The House on the Lake

by Nuala Ellwood

  So as I stood outside the prison gate that cold January afternoon I knew that I was all alone in the world and I faced the daunting task of having to rebuild my life from scratch. My future was bleak and uncertain – and it didn’t feature Joe. Joe. My beautiful baby boy, the child whose birth was supposed to have heralded the beginning of an exciting new future, a family, a life. But I had ripped all that apart in one moment of madness. At that point, standing outside the prison, there was very little hope. I was forbidden from seeing Joe until I could reassure the social worker I could secure work and a roof over my head. I also had to take anger management classes to control what the judge had described as my ‘volatile temper’.

  My situation couldn’t have been more hopeless but then I put my hand in my pocket and found the crumpled piece of paper Grace had thrust at me as I left the cell. It was a rough drawing showing a map with the name of a village scribbled across, Harrowby, and a picture of a house, the words ‘Rowan Isle House’ printed in capital letters below. At the top of the map, Grace had written: If you ever need a place to stay, it’s yours. You won’t need keys, just give the door a good push. And remember, Lisa, you’re stronger than you realize.

  I’d thought it was a sweet gesture then put it to the back of my mind, though later, when I had found a job working on reception at an estate agency in Clapham, I’d googled Harrowby on the office computer and found that it was in a remote part of the Yorkshire Dales. At that time, the idea of upping sticks and tramping off to Yorkshire didn’t even cross my mind. For one thing, I was just finding my feet after coming out of prison – as well as the new job, I’d also managed to secure a house-share in Balham, on the other side of the river from Joe and Mark. And for another, well, I was a London girl who had little clue about the north of England, let alone some obscure Yorkshire village in the middle of nowhere.

  But the reality of being apart from Joe was so painful I found it difficult to cope. I could deal with it in prison because it was an alien environment, somewhere Joe had never been part of, but going to visit him in our old neighbourhood, walking past the places I had taken him to as a baby – the park, the little cafe on the high street where they gave him boxes of cloth books to play with, the library where I got him his first library card, aged nine months – and the fact that my visits to him had to be supervised by Mark, was too much to bear. Every time I said goodbye to him at the door of the house that was once my family home and trundled back on the Tube to the attic room in a house full of strangers, I felt like my heart was being ripped apart. The pain was physical and more acute than anything I had ever felt before. Once December came around and Christmas songs started to be played on the radio I felt like I could quite easily die from heartache. The thought of spending Christmas holed up in a room in some strange house while my little boy was celebrating with his dad and family was inconceivable. So I formulated a plan.

  I arrived at Mark’s for the supervised visit at the usual time of 9 a.m., with Grace’s map safely tucked inside my jacket and a beanie hat pulled down over my newly short, dyed hair. Mark was in a flustered state as he had a work deadline. He looked exhausted, like he hadn’t slept for days. I made him a coffee and told him I’d take Joe out to the garden to play in the Wendy house to give Mark a chance to get some work done. He’d hesitated for a moment but then the idea of clearing a few hours’ work seemed to outweigh any suspicions he might have had of me and he disappeared upstairs to his study. After that I acted swiftly, grabbing my large bag that was still in the understairs cupboard where I’d left it before I went to prison and filling it with some of Joe’s clothes and his favourite plastic animals. Then, wrapping Joe in his warm winter coat, I’d taken his hand, left the house and dashed to my car, which I’d deliberately parked in the next street. Joe had clocked that something was up before we’d even left London and the rest of the journey consisted of him alternating between crying, screaming and calling out for Mark. It was hell, but as I sit here looking at him playing so happily on the rug in front of me I have no doubt that I made the right decision. I’m his mummy. Without him I don’t make sense. I had to be with him this Christmas.

  ‘Come on, Joe,’ I say, getting up from the chair and blowing out the candles. ‘It’s getting late now. How about we cuddle in and have a story?’

  He looks up. His eyes are tired.

  ‘Can I bring lions?’ he says, holding up a fistful of the plastic toys.

  ‘Of course you can,’ I say. ‘I’m sure they’d like to hear the story too.’

  He raises his arms for me to lift him but as I bend down to pick him up there’s a loud pounding on the front door.

  ‘Door,’ says Joe, snuggling into my chest. ‘Let’s go see.’

  But I can’t move. My feet are frozen to the spot. The pounding starts again, more urgent this time, then I hear a voice – a man’s voice – calling my name and my stomach twists inside.

  28

  Grace

  25 November 2004

  I’m writing this in the woods, sitting in my doss bag under a big old oak tree. It all started two nights ago when I shut this journal and went to get some scran. I’d forgotten all about the make-up Isobel had put on me and when I walked into the kitchen he was just taking a pan of potatoes off the hob. Well, he took one look at me and dropped the whole lot, boiling water and all, on to the floor. Then he went so pale I thought he was going to faint. He gripped the table with both hands and sort of bared his teeth at me. He looked like a wolf.

  Then he just started muttering something under his breath.

  ‘What is it?’ I said. ‘What are you saying?’

  But then I heard it. He was saying her name, over and over. Noora Noora Noora.

  Then he took my hand, gripped it tightly and said, ‘Do you forgive me, Noora? Tell me you forgive me?’

  His eyes were all wild and flashing, just like they had been when he’d trapped me in the room, and I got scared then. I knew this was only going to get worse and that I might even end up back in that room.

  Then he fell to his knees and clasped his hands together, like he was praying or something.

  ‘You …’ he said, shaking his head from side to side. ‘Where did you come from? How did you find me?’

  I opened my mouth to tell him it was just me and then I remembered the make-up and my reflection in the mirror. He wasn’t seeing me, he was seeing her. The dead mother. And you know what? I liked the fact that he was scared so I just stood there and let him think that I was her. Let him feel scared like I’d felt when he’d locked me in that room.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. His hands were still gripping the table but his face had softened. ‘I didn’t mean to do it. I really didn’t. Do you forgive me, Noora? Do you forgive me?’

  Noora. It’s funny the effect a name can have on you. I remember the pride I felt when he’d started calling me Number 1 after my hunting success. Even though Grace was my name, Number 1 was the name I’d earned. It said so much. Like he was never ‘Dad’ but Sarge because that’s what he’d always been to me, a rank, a superior, a soldier. Never a dad. But Noora. Well, that name has the same effect on me as Isobel’s name. It’s a warm hand on my back. Beautiful and comforting. And hearing it, thinking about her lovely face smiling up at me from the photo, filled me with a burst of strength.

  ‘Please, I beg you,’ he cried, still on his knees. ‘Answer me. Do you forgive me? Tell me you forgive me?’

  I stood looking at him. His eyes were pleading with me just as I’d pleaded with him to let me out of that room. Now he wanted my forgiveness. After the terrible way he treated me, the coldness he showed me day after day.

  ‘No, I don’t,’ I said, staring back at him with Noora’s eyes. ‘I will never forgive you.’

  Then I turned and walked out of the kitchen. I could hear him wailing behind me but I didn’t go back. Instead I went to my room and grabbed my doss bag and some clothes. As I walked past his bedroom on my way out I saw a book lying on his bed.
It was the one with the squiggly writing in it that he kept by his bed at all times, the one with her photograph in it. I remember him catching me with it that time, when I first saw her face, and how mad he was. In fact, every time I saw him with it he looked crazed. It had that effect on him. So I decided to do him a favour, a kind of farewell gift. I went into his room, grabbed the book and stuffed it into my bag. Maybe without this he’d stop the madness.

  When I passed the kitchen I could hear him wailing still. He was ranting about the wolves and the monsters. ‘There are monsters in my mind, Noora,’ he cried. ‘Controlling. Eating me alive. They did it, not me. They did it. Believe me. Please … believe me.’

  I couldn’t bear to listen any more so I stepped away and walked out of the front door. I walked and I walked until I wore myself out and slumped in this little clearing on the far edge of the woods. I feel safe here now, though he’s been out looking for me. I heard him coming that first night and I scarpered into the trees, taking the bag with me, and watched him from my hiding place. He was frantic. Calling my name, not hers, over and over again like a crazed person. But then that’s what he is. Crazed. I realize that now. And if you spend enough time around crazy people, it rubs off. I don’t want to be like him. I want to be normal. I want to be free.

  And yet as I write this I can’t help feeling sad for the man he used to be, the loving dad who cherished me for the first ten years of my life. The days before the military training began, the days of The Wind in the Willows, him taking on the voices of Ratty, Mole, Badger and Toad, me telling him not to stop but to do those voices again and again and again. Life felt safe then. We were living inside a story, so it seemed, a perfect world where nothing bad happened and everything was arranged in neat chapters. But then I turned eleven and it all fell apart.

  I can see the book I took from his bedroom. It’s lying on the ground beside me, unopened. I know he’ll be frantic when he sees it’s missing cos there’s not a day gone by when he hasn’t read that book, clutched it in his hands, spoken to it, shouted at it. Once, I even saw him throw it against a wall. It was like the book had a spirit of its own and I could never be sure if that spirit was good or evil. But I knew that it brought out the worst in him. We could have had the most ordinary day, when we’d have gone hunting, say, or baked a batch of bread or cleaned out the chickens, a day when not a cross word passed between us, but as soon as evening came and he picked up that book, everything would change. His face would contort and all the happiness would drain from him like water down a plughole.

  So even though I want to see what’s inside, there is a part of me that’s scared to. What if it has the same effect on me as it had on him? What if opening it releases things that can never be put back, like that woman in the story with the box? But if I don’t then he will always be a mystery to me and I don’t want that. I want to find out why he did what he did, why he locked me in that room and tortured me. And I know, deep inside, that the answers lie somewhere in that book.

  So my plan is this. I’ll open it and if anything bad happens I’ll take it to the top of Harrowby Tarn and burn it. That’s what you’re supposed to do with evil things, with things that have become possessed. I read that in a book I borrowed from the mobile library called Great Mysteries of Northern England. I might even ask Isobel to get her dad to help me burn it. That’s another thing I read, that priests and vicars and religious folk can get rid of evil spirits by reciting words and chucking holy water about.

  Yes, that’s what I’ll do if the worst comes to the worst. But, after all, it’s just a book, just a story. And nothing truly bad ever came from reading a story.

  29

  Lisa

  With Joe in my arms, I walk trance-like to the front door. It seems to swell and expand before me like a giant shadow. As I draw closer the banging starts again and I almost drop Joe.

  ‘Lisa? Are you in there? It’s just me, Jimmy.’

  Jimmy. The landlord from the pub. My body sags with relief. It isn’t Mark or the police. We’re still safe. For now.

  ‘Is it Daddy?’ says Joe. His eyes are sleepy and he rests his head on my shoulder as I fumble with the stiff door handle.

  ‘No, darling,’ I say. ‘It’s just the man from the pub. We’ll see what he wants then tuck you into bed. You’re tired out.’

  I give the door one final yank and almost tumble out on to the step.

  ‘Steady,’ says Jimmy, stepping forward and grabbing my arm.

  ‘Hi,’ I say as I regain my balance. ‘Sorry I took so long to answer. I … I was just getting Joe down.’

  ‘Oh God, did I wake him?’ says Jimmy apologetically. ‘I’m really sorry. I was just a bit worried after the other night, you running off like you did. I thought I’d scared you with all that talk about the mad fella. To be honest, I was in a bit of a daft mood and I guess my bantering went a bit too far. I’m sorry.’

  ‘It’s fine,’ I say, slightly bemused at him turning up like this, though grateful to see a friendly face.

  ‘Anyway, I brought you this,’ he says, holding up a bottle of white wine. ‘Isobel thinks I scared you with my stories too. I don’t always judge situations very well.’

  ‘I guess it did spook me out a little,’ I say, shivering in the cold draught. ‘Listen, why don’t you come in?’

  ‘If you’re sure,’ says Jimmy, looking rather sheepish suddenly. ‘I wouldn’t want to impose or anything.’

  ‘You’re not,’ I say, pulling Joe closer to my chest. ‘It’s nice to see you.’

  He smiles then follows me into the house.

  ‘Want Daddy,’ whispers Joe sleepily, his head tucked under my chin. ‘He tell me bedtime story.’

  ‘Missing his dad, eh?’ says Jimmy. ‘Is he going to be coming up to join you?’

  I search his face for any sign that he knows. That headline must have made its way on to the kitchen tables of several homes around here, the pub included. Yet it doesn’t seem like Jimmy has seen it.

  ‘No,’ I say, more firmly than intended. ‘Er, no, we’re not together any more, his dad and me.’

  I feel Joe’s head grow heavier on my chest.

  ‘I’d better get him to bed now,’ I say. ‘Why don’t you make yourself comfortable in the living room and I’ll be with you in just a sec.’

  As I walk away I hear his footsteps on the stone kitchen floor. I should be peeved that he’s snooping but this isn’t my house and the only thing he’s likely to come across is an old tin of powdered milk. But when I get to the bedroom I remember the newspaper on the kitchen table, my name and face splashed across the inside, and my legs buckle. Joe is fast asleep in my arms now. I lay him down gently on the bed, tuck the thick woollen blankets tightly round him, then quickly make my way back to the kitchen.

  ‘Christ, this place is like a museum,’ says Jimmy as I enter.

  He’s standing by the stove, looking up at the dusty shelves. ‘I was looking for some glasses,’ he says, turning to me, smiling. ‘But it seems these are the nearest thing.’

  He takes down a couple of wooden beakers from the shelf, wiping the rims with his sleeve.

  ‘Thank God for screw tops, eh?’ he says, gesturing to the bottle of wine that stands opened on the table. ‘A man could die of thirst. And how come there’s no taps?’

  ‘I have to collect the water from the lake,’ I say, swiping the newspaper from the table and tucking it under my arm. ‘There’s no water in the house, no electricity, no gas.’

  ‘Fucking hell,’ he exclaims, his eyes widening as he pulls out a chair and sits down. ‘How the hell do you manage? And you say you came here for a holiday? You must be made of stern stuff.’

  ‘It’s been … an experience,’ I say, sitting down opposite him and placing the newspaper on my lap. ‘But then it’s also been quite refreshing. You know, getting away from it all.’

  ‘I suppose,’ he says, pouring me a beaker of wine. ‘But I can’t imagine it’s that relaxing being here. I’d be scared
shitless, to be honest.’

  He leans across and passes me the beaker.

  ‘That too,’ I say, smiling. ‘Particularly after hearing your stories the other night.’

  ‘Yeah, I shouldn’t have gone on like that,’ he says, taking a sip of wine. ‘Anyway, now I’m here, it’s the last thing I want to think of. Let’s just hope that mad woman’s safely away in jail, not prowling around here somewhere.’ He shudders. ‘So how did you find it?’ he says, moving his chair forward a little. ‘This place? Was it on a website or something?’