A big part of Orla’s A-level coursework was a spectacular multimedia presentation on the evolution of popular music.  Her parents were pleased as punch.  They told people they’d always encouraged her interest in culture.

Amy’s parents told her that periodically checking in on Irene at her foster parents’ place was DEFINITELY the wrong thing to do.  The girl was clearly unhinged.  None of them knew what had really gone on that night- how did they know that she hadn’t hacked her father to death and then hidden up the tree to play innocent?  Why couldn’t Amy leave well enough alone?  

(In later years, Amy would look back on this as the point where she started to wonder why she’d ever listened to them in the first place.)

During Unity’s second year of university, her grandmother died, and, good as her word, left Unity the house.  Not long afterwards, Unity’s parents invited her down to theirs for dinner.  It had been a long time, they said.  There was a lot to talk about.

Unity thought she knew what this was about.  She remembered what her grandmother had told her to do if her parents tried to get hold of the house, and decided again that she wouldn’t be able to do it, no matter how bad things got.  You didn’t burn things down after you’d spent years fixing them.

When she got there, however, things didn’t go as expected.  Unity’s parents hung on her every word, asking for stories from university or from her job.  They were proud of her, they said.  She was making a life for herself.

Opposite Unity, her sister seemed to shrink into herself.

As the night wore on and Unity’s parents drank more and more wine, things got nastier.  They’d picked the wrong one, they told each other.  They’d had an honest girl and a liar.  They’d had a grafter and a lazy piece of shit.  

Unity should have pushed back against it more than she did.  She found herself tongue-tied, caught between the way things had always been and the way they seemed to be tonight.  But when her sister ran out of the house in tears, Unity snapped out of it and ran after her.

By the time Unity got outside, her sister was nowhere to be seen.  Unity got into her car and drove off to look for her.  For hours and hours, she had no luck.  And then she passed the hill with the Witch’s Tree at the top.

There was a shadow under the lowest branch.  Something was hanging from it.

Unity’s first thought was to try and ram the tree over with her car… but she knew that by the time she managed to drive up that steep hill, it would be too late.  Her second thought was that if she had a hammer or a set of pliers, she could use it to wrench the branch from the trunk… but she didn’t.  So instead, she got out of the car and ran.

Later on, the paramedics said that it was practically a miracle.  If Unity’s sister had tied the knot properly…. If the branch hadn’t already been weakened by woodworm…. If Unity hadn’t managed to hit exactly the right spot with all her weight…

The branch came down, taking Unity’s sister and a big strip of bark with it.  Unity heard her gasp for breath, and called the ambulance.  She didn’t notice how much damage she’d done to the tree until a few minutes later, as she turned around to get back into her car and follow the ambulance to hospital.  She felt a little guilty- it was clearly an old, magnificent-looking tree, and it looked as if she’d practically peeled it to the core.  But she didn’t regret what she’d done.  Her parents might have been wrong about her sister being more important than her, but Unity was pretty sure that she was more important than a tree.

The End