Deep Waters

Title Page
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
About the Author
Books by Kate Charles
Copyright

Grateful thanks are due to numerous people:

Deborah Crombie, Marcia Talley and Suzanne Clackson, for editorial advice and creative input.

HM Coroner Dr. William Dolman, Dr. James Cullen, the Rev. Sharon Jones, the Rev. Ann Barge, the Rev. Mary-Lou Toop, the Rev. Sylvia Turner, for technical expertise and
information
.

Westcott House and Dyffryn Farm, for creative spaces.

Kat, Paula and Louise, for Jodee’s hair.

About three o’clock on a March morning, Callie Anson thought the world must be coming to an end. It was the wind that woke her, slamming against the sash window of the bedroom as though it was trying to break and enter. Above her head the roof timbers creaked and groaned, then came the sound of a sliding slate, followed by a crash.

Callie was torn between the temptation to get out of bed to look out of the window and the urge to pull the duvet over her head and pretend it wasn’t happening. Cowardice won out over curiosity, aided by the common-sense realisation that it was dark outside and she wouldn’t be able to see much anyway.

Then there was a scratching sound at the bedroom door, frantic and persistent.

‘Oh, Bella!’ In an instant Callie was out of bed, opening the door to admit a black and white cocker spaniel. ‘Come on, girl. You must be terrified.’ She scooped the trembling dog up in her arms and carried her to the bed. ‘It’s okay,’ she soothed, getting back under the duvet and stroking Bella’s soft ears. ‘I won’t let it hurt you.’

As another slate and then two more crashed to the ground, Callie wished she felt as confident as she sounded. But then, that was pretty much the story of her life.

‘I don’t know.’ The young man shook his head as he surveyed the wreckage which surrounded the church hall: smashed slates and
broken branches. He tipped his head back and squinted towards the roof. ‘Yer’ve lost a fair few of them slates, see? And it’s too high up for a ladder. Goner need scaffolding, innit?’

‘Scaffolding!’ That, reflected Callie, sounded serious. And expensive.

‘It’ll cost yer,’ he echoed her thoughts. ‘Got insurance, have yer?’

‘Oh, the church has insurance.’

The young man gave her a suspicious look. ‘Yer live in a church?’

‘This is the church hall—I live upstairs. The church is over there.’ Callie pointed towards the nearby Victorian edifice, its roof miraculously intact. That, at least, was a blessing. The churchyard was going to need some clean-up, with all of those branches down, but it appeared that the building itself hadn’t sustained any significant damage.

Likewise the vicarage, standing stolidly next door. No, the church hall had taken the brunt of the storm, and once it had lost one roof slate, a whole army of its fellows had followed.

The wind, though it had lost the edge of its savagery, was still blowing in frigid gusts. Callie shivered, while the young man crossed his arms across his chest and tucked his hands in his armpits. ‘Any chance of a cuppa?’ he suggested hopefully.

‘Of course.’

That she could manage: dispensing cups of tea was one of her specialities, rain or shine. It was something curates, if they were at all clever, mastered in the first week of their job.

Callie led the way up the stairs to her flat. Ignoring the fancy hot drinks machine her brother had bought her, she filled the kettle and switched it on. Some good sturdy PG Tips was what was needed here, not poncy cappuccino or espresso.

She brought two mugs back into the sitting room to find that the young man had shed his donkey jacket and was on the sofa, stroking Bella. Above his faded jeans he wore a t-shirt which revealed a surprisingly thin, wiry physique. His skinny upper arms were encircled with some sort of tattoos, like celtic torc armbands. ‘Nice dog,’ he said.

‘Thanks.’ Callie smiled. ‘She’s called Bella.’

‘I’m Derek, by the way. Derek Long.’

‘Callie Anson.’ She put one of the mugs on the table in front of him. ‘Three sugars, like you said.’

‘Brilliant.’

How, she wondered, could he be so thin if he took three sugars in his tea? And what about his teeth? What she’d seen of them didn’t look particularly attractive; her own teeth hurt, just thinking about it.

Derek picked up the mug, blew on its steaming surface, then took a gulp. ‘Perfec,’ he pronounced.

She drank her own tea, feeling she needed the warmth and comfort it provided after her foray outside.

‘Can I ask yer a question?’ Derek was looking at her over the rim of his mug. Looking, she perceived, in the vicinity of her clerical collar.

‘Of course.’

‘Are yer a vicar?’

Callie smiled. ‘No, not exactly. I’m a curate.’

‘What’s that, then?’

Ah, she thought, the mysteries of the Church of England hierarchy. How could she explain it without boring this young man to tears? Bishops, archdeacons, deans, canons, vicars,
rectors
: even the faithful weren’t always clear what it all meant. ‘I suppose a curate is sort of like a junior vicar,’ she said. ‘The vicar—Brian—is my boss.’

‘Curate sounds more like a junior doctor.’ He grinned.

Callie laughed. ‘I suppose it does.’

‘So y’re like…religious? Or somefink like that?’

How was she supposed to answer? She thought about it for a moment, then said carefully, ‘Well, I work for the Church. I believe in God, if that’s what you mean.’

Derek Long shook his head. ‘The Church,’ he said. ‘I don’t get it. I mean, like, y’re not bad lookink. If yer don’t mind me sayin’. Why would yer waste yer life on the bloomin’ Church?’

She turned the question back on him. ‘You’re not a
church-goer
, then?’

‘Me? Nah.’ Again he shook his head. ‘I mean, like, why would I go to bloomin’ church? On a Sunday mornink? Not bloody likely. Not after I been down the pub on a Saturday night, like. I’m not goink nowhere on Sunday mornink.’

And this conversation wasn’t going anywhere either, Callie decided. She didn’t want to come across as prim and pious, and she knew that nothing she said would persuade this young man that church had anything to offer him. So she sipped her tea for a moment, then changed the subject. ‘About the roof,’ she said. ‘It’s bad?’

‘It’s bad, all right,’ Derek replied promptly. ‘To be honest, like, I fink it’s past mendin’.’

‘Past mending?’ That sounded alarming. ‘You mean you can’t fix it?’

Derek ran a hand over his head—which wasn’t quite shaved, but cropped very close to the scalp. ‘Best to have a new roof.’

Well, Callie told herself philosophically, the insurance would take care of it. Brian would moan about all the paperwork, but it couldn’t be helped. ‘Will you be able to do it right away?’ she asked. ‘Or as soon as we can sort out the insurance?’

He shook his head. ‘Not a chance.’

‘But—’

‘There’s a waitink list, like. For the scaffolding, innit?’

Callie fortified herself with a gulp of tea. ‘Then how soon?’

‘Month. Six weeks, mebbe. Two months, outside.’

Two months! Callie envisioned the spring rains which were yet to come and remembered the gaping holes in the roof above her head. ‘Can you do something temporary? Put some plastic over the holes so the rain doesn’t come in?’

Derek fondled Bella’s ears. ‘Yeah. I can, like, use some
polyfene
sheetink. But,’ he added, as if it were an insignificant detail, ‘yer won’t be able to live here.’

Not be able to live in her flat—for up to two months? Callie sank back in her chair. ‘But…but…where am I supposed to live?’

Derek Long shrugged.

Where on earth was she going to live? Even if the insurance would pay for it, which seemed unlikely, Callie couldn’t just go off and live in a hotel for two months. She had a dog, for one thing. And she needed to be in, or at least close to, the parish. Close to the church.

She’d better talk to Brian, and soon. Maybe he would know of a parishioner with an empty flat, or someone with a spare room who wouldn’t mind a well-behaved dog—not to mention a well-behaved curate—moving in.

Jane Stanford was feeling a bit out of sorts. It wasn’t anything she could put her finger on, but she just wasn’t at her best. She’d spent the morning at the ironing board, which she usually didn’t mind at all; on this occasion, though, her lower back ached.

A possible symptom of pregnancy, Jane was aware.
If only
. But Jane knew that—in spite of her efforts—she wasn’t pregnant. She’d used one of her supply of testing kits just a few days ago, and the results were negative. Again. Not this month. Maybe soon, but not yet.

A baby girl—that was what she wanted. She’d wanted it for a very long time, since not long after she’d given birth to twin boys over eighteen years before, but the hard facts of vicarage budgeting had meant that it was out of the question to have another baby. Out of the question until just a few months ago, when an unexpected legacy had given their finances a boost, and Jane had confided her long-deferred hopes to Brian, hoping it wasn’t too late.

She was, she hated to admit to herself, on the wrong side of forty, when conception could by no means be taken for granted. When she’d had the twins, all those years ago, it had been so easy. Now she was doing everything it said in the book—charting her temperature to pinpoint the moment of ovulation, taking lots of vitamin supplements, even losing a bit of weight—yet nothing had happened.

Jane straightened up, arching her shoulders to ease the strain. Perhaps, she told herself, the back ache was because she hadn’t slept very well. There had been a tremendous storm in the night, battering the vicarage windows with a frightening savagery. Brian, bless him, had managed to sleep through it, but Jane hadn’t been so lucky. She’d lain awake for what seemed like hours, hoping the walls and roof would withstand the onslaught.

And while Jane was ironing, transforming crumpled lumps of white fabric into crisp, snowy surplice and alb, Brian had spent much of the morning in his study with his curate, Callie Anson.

There was something about Callie Anson that got on Jane’s nerves. She admitted it to herself, though she wasn’t sure why it was so. In theory, Jane didn’t have any strong objections to women in the clergy, nor could she come up with any valid theological arguments against women’s ordination. She didn’t really think that Callie had designs on Brian or would ever, consciously or unconsciously, inflict damage on their marriage. Callie wasn’t rude or patronising to Jane as ‘just the vicar’s wife’; on the contrary, she was always pleasant and polite. She was a perfectly acceptable young woman, attractive and bright and hard-working. Jane just…didn’t like her.

She’d tried very hard to keep her feelings about Callie from Brian. After all, she knew how irrational they were, and she didn’t want Brian to think she was some sort of jealous shrew. Still, she wasn’t sure how successful she’d been until that day at lunch-time.

Lunch was vegetable soup, made with the dregs from the vegetable drawer of the fridge and a few sprouty potatoes she’d found at the back of the larder. Still, Brian ate it without
complaint
, and while eating he dropped his bomb-shell.

‘The church hall really took a hit from that storm last night,’ he said. ‘I suppose we were quite lucky that the church and the vicarage weren’t damaged as well.’

‘Damaged?’

‘The roof,’ said Brian. ‘Lost quite a few slates. Apparently the whole roof will have to be replaced. It’s not even safe for
habitation
. The roofing chap told Callie she’ll have to move out.’

Jane didn’t have a premonition of what was coming. ‘Oh, poor Callie,’ she said with as much sincerity as she could muster.