White Heart (Merrydian's Gate #1) Read online

  Overall, it was a pleasant home but highly lacking in space, I believe the estate agent had described it to my father as ‘cosy’ on our first viewing when I was five. We lived there ever since. A small but cosy family unit, we could sit for hours in one another’s company without ever uttering a word, yet still feel connected. Sometimes I think back and miss the simplicity of life at sixty six Wickersley Lane. I miss my school, although it was falling to pieces and smelt of damp plasterboard. I miss my street, the greying red bricks and the elderly neighbors, all of whom smelt of TPC. I miss my tiny cove of a bedroom. I miss my friends who used to cram into my tiny cove of a bedroom on cold winter nights when there was nowhere else to go. Most of all I miss my mother and father.

  My father was a quiet but intense man. He never spoke unless spoken to and even when he did, his answers tended to be no more than three words long. Occasionally and if given the right prompting, politics was his favorite subject; he could hold discussions that would drag on for hours. Some people found him boring, including my own mother sometimes, but he was always well informed on any subject he was willing to talk at length about. He reminded me of an owl, he was wise yet reserved. My mother used to say I was a lot like him, not that I’m wise but I am reserved. I guess I’m just not one of those ‘open book’ kind of people. I’d always felt there was nothing that interesting about me, I’d rather sit back and listen to others than push myself into the limelight. I miss my mother the most.

  She had frankness about her, a northern charm. She always spoke with the greatest kindness but the sincerest honesty. Most people loved her for it, some people didn’t. I always felt that the way in which she polarised people was admirable. Surely, it is better to be disliked for who you truly are, than to be liked for who you’re not. It was the greatest lesson my mother ever taught me. One I would try to live by throughout my life. My mother was a nature lover. An avid nature lover and natural adventurer, she used to go on long excursions deep into the countryside on her own. Sometimes it would be dark before she would return. On these nights, I would sit in my flowery red chair, my eyes flicking from the small yellow clock on our fireplace to my father’s worried face. When she did return she’d always laugh and tell us not to panic, insisting she had an infinity with nature that acted as an internal compass. My father thought she was reckless, I thought she was brave.

  The countryside my mother would wander for miles into, wasn’t far away from where I lived. Actually, I only had to walk for around five minutes in a southerly direction and I would be surrounded by country farmhouses with flourishing golden yellow wheat fields and a woodland area the local people called Spider Wood. I often went there with friends, it was a beautiful place to dream away the lazy summer afternoons during the school holidays and that’s what most kids my age did. We spent hours collecting conkors, making rope swings and mostly just exploring the numerous pathways that usually led around in full circle back to the opening of the wood, all apart from one that is. The most beaten pathway was also the most breathtaking if you ever stopped to admire it. The ancient yew trees with their outstretched branches intertwined towards their parallel creating a canopy like shadow, hogweed and buttercups sprouted sporadically along the edge of the path of a well-beaten dirt track until a gradual opening led the way to a circular hollow. It was dubbed Spider Hollow, because of the giant spider like grassy mound that lay in the very centre of it. Just beyond the spider, there was an ancient belfry tower and the ruins of an old grey cobblestone church, abandoned long ago. An unusually vivid shade of green ivy stretched up the tower, which unsteadily stood, usually in the shadows cast by the giant willow trees that inhabited the former church garden. Most people seemed to avoid the grass mound spider because of its eerie aura, as if it was just about to detach itself from its verdant bed and pounce. Not a single soul approached the stone ruins because, above all else, they looked highly unsafe with one of the lower corners of the building almost completely crumbled.

  This was where the resident kids spent most of their free time. I was always surprised whenever we reached the hollow that the local council hadn’t discovered the old stone building and condemned it, it must have breached about a hundred health and safety laws, but it was always there, barely standing each time.

  Other than hang around at the hollow, attending my bi-weekly book club (geeky I know) and work, I didn’t really do much. My life was uncomplicated; the days rolled into one another easily and routine was the norm. I seemed to spend my every waking hour either at the hollow or at the DIY shop where I worked. I was saving my wages to pay off my prospective tuition fees. I hadn’t even started college yet but I had been working extra over the summer months because universities had upped the price of their courses and there was no way I’d be able to pay the price of a full three year English degree course all alone. I’d actually spent most of the summer mulling over my financial conundrum and whether it would be worth going to university at all. My mother had finally talked me into at least holding onto my savings for a couple of years, hoping that I might be the first person in my whole family to attend university which would then enable her to hold my achievements like her own personal trophy. I went along with the plan dutifully having no better ideas of my own. I suppose I was a little bit lost. I just didn’t realise it yet.

  Katherine and Dennis Knight, mother and father to me, were both hard working people. They had saved enough by their early thirties to open a small flower shop on Harold Street around the corner from our petite terraced house. Hanging baskets, displayed on either side of the door during the summer, emitting an array of colours that illuminated the red brick building behind. It was not an ideal area to operate a business from. The shop was sandwiched in-between two small houses on a tiny plot of land that my mother could only just sit her ‘Come and browse at our blooming great deals!’ sign on. As it turned out Knight’s Blooms had opened in the right place at the right time because shortly after my mother had finished stroking the last interior brick wall with the ivory-white coated paintbrush, a funeral parlour had opened its doors directly across the road in a newly restored warehouse. Business for the Knights’ was booming.

  My father had asked me a couple of times to come and work at Knight’s Blooms, he wanted me to carry on the family business when they retired but it wasn’t for me. I was a terrible florist with a strange knack for making every bouquet I created look like it had been prepared by a disinterested five year old. I would have made an even worse manager, as uncomfortable as I was around people, people I didn’t know anyway. In any case, I wanted to study English literature. I adored poetry especially William Blake’s ‘Songs of Innocence and Experience’. They enthralled me into a strange hypnotic state. I spent hours alone in my box room delving into fictional worlds of flamboyant imaginations with their daring heroes, passionate love stories and despicable villains. Other than my family and my best friend Dahlia there was no one in the world I would chose over a good book. Blake was always my favourite though. The mourning for nature’s beauty, the green and pleasant land that had become enveloped in man-made fuels and misery was something I found oddly resonant especially living on the outskirts of the urban jungle that was a northern industrial city. I used to wonder if this odd sense of detachment I felt from the natural world was influencing my slumberous self. Maybe the dream that was constantly on repeat was my mind’s subliminal way of telling me to get more fresh air. Even in Spider Hollow, you could still hear the thundering of car engines, whizzing by on the busy road to the west of the wood.

  Since my birthday, my mother has been insisting, in her usual candid yet gentle manner, that I needed to start to prepare myself for the adult world I was on the cusp of entering. I had to put down my books, stop bringing half of the forest home with me every evening and get some kind of job. ‘Go out meet new people’ she said. Therefore, I did.

  By the beginning of the year, I had found a part time job at a local DIY store named Brick-a-Bracks. It wasn’t ideal
work for a young slender girl like me, with the daily heavy lifting and all, but I liked to think it kept me fit and the wage was alright. Brick-a-Bracks was around two miles away from where I lived, past Spider Woods and towards the centre of town. If I caught the bus my journey to work would take double the time. Fortunately most days Dahlia would drive me into work in her small baby blue car that she would humorously refer to as ‘The Beast’.

  I met Dahlia Dixon on the first day of school when her contraband golden bouncy ball accidentally hit me in the face. Dahlia had approached me guiltily reasoning that the only fair way to make it up to me was to bounce the ball hard off the tarmac and into her own face. We both sat in the playground teary-eyed and feeling sorry for ourselves for the first half of school that day, that was until we entered the classroom and our bouncy ball war-wounds clearly impressed our classmates. We decided to tell them we had been attacked by a monstrous creature and that we had managed to bravely fight it off with our lunch time carrot sticks, after all every child knows there is more to fear from vegetables than any beastly creature.

  Dahlia lived alone with her father Solomon Dixon just at the very end of our street. Her house was slightly bigger, being an end terrace, but very lacking of imagination in the decorative department. Every wall, fitting and fixture was a different shade of blue, other than Dahlia’s room that we had spent a day painting bright pink in protest at the colour scheme. When Mr Dixon had arrived home that day, an almighty argument had erupted. We had accidentally spilt the paint the whole way down the stair carpet and Mr Dixon was furious. Eventually, a sobbing Dahlia demanded to know where her mother lived so she could beg her to take her in. She was very dramatic that way, led primarily by her emotions in a way I was not, but I always admired her for it. A teary eyed Mr Dixon put an end to the argument at that point, shuffling away looking utterly broken, mumbling something about ‘transient’ and ‘heartbreak’ as he passed me. Dahlia never mentioned her mother after that awful day so neither did I.

  Before my schedule had become so fully booked, Dahlia and I had been out on numerous spontaneous road trips in The Beast. She passed her test as soon as she had turned seventeen, nearly a full year before me. We would drive to the coast with her swishing her long silky black hair back and forth to the beat of whichever rock song we would have playing on the in car stereo. She would sing out the words to her favourite song in a high soprano voice that always gave me a headache. Occasionally she would become so entranced in a song she would forget she was driving all together and almost veer off the road. We never had a major accident, however one time we did end up driving into some bushes near home. Dahlia swore it wasn’t the music that distracted her. She seemed to think she had seen a mysterious shadow dance into our path and she had felt an overwhelming compulsion to follow it. I always thought that Dahlia had become too susceptible to the rumours of the cloaked monks that haunted the roads, which ran parallel to Spider Wood.

  It was a hazy summer’s morning in July, when I left behind the people I loved and the world I knew.

  The sun beamed in through the narrow creak separating the floral lavender curtains I had spent at least an hour contemplating before finally purchasing from Brick-a-Bracks. It began much the same as any other mediocre day. I woke and spent at least the first five minutes pondering my nocturnal excursion to the field and what it all meant, before bounding downstairs and scoffing some toast. I brushed my teeth and quickly ran a brush through my long red hair that curled at the tips. I finalised my morning ritual by pulling my wicker necklace over my head. My mother had given it to me when I was five. We were moving house and she came across it tucked away in grans bedraggled box of old possessions whilst cleaning out the loft. The necklaces creator had intricately twisted some wicker rope and then neatly wove it around a golden amber core. Even though I had been wearing it since I was five, she still referred to it as that hideous piece of rubbish. I didn’t care, she just couldn’t appreciate its uniqueness.

  I surveyed my reflection in the mirror and concluded that people always got the impression that I was standoffish because of the natural downturn of my lips that gave me a permanent sort of semi-frown. Still, my lips were always my favourite facial feature; at least they were thick and filled my face. My eyes were a cool grey blue colour that was something of a normality in my part of the world so I’d always felt there was nothing special there. My skin was once again the alabaster white it had always been, despite the fact that it was a particularly hot beginning to the summer and every other person I knew was a nice tone of golden bronze by now. Having decided I was fit and ready for work, I climbed into my black and yellow uniform. I hated it. It seemed to make anyone that wore it a target, for not only human ridicule, but also dive-bombing bees. I grabbed a final charred slice of toast and set off on course to yet another boring day advising people on which lawnmower is best for smaller gardens.

  As expected my days work was uneventfully enough other than Derek the kitchen sales person catching a group of kids taking pictures of themselves- trousers down I might add- on one of the display toilets, I thought it was kind of amusing at least it broke the monotony of my usual working day. I tortured myself by watching the clock for the last hour of my shift, checking disappointedly at five-minute intervals for the workday to end. I was tired, hungry and in desperate need of a shower. The shop’s air conditioning system had decided to break on the hottest day of the year, so when Dahlia pulled up in the car park and gave the horn a succession of quick jabs I was relieved to be going home. I climbed in the passenger seat and smelt the familiar scent of vanilla air freshener that Dahlia would replace weekly to keep The Beast smelling nice and fresh.

  “Where’s your seat belt?” Dahlia demanded, eyeing me knowingly, she had still not forgotten the time she had to pay a fine because I had not worn it when she had given me a lift to work last winter.

  “Ok sorry mum.” I laughed back at her as I pulled out my hot pink mobile, which was making a shrill bleeping noise signaling a text. Dahlia frowned disappointedly when I swiftly stuffed the phone back into my black denim work jeans.

  “Look Violet, you know I love you dearly as a friend and that is the only reason I’m saying this but you really need to text that boy back or else I will not be able to control my actions!” She rounded the corner that headed towards the busy road that ran past Spider Wood -the shortest way home.

  “You can have him!” I exclaimed stormily, “I honestly can’t understand why any boy would want to pursue a bookworm like me when he’s got a secondary school stunner like you chasing him anyway.” I was not jealous of Dahlia, although she had beautifully soft, truffle coloured skin, enchantingly long lashes and huge chocolate eyes. Most girls our age would have given their right arm for her thick black hair and she had the athletic build of a runner. She was undeniably stunning.

  I was not interested in Henry Williams and I would have been happy for her to distract his unwelcome advances away from me. Sure he was the captain of the school rugby team, ok he wore skin tight tee-shirts that perfectly framed his bulging biceps and washboard abs. However, he always seemed a little egotistical and too crass for my liking.

  I was quietly pondering how to let Henry down gently. Maybe I would tell him I already had a boyfriend. I considered the idea for a short while before deciding it was a long shot. As quiet as most of my schoolmates were well aware I was, they would never believe it. My contemplation had left me blissfully ignorant of the familiar scenery passing us swiftly by. My silent consideration was abruptly broken as Dahlia let out a short gasp of surprise and veered the steering wheel sharply to the right of the narrow road, colliding with the dry stone wall that bordered Spider Wood. In the same instance, I turned my gaze forward in horror to see that Dahlia was not swerving to avoid some small animal that was the first thought that crossed my mind in such a woody and secluded area. Instead, it was a hooded figure that appeared to have stepped right out from the row of silver birch trees straight into the path
of the Beast. Was this one of the notorious ghostly monks?

  There was certainly something unnerving about the way this mysterious figure was moving in the few seconds before the accident, it appeared to jerk and over emphasise its movements in an animalistic manner. It seemed strangely unnatural for a human. My heart felt like it had leapt into my throat and every nerve ending in my body was tense, screaming out danger. The figure was dressed in what appeared to be a full body midnight black cloak, the hood was up which obscured the face from view. Although Dahlia’s swift turn had narrowly avoided a full on impact that would have sent the hooded figure flying into the air, she could not turn fast enough to avoid any impact altogether and the very left edge of the bonnet clipped the hooded figure sending it into a forward spin. The figure let out a screech strikingly similar to the one I heard every night in my dreams. Danger! The word flashed into my mind and was gone before I could fully process it. It sent a stone cold chill down my spine and I sat motionless for a few seconds before recovering my senses. Dahlia was clearly in shock as she sat at the wheel nervously eyeing the figure waiting for it to move. She turned to me her face paler than mine usually was, her voice deep in pain and panic