saving his life she had helped him to defy death for the fourth time.
She continued up the avenue until she reached a gap in the trees. On impulse, she cycled into the woods and followed a path through the trees. Some of them were leafless and bleached of colour, their skeletal branches reminding her of withered limbs. She emerged into a swaying sea of long grass. It needed mowing but it was clear from its length and breadth that she had reached Hyland Gallops. Charlie said the jockeys used to exercise the horses there and that Hyland Stables had once been famous for training champion racehorses. Even here, there was evidence that rubbish had been dumped and cleared away. The enormous ring of rotting, yellow grass reminded Isobel of entrails, not that she had ever seen any, but that must be what they looked like. Something that was hidden and then exposed in all its glistening ugliness. Seagulls dived towards the mulching circle and scavenged for worms. The smell was still there, like it had become part of the earth.
She stood on a lake shore and watched the swans. Moorhens stretched their necks as they sought shelter in the whispering reeds. A small island in the centre of the lake reminded her of a hulking, mottled-green tortoise. The shore was marshy and her trainers were soon covered in mud. Aware that she was sinking in the mire, she pulled free from its clutches and moved back onto firmer ground. In the distance she saw a building with a high domed roof. Drawing closer, she realised it was a derelict boathouse. An old, broken boat lay sideways by the edge of a wooden jetty. Slats were missing and the wood was covered in moss. A wide arch framed the entrance to the boathouse. Cobwebs swung like hammocks from the ceiling and bundles of reeds, tied with twine, were propped against the walls.
The gloomy interior matched her mood. She could no longer pretend that her friends missed her or cared that she was stuck in hell. No one had ‘liked’ her ghost pictures or sent laughing emoticons after they read what she wrote about growing roots and turning into a tree.
Joanne had advised her to ‘stop obsessing about the past’ in their last Snapchat. Only three months had passed since she was at the centre of her friends’ lives but, now, she belonged to their past. She stood under the arch and shouted out their names – Joanne, Sarah, Lisa, Magda – and when the echo of their names had faded, she knew the time had come to let them go.
A rumbling sound reached her. A tractor or a lorry, she thought as she emerged from the gloom of the boathouse. Had the fly tippers returned? She eased around the side wall to check. Charlie was driving his hearse across the Gallops. She sheltered behind the boathouse until it came to a stop on the far side of the jetty. A door opened and a girl, who looked to be about her own age, jumped down. She was wearing dungarees with rips and her short, spiky hair was dyed purple. She strode into the boathouse and was followed shortly afterwards by Charlie. They emerged with bundles of reeds in their arms. Isobel remained hidden while they carried them from the boathouse and arranged them carefully in the back of the hearse where coffins usually rested. She could hear them talking. Charlie called the girl Kelly. She must be his granddaughter. Her parents had also split up and she had spent the summer in Australia with her father.
Charlie had many grandchildren but his voice was always extra loving when he spoke about Kelly. He seemed to believe that she had lots in common with Isobel and hoped they would become friends when she returned home. Having part-time dads was hardly a reason to exchange friendship bracelets, Isobel thought as she watched Kelly striding between the hearse and the boathouse. She looked so confident, like she was completely at ease in her surroundings and was not afraid of anything. Julie – who had become a purveyor of gossip from the pony club – had told her that Kelly Bracken was called ‘Freak’ behind her back because she touched dead people and wanted to be an undertaker when she left school.
A rat emerged from a tussock of sedge and ran past Isobel. Unable to hold back a shriek, she jumped into view just as Charlie