Little Girls Tell Tales

by Rachel Bennett

  As I drove, I sneaked glances at Cora. She was soon miles away again, her gaze unfocused, one hand clutching the other as if holding herself together. It was difficult to read her. She was so obsessed with looking for her sister that it seemed like she had no interest in personal relationships. But nothing got past her. When she’d been in my house, she’d seen and appraised everything I owned. My books, my pictures, my possessions. The wedding photos of me and Beth. She knew as much about me as I’d revealed to anyone.

  I wished I could reach over and take her hands; hold onto them myself. It was probably a good thing I was driving. I didn’t want to embarrass myself.

  ‘What about dinner?’ I said. Heat rushed to my face. ‘I mean, do you guys want to come to dinner at my house? We can sit down and talk things over properly.’

  Cora gave me a smile that warmed me all the way down to my toes. ‘That sounds great.’

  Chapter 18

  Before we got back to Ramsey, the rain started again, drizzly at first, then increasing to a steady beat that drummed on the roof of the car. Dallin’s bad temper returned by the time we approached the campsite.

  ‘Tell you what, just drop me here,’ he said as I turned left next to The Raven. ‘I’ll wait out the rain in the pub.’

  I pulled in and let him out of the car. He ran into The Raven with his shoulders hunched. I smiled at Cora, happy to be on our own again.

  But it turned out we would have an unproductive afternoon as well. We called at Eloise’s house, but she wasn’t in, and neither were Nicole or Patrick. Next, we drove up through the winding roads to Lenny’s house. He lived on a narrow track near Blue Point beach, right on the exposed northern coast of the island. Here, wind and wave sloughed at the coastline, eroding the crumbling cliffs a centimetre at a time. The land was flat, the trees and bushes stunted by the salt air.

  I didn’t expect to find Lenny home at that time of day, but to my surprise, his work van was parked on the driveway.

  ‘Bleak kinda place,’ Cora said as she got out of my car.

  Scrubby gorseland surrounded the house. To our right was the sweep of the exposed coastline. The tide was out, leaving a thick band of dullish sand, dimpled with rocks and puddles, but when the sea came in it would crest up to the foot of the cliffs themselves. From where we stood, I could see the clifftop car park at Smeale, where a few hardy dog-walkers had parked to enjoy the view.

  We knocked at Lenny’s door and stood shuffling our feet in the cold as we waited. Cora glanced at her watch.

  ‘Is he likely to be out, if he’s not taken his van?’ she asked.

  I had no idea. Lenny might’ve had two cars – or a dozen cars – for all I knew. I knocked again and, when there was still no response, tried the door handle. It was unlocked.

  ‘Hello?’ I called into the hall. ‘Lenny? You around?’

  No answer.

  ‘He must be out.’ I pulled the door closed.

  Cora gave me an odd look. ‘With the door unlocked?’

  ‘Sure, why not?’ Beth had always forgotten to lock our house. On more than one occasion we’d gone out and left the back door wide open. The worst that’d ever happened was a farm cat had got in and eaten my tuna sandwich.

  Cora opened the door. ‘Hello?’ she called, louder. She stepped into the hall.

  ‘Cora—’

  ‘What if he’s had a fall? Why else wouldn’t he come to the door?’

  ‘He could be on the loo. Or in the shower.’ There were a dozen sensible reasons to ignore visitors.

  Cora went through the hall, peeking into each room as she passed. I hesitated at the front door for a moment longer before following her. If Lenny had turned up at my house, I reasoned, and I wasn’t answering the door, he’d be neighbourly enough to check I was alright. Cora could be right – he might’ve fallen. Once the idea got into my head it wouldn’t dislodge.

  Cora checked the downstairs rooms then went upstairs, calling to Lenny again. I went into the front room. Lenny’s house was just as full of random clutter as mine, but it didn’t look like he tidied often. On the sofa, a calico cat watched me with sleepy green eyes. Obviously it didn’t care that I’d wandered in off the street.

  I could hear Cora moving through the rooms upstairs. The floorboards creaked under her feet. Lenny’s house was built of thick, sturdy stone, but inside it was cosy to the point of claustrophobia. The furniture was outdated and shabby. I picked up a copy of the local newspaper from the coffee table. I recognised the front page from several weeks ago.

  It didn’t feel right to be there without permission. It definitely wasn’t right for me to appraise Lenny’s possessions. How would I feel if someone did that to me? I left the room, making a conscious effort not to look closely at anything else.

  ‘Cora?’ I called. I started up the stairs. It was obvious Lenny wasn’t home. I didn’t want to invade his privacy any further than we already had.

  On the upstairs landing, I paused. Through a doorway to my left, I saw Cora’s shadow moving. ‘Cora?’

  I went to the door. Cora had found what appeared to be a junk room. She’d lifted a cardboard archive box off a pile against the wall and set it on a broken-backed chair so she could rummage through the contents.

  ‘Cora, what’re you doing?’

  ‘Looking.’ She lifted a stack of papers, sorted through them quickly, then stuffed them back. She grabbed another box off the pile.

  ‘You can’t—’

  ‘I’m not doing any harm.’ Cora opened the next box and pulled out more papers. ‘I’m just looking.’

  I was certain that wasn’t harmless at all. But I stood frozen as she rooted to the bottom of the box. ‘What’re you looking for?’

  ‘I’ll know it when I see it.’ She found a battered old Filofax and flicked through it. ‘I told you, a lead can come from anywhere. It’s just a case of searching hard enough.’

  ‘Cora.’ I spoke softly, like Beth used to when she had to talk me down. ‘This isn’t the way to find anything.’

  ‘How do you know? Lenny knows more than he told us. What if there’s something here that can lead me to Simone?’

  I saw it clearly then, how her obsession affected her. In the same way she would have to search every square foot of the curraghs before she’d accept Simone wasn’t there, so she would stay here all day, if I let her, and peruse every single time in the junk room.

  I crossed the room to her. She still clutched the Filofax but I took hold of her wrists gently.

  ‘Cora,’ I said again. ‘This isn’t how we’ll find her. Come on.’

  For a second I thought she would argue. Her jaw clenched and relaxed. But then she let out a breath. A shiver of released tension ran through her hands. Her eyes held mine for a moment then darted away.

  ‘Yeah,’ she said with a sigh. ‘I know.’

  Chapter 19

  Before we drove away, I made a quick circuit of the outside of the property, in case Lenny was working in one of the sheds out back. There was no sign of him. The sycamores that bordered his back garden shook and whispered in the rising wind.

  When I got back in the car, Cora had taken out the photo of Simone she kept in her wallet. It was rubbed at the corners, as if she’d spent a lot of time taking it out to show to people.

  Before she could put it away, I held out my hand. ‘Could I see, please?’ It’d occurred to me that I’d not taken the time to study it myself.

  Cora passed it over. It had obviously been trimmed down from a larger, standard-size picture. I wondered if Cora had done that to make it fit more easily in her wallet, or if she’d deliberately cut someone out of the photo. Simone looked at me from the picture, her eyes cool and her smile distant. I couldn’t tell if she was happy or not. Without the context of her surroundings, I had no idea where the photo had been taken.

  Now I was looking closer, I could see the definite family resemblance between her and Cora. The main difference was their noses. Simone’s was snub where Cora�
�s was fuller.

  I examined Simone’s face, frozen forever at age fifteen. I tried not to compare it with my mental image of how I’d pictured Bogbean. But it was difficult. Bogbean had always been a faint presence at my side, a wisp of a girl, with drifting hair. Simone was real.

  Her smile in the picture made me think of something. ‘Fillings,’ I said aloud.

  ‘What?’ Cora blinked at me. She’d been lost in her own thoughts.

  ‘Did Simone have any fillings in her teeth?’

  Cora’s brow knitted in thought. ‘I don’t know. I think she probably did. We have a history of lousy teeth in my family.’

  ‘The skeleton had filings in two of its teeth,’ I said. ‘I’m just thinking of corroborating details. If we could find out whether Simone had dental work or not …’

  She tugged her bottom lip in thought. ‘I didn’t think of that. I guess there would’ve been dental records from the time, but they probably wouldn’t have kept them.’

  ‘What about your parents? Could you ask them?’

  Cora took out her phone and started typing a text. ‘Hold on, let me ask my brother.’

  ‘You have a brother?’

  ‘Half-brother. Simone always confided in him.’

  There was a faint, residual bitterness hidden beneath her words that took me by surprise, more so than finding out she had another sibling. ‘Really? Why?’

  ‘God knows.’ She kept typing. ‘They were ridiculously similar. Both hated our dad, for different reasons. Both wanted to be anywhere but at home. They used to hang out all the time. If anyone would know a ridiculous detail like her teeth, it’d be him.’

  ‘I …’ Why hadn’t she mentioned him before?

  ‘It’s okay.’ Cora gave me a tight smile. ‘It’s helpful, to be honest. He remembers a lot more everyday stuff about her than I do. It can be useful.’

  ‘Where is he now?’

  ‘Home. He never escaped. I figured, after Simone went, he’d be right behind her. But he kinda swung in the opposite direction. Now he hardly ever leaves the house. He’s a proper technological marvel too. Even if he doesn’t know something offhand, he’ll find out for you.’ Cora lifted the wrist with her GPS watch it. ‘He got me this doo-hickey. Said if I was going to look for Simone, I should have technology to back me up. That was as close to encouragement as he’d get.’

  ‘He doesn’t think you should be looking for Simone?’

  ‘He doesn’t think I’ll find her, not by searching in the real world. He’s been looking online for years. And, since he can’t find any trace of her, ergo she’s not findable. That’s how he looks at the world. Plus he’s residually mad at me because I’ve only recently taken up this search. He doesn’t understand why I didn’t start searching the minute Simone went missing.’

  ‘Why did you leave it so long?’ It was something I still didn’t understand.

  Her phone beeped as a text came back. Cora frowned at the screen. ‘What side were the fillings on?’

  I rubbed the side of my face. Could I trust my memory? I tried to picture the day I’d found the skeleton. So many times over the years I’d done the same. I could no longer be completely certain what I had or hadn’t seen.

  And if I wasn’t certain, would it be right to tell Cora? I was still scared of giving her false hope. If she latched onto what she saw as a corroborating detail, no matter how small …

  ‘I don’t remember,’ I hedged. ‘What does your brother say?’

  ‘He’s gonna look into it. That means he doesn’t remember either.’

  ‘Doesn’t he think it’s weird you messaged him a query like that?’

  ‘It’s the only sort of query I ever send. We don’t have a traditional texting relationship.’

  I used my phone to take a picture of Simone’s photo. ‘In case I need to show it to anyone when you’re not around,’ I explained. I gave her back the photo and started the car. ‘I’m sorry this afternoon’s been unproductive,’ I said as I checked my mirrors. ‘This can’t be easy for you.’

  ‘It’s fine.’

  I sneaked a glance at her face. ‘Are you sure? How’re you holding up?’

  ‘Badly. That’s the honest answer, if you’re looking for one.’ Cora leaned her head back against the car seat headrest. ‘It’s made everything with Simone feel like it happened yesterday, y’know? I wish I knew if I was getting close or if this is another wild goose chase.’

  I pulled out onto the main road. ‘How many other places have you visited?’

  ‘In total? Five outside Birmingham. There’s only so much you can do by phone or internet. Sometimes you have to visit the actual place for answers. But, obviously, that doesn’t always work out like you expect.’ She sighed heavily. ‘Every potential lead I’ve found has turned out to be nothing.’

  ‘I’m amazed you’ve found so much to track down, after all this time.’

  ‘Yeah, well. A lot of the time I was clutching at straws. I can admit that in retrospect. I would latch onto a story or a hint, and I would spin it out until I was convinced that here, at last, was the answer to my prayers. Did I tell you about the trip to Scotland?’

  ‘You mentioned an exceptionally weird bed and breakfast.’

  ‘Yeah, that was the Scotland trip, about two years ago. I was chasing up a decade-old sighting of someone I genuinely thought could be Simone. It was a woman, the right age, the right description, with a midlands accent, who’d moved to the middle of absolute nowhere in north Scotland. She lived in a caravan and stayed the hell away from everyone. I never would’ve heard about her except a pair of backpackers got lost in a storm and she let them stay overnight to dry out. They were so grateful that when they got home, they immediately went online to tell everyone who’d listen about the wonderful hospitality they’d encountered. I stumbled across the story. They’d taken a picture outside her caravan, although you can only see the back of the woman’s head. I don’t think she knew they’d taken the picture, otherwise I’m sure she would’ve told them not to put it online.’

  ‘Why not?’

  Another heavy sigh. ‘It wasn’t Simone. It was some poor woman who’d escaped from her abusive husband. She’d set up a new home in the middle of nowhere, figuring no one would find her. And I went rushing up there, asked all her neighbours where to find this woman … you can imagine how she reacted when I turned up at her door and told her I’d tracked her down from a story online. She flew into a panic. If I could find her, so could her husband.’ Cora pressed her hands over her eyes. ‘I put the absolute fear of God into her. I never meant to. But she packed her bags that night and disappeared. All thanks to me.’ She let her hands fall. ‘It’s easy to think that this stupid, obsessive quest isn’t hurting anyone. But that’s just not true.’

  I didn’t know how to react to that. ‘What about the weird bed and breakfast?’

  Cora laughed. She shook off her despondency. ‘Oh my goodness,’ she said. ‘Where to even start with that place?’

  ***

  Our half-brother Jason was eight years older than me, only one year older than you.

  He wasn’t always around. I was glad he lived with his mum, across town, because I was jealous. Jealous that you shared your secrets with him instead of me. Jealous of the way Da spoke about him, always in gentle tones, with none of the exasperation or impatience he reserved for you and me.

  But, despite your closeness, you never told Jason about him.

  The only person you ever told was me.

  And that was only because I found the letter he sent you.

  Chapter 20

  At five o’clock we gave up for the day and collected at my house for dinner.

  People do this all the time, I reminded myself as I checked my reflection in the hall mirror. And they do it without freaking out.

  But my constant reassurances weren’t working. Inside I was a tangle of nerves. It showed in every little thing I did. For example, looking in the mirror five times in the space of an h
our. That was unprecedented. There’d been times when I’d gone a week or more without feeling the need to see my own face.

  My eyes fell on the pile of post on the hall table. Somewhere beneath it was the Manila envelope that’d arrived that morning. I’d still not psyched myself up to opening this one, although I was certain it contained the same stuff as the last, and the one before that, and the one before that. What I really should’ve done, I told myself, was dump it straight in the bin. Or, better yet, round up all the other, similar letters that’d been sent to me over the last two years, and burn them in some kind of cathartic bonfire in the garden. It would certainly be healthier than hiding them around the house, which is what I’d done, as if they were something I needed to keep and agonise over. As if I didn’t have enough of my own guilt without other people heaping it onto me.

  In the kitchen, Cora and Dallin were discussing some television programme that’d aired last year. The argument had the soft, almost-comforting edge to it that told me they’d hashed out these opinions before. Dallin seemed to have left his bad mood in the pub, which was a relief.

  No, there was no time to go through my post tonight. It could wait till later. Till forever, maybe.

  ‘You got rid of the steps out to the garden,’ Dallin said.

  I turned to find he’d come out of the kitchen without me hearing. He held a slim bottle of beer in one hand. There was the slight flush to his complexion which he always got when he was drinking. He made a vague gesture towards the back door.

  ‘The steps,’ he repeated, as if to clarify. ‘You got rid of them.’

  I couldn’t stop from rolling my eyes. ‘They were like that last time you were here. Mum had the ramp installed. When we were looking for a way to keep her living here. Remember?’

  Dallin winced at my tone. ‘I don’t remember. I mustn’t have gone out to the garden that time.’

  ‘How else do you think she would’ve got outside? It’s not like she could’ve bumped her chair down the steps.’

  ‘Alright, I get it.’ Dallin’s voice was defensive. ‘I thought maybe you’d done it yourself for some reason. I was just asking.’