Read Online Time's Echo by Pamela Hartshorne - Free Book Online Page B

their trolleys past me.
    My mind scrabbled with the shock of the abrupt return to reality, and my heart was banging painfully under my ribs. I felt sick and very frightened as I crossed the square and cut through the
narrow alleyways that riddled the city centre, too preoccupied by what had happened to think about how I knew the way.
    I wasn’t mad. I
wasn’t
. I held onto the thought of Drew Dyer, who had treated me as if I were perfectly normal. He had said that I should eat, I remembered, but all I could
find near Monk Bar were charity shops. I didn’t want to go back to the market—
    My thoughts broke off. What was I thinking? There had been no market. I had imagined it.
    I made myself stop and take a deep breath. I needed to eat, that was all. I asked a newsagent where I could buy food, and eventually found a Sainsbury’s, where I bought some basics. The
ordinariness of the task was calming, and I was feeling steadier as I let myself back into the house.
    There had to be an explanation for this. I couldn’t be slipping back in time and reliving another life. The whole idea was absurd.
    But I kept thinking about that nightmare, about being Hawise and drowning, and I thought about the voice I’d heard whispering for Bess, when I hadn’t been dreaming at all.
    The house was very quiet. I shut the door behind me and braced myself for that creepy whisper –
Bess
– but heard nothing. A faint suggestion of putrid apples lurked in the
air. I told myself I was imagining it. There had been no apples in the bin that morning, so I must have dreamt them.
    Still, the smell lingered unpleasantly as I carried my bags through to the kitchen and made myself a sandwich. Cheese and chutney, sliced brown bread. The rush of sugar from the brownie had long
since evaporated and I’d been too tired to think about cooking a proper meal as I wandered around Sainsbury’s. Too tired, and overwhelmed by the choice and the amount of packaging on
the shelves.
    And afraid to wonder whether it was remembering the
pasars
in Jakarta or the markets in sixteenth-century York that made the supermarket feel so alien.
    I ate my sandwich standing up, looking out at Lucy’s back yard. I didn’t want to think about what had happened that morning. The earlier promise of the day had clouded over and the
garden looked huddled down, as if reluctant to believe that it really was spring. Lucy had clearly made an effort with it. I’m not very good with plants, but I could identify clumps of woody
lavender and rosemary, and in spite of myself I found myself thinking about Hawise. Found myself remembering the smell of the rosemary that she – I? – plucked from the basket, and how
its pungency filled her – my? – nostrils.
    Rosemary for remembrance. I could have heard that anywhere, I reasoned to myself. It was the kind of thing Lucy used to say all the time.
    I looked away from the rosemary to where a stiff breeze bullied some cheery daffodils in a tub by the back gate. I’d never thought of Lucy as a gardener, but then I’d never thought
of her as a witch, either.
    I’d never thought she would die and leave me her house.
    I hadn’t known her at all.
    I sighed, brushing crumbs from my fingers, and was turning back to the kitchen when something caught my eye. For a moment I could have sworn I saw a gnarled apple tree in the corner of the yard,
but when I swung back to stare, it was just a straggly rose being buffeted by the wind.
    I made a mug of coffee and took it through to the sitting room along with my laptop and the envelope of Lucy’s effects that John Burnand had given me. It was cold in the
house and I put on the gas fire, huddling in front of it while I drank the coffee and tried to get warm.
    The air felt spongy and sour. Lucy had painted the walls a dark, disturbing red, and they seemed to be leaning in, crushing the light from the room. I wriggled my shoulders uneasily. My
imagination had been working overtime since I