by R. H. Dixon
‘My daughter. Little blonde girl. She was in the garden.’ John pointed to his mother’s lawn, his gesturing frantic. ‘Have you seen her?’
‘Aye.’ The old man leant the spade against the side of his house, seemingly unmoved by John’s sense of urgency, and shuffled down the garden path, his checked-fabric slippers worn at the front where big toes threatened to poke through. He cut across his square patch of lawn and stood facing John, the wooden fence between them. Both hands were now stuffed into the large slouchy pockets of his beige knitted cardigan, but he took one out and extended his arm to John. ‘Your ma’s neighbour, Wilf.’
‘My daughter.’ John shook his head, too flustered to accept the handshake and not caring a damn at that point who the old man was. ‘Where did you see her?’
‘In your ma’s garden.’
‘Who with? Did you see?’
Wilf had a serious but friendly face, and up close his age was belied by skin that had harvested not too many wrinkles. A layer of silver filing whiskers on his jaw carried down to the base of his neck where it was met by a tangle of wire wool chest hair protruding from a burgundy polo shirt. He hacked up some phlegm and spat into the rose bushes, then said in a voice that was thick with age, ‘Not when she was in the garden, no. I only just happened to glance out the window and saw her playin’. I was helpin’ Ethel, that’s the missus, clean the budgie’s cage out. He died this mornin’. By the time we’d got sorted I looked outside again and saw your little 'un walkin’ down across the bridge with some woman.’
Light-spots pricked the inside of John’s eyes and he found it hard to focus on Wilf’s face. He gripped his hand around a pointed fence post and asked, ‘What woman?’
‘Not sure, son. Sorry.’ Wilf shrugged his broad shoulders. He took a crumpled cotton handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed around his nostrils, then explained, ‘Eyesight’s not too good these days, must admit. She had long dark hair. That’s all I can tell you with any amount of certainty.’
Emily was now jogging towards them, the sound of her flip-flops slapping the concrete made both men turn. ‘Any news?’ she asked, her face sombre. ‘I searched the rest of the house, even up the loft, but they’re definitely not in there.’
‘Go back inside. Call the police,’ John said, not really hearing what she’d said. ‘Tell them the neighbour saw her walking off with a woman with dark hair…’
‘What?’ Emily’s complexion turned seasick-white.
‘Just do as I said. Now! And stay here in case she comes back. I’ve got my mobile. Ring me.’
John didn’t wait for a response, he left her and Wilf gawping after him as he turned and fled towards the bridge, his mind a whir of conflicting thoughts. Who had walked off so easily with his little girl? And where had she taken her?
Sharp stones underfoot were quick to remind him he wasn’t wearing shoes. Acute pain along his instep made him gasp and wince with every footfall. But he kept on going, driven by blind fear and a certain amount of rising anger. Surely bad luck wasn’t so closely partnered with him that tragedy was about to befall him again? How much pain was he meant to endure?
Once over the cobbled bridge and onto the dirt track and grassy verges down by the allotments, running became much easier and he picked up speed, running faster than he could ever remember having run in his life. By the time he got to the field at the top of the beach banks his side ached with a wicked stabbing sensation and his lungs felt as though they were filled with battery acid. His windpipe burned with every mouthful of air he sucked in. He bent over double, hands on thighs, and cried out to the grey morning till his throat was sore.
‘Seren!’
In the wake of his plea he heard nothing but his own ragged breathing. Wind buffeted his ears, blocking any response that might have been. And he realised his own cry had probably gone unheard, lost to the same wind.
Way off to the left, across the field, a white dog scurried up from the bank’s side. A small terrier that set to weaving in and out of tall grass. It sent a partridge up into the air, and John thought he could hear the faintest of yaps. Perhaps someone might have heard his own cries after all. He scoured the horizon looking for an owner, someone who could help, someone who might have seen a woman walking off with his daughter, but there was no one. Just the dog.
He started jogging, straight ahead, ignoring the knot in his right side that worked itself tight again. He would cross the field and then work his way along the cliff path, heading anticlockwise towards the dog and, hopefully, its owner. And then…And then he didn’t know. What if the owner couldn’t help? Was he to climb down to the beach? Or go back and do a search of the allotments? Seren could be anywhere. In the thick of the dene, or somewhere else in County Durham by now if the woman had lured her to a waiting car on the beach road. He was confounded that his daughter had willingly gone off with a stranger, that she hadn’t shouted to alert him, but mostly he felt anger towards whoever had led her away. He tried to funnel that anger into his body, to spur himself on. Because the alternative would be to ponder devastating possibilities, and then he’d lose it altogether and be no good to anyone.
His socks were quickly made sodden by the dewy grass and a few times he almost slipped. If he hit a pothole in the tall grass he knew he could break an ankle, or obtain a sprain at the very least, but the risk wasn’t enough to make him let up. He kept on, picking up speed and running through the pain that his lungs served him with. He was alert, eyes scanning the banks and surrounding green. Searching. But there was no one else about. Not even the small white dog. When he was about twenty metres from the edge of the cliff, he slowed to a trot and brought his thumb and forefinger up to his mouth. Placing both beneath his tongue he whistled, a loud piercing sound that penetrated the wind and lasted a good five seconds. He looked about expectantly. A gull glided above him, its wings fully outstretched, but nothing else moved apart from the windblown grass all around him.
‘Otis!’ he cried, before whistling again. ‘Mindy!’ By now he was standing at the top of the beach banks, looking down across the beach, way below, to the frothy shore of the low tide. The morning coast had a hazy quality and sea fret haunted the shoreline with a vignette of dankness. Off in the distance the banks of Boulby stretched out into the North Sea like a fallen, jagged monolith in a ghostly dreamscape. John whistled again and searched the rugged foreshore for movement. There was nothing. He started moving again, off to the left to begin tracing the cliff path, but stopped when he heard something in the opposite direction. A sharp rustling of something moving through grass, too heavy to be wind. Spinning round, he searched the field but saw nothing. Then movement drew his attention down the grassy decline of the bank to the right. Otis! The wiry lurcher was bounding towards him, tail wagging.
John stooped and clapped his hands together. ‘Here, boy!’
Otis nuzzled into the palm of John’s hand and licked, nudging his body against John’s legs at the same time.
‘Where’s Seren?’ John looked in the direction the dog had come from. ‘Is she down there?’ He pointed.
Otis whined.
‘Show me.’ The wind chill was now cutting through John’s jumper, making him shiver. After the exertion of running across the field, he was rapidly cooling down now that he was still. He beckoned with both hands, urging the dog to take the lead. ‘Show me where she is, lad.’
Otis took off, leaping sure-footed over grassy mounds and loose earth, clambering down the bank at a steady angle. John followed, not as easily on soaked, stockinged feet, but not slowing to caution. His hair whipped about, blinding him, and he warred with the frontmost strands, trying to keep them out of his face. Soon he was climbing sideways rather than descending further. He stumbled and staggered as fast as he could, hoping the dog wasn’t leading him on some false trail of hope. The cold was now bone-deep and John clenched his jaw to stop his teeth from chattering. Every now and then Otis would wait for him to catch up, his tail wagging as if they were playing a game, then he
’d launch off again. John watched as he vaulted up and over a large mound of earth that sprouted long tufts of beach grass, before disappearing out of view. Using the grass for leverage John pulled himself up onto the mound, the thin green blades harsh in his cold hands. Once at the top he fell to his knees, his legs giving out beneath him. Some ten metres down, sitting in the sand pit he’d shown her a few days ago, was Seren, and Mindy lying next to her. Relief consumed John. He was rendered immobile for a moment, and he didn’t know whether to call out, sob or be angry.
Cupping his hands around his mouth, he at last yelled, ‘Seren! I’m coming to get you. Stay there.’ Using his feet, hands and backside, he scrambled down to the pit: an ungraceful effort which left yellow sand clinging to his wet socks and the hems and seat of his jeans. When he reached her Seren regarded him with wide eyes and he saw that she was trembling.
‘What’s going on?’ he panted, managing to sound much calmer than he’d expected.
When she didn’t answer he reached down and gripped his hands around her underarms, hauling her up into the air. Then he held her close in a fierce hug and looked around them. ‘Who brought you here?’
She hugged him back, her skinny arms locking around his neck, but didn’t reply.
‘Seren.’ His voice became stern with concern. ‘Who?’
A few moments lapsed before she whispered into his ear, ‘Megan.’
‘Megan?’ He twirled around, in case he’d missed someone skulking behind beach grass or mounded earth. ‘Who’s Megan?’
‘The woman I’ve been telling you about.’
‘Which woman…?’
‘The one who visits my room.’
John closed his eyes. Cold, exhausted and on the verge of surrender, he felt as though the rest of the world was spinning around fast and he was the only one standing still. ‘Please, don’t start…’
‘But it’s true,’ she said. ‘Megan says if I don’t leave Gran’s house the bad woman will take me away. Forever.’
‘What bad woman?’ John spun around again to emphasise the fact that there was no one else there.
‘The one that took Megan away. The one that stole Petey Moon.’
John bit his lip and began to trudge upwards. He felt that if he spoke he might cry. So he didn’t. The dogs followed close behind. It wasn’t until they were all standing at the top of the bank that he’d composed himself and said wearily, ‘I don’t know who Megan is, kidda, but, truth be told, I’m starting to miss Petey Moon.’
__
22
_
With still over an hour before closing time, Natasha’s nerves were getting the better of her. Agitated and restless, she found it difficult to sit still for more than ten minutes at a time. She felt as though she’d been throwing back taurine drinks all day and was now dealing with the edgy after effects. She’d taken to reorganising shelves that were perfectly tidy, stacking business cards that were already stacked and scrupulous clock-watching. She willed the minute hand on the vintage wall clock to move as quickly as the second hand. If anything, though, it seemed to have got stuck.
At home a summery maxi dress was laid out on her bed. Lee had arranged to call round later and, no matter what transpired between them, she wanted to look nice. Different scenarios for the evening had played out in her mind all day, her imagination covering every possible eventuality. If things turned out badly and the pair of them ended up going their separate ways, she thought she could deal with it so long as they reached the decision mutually and amicably. No toing and froing or bickering through weeks of uncertainty. Amidst these thoughts of arguments and the possibility of a broken heart, flashbacks of recent nightmares troubled her as well. She had a purpling egg on her forehead as a result of having fallen over while sleepwalking. That’s what she put it down to anyway. She remembered the onset of labour pains and the freakish way her stomach had looked before she’d passed out on the living room floor, but none of it could have been real. It was a consequence of stress, nothing more, the past few weeks disturbing her in ways she never could have imagined.
The bell above the door rang and a thick-set woman with bleached hair walked in. She wore a brash combination of sage green and cobalt blue and was followed by a man who favoured beige.
‘Afternoon,’ Natasha called from her stool behind the counter.
‘And so I had the wild mushroom risotto,’ the woman said to the man, heading straight to a display case of handcrafted jewellery without so much as a glance in Natasha’s direction. The man raised his eyebrows in silent greeting, or apology. Maybe even disdain. Natasha couldn’t tell. She pulled a face at their turned backs, startling when the landline on the counter rang as though catching her out in some act of childishness.
‘One Hundred & Ninety-Nine, how may I help?’ she said into the receiver.
‘Tasha. It’s me.’
Lee.
‘Hi. Everything okay?’ Her stomach flipped, something about his tone suggested it wasn’t.
‘Yeah. It’s just, I’m not gonna to be able to make it tonight.’
‘Ah. I see.’ She didn’t. But she waited for him to explain.
‘Something else has come up. I’ll call later.’
‘Er…okay.’
‘Right. See you.’
‘Yeah. Bye,’ she said to the empty line. She stared at the receiver for a while before putting it back in its cradle. Lee had been upbeat when he’d called the previous evening, but now he sounded irked, detached. Had he had second thoughts about wanting to see her? If something unexpected had happened at work or if there was a family crisis he needed to deal with then he would have said as much, surely?
Realising now that nothing was going to be resolved that night, Natasha sighed. All of her nervous energy plateaued and she suspected it wouldn’t take too long for it to plummet to the depths of melancholy instead.
Had Lee done this deliberately? Was he making her stew for having rejected his marriage proposal? Could she even blame him if he was? Maybe she had reacted too touchily, melodramatically even, to his romantic gesture.
Romantic? Please!
There was nothing romantic in the slightest about asking someone to marry you just because you thought that’s what they wanted to hear. Or, indeed, to cheer them up. The whole situation was such a mess.
When the phone started ringing again she whipped it up, her heart accelerating. She dared to hope he might have changed his mind, so they could resolve their disputes sooner rather than later. ‘One Hundred & Ninety-Nine.’
‘Is that Natasha?’ It was a child.
Natasha’s shoulders sagged. ‘Er, yes. Yes it is. How can I help?’
‘Hello, I’m Seren.’
‘Hello, Seren, what can I do for you?’
‘I need to talk.’
‘What about?’
‘It’s a bit weird to be honest.’
‘Go on then.’ Natasha started fiddling with the phone’s spiral cord, a curious smile finding its way to her lips. ‘I’ve heard plenty of weird things in my time.’
‘Okay. A new friend of mine needs your help. She’s in trouble.’
Natasha’s eyes narrowed and her smile disappeared. ‘Er, do I know you at all?’
‘No.’
‘How did you get my number?’
‘Online. I looked you up on my dad’s tablet.’
‘Ah, so you visited my website?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘So who’s this friend of yours?’
‘Megan. She told me to contact you.’
Natasha stopped twining the plastic cord around her index finger. ‘And who’s Megan exactly?’
‘Someone who knows you.’
Natasha looked around the shop, and then outside at the dove-grey sky. ‘I’m sorry, Seren, I don’t know anyone called Megan.’
‘Yes you do.’
‘No, I really don’t.’
‘Yes you do,’ the little girl insisted.
Natasha closed her eyes
and massaged her left temple. ‘Look, is this some sort of prank call?’
‘No, you have to listen to me.’
‘I am listening to you.’
‘Alright, the bad woman’s coming back.’
Natasha sat up straight, opening her eyes. ‘What bad woman?’
‘The one who took Megan and Petey Moon away. And now she wants me. Can you help us?’
‘Whoa, whoa, whoa.’ Natasha splayed her hand on the table. ‘The bad woman who took Megan away?’
‘Yes. So you do remember Megan?’
‘No. But…where is she?’
‘Someplace in the dark. I don’t know. She’s trapped and can’t get out and she’s scared. So am I.’
‘Look, kid, I really don’t appreciate this right now…’
‘I know, I’m sorry. I’m sorry about your sad news.’
‘What sad news?’
‘Megan told me what happened, and she wanted me to let you know that the bad woman had nothing to do with it this time. This time it was just awful bad luck.’
Natasha’s jaw began to ache with building emotion. ‘What do you mean? What do you think happened to me?’
‘You lost your baby.’
Any verbal response Natasha might have had caught fast in her throat.
_
23
_
Wilf was making a big task of filling a small rectangular hole in his garden when John, Seren and the two dogs trundled up from the railway bridge. John managed to deflect conversation with a look of not now when the old man opened his mouth to speak. Emily came to the gate, her eyes puffy, cheeks pink and dewy. She bundled Seren into her arms and hurried into the house.
Once inside, John didn’t feel like doing much of anything. He changed into dry clothes and apologised to Emily, telling her he’d understand if she didn’t want to come back after her afternoon shift at Asda. Who needed such drama? In response she gave him a stony look and told him not to be stoopid, that if anything it made more sense for her to be around. She went then to change into her uniform and when she came back downstairs John was in the kitchen making a cup of tea.