# The Heights: A dark story of obsession and revenge

Juliet Bell

#2 in Yorkshire Post’s ‘Pick of the Best Books’The searchers took several hours to find the body, even though they knew roughly where to look. The whole hillside had collapsed, and there was water running off the moors and over the slick black rubble. The boy, they knew, was beyond their help.This was a recovery, not a rescue.A grim discovery brings DCI Lockwood to Gimmerton’s Heights Estate – a bleak patch of Yorkshire he thought he’d left behind for good. There, he must do the unthinkable, and ask questions about the notorious Earnshaw family.Decades may have passed since Maggie closed the pits and the Earnshaws ran riot – but old wounds remain raw. And, against his better judgement, DCI Lockwood is soon drawn into a story.A story of an untameable boy, terrible rage, and two families ripped apart. A story of passion, obsession, and dark acts of revenge. And of beautiful Cathy Earnshaw – who now lies buried under cold white marble in the shadow of the moors.Two hundred years since Emily Brontë’s birth comes The Heights: a modern re-telling of Wuthering Heights set in 1980s Yorkshire.Readers love Juliet Bell:“A genuinely gripping book, cleverly re-telling the story of Wuthering Heights in a convincing modern context… A brilliant achievement. Highly recommended.”“Excellent modern re-telling of Emily Bronte's classic.”“The Heights is an edgy and compelling read”“A fantastically absorbing read”“gripping and dark and an absolute triumph!!”“Excellent read.”

Two hundred years since Emily Brontë’s birth comes The Heights: a modern re-telling of Wuthering Heights set in 1980s Yorkshire.

The searchers took several hours to find the body, even though they knew roughly where to look. The whole hillside had collapsed, and there was water running off the moors and over the slick black rubble. The boy, they knew, was beyond their help. This was a recovery, not a rescue.

A grim discovery brings DCI Lockwood to Gimmerton’s Heights Estate – a bleak patch of Yorkshire he thought he’d left behind for good. There, he must do the unthinkable, and ask questions about the notorious Earnshaw family.

Decades may have passed since Maggie closed the pits and the Earnshaws ran riot – but old wounds remain raw. And, against his better judgement, DCI Lockwood is soon drawn into a story.

A story of an untameable boy, terrible rage, and two families ripped apart. A story of passion, obsession, and dark acts of revenge. And of beautiful Cathy Earnshaw – who now lies buried under cold white marble in the shadow of the moors.

The Heights

Juliet Bell


ONE PLACE. MANY STORIES

Contents

Cover

Blurb

Title Page

Author Bio

Acknowledgements

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-One

Chapter Forty-Two

Chapter Forty-Three

Chapter Forty-Four

Chapter Forty-Five

Chapter Forty-Six

Chapter Forty-Seven

Chapter Forty-Eight

Chapter Forty-Nine

Epilogue

Copyright

JULIET BELL is the collaborative pen name of respected authors Janet Gover and Alison May.

Juliet was born at a writers’ conference, with a chance remark about heroes who are far from heroic. She was raised on pizza and wine during many long working lunches, and finished her first novel over cloud storage and Skype in 2017.

Juliet shares Janet and Alison’s preoccupation with misunderstood classic fiction, and stories that explore the darker side of relationships.

Alison also writes commercial women’s fiction and romantic comedies and can be found at www.alison-may.co.uk.

Janet writes contemporary romantic adventures mostly set in outback Australia and can be found at www.janetgover.com.

Acknowledgements

This book was written with the help and support of many people.

First we must thank Emily Brontë for Wuthering Heights. Adapting her timeless story to our modern world was a huge challenge. We hope we’ve done her justice.

Many thanks to Jon Sawyer, for sharing his memories of troubled times and the picket lines and inspiring some of the key moments of the story.

Our thanks also go to our agent Julia Silk for believing in us and in this book, and to our editor, Clio Cornish, for her enthusiasm and love for the story we were trying to tell.

Writing a novel is a curiously solitary task, even when there’s two of you, so we must also thank all our friends and family for supporting us during the process. Special thanks to all our friends in the RNA, especially the wonderful women of the naughty kitchen. And extra special thanks to John and Paul for, well, for everything really.

And finally – thank you, dear reader, for picking up this book. We hope you enjoy it.

Dedicated to Emily Brontë, for creating a world with the enduring power to inspire readers and writers to this day.

Prologue

Gimmerton, West Yorkshire. 2007

The searchers took several hours to find the body, even though they knew roughly where to look. The whole hillside had collapsed and, although the rain had cleared, there was water running off the moors and over the slick black rubble. The searchers were concerned about their own safety on the unstable slope. The boy, they knew, was beyond their help. This was a recovery, not a rescue.

Twice during the search, the hillside started to move again, and the searchers held their breath. The blue hills were nothing but mine waste. There was no substance to them. They were as fragile as the lives of the people who lived below them on the estate that clung to the land around the abandoned pithead.

Some of the searchers had worked in that mine. Years ago. The boy they were searching for was one of their own. Almost. He had the right name, even if most of them had never laid eyes on him. They knew his family. His grandfather had worked beside them at the coalface. His uncle too had been one of them. Not the father, mind. But still, they weren’t going to leave the lad buried beneath the landslip.

The family weren’t out there on the slope. Maybe the police had told them to stay behind. But maybe not. Maybe they just hadn’t come.

They’d been looking for a couple of hours when the photographer from the local newspaper arrived. He was told to wait safely beyond the edge of the slip. But he was carrying an array of big and expensive lenses. His camera would go to the places he couldn’t.

The sun was sinking when they found him.

One of the searchers had started yet another small slip, and as the rock slid away, almost like liquid, part of the body was exposed. Carefully they had pulled him free.

The boy hadn’t died easily. Father Joseph, down at St Mary’s, was an old-fashioned priest, but there was no way this lad was going to have an open casket. His body had been pummelled by the sliding rock. The rain had washed most of the blood away, but it was still enough to make one of the men turn away and heave into the scrubby grass.

Surprisingly, the boy’s face was hardly damaged at all. Just a couple of small scrapes and a cut on his temple.

The team leader removed his rucksack and dug inside to find a body bag. Carefully, they lifted the boy and put him inside. There was a sense of relief when the bag was closed.

They carried him down from the hills. The photographer followed. He took a few pictures, but then seemed to lose interest. As soon as they reached the road, the photographer broke away and walked quickly to the warmth of his car.

The searchers carried the body to the ambulance and waited while he was gently placed inside. Then they too dispersed.

The ambulance and the police were the last to leave. The ambulance was destined for the morgue. The police car turned into the estate and parked outside one of the few houses that wasn’t boarded up and deserted.

The young constable got out, and carefully placed his hat on his head and straightened his uniform jacket. That’s what you did when you brought bad news to a family, even one that hadn’t bothered to come and join the search.

He walked up to number 37 Moor Lane and knocked on the door.

Chapter One

Gimmerton. 2008

This was the place he had almost died. Lockwood shivered. In front of him, the chain-link fence was rusted and sagging. The sign hung at an angle, the words NO TRESPASSING all but covered with dirt and grime. Beyond the fence, in the grey light of the overcast afternoon, the buildings looked dark and decayed. Odd bits of iron, stripped from the disused mining machines, lay scattered about the ground and weeds were reclaiming their place in the filthy wasteland of the deserted pit. One building was open to the elements, the remains of its roof lying in a twisted heap between the crumbling brick walls. Not a single pane of glass remained intact. The men of this town had good throwing arms. Stones hadn’t been their only weapons. Nor had windows been their only targets.

Lockwood reached into his pocket and retrieved the piece of metal he’d carried with him every day for more than two decades. The nail was twisted and bent, distorted almost beyond recognition when it was fired through the side of the police van. The newspaper reports at the time had declared it a miracle no one was injured as the nail ricocheted around the interior. Lockwood knew better. A tiny white scar on the left side of his neck showed how close death had come. After everything he’d seen in this job, that was the place his brain took him whenever he let his guard drop. To this day he still woke, sweating at night, hearing the sound of the nail gun beside his ear, and the screech of metal as the nail tore through the body of the van. He could still feel the sharp stab of pain in his flesh.

Lockwood told himself he was no coward. Even then, working with the riot squad, he’d expected danger. The miners were tough, and they were angry. Desperation had seeped into the bones of their community. They were about to lose their jobs. More than that, they were about to lose a way of life that had been with them for generations, the only way of life they knew. They were looking for a fight. He’d been green and keen, and could handle himself. He’d been trained to deal with anger, and there’d been so many moments in his career when something could have gone wrong. There’d been moments when things had gone wrong, but those weren’t the moments he carried with him. Instead he kept hold of this one, as clear and solid in his memory as the nail in his hand. Maybe because that was the first time things had gone wrong. Maybe because they’d never caught anyone. Maybe because of the randomness of the attack. But stay with him it had.

They might not have caught the person who did it, but Lockwood knew who it was. The squad had been out of the vehicle seconds after the incident, breaking up the crowd pounding on the sides of the van. As he struggled in the melee, his neck damp with his own blood, Lockwood had looked towards the nearby houses and seen him. A dark youth, with hatred on his face. He’d been no more than fifteen then and already familiar to the police. He was carrying something in his hands. Lockwood couldn’t see it clearly, but he knew in his heart it was the nail gun, and somewhere in amid the shouting he’d heard the words: ‘That Earnshaw kid.’

By the time Lockwood had fought his way through the crowd the youth was gone. He’d looked at the maze of narrow streets and identical houses in the Heights estate, and known he wouldn’t find him. They had investigated for a few days, but found nothing they could take to court. There were more pressing matters than one split second amid weeks of violence. Nobody was charged, and the incident was forgotten by everyone except Nelson Lockwood.

Darkness was falling as he turned away from the mine and got back into his car. He pulled away from the gates and began to retrace the route he’d followed that morning. The estate was even shabbier than before. Most of the people had left when the mine closed. Rotting boards covered the windows of the deserted pub. Graffiti scarred the walls of the empty shops and houses. Here and there, curtains or a light in a window showed that a house was occupied. For some people, Lockwood guessed, there was simply nowhere else to go.

His goal was the very last row of houses. A couple of the foremen had lived up here. They were the best paid and most trusted of the mine’s employees. They had also been the leaders of the strike. And they always protected their own. The hotheads who had thrown the bricks and started the fights. And a kid with the nail gun he’d stolen from the mine.

Lockwood knew what he would find at the far end of this street, where the town ended and the wild hills began. Since his last visit, someone had turned two small houses into one. It was larger than the houses around it, but not better than them. The aura of neglect and decay was almost palpable. It would take more than a coat of paint or some new guttering to erase the memories that lingered in those walls.

Lockwood didn’t need to see the light in the windows to know that the house was still inhabited. He’d checked that before leaving London on this final trip to Gimmerton. He drove past without stopping. There was plenty of time.

It took only a few minutes to drive from the past back to the present. The new estate had been built on a gentle slope below the moors. The houses were all detached with well-tended gardens. They were big and new and looked away from the mine, across the valley towards the lights of the town. The people who lived in the new estate weren’t part of the old world. They sent their kids to the right schools and drove their big four-wheel drives to Leeds and Sheffield to work in offices, rather than toiling beneath the ground they lived on. Their wives ate lunch, rather than dinner, and went shopping for pleasure not for provisions. The history of this place didn’t touch the Grange Estate.

Except for one small corner.

The house that had given the estate its name sat slightly removed from the new buildings, surrounded by a large garden. Thrushcross Grange was Victorian – the big house built for the mine owners back in the day, then used by a succession of managers after the pit was nationalised. It remained aloof from the newer buildings that surrounded it; with them but not a part of the town’s new story. Thrushcross was the old Gimmerton.

After parking his car, Lockwood removed his bag from the boot and slowly approached the house. Despite the need for a new coat of paint, it had survived the new reality far better than the Heights. But still the memories lingered. He stepped through the door and made his way to the reception desk where a young woman with an Eastern European accent waited to check him in.

‘Welcome to Thrushcross, sir. Do you have a reservation?’

He nodded. ‘Under Lockwood.’

She stared at the screen. ‘That is for a week?’

‘I’m not sure. It might be longer.’

‘It is quiet time, sir. There will be no problem to extend the booking if you want to.’

It felt strange to be walking the same hallways as the people who had intrigued – no, obsessed – him for so many years. As he entered his room, with its high, embossed ceiling and big bay window, he wondered which of them had slept here. He looked around the room trying to picture them, but suddenly shivered. It must be the cold wind off the moors, and he was tired after the long drive from London. The guesthouse had a restaurant. He’d go down and get something to eat and maybe a whisky before he tried to sleep.

Emerging into daylight the next morning, Lockwood was surprised to find a bright, still day. His restless sleep had been punctuated by the deep moaning of strong winds blowing off the moors, and the tapping of heavy rain against his window. Perhaps he’d been dreaming, his mind disturbed by reconnecting with the past.

Not even dazzling sunshine could make the town centre look appealing. It had changed in twenty-four years. It had never been smart, but now the decay was overwhelming. The few remaining shops were at the bottom end of the market – charity shops, pawnbrokers, pound stores. The two small pubs didn’t look at all inviting. Nor did the only food outlets; a grease-stained chippie and an Indian. A tired looking Co-op also served as post office. Lockwood had seen a nice pub and restaurant just outside the town, on a hill with a glorious view of the moors. That must be where the people from the new estate went. Their road skirted the town centre to take them away from here without even passing through the old town and risking getting the dust of poverty and hopelessness on their shiny new cars.

In a tiny town square, a group of youths sitting at the base of a statue watched through hooded eyes as Lockwood drove past. He remembered that statue. It was of the town hero, a footballer who had made it good in the first division, back when the first division really was first. It said a lot about Gimmerton that Lockwood had never heard of the town’s most famous son. There were more people standing near the pub. Men leaning against the walls, smoking as they waited for the doors to open. There was nothing else for them to do.

It hadn’t always been like this.

Lockwood parked his car outside the church. It had beautiful arches over ornate, stained-glass windows and a wide staircase leading to dark wooden doors. It was newly painted, perhaps to prove that God hadn’t entirely forsaken Gimmerton. Across the road from the church was a magnificent gothic edifice, no doubt built when the mine was flourishing. The stone was stained with soot. Three storeys above the ground, ornate Victorian gables towered over windows that were dark and empty. Above the door, a carving announced that this was the Workingman’s Institute.

Or rather it had been, when there was work.

Much of the strike had been planned and run from this building. Until the union had been kicked out. And ten years later, when the pit finally closed, so too had the Institute. It was open again, but served a very different role. The men and women who walked up those steps now were going to the job centre to sign on, hoping to avoid the interest of the social workers who occupied the floor above. But this morning, that was exactly where Lockwood was heading.

The cavernous hallway echoed slightly as he made his way to the stairwell. At the top of the steps, a young mother and two small children sat on orange plastic chairs in the waiting area. Their clothes looked as if they had come from one of the charity shops on the high street. The reception desk was at the back of the large, unloved room. Behind it stood a woman about Lockwood’s own age. She had the look of a someone who’d left her better days behind some years ago and her grey hair was cut in a short, severe fashion that did nothing to flatter her lined face. She glanced up as he entered and frowned.

‘Yes?’

‘I’m looking for Ellen Dean.’

The shifting of her eyes told him he had found the woman he was looking for.

‘And you are?’

‘DCI Lockwood. I have an appointment.’ He pulled his warrant card from his pocket and held it up for her to see.

‘This way.’

She led him to a small office. She took a seat behind the cheap wooden desk while Lockwood helped himself to another orange plastic chair. Miss Dean sat primly, her mouth firmly shut, waiting for Lockwood to begin.

‘As I mentioned in my email,’ he said, ‘I’m following up on a couple of incidents recently that may shed light on an unsolved case dating back some time.’

‘What case?’ Her eyes narrowed.

Lockwood sensed she was going on the defensive.

‘It goes back to the strike,’ he said, hoping to reassure her she wasn’t his target. Not now, at least.

‘That’s long gone. People don’t talk about those times much around here.’

‘I’m not so much interested in the strike, as in some of the people who were here back then. The Earnshaws and the Lintons.’

He waited for her to say something, but she simply sat there, her eyes narrowing and her mouth fixed in that firm, defensive line.

‘I believe you had dealings with both families in your role back then with social services.’

‘In this place, most people had dealings with social services.’

Lockwood nodded. ‘I’d like to start with the Earnshaws. In particular the youngest boy. Heathcliff.’

A shadow crossed her face. He could almost feel her defences rising. Was it guilt, he wondered. He’d been in plenty of meetings with plenty of social workers over the years. He’d sat through child protection conferences, and even gone out as muscle when they took the kids away. He’d seen the good ones, the ones that cared too much, the ones that didn’t care at all, and the ones that got worn down by the job. Now, here was Ellen Dean. He wasn’t sure which type she was. He reminded himself that he was here to do a job. However personal this investigation was, he was a professional. He would do what the job demanded. He arranged his face into a more sympathetic expression.

‘I’ve read the file,’ he said. ‘There’s not much detail there. The child apparently just turned up.’

‘Old Mr Earnshaw brought him back from a trip. Liverpool.’

‘And you never thought too much about it? You didn’t question where the boy came from or how Earnshaw got hold of him?’

The woman across the table bristled. ‘It was a private fostering arrangement.’

‘Really?’ Lockwood’s eyebrow inched upwards.

She nodded. ‘Perfectly legal. There was a note from the mother.’

‘That’s not in the file.’

She shrugged. ‘It was a long time ago. Things were different then. He were never reported missing. And besides…’ Her voice trailed off.

Lockwood felt a glimmer of hope. He was beginning to understand Ellen Dean now. He knew how to get what he wanted from her. ‘Please, Miss Dean…’ He leaned forward, hoping to suggest to her that they were co-conspirators in some secret endeavour. ‘Anything you could tell me about the family will help.’

The woman pursed her lips. ‘I’m a professional. I don’t engage in gossip.’

There it was. Lockwood forced himself to resist the smile that was dragging at his lips. She knew something. And in his experience, anyone who professed not to be a gossip usually was. He nodded seriously. ‘Of course not. But if there were things you think I ought to know.’ He paused for a second as she leaned slightly towards him. ‘In your professional opinion, of course. And to help with the old case. It would be good to get rid of the paperwork on it.’

‘Well…’ The woman glanced around as if checking no one could overhear. ‘There was them that said the boy was his.’

That was interesting. ‘Was he?’

‘Don’t know. He looked like a gypsy. All dark eyes and wild hair. Talked Irish an’ all.’

‘And the mother?’

‘She never came looking for him. Back then, I had my hands full. It was desperate round here. The winter of discontent and all that. There were families what needed my help.’ She straightened her back. ‘I had important things to do. More important than wondering about one brat. He was fed and housed. He was safe. There were plenty who weren’t.’

‘Of course.’ He smiled at her.

A sudden crash outside the room was followed by the sound of a woman yelling at her child. A few seconds later, the child started screaming. That was his cue.

‘I can hear you’re busy, Miss Dean,’ he said getting to his feet. ‘Thank you for talking to me. I may need your help again.’

She nodded brusquely as she got to her feet. The closed, hard look on her face didn’t bode well for the family who dared to create a disturbance in her office.

Lockwood spent the afternoon at the town’s small library, also housed in the Workingman’s Institute. The seats were empty, and a lone librarian showed him the way to their old newspaper files. The library had not yet entered the twenty-first century. Back issues of the local newspaper were on microfiche, not computer, and by the end of the day his eyes felt dry from staring at the viewer. He hadn’t learnt much. He’d found a lot of stories about the miners’ strike and the pit closure and the deaths that had brought him back. But nothing he hadn’t already read. He had even seen his younger self in one of the photos. His face was obscured by his helmet and shield, but he knew himself. Even after all these years, he felt a twinge of pride that he had followed orders and done the job that was required of him.

The current job, however, was looking pretty hopeless. Heathcliff had been and remained a mystery. There was nothing to tie him to any crime.

Lockwood was an old-style copper. He believed in old-fashioned investigation. People were the answer. Someone always knew the truth. The trick was to get these people to talk to him. They didn’t like strangers, and most of all they didn’t like a copper from the south. Old enmities died hard around here. He had a lot of legwork in front of him. And he didn’t have much time. He was retiring soon. This investigation was, on paper at least, official, but Lockwood knew he’d been given the case review as a favour. No one thought he would find anything new. This case was so cold there were icicles on it. Dusk saw him back on the Heights estate, sitting in his car at the end of a street made gloomy by the lowering clouds. A small beam of light was visible from the window of the shabby house at the top of the rise.

When it was fully dark, Lockwood got out of the car and walked slowly up the hill to stop in the deep shadows beside an old and boarded-up terrace across the road from that single light. He watched for a while, but saw nothing through the grimy curtains. He crossed the road and made his way down a path between two houses into the yards at the back of the terrace row. There was a gap in the fence wide enough to let him through. From the back of the deserted neighbouring home, he could see more lights. These windows had no curtains, and for a moment he thought he could see a dark shape moving inside. He stepped onto a pile of mossy timber and grabbed the top of the fence to pull himself up for a better look.

The girl’s hand came from nowhere. It grabbed his wrist, the bare fingers pale in the dim light and icy cold.

Lockwood gave a startled cry and smashed his free hand down into the girl’s flesh, driven by a desperate urge to stop her touching him. His foot slipped and he fell backwards. He crashed to the ground, grimacing in pain as his shoulder hit something hard hidden in the long grass. A moment later, the door of the house next door crashed open.

‘Cathy? Cathy?’

Lockwood bit back a moan of pain and sat up, to peer through a gap in the rotting fence.

The boy was now a middle-aged man, but Lockwood knew him in an instant.

‘Heathcliff,’ he breathed.

Time had not been good to him. His dark hair was still worn long and untidy, but now it was heavily threaded with grey. Where once he’d been muscular and lean, he was now painfully thin. His face was gaunt and lined and his eyes were sunken dark holes. He looked wildly around.

‘Cathy? Are you there?’ Heathcliff called in a voice shaking with emotion.

No answer came from the silent night.

Lockwood didn’t dare move. Heathcliff waited, staring out into the blackness and muttering something Lockwood couldn’t hear.

Something moved in the corner of Lockwood’s vision. He turned his head, but there was nothing or no one there. A heartbeat later, a soft white flake drifted to the ground. Followed by another. And another. Within a minute, heavy snowflakes obscured his vision and he began to shiver and the temperature dropped even further. Still, Heathcliff didn’t move. Just as the cold was about to drive Lockwood to revealing himself, a shout from inside the house caused Heathcliff to stir. Muttering loudly, he turned away and retreated inside the house, slamming the door behind him.

Lockwood waited no more than a few seconds before slowly getting to his feet. He risked another look over the fence, but there was no sign of the girl with the icy hands.

Cathy?

His mind conjured up a picture of a dark-haired girl with wild hair. She hadn’t been beautiful. Not really. But something about her had been strangely compelling. She had been Heathcliff’s constant companion, matching his every wildness. But then, something had happened to drive them apart. He knew that much.

Hers was one of the deaths that had brought him back.

Catherine Linton. Catherine Earnshaw.

Heathcliff’s beloved Cathy.

Chapter Two

March, 1978

‘Is he for me?’ Cathy peered at the scratchy-haired, dark-eyed boy standing behind her daddy in the hallway. ‘You said you’d bring me back a present. Is he my present?’

‘No, dear.’ Her father set his bags down next to the front door. He didn’t hug her the way he normally did after being away. But Cathy didn’t mind too much. She was far too interested in the boy, with his tatty clothes and hunched shoulders. ‘This is your new brother. His name is Heathcliff and he’s going to stay with us for a while.’

Cathy’s mother bustled out from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a dishcloth. She stopped in mid-stride and looked down at the boy. Her eyes narrowed and her lips almost vanished as she frowned. Cathy knew that look too well.

‘What is that?’ Her voice was hard, the words clipped.

Her daddy shifted from foot to foot. ‘Cathy, why don’t you take Heathcliff upstairs?’

That always happened. Every time there was anything interesting, Cathy got sent upstairs. It wasn’t fair. Mick didn’t get sent upstairs. Mick got to go out round the village with his mates. Mick had even had a ride in a police car. He’d come into her bedroom and shown her the bright-red mark across his cheek where he reckoned a policeman had clipped him round the head. Mick got to have all the adventures.

But not this time. Mick wasn’t here. Getting a new brother was almost as exciting as riding with the police. Maybe more exciting, especially if Mummy and Daddy were going to row about it. And for now it was all hers. Being sent upstairs was not fair at all, but she knew how to deal with that.

‘Come on,’ she said.

The boy followed.

She stopped on the tiny landing. ‘So my room’s down there. That’s Mick’s. Mummy and Daddy sleep in there. Bathroom’s downstairs through the kitchen.’ She looked around. ‘Where are you going to sleep?’

‘Dunno.’

‘Is your name really Heathcliff?’

The boy shrugged. ‘Yeah.’

Cathy wrinkled her nose. ‘That’s not a name. Names are things like Gary or David. Have you got a last name?’

Heathcliff shrugged again.

Cathy sat down on the top step.

Heathcliff hesitated for a few seconds then sat down next to her, squashing himself against the wall, as far away from her as he could get. She sniffed. Did he think she had something catching?

‘What are we doing?’

‘Listening.’ This was Cathy’s secret listening spot. From here you could hear people perfectly if they left the door at the bottom of the stairs open. This time they hadn’t. She had to strain to make out bits. It sounded like her mummy was doing most of the talking. And when she yelled, it was easy to hear her.

‘What were you thinking?’

‘What about his mother?’ Mummy got louder.

‘Did you really think you could just bring him here? That I would cook for him and wash his filthy clothes and treat him like my own children?”

‘Well, I put up with Mick…’ That was Daddy. He was getting angry now too.

‘That’s different. It were for ever ago.’

‘Was it?’

Cathy blew the air out of her mouth so that her lips tingled. Everyone had to put up with Mick. She didn’t want to listen to her parents talking about Mick.

Cathy heard the kitchen door slam. That was it then. Her mother would hide in the kitchen and sulk while her daddy sat in the back room and read the newspaper. There was nothing more to hear.

She turned her attention back to the new boy. ‘Do you play with Sindys?’

He shook his head.

‘Well, what do you do?’

He shrugged.

‘You don’t say much, do you?’

‘Dunno what to say.’

Cathy didn’t know either. ‘You talk funny.’

‘I talk like me mam. You’re the one who talks funny.’

She didn’t. She talked normal. ‘Come on. I’ll show you how to play Sindys.’

Mick Earnshaw strode up the hill towards home. This winter was turning into a pain in the arse. His dad reckoned they were going to bring back the three-day week. That was the last thing he needed – his dad hanging round the house the whole time, winding his mum up even more than she already was. His dad had been away this week, some union thing in Liverpool. He always came back from union meetings ranting and raving about what a waste of space Callaghan was. Mick didn’t care. He probably would when he finished school and got a job. Until then, he had his mates. And as long as the lasses kept looking at him the way they did, he was happy.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a packet of fags. He lit one and took a deep drag, then stretched out his hand. The scabs across his knuckles had gone now, but he liked to picture the blood, and the bruising, and the looks on his mates’ faces when he’d rammed his hand into the police car. The buggers had all run away after that. They hadn’t seen the copper clip him over the head. Shame, but he’d told them all about it. He’d seen the respect in their faces. That was the important thing.

Mick grinned as he got to the top of the Heights estate. Theirs was the last house in the row. The end of the terrace. Mum reckoned that meant you could call it a semi-detached. Mum needed her head looking at.

He flicked his fag end away, stuck his key in the Yale and opened the door. They didn’t used to lock it during the day, but now you heard stories about neighbours stealing from one another and his mum said you couldn’t be too careful. Mick wasn’t worried about that. Anyone who tried to take anything from him would be sorry.

‘Who is it?’

‘S’Mick.’

His mother came into the hallway. She looked angry, but then, she looked angry most of the time these days. ‘Your father has something to tell you. I’m going to my Ladies’ Group.’

Mick shrugged. His mother was for ever going to her groups at the church. There was a cookery group, and a group for wives, and another group where some old women taught the young women how to do darning and rubbish stuff like that. Half the time, when she said she was going to the church, Mick saw her nip off in the opposite direction anyway.

His dad was sitting in the back room. They never sat in the front room. Mum said that was for Best. Best wasn’t something that happened very often. Dad was wearing his weekday suit. He had one suit for Sunday and one for during the week and a scrappy old one for working round the house. Mick would see the other miners walking along the road in jeans and tracksuit bottoms. They didn’t know how to present themselves. That’s what his dad reckoned anyway. His dad was a cut above.

‘I need you to make some space in your room.’

‘What? Why?’

‘We’ve got someone staying with us.’

‘Not in my room.’

‘Well, he’s a young boy so he can’t really go in with Cathy.’

‘How long for?’

His dad stood up. ‘For as long as needs be. I’ll bring the foldout bed down from the loft. Go clear some space.’

Mick’s chest tightened and his fingers closed into a fist. It was crap – there was no way he was going to share his room with some kid. ‘Why’s he here anyway?’

‘He needed somewhere to stay.’

Mick shook his head. ‘You can’t just bring a kid home. There’s social services and that. Like when Keely Baldwin’s mum went off and it was just her and them babies in the house. Social services took them all away in the end.’

His dad’s face grew dark. ‘This is different. The boy’s staying here. Now go and clear some space.’ He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t make a fist, but Mick’s legs turned and carried him towards the stairs as surely as if he’d been whacked on the arse.

There were two faces watching him from the landing. Cathy, sitting at the top of the stairs, like always, and this new kid sitting next to her. ‘What the hell?’

The boy had a thatch of thick black hair, above dark skin, and dark eyes, but that wasn’t what Mick first noticed. The first thing he saw was the bright-red shine on his lips and the glittery blue rings around his eyes.

Cathy shrugged. ‘We were practising doing make-up.’

‘He looks like a freak.’

Cathy stuck out her chin. ‘Well, I like it.’

He looked at the boy, but the boy was staring at Cathy, eyes wide. The look on the brat’s face said it all. Cathy had him wrapped around her little finger. Like the old man. In their father’s eyes, Cathy was his little princess. She could do no wrong, while Mick couldn’t do anything right. And now his dad had brought this brat home. Not that Mick cared.

He stalked past them up the stairs, jabbing the boy in the ribs with the toe of his boot as he did. The kid started, but didn’t make a sound. Mick wondered if the brat would cry if he knocked him down the stairs. Maybe one day he’d find out.

Chapter Three

March, 1978

Ellen Dean didn’t have time for this. She still had a pile of case notes to write up from yesterday as well as all today’s home visits. She could do without an extra trip to the Heights estate being dropped on her as well. Her boss, Elizabeth – always Elizabeth, never Liz or Lizzie – had handed her a scrap of paper with the address on with some glee. Ellen had no idea why she had to do this today. The kid had only arrived yesterday. Cases like this usually waited a week or two before anyone got around to doing something about them. What did it matter? But oh no! Queen Elizabeth said today, so today it had to be.

Every social worker in the county knew about Collier’s Heights. It was a rite of passage for the new starters and a source of many a well-told war story for the old hands. A lot of their work was up there. The name said it all. The estate had been built for the miners when the pit was new. Back in the day, it might have been a close-knit and happy community, but things had changed. Now it was the roughest end of a rough town. Ellen had only been in this job three weeks, and she’d already been to the Heights twice, tagging along behind Elizabeth, who had taken great delight in sending her junior up there today – all alone for the first time. What Elizabeth didn’t know – what nobody knew – was that Ellen had grown up on an estate not all that different to the Heights. Hard work and a bursary to pay her rent at university had been her escape route. Social work hadn’t been her choice, but it was the only scholarship available, and now it had led her back to the same sort of place she had left behind. This time, however, she was on the other side of the fence, and determined to help other kids the way she had been helped.

She turned her car into Moor Lane, right at the top of the hill to which the Heights clung, and drove slowly along the street, peering for numbers on the rows of identical, weatherworn, redbrick terraces. She was very aware of the groups of lads at the corners, eyeing the car. Here and there she caught a twitch of a curtain or a slam of a door that had stood ajar in welcome a second before. She hadn’t expected any different. She’d grown up doing the same thing.

She pulled up outside number 37 Moor Lane, and picked up the buff-coloured folder from the passenger seat. The Earnshaws. Ray, Shirley and two kids. A boy and a girl. She mouthed the names to herself as she waited for someone to come to the door. She’d learnt that on her first day, when she’d completely forgotten the name of the mother she was coming to see, and the woman had called her a stuck-up bitch and accused her of not giving a shit about anyone. The Earnshaws. Ray and Shirley and… She flipped the folder open. Mick and Cathy. Mick’s entry in the file was longer. Truancy, shoplifting and the odd run-in with the police. Nothing unusual there for a fourteen-year-old kid from an estate like the Heights. The door swung open.

The man was older than she expected. Half the parents she’d met so far were about her own age, if not younger. This man was more her parents’ generation. Smartly dressed, or as smartly dressed as money allowed around here, with a shirt and tie under his faded pullover and hair combed over a slight bald patch. She held out her hand. ‘I’m Ellen Dean.’

The man didn’t respond.

‘From social services?’ She heard the hint of a question in her tone, and hated it. ‘About…’ She stopped. What was the boy’s name? ‘About the young boy.’

‘Heathcliff.’

‘Yes.’

‘You’d best come in.’

His wife was waiting in the back room and offered tea, which Ellen didn’t accept. Mrs Earnshaw tutted at that as she tucked her cotton skirt tightly around her legs and sat down, back straight and stiff, at the wooden table.

‘Shall we go into the front room?’ Mr Earnshaw shuffled slightly from foot to foot. ‘It’s nicer in there.’

Mrs Earnshaw shook her head. ‘I’ve not aired it. This’ll do.’

‘This is fine.’ Ellen took a hard wooden seat at one side of the table and waited for Mr Earnshaw to sit opposite her. She arranged her face into what she hoped was a friendly smile rather than a grimace, and wondered if the Earnshaws could hear her heart pounding.

‘So it’s about Heathcliff?’ Her voice was louder than she intended.

‘What about him?’ Mr Earnshaw’s expression was closed.

‘Well, I understand he’s living here now.’

Earnshaw nodded.

‘Okay.’ Ellen swallowed again. ‘I need to check that everything’s in order…’

‘In order how?’

She took a deep breath, afraid her inexperience was showing. ‘Sort of… well, legally. I need to establish why he’s moved in here and make sure everything’s above board. He’s what… six?’

‘Seven.’ Earnshaw pulled his chair back. ‘There’s papers.’

‘Right. Good. Papers are good.’

Mrs Earnshaw hadn’t spoken or even moved. Ellen gave her a tentative smile as Ray left the table. The woman’s face was stone.

Ray carefully opened a drawer in the dark wooden chest that dominated one wall of the tiny room.

‘A letter from his mother.’

Ellen unfolded the crumpled sheet, apparently torn from a notebook. The writing was wobbly and uneven, as if the writer wasn’t confident forming the letters, but the three short sentences were clear. Heathcliff’s mum couldn’t manage. She wanted him to live with Ray Earnshaw and his family. She didn’t want anyone else sticking their nose in. Ellen was doing just that, but if she didn’t she’d get no end of grief from her supervisor. Besides, it was the right thing to do. Someone had to make sure the kid was safe.

‘Right. Do you have a birth certificate or anything? To confirm that this is his mother. And whether there’s a father around.’

Mrs Earnshaw folded her arms.

Mr Earnshaw was quiet for a moment before he spoke. ‘I don’t. But you can get that, can’t you? Ring up the records place or what have you.’

Ellen nodded. She could. She made a note in her folder. ‘And he’s been registered with the school? As Heathcliff Earnshaw?’

‘That’s right’

Ellen heard the sharp intake of breath from the wife.

‘Could I see him?’ She glanced at the clock. ‘If he’s not in school.’

Mrs Earnshaw stood up, moving towards the door in a way that gave the distinct impression that Ellen’s visit was over. ‘He’s poorly.’

‘Right. It only needs to be for a second.’

Mr Earnshaw shook his head. ‘Shirley’s right. He were sick in the night. He’ll be asleep.’ He shrugged. ‘Can you come back another day?’

‘Right.’ Ellen hesitated. She was supposed to see the boy if she could. Another glance at the clock. He would normally be in school anyway, so she hadn’t really expected to see him. And her next case was across town. She already had another job from the Earnshaws to find the blessed birth certificate, so she had to come back. She shook her head. ‘That’ll be fine for now, I’m sure.’

She heaved a sigh of relief when Earnshaw closed the front door behind her. That poor kid wasn’t coming into a very welcoming household. She couldn’t imagine Shirley Earnshaw pulling some bastard kid to her warm embrace. Still, he had a roof over his head, and there’d be a meal on the table every night. The sound of voices drew her eyes to her parked car. Three teenagers were leaning against it – a boy and two girls. All three had cigarettes hanging from their mouths. It was hard to see past the make-up, but Ellen guessed the girls were not more than thirteen. Fourteen at most.

‘You all should be in school,’ she said as she approached, trying at the same time to appear firm and friendly.

‘What’s that got to do with you?’ the boy asked insolently. He slowly lifted himself away from the car. Taking a last drag on his cigarette, he stubbed it out on the faded red paint on her bonnet.

‘Sod off! You little shits.’ Her carefully cultivated demeanour vanished and the words were out before she could stop them.

The group ‘oooohed’ like an overexcited audience on TV, taking the mick out of her even as they strolled away.

Cathy sat on her step and watched Daddy walk into the back room and shut the door. She didn’t know what the straggly-haired woman wanted, but it was something to do with Heathcliff. Mick was at school. Or at least he was supposed to be at school. He was probably off with his mates somewhere getting into trouble. Cathy should have been at school too, but she’d said she had tummy ache. Her mum wasn’t paying much attention – she didn’t seem to pay attention to much any more – and had grunted that she could stay home. That was all Cathy needed to hear. School was boring. Heathcliff was staying at home today and he wasn’t boring at all.

Cathy ducked up the last couple of stairs and opened the door to Mick’s room. She wasn’t allowed in Mick’s room, but Mick wasn’t here. Heathcliff was sitting on the floor in the corner of the room, his arms wrapped around his knees and his forehead resting on them. The foldout bed he was supposed to be sleeping on was covered with Mick’s stuff.

‘Did you sleep on the floor?’ she asked.

‘What do you care?’ Heathcliff raised his head. There was a bruise on his face.

‘Did Mick do that?’

Heathcliff shrugged.

‘I hate Mick,’ she declared.

‘I do too.’ The scowl on Heathcliff’s face softened a bit. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

Cathy shook her head. ‘We’d get in trouble.’

Heathcliff stood up. ‘I don’t like being stuck inside. Everything’s too small.’

Cathy looked around. That wasn’t true. Everything was normal-sized.

Heathcliff got up and walked to the bedroom window. He looked out and down, then shook his head. ‘This is no good,’ he muttered. ‘There’s no way out here.’

‘My room has a window too,’ Cathy offered.

Cathy’s room looked towards the exposed hillsides and moors behind the estate. There were no houses to be seen, only a couple of old warehouses from the mine, and the blue hills.

‘That’s where I want to go,’ Heathcliff told her.

‘Why?’

‘Cos it’s better than in here. It’ll be just us out there.’

She looked around. It was just them already. Well, apart from her parents downstairs. Maybe Heathcliff was right. It might be good to get away from them.

‘Come on.’ Heathcliff slid the window up as far as it would go. ‘We can jump.’

Cathy leaned past Heathcliff to look out of the window. There was a coal bunker underneath her window, built up against the kitchen wall. But it still looked like a pretty big drop. ‘It’s too far.’

Heathcliff laughed. ‘Well, I’m going.’

She watched him pull his scrawny body up onto the windowsill and stare down at the bunker and the ground beneath them. He was very still for a very long time. Cathy stamped her foot. ‘Get out of the way.’

‘What?’

She pulled him backwards onto the bed and climbed onto the sill. She swung her legs out through the window and screwed her eyes tight shut, before pushing off with her hands to lift her bottom over the frame. And then she was dropping. She landed on her feet on the coal bunker and tipped forward to her knees. She crawled forward. If Mummy or Daddy heard her and came out now she would be in so much trouble. At the edge of the coal bunker she stopped. The roof she was sitting on was about the height of a grown-up but there was a dustbin against the wall. She dropped onto that, and then onto the ground. She’d done it. She spun round. Heathcliff was still watching from the upstairs window. ‘Come on,’ she said in a loud whisper.

He hesitated.

‘Scaredy.’

‘What?’

‘You’re a scaredy.’

‘I’m not.’

‘I did it.’ She grinned. ‘You have to follow me.’

In the window, Heathcliff frowned, and then swung his legs over the ledge and jumped.

They ran past the old warehouses. There were people moving around inside, but nobody cared about a couple of kids bunking off. They stopped running when they reached the blue hills. Heathcliff looked around at the mounds of loose black rock, sparsely covered with grass.

‘What’s this?’

‘It’s from the mine. Everyone knows that,’ Cathy said.

Heathcliff grunted and walked off ahead of her. He was moving so fast, she almost had to run to catch up.

‘Come with me,’ she said and led him towards the tallest of the mounds.

They scrambled up the side, feeling the damp, loose rock sliding beneath their feet. When they got to the top, Cathy sat down on a patch of grass. It was wet, but better than sitting on rocks. Heathcliff didn’t seem to mind either way. He sat down next to her. They sat for a minute. From this angle, she couldn’t see the mine. And the town, in the distance, was almost pretty. After a while, Cathy looked across at Heathcliff. His eyes were wet.

‘You’re crying!’

‘Am not.’ He rubbed the back of his hand across his face.

‘Were too. S’all right. I cry sometimes. When Mummy and Daddy fight.’

‘My mam sent me away.’

He sounded so sad, sadder than anyone Cathy had ever known. She squeezed his hand. ‘I’m glad you’re here,’ she said. ‘I want you to stay for ever. I’ll never send you away.’

He turned towards her. ‘Promise?’

Cathy nodded seriously. ‘I promise.’

Chapter Four

January, 1983

Shirley Earnshaw paused on the steps of the Methodist Hall and undid her headscarf, patting her hair into place before she pushed open the door. She took a deep breath and steeled herself for what she knew was coming. It was five years since Ray had brought that boy back from Liverpool. Surely these women had gossiped enough by now. But as soon as she walked in the door, the looks would start, and they’d be whispering behind her back.

She wasn’t that keen on coming here anyway, but the old priest, Father Brian, was very big on the churches working together. At least that’s what he said. Shirley fancied he was actually keen on getting as much work as possible shifted onto someone else. He was retiring soon. The new priest, Father Joseph, had already arrived. He was a different kettle of fish. He’d preached the sermon last Sunday. All about the devil and the wages of sin. Shirley had a feeling that when Father Joseph took over the parish, there’d be no more mixing with the Protestants. Anyway, today the Young Wives were meeting up with the Methodist Ladies Fellowship for a talk from the new Methodist chap about missions.

The hall was more modern than the room the Young Wives met in, and bigger, with half-peeling lines stuck on the floor for badminton. There was a table laid for morning tea at the far end of the room, and a queue forming by the urn. As Shirley approached, she saw a few swift glances sent her way. She ignored them, and accepted a cup of tea, in a green cup. It was weak. Shirley usually did the teas at St Mary’s. She would never have served up pale brown water, not if they had visitors coming. She found a seat next to Gloria. Gloria had been coming to Young Wives since the fifties. Her daughter-in-law sometimes came now as well. That was fine. So long as Gloria was there, Shirley still counted one of the young ones.

The two groups of women took seats on opposite sides of the hall, eyeing each other cautiously, if not actually with hostility. At the front a tall man in a black shirt and tie was fiddling with a slide projector. Shirley sipped her tea.

One of the women from behind the tea counter came through, wiping her hands on her apron, and whispered something to the man at the front before clearing her throat. ‘Right then. Shall we start with a prayer? Erm… Reverend Price, would you like to lead us?’

There was a pause as the ladies popped their cups down on the floor and bent their heads. Shirley screwed her eyes tight closed. She always did when it was time to pray. Her mother’s voice warning her that the devil came for little girls who looked around still rang in her head. It was nonsense, of course, but the little bubble of darkness made her feel different somehow from the rest of the time, not so much closer to God as simply more distant from the drudgery of normal life.

The priest… no, not priest, vicar maybe? Shirley wasn’t sure. Anyway, whoever he was, he intoned deeply, ‘Let us pray…’

Shirley’s whole body tensed. That voice. It sounded familiar. It dragged her to a time and place a long time ago. 1963. A young girl had taken one stolen moment of excitement in a drab and boring existence. A lad with a teddy-boy quiff when everyone else was growing a mop top had shown her more about life than a single girl ought to know. Then run off and left her no choice but to marry a local lad before she started to show. Shirley screwed her eyes even tighter closed as she remembered her mother’s voice and her father’s fist. Her mother had said Shirley was lucky the Earnshaws hadn’t got wind of her associating with that wrong-un. Lucky Ray Earnshaw didn’t discover the truth until well after the wedding, when it was too late for him to do anything about it. Lucky that Ray valued his reputation enough to say nothing. And lucky he loved the daughter who was his enough to stay.

The voice, that voice that couldn’t possibly be him, was reaching the end of the prayer. ‘Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.’

All around her the women muttered their amens. Shirley didn’t join in. She had to open her eyes, though. She had to break the little bubble that she’d created when she screwed them closed. It wouldn’t be him. It hadn’t been him when she thought she’d caught a glimpse of him that time they’d gone to Southport when Cathy was a baby. It hadn’t been him when she’d thought she’d seen him in the crowd on Match of the Day. She opened her eyes.

It wasn’t him.

Shirley sat through the whole talk with her handbag perched on her knee, twisting the strap round and round her fingers, trying to listen to what Reverend Price was saying. He was on about sending help to some place she’d never heard of in Africa. A corrupt government was leaving people to starve, the Reverend was saying, when Gloria suddenly shot to her feet.

‘What about our government leaving us to starve>’ Gloria declared. ‘Her. That Margaret Bloody Thatcher. She’ll have the pits closed and us all on the poor house the way she’s going.’

She was surrounded by murmurs of assent. Shirley didn’t bother listening to the churchman’s answer. She was with Gloria. Night after night she’d sit there while Ray went on and on about the state of things. About the unions and the strikes to come. About the need for brotherhood among the workers. Comrades, he called them. Like some bloody commie. And when he wasn’t on about that at home, he was off at some union meeting, leaving her to cope with three kids – one of which wasn’t even hers.

This wasn’t the life she had dreamt about as a girl. She’d been the pretty one. The one they said was going to make a fine match. To live the sort of life others only dreamt about, with a nice home and pretty clothes. And look at her now…

It was suddenly all too much. Shirley got to her feet and walked out of the hall, oblivious to the hubbub behind her. Those woman had been gossiping about her one way or another for most of her life. What did one more day matter?

Shirley didn’t use the shortcut across the stream. She was wearing her Sunday shoes so she walked all the way to the bridge, then turned back along the road to the Heights. She walked past the row of identical terraced houses. There were other women behind those doors, but none of them was her friend. They were, for the most part, tied down with hard work, a baby each year and trying to make ends meet on a miner’s pay.

And the hardest part to accept was that she wasn’t that much different to them.

She turned into Moor Lane and looked up at the house at the end of the terrace. Her steps faltered. There was nothing there calling her home.

She should have loved her firstborn son. Mick was the one thing linking her to those moments of stolen pleasure. But, truth be told, she didn’t love him. In a way, she hated him. If he hadn’t been growing inside her, she never would have married Ray Earnshaw. She certainly didn’t love Ray. Or the daughter she’d given birth to back in the days when she had accepted Ray pawing at her on a Friday night after he’d been down the pub with his mates. And as for that bastard boy – she could barely stand the sight of him.

It occurred to Shirley that maybe she didn’t really know what love was. But one thing she did know was that she had no love for this town, or that house, or any of the people who lived in it.

It made her wonder why she was wasting her life here. She paused. She told herself she could go down to St Mary’s and sit for a while, let the coolness and the quiet of the church calm her. But it wouldn’t work. Eighteen years since she’d had the baby that had tied her to this place and this husband for so long. Five years since Ray had brought that bastard home. She’d put up with more than anyone could expect. She wasn’t going to sit and think and pray and hope to feel better. She wasn’t going to clean and cook and do everything for everyone else.

Something inside her had been pulled taut for too long. And now it had snapped. The girl she’d been all those years ago was awakening inside her and screaming that it wasn’t too late. What Shirley Earnshaw was going to do, was walk back into that cold little house, put her things in a suitcase, get the post-office book Ray knew nothing about from her knicker drawer, and walk away.

Mick pushed his giro cheque over the counter. This was the life – getting paid for doing nothing. It wasn’t much money, but it was more than he’d had before. And it beat working. He was free to do as he pleased. He stuffed the book and money into his pocket and sauntered out into the street. Davo and Spud were leaning on the railings outside the post office. The trio fell into step.

Spud dropped his fag butt to the ground. ‘We getting some beers now then?’

Davo laughed. ‘He’ll have to hand it all over to his dad, won’t he?’

Mick shook his head. ‘No way. I do what I like with what’s mine.’

That was a lie, but he wasn’t letting on. His dad had this idea that now Mick had left school he ought to be paying rent, but that was crap. He couldn’t pay rent because he hadn’t got a job. His dad had plenty to say about that too, but would he help him get one? Not bloody likely. His dad was a supervisor down the pit now. He was a big man. He could’ve got Mick a job if he’d wanted. But no. He said it was up to Mick to make his own way. What was he supposed to do? There weren’t any jobs going outside the pit. At least not for the likes of Mick.

He led the way to the Spar across the road, and picked up a pack of cans. A few years ago, they might have gone to the youth club. But that was closed now. And besides, they weren’t kids any more. They could go to the pub. Spud was still a couple of months short of his eighteenth, but nobody would say anything. Not at the Red Lion. Trouble was, the Lion would be full of his dad’s mates. They’d all be talking about Maggie Thatcher and Arthur Scargill, and the mine and the union and the government. That was all anyone ever talked about. The pit was all that mattered. Some had already closed, and there was talk that they were going to close even more. But the Gimmerton Colliery would never close. It was too big and making too much money.

Mick and his mates made themselves at home on the steps around the statue in the middle of the village and opened the cans.

‘Saw your sister yesterday,’ Spud said. ‘She was up the blue hills with that gyppo kid. What’s his name?’

‘Heathcliff.’ Mick spat out the word as if it was leaving a foul taste on his mouth.

‘Yeah. Him. What sort of a name is that anyway? It doesn’t sound gyppo.’

‘Don’t know. Don’t care,’ Mick said, lighting another fag from the butt end of the first.

Two girls emerged from the Spar. They looked up the hill towards the statue. Mick watched as they exchanged whispers. The blonde one cast a glance his way

‘She’s a bit of all right,’ said Spud, jabbing an elbow in his ribs. ‘You might be in with a chance.’

‘Nah. She’s just a kid.’

‘I dunno,’ laughed Davo. ‘Hey, do you think that gyppo kid and your sister are…’

Mick swung his arm and slapped him up the back of the head.

‘Shut your mouth. That gyppo will never lay a finger on my sister.’

‘Yeah. Sure,’ Davo said quickly. ‘Just saying, they spend a lot of time alone out in them blue hills. Well, we all been up there with girls, haven’t we? You know what goes on.’

Mick crushed his empty can against the statue. Spud kicked his across the square. ‘I’ve gotta get back.’

Mick frowned. Spud never had anywhere to be. ‘Where you going?’

His mate shrugged. ‘Tracy’s mam said I could do a few hours for her on service washes.’

‘Fucking laundry?’

‘Tracy says we have to start saving for baby coming.’

‘Well, bugger off then.’ Mick’s expression closed as his mate strolled away. Spud was trapped. He wasn’t old enough to order a pint in the pub, but he’d got Tracy up the duff and now he had to marry her. He’d have a kid to support. They had no money and were living with her parents. No way Mick was going to end up like that.

Davo chucked his own can against the statue and stood up.

‘You off too?’

‘Well, there’s nowt doing here, is there?’ The clock on the building opposite hit twelve o’clock. ‘Mam’ll have lunch on.’

That was a thought. Mick’s mum would be at one of her church groups, but when she got back she’d do sandwiches with the leftovers from the roast. Mick shrugged. ‘Suit yourself. I’ve got stuff to do too.’

Davo nodded. ‘See you then.’

Mick made his way through town and onto the Heights. It was pretty quiet this time of day. Two of his mates from school had already moved to Manchester to work. One had gone all the way down to London. Some were already working at the pit. A couple of others had gone to college. He saw them every afternoon trudging up from the bus stop at the bottom of the estate at the end of the day. If he ever got away from Gimmerton, he’d never come back. He wasn’t going to end up like his dad, working in the same place every day for forty years, just to pay the mortgage on a terraced house in the Heights. Mick opened the front door and shouted for his mother. There was no answer. He stood at the bottom of the stairs and shouted again. ‘Mum. I want a sandwich.’

No answer. She mustn’t be back yet. He’d have to make his own sandwich. Then he might go up the blue hills. Cathy was a pain but she was his sister. He weren’t going to have people saying his sister was at it with some pikey bastard.

Chapter Five

April, 1983

Cathy watched the other kids shuffle forward in front of her. She could feel the itching starting at the back of her neck. Her head always itched in the queue. She couldn’t help but imagine the nits crawling through her curls, drinking her blood and laying their eggs in her hair. She thought about it. Had it been itching before she got in the queue? Had it been itching at playtime? Or last night in bed?

She was second from the front now.

‘Hands out of pockets.’ Mrs Bell’s cold voice made her look around. Heathcliff, standing behind her, was the object of the teacher’s glare. She was always telling Heathcliff off. He shrugged his hands down by his side and stared at Cathy.

The queue moved forward. At the front of the line Joanne Warren was having her ginger curls pulled one way and the other by a fat, grumpy-looking woman in a dark-blue dress. Cathy felt her hand rising to scratch the crown of her skull. She stopped herself. Joanne was released by the nurse and the queue moved forward again. Cathy watched Suki Karim unplait her long black hair as she stepped forward. Cathy would be next.

Something jabbed into the small of her back. She spun round. Heathcliff’s grubby finger was still digging into her torso. ‘What?’ she whispered.

He stuck his tongue out at her, rolling it into a tube. She did the same in response. He grinned. It was their secret sign. Mick couldn’t do it and he hated it when they did. Cathy could still see the shadow of the bruises on Heathcliff’s arms where Mick had thumped him yesterday, for doing exactly what he was doing now. Heathcliff never let Mick get him down. Or anyone for that matter. If he could stand up to Mick’s bullying, there was no way a few nits were going to get to Cathy.

‘Catherine Earnshaw!’ Mrs Bell pointed towards the nurse, who had finished her inspection of Suki and was waiting for the next victim.

Cathy stepped into position and turned around, bending her head slightly forward. The nurse smelt of disinfectant and cigarette smoke. She tugged Cathy’s hair apart in sections, and Cathy could feel the woman’s breath on her scalp as she leaned close to make her inspection. ‘All right then.’

Cathy started to walk away.

‘Wait over there for me, pet.’

Cathy stopped. The nurse was pointing towards the corner of shame. Kevin Harrison was already standing there. Kevin Harrison had a black ring around the collar of his school shirt and everyone knew his clothes came out of the charity box at church. Cathy felt tears welling up behind her eyes. She heard a couple of sniggers in the queue. It wasn’t even just her class any more. They’d started to bring the next class in. The whole school would be laughing at her now. They’d be calling her the same names she used to call Kevin Harrison and his sister.

Heathcliff was with the nurse now. He had his head bent forward away from Cathy, but she could see his fist balling up at his side. After a few seconds the nurse released him. ‘Okay. Back to class.’

Heathcliff didn’t move.

‘You’re done, pet. Back to your classroom.’

`Don’t you want me to stand in the corner?’

The kids in the line were interested now. Nobody volunteered to stand in the corner. That wasn’t how the corner worked. The corner was somewhere you got sent. The corner was for the dirty kids, the nitty, infected, outcast kids.

The nurse shook her head. ‘No. You’re fine.’

Heathcliff unclenched his fist, but only for a second before it balled back up again.

‘Heath!’ Cathy hissed his name.

The fist unfurled, and found itself stuffed into his pocket. ‘I’m gonna stand in the corner, miss.’

The nurse shot a look towards Mrs Bell, who shrugged.

‘Fine. Next!’

Heathcliff stood himself next to Cathy and pulled his hand out of his pocket, wrapping his fingers around hers.

‘What are you doing?’ she whispered.

He stared straight into her eyes. ‘Making sure we’re together.’

She didn’t say anything. She didn’t need to. He was right, of course. They were always meant to be together, wherever they were.

Mick lit a cigarette, drawing deeply to make the red flame glow brightly. That should catch their attention. He leaned back against the graffiti-covered wall, doing his best to look cool. He started to hum the new Madness single, and tugged at his jacket the way Suggs did when he sang. Mick took another draw on his cigarette in the way he’d practised in the mirror and ran his hands through his hair. He wouldn’t mind a skinhead cut. But he knew his old man would hit the roof if he did.

The two girls were whispering together, then they looked over at him and saw him watching. They giggled and turned away, arms linked as they scurried home. One of them cast a quick glance over her shoulder. She had curly blonde hair and a really short skirt. She wasn’t as good-looking as that Aussie bird on TV, but Mick thought she was all right. He wouldn’t mind seeing her in a pair of tight black leather pants.

He watched her until she turned the corner, then he pushed himself off the wall. This town sucked. There was nothing to do. It was starting to get dark and a bit cold as he sauntered slowly down the hill towards the creek. He walked along the old fallen tree that spanned the stream without a second thought. Like all the kids from the Heights, he’d been crossing from the town to the estate that way for as long as he had been walking.

On the mine side of the stream, he turned left, towards the pit gates. He could see a gaggle of men standing talking outside the gates – talking strikes, no doubt. The union had just balloted them again, and still not got the result they wanted. His dad was dead against striking, but Mick didn’t agree. If he was ever stupid enough to work there, he’d definitely vote for the chance to take time off.

His dad reckoned it’d get nasty, though, police all over the place and no money coming in. Mick grinned at the idea of coppers trying to keep a bunch of angry miners in check. It’d take more than a truncheon and a stupid helmet to win a fight with the lads from the Heights.

‘Mick!’ His father was one of the men clustered around an oil drum. The miners liked his dad. He was their shift leader. Not a boss – he was one of them. He worked beside them on the coalface. They respected him too, and he was a union rep. He must be a better man down the mines than he was at home. At home, he didn’t say much except to row with Mick’s mum. He always had time for Cathy, of course, and for Heathcliff, but he barely even looked at Mick these days. Maybe here, in front of his friends, his old man would treat him better.

He sauntered over, lighting another cigarette as he did. In his mind he could see his father put an arm around his shoulders and introduce him to the other men as his son, with a tinge of pride in his voice.

‘Where did you get those fags?’ His father’s voice was accompanied by a clip round the back of his head. ‘You been stealing again?’

‘No,’ Mick mumbled as he ducked away.

‘If you’ve been wasting your dole money on beer and fags, I’ll have something to say about it. When you get a job, you can buy fags. In the meantime, you get home and give over that money to your mother. Time you paid for your keep ‘an all.’

Mick mumbled something incoherent, feeling his face redden with embarrassment. How could his father treat him like this in front of the other men? ‘Now you get on home,’ his father said. ‘And tell your mother I might be late. We’ve got union things to sort out.’

There was a murmur of agreement from the nearby men. Sure, they thought his dad was great. They didn’t have to live with him.

As Mick turned away, he heard his father’s voice. ‘He’s always in trouble that one. Time he got a job. There’s nowt for him here.’

‘Me brother works in Manchester. Building trade,’ Mick heard someone say. ‘I can get him to ask around.’

Now that would be the thing, Mick thought as he trudged home. Get out of this bloody dead-end town. There was no way he was ever going down that pit. He wasn’t going to spend the rest of his life covered in sweat and black filth. He was going to make something of himself.

He let the front door bang shut behind him. He thought about going up to his room and forgetting to tell his mother about the food. Serve his dad right to go hungry. But Mick was hungry too, so he sauntered through into the kitchen.

It was empty.

‘Mum!’ he called loudly. Maybe she was in the loo.

He shrugged and opened the bread bin. It was empty. Damn it. His stomach rumbled loudly. The fridge was pretty much empty too. Maybe that’s where his mother was – out getting food. There was one of his dad’s precious cans of Stella in the fridge. Despite what he said in front of the men, his dad always seemed to be able to afford beer. Mick grabbed it and ripped the top off. He took a deep swig, and them almost coughed it all back up again. Rubbing his sleeve across his mouth, he sipped it a bit more slowly as he headed upstairs.

The door to his parents’ room was open. He could see the room was a mess. That was strange. His mum wasn’t the world’s greatest housekeeper, but she was better than that.

‘Mum?’ he called. ‘You there?’

When there was still no answer, he walked into the room and looked around. It was empty. The door of the tatty wooden wardrobe was open, and it was empty. It wasn’t just that his mother wasn’t there; none of her stuff was either. A few wire hangers hung from the rail. Most of the drawers were open too, with nothing inside. Mick swallowed hard. Had they been robbed? Even as he thought it, he knew it didn’t make sense. Burglars didn’t carefully select women’s clothes and leave everything else behind.

He saw something he recognised in an otherwise empty drawer. He pulled it out. It was a scarf – the one he had given his mother for Christmas a couple of years ago. He had saved for weeks to get it for her, and she’d said she loved it. It was bright-red and she’d smiled when she opened the gift, saying it made the place more cheerful.

She was gone. Mick knew it. She’d left him. And she had left his scarf behind.

Clutching the scarf, he left the room and headed into his own bedroom. He wasn’t going to cry. He started to shove the scarf into his bottom drawer, the place where he hid his fags and the dirty magazines Davo stole off his dad. As he did, he happened to glance at the small bundle of belongings on the truckle bed. In the corner of the room. Bloody Heathcliff. Everything had gone to shit since that brat arrived. His mum and dad had barely spoken to each other, and now she was gone. And she’d left Mick behind… Biting back the lump in his throat, he grabbed the sorry bundle of clothes and opened the door. There was no way that little shit was going to sleep here any more. Not after driving his mother away.

He flung Heathcliff’s belongings into the small recessed corner at the top of the stairs. The bed followed. Then Mick walked back into his room and slammed the door. Hard.

‘We’re going to be in trouble,’ Heathcliff declared as they walked back down the path from the blue hills.

‘Nah,’ Cathy said. ‘There’s more trouble down the pit. Always is. Dad spends more time there than at home. And Mum doesn’t care any more. She won’t say anything. She’ll just make us do what the nurse said.’

‘Were they always like that?’

Cathy bit her lips as she tried to remember. There must have been some better times. Maybe before things went bad at the mine. And in the house. She seemed to remember hearing her parents laugh. But not recently.

‘I guess…’ she said hesitantly. ‘What about yours?’

‘There was only ever me and me mam,’ Heathcliff said. ‘And she never laughed much.’

They reached the fence behind their house, and slipped through the back gate. The first thing Cathy saw was Mick, standing in the yard, a fag dangling from his fingers. It was too late to avoid him. Mick’s arm shot out and grabbed Heathcliff. Cathy dropped her bag to pull Heathcliff out of her brother’s grasp. Her school stuff tumbled across the yard. Mick bent down and picked up the bottle. ‘What’s this?’

Cathy folded her arms across her body. ‘It’s nit stuff,’ she mumbled. ‘We’ve got to put in in our hair. All of us.’

‘Nits? That filthy gyppo brat’s got nits? Get him away from me.’ He shoved Heathcliff so hard, he almost fell over.

‘Stop it!’ Cathy jumped between them. ‘It’s me that’s got the nits, not him. Leave him alone.’

Mick stepped away. ‘Well, I ain’t gonna put that stuff in my hair. It stinks.’

‘You have to,’ Cathy said. ‘The nurse said so. Mum’ll make you do it.’

‘No, she won’t. She won’t make me do anything ever again.’ Mick spun away, kicked open the gate and walked out.

Cathy frowned. What did he mean by that? She looked towards the house. There was no light in the kitchen. Her mum should be cooking dinner by now. There was a light upstairs in Mick’s room, but it was the only one.

She was a little bit scared as she opened the back door.

The house was in total silence. She turned on the kitchen light and almost screamed when she saw her father sitting at the table. There was a beer can in his hand and two others lay on the table. That was wrong too. Her dad only ever drank one beer each night.

‘Dad?’

He looked up at her, and blinked a few times, as if he was struggling to remember who she was.

‘Ah. Cathy.’ His eyes moved past her. ‘And Heathcliff too. Um…’

Cathy glanced sideways at Heathcliff. He looked as frightened as she felt. She darted forward to stand at her father’s knee.

‘Daddy?’ she asked in a tiny, tiny voice.

‘Are you hungry, sweetheart?’ he asked. ‘I guess you both must be. I don’t think… I sent Mick here to ask your mum to get some food together. But he didn’t come back. I thought… But when I got here…’

‘Where’s Mummy?’

Her father put a hand on her head to comfort her, but it slipped away as if he didn’t have the strength to hold it there.

‘Your mother’s gone, Cathy.’

Cathy frowned. ‘What do you mean gone?’

‘She’s left. Gone away to live with someone… somewhere else.’

‘But she can’t just leave. She’s got to put stuff in our hair. Hers too. We’ve got to do what the nit nurse said.’ She was close to tears.

Her father shook his head slowly, as if he hadn’t really heard her. ‘It’s just us now.’ He ruffled her hair. ‘Cathy, you’re the woman of the house now. You have to do what’s needed. For all of us. You and me. Heathcliff too.’ He didn’t ruffle the boy’s hair, but he did try to smile at him.

‘And Mick too?’ Cathy said slowly.

‘Yes. Mick too.’ Her father didn’t sound so sure. ‘We’ll be fine, just us,’ he said. ‘Now, I need you to give me a few minutes, then we’ll think about dinner. Maybe get some fish and chips. Give me a few minutes…’

They left him there, sitting in the kitchen, which now seemed even emptier than before. Cathy didn’t think there would be any fish and chips. But that was all right. She had some chocolate bars stashed in her room.

At the top of the stairs, she was stopped by the sight of Heathcliff’s things, heaped at the back of the landing.

They stood side by side and stared for a few seconds.

‘I guess Mick won’t let me sleep in his room any more,’ Heathcliff said.

‘You can sleep in my room,’ Cathy declared.

‘Your dad won’t let me.’

‘He doesn’t have to know. Come on.’

Under Cathy’s direction, they set up the camp bed in the small space at the back of the landing. They put Heathcliff’s clothes in the bag he’d had with him the day he arrived and slid that under the bed.

‘See. Dad will think you’re sleeping there. Now, come with me,’

She took Heathcliff’s hand and led him through into her room. They sat on the bed together, while she doled out a supper of Mars bars. They didn’t say much, but when they had finished eating, they lay down side by side on the bed. Cathy’s hand found Heathcliff’s and their fingers entwined.

‘Everything will be all right,’ she said in a firm voice that might make it true. ‘Nothing will hurt us as long as we’re together.’

Chapter Six

2008

Even after all these years, the stone church was familiar. Lockwood had never been inside, but the police van had driven past it every day during the strike – taking Lockwood and his fellow officers to the mine head and the picket lines. He’d never paid it much attention. Looking at it now, he could see the rough texture of the stone, stained with generations of grime from the now-silent pit on the other side of the valley. St Mary’s was neither large nor impressive. Not even well-kept, it was a poor cousin to the clean, bright, Protestant church near the top of the town. This church, with its narrow windows and a roof sadly in need of repair, had served the miners since the young Queen Victoria sat on the throne. The rituals and sermons, the fire and brimstone, had been as much a part of their lives as the fire of the ironworks and the smell of gas in the dark and dangerous tunnels.

Lockwood had a more recent memory of the church. He’d seen a photo in the library archive yesterday. Not much happened in Gimmerton, so this particular funeral had been enough to capture the attention of the local newspaper. This funeral had been special. The deceased was a teenager. A seventeen-year-old boy. He’d been to the funerals of kids before. Standing discreetly outside or at the back of the church, looking to see who came, who was acting out of character. It was part of the job. Lockwood shook his head. He’d been a copper too long. Every case now seemed to remind him of the one before.

He dragged his thoughts back to the here and now. You couldn’t get the result you wanted every time. Nobody did, but he had a second chance with this one. He stared at the church, thinking back on the pictures of that funeral. Normally such a tragedy would be expected to bring a crowd of mourners to a church. Parents and grandparents. Schoolfriends and teachers. Maybe members of some sporting team.

There had been so few people in that photo. A priest and four anonymous pallbearers carrying a cheap coffin. As for the boy’s family, there had been just four of them, each standing slightly apart from the others. Not a family so much as a group of people whose lives had somehow all been linked through that dead boy. And the one furthest from the grave – that had been his father – Heathcliff.

Lockwood leaned on the rusty iron gate that looked across the churchyard and the ranks of graves, becoming ever more overgrown and neglected as they marched down the hillside. Were the answers to some of his questions to be found out there?

The gate creaked as he opened it.

The lawn nearest the church was mown, not neatly, but better than nothing. There were two recent graves, one with a little flash of colour still showing in the withered flowers that rested on them. He glanced at the headstones, but these were not the graves that had brought him here.

A very light rain was starting to fall. More mist than rain, it obscured Lockwood’s view of the older sections of the graveyard. He turned up his coat collar against the damp and decided he would come again tomorrow.

‘How can I help you, my son?’

The voice was rough, the accent thick. Lockwood turned slowly. The priest was old, his face lined with hard use. His eyes, though, were bright and a dark steely grey that spoke of long, passionate sermons about sin and guilt. This was an old-style priest of the fire-and-brimstone variety. He was wearing a cassock and dog collar. Despite the cold, he wasn’t wearing a coat.

‘Hello, Father…?’ The face was familiar, but the name eluded Lockwood.

‘Father Joseph.’

He remembered now. Father Joseph. The priest had been on the picket lines as often as the miners themselves. Lockwood could remember the anger on the priest’s face as he exhorted others to violence from the back of the crowd. They hadn’t arrested him. He was too much of a coward to throw a punch himself, and the Inspector had thought arresting the priest would have only made matters worse. He might have been right.

Lockwood could see the priest didn’t recognise him. And why should he? Most of the time they had faced each other, a riot helmet and shield had obscured Lockwood’s identity.

‘Were you looking for someone?’ The suspicion was evident in the priest’s face. The two words Lockwood had spoken would have been enough to show him for what he was. A stranger. An interloper. And from the south. Even now, distrust of southerners ran deep among the people who had lived through the strike.

‘The boy who died just before Christmas. Luke Earnshaw.’

‘What about him?’

‘I wanted to visit his grave.’

Father Joseph wanted to say no. Lockwood could see it in his eyes. But his curiosity was stronger than his distrust. Instead, he grunted and started walking down the hillside towards a remote and overgrown section of the graveyard.

As they walked along a narrow and barely visible path, the graves became increasingly neglected. Brambles grew wild, their long tendrils sharp with thorns, covering the carved stones. In places, the deep-red berries stood out in sharp relief, blood-red against pale stone. Lockwood’s trousers and feet grew cold and wet as he pushed his way through the long grass, following the stiff-backed priest. They were approaching an ancient section of the graveyard, near the stone wall that separated hallowed ground from the wilderness of the moors. In the distance, Lockwood could see the rusting gantries of the mine head. Most of those buried here lay beneath plain slabs, carved with little more than a name and a date.

‘Here he is.’

The grave still looked freshly dug. The earth was bare. It was too cold now for the grass to cover it. There was no headstone. There was nothing to remind the world of the boy who lay there.

‘Why’s he right back here?’

The priest stared at the ground. ‘Most families prefer plots nearer the path. This one’s folks didn’t really care.’

Lockwood stared at the plain carved stone. ‘Luke Earnshaw.’ He whispered the words into the breeze.

‘Yes. May God grant him mercy.’

The underlying emotion in the priest’s voice surprised Lockwood. ‘You knew him?’

‘No. No one did. He was barely seen in the town after his father brought him home.’

‘His father…’

Heathcliff Earnshaw.’

That was the opening Lockwood had been waiting for. And the contempt dripping from the priest’s voice left him in no doubt that it would lead him somewhere he wanted to go.

‘The Earnshaws were a mining family, weren’t they?’

‘They were,’ the priest said. ‘There’s many around here were that, before the pit closed. But Heathcliff wasn’t from around here.’

‘No?’ Lockwood feigned surprise.

‘No. The old man brought him here as a brat. All wild and wilful. A gypsy brat, some said. The bastard of some Irish tart. There were them that said he was Earnshaw’s kid.’

‘And was he?’

‘That’s something only the good Lord knows. I’m sure he regretted bringing him here, whatever the reason.’

‘Why is that?’

‘The boy had an evil heart. Even then. Tore that family apart. Running wild with the girl. Fighting with the son. Sinful. And Ray Earnshaw never lifted a hand against him.’

‘What about his wife?’

‘She was no better than she should be either.’ Father Joseph passed judgement. ‘She wanted no truck with Heathcliff. Or the others for that matter. Social services were always up there at the Heights. Finally, she up and left with some fancy man. A travelling salesman or some such. That’s when the rumours started about Mick. The son.’

‘Rumours?’

‘That he wasn’t really Earnshaw’s son. That she had been sinning too.’

Lockwood hid his surprise.

‘And was he… Earnshaw’s son?’

‘Only the good Lord knows.’ Father Joseph wasn’t going to let a question distract him from his story. He nodded towards another grave. This one was much older. The brambles had almost covered the tall cross, and the name written on it was obscured.

‘The old man went to his grave never saying nothing,’ the priest said. ‘Died on the pickets, he did. Police thugs. Maggie did for him same as she did for the pit and for the whole town. I hope she rots in hell for what she did.’

Lockwood shivered but didn’t reply.

Without another word, Father Joseph turned away from the grave and set off back up the hill towards his church. Lockwood followed, watching the sodden hem of the priest’s cassock flap around his ankles like the leathery wings of a bat.

By the time Lockwood got to his car, the rain was falling in earnest. He started the engine and turned the heating up to high. While he waited for the engine to warm up, he rubbed his icy fingers together and stared out over the graveyard to where Luke Earnshaw lay in his unmarked grave. In the rain, the graveyard looked even more bleak than before, if that was possible. Old Mr Earnshaw. Mick. Luke. There had been other graves, too, in that little group by the wall. He wondered if they were also Earnshaws. He would take a look – but not right now. He needed to get warm and dry, and he needed something to eat. He decided to try the pub at the top of the town. It looked the sort to have a fire in the bar. After the chill of the graveyard and the man who cared for it, a cheerful fire would be welcome. He slipped the car into gear.

He drove up the hill and on an impulse turned left towards the Anglican Church. He pulled up opposite the large, well-kept building. It was a far more modern construction than the Catholic church, no doubt built at the height of the mine’s prosperity. The plaster walls were painted a rich cream and the doors were a dark mahogany colour. Even through the rain, he could see the rich colours of the stained-glass windows.

The church itself was set close to the road. Here, in the middle of town, there was no vast overgrown graveyard. Instead, elegant marble tombs had been built in a paved area beside the church. Tombs for the wealthy people of the town. The mine managers and owners who had never been forced below ground to feed their families. The Lintons, he knew, were buried here. Their graves were marked by simple, classy, marble slabs.

Cathy was here with them, buried as a Linton, not an Earnshaw. Would she have liked that? Had it been warmer, Lockwood might have gone to investigate. He was about to drive on when movement caught his eye. He let the car roll forward a couple of feet to get a better view.

A man was standing by one of the graves. The marker stood out from the plain grey stones around it. Here a sculpted angel with head bowed and wings spread stood sentry over the grave. The man was tall and thin, wearing a black coat, the collar turned up against the weather. Lockwood didn’t need to see his face. He knew in an instant who it was. Heathcliff. The kid with the nail gun. The very first one who’d ever got away. He was staring at the marble slab on the ground in front of him, as if he could see through it to the woman who lay beneath. How long had he been there, Lockwood wondered. And how often had he come here to stand like that and mourn the love he lost so long ago?

When Heathcliff moved, it was with violence. He slammed his forehead against the angel’s face, not with the gentle touch of sadness but with the savagery of unbearable agony. Again and again Heathcliff smashed his head against the stone. He dropped to his knees and pounded on the marble slab with his fists, and then scraped and dragged at the ground with his bare hands.

When at last he stopped and slowly stood up, his shoulders heaved. A line of blood ran from his hairline down his brow.

Lockwood watched as Heathcliff walked through the church’s wrought-iron gates and turned down the street. He was hurrying now. Once he lifted his head and looked upwards towards the blue hills and the moors beyond. Lockwood’s eyes followed his gaze. There was nothing there, nobody calling to Heathcliff from the hills. There was just the graveyard, Heathcliff, and DCI Lockwood looking on.

Chapter Seven

March, 1984

Ray Earnshaw walked the long way home, along the pit road onto the estate, rather than cutting by the blue hills and onto the back lane. He needed the thinking time. He’d told himself it weren’t going to happen here. He’d known the younger lads were getting angry, and he’d heard about what was going on at other pits around and about and down by Nottingham, bits on the news about the union, but that was there. They were firebrands over there. Not like Ray.

Ray had never voted to strike in his life. Just last year, he’d voted against it in the national ballot, and he hadn’t voted to strike this time either. None of them had. Then Maggie had started to talk about pit closures and the walkouts had started. And now Scargill had called everyone out. There was some as said that wasn’t right. That there should have been a vote. Ray agreed, but it were too late now. He’d never crossed a picket line in his life and that wasn’t about to change. Nobody was going to call Ray Earnshaw a scab. He had a reputation round here. The lads knew him. He fancied they respected him. That counted for something, so it was one out, all out. Didn’t matter what you thought yourself. That was how it had always been. That was how it would always be.

He walked up to his front door and reached for his keys. The first thing that hit him as he opened the door was the sound of shouting from the kitchen. For a heartbeat he thought Shirley might be back. That was the fantasy he had every night as he put the key in the lock. Shirley back and everything as it should be, but the female voice he could hear was his daughter, not his wife.

He opened the front door and the words became clearer.

‘Leave him alone, Mick. You’re a bully.’

‘That gyppo bastard doesn’t get to give me cheek.’ Mick’s voice was slightly slurred, leaving Ray to wonder if his son was drunk. ‘If he doesn’t stop staring at me, I’ll punch his lights out. And as for you, going off with him up in the blue hills. People will think you’re a slut.’

He heard a low growl. Heathcliff, jumping to Cathy’s defence, no doubt, which seemed like his normal way to get himself in trouble.

‘That’s enough,’ Ray shouted as he walked through to the kitchen. ‘Shut up the lot of you.’

The kids did as they were told, probably shocked by the uncharacteristic roughness in his voice. Ray went to the fridge and reached for a can of beer. God knew he needed it.

‘Dad,’ Cathy ventured in the voice she used when she was trying to get him on her side in an argument. ‘Mick said…’

‘I don’t care what Mick said. Pay attention. All of you. Things are about to change here. We’re on strike. The miners. All of us.’

Silence fell in the kitchen. Ray checked the clock on the wall and reached for the radio. The smooth voice of the BBC announcer filled the room.

‘…Britain’s miners have stopped work in what looks like becoming a long battle against job losses. More than half the country’s 187,000 mineworkers are now on strike. Miners in Yorkshire and…’

‘You’re on strike, Dad?’

‘Shut up, Mick. Listen…’

‘…National Union of Mineworkers president Arthur Scargill is calling on members across the country to join the action.’

Ray took another swig from his beer. Now the strike was on, no one was going to hear him say a word against Scargill. That was what the union was all about.

‘…Violence flared on the picket line at Bilston Glen colliery in Scotland, when miners from the recently closed Polmaise pit tried to stop others going into work…’

Scabs. There’d been talk of trucking in lads from the other pits to join the picket. There’d be nobody working at Gimmerton. He’d see to that.

The kitchen became very still, the only sound the voice from the radio. Words seemed to hang in the air, painting a bleak image of a long and bitter time to come.

‘It won’t last long, Dad, will it?’ Cathy asked. ‘I mean… without jobs people won’t have any money…’

‘They’ll cave in,’ Mick said brashly. ‘She can’t close the pits. The whole bloody country’d come to a standstill.’

Ray wasn’t so sure. There had been rumours of coal stockpiles.

‘It might last a few weeks,’ he said. ‘So we all have to pitch in and make ends meet. No more beer and fags, Mick – all your dole money goes to the house.’

‘I want to join the picket,’ Mick said.

‘You’re not a miner.’

‘No, but I want to join the picket. That guy on the radio said even women were expected to join this. I won’t be left out of the fight. You’re gonna need all the help you can get.’

Ray didn’t like it, but Mick was right. He looked at the boy he had raised as his son, and for the first time thought that maybe there was something of him in Mick after all. If he was willing to stick up for his mates.

‘All right. But be careful. They’re going to bus police in here as well as lads for the picket. I don’t want you getting involved in anything violent, you understand.’

‘Yes, Dad.’

And as for the two of you…’ Ray turned towards Cathy and Heathcliff, who, as always, were standing so close together they might have been Siamese twins. ‘You two keep going to school. Cathy, you look after the house the way you have been since your mum left. And I don’t want social services on my case because you’ve been bunking off. Understand?’

‘Yes, Dad,’ Cathy said meekly. Heathcliff as usual said nothing. But Ray knew he would follow where Cathy led.

Ray relented and reached out to pull his daughter close for a hug. ‘Ah, you’re a good girl, Cathy. Hopefully this strike will be over in a couple of weeks and we can all get back to normal.’

‘Look, Heathcliff. A kestrel.’

‘Where?’

‘It went… No. There. Above those rocks.’ Cathy pointed. ‘See it?’

‘Yeah.’

Cathy leaned forward from her place on the high, rocky outcrop, as if she was about to launch herself into the air. ‘I wish I could fly, Heathcliff. Just like that falcon.’

‘And if you could fly?’

‘I’d fly away from this place and never come back.’

Cathy felt his body shift, as he moved away from her. She dragged her eyes away from the bird to look at the youth sitting next to her. His face was a black mask.

‘You’d leave me behind. Stuck here.’ His voice had turned all pouty.

She knew that black look. And she knew how to fix it. ‘No, of course not. You’re my brother. If I was a falcon you’d be a falcon too and we could fly away together.’

‘I’m not your brother.’

‘No. You’re better than a brother.’

That seemed to help. He turned back to look for the bird, giving Cathy a good look at the bruise on the side of his face. It was much darker than it had been when she first saw it last night. She reached out her hand and touched Heathcliff’s cheek ever so softly. He didn’t flinch away.

‘Why didn’t you tell Dad that Mick did this?’ she asked.

‘What good would that do? He’d only give me another hiding for ratting on him.’

That was true. And their father wouldn’t help. He didn’t care about anything except the strike. And now Mick was on the picket with the rest of the old men, their dad was more inclined to take his word over Cathy’s.

‘Look at that!’ Heathcliff drew her attention back to the bird. ‘He’s spotted something. A rabbit maybe.’

The kestrel was hovering not far away from them. Cathy could see that the bird had its eyes fixed on the ground. Suddenly it dropped like a stone, its wings folded tight against its body until the last moment, before it crashed to earth. A moment later the bird rose from the long grass, and she could see it held something in its talons.

‘That’s what I’d do if I could,’ Heathcliff said, so quietly she could hardly hear him. ‘I’d teach Mick. I’d teach all of them.’

Cathy could hear the anger and pain in him as he spoke. She felt it too, whenever Mick hit Heathcliff. Or when one of the kids at school picked a fight with him. She reached out to take his hand.

‘Come on. I’ve got an idea.’

‘What?’ he asked, but he got to his feet to follow her.

‘Let’s go down to the Grange and pick some apples.’

They set off across the hills. Cathy kept hold of Heathcliff’s hand. She liked holding his hand. Some of the girls at school held hands with boys, but this was different. The other girls thought it was fun and they giggled about it a lot. Holding hands with Heathcliff wasn’t fun. Or something to giggle about. It was just… just what they did. Had always done. Would always do.

They reached the edge of the blue hills and, still holding hands, ran down the last slope towards the road. As they did, a car came into view.

‘Shit,’ Heathcliff said as he pulled her to a stop. But it was too late. The driver of the car had already seen them. It pulled over to the hard shoulder and a woman got out.

‘Catherine Earnshaw. Heathcliff. Come here.’

Cathy reluctantly let go of Heathcliff’s hand. It was that woman. The social worker with the stringy hair.

‘Why aren’t you two at school?’ the woman demanded in her high, raspy voice.

‘We weren’t doing nothing,’ Heathcliff said sullenly, kicking the toe of his shoe into the road.

‘Really?’ The social worker sighed and turned to Cathy. ‘What about you, madam? Have you got an excuse?’

Cathy tried to straighten her skirt and blouse. They were covered with mud and grass stains. Her shoes were wet. It suddenly occurred to her that she was cold. She was never cold when she was up on the hills with Heathcliff. But when she came down – that’s when the coldness set in. She shrugged.

‘I ought to take you both to the headmaster’s office right now.’

Cathy’s heart sank. A visit to the headmaster would mean getting her dad involved, and then there’d be shouting and Mick looking all pleased with himself because her and Heathcliff were getting a bollocking. She forced a meek smile onto her face. ‘Been to doctor’s. Dad’s on the picket so he said we should go together. Doesn’t like us wandering round on our own.’

The woman glanced up in the direction of the blue hills. ‘You’ve come from the doctor?’

‘Yeah.’

The woman checked the watch on her wrist and sighed. ‘I want both of you back in school. Right away. And I’ll check, so no skiving off again.’

Cathy nodded quickly. She arranged her face into the same look she gave her dad when she was trying to get money off him for sweets. Not that there was money for sweets since the strike started.

‘All right then. Now go. Both of you.’ The woman jumped back into her car and drove away.

‘I’m not going to school,’ Heathcliff announced.

‘Course we’re not. Come on.’ She took his hand and a few seconds later they had crossed the road and were running through the heather.

They stopped running when they reached a tall hedge.

‘This way. There’s a gap.’ Cathy pulled Heathcliff after her. She stopped and peered through the hedge before finally letting go of Heathcliff’s hand to push her way through the hole. He followed.

They were standing in an orchard. The apple trees were old and twisted and wild. Others, it seemed, knew about the hole in the hedge, because much of the fruit had already been pulled from the trees. The lowers branches were all bare, but there were still some apples quite high up.

‘There,’ said Cathy. ‘Up there. They look good.’

Heathcliff reached up to grab a branch and swung himself up. He wrapped his legs around the lowest branch and heaved himself into a sitting position. He held out his hand. Cathy reached up to take it and he pulled her up beside him. He reached above his head to grab some of the ripe, round fruit.

‘Check for grubs,’ Cathy instructed him.

‘It’s fine.’

She took an apple and polished it on the cleanest part of her blouse before sinking her teeth into the firm red skin. The apple was delicious. Juice ran down her chin, and she wiped it away with her hand. Beside her, Heathcliff bit into his apple and smiled at her.

These were the best moments. Just her and Heathcliff and no one else. She wished it was always like this.

‘Let’s go look at the house,’ Heathcliff said, tossing his apple core down to the ground.

‘Okay.’

They made their way to the far side of the orchard. There was another hedge, but like the first, this was neglected and had a hole that clearly served as a passage for people other than themselves. They ducked through into the garden.

Cathy looked up at the house. To her it seemed huge. The paint was fading and it had a deserted air, but it was so much bigger and better than any house she had ever seen before.

‘Dad says there’ll be new people coming to live here one day,’ she told Heathcliff. ‘Imagine living in a big house like this. Wouldn’t that be great? It would be like being the Queen or something.’

‘When I’m rich, I’ll buy this house for you,’ Heathcliff said. ‘And we can live in it together. Away from everyone else. No one will hurt us then.’

She turned to look at him. It was starting to get dark and the bruise on his cheek was hidden from her. Was he handsome? She wasn’t sure. She wondered, for the first time, if he thought she was pretty.

Chapter Eight

July, 1984

The thumping beat of the music coming from the radio was jarred by another thumping – this time on the front door downstairs. Cathy slowly rolled off the bed. Leaving Heathcliff still sprawled there listening to the music, she darted into her father’s empty bedroom and looked out the window. Below, a woman was banging firmly on the front door. Cathy darted back behind the curtains.

‘It’s that social worker,’ she told Heathcliff as she returned to the room she now thought of as theirs.

‘Probably on about us skiving off school.’

‘Why does she have to pick on us? Everyone skives off school. You say it’s cos of the strike and no one cares.’ Cathy walked to the window and stared out into the distance.

‘Yeah. But half of them are down on the picket or helping at the church or summat.’

‘It’s nearly holidays anyway.’ She and Heathcliff never went down the picket lines. Their Dad didn’t want them there. He wanted Cathy to stay home and cook and wash and clean the house. Other than that, he didn’t seem to care much where they went or what they did. All he cared about was the stupid strike.

‘Let’s go,’ Cathy said, swinging her legs over the windowsill.

A few minutes later they were up in the blue hills, heading for their favourite spot. A stunted tree had managed to grow near the top of one of the older slag heaps. It clung precariously to the unstable earth. From its base, Cathy and Heathcliff had a good view of the pithead, the locked gates, and the two sides facing off for battle.

‘That’s a lot of police,’ Heathcliff said. ‘They’re up to something.’

He pulled two Mars bars from his rucksack and they started to eat. There wasn’t any money for sweets, Dad said, but they could run faster than Mr Hamid, who had the shop at the bottom of the estate.

Below them, the police were forming two solid walls of blue, pushing the miners back to clear the roadway. Of course, Ray Earnshaw was down there. He always was. The strike was everything to her dad. On the pickets all day and sometimes at night, and then meeting at their house or down the Institute every evening. On the picket. Planning the picket. Talking about it all for hours and hours. Last night they’d all been crammed into the living room. Cathy hadn’t listened for long, but she’d heard them talk about buses. Buses of scabs. Buses of pickets from round the county. Buses of pigs from London.

In the months since the strike started, there’d been fighting at the other pits. They’d seen it on the telly, and listened to the talk. Now it might actually kick off here and Cathy was determined to get a good view.

‘There’s Mick.’

Cathy saw her brother approaching the picket, with his mates around him. They were greeted and absorbed into the growing ranks of miners like they belonged. Which they didn’t. Mick was workshy. That’s what her dad said. At least, that’s what he’d said before the strike.

As it had so many other days, the crowd at the pit gates formed into lines. The miners on either side of the road, pinned in place by a wall of blue uniforms. And in the centre, the thin, grey stretch of roadway, a no-man’s land to the locked pithead gates.

The chanting started. From their hiding place, Cathy and Heathcliff could hear the raised voices.

‘Miners united will never be defeated…’

Maybe. But the strike had been going for ages now and Cathy was sick of it. Sick of having no new things. Sick of her dad spending all his time with his union mates. He didn’t even go on at her about school any more. She couldn’t remember the last time he’d properly looked at her. Or spoken to her other than to ask when she was going to have dinner on the table.

‘Look..’ Heathcliff sounded eager. Excited even.

A line of vans and buses was making its way along the road from town. In the front were two white police vans. Behind them was a bus, its windows blacked out to hide the occupants. And behind the bus, two more police vans.

‘Let’s go down there.’ Heathcliff scrambled to his feet.

Without a word, Cathy followed him.

They stopped at the side of the road, where a caravan sat on the grass. It was covered with posters and graffiti and served the miners as headquarters for the pickets. It also served Cathy and Heathcliff as a hiding place.

‘Scabs! Scabs!’

The chant was louder now. Harder. Aggressive and angry. The miners were pushing forward against the police lines.

The first police van was almost at the gates when the miners surged forward as one. They made it to the bus and were pounding its sides with their fists.

The doors of the first two police vans swung open and officers poured out. They were in full riot gear, helmeted and armed with truncheons. The miners began to fall back at the sight.

‘They’re going to lose,’ Heathcliff said. ‘Come on.’

He grabbed a large rock lying near his feet and darted forward. Cathy tried to grab his arms and hold him back, but he was gone. She followed him into the melee.

‘Fucking scabs!’

The voices around Ray were getting angrier by the moment. The jostling gave way to serious shoving as the men tried to force themselves between the bus and the gates to the pit.

He looked up at the sides of the bus. Through the blacked-out windows, he could see faint shapes within. Who were these men, he wondered, who would betray their brothers, who were not prepared to fight for the cause? Were they frightened, those men inside the bus, as they listened to the fury all around them? They should be, because Ray was beginning to be a little afraid himself.

A swinging truncheon clipped his shoulder. There wasn’t much force behind it, but it hurt, nonetheless. The doors of the second police van opened and another wall of blue poured out. The bus was moving forward again, forcing its way inexorably through the heaving mass of men. A huge stone flung with great skill and force suddenly crashed against the helmet of the policeman in front of Ray. The man staggered and started to go down. This close, Ray could see his face through the visor, frozen with panic. If he fell beneath the heaving mass of angry men, or beneath the bus wheels…

He was wearing the uniform, but he was just a boy. Not much older than Mick. The pickets weren’t the only lines Ray Earnshaw wouldn’t cross.

Ray reached out a hand and grabbed the copper’s arm. With a grunt of effort, he pulled the lad back onto his feet. He saw the relief and gratitude on the boy’s face for a second before the surging crowd separated them.

Ray was pushed back against a solid wall of men behind him. He looked around, but knew none of the faces. These weren’t his men. They were from other pits. Their faces were hard. There’d been a lot of violence on some of the lines, and for the first time, Ray was uncertain. He believed in the cause. He didn’t want the scabs working. But this was starting to look like war. And he was too old for a war. He had a houseful to feed and he coughed and wheezed every morning when he woke up. A war was what it was going to take, but without some cash in their pockets, Ray didn’t think any of them were going to last that long.

The crowd around him shifted, and Ray found himself near the edge of the crowd. He turned.

‘What the…’

His daughter stood in front of him at the edge of the crowd. ‘What are you two doing ‘ere?’ He stepped forward and grabbed Cathy’s arm. ‘This is no place for kids. Get out of here.’

Cathy shook off his hand, her face fixed in defiance. Heathcliff was at her side, as he always was. A shout went up behind them as another police van drew forward to be immediately surrounded by shouting, angry men.

‘It’s not safe. Get her out of this,’ he told Heathcliff.

Another flurry of violence erupted near the police van. Ray shoved his way forward. He had to try to calm things down. At this rate, someone was going to get seriously hurt. He was close to the van when he heard a noise. Short and sharp, almost like a gunshot, followed by a roar from the crowd. A second sound overtook the first as the door of the police van shot open and the occupants poured out. Ray could see one man was bleeding from a wound on the side of his neck. His eyes as he scanned the crowd were full of unmasked hatred.

‘A nail gun!’ The words were passed through the crowd. Ray cursed silently. What sort of a fool would fire a nail gun into a police van full of men?

Then he saw Mick. His son was standing near the van, looking like some wild creature. His eyes were wide, his mouth spread in a grin. He looked almost joyful.

‘God help us.’ Ray scanned the crowd, desperately looking for the nearest familiar face. ‘It was Mick,’ he said. His mate closed his eyes for a fraction of a second. ‘Shit.’

‘Just get him out of here.’

‘Right. Come on.’

A handful of men surged forward again, surrounding Mick even as the wounded policeman began scanning the faces of the crowd. Ray raised his arms and locked them around the shoulders of the men either side of him, protecting the boy.

‘It’s the Earnshaw kid. We gotta get him outta here.’

If Ray could hear them, so too could the police. That wasn’t good. Ray started chanting, and the men around him joined in as the bus inched forward towards the gate. They were going to lose this one, but Ray’s mind was elsewhere. He believed in this strike. He believed in the union. The violence he’d seen on the lines wasn’t his way. And now the boy he had raised as his own had crossed a line equally as important as the picket. Mick might not be his flesh and blood, but he’d promised to look after him, like he’d promised the lads on his shift he’d look after them. And a promise was still a promise.

And it wasn’t done yet. He’s seen the look in that policeman’s eyes. He’d been lucky to escape with just a scratch on his neck.

He wasn’t about to forget.

Mick sucked the last of the beer out of the can, then crushed the thin metal between his hands. As he did, the front door crashed open.

‘Mick?’

He said nothing. He carefully placed the crushed can on the kitchen table and got to his feet. He could hear the anger in his father’s voice and his hands curled into fists.

‘What the bloody hell were you thinking?’ Ray stormed as he walked into the kitchen. ‘A nail gun? For fuck’s sake, boy. You could have killed one of them.’

‘Would have served them right,’ Mick muttered. ‘Anyway, I didn’t do it.’

With surprising speed, Ray took a step closer and cuffed Mick around the side of the head. It wasn’t a hard blow, not enough to set his head spinning. It was the kind of blow a father gave a child, not even a proper man-to-man punch.

‘I said, I didn’t do it.’ Mick drew himself up. ‘Dunno who did, but I’m glad they did. I wish they’d killed one of them cops.’

Mick wasn’t sure what he wanted to see in his father’s face. What reaction he wanted to provoke. Just something to show that his father gave a shit about what happened to him.

‘You’re an idiot.’ Ray’s voice dripped with contempt. ‘Kill a pig and the whole bloody lot of them will be down on us like the wrath of God.’

‘That don’t scare me.’

‘Well, it should,’ Ray said. ‘Right now I don’t care if they lock you up and throw away the key, but I’m not having anyone saying it were the Earnshaws that sent this whole place up in flames.’

‘I tell you, I didn’t do anything.’

‘I saw you carrying the nail gun.’

Mick hesitated, tempted to lie. A sound in the doorway caught his attention. Cathy had come into the room. She was staring at him, her eyes wide open. And behind her, Heathcliff stood, his lips twitching as if trying to keep a grin off his face.

‘It wasn’t me,’ Mick said again. ‘Well, I had the gun, but I didn’t use it. Someone pulled it out of my hand. Haven’t seen it since. I swear.’

His father leaned on the table and coughed a long, hacking cough. Mick looked across the room again at Heathcliff.

‘It were him,’ Mick said. ‘That Heathcliff. It were him that did it.’

His father’s open palm caught the back of his head again, this time hard enough to snap his jaws together. He tasted warm blood from his bitten tongue.

‘That’s right. Try and blame a child. Coward. You haven’t even got the courage to stand up for what you did.’ Ray Earnshaw shook his head. ‘You’re no son of mine.’

Silence fell over the kitchen. Mick frowned. That was just his father’s anger talking, wasn’t it? Okay, they’d not always been close, but…

Two short, sharp honks from a car horn fell into the silence in the kitchen.

‘That’s it,’ said Ray. ‘Pete from the mine is outside waiting for you. He’s got a cousin in the building trade in Manchester. Get a few things and get in that car.’

‘What?’

‘I want you gone before anyone has the chance to ask questions. And they will. Get in that car and get out of here. I don’t want to see your face again.’

Mick stared at his father, but Ray turned away. He walked through into the kitchen, and slammed the door behind him. Mick knew he had no choice. Brushing past Cathy and Heathcliff, he took the steps two at a time to his room. He grabbed a sports bag and thrust some clothes into it. A couple of minutes later he was back down the stairs. He looked into the back room, but his father wasn’t there. Only Cathy and Heathcliff stood watching him silently.

Heathcliff’s eyes were shining. Heathcliff was to blame for this. For everything. Life had been shit since that brat arrived.

‘This doesn’t end here.’ Mick directed the words at Heathcliff in a voice that was all the more dangerous for being soft. ‘Just you wait.’

One of these days, Mick was going to get his own back.

He turned and walked out the front door.

Chapter Nine

February, 1985

‘Godless heathens,’ Father Joseph muttered as a white police van swept past. He pulled his heavy black coat tighter against the bitter February winds. The hem of his cassock was damp with the rain as it flapped around his ankles, but at least the snow was gone.

The mid-morning light was dim and dreary, and his stomach was rumbling as he closed the church gate behind him and set out along the road into the town. His Ash Wednesday fast was two days away. To be followed by forty days of Lent. Father Joseph observed the fast with passion. But there was nothing in the canon law to say he couldn’t have one good meal before Lent started. God knew he’d been hungry more than once in this past year.

Father Joseph turned the corner into the high street. It was deserted. All the men were down the picket line. Most of the women too. Those that weren’t stayed home. There was no money to spend, so no reason to come up the shops. The pub was empty too. For a long time, the pub had stayed open. It was a place for the men to cheer themselves on with strong words and talk about their upcoming victory. Then it had become a place to meet and console themselves. Now, there was no money for beer.

Father Joseph could have gone into the pub for a shot of the whisky he so enjoyed. The church always had money, and not all of his stipend had gone into the pool to feed the mine families. But he didn’t want to get aggro from some parishioner who didn’t understand that his situation was rightly different to theirs.

And he did have that one last bottle stashed back at the rectory, jealously guarded and eked out for almost a year of this cursed strike. There was one shot left. Perhaps tonight…

The sound of laughter caused him to stop and turn.

A few yards behind him, two figures darted out from behind the deserted pub. He knew them in an instant.

‘Catherine Earnshaw. Heathcliff. Come here. Immediately.’

The two paused in mid-flight and turned to look at him. Father Joseph frowned as Cathy’s hand closed around the boy’s. They shared a look that was so intense and so private it was almost like they were hearing each other’s thoughts. Then they walked towards him, their hands still linked.

‘What do you two think you’re doing?’ Father Joseph demanded. ‘Come with me.’ He grabbed the girl by the arm to drag her back around the corner. As he did, the youth at her side made a strangled sound in his throat. If he’d been a dog, he would have been growling. Father Joseph would have crossed himself, had he not needed to hang on to the girl.

The wall behind the pub was covered in graffiti. Two fresh paint cans lay tossed to one side on the footpath. One end of the wall glistened with fresh paint. Cathy, it said, in huge letters.

Father Joseph turned to Heathcliff. ‘You did this?’

The two shared another look, but said nothing. Nor did they hang their heads in shame, as rightly they should. In fact, the girl lifted her eyes to his face, her large brown eyes shining with wickedness as her lips curled into a smile.

By Jesus and all the saints, the girl was trying to tease him. But she was just a child. Father Joseph took a closer look. The way the girl looked at Heathcliff was nothing short of sinful.

Before he could say another word, the two turned and ran down the street. Cathy, in hand-me-down trousers that were far too tight for her, paused and flung a final glare back at the priest.

They disappeared down a side lane and were gone. He knew they’d be heading up into the blue hills. Well, it was time that was stopped. The good Lord only knew what they were doing all alone up there and unsupervised. Ray Earnshaw was a good man, but he’d been neglecting those two since his harlot of a wife ran off. No more, Father Joseph vowed. Those children had to be brought back under control before the devil took them.

He turned around, all thoughts of shopping for his supper gone. He looked across the valley towards the mine. The crowd around the gates seemed even larger than usual. The newspapers were predicting that the strike was almost over. That Thatcher had won. Anyone looking at the picket line would disagree. There were more miners there now than ever before. They had come from far and wide to stand behind the lads from Gimmerton.

Movement at the base of the blue hills caught his eye. It was too big to be those kids. Vehicles. Horse trailers, and that meant mounted police. This time, Father Joseph did cross himself. He’d seen the violence from the other pits on the telly. May all the saints preserve them; today it was Gimmerton’s turn.

He began to run towards the bridge over the stream. He had to warn the miners what was coming. Help them prepare. And God help him, he would stand by their side against the heathen police.

He was gasping for breath as he crossed the bridge and started up the hill towards the mine gates. He could hear the noise; the chant as familiar to him as the Lord’s Prayer.

‘Miners united will never be defeated.’

He rounded the last corner and slid to a halt, taking in the scene in front of him.

The pickets had formed a long line, three or four men deep across the road, blocking the gates of the pit. Opposite them, twice that number of police were standing, protected by their shields, and with truncheons at the ready. And behind them, Father Joseph could see the mounted police moving into formation.

There was an almighty uproar to his left. Some of the lads had thrown their weight and a couple of crow bars at a brick wall which was now falling around them. Willing hands were reaching for the bricks. Ammunition for the battle to come.

Father Joseph felt his legs begin to shake. He could not have moved even had he wanted to.

With another roar, the strikers launched a hail of bricks at the police, and surged forward. The police lines held for a few heartbeats, then they began to fall back. A couple of men were dragged to safety by their neighbours as the solid wall of blue began to disintegrate. A long whistle blast sounded, and the police began to fall back at a run. Opening a wide path, down which the horses were now advancing at a canter.

Father Joseph could see the fear on the faces of the miners. There was Ray Earnshaw, right in the middle of the line. Ray’s face stood out for a second, white among the dark clothes that surrounded him. And then everything was confusion. Miners running in every direction. People yelling. Anything that could be picked up was being thrown. So much anger. Between the miners and the police, between the men driven back to work by starvation and those determined to hold out. A man could fall in a melee like that and nobody would ever be able to say what caused it.

‘Mick! Mick! Earnshaw!’ Mick turned off his drill and looked towards the voice. The gaffer jerked his thumb towards the doorway of the half-finished new-build. ‘Your girl’s in the office.’

‘Who?’ Mick had a girl, but he’d been keeping that pretty quiet. He didn’t fancy the comments and jokes he heard every time another one of the lads fell by the wayside. The whip-crack mimes and ‘under the thumb’ jokes. And the other stuff. The jokes about the size of her boobs and arse, over cards when they’d finished up onsite. He wasn’t having that. She was a special, his Frances, a cut about the Sharons and Julies he usually got off with.

Doug shrugged. ‘Some blonde bint.’

Mick put his tools down and took the two-minute walk across the site to the foreman’s portakabin. Frances really was a bit of all right. He’d met her at his digs. It was mainly builders and apprentices, but the three rooms on the top floor were all girls. Dancers. Two of them were right stuck-up, but Frances was different. She’d always smiled at him when they passed on the stairs, even when he was staggering back after a skinful. He didn’t do that so much any more. He spent more time with Frances and less down the pub. He was saving his money because he had plans, he did, and those plans involved Frances. Now, she was standing on her own in the middle of the cramped room, not sitting on the orange plastic chair. She had arms wrapped tightly across her body. Mick moved towards her and she stepped back. ‘Have you heard the news?’

He shook his head. ‘Nah. Can’t hear the radio. Have to wear these things.’ He tapped the set of ear protectors hanging round his neck.

‘Well, there was some trouble on the picket line.’ She stared at the floor. ‘At Gimmerton.’

Mick’s stomach tightened. ‘What sort of trouble?’

She still wasn’t meeting his eye. ‘The police phoned the digs.’

The knot in Mick’s stomach jumped to his throat. He stared at the floor. There were two different offcuts of lino on the floor. One grey. One blood-red. He’d never noticed that before.

‘They said your dad got in a fight with some other miners.’

Mick shook his head. That wasn’t right. The lads only scrapped with each other over beer and women and his dad could take or leave both of those. ‘Was it a scab?’

‘What?’

‘Did he get in a fight with a scab?’ That could be it. His dad wouldn’t have scabs at his pit. And Ray Earnshaw knew how to use his fists if he had to. He could’ve done the other bloke some proper damage.

Frances bit her lip. ‘I don’t know.’

‘So what? Is he in hospital or summat? I hope they don’t expect me to sort out those bloody kids.’

Silence filled the tiny room. It seemed to last for hours. Finally Frances stepped towards him, reaching out her fingertips to his cheek. ‘I’m really sorry, love.’

Mick couldn’t bring himself to ask the question, to hear her confirm what he thought he already knew. He let her wrap an arm around his waist and sink her face into his shoulder. Normally she didn’t like to hug him until he’d washed and changed. Now she pressed herself against his dust and grime. ‘I’m so, so sorry.’

‘Something’s going on.’

Heathcliff was right. Something was wrong. Why else would there be so much activity in Moor Lane? There were people standing around in the street, talking. There were two police cars. And they were parked outside the last house in the street.

Their house.

Cathy tightened her grip on Heathcliff’s hand. ‘I don’t like the look of this. Let’s stay away.’

The two of them had been coming home, after a day spent on the blue hills. They had walked through the heather. Lain on their backs and watched the clouds scudding past. It was cold, but not wet, and for February that was a rare joy. Cathy loved days like those, up in the hills with Heathcliff. Sometimes they talked. Other times they didn’t. They didn’t have to. It was too cold now to swim in the lake up behind the pit, but they could watch the birds riding the updrafts of air as they searched for prey. They could pretend there was no strike. There was no school. There was nothing but the two of them.

Cathy was the one who always turned for home first. She had to get dinner on before her father got home. She wished she didn’t have to, but wishing didn’t change things. Just as staying out all night wouldn’t change whatever was waiting for them below.

‘I’m frightened, Heathcliff.’

His arms went around her, pulling her close. ‘Don’t be frightened. I’m here. Nothing can touch us when we’re together.’

She led the way out of the hills and across the wasteland at the end of the road. As they got closer to the house, another car pulled up, and a woman got out.