Little Girls Tell Tales

by Rachel Bennett

  An odd look passed over Cora’s face. She dumped her beer on the table and went racing for the front door.

  ‘Cora!’ I called after her.

  We both got up. Cora was already out of the front door and halfway down the driveway.

  ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ I heard her yell.

  I made it to the front door in time to see Cora shooing someone away from her car.

  It was Eloise. Her hair was stuffed into a multicoloured wrap and she looked to be wearing at least three jumpers, one on top of the other. She held up her hands to ward off Cora. In one hand Eloise held a square of paper, which flapped like a white flag.

  ‘What’re you doing here?’ Cora demanded. ‘What do you want?’

  Eloise’s mouth opened and shut. When she spotted me, she waved a hand in my direction, like I might be inclined to calm Cora down.

  ‘Well?’ Cora asked.

  Eloise drew herself up. ‘I was leaving you a note,’ she said in a wavering voice. ‘But now you’re here I supposed I can just tell you in person.’

  Cora snatched the sheet of paper out of her hand. ‘Stay out of the curraghs,’ she read. ‘“You don’t know the damage you’re doing.” Well, that doesn’t sound threatening at all.’

  ‘It’s a simple enough fact.’ Eloise clasped her hands, so tightly it looked like her fingers were braided. ‘Don’t think I don’t know what you’ve been doing.’

  Cora drew in a sharp breath.

  ‘Each time you go stomping off away from the path, you’re causing untold damage,’ Eloise said. ‘Do you have any idea how many species of flowers need this place to live? Let alone the nesting birds. How can you be so careless?’

  Cora read the note again. There was a look in her eyes I hadn’t seen before. ‘Was it you?’

  The question confused Eloise enough that she forgot what she was saying. ‘What?’

  ‘Was it you who cut the tyres of my car?’

  Eloise took a step away from her. ‘You’ve got no right to be doing what you’re doing. Why can’t you stay on the paths like you’re supposed to?’

  ‘What about our tents?’ Cora closed in on her. ‘Was that you too?’

  Eloise had a panicked look in her eyes that reminded me of a cornered animal. I stepped down onto the driveway, intending to get Cora to back off, but before I could open my mouth, Eloise took us all by surprise. She kicked Cora hard in the knee, then turned and sprinted away like a jackrabbit.

  Cora cried out as her knee buckled. By the time I reached her, Eloise was way up the road, head up, legs pumping like a champion sprinter. I swore I’d never seen the woman move so fast in her life. She didn’t look back, not once. In a moment she vanished from sight around the corner.

  I helped Cora back to her feet.

  Chapter 26

  I didn’t have any ice in my freezer, so we had to pop a bag of frozen peas onto Cora’s knee.

  ‘It’s fine,’ Cora kept saying each time I fussed. ‘There’s no damage. It just hurts. Give me ten minutes and I’ll be fine.’

  Dallin tilted his chair back onto two legs, his foot propped against the kitchen table. ‘At least now we know who’s to blame for your spate of bad luck.’

  I shook my head. ‘I don’t believe Eloise would’ve damaged your tent,’ I said. ‘She’s eccentric, but she’s not dangerous.’

  ‘Tell that to my knee,’ Cora muttered. She lifted the pack of peas so we could all see the bruising that was already colouring the top of her shin.

  ‘Keep the peas on it,’ I admonished her. ‘They won’t do a bit of good if you’re waving them around.’

  Cora grumbled something else. But she put the peas back on her leg.

  ‘Do you want to tell the police?’ I asked. I smoothed out the note Eloise had intended to put on Cora’s car. Not matter how many times I read it, I still couldn’t figure out if it was threatening or not. Stay out of the curraghs … That could’ve been a threat, if said by the wrong person. You don’t know the damage you’re doing. That sounded more like an exasperated plea. Eloise had signed it from ‘a concerned neighbour’. Any way I read it, it was still ambiguous.

  Cora shook her head in answer to my question. ‘We already told the police Eloise was angry about us going into the curraghs. Told them twice in fact.’ She got out her phone and started typing with one thumb. ‘I don’t know if they talked to her. They thought it was a big jump from words to tyre-slashing.’

  ‘It’s odd,’ Dallin agreed. He tilted his chair back and forward on its back legs. ‘People usually escalate their behaviour. You’d expect the note first. It’d be weird to start with an act of violence and then give us a warning.’

  ‘May I remind you the woman kicked me in the knee?’ Cora scowled at her phone. ‘What’s her full name?’

  I had to think for a minute. ‘Purcell. Like the composer, not the washing powder.’

  After some more one-handed typing and quite a lot more scowling, Cora said. ‘She’s about forty-five, is that right?’

  At a guess, I would’ve said Eloise was younger, but I was notoriously rubbish at estimating ages. ‘I’m not sure,’ I said. ‘Maybe?’

  ‘She looked about that age to me,’ Cora said. ‘At a very charitable guess.’ She thumbed through another screen on her phone. ‘I reckon this is her.’

  She turned the phone around to show us a black-and-white photo, one where Eloise looked at least ten years younger. It was on a poetry publication website. I automatically noted the professional formatting.

  ‘Says she’s based in Peel,’ Cora said. ‘That’s south of here, isn’t it?’

  ‘South, and west a bit. It’s on the coast.’ I peered over her shoulder. ‘How old is the webpage? She moved up here just before I did. About seven or eight years ago.’

  ‘This looks like a pretty old site.’ Cora scrolled a bit more. ‘Last updated almost ten years ago. Still, it’s something to go on.’

  She pressed her legs together so the left knee held the bag of frozen peas against the right. That freed up her other hand so she could type with both thumbs. I watched, intrigued by how fast she could go.

  ‘What’s she looking for?’ Dallin asked.

  ‘I’m backtracking.’ Cora answered without looking up. ‘Ten years ago, Eloise Purcell was in Peel. Where was she before then?’

  Dallin said, ‘She doesn’t look the sort to have a big online presence.’

  ‘She doesn’t.’ Cora flashed a humourless grin. ‘But people don’t realise how much information they put onto the internet, whether they mean to or not. You of all people should know that.’

  Dallin stopped rocking his chair. ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘You should take a look at your own online presence sometime. I don’t know if you intentionally meant for your details to get attached to quite so many unsavoury websites, but you should perhaps consider changing your password.’ Cora scrolled past another page. ‘Or getting a different email address. And perhaps not putting your actual birthday online.’

  Dallin’s mouth twisted. ‘You’re just trying to wind me up. Why would you go digging around in my personal life?’

  Cora smiled, but it wasn’t the sort of smile that suggested she was joking. ‘I met you on the internet. I drove two hundred miles to a ferry port with you, then all the way up here into the middle of nowhere, with nothing but your promise that you were a nice person. You bet your life I checked you out first. Just like you did with me.’

  ‘Thanks a bunch.’

  Cora shrugged. ‘I’d rather be paranoid than murdered in a layby.’

  Dallin set his chair back onto four legs. There was a bit of colour to his cheeks. ‘It’s not what you think,’ he said to me. ‘The websites I’m registered on. It’s a bunch of conspiracy forums. I wanted to see what else was out there. Most of them won’t let you browse without creating a profile.’

  I smiled at his discomfort and said nothing, letting him think we didn’t believe him. To be honest
, I knew how awkward it was to get onto those forums, having experienced it myself while trying to look at his profile page. Who’d have thought a bunch of conspiracy fans would be so paranoid?

  ‘Here we go,’ Cora said then. ‘Eloise Purcell was at high school in Peel, went away to university for a bit, then came back to work as a teaching assistant at – ding ding ding – Sulby Primary School. That’s right around the corner from here, isn’t it?’

  I peered at the screen of her phone. She’d found an archived page that contained a list of teaching staff from the primary schools on the island. Halfway down the page was Eloise’s name.

  ‘I assume that’s the same person,’ Cora said. ‘It’s a distinctive enough name. So, if she was working at the local primary school in her mid-twenties, it’s likely she would’ve been living nearby.’

  I crinkled my nose. ‘Maybe. She could’ve commuted in from Ramsey or Kirk Michael.’

  Cora leaned over the phone. ‘The dates match up,’ she said with an edge of excitement to her voice.

  ‘What dates?’

  She turned the phone to show me, but I still didn’t see anything apart from a list of names and the year they’d joined the school. ‘She was here twenty years ago. She was in the area when Simone disappeared.’

  Chapter 27

  I tried and failed to talk Cora out of going straight round to Eloise’s house. The way I saw it, it’d do very little good for us to turn up on her doorstep looking belligerent and, in Cora’s case, a little drunk as well.

  ‘I just want to talk to her,’ Cora said. ‘We’re not going to cause a scene. I need to know if she remembers anything.’

  Nothing I could say would persuade her otherwise. In the end I went out to the hall and pulled on my boots.

  ‘What’re you doing?’ Cora asked. She’d already bundled herself up in her duffle coat.

  ‘I’m coming with you,’ I said. ‘Eloise is way more likely to talk to you if I’m there too.’

  Dallin wandered into the hall from the kitchen. At some point he’d opened another beer. He stood watching us as Cora struggled into her boots.

  ‘Are you coming?’ I asked Dallin.

  He gave a careless shrug. ‘Doesn’t seem like it needs all of us. I’ll hold the fort here.’

  I didn’t particularly want him being in the house on his own. But I couldn’t put the feeling into words. It was the idea of him being unsupervised here. Looking at my stuff. Touching Beth’s ornaments.

  I concentrated on lacing my boots, glad none of this showed on my face. Even I could tell those thoughts were irrational.

  ‘Don’t eat all the food before we get back,’ Cora said.

  We walked round to Eloise’s house. I could’ve driven, but it seemed daft to take the car such a short distance. Besides, it was nice to be out in the evening air. The wind had picked up, tousling my hair forwards over my face, and making the trees chatter loudly as they moved. A slightly wild evening, one which felt like it could tip over into a storm with little provocation. I liked it. The noise of the wind and the trees left little room in my head for anything else.

  ‘Is the weather always like this?’ Cora asked me.

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘So … changeable. It was raining this morning, bright sunshine at lunchtime, now this. And I’m sure the forecast predicted thunder for tomorrow.’

  ‘That sounds about right,’ I said with a smile.

  ‘It’s crazy. Is it always like this?’

  ‘Living on an island, the weather’s always going to be changeable. You get all four seasons in a day sometimes. Hot, cold, rain, sun, sleet, hail. It happens more often than you’d think.’

  ‘How do you get used to it?’

  I frowned. ‘I don’t know. I don’t suppose we have any choice in the matter. The weather will always do its own thing, regardless of how we feel about it.’ I waited a beat, then asked, ‘Why did you take Lenny’s Filofax?’

  Cora gave a rueful smile. ‘I wondered when you’d bring that up. I knew you’d taken it from my tent.’

  ‘You did?’

  She shrugged. ‘It was there when I first checked if anything was missing. It was gone five minutes later.’

  I studied the side of her face as we walked. ‘You shouldn’t have taken it from Lenny’s house.’

  ‘It looked important. You didn’t give me time to check it out properly.’ Cora side-eyed me. ‘Where is it now?’

  ‘In my car.’ I knew what she was really asking. I should’ve given it back to Lenny straight away, but I couldn’t think how to explain to him why I had it.

  ‘Did you read it?’ Cora asked.

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘You should.’ Cora pulled up her hood against the wind. ‘There’s some information that concerns you.’

  ‘What information?’

  We’d reached Eloise’s house. No lights were on. Her car wasn’t parked on the drive.

  ‘I’ll show you when we get back,’ Cora said. She looked at the dark house. ‘What d’you think? Out, or hiding from us?’ She went up and banged on the door anyway.

  Personally, I didn’t think Eloise was in. She tended to walk most places, so if she’d taken her car, she must’ve gone further afield.

  A light came on when I went to the side of the house, but it was an automatic burglar deterrent above the side door. We’d had one on our own house, until we’d got fed up of it being tripped by cats or stray animals, or possibly wallabies.

  I peered in through the frosted glass of the side door. No lights inside, no sign of movement. I hesitated before trying the handle. I was secretly glad to find it locked.

  There were two pairs of wellies next to the step by the door, turned upside down on a wooden stand so the rain would clean off the mud. I bent to look at the undersides of the boots. All had fresh mud stuck in the treads, but none showed the distinctive wavy pattern I’d seen on the prints next to Cora’s tent.

  I heard Cora banging on the front door again. Still no response.

  ‘She’s definitely not in,’ I said when I returned to the front of the house.

  ‘How can you be sure?’ Cora asked. ‘She might’ve spotted us coming and hidden.’

  ‘You’re standing in her flowerbed. If she was here, she definitely would’ve come out to shout at you.’

  Cora swore under her breath and stepped back onto the path.

  ‘Plus she has a noisy dog called Butterscotch,’ I said. ‘At a guess, she’s taken him for a walk.’ I looked up at the dark house. ‘We should go home. Come back and try again in the morning.’

  This time she didn’t argue with me.

  When we got back to my house, Cora stayed outside to check her car.

  ‘Making sure the crazy lady didn’t touch it,’ she explained.

  Dallin was in the sitting room. I’d known, as soon as I left, he’d go into the one room I’d deliberately closed the door to. But still, it gave me a thrill of panic, to walk in and see the living room with the lights on. He was sat on the sofa with a beer in one hand and a photo album in the other.

  Without commenting, I took the album off him and snapped it closed. I didn’t look at him. I also tried not to look at all of Beth’s ornaments. ‘Come back in the kitchen,’ I said.

  I didn’t wait for him to argue. Instead, I walked off into the kitchen and sat down, like nothing untoward had happened. At that point I realised I was still clutching the photo album. I didn’t know what to do with it. Holding it to my chest would make everyone realise it was secret and private. Putting it down on the counter would be an open invitation for everyone to look at it.

  I glanced at the cover. It wasn’t even one of the important albums. A load of photos from a trip we’d taken to Malta, when Beth’s digital camera had packed up and we’d instead bought a handful of cheap disposable cameras. As a result, that holiday was one of the few immortalised in hardcopy. The rest were in a digital folder on my laptop.

  After a full minute, just long
enough to make it clear he was doing it of his own volition, not to humour me, Dallin followed me into the kitchen. He went to the back window and stood looking out at the garden.

  ‘I still say it’s kinda convenient, when you think about it,’ he said after a while.

  I blinked. ‘What?’

  ‘Cora suggested from the outset we should ask to stay here. I told her you’d rather not have houseguests.’

  The presumption annoyed me, even if it was correct. ‘So?’

  ‘So, it’s interesting, don’t you think, how her tent got damaged like that? Just hers, not mine. And you just so happened to offer her a room for the night.’

  I rolled my eyes. ‘Nobody’s that weirdly manipulative,’ I said. ‘Cora hasn’t once said – or even suggested – she’d want to stay here instead of a tent. In fact, it sounds like you’re the person who’s been having trouble sleeping on the ground. Hey, maybe you cut holes in her tent, because you knew I would invite her to sleep here instead, and I’d have to invite you as well.’

  Dallin got an odd look on his face. ‘You really think I’d do that?’

  ‘I don’t think anyone would do it. It’d be crazy. And it’s kinda ugly of you to suggest your friend might be crazy.’

  Dallin turned back to the window. ‘She’s not my friend,’ he muttered, just loud enough to hear.

  Whatever. I stayed at the table, hunched over the photo album, my hands gripping it so hard the edges bit into my fingers.

  ‘By the way,’ Dallin said. ‘This fell out of your photo album.’

  I turned my head, slowly, like in a bad dream. Dallin was holding up a folded square of photocopied print. Fluorescent yellow lines picked out a sentence here and there. He also held the Manila envelope the letter had come in, identical in all respects to the one that still sat on my hall table, except this one was battered and creased at the edges where I’d jammed it between the pages of the photo album. I recognised the paper and the envelope perfectly well.