Free The Memory of Midnight by Pamela Hartshorne Page A

with Richard’s notes on editing conventions for the records. How to indicate text that had been omitted by the clerk, or that had been
deleted. Whether a fine was squeezed between lines, or words written in the left- or right-hand margin. Working steadily, Tess set them up on a clipboard, ready for her to start work the next
day.
    It was just the mindless task she needed, she decided, but as she worked she kept stopping to lift her head and listen to the silence. She couldn’t shake the conviction that it was
thickening, growing denser by the second, until it became a tangible thing that was creeping up behind her. Several times she actually glanced over her shoulder.
    Her palms were damp. She wiped them on her thighs, just as the shrill of the phone beside her ripped through the heavy silence without warning. Tess’s whole body jolted in shock, and it
was a moment before her lungs started to work again and she could remember how to breathe.
    Brrr, brrr. Brrr, brrr. Brrr, brrr.
    It had to be an emergency for someone to ring at this time of night. Tess stared at the phone as if it were a living thing, her heart still jerking frantically. It was Richard’s landline,
she realized. What if a relative was trying to get in touch with him? Shakily, she picked up the unfamiliar phone and struggled to focus. Her thumb was so unsteady that it took several goes before
she pressed the right button firmly enough to answer.
    ‘Hello?’ she croaked.
    In reply she could hear breathing, quiet and steady.
    ‘Hello?’
    Nothing, just a dull burring in her ear as the connection was cut and the line went dead.
    As dead as the dead of night.

Chapter Four
    ‘I didn’t tell Martin anything!’ Sue Frankland’s voice rose plaintively.
    ‘Then how did he know how to get in touch with me?’ Tess knuckled her eyes. They were gritty from lack of sleep. Oscar was safely at school, and she was walking back towards Monk
Bar, her mobile pressed to her ear.
    She should have known her mother would be the weak link.
    ‘For heaven’s sake, Theresa! You said there was nobody on the other end of the line. It was probably a wrong number.’
    ‘At half past three in the morning?’
    ‘Exactly. Why on earth would Martin ring you at that time and not say anything?’
    To scare me. To let me know that he knows exactly where I am.
    ‘I know it was him,’ said Tess stubbornly.
    She had a new mobile phone. She had changed her email address and shut down her Facebook account. She had done everything she could think of to cover her traces. And yet within a few hours of
her moving out of her mother’s house, somehow Martin had been able to find out Richard’s number, which meant he not only knew how to contact her, he knew where she was.
    If it
had
been him.
    Maybe it hadn’t. Even Martin couldn’t have access to that kind of information that quickly, could he?
    Could he?
    ‘Have you spoken to him at all?’ she asked her mother, who huffed and puffed and finally admitted that Martin had rung the night before.
    ‘So he knows we’re still in York?’
    ‘Of course he knows you’re still here. I had to tell him that, at least.’ Her mother sounded huffy. ‘Martin’s very concerned about you, Theresa, and about
Oscar.’ Sue was the only person apart from Martin who called her Theresa. ‘He’s Oscar’s father. He has a right to know where his son is.’
    ‘You said you didn’t tell him!’
    ‘There’s no need to snap. I didn’t give him your address, since you made such a fuss about it, but it was very awkward. I don’t know why you’ve got it into your
head that you can’t trust Martin. He was charm itself when he rang yesterday, even though I could tell how disappointed he was not to be able to talk to you.’
    ‘He
can
be charming when he wants to be,’ Tess said wearily. She was never going to convince her mother that Martin wasn’t the best thing that had ever happened to
her. And that was her fault. For the first