Fish. Dead on the bank, where the river’s bend
curves like a hand
and you left me faster than the sky.

They have us
to thank

for this
un/fortunate state

in which our
height in space
is fate

and where
an I
is not an I-am-waiting-for-you-and-the-ferry-is-strange-on-the-steaming-water I,
but rather, rocky and moss-drenched in a park, by a still
green pool.

Trent

Down to the washlands
where the library is mess of glass,
where the last of the kids leave the playground.
Breweries beam their smog, distant hills are charcoal,
I sit on a bench and the ground is fat with water.

Down to the washlands after college with Jess
A horizon of flooded fields.
The low sun’s reflection forms a golden sea.
She taps a joint in the silence
and the smoke joins the breeze.

Down to the washlands while engines shunt carriages
and did you know this was 60 miles from the coast?
Battered willows lull at the stream
a seamless expanse. A squirrel drags some litter
tangled in a branch.

Down to the washlands to stare at my legs
the talk of little birds wading in the shallows.
Trucks climb the hill, a barge churns water.
It’ s summer but the sun rises so late
I hardly know my own reflection.

Assen

When the rain finished we took a bus into town,
stumbled through the flat greys and pinks
picked a bench to eat pizza by a deer park.

Everything so fresh and clean. The gulped air cooled
like cobbles, ravenous pigeons flapped in invisible slips
of wind.
I looked at you for a moment,
the stretch of all Europe in   your face
                                                       on every blade of grass:
droplets.

I remember when the world was flat

and the water ran off like

a spilt drink on a tabletop

and how they’d do day trips

to the edge on little tour boats

that tugged-up by the big fence

they’d built all round the edge

to stop people falling off.

Then there was that time

man went to the moon

and I remember languid legs

and sooty boots shaking off the ash

next to that statue they found

of some old guy in a diving suit

and the big investigation afterwards

into pre-history and nuclear weapons.

And what about that hot summer

in 2008 when all the money melted

into a chocolaty mess that lined

our pockets and everyone got agitated

because it would take years to

come out in the wash unless

they were rich enough to afford

the laundrette or tax evasion.

Living-Room Spirit

There’s warmth beneath

the bed sheets: propped up

with rudimentary supports

- sticks from the garage

and leftover poles

from broken gazebos.

We’re giggles galore,

stumbling over sofa

cushions to compare

the blankets stuffed

between fat hands,

tying ropes from poles

to tables, to shelves,

to expensive televisions

lounging on faux -

pine furniture, and Mum

will come home and shout

at us, but it doesn’t matter

because we’re cats,

and we’re pirates,

and we’ve got torches

and stickers, and sails,

and swords, and forts,

and glow-in-the-dark stars.

Downturn

That day

the sun tore

at our eyes.

Now we bob;

heads hovering

over hands

in hope that

when that final

shuffle shears us

from our shoulders

we won’t be

headless.

Grahams – (17) but less sure of his place in the world, he is ready to follow the lead of whoever is taking the class.

Morrison – (17) and doesn’t need teachers as he knows everything there ever needs to be known. Who needs to go to school when you will one day own it?

Eric – (37) is a teacher of much experience, much ingenuity and much patience.

A one-man blue tent is pitched on the edge of a small town Occupy camp. The zip has been padlocked shut from the outside. In front a pair of dirty Birkenstocks and a pile of clothes; to the side an upturned milk crate topped with a newspaper and a steaming mug of tea. Other crates are scattered and there is a sign proclaiming ‘Occupy School.’

The tent moves; someone is trapped inside it.

Adams and Grahams, both in school uniform enter, Grahams kicks the school sign over. The tent stops moving.

To read the full script, click on the PDF:

Lunken, Tilly- Occupy Eric

1. Woman
2. Woman is in the lap of A, B, C …
3. Now that august is gone
4. This woman
5. Rope hair woman
6. kay
7. she complains that she is not that weak woman in passion
8. Just like yesterday
9. woamn
10. Thru My Eyes
11. When Man Enters Woman
12. HE TASTES THAT WOMAN
13. ! ¤*Every Woman*¤!
14. U and ME
15. catherine
16. A life half lived
17. milking stars
18. Somewhere

Nolita

1/

Have we accepted that we cannot turn cannot turn cannot turn the secret

hidden method of the audience?

The test speaker quicksteps in public and gives the audience his dirty tips.

The problems in the audience sector can be defined as enclosed in a dresser,

in a field, with a vision of modernism.

Federal Garcia Lorca receives the audience in a public garden, a zoological garden

of public choice. The audience have knowledge of the public bodies combustion bill

and the book shelf personality of a toilet.

A violent audience that threatens the public service in advance

with the can-can.

2/

The public is forever in fear.

Public sectors surround the mind and face.

Blinking in the public section can never be accepted.

Federico Garcia Lorca is used to that (what a citizen).

Public investigation is quick and shall decipher at the public’s interest.

The public park, the public zoo are public marks from private folds.

The ministry offers the public milk and honey.

3/

Public enemies

review the public in public –

prompt and dingy

creatures with prevalent interests

in alternative public depiction.

The public face of modernism

was a dividing folder

a common folder

that came into the public

via Federico Garcia Lorca.

The public model of science –

fervent in public organ rations –

was always prevalent and hot.

Its problem

in the public sector

can be defined

as room for surrender.

4/

The property always feared her comrades’ eyes.

The eyes that never winked. That cannot accept becoming.

Cannot advise becoming.

The method cannot be extracted – becoming the enemy.

Criticism is the speaker’s quickstep, the dirty typist.

Define becoming.

The science of public understanding of private interest.

Picture philosophy and her problems –

an embraceable region becoming the commons of the face.

The audience wants what the audience gets.

A garden comes into use. Some follow the montage.

Public choice – a model worth the arts subjects. Worth.

Worth the science.

Burning locations

character the private.

Eight Phrases

— My drink is getting lonely, would you like to join me with yours?

— What’s your name?

— How long does the journey take?

— My father is a policeman.

— I do not have a brother.

— My birthday is January 8th.

— Your breath smells like peaches.

— Can you give me something for the pain?

From the Window of a Moving Train

Suddenly I am struck by the stillness of horses.

I miss my turn in the game. Outside are objects,

we must spot them. The rules are not complex.

But is a rainbow worth more than a cloud?

A church equal to ten burnt-out sheds? And how much

for a flag, a scarecrow or a swarm of bees? A couple in love,

a couple not in love, a tree stump, a crime-scene?

An upturned rowboat, a child’s kite, a face at a window?

A fist-fight? Lost money? Perfect light? A girl, running?

Substance

I had been reading about ancient belief

in ‘upper’ and ‘lower’ waters, how the former

represents potential — a cloud or a contrail —

and the latter the actual: a lake or canal.

Coming across ‘skull-water’, I said it aloud.

But you asked about condensation,

where steam and rain came in.

‘Why not call a cloud a cloud?

Why complicate the thing?’

To view all the poems, download a PDF:

Collins, Sophie- Selected Poems

INT. registration hall – DAY

A light and slightly comical musical score plays throughout the scenes.

PIPPA is a young 18, a figurine with a slight build and fair porcelain-like complexion. She stands, in her rather ordinary stop-motion animated world, opposite a temporary desk where MARTHA, a much older, plump administrator, taps on a computer. Other young figurine STUDENTS, of more sturdy and plasticine complexions, are lined up behind Pippa.

The student right behind her is ALEC, scruffy and with a book in hand. He watches Pippa and as she turns to look at her surroundings, he feigns interest in his book. Pippa pauses as she notices him reading. Alec darts his gaze back up to look at her. They both gasp at being caught.

To read the full script, click on the PDF:

Black, Linda C- Rock Paper Scissors

on the teeth of the roads.  I slipped into town,

The Green Inn, gave my order and sat down –

Bring me bread and butter.  A plate of ham too.

Leg bones under the grass-green table,

still alive, I gazed at the wallpaper’s

evil designs. They were pulsating.

Then a black Amazon with pert tits shaking –

His fierce kiss wouldn’t scare her away! –

swept in laughing with a dish of ashen bread

and ham laid out on a bone china plate,

ham that smelt strange, all haloed with white,

then poured clear water, my fallen head

touched by the gold of the sun at midnight.

Forecasts

‘We live submerged at the bottom of an
ocean of air’

            Eva
ngelista
Torricelli

i.

I am beginning to

realise that you are

the kind of sentence

that doesn’t go anywhere

fast. I have been

tracking the weather forecasts

in France – your mute

winds spook me, enough

to annotate my days

away from silence, deaf-

dumb-blindness of being

left alone with no-one

to narrate the cloudburst,

or the way the

wheat fields in the               

morning smell like burning

popcorn. Last night I

read a story aloud

just to hear words

spoken in our house.

It was about a

little girl who wished

she owned a cat.

One afternoon a tiger

landed in her garden

in a wooden crate

destined for the zoo,

and the little girl wanted

a cat so much

she simply believed the

tiger was a cat.

Poor tiger, house-trained,

learning how to purr

for her, he tried

so hard to be

a cat – ignoring trees

and dogs and making

such an effort not

to eat her until

the end. It made

me think of how

much you want to

believe in taming airstreams,

translating storms into a

chorus we can score 

in our own voices. 

But don’t we always

misread something? Afterwards

I woke myself laughing

into the empty room,

my voice so loose

I was certain it

must have been you –

not so far away

across the sea, not

chasing hurricanes just to

hear if they speak.

vi.

Last night the sky turned white

as a soft-boiled egg, and lightning

marbled the milk skin

red. I saw your eyes, bloodshot

from driving nights round city outskirts,

where the bloodhounds bay over fences

at the slightest interruption,

and inside your cab there is

a constant intermission; agony of stale

air, saliva gumming up from the

cluttered, plastic disposable-cups,

furnishings breathing toxins through your closed

compartment heart. These small storms hit

us hard, but I found that

a whole summer’s rainfall

in an hour can be exhilarating.

I stood in the doorway staring

up until the tungsten clouds broke,

listening to next-door wailing

carly carly where are you carly

come home carly over and over

again beneath the sound of freight-trucks

ploughing miles through the

sky, and I thought I heard

your voice counting down the cats-eyes’

on the motorway. Here the storm

wind booms, gathers its

reverberations back into the cavity of

its own iron moan. The streets

are flooded, full-throttle thunder drenched

the roses you never

even saw bloom, they fattened and

dwarfed in an instant, the way

swollen skies are so suddenly spent,

emptied hissing over doorsteps.

Meanwhile red eyes, channel your paths

through thunder, crack the window, catch

the quick winds in your palm,

fingers streaming through slant

gasps on the other side of

glass. I can only try and fill

this house with sounds you missed,

a box of storms,

sheet-metal compressed and furious.

viii.

The house is beginning

again to dust

and I am allowing

the bruised fruit to

soften. All we can hope

for since the storm

is something more to stir

us. I give you

hints; a jackdaw clack, 

photographs we

ought to remember for

each other; blue

balloon in a grey-green

river, the girl

who. I know you told me

not to but I

went swimming in the lake

last night. It was

a struggle, as

soon as I got far enough

I wanted to

turn back, but it was a

song I had to

finish, there were little

fish and raindrops

flinched against the surface

like scattered

rice. I wanted to be

so completely

wet I couldn’t hear. I

held my breath and 

counted my lungs in my

fists; blood rustled

like static, a needle

snagged on a scratch,

the way we catch our breath

on hairline splits

between us and return

always to memories -

I remember

I wanted you to jump

from the rock face,

watched you watching the local

boys who knew

instinctively where to

climb, where to aim

for in the water – I

held my breath for

you then, watching sunlight

creep up carving

edges onto everything,

clarity given

back in a flock of leaves

appearing here

here again, interspersed

with breathlessness.

And later, our cool white

room whose windows

opened out onto the

red-tiled terrace

where the other guests smoked

and drank home-made

brandy out of foot-less

glasses, we held

our silence in our throats

behind the thin

cotton curtains, sweating

in the storm of

each other.

ix.

The sprig you stole

from the plantation garden has produced

leathery flowers that reek of jasmine,

but are not that.

The bush is breaking

apart the patio, the purpled florets

hook newly-hatched spiders in their flight

out of the garden.

How easily they lift

into the wind and clot their

own nests in the forest, how

easily wind can take

into itself something so

delicate and pass it on, until

completely stitched into the fabric of

our distances. How light

the air is tonight.

I dip my body in itself,

hoping something tender reaches through the

wind spinning nets across

the fields, touches you

composing loops and curves between us,

breathing in the air, the scent

of jasmine, misremembered skin.

FORECASTS

We live submerged at the bottom of an ocean of air

- Evangelista Torricelli

I.

I’m trying to write

a film about different

kinds of wind because

really we’re all dying

to be air  Today

I took field recordings

of agonal breathing  listen

my voice is hidden

in the track underneath

Wind itself is deaf

and dumb  only interrupting

matter such as microphones

can vocalise an airstream

   I am difficult to

   talk   it makes me

   whispers   we drift like

Subtitles are being considered

The script is forming

itself silently  I’m shooting

the sky to establish

a setting  it opens

on a big blue

yawn  a voice-over

carries over the mistrals

III.

all day long I score soughs

and rustles  creating dialects of air

You’d smile to hear blusters fold

over into form  thick autumn thermals

plumped into howling vowels  We two

both learn to purr  notating twists

as whistles skim the chimney  This house

rattles its emptiness on the windows

I often read your poem aloud

lift and circulate the words  listen

for inner similarities to their meaning

so much warm air   so close

the soft drone of your vocables

V.

filter coffee service stations  where nobody

speaks and the rain blisters windows

I’ve been sleeping in the car

and it’s been aspirin for days

There are messages on your side

residual questions traced in glass  wiper-

blades drag off-beat against silent

wind-farms lunatic arms   My mornings

turn upon the centre of your

air-conditioned letters  tell me  where

did you sleep last night  We expand

against the air  an unending series

of replacements  we call this language

 shiver when the cold wind blows

VII.

I hold my breath

after lightning and wait

for it  to return

thunder  Please know this

is exactly as I

found it   white balloon

in a field  with

nothing else  little lung

in a furrow bobs

so soft in leeward

breeze  Do you remember

the car game  puffing

our chests and pinching

our noses  we drove

at night through tunnels

blood swimming in our

ears  those rumbling tyres

the blinking lights  our

beating hearts    I’m trying

to picture the world

before we were taught

about looking  but everything

framed returns   A balloon

in a field  tumbles

towards a knotted patch

of brambles  Thunder claps

IX.

You always took good care

of pot-plants and plot curves

Things have been calm and grey

Remember the house where

wisteria whispered

in through open windows

the pink violet vines’

breath on your back   smoke-

like  after night-swimming

There was something I meant

to say to you  something

about currents or waves

but I often lose track

of the simpler facts  Wind

waving the wind along

the tonnes of air under

which we are all submerged

and our small conversions

Sometimes we have to change from a fast to a stopping train. This means waiting on Motspur Park station, not far from the athletics track where Roger Bannister once trained for his record-breaking four-minute mile. Our own sports to pass the time before the next train arrives are somewhat less athletic though perhaps more inventive. They are certainly more hazardous, as they include a number of variations on the game of ‘chicken’.

Today this involves taking turns to stand near the platform edge, facing the incoming train and jumping repeatedly, putting our legs together and then apart, then together again, and apart again, fast and faster. It has the excitement of the dance and the adrenalin of a dangerous sport, although perhaps we don’t realise the true risks involved.

It’s my turn now, and I begin with a jerky sort of jumping then quickly increase my pace, shouting and laughing. The train looms up out of the fog, and as it rushes into the station I continue with the game, jumping the splits and daring the driver, to and fro in a laughing frenzy, until at the key moment as the driver catches my eye, my right leg suddenly slips down – down and further down between platform edge and inrushing carriages, an impossibly slender gap which in my mind now turns into the deepest of chasms, the train rattling madly by, close to my shivering face. An irretrievable moment of fall, and I seem to be still falling, and although there is no further to go, yet the terrifying dropping sensation just keeps going.

I hold myself as steady as I can, rigid with terror, the left leg kneeling on cold stone, the mind racing and focused entirely on not moving the right leg, knowing that to do so means death. Although I am still in some sense falling, my perceptions seem to freeze into the eternity of this moment, as I watch the dark wooden running-boards below the door-sills hurtling past me. I strain my neck muscles to lean my head as far away from the train as possible, but even so I feel the rush of air and smell the rancid mix of oil and dust from the electric motors under the carriages. I hear the grinding wheels on the steel rails, and the squeal of the brakes and a distant shout of alarm from somewhere far away on the platform. Perhaps that is my own voice screaming or is it Dominic calling to me? Perhaps I am dying. Maybe I’m not such a superhero after all.

In these days on every platform there are dramatic posters warning of the dangers of opening the door before the train has stopped. The posters usually show a child about to be hit by a door being carelessly opened by a smiling pipe-smoking man in a jaunty-looking trilby. No posters, though, warn passengers or drivers about children dancing with death in the misty mornings.

As the train stops I carefully extract my leg and sit back looking at it in shock, by now feeling disconnected from it, as if one strand in time has already sent me off into my own destruction. I begin the attempt to mentally join the leg back to my mind, but I can’t quite do it: it seems to have already gone. I place myself a long way back from the platform edge, trying to smile, and the other commuters stare at me, appalled at the idiocy of the game, but they have to get on with their day, so they shake their heads and board the train which by now is ready to pull out of the station.

I sit this one out and let it go on its way, and I am left in the cold with the suddenly-silent Dominic and we wait for the following train, knowing that it will be several minutes before it arrives, and hoping that by that time we may have recovered our senses. This is my most public fall so far, maybe performed for my friend, for the sake of attention or causing sensation, or even just to provide memorable incident in the tedium of schoolboy life. In this respect and this respect alone, I am successful: it is definitely a memorable incident.

*    *    *

This fall at the station is a moment to which I have often returned, and once it is recalled, even many years later, it is hard to uncouple the memory and let it go again. The fear in that petrified 10-year old child is still there, leg lost over the cliff-face, waiting for the impact. Where that hip joins leg and trunk, some catastrophe that never happened is still located, this memory neither quite bodily nor really mental but of some other dark substance that seems hard to know about. That moment remains forever, an inescapable tunnel of fear in the hillside of memory.

A storm had rolled in from the channel to soak the last seconds of the century. Wind and rain joined the high tide, waves blanketing Bantham Beach to slam against the hillsides. The River Avon surged, breaking its banks, into the South Hams. The water destroyed Grace Tucker’s garden, ripping up the cradled buds and nurtured roots, to finally push the front door open, letting the violence in.

Grace stood before the struggling fire. It was the centre of her house, black from providing heat for food and light for the table, which was stained too, with ink spills and the scratches of a child’s first pen strokes. Now the flames were reduced to embers by the storm, just as the kitchen seemed to shrink with both men stood at either end, boxing her in.

Benedict hovered in the doorway, soaked through, and Grace thought she’d glimpsed dried blood on his hands. On the far side of the room, Tom leant against Molly’s bedroom door. The column of his body collapsed inwards, those huge shoulders dragging on a fail­ing back. In one hand, he held her diary. In the other, a pistol. Grace tried to keep her hands pinned to her skirts, but kept returning to pick at a loose thread.

‘Please, Tom,’ she said. ‘I do not understand what has happened.’

Tom raised the book. In the firelight, he could just make out where Grace had pressed ink into its hide, embedding her words: A True Relation of My Life and Deeds.

‘I remember one night, you saying you wanted to write for your bread,’ he said. ‘I laughed. I never thought you meant it. You must have kept this little confessional somewhere safe when I came around. Strange, to find it out tonight, with all the fineries I bought you. As if you was packing. And with my name on nearly every page. So now I know what a woman has to write about. Gossip, and the secrets of men.’

‘It has only my life,’ said Grace. ‘I have written it for Molly. And – and for myself. There is nothing strange in that, nor harmful. Now please, tell me why you have come here so late.’

In the doorway, Benedict eased from foot to foot. He had never met Tom’s lover before. None of the crew had. Whenever they came ashore, the ship burdened with barrels of brandy or chests of tea, Tom came here. The crew all talked about it: Tom West and his lover, a woman with a child begot by another man. But never in front of Tom. No one told him he was a lucky devil, a lady of quality to lie with whenever he wished, or said how strange it was, Tom caring for a girl with nothing of his blood in her veins. This was more than a warm bed and pottage in the morning, though. Benedict understood that now, but not why Tom had come here. What could this cottage mean to the men they’d dragged from the river, smugglers and Rev­enue bleeding alike? He shuffled back.

‘I can wait outside,’ he said. ‘The horses -’

Tom cut through him, rolling Grace’s gentle vowels in his Devon growl: ‘No harm in it, you say. Then I take it there are none of my movements scribbled down in this masterpiece of yours?’

‘What do you mean?’ said Grace.

‘A little late to play the fool, my girl.’

‘I am playing at nothing.’

‘No?’ said Tom. ‘Then it weren’t your wretched words that got me and my men ambushed tonight?’

‘Ambushed?’ repeated Grace. She edged backwards. The floorboards groaned and she stilled.

‘The Revenue was hidden by the tidal road at Aveton Gifford,’ said Tom. ‘As if they knew I was coming. As if they was waiting. Two of my men are dead. Shot whilst rowing. No warning, no chance.’

Grace paled. ‘Are you hurt?’

Tom laughed. He squeezed the pistol’s walnut grip, his fist swelling like a joint of pork strung too tight. ‘Would it matter?’

‘How could you ask such a thing?’ said Grace.

‘Someone told them where I’d be. Someone didn’t care if I was lain down to die tonight.’

‘That boy – that boy you told me about – Frank Abbot. You said he had been seen talking to the Revenue,’ said Grace, ‘before he… left, for Plymouth. He must have mentioned where you would be taking the goods.’

At Frank Abbot’s name, Benedict searched for Tom’s familiar eyes in the dark, but all he could see was the man’s terrible height, which seemed to grow in the gathering silence. The only other time Benedict had seen Tom like this was when they discovered Frank Abbot had betrayed them. Everyone knew what happened to Frank next, but no one spoke of it. The villagers shook Tom’s hand as they always had, enjoying the pint of ale he bought them, or praising his name whilst they sprinkled salt he carried from France on their food.

‘What makes you think Frank left for Plymouth?’ said Tom, looking at her steadily.

Grace glanced at the pistol. It was shaking in his hand. She had never asked him how many of the rumours were true: if that pistol acted as just a warning, remaining in his belt, or if he was free with it. Sometimes she believed she never asked him because he in turn had never asked about the gossip built up around her, what was true or false. She knew, too, how gently he could hold a child, and surely his hands were not capable of all people said. Other times, she believed she never asked because she knew how anger could change his face.

Now she took a deep breath and said, ‘I know what you did. I heard some fisherman talking about it. Frank Abbot was found dead on Burgh Island. I know you ordered it, or did it yourself.’

Tom’s grip went slack on the gun and then tightened quickly before he dropped it. ‘And haven’t you got a whole load of docity, coming out with it. A lady of your breeding, repeating men’s private conversations. I wonder if they thought they was safe, these fishermen, speaking their secrets so close to your ears. Perhaps they thought you was the kind of woman who observed sanctities. The kind of woman who would keep any words that crossed her pillow close to her chest.’

‘I do not know what you are trying to say,’ said Grace, ‘but whatever you think – you are wrong.’

Tom tried to breathe. He was burning, too many tolls taken: nerve-endings seared from diving into freezing water to haul his men out; a bullet graze on his arm; fractured ribs. He was swaying on his feet. He was falling into Grace’s green eyes. Green like the land he loved, that’s what he had told her. But not blue, like the sea you love more. Her words. One foot on land, one leg in water. After the ambush, he had mounted a dead officer’s horse and left his men by the tidal road, driving the animal here as fast as he could. Benedict had followed – at Harry’s command no doubt – arriving thirty minutes later. Time enough for Tom to see Grace packing, to go through her books whilst she lied to him, and find her diary with his name scrawled throughout. Tom had not told Benedict to leave when he stumbled through the door, believing he could keep his temper in check as long as the boy was staring at him with that lamb-like worship. But all he could think of was her eyes: green like the land I love.

‘I saved you,’ he said. ‘I kept your little girl from starving. I’ve been good to you. Better than you precious husband ever was, or would have been. I’ve loved your daughter when any other man would have scorned your bed for having a child crawling into it. I’ve – you know, Grace. You know what I feel. I trusted you with my life, and the life of my crew. I thought I had cause.’

‘You do. Please, Tom, step away from Molly’s door.’

‘You think I’d hurt her?’ Tom snapped, making both Grace and Benedict jump.

‘No,’ said Grace, her hands up. ‘I know you would not. Please, just sit with me. Please.’

‘Tom, sir, we’ve got to go,’ said Benedict. ‘The Dragoons will be out soon. Please, we’ve got to get to the ship.’

Tom breathed out through his nose. He was trembling. He looked at the pile of lace and linen he had bought Grace, now folded up on the table, ready for a bag. She was going to leave him. She had betrayed him, and now she was going to leave him.

‘I’ll sit with you, if that’s what you want,’ he said. ‘Benedict, get out. Go.’

‘But –’

‘Now.’

Benedict wormed on the spot, and then gave a nod and twisted away: back down the cross-passage and out the front door. The world was black now, water and hills and sky merging, solid. Benedict blundered into it, groping for the damson tree. Water sloshed around his ankles. A hot breath on his face made him jump. The horses. He felt for the reins, tugging and pulling at the knot. But in this weather, even if he got the horse free, it would be impossible to get back up the hill without any help.

In the kitchen, Grace and Tom sat across from each other at the table as they had for the past three years. Tom’s long legs barely fitted. Grace perched, birdlike, on the edge of her chair. Tom set her diary down, but kept the pistol. His wet hair hid his eyes. Grace reached for him, fingers skirting his swollen knuckles. Tom hunched, gripping the pistol closer.

‘There is blood on your hands,’ she said.

‘Not my hands alone.’

The seconds passed, giving those low, scratched words strength, giving them meaning. From the other room came the sound of Molly crying. Grace rose. Tom’s hand moved quickly, holding her where she was.

‘Molly needs me,’ she said.

‘I need you,’ said Tom. ‘You know why I’m here. What I need you to tell me. Don’t you?’

Grace’s shoulders slumped. She looked over his face and then down to where his fist was tightening on her arm, cutting off the blood to her hand.

She said, ‘I can explain.’