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  So busy and pleasant had her first days become in this new setting that she found herself, one evening, arranging a couple of vases of fresh flowers, one each to brighten up the dining and sitting rooms, and humming a tune as she cocked her head to one side to consider the balance of her arrangements. Without her realising it, she had moved from feeling numb to a sense of happiness and contentment, so long missing from her existence that she hardly recognised it.

  Her commute to work was about the same as it had been from her old address, the transfer to another branch going without a hitch, and it seemed that life now held some promise for her. Her telephone started to ring with invitations from new friends, and her social life became almost as busy as it had been many years ago, when she had been young and carefree, and had no idea of the blow that life would one day deal her.

  Carole Winter was an avid gardener, and began to help Miriam plan her own little piece of land. At the moment it was all laid to lawn, without a bed to break the runs of grass at front and back, and they began to go out to garden centres to see what was available for autumn planting, and what bulbs would go in in the autumn for the next spring.

  Books from the library accelerated Miriam’s interest in this hitherto unconsidered pastime, and she began to watch gardening programmes on the television, becoming hooked on the subject within a very short time. This, she considered, was because she had lived her life in limbo for so long. She could feel herself waking up, as if from a long hibernation, and it felt good to be part of everyday life again.

  She also began to make friends at work, and sometimes spurned her usual home-coming train in favour of going out for a few drinks with colleagues from the office, returning home much later than usual, and feeling quite young again. Locally, she joined the reading group and attended a couple of meetings of the WI, as time-fillers, and found to her surprise that she enjoyed them, adding them to her list of regular outings. It seemed that, at last, she would be left in peace to lead as normal a life as she could, without all the hassle she had left behind when she had moved away.

  She and Carole next door, who seemed to be relieved to spend a little time away from her husband, who was now retired, and whom she said got under her feet all the time, were happy to go into Market Darley on a Saturday afternoon to window shop and have a coffee and cake in the local coffee shop.

  On Sunday mornings they walked to church together, even though Miriam had never been a regular church-goer in her life before. She even said her very first sincere prayer – one of thanks and gratitude that her nightmare seemed to be over, and that she was starting life anew.

  On Sunday afternoons, Miriam drove while Carole sat in the passenger seat, and they toured round the various garden centres that seemed to surround the town, all of them hard to get to without a car. Carole had almost convinced her to dig a little vegetable patch, or even grow vegetables in pots, as there was nothing like food straight from garden to plate, she said.

  It was on one such afternoon, just over a month since she had moved in, when they were discussing whether to go to all the trouble of turning over a patch of ground, or whether to use troughs, pots and planters for tomatoes, courgettes, strawberries and the like, and even maybe a plastic dustbin for new potatoes, that Miriam realised that she was doing most of the talking, and that Carole was uncharacteristically quiet.

  ‘Are you OK?’ she asked, wondering if maybe Carole and her husband had had a disagreement between the church service and now, or whether she just had a headache, or something similar, that was making her feel under par.

  ‘I’m fine,’ was the curt answer, and she lapsed back into a silence that soon became awkward for both of them.

  ‘What is it?’ Miriam risked another question, wondering if something she’d done had unintentionally upset her new friend.

  ‘Nothing. You carry on with your plans,’ her passenger replied, but there was the very slightest of chills in her voice, and the rest of the journey to the garden centre passed in silence.

  Carole was equally distant as they walked around the area where packets of vegetable seeds were sold. She indicated, with a pointing finger, the varieties she recommended for container growing, hardly communicating at all, and leaving Miriam upset and mystified at what could have caused this sudden change in her previously very friendly neighbour.

  Asking her brought forth nothing more than denial that there was anything wrong, and, in the end, Miriam suggested that they go back home early, without going on to a second establishment, because she had a headache – which wasn’t a lie. The replacement of her normally irrepressible and ebullient friend by this uncommunicative and distant stranger had affected her considerably, and her temples were beginning to throb with pain.

  Back home, Carole bade her a less than enthusiastic goodbye, with no comment that she would see her soon, and disappeared through her own front door without turning to wave, or thanking Miriam for the lift. Miriam entered her own house in considerable puzzlement. Her neighbour had seemed fine that morning at church, but by the afternoon, she had appeared not to be comfortable in her company any more. What on earth had she done?

  Chapter Three

  Monday 13th September

  Miriam had not spoken to her neighbour again the day before, and left for work on Monday morning as confused as she had been the previous day. Her work and colleagues proved sufficient distraction during working hours, and she gladly forgot about this little glitch in her friendship with her neighbour. She agreed to go for a drink after work, partly because she knew she’d enjoy it, and partly because she was delaying going home; shelving the coolness that had so unexpectedly arisen between her and Carole.

  Six of them went to the Jack of Three Sides, an old pub just off the town centre, situated on a small triangular island of land where the roads were unusually convoluted. It was an old building that had stayed in character, and to which she had never gone before.

  The inside looked less contemporary than many of the public houses in the town where she now worked, and more like the establishment as it had existed many years ago. Every piece of wall was covered with pictures, framed sepia photographs and newspaper cuttings relating to the tiny area in which the pub stood. Pewter tankards hung from the beams, just below the very darkly nicotine-stained ceiling, and even this surface was not neglected, as some inventive soul had found a way to fasten pictures and paintings to the ceiling, so that even looking up was a delight.

  The chairs and tables were, similarly, a mishmash of styles, but none of them new or out of place, and she stood at the bar just looking round in admiration at the fact that there was no dust. In a bar crammed with memories, there was nowhere one could see a plain surface, and yet everything was wonderfully clean.

  Living near the station in Market Darley as she did, there was nothing to stop her having three glasses of wine, as she would not have to drive when she de-trained, and she thoroughly enjoyed herself that evening, sipping her chilled drinks, and gossiping with the others with whom she now shared her working life.

  When her train finally arrived at her destination, it was much later than she usually arrived home, even after staying on for a drink, but she was relaxed and happy after the little boost of alcohol, and the bonhomie she had shared. It fleetingly crossed her mind to just dump her bags and knock on Carole’s door and confront her, asking her outright how she seemed to have alienated her friend, but given the lateness of the hour, and the lovely relaxed feeling she was enjoying, she slid her key into the door, and dismissed the idea from her mind. A long, relaxing bath and then to bed with a book would round off the day very nicely, and she didn’t want to spoil how she felt now with any bad-feeling.

  That feeling evaporated completely when, picking up her mail from the hall carpet, she noticed that the top envelope had a very badly hand-written name, and no address, implying that it had been delivered by hand: and it was to Mrs Miriam Stourton, not Ms Darling.

  Her hands immediately began to sha
ke, and she sank down on to the carpet as her legs threatened to betray how she felt. No! Not here! Not again! she thought. It can’t have followed me here! Letting go of the envelopes she held in her unsteady hand, she put her hands to her face, and began to sob. Her recent euphoria had completely evaporated with this one small discovery.

  Monday 20th September

  A steady flow of letters began to arrive, some in the naive hand of the first one, others in letters cut from newspapers and magazines. Some came in the post, others were dropped through her letterbox at night, and Miriam’s newly minted self-confidence and happiness disappeared, from the receipt of that first missive.

  Her applications to join various organisations were suddenly turned down, with no explanation given, invitations were withdrawn and, eventually, stopped being issued at all. Even at church, the previous morning, Carole had pleaded an upset stomach, and Miriam had found herself blanked and shunned by members of the congregation who had previously appeared friendly towards her. Even the vicar shook her hand very limply after the service, and moved on to the next person quickly, to rid himself of her company, it seemed to Miriam.

  After a month of contentment and comparative happiness, within a week she had been reduced to a social pariah, and she knew it had started all over again, but this time she’d have to do something about it. She’d lived with it in her old home, but this time she was going to involve the police. She couldn’t live the rest of her life constantly running away. She had to find a platform from which to plead her case, this time with the help and support, maybe even the protection, if things escalated, of the forces of law and order.

  Detective Inspector Harry Falconer of the Market Darley CID was just scanning his diary for the week and exchanging morning pleasantries with his detective sergeant, ‘Davey’ Carmichael, when the telephone shrilled on his desk and, with a sigh of ‘here we go again’, he answered the call, holding up his free hand to stem the flow of Carmichael’s enthusiastic conversation.

  The woman on the other end of the line was almost hysterical, and it was a few minutes before he could calm her enough to be able to comprehend anything she said. She was obviously in a highly emotional state and, given that he had little in his diary for the day – and the state she was in, he decided, in the circumstances, that the situation merited a trip to her home, to interview her in privacy without the necessity of her making a trip to the police station.

  ‘Come on, sunshine,’ he cajoled his sergeant, as he ended the call. ‘We’ve got a damsel in distress to rescue. Get your armour on, and we’ll ride over to her tower and see what we can do for her.’

  ‘What armour, sir? What tower? Ride? I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ was his sergeant’s reply.

  ‘I know you don’t, Carmichael, but that’s about par for the course.’

  ‘Why are you talking about golf now?’

  ‘Come on, you. We’ve got the beginnings of a nasty case here. Make sure you’ve got your notebook, and I’ll explain in the car on the way over. It’s not far.’

  ‘But where are we going? I don’t underst …’ Carmichael’s questions echoed all the way down the stairwell, as they made their way out of the station and into the car park.

  Once safely strapped into Falconer’s ritzy little Boxster, he began to relate what he had learned from the hysterical woman on the phone.

  ‘Something’s evidently happened in her life, in the past, that she’s moved here to forget, but it seems that her story has followed her and caught up with her, and now she’s receiving hate mail. I don’t know any more details than that at the moment, but it sounded like she wasn’t in a fit state to drive to the station, so I said we’d come to her. Somehow, although I don’t have the whole story, this one doesn’t feel like a storm in a teacup to me. It feels nasty.

  ‘She says she’s had abusive phone calls – numbers withheld, of course – silent phone calls in the middle of the night, and about seventy-odd letters, threatening her with all sorts of things. I don’t know what happened yet, in her past, but it seems to have caused a furious reaction amongst those she’s met and become friendly with, since she moved here.’

  ‘She must be terrified, sir,’ Carmichael commented, his brow furrowed with the effort to imagine his own wife in a similar situation.

  ‘Well, she certainly sounded it on the phone.’

  Chapter Four

  Monday 20th September

  When Falconer knocked smartly on the door of Miriam’s house, there was a delay, during which they noticed the net curtains twitch, to establish who was calling, no doubt. Then there was the sound of bolts being drawn back and keys turned, before the front door opened just a crack, to the extent of its security chain, at which point they displayed their warrant cards to identify themselves.

  The face that greeted them was blotchy and swollen, the eyes, as they surveyed their identification, red, and full of fear. In silence, the woman stood back and allowed the door to open just enough to admit them, before closing it again, and locking and bolting it behind them. Miriam Darling was still in her dressing gown, her hair tousled and wild, and she looked to be in the extremes of anxiety, as she preceded them into the living room.

  The first thing that confronted them was a sofa completely covered in pieces of paper, some in scrawled childlike handwriting, others with cut-out letters to spell out their messages. There were dozens of the things, completely swamping the green leather surface, and Miriam simply looked at them, and then at her two visitors.

  At that moment, the telephone rang, and, as she dragged herself across the room to answer it, Falconer looked at Carmichael, whose face was scrunched up in anger at this material evidence of hatred and spite.

  She listened for a moment, then cried, ‘Who are you? What do you want? Why don’t you say something?’ Her voice was shrill and harsh in the silence of the house. She slammed down the handset, pulling the plug from the wall in her impotent anger and frustration, then just wandered back to them, before collapsing into an armchair.

  ‘What am I going to do?’ she asked, in a voice hoarse with weeping. ‘I can’t keep on running. I’ve already gone back to my maiden name, but someone’s found out. Am I never to be free of it? I haven’t done anything wrong. It was just a tragic accident, and as if that wasn’t enough, here I am being hounded again, like some sort of criminal.’

  Falconer nodded at Carmichael and the letters. The sergeant, in complete silent understanding, donned a pair of latex gloves, and began collecting together the sheets of paper and putting them in evidence bags, to be checked later for fingerprints. The inspector took a seat in the armchair on the other side of the fireplace and gathered his reserves for interviewing this deeply distressed woman.

  Miriam just sat in her chair, her hands in her lap, her head drooping, like a marionette that had had all its strings cut. She was evidently steeling herself, too, for the ordeal to come.

  His task swiftly completed, Carmichael sank down on the now unencumbered sofa and removed his notepad from his pocket, ready to record what the woman had to say. He waited in silence for Falconer to commence his questioning.

  ‘I’d like you to tell me what it is in your past that has ‘followed’ you here, and why the reaction is so extreme. There’s no need to rush. Just tell it in your own time, so that we can understand what has been happening to you recently,’ he said, his voice quiet and almost tender.

  ‘It was something that happened just over a year ago.’ Miriam’s voice was so low, they could hardly catch what she was saying, but after clearing her throat and shaking her head, she continued at a more easily discernible volume.

  ‘One year, one month, and six days ago, to be precise – I can’t seem to stop counting the time that has elapsed. I was married then, and we had a son. Mark, my husband’s name was, and Ben was our son, only four years old, and full of life.’ Here she had to break off, as her voice cracked, and tears began to track down her cheeks.

  ‘My parent
s moved to Spain three years ago, when Dad took early retirement, so we went out to visit them in the summer, and at Christmas. Although it was rather expensive, it was cheaper than taking a break through a travel agent, and it meant that at least they saw their grandson twice a year. We used Skype, of course, but Mum wanted to cuddle Ben, and Dad wanted to take him to the beach and play football and all those sort of grandfatherly things.

  ‘It was when we went out last summer that it happened, and my nightmare began, although I didn’t realise people were so cruel, and it would go on for so long that I wouldn’t have time to come to terms with it in peace, and mourn them in privacy.’

  ‘What was it?’ asked Falconer, feeling that they weren’t really getting anywhere, and he needed to get to the nub of the matter, and discover the details of the mystery event.

  ‘We had planned to go along the coast to a little cove that was very beautiful, but usually completely empty of holiday-makers. Ben was excited at the thought of getting a bit of beach to himself, so that he could make his sandcastles without a game of football being played through his efforts, and people’s dogs arriving to dig in his turrets.

  ‘I suggested that we walk along the cliffs to get to it, as there was a rudimentary set of steps there, although they were difficult to descend, having been cut out of the cliffs, but Mark had very different ideas. He’d been a bit scratchy that holiday, and I didn’t want another argument – we’d already had quite a few blow-ups, and I knew he was fed up to the back teeth of always going to the same place, and having to stay with my parents.