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Prologue

I wore a black suit and a white shirt, a black tie and black shoes, all polished and shiny: clothes that normally would make me feel unco to be an adult Today they gave ht clothes for a hard day

I had done , spoken the words I was meant to speak, and I meant theot in my car and I drove, randomly, without a plan, with an hour or so to kill before I met more people I had not seen for years and shook more hands and drank tooSussex country roads I only half remembered, until I found myself headed towards the town centre, so I turned, randoht It was only then that I realised where I was going, where I had been going all along, and I grimaced at my own foolishness

I had been driving towards a house that had not existed for decades

I thought of turning around, then, as I drove doide street that had once been a flint lane beside a barley field, of turning back and leaving the past undisturbed But I was curious

The old house, the one I had lived in for seven years, from when I was five until I elve, that house had been knocked down and was lost for good The new house, the one arden, between the azalea bushes and the green circle in the grass we called the fairy ring, that had been sold thirty years ago

I slowed the car as I saw the new house It would always be the new house inthe way they had built out on the otten that the bricks of the house were chocolate brown The new people had made my mother’s tiny balcony into a two-storey sunroo less than I had expected about ood times, no bad tier It didn’t seem to be any part of who I was now

I backed the car out of their driveway

It was ti, cheerful house, all tidied and stiff for the day I would talk to people whose existence I had forgotten years before and they would ask o, a relationship that had slowly frayed until eventually, as they always see anyone (I wasn’t; I was not even sure that I could, not yet), and they would ask about rown up, they have their own lives, they wish they could be here today), and work (doing fine, thank you, I would say, never knowing how to talk about what I do If I could talk about it, I would not have to do it I make art, sometimes I make true art, and sometimes it fills the empty places in my life Some of them Not all) We would talk about the departed; ould remember the dead

The little country lane of my childhood had become a black tar estates I drove further down it, away from the tohich was not the way I should have been travelling, and it felt good

The slick black road becale-lane track I remembered from my childhood, became packed earth and knobbly, bone-like flints

Soon I was driving slowly, bumpily, down a narrow lane with brae was not a stand of hazels or a wild hedgerow It felt like I had driven back in ti else was

I drove past Caraway Far red-cheeked, fair-haired Callie Anders, who lived there, and whose family would soon move to the Shetlands, and I would never kiss her or see her again Then nothing but fields on either side of the road, for alle ofits end

I remembered it before I turned the corner and saw it, in all its dilapidated red-brick glory: the Hempstocks’ farmhouse

It took h that here the lane had always ended I could have gone no further I parked the car at the side of the farmyard I had no plan I wondered whether, after all these years, there was anyone still living there, or,there It seemed unlikely, but then, from what little I remembered, they had been unlikely people

The stench of cow erly across the small yard to the front door I looked for a doorbell, in vain, and then I knocked The door had not been latched properly, and it swung gently open as I rapped it with my knuckles

I had been here, hadn’t I, a long tio? I was sure I had Childhood s that cootten at the bottoood I stood in the hallway and called, ‘Hello? Is there anybody here?’

I heard nothing I s and wax furniture polish and old wood My eyes were slow to adjust to the darkness: I peered into it, was getting ready to turn and leave when an elderly wo a white duster She wore her grey hair long

I said, ‘Mrs Hempstock?’

She tipped her head to one side, looked ater ‘I know you, but things get e Who are you, exactly?’

‘I think I ht, the last time I was here’

She smiled then ‘You were Lettie’s friend? From the top of the lane?’

‘You gave me milk It arone by, and I said, ‘No, you didn’t do that, that ave e, we becoh and we see faces repeat in time I remembered Mrs Hempstock, Lettie’s mother, as a stout woman This woman was stick-thin, and she looked delicate She looked like her mother, like the woman I had known as Old Mrs Hempstock

Sometimes when I look in the mirror I see my father’s face, not my own, and I remember the way he would sood,’ he’d say to his reflection, approvingly ‘Looking good’

‘Are you here to see Lettie?’ Mrs Hempstock asked

‘Is she here?’ The idea surprised one somewhere, hadn’t she? America?

The old woman shook her head ‘I was just about to put the kettle on Do you fancy a spot of tea?’

I hesitated Then I said that, if she didn’t mind, I’d like it if she could point me towards the duckpond first

‘Duckpond?’

I knew Lettie had had a funny name for it I re like that’

The old woman put the cloth down on the dresser ‘Can’t drink the water fro life’s blood Do you reet to it around the side of the house Just follow the path’

If you’d asked me an hour before, I would have said no, I did not remember the way I do not even think I would have re in that hallway, it was all cos, beckoning to ht have half believed you, for a moment

‘Thank you’