Little Girls Tell Tales

by Rachel Bennett

  Dallin turned it in his fingers as if examining it. ‘Who’s been sending you excerpts from medical textbooks? Weirdly annotated excerpts, at that.’

  I couldn’t find my voice. Someone had stolen it away.

  Dallin held the paper up to read something on the back. As if he hadn’t already read it before I got home. ‘I mean, I don’t want to imply too much into this, but is there some reason why someone’s highlighted and underlined the word “murderer”, right here?’

  Before I could even begin to think of an answer, Cora came in, and Dallin, thank God, shut up.

  Chapter 28

  At approximately three o’clock in the morning, the wind changed direction and caused the rain to drum loudly against my window. It lasted only a couple of minutes but that was enough to wake me up.

  I lay in bed, listening to the swoop and wail of the wind. When I was younger, I’d imagined the wind would lift the whole house, tearing loose its roots and pitching it into the sky like Dorothy’s farmhouse. The thought had never particularly scared me. I couldn’t imagine the storm would hurt me. It would just pick me up and take me someplace new.

  When Beth had been here, when a storm woke up one or both of us, we would roll over and find each other. I would scoop her into my arms, or she’d gather me into hers, and we would lie there, awake, listening to the wind and the rain outside. Neither of us would speak. We were secure in the knowledge that our house was safe. That we were safe. Nothing could touch us.

  Now, when I rolled over, I found nothing but an empty stretch of cold sheets. Those were the worst moments. In my half-awake state, I sometimes forgot she wasn’t there, and startled awake to find her side of the bed cold and untouched.

  I reached out and pulled Beth’s pillow to me. I clung to it like a comforter.

  Murderer.

  Outside, the rain spattered against the window again.

  It didn’t look like I’d be getting to sleep anytime soon. I got up and padded on bare feet to the bathroom.

  On the landing, I paused. The only light came from the lamp in my room. None shone from underneath the door to the spare room, or to Dallin’s old room. I hoped my guests were sleeping better than me.

  Sleeping better than they would in that tent. The thought made me remember Dallin’s words. Of course, I didn’t believe Cora would’ve damaged her own tent. That was just Dallin putting weird ideas into my head.

  It bothered me he’d been thinking like that. All those half-dropped hints about Cora being manipulative and borderline unhinged … what exactly was he basing that on? I hadn’t seen her acting particularly crazy. Obsessive, sure; determined, definitely. But those weren’t particularly odd traits. I did strange obsessive things myself. The difference was I knew my tidying rituals and fear of the outside world were stupid, but I did them anyway, because I wouldn’t know how to cope without them.

  It bothered me a lot more that he’d found one of the clippings Beth’s parents had sent me.

  I should’ve hidden them better. Or burned them without opening the envelopes. I wished I’d found a way to deal healthily with the guilt they’d brought.

  I stood there on the landing for longer than intended. Although I strained my ears, I couldn’t hear any sounds from inside Cora’s room. She was probably fast asleep.

  For a moment – a very brief, fleeting moment – I considered pushing open the door and peering in to see if she was awake. But to what end? I couldn’t think what I would say to her. How I would frame the thoughts swirling in my head. Even if she felt the same way I did …

  I remembered what she’d said, about her ex-husband.

  Resolutely I turned away. No, it was a nice daydream, but I knew there was no way I could have that conversation with Cora. Not with the ghost of Beth hovering over my shoulder at all times.

  In the morning, Cora cooked breakfast, which was a feat in itself given that I hadn’t thought to buy any breakfast items when I did the shopping. Usually I only had toast and tea. I never woke up hungry. So I was surprised when I got up, smelled something delicious, and immediately felt my stomach growl.

  I put my dressing gown and slippers on before I came downstairs. Beth had said they made me look like a granny, but they were warm and they meant no one had to deal with seeing my bare feet first thing in the morning.

  ‘Morning, sunshine,’ Cora said as I came into the kitchen. She’d scrambled what looked like two dozen eggs in the cast iron skillet. ‘Are you hungry?’

  By rights I shouldn’t have been, but my stomach grumbled again. ‘Apparently so,’ I said.

  Cora favoured me with a smile. ‘Sit yourself down. Eggs will be done in a minute.’

  Dallin was already at the kitchen table, his hands wrapped around a cup of strong coffee, his shoulder hunched. He didn’t look particularly happy to be awake. On the table in front of him were spread Cora’s maps and charts.

  He raised his eyes to mine as I sat down opposite, but didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to. He now knew I had a secret I didn’t want to talk about.

  ‘I need to get out early,’ Cora said. ‘I’ve drawn up a revised schedule, but even so, I need to boogie if I’ve any hope of sticking to it.’

  I looked at the nest of red lines she’d drawn across the photographs of the curraghs. ‘Do you need me to come with you?’ I asked. I crossed my fingers the answer was no. Outside, the rain had turned to miserable, persistent drizzle. I didn’t want to be out there today.

  ‘Not unless you want to,’ Cora said. ‘We should have it covered.’

  ‘Are you going to Eloise’s house this morning?’

  Cora’s shoulders stiffened. ‘I’ve thought about it. I was … maybe a little short-tempered last night.’

  ‘Maybe a little,’ I agreed.

  ‘I’ll call by her house on the way to the curraghs. If she’s not there, I’ll try at lunchtime. Eventually we’ll catch up with her.’

  I was glad Cora’s temper had cooled. After the way she’d acted last night, I’d been worried what she might do when she found Eloise.

  Cora brought a pile of toast to the table. ‘Can we maybe ask you to look into something else for us?’ she asked me.

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘We need to speak to anyone else who was living in this area twenty years ago. Could you see what you can dig up?’

  ‘I can give it a go,’ I said. ‘I’m not really a computer whiz though. Not like you.’

  ‘I’m nothing like an expert. All I know is a few tricks my brother taught me. You’ve got something I haven’t, though,’ Cora said with the ghost of a smile. ‘Friends. You can make phone calls and speak to people. They’re less likely to speak to me, no matter how nice I ask them.’ She came back to the table with a dinner plate loaded with scrambled eggs. ‘Help yourself,’ she said. ‘We had a bunch of eggs that we bought the other day. They need using up.’

  ‘Looks great. Thank you.’ I avoided looking at her directly. Whenever I did, I felt the guilty spark of standing outside her bedroom door last night, straining my ears to see if I could hear her breathing.

  What would’ve happened if she’d opened her door?

  I kept my eyes down so no one would see the heat that’d risen to my face.

  ‘When you’re searching online,’ Cora said, ‘don’t limit yourself to people who lived in this area. If possible, check out people who worked in the local shops and pubs, stuff like that.’

  I seriously doubted I could find out much. Cora had found Eloise’s details easily enough yesterday, but my experience with websites – especially Manx websites – were that the pages I looked for either didn’t exist or didn’t carry any of the information I wanted.

  ‘I probably won’t find anything useful,’ I said carefully.

  ‘I’d appreciate it if you try,’ Cora said.

  ‘I just—’

  ‘Look, I know no one’s going to say, for sure, I remember your sister, she got killed and dumped in the swamp and, as a bonus, I totally kno
w who did it.’ Cora was turned away from me, scraping the burned-on egg bits out of the pan, so I couldn’t see her expression. ‘But someone might remember something.’

  ‘Hope springs eternal,’ Dallin said. He sipped his coffee like it was the only thing keeping his eyes open. ‘It could be she was here, on her way somewhere else. She could’ve gone to a different part of the island. Or back to England. If you can find a trail to follow …’

  ‘So, you think she might still be alive?’ I asked.

  ‘In the absence of solid evidence, we have to consider every possibility, don’t we?’ Dallin said. ‘So, yeah, I reckon there’s an outside chance she might be living a full and rich life somewhere.’

  Cora shook her head without looking up from the pan. ‘If she was alive, she would’ve contacted me. There’s no way she would’ve stayed lost for all this time.’

  ‘Unless she has amnesia. She could’ve fallen and hit her head and forgotten who she was.’

  ‘Now you’re being silly.’

  ‘I’m making the point we simply don’t know what she did.’ Dallin drank some more coffee. Behind his sleepy, grumpy demeanour, I could see the wheels turning. He knew this was his best chance to talk Cora around. ‘There could be reasons why she’s not contacted you, Cora. She could’ve married an unsuitable bastard and been too afraid to tell anyone. She could’ve been kidnapped. Or brainwashed. Or—’ He made a circular motion with his hand as he sought another possibility. ‘Rosie, help me.’

  ‘Oh no,’ I said. ‘You can dig your own way out.’

  Cora at last gave up on the skillet and came to sit down at the table. We ate toast with thick wedges of butter and hot scrambled eggs on top.

  ‘I’m coming around to the idea of breakfast,’ I said. ‘Never been a fan of it before.’

  ‘You just needed someone like me to cook for you,’ Cora said with a smile.

  My cheeks went red again. I mumbled a rubbish response into my half-finished meal.

  Was she being serious? Did she mean anything by it? Or was it just a glib comment? I snuck a few glances at her as I ate the rest of my eggs. Cora seemed unfazed. She was reading a page of the scribbled notes in one of her notebooks.

  I tried to think of something else to say, to keep the conversation alive, but my brain had stalled. All too soon, Cora finished eating and stood up.

  ‘Oh, I forgot,’ she said. ‘Could you check some of this as well?’

  From her pocket she produced Lenny’s Filofax. I wanted to groan. She’d obviously taken it from my unlocked car last night. I knew I’d been wrong to tell her where it was.

  Cora laid the book down next to me. She’d bookmarked a few pages with scraps of paper. I frowned.

  ‘We’d better get moving,’ she said to Dallin.

  ‘Right behind you,’ Dallin said. To my surprise, he finished his coffee and stood up. I hadn’t realised he was going with Cora.

  He winked at me, and I was suddenly glad I wasn’t going to be left alone to make conversation with him. I was pretty sure what he’d want to talk about.

  Chapter 29

  The internet was a wonderful and confusing thing. It always baffled me how everything a person could ever want to know was on there, and yet I could spend hours randomly clicking around without finding a single useful thing.

  I think the problem was too much information. Even the simplest search dragged me down a rabbit-hole of interesting but irrelevant pages. I never understood how Beth could find and narrow down the information she wanted for her blog posts.

  This time, at least, I had something to focus on. It helped take my mind off everything else. I’d managed to avoid Dallin’s questions last night and again that morning by the simple trick of staying in the same room as Cora at all times. I’d guessed correctly he wouldn’t want to ask me anything difficult while she was around.

  My gaze fell on the Filofax. Cora obviously wanted me to read it. With reluctance I opened it to the first of the bookmarks.

  The page was sparsely filled with a column of numbers and various comments written in Lenny’s surprisingly neat handwriting. I immediately saw why Cora had flagged that page. Halfway down was Dallin’s name. The note next to it said, ‘£2000 – Drainage’.

  I sighed. Was this evidence of the money Dallin supposedly owed? I wasn’t sure I could cope with untangling the cryptic messages right then.

  Instead I pulled my laptop closer and opened a new search window.

  The first thing I did was look for Eloise online, trying to replicate what Cora had found last night. I could only do so because I knew to search with the name of the primary school. Even so, I had to wade through pages till I found what Cora had alighted on so easily.

  Not for the first time that morning, I wondered whether Cora had given me this task simply to keep me indoors, to give me an excuse not to traipse around the curraghs with them. Looking out at the dull, unappealing weather, I couldn’t be entirely upset.

  I glanced at my mobile phone. Cora had promised to text me if they spoke with Eloise. So far nothing, which meant Eloise probably wasn’t in.

  I did a quick Google search of Nicole instead. It took me two attempts to spell her middle name correctly. Vanaella, which always made me think of a perfume, or a macrobiotic yoghurt. The first thing that popped up was her Facebook page. It seemed to consist of cute dog pictures.

  It made me feel a little seedy, to sit there and Google my neighbours. Like I was prying into their lives. It also made me aware of how long it’d been since I’d last been on social media. My laptop automatically logged me into Facebook when I went onto Nicole’s page. At the top, an alert in red told me I had 99+ updates from friends.

  The thought made me nauseous. All my friends and acquaintances – many of them people I’d never met in real life, only online – were steadily going on with their lives, while mine had stalled. Did they ever think about me? A glance at the message alert suggested they did – I had over fifty unread messages. My stomach turned over. A lot of those would’ve been sent soon after Beth died. People offering sympathy, or help, or a someone to talk to. I remembered the influx of text messages to the same effect. Eventually everyone got the hint. The messages tailed off.

  I hadn’t wanted to answer them then and I didn’t want to answer them now. I didn’t even want to think about the people I’d used to know. My friends were all Beth’s friends.

  Quickly, I clicked to a different page before I could give into temptation and look at the messages. I knew with absolute certainty that no good would come of it.

  Nicole didn’t have a lot more to discover. I tried a couple of the tricks Cora had suggested, and found out Nicole had gone to high school in Ramsey. She didn’t have any relatives listed on social media, so it seemed Patrick had resisted its siren call. She definitely didn’t have a niece, in Birkenhead or otherwise, so goodness knows who Mum was talking about. Nicole was also a few years older than she’d told me, which was probably not helpful but did make me feel like I’d uncovered one secret. I hit a dead end because I couldn’t remember her maiden name.

  Cora had also left me the contact number of her brother, in case I got completely stumped, but I didn’t want to give in quite so soon.

  Mum will know Nicole’s maiden name. As soon as I thought it, I slapped my forehead in annoyance. Why hadn’t I thought of that before? Mum knew everyone. She would’ve made a far better detective than me.

  I hummed to myself as I went to put the kettle on. I had a plan now. A good cup of peppermint tea, a sit-down on the hall stairs, and a nice long natter with Mum would dredge up more results than a whole morning at my keyboard.

  Before I could set foot in the hall, the phone rang.

  My first, slightly irrational thought was that Mum had somehow known I was going to call and pre-empted me. My second, only a bit less irrational thought, was it was Cora, and something else awful had happened. But it also could’ve been Dallin, which would make sense if something had happened to Cora
…

  I snatched the phone from its cradle. ‘Hello?’

  ‘Oh, hello Rosalie, sweetheart. It’s Nicole.’

  My brain was still running through anxious what-if scenarios. It took me a moment to adjust to the notion that Nicole probably wasn’t phoning with a problem. ‘Hi. Hi, Nicole. How’re you?’

  ‘I’m just fine, thank you. I’ve been thinking about what your friend was saying, about her sister that disappeared?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I said I’d give you a call when I got into my old calendars. Well, that’s the news, I got into my old calendars. It turned out Patrick had moved them up into the attic for me. Trying to be helpful, obviously.’

  I sat down on the third step of the stairs and pulled my knees up. The phone cable stretched out from where it was plugged into the wall. ‘Uh-huh,’ I said, not sure what response she was looking for.

  ‘I got my dates confused,’ Nicole said. ‘I thought I went away after June that year, but I actually went at the beginning of May. I wasn’t on the island at the time your friend’s sister came here.’

  ‘Oh.’ I rubbed the side of my face. This didn’t sound like earth-shattering news. ‘What about Patrick? Was he on the island at the time?’

  ‘He was, yes. He was home alone.’ Nicole laughed. ‘They don’t cope particularly well when you leave them unattended, do they? No matter that he’d spent plenty of time away the year before when he was pretending to run a business. But apparently they still need someone to remind them to put socks on in the morning, don’t they?’

  ‘Have you asked him about Cora’s sister? Does he remember seeing her at all?’

  ‘He says he doesn’t remember her. The name doesn’t ring a bell.’

  ‘What about her picture?’ I remembered Nicole had taken a photo of Simone’s picture.

  ‘He didn’t recognise that either. Sorry.’

  ‘Do you want me to come over? Perhaps I can jog his mind.’

  ‘He’s out in the fields at the moment. I can get him to call you when he gets home? I think he’s got his mobile but good luck getting him to answer it. It’s always either on silent or he’s left it under his pillow at home.’