Chapter 1: Flight

Lincolnshire is not a county of extremes; it rained this morning, for example, but gently so the plants were watered but no puddles formed. I’m sitting in a five-tonne truck outside the secondary school where my daughter is approaching the end of her first year. There is a breeze moving the tops of the trees at the back of the school playing field but it is hardly strong enough to bend a reed. There is enough high cloud to moderate the heat of the sun. Not a place of extremes, as I said.

The truck is loaded with souvenirs, and I was due to drive it to Wales as soon as I’ve settled Aine with her Aunt Jenny. I was early but now the other parents are arriving, mostly in cars; I appear slightly exotic in my lorry. It’s warm in the truck even with the windows lowered – warm and soporific. The only sign of anything unusual is that a few of the cars are loaded ready to leave at once on the May Bank Holiday weekend.

Comfortable Lincolnshire is ready to relax in the certainty of its ordinariness. There will be chaos on the roads, no doubt, but there are fewer motorways in Lincolnshire than almost anywhere but Rutland.

And yet, twelve hours ago and no more than five miles from this school, my daughter Aine and I stood on a river bank and invoked the help of Celtic gods by making sacrifices that went out of use before Christianity reached Lincolnshire.

It was pretty spooky down by the river at two o’clock in the morning, I can tell you, and I think I’ve been trying since then to convince myself that it didn’t happen. Sitting outside the school, I’m forced to accept that it was real and that it changes our lives. In particular, my plans for the holiday weekend have to be radically altered.

If the experience shook me, it must have had a much greater effect on Aine who is only twelve years old. My wife is visiting her father on the Isle of Skye and there is no way that I can leave my daughter with my aunt while I get on with business as usual. She went off to school this morning without complaint but the events of last night must be preying on her mind. I haven’t been the best father but I’ve been awakened to a consciousness of my responsibilities. We probably needed the time apart to process the events but now we need to be together to plan our future.

I’m impulsive and impressionable. You have that from the lips of my dying mother and she had more than thirty years to observe my character. She was a solicitor who specialised in convincing magistrates that all the ugly ducklings she represented needed this one break to transform themselves into swans. I don’t suppose they believed her, but it was much less stressful to agree with her.

They probably lacked my skill in rationalising my surrender to her of every dearly held principle.

‘She makes Hitler seem as innocuous as Buster Keaton,’ I overheard a prosecuting solicitor say to the stipendiary magistrate after a homicidal thug was acquitted.

Hitler was a name I recognised but I couldn’t actually remember if he was a good guy or a bad guy. I was in court to watch mother at work because the school had suspended me for three days. It was a pivotal moment in my life. I know that for sure because mother arranged for me to have private therapy from a psychiatrist.

The doctor was a slightly shop-worn version of mother – surprise, surprise. I learned a great many useful words and phrases, like ‘pivotal moment’ but she failed to see that she was treating the wrong patient: there was nothing wrong with me except that I lived with a monster. Mum didn’t look like a monster; in fact she was a very classy lady who still attracted wolf-whistles until a few months before her death. She could also be very charming although, of course, I only ever observed that at second hand. Why bother to charm your only child when you could bully and browbeat him?

I was about eleven when I stopped telling mother what I was planning. Before that, I would confide some childish wish for, let’s say, a chocolate chip ice-cream cone. Mother would explain at length why that was a really bad idea; if she was in a good mood she would buy me a lemon sorbet instead. To be fair, she often was in a good mood but that arose from her work: nothing I did or said altered her mood for the better although it would rapidly make it worse if the verdict had gone against her in court.

She didn’t believe in pocket money but my Uncle Jim always slipped me a pound when I visited him in the garage he owned, on my way home from primary school. Once I worked things out, I’d buy the ice-cream of my choice and eat it before mum found out; she would spot the traces every time and lecture me but at least I now got what I wanted. At that stage, I didn’t bother about keeping my misdeeds secret. She made her living, after all, by extracting secrets from reluctant witnesses while diverting the opposition solicitor from catching her client in blatant lies and evasions.

I’m making mum sound awful but most of the time she wasn’t too bad. She devoted every hour to me she wasn’t in court or preparing a brief, taking me out and about. Her preference was for art galleries and museums but I shared her enthusiasm so I was happy enough to tag along soaking up her running commentary on the exhibits. She genuinely did know more about what was on show than most of the curators who were amateur volunteers.

In good weather we would spend the time out of doors where she showed her only sign of weakness: she hated creepy-crawlies. Spiders and flying bugs didn’t bother me and I enjoyed the chance they offered for me to shine in my mother’s eyes.

‘You’re a real little man, Jack,’ she would tell me, when I had chased off an innocuous butterfly.

For a long time pest control was the only thing I did better than my mum. Many years later, when I became a more than competent mechanic she made no effort to hide her astonishment.

‘You were always so clumsy as a child. Do you remember the trouble I had teaching you to use Lego?’

What I remember is sitting on the floor watching mother play with Lego, smacking my hand away if I had the temerity to reach for a piece. When she had almost finished the construction she would allow me to fit the last piece – if I had been a good boy, of course.

I was something of a star pupil in primary school. All the teachers were women and I knew how to behave in their presence. I had been to more museums than the other kids which meant that I could often contribute something useful to class discussions. When mum was working she made me sit and read so my vocabulary was impressive. I suppose I must have been intelligent for I vividly remember feeling bored because the other pupils took so long to learn really simple things.

We lived some way from the school and mum dropped me off in the mornings; after school she often sent her secretary to pick me up and take me back to her office. She was scared to death of mum but she would let herself be talked into treating me to a cake or a sweet biscuit, just so long as mum hadn’t expressly forbidden it. The best days were when I was allowed to walk to the garage where Uncle Jim and the other men made a fuss of me.

I got on well enough with my classmates although I can’t recall any of them visiting our house. I went to birthday parties at their homes but mum didn’t do parties, as she told the other mums. At some level I was aware of the domestic arrangements of my friends but it wasn’t until I moved up to secondary that I became conscious of the fact that we didn’t have a dad in our house. Not only was he always absent but he was never talked about.

I was jarred out of my reverie by the ringing of the school bell. There was a little flutter in my tummy as I waited for my daughter Aine to emerge; I hadn’t told her I’d be here but she would be half-expecting me and anyway it would be hard to miss me in the driving seat of a five tonne truck. I wondered how she had coped with lessons today after the trauma of last night. It was after two in the morning when we pulled trousers and coats over our pi-jams and went down to the river to empty the pills into the fast-flowing stream followed by the glass container and the shredded prescription.

She came out with a group of friends, laughing and chattering together, excited because it was Friday the thirty-first of May, the eve of a holiday weekend and school was over. The weather was warm and the forecast was good – for our part of the country, at least. Aine was smiling and animated although I caught the brief frown that crossed her face when she saw me. One of the others, Abi I think, spotted me and it was only then that Aine gave me a wave. Watching her I couldn’t believe that it had taken me so long to notice the problem.

As ten-year-olds there had been perhaps twenty centimetres between the tallest and Aine, who was always the shortest, much to her annoyance; now the gap had grown to almost a metre. Their shapes had changed as well but in a more subtle way. Even under their blazers and loose blouses it was obvious that some at twelve had noticeable breasts. Even the girls who still appeared flat-chested had rounder limbs as their bodies adapted to burgeoning womanhood – except Aine.

She still had the pre-pubescent gawkiness that the others had left behind. I suppose every father wants his little girl to stay young but that is no excuse for failing to notice that in her case it was going on too long. I wonder if I would have noticed at all if Emer, my wife and Aine’s mum, hadn’t had an emergency call to the coven. As she rushed out the door her last words were to remind our daughter to take her pills.

Later, when I called Aine down for supper, I asked her about the pills. She had been looking a bit peaky I thought, so I wouldn’t have been surprised if her mum had prescribed a tonic but our arrangement was that I was allowed to research anything that came from the family, which is heavily into alternative medicine. I have no problem with the principle of herbal medicine but there are some traditional ingredients that are potentially harmful. Emer gives me a list of ingredients, usually handwritten, and I search the internet. We both love our daughter very much so there has never been a problem in supplying me with the information I need.

This time, I had no knowledge of the pills and I had a distinct impression that Aine had been taking them for some time, in which case I should have been told. It didn’t seem like a big deal; there had been other times when the dose preceded the check, as when Aine had a chesty cough while I was at the other end of the country doing a delivery. It wouldn’t take long to check, so I had her bring the bottle down. The label was handwritten as usual but there was a warning in block capitals that the pills were to be used by no one other than Aine.

There was no indication on the bottle of the ingredients, and I asked her if she knew what they were and how long she had been taking them.

“I’ve been taking one every day since I was ten, Daddy. Mummy said that I wasn’t to tell you. It was a woman’s thing, she said.”

Perhaps this wouldn’t be surprising in other families, but my wife’s clan make a particular point of being open about natural functions – embarrassingly so at times.

“Has she told you what they’re for?”

“She says they stop me becoming a woman too soon.”

I left her sitting at the kitchen table eating her supper while I bounded upstairs to Emer’s study. It took me several minutes to search through her desk, but I finally found the prescription in the secret drawer. I opened the internet, sitting at my wife’s desk, with growing horror as I followed the links to uncover the exact nature of the herbs my daughter had been taking for two years.

“I didn’t want to take them, Daddy,” Aine told me, tearfully, when I came back to the kitchen an hour later. “I feel as if my mind and my body are fighting with each other all the time. I still think the same way as my friends, but my body is sort of lagging behind.”

I cuddled her and promised that she would never have to take the pills again. When she was a little calmer, I asked if she knew why she was not allowed to grow up.

“It’s to do with the prophecies, I think. If I become a woman, I’ll lose the power to see the future; at least that’s what Grandfather says.”

“But are the prophesies real? I thought your Mum made them up on your grandfather’s instructions.”

“Oh no, Daddy, I sometimes see into the future. Mummy asks me questions members of the family have asked and I say the first thing that comes into my head. Quite often I get a picture in my mind when Mum puts the question but other times my mind’s blank.”

I was getting very angry, so I sent Aine to bed while I considered everything. One of the ingredients of the pills is known to delay the onset of puberty; indeed, it is the basis of a research programme by a major drug company. Prolonged use is dangerous because one of the side effects is to reduce bone density. Aine could suffer from brittle bones in later life just so her grandfather can increase his hold over the clan. It was chilling to discover just how ruthless the old man is, and I wondered if I should have acted against him before now.

I was still puzzling over everything when Aine came back downstairs in her pink pj’s. She crawled up on my lap and snuggled.

“Do I really not have to take the pills again Daddy? I mean, you’re not just saying it and then back down when Mummy shouts at you.”

And that gets to the very heart of the matter, I thought, as I held my little girl tightly in my arms. The question was still hanging over my head as I sat in my truck waiting for the girls to finish exchanging plans for the weekend. Aine finally skipped over and hoisted herself into the passenger seat.

“Did you phone Mummy?”

“Not yet, Princess.”

I know all dads think their daughters are princesses, but I looked across at Aine, sitting with the afternoon sun making a halo of her hair mussed by her day at school and she really could be of royal blood. Not the blood of the upstart Windsor’s nor the Plantagenet’s; not even the Saxon blood of King Alfred but the older line of Arthur and the Tuath De Dannan. I’ve spent too long with Emer and her cursed family – I’m beginning to think like them.

“You promised!”

Aine was still not satisfied that I would find the will to protect her and I had to quickly think of a way of making the pact solemn and binding. In the early hours, we got dressed and walked to the river where I simply emptied the pills into the water before I threw the empty bottle arcing after them. The torn-up scraps of the recipe, I consigned to the wind. I swore to her that I would protect her from any attempt to make her take such pills ever again. Now she feared that I would back away from a fight, seeing the other point of view and compromising, as I had done in the past.