After the Eclipse Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

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  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Also Available from Titan Books

  AFTER

  THE

  ECLIPSE

  AFTER

  THE

  ECLIPSE

  FRAN DORRICOTT

  TITAN BOOKS

  After the Eclipse

  US print edition ISBN: 9781785657887

  E-book edition ISBN: 9781785657894

  Published by Titan Books

  A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

  144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

  First edition: March 2019

  2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1

  Names, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (except for satirical purposes), is entirely coincidental.

  © 2019 Fran Dorricott. All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

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  For Shadow, without whom this novel

  would have been written two years earlier.

  …and the sun has perished out of

  heaven and an evil mist hovers over all.

  Homer’s Odyssey XX. 345

  Prologue

  11 August 1999

  THE DAY SHE BECAME a local legend, Olive Warren did not do as she was told.

  Normally a well-behaved child, and as unlike her sister as it was possible to be, Olive hated to be told off. She liked quiet things: libraries, dinosaur bones in museums, her model of the solar system. People told her it was odd, but she figured if she wanted to be a curator, or even an astronaut, then liking rules and silence was probably a good thing.

  Still, staying with Gran in the summer was never the same as being back at home in Derby. Here at Gran’s, rules were bendy and punishments were non-existent, especially when her older sister was in charge. And anyway, this was an extra special day.

  She’d been looking forward to the solar eclipse for weeks and she wasn’t going to miss it because her big sister was too busy with her new “friend”. She’d counted down on her calendar, ticking off the days until the event, even when Cassie made fun of her. When the day arrived, they went to Chestnut Circle, the centre of Bishop’s Green’s universe.

  There was a big party; the town seemed more alive than Olive had ever seen it, thrumming with the sense of possibility. Olive had been excited at the thought of all the people in town coming together to watch the eclipse – but the reality was overwhelming. The crowd was too thick, and although there was a stage and children playing party games she couldn’t see any of what was happening. Some kid won a large cuddly unicorn and all Olive saw was the rainbow mane and a spindly golden horn.

  The music was too loud. Olive longed to be back at Gran and Grandad’s house, perhaps sitting on the roof outside the bedroom she shared with Cassie. She wished people would quieten down and just wait. Olive followed the minute hand on her watch. The main part of the eclipse was supposed to happen at ten past eleven but what if she couldn’t see it?

  Cassie and her friend Marion were hanging back in the little alley next to the corner shop, their heads bent together, totally oblivious to everything. They were whispering, their noses almost touching, completely ignoring Olive. It had been like this between them for days now, but today was worse because Marion was meant to be going on holiday soon and neither of them wanted her to go. Olive decided she didn’t mind if Marion went. At least then she wouldn’t have to share Cassie.

  Olive’s frustration boiled in her stomach as she watched them. She couldn’t decide whether to do it – to stretch Cassie’s one rule. Stay in sight. Her body was tense with the idea that she didn’t have to do what Cassie said all the time.

  “Olive, stand still, will you? Gran said you’re meant to stay near me,” Cassie called.

  Olive sighed. She’d only been trying to get a better view. She couldn’t see anything, least of all the sky, through the awning above the shop. They weren’t here for Cassie to get all moony with the policeman’s daughter. Cassie had even been grumpy when Olive went into the shop for a can of Coke even though she was only gone a minute and Gran had given her the money for it. It wasn’t fair.

  In that moment, Olive decided. She was going to break the rules, not just bend them. It was only going to be the once, and it wasn’t going to be for very long. The crowd was pressing in on her, making her palms sweaty; even though nobody touched her she felt breathless. She just needed to see better. She needed what Gran called a “vantage point”.

  Olive knew Folly Hill from the picnic her gran and grandad had taken them on the summer before. It wasn’t far, maybe a mile. Olive was good at walking, she enjoyed it, and Olive knew that from the hill she’d have a view to die for as the sun shimmered into darkness. She’d be able to see much of Bishop’s Green in its little dip between the green hills, would be able to watch as the shadows chased across the streets near her gran’s house. She could write her summer paper about it when she got back to school.

  Plus she could probably get back before Cassie even noticed she was gone.

  So she waited until Cassie and Marion were whispering again, hidden in the mouth of the alley. The candy-striped awning stretched around the side of the shop and they were huddled in the growing shade. They were so busy, so full of each other. Olive sort of wished she had a friend like Marion – somebody who just soaked up all of the badness and the arguments. Cassie never had to listen to Gran and Grandad talking about Mum and Dad and their problems; she was always on the phone with Marion, thinking about Marion. Talking about Marion.

  Olive took the plunge. She sneaked out of the alleyway, skirting along the edge of the crowd and towards the road. There were a few cars parked beside the corner shop, stragglers coming late to
the party in the Circle, but nobody paid any attention to Olive. The noise was growing from the people crowded around the fountain in the middle as the DJ on the stage gave a countdown. Half an hour to go until it was dark. Until the eclipse. Olive mouthed the word and felt the magic of it tickle her with excitement.

  She’d been waiting for ages for this. She wasn’t sure if it would get totally dark here – Gran said it would be the best down in Cornwall – but they stood a decent chance since it wasn’t too cloudy. Bishop’s Green was the perfect place to watch it, really. A town soaked in its own magic. It even had the Triplet Stones – sort of Druid stones up on the hillside – which Olive loved. Visiting her grandparents here was like going on holiday back in time, to a world where people still believed in omens and spells and lucky charms.

  The eclipse was the event of the year. Of the decade. Olive could already feel the moon on her skin as the shadows lengthened. Gran had told her that crescent moons were meant to be the most powerful lucky symbols, but Olive figured eclipses probably beat them since they happened so much less often. It would be years and years before there was another one.

  As she headed away from the noise there was an eerie quality to the sound fading away, as though that too was being eaten alive. She felt like she was running out of time. Willow Lane, the road out towards Folly Hill was dusty and uneven. It was deserted, Olive realised, because everybody who had thought of going to the hill to watch the eclipse was already there. The lane was longer than she remembered, too. Olive’s chest was tight from the dryness of the air as she walked faster.

  It must be gone eleven o’clock now. The dark was growing. She should have left sooner, should have been braver. Cassie was never going to chase after her. What had she been so afraid of?

  She started to run. Slowly at first, a jog, but soon she was panting and running so hard her legs were going like jelly. She caught her foot in a dip, her knee crashing down and scraping the ground. She didn’t make a noise. She hated to cry.

  Her knee stung like it had a thousand tiny scratches – and her palms hurt too. They were gritty with the gravelly white dust from the path, not helped by the Coke she had spilled earlier, or the segment of orange she had eaten in the shop, the juice still tacky on her fingers. She wanted to wipe her palms on her shorts, but that would only sting worse. A little hiss escaped from her mouth.

  She got back to her feet, her ankle complaining and the skin on her knee stretching and creasing in all the wrong places. She wiped her forehead with her arm, glancing up at the sky. Not yet, she thought. Not yet, please. I don’t want to miss it.

  Just then, somewhere behind her, she heard a rumbling sound. Willow Lane didn’t look like the kind of place that saw many cars. Or many people, Olive thought, except dog walkers.

  She turned as a van approached up the long, steep lane, the hedge on the left rising up high above her and making the sound seem like it was coming right at her. She stopped walking, squinting to see if she could see the driver.

  She couldn’t. Not at first.

  The van slowed to a walking speed when it came closer. The driver waved. That’s when she recognised him. Now he came to a stop, wound down the passenger window and leaned across to speak to her.

  “I saw you leave the party,” he said. “You heading for Folly?” He was wearing sunglasses hooked onto the neck of his shirt and a baseball cap like one her dad owned.

  She nodded. The darkness was growing, like it was chasing them. She wanted to look upwards, to see the silhouette of the moon start to creep across the sun, but she didn’t want her eyeballs to burn because her special glasses were still in her pocket. It felt rude to get them out now. The shadows were getting longer though, and Olive wished she’d brought a jacket. The birds had gone quiet, and all she could hear was the rumbling of the van and the far-off sounds of celebration from the Circle.

  “You’ll miss it if you don’t get a move on,” he said.

  “I know.”

  “I can give you a ride, if you want. Just up the hill.”

  Olive thought about this, but only for a moment. She’d been told to never take a car ride with a stranger, but everybody knew everybody in Bishop’s Green. It was just that sort of place. Gran and Grandad gave Cassie and Olive the run of the town when they were here; Bishop’s Green felt like the seaside, everybody smiling and friendly. And she knew him well enough by now, didn’t she? It wasn’t like at home, where Mum was always telling them to be careful and not to talk to strangers.

  So she nodded again.

  He opened the door from his side of the van and she clambered inside. It was surprisingly chilly inside, a breeze blowing through the open windows. She shivered, the sweat cooling rapidly on the back of her neck. She was thirsty, despite the Coke she’d had earlier, which just made her tongue feel fuzzy in the heat of the day.

  The man noticed and handed her a bottle of water. She took it gratefully; the coolness of the bottle on the grazed skin of her hands was soothing even if it stung a bit. She drank greedily from the bottle.

  “Why did you leave the party?” he asked as they moved off. The van felt like it was crawling up the hill and smelled faintly of antiseptic. “You looked like you were having a good time earlier.”

  “It was okay,” Olive said hesitantly.

  “But then Cassie ruined it. She’s not really very nice to you, is she?”

  Something about the man’s voice made Olive stop. Her heart fluttered nervously, although she didn’t know why. He was watching her as they drove up the hill, his gaze no longer fatherly.

  “I…”

  He’d been nice to her all summer – but now it didn’t feel like he was protecting her. The way he said her sister’s name made her shiver. The wrongness of it settled in Olive’s stomach along with the stale water and she squirmed uncomfortably. It was like something had changed, right here in the van. The air was too cold, the sky outside too dark. Olive was belted in and she didn’t like how the man seemed too close to her, how he smelled like antiseptic and somebody else’s clean clothes.

  She realised she didn’t even remember his name.

  Suddenly the silence was unnerving, the quiet she’d craved was too much. Olive wanted to stop the van. She wanted to get out. But she found that her mouth wasn’t working properly; her tongue felt heavy and she was pretty tired. Panic started to worm about inside her. He’d rolled the windows up. The van kept moving. Further away from Cassie, from Gran and Grandad. From everything.

  The man kept looking at her. He drove faster.

  And as the road grew darker, as the sun was eaten by the moon, Olive Warren began to wish she had just done as she was told.

  1

  Monday, 16 March, 2015

  THE SUN WAS JUST rising as I headed out for my run but I had been awake for hours. My eyes were gritty. I could feel the long sleepless night behind me like a spectre and my whole body ached with it – but I focused on the relief instead of the tiredness. I listened to the steady pounding of my feet on the pavement, and then on compact dirt as I pushed away from the residential streets of Bishop’s Green and into the woods south of town.

  I tried not to think at all, focusing on my breathing, my heartbeat, the ache in my legs. At least it wasn’t the job that was going to kill me these days. That could only be a good thing.

  When I’d traded city life and the battle for a decent journalism gig in London for my grandmother in Bishop’s Green, I’d had visions of family dinners, of me playing the doting granddaughter who managed her grandmother’s dementia with ease. Instead I felt like a prison warden – and that was on the days when Gran remembered who I was. The days when she didn’t were harder still, having to explain who I was and why I always felt like such a failure.

  I felt the itch even as I ran. The itch to call it quits, to hold my hands up and claim defeat. When I’d made the decision to leave London it had been on the back of a six-month rough patch. Losing my job had been hard enough – but that had been my own f
ault. The three-year relationship and the cushy London flat that I’d lost with it, however, still stung. But I shook the thoughts from my mind as I ran; it didn’t matter why I’d left, I was here now.

  I let my feet guide me as the thud-thud of my trainers drowned out my worries. I cut away from the trail, brambles scratching my legs as I widened into a loping, unsteady pace and let my breathing go wild. This was my first run in over a week and I relished the damp air on my hot cheeks, sucking in the sweet scent of evergreens on the March wind.

  The woods began to thin, and I passed a gnarled old tree with a rope swing on a low branch. It was the sort of thing Olive and I would have spent hours playing on during our summers here, although she’d probably have spent a good fifteen minutes trying to determine its stability first. I smiled at the memory.

  I’d been thinking of Olive a lot recently. She was always there, a soft phantom at the back of my mind, but it had been worse in the last months. Moving back to the town where we’d last been together had seemed cathartic over a drink in a distant London pub. Now it felt misguided. Morbid, even. And I knew that the looming solar eclipse was only upping the frequency of the nightmares.

  I didn’t want to think of my sister this morning. I was too tired, too emotional. Gran had managed to escape in the night, wandering the fields for hours before I tracked her down. Her midnight escapades were getting more frequent, harder to prevent. I just wanted to run, to get sweaty and think about nothing except my aching body.

  I stumbled back onto the trail and followed it out of the trees, panting now with the effort. A grassy bank came into view, and I slowed for a minute, blinded by a sudden brightness. Hands on my knees, I came to a complete stop at the edge of the lake.

  It was how I remembered it. Big, dark, stretched taut like blown glass. The sun, fully risen now, was a distorted disc among reflected clouds. There weren’t many people around yet but the weather wasn’t entirely to blame. The whole town had lost the bustle I remembered from my childhood summers here. Still, by August the tourists would be back, drawn by Bishop’s Green’s reputation as a magical hotspot, blessed by the Triplet Stones or Druids, or whatever nonsense they’d been peddled to reel them in.