‘Did they empty the bags so we wouldn’t notice the damage straight away?’ Dallin wondered. ‘Or were they really looking for something?’
‘Whatever it was, they won’t have found it in my dirty underwear.’ Cora tilted her face to the sky. Her anger was bubbling under the surface. It seemed likely she would start swearing again at any moment. ‘What the hell did they expect to find?’
In the mud near the back of the tent was half a boot print. I bent to examine it. Obviously, it could’ve belonged to Cora – or Dallin, if he’d wandered around the tents at any point. But it must’ve been left recently, because the rain last night would’ve erased it. The back half of the print was the only bit captured by the mud; the front was on the grass. What I could see of it displayed a wavy pattern, like you’d find on a child’s shoe.
I pointed it out to Cora. She took a photo, just in case.
‘Something else to show the police,’ she said. ‘Probably nothing they can use, but at least they won’t dismiss us out of hand. Hopefully.’
‘We’re on private land,’ Dallin said. ‘That’ll make a difference. The campsite owner won’t be happy about vandalism, deliberate or random. It’ll reflect badly on his business.’ He gestured at the other tents. Outside a few, people were sitting, talking. I realised they were casting covert glances in our direction. ‘Word spreads fast in places like this. Soon everyone will know what happened. The owner wants people to know he’s responding quickly and it won’t happen again.’
I ducked my head to look inside the tent again. Now the shock had worn off, I could see the mess more dispassionately. The tears in each side of the tent were not obvious at all. But when it rained again – which it would do at any time – the interior of the tent would end up damp at best, soaked at worst. That sort of thing could send people home very quickly. I’d only been camping a few times, when me and Beth were both younger and more adventurous, and I knew being wet and miserable would take the shine off an adventure fast.
Would it have been enough to make Cora give up and return home? Was that what someone was hoping for?
Underneath a pile of T-shirts, I spotted the corner of something solid. I lifted a shirt to reveal a picture wallet, of the sort I’d sometimes seen people keep in their pockets, when they carried a large number of family photos that they wanted to bore people with. I didn’t think anyone still used those these days. You could bore people much more effectively with a smartphone.
The wallet was open to a picture of Cora and Simone together when they were much younger. Since it was obviously personal, I didn’t look too closely. But underneath was something else. A square black book with rubbed corners and the word Filofax embossed on the front.
My stomach lurched. No … she wouldn’t have …
The door fabric rustled as Cora moved to come in. I snatched up the Filofax and shoved it under my coat.
Cora poked her head into the tent. Her eyes fell on the photo wallet.
‘You think they looked at these pictures?’ I asked.
Cora made a small noise in her throat. ‘I keep them in a zip pocket of my bag. They wouldn’t have fallen out by accident.’ She turned to look at me, very close in the confines of the tent. ‘Whoever was in here, they were looking for pictures of Simone. Why would they do that?’
Chapter 24
Later, I was sitting in my car, parked outside the campsite office, when Dallin sought me out. Cora was talking to the police, down next to her tent. It’d been decided to keep Dallin away from the police this time.
Dallin opened the car door and dropped into the passenger seat without asking. He let out a sigh so long and heavy it was like he was deflating. ‘I’m exhausted,’ he said. ‘What a goddamn mess, huh?’
I nodded absently. I was distracted, still thinking about the Filofax I’d found. It was Lenny’s, I was certain. Cora must’ve snuck it into her pocket while I was putting the boxes back. But why?
From where I’d parked, I could see the top of Cora’s tent and the police car next to it, but I couldn’t see her. Presumably she was talking with the officers somewhere.
‘All I want to do is fall into bed,’ Dallin said. ‘But apparently I can’t even do that.’
‘Did you check if your tent is damaged too?’
Dallin nodded. ‘Nothing’s been touched, inside or out. I guess it was just Cora’s tent that got targeted.’
‘First her car, now her tent.’
‘It does look like someone hates her, doesn’t it? Cora was talking about some photos that’d been pulled out of her bag. Family stuff. Did you see them?’
‘No. I saw the photo wallet, but not what was inside.’
‘The police have taken it. They reckon it’s the best bet for finding fingerprints.’ He ran his fingers through his hair. ‘It’s weird. Cora never mentioned those photos. I’ve asked about her family a bunch of times. You’d think she would’ve brought out the pictures.’
‘Not if they were personal.’
‘But if she had anything, no matter how personal, that would potentially jog someone’s memory about Simone—’ He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I would’ve expected her to be showing them to everyone. She’s weirdly secretive about her family sometimes.’
‘Not everyone likes to overshare.’
Dallin looked at me. ‘Is that a dig at me?’
‘A little, yeah.’
‘You’re still angry about the website?’
I sighed. ‘I’m still angry about everything. The website is the absolute least of it, and you know it. You can’t expect me to forgive you so easily.’
‘I’ve said I was sorry.’
I wasn’t entirely sure that was true, but I let it pass. ‘Why did you hate us, Dal?’ I asked.
‘I never hated you,’ he said with surprise.
‘No, but you hated us. Me and Beth, together. You hated the idea of us being together, and living in Mum’s house.’
‘That’s not true at all.’
‘Isn’t it? The minute you heard Mum say she was renting her house to me and Beth, you were gone. Pretty much the same day. That looks a lot like you hated us.’
‘Rosie,’ he started, then sighed again. ‘Listen, it was nothing to do with you. It was a really difficult time. I didn’t know how to process how I was feeling. Losing Dad … and then Mum having to give up the house she loved and go live in that pokey little flat, just because we couldn’t figure out how to install a stairlift … that’s the sort of thing that happens to old people. She’s not even sixty. I hate that she was forced out of her home.’
‘And you thought the best way to express that was to move to England? Don’t you think she needed your help more than ever?’
‘She had you. And Beth.’ As always, he said her name carefully, like it was something made of glass, or knives. ‘I tried talking to Mum about moving back in with her. Getting a load of work done to the house, to make it suitable for her. But she’d already made her own plan. She wanted you to live in that house. More than she wanted me living there.’ He rubbed the side of his face. ‘Don’t pretend it isn’t true. She said you would take better care of the garden.’ He rolled his eyes. ‘Like that’s a proper excuse for anything. She just didn’t want to admit she liked you better than me.’
I said nothing. In point of fact, I remembered those conversations between me and Mum and Dallin. I’d been just as resistant to the idea of her moving into a flat. It’d be such a huge wrench. But she’d been adamant. She wanted to remain independent, even if that meant leaving her beloved home, and I’d supported that decision. Only once had I asked her why she’d rented the house to me and Beth instead of to Dallin.
‘I could never have asked him to pay rent,’ Mum had said. ‘It would’ve never worked out, for either of us. The only other thing I could’ve done was sell the house and split the money between the two of you. But I knew what would happen if I did.’
I knew as well. Mum couldn’t bear the idea of losing the house
and seeing Dallin squander the profits. So she’d found a compromise she could live with – she knew me and Beth would use the house as a home, and love it as much as she had. Apparently that wasn’t what Dallin had hoped for. I uncharitably wondered what plans he’d had for the money we would’ve made from selling.
‘Anyway, it doesn’t matter, does it?’ Dallin said at length. ‘Things never work out as anyone plans. Your whole life can go awry in a moment.’
I laughed without humour. ‘Yeah, tell me about it.’
‘I just never understood … how come you’re not more angry? I’m furious, all the time. But you’re just—’ He gestured at me. ‘You’ve just accepted it.’
‘Is that what you think?’
‘Come on, Rose. How can you not be angry at Mum for what happened to Dad?’
And there was the truth, at last. I felt a weird kind of satisfaction that he’d finally admitted it aloud. ‘It was an accident, Dal,’ I said. ‘We all know that.’
‘Mum was driving. Whatever happened had to be her fault.’
‘Possibly. We’ll never know, will we?’
Mum had no memory of the accident. No memory of that entire day, in fact. The police found Mum’s car, on its roof, halfway down a steep embankment on the coast road to Douglas. Another twenty feet and the car would’ve pitched over the cliff into the sea. No one ever pieced together exactly what happened. From the marks on the road, it looked like she’d swerved, but for what reason we’d never know.
Dallin was shaking his head. ‘It must’ve been—’
‘There’s no must about it. For all we know, another car forced them off the road. Or a duck ran out in front of them. Or they had an argument and Dad grabbed the wheel.’
Dallin stared at me in shock. ‘Dad would never—’
‘That’s the point though, isn’t it? We don’t know what they did. We have to accept that.’
Which was fine for me to say, of course. But when I catalogued the ghosts at my shoulders, Beth and Bogbean, why did I never include my dad with them? By all rights, he should’ve been right there, in my thoughts and memories always, and yet I hardly ever caught myself looking around for his shade. Why? Because I was angry with him too. I knew I had no right to be, but some things defied rational thinking.
What if he did cause the crash? Him and Mum always argued when they were in a car together. It was as inevitable as the tides. Even after fifteen years of separation, they still picked fights with each other. On more than one occasion I’d seen her take both hands off the wheel to harangue him.
So, yes, the same dark thoughts had crossed my mind. What if? What if? I didn’t want to believe Mum would’ve done anything to hurt Dad.
But what if?
‘It’s your fault as well,’ I said. I didn’t mean to say it aloud but it slipped out as I was trying to suppress those other, darker thoughts.
‘What?’ The stricken look on Dallin’s face made me wish I’d kept quiet.
‘Mum only went to pick up Dad from Douglas that day because you were too hungover to do it yourself,’ I said. ‘If you’d just got out of bed that morning …’
I didn’t finish the thought. My awful words hung in the air between us.
‘Is that really how you feel?’ Dallin asked, his voice subdued.
‘No. Of course not.’ The lie came easily. ‘If we’re playing the blame-game, we can point the finger at anyone. The crash could’ve been the fault of Mum, or Dad, or you, or me, or the universe, or no one or everyone.’ I rubbed my forehead. ‘Or it could’ve been an accident. A stupid, unfathomable accident that makes no sense no matter how much you want it to.’
I thought about Cora, so desperate to know what happened to her sister. I could’ve been like that – obsessing over what caused my mum to crash the car, or what had sparked the cancer in Beth’s young body. If I’d asked the right questions, harassed the right people, could I have discovered why exactly these terrible things had happened to us?
When I closed my eyes I thought I felt Beth’s hands on my shoulders. Don’t hold onto it, she would’ve said. Some things ground you; others drown you.
There was another silence, longer this time. But the air felt clearer. I blinked away my tears.
Eventually, Dallin said, ‘Have you considered having the garden remodelled? It must be a lot of work for you on your own. Have you thought about putting down decking?’
I laughed at the side-stepping of topic and shook my head. No, I hadn’t considered remodelling anything. For a start, I didn’t have the money. I also didn’t have the mental wellness. I was struggling just to keep things ticking over from one day to the next. The slightest deviation to my routine left me discombobulated for days. What would happen if I got a load of workmen in to tear up the garden and remodel it? Just the thought gave me a tight feeling in my chest.
‘Do you remember the big tree that used to be in the garden?’ I asked. I wasn’t really interested, I just wanted to distract him from proposing changes to my home.
‘Which one?’
‘The big horse chestnut. It was down by the boundary wall. Nicole says it got struck by lightning when you were a kid.’
‘Oh, shit, yeah. I remember. It caught fire one night. Proper horrifying. I was asleep in bed when I heard people shouting. When I looked out of my window the whole garden was lit up. Like something from a movie. Flames climbing all the way up one side of the tree. Mum came pounding up the stairs and bundled me out of the house – picked me right up and hauled me out of there. It must’ve been adrenaline or something, because I was pretty heavy by then. It’d been years since she’d carried me anywhere. But anyway, yeah, I remember sitting out on the road in front of the house in my pyjamas. I think Mum must’ve been scared the tree would fall onto the house; that’s why she got me out of there so fast.’
Nicole had said Dallin wasn’t home when it happened, but I guessed it was so long ago, it was no wonder memories got mixed up. ‘Why did no one tell me about this?’ I asked.
‘I told you a bunch of times. It was literally all I talked about that summer. Mum sent me to stay with you and Dad for a week afterwards, in case I’d been traumatised, I guess. When I got back, whatever was left of the tree had been chopped down. There was only a stump left.’ Dallin looked at me quizzically. ‘Don’t you remember it at all? I swear I told you.’
I shook my head.
‘I guess you were pretty young. About five or six, maybe? Mum never liked talking about it. I think it traumatised her more than it did me. I got into the habit of not mentioning it.’
I thought hard but no memories surfaced. Dallin was probably right – how much did I really remember from when I was young? My memories of early childhood were scrappy and piecemeal. Like most people’s, I suspected. There were more important things that I’d forgotten. My grandfather, for example, who died when I was three. Three whole years, and I didn’t have a single memory of him. At least I could picture my dad, if I closed my eyes.
But still, it was weird, to think I’d been living in that house all this time and never known about the tree. It made me wonder what other secrets were buried in my garden.
‘Something else we’re not mentioning,’ Dallin said then. ‘I think we should tell Cora to give up on this search.’
I turned to look at him. ‘You really feel that way?’
‘Don’t you? This search is a loss. She won’t find anything.’
‘What makes you so certain?’
‘I don’t know. Nothing. Everything.’ Dallin pulled down the sun visor so he could check his reflection in the vanity mirror. ‘She’s not telling us the full story about her sister. Have you heard the way she talks about her parents? There’s something not right there.’
I frowned. Had I noticed anything odd in Cora’s comments? ‘They don’t get along,’ I said. ‘That’s not so unusual.’
‘It’s more than just not getting on. She’s angry as hell at her parents. She blames them completely for Simone
’s disappearance. In fact, I think she blames everyone she knows. She keeps saying if only everyone had looked harder for Simone, maybe they would’ve found her in time.’
It was a fair enough sentiment, I thought. ‘She’s been through a lot. It’d be weirder if she wasn’t angry.’
‘Maybe. I’m just saying, I’ve only known her a few months, but it’s long enough to suspect she’s plastered over a lot of cracks. I’m worried she’s not stable.’
‘She’s fine.’ I came to Cora’s defence automatically. ‘This is what people look like when they’re grieving. It’s normal.’
Dallin didn’t answer. Silence filled the car, broken only by the barking of a dog outside a tent further down the field.
‘Anyway,’ I said at last. ‘Someone obviously thinks Cora is onto something. Otherwise, why would they be trying to scare her away?’
Dallin smoothed his hair forwards with both hands. ‘I don’t think they are. I think she’s had a run of bad luck, that’s all. Two bad things happening in two days can look a lot like a conspiracy, if you’re of a certain mindset, which Cora is.’
I stared out towards the tents. I still couldn’t see Cora. ‘She won’t listen to you if you tell her to give up.’
‘I know. And I’d feel bad leaving her, after I promised to help, but I can’t stay here if I don’t believe in what she’s doing.’
It took me a moment to understand what he was saying. ‘You’re leaving?’
‘Don’t make it sound so dramatic. I’m here voluntarily. I said I’d introduce Cora to you and Mum and anyone else who could help her. And I’ve done that. My usefulness doesn’t extend to much more. What am I going to do, trail behind her in the curraghs for the next four days on the very slim off-chance I might spot something she doesn’t?’
‘Has she asked you to do that?’
‘She never asked for anything, not directly.’ He raised his hands, then let them fall. ‘She has something about her that makes you want to do more for her, y’know? When she told me she intended to come here … it stood to reason I should go with her, right? I mean, this is as close to a hometown as I’ve got.’ He pursed his lips. ‘I thought she needed me, y’know? I thought I could be helpful. Stupid, really. She doesn’t even need me for moral support. She found you for that.’
Little Girls Tell Tales Page 18