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given birth there; she had gone into labour over half a pint of Guinness and then been rushed off to hospital to give birth to Connie. The present owner of The Church Inn had a glass display case full of tiny sculptures of animals and little dolls, and he said that Prestwich had something to do with actual witches. Connie knew this to be untrue because she had written about Prestwich at school, and it was named after a priest’s dairy farm.
    Not many people paid attention to Connie on the morning of the wedding. Her hair had been cut to a short, brown bob the day before. Connie’s mini dress was a mass of psychedelic blue and lime-green swirls, to be slightly subdued by a pale-blue coat and blue shoes. Connie retreated to her bedroom, away from the palaver that her older sister and mother were making. They were frantically trying to alter her sister’s Biba wedding dress. Everything had been left to the last minute. Connie’s father, Raymond, had been sent off to take the wedding cake to The Church Inn.
    The wedding ceremony itself was a hurried, ushered-in affair; the usual relatives whom Connie hardly knew and would not see until the next family occasion, wedding, christening, or funeral. The turnout was small because it was a winter wedding and a few had made their excuses that it was too cold to attend and stand about for photos, and suchlike.
    After the brief ceremony, most got lifts or took a taxi to the pub where the real celebration started. Connie was small enough to dodge most of the relatives but the occasional one would catch sight of the swirl of blue and lime-green and ask her if she liked school or perhaps The Beatles. Connie didn’t bother to tell them that she liked Pink Floyd instead, although she had tried to tell her auntie a few months earlier that she used to like The Beatles, only her auntie had changed the conversation to school again. Connie was beginning to think that school was all adults could talk to children about.
    After the meagre buffet, and bored by the fact that she was the only child at the wedding (her sister, Penny, was pregnant but Connie wasn’t interested in that), she looked about for something to do. She looked at the silent jukebox and thought about asking her mother if she could put it on but her mother was deep in discussion with two older women, and Connie knew better than to interrupt those family conversations. Penny’s new husband, Jim, sat next to his young bride. He looked sheepish and was downing pints as if there was no tomorrow.
     
    It grew dark early at that time of year. Connie stared out of The Church Inn window. If she was going to go across to the churchyard to see the gravestones she would have to do it before it was too dark to see anything. She still hadn’t found the oldest one. Shifting quietly through her relatives and avoiding her father, who was leaning against the bar looking absently in the opposite direction, Connie scooted out of the main entrance across some cobbles, and into St. Mary’s churchyard.
    St. Mary the Virgin Parish Church was well off the main road and situated in a cul-de-sac. The graveyard had been her playground for most of the summer. The vicar had told her about one coat of arms that was high up inside the church. She had been attracted to it because on it was a carving of a mermaid and the vicar told her that the motto of the Prestwich family to which it belonged was “In God have I put my trust.” Connie didn’t know if she should really trust anyone, including God.
    From her house in Clough Walks she could get straight onto the pathway, through the woodland and up to the graveyard. Her mum trusted her out in the Clough and Connie never worried her mother about the bad men.
    The gravestones intrigued Connie. She once found what she had thought to be the oldest, but her brother teased her that it wasn’t and so she was still determined to find it. She thought the oldest was 1665. The family of Thomas Collier had died in