by C. J. Skuse
I find Ferocious Ponytail Woman exactly where the limping housekeeper told me she would be – vaping through the end window, sitting on the sill. When I approach she stops vaping and sneaks the instrument into the front of her apron.
‘Hello, is it Vanda?’ I ask.
‘Who wants to know?’
‘My name’s Foy, I’m looking for my cousin who works here and I’ve been told you would be the best person to ask about her.’
‘Who is your cousin?’ she asks.
‘Well, you know her as Genevieve—’
‘Huh,’ she huffs, getting her vape out again. ‘Waste of space. We keep her job open, let other good girls go, and you know how she thanks me? Pisses in my face.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘She pisses in my face!’ she shouts. ‘She never work. The manager keeps giving her chances cos she afraid of a tribunal for sacking mental ill person. And when she is here, she lie. She lie about who she is, where she goes.’ She points her finger at me. ‘You talk to her one day she’s Genevieve, a nurse who knows strangling techniques, next she Joanne with dead parents. People say she has other names too. Nobody know who she really is. She go to hairdresser where my sister works and say her name Mary.’
‘Mary Brokenshire?’
‘Yes, fucking Mary Brokengirl. I mean, where does she get these names? Does she steal passports? She disgusts me.’
‘She’s got a lot of issues.’
‘Huh,’ she huffs again. ‘Tell me about issues when you’ve got three kids under ten, your husband walk out on you, you cannot pay rent. Then I listen.’
‘She needs help, Vanda.’ I hold her stare. ‘I need to find her before she… before something happens to her.’
‘What, she missing?’ She makes a short, sharp throat-slit motion with her hand and continues puffing out the window.
‘She is missing, yes. For the past four days. I need to build up a picture of that last day. Did she come to work? Did you speak to her?’
‘Oh yes, I spoke to her,’ she says. ‘She come in to show me her wedding dress.’
‘Wedding dress? Why did she have a wedding dress?’
‘I see her in window of bride shop on my way to work. And I laugh, ha ha ha, because I know she only go in there to try on dresses. She has no boyfriend. Just a dolly and herds of cats. So I laugh at her through window. And then she marches in here with the dress saying she bought it. She freak girl.’
‘She bought it?’
‘Yeah, or stole it. Then she tell me she leaving and that I a bully. Idi v pizdu, she says – go fuck yourself.’
‘Ellis said that?’
Vanda nods slowly and surely. I don’t believe it for a second.
‘She crazy girl.’ She swans off then, back to her cart, her job. ‘I need to work. I can’t afford to take time off to go missing or breastfeed dollies. You ask Trevor if you want know more. He’s done jail time – he knows a weirdo when he sees one.’
She then passes me by, lifting two folded bedsheets from her cart and knocking on the door of Room 43. We are done.
I spend ten minutes searching for Trevor the janitor, eventually hearing his infernal whistle coming out of the ground floor lifts. The key bunch jingles at his waist as he lugs his way across reception towards the seating area outside the restaurant, overlooking the beach. It’s windy and cold but he’s only wearing short navy sleeves and shorts. He has tattoos on both calves – I can’t make out what they are because his legs are too hairy and the tattoos too crap. He’s mending a wobbly chair leg.
‘Trevor?’
‘Yep, be there in a tick.’
‘I’m looking for my cousin, and your colleague Vanda said you might be able to help me piece some clues together about her whereabouts?’
‘Who’s your cousin, lovie?’
‘You know her as Genevieve Syson?’
He stops fiddling with the chair leg and stands up. ‘Is she dead?’
This blows me away. As does the sudden pong of his intense body odour, even in the howling wind. ‘Why would you say that?’
‘Well she hasn’t been in for a few days, nobody knows where she is. And the last time I saw her she was in a hell of a state.’
‘Was she?’ I sit down on a nearby seat.
‘Oh yeah. Accused one of our VIP guests of stalking her. Ken Whittle, that comedian on at the Winter Gardens. She point-blank accused him in the middle of the restaurant. Kiddies about and all.’
‘Why did she do that?’
He made a twisting motion by the side of his head. ‘She’s nuts, in’t she?’
‘NO SHE’S FUCKING NOT!’
‘Hey, calm down, sweetheart. I was only jesting. What would you call it then?’
I breathed through my nose as ‘Wynken, Blynken and Nod’ began to dance around my head in the wrong order. ‘She’s sad. She needs help.’
‘I’ll say. She’s paranoid too. A woman was murdered in this hotel last week. Genevieve was obsessed with it. Thought there’d be another one. Maybe one of us.’
‘Why?’
He shrugs theatrically. ‘Vanda said Genevieve weren’t her real name, either – the name in her file’s Joanne. Did you know her as Joanne?’
‘No, I knew her as Ellis.’
‘Ellis?’ he almost-shrieks. ‘Bloody hell, who was she then?’
‘She was Ellis. She is Ellis.’
‘Well, she’s a very troubled young girl if you ask me. The young woman who died here – Genevieve knew looking at her she’d been strangled. Said she used to work in a hospital and had seen someone strangled before. That was all bullshit, I reckon. But how could she know about them injuries unless she’d seen them before?’
‘She has seen someone strangled before. Her dad.’
‘Eh?’
‘She watched her own dad being strangled to death by three men when she was eighteen. The same three men who did that kicked the crap out of her and left her to die. That’s how she knew. And that’s the truth. When the truth is too hard to bear, you make shit up. And that’s what she did. Perhaps if any of you had been more approachable or given her a chance, she wouldn’t have had to tell so many lies.’
‘She thought Ken Whittle wanted to kill her ’n’all. Kept saying he was one of the Little Pigs, whatever that means. She’s not in her right mind, darlin’, stand on me.’
I thought about this, and I came to the conclusion that The Three Little Pigs were the three men who broke into their house and killed Uncle Dan and attacked her. Had to be. But Ken Whittle being one of them? That’s insane.
‘That girl is broken,’ says Trevor with some finality. ‘She needs locking up.’ He gets to his feet with some awkwardness, rubbing his knee which is white with dryness.
‘She needs looking after,’ I tell him. ‘She’s been missing for four days.’
‘Blimey,’ he says. ‘Probably gone over the sea wall. That’s where people usually end up when they go missing in this town.’
That smarts, like being pricked by a pin. ‘Vanda said you’d done time, Trevor. What was that for?’
His face darkens. ‘That’s none of your business. Vanda’s no right telling you.’
‘Well she did tell me, and my cousin is missing in mysterious circumstances so you either tell me, quietly, what you went in for, or I will follow you, shouting it from the rooftops until you do.’
He glares at me, more with embarrassment than anything. ‘Burglary. Alright?’
‘Where?’
‘What do you mean “where”? How is this information you need?’
‘I just need it. Now tell me. Where?’
‘When I lived in Dublin, alright? I did a couple of burglaries with some mates. And I did my time.’
‘What mates?’
‘I ain’t listening to this,’ he says, with a flap of his hand, and starts to walk away, back through the patio doors and into the restaurant.
I get in front of him and stare him hard down. ‘If you burgled someone
in Scarborough eighteen years ago, you tell me now.’
His voice lowers and he grabs my arm. ‘I ain’t never been to Scarborough, what are you talking about? I’m trying to wipe the slate clean, here, you’re not being fair. Why are you asking me about this?’
‘Did you ever hurt anyone when you did these burglaries?’
‘No, I didn’t.’ He again tries to leave.
Again, I step in front of him. ‘I will check on this and if you’re lying to me, I will make sure you pay for it, I swear.’
‘Get out of my way.’
‘I will follow you, I will hound you and even if you kill me, I will haunt you until I find out where she is. Stand on me.’
But Trevor pushes me firmly aside and stamps back across reception, keys jangling as he walks.
23
Still Tuesday, 5th November, (late morning)
There’s only one bridal boutique in town, a tiny place called Seaside Bridal in a back street. It’s a depressing little place with the most hideous gowns showcased in the poky bay window and an overpowering smell of PlugIn as you enter. The woman in charge is clearly an idiot. I know it before she opens her mouth.
‘Oh, hello there, my dear, come on in. Did you want to browse or are you looking for anything in particular that I can help you with today?’ She’s so simperingly polite that I fight the urge to vomit right there on the coconut doormat.
‘Uh, yeah, you might be able to help actually, well, not with a dress.’
‘Oh.’ She starts looking around like this is some big joke and she’s on camera.
‘I’m looking for my cousin, Ellis Kemp, and I believe she came in here the other day. Well, I think she came in here anyway. She’s gone missing.’
Both hands fly to her mouth. ‘Oh my gosh. You mean she got cold feet?’
‘No, um, there is no wedding as such. She just came in to buy a dress. She might have been using an alias. Maybe Mary? Or Genevieve?’
The woman frowns. No recollections at all. ‘What did she look like?’
‘Black hair with probably ginger roots. Brown eyes.’
‘Ah, you mean Ruth?’
I’m washed all over with recognition again. ‘Ruth Gloyne?’ And her unborn babe Henry. Died 1830-something. We used to sit on her grave, eating blue bootlaces.
‘Yes, yes, that’s the one. Oh, do you know I thought there was something odd about her at the time. She seems a very troubled young lady.’
My chest fills with poison. I am so sick of hearing that.
‘Are you okay? Do you want to sit down? Alice – tea.’ At the click of her fingers, a short mousey woman with an apologetic walk disappears out the back and I hear a kettle clicking on. I’d initially taken her to be one of the vile polystyrene statues of Greek goddesses that are dotted about the place with their faces picked off.
I post myself on a grey velvet chaise longue near the till. ‘She is very troubled.’
‘Well she has recently lost a baby, so perhaps it’s understandable that’s she’s a little out of sorts,’ says the woman – Cathy, she announces. A miscarriage now – another bloody lie. I feel bile rising in my throat.
‘I’m trying to piece together her last movements.’
‘You’re a policewoman?’
‘No, I’m her cousin. Nobody else seems to care about her very much.’
The Alice girl returns with a steaming cup and saucer, with a Jammy Dodger on the side. I take it gratefully and she returns to her position, hands clasped in front of her, between the rails. I went off Jammie Dodgers years ago. Too sweet.
Cathy bites her lip. ‘She probably just needed some time. You know, to process the loss of the baby.’ She does seem genuinely worried, which somewhat cools my ire, but I can’t let her believe this latest tall tale. That’s a bridge too far for me.
‘She wasn’t pregnant,’ I say, with a sigh.
This makes Cathy start. ‘She wasn’t?’
I shake my head. ‘She’s a compulsive liar. There was no pregnancy, no wedding. I don’t understand why but, basically, she’s lonely. And I need to find her and help her. I need to tell her that I’m here.’
Cathy doesn’t know how to take this – she’s clearly not used to lies. I think if I so much as raised my voice in her Land of Lovely, she’d have a stroke. ‘Oh, I see.’
‘She definitely bought a dress in here though?’
‘Oh yes, she bought one of the most expensive dresses we have. From the de Havilland range. She showed me a picture that a child had done, a cousin.’
I feel like Chief Brody in Jaws when the camera zooms in. ‘Foy?’ I say.
‘Yes! Oh, are you Foy?’
I try not to start blubbing because I know I won’t stop. I’d hated Ellis, momentarily, for lying about losing a baby. But in a heartbeat, I love her all over again.
‘She said you and she designed your wedding dresses when you were little. You said if either of you got married, you had to wear dresses that looked like that. Lace, feathers, long sleeves. She bought the size sixteen. Four thousand pounds worth.’
Cathy shows me the picture in the catalogue. The dress is stunning and it truly was a living, breathing version of the one we drew as kids. A fantasy wedding dress. Why was she still living in this fantasy world we created as children? The answer fell on me like ice water – because that was when she last felt safe.
‘She definitely took it with her? She didn’t have to have it altered or anything?’
‘No, it fit her wonderfully.’
‘It’s not at her flat.’
‘Oh. Well, I don’t know. She definitely took it away the day she tried it on, I remember distinctly. I have the receipt somewhere—’
‘No, I believe you, don’t worry.’ The dress was definitely not in Ellis’s flat; Neil and I had searched every inch of it. And then two tiny comets collided in my mind – the figure with the bin bag on the CCTV. The heavy bin bag. And the foam on the rocks. White foam. White dress? Is it too much of a long shot to pull the trigger on?
But why buy a £4,000 dress only to throw it in the sea? Why would she do that? Unless she didn’t. Unless somebody else did. The one person who knew where she was – the last person to see her. I couldn’t connect the dots quick enough.
‘Okay, I have to go now,’ I tell Cathy, unable to concentrate any further and returning my half-finished cup of tea to the glass table.
Cathy seems sad. ‘Right, yes, well if we can be of any further assistance, Fleur.’
‘Foy,’ I say. ‘You’ve been really helpful, thank you. Sorry to take up your time.’
‘I hope you find her,’ she says as I’m in the doorway, and she smiles so genuinely I feel bad for thinking she was an idiot.
I make my way down the slippery algae-strewn steps to the beach, scanning the sands for any signs of the dress or a large black bin bag that the sea has rejected. There are logs and dark clumps of seaweed and tyres and the odd plastic cup and mound of sea foam, but no black bin bags. I walk towards the sand and make my way over to the bigger rocks forming an isthmus out into the sea and separating the beach in two. There’s white foam all over them. It’s worth a look.
And it is just foam and bits of discarded polystyrene and plastic ice cream tubs. Everything white is not the dress. It was too long a shot. But I don’t give up. I keep looking. I know that dress was in that bag. I know it went over that wall.
And then I spy a large expanse of foam on the ridge of big rocks. And I climb the rocks to get a closer look at it. It’s not foam. My heart pounds, but logic kicks in. A sail perhaps, from a boat, brought in from the storm? A bedsheet, could be a bedsheet. But it’s smaller than a bedsheet.
It has arms.
It’s a dress. It’s the dress.
‘Oh my god! I don’t believe it!’
I run closer to it, pumping my exhausted arms and legs until I’ve climbed the rest of the rocks. I reach out for it, slipping on the algae but grabbing it in time and pulling it down with me. I’v
e got it. I climb down to the sand again, dragging the dress with me. It’s got sea weed trails all over it, oil, sand, black dust and a couple of baby crabs have taken up residence in an armpit. The skirt is all raggedy and has lost most of its feathers but it’s the dress from the catalogue Cathy showed me alright.
And then I see it, on the back of the dress, all up the silk and over the tiny buttons rising to the neck – a spray of pink. A spray of washed-out pink.
Pink that used to be red. There’s no pink hair dye at the flat. No pink paint.
But there is blood.
I run all the way back to The Lalique, right at the other end of the seafront, the sodden wedding dress draped over my arm and soaking my jumper. By the time I get back to Neil’s room, I can’t decipher one breath from the next. When he lets me in, he has a towel wrapped around his bare waist and his blond hair is dark and damp.
‘Where have you been?’
‘Out,’ I pant, hurrying inside the room. ‘I left a note.’
‘What’s that you’ve got?’ he asks, closing the door behind me.
‘Dress,’ I pant. ‘Wedding dress.’
‘Catch your breath,’ he says. ‘I’ll get changed and then you can tell me about it. I’ve got something I need to talk to you about, too.’
I’m so confused. There are so many different emotions pinballing around my body. I’m upset from the different people I’ve met this morning who’ve called Ellis a freak or a weirdo or looked at me funny. I’m upset by the fact that she still seems to be living in an elongated version of our childhood and pretending to be the women on the gravestones we used to sit on in Carew, all those years ago. But most disturbingly of all, the day she disappeared, she bought a wedding dress. A wedding dress that was dumped over the sea wall that night, sprayed in blood.
When the bathroom door unclicks, a mere two minutes later, Neil appears, fully dressed in black jeans, socks and a navy jumper. His hair’s still wet and he smells like Luc used to smell. Fahrenheit. Unmistakeable.
‘Okay,’ he says, sitting on the end of his unmade bed. ‘What’s with the dress?’ I’m at the desk, still clutching the thing. ‘Christ you’re shaking.’ He gets up and prises it from my arms. ‘It’s soaked. You’re soaked.’