The Unseen(78)

Outside, the sun came out, blisteringly bright, making her screen hard to see. Blinking in the sudden glare, Leah turned her body away from the window. She skipped through a few of the paranormal websites, where the pictures and story took second place to the better known Cottingley Fairies, famously championed by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. On one site she found a short biography of Robin Durrant, describing him as a theosophist rather than a spiritualist. Leah jotted the unfamiliar word down in her notebook. She leaned back and looked out of the window, at people marching by, squinting. The street outside was rendered black and white by the sudden harsh light; people and buildings were silhouettes, hard outlines. The same sun in a different season would soften everything, and coax out all the many colours. Now it was as sharp and unforgiving as a knife. Leah looked at her watch. Mark Canning had invited her to have a look around The Old Rectory at midday – in an hour’s time. He had told her, in The Swing Bridge pub, that the fairy photographs had always been a source of mild embarrassment to his parents and grandparents, who were deeply logical people and had no time for such things. That an otherwise unimpeachable ancestor, the vicar Albert Canning, had been taken in by such blatant trickery was considered quite baffling, and tragic.

Leah thought about Mark, picturing him as she had last seen him – in the darkness outside the pub as they had said a stilted goodnight. A tiny muscle in the grey skin under his eye had been caught in a spasmodic twitch, a little hiccough visible even by the wan light of the single bulb above the door. A sure sign of exhaustion, and Leah had put her fingers to her own eye socket, pressing them into the skin in sympathetic agitation. Mark had not seemed to notice the odd gesture. She hadn’t asked him anything more about himself, except in the broadest terms – to establish his relationship to Hester Canning. She had been itching to ask more, but he was so extravagantly cagey about it that she didn’t want to frighten him off. His violent reaction to the idea that she was a journalist and might have an interest in him had of course only served to make her more interested. With only a tiny niggle of guilt, she turned back to her computer and googled him. News articles from recent archives appeared. Not huge headlines, but the kind of story that rumbled on for weeks, getting two or three columns on page eight or nine. She skimmed through a few of the articles, her lip clamped between her teeth in fascination, eyes widening. Vaguely, she now remembered hearing a short piece on the news about the case, but it had been early in the morning when she had been staring listlessly at the TV over her breakfast, and not really listening. Small wonder he did not want to talk to a journalist. The press had given him a rough ride over the previous six months.


At noon she walked up the overgrown path to The Old Rectory again. Drops of rainwater on the knocker wet the palm of her hand, made her shiver and tuck her chin into her scarf. In the ruined vegetation of the garden, small splashes of colour were beginning to show. Occasional purple grape hyacinths, and pale yellow narcissi; the minty green spikes of tulip shoots, nosing their way between swathes of rotting brown foliage. Leah was reminded of The Secret Garden, one of her favourite books as a child. And in spite of the drifts of dead leaves that lay all around, half a foot deep in places, by summer, even if nobody paid it any attention, the garden would be a rich jungle. Plants need much less help to grow than gardeners might like to think, Leah thought. She looked to one side of the door. The wooden frame of the nearest sash window was rotten to the core. The paint was a pattern of chipped scales, the putty securing the glass all but gone; a waxy-looking orange fungus frilled the sodden wood here and there. She jumped slightly at the sound of bolts being drawn back from the door.

Mark opened it with a heave that made it shudder.

‘Bloody thing always did stick in wet weather. Come in out of the rain,’ he said. He’d had a shave since she last saw him, and washed his hair. He still looked worn out, but calmer than before.

‘Thanks. I was just admiring the garden,’ she said, smiling away any implied criticism.

Mark rolled his eyes. ‘I know. The whole place has gone to seed, not just the garden. Dad really let it get away from him. I should have helped him more but … you know how it is. Life gets in the way. It’s been empty for half a year now. Since Dad …’ He hesitated.

‘Oh, I’m so sorry – you lost him?’ Leah asked, gently.

‘In a way, yes. Come through.’ Leah stepped into the hallway, which was wide but gloomy. She looked up. There was no light bulb in the single socket that dangled overhead. Spiders had built a cone of dusty webs around the wire. The air was incredibly still, as if one occupant was not enough for the place, could not hope to fill it. It smelled of damp plaster and cold, gritty floors; and the chill of winter seemed to linger even more than it had outside in the rain. ‘I won’t offer to take your coat – you’ll need it,’ Mark said wryly, as if reading her mind.