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there somebody else who should be here instead?”
    Corrine finally speaking, wrenching out the words in a faint, childlike voice: “No … please … go …”
    Sean leaning forwards in his seat, trying to make eye contact. “Corrine, was there somebody else there? Somebody else there with you?”
    Looking up at him at last, repeating the words with rising hysteria. “Please … go … Please … go!”
    And all he saw in her eyes was naked fear.
    The rush-hour traffic was kicking in now and Sean was glad to shift his concentration to navigating his way through the system of flyovers and bypasses. The Ernemouth signs were getting bigger, adorned with jolly symbols of a racecourse, a funfair and caravan parks. One right turn and the road to his destination lay before him.
    A long, straight ribbon cut through wide, flat marshland, dotted with white blobs of sheep, and the wingless remains of crumbling windmills. On the skyline, a row of wind turbines soared above these remnants of an earlier age, propellers cutting swathes through the darkening sky. But even they seemed like dwarves against the vastness above them.
    The town crouched on the horizon, an illuminated clocktower staring out like one baleful eye. To his right, a vast expanse of water opened up a dramatic view of the estuary. Only the water could compete with the sky. Streetlights coming on as the road drew level with the train station and the sign that read
Welcome to Ernemouth.

4
Fire Dances
September 1983
    In the long hours since they’d had their lunch, Eric and Edna had been sitting in the lounge, straining to hear above the ticking of the clock, the rustling of Eric’s papers and the clack of Edna’s knitting needles, the sound of a car pulling into their drive. But when Noodles sprang from Edna’s feet to stand on top of the sofa, yapping a staccato warning, they both looked up with a start, as if it was the last thing they had been expecting.
    A Morris Minor, spray-painted purple, had stopped in the driveway. Edna tried to ignore the sinking feeling in her chest as she looked from the car to her husband, his expression propelling her towards the front door.
    Amanda was the first to emerge from the ridiculous motor, in a cloud of honey-blonde hair and a pair of huge, brown, oval sunglasses. She hadn’t lost her figure, Edna noted bitterly. Tight blue jeans and a denim jacket were worn casually over her slim hips and bulging chest, a pair of brown leather boots giving her height, gold glinting around her neck. The smile Amanda had plastered on with red lipstick was a mirror of her mother’s and Edna could smell the Youth Dew from her doorstep.
    “Mum,” Amanda said, walking towards Edna with painted talons outstretched. The two women touched palms for thebriefest of seconds as they strained to avoid closer contact, kissing the air around each other’s faces. Edna’s nose wrinkled as her daughter’s perfume settled around them, a vaporous outrider encroaching on her territory.
    “You’re looking well,” Amanda said as she stood back to take in the figure of her mother, regulation perm, pastel twinset and theatrically pained facial expression all present and correct. Silly little dog standing at her feet with its top lip drawn back, body shaking indignantly as it growled at her.
    For the past fifteen years, their contact had consisted mainly of phone calls arranging Samantha’s summer visits and an exchange of gifts each Christmas that neither looked forward to unwrapping. Yet Edna seemed to Amanda to have been untouched by time. She stood on the doorstep exactly as she had left her.
    “Thank you,” Edna touched her hair self-consciously, wondering what had happened to her daughter’s voice, why she sounded so different in the flesh to on the phone. There was not a trace of Ernemouth in it any more, Edna realised. You would have believed Amanda had been born within the sound of Bow Bells if you didn’t know better.
    Behind the brown lenses