CHAPTER 1

Policemen on a Wednesday

 

‘Shit!’ said the vicar as, with a roar that could be heard even over the noise of the storm, the vicarage slipped inexorably over the cliff and into the sea.

A collective “whoa!” of surprise went up from the little group of onlookers at the other side of the lane and the policeman looked at her in horror.

‘Oh shit!’ said Cass again; anything more eloquent had deserted her in the shock of seeing her house disappear into the waves.

She had known that there was something wrong the moment she saw the police car at the end of the lane. She had hardly ever seen a police car in the village before, let alone all the way up here on the clifftop on which her vicarage stood - had stood, she corrected herself, had stood when she had left this morning to go and visit one of her parishioners who was dying in the general hospital over at Ormsborough. Everything had been fine then…although there had been a big crack in the ground at the bottom of her garden since the rain had started again. A wet, blustery October had given way to sharp frosts at the beginning of November but then the rain and storms had returned last weekend. For the last three mornings she had woken to the sound of waves beating against the cliff and wind blowing the rain against her bedroom window. Well, that wasn’t going to be a problem tonight; the wind was blowing the other way now – and there was no window and no bedroom.

Someone in the little knot of spectators who were standing next to the police tape across the lane found his voice.

‘Blimey. Didn’t expect that.’ It sounded like Mrs. Randall’s son. Mrs. Randall lived on Widows’ Row; the four small terraced cottages down the lane from where the vicarage had stood that suddenly found themselves with unexpectedly close sea views. Cass wondered what had happened to the residents of Widows’ Row – although two of the cottages were holiday lets, Mrs. Randall from number four and the young woman from number one would normally be at home now, but their houses were in darkness beyond the temporary metal fence that had been erected around the properties. A sound of general concern came from the dark group of bystanders, and one figure crossed the lane to where Cass stood with the young policeman.

‘Are you OK, Vicar?’ It was indeed Mrs Randall’s son, Mike, large and usually genial. Today he looked concerned and windswept.

‘You’re the vicar?’ The policeman said, obviously surprised. Cass sighed. Twenty-five years since the first woman had been ordained, and still everyone expected an elderly man. She unwound the scarf from her neck to reveal her dog-collar.

‘That’s why I was asking you if I could get to the vicarage,’ Cass said. ‘Everything I own is - was - in there. Everything. And my cat …’ her voice shook, thinking of Twiggy.

‘Don’t worry, Vicar. Cats are great survivors. Maybe she’ll have got out when the gable wall collapsed this afternoon,’ Mike Randall said in what was obviously meant to be a consolatory manner. Cass didn’t believe it for a minute. Twiggy was a timid little thing, liable to run and hide under the bed whenever anything unexpected happened – that’s no doubt where she would have been when…when the vicarage fell over the cliff.

It still didn’t quite seem possible. This morning there had been the whole of the coastal path and the field through which it passed as well as her garden between the vicarage and the cliff edge – a good fifty metres of land and now it was all fifty metres below her, in the North Sea.

Cass tucked her scarf back into her coat; the storm wind was whipping at her clothes and hair. She wore her hair short these days - more practical that way, she found - and easier to ignore the streaks of white that were appearing now she was in her late thirties, amongst the black that was her original colour. She occasionally considered dyeing it, but that would be vanity, wouldn’t it? And vicars should not be vain. She had her good points, she knew – her big dark eyes and her prominent cheekbones – but it wouldn’t do to dwell on them.

‘We have been trying to contact you all afternoon, Vicar,’ the policeman said. He looked impossibly young and very, very cold, Cass thought. ‘Your – what do you call him? – your church-helper, Graham was here when we arrived.’

‘My church warden.’ Graham was the village handyman, a small, quiet, white haired man in his early sixties who could turn his hand to fix anything that was broken and spent a lot of his time quietly and capably fixing things at one of the two Rawscar churches that Cass was responsible for. He seemed to have a sixth sense about such things and he would be there, ready to mend and repair, even before she knew there was something broken.

‘But he couldn’t get through to you on the phone,’ the policeman continued, almost apologetically. ‘And no-one seemed to know where you were. This gentleman’s mother had seen you go out early this morning.’

‘I’ve been hospital visiting over at Ormsborough General all day so I had turned my phone off. I must have forgotten to turn it on again.’

Sickness and suffering were part of the day-to-day business of a vicar - consoling those in pain, trying to help them mend. But sometimes she didn’t understand any better than they did – why here, why now, why her, why did she have to be the one, why, why, WHY? Sometimes she didn’t seem able to find any answers.

‘Have you got anywhere you can stay tonight, Vicar?’ Mike Randall asked.

She hadn’t even thought about that yet, it all felt so unreal. If she didn’t have her bed, her pyjamas or her vicarage, where would she sleep? If she could sleep at all, that was. But she couldn’t just sit in her car all night, she would have to go somewhere.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Well, you could come to ours, but Mam’s in the spare room – the surveyors wouldn’t let her stay in case the cottages are unstable. Mam had to clear all her things out this afternoon, we’ve got a houseful of her furniture.’

If only she had been there, Cass thought, she might have been able to save some of her own possessions – not that there were many that she was emotional about. Vicars shouldn’t put store on earthly possessions, as the Bible reminded her, and most of hers had gone in one of the burglaries. Now her father’s Bible and her mother’s keepsake box and their photographs - all she had left to remember them by - were gone over the cliff and into the sea and so was poor little Twiggy … It was beginning to feel like God was trying to tell her something. Really, the last couple of years had just been one calamity after another with three burglaries, the disastrous relationship with James and the ignominious transfer from Ormsborough out here to Rawscar. Sometimes it felt like no matter how hard she tried to live a good life, to follow Christ’s teachings, to do what God, her father and the bishop would want, still she got it wrong. Was God punishing her? Why was he punishing her?

‘Jack Thorburn down at the Ship might have a room though,’ Mike suggested.

Cass wasn’t in a hurry to throw herself on the mercy of the landlord of the Ship Inn. As a female vicar, and what was worse an “incomer” she had found herself on the wrong end of his “jokes” a few too many times in the eight months she had lived in Rawscar. She avoided the pub if she could help it - but where else would she find a bed at this time of night? It was nearly eight o’clock already.

‘Don’t worry Reverend, your church warder” the policeman began.

‘Warden,’ she corrected him automatically.

‘Church warden, Graham and his wife are getting their spare room ready for you to stay there tonight.’

‘Ay, Vicar, get yourself away,’ Mike Randall added kindly. ‘You could probably do with a stiff drink. I’m sorry about your house, Vicar.’

There was a pause. They seemed to be waiting for her to say something meaningful. People seemed to expect it of a vicar, she had found; the right words for the occasion. The parable about the wise man who built his house on a rock flitted through her brain – but Cass could have sworn that the solid old coastguard’s cottage that had served as her vicarage would have been well built and safe in any storm. How was she to know that the rock beneath it would crumble and fall? Sometimes, it would seem, no matter how well and carefully you built your house, it still fell, no matter what you did. Sometimes faith wasn’t enough.

Her legs began to tremble.

‘You’ve had a shock,’ The policeman said, his sensible business-like manner belying his youth. He was used to moments like this, of course, he would be trained to deal with them. ‘Let’s get you down to Graham’s house. There’s nothing you can do now. My colleague PC Evans will contact the council surveyors, and I would suggest you get on to your insurers as soon as possible. Do you own the property?’

‘No, the vicarage belongs to the diocese,’ she said, amazed that the voice coming out of her mouth was so normal and recognisably her own. ‘I’ll ring the Diocesan Office in the morning. There won’t be anyone there now.’ How calm, how strong her voice sounded. Just as a vicar’s voice should. Her father would have been proud of her; the bishop would be impressed.

‘Oh no,’ Cass stuttered as another awful thought overwhelmed her – worse than the loss of her home, her possessions and her beloved cat. Her heart lurched and she felt sick to her stomach. ‘Oh Lord, how am I going to explain THIS to the bishop?’