enough ground. I was going to go over the Artside launch but that’ll be enough for tonight. Especially as Sadie has got the first round in. Anyone up for red?’
I nodded at Maggie and gestured for a large one and
we proceeded into Maggie’s kitchen. It was a nice bright extension with a modern finish and all mod cons, and after the day I’d had it was exactly where I wanted to be. I’d detoured here before home. There was something I had to do. In the minutes after the phantom disappeared I had worked out what that was. She’d told me.
Maggie didn’t look put out to see me but I felt I had to explain myself. ‘Sorry to butt in, Mags, but I’ve had a bizarre sort of day. Needed to see someone sensible.’
‘And you thought of me?’ She reached up to a rack on the kitchen cupboard and presented me with a bottle of red. ‘This one’s better than what you brought.’ Then, clocking the paleness of my face she added, ‘You all right, love?’
I grimaced as she handed me the corkscrew but nodded. I knew, after our last conversation, I’d have to edit my words carefully.
Maggie sussed my hesitation. Her face dropped for a moment. ‘What’s up? Everyone okay? Your dad? Dan, is he okay?’
‘I still don’t know where Dan is, I’m afraid. It’s a worry,’ I sighed and uncorked the bottle, pouring two large ones into bulbous glasses. ‘Can I run something past you?’
There was an exasperated tone to my voice that Maggie caught at once. ‘You want a fag?’
‘More than ever,’ I said and handed her a glass.
We swept through the living area, where she deposited two wine bottles with the crew, and on through a conservatory into the garden porch. Despite its state of the art interior, Maggie’s garden was a thing of the past: a long stretch of land that flowed downhill towards the seafront and thus gave a good view of the sea. However, its high fences and drooping apple trees lent it protection from the coastal winds.
Maggie got into the swing chair and I came and sat beside her. ‘So what’s eating Gilbert Grape?’ she said.
I’d already decided on my way over here that I was going to omit any mention of the supernatural. There was no point communicating any of that to Maggie. She would try to rationalise it, as she had the messages and the girl in the mirror. She wouldn’t get it. It wouldn’t touch her. Someone like Mags would never understand or believe it unless she experienced it for herself. And even then, she still might not trust herself. Just as I hadn’t – until tonight. Until she told me.
So I began with the trip to the castle. I told her I’d got stuck in the gaol because someone had played a prank and shut the door. That I’d got very distressed and it had made me realise just how terrible it had been for the women that were imprisoned in that tiny dreadful space and how unjust that was.
And then I hit her with it. It had appeared in a flash, when she had pleaded for ‘mercy’.
‘You know, I keep going on about how awful it was, and how tragic and unfair. I know that most, if not all of the women Hopkins took there, were innocent. But I’m not doing anything about it other than just writing it down.’
Maggie shifted in the chair and crossed her legs.
I carried on. ‘But I could do something more. People do, don’t they? When there’s been a miscarriage of justice …’
Maggie kept her mouth shut and nodded.
‘So I’m thinking – why don’t we try to get a pardon for them? It was a travesty. I mean seriously – it should be put right. They should be forgiven. Acknowledged. In Salem they’ve got a remembrance garden and a plaque and a museum for their twenty-two. There’s one in Lemgo, Germany, for 254 poor sods; a fantastic monument in Vardo, which was opened by the Queen of Norway herself. Lord Moncrieff in Kinross, Scotland, is building a maze to commemorate the execution of local witches by one of his predecessors. And yet we’ve got nothing in Essex. There’s information on the witches and Hopkins in Colchester Castle but nothing else. Not one single monument or confirmation of the human catastrophe. We lost so many more than in Salem. And, you know, monuments, they are a way of coming to terms with the