The Unravelling: Children can be very very cruel (A gripping domestic noir thriller)

by Thorne Moore

  Miles, of course, only wanted to know about me knowing about Janice. He nodded and smiled as I talked, because he thought it meant I’d broken through some mighty concrete blockage. I talked, because it was all I could do to bring her back to life. But still I could not remember the car.

  No one was asking me to, any more. Why would they? They might have been desperate to know, thirty-five years ago, but no one cared now. It was forgotten. Was anyone ever caught and convicted? Maybe. I was out of it from then on.

  Charlie was hugely pleased with me. ‘Miles says you’ve been going great guns. Leaps and bounds. I really think you might have turned that big corner, Karen. It’s all coming back to you, now, and you don’t have to hide from it any more.’

  Malcolm was pleased too, when they let me back out into the big wide world. ‘Thank God for that, Karen. Gem’s is going to pot. Can’t manage without you.’

  ‘Yes you can,’ I said, though it was nice of him to say so. ‘The last thing you need is a resident lunatic, messing up your shop.’

  ‘Well, you know what they say. You don’t have to be mad to work here, but…’

  I gave a fake smile. No, it really didn’t help to be mad.

  I wasn’t mad now. I was sane. Cured. I went back to work and for a month it was as if I really had turned that magical corner back to normality. The mystery and the horror I’d been nursing all these years was Janice. Her absence had been sending me round the bend. I’d transferred my anxieties and obsession on to poor Serena Whinn, but now I knew the face I should have been remembering. I had Janice back.

  I told Malcolm all about my childhood, those early years before my accident, or whatever it was, in Liverpool. I described to him, ruefully, my recent disastrous meetings with Ruth and Barbara. Not much chance of meeting the others. All I knew about them was that Serena was twice widowed, Denise was religious, and Angela was a photographer, several times divorced, who was too drunk to hold a camera any more.

  As it happened, Malcolm found Angela. Just by chance. He had contacts with other bookshops, of course, and he was on mailing lists. He received some bumph from a place in Hay-on-Wye, not a bookshop, but an art gallery, and somewhere on one of the leaflets was a photograph by Angela Bryant, local artist. He showed me. We agreed it could be her. The leaflet mentioned she had a studio somewhere near Brecon.

  Interesting. Nice to know. That was all. I was no longer in the grip of a mania, no longer craving for more. I had Janice and though I might not have filled in all the squares, I had enough to make sense of what I was. And what I was now was fine enough.

  Then the glass moved.

  — 12 —

  It was just a glass beaker.

  Malcolm and I had shared a mid-afternoon lunch ‒ sandwiches and a can of Fanta. No rush. It was a Sunday, and the shop was shut, but after visiting the cathedral to listen to the choir singing matins, we’d come back to do a bit of tidying up, weeding out and repricing. He was going to spend the rest of the day drowning in accounts and I was going to make a couple of deliveries to favoured customers. I suppose most people would have regarded it as a day of rest, a chance to shut the shop door and forget about business for once, but as Malcolm and I both loved books, there was no better way to spend a Sunday than in the midst of them, in undisturbed tranquillity.

  When he’d chewed the last crust and drained the can, Malcolm went off to fetch his papers and I took our crockery out to the kitchenette to rinse under the tap. I left the plates propped up in the sink and the glasses upside down to drain. Then, the way wet glasses sometimes do, a beaker began to move across the board.

  *

  ‘You all have to put one finger on.’ Barbara is bossing us, as usual. ‘No, not really hard, Angela. Ruth, you’ve got to, or it won’t work.’

  Ruth hangs back, all little mousy in case we’re doing something that isn’t really allowed. But Barbara says to do it and when Barbara gives orders, it’s always best to obey, so she places one nervous finger on the upturned glass, as if it might bite her. I obey because I don’t know what there is to be nervous about. I am taking part, that’s all that matters. I helped cut up the paper and write some of the letters and words. I belong.

  There are six fingers resting on the glass, some plump and pink, some short and stubby. Mine is a bit grubby. Janice and I had been decorating our den with paste and glitter before I came here, and I forgot to wash.

  ‘Sit back, Denise! You’re pushing the letters.’

  Denise is round and short. Reaching across to place her finger on the glass, her belly is squishing into the table and bits of paper have shifted out of the perfect circle we made. She reaches again, trying to breathe in and going very pink in the face.

  ‘Right. Now. Is there a spirit in the room?’

  We wait. Nothing happens, except Ruth’s finger begins to tremble on the glass.

  Barbara’s impatient. ‘You try.’

  ‘Is there a spirit in the room?’ asks Serena, very gently, and perhaps it’s because she doesn’t sound as if she’s going to smack the spirit, like Barbara did – the glass shifts.

  Instant squeals. Two fingers snatch back from the glass.

  ‘Stop it!’ says Barbara. ‘Put your fingers back!’

  So we all settle down and concentrate, terrified and lapping up the terror.

  ‘Is there a spirit in the room?’

  This time we’re ready for the sensation as the glass glides across the table to the word YES.

  ‘Are you a good spirit?’

  The glass gently bumps the word again.

  ‘What is your name?’

  P E T E R

  ‘Oo! Like Peter Pan!’ squeals Denise. We’re all going to see Peter Pan on Ice after Christmas – the car factory’s arranged it.

  ‘Sh!’ orders Barbara.

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Do you have a message for any of us, Peter?’ asks Serena.

  As the glass begins to judder, the door swings open and we all jump and shriek. But it isn’t a creepy spirit called Peter, it’s Mrs Whinn, with a tray of Corona and chocolate biscuits.

  ‘Here we are. And what on earth are you doing there, girls?’ She’s leaning over to look at the table, the glass, the circle of letters. ‘Oh, that silly game. I’m not sure I approve. Well, make sure the glass doesn’t scratch the table, won’t you?’

  Serena smiles sweetly at her mother. ‘It won’t, I promise.’

  ‘All right then. I’ll leave you to your ghouls and ghosties.’

  She bustles out, leaving the tray on another table. Serena’s mother is very nice, but things are a bit flat when she’s gone. Like a balloon has gone bang.

  Angela pushes some of the letters back into place, then we look at each other, waiting for the magic to return.

  ‘Draw the curtains,’ suggests Serena.

  Barbara gets up and lumbers round the room, closing the curtains, and it’s all spooky again because we’ve just got the fairy lights on the Christmas tree.

  ‘Are you still there, Peter?’ asks Serena.

  YES

  ‘Do you have a message for any of us?’

  YES

  ‘Who?’

  B A R B

  ‘Barbara?’

  YES

  Barbara opens her mouth to say something, then stops. She’s pretending that she’s just impatient, but I can see her finger trembling as the glass moves from one letter to the next.

  C A T

  ‘Oh!’ Barbara begins to cry. She’s not a crybaby, but she blubs.

  Serena lays a hand on her arm. ‘Maybe he means you are getting a kitten for Christmas after all. Do you mean that, Peter?’

  YES

  Barbara sniffs, appeased, and tries to pretend she just got something in her eye.

  ‘Do you have another message?’

  YES K A R

  ‘Karen?’

  ‘Me?’ I squeal. So eager. I never though a spirit would waste time on me.

  AND J A N I C E

&nbs
p; ‘Karen and Janice?’ asks Serena.

  YES

  ‘Janice isn’t here.’ I feel guilty pointing it out. Of course Janice hadn’t been invited to the Christmas party at Serena’s home. I could hardly have expected Serena to invite her.

  T E L L H E R.

  ‘You’ll have to tell Janice Dexter,’ orders Barbara. She’s forgotten about crying because she’s got me to concentrate on now. ‘Give her the message.’

  ‘Yes, go on.’ My eyes are fixed on the glass, eager for more. Ruthie can’t take it and pulls back with a whimper, but the rest of us stay, our fingers glued to the glass as it slides and judders.

  O N E W I L L K I L L T H E O T H E R

  This time, three fingers leap from the glass as if it’s shattering and stabbing us with splinters. I sit staring at it. Because it can’t be right. It must be going on to say something else. Like ‘Ha Ha Joke’. But it doesn’t. The glass stops moving.

  Someone starts crying. It’s me.

  *

  I didn’t tell Janice about the spirit message. Barbara did. We’d met in the street, on Christmas Eve, to take presents to a new, sizeable mouse that seemed willing to hang around in our presence.

  On reflection, I think it was a rat. There were a lot of them around the demolished prefabs. He ate the mixed peel wax-paper house, so we’d put a cornflakes box for him in the abandoned coal bunker, and the cheese we’d left there had been eaten. Not surprising really. All the vermin and creepy crawlies on the estate must have made a beeline for it, but we were convinced only our mouse Christopher would find it.

  We’d been hoping he’d be there, waiting for a Christmas surprise, but by the time we met as planned, I didn’t care about the mouse any more. I’d come to the den as arranged, drenched with guilt and fear, and Janice, unaware of what had upset me, was trying to cheer me up, when Barbara came along Aspen Drive from the Parade, with sheets of Christmas wrapping paper and, of course, at sight of us, she had to bustle up to join us.

  *

  ‘Have you told her?’

  I can only shake my head.

  ‘What?’ asks Janice.

  ‘A spirit told us one of you would kill the other one.’

  ‘No! Don’t!’ I don’t know if I’m pleading with Barbara or Peter, who is not a good spirit, whatever he claimed. He’s an evil spirit.

  ‘It’s true,’ says Barbara. ‘If a spirit said it, it must be true.’

  ‘It’s not,’ I insist, beginning to cry again. Janice catches on and cries too. It isn’t fair. We look at each other, wanting to gang up against Barbara and spirits and the whole world, but what can we do? Besides…

  A spirit had said it. I can’t escape from it, the thought and the new, creeping, chilling fear. I don’t want to kill Janice, so does that mean that, secretly, she wants to kill me?

  And I see the self-same doubt and terror in her eyes.

  *

  It had been a game. A stupid game, something to keep the girls amused by candlelight, around the Christmas Tree. Just a fun game. I don’t know whose idea it was. Barbara seemed to be in charge, but then she always did step in, like Brown Owl, no matter who suggested anything. If she had set it up, did that mean it was her finger secretly moving the glass? Someone’s finger was, but the other five of us never suspected a thing. You can’t possibly cheat with such things, can you? We were gullible and innocent, and open to all the terrors of the world.

  Whoever it was, it must just have been a joke. A very sick joke. We’d been telling ghost stories, trying to frighten each other and loving the thrill of exquisite fear, but this was on a different plane. The terror that it planted, first in me while we played the game, then in Janice, thanks to Barbara’s officious interference, was something that couldn’t have been undone, even if the culprit had come clean. I could remember that Christmas, now, as the moment when my life began to crumble, and the shadows started creeping in.

  *

  ‘Karen! Come back down here now. Look at this mess. Karen! It was just a glass of squash. If you didn’t want it, there was no need to throw it across the room. You’ve ruined poor Hilary’s dress and it was brand new!’

  I don’t care. I just want to hide under my quilt. I don’t want orange squash. I don’t want a glass of anything.

  ‘Roy, you try and do something with her. I’ve had enough.’

  My father’s turn to have a go at me. ‘Now come on down, Missie, and stop all this silliness, or I’ll just have to pack up those presents and send them back to Father Christmas. He only gives presents to good children, and I don’t know what he’d think if he could see you now.’

  ‘I don’t care! I don’t want them!’

  My sister is in the bedroom doorway, her face screwed up, crying her eyes out because it’s Christmas and I’ve spoiled it for her. But I can’t help it. Everything is spoiled, forever.

  *

  That was just Christmas. After Christmas, it was January and in January, Janice died.

  ‘Okay?’ Malcolm poked his head round the kitchen door. ‘Karen?’ He looked me over with a practised eye. ‘Will you be okay to take that delivery? I can do it later, if you like.’

  ‘No. No, I’m fine. Just thinking.’ I went through the artificial motions of appearing to pull myself out of a reverie, smiling, wiping my hands dry. ‘I’ll take it now, shall I?’

  ‘If you’re sure.’ He tossed me the keys to the elderly van he kept for business. I’d done a few deliveries in it, because he said I needed to keep my driving hand in, until we figured out what to do about my impounded car.

  I started the motor, made a big show of driving the van out of the yard, down the road, round the corner, then I stopped. I needed to sort this out.

  That stupid game…

  I didn’t do it, did I?

  Or did I? Before she could kill me?

  There was still this big black hole in my memory. The hole that Dr Miles Pearce didn’t seem to worry about because I was talking so freely about Janice that I must be all right. He knew I still couldn’t conjure up the car that she got into, but that didn’t matter, because it wasn’t something the police would be interested in any more. It didn’t contribute to my condition.

  But here was the real reason. I couldn’t conjure up the car, or the murderous stranger in it, because there was no car. I’d told Serena there was, apparently, but I’d made it up, to conceal the truth – that I had killed Janice. Because I couldn’t stand the fear any more. I couldn’t cope with waiting for her to kill me.

  I don’t know how I’d done it, except that I had that one horrible memory of looking down on Janice’s upturned face, smudged and smeared with tears and snot and terror.

  I must have done it.

  But didn’t the police find who did it? Isn’t that what Barbara told me? They’d found the car and the culprit, even though I’d refused to tell them anything. Or did she say she thought they had? Or they thought they had. Maybe, for all these years, some innocent man had been in prison for a crime I’d committed.

  All that questioning by the police. I could remember it vividly now, questions over and over and over, pleading, shouting, the thumping of tables, and all the while, my brain commanding me to block them out. Perhaps it wasn’t the helpless reaction of a traumatised child, after all. It was the panicking reaction of a child murderer, trying to conceal her crime from the rest of the world.

  What had I done? Who had paid?

  Barbara would know. I’d rushed out without waiting for her to give me the full story. I could go back.

  I couldn’t face her again…the office I’d left sprayed with vomit, the unpaid consultation bill. And no point going back to Ruth, who’d thrown me out. But I could find Angela. She had an exhibition in Hay-on-Wye. The gallery leaflet said so. I could go to Hay.

  I was splitting in two again. Half of me knew that I was being stupid, that I needed to deliver these books for Malcolm and then go home, get some sleep, talk it through tomorrow, maybe, with Charlie. Make a
nother appointment to see Miles.

  The other half was already screaming at me that I had to resolve this now. I had to know. I had to put right what could never be put right.

  So I drove to Wales.

  — 13 —

  Yes. I know. I shouldn’t be allowed on the roads. Many had said it and wondered how I’d ever been allowed behind a wheel. It was why I hadn’t made more of a concerted effort to haggle with the police about getting my car back. If they’d stopped to take a closer look at me, I’d probably have had my driving licence taken away.

  I had it in the first place because I did occasionally manage long spells of apparently perfect sanity. Charlie had persuaded me to try for it, because she thought I’d have a better chance of turning up to work on time if I drove. Sane or not, I had a habit of missing buses. So I learned and I passed. And I was mostly not too bad, on roads I knew. Other drivers might never suspect I was a dangerous lunatic. I’d been feeling so sane recently, that if Malcolm had asked me, the day before, to make a delivery to Wales, I would probably have managed it without any problem. Or at least with no more than the problems naturally involved in finding a place I didn’t know, on roads I wasn’t sure about. For a start, he would have given me a map.

  But today, thanks to a moving glass and all that had spilled out of it, the mental safety harness had snapped and I was in chaos again, driven by compulsions that made no allowances for my geographical delusions. I just drove. I think that once I got going, from that side street where I’d paused to finish cracking up, I must automatically have taken the route towards Lyford. In the motorway furball below Leeds, the cattle prod jabbed, to tell me I didn’t want to be going south. I should be going west. So I did.