One Of Us Read online

  One Of Us

  Part 3 of the Village Trilogy

  Rachel McLean

  Contents

  Join My Book Club

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Read The Prequel

  A House Divided, Part 1 of the Division Bell trilogy

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  If you want to find out more about the characters in One Of Us - how they escaped the floods and arrived at the village - you can read the prequel for free by joining my book club.

  Please see the end of this book for full details.

  Thanks,

  Rachel McLean

  1

  “You've what?”

  Leah Golder stared at her son across the table. Beside him, Jess squirmed in her seat. She was a grown woman. She'd dealt with much worse than this; so why was she feeling scared?

  “You heard, Mum,” Zack replied. “I thought you'd be pleased.”

  Leah's gaze shifted from Zack to Jess. Jess gave her a nervous smile. In an instant, the woman had gone from beaming and friendly to shocked and hostile.

  Jess looked down at the table between them. On it was a cake and a plate of biscuits. Leah had probably used a week’s rations for this meal.

  Next to her mother, Zack's youngest sister – was it Shirley or Rose? Jess struggled to remember – shovelled cake into her mouth, knowing she wouldn't get this opportunity again in a hurry. The girl was eleven years old, over ten years younger than her brother and his twin, Sam. Twenty years younger than Jess. Sam was currently stuffing the remains of a fish pie into his mouth. Crumbs slipped from his lips and rained onto the tablecloth. Jess wondered how often it got used.

  “Well, I knew you were… close,” said Leah, her stare moving back to Zack. “But I never thought it would come to…”

  She put down her knife and picked up a napkin. She wiped her lips, her eyes closed.

  Zack looked at his dad, Tim. Jess followed his gaze, hoping for some help.

  Tim cleared his throat. “Don't get me wrong, Jess. This is nothing personal. And it's not because you're the steward, or anything like that. It's just – well – you're… it's the age difference.”

  “Don't be daft, Dad,” said Zack. “Who cares about nine years? I love her.”

  He grabbed her hand under the table. She thought of the ring he'd slipped on her finger the previous night. Plastic, scavenged from a landfill site near his work, but it was the thought that counted. She recalled the rings she'd given to her sister-in-law Ruth six months ago, after Ruth had been kidnapped and Jess and Zack had gone to save her. Her mother Sonia's rings, kept safe in a tin for the previous five years. I don't need them, she'd said. She'd meant it at the time.

  She took a deep breath and smiled at her prospective mother-in-law. “I'm sorry to have surprised you, Leah.” She couldn't bring herself to call her Mrs Golder. Leah and Tim had been Leah and Tim before she'd got to know Zack. Maybe that was the problem.

  “You taught him,” Leah replied. “You were his teacher.” She picked up the teapot and stared into it as if it would explain everything.

  “For one year. Six years ago. And it's not as if our relationship started then.”

  “Hmm,” said Tim. “Maybe she's got a… what was that?”

  Jess felt a tremor ripple through her. She tightened her grip on Zack's hand and stood up.

  The room went quiet. Rose-or-Shirley dropped her fork and squealed.

  Leah put down the teapot. It was brown, chipped on the spout, its shine lost except for one patch on the side that reflected the light from the candles on the windowsill. It was almost completely dark now, the darkness exaggerated by the fact that lights-out was just fifteen minutes ago.

  Maybe Jess had imagined it.

  “Did you feel that?” she said.

  “Yes,” said Zack. He dropped her hand and went to the window. “Shit.”

  Jess ignored Leah's frown. “What?” She slid in behind him at the window, peering over his shoulder.

  There it was again. Lower, this time, and less abrupt. A rumbling sound, and a low tremor running through them.

  She turned to Zack's family. “I've got to go. Sorry.”

  She dashed towards the front door and yanked it open. The village was in darkness. Opposite, a door opened, the faint glow of a candle silhouetting a man, raising himself up to get a better view.

  She didn’t pause to check if Zack was behind her, but instead ran towards the centre of the village. As she approached the community centre, there was another bang, two beats and then a splintering sound. It was coming from the north.

  She almost skidded to turn along the road that led to the northern edge of the village, wondering if any of the other council members had heard it. If they would be out too.

  Doors were opening as she hurried past. People muttered as they stumbled out into darkness. Ahead of her, slowly gaining in intensity, a glow rose above the rooftops.

  She felt her stomach lurch. Oh no, please no. Hadn’t they been through enough? Her own sister-in-law had been kidnapped and then arrested, for God’s sake. Ted Evans, her former neighbour, had been convicted of a double murder. They deserved some respite.

  “Go back inside,” she called as she passed the people emerging from their houses. “Stay indoors.” They nodded at her, some muttering questions. But no one retreated. Instead, they followed.

  She thundered to a halt as she reached the scrubby bushes that flanked this edge of the village. The road ended abruptly, giving way to potholed gravel and weeds as if someone had been interrupted while building it. Not unlikely, given that this place was still under construction when the flood hit six-and-a-half years ago.

  Ahead of her, on the horizon, the glow was ballooning, mushrooming into the sky. She took a deep breath then coughed noisily.

  Colin Barker was here already, the secretary to the village council.

  “Jess.” He stepped out from a crowd of villagers peppering him with questions. “There’s been an explosion.”

  She pushed her ginger hair out of her eyes. The night was cold and still, the moon bright over the sea to her right.

  “Where?” she asked.

  “Not sure. Somewhere in Filey.”

  She swallowed. “Shit.”

  “At least it wasn’t here.”

/>   She turned to look at him. “People could be hurt, Colin.”

  “Outsiders, Jess.”

  “Still.” She felt a tremor run down her spine.

  “Do you think they’d care if something like that happened to us?”

  She said nothing. More villagers arrived, jostling her in their haste to get a good view.

  “Exactly,” Colin said. “They don’t give a monkeys about us, so why should we about them?”

  “Two wrongs don’t make a right, Colin.”

  “Is that what you said when those men tried to kill Ruth?”

  She glared at him. “Don’t.”

  “I know what happened, Jess. I know why they came for her.”

  She tightened her jaw. Of course he knew. Despite her promise to her brother Ben to keep it secret.

  “This isn’t the time, Colin.”

  He grunted. She resisted the temptation to remind him that he wasn’t exactly the innocent in all this. Not after he’d locked that boy from Filey up in the boat house – oh yes, she knew things too. Instead, she turned away from him and pushed through the crowd of villagers. Where were Ben and Ruth? Ben, surely, would be somewhere nearby, wanting to get involved.

  “Ben.” He was with Clyde and Sanjeev, muttering at the edge of the crowd. “Where’s Ruth?”

  “With the boys. What are you planning to do about this?”

  “About what?”

  He gestured towards the steadily brightening glow along the coast. “That.”

  “I can't exactly put it out, can I?”

  “It’ll be trouble.”

  “I don’t see how. It’s miles away.”

  He shook his head. She glanced at Sanjeev, Ben’s best friend. He threw her a tight smile.

  “It’ll make its way here, sis,” said Ben. “You can count on that.”

  She shook her head. Where was Zack? Had he continued with his little speech, his attempt to justify to his parents why he wanted to marry a woman who was not only the village steward, but nine years older than him?

  “Let’s get everyone inside,” she said. “It might not be safe.”

  Ben shrugged, his eyes dark, and turned towards the crowd. With Sanjeev and Clyde’s help, they started corralling everyone back to their homes.

  2

  Sarah sat down next to Martin, feeling the sofa dip beneath her weight.

  “How was your mum?” he asked.

  She smiled and blew on her mint tea. “Good.” She sipped. “Very good.”

  “New job on the council suiting her?”

  “I never knew she had it in her.”

  “Good for her.”

  She eyed him. “This is the woman who called you a bad influence. Who wanted you out of the village.”

  He shrugged. “She had her reasons. She changed her mind, remember.”

  “She changed her mind about a lot of things.”

  He said nothing. She drank the rest of her tea, thinking about her father. His trial had been and gone, with no one from the village attending. Now he was in a jail somewhere near Leeds. He hadn’t received any visitors.

  The sofa shook and she brought her hand up to steady her mug. “Hey, careful.”

  “I was about to say the same to you.”

  “That wasn’t you?”

  “No.” He stood and crossed to the window. “Didn’t you hear it?”

  She placed her mug on the table and slipped in between him and the window, feeling him wind his arm around her waist. Outside was the usual darkness at this time of night. By day this self-sufficient refugee community was alive with activity: people tending the land, making food, keeping the place spick and span. But at night, they retreated. Electricity was permitted for the first hour of darkness, during which time many people sought comfort in the warmth of the JP, the community pub.

  But now it was dark, and still.

  “Oh my God.” She felt her legs tremble. From outside there was a crashing sound, followed by something like the roar of a river.

  Except there were no rivers near here.

  She grabbed Martin’s hand. “Come on.”

  She pulled him towards the door of the flat and they stumbled downstairs in the darkness. Candles weren’t safe in the stairway and oil lighting was too dirty, so all they had to guide them was the dim light from beyond the windows. Tonight the sky was tinged with an unfamiliar shade of orange, reminding her of street lamps in the years before the floods.

  She pushed open the outer door to the sound of voices passing.

  “That way, look!”

  “What was it?”

  She peered out, failing to recognise faces. Two men ran past, shouting to each other. She shrank back, scared. They disappeared into the shadows, in the direction of the light. The sky above the rooftops glowed. It trembled and swayed, seeming to be alive with light. She stared at it, open-mouthed.

  More people passed; a woman with a teenage boy and another woman with a man not far behind.

  Sarah stepped forward, full of questions.

  “Stay here.” Martin’s breath was hot on her neck. “Please.”

  She turned. “They won’t bite.”

  “I know. But… well, we don’t know what’s happened. I don’t want to be blamed.”

  “Why would they blame you?” She tried to push the irritation out of her voice. “That’s ridiculous.”

  “I'm not popular. You know it. Please, Sarah. Just stay here. Just for now. Till we know what’s going on.”

  “Skulking in the shadows will just make you look suspicious.”

  “Please.”

  His face was close to hers now, his eyes bright against his skin. He was staring into her face, his eyes flitting between hers.

  She sighed. “Alright. Of course.”

  She should be more sympathetic, she knew. But six months ago she would have done what he’d said; or rather what her father had said. She would have stayed indoors, hiding away, never told what was going on outside.

  Things had changed.

  Martin shouldn’t be so timid. He hadn’t been like this before, when he had saved her from Robert Cope. When he had helped her understand the truth about her father.

  She grasped his hand. It couldn’t be easy, being the village’s newest and most unwelcome resident. “Sorry. We can stay here. Of course.”

  She was interrupted by a deep-throated rumbling coming from somewhere behind them. She turned, realising that she was holding her breath.

  “What’s happened?” she whispered. She turned to Martin, a finger on his lips. “Two seconds. I’ll be back. I promise.”

  She stepped forwards. A man and a woman were passing, almost running but not quite daring to in the darkness. She recognised them from the school; they had a boy. Craig. Blond, cheeky. Clever.

  “Hello,” she said, her voice unsure.

  The woman stopped. “Sarah. Did you hear?”

  She nodded. “What is it?”

  “An explosion, over towards Filey. That’s what Pam said.”

  “Pam?”

  Pam was the stern woman who presided over the village store. Sarah hated having to go to her to collect her rations every day, knowing that the woman was judging her, gossiping about her to the next person she encountered.

  “She was walking home from the JP when it happened,” Craig’s mum said. “Half the council is out.”

  The woman peered round Sarah, no doubt looking for Martin. Sarah didn’t enlighten her. She felt her breathing return to normal.

  Was it bad, that she was relieved it hadn’t been something closer? Something Martin might be blamed for? No one in Filey would care about him. At least, not anymore.

  “Thanks.” She turned back to the flat.

  “You’re not coming to see?”

  “No.” Why did people have to be so mawkish? “Thanks.”

  “Right. Goodnight.”

  The woman’s words were followed by another rumble from the north. Sarah felt her heart hammering at her rib
cage. She needed to get back to Martin. She needed to check on her mother.

  “Have you seen Dawn?” Her voice was little more than a croak.

  But the woman was gone, loping towards the glow over the rooftops, her hand gripping her companion’s sleeve.

  Should Sarah go looking for her mother? She was a grown woman after all, one who had suffered through much worse than a distant explosion.

  “Sarah!” Martin hissed from the shadows. He’d ventured away from the wall of the building that contained his flat, and was in the shadow of an oak tree. Sarah looked at it, wondering what this land had been used for when it had been planted.

  “Sorry.” She slipped back to him. The April night was cold and crisp; it wasn’t raining, for once.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  “An explosion, near Filey,” she said. “Apparently.”

  “Blimey.”

  She drew closer to him, aware of his breathing in the quiet.

  “What kind of explosion?” he asked.

  She shrugged. “Dunno.”

  “Maybe I should help.”

  She put a hand on his arm. “A minute ago you wanted to hide away. Besides, what can you do? It’s miles away.”

  “I don’t know. But surely something.”

  “Please, Martin. Let’s go back inside. I don’t like it with everyone running around like this.”