Total pages in book: 101
Estimated words: 97229 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 486(@200wpm)___ 389(@250wpm)___ 324(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 97229 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 486(@200wpm)___ 389(@250wpm)___ 324(@300wpm)
She paused, with a hand on her hip.
“Let me think. Somewhere with weird churches.”
My turn to scoff. “That could be anywhere in Herefordshire.”
“No, there was one of them he was talking about with George… One with some weird things on it. Carvings of a serpent, and a green man, and an upside down hand.”
I stopped in my tracks. “Are you sure?”
She looked at me. “Um, yes. I’d say that’s pretty memorable.”
“Garway,” I said. “That’s the church at Garway.”
“Possibly. I don’t remember the name.”
“It is,” I told her. “That’s the Garway Templar Church.”
“I guess so, then,” she replied, unaware of the coincidence.
Or synchronicity.
“It’s only a few miles away from Orcop,” I went on. “Where I grew up.”
She laughed. “Maybe you did run into him at the local shop at some time. I don’t imagine they have all that many around there.”
She didn’t even say wow, that’s strange, don’t you think? Nothing. She got straight back to work, passing it off as nothing but two people living in the same county, but she didn’t know Herefordshire. The village communities were so small and interconnected that it was insane to think a man like Hans could have lived in Garway without me never so much as hearing about him. It gave me shivers.
If I’d have had anything like a decent relationship with Mum I’d have called her on the spot and asked if she knew him.
“When did Hans join the Regency?” I asked.
Eliza shot me a piercing stare this time.
“What’s the interest in Hans all of a sudden?”
“Nothing,” I said. “It’s just a bit close to home. Literally.”
“Not all that long,” she said. “Just a few weeks before you started. Like I said, I don’t know all that much about him yet. None of us do really, bar Frederick.”
Those eyes. His smile as he reached for me…
I got a wave of something so deep in my stomach I thought I was going to be sick on the spot. I put my hand on my belly and held back a retch, but Eliza saw me.
“Are you alright? You look like you’re going to throw up.”
I nodded, but I was lying. I wasn’t alright at all.
She moved a little closer, but I held out a hand shaking my head.
“I’ll be fine, don’t worry.”
“Hardly. You’re as white as a ghost.”
I’m sure I was. A ghost from the past.
The room started spinning, so I closed my eyes. I heard a ringing in my ears as pictures of Garway church flashed through my mind one after the other. The carvings. The altar. The way I’d been lighting candles there on visits since I was a little girl. My mother and grandmother were religious women. Garway was the church they would pray in, every Sunday for years. I used to play around the gravestones, making up stories.
Had Hans been there?
Of course he had. The memories were flashbacks, streams of the forgotten like lightning bolts right through my head.
The evening choir singing around Christmastime. The man under the yew tree, watching as I left the service early, bored of Mum and Grandma chatting bullshit with the locals.
The man looking up at the Hand of God carving on the outside of the chapel, standing in the darkness and looking over at me with a smile.
It was him.
I couldn’t remember his face, only his presence, but it was him. I knew it for certain.
My God. Hans had been there. In Garway. All those years ago.
“You need to go home, Katherine,” Eliza said, breaking through my thoughts. “I’ll finish the bar. Go call yourself a taxi and get to bed.”
I nodded with a thank you and stumbled out to grab my phone from my bag, my fingers shaking so badly I could barely use the screen.
I dialled the taxi firm I normally used, but its lines were all busy. I tried the reserve taxi cab firm, but the operator told me they had no cabs available for at least the next hour. I called up some more from the listings. Three, four, five, all ringing out to nothing.
Fuck.
I tried the original one again, but the lines were still busy, over and over again.
The waves were still rushing through me, the spirals of memories still coming. Me in the darkness at Garway church as a little girl, the man on the sidelines always standing there.
No. It couldn’t be. This was fantasy.
Stupid girl, Katherine.
I gave up on cabs. I had to leave. Now.
I grabbed my coat and put it on, took my keys from my bag and set off on shaky legs. My phone was still in my hand, I kept dialling the cab number as I walked down the street, becoming oblivious to the line busy tone that was beeping in my ear.
It was gone 3.a.m. as I walked up the street, that much I knew. Far too late for every taxi cab in London to be busy. That was reinforced by the fact that there wasn’t anyone in sight as I made my way home.