17. The Farm

Lola marked out the perimeter with a tape measure she found in Kurt’s toolbox. Kurt had everything in his toolbox. Nails. Screws. Rawlplugs. Even a little spirit level. On the side, the name THEODORE BLAKE was printed neatly in black marker. She guessed that was his dad, who he never talked about. She locked the tape measure in place and mentally noted the numbers in her head. Five feet long, two feet wide. That should be big enough, shouldn’t it? She found some stones in the corner of the garden and used them to mark out the hole, the monotonous repetition of placing each tiny stone allowing her to focus and block out the real world for just a minute. 

She didn’t want to go near the body again until they had to bury her. After burning the crawler, neither Lola nor Cherry had felt like digging the hole, and so they had left her locked in the bathroom under a white cotton sheet. This morning, they had opened up the door to carry her outside, and there was a rotten stench that made both of them run out gagging. Now, she was gagging on the guilt of having left her in there for even longer, glued to the floor with dried blood and toilet water. She looked around at Kurt’s garden, lost in the blurred rainbow of flowers dancing in the breeze, her mind circling back, again and again, to Macey, the way a tongue keeps finding a wobbly tooth.

‘I found five shovels, and a couple of small trowels,’ Cherry said as she crossed the garden, pushing a wheelbarrow full of tools in front of her. Lola noticed how Cherry's sleek red hair ruffled in the breeze. Cherry wiped a strand from her forehead. ‘And some thick gloves– here.’

She passed a pair of gloves to Lola. They felt like real leather. Knowing Kurt and the little he’d mentioned about his family, this was probably some beloved family heirloom, handcrafted from the skin of a prized cow. She turned them over in her hands, just looking at them, before saying, ‘Have you ever watched the film Holes?’

‘Um, the film where they dig the holes?’ Cherry giggled nervously, handing Lola a shovel. ‘Shia LaBeouf is at some camp for criminal kids, right? I think we watched it in primary school.’ She pulled a bobby pin out of her pocket and slid it into her hair, clipping it back from her face. ‘Why?’

Lola pulled the gloves on and flexed her fingers, feeling the cracked leather at her tips. ‘There’s a copy of the book in Kurt’s room – I started reading it last night.’ She looked down at the shovel Cherry had handed her, testing its weight. ‘Just a bunch of boys digging holes in the middle of nowhere, and nobody would tell them why.’ She paused, wondering why she had brought it up. Just to fill the awkward silences where she knew they would both be thinking about Katie? ‘At least we know why we're digging.’

They both looked solemnly at the bathroom window.

‘Did you manage to find everyone else?’ Lola said as she began marking out the edge of the hole with her shovel, following the line of rocks and pebbles. She pushed the shovel into the ground deep enough to leave a mark, then repeated around the perimeter. 

‘Malcolm’s coming to help, of course. And Cai. Bryn said something about his horse, so I took that as a no. Pebbles is looking after the little ones for me, down in the basement.’ Cherry looked at her fingers, mentally counting out who else was left. ‘Macey is cooking lunch, so I think it’ll just be us four,’ she said. ‘And Kurt is obviously a no. I did knock, but I think he was sleeping.’

‘Right, lunch,’ Lola squirmed, wrinkling her nose. ‘I forgot about lunch.’ 

‘Don’t start, Lola. It’s a nice gesture. I really do think she’s just trying to help,’ Cherry said, pulling on her own pair of gloves. Lola supposed it was nice in principle, and her mouth had watered at the suggestion of a proper cooked meal, but the idea of ingesting anything Macey had touched made her feel sick. She imagined Macey slipping poison into the mashed potatoes, or crushed glass into the gravy, watching with a sickly sweet smile on her face as they devoured it.

‘I just don’t understand why no one believes me,’ Lola grumbled, finished with marking the hole now. She rested on her shovel and sighed at Cherry. ‘She had to have opened that window, Cher. I know she did.’

‘The crawlers are getting cleverer. You said that yourself. Maybe it just opened the window itself.’

‘But it locks from the inside!’ 

Cherry looked sympathetic. ‘Then one of us left it unlocked. Or maybe she did unlock it, but she didn’t mean to let one in. There’s no way you can prove anything, Lola. It’s not your fault, but it’s no one else's either. It’s a horrible, terrible, awful, sucky tragedy and we are all affected by it. But it’s happened before,’ Cherry said, reaching out a hand. Lola shyed away from it. ‘With Jamie. You were the same then.’

Lola drove the shovel into the earth again, this time intending to start the hole. She chose to ignore what Cherry was saying, though it swirled around in her mind. She wanted to shout that it was different. Kurt hadn’t killed Jamie in secret. It was a stupid, petty argument that sent Jamie outside to the fence. No one knew a crawler was near. ‘It won’t be a proper roast dinner. We haven’t got half the ingredients,’ she said, using her foot to push the shovel down harder. ‘There’s no meat.’

‘Lola, when was the last time we had a proper meal? One that wasn’t eggs or stale homemade bread or eggs on stale homemade bread?’ Cherry laughed. ‘I am so damn hungry I could eat Bryn’s horse.’

Malcolm jogged across the garden and swung his arms around Cherry, pulling her into a kiss. ‘Heyo, heard you needed some muscle,’ he said, letting go of Cherry and flexing his skinny muscles. He was wearing a loose white T-shirt that swamped his upper body and a pair of Kurt’s wellies. He pulled Cherry in and planted another kiss on her forehead that she clearly didn’t want.

‘Yeah, that’s why Cai’s here.’ Cherry stuck out her tongue as she pulled away from him and pointed across the yard where Cai was making his way over in a pair of muddy dungarees. His hair was jostled, and his cheeks were rosy and red. 

‘Oh shush,’ Malcolm said, grabbing a shovel. He held it up above his head and shook it like a trophy, then swung it down and started digging, missing where Lola had marked the boundary. He flung the dirt over his shoulder, and it dispersed in the wind, some blowing straight into Cherry’s face. She made a pfft sound, and tried to hand him a pair of gloves. 

Malcolm waved them away. ‘Nah.’

‘You’ll need them, Malc,’ Cherry insisted. You’ll get blisters on your hands.’

‘Nah, I’ll be fine; they’ll make my hands sweat too much,’ he said, shaking his head. Lola studied the way Cherry’s face scrunched up in response. Malcolm resumed digging and then stopped again and looked between the two girls. ‘Chop chop, what are we waiting for?’

‘We’re digging a grave for an eleven-year-old girl,’ Lola said through gritted teeth. How could they all act so casually when a corpse was waiting for them, locked in a bloodstained bathroom? They were laughing, smiling, cracking jokes. Even Cai was in a cheery mood when he grabbed his shovel, pointing it towards Malcolm and initiating a duel between them whilst Lola’s words settled around them. ‘Or have you all forgotten?’

‘Of course we haven’t,’ Cherry said softly. ‘But if we dwell on those feelings, this hole is not going to get dug. We’d be hiding away, like Kurt is.’ She pushed her shovel gently into the ground, careful to stick to Lola’s markings. She leveraged some dirt free. ‘I don’t mean to be unkind, you know that. He’s grieving a little sister, of course. But we can’t all do that, or nothing would get done. The farm is still here, and needs us to work it, like it always has. So we might as well try and cheer ourselves up and make this a day to celebrate Katie’s life. That’s what a funeral should be like. That’s what she would have wanted, right?’

Though many cruel words spun through her mind, Lola remained silent and went back to digging, her lips shut tight in a thin line. She liked how easily the earth was coming away, and for a while she was able to get into the rhythm of it. She pushed the shovel down, slicing through the earth. Then she angled the shovel backwards, leveraging the dirt upwards before swinging it to the side and dumping it in a neat pile. There was a real therapeutic nature to it, despite the sweat on her brow and the ache in her shoulders. In year six, she had joined the gardening club, which had consisted of only her, a boy from the year below, and the teacher. They’d dug the earth up with their bare hands and planted sugar snap peas and cherry tomatoes which tasted sweeter than any she had eaten from the supermarkets. She wondered if that was why Kurt loved his gardening so much, or if it was just because his parents had.

The creak of the back door opening knocked Lola out of her thoughts, and she turned her head. She didn’t know how long she had been digging for. It could have been an hour, or it could have been ten minutes. Macey was standing in the doorway, holding a tray of cups of tea and glasses of water and smiling sickly. Lola noticed her two top incisors were sharp and pointed, sticking out just a little more than her other teeth, like vampire fangs.

‘Refreshments for my hard workers?’ she offered, doing a fake-like curtsey. Malcolm instantly dropped his shovel and paced over to her, grabbing a glass. He downed it in one, then also took a cup of tea. ‘Wow, you guys must be working extra hard!’

‘We’re getting there, yeah,’ Malcolm nodded, sniffing at the air. Lola looked at the section where he’d been digging, and he’d made barely a foot of progress. ‘What’s that smell?’ He sniffed again, his nose turned up like a snuffling pug. ‘Is that chicken?’

Macey laughed. A little tea sloshed onto her tray ‘Oh, no, it’s the chicken of the woods!’

‘Pigeon?’ Malcolm said, making a face.

‘No, no,’ Macey said, ‘Laetiporus sulphureus. I spotted it growing on the trees down by that other farm across from here. It’s yellow and meaty and looks like chicken when shredded up. I found some old chicken stock cubes at the back of a cupboard, and I’m cooking a sort of broth thing.’

‘You’re going to make us eat some fungus you picked off a tree?’ Lola asked, stunned, thinking about what she’d imagined earlier. Her stomach flipped. ‘How do you know it’s not poisonous?’

Macey laughed again, high and shrill. ‘Oh, don’t worry. Laetiporus sulphureus is very distinctive. I know I haven’t accidentally picked Hypholoma fasciculare, for example, which is poisonous, because that stuff doesn’t grow around here.’ As she spoke, she overpronounced each syllable of the Latin names, and a flicker of something filtered across her face, as though she had just formulated a plan in her head. ‘I think you’ll really like it, Lola.’

Lola didn’t agree. She turned back to her digging and stabbed at the ground with her shovel. She didn’t understand how no one else could see what she saw in Macey. It was driving her mad, the way they went in circles around the topic. The sly looks, the stupid high laugh, the way she inserted herself as if she’d always been here. It was wrong. All of it was wrong. She stabbed the ground again with a grunt.

Malcolm downed his tea and dropped the mug back onto the tray. ‘Well, I think it smells delicious, and I can’t wait to devour it. When will lunch be ready?’

‘Hmm,’ Macey deliberated. ‘I just need the broth to reduce a bit whilst I chop and boil the vegetables, so maybe about fifteen minutes? Oh, but then there’s the mash! I haven’t started the mash yet; let me get back to it!’

As she turned around, Malcolm stepped in behind her. ‘Why don’t you let me do the mash, and you do the veg?’

‘Oh, that would be a great help, thank you, Malcolm!’ Macey said loudly. ‘Cai, how about you help with the chopping? Then it’ll be done in no time.’

Cai shrugged and dropped his shovel. ‘Sure,’ he said, then he looked cautiously at Lola, like she might bite him. ‘Is that okay?’

‘Be my guest,’ she grumbled, scraping around the edge of the hole with her shovel. 

The backdoor shut with a click. Lola kept her eyes on the dirt and pummeled harder into the ground, abandoning her neat dirt pile and throwing it over her shoulder as Malcolm had done.

‘I can’t believe that,’ she said, shaking her head. 

‘I know, right?’ Cherry replied, wiping at her brow with her gloved hands. ‘I can’t believe the way he looked at her! His tongue was practically hanging out of his stupid little mouth! And following after her like a sick puppy!’ Cherry sounded genuinely hurt, which made Lola feel angrier. ‘Did you see what he did earlier? He got dirt right in my mouth!’

‘No,’ Lola shook her head. ‘I mean about Macey. Taking half our workforce. The burial was supposed to be done before lunch. Not after. It’ll be too dark by then, and there will be no way to convince Kurt to come out of his room, let alone outside!’ she gushed, tearing at her muscles the harder she dug. ‘Whatever your problem with your stupid boyfriend is, just put it aside and fucking dig!’

Cherry drove her shovel into the hole with a fury that suggested she was seeing Malcolm’s face at the bottom of it, or perhaps Lola’s. ‘You know, Lola, you’ve gotten awfully nasty lately.’

They dug in silence for another fifteen minutes. The hole was about half as deep as they needed it to be. Lola was thinking about apologising to Cherry for being so snappy when Cai popped his head out the door and shouted that dinner was ready. He ran off to get Bryn, and Cherry and Lola filed inside.

Macey had moved the kitchen table into the back room – the room where the crawlers had gotten in. Seven places were set around the edge of the table, with the five chairs from the kitchen and two more she’d taken from rooms upstairs. There were three extra places set at the coffee table next to the sofa, and the little ones were playing with their toys on the floor beside it. Ben was grabbing wooden blocks from the tower Alys had built and was throwing them at Anwen, who was crying. The air was hot and thick with a burning smell. On the table was a bowl of boiled carrots, a loaf of stale bread, pre-sliced, a jug of water with sprigs of basil floating on top, and a huge pot of mashed potato. Lola’s stomach growled, finally admitting how hungry she was. She resolved that she would eat everything except the mushrooms, purely to make a point, though the more she thought about it, the crazier she felt. Macey would be stupid to kill them all with a chicken-tasting mushroom broth. Right? 

‘Lola, you sit here,’ Malcolm said as he walked in, pointing at the seat to the side of the head of the table. Bryn and Cai came in as he was fussing over the places. ‘No, Cherry, you go opposite Lola. Bryn, you go next to Lola, and Cai next to Cherry. Pebbles? Where’s Pebbles?’ He spun around, searching. Pebbles slunk slowly into the room from the kitchen. 

‘Sorry,’ she said, very quietly. ‘I had to double-check all the locks.’

Malcolm pointed to a seat. ‘That’s okay, you go next to Cai.’

‘Err, aren’t you gonna sit next to me?’ Cherry asked as she slid onto her seat. Several chair legs scraped against the wooden floor at the same time as everyone started to sit down. 

‘I’m sitting next to Macey,’ Malcolm said, offhandedly as if it was crazy for Cherry to suggest he sit next to his own girlfriend. ‘Macey’s at the head of the table, as the chef should be, and I’m next to her because I was the chief mash maker,’ he said with a playful wink.

‘Oh,’ Cherry said, her mouth forming a perfect round shape. She looked down at her plate, and then across at Lola, who was carefully lowering herself onto her chair. Cherry looked like a little girl, not the cool, sophisticated teen Lola had always thought her to be.

‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered, leaning in a little. ‘I was wrong to snap before. He is being unbelievable right now.’

‘Right?’ Cherry mouthed back. Then she turned around to check on the little kids. ‘Ben! Stop that! Alys, sit down! Anwen, don’t eat that, it’s wood!” 

Lola glanced towards the kitchen, and then at the empty place at the other head of the table, next to her. ‘Should I go and get Kurt?’

Macey appeared in the room again, carrying the large saucepan of mushroom broth. ‘I already called him down. He’s on his way! Malcolm, can you move that cup so I can put this down? Thank you? Does everyone have a plate, a bowl, and cutlery? Bryn, do you have a spoon? I’ll get you one!’ She fussed around, as though her primary function was to please everybody. She had clipped her hair back into a high bun, and her apron was tied tightly around her waist, hiding the front of her t-shirt. It wasn’t the blood-stained one she arrived in; that was hanging out on the line to dry. Lola tried to see the design on the front as she bustled around, sure she recognised it. Surely it wasn’t one of Katie’s graphic tees? 

After dishing up small, cool bowls of broth for the little ones, Macey finally took her place at the head of the table. She sat quietly for a moment, watching as everybody served themselves the food she had made, and then turned and smiled specifically at Lola, who held her gaze with a cold stare. Everyone else was slurping and chatting and tearing at pieces of bread, mopping up broth with it and swallowing it down so fast as though the meal might disappear in front of them. Lola picked up her fork and took a bite of a piece of carrot. A little too crunchy. Undercooked. She tried a mouthful of mash, which was better, but hadn’t been seasoned with any salt or pepper, and there was only a tiny amount of butter to go around because Kurt hadn’t made any in a while and no one else had the strength to churn for that long. As she swallowed, her hungry stomach pleased with her decision to line it, she looked up and saw Kurt standing in the doorway. 

He was pale, and his face was gaunt. There was almost no expression in his eyes. He had dressed up, putting on an uncreased blue plaid shirt and crisp blue jeans, and his hair had been washed and combed, but that didn’t hide what Lola could see in him. Or rather, what she couldn’t see. The emptiness. 

‘Kurt,’ she croaked, putting her fork down. The room had grown silent now. ‘Come si–’

‘Kurt!’ Macey interrupted, jumping up and swallowing him in a hug. ‘It’s so good to see you up. Please, take a seat over there, opposite me!’

Kurt walked quietly to the chair and sat down, not saying anything. He looked around at the expectant faces, wide-eyed and blank, then settled his gaze on the empty place at the table. He must have been thinking about Katie, Lola thought, feeling a horrible pang of sadness mix with the potatoes in her stomach. She wanted to hug him. Not in the same way Macey had, all fake and devouring smiles, no. She wanted to pull him in, his head against her chest and let him cry. She wanted to stroke his hair and dry his eyes and tell him it was going to be alright.

‘Guys,’ Kurt said, clearing his throat. Everyone stared at him, unsure what to expect. He nodded at the space across the table. ‘You forgot to set a place for Katie!’

Everybody paused, their cutlery held in midair. Even Macey shot a quizzical look across to Lola. He looked around at them, expectantly, as if he couldn’t understand why they hadn’t. 

‘She’ll be down any second. Don’t tell me you all forgot about her?’ He said, looking a little shocked and leaning back against his chair. ‘She’s just getting changed into something smarter. You know that red dress you helped her fix, Cherry?’

No one said anything. What could they say? Lola swallowed her saliva and reached out with her left hand. She clasped it over Kurt’s right one, which was clenched around a fork. She tried to speak but nothing came out. 

‘Kurt, buddy,’ Malcolm said, beating her to it. ‘Katie can’t come down, can she?’

‘Why not?’ Kurt blinked. ‘She’s been looking forward to this meal for ages. As I said, she loves mashed potatoes. That’s why she asked Macey to make them. Right, Macey?’

Macey’s face had gone as pink as a peach. She opened her mouth and then closed it, like a goldfish. ‘I– that’s not what I-’

‘Yes, it is,’ Kurt nodded. ‘You came up and told me that dinner was going to be ready and asked what Katie liked, and I said mashed potatoes.’

Lola’s heart ached. Just a second ago he said Katie had asked for them, but now he was saying it was him. He must be experiencing some sort of psychosis. ‘Kurt, do you remember what happened?’

He turned slowly to look at her. ‘When?’

‘Yesterday.’

‘You mean about Rev running away and saving Macey?’ he asked.

She shook her head. ‘No, after that.’

He didn’t seem to be able to answer. He just turned back to look at the empty chair. Then he pulled his hand out of Lola’s grip and suddenly stood up. In one brisk movement, he seemed to glide out of the room to the kitchen, where he grabbed a clean plate and some cutlery and arranged it neatly on the table in the empty space. Then he grabbed a ladleful of mash and plopped it onto the plate, followed by a handful of carrots and finished off with a drizzle of gravy. ‘There, she loves gravy too. I’m not really a gravy man, but Katie could drink the stuff. I caught her eating an oxo cube once.’

No one had taken a bite the entire time, except the little ones, who were now covered in broth and gravy and grabbing at the sofa and the rug.

Kurt looked around at everyone and laughed. ‘Who’s died? Jesus, you’re all so glum.’ He shook his head in disbelief. ‘Let me go and get Katie.’

He toddled off back through the kitchen, and once they heard the bottom stair creak, they all turned back to each other. 

‘What the fuck,’ Macey said, hushed, to Malcolm. ‘I didn’t say anything about Katie. I asked if he was going to come down. I asked him what he liked, and he was the one who said mashed potato!’

‘It’s the grief,’ Malcolm said back to her, matter-of-factly. ‘When my grandad died, my grandma kept saying he was in the bath and that’s why he wasn’t in the room. When we took her to the bathroom to show her that he wasn’t there, she would remember.’ 

‘Well, he’ll figure that out when he goes into her room, and she’s not there,’ Cai said, leaning across the table to help himself to more mash. ‘Anyway, your grandma had dementia; Kurt doesn’t, right?’

Lola glanced up at the ceiling, listening to the creak of Kurt’s footsteps as he walked down the hall and opened up several doors. She could hear him saying, faintly, ‘Katie? Katie?’ 

‘Should I go and say something, or…?’ Macey asked, looking at Lola, clearly suggesting that she should be the one to deal with it. For once, she was right. Lola had been closer to him than anyone else. Anyone else except Katie, of course. She pushed her chair back and stood up. She walked into the kitchen, and Kurt was already coming back down the stairs.

‘Have you seen Katie?’ he asked, sticking his hands into his pockets and shrugging in a very strange mannerism that Lola didn’t think belonged to Kurt. ‘She’s not in her room. She’s not upstairs at all. I’ve looked everywhere. Even the airing cupboard.’

‘Kurt,’ she said, ‘Katie isn’t here.’

‘Well, where is she then?’ he pressed, pulling one arm out of the pocket and sort of swinging it around as he paced unnaturally around the room. He roughed up his own hair. ‘She hasn’t gone out, has she? She knows it’s dinner time, and it’s not safe out there. I haven’t reinforced the fence.’

Lola gulped and searched for the right words, but they kept running away from her tongue. She thought about when Jamie had died. People trod on eggshells around her for too long, and she hated it. The dead were dead, and they weren’t coming back. They had all learned that from when their parents died. At least Katie died with the dignity of being human, not turning into a disgusting creature. ‘Kurt, Katie died yesterday.’

He stopped for a moment, and seemed to consider her words. He furrowed his brow and studied the floorboards, then burst into an uncertain laugh. ‘Did she tell you to say that?’

‘No, Kurt. I need you to snap out of whatever it is you’re doing right now,’ she said, sterner than before. ‘Katie died yesterday, remember? Rev rescued Macey, and we came inside, and a crawler got in and killed Katie.’

‘Lola,’ he said, quietly, suddenly very still. ‘Lola, do you think I’m stupid?’

‘What?’

‘She’s told you to say this, hasn’t she?’ he said, taking a step closer. ‘She was wearing one of Katie’s tops. Katie told me. She stole it. She’s trying to make everyone hate Katie.’

‘Who?’ Lola said, exasperated. 

‘Macey!’ he whispered, grabbing hold of Lola’s shoulders and shaking her. ‘Her things are all over Katie’s room. You were right about her, Lola; she’s trouble. Her things are in Katie’s room and she’s wearing Katie’s top and she didn’t set Katie a place and she’s telling everyone that Katie is dead and it’s upsetting Katie, and Katie is hiding now and she won’t come out!’

‘Katie is dead!’ Lola yelled, instantly hating herself. She blinked back tears, wishing for the old Kurt to come back. The stubborn, pragmatic, grandfatherly Kurt. She knew grief broke people, but this wasn’t something she knew how to deal with. When Jamie died, she had curled up into a little ball under the bed and cried her heart out, and she had punched walls and argued with everyone, but she hadn’t been delusional. Not like this.

Kurt shook his head, slow at first, then faster, like he was trying to shake out the possibility of her death. ‘No. No, no, no. You’re saying that because Macey told you to!’

Lola pulled herself out of Kurt’s grip. ‘Why have you switched up on Macey? Just yesterday you were defending her and –’

‘I heard my name?’ came Macey’s voice. She was standing in the doorway, the apron off now, revealing a ladybug graphic T-shirt that had definitely been Katie’s. Her eyes were wide with concern, but there was a trace of a smirk on her lips. When she saw Lola staring, she quickly wiped it off and replaced it with a concerned frown. 

Kurt snapped his head towards Macey. ‘That’s my sister’s top.’

Macey looked down at herself and then made a face. ‘Oh, this? I found it in the laundry basket, honest. I’m really sorry. I didn’t know it was special.’

‘It’s not special,’ he said, shaking his head again. ‘It’s just hers.’

‘Kurt–’ Lola started.

‘She doesn’t need it anymore, does she?’ Macey asked in a syrupy soft voice, tilting her head to the side and batting her eyelashes. ‘Don’t you remember what happened?’

‘It’s not true,’ he said, chewing his lip and pacing forward, towards Macey. 

‘You want to see her?’ Macey said, swinging an arm backwards and pointing at the bathroom door. ‘I can take you right to her.’

‘Macey, don’t,’ Lola warned. What the hell was she playing at? Was she trying to make him worse?

‘Yes,’ Kurt replied. ‘I want to see my sister.’

‘No.’ Lola grabbed his arm, but he pulled away quickly and hurried into the kitchen, where Macey was breezing over to the door of the bathroom. ‘Kurt! Someone stop them!’

But everyone sat around the table, just staring as Macey pulled open the bathroom door, revealing the stench of Katie’s body, and blood, and the various liquids that had escaped the crawler as it died. Macey ripped off the sheet to reveal the mangled, pale corpse, and pushed Kurt closer to it. 

‘There, you want to accuse me of lying again?’ Macey hissed, shoving him another inch closer, her fingers digging into the back of his shirt. ‘Look at her. Go on. Look.’

Kurt didn’t say anything, and from where Lola was frozen on the spot, she couldn’t see his face, but she could tell it was like he was watching her die all over again. He crouched down and stroked Katie’s cheek, and whispered, ‘I’m sorry.’ He looked over his shoulder at Lola. ‘We bury her now.’

No one argued, but once they were outside, Lola had to remind them that the hole was barely half dug. Macey scowled and stomped her foot, moaning about how her dinner was getting cold, but for once people ignored her. 

‘If we all dig, with a shovel, or with our hands, we can get it deep enough,’ she said, passing out the shovels they did have and wondering why no one had cared earlier. Everyone was quiet, and Pebbles had stayed back with the little ones, their sticky hands pressed up against the glass, watching curiously. They should have done this yesterday. It was the least that Katie deserved. She watched as Macey dug with the trowel, unable to take her eyes off of Katie’s top. She had known it was Katie’s when she first saw it. And what Kurt said about her asking what Katie’s food was. She felt sick to her stomach and wanted nothing more than to get her out of their home. 

When the hole was deep enough – not six feet deep, but enough that Lola was sure they could bury her and not risk a fox or something digging her up. Cherry was holding onto the bottle of lye she had found in the toolshed, and they poured it over the hole, hoping that would work as well as if they poured it onto her body, which they didn’t want to do. 

‘You get her feet,’ Lola said as Cherry and Malcolm followed her into the bathroom. I’ll get her arms. Malcolm, can you hold the middle?’

The ghostly shape of Katie haunted them from beneath the white sheet. They didn’t want to remove it, so it trailed beneath them as they slowly carried her body out. Her wrists felt small and stiff in Lola’s hands. Any small amount of pressure felt as though it would snap them in two. They lowered her as gently as they could into the hole. Kurt was watching them from the grass, where he was sitting with his hands resting on the tops of his knees. Cai and Bryn were on lookout with the binoculars, making sure no crawlers were on their way to rip anyone else open. Macey had distracted Ben, Alys and Anwen with some flowers, so they didn’t see the body.

Once Katie was snugly in the hole, Lola looked around. ‘Has anyone ever been to a funeral?’ 

‘Didn’t you do one for your boyfriend?’ Macey asked, rejoining the group with Ben on her hip. ‘The one that got killed out here?’

‘Who told you about that?’ Lola scowled. Everyone averted her look, a collective guilt hanging in the air. 

‘Sorry, I know it’s a sore subject. But what did you do for him?’

‘We didn’t,’ she said, plainly. Her heart was pounding in her chest, but she didn’t want Macey to know that. ‘We didn’t do anything. There wasn’t enough of a body left to bury.’

‘Oh, sorry,’ Macey said, shrugging. She turned around and went back to the kids. ‘Come on, Ben, let’s pick some flowers quickly.’

Cherry elbowed Malcolm. ‘What about your grandad?’

‘What about him?’

She huffed. ‘His funeral? What did you do?’ 

‘Uh, it started with a prayer, I think. My dad gave a speech, and then everyone who wanted to came up and said something about him, and then they lowered the body in and we all took turns dropping some of the soil on top,’ Malcolm replied, though he didn’t look sure. ‘I was only little.’

‘Let’s start with a speech then,’ Lola said, turning to Kurt. ‘Kurt, do you want to say something?’

He looked down at the grass between his knees and said nothing, his hair hanging over his face. Lola bit her lip and turned to Pebbles. ‘Pebbles, you were her best friend; do you want to start?’

Pebbles nodded meekly and scampered over to the hole. Her purple hair had dark black roots growing in, the same colour as the rings around her eyes. She was wearing a black hoodie and pulled something out of her pocket. Her tarot card deck.

‘Katie was my best friend,’ she said, slowly sitting down cross-legged at the head of the hole. ‘We only met when I came to the farm three months ago. I had to run from my house down in Llanbadarn because my parents had turned. The cards told me to come here. The cards are always right. Katie was like a sister to me. She was the first person to ever listen to my tarot and to believe me. She never laughed, like some of you,’ she shot a glare towards Malcolm. It was the most Lola had ever heard her say at once. ‘I’m going to give a reading. I think Katie would have liked it.’

‘A reading for what?’ Cherry asked.

‘For us,’ Pebbles responded, shuffling the deck slowly. The cards slowly whispered against each other, and she drew one out with a shaking hand and placed it upright on the dirt beside her.

Death.

There was a small gasp, and Malcolm let slip a nervous giggle.

‘No, no,’ Pebbles panicked. ‘It doesn’t mean death. Not literally. It means letting go. Change. Moving on after something sudden,’ she nodded towards Katie’s still form in the hole. ‘She wouldn’t want us to dwell. She wouldn’t want us to stop because she stopped.’

Pebbles shuffled the cards again, and suddenly one flew from the deck and landed in the hole, on top of the white sheet. It was face up, and when Lola bent down, she could see a small detailed painting of the sky, with one star larger than the rest.

‘The Star,’ Pebbles whispered. She reached out a hand and carefully picked the card back up and placed it next to the other one. ‘It means hope. For the future. That we are still here and whatever happened in the past has moved on. Katie wants us to be ourselves.’ Pebbles looked up at Lola and said, ‘People will see us for who we truly are.’

The hair on the back of her neck stood up. She didn’t need to ask what that meant. Somehow, she knew. And it was like Pebbles knew as well.

Lola took a handful of dirt and dropped it onto the sheet. ‘I’m sorry, Katie. I’m sorry I didn’t get to know you as well as I should have.’

Pebbles followed, without a word.

‘You were a kind soul,’ Cherry said, using the shovel instead of her hands. 

Malcolm used both his hands and threw a large chunk of earth right in the middle of the sheet. The sheet shifted and pulled off of Katie, revealing her pale face. Before Kurt could see, they all scrabbled at the dirt and started filling the hole. 

‘We’ve got some flowers for the top,’ Macey said, coming back over. She pushed Alys and Anwen forward. Clasped in their small, sticky hands were bunches of bright flowers, ripped from the ground of Kurt’s garden. 

Kurt’s head snapped up. ‘Who said you could pick those?’

Macey looked around at him, and he jumped up, snatching the flowers from the kids' hands. Alys burst immediately into a bout of ugly, loud tears. Anwen blinked slowly and looked around for a hug. Ben was giggling behind them, shoving a fistful of daisies into his mouth.

‘These are flowers that Katie planted!’ he shouted, holding them up and scrunching them in his fists. ‘Who said you could pick flowers from my garden? She planted them for the bees!’

Cherry pulled the kids into a hug. ‘Shh, shh, guys.’

‘Kurt, be quiet,’ Lola hissed softly, reaching for his shoulder.

Kurt growled and threw the flowers up in the air. They fell softly around him, like colourful rain. A light pink cosmos landed on the top of the grave. In the flurry of flowers and tears, he stopped shouting and watched as an orange Nasturtium landed on Macey’s head. For a second, nobody moved. Then he crossed the grass in three short strides and hit her.