Chapter 39
NOW
As Violet was driving back up the road to the Well, her phone rang. She jumped, but pressed the Bluetooth button and answered it.
It was Jake.
‘Hello! Looks like we’ve got access to and from the site now,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Don’t know if the offer’s still on for a rescue mission?’
‘Ahh…’ Violet cringed. ‘I’m… umm… busy now. Sorry.’
For a second, there was only silence on the line. Then: ‘Busy? Oh, okay. Not to worry.’ He sounded like he’d ramped up the fake cheer for that last comment and she felt guilty. ‘What are you up to? Corbridge? Or Hexham again? Just thinking with the weather, towns are a good bet.’
‘The Well. Oh—’ She closed her eyes briefly, wishing almost immediately that she could take that comment back. But it was too late.
‘The Well? Fuck’s sake, Violet. That place is dangerous. There’s like a foot of snow, it’s uneven paths. Who’s going to pull you out if you slip today?’
‘I won’t need pulling out!’ Now she was cross because, obviously, attack was the best form of defence. And yes, she had already been today and had not needed pulling out then.
In fact, she’d been twice.
‘I’ll be careful,’ she said. ‘I’m—’
‘You’re what?’
‘I’m meeting someone…’ It was a hideous lie and she knew it.
‘You’re meeting who? Meggie? The dead witch?’
‘No. Ollie.’
‘Dear God, Violet.’ Okay, adding Ollie’s name in there was probably not a good move.
Jake really seemed to dislike him. Violet had the fleeting thought that maybe there was something bubbling under the surface that neither of them was aware of.
If Emory had inherited Charles’ wealth, and there was more than a passing resemblance to those men in Jake and Ollie…
who knew what that was stirring up? ‘Well, it’s clear our itineraries aren’t gonna match today.
Let’s just hope fucking Ollie pulls you out of the water this time, yeah? Have a good day—’
The phone went dead and Violet’s stomach turned over. She pressed a button, wondering whether Jake had genuinely hung up on her, or whether she’d gone down a dip in her car and lost signal.
It seemed like the latter.
But you know what… let him think she’d hung up on him. He was the one being unreasonable about Ollie. It wasn’t as if she was going to run off and marry the man.
But she couldn’t worry about any of that now. She switched her phone off and clutched the steering wheel more firmly. She had to do this. She needed to do this. And this would be for the absolute best.
She could feel it in her soul.
* * *
The line went dead just as Jake was in the middle of some enraged comment. He stared at his phone, and pressed redial. Nothing. Just Violet’s cheery answerphone message, telling the caller she’d get back to them.
He tried a few more times, wondering if it was the signal and looked up into the sky.
It was grey and overcast, so he wouldn’t be surprised if it was deadening the signal.
He sent a text message saying he thought they’d been cut off, and please take care and call him when she was back at the guest house. And that was all he could do.
Maybe he’d overreacted a little bit about the Ollie thing. But there was just something about him he didn’t like or trust. He just had to trust Violet’s judgement about him, he supposed.
But it still rankled.
There was no response to his message and no indication she had even read it or tried to message back. So he went to the café with the other volunteers and had hot coffee and biscuits, and tried to join in the conversation.
But the whole time, he was thinking of Violet. Images from that dream kept coming into his mind and he was feeling edgy and uncomfortable.
‘You okay, mate?’ asked the guy who had told him about the thundersnow. Jake now knew he was called Ben, and Ben definitely had a strong Midlands accent. ‘We didn’t bank on this, did we?’
Ben was a student and he was up with a couple of friends in a rented motorhome. They’d been to the Lake District and the plan was they’d have a couple of days up on the Roman Wall before heading home.
‘Not at all,’ Jake replied.
‘It wasn’t forecast to be as bad as this,’ continued Ben. ‘But I think it’s supposed to start clearing from this evening. I bloody hope so, anyway – we need to get the van back to the rental company.’
‘Maybe we all need to start praying to Coventina,’ said Jake wryly. ‘It’s what they used to do.’
‘Really?’ Ben’s interest was sparked. He was studying history and literature, so Jake had been informed, and they’d had an interesting chat while they were shovelling snow.
Jake had mentioned his interests about the Romano-Celtic religion and Paganism and Ben was now wondering if he should do his dissertation on the Neo-Paganism of Rupert Brooke, because that combined both his interests – the existential poems of Brooke with themes of the natural world alongside Christianity.
The boy was going to go far in Jake’s opinion.
‘Yes. She’s apparently the goddess of the thaw,’ Jake said now. ‘Meggie used to—’ He stopped. Why did it matter what Meggie did or didn’t do?
‘Who’s Meggie?’ Ben jumped on the name. Then he grinned. ‘Your girlfriend? The one you’ve been talking to today?’
Jake opened his mouth to deny it: No, Ben, Meggie was a witch from four hundred years ago. But he found himself stuck on the denial.
‘She used to live here,’ he said eventually. ‘They apparently tried her and executed her as a witch. My partner is doing some work on her. Violet is pretty invested in her story.’
‘I bet that’s interesting.’ Ben nodded. ‘Do you think she haunts the place? Where she was killed, I mean?’
‘I don’t know,’ admitted Jake. ‘But it’s a strange place.’
Even as Ben chattered next to him, Jake was still hung up on the image of the dream. He took a sip of coffee, and then his stomach somersaulted.
What if?
What if that vision of Violet wasn’t a mish-mash of stuff from that day? Perhaps it was something that hadn’t yet happened…
‘I have to go,’ he said suddenly. He put his mug down and sloshed coffee over the top. ‘Thanks Ben. I’ll – umm – catch you later.’ And he hurried out of the café, already pulling his van keys out of his pocket.
What if it had been a premonition?
And she was up there today. Right now.
Meeting bloody Ollie? Or so she said.
Jake began to run across the site; he just knew he had to get there.
He prayed he’d be in time.