HERE WE WORSHIP CHRIST,
THOUGH CHRIST IS EVERYWHERE.
His eye was caught by a couple moving with difficulty through the wrought-iron gate beside the sign. It was sheltered from the rain by a small thatched roof, propped up by four warped beams. Through the narrow lychgate, huge feet first, came a very large woman, tipped back on a wheelchair, being moved by a similarly enormous man. The woman’s feet were so big they might both have been in clip-on hospital casts. They were in their sixties, and the man pushing the wheelchair was also gigantic in height and width. The wheelchair got stuck in the lychgate and, to Edward’s surprise, the woman heaved herself out of it and hobbled sideways to draw a long, knobbled walking stick from the side of the chair. As the man pushed the back of the chair, she jammed the stick between the wheel and the side of the lychgate. She pushed and pulled it like the lever on railway points. The chair came free and she dropped back into it.
It could almost have been a comic scene. Except that Edward recognized the walking stick.
His mind took him with a whipcrack back to the violence he had suffered in his garden. He felt his sight blur and a wave of nausea. What was going on?
‘What have you seen? You’ve gone pale,’ Wendy said, her voice sounding as though it came from a great distance, but he had stood up instinctively and darted to the door of the café, where he nearly knocked Kim flat.
‘Trying to escape me? You’re sweating.’
‘No, I—’
Looking over her shoulder, he lost sight of the couple within seconds. What was his mind doing to him?
He shook his head, like a dog shaking off water. Wendy Wrigley had been endlessly patient. Now was not the time to charge out of the café without a word of explanation. He led Kim back to the table.
With real tenderness she said, ‘Nice to see you again, Wendy.’
‘Edward was very keen that you should be here. You’ve found out something, I gather?’
‘Kim worked it out,’ Edward said, trying to regain his composure.
‘Hardly,’ said Kim.
‘I’m all ears.’
‘It was a thought I had,’ Kim started. ‘It was something Edward said about the height of the hole in the tree’ – she held her hand up at chest height – ‘then the smell of the gunpowder that he found in the hole. It made me think, well …’ She reached over and took Wendy’s hand. ‘Wendy, it made me wonder if he could have done it himself.’
Wendy gave a choked sob. ‘Really?’
‘Yes. I’m so sorry. We got a friend to help test the theory.’ Kim described the experiment they had done with David Marner. They had shown how a person could pack gunpowder into the hole, heat the bolt and have it fire with explosive force – without a crossbow.
Wendy cried as she listened.
‘That must be it, that must be it,’ she said, ‘but why, why?’
Edward took up the story. ‘Do you remember I asked you about whether his father had Motor Neurone Disease? You looked upset and said no.’
‘It was a shock to be asked that.’
‘I’m sorry I sprang it on you.’
‘Full disclosure,’ said Wendy. ‘His mum had a thing called Huntington’s.’
‘Ah,’ said Edward, ‘I was sure of it.’
Kim said, ‘Sure of what?’
‘Wait,’ said Wendy, ‘you think Jonathan had Huntington’s? He can’t have, he took a test!’
‘And did you see the results yourself?’ Edward asked gently. Turning to Kim, he explained, ‘Huntington’s is always inherited, always deadly, but only goes to fifty per cent of the offspring. If you watched the Bob Dylan movie, it’s what Woody Guthrie has from the first minute to the last.’
‘That’s what my Jonathan dreaded,’ Wendy said, tears running down her face again. ‘Going from sewing, fireworks and Airfix models to … well, I don’t need to spell it out. You lose control of all movement, even your lungs. Oh God.’
‘Wendy had mentioned so many things we should have picked up on,’ said Edward. ‘Jonathan had bad fatigue, a sense that he was stumbling a bit, messing things up. Fine motor skills – couldn’t sew at the surgery. Memory getting worse. He was only in his fifties.’
