The Crows

4:1 The Grande Dame

• In which Beverley returns the Green Man and Carrie gets suspicious •

19 April

Carrie decided against mentioning Beverley Wend's invitation to Mercy. Mercy seemed kind, frank and earnest, everything Becky and Jess had been. Carrie had already made that mistake once.

Besides, although Mercy's advice had been sincerely meant, every town had its scapegoats, every community had That Family. As an outsider, as much as she hated that designation, Carrie could approach people with an open mind. At least, that's what she spent the day telling herself, avoiding the obvious knot in this line of thinking: maybe Mercy was exactly what she seemed, and Carrie should stop projecting.

After work, armed with her Maps app that seemed to know how to get to Sea View Road without sending her over a cliff, she made it to Beverley Wend's cottage on time and without mishap. She took this as a good omen.

Set back from the road in the last crook of trees crowding around the lanes, Wundorwick was not the fairy-tale dwelling Carrie had imagined. It was a smart, two-storey detached house of dressed stone, matching curtains at all the lower windows and blinds upstairs. Carrie smirked at her own misgivings. The garden gate looked new, but the scream of its protesting hinges made her wince as she pushed it open.

Beverley Wend opened the front door before she was halfway up the path, looking like a model from a style-for-the-over-sixties catalogue. A ginger tom-cat stalked out from under her long, high-waisted skirt, bottlebrush tail held high. He looked at Carrie with imperious disdain and streaked up the apple tree to leap onto the roof.

"That's Toffee, the little devil," Mrs Wend said, as Carrie approached.

Carrie wasn't a cat person, but she tried. "That's a cute name. He's lovely."

Mrs Wend snorted. "Don't let him fool you. It's short for Mephistopheles." She beckoned her in. "Come in, dear. I've put the kettle on."

Sheila Azeman's warning punched its way into Carrie's mind.

Don't drink the tea.

"Thank you," Carrie said, wondering if she should take it seriously. "Wundorwick? That's an interesting name."

Mrs Wend followed her gaze to the sign on the wall. "Old English, with a little poetic licence. Roughly, it means 'wonder house'. Everyone needs a little bit of wonder in their lives, don't they?" She gave Carrie a smile. "Come in, I've got a casserole in the oven."

"Could I get a glass of water, please?"

Mrs Wend patted her arm, squeezing a little unnecessarily, and led her inside. "Of course. This way."

Mrs Wend's living room was a gallery of amateur portraits and photographs. There were oils and watercolours of adults and children of various ages, all bearing some family resemblance: the nose, the cheekbones or the shape of the eyes. The framed photographs showed how closely the sitters had been captured.

One old photograph caught Carrie's attention. It was of a young, pale girl in a dark dress, straw boater set winsomely on her tight ringlets, standing by a rose bush. She was staring up at the camera with a hooded expression, a twisted smile of secret knowledge on her face. There was something malevolent about it that sent a chill up Carrie's spine.

"That's me, before I became Mrs Wend," Mrs Wend said, peering over Carrie's shoulder and making her jump. "Beverley Pendle I was then. I couldn't be more than, oh, eighteen there. These are my sisters." She pointed out a portrait of two girls, clearly an amateur's early attempt but showing promise in the passages of paint. The perspective was a little off, but they told a story of a quiet girl with sad eyes and a proud, younger girl with a strong jaw. It was the swirling background that made Carrie uneasy, as if the painter had been trying to capture something they couldn't quite see, something reaching for the girls with writhing, pale green coils.