Outside, the lawn glittered with tiny beads of water. The night sky was huge, dusty with stars, ragged clouds chasing each other across the moon. Bella shivered, despite her thick winter coat. She squinted through the darkness, trying to make out the square outlines of the shed. Jake hesitated beside her. Then he strode forward, his boots leaving black prints as he walked across the beaded lawn. Bella plunged her cold hands further into her pockets and set off after him.

By the time she reached the shed, her eyes had adjusted somewhat to the darkness. She could see outlines in shades of grey, the edges of her vision smeared with darkness, Jake’s back a blacker smudge in the gloom. Their breath streamed out in front of them in long white plumes.

“We should have brought a torch,” Bella whispered.

“I’ve got one.” Jake patted his pocket. He put one hand out to the padlock on the shed. “Lucky I took the spare key to this. Carl had the one we used to lock it, God knows what he’s done with it.”

His tone was oddly jaunty. Bella felt her stomach twist and cramp again. It was full of red wine, and little else – she’d eaten almost nothing again today. How could she, faced with the knowledge of what they were about to do?

The padlock sprang open under Jake’s groping fingers. Bella caught her breath. Jake pulled the padlock from the door and promptly dropped it. It fell with a thud onto the toe of his boot and he cursed, jumping back into Bella, who was unable to stop a little shriek of surprise from escaping her.

“Quiet!”

“I’m sorry.”

“Fuck, my toe – “

Bella felt hysterical giggles rising up in her throat and she clamped her gloved hand over her mouth, choking down the sounds that were trying to come up. Was she laughing or crying? She didn’t know anymore. She bent over, heaving, tears running from her eyes.

“Shut up,” hissed Jake.

“I can’t, I’m sorry – I can’t – “

She dug her woollen-clad fingers into her palm, the pain muted by the layer of cloth. Slowly, her laughing fit abated, leaving her gasping in the cold air. She straightened up, gingerly, wiping her wet face.

Jake was staring at her.

“What’s wrong with you?” he said, quietly. “Why are you laughing?”

His tone did more to sober her than any slap in the face. Bella felt a chill that went deeper than the frosty air surrounding her.

“I’m sorry,” she said, whispering. “I got hysterical. It’s the tension. I can’t believe I’m doing this.”

All of a sudden, his shoulders relaxed. He even grinned.

“I know,” he said. “It just doesn’t seem real, does it?”

He turned away from her, back to the shed door. As he pulled gently at it, Bella was again gripped by nausea. Would there be a smell, still? Jake had told her about the smell. You can’t even describe it, he’d said. It’s like nothing you’ve ever smelt before.

The door to the shed gaped before them, a greyish outline to a blacker darkness beyond. Jake reached for the torch and the little beam came on suddenly, jittering in the night air as his hand shook. The light strobed over the interior of the shed and they both looked down at the scuffed and dirt-smeared boards of the floor.

“Christ,” whispered Bella. She was cold to the bone now, beginning to shake. Her blood felt as if it were slowly congealing in her veins but despite this, her heart began to beat faster. She could feel it, thudding away on the inside of her ribcage, beating away at her bones like a tiny, insistent fist.

“Come inside. We need to get the door shut; someone might see the light.”

Jake pulled the door fast behind Bella. She stood, clutching her elbows with numb hands. Jake propped the little torch against the wall and its faint beam showed motes of dust glittering in the snowstorm of their nervous breathing. He began to feel for the ends of the boards.

“We didn’t nail them down very securely,” he said, almost to himself. “We can’t have done, anyway, I can’t feel the nails.”

“Are they loose?” said Bella, just for something to say. She felt light-headed, swamped again with another wave of unreality. I’ll wake up in a minute, she told herself. Jake will be lying next to me, in our bed.

“Yes.” He pulled tentatively at one and it pulled away from the floor with a thick, grinding sound. Bella cringed back against the wall of the shed, terrified of what was about to be revealed.

“Help me then,” said Jake, looking at her in appeal. His eyes were lost, his mouth held in a tight grimace. Something moved inside her – he could still do that to her, even now. She bent to help him.

They pulled up four boards, each one coming loosely away in their hands. Jake was frowning now, his black brows stitched together. The beam of the little torch was beginning to grow dimmer. Jake seized it and directed it at the earth beneath the hole in the floor. Holding her fingers over her eyes, as if she were watching a horror film, Bella looked, shrinking, along its beam.

The earth lay flat, dotted here and there with ghostly tufts of grass that had tried to grow in the darkness, withered and died. A large black beetle scurried across the failing beam of the torch. Frost crystals glittered in the soil.

For a moment, the two of them regarded it in silence. Then Jake leant forward and began to slowly scrape away at the earth. Bella heard herself make a small sound of protest. He took no notice, the rhythm of his hand beginning to gain in speed, his other hand beginning to dig, dirt beginning to shower against them both, clods of earth caught momentarily in the fading light of the torch. Bella gasped out something, some protestation, some inarticulate plea for him to stop. The earth gaped beneath his plunging fingers. Soon he had dug a hole some two foot deep and eighteen inches wide. Bella stood frozen, her eyes wide. Before the torch beam flickered and died, she could see that there was nothing buried beneath the shed, in the cold earth. There was nothing there at all.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

They sat at the kitchen table. After a moment, Bella got up and switched on the overhead light. They both blinked against the sudden glare. Bella stood, dithering, by the light switch. Then she sat down again, unable to think of what to say or do.

Jake was staring down at the tabletop. Occasionally, his lips would move. She wondered what, if anything, he was thinking. I must have been more miserable than this at one time, thought Bella, but I can’t remember when. She was so cold, still shivering from the frosty air outside. As if he’d heard her thoughts, Jake raised his head. His eyes were red-rimmed.

“I’m not lying,” he said, as if she’d told him he was. “I’m not mad. There was a body there, there was.”

“Okay,” said Bella. She held onto her legs under the table to stop her hands from shaking.

Jake glared at her.

“Don’t tell me I’m lying!”

“I’m not,” she said hurriedly. “Really, I’m not. I believe you.”

“You’d better – “ he said, before the rest of the sentence slurred away into a mumble.

Bella sat still but her mind was racing. What the hell am I going to do? She fought against a backwash of unreality. This couldn’t really be happening, could it? I don’t know what’s real anymore, she thought and blinked against the sudden sting of tears.

Jake was whispering something under his breath. Trying not to appear as if she was eavesdropping, Bella strained to hear. Something about cherries… surely not? She held her breath, trying to hear. Treachery. That was the word he kept repeating. She felt the chill that gripped her begin to deepen.

She got up slowly, trying to move quietly. Not quiet enough for Jake, who snapped at her. She jumped, she couldn’t help it.

“Where are you going?”