Free Death on Lindisfarne by Fay Sampson Page A

untouchable, that Christ would turn his back on her. Hope, like a tiny seed, was what Lucy had tried to sow.
    What could happen to Rachel if James smashed down that fragile growth?
    She was aware that Valerie was intervening, trying with her gentle voice to steer the session into calmer waters.
    â€œI expect that Rachel’s gone away to find some peace on her own. Didn’t I read somewhere that that’s what Aidan used to do? Even on Lindisfarne?”
    Lucy took her eyes away from the contempt on James’s face. She tried to bring her shaken thoughts under control.
    She threw Valerie a grateful smile. “Yes, you’re right. It’s something you read a lot about Celtic abbots. Columba on Iona, Kevin on Glendalough in Ireland, Aidan here. They needed a place where they could be alonewith God and lay the cares of the monastery at his feet. To become a spiritual child again, seeking help from their Father.
    â€œFor Aidan, in the great fast of Lent, it was one of the Farne Islands. Out there. You can hardly see them, they lie so flat against the sea. But you can make out the lighthouse, where Grace Darling and her father later rescued shipwrecked sailors in a rowing boat in a storm. We’ll talk more about Inner Farne when we get to St Cuthbert.
    â€œBut Aidan had a little sanctuary closer than Farne. Hobthrush Island, or St Cuthbert’s. Just a pile of rocks, and a bit of grass, cut off from Lindisfarne at high tide, just as Lindisfarne itself is cut off from the mainland. I can show you, if you like. It’s not far.”
    She felt an urgent need to be moving. To do something. She sensed that many of the group, too, were glad to lift themselves from wherever they had found dry stones to sit on. But it made everything so much more real to tell these stories where they actually happened. To fill your eyes with the same meadows and waves and beaches they had seen. To feel the same wind sharp against your skin and the spatter of rain that had been part of their daily life.
    But she knew that Fran Cavendish, at least, would have preferred the comfort of an armchair in the lounge. And David was probably looking forward to Mrs Batley’s Sunday roast.
    Elspeth must have had something of the same feeling. She hoisted her bulk off the shooting stick. “Lead on, then. Might as well work up an appetite for lunch.”
    As they walked down over the grass to the narrow beach, Lucy’s eyes were flitting from side to side, longing for a sighting of the elusive Rachel. The tide was falling. Could anything have made her so desperate that she would try to leave the island when the causeway opened?
    Peter shambled alongside her. “Do you want me to go and look for her?”
    Lucy badly wanted to say yes. But she shook her head and smiled bravely. “Let’s not start panicking yet. If I’m right, and James has been getting at her, she may need some time on her own. I try to help, but she doesn’t always want to talk to me.”
    â€œLet’s face it, Rachel doesn’t often want to talk to anyone.” His hands were in his pockets, head thrust against the breeze.
    â€œCheer up.” Lucy smiled. “You’ve been wonderful with her. Yesterday you had her singing in the car half the way up the motorway. I’ve rarely seen her look so happy. I thought we were getting somewhere. Then, once we got here, everything changed.”
    She remembered uneasily that there had been a different brightness about Rachel last night. Lucy had come back from the lounge to find her brilliant-eyed and defiant, refusing to say where she had been.
    â€œThere!” she called to the others. “That’s Hobthrush Island. The building you can see is Saxon, but it’s later than Aidan and Cuthbert.”
    A simple wooden cross marked the low spit of rock. Stone walls stood not far from it. The tide still ran between the litter of stones and seaweed that separated the islet