It was nearly dark again by the time they left, the days getting noticeably shorter even from one to the next as autumn rushed toward winter. Against the dusk, the library's glass façade was an oasis of light, and Barb had a brief urge to turn and run back into its safety. Instead, she did up the buttons on her coat and then took one of their bags of notes and supplies off Alison, who was struggling under its weight.
"Take the other one too," Alison said. "I've got to sit down."
"What's the matter?" Barb caught the other bag as Alison all but fell onto a nearby bench. "Alison, what is it?"
"It's ... okay," Alison said in a strange, clipped voice, as if she were forcing each word out through a tiny chink in a vast wall of pain. "Comes and goes. I just ... need ... a minute." She hunched over, arms tight round her middle and ponytailed hair spilling forward across her shoulder, and appeared to be examining her new blue trainers.
Barb hovered, feeling helpless. If it were Robert, she would have known what to do, would have tried to offer comfort and support, but she didn't know Alison well enough yet for that. Moreover, she had begun to realise that Alison didn't like to be touched unexpectedly - she'd nearly jumped out of her skin when Barb had taken her hand earlier - and that a gesture meant to be gentle and reassuring might not be taken as such. She hesitated, bit her lip in indecision, and finally settled for sitting down on the bench beside Alison, hoping that her presence might help somehow.
"Is it getting better?"
"A bit," Alison said indistinctly. The dusk grew deeper, and Barb thought of what Robert had said about Alison's injuries; about the crash and the tangled metal and the spike that had torn through Alison's flesh and left a ruin behind. She couldn't begin to imagine so much pain. Her own life had been easy in that respect: she'd never broken a bone or had an operation or delivered a baby; had never suffered anything worse than ordinary bumps and bruises. Watching Alison sweating and shaking, she began to feel ashamed of the whole, sturdy, healthy body she took for granted most of the time. Who was she to have lived half a lifetime unscathed when Alison had been smashed to bits and stuck back together again?
"What about now?" she asked.
"Jesus. Yes, it's getting better." Alison straightened up halfway and propped her elbows on her knees, then glanced sidelong at Barb. "Don't look like that. I'm not going to die. Believe me, there have been times when it hurt so much I wished I would."
"Isn't there anything that can be done for it - some sort of surgery, or therapy, or meds?"
Alison shook her head. "Tried them. I've got to live with it, that's all. This is nothing compared to what it used to be; I had to move house, once, when the neighbours got sick of hearing me scream. Oh no -" Her face contorted, and she folded in half again, hugging herself and breathing in shallow gasps. Too worried now to care whether it was wanted or not, Barb reached out to put a comforting hand on Alison's back, but was interrupted in mid-reach by the buzz of her mobile vibrating in her pocket.
"Oh God, it's Jude," she said, staring at the name on the incoming call screen.
"You'd better answer it," Alison said without looking up . "Go on. I'll be all right."
A bit reluctantly, Barb got up and walked down the path that led away from the library's main doors, flipping the phone open as she went.
"Barb?" Jude's voice was so familiar, so much a part of her ordinary life, that it sounded as if it were being beamed from a distant universe. Whilst she was still getting her head into the right place to answer, Jude tried again.
"Hello, are you there?"
"Yes, sorry, I was just distracted. Hello. What's going on?"
"Well ..." Jude sounded hesitant. "I was wondering if you'd mind looking after Morgan tonight. It would only be for a few hours - someone gave Clive tickets to a play, and we haven't been out together in ages -"
"Oh - oh, I'd love to, but I can't." She cast about for an excuse that would satisfy Jude without revealing too much. "I went away for the weekend."
"I didn't know you were planning to go away -- Morgan, don't, that's dirty. Leave it. I said leave it. Here, play with Thomas and Percy instead." Jude's voice had gone muffled and distant during this exchange, but now she returned at full volume. "Sorry, Barb - so is everything all right? Nothing's happened to your mum, has it?"
"No, no, not at all. I'm not with her," Barb said, and then embellished that truth with a barefaced lie. "I'm in London."
"You are? What are you doing there? Have you met someone?" Jude asked with dawning delight. "You have! Where did you meet him? What's he like?"
"No, I haven't met anyone," said Barb, glancing back at Alison on the bench. Alison seemed to be recovering; she was sitting fully upright again, at any rate. "I just thought I'd get away for a few days and see some old friends. It was a last-minute sort of thing." It certainly had been last-minute, she thought defensively, and she had seen Neil, who qualified as an old friend by any definition of the term. And she hadn't met anyone as such, because she had encountered Alison for the first time a good two years ago. She might be skating across the surface of the truth, but at least she wasn't lying to Jude any more than she had to.
"Well, good for you, anyway," Jude said, in a tone of warm approval that made Barb squirm. "You've been spending far too much time at work lately. Although I don't know who else I can get for tonight, not at this hour."
"I wish I could be there," Barb said. That, at least, was utterly, nakedly honest. She loved Morgan, as she'd loved Josh, and his small, safe, well-lit nursery world, with its toys and books and milk, seemed the perfect antidote to icy darkness and terror. What wouldn't she give to be sitting right now with Morgan on her lap, reading about the three bears and the wolf and the moon in the little rabbit's room?
"Never mind, just enjoy yourself," said Jude, and then, going distant again, "No, sweetheart, not in your mouth. Give it to Mummy. Thank you. Sorry - are you coming home tomorrow, then, to be at work for Monday?"
"I think so," Barb said. Alison had levered herself off the bench and was walking toward her, slowly and haltingly, as if it hurt to move. "I've got to go. I'll talk to you soon."
"Okay." Jude paused. "Barb?"
"Yes?"
"Are you sure everything's all right? You sound ... well, a bit odd."
"Absolutely sure," Barb said. "Bye." She snapped the phone shut again and dropped it back into her pocket as Alison reached her. Wet streaks shone on Alison's face in the golden light from the library windows, and without a word, Barb rummaged in her handbag, found a clean tissue and held it out.
"Thanks," Alison said. "What did Jude say?"
"Never mind that, what about you? Are you well enough to go on?"
Alison nodded, still blotting tears. "Is there a Catholic church round here?"
"Not right here," said Barb, "but there's one the next town over - St Edmund something, I think. We went to their summer fête one year, all three of us. Paul caught it when we came home for letting Stephen and me hitch lifts."
"Perfect," said Alison. "Can we go there? They'll be having evening Mass soon."
Barb looked at Alison's face, still pinched and white with the fading aftermath of pain, and wondered what was going through her head. It seemed a strange time to want to pray. "Yes, if you like, but do you mind if I ask why?"
"I want a priest to bless us both," Alison said, "and I want to get some sort of blessed object to take with us, if I can."
"What, seriously?" Barb started to laugh, but Alison was so obviously in earnest that she bit it back, not wanting to hurt her feelings. "Look, I know you were brought up with religious faith and I don't mean to make light of it, but surely you don't believe that objects have literal magical power, do you? I've got better at suspending my disbelief lately than I ever thought I would, but I don't think I can charge into my house brandishing a crucifix like Doctor Van Helsing or Buffy the Vampire Slayer."
"It doesn't matter if you or I believe in it or not," Alison said. "It matters if John Collier's spirit does. He was a real person once, Barbara, you can't forget that, and he lived in a time when people did believe in that sort of magic. The book said that he told the townspeople he'd sold his soul to the Devil, so he must have believed in it too."
"Like the placebo effect, you mean," Barb said. "If a patient believes medicine will help him, then it does, whether it has any active ingredients or not. If an evil spirit believes a blessed object stops him hurting us ..."
"Then it does," Alison said.
"Yes, well, there's a problem with that," said Barb. "The placebo effect doesn't work unless the subject truly believes in the efficacy of the treatment. Suppose your credulous townspeople showed him a Bible or waved a prayer book at him, and he learnt then that it couldn't stop him? Or suppose he's simply worked out sometime in the last few hundred years that the medicine is only sugar, so to speak?"
"Then we haven't lost anything by trying," Alison said. "We have to confront him one way or the other. We may as well go armed with whatever protection we can get."
"Now there's a theory I can subscribe to," Barb said. "All right, I suppose it can't hurt. Can you walk all the way back to the car, though? It's so far, and you still don't look well."
"I'll be fine," Alison insisted, but she wavered even as she said it, and Barb decided it was time to put her foot down for Alison's own good.
"I don't think so," she said. "You've already helped me in more ways than I can count. Let me help you where I can." She picked up the carrier bags in one hand, then offered her other arm to Alison. That was the key, she thought. Alison had taken her hand to lead her round her house, had held her when she cried, had slept curled up beside her all night. Alison didn't mind touching; it was being touched that made her uncomfortable. So Barb waited, not pressing the issue, and with only a slight hesitation, Alison linked her arm through Barb's and leant against her, tentatively at first; then, seeing Barb really meant to support her, with all her weight.
"I've walked a lot of patients down hospital corridors this way," Alison said. "I hope I'm not as heavy on you as they were on me."
"Not at all," Barb assured her. "Not at all."