Caedmon’s Song by Peter Robinson Read Free Book Online Page A

are still here, waiting outside. Do
you want to see them?’
    ‘Later,’ Kirsten said. ‘Wait. Where’s Galen? Have you seen Galen?’
    ‘Your boyfriend? Yes,’ Elswick said. ‘He was here. He said he’d come back. He left those flowers.’ He pointed to a vase of red roses.
    When Elswick and Haywood left, the nurse came over to straighten the bed. Just as the door was closing, Kirsten could hear Elswick saying, ‘Better keep a man here twenty-four hours a day .
. . Might come back to finish what he started.’
    Before the nurse could move away, Kirsten grabbed her wrist.
    ‘What’s happened to me?’ she whispered. ‘My skin feels tight and twisted. Something’s wrong.’
    The nurse smiled. ‘That’ll be the stitches, dearie. They do pull a bit sometimes.’ She ruffled the pillow and hurried out.
    Stitches! Kirsten had had stitches before when she fell off her bicycle and cut her arm on some broken glass. It was true, they did pull. But those stitches had been put in her arm; she had felt
only very minor, localized pain. If stitches were the cause of her discomfort this time, then why did her whole body feel as if it had been sewn tightly and ineptly around its frame?
    She could have a look, of course. Ease down the covers and open her nightdress. Surely nothing could be simpler. But the effort was too much for her. She could manage the movements all right,
but what really stopped her was fear: fear of what she might find. Instead, she welcomed oblivion.
     
11
    MARTHA
    There were no names on the gravestones. Martha stood in the cliff-top cemetery by St Mary’s and stared in horror. Most of the stones were blackened around their edges,
and where the chiselled details should have been, there was just pitted sandstone. On some of them, she could see faint traces of lettering, but many were completely blank. It must be the salt
wind, she thought, come from the sea and stolen their names away. It made her feel suddenly and inexplicably sad. She looked down at the ruffled blue water and the thin line of foam as waves broke
along the beach. It didn’t seem fair. The dead should be remembered, as she remembered them. Shivering despite the heat, she wandered over to the church itself.
    It was an impressive place inside. She skipped the taped lecture and, instead, picked up a printed guide and wandered around. At the front stood a huge, three-tier pulpit, and below it stretched
a honeycomb of rectangular box pews said to resemble the ‘ ’tween-decks’ of a wooden battleship. Some of the boxes had engraved brass nameplates screwed to their doors, marking
them out as reserved for notable local families. Most of these were at the back, where the minister would have a hard time seeing because of all the fluted pillars in the way. The rich could sleep
with impunity through his sermons. But at the front, right under his eyes, some boxes were marked FREE, and others, FOR STRANGERS ONLY.
    That’s me, Martha thought, opening the catch on one and stepping inside: a stranger only.
    When the latch clicked behind her, the small enclosure gave her an odd sense of isolation and sanctuary within the busy church. All around her, tourists walked and cameras flashed, but the box
seemed to muffle and distance the outside world. A fanciful idea, to be sure, but it was what she felt. She ran her finger along the worn green baize that lined the sides of the box and the pew
bench itself. There was even a red carpet, and patterned cushions to kneel on. Martha’s knees cracked as she knelt. Now she was even further away from the world outside. It would make a good
place to hide, if things should ever come to that, she thought. Nobody would be able to find her in a box pew marked FOR STRANGERS ONLY. It was just like being invisible. She smiled and let herself
out.
    Through the car park by the abbey ruin was a footpath, part of the Cleveland Way. According to Martha’s map, it would take her all the way from East Cliff to