The cottage had a damp and woody smell. The carpet was patchy, and so were the walls, with lighter shapes where pictures had been. The living room was empty save for a rocking chair and a battered cushion. ‘I always leave a chair until the end,’ said David, following my gaze. ‘It’s a long job, clearing houses.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Shall I show you round, or leave you to it?’
‘Leave me to it,’ I said too quickly.
He raised his eyebrows, but didn’t comment, only offered to come back and pick me up. ‘Save you walking in the dark,’ he said. ‘I live out this way. A few miles up, on the main road, set back.’
I knew where he meant: a line of old cottages with long gardens and woods behind. ‘How long have you lived there?’ I said, making my voice sound casual. For all I knew, David might have been in the village for years. In which case he’d know about me. Not that I recognised him so I didn’t think he’d been to my school.
‘About six months. I was in Japan. And London before that.’
‘Japan? What did you do?’
‘Worked for a bit, odd jobs, anything really, just for a couple of years. It was . . .’ He stopped.
‘Exotic?’ I offered.
‘Cathartic,’ he said at the same time. ‘And accidental.’
There was a pause. It was a strange combination of words. ‘How?’
‘Accidental because Japan was the first place I thought of, and cathartic because it made me feel better. Is that what cathartic means?’ He raised his hand. ‘Don’t answer. I’ll leave you to get on. What about picking you up later?’
It was tempting, but I declined. ‘I’d rather walk. I like the exercise.’ The first bit at least was true.
As soon as the front door slammed, and the van drove away, the silence became absolute. The house dictated: no dripping taps, or clanking pipes; no sighing beams or scuttles in the loft. I clumped out of the room, if only to hear sound, and climbed the stairs more slowly, feeling the give of the boards. The fifth step creaked and so did the ninth. My limbs prickled. Above me a shadow moved. Was I following my own ghost, my twelve-year-old self, tiptoeing through the cottage?
Turning at the bend of the stairs, I continued to the top and sat on the musty carpet. The window ahead of me framed the trees. The afternoon sun was dropping, the grey sky turning slate, but still the light picked out the burnished golds and reds. A late swallow dipped across the sky. Two gulls appeared. Zigzagging, chasing. An aggressive flight.
The bookcase behind me on the landing had gone. Years before, the whole house had been crammed with books and ornaments. God, I’d effectively broken in. How had I been so brave? Twelve years old and determined to find out what had happened to my sister. When had I given up that fight?
Why had Mum taken this clearance on? I pictured the scrapbook lying in the drawer. What if she’d turned detective like I’d done once? She might even have done this before, taken on house clearances from people who had died in the village, and then gone through their belongings, looking for clues. I shivered. I was being morbid. My imagination was going into overdrive. It was this house. It had that effect on me. Mad girls. Men who locked people up.
Still, I explored the rooms. The bathroom was old-fashioned, the suite chipped with age. There was a toothbrush alone in a pitiful plastic cup, an electric razor next to that, a comb and a bottle of hair oil. One bedroom was empty. The other I’d been in before. Now the bed was covered by a grey counterpane with bags piled on top. I pulled open the wardrobe. Mothballs. There was no mistaking the chemical scent. In the drawer at the bottom, I found bundles of papers and a few more photos. The papers looked like invoices, or copies of them, sent out to customers. They were written in Spanish and headed with the name of a shop, La Plata, along with an address in Seville. Edward Lily’s business, I supposed; the reason he’d been in Spain. I took the photos, thinking I’d put them with the rest.
Downstairs, the living room drew me back in. I sat down, grateful to David for having left the chair, and looked through the photos, recognising Seville: the Giralda, the Alcázar, and there was Lydia in the Plaza de España wearing a shawl covered in roses.
The front door opened, footsteps shuffled in the hall. I had no time to call out before a woman appeared. She screamed when she saw me. Lydia? Her mother? No. Lydia’s mother was dead. And this was no middle-aged ghost, wearing a cardigan and clutching her heart. It must be a neighbour, or a friend. Too young for Edward Lily’s sister.
Springing up, I leapt forward. ‘I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.’ The woman stayed where she was, hand gripping the door jamb. ‘I’m Anna, from the House of Flores, the place where all this . . .’ I stopped dramatically and swept my hand through the air, halting as I realised it was a futile gesture in an empty room. She looked around, eyes wide. She was short and solid with a mass of grey hair; her face white with shock. I panicked. Oh God, was she a relative who didn’t know Edward Lily had died?
‘You do know what happened?’ I said, composing myself.
‘Yes.’ She passed her hand across her forehead as if trying to sweep it from her mind. ‘Yes, of course. It was only seeing you . . .’ She pointed at the chair and I turned automatically to look. ‘That’s where I found him,’ she said, a little wildly. ‘I think about it all the time. I thought he was asleep. I said his name and he didn’t answer. I touched him, to wake him, you understand, but he was stone cold dead.’ She paused, made the sign of the cross and then lumbered across the room, hands stretched out like a sleepwalker, the scent of something floral following in her wake. She dropped straight into the chair and set it rocking.
‘There was a picture on the floor,’ she said, jabbing her finger at the carpet. ‘Right there. He was looking at it, I reckon, when he died. And there was a smell. I thought it was the rubbish. I never imagined . . .’ She stopped, her voice tearful now. ‘When I saw he’d passed away, the first thing I wanted to do was to phone my husband, can you believe. He’s been dead almost three years. That’s how upset I was.’
‘How terrible,’ I said, not knowing quite what else to say. ‘Are you his . . . ?’
‘Housekeeper. Dawn. I came to clean things up. The man, the one with the van, he said it would be all right.’ She pulled out a handkerchief and blew her nose. ‘I didn’t want people to think I’d neglected the place.’
‘How long did you know Mr Lily?’
‘For years,’ she said. ‘Right from when he bought the cottage. Early eighties.’ She sat forward, scrutinising me. ‘How long is that?’ She frowned as if reminded of something and took another look at me. ‘Of course,’ she said, her expression clearing. ‘Aren’t you . . . ?’ She stopped.
I spoke quickly, avoiding the question with one of my own. ‘Did you know Lydia? I remember when she lived here.’
Dawn glanced over her shoulder as if someone might be listening and leaned closer, steadying the rocking chair with her feet. ‘Lydia was . . .’ She stopped and grimaced and tapped two fingers to her temple. ‘You know what I mean?’ I looked away, not wanting to respond. ‘But then she would’ve been, wouldn’t she, after her mother, you know . . .’ She made the sign of the cross again. ‘I didn’t know Isabella. But I did feel sorry for Mr Lily looking after Lydia on his own. It was a shame. And she was a sweet girl. In her own way.’
I was curious now. ‘What was she like?’
‘Well, sweet, as I said, but quiet, very quiet. And so thin. I remember Mr Lily fretting and bringing treats to tempt her.’ She looked away and made a face as if trying to decide whether to say more.
I didn’t press her, although I wanted to know. I had a recollection that she’d stayed in England when her father had gone back to Spain. I wondered if she’d been to the cottage since he’d died.
‘I don’t think so,’ said Dawn when I asked.
‘Was she at the funeral?’
She shook her head. ‘There was only myself and Mr Lily’s sister and a few people from the village.’
&n
bsp; ‘Do you think Lydia has . . .’ I hesitated. ‘Passed away?’
‘No. The sister mentioned her, although she didn’t say why she wasn’t at the funeral. Mr Lily was cagey about Lydia, too – with me, at least.’ She cleared her throat. ‘To be honest, I always wondered if he put her in a place.’
‘What kind of place?’
‘For people who . . . you know, have that kind of problem.’ She looked away as if embarrassed to talk about it.
‘You mean a home?’
‘Yes, or a convent. That’s the kind of thing they have in Spain, isn’t it?’
I had a vision of Lydia drifting through stone passageways or in a secluded garden surrounded by orange trees and bougainvillea.
‘You really think he’d have abandoned her like that?’
‘Well . . . that generation,’ said Dawn, in the same conspiratorial tone she’d used before. ‘They did that, didn’t they?’
She was right. My mother had had a distant cousin she never spoke about. By the time I found out, both Grandma Grace and Granddad Bertrand had died as well as Uncle Thomas. I’d seen a letter on the kitchen table. It had come from a residential home in London and was asking my mother as the only remaining relative for permission to send on her cousin’s things. Her name was Mary and it was obvious from the letter that she’d lived in the home for years. I remembered feeling angry about it, accusing Mum of being secretive, not mentioning her cousin before. ‘It was different in those days, Anna,’ she’d said. ‘I don’t expect you to understand, but there was shame in things like that.’
‘In things like what?’ I’d said. ‘Mental illness? Family secrets?’
‘Both,’ she’d snapped back at me. ‘That was how society worked. Your generation don’t know anything about it.’
I’d tried to make her say more. I’d wanted explanations, justifications, but she’d tightened up her lips and no amount of prising on my part would extract any words.
Now there was silence as I searched for something more to say to Dawn. ‘Mr Lily must have been glad of your help,’ I said finally.
‘I was glad of the work. Robert too.’
‘Robert?’
‘My husband. Well, he wasn’t at the time.’ She smiled. ‘That came later. I suppose I should thank Mr Lily since he employed us both.’ She stopped talking and seemed suddenly lost.
In the end, I suggested she came to the shop to choose a memento, and when she asked if she could set aside any of Lydia’s things that remained in the cottage and pick out something of hers too, I agreed. I doubted Edward Lily’s sister had left anything of sentimental value, and despite Dawn’s clumsy way of speaking about Lydia, she’d clearly had an affection for the girl.
Dawn disappeared to do her cleaning and I took a stroll in the garden. The light was fading. It would be a dark walk home. Still, I stayed, wandering across the scruffy lawn, my mind swinging back to the idea that my mother had taken to foraging in other people’s houses looking for evidence of a crime. The image didn’t fit with the lost woman she’d become. Had the police even searched this cottage? I supposed they must have done when the investigation had been at its most intense, when Edward Lily had been a suspect. But how far had they gone? Had they lifted every floorboard, emptied every drawer? Had they looked in the shed, the water butt, the hollows in the trees? Was there a possibility that a clue had been missed either here or elsewhere in the village?
I looked back at the house. Slates were missing, the window ledges were peeling, part of the felt on the porch above the back door was hanging loose. The shutters downstairs were closed, making the place look gloomy and hostile. Was there something hiding here? Was it worth searching again, starting from where I’d left off?
A pigeon flew from a tree behind me, wings beating, making me jump. I spun around and watched as it stumbled, pecking at the ground. In the distance the tractor had stopped. Only the breeze ruffled the leaves, a creature stirred in the undergrowth. It was so quiet here. So lonely. Anything could happen in a place like this.
Had my mother believed that too?
What had she hoped to find?
I needed to look at things clearly. My mother’s death, the return to the village, familiar names and faces had shaken me. I was thinking too much about the past.
And yet, as I stood gazing at the cottage, I felt something stirring, deep inside me, finding its way through the chaos of my mind. I felt it again as I rounded the path and set off down the lane. Distant now but marching closer, I recognised what it was. Persistence, the need to know, creeping back after all those years away.
10
1982
The last day of term ended with a dull prize-giving assembly in the hall. School was always dreary, with its concrete blocks and teachers who had nervous breakdowns. I’d wanted to go to the grammar school, where the building was like a mansion in a gothic novel, and the girls wore blazers and purse belts and learned Latin, and nobody called you four-eyes or a swot for listening in class. But tragically Saint Barnabas was in town – thirty minutes on the bus; Mum didn’t like the journey and Dad despised selection. ‘Jesus and Mary,’ said Gabriella when I told her my dream. ‘Latin is dead. D.E.A.D. And have you seen their uniform? Skirts down to their ankles.’
Now Mrs Green, the head teacher, droned on as she always did and dished out cups and shields. We sat in rows, our heads nodding, until Miss Pretty came onto the stage to declare the winner of the art competition. Then the school woke up. Miss Pretty was young. She wore flouncy dresses and big hoop earrings – exactly what an art teacher should look like.
The painting was concealed on an easel behind a cloth. With a great show, Miss Pretty pulled back the cover to reveal a painting of an old man. ‘And the winner is,’ she said, her arms wide as if to embrace the lot of us, ‘Martha Ellis.’
Silence.
‘Martha Ellis,’ a boy in the row behind me said. ‘She can’t paint jack shit.’
But she could and there was the proof on the stage, and there was Martha climbing the steps to a patter of applause.
Afterwards, when the bell rang and we trooped outside, I searched for Gabriella. I found her with Martha. They were both looking at the prize – two tickets to an exhibition at the Tate Gallery in London. A dark feeling rose up and swept right through me. I tried to get rid of it. Why should I care? But Martha was fawning and smiling at my sister in that irritating way of hers and I gave in.
‘Are you ready?’ I said, my voice high and unnatural.
‘What for?’ said Gabriella, turning with a look of surprise.
‘We need to get home.’
‘Do we?’ She frowned.
I fixed my face with a serious expression. I thought she’d resist, but she said goodbye to Martha and followed me to the gates. When I looked back, Martha was staring after us, her hand extended as if she was giving the tickets away. I gritted my teeth and hurried down the street, pulling Gabriella with me.
‘Why do we have to get home?’ said Gabriella.
‘We don’t,’ I said. Although even as I spoke, I was looking around, half expecting to see Dad waiting in his van. He’d taken to picking us up as well as dropping us off. Or at least insisting we walk together to the House of Flores instead of straight home. ‘You’re as paranoid as Mum,’ Gabriella had accused him. While he’d claimed he only wanted to spend more time with his girls.
‘So why did you lie?’ said Gabriella now.
‘I thought you needed to be rescued.’
She looked at me. ‘Don’t be stupid, Anna. What’s wrong with you? Don’t you feel sorry for anyone?’
My cheeks reddened. Gabriella’s disapproval was like a blast of cold air and my stubbornness crumbled with its force. We walked the rest of the way in silence, my face burning with shame. Gabriella was right. I was stupid. I should have left her and Martha alone. Gabriella was only trying to be nice.
‘Sorry,’ I mumbled, when we arrived. I pulled at the peony by the door. The flowers were blo
od red and bursting from their buds. I picked one and held it out to Gabriella. ‘Sorry. Really, really sorry. You can go with Martha to the exhibition if you like.’
‘I wasn’t actually going to offer,’ she said, taking the flower and giving me another disapproving look. ‘Now, if it had been tickets for Siouxsie . . .’ She grinned. ‘Forget it.’ She pulled out a grip from her hair and fastened the peony in mine. Standing back, she admired the effect. ‘You look gorgeous, Anna Flores. Like a flamenco dancer. I wish I had your black hair. I wish Mum would bloody well let me dye it.’
‘Maybe you should just do it,’ I said more forcefully than I intended.
She stared at me, her lips parted with surprise. ‘What happened to Little Miss Righteous?’
I shrugged and smiled. We were united again, although this time against Mum.
Later, when I looked in the mirror, some of the petals of the peony had fallen off. How much better the flower had looked on the plant. I should have left it there. Guilt slithered inside my belly and joined Jealousy. But it wasn’t the dying flower that was making me feel guilty; it was the memory of Martha’s face as she stood with her hand out offering those tickets to no one.
The holiday began and we got used to our freedom. Mum took us on a trip to town and we argued over seeing Rocky III or Annie at the cinema. In the end, we watched both and had doughnuts in Debenhams afterwards.
On the first hot day, we decided to go for a picnic. Mum was lying down with a headache and a wet flannel laid across her forehead. There was no point asking for permission as we knew she’d make a fuss, so, helping ourselves to a packet of Scotch eggs, some sausage rolls and a Battenberg cake, we slipped out the door.
Tom, the road sweeper, was walking past. Tom had been around forever, always wearing a multicoloured scarf knitted by his mother, and pushing his barrow, with his spike, shovel and broom sticking out in unison like a trident. The perfect murder weapons, Rita said once, to pierce, to dig, to sweep away the soil.
The Missing Girl Page 7