The House on the Lake

by Nuala Ellwood

  And in that moment I remembered and my blood ran cold.

  Sarge. He had been there. I’d shouted at him and told him he was a liar but him turning up had stopped me from carrying out my plan. He’d saved me from myself. The blood on the ground wasn’t mine and I know now it wasn’t Isobel’s. She’d got away and dropped her ribbon. It had to be his. What have I done?

  The page is damp and dirty and most of the words are obscured by black marks. I try to read on but a loud noise outside makes me stop. I put the book down and get to my feet. I hear the bolt slide back and I rush for the door, my heart thudding wildly. It opens slowly and a familiar face appears.

  ‘Oh, thank God,’ I cry, relief flooding through my body. ‘Thank God you’ve come. You have to help me. Mark’s taken Joe.’

  42

  Isobel steps into the room, closing the door behind her. She looks at me, her face strangely impassive.

  ‘Isobel,’ I say breathlessly. ‘Are you listening? We’ve got to get out of here. Mark has taken Joe. He came running up here when we arrived and then … then I heard this voice singing “Jingle Bells” and … and it was dark and then I saw Mark … he just ran past me. He took Joe and locked me in.’

  I pause to get my breath. Isobel doesn’t speak. She just stands there looking at me with that strange expression on her face.

  ‘What’s that?’ she says, gesturing to the book that is lying on the floor by her feet.

  ‘It’s an old diary,’ I say, my voice catching in my throat. ‘Grace’s diary.’

  ‘Grace’s diary?’ says Isobel, the colour draining from her face. ‘Where did you get it?’

  ‘I found it on the window ledge when I was trying to escape,’ I say, crouching down to pick up the diary from the floor. ‘It was written by Grace when she was holed up in here all those years ago. And it seems you were right. She did kill her father. I can’t believe it. I didn’t think the Grace I knew was capable of that. But you knew her too, didn’t you, Isobel? You were there that night. With Steve Markham.’

  ‘No,’ says Isobel. ‘No, that’s not …’

  She shakes her head and I’m shocked to see that she’s crying.

  ‘He was your boyfriend, I know that,’ I say gently. ‘And you were planning to run away. It’s all there in the diary. I realize this must be a huge shock but … you were friends with Grace, good friends by the sound of it. Look, I can understand why you said you didn’t know her. You wanted to put all this behind you and that’s fair enough. I understand. I just … I just can’t believe Grace did that. She killed her father.’

  Isobel doesn’t respond, just stands there shaking her head and staring at the floor.

  ‘Listen, Isobel,’ I say, frantic now. ‘I need you to help me. Mark has taken my son. I need to get out of here and find them. And this house … this house is dangerous. Ever since I arrived here I’ve felt it, a sense that I’m being watched. Joe even saw someone at the window. What if … I don’t know … what if Grace has been released and she’s followed me here? What if it’s been a big trap? I mean, she’s killed once, she could kill again. We need to get out of here, Isobel. We could be in serious danger. Grace could be watching us right now.’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, shut up,’ cries Isobel, sobbing. ‘You’ve got it all wrong. It wasn’t Grace who killed her father. It was me.’

  43

  I stand there stunned, unable to move or speak. The room is silent save for Isobel’s low sobbing and the soft bleating of a sheep in a distant field.

  ‘It all happened so quickly. I didn’t know what to do.’

  I look down at Isobel. She is staring up at me, her face pink and swollen from crying.

  ‘Grace was … Grace was going crazy,’ she says, her voice trembling. ‘She turned up with a gun and started waving it at Steve, telling him she was going to blow his brains out.’

  I nod my head. Isobel’s story tallies with what Grace recounted in the diary.

  ‘Then her father came and he … he looked crazed too,’ she says, her eyes fixed on the ground now, as though seeing the events of that long-ago night laid out in front of her. ‘I was so scared. Steve was shaking. When Grace had waved that gun in his face we were both certain she was going to kill him. She had this strange look in her eyes, like she was possessed.’

  I remember Grace’s words in the diary, how she wanted to kill Steve Markham, to get him away from Isobel for good.

  ‘Anyway, they started arguing,’ she continues. ‘Grace and her father. It was all getting so heated and … I knew that if I didn’t stop her then she would come after Steve. We had to get away. We had plans made. A hotel booked in Scotland. Steve’s car was back at the village. Oh God … this is … this is so hard. I was scared, don’t you see? I was just so scared.’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure you were,’ I say, crouching down next to her. ‘What happened then, Isobel? Tell me what you did.’

  ‘I … I knew I had to get that gun off her,’ she says, looking up at me warily. ‘I had to make sure she was disarmed otherwise Steve was in great danger. That’s what I thought. I just wanted to stop her. And I wanted Steve and me to get away. Like we’d planned. I didn’t mean to …’

  She pauses to take a breath then continues.

  ‘Grace was so angry, so busy screaming at her dad, that she didn’t see me come up behind her,’ she says, shaking her head. ‘I grabbed for the gun and as I did she swivelled round and …’

  ‘And what?’

  ‘She sort of staggered towards me but then she lost her footing and fell backwards, hitting her head on a tree stump,’ says Isobel, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. ‘She’d dropped the gun as she fell. It was next to my foot. He was ranting and raving like a madman, screaming at me that I’d killed his daughter, that I was the enemy and he was going to get rid of me once and for all.’

  I try to imagine the terror Isobel must have felt faced with someone as unstable as Grace’s father.

  ‘He came at me,’ she says, her eyes red from crying. ‘He was a huge man, tall and broad, a soldier. And I was just … I was just a kid. I thought he was going to kill me. I swear I did.’

  ‘What about Steve?’ I say, trying to keep calm. ‘Didn’t he … didn’t he try to help you?’

  ‘It all happened so fast,’ she says, her face stricken. ‘I didn’t really know what I was doing, just that I had to stop him, so I … I … reached down and I grabbed the gun. It was big and unwieldy, but I managed to get a grip on it. Jesus, I’d never held a gun in my life.’

  She shakes her head and looks down at the floor once more. After a moment’s pause she resumes her story.

  ‘He … he went to grab it from me, grabbed me from behind,’ she says, glancing up at me. ‘I felt his fingers curl round the trigger. He was going to kill me, I was certain of it. So I spun round to face him and … and then there was this almighty blast and he … he fell down.’

  ‘What did you do then?’ I ask, trying to imagine someone as slight and demure as Isobel being capable of shooting a man as formidable as Grace’s father.

  ‘It was all a blur,’ she says, pulling her knees up to her chest protectively. ‘I was panicking so much I thought I might have a heart attack. Steve and I just stood there for what seemed like for ever but can only have been a few minutes. He just kept saying, over and over again, “What have you done, Isobel, what the hell have you done?”’

  She stops, closes her eyes and starts to cry again.

  ‘Then we just grabbed each other’s hands and started to run,’ she says, her voice barely audible through the sobs.

  44

  ‘We ran all the way back to the village until we reached Steve’s car. Then we drove back to the edge of the wood and sat there, trying to think what to do.’

  Isobel’s voice cracks again and she takes a deep breath before carrying on.

  ‘I told Steve that I’d go back to the vicarage and tell my father what had happened,’ she says, her voice steadying. ‘I s
aid I’d tell him that Grace’s dad had attacked me and I’d acted in self-defence but Steve grabbed my arm and told me I mustn’t do that, that if I did then there was a possibility I’d go to jail. He couldn’t let that happen. So … so then …’

  She looks up at the ceiling, closes her eyes, then – as though confessing her sins to some greater being – continues to speak.

  ‘He told me to stay where I was and keep a lookout for anyone coming. If I saw anyone I was to tell them we’d broken down and that the AA were on their way. “Whatever you do, Isobel,” he said to me as he got out of the car, “make sure you send them on their way, do you understand?” I nodded my head, though the truth was I could barely hear a word he was saying. My ears were ringing with the aftershock of gunfire. I don’t know whether you’ve ever heard a gun go off at close range?’ She opens her eyes and turns to me.

  ‘No,’ I say, shaking my head. ‘No, I haven’t.’

  ‘Well, hopefully you’ll never have to,’ she says, her eyes welling with tears. ‘My head was buzzing as I sat in that car and waited for Steve to return, my heart pounding at every little noise in case it was someone coming to find us. After about forty minutes I heard … oh my God, how do I even describe it? … I heard this terrible scraping sound. I looked in the rear-view mirror and saw Steve. He was … he was pulling the body along the side of the road and that was the noise I was hearing. I still have nightmares about that noise, even after all these years.’

  I look down at the ground, remembering the sound of the glass as it sliced into Mark’s skin, and I know exactly how she feels. That sound haunted me as I lay on my bunk in that cell, praying for sleep to come and take it away.

  ‘Steve was well built,’ says Isobel, her voice snapping me out of my memory. ‘He played rugby, went to the gym, all that kind of thing, but Grace’s father was a big man alive let alone dead, and it took him the best part of an hour to get him into the boot of the car.’

  ‘Oh my God,’ I cry, putting my hand to my chest. ‘You had the body in the car.’

  ‘There was no other choice according to Steve,’ says Isobel impassively. ‘We had to get rid of it otherwise I was going to jail.’

  ‘Where did you take it?’ I ask.

  She doesn’t reply, just stares straight ahead.

  ‘Isobel?’ I say impatiently. ‘Where did you take it?’

  ‘We didn’t have to go far, that’s all I’ll say,’ she whispers, her eyes clouding over.

  ‘Isobel,’ I say, my voice trembling. There’s something about her tone that is deeply unsettling. ‘Isobel, where did you bury the body? I need to know.’

  She looks up at me then smiles a strange, resigned smile.

  ‘The lake,’ she says, gesturing to the outside with an outstretched arm. ‘We put rocks in his pockets, put him in the boat, then Steve waded out with it and tipped it over. The body went straight down.’

  I sit there, frozen, trying to take in what she has just told me. The lake? There’s a dead body in the lake? I can’t take it in. My stomach convulses. I jump to my feet and retch on to the floor.

  ‘I … I don’t believe it,’ I say, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. ‘It’s not possible. What about when the police came for Grace? Surely they would have drained the lake?’

  ‘That’s what I was dreading,’ says Isobel quietly. ‘Though, in her manic state, Grace told them she’d left the body in a graveyard. The police spent weeks searching all the nearest churchyards, ours included. My heart was in my mouth when they came to our door. I thought I’d been found out.’

  ‘So how did the police find Grace?’ I say. ‘Why did they come for her?’

  ‘Apparently she woke up in the woods sometime around dawn,’ says Isobel. ‘By that time we were long gone but her father’s blood was splattered on her clothes. It must have got on to her when he fell. According to the police she told them she’d staggered back to the house after that and holed herself up in this room.’

  I look around at the stark white walls and shiver, imagining Grace as a young teenager in here all alone, scared and confused.

  ‘Someone must have noticed she was here alone because the police were given an anonymous tip-off and found her here covered in blood,’ says Isobel, her face hardening.

  ‘Anonymous?’ I say, frowning. ‘But I thought Grace and her father had kept themselves to themselves. Who would have –?’

  I stop then, noticing the strange expression on Isobel’s face.

  ‘You called them?’ I say, my voice shaking with rage. ‘You framed Grace for the killing? I don’t believe it. How could you, Isobel? You were supposed to be her friend!’

  ‘Friend?’ cries Isobel. ‘She was never my friend. She was just some misfit who’d attached herself to me. We were never friends.’

  ‘She was sent away,’ I say, trying to keep calm as I remember Grace and her small acts of kindness that got me through those dark days. ‘She’s in prison now.’

  ‘She’s not in prison for what happened to her father,’ snaps Isobel. ‘She was sent to a young offenders’ place for that and got all sorts of therapy. What you don’t realize is that Grace is mad. She always was. When the police turned up that day she told them she’d killed her father. She was a lunatic.’

  ‘She told them because she was covered in blood and had no recollection of what had happened,’ I say. ‘She was scared and confused.’

  ‘She was dangerous,’ says Isobel, her eyes blazing. ‘You forget she’d been brought up by that madman, utterly untamed. After she was released from the young offenders’ place she got slung back in prison for all sorts of things: theft, assault, GBH.’

  ‘How do you know all this?’ I say.

  ‘I kept myself updated,’ says Isobel sourly. ‘Googled her name from time to time, that sort of thing. It was in my interest to know what she was up to.’

  ‘But everything that happened to her stemmed from that night,’ I cry. ‘For being framed for something she didn’t do. Grace was a good person. I know that because I spent time in prison with her. I saw her kindness first-hand. Isobel, you have to tell the police what happened. You must.’

  ‘Don’t tell me what I must do,’ she yells, jumping to her feet. ‘I know all about you and what you did to your husband. I saw him on the news the other night, poor chap, begging for his little son to be brought back. What kind of a wife and mother does that?’

  ‘I ran away because I couldn’t be without Joe,’ I say, my voice trembling. ‘I’m his mother. I needed to be with him. You wouldn’t understand that.’

  ‘I wouldn’t understand?’ cries Isobel, her eyes welling with tears. ‘Because I’m a cold-hearted, childless bitch, is that right?’

  ‘I didn’t say that, I just meant –’

  ‘You think I owe Grace anything?’ she says, tears and snot running down her face. ‘Getting involved with that girl ruined my life. Do you know what happened three months after that night, eh?’

  I shake my head.

  ‘No, why would you,’ she shrieks. ‘Well, I’ll tell you. Three months to the day after he hid that old lunatic’s body in the lake Steve went and gassed himself in his friend’s garage. They found him after three days. I had to find out by seeing it on the local news. “Mystery as promising young rugby player takes his own life.” That was the headline. But there was no mystery for me. I knew exactly why he had done it. It’s because he couldn’t live with the guilt. He was a good person, a kind-hearted, loving person, and he just couldn’t bear to think that he had disposed of a body like that, colluded in someone’s death. He was a good person, not Grace. And that’s why I have no guilt over what happened to her because as far as I’m concerned she killed Steve. She killed the love of my life.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I whisper. ‘I really am.’

  ‘You talk about Grace’s life being over,’ she continues, her eyes wild now. ‘Well, mine was destroyed the day I found out about Steve. My heart was ripped to pieces. And then a few weeks la
ter I found out I was pregnant. Imagine explaining that to your father when he’s a vicar. And I wanted that baby. I wanted it so much because it was my only reminder of Steve.’

  She starts sobbing. The sound is raw and heartbreaking. I go to her and put my hand on her shoulder.

  ‘Isobel, I’m sorry,’ I say gently. ‘You’ve been through the worst possible experience but I know what guilt feels like too. It eats you up inside. You’ll never be free until you do the right thing and clear Grace’s name.’

  ‘Do the right thing?’ she snaps, stumbling to her feet. ‘What about you? The runaway mother who slashed her husband’s face and …’

  Her voice is drowned out by the sound of sirens.

  ‘What’s that?’ I say, my mouth going dry. ‘Did you call them? Maybe they’ve found Joe.’

  I rush to the door and start yanking at it. Then I hear Isobel’s footsteps behind me.

  ‘Yes, I called them,’ she says softly. ‘And I also called his dad.’

  ‘What?’ I say, turning round. ‘Why did you do that?’

  ‘Like I said, I saw you on the news,’ she says, sighing heavily. ‘You’d been asking me all sorts of questions about Grace and … I panicked. I thought you were on to me.’

  ‘On to you?’

  ‘I thought you knew it was me who killed Grace’s father,’ she says. ‘I thought that’s why you’d come. I mean, no one would come up here to this dilapidated old place for a holiday. But then I saw your face on the news, heard what you’d done to your husband.’

  ‘So you contacted Mark and told him where I was?’

  ‘Yes,’ she says, looking down at her feet. ‘I thought I was doing the right thing because he sounded so nice and he said how you had attacked him and that you weren’t right in the head. He said he was scared you were going to hurt Joe.’