The Other Girl

by C D Major

  Edith could just make out Donna’s pout in the dark before she started to laugh.

  Edith’s eyes darted to Martha, who was fidgeting next to the bed, her hand up near the broken shutter, weak moonlight on her palm. ‘Let’s get on with it,’ she said in a burst.

  ‘Don’t rush me.’ Donna’s head snapped to the side; Martha was quickly silent once more. Her focus went back to Edith. ‘So come on, lie down now, I’ve got something for you.’

  Edith felt her breathing quicken again. If she did what she was told it would be over. Patricia had never done what she was told. She wriggled down quickly, pausing for a second before reaching to pull her nightdress over her head.

  Edith lay, pale in the dark, her fingers itching to snatch the blanket back. Donna held her breath, as if she was waiting for something.

  Martha had moved across the room and for a second Edith thought she was leaving. Then she returned, something dangling from her left hand.

  ‘Head down,’ Donna instructed before Edith could see what it was. A rope? The panic spread again, her insides lurching.

  Martha leaned across her now, the item a strip of some kind of cloth, like a man’s tie, and covered her eyes. The dark room disappeared into nothingness.

  ‘Good girl,’ crooned Donna, stroking the inside of her arm so that Edith felt nausea swirl inside her.

  Every sound seemed louder; the pressure on the mattress, the movement by the bed; she strained to hear and feel it all. What would she do to her? She imagined the fingers in the milky water of the bath, on her chest.

  Something soft: a whisper on her cheek, tickling her flesh, making goosebumps spring up on her bare arms. Breath caught in her chest as the tickling moved from her face down her neck, like a soft feather duster, along her collarbone.

  ‘We knew you’d like your present,’ Donna said, her voice sounding wobbly as if she was about to burst with the next words.

  Then, with no warning, a weight on her chest: heavy, furry, stiff, sticky. Edith gasped, hands flying up to remove the blindfold, her whole body bucking to remove the thing. A hand pressed it to her, something dug into her skin, scratching her. A smell, a terrible rotting smell. Bucking, bucking, get it off, get it off.

  Laughter.

  A worried voice: ‘She’s too loud.’

  The sounds faded as everything became about the thing on her chest, on her stomach. Wet liquid, the smell. She was whimpering, she knew it.

  ‘Donna.’ A hiss.

  Fur, claws. Her insides about to explode with the fear.

  Then suddenly the weight was gone, a hand over her mouth, another pulling at the cloth over her ears. ‘Shut up.’

  Her chest rising, falling, rising, falling.

  ‘Stop fucking breathing like that.’

  ‘Donna.’ A hiss.

  A footstep.

  From outside the room. The mattress lightening, figures melting away.

  A bunch of keys jangling and a lone voice. Then the latch clicking, a torch shining on to her bed, Edith staring wide-eyed at the beam, sweat beading her top lip, her hairline. Reaching for her blanket to cover herself up.

  Where were they? Silhouettes pressed into the corners of the room. What if she shone the light there?

  ‘You making that noise, Edith?’ Deputy Matron’s voice.

  ‘I . . .’ What if she shone a light in the corners? What would happen then? Would they all be in trouble? Would she help her? ‘I . . .’ She swallowed, feeling the panic rise, clutching her blanket. ‘A bad dream . . .’

  ‘Get back to sleep.’

  The torch moved away, the door closing, Edith’s fingers still clutching the bedclothes as the latch clicked, signalling the missed moment.

  They all waited in the dark, Edith wondering for a second whether it had been a nightmare, a hideous nightmare that Deputy Matron had interrupted.

  Then she heard the whisper. ‘Let’s go; I can’t get caught.’

  ‘Relax.’

  ‘I want to get out. I’ve only got a few years left, my boy will be . . .’

  ‘Shut up about your boy.’

  Silence.

  Edith still lying there, too frightened to shift position, to call out. Would they cover her eyes again? Where was the heavy weight now?

  A figure loomed over her, making her cringe back into her pillow. ‘Well, this has been fun,’ whispered Donna, one finger running down her cheek.

  Then she was gone, footsteps on the wood, Martha exhaling as she moved, too. A key turning, a slight breeze and then a few words drifting into the room as they left: ‘Sleep tight, Edie, hope the dead cat doesn’t bite.’

  Chapter 40

  NOW

  Declan’s head was crammed, heavy with facts and lack of sleep as he drove back along the coastal road towards Seacliff, the sun low, a weak orange, about to be lost behind a thick bank of cloud sitting stubbornly on the horizon. The shadows lengthened as he drove out of Oamaru, his whole world altered. It had been the longest day.

  He was still replaying the moment he had pushed into the local police station first thing that morning, approached the desk where a man sat groggily cupping a cooling mug of coffee in his hands; the policeman’s expression shifting as he reached into the bag and gently lowered the bone down on to the counter, morphing from an early morning sleepiness to wrinkled confusion to revulsion in a few seconds. He looked at Declan with narrowed eyes, scraping his chair back to stand up.

  Then it had been a whirlwind of activity as he had explained what the bone was, where the rest of the body could be found. The policeman had picked up the telephone, holding the receiver to his mouth as he was connected to his superior. Declan had yet to explain how he had known where to dig. There was a pause as he imagined the man arresting him; it hadn’t occurred to him that he might be a suspect. That he might be leading them all to his victim. They had been in a motorcar moments later, Declan sitting next to him in the front.

  They were met by another motorcar half an hour later: three more men, a pathologist and two other policemen. The group shook hands and Declan spoke quickly to them before leading them into the cluster of trees, the policemen exchanging looks as they followed Declan in silence. One of the older policemen remembered the case: a runaway, case closed, but some of the family had made him wonder.

  The tide had been high and they struggled to make it down to the mouth of the cave, picking their way round rocks, water spraying over their ankles as they clutched the edges of the cliffside.

  ‘We could wait an hour or so, for a lower tide,’ one of the policemen said, but Declan pressed on, dropping on to the strip of sand and hurrying towards the mouth of the cave, his boots, already wet, sinking into the soaked sand as he did so. For a crazy second he imagined approaching the back of the cave, the flat rock, and seeing nothing but a smooth surface of shingle, no evidence of anything at all; or a series of holes, all empty, as if the day before had happened only in his mind. Then he remembered the weight of the bone in his hands that morning. He approached the rock, saw the handle of his shovel sticking up in the grey morning light.

  Slowly he approached the grave, noting his hurried attempts to cover it again when he had left the day before. He could make out a long, dark clump of brown hair he had missed. The rest of the policemen gathered behind him, a small, silent semicircle. One man removed his hat. They were still for a moment, all contemplating what they were looking at. This wasn’t petty theft, break-ins or their usual fare, and Declan felt a momentary flood of sympathy for them. This would be something none of them would ever forget.

  The pathologist placed his bag on top of the rock and started issuing instructions. One policeman had stumbled to the mouth of the cave clutching his stomach, was being sick into the shallow water. Another glanced nervously over at him. The pathologist raised an eyebrow at Declan, a look between two professionals: Declan realised he was a long way from the scared student he had been before. There was no nausea now, not when the remains were the very proof he nee
ded to free her.

  Once a large part of the torso had been revealed, Declan turned to the pathologist who was recording notes on a pad, squinting in the poor light.

  ‘When was the body buried?’ Declan asked him.

  The pathologist shrugged. ‘Very hard to tell at this stage, but the sand is damp so decomposition has been slower. You can see places where the skin is still intact, the clothing is brittle, but there . . .’

  ‘Would the end of the Great War sound right? Early 1920s?’ Declan asked, attempting to keep his voice light.

  All the policemen looked up at that, and Declan tried to focus only on the pathologist’s face.

  He was shrugging. ‘That might not be a bad estimate,’ he said. ‘But obviously I’ll know more when we take the body back to examine it.’

  Declan spoke to the policeman he had driven over with and they moved away, giving a simultaneous breath of relief as they ducked under and out of the cave. The tide was further out and they managed to get back up the cliffside with relative ease, largely silent for the walk back to the motorcar, sand sticking to their shoes, the hem of their trousers, watermarks on the material.

  Signs had been erected already, an ambulance to transport the remains had been summoned and the area was sealed off to any wandering hikers. A local journalist had appeared next to the haphazard arrangement of motorcars and was already asking questions: there were rumours, but no one seemed to have any idea who the body could be. Declan asked to speak to the chief superintendent, or whoever was in charge.

  The chief superintendent, a portly man with a shiny head, had in fact been waiting. He asked the policeman to brief him and got another to show Declan into a holding cell and bring him a drink. Declan sat in the windowless grey room that smelt of piss and tobacco and sipped at the milky coffee in a paper cup. In the distance he could hear a shout, a telephone ringing, footsteps. He wondered how long he would be left here, and then couldn’t help a smile slipping out as he thought of the irony of him being locked up. A bark of strange, high laughter. So this is what it felt like.

  The chief superintendent appeared in the doorway, apologising for leaving him in there for so long: procedures to follow. He was mumbling a little, clearly this scenario wasn’t in the handbook.

  He had some questions: did Declan mind? Did he want another cup of coffee?

  Declan shook his head, cut him off with a hand. ‘I believe the body will turn out to be the body of a teenage girl. I believe she will have been found to have died by a blow to the head in the year 1922 at the hands of her stepbrother. I believe she lived in a house on Seaview Road called Karanga, the one at the end. I believe she was called Primrose.’

  The policeman stared at him, pen poised over his pad, unable to tear his eyes away.

  Then, as if the spell had broken, he dropped his pen and placed two hands on the table in front of him. ‘But how do you know this information? Who are you?’ He was angry, seemingly on the verge of arresting him, fingering the handcuffs that fell from his belt. But his face was puzzled, the questions obvious: how could this young man, who couldn’t possibly have been any older than a toddler in 1922, have been able to murder a young girl?

  ‘If those things are true, I can tell you more, but please, for now, I need to get back to Seacliff. People will wonder where I am; the truck isn’t mine.’ Declan felt dazed, wet, exhausted, his body drooping now that others had taken over things; the adrenalin leaking out of him.

  ‘You can’t leave,’ the policeman said, face aghast. ‘We’ve got a lot more questions for you.’

  Declan reached into his pocket and drew out his wallet. ‘I work at Seacliff Institution. Doctor Declan Harris. This is my identification. I have to go, but if you attend this address there is someone who will help you with your enquiries. Please.’

  He left the police station, feeling years older: a different man.

  Chapter 41

  BEFORE

  I am in my bedroom lying on my bed looking at a picture book. It has been raining all morning and little drops slide down the window, pause, drip more. All I can see in the street below are the tops of umbrellas. When I was big, before, I remember a day with fat grey clouds when it rained on the beach, hitting the top of the sea so you didn’t know where one ended and the other began. Here it bounces off pavements, drips from rooftops and flows down the streets.

  The bell goes and Mrs Clark appears in the doorway.

  ‘You’re wanted downstairs, Edith,’ she says. She has taken her apron off but her day dress still has floury marks on it.

  Before I leave the room she holds me by the shoulders and wipes at my face with the bottom of her skirt, tries to smooth my curls. ‘Need you to look nice now,’ she says. Her voice makes my heart beat fast.

  Father is waiting for me in the doorway to the sitting room that is normally reserved for guests.

  Mother is standing on the other side of the hall. Peter is crying in his basket next to her but it is like she doesn’t notice. I want to go to him and hold him but Father told me I am never allowed to touch the baby now. I feel sad because I know I can make him smile by tickling his nose with mine. I used to do that when I was big before, with Mary, and she made the same gurgle.

  ‘Edith.’

  I stare back at Father.

  ‘Can you come inside, please, Edith,’ he says as I hold the bannister on the stairs.

  I swallow. Someone is standing behind him but I can’t see who it is. There is a wet umbrella propped up by the door, a little puddle already underneath it.

  I pull on my skirt as I cross the hallway. Father turns his back on me and walks into the room.

  The curtains have been drawn and all the lamps are lit and there is a man there, older than Father, dressed all in black. Father doesn’t look back at me as I wait in the doorway, not wanting to go inside, looking over my shoulder. Mother takes one step towards me and then one step back.

  ‘Edith.’ Father’s voice, low.

  I don’t want to go into the room with Father and the old man. ‘I . . .’ I know he’ll get angry if I say that. It looks different though, dark; the rain is louder too.

  ‘Edith.’

  Looking back at Mother again I bite my lip.

  Father clears his throat. I don’t want to be a bad girl. I shuffle forward and Father moves round me to close the door to the hallway.

  ‘Edith, this is Reverend Peck.’

  ‘Hello,’ I whisper.

  The old man holds out his hand and I look at Father before taking it. It is huge and dry and I don’t know what to do, so I just leave my hand in his as he moves it up and down.

  I wish the curtains weren’t closed and Mother was in here too. Everything smells of mothballs.

  ‘How do you wish to begin?’ Father hasn’t looked at me at all and my head moves from him to the old man as if I am my jack-in-the-box.

  ‘I think it would be best if she lies here,’ the old man says, pointing to a long green sofa. He moves across and looks at me expectantly. ‘Edith, would you lie here, please.’

  I think he might be a doctor as well as a church man like Father, as Mother always needed to lie down when she was being looked at by the doctor. I’m not ill, though, and I don’t want to lie down.

  I step back over to the door. ‘Please, I don’t . . .’

  Father puts a hand on my shoulder and I freeze. ‘Now, Edith.’

  I blink quickly, don’t know what I can do to escape.

  ‘Please, Father.’ I spin round to look at him, one hand reaching up to him.

  He turns me back round and I find myself moving across to the old man, climbing up on to the sofa to lie down. I don’t remember to remove my shoes; Mrs Clark will be cross if I get marks on the cover.

  ‘My shoes . . .’

  ‘Lie down.’ Father’s voice is different: loud, sharp, and I do as he says.

  Reverend Peck moves to stand at my head and I twist to try and see what he’s doing. Father is staring at him standing a
bove me.

  ‘Let us pray.’

  Father dips his head and I know that when those words are said in church I am meant to do that too, and I close my eyes but I don’t want to. I look at the door. What would happen if I ran out? I hear a sound and realise it is coming from me.

  The old man speaks over it, leaning down so that both his hands hover over my body, so close I think he is going to touch me. Only Mother and Mrs Clark touch me, not Father. I stare at the hands and try to press into the sofa away from them. Father still has his eyes closed and I try to stay as still as a statue. The old man is praying, asking God and the Holy Spirit for things. Father is repeating some of the words and I don’t know what to do so I lie there and try to look at the lamp behind Father, at the light. I try not to make the noise but I can’t help it; I sound like a hurt animal, a scared animal. The old man doesn’t stop. Father doesn’t open his eyes.

  I make the noise again and I am back there: the other girl, making the same sounds as I watched him from the flat, wet rock.

  He had stepped inside the cave, slowly. He had followed me there. He was angry. I remember now that I had threatened to tell them: to tell his father and my mother what he’d done to me in the plannies, that it had hurt. He was holding something in his hand. I tried to ready myself for him. I had to fight back this time.

  He grabbed for me and I twisted, found the flesh of his arm, sank my teeth in.

  He howled. ‘Bitch.’

  He pulled me up by my hair. I screamed as he grabbed my shoulders.

  Damp sand clung to my skin and clothes as I thrashed. I tried to reach out to grip the stone, to get back on my feet.

  ‘Bitch.’ He said it softly, repeating it as I scratched and clawed at him, wanting to tear the skin, wanting him to hurt, to be frightened like me.

  It all happened so fast. I saw him lift the rock above him. Raised my hands, the first blow smashing my knuckles, the crunch of bones, the feeling of things shattering inside, then the pain. A pain I’d never known. Someone was moaning, a terrible, keening moan and I realised it was me.