Fabric of Sin Read Online Free PDF

less. Rachel, the woman who took Fuchsia, she was this earth-mother type, done it before. I mean, it was that kind of place. Fuchsia was a child of the tribe, kind of thing. We thought Mary was gonner come back – she said she’d been offered a job, good money and she’d be back for the kid. The social services tried to find her, got nowhere. So it ended up with Rachel adopting Fuchsia, or fostering her, whatever. And I kept in touch, kind of thing. Helped out. Sent money.’
    ‘You left when it was clear that Fuchsia’s mother wasn’t going to come back?’
    ‘No, no, what happened, my ole feller died suddenly, I had to sort things out. He had a builder’s yard, my dad. I sold it after a bit, went to work for a firm of conservation builders. Learning the trade, kind of thing. Then went on my own, built up a business. Got married, got divorced. Then Fuchsia showed up.’
    ‘What, just appeared?’
    ‘We’d put her through art college, see.’
    ‘
You
had?’
    ‘Had the money by then, Mrs Watkins. Why not? I mean, I never meant for this … for us to be like, you know, how it’s turned out. She just arrived one day, and she was interested in what I was doing, the conservation work, and she hadn’t got a job …’
    ‘She went to work for you, before there was any … relationship?’
    ‘That was how it started, aye.’ Felix wiped his mouth with the back of a hand. ‘I call her my plasterer – what she does really is mouldings, recreates original colours, experiments with limewashes. She just loves the feel of plaster.’
    ‘I see.’
    ‘Look, Mrs Watkins, I’m under no illusions about how long it’s gonner last, but we’re rebuilding that—’ Felix nodded towards the barn. ‘It was a ruin, and I’m determined to make it into a proper home for her. Like an ancestral home, kind of thing, for the ancestry she’ll never have. She reads all these stories about folks living in country houses, and if I can give her that, things might be … good. For a while.’
    ‘You never heard from her mother again?’
    ‘Not a word.’
    ‘You’d never tried to find her?’
    ‘Didn’t know where to start. No idea where she was from. She had a bit of a Brummie accent, I remember, and she was mixed race – one of them must’ve been black. Fuchsia reckons she’s dead.’
    ‘Why does she think that?’
    ‘Just a feeling. There’s this kind of tribal mysticism in Tepee City, and she had a period of building fires in a clearing in the wood and looking for Mary in the smoke. Now she just mopes around ole churches and reads ghost stories. I was hoping, when the barn was finished, it’d be some kind of stability.’
    Merrily looked at him, saying nothing. There was a sadness here. A longing, but also a realistic suspicion that it wasn’t going to work out.
    ‘If you can take away the fear,’ Felix said. ‘If you could just do that … you know?’
    ‘You think it’s more than just this place – the Master House.’
    ‘Look, I don’t
know
. I believe something happened to her in that place, I just don’t know if it’s … in her mind. I don’t know, Mrs Watkins. I accept that these things go on.’
    ‘What I mean is, you have a feeling for houses, but nothing seems to have … I mean for you …’
    ‘It didn’t have anything to say to me, good or bad. What I usually do, if a place is blocking me, is I’ll spend a night inside, in a sleeping bag. You wake up in a house, you can somehow get a proper feel of it. I might’ve got round to that, but … she didn’t want me to. Look, I know what you’re thinking, but … it’s just a job. Just money.’
    ‘Right. Erm … why’s it called the Master House, do you know?’
    ‘Not really. Bloke I spoke to said it goes back to the Templars who built Garway church. They had masters and grand masters, apparently. It
could
be old enough, I found fourteenth-century bits, maybe older.’
    ‘Did you ask anybody if it was supposed to be haunted? Anybody