The Sea Gate

by Jane Johnson

The door creaks as I open it. I push the shelving units clear of the door and manoeuvre another paint pot across the cellar floor, making sure the tunnel door is also securely wedged open. Then, with my torch beam playing alternately on the rough walls and the uneven stairs of the tunnel, I descend into the darkness to where the bone tapped me on the shoulder.

  Is it my imagination, or is it even colder in here than it was last time? Is that my breath I can see in the air, or the remnants of some early morning mist that has drifted up from the cove? My muscles feel tightened by fear, by the anticipation of what may be lurking down here, and my brain is constricted by the weight of everything it may mean. I run the torchlight over the spot where the bone fell from. The wall appears to comprise irregular blocks of some sort of grey stone that may be slate and compacted earth. Here and there small pebbles are embedded, some dark chunks, others paler than the surrounding bedrock. There is no immediate sign of any other part of a hand, or of the body to which it was once attached. On the ground, though, there is some debris to mark the spot where it fell to earth – a scatter of soil and tiny stones, but no other bones. I move a step further down and examine the wall there, which is completely solid and undisturbed. I go back up a step.

  I touch the tip of the trowel to the wall and a little more soil crumbles away. Scrape, scrape: more earth and a spill of tiny pebbles. The sound they make as they skitter down onto the steps is whispery, eldritch, and I shiver. When I dig a little deeper there is a sudden small gush of debris and I leap out of the way in terror: what if I bring the whole wall down? I dash back up the stairs, shaking with dread, but no collapse follows and I make myself go back to examine the wall and shine the torch into the small hole I have made, but there is nothing to be seen but rock and earth.

  My shoulders drop with relief. Perhaps the bone is just a tiny remnant of a bygone age. Perhaps it was just a buried finger! The result of an accident, or some arcane punishment. Being honest with myself, I must admit that I don’t really want to know, because the more I know, the more I will be implicated if this all comes to light. But then, I reason, if there’s nothing important to be known, I can go ahead with the renovations. Inter the bone out in the orchard, maybe even say a few words over it for what good it will do, and get Reda and his brother to carry out Olivia’s instructions and think no more about it.

  I play the torch one last time over the wall, and still see nothing incriminating. I do the same with the opposite wall and find it safely and innocently solid.

  Right, then. I scurry back up to the cellar and lock the tunnel door against the darkness and flee back up into the house, turn off the light and breathe.

  Then I walk into the village, take a bus to Penzance and hire a Renault Clio from the cheapest hire company I can find.

  *

  I do not drive the car directly back to London, which is probably what I should do (if the old banger would make it that far). Instead I drive to Truro, tackling the bends and roundabouts with rather more care than Rosie Sparrow. I am fuelled by determination, though my moral compass spins between panic and common sense. Just ignore it and get on with the practical work, my common-sense voice tells me; but panic interrupts: Your cousin is a murderer and she’s making you an accomplice after the fact!

  One way or another, I must get to the bottom of this mystery, must persuade the old woman to be honest with me, so that I can proceed with a clear conscience; or run away and preserve myself.

  But as I enter the ward and present myself at the nurse’s station a doctor who was bent over the computer screen straightens up and asks if I am Olivia Kitto’s next of kin. A bolt of cold electricity jolts through me. ‘Is she OK?’ I ask, fearing the worst, and quickly confirm that I am indeed designated as her next of kin.

  ‘Would you mind if I ask you a few questions?’

  She leads me to a little side room, and closes the door behind me. This feels ominous. I do not sit down.

  ‘We ran tests on Mrs Kitto and some of the results were a little strange,’ the doctor says, leaning back against the deck, and some of my fear evaporates. She has grey shadows under her eyes. I wonder how long she’s been on call. ‘So I wondered if I might ask you a couple of questions about her lifestyle?’

  ‘Lifestyle?’ Whatever could she mean? Her haphazard living arrangements, the filth in the house, her penchant for digestive biscuits?

  ‘Tell me, does Mrs Kitto have a history of drinking?’

  ‘What, like an alcoholic?’ There isn’t even a corkscrew in Chynalls: I’d bought a bottle of Merlot from the local shop and had to push the cork in with a hammer and a bit of kindling: amazing how the need for wine can drive you to invention.

  ‘Not necessarily. Lots of things can cause the liver’s function to be impaired, but of course alcohol is the first thing we check for. We asked Mrs Kitto, but—’

  ‘I can imagine.’ I smile. ‘But no, I don’t think she drinks at all.’

  ‘We were concerned that it might be cancer or NAFLD’ – she unpacks this for me as ‘non-alcoholic fatty liver disease’– ‘but when we scanned her we couldn’t find evidence of either.’ She shrugs. ‘Every body’s full of secrets, and she’s in remarkably good shape for her age. We’ve put her on some medication and we’ll keep an eye on her. We’ve explained all this to her but she’s quite—’

  ‘Irascible?’

  The doctor laughs. ‘Bloody-minded was what I was going to say.’

  We grin at one another like conspirators and abruptly I feel disloyal. ‘She’s very independent. I don’t think she takes well to being cooped up.’

  ‘If we can stabilize her and she passes her assessments she can go home. Once the works have been carried out. Social services will take over from us at that point, and they may be able to provide a certain degree of support, but I think when Mrs Kitto does go home she’s likely to require full-time care.’ Her shadowed eyes fix me with a penetrating gaze.

  ‘Well, I’m not going anywhere,’ I find myself saying, and feel myself go hot, then cold.

  She leans forward to squeeze my arm. ‘I’m so glad. Despite everything, we’ve become very fond of her.’ Then she is all business again and ushers me back to the ward.

  At the door, I excuse myself, and flee to the toilets. I sit on the hard plastic seat inside a cubicle with my throbbing head on my knees. What was I thinking? My life is in London. Eddie is in London. My consultant and his team are in London. And there may be a corpse buried under Olivia’s house.

  I dig into my handbag and roll some of the lavender stress-relief oil I keep there over my pulse points, losing myself in the scent for a minute or two. I am not committed to anything, I tell myself. I have all sorts of good excuses for not doing this.

  Just take it a day at a time, darling. Don’t run at everything like a bull at a gate.

  My mother was always coming out with things like this. She knew me too well, knew how easily I let myself become panicked and over-stressed. And again I remember Evie calling me ‘so fragile’ and James recalling how Mum used the excuse that I already had ‘enough on my plate’ for not telling me she was ill. I roll my shoulders and get to my feet. It’s time to take some responsibility for a change, to try to do some good in the world, to help my elderly cousin as I was never able to help my own mother. I push the thought of the bone away. Of course Olivia has not killed someone and buried them under Chynalls. Of course it’s historic, and maybe not even human.

  Yes, you tell yourself that, Becky.

  *

  ‘So we thought we could make a hole in the wall in your sitting room to lead into the old scullery and put your new bathroom in there, then you won’t have far to go to get to the loo. And we’ll make the doorway wide enough for a wheelchair—’

  ‘What nonsense! I don’t need a wheelchair!’

  I glance at her cast, which she seems to have forgotten. In the corner of the cubicle is a walking frame that the nurses tell me she refuses to use now that the break has knitted.

>   We talk for a time about the practicalities of the build and she uses my phone to call her bank manager in Penzance. There is a lot of back and forth, during which she says, ‘Power of attorney?’ in response to something he has just said. ‘Of course I’m not giving her power of attorney: I haven’t entirely lost my marbles.’ I stifle a chuckle.

  There appears to be back-tracking at the other end of the phone and explanations no doubt as to why these formalities are necessary, before Olivia cuts him off with, ‘I’ve banked with you for over seventy years. When your father worked in the branch he had a rather ill-advised affair with a friend of mine.’

  A passing nurse catches my eye at this bellowed declaration. It soon transpires that the bank manager is sufficiently convinced that Olivia is indisputably herself and acting of her own free will, so is prepared to sidestep the usual security requirements. He must have said something about losing his job if anyone finds out, for Olivia says loudly, ‘Don’t be such a wimp! Things were different in my day.’ She thrusts the phone at me.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ I say into the phone. We agree a time for a meeting, then I cut the call and raise my eyebrows at my cousin, but she is entirely unrepentant. ‘It’s my blasted money,’ she says mutinously.

  Just as I am about to frame a response to this my phone buzzes and I see I have a text from a number I don’t recognize. When I open it I see it’s from Reda, along with a photo of him with another man, a bit balder and wider, who must be his brother, giving me the thumbs-up: Mohamed has accepted the job.

  ‘It’s from the builders,’ I say.

  ‘I hope you’re not using Saul and Ezra,’ Olivia says fiercely.

  I can’t help smiling.

  ‘That’s a very secretive smile.’

  ‘Look,’ I say, angling the phone towards her. ‘This is Mohamed – he’s the builder I found – and his brother, Reda, who’s the plumber. They’ve just texted to say they’re going to do the work for you.’

  Olivia looks at the photo for a long time without saying anything and I can’t help but brace myself for the inevitable racist remark, but she doesn’t say anything. I lean over her shoulder. ‘They’re Moroccan,’ I tell her.

  Olivia is fiddling with the screen so that the image shifts in and out of focus. ‘Oh, these wretched things!’ she huffs. ‘I can’t be doing with these modern gadgets.’

  I expand the view for her and Olivia brings the phone up almost to her nose. ‘Would you like your reading glasses?’ I ask, but she shakes her head.

  ‘Moroccan, you say? Not Algerian?’

  ‘From Oujda, Reda said that’s in Morocco.’ Belatedly I remember him saying something about Algerian cousins, but it seems too complicated to add.

  She sits up a bit straighter. ‘I went to Morocco once, you know.’

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘I rode a camel through the desert.’ She looks wistful, then intensely sad.

  ‘I’d love to hear about your adventures. I remember you said in your letter to Mum that you walked across a desert.’

  She shoots me a look. ‘Have you been reading my correspondence? It’s private! Nothing to do with you. Where’s your mother? She should be here!’

  I shake my head, rendered wordless.

  ‘Oh yes, she’s dead. I remember now. Not going doolally, not quite yet. Oh well, we all decline to dust, don’t we?’ She gives a great sigh, then asks briskly, ‘And how is Gabriel?’

  ‘He’s doing very well.’ I tell her about his antics and make her laugh, then dig into my bag and bring out the string of beads.

  ‘I didn’t find your locket, but I did find these.’

  Olivia stares at it, then snatches it out of my grasp.

  ‘Reda told me it’s a misbaha. He says they’re Muslim prayer beads.’ I watch her but she closes her eyes as if deliberately cloaking her thoughts. I wait for her to open them but a minute later she starts to snore. Cartoon snoring – the snort, the pause, the whiffle. To test her, I touch the string of beads as if I might take them back again, and as soon as I do, her fingers close over them.

  You old fraud, I think, rather admiringly.

  I get up, gather my things, push my chair back out of the way, making sure she can hear all this preparation for departure, then walk away, letting my flip-flops clack loudly against the soles of my feet. At the ward’s door, I stop, step aside and look back. For a long moment Olivia does not move and I begin to think I may have misjudged her, then she lifts the misbaha and lays her cheek upon it. Her shoulders jerk: she is crying.

  *

  A few days later I drive the Renault Clio into Penzance for my appointment with Olivia’s bank manager.

  As I wait outside his office I very much hope he won’t take his affront at Cousin Olivia’s rudeness out on me. I haven’t always had a good relationship with banks: for me it was a relief when the system became depersonalized.

  The door opens to reveal a tall, thin, ascetic-looking man of sixtyish, with swept-back silver hair and a pair of half-moon spectacles halfway down his nose. He looks like a kindly consultant, the one come to break bad news as gently as possible. He ushers me inside, looking down the corridor and closing the door quickly behind me, as if engaged in some illicit action.

  ‘This is very out of the ordinary,’ he tells me as we both sit down with his big paper-covered desk between us.

  ‘It is Olivia Kitto we’re talking about,’ I say, with a smile to indicate I know what he’s up against.

  ‘Indeed. She is… rather a force of nature.’

  ‘She’s asked me to take over paying her bills. I have her cheque book, but some companies don’t take cheques any more, so I’m not sure how she’s been managing.’

  He runs a hand through his hair. ‘She used to come in every week or so and take out cash to pay them in person, but these companies have gone online now, so after that she would come into the branch and have one of the team help her on the computer.’ He sighs. ‘It was very time-consuming, but she simply wouldn’t learn how to do it for herself like everyone else. The problem is now, Miss Young… well, has she not let you read the correspondence?’

  I look at him blankly. ‘What correspondence?’

  ‘We’ve been sending her letters for about six months now, but she hasn’t been replying.’

  ‘How’s she been paying her bills? The utilities are all still on at the house, so I imagine she must have been somehow.’

  He leans forward, and all but whispers, ‘Rosie Sparrow.’

  I nod. ‘Oh. OK. So she’s been getting Rosie to come in.’

  The bank manager shakes his head impatiently. ‘No, no. Rosie has been paying the bills herself.’

  I feel my eyebrows shoot up. ‘Really? I thought Rosie was her cleaner? How can she afford to do that?’

  Now he looks agonized, then says, ‘I’m afraid there have been some irregularities in your cousin’s account. I took the liberty of printing off her current statement.’ He pushes a couple of pieces of A4 across the desk towards me.

  I pick them up and scan them. I hate bank statements, but I know an overdraft when I see one. I gaze up at him, aghast.

  ‘We’ve honoured her outgoings so far, but I’ve been writing for the past few months to say that we really can’t continue to do so. She is way, way over any permissible overdraft level for a woman of her age without a regular salary or assets.’

  My head is spinning as I try to process this. ‘But what about the house? Could she not…’ I dig for the grown-up words. ‘… apply for equity release?’

  ‘We did send a chap around to value the property, but he came away saying she wouldn’t let him in – in fact he said she was rather rude to him – and that the place was falling down around her ears, so he couldn’t recommend it as collateral.’

  I take a deep breath. ‘We’re addressing the state of the house – putting in a proper bathroom, mending drains and windows…’ I look at the bank statement again, then turn it over. There is the debit for the cheque O
livia gave me, but there is no sign of the one I gave Mohamed and Reda to start the work. I look again. ‘Um, how long does it usually take for a cheque to clear?’

  He pauses. ‘If there are sufficient funds in the account, usually three or four days, sometimes a little longer.’

  ‘I gave the builders a cheque for two thousand pounds,’ I say, dreading his response.

  He looks down at his desk. ‘Ah. Yes, well that is a bit of a problem. Of course, if you were to put a stop to… ah… certain outgoings from the account and make sure she’s getting all the benefits she’s surely entitled to, I might find a way for such a sum to be honoured.’ He nods at the paper I hold in my hand. My eye is drawn by the regular appearance of a number of noughts – three thousand pounds paid out on the fourth day of every month. To the account of Mrs R. Sparrow. My head comes up.

  ‘Three thousand pounds? For cleaning and gardening?’

  ‘Indeed,’ he says grimly.

  ‘But that’s criminal!’

  ‘Miss Kitto herself validated the payments.’

  I stare at him. ‘I don’t understand.’

  He gives me a tight smile. ‘Neither do I. It’s why I’ve written to her several times, but she has replied to none of my letters. Maybe you can find out what’s going on.’

  ‘Can I cancel the standing order?’ I ask after a pause while I try to take in the enormity of it all. How will we pay for the work to the house? If Olivia can’t return to her own house will she have to go into a home? And if she does, will we have to pay the fees? What if we have to sell the house? It all seems terrifying and cruel, endless ramifications piling up into a huge black thunderhead cloud.

  ‘Yes,’ he says slowly. ‘But be prepared for repercussions.’

  Sitting in the hire car in the car park off Causewayhead, I wonder what he means by this, and find I am trembling. Suddenly, I am afraid to go back to Chynalls, afraid to see the lovely builders and face their dismay. I cannot not tell them. There are people who teeter through life on the brink of financial ruin, brazenly lying, borrowing wildly, buoyed by the phrase ‘it’s only money’. I am not one of them. All my life money has been tight: I have worried how I will pay every bill, let alone cope with unforeseen emergencies. Money – or lack of it – keeps me awake at night.