The nightmares were awful last night, truly horrific. I was in a dark place, breathing in blood, my nose pressed into tissue, a slowly pounding heart that beat into my face, cutting off my air until I thought my lungs would burst, then releasing me. Beating slower and slower. Worst of all was the voice, malevolent, whispering fiercely in my ear, hissing a foul chant, over and over.
‘Baby. Bay-bee. Ba-ba. Bee-bay. E-bay. Buy-bay-bee-on-eBay. Get rid of bay-bee. Kill bay-bee.’
I woke up shaking and hugged Rommel to me, crying into his rough oily coat. It was Maura of course, that had triggered it. She had sobbed her heart out, saying she wanted an abortion. Then, catching sight of the horror that must have flashed over my face, shaking her head and saying she didn’t know what to do. Jeremy wanted children, of course he did, but it wasn’t him that would have to go through it all. I suppressed the nasty thought that he would actually have been a good mother – nice child-bearing hips by the sound of it.
It was a horrible place to be, reassuring a woman that if she wanted, really wanted, an abortion, then that was her unalienable right. It wasn’t her fault; she didn’t know me; didn’t know how much I craved a baby. How could she know that, to me, being pregnant would be the most wonderful thing in the world while the very idea of getting rid of a baby was so alien as to be unimaginable.

We took the coffees out and somehow got through the rest of the morning. Camilla, bless her, talked about the flowers for the church at Easter. Inconsequential but we fell on it like starving wolves and debated furiously whether it should be traditional lilies as usual or whether we could break out and consider banks of white tulips for a change. Lord, I don’t even go to church. Except, I forget, I do. God help me. I looked down at my knitting and realised I’d totally lost my place on the pattern and the sleeve was stating to go out instead of in – I’d need to unpick about four inches.

Jane caught me up as I walked down the road, close to tears myself.
‘Hey.’ She put her hand on my shoulder.
‘No. Please don’t. I’ll cry. I can’t bear people being nice to me when I’m upset.’
She smiled and threw up her hands, as if to show they wouldn’t go anywhere near me.
‘Let me guess. She’s pregnant.’
I looked up sharply.
‘How did you know?’
‘Not rocket science. It was either that or bonza boy is having an affair. Frankly, I’d doubt the latter – can’t think of anyone who’d want to jump into the sack with Jeremy Cabburn. Big waste of space.’
‘Why?’
She rolled her eyes.
‘One of those really pathetic men who thinks he’s a cut above the rest of us because he’s a musician. An ‘artist’. I’m not saying he’s not talented; I’m sure he is. But he barely earns a penny as most of the stuff he’s offered is ‘beneath him’. So Maura, poor cow, has to keep the whole sad shebang going.’
‘What kind of musician?’
‘Guitarist. Singer-songwriter,’ she drew little quote marks in the air.
‘Maura’s an accountant – bloody good one too. But of course he thinks that what she does is rubbish. She sits there in that poxy caravan keeping them going while he faffs around. Silly arse.’
I couldn’t help but smile. But it was still a sad smile and Jane, smart as anything picked it up.
‘It’ll happen, you know. Just when you least expect it. You wait and see. We were on the verge of going into IVF and then, out of the blue, woooah, I’m up the duff. Won’t be long – you wait and see.’
‘I don’t think so. It takes two of you to make babies and I’m barely seeing Aidan at the moment. He’s up in town all the time – or so it seems.’

We’d walked right back to the house without realising it, so I invited Jane in for lunch.
Ben was there, replacing floorboards; Rommel watching his every move beadily, like an overseer. He smiled and nodded over towards the kitchen.
‘There’s a quote on the table from Pete, the plumber, for the bathroom. See what you think. Talk it over with Aidan. He’s a good bloke, Pete, neat work and fair. He won’t rook you.’
‘I’m sure it’s fine if you’ve checked it.’
Lord, we were lucky with Ben. He was pretty much taking over the renovation and doing a fantastic job. How come Maura and Jeremy hadn’t used him?
‘Jeremy’s one of those blokes likes to think he knows best,’ said Ben with a rueful smile. ‘He got talking to a bloke down the pub and came away convinced he’d found the best builder in the county. A few people tried to put him straight but he wasn’t having it. Losing face and all, as he’d already offered Nelson the work.’

Ben joined us for lunch and we had a good laugh. Between them they dispersed the sour taste in my mouth left by Maura. After some strong coffee, he offered to drop Jane back in the village to pick up her car and said he needed to get materials so wouldn’t be back until the morning.

I felt restless after they had gone. The house was filthy but there didn’t
seem much point in cleaning it while all the sawing and sanding was going on. It would only get as bad again tomorrow.
I seemed to have hit ‘pause’ on the book and I really needed Aidan to take me to a nursery or garden centre before I could really progress with the garden.
It was too early for a drink, to early for a fire. So I thought I’d go for a walk. All this exercise, I was going to get seriously fit. Who needs a gym when you live in the bloody countryside?


We struck out along the road a little way and then Rommel veered off onto a footpath I hadn’t noticed before. It was a stunning walk, alongside the river, small waterfalls skidding down over rock, sinking into pads of thick moss. A kingfisher dipped, a flash of turquoise, and two snipe rose up and zigzagged away (my father loved shooting snipe - said they were the Red Arrows of the bird world). ‘Any idiot can shoot a pheasant,’ he used to say, ‘But snipe….you have to be fast and smart. Think ahead.’

Everything is so fresh in early spring, so brand new around the edges.
Quite soon we were faced with a choice. The path split into two, one hugging the river, the other turning away in a wide lazy circle. I started along the river path but Rommel fixed me with a beady look and headed firmly the other way, into a wood, possibly a forest. Ah well, whatever. It wasn’t as if I were going anywhere in particular. We walked for maybe another five minutes and suddenly we were into a clearing and ahead of us sat the most bizarre little house.

It looked more like a shed than a house. Clad in wooden boards, with a steeply pitched roof, it perched on a series of stone mushrooms that kept it aloft from the forest floor. Nonetheless, adventurous ivy had somehow managed to make the leap and poked tendrils across the back wall, spreading out slowly, insidiously, like a claw. It was set in a clearing but the trees crowded around, like curious onlookers at the scene of an accident. The bracken was still reddish-brown, stiff and dry. The grass still had that bleached out tinge, the fresh green yet to push through here.

The door was open, a clear welcome, so I climbed carefully up the steep wooden steps and pushed the door, which was painted a surprising electric blue. The little house smelt delicious. Pine resin mingled with woodsmoke and a faint whisper of something exotic, amber perhaps?

It was clean as a whistle but plain, so plain, Shaker-simple but not in an affected way. Plain wooden boards, bleached with scrubbing, formed the floor. The walls were wood too – thick planks of blonde wood, grooved so closely there was no chance of a gap. No curtains, just wooden shutters. It was one large room – an old-fashioned camp bed in one corner, with a neat pile of plaid blankets stacked at the end. A Calor gas stove sat one end of a wooden chest while a small sink perched on the other. There were no taps. At the other end of the room was a wood-burning stove, four-square planted on the floor, a coffee pot sitting on its soft black top. A low armchair, squashy in faded tartan, snuggled up close.
The stove was alight, warming the room, but the place was empty. I stood on the threshold and let out the breath I hadn’t realised I had been holding. I let the silence stroke me. Except it wasn’t silent. The wood was full of sounds, not just the obvious birdsong, but the creaking of branches, the rustling of bracken, and above it all, the sound of water, quite a lot of water, tumbling nearby.

I followed the water-song. It was deceptive and I stumbled down a few dead-ends before finding the screen of ivy, wild honeysuckle and soldier-straight elder, behind the house. I pushed my way gently through and followed a narrow but definite track. A narrow torrent of water spat out from a moss-clad rock-face. A natural shower. Below it someone had dug out just enough of the gravely slate to make a pool. It wasn’t deep enough for a bath but perfect for washing dishes. Not that you’d need a bath because someone had thought of that too. There was a bath, an old-fashioned tub, plonked a short distance from the waterfall. There was even a length of pipe, tucked under a clump of bracken, that would siphon water into the bath. Underneath a fire pit. Clever – you lit a fire which heated the water. But still damn cold. You’d have to be more than Spartan. There was a rough and ready out-house too, once again clean and neat, with a large throne-like toilet and high cistern. Presumably feeding into a cess pit or something.

Who lived here? I knew - well I was pretty sure. It had to be the strange witchy woman, the one who had vanished from church, the one who had marched into the knitting circle and announced she needed to talk to me. Eden. Well, here I was and here she obviously was, though where I wasn’t quite sure. I wandered back to the house and could hear voices. She must have come round the other way. I was on the verge of calling out, but something stopped me. I don’t know what exactly. Maybe it’s because I have Scorpio in my chart, I have a love of secrecy. If I’m honest, I have to confess to occasional bouts of eavesdropping. It’s not a nice trait, I freely admit.
So I paused before climbing the steps, long enough to hear that it *was* Eden, with the dusky voice, and that her guest was Maura. I soon heard enough to realise that this wasn’t the best conversation to interrupt with a cheery ‘yoo hoo’.
‘I can’t keep it.’
‘It would be dangerous. You could harm yourself. You might never be able to conceive again.’
‘I don’t care.’
I slunk away. There are some conversations you shouldn’t hear. They say the eavesdropper never hears good and they (whoever they are) are right.