The Power of Five Oblivion

slight hill, with the square and the church and the main hall in the middle so there was an upper and a lower village, which were actually quite different from each other. The bit where I lived was mainly modern, consisting of neat brick houses with picture windows and back gardens which had once been full of flowers but that were now planted with vegetables. The bottom half was much older. This was where all the weekenders had lived, but they were all gone now and their houses had been taken over. These were mainly thatched cottages, which caused all sorts of problems with grubs living in the thatch and leaks in the windows, but there were also a couple of rows of pretty terraces that almost vanished behind the wisteria and honeysuckle that still erupted every spring, even though nobody looked after them.
    Walking down from the square, you came to a crossroads with the Queen’s Head on one side. The Queen, as everyone called it, was white, half-timbered and still made its own beer. Known as Queen’s Rot, it had been something of a joke in the county: weak, watery and wet was how the locals described it. Nobody had thought that, one day, it would be the only beer you could get. Turn right and you looped back on yourself, coming out on Ferry Lane behind the garage. Turn left and you passed about half a dozen houses before coming to open farmland and the orchards. The village grew wheat, potatoes and sugar beet, depending on the season, and there were pigs and chickens too. Everyone had their own allotment but the rule was that you had to share everything, even though this always led to arguments.
    Follow the main road all the way down to the bottom and you came to a quay with a flagpole but no flag, and the river, a dead end in every sense because although the water had once been full of fish, it was now thick and oily and a five-minute swim would put you into hospital – if we had one, which we didn’t – or more probably the grave. In The Queen there was a photograph of the river as it had once been, and even though it was a black-and-white picture it still looked more colourful than it did now. There was no other way out of the village and only one way in. That was its distinguishing feature. A single road ran through the thick woodland that surrounded us on three sides. Over the years, a ring of watchtowers had been constructed so that it was impossible to approach the village without being seen. Big signs warned people that they would be shot if they came too close and I did hear gunfire once or twice in the middle of the day, but as I never went to a village meeting I don’t know how many people tried to get in, how many were turned back or how many died.
    We villagers were allowed to come and go. We had passwords that changed every month and that were posted in the old bus shelter which stood as a reminder of the time when there had been buses. September’s password was “samphire”. There were still plenty of rabbits in the wood (although fewer in recent years) and we were encouraged to go out hunting, using bows and arrows to conserve bullets. I’d once brought down a wild deer with a single arrow through its neck and for about a week after that I was the village hero. Everyone had something nice to say about me. But then the last scrap of meat was eaten and the bones were boiled down to the last bowl of soup and things quickly went back to normal.
    Anyway, there you have it. A village of about three hundred people with a dense wood at one end and a dead river at the other. We were isolated. And we all knew that was probably the reason we were still alive.
    Rita was waiting for me on the other side of the front door and she knew immediately from my face that something was wrong. She was stick-thin with long, silver hair and eyes that had retreated into caves. When she was angry, she looked like a witch. Now she was just scared, although as usual she was doing her best not to show it. Rita kept her emotions locked up like her best china and only brought them out for special occasions.
    “What is it, Hermione?” She was the only one who called me that. “What’s happened? Why are you late?”
    “I met someone…” I hesitated.
    “Who did you meet?”
    “It was a boy. But he wasn’t from the village.”
    She stared at me. “What do you mean?”
    “He just appeared at the church. He said his name was Jamie. I’d never seen him before.”
    “So what did you do?”
    “I didn’t do anything.