Page 5 of The Start of the Story
‘So, I figured I’d run into you soon enough, and that you’d be wanting to keep an eye on me now. I did think it might take a wee bit longer, but – here we are.’
‘Apparently so.’
‘Ah, you’re a hard woman to get around, Dr Thorpe.’
His words were almost gleeful, as though he were utterly relishing my monosyllabic replies and my distinct lack of enthusiasm for his company. He sounded happy and cheery and completely at ease and his entire personality got so far up my nose that it was wheeling around my sinuses at this point.
‘Look.’ I stopped suddenly and was mildly appeased when he skidded alongside me in an attempt to stop too. ‘You aren’t going to “get around” me. I have no intention of being “got around”. You want to lift the Fairy Stane, I cannot and will not allow that to happen. There is no middle ground here, Professor O’Keefe. The stone is on my territory. I’m working on the stories based around it, and, therefore, lifting it is out of the question.’
I’d turned around to face him down, horribly aware that the rain was beginning to drip from the ends of my hair and it had got through the seams in my jacket. He, on the other hand, had his coat shrugged up at the collar, hands in pockets, and the rain was decorating his hair with uneven beads of moisture rather than sliding down to run down the back of his neck.
How the hell did hedothat?
‘Well, now,’ he said, tipping his head to one side, ‘and why don’t you tell me what you really think?’
He was so utterly infuriating that it took all my willpower not to run off and try to beat him to the car, so that I could have the satisfaction of leaving him on the moor in the rain. But he’d probably stand by the road looking billowy and craggy and get picked up by the next car, which, I thought with my teeth gritted, would be driven by three supermodels who were heading to Monaco for the weekend and who’d invite him along.
Every single aspect of Connor O’Keefe ran down my nerve endings like an electric wire.
‘If I told you what Ireallythink,’ I snapped back, ‘you’d have me arrested.’
‘Ah, I reckon we’re only about ten minutes from that happening anyway.’ He started walking again. We were very nearly at the car and the thought of being able to sit down out of the rain made me speed up a little. ‘You really don’t like me much, do you, Dr Thorpe?’
‘You do yourself an injustice,ProfessorO’Keefe. I don’t actually like you atall.’
I unlocked the car, slightly smug at my comeback, and he swung into the passenger seat in a move that looked as though he would have preferred to slide in through the window like Starsky and Hutch.
‘Where’s Glaisdale?’ He didn’t follow up on my expressed dislike of him, but his tone was a little less cheery and his chinhad a set to it that implied he might be clenching his teeth slightly.
‘It’s near Danby. In the heart of the moors.’ I tucked my jacket as far under my bottom as I could to protect the seat from the warm damp that my moss-soaked behind had become. This pulled the neck taut as a straitjacket and made me sit more rigidly than I might otherwise have done.
‘And you’ve a farm to take pictures of, y’said?’
‘Yes. I’ve been recording folk memories of the area round abouts, and there’s a farm still standing where there were stories of a hob working.’ Then, because I couldn’t resist the opportunity to know more than him, ‘A hob is like a brownie or a pixie, a helpful house spirit.’
‘Ah. A bowl of milk and they’d clean the kitchen for you.’
‘That sort of thing, yes. And I want to put photographs in to illustrate locations. It might be valuable in the future, when some of these sites are gone.’
‘No such luck for me. The Romans were not ones for the camera, sadly.’
‘I imagine not.’
We lapsed into silence. I was wondering why the hell I hadn’t admitted I was heading back to York. Well, because I’d thought he’d decline a lift that was apparently going to take him miles into the depths of the moors, that was why. Now I had to drive pointlessly up to the old farm, taking photographs of a place I’d photographed only the other day so I didn’t look like a liar.
The rain pounded against the car while the cloud gathered itself around us as we drove higher and higher into the moors. The occasional sheep passed into view, black faces against the fog, floating above the grass at the sides of the road, but there was nothing else. No other traffic, no walkers, no scenery. I toyed with the idea of turning round but he’d only ask questions, wouldn’t he?
It began to feel like one of those films where you realise the characters are actually dead and in Purgatory.
‘Are you sure you’re going to be able to take any pictures in this?’ Connor turned to look out of the passenger window. Because of the fog outside, I could see his face in reflection and he looked unsettled. Being driven he knew not where by a woman whose dislike filled the car like petrol fumes must be finally getting to him. ‘It’s a touch filthy out there now.’
In reply, the rain thrummed on the car roof and we drove through some standing water so deep that the car bucked like a resistant horse. ‘No, not really,’ I said grudgingly. ‘It’s worse than I thought this far up.’
But I drove on. Turning around, admitting defeat and heading back to York would be – well, admitting defeat. And I couldnotbe defeated, not with Mr Swanky Pants in my car, waving his professorship and the Romans at me. Folklorists keep going. It was practically a motto. In fact, I’d have got it on a T-shirt, if I ever wore T-shirts, which I didn’t because one thing about being a folklorist is that everyone expects you to wear tie-dye and kaftans and lurid T-shirts and listen to Steeleye Span. So I defiantly wore Levis and tidy shirts with tailored jackets and pretended to like drum and bass and The Weeknd. The fact I preferred silence, I kept to myself.
The fog thickened to the extent that I had to drop my speed to fifteen miles an hour. I wanted to turn around so much that I had to fight my hands’ desire to take over and spin us in the road, but in the face of Connor O’Keefe’s presence, I could not. My jacket was almost strangling me and the moistness of my jeans was giving me a very unpleasant warm chafing sensation, but I’d told him I was driving up on the moors, so drive up on the moors I would. Besides, if this extended trip was inconveniencing him in any way other than keeping him away from my Fairy Stane, I was going to maximise his discomfort. My own I could ignore.
Eventually, when it would have been quicker to abandon the car and get out and walk, the decision was taken from me. We were flagged down by a man in a fluorescent jacket.
