by S Williams
‘That’s great, Mouse,’ Bella whispered, as if they’d done something monumental. ‘Now all we need to do is to seal it with a kiss.’
‘What?’ Mouse said, unsure if she’d heard correctly, but before she could say anything else Bella leant forward and kissed her. It was a cool kiss, with their lips barely touching, and over before it had ever really begun, but Mouse could feel the heat behind it; deep down in Bella’s throat. Like a snake wrapped around her heart, she thought, leaning forward, closing her eyes. She could smell the fire, from where they had sat in front of the stove, eating oranges and putting the skins on the hot plate, filling the room with a burnt citrus odour.
‘There,’ said Bella, leaning back and smiling. ‘That’s all done and can never be undone. Like Heathcliff and Cathy.’ She clapped her hands together and jumped up, wrapping her massive coat around her small frame. ‘Let’s go back in and tell ghost stories ’til it’s light.’
Mouse stood up slowly, not taking her eyes off Bella.
‘What just happened?’
‘I told you! Our world got turned upside down.’
‘By what?’
‘By my mother,’ Bella said, a coldness creeping into her voice.
‘Your mother? What’s your mother got to do with anything?’
Bella looked at her friend, all laughter and playfulness gone like they were never there.
‘She’s pregnant, Mouse. I’m going to have a baby brother or sister.’
Mouse stared open-mouthed as Bella turned and began walking back to Blea Fell, her footsteps sounding like slowed-down stabbing as she crumped through the snow.
28
Mary’s House
It’s not attraction, it’s something else, Mary thinks, trying to shuffle through the emotions playing in her head.
Athene is still stroking Mary’s hair, holding her gently in her arms.
As if she is my mother, or someone trying to protect me, she realises, keeping her eyes closed. The smell of Bella is strong; oranges and cinnamon and the salt of the wild western winds that came in from the North Sea. Mary rationalises it must be because of Blea Fell, and the photograph and the bells: that all the memories were being unlocked inside her.
Bella was dead, and Blea Fell burnt down, and nothing of that past could possibly be happening now.
Mary opens her eyes and looks at the photograph that had been left. The twisted metal of Trent’s car looks as bare and brutal as it did the night of the accident, when she had been thrown out of it. As she stares, the sounds of that night sweep through her. The wet rasp of Trent’s breathing; his lung punctured by the broken ribs when his body slammed into the steering wheel. The hissing of the snow as it evaporated on the underside of the car. The glass spider-splintering-in-ice-song as the weight of the car crushed the windows. The empty piece of air that had been filled with the sirens of the ambulance, suddenly switched off as it slipped and slid to a halt.
And the silence from the still form of Bella, half in and half out of the car; a doll with her stuffing coming out.
Mary closes her eyes again, takes a deep breath, then gently pushes Athene away.
‘Come on,’ she says, standing. ‘The clothes will be dry by now. Let’s get you back to the pub.’
Athene looks at her with concern. ‘But what about all this?’ She indicates the photo and the tiny bells. ‘Shouldn’t you take it to the police or something?’
Mary smiles. ‘What would I tell the police? That somebody is fucking with me? Me and Bella and Trent.’
‘Trent?’ Athene asks.
Mary nods. ‘Somebody sent him a picture from the past, like they did you. Maybe the same person who put this stuff on my door.’
‘But why?’
‘Good question. And why you? Raking up the past with me and Trent makes sense, but why you? It’s just so random!’
‘Why does it make sense? I mean with you and Trent? If your friend died in a terrible accident what is there to rake up? I mean what’s the point?’
Mary looks at Athene a moment, then looks away. ‘It’s… complicated. After the accident, there was the fire at Blea Fell.’
Athene nods slowly, a confused look on her face. ‘But what’s that got to do with–’
‘It was arson,’ Mary says. ‘And somebody died.’
Athene stares at her, her mouth slightly open, clearly unsure what to say.
Mary sighs. ‘Come on; I need to go with you to the Craven Head. I want to see Jamie.’
‘Jamie? What’s he got to do with it?’
Mary shakes her head again and gathers up the photograph and bell.
Five minutes later they are back in her car heading for the village.
It’s only as they’re driving into the village that Mary realises Athene deflected her question; that she never answered why she had been targeted too. Why she was even here.
29
Bella’s Last Summer: The Bedroom
‘You could be locked up, for going with a fifteen-year-old, you know that?’
Trent looked down at her, as he pulled on his 501s. He tried to do it like the man in the advert did; cool and fluid, as if he was pulling on a second skin.
How things looked were important to Trent; they were all he had.
Like now, with the girl spread naked on the bed in the gloom. He could see the shape of her body. She was lying on her stomach, with the detritus of sex around her. The discarded clothes and twisted sheets. The pillow on the floor and the duvet scrunched up into one corner. The stale smell of lust, cooled down and coagulating, like used cooking oil in an old pan.
‘Could, but won’t,’ he said, smirking. He was good at smirking. He spent hours in front of the mirror practicing. ‘Someone would have to care, for that to happen.’
Smirking when anything close to emotion might be wanted or expected.
Smirking when seriousness was required.
Trent had practiced and practiced and now it was armour-perfect.
‘And who’s going to care about you, Mouse?’
‘Wanker,’ Mouse muttered, dragging on her cigarette.
Trent silently agreed. In fact, he’d go so far as to say ‘prize wanker’. If the armour wasn’t so firmly in place he’d probably hate himself.
Mouse got up off the bed and walked across the room to the window. Trent felt a sudden pang of panic, then remembered where he was. He began to walk over to her.
‘Don’t,’ she said, without turning around.
Something about her tone made him pause. Normally he controlled the situation; held the power. But somehow the balance in their relationship seemed to have shifted. He was beginning to lose himself; become undone.
‘Don’t what? I’m not doing anything.’
She didn’t turn around, just stayed staring out at the darkening sky.
‘It’ll be winter soon,’ she said, finally. She said it so quietly, and with such a blanket of sadness, that he found himself wanting to hold her. Protect her. Instead he reached down and stole a cigarette from the soft pack of Marlboros on the floor.
‘And then it’ll be a new year, and the whole sorry dance will start over again,’ he said, lighting his smoke.
She finally turned around and faced him, completely uncaring of her nakedness, like it was pointless.
‘What if I’m pregnant? What if what we’ve done has made me pregnant?’
Trent stared at her for a long beat, then laughed. It was the sort of laugh that could get away from him. It was mad Blackpool-rock laughter, the lunatic locked-away-in-an-asylum razor-blade laugh he kept bottled up, but which ran all the way through him, right down to his very centre.
‘Don’t worry, I’m not father material: there’s no way you would get pregnant.’
She stared at him some more, then turned back and looked out of the window. ‘I’d like you to leave, now.’
Trent gave a mocking bow to her back, and dragged on the rest of his clothes. While he did it he placed his stolen cigarette on the wooden dr
esser, like he would on the rail of a pool table. In the washed-out reflection of the window, Mouse watched it burn down, blackening the edge of the scarred top.
‘That’s a bad habit,’ she said.
‘What is?’ Trent said, making his voice flat, like he was bored. With his clothes on he felt more himself. More in control. ‘You?’
‘No; I’m not a habit, Trent. I’m just something in your past.’ She nodded. ‘The cigarette.’
Trent looked at the butt. The smoke had burnt the wooden top, causing the wood to char.
‘Whoops,’ he said, smiling, hoping to get a smile out of the ghost-girl in the glass. He didn’t.
‘One day it’ll be more than “whoops”. One day you’ll burn the whole fucking house down.’
Trent looked at her back, taut and soft at the same time, and felt like screaming; felt like screaming backwards.
‘When did you stop being a mouse, Mouse?’
Mouse’s back became more taut, closing herself further from him. He felt himself wanting to take it all back: to reach out and stroke the girl in front of him.
Tell her he was sorry.
Tell her about the real him, hidden away since beyond early.
But he didn’t. He just blinked, turned, and left.
By the time he’d made his way out of her house through the kitchen, walked round the side, and looked up at her bedroom window the day was full dark.
There was nobody looking out at him. The glass pane was just a black space.
Trent pulled the coat around himself and trudged down the track to the road, feeling heavier with each step.
30
The Craven Head
Jamie looks up as Mary walks through the bar-saloon door.
‘Mary!’ He jumps to his feet. ‘Thank Christ you’re here, I’ve been ringing the café! Trent phoned me! Can you believe it? I didn’t even know he was released! Right out of the blue, he said–’
As Athene comes into view, walking in behind Mary, Jamie stops talking like someone had unplugged him. He rearranges his features into a poor semblance of the manager of a quaint tourist hotel.
‘Oh, Athene, hi! Did you have a good look around the village?’
‘Don’t worry, Jamie, she knows about Trent.’ Mary’s voice is clipped and matter of fact as she slips out of her coat and flings it in the direction of a bar stool. It lands on the circular leather seat, stays for a moment, then slides off onto the carpet like the skin off a drunk.
‘Fuck,’ Mary comments, looking at it. ‘I used to be a much better aim than that.’
‘Hi, Jamie!’ Athene gives him a little wave.
‘What do you mean, she knows?’ Jamie says, ignoring the wave and the collapsed coat, looking from Athene to Mary, his eyes wild. ‘Knows what? Knows about what happened? You didn’t say–’
‘Knows about Trent,’ Mary interrupts. ‘She was there when he phoned me.’
‘Trent phoned you?’ Jamie looks with confusion at his mobile on the bar, as if somehow Mary had borrowed it.
‘Yes; while we were at Blea Fell.’
Jamie’s eyes swivel back to Mary and lock on. ‘Bella’s place? Why the fuck were you at Blea Fell!’ All semblance of quaint-manager has vanished, revealing a double barrel of fear and confusion.
‘Swearing in front of the guests, Jamie?’ Mary tuts.
‘Sorry, Athene,’ Jamie mutters, eyes still fixed on Mary. ‘But there’s a bit of a crisis from the past happening here.’
‘So I’m gathering,’ Athene says.
‘Jamie, listen to me carefully.’ Mary walks forward and stands in front of him.
‘What?’ Jamie’s breathing is hard and fast. ‘What, Mouse?’
If the use of her old nickname was meant to transfer power in some way, it doesn’t work: Mary merely nods and smiles, like he’s just done something she expected. ‘Trent is coming here–’
Jamie cuts across her, eyes bugging. ‘I know! He left a message! He said he was arriving this weekend! Maybe sooner!’
‘Trent is coming here, Jamie,’ Mary continues as if he hadn’t spoken. ‘Because somebody sent him something.’
Jamie looks at her. ‘Sent him what?’ he says quietly, suspicion filling his tone.
Mary shakes her head. ‘I don’t know everything, but what he told me was enough. Somebody sent him a picture of back then, of Blea Fell, along with my mobile number.’
There is a pause while Jamie’s face tries to both express, and hide, his thoughts; confusion and fear and incomprehension scuttling themselves across his features.
‘Plus a picture of me, Trent and Bella at the fair,’ Mary finishes softly.
‘The fair?’ Jamie’s voice is quiet. ‘The winter fair?’
‘And not just any winter fair, Jamie.’ Mary takes a step forward. ‘But that winter fair. The final winter fair. That photograph, Jamie. The one you took.’
‘What’s the winter fair?’ Athene asks.
Nobody looks at her. Jamie’s eyes stay locked on Mary’s. He shakes his head slightly.
‘That’s not possible,’ he manages, after a few seconds.
‘Oh it’s possible, all right,’ Mary comments breezily, taking another step forward. ‘If somebody had decided to fuck about.’
‘What’s the winter fair?’ Athene repeats.
‘Mouse, this is so fucked-up. I wouldn’t–’ Jamie retreats a step.
‘It’s possible if somebody manages to get hold of the photo somehow, out of wherever the police put photographs after twenty years.’ Mary’s eyes are blazing.
‘Not me. Maybe Trent–’
‘The police?’ Athene says, slightly louder, but nobody is paying attention to her.
‘Somebody sent it to Trent, Jamie. Somebody not only got hold of the photo, but knew who to send it to.’
Mary’s voice has gone from breezy to danger-quiet. As she advances, Jamie takes another step backward.
‘Where he lived? How the fuck would I know where he lived, Mouse? I didn’t even know he was out of jail!’
‘Maybe it was the same person who sent me a photo too. Pinned it on my door like a fucking scene from Deliverance!’
Mary reaches into her back pocket and brings out the photograph of the car crash. Jamie looks at it, shaking his head, eyes wide.
‘Wait, Trent was in jail?’ Athene says, alarm in her voice. ‘What was he in jail for?’
‘Not been out to my house, today, have you, Jamie?’ Mary says, still ignoring Athene. Her voice, although soft, seems to cut through the silence of the room.
‘Where did you get that?’ Jamie stares at the print, his voice is hoarse with tension.
‘Look, can somebody tell me what’s going on?’ Athene looks from one to the other. ‘Why did Trent go to jail? Was it something to do with the crash?’
Mary’s eyes stay locked on Jamie, who is staring at the photo like it’s car-crash pornography. He licks his lips, and his fingers twitch, reaching out for the print. Before he can take it, Mary puts the photo back in her pocket.
‘Any idea how this wound up on my door, Jamie?’ Mary asks.
Jamie’s skin has become pale and blotchy, like it had been made up out of the wrong ingredients. He licks his lips again. ‘How would I know?’
‘When they questioned me, Jamie, back in the day; just after the crash; they showed me this picture. When I say just after, I mean when I could talk. Once the leg had healed. Or healed enough for me to be off the sleepy-meds. They showed me and asked me how the crash happened. I couldn’t believe it when I saw it.’
Jamie looks around the room, then back to where the photo was hidden.
‘I–’ he begins, but Mary steps forward suddenly, her face inches from Jamie’s.
‘I remember not understanding, because it didn’t make sense. If someone was close enough to take a picture they were close enough to help.’
‘I don’t…’
‘They wouldn’t tell me where the photo came from. They said that the ambul
ance was there already, and it was taken by a passer-by, but I knew it was you. The picture was too good.’
Jamie looks at her. For a moment there’s defiance, then he seems to deflate.
‘It was such a fucked-up night,’ he says softly.
Mary nods. ‘Especially for Bella.’
‘When the ambulance shot through the square it was just after the fireworks. It seemed…’ He shrugged his thin shoulders, searching for the right phrase. ‘Fun.’
‘Fun?’
He nods. ‘Like it was something off the telly. Casualty or whatever. I grabbed my satchel – the one I kept my camera in – got on my scooter and followed it. It couldn’t go too fast because of the weather, so it wasn’t hard. When it reached the…’ He struggles for words again. ‘When we came across the accident I didn’t know what to do! They wouldn’t let me help; told me to keep back! In the end all I could do was… record it. Photograph it.’
‘Jesus!’ Athene mutters.
‘Then the police came, and they took my camera. I swear! They took my camera so there was no way I could make copies! They said they needed it for evidence!’
Mary stares at him, long seconds knifing out between them.
‘So how come it ended up on my sodding door then?’
‘I don’t know! I didn’t have anything to do with it, Mouse, I swear!’ Jamie looks like he’s about to cry. ‘The police took the film before it was even developed!’
‘And what about the other one, Jamie?’ Mary asks. ‘The one that was emailed to Trent? I suppose that has nothing to do with you, either? That’s…’
‘If someone doesn’t tell me what the hell is going on I’m going to bloody well…’
Mary and Jamie turn and look at Athene, her angry outburst finally getting through.
‘I don’t know what I’d do, but it wouldn’t be pretty,’ Athene finishes, wilting somewhat under Mary’s clear gaze.
‘And not just the photo of the fair,’ Mary says, her eyes thoughtful, appraising the student. ‘There’s the photo that was sent to you and your mum, Athene.’