If you’d been there you’d understand exactly why I stood up and told Harman what I thought of him. These fucking rich pricks like him and Noli Seymour never see what happens at Chapman Farm. They’re being used as recruitment tools and they’re too fucking dumb and arrogant to realise it.
The book’s stalled, so Roper Chard will probably drop me anyway. I’m dealing with a lot of stuff I think I repressed. There was a night when all the kids were given drinks that I now think must have been drugged. I’m having nightmares about the punishments. There are also big stretches of time where I can’t remember anything.
I can feel the presence of the Drowned Prophet all around me. If anything happens to me, she’ll have done it.
Kevin
Letters from Sir Colin and Lady Edensor to their son William
14 December 2015
Dear Will,
The doctors have now given Mum 3 months to live. I’m begging you to contact us. Mum’s tormented by the idea that she might never see you again.
Dad
14 December 2015
Darling Will,
I’m dying. Please, Will, let me see you. This is my dying wish. Please, Will. I can’t bear to leave this world without seeing you again. Will, I love you so very much and I always, always will. If I could hug you one more time I’d die happy.
Mum xxxxxxxxx
2 January 2016
Dear Will,
Mum died yesterday. The doctors thought she had longer. If you’re interested in attending her funeral, let me know.
Dad
February 2016
Private detective Cormoran Strike was standing in the corner of a small, stuffy, crowded marquee with a wailing baby in his arms. Heavy rain was falling onto the canvas above, its irregular drumbeat audible even over the chatter of guests and his newly baptised godson’s screams. The heater at Strike’s back was pumping out too much warmth, but he couldn’t move, because three blonde women, all of whom were around forty and holding plastic glasses of champagne, had him trapped while taking it in turns to shout questions about his most newsworthy cases. Strike had agreed to hold the baby ‘for a mo’ while the baby’s mother went to the bathroom, but she’d been gone for what felt like an hour.
‘When,’ asked the tallest of the blondes loudly, ‘did you realise it wasn’t suicide?’
‘Took a while,’ Strike shouted back, full of resentment that one of these women wasn’t offering to hold the baby. Surely they knew some arcane female trick that would soothe him? He tried gently bouncing the child up and down in his arms. It shrieked still more bitterly.
Behind the blondes stood a brunette in a shocking pink dress, who Strike had noticed back at the church. She’d talked and giggled loudly from her pew before the service had started, and had drawn a lot of attention to herself by saying ‘aww’ loudly while the holy water was being poured over the sleeping baby’s head, so that half the congregation was looking at her, rather than towards the font. Their eyes now met. Hers were a bright sea-blue, and expertly made up so that they stood out like aquamarines against her olive skin and long dark brown hair. Strike broke eye contact first. Just as the lopsided fascinator and slow reactions of the proud grandmother told Strike she’d already drunk too much, so that glance had told him that the woman in pink was trouble.
‘And the Shacklewell Ripper,’ said the bespectacled blonde, ‘did you actually
‘Sorry,’ said Strike, because he’d just glimpsed Ilsa, his godson’s mother, through the French doors leading into the kitchen. ‘Need to give him back to his mum.’
He manoeuvred past the disappointed blondes and the woman in pink and headed out of the marquee, his fellow guests parting before him as though the baby’s wails were a siren.
