A Gingerbread House

by Catriona McPherson

  ‘Ivy! Ivy!’ Martine said. ‘What are we going to do?’

  ‘Shoosh, shoosh, shoosh,’ Ivy said. ‘Let me think. Leave it to me. I’ll think of something, I promise you.’ Martine burrowed into her like a nursing kitten. She didn’t seem to mind the rank onion stink of her, just as bad as ever now after the new clothes had given them a fresh start … how many days ago was that now? Ivy stayed awake until Martine was snoring, then she let herself sleep too.

  And was woken by the key in the lock. It was the dead of night, black as ink and not a single swish of distant traffic on the road.

  ‘Marty,’ she breathed, and felt Martine stiffen as she woke too.

  But no one came in, not Gail finally making her move, not Kate out of her routine. Instead they heard a rattling sound, fast then slow as it got near them and the door locking again.

  ‘What was that?’ Martine whispered.

  ‘I think,’ said Ivy, wriggling out from between the two girls, ‘at least I hope it was a bottle of pills. Help me find it, eh?’

  Holding it five minutes later when they’d traced its trajectory over the lumpy floor to where it had stopped, Ivy shook it. ‘Sounds quite full.’

  ‘But of what though?’ Martine said. ‘It could be diuretics. It could be to finish her o— Make her worse.’

  ‘It could be,’ Ivy said. ‘If we wait till daylight maybe we could read the label.’

  ‘If it’s even the right pills inside.’

  ‘But think about it,’ said Ivy. ‘If it’s a trick, why didn’t she bring them in the daytime? Maybe she waited till night so Gail didn’t find out.’

  ‘But it’s Gail’s time,’ said Martine. ‘The middle of the night. So it’s a trick.’

  They were silent for a while, listening to Laura’s ragged breathing.

  ‘What choice have we got?’ Ivy said at last. ‘If we crush some up in her water and she … I can’t say it … we’ll never know anyway. If we don’t, we’ll never know. If it’s good stuff to help her, she might get better and she might not. The only thing we do know is urine goes to kidney goes to sepsis goes to … What choice have we got?’

  In reply, Martine took the bottle out of Ivy’s hands, shook a couple of pills into the lid and ground her knuckle down into them, wincing.

  ‘Don’t hurt yourself,’ Ivy said. ‘We could use …’ But there was nothing. An old stiletto heel? The corner of a drain cover? ‘Here give me a turn too.’

  Then they waited. Round and round, convinced she was better, convinced she was worse, thirsty, scared for themselves, starting to feel the hunger bite too. Laura was going to die, Ivy thought, and they would never know if they’d killed her. Then what? Would her body be left down here? Could Martine bear it? Could Ivy comfort her enough to take that horror away?

  ‘I’ve got it,’ she said, sitting up so abruptly Martine slid sideways. She’d been so relaxed curled up at Ivy’s side. ‘I hope Laura’s completely out, because otherwise this is going to be awful, but I’ve thought of a way to get the Kate in here and restart the plan.’

  She gave Martine one last squeeze then wriggled away and stood up, pacing as she laid it out.

  ‘We’re going to pretend Laura’s dead.’ Martine was looking at Laura and didn’t see so much as a twitch. If she had she’d never have agreed to it. ‘Now, I know this house is solid,’ Ivy was saying, ‘but if we wail and scream at the top of our lungs they’ll hear something, don’t you think? They’ll hear the tune if not the words. Can you make mourning sounds? Can you keen? Can you kneel at her side, hold her hand, and cry.’

  ‘Of … course?’ Martine said. She stroked Laura’s cheek. ‘I really hope she’s completely out or this is going to be a nightmare.’

  It took them a long while to gird themselves for it, even so. They talked, on and on and on, and they rested, as much as they could bear to, with the plan surging in their veins, making their muscles shiver like horses’ flanks when flies land. They even took some sips of water, even though for days they’d been giving most of it to Laura, thinking the extra sedation would help with her pain, watching her swallow weakly, spluttering.

  She was peaceful as they rolled her on to one side, then the other, pulling the filthy blanket out from under her. They took it over to the drain and spread it for her to lie on. Then, trying not to let their hearts sink at how weak they felt, and being as gentle as they could be, they slid Laura over the floor and arranged her on it, folding it over her, covering her from top to toe.

  ‘Oh God, oh God,’ Martine muttered.

  ‘I know, I know,’ said Ivy, stroking her back. Then she slid the drain cover clear, gagging deep in her throat at the stink. Staggering a little, she hefted it up and put it under her arm then stepped away from the other two and gave it a couple of swings.

  ‘OK?’ Martine said.

  ‘Fine,’ said Ivy, grimly. ‘There’s a kind of ridge I can get my fingers under. I won’t let it go. And it’s good and heavy. One swipe, as long as I do it right.’

  ‘And then we wait for Gail.’

  ‘And then … we’re out.’

  Martine gave Ivy a long steady look, then put her head back and, starting low in her throat, she began to wail. ‘Nooooo. Nooooooo. Laaaauuuurraaaaa! Come baaaaack. Don’t diiieeee. Noooooooo!’

  Ivy crept over to crouch behind the inner door and send her own bellowing roars of grief up to the stone ceiling.

  It seemed like hours until the sound of the key, but it couldn’t have been. Martine couldn’t have howled for hours without losing her voice. Ivy stood up, knees bent and arms raised, the good honest weight of the drain cover giving her strength, rather than taxing her. When the inner door opened, she steadied her feet and got ready.

  Kate was shouting before she was in the room. ‘Is she dead? Is she dead?’ She was swinging a torch around, the unfamiliar light skirling over the dank stone, making it sparkle.

  Martine stopped crying, struck dumb, Ivy thought, by the tone of the words, simmering close to hysteria. Kate stopped the torch full in Martine’s face, her mouth open and her eyes wet. ‘Is she dea—’ then she shrieked, like an animal. ‘Get away from there. Get away from there!’

  Martine, helpless not to, flicked a glance at Ivy. Kate spun round on her heel, sending the torchlight wheeling again, saw Ivy standing there, arms over her head, but then – unbelievably – turned back and went charging to where Martine was crouched at Laura’s side, began beating her over her back and her head with the torch. ‘How dare you? How dare you? That’s mine! That’s private!’

  Ivy, the plan forgotten, went rushing up to help, dropping the drain cover, reaching Kate and grabbing for the sickening zigzag arc of light, trying to catch the torch as it came down again and again on Martine’s back.

  Then strong hands were pulling her back and sending her sprawling on the floor, her elbow cracking hard and an instant rose of pain blooming.

  Gail loomed over her, jabbing at her with her blade, pressing Ivy back and back and back.

  They were going to die: Martine bludgeoned to death and kicked into that stinking hole; Ivy stabbed; Laura, if she wasn’t gone already, soon to sink into the blackness.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Ivy whispered, as her bowel and her bladder and the last of her hope all let go.

  TWENTY-TWO

  One day left, but every minute felt like an hour to shovel past me, nothing to do except tell myself he wouldn’t, then tell myself he would, then tell myself to go to the cops, then tell myself to save the jobs, then start at he wouldn’t again.

  Even the bit of drama at the fairytale cottage didn’t last. She had taken two days off her clear-out, not a single trip to the basement with a bag. Then early one morning, both of them – cardi and curtain – went rushing down and charged inside. Half an hour later they came trailing out again. Maybe it was a gas leak.

  There was even less to see out the front window, just Hephaw High Street sweltering in the sudden arrival of summer: wasps round the bins, hanging basket
s flagging outside the Paraffin Arms, the drunk in the bus stop – he wasn’t waiting for a bus; I knew that now – down to his T-shirt with his boots unlaced.

  I had twenty-three hours to get through before I went back to Grangemouth to see if Big Garry would fold, if he would blink. I was kidding myself that anyone would notice a woman like me vanishing.

  Laura Wade, I wrote on a pad of paper. Twenty-fifth of May.

  Martine MacAllister, I wrote on a new line. The blurry woman who went to the Family Forest church in Lockerbie. Then I swung towards my laptop to see if I could pin a date down for this one. Third weekend in March was as close as I could get it from the scraps in the Dumfries Standard.

  And what about Ivy Stone up in Fraserburgh? I went back to my history and found the story from the Press and Journal. Twenty-third of February.

  When I clicked the windows down and went to the calendar in the corner of my tool bar my finger left a streak of sweat on the mouse pad. My heart was rat-a-tat-tatting against my ribs and I could feel my pulse in my neck. The third weekend in March was the twenty-third and twenty-fourth. I sat back and stared at the little box with its grid of dates.

  Jesus. I had a finger pressed into the base of my throat between my collarbones, so when my blood gave a sudden sickening extra lurch I felt it inside and with that finger too.

  One a month.

  It wasn’t that women disappeared every month. It was more like, every month, a woman disappeared.

  I rubbed my hands on my jeans to dry them then put my fingers back on my keyboard. I had forgotten Big Garry for the first time in six long days.

  Missing woman, Scotland, April 2018, I typed and sat back as the screen filled with irrelevant nothing.

  With Scotland crossed out, I got stories of missing women from all around the world. With woman crossed out, it was stories about lost dogs in April, missed planes that wrecked Scottish hen nights, and a hundred other irrelevant reports of runaways who’d turned up, and girls taken overseas by divorced dads. Even Laura, Ivy and Martine popped up once I was a few pages deep in the search results, with April gone.

  Maybe, I said to myself, just maybe, they tried in April and failed. But tried what? There was no pattern to the three disappearances. Laura left her flat all dolled up for a date. Martine was last seen at her funny church, and Ivy hadn’t been seen anywhere after she’d turned out for an animal charity. Where would you even begin to find the missing corner to make that a square?

  Family Forest, I typed. Because, not to be prejudiced or anything, but a weird little church no one had ever heard of struck me as the dodgy bit.

  Except, as the hits filled my screen I could see it wasn’t a hole-in-the-wall operation at all. It was international, with branches from Utah to Adelaide to Lima to Hong Kong, professional-looking pop-ups and pictures of happy groups of people hugging each other and all with photo stock copyright protection overlaid.

  When I added Lockerbie to the search, it got a bit more low-key: just a single page dedicated to that branch on the main website and not much more information than that they met at the Cross Keys Hotel, once a month on a Tuesday. I sat back. They were meeting tonight. They were meeting in four hours. I had my keys and my bag and was halfway out the door before the spinner had stopped, before the last of the pictures was loaded.

  At Hollywood Nails, Aisling and Renny were cleaning, going at the place with gloves and mop slippers on.

  ‘Cos I think there’s a smell,’ Aisling said. ‘Can you smell a smell, Tash? Renny says it’s nothing.’

  ‘I never said I couldn’t smell it,’ Renny said. ‘I said it’s nothing to do with us. It’s the drain out the back that’s gone a bit whiffy. You can’t smell it in here. Can you, Tash?’

  I took a deep sniff and then cleared my throat. The gel nails and acrylic dust, added to the girls’ perfume and that cocktail of cleaning products on their wipes and mop feet made a powerful blend. ‘Smells lovely to me,’ I said.

  ‘What did you want anyway?’ Renny said. ‘Don’t suppose you came in because you’ve finished all your housework and you still feel like scrubbing.’

  ‘I just came to say I’m going to be out for the rest of the day. But I’ll be back tonight and I’ll see you tomorrow.’

  They had been skidding around, toeing into corners and wiping any surfaces that came within reach but when I said that, they stopped and turned to face me.

  ‘Are you OK?’ Renny said.

  ‘Hope so.’ I tried for a cheery tone. Their faces told me I’d missed by a mile. Same as with Adim, I felt myself longing to tell them, felt it like a physical pull towards them, a knowledge that if I could get it even half out of my head and into someone else’s, I might be able to sleep, and breathe, and laugh again. ‘So,’ I said, ‘see you tomorrow.’

  My car was still parked up the side street and, as I turned the corner, I caught a sudden trace of the smell the girls had mentioned. More than a trace. It was strong enough to make me put my hand up to my face and cover my mouth and nose.

  ‘Comfortable rooms, home-cooked food’, the sandwich board on the pavement said, as I spotted the Cross Keys and pulled into the carpark three hours later. And suddenly it felt good to be so far from Big Garry. I could stay here tonight and go straight to Grangemouth tomorrow. So I checked in.

  When I climbed the stairs, let myself through a couple of fire doors and found my bedroom, it wasn’t as bad as I’d feared. The furniture was eighties flat-pack but the carpet was clean and the towels were fluffy. There was even a packet of shortbread near the kettle and a flask of milk instead of little tubs of creamer. I splashed my face and went back down to the bar to order myself a plate of the fish and chips I’d seen someone else eating, waiting till half past seven came and the start of the service.

  ‘Are you here for Family Forest?’ I asked the woman who came up beside me. It was a guess but she looked more churchy than pubby. She wore a sweatshirt with a complicated decal on the front – something medieval or fantastical, maybe both – and long unkempt hair brushed down over her shoulders so it looked as if it was sticking to the cheap polyester. It made my neck itch just looking at it. ‘I’ve come from up by Falkirk.’

  ‘We’re honoured,’ the woman said. ‘How are you getting on with it?’

  ‘With what?’ I said.

  ‘Your family tree,’ she said. ‘I’m back to before the parish records on mine.’

  ‘Ahhhh!’ I said. ‘Family history.’

  ‘Genealogy,’ the woman said. ‘Different thing altogether.’

  ‘I thought you were a religious organization,’ I said.

  ‘We must come across that way to the uninitiated,’ the woman said. ‘But once you’ve started, you’ll understand. I can help you out tonight. If your parents are living, or even your grandparents, young as you are, the best first step is to pick their brains. Get names on all the photos as soon as you can and see what they can remember about what their elderly relatives told them, away back in their early days.’

  ‘No,’ I said, breaking in. I couldn’t stand thinking about chats with my family. I’d probably never have another normal conversation with either of my parents again and I could only be grateful that three of my grandparents were dead and would never know what their children had done. I couldn’t bear to think about my granny when she found out. ‘I mean,’ I went on, ‘I really thought Family Forest was a church. I’m not interested – no offence – in doing my family tree.’

  ‘You say that now—’

  ‘No really. I’m interested in Martine MacAllister. And what happened to her. Where she went. Why. This seemed like the only place where people might know.’

  The woman was changing colour, a deep blush flooding her cheeks and steaming crescents into the bottom of her glasses. ‘It wasn’t us,’ she said. ‘We’re a friendly group. We take all-comers, just the same. It was her that was stand-offish. Snooty, you would say if you weren’t scared of getting called on it. A right snob, actually. Looking
down her nose at the rest of us. And then she just stopped coming. We weren’t to know she was “missing”. All we knew was that she didn’t come any more. And if we weren’t sorry, well shoot us.’

  A waiter appeared from the back just then with my plate of fish and chips and, in the little bit of bustle it took to set me up with cutlery and vinegar, the woman in the decal sweatshirt took her chance to slip away.

  The barmaid was still standing there, though.

  ‘Was she?’ I said. ‘Was Martine snooty and snobby and stand-offish? Did you ever meet her?’

  ‘You didn’t hear it from me,’ the barmaid said, ‘but I think she was snobby … considering.’

  ‘Jesus.’

  ‘Yeah. And then so when she finally made a new friend, at the last meeting, they decided the friend was the problem. Cleared their conscience.’

  ‘And this friend,’ I said. ‘Was he a stranger? Did no one else know him?’

  ‘Her. Martine bought her a glass of wine. I was on that night too, as it goes. “Did anyone know her?” Search me.’

  ‘Her though,’ I said. ‘So probably she was nothing to do with it.’

  Then the barmaid was called away to the other end to serve a customer there and left me with my thoughts. Martine had come to her genealogy club and made a friend. And Ivy Stone, back in February, had gone trotting along to the NLL to meet a friend too. Still jabbing up chips with one hand, I dug out my phone and started searching the Press and Journal mobile app for that story with the quote from the committee member. God bless journalists. There she was: Carole McGann, 62, of Fraserburgh. The age didn’t matter – I had never understood why papers did that – but Carole McGann of Fraserburgh wouldn’t be too hard to track down surely, even if she wouldn’t be in the phone book like the good old days.

  She was on Twitter, though, and she followed back within minutes. I sent her a message, playing it straight, telling Carole I was looking for Ivy Stone and wanted to follow up on what I’d read in the paper. Could we perhaps WhatsApp? I typed, but Carole had pinged back her mobile number before I could even start setting up a one-off ID. I tapped the number and tucked the phone under my chin as it started ringing, standing and signalling that I was finished with my plate and could they put the bill on my room. I let myself through the fire door into the back corridor and the stairway.