“For whom?”
“A newspaper.”
“I see.” He walks over to the counter and starts looking through the pile of mail. In among it is a circular from the government listing precautions to take in the heat wave. The wordsKeep Safe, Keep Coolhave been written at the top beside a cartoon of a thirsty-looking cat. Oscar frowns at it.
“They think it’s going to hit thirty-seven degrees tomorrow. I heard it on the radio.” He turns the leaflet toward me.
“Oh yeah?”
“It’s going to be like seventy-eight all over again. You remember that?”
I did. It had been the summer of skimming stones across the river with my best friend Sharon and rubbing our legs with sunflower oil because we thought it would help us tan quicker. Dad had told us we smelled like a chip shop, which had made us laugh. The sun had been a furnace that whole long summer, the lawn in the garden a strip of yellow, scorched earth.
“It won’t be that bad,” I reply, filling a vase at the sink, and putting the flowers in, stem by stem. “That was adrought.A proper one.”
“Which newspaper?”
I frown at the sudden swerve in conversation. Sometimes I think he does it on purpose.
“It’s, uh,The Western Herald.”
“Hardly a newspaper but go on, tell me what the job is.”
“You ever heard ofa place called Banathel, Mina?” Sam asked me that afternoon when I’d met him in the café on the harborside. The River Fal moved slowly past, the water brackish, brown, and muddy. I’d told myself I wasn’t staying long, ordered a tap water with plenty of ice. Sam put aside his empty plate smeared with ketchup and stirred a sugar into his tea.
“Nope.”
“Can’t say I’m surprised. It’s a tiny village down near Penzance, which barely warrants a mention on the map. Population just over a thousand—on the High Street you’ll find a post office, a few shops, and a pub. That’s it. Its only real appeal is the medieval chapel there and access to a stone circle further up the valley. The tourists pass the turning to Banathel on their way to Marazion and Praa Sands for their cream teas and don’t pay it any mind.”
“I thought you wanted to talk about ghosts.”
“The paper had a call last week from a man called Paul Webber. He’s worried about his teenage daughter, Alice. More than that. He’s frightened. You see, just after Christmas, Alice Webber started to get sick. She complained of pains in her sides like needles being pressed there. When they lifted her shirt, there was a pinprick rash and blood welling up as if the skin had been broken. A few days later she started vomiting. By this point Alice was too weak to get out of bed so her mother put a bowl beside it. When she came to empty it, she found watery bile and clots of black hair, like you’d pull out of a plughole. Another time Alice coughed up a handful of sewing pins bent into strange shapes.She developed a fever which made her start seeing things. She got delusional.”
“In what way?”
“Alice told her parents that a witch was spying on her through the chimney breast. She said the witch had a black tongue and her face was ‘all on upside down.’ Alice shares a room with her younger sister, Tamsin. Their beds are either side of an old fireplace and Lisa—that’s their mother—started finding dead wasps in the grate and on Alice’s pillow. They think there must have been some sort of colony in the chimney because Alice said at night she heard buzzing and tapping loud enough to keep her awake. After this had gone on for a month, Lisa took Alice to the doctor who declared her perfectly fit and well. Physically, at least. He said the buzzing and clicking she was hearing was likely tinnitus. Harmless but incurable. Nothing we can do, so sorry. Soon, the noises changed. Alice began hearing grunts and squeals which were almost piglike.”
I didn’t notice the way the time was slipping away from me, the hands of the clock inching toward three. I leaned forward, face flushed with expectation.
“Well? What was wrong with her?”
He puffed out his cheeks, laughing. I recognized it as an expression of bafflement, not good humor.
“No one knows. Alice was sent for more tests, this time at the hospital in Truro. They couldn’t find any issues except that she was underweight and borderline anemic. She was prescribed sleeping pills and this appeared to help for a while.”
“These tests you’re talking about are all physical. Did she speak to any psychiatrists or neurologists?”
“They’re on a waiting list, apparently. There’s been talk of a brain scan but again, there’s a wait.”
“Maybe they’re hoping your intervention will move them along quicker.”
“Well, they’ll be disappointed if that’s the case. Iwashoping, however, to be able to offer them access to a child psychologist—albeit a newly qualified one.”
He looked at me meaningfully, not quite smiling.
“Me?”
“Why not? Alice needs the help and you need the experience. It’s win-win as far as I can tell. Besides, who better to understand an adolescent brain than the woman who wrote a paper on it?”