October, 4th

Cokeworth

Spinner´s End, 12

Sunday...The first in her new "home"...Although it certainly didn´t feel like home just yet. That would take sometime...Evelyn hadn´t even had the time to start feeling at home. Two days...cleaning, unpacking, organising, fixing, exploring...That house just puzzled her to no end. She had tried to look for clues, anything that might be related to her grandfather somehow, but no luck...Nothing that indicated that he had ever as much as set foot into that house.

Evelyn let her body fall heavily onto the bed, drawing in a deep sigh. She looked around at the room she currently called her bedroom. There were two bedrooms in the house, the other one had been turned into and office, where she had organised all of her books and papers. The bedroom she occupied most certainly had once belonged to either a female or a couple, judging by the ample four-postered bed and the delicate décor. It didn´t really follow the art-déco style of the first floor, although some elements of it were pretty obvious...Instead it looked more "transitional" with a heavy turn-of the century feel, particularly in the objects, art and those magnificent stained glass windows that made the grey day-light outside change into a myriad of soft colours as it came inside...A rich tone of brownish-pink covered the walls making it all warm and welcoming...the faded pattern of the impeccably conserved wallpaper gave it an undeniable charm, just as the delicate curtains and dark art-nouveau style wooden furniture...But still...it didn´t feel like it was ever "lived in"...It felt more like a film set than a house where someday, someone had lived. All of the house had this slightly disturbing feel of never having been quite "alive". She smiled, feeling a little stupid...According to the neighbour nobody had lived there for forty years, so she shouldn´t be surprised that the house was dead, so to speak...

The neighbour...Severus Snape... Most unusual man he was...One day snarky and surly and the other, suddenly solicit...albeit always insufferably grumpy. Evelyn shook her head, a little ashamed of herself for thinking about him in such terms...Of course he was snappish and ill-tempered, it was rather obvious the man wasn´t going through the most happy period of his life... Recovering from injuries that had kept him away from work, seemingly without any assistance from family or friends...No wonder he wasn´t the cheeriest of men.

"Leave of absence due to injury", she recalled his words, lazily petting Ciarán, who had just climbed the the bed and laid his head onto her belly. Evelyn wondered what those words meant exactly, but didn´t have the nerve to ask...Not after seeing his left hand and the bandages on his neck... She hadn´t noticed when they first met, but when he awkwardly carried her shopping bags, she could see something was not right with his left hand, and those bandages on his neck just looked like they hid a pretty awful injury, if the glimpse of unhealed scars snaking up his jaw were any indication. He was a chemistry teacher, so at first she thought it might be a work related injury, but what she saw were clearly the marks of an act of violence...

Regardless of whatever had happened to cause those injuries, what really puzzled her about him, was his staunch refusal to answer her questions with more than vague negatives. During their first conversation she couldn´t decide if he was simply being curmudgeon or if he was withholding information from her. Thinking about it later, she came to the obvious conclusion that he really didn´t know anything about the house or the relation between their families...And frankly how could he? Her grandfather had lived in Ireland since the 1930s and over the course of the decades had turned into the most Irish of all the men she knew, safe from his own son, born and raised in Doolin, a teacher of both Irish history and Gaelic to boot. Never had Marius Black Sr. set a foot in England again after moving to Doolin...Actually Evelyn could count on the fingers of one hand the times he left Doolin for anything...and even so, the farthest he had ever travelled was Dublin. That Severus Snape, an antisocial man, about her own age, apparently born and raised in Greater Manchester area and employed somewhere in Scotland up until recently would have any knowledge about her grandfather´s past was a downright ludicrous idea.

But after casually meeting her new neighbour and inviting him over for tea, she was forced to forget the notion that he didn´t know anything. Strangely enough he had been so solicit and patient this time around, that one might wonder if he had ulterior motives. But, she had thought to herself then, he could simply have felt bad for treating her so poorly the day before...Maybe he was having a bad day and let it get to him, and was now sincerely sorry... Maybe that polite, yet stubbornly quiet man she had had tea with was the real Severus Snape, and not the snappish and rude tyrant from the first day. She had let herself relax, happy to have at least on neighbour to talk to in that godforsaken street...but once they entered the subject of her grandfather, and she showed him the box of documents...Evelyn couldn´t quite put her finger on it, but he had changed...She could distincvely feel he was tense. The he made up some excuse about having to meet a friend across town and left hurriedly.

She laughed softly. Paranoid, she was positively paranoid. Severus Snape knew just as much as she did, and was, probably, just as puzzled as she was by all of it. She was letting it all get to her... The last three years...breaking up with Richard, then her grandfather´s death, moving back to Doolin and her father passing away as well, and so recently, before she had even recovered from loosing her grandfather...And now all those mysteries surrounding his past. The last three years had been hectic, to say the least...After the death of her older brother, twenty five years ago, she had been hoisted to the position of "oldest child" with all the privileges and responsibilities it entailed and it has just hit her that maybe all this time she had been trying too hard. And now with all the men of the family gone, her mother and sister Caitlin expected her to take the helm. For months she had taken care of the family´s matters, her father´s assets, assisted her sister and two young nieces, kept her mother company...Caitlin jokingly called her "the man of the house" and it wasn´t far from the truth. She had spent so much time looking after everybody else, that only now, in the silence of that odd house, did it finally sank in...Her father was dead...Marius Black II, the kind, serious scholar loved by all, who had taught her everything she knew about the wondrous land where she was born...was dead...Like his own father, just a mere couple of years before him, a man just as gentle and admirable as his son, the one who had filled her childhood with wonder and fairytales...Within three years, nothing but three years, both gone...

Evelyn swiftly got up, fighting back the tears and started to get changed. She couldn´t just lay there, crying. Never in her life she had allowed herself to indulge in tears and inaction and she wasn´t about to start now...She had to find a way to keep herself busy, find something to do with her time... She slipped into a warm pair of stockings, an unadorned brown blouse and black skirt, put on a pair of the simplest pumps she owned, grabbed her beige plaid shawl and left, still not knowing where to go.

-

It was a grey, cold day and the streets mirrored the the dull, cloudy sky. As fitting for a Sunday, not many people were on the street and those who walked around looked like nothing more than dark shadows with their shapeless coats. Cokeworth wasn´t exactly a lively place, but the neighbourhoods surrounding Spinner´s End were particularly morose at any given time, moreso on a Sunday. As she drove forward the only semblance of vibrancy she saw were the bright shades of orange and red crowning the trees. The sight of Autumn leaves had always had a very soothing effect on Evelyn. To her Autumn had the scent of hot cocoa and leaves, of lazy afternoons spent in the backyard with her big brother, of the smoke of her father´s pipe, as he sat on his rocking chair, of her sister´s baby powder and her mother´s chamomile tea. Her sister was only five when Paul, the eldest, passed away at age eleven, and barely remembered him; but to Evelyn, Paul´s image was all too clear...On afternoons like this, Paul and Evelyn would spend hours outside, picking the prettiest leaves they could find so later, as night fell, they´d show them to Caitlin, using them as puppets to tell her silly stories that made her giggle uncontrollably...Then, the three would use them to make mishapen wreaths and collages that their mother used to decorate the house.

Evelyn had been driving around for so long she had lost track of time. She was somewhat familiar with the main part of Cokeworth, what people called "the nice part of town" or the "new town" on the other side of the river from Spinner´s End and surroundings, but other than a brief excursion two days before, this side of the river was still unknown to her. The history of the town was quite evident in every brick and crack she passed by... This side of town had once been a prominent part of the Industrial Revolution, and Cokeworth´s textile production was only surpassed by that of neighbouring Oldham. The rows of of brownish-red brick houses built to house the mill workers, the mill itself looming over the town like the dark shadow of a monster king, the narrow streets...all was evidence of a past that still lingered over the rundown neighborhoods this side of the river. Much like Oldham, however, Cokeworth´s textile industry fell into a decline by the mid-XXth century. The once rapidly growing town went into a state of stoppage, and only after new economical alternatives were found, its development had resumed, this time by the other side of the river. The once bustling industrial centre slowly turned into a ghost town.

After much wandering around, Evelyn finally reached the main bridge and made it to the other side, driving away from the "old town" and into the "new" one. It would be nice to get away from the river and its horrid stench... The "old" town was disturbingly quiet, so maybe revisiting the commercial centre would make for a more pleasant pastime. But just as she had made her mind to go into the main commercial area, her attention was caught by the sound of laughter. A little beyond the bridge there was a small park, with overgrown bushes. There were some kids playing there. That was a sight she hadn´t seen yet around here. She had seen plenty children playing in the more residential part of town, but the closer one got to the "old town" the more dificult it got to see kids or families. She quickly found a parking space, got out of the car and walked towards the park.

It was nothing but a little playground with rusty swings, a slide and a teeter-totter. The ground was covered in leaves and sticks surrounded by dry bushes. Still, the half-dozen kids running around didn´t seem to mind it much. There were benches, and she saw a small group of women sitting on one of them, talking, and eventually calling out to the kids. As run down as the park seemed to be, it was quite obvious that the families of the area still thought of it as a viable source of entertainment for their children. She walked around and tried to not think to much about the possibility of any of those children getting tetanus from the rusty toys, and instead looked on as they played. Evelyn almost laughed at herself...how come at the sight of playing children, tetanus was the first thing in her mind? She was starting to turn into her mother... She could still remember when her and Paul were little, running about, jumping over rusty fences, scaring sheep, running through grass, dirt and mud, climbing trees to get fruit which they would then eat with their dirty little hands, running off to the sea to swim and play at the beach without adult supervision. Evelyn was absolutely sure the two of them had been personally responsible for at least half of their mother´s once golden blonde hair turning prematurely snowy white.

She leaned on the fence and looked around. Away from the park she could see the modern skyline of the new-town Cokeworth, an inverted mirror of the old mill town behind her. A few meters away from where she stood there was a little church, a XIX century Gothic revival building. The park and church seemed to mark the precise spot where old Cokeworth had stopped growing and gave way tp the new one. Evelyn usually didn´t like revival Gothic...Maybe it was a little snobbish of her, but she was so used to visiting actual Gothic cathedrals, particularly in her many study travels to France, that the revival style just felt like a cheap knock-off of the real thing. But this particular church had something positively charming about it...It was rather small, but it was so well-proportioned and the details were so delicate that instead of a "copy" it felt almost like a miniature. She let go of the fence and walked over to the church, wrapping her shawl tightly around her shoulders to protect herself from the gelid breeze that shook the leaves off the branches of the trees scattered around her.

The church was almost empty and her heels echoed onto the marble pavement. She sat down on one of the benches in the back and observed the few people inside, middle-aged women sitting in duos or trios, talking quietly amongst themselves, probably waiting for the services to begin, and acolytes walking about preparing the altar. Evelyn took a deep breath, the scent of candles and incense bringing her back to a familiar place. Her mother was the most devout person she had ever known...To her being a Roman Catholic was as much a part of her identity as being Irish, and she was possibly the most Irish of all Irish mothers...Now that she was an adult, Evelyn could laugh about it, but growing up, having a Irish Catholic stereotype for a mother wasn´t always fun. But still, as overbearing and conservative as she was, Sophia Black was the sweetest, most devoted mother one could ever wish for...Maybe that was the reason that religion didn´t feel as oppressive to Evelyn as it might have otherwise... Once she started her studies, she had read the lives of saints with great interested and fallen in love with St. Teresa, St Catherine of Sienna, St Augustine and St Thomas Aquina´s writings all of which she read with a purely academic interest, in a subconscious attempt to go against what she saw as a "simplistic" and almost ignorant attitude towards faith of her mother. Over time, once the teenage rebellion wore off and she started to understand her mother better, Evelyn had learned to see things in a more flexible way...But still, she would never be as "good" a catholic as her mother would like her to be.

Actually, Evelyn was the text-book definition of a fallen catholic: she almost never went to mass, she firmly believed a lot of the church´s dogmas and positions to be flat out ridiculous, she had lived with a man for four years without being married to him...and yet, she kept her silver cross on her neck at all times, caught herself praying whenever she felt alone or depressed, and when things looked bleak didn´t have many qualms about looking for the next church for a bit of peaceful reflection...Like now. Sitting quiet inside that little "toy" version of a Gothic cathedral, watching the preparations for the mass, she felt a sense of amazing peace invade her...She clutched her shawl letting the quiet inside the building ease away the bothersome thoughts...

"Excuse me, miss?" A soft male voice brought her back to earth. She looked up and saw a man dressed in black clergy shirt with a collaret and a clerical collar. He was somewhat stocky, had greying blond hair and looked about sixty-something, but his bright blue eyes and soft expression lent him a certain youthfulness.

"Yes?"

"May I have a seat?"

"Of course.." she smiled, scooting away to give him more space

"Father Thomas..." he smiled

"Evelyn Black." She smiled back, shaking the hand he offered her

"I don´t remember seeing you here before...and I know each and every one of my parishioners"

"Oh, yes...I just moved..."

"From Ireland, right?"

"Yes...Is it that obvious?" she laughed softly

" Just a little bit..." he laughed heartily "But I would recognise an Irish accent anywhere..."

"Is that so?"

"My grandparents were Irish...Actually most of Cokeworth´s catholic community is of Irish extraction"

"I see..."

"And how is Cokeworth treating you so far, Miss Black?" His voice was quieter and more serious now, his blue eyes filled with concern

"I´ve only been here for three days, actually...So I guess is too early to tell"

"Are you living nearby?"

"Yes...Spinner´s End..."

"Spinner´s End?" his eyes widened slightly

"You seem surprised"

"In a way yes...I used to do lots of charity work there in the past... But ever since the mill closed nobody lives there anymore...Even the Snapes, who stayed there for longer...After Eileen and Tobias died, their boy moved to Wales or Scotland..."

"Scotland."

"Oh, you know Severus?"

"He´s my neighbor..."

"Severus?...Oh, my..never knew he had returned...But then again he was never the most sociable young man out there..." Father Thomas smiled saddly

"Were the Snapes your parishioners?"

"No, not actually...They are not catholic. But I did get the chance to meet them every time I went to Spinner´s End... They were...hard to miss, so to speak...Severus spend a lot of time playing in the park out there as well..."

"Did he?" Evelyn smiled, the thought of her moody neighbour as a young boy playing in the park amusing her greatly

"He did...Severus spend more time wandering on the Streets than home... I lost track of how many times I stumbled upon him..." He chuckled, melancholic "This little scrawny lad, always so quiet... Didn´t have any friends, other than this little girl, about his age...they went together everywhere...What was her name...Linnie, Lilian..Something with an 'L'"

"And Eileen...do you remember her?"

"I never knew her too well...The Snapes kept to themselves, mostly...Tobias had some... issues..Severus moved away to a boarding school and from then on I only saw him on summer breaks and Holidays...I meet him sometimes after his parents died and he moved away, but...is not like we ever socialised...He´s very...guarded."

"Sounds like him all right..." She mumbled.

"But tell me about you...Where in Ireland are you from?"

"Doolin."

"County Clare...Lovely place...My grandparents were from Kerry, just next door from you. I´ve actually been to Doolin a couple of times, to visit the Cliffs...Most lovely sight on summer"

"Oh, indeed...the beach is wonderful..."

"Yes...great for surfing...not I´d know about it...as far as sports go I´m rather hopeless...But do tell, why would anyone leave such a gorgeous place behind? Work?"

"In a way...I´m doing some...historical research, so to speak..."

"Oh, really? That´s interesting...If you need any help, just drop by. We have some very interesting archives in the church"

"I most certainly will."

"Oh, well...I must go...service starts in a few, if you feel like staying..."

"I guess I will, thank you..."

"Good...Well, Miss Black...welcome to Cokeworth."

Evelyn watched as father Thomas walked away, shaking hands and greeting people left and and right on his way to the sacristy. As they sat there talking a quite larger number of parishioners had arrived, mostly middle aged or elderly women and families with children...Many greeted her discreetly, and Evelyn greeted them back. Soon enough she was sharing her bench with a young mother and her fussy toddler and a pair rather chatty elderly ladies. Evelyn allowed herself to stay where she was as the people made their way in and found their places. After hours wandering about town all alone, sharing an hour of her time with other people, even if for something as boring as mass, would do her some good.

-

Unknowingly Fr. Thomas had provided Evelyn with some precious few moments of complete peace of mind. For some time she didn´t think of her father or grandfather, or her mother and sister in Ireland, or even the mysterious papers her grandfather had left behind. Instead she had just basked in the comforting aura of his father-like figure and allowed herself to just be another one of his parishioners. But some of the things he said had made an impression of her.

Severus Snape...There was certainly more to that man than it met the eye. A scrawny kid, wandering about in the streets, possibly dealing with some serious issues at home...Evelyn had noticed he didn´t have family pictures in his living room...Only photos of his mother and a red-haired girl. Sure enough his father wasn´t some "model dad" who would deserve being commemorated by a nice photograph on the mantle. And the red-haired girl...she could only be the one Fr. Thomas had talked about...Linnie or Lilian... Probably the very same young woman from the ripped photograph she had seen there... Maybe the little girl he shared his childhood with had turned out to be his girlfriend or wife...But torn photographs were an usual sign of love gone wrong, Evelyn knew it all too well...

She opened the door and threw her shawl onto the couch, shaking her head. What was she doing, snooping around the life of a man she had just met...It wasn´t like her at all...In fact why the hell was she so interested in this Severus? She had more important matters to be concerned with...Instead of thinking about her neighbour, Evelyn should be foccusing on what she had noved into Cokeworth to do. If only her father was still alive he might...Come to think of it...She wondered if her father knew the contents of her grandfather´s box...Once he had received the box and other objects from his own mother he had simply locked it away in the attic and never talked about it again...Now Evelyn had to ask herself if he had done this simply because he toutght they were old stff of no importance or if he had had any particular reason to do that...Suddenly she remebered what Severus Snape has told her on the day they first met...Maybe there was a reason her grandfather had never shared this with anyone else...maybe she would just end up stumbling onto something that might be better left uncovered...She shook her head as she walked into the kitchen, and sat down for a while...She was tired, her feet hurt and she hadn´t even had lunch yet..Maybe she was just too hungry and too tired for her thoughts to make sense...

Suddenly a little noise got her attention...she looked over to the window and saw Ciarán sitting on the windowsill, staring at her and beating onto the window-glass with his paw...

"I´m not in the mood to play today...Just come in already, window´s open, you silly..." she smiled. But the Cat remained still, looking at her as if he was just as puzzled as she was. "What´s going on?"

She stood up and walked over to the window, carefully picking him up from the windowsill and cradling him into her arms.

"You´re a really silly boy you know that? Silly and spoiled." Ciarán purred hapilly, nestling against her chest "You´ve been feeling lonely lately haven´t you? Where have you..." She looked up and around, only now noticing her kitchen window allowed her to see the kitchen next door. She saw a tall and slender figure standing over there...

Severus Snape.

Wearing the same usual cryptic expression on his face Severus looked at could almost see a certain tension in the way he stood, some...preocupation...Only now did it hit her that he was always like this...tense, alert, almost as if perpetually prepared for an attack, or anticipating a catastrophe. Before it had looked to her as merely a sour and unpleasant man being his sour and unpleasant self. But after talking to Fr. Thomas she couldn´t help but think it was something else...A little young scrawny kid...taciturn...without friends... She held his gaze for a while wondering why he was looking at her like that, but amazingly she didn´t feel uneasy... More than discomfort there was an incredibly pathetic sadness in all of that...Two people separated by the dirty walls of the run down houses of an old abandoned street...two people willingly buried in that ghost town of a neighbourhood...She knew what she was there for...but what about him?

She smirked bitterly...Did she? Did she really know what she was there for? What was the point of coming here, after all? It wasn´t about some silly house deed and her gradfather´s past was it? How could she be so sure that she wasn´t going on what she knew was nothing but a wild goose chase, just because it provided her with the perfect excuse to run away from...from what? Her father´s death? The breakup with Richard? The fact that maybe, just maybe she wasn´t as strong as her mother and sister expected her to be? If only Paul were here, he´d find a way to laugh it off...But he wasn´t...Nor, Paul, or her father, or her grandfather...they were all gone and she had no idea were she stood anymore...She held Severus´gaze, quietly and attentively as if looking at her own reflection in a mirror, as if seeing into his dark eyes just how many years had passed for her without her ever noticing, watching in his arcane expression just how much of a blank she was inside.

Ciarán purred.

After a second she blinked and smiled at her own silliness...Obviously, Ciarán had been visiting Severus again...and her neighbour was probably looking to see if the cat had made its way back...Evelyn could bet he was just as amazed as she was at Ciarán´s bizarre reluctance to get back inside. Certainly Mr. Snape wasn´t expecting to see a silly woman standing like a fool at her own window, looking back at him like he was a ghost. No wonder he seemed puzzled.

"I see you´ve been bothering our neighbour again...You really like him don´t you?" She murmured looking down at her cat. Ciarán simply continued to purr lazily. She looked up again, a tired smile lingering on her lips and waved, trying to keep some semblance of normalcy. Then, feeling too exhausted to cook anything, she went back to her bedroom... Frankly, she wasn´t even hungry anymore.