by Susan Lewis
The others watched her and started to wail.
They were still wailing as Ekta hanged herself from a beam. Then one by one each of the remaining women hanged herself too, and all became silent and still on the upper storey of the rail shed.
Minute after minute ticked by. The dangling bodies ceased to sway, the only movement in the room was the rats and flies. Tiny threads of moonlight wove through the darkness. The colourful saris were like flowers, adorning the bodies they covered. Matted strands of once glossy black hair fell over once beautiful faces. Silken lashes curled from unmoving eyelids. Some lips were parted, others weren’t. A hennaed hand rested limply against a pillow, another was almost touching the hand of a friend. One tiny foot lay twisted towards the other. A rat climbed on to a mattress, hunted round then scurried off again. Everything was quiet. No one would abuse them again. They were free now. No-one could ever harm them again.
Outside a train thundered by, and somewhere in the distance a dog barked.
After a while a car pulled up outside and some people leaped out.
Laurie reached the green wooden doors first and began to thump. Rose and the crew were right behind her, not a camera in sight.
‘Stand back,’ Stan ordered.
Moments later he’d broken the lock and they were charging up the stairs.
‘Hello! Hello! Is anyone in there?’ Laurie yelled when they reached the door at the top.
The silence from within chilled her heart. She turned to Rose, then to Stan. ‘Are you sure it was here?’ she said.
‘Give me a hand,’ he said to the two guys from the crew.
The door finally burst open. The foul stench assailed them, almost pushing them back. Beams of torchlight began whizzing around the room.
‘Jesus H. Christ,’ Stan muttered.
‘Oh my God, no,’ Laurie gasped in horror. She was staring at Ekta’s wide-open eyes.
Rose was pushing her way through. ‘They can’t all be dead,’ she cried, skimming her torch over one lifeless form after another.
Immediately everyone threw themselves into action to begin checking. ‘Oh God, here’s the child,’ Laurie cried, lifting Shaila’s little body.
‘Let me,’ Stan said, easing her aside.
Laurie turned instantly to the young girl next to her. ‘Please, God, please, please,’ she muttered, feeling for a pulse.
‘I think this one’s still with us,’ one of the crew suddenly shouted from his side of the room.
A moment later Rose cried, ‘This one is too.’
‘And this one,’ another voice cried.
Finding a faint flickering in Neela’s wrist, Laurie immediately began thumping her chest and blowing air down her throat. ‘Come on, come on,’ she urged. ‘Please. Please!’
Stan was still working diligently on the child, concentrating on her to the exclusion of all else.
‘It’s all right. It’s all right,’ Rose was saying to someone. ‘Don’t be afraid. We’re here to help. Gino, call the police,’ she shouted to one of the crew.
‘Already done,’ he responded.
Neela’s eyes started to open. Laurie hurriedly gave her more air. ‘Stay with me,’ she murmured. ‘Please. Don’t go.’ She blew again and again, then peered down at Neela’s face.
Neela was looking at her.
‘Oh yes,’ Laurie sobbed ecstatically. ‘You’re here. Oh thank God,’ and clutching the girl in her arms she held her so tight that Neela started to choke.
‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Are you all right?’ Laurie gasped.
Neela still only looked at her.
‘I’m Laurie Forbes,’ Laurie told her. ‘We’re here to help you.’
After a moment Neela whispered, ‘Ambamata.’
The wail of emergency sirens was coming in from the distance.
‘Shaila,’ Neela said.
Laurie looked at her helplessly. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand,’ she said.
Neela turned her head towards the child.
Realizing now, Laurie said, ‘Stan, have you got her? Is she still here?’
‘I’m not sure,’ he puffed.
‘Oh please God, please, don’t let her die,’ Laurie begged, tears streaming down her cheeks.
Stan kept at it, pumping the fragile chest, and breathing air into the tiny lungs.
By the time the ambulance arrived Shaila was responding, as were most of the others.
It was the early hours of the morning before Laurie finally walked out of the police station to find Rhona waiting in her car.
‘The others have gone home,’ Rhona told her as she slumped into the passenger seat. ‘But Stan’s still in there.’
‘Let’s wait,’ Laurie said, so exhausted she could feel it to the very core of her bones.
Rhona reached into the back seat and produced two flasks. ‘Coffee, or brandy?’ she asked.
Laurie didn’t even hesitate. ‘Both.’
As Rhona poured Laurie rubbed her hands over her face, then let her head fall back. ‘Was I really still on a Greek island this morning?’ she murmured. ‘What day is it?’
Rhona checked her watch. ‘It’s two o’clock, so it must be Monday.’
Laurie took the cup Rhona was passing, but didn’t drink straight away. ‘As long as I live I’ll never forget what we saw tonight,’ she said, her voice scratchy with tiredness and emotion. ‘Can you imagine how bad it must have been? What they must have suffered to do that to themselves. What is it like to feel so helpless, so devoid of hope? Five women dead.’
‘But the child made it,’ Rhona said gently.
Laurie nodded. ‘Thank God.’
‘What’ll happen to them now?’ Rhona asked after a while.
‘You mean after they’re released from hospital? God knows. It’s too soon to tell. Social services will take over, I expect.’
‘What about deportation?’
‘No way,’ Laurie responded. ‘I just won’t let it happen, unless it’s what they want, of course. Tell me,’ she said, turning to look at Rhona, ‘why on earth didn’t Sherry get them out the minute she knew where they were? OK, shoot the video, but why leave them there?’
‘I guess only Sherry knows the answer to that,’ Rhona said, as Stan got into the back of the car.
‘Why didn’t Sherry call the police?’ Laurie said, turning round to him. ‘What did she say? Why did she just leave them there?’
‘She told me she was going to call the police,’ he answered. ‘She said she was going to do it the minute she got home.’
‘So what happened?’
‘I dropped her off, back at her flat, and that was the last I heard from her. I presumed she’d done it, until Rose called to ask if I knew where she was.’
Laurie and Rhona looked at each other. ‘Someone must have been waiting in her flat when she got in,’ Laurie said. ‘They must have taken her somewhere. Or …’ She shook her head, unable to put her worst fear into words.
Rhona started the engine, and after driving Stan home she took Laurie back to her place to spend the night.
Early the next morning Rose called, waking them up. ‘Jet lag,’ she explained, when Rhona complained it was only six o’clock. ‘I need to speak to Laurie.’
Rhona carried the phone through to where Laurie was already sitting up in bed. ‘What is it?’ she asked.
Rhona shrugged and passed her the phone.
‘Laurie, I’m at the office,’ Rose told her. ‘I’ve just opened my computer and found a note from Sherry tucked away in one of the files.’
Laurie’s heart was thudding with dread. ‘What does it say?’
‘She’s telling me to get in touch with a lawyer who apparently has the footage she shot.’
Frowning, Laurie said, ‘Does she say why she gave it to him?’
‘No. She just gives his name and phone number, and says that’s where we’ll find it.’
Laurie’s mind was racing. ‘She must have given it to him for safekeeping and gon
e into hiding,’ she said, swinging her legs off the bed.
‘That’s what I thought,’ Rose responded, ‘until I read the last line. It says, “I’m sorry about Laurie, but I had no choice.”’
Chapter Twenty-Five
THE ROAD TO the prison was endless, and dusty. Either side of it there was nothing but dull, flat terrain baking in a heat that allowed little to survive. Though Sherry had always known it was in the middle of a desert wasteland, two hundred or more miles outside Los Angeles, she’d had no way of knowing, until now, just how desolate and isolated a place it actually was. It seemed to symbolize how far she had cast her mother from her life, and to think of her being here all this time made her ache and cry inside. As she drew closer the yearning she felt seemed to grow stronger, as though she were about to have a severed limb reattached. Had it been left to wither too long? Was it possible for it to regain its power?
Aunt Jude had called ahead to make the arrangements, then Sherry had spoken to someone at the prison last night, who’d confirmed she could come today for no more than an hour.
The prison was in sight now, a loose hexagon of long, low buildings inside a high barbed-wire fence. In spite of being modern, to her mind it still managed to emanate as much menace and austerity as a Victorian gaol, and a hostility that almost seemed to stain the air around it.
Visitors were directed where to go by a sign at the gate, and by a uniformed officer who checked her ID. She drove slowly over the scorched tarmac and speed bumps. There was hardly anyone around, just an officer walking from one building to the next, and a couple of blue-overalled prisoners wheeling a cart towards a basketball court. She wondered which one of the buildings her mother was in. Did they all have different functions and she was allowed in only a few? What kind of relationships had she forged with the officers and other women? Was she afraid of them? Did they treat her badly? What kind of life had her own daughter condemned her to?
As she got out of her hire car Sherry felt the heat engulf her like a fire. Inside she was sick with dread and with each second that passed it was getting worse. She wondered how her mother was feeling now, as she prepared, for the first time in seven years, to see the daughter who’d refused all contact with her since she’d sacrificed her own freedom so Sherry could keep hers. Had there ever, she wondered, been any moments of regret or bitterness during all this long time? Had she ever been tempted to confess what had really happened on that terrible February night? Looking around her now, Sherry couldn’t imagine there being no regrets or temptations at all, for the bleak isolation of the place and forbidding nature of the fences were in themselves enough to fill anyone with despair. To imagine her beautiful, gentle mother locked away here, month after month, year after year, was too terrible to contemplate for more than a moment.
There were more security checks, forms to fill in, directions to take. Finally she was led towards a small, wooden-fenced area that contained picnic benches, climbing frames and sandpits. She thought of their garden back in LA and all the fun they’d had as a family over the years. The three of them on trips to Disneyland and Universal Theme Park. Special nights at the Hollywood Bowl. Watching her parents dance on the deck of her father’s sailboat. Afternoon parties at their Bel Air home for Sherry’s friends, or agents and celebrities. Days at her father’s office when she’d felt as though he was the most important man on earth. She wondered if he could see any of this now. Was he looking down on his flower girls as they came together for almost the first time since his death? And if he was, how did he feel about the part he had played in bringing them to this?
When she reached the park the guard who’d escorted her let her in, and closed the gate behind her. She walked forward a couple of steps, then turned round to watch the guard go. Her eye was caught by a solitary figure, standing about a hundred feet away, outside one of the wretchedly characterless buildings. Though it was hard to tell at this distance it felt as if she was watching her, then with a jarring thud in her heart she realized it was her mother. Isabell MacEvilly. Bluebell.
As she began walking across the yard to the park Sherry watched her, a slender, dark-haired woman in blue prison issue whose very approach seemed to be filling up her life. She moved with the same grace Sherry remembered, for she was every beautiful symphony ever written, a Strauss waltz, a Mendelssohn concerto, a Venetian barcarole, a playful nocturne. She was a Byzantine beauty with an aquarelle romance. She was a swan, a doe; a hummingbird at dusk, a sparkle of dew at dawn. She was everything that made the world a truly magical place.
She was very close now, and Sherry’s heart was so full she couldn’t breathe. Tears ran down her cheeks. Sobs shuddered through her body. She never had, and never could love anyone more than this woman, who had given her life, not once, but twice. No matter the time, the distance or the pain, they were still connected in every way and it would never change. How could she ever have thought it would?
Her mother’s hand was on the gate, her eyes still on her daughter. She was smiling with such happiness that Sherry just couldn’t bear it. As her hands covered her face her mother’s arms went round her.
‘It’s all right,’ her mother whispered.
Sherry wept as though her heart would break. The smell, the touch, the voice, everything about this woman gave meaning to her life. She realized now that nothing had made any sense without her, nor ever would. She couldn’t understand why she’d cut her off the way she had, when she should have known she couldn’t survive without the oxygen of her mother’s love.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, over and over. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘Ssh. You’re here now. That’s all that matters.’
Sherry looked into her face, her eyes probing deeply, searching for signs of what she must have suffered during these past seven years. And they were there, in the deepened lines around her eyes and tighter set of her mouth. She was like a delicately perfumed soap that had been scoured with a brush – still fragrant and beautiful, but marred. Or a dainty Japanese fan painted with thorns instead of lotus blooms. A perfect garden that had been roughened by a storm. All the horror and sorrow were there, lurking in the shadows of her hyacinth eyes, but mainly they were hidden now behind the joy and relief of seeing her daughter again.
In a way it was difficult to believe so much time had passed for, in spite of the almost indiscernible flaws, she hardly seemed to have aged, except the skin under her eyes was looser and there was grey in her hair. She was wearing it short now in a neat, elfin cut which suited her. She still had freckles on her nose, and a beautifully slender neck that Sherry always wished she’d inherited instead of the freckles. Her skin was tanned and more leathery than it had been, her hands less elegant, and more work-worn, but her lovely, infectious smile was as radiant as ever.
‘You’ve hardly changed,’ Sherry told her in a voice still thick with tears.
‘You have. You’re even more beautiful.’
Sherry spluttered a laugh, and they held each other again, almost oblivious to the baking sun, as they allowed all the emotions of the last seven years to surface at last.
‘We should go into the shade,’ her mother said finally. ‘Over there, under the tree.’
They walked hand in hand to the tree and sat down on a bench. Everything was so still they could almost have been the only people alive, in a wilderness that was so strange it might not even have been earth. ‘It’s like a dream,’ her mother said, as though reading Sherry’s mind. ‘I’ve imagined this every day, seen it all in my mind a thousand times, and now, at last, here you are.’
As guilt flooded through her, Sherry took her hands. ‘I’ve missed you,’ she said.
‘I’ve missed you too. We have so much to catch up on. I want to hear …’
‘We don’t have long,’ Sherry cut in gently, ‘and there’s something I have to tell you.’
‘But first you must tell me how you are,’ her mother insisted, gazing into the same deep blue eyes as her own. ‘Aunt Jude sen
ds me news from time to time, so I know you live in England now and you’re a reporter, but what’s your life really like? Do you have lots of friends? A special boyfriend, maybe? Tell me about your home. Do you have a garden? Did you bring any photos?’
Sherry shook her head. ‘I didn’t think of it,’ she confessed. ‘I left in a hurry. Mum, I have …’
Isabell’s eyes were brimming with love. ‘You always did call me Mum,’ she said, seeming to sink into the word as though it were balm. ‘Never Mom. I liked that.’
‘You used to make me,’ Sherry laughed. ‘It was your way of making us stay English.’
Isabell was laughing too. ‘Is it wonderful being back there?’ she said. ‘I don’t suppose you remembered it very well, you were so young when we left. But we used to visit a lot. Daddy always loved to go home, didn’t he?’
It was such a natural and affectionate way to speak of her father that instead of resisting, Sherry found herself going with it. ‘And when we got there he could never wait to come back,’ she said wryly.
Isabell clapped her hands in joy. ‘So typical of him,’ she cried, ‘always wanting to be somewhere he wasn’t. “We’re Americans now,” he used to say. “Can never go back there and live.”’
‘Then Christmas would come round,’ Sherry continued, ‘and suddenly we’d find ourselves swamped in so much nostalgia, having to listen to what real Christmases were all about, with snow and roaring log fires and stockings hanging over the fireplace … Do you remember how we used to scour British magazines for country houses to buy? “This time next year,” he used to say, “we’ll be back in Blighty, where we belong.”’
Isabell’s eyes were shining with love. ‘And now that’s where you are,’ she said, stroking Sherry’s cheek. ‘You’re even losing your American accent.’
Sherry’s smile started to falter. ‘Do you still miss him?’ she whispered.
Her mother’s eyes rose to the heavens as she seemed to drink in the very stillness of the air and pristine blue of the sky. ‘I talk to him all the time, in my mind,’ she said, ‘and I feel him all around me. Do you feel him too?’