The water in Ashley Lane had always tasted of secrets.
Not the poisonous kind, not at first. It was a clean, cold taste, drawn from a deep chalk aquifer that ran like a buried river beneath the old cobblestones. Old Man Hemlock, who’d lived in the crooked cottage at the lane’s dead end for eighty years, swore it was the best water in the county. “Puts hair on your chest and sense in your head,” he’d croak, filling his chipped enamel mug from the garden pump. ashley lane water
They buried Alice Fairfax in the little churchyard up the lane, with a headstone that read: Healer. Forgotten. Now Remembered. The water in Ashley Lane had always tasted of secrets