Disturbing Ground by Priscilla Masters

turn-out at her funeral. As the hearses crept towards the church people standing on the route dropped their eyes and the men doffed their caps. Catholics crossed themselves, Methodists muttered a prayer. Those with looser religious tendencies prayed for a peaceful soul while even the agnostics stopped whatever they were doing, eating chips, shopping, chattering on mobile phones to stand silently and watch the cars slide down the valley, a queue of motorists behind, some in black ties, others impatient to arrive at work. As the procession passed, the streets stilled for Bianca Rhys. In death she commanded more respect than she had probably ever been given in life. Megan trailed after the procession in her own car, shifting from second gear to first as they neared the church.
    The hearse halted in front of the double doors and the bearers shouldered the white plastic coffin.
     
    Carole Symmonds was amply supported by friends, relatives and neighbours. A stout woman wearing an elegant, wide brimmed hat helped her up the path. Megan followed slowly, deep in thought. Her own grandparents had been buried here, as had been many of her ex-patients. When she looked up again EstherMagellan was standing right in front of her, blocking her route. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you, doctor,” she began.
    Esther had dressed for the funeral. In a bright red hat with a floppy rim that at a guess had been bought from one of the charity shops, it looked like a remnant of the early seventies and battered enough. Purple leggings which sagged at the knee and a long, black T-shirt completed her funereal outfit. Esther was plump and amorphous with a lardy complexion and huge, beseeching eyes. And as always she wore a smear of bright red lipstick and face powder randomly applied, Megan suspected, without the aid of a mirror. Her hair was heavily henna’d, sawdust-dry, brittle and badly cut. Her eyes were pale blue and quite vacant but devoid of malice. She touched Megan’s arm timidly. “Bianca isn’t here today,” she said, “at least she is here in her body. And in her soul,” she added cheerfully. “She just isn’t here any more.” She touched her eye with a grubby handkerchief. “I don’t know how I’m going to manage without her. She was my friend.”
    Megan murmured something non-committal.
    “Perhaps I should have looked after her better.”
    Megan was swamped by the pathos of the situation. Esther was not capable of looking after herself. Let alone Bianca, with her attendant problems. “It wasn’t your fault that she died, Esther,” she said. “It was just an accident.”
    “That’s what they’re sayin’ but I wonder. Maybe it wasn’t an accident at all. Maybe somebody pushed her. She couldn’t swim, you see. She told me that - once.”
    “She didn’t need to swim. The pool was only shallow.”
    “Oh.” Esther opened her eyes wide, as though this was news to her.
    “You were her friend,” she continued happily. “Sheliked you. She thought you would make her better, stop her from hearing those nasty voices.”
    Megan nodded, again deliberately non-committal.
    “Bianca was clever,” Esther said suddenly. “She under stood things.” She grabbed Megan’s arm. “She did know things. Understand things. Things other people didn’t have the sense to realise. She could put two and two together and make …” she hesitated for a couple of seconds, her eyes shining with a vision, “… anything she wanted,” she finished happily. “Anything.”
    Megan looked back at Esther Magellan, who knew so little and understood less than half that. To her simple mind Bianca might have seemed wise. Knowing. Someone who knew things. But far back her mind prickled with some animal alertness as though primitive instinct had been evoked. “I’ll come and visit you tomorrow, Esther,” she said. “Late - after surgery.”
    Esther nodded and vanished through the swinging doors. Megan took her seat at the back. She was not