—And Alfie?
—Yeah … that poor little boy. He was just lovely, sat there in his little car seat, looking out the window. I was sat in the back with him, with half the bags across my knees. I spent most of the journey laughing and singing with him. He wanted ‘Wheels on the Bus’ about a million, billion times. Sorrel joined in loudly every time. Sonia though, she just sat there, staring out the window. It was like she couldn’t be bothered.
—What was going on with Sonia at this point? Did she have problems of her own?
—Everyone knows – from the news and that – that she was drinking. I think it was just getting really bad around then. I didn’t know what was going on at home with her and I wasn’t really looking to be completely honest with you. I didn’t smell drink on her. She just looked defeated.
At some point on the journey, Sorrel pulled off the pass and opened a gate onto a dirt track leading into the trees. Wendy says she’s sure they were trespassing as there were no official signs pointing to any sort of campsite.
—We drove for ages, the car bumping about. Alfie was having a great old time, laughing and giggling. When we stopped, I realised we’d gone totally off road – there wasn’t even a track anymore. Sorrel had just driven into the middle of the forest. It was lucky it was summer or else the car would have got stuck, I reckon.
—It seems a rather odd place for a holiday, did you think that at the time?
—I remember that we were the only ones in that whole forest; there was no one around. But that would’ve suited the Sorrel I knew.
—What do you mean by that?
—He hated scrutiny. He was defensive, always thought that people were judging him. Being away from everyone like this, I guess it gave him a bit of freedom. And he would have been embarrassed by Sonia. And, I shouldn’t say it, but probably the boy, too.
—Sorrel saw Alfie as an embarrassment? Really?
—Sometimes I think Sorrel saw that boy, not as a person in his own right, but a reflection of himself. I think he felt that Alfie’s behaviour reflected on him as a parent, which to some extent, it did. So going somewhere remote kind of solved that problem for a bit. As for me, I thought it would be good for me to be in the middle of nowhere. No pubs, no temptation. It felt like I could regain who I was with my friend beside me. It was an opportunity for me to sort my life out a bit.
Sonia and Wendy pitched the tents and looked after Alfie while Sorrel went off into the woods to gather firewood. Wendy says that Sonia came out of her shell a little bit then and the two women were able to chat while they worked and played with Alfie.
—It was a funny place, that forest. It was dark and huge. The trees were massive, blocking out most of the sky. It was quiet too, just faint rustlings of birds and that. We couldn’t relax, we couldn’t settle in there.
—Why was that?
—It sounds daft, but it felt like something was watching you. All the time. And we found we was talking quiet, shushing Alfie if he made too much noise. As if we was in a church or something.
I think it was cos we knew we wasn’t supposed to be there. We listened out for Sorrel, thought we’d hear him chopping branches and that – he’d taken this little axe and a spade with him – but there was nothing. It was like the forest had swallowed him up.
—Did Sonia confide in you at all while Sorrel wasn’t there? Did she say anything of note? Perhaps about how things were at home?
—No. She didn’t come across like she was … anything really. There just wasn’t a lot to her.
—What about Alfie? How did he seem?
—He was like any other little boy; wandering about, grabbing sticks. He loved it in them woods. I was glad because I just found the whole place weird. I couldn’t relax. I remember he had us playing this game. The trees were dead close together outside the clearing, the woods were really dark. Alfie kept walking over to the line of trees and pointing.
—Really? What at?
—It was funny. He kept saying ‘Doggy!’ and either me or Sonia would go over to look, and Alfie would shout, ‘Doggy gone!’ He did it with other animals too: ‘Piggy gone!’, ‘Goat gone!’
I don’t want to mention what Callum Wright told me about the animal sightings in the forest, I don’t want to plant bias in Wendy’s mind or taint her story. All of a sudden, her smile turns to a frown.
—Kids are funny, aren’t they? They come out with all sorts. I remember Alfie toddling over to another clump of trees; he had his hands out as if he was trying to catch something. Me and Sonia, we’re just sat there, looking at him, and then he stops still and stares into the trees. Dead quiet. Well, Sonia was trying to lie down, she was done playing, but I go over to him, quiet cos I can hear him chuntering away.
—What was he saying?
—It was just gabble – made-up kiddie speak, but he was whispering it. It was weird cos it was like he was answering back, you know? As if he was talking to someone.
—I don’t follow.
—Like someone was speaking to him.
—Who?
—No one! There wasn’t no one there! I get closer and squat down in front of him and he starts laughing. Well, when a little one laughs like that, you can’t help yourself, can you. I started laughing, too. We’re laughing and laughing, and I ask Alfie what’s funny. He’s still looking away from me, into the trees.
He stops then and turns round to face me. He does this funny thing: he puts his hand up and touches my lips with his finger, dead soft.
‘Shh,’ he says.
So I play along, like it’s a game, and I start whispering. I ask Alfie why we need to be quiet.
He looks at me, right in my eyes and says, ‘Bad piggy wake up.’ And the corners of his little mouth turn down like he’s going to cry. Well, I dunno why, but there was something I didn’t like about the way he said that. ‘Bad piggy’ – it sent a chill through me. God knows why.
—Did Sonia know what he was talking about?
—She acted funny about it. She shouted at Alfie to stop it, which I thought was pretty harsh. I asked her what the matter was and she got all sulky. She said it was a thing that Sorrel did. She said she wasn’t having it while they were away.
—What did she mean?
—She said Sorrel and Alfie had a game they liked to play together, without her. She said it started cos she’s scared of mice. The game was simple; Sorrel and Alfie used to make scratching sounds with their feet when she wasn’t looking, point at the floor and say ‘bad mousey’ – it would make Sonia scream out. They thought it was hilarious, she told me.
—It just sounds like a kids’ game. It doesn’t sound particularly nasty.
—She said that Sorrel did it to Alfie, too. If Alfie didn’t do what he was told, Sorrel would make a scratching noise, a snuffling, a growling. He would tell Alfie that ‘bad piggy’ would come and eat him if he didn’t behave. I think it was just a way for Sorrel to try and control him.
—Perhaps that’s all it was…
—Anyway, I think he was getting tired then, cos he starts playing up.
—Playing up?
—Sonia tells him to come and get a drink and something to eat, but he won’t. He keeps telling her to shush. He keeps shaking his head and pointing into the trees, babbling away. Sonia’s fed up with it and she tells him to get over there now. Alfie though, he starts getting red in the face, his little hands curl into fists and he points at Sonia. He starts shouting ‘Bad lady!’ at the top of his voice. Over and over again: ‘Bad lady! Bad lady!’ It took both of us to calm him down.
—What do you think was wrong with him?
—No idea. I tell you what, though, I didn’t like all that ‘bad piggy’ nonsense. It messed with me head. I kept thinking I was seeing things in the trees. I thought I was hearing footsteps or whispers in the wind. That was probably cos I’d not had no drink or anything, though. You hear things when you’re drying out.
And another thing – by the time she’d finally calmed
him down, Sonia had all these cuts on her arms. There were bruises as well.
—Alfie did those to her?
—Who else could have? He must have been scratching and hitting her. Then Sorrel came back. And that’s when everything started going really wrong.
—What happened?
—Sorrel had been gone for ages and after Alfie had some food and a drink, we were getting a bit bored. Once we was used to the fact we was in a forest, there wasn’t actually anything to really do. We had put the tents up, dug the fire pit and Alfie had helped us put stones all round it. Sonia said that Sorrel would like that. We had all the food ready to go, we was just waiting for the firewood. None of us wanted to go far from the car and the tents, we didn’t want to explore or nothing. Not after all that ‘bad piggy’ nonsense.
So finally Sorrel comes back with a handful of firewood, just enough to get a fire going, and there’s suddenly this tension.
—How do you mean?
—Before, in the car, he was laughing and joking and that, but he came back with this scowl on his face. I’d seen that scowl before, when he wasn’t getting his way in the kitchen. I remember Alfie running over to him to give him a hug and he just stands there, looking at Sonia. I could feel her tensing up beside me.
—What was the matter with him?
—I dunno. He was filthy; all covered in mud and sweating. I remember how red he was, like he’d been running or something.
—Did he say what he’d been doing?
—He never said, but he was tired, irritable, started asking Sonia all these questions: where’s this, where’s that? She starts getting flustered and he’s getting more annoyed. He didn’t even have much firewood.
—So what do you think he’d been doing instead of collecting wood?
—I had no idea. Must have been pretty hard work, whatever it was. But I didn’t want to ask. Sonia and me, we were just scuttling about, trying to appease him.
—Was Sorrel angry with her? Was he … abusive in any way?
—No. It was more like he was disappointed. Every time he asked her something and she didn’t know, or hadn’t done something, he just did this face. He sighed. That was the thing with Sorrel: he was so charming that you didn’t want to disappoint him – you wanted to make him happy. So I starts scratching around, trying to get the fire going. And Sonia’s trying to get Alfie to go down for a nap. The whole time, Sorrel was just looking at Sonia like she’d failed him.
This behaviour went on for the rest of the afternoon. Wendy says the tension was almost unbearable. She kept her head down, assisting Sonia with trying to do everything right and keep Sorrel from being disappointed. She reiterates that nothing Sorrel had asked Sonia to do was overtly unreasonable, she just couldn’t seem to be able to do anything right for him.
—Alfie was getting silly, too; he kept trying to run off. Every time Sonia tried to soothe him, he would start doing his ‘bad lady’ thing and laughing. Sonia gave up after that. That’s the only time I seen Sorrel actually do anything with Alfie that trip. He sits down on this log and starts telling Alfie a story.
—Trying to settle him?
—Well, not really. It wasn’t like no fairy story, I tell you. He starts telling him that there’s little men what live in the woods. He called them ‘the wood-knockers’. He says to Alfie that if he listens, he’ll hear them knocking. So we all go quiet. The sun was going down and there was a wind in the trees. You could hear the quiet of the place like a rushing in your ears and every so often there’d be a snapping noise or a rustle, and you’d look round but there was nothing there.
Alfie was looking up at his dad, his eyes wide. He was wearing this little yellow rain coat and blue wellies, and my heart just … I could see how scared he was. But Sorrel goes on.
He says that the wood-knockers have no eyes, but they have sharp teeth and their favourite food is children. He says that if you run off into the wood without a grown-up, they’ll catch you and eat you.
—Wow.
—I know. But Alfie, he’s a spirited little one. He says ‘Dad, how can they catch me if they got no eyes?’ Sorrel doesn’t miss a beat. He says that they can smell children, that their noses are stronger than dogs’. He says that, if they smell you, they’ve got these long fingernails what they tap against the trees to let the others know you’re coming. He must have thought this story up when he was collecting firewood cos he’s got this stick in his hand and he starts tapping it against the log he’s sat on, behind his back so Alfie can’t see.
—That’s … unpleasant.
—Poor Alfie. I can see his lower lip going and Sorrel’s face is deadpan, serious. Alfie looks at him and back to his mum. Sonia opens her mouth and I swear, she’s about to tell Alfie it’s just a story, but Sorrel gets in first.
‘Mum’s heard them, too,’ he says. His eyes go wide. It’s a warning look, and Sonia nods her head. Something comes over Sorrel’s face then. I’ll never forget it – it was like he was telling an inside joke.
‘Mum hears a lot of strange things, Alfie,’ he says. ‘Mum hears a lot of things that Daddy doesn’t.’
‘Listen,’ he says, and we’re all just stood there like lemons, listening to nothing. ‘Hear that?’ Sorrel says, and Sonia sort of twitches. Her whole body jerks like she’s been electrocuted.
Alfie’s just looking up at us all like the world’s gone mad. I just keep my mouth shut.
—Why? Did you hear something?
—Yeah I did and I didn’t want to say nothing cos this was obviously not my business. It was some family thing that I had nothing to do with.
—What was?
—It was obvious. Sorrel’s got that bit of wood behind his back and he’s tapping on it with his knuckle. I could see him. But Alfie’s pretending like he can’t hear anything, and Sonia’s acting like she’s got ants in her pants.
I have no idea what’s going on, and all I want to do is take that little boy in my arms and tell him it’s not real, that he’ll be OK. Sorrel and Sonia are just staring at each other.
I’m interested that Sorrel didn’t use the story of the Wentshire Witch, which he surely must have known, and instead made up this rather gruesome tale of sightless ‘wood-knockers’. I also note the grim recurrence in this case of the ‘tapping’ noise.
Wendy explains that, after this, it was an easy way to keep Alfie in check. If the boy ventured too far away, all Sorrel had to do was tap a couple of sticks together behind his back and Alfie would come haring back into his mother’s arms. And he stopped all the ‘bad piggy’ stuff.
—I imagine none of this was conducive to getting Alfie to sleep that night?
—Poor little mite. It was Sonia who had to try and get him down while Sorrel just sat in front of the fire. We could hear Sonia in the tent, singing and soothing, trying to get Alfie to settle. It was dark by then. The darkness in there … it just fell. All we had was the torches and the fire, but even they weren’t bright enough.
—What about when Alfie went to sleep?
—We sat up for a bit, the three of us. It wasn’t cold and we had the fire. And Sonia perked up a bit then, too.
—Why was that?
—She had a drink then, didn’t she? They’d brought a wine box. Sorrel and her was drinking it. I was trying to stay off the drink, though. I was thinking that I’d be getting up with Alfie in the morning. After all that’s why I was there – to be like a babysitter.
—Did you think of just leaving?
—How could I? I couldn’t drive. You know how big Wentshire Forest is? There was no way I was going to start walking through that place on my own. Also, I felt for Sonia. I felt for both of them, to be honest.
—Did Sonia drink a lot that evening?
—Yeah. She was chatty for a bit before slumping into a stupor. She must have drank about half that box. Sorrel just had that disappointed look on his face and packed her off to bed. I heard him muttering, her slurring her words. Then they started arguing, I covere
d my ears for a bit cos I didn’t want to hear it. The argument went on for ages, then he came and sat back down. That’s when he told me what was going on.
This idea of Sonia drinking wine before passing out is consistent with Sorrel’s accusations against her made during his account of what happened when Alfie disappeared. So perhaps we can see why he took Alfie away that fateful night. However, Wendy says Sonia, on that trip, never showed one iota of aggression toward Sorrel or Alfie.
—Sorrel gives me a plastic cup full of wine. I couldn’t turn him down. He says thanks for today; he says he knew I’d be the best person to come and help.
—Did you not ask him why it had been so long since he’d been in touch?
—That was another thing about Sorrel; when he talked to you, it felt like you were the only person in his world, that you were the most important thing in his life. I didn’t want to disappoint him by moaning about why he’d not been in touch. We was sat together on that log, just the two of us, and the only sound is the crackling off the fire and Sonia crying.
Then she comes out of the tent again. She’s all bedraggled, her face all blotchy. She’s sniffing and sobbing, asking Sorrel just to talk to her.
—Sounds awkward.
—It was awful. He gets up and marches over to her, chest puffed out. For a moment I think he’s going to slap her, but he just sends her back to bed, tells her to go to sleep like he’s scolding a little kid. I didn’t know where to put myself.
—Did he come back to you?
—Yes. And he wanted to talk.
—What did he say?
—He wasn’t really emotional – he just told me sort of facts. He was working all hours to keep the finances above water. He was souschef in a restaurant and working in a bar, too. It sounded relentless. Sonia didn’t work at all; she was supposed to be looking after Alfie. She had a few hours in the day when Alfie was at school, but Sorrel would come home and the house would be a mess, and she would be drunk.
Changeling Page 12