Never Go There

by Rebecca Tinnelly

  Breathe, she told herself, breathe.

  People kept coming, the benches filling, people standing, people leaning against the wall, people everywhere.

  She looked at her phone in her pocket, checked the time. The old phone she never updated, had resisted all attempts by Emma to modernise, download apps, social media, email. This one did everything she needed, phone calls and the odd text, and worked as a pocket watch too.

  They would be missing her by now, at home.

  She thought of Jennifer banging on the pub door, finding the letter Maggie had left for her, explaining, begging her not to tell anyone, not to follow.

  She imagined Jennifer calling the police all the same, telling them where Maggie was heading.

  And she thought of DS Pale going through the pub, Ali close behind, finding the letter she’d left addressed to them both. The letter detailing Arthur’s actions, what he’d done to Lois all those years ago, how Edward Burrows was the last living witness. She didn’t want Arthur to go unpunished. She left it on the kitchen table, just in case she got caught up in London, never came back. Nuala Greene had already killed two people, after all.

  She turned the phone off, slipped it beneath her on the bench. She would leave it behind. She’d watched enough television, read enough books, to know the phone signal could lead the police straight to her.

  Maybe that’s why Nuala had left her phone in London when she had come, weeks ago, to the village. That’s what Ali had said, that the GPS hadn’t moved on her phone for weeks. It had formed part of her alibi.

  Nuala Greene.

  The name was like lemon juice at the back of her throat, making her jaw clench, tongue prickle, nose smart.

  She was here because of Nuala Greene.

  Because of everything Nuala Greene had taken from her.

  ‘I’m here for Emma,’ Maggie said under her breath, eyes shut. ‘I can do this for her.’

  She took a small map out of her bag, unfolded it, used her finger to trace the line from the station to the top of Nuala’s road.

  Eyes closed, she pictured the route she would take, the road signs she would see. It was just one more train ride away.

  She reached into her bag and pulled out the only thing left: the prize.

  The letter to James that Nuala had left in the guest room. She knew Pale had never searched it himself, suspected the SOCOs of only giving the guest room a cursory glance, having found enough ‘evidence’ in Emma’s bedroom.

  She tried to muster the same sense of relief she’d felt last night, the hallelujah of finding the envelope wedged between the bedside table and the mattress, James and Nuala’s address on show. It felt like a sign from up above, from Tom, from Emma, that she was doing the right thing, that it would all go to plan.

  She held the letter in her hand, the edges digging into her fleshy palm.

  Nuala must have thought Emma had written this letter to James, that Emma had been trying to lure James home, back to her. Nuala’s jealousy, her mania, must have driven her over the edge.

  Maggie couldn’t bring herself to look at it, to look at that writing again.

  She would know Emma’s handwriting anywhere.

  She’d seen it every day for seven years, had recognised it on the photocopied suicide note that DS Pale had pushed across the card table.

  Emma hadn’t written this letter.

  And Maggie knew who had.

  Maggie wanted to shout, curse the name, but her voice was a pathetic whisper, lost to the clack of the trains. ‘Lois Lunglow.’

  Nuala had said that Lois told her that Emma had written the letters.

  Why did Lois lie?

  Maggie pondered the letter, thinking how desperately Lois must have longed for her son to return, how devastated she must have been to find out he would never come back.

  Lois must have lied to Nuala as some kind of sick revenge, to make her angry, make her jealous, perhaps unaware that she was pushing a woman who had already lost her husband, her parents, to the edge. Why had she done it? Was it to get back at Nuala for marrying James, perhaps thinking it was Nuala who kept him away from the village? Or was it punishment for not telling her James was dead sooner, petty comeuppance for cremating him without her, as if her lie could reverse time and change that?

  Or worse. Could Lois have told Nuala the lie suspecting, perhaps even knowing, how Nuala would react? What she was likely to do to Emma, the woman Lois had blamed all along for James’s absence, probably blamed too for the fire that destroyed her house?

  When had Lois started writing the letters? After the fire, after her house was burned down? When her life unravelled even further, when the only man who offered to help her was the one who had raped her as a girl, fathered her child then attacked her again, years later? That’s when she’d started writing, Maggie knew it, felt it. That’s when she would have tracked James down, begged him to come back, because she felt no one else would help her.

  Not her neighbours, not her family, not Maggie who had failed her so long ago with her silence.

  Did Nuala know about everything Lois had been through?

  Maggie opened her fist, the letter turned to pulp.

  A reminder of how strong she was, what her thick-fingered, powerful hands could do. She pictured them wrapped around a gas canister, changing the barrels at home, her weight and the bulk of her arms adding to their force.

  Nuala Greene was one more train ride away.

  She dropped the pulped letter, closed the bag, her train at last approaching.

  She knew what she was going to do, what she was prepared to do.

  Nuala

  Tuesday, 12th December, 2017

  If only she hadn’t left that last letter behind, in the pub. How could she have been so short-sighted?

  Every day she checked online, waiting for the date of the inquest, wanting it to be over, the case closed, forgotten.

  But one person, she knew, would never forget.

  And that person was everywhere she looked. Today she was even behind her in the queue for the cashpoint, a fat woman with grey hair.

  But no, that wasn’t Maggie.

  But the reflection of an old woman in the nearby shop window, was that her?

  No; it was just a reflection. Only light on glass.

  Her own reflection had changed. Thinner than ever, pimples across her hairline and back, hair lank and thinning from stress.

  She reached the cashpoint; took out her bank card, entered the PIN, withdrew the daily maximum limit. Half she would add to a pre-pay debit card. The other she would keep as cash. She had a few thousand gathered so far, but that wasn’t enough, not nearly enough, to get out of this city, run away before anyone discovered the truth.

  The old woman behind urged her on with a cough.

  She took her money, slid it inside her purse and moved off without meeting the old woman’s eye, fearing she’d see a scarred cheek after all.

  Maggie.

  She was everywhere, driving every car that passed on the road, serving behind shop counters, walking through garden gates, selling the Big Issue in a bundle of thick coats. Even men, walking with a roll and hair growing over their collars, looked like Maggie did from behind.

  Money in her purse, she stopped at a crossing.

  But there, look there, who was that in the shop window?

  Who was that riding the top deck on that bus?

  She turned her back on the road, the cars, buses, people. She needed to get back, to get home, needed her heart rate to slow, to calm down.

  She would come back later, to add the cash to her pre-pay card. It would give her something to do, focus on. It would help fill her long, empty day.

  The pavement was slippery beneath her leather boots, the breeze ripping through her thin coat. She pulled her scarf over the bottom of her face, her hands deep in her pockets. Head down, hat pulled low, she walked on past the clothes shops and cafes, avoiding people, their gaze, their curiosity.

  Sh
e could feel eyes on her back but didn’t turn round.

  The streets were getting quieter now, more residential as she neared the park.

  She could sense a car slowing beside her; she ignored it.

  The money in her bag burned hot at her side.

  She had to get home, add it to the rest, plan her impending escape.

  She couldn’t go on like this, not forever, couldn’t pretend to live the life of an innocent, scared that anyone looking her way was a detective off duty, would recognise the guilty look in her eye.

  She had to start afresh, somewhere new, put on weight, dye her hair, melt into the obscurity of the normal.

  Nearly home. Nearly there.

  Soon she would be able to lock the door, turn out the lights, close the curtains, keep the outside world, the police and all the Maggies, at bay.

  It was somehow worse that the police weren’t interested in her, all her excuses and alibis gone to waste. No one talked to her; not one person had knocked on her door, the phone hadn’t rung save for sales calls.

  She’d cleaned the house, three times, from top to bottom.

  There was someone there, at the top of her road, who was that?

  No one, just another old woman in an oilskin with grey curling hair.

  Her nerves were getting too much to bear. Only inside the house was she at peace, able to plan her escape with calm logic.

  She felt in her pocket for the bunch of steel keys, cold, hard, sharp in her hand.

  The grey-haired woman was speeding up now, her walk familiar.

  Was that the trace of a scar on her cheek?

  No, no.

  It couldn’t be.

  She looked down at the keys, found the right one as she walked up the path to the house.

  Her feet skidded on the stones as she reached the front door.

  She heard a rasp of breath from the old woman jogging past on the street.

  She placed the keys in the lock, heard the same breath behind her, getting closer, the old woman’s reflection closing in on the door.

  She twisted the key, pushed the door open. She had to get in.

  Too late.

  She felt the hands reach for her, her feet losing purchase on the stones.

  She grabbed the keys, still stuck in the lock, but couldn’t wrench them free before Maggie had her.

  The old woman’s hands wrapped around her neck, but the scarf saved her, tangled between Maggie’s fingers and stopped her from squeezing.

  Eyes wide with panic, she cried out, but no one was there, no one heard her.

  She tried to scratch, lash out with her flailing arms, but too late again.

  A push to her back and she fell through the doorway, her handbag thudding hard on the floor, a picture frame falling from the wall.

  The old woman was grunting, face red, that angry scar pulsing, hair dishevelled by the wind.

  Maggie stood above her as she scrabbled on the floor, tried to stand. She looked up at Maggie, her eyes pleading, her face covered, muffled, by the scarf.

  Maggie came closer, hands outstretched and strong, ready to hold her by the neck and squeeze tight.

  But she shuffled back along the floor, pulled the hat off her head, flung it away.

  Maggie paused, hands mid-air, fingers twitching.

  She moved backwards on the Persian rug again, increased the space between her and Maggie, took the scarf and pulled that down, too.

  She stared at Maggie, the older woman looming over her, cheeks losing their angry colour, eyes moving from hatred to horror.

  She pulled the scarf off, and looked up, showed Maggie the full view of her face.

  Maggie

  Tuesday, 12th December, 2017

  Without taking her eyes off the woman on the floor, Maggie stumbled backwards against the door.

  She couldn’t look at the woman’s face; only her hands. The hands she’d seen hundreds of times ringing the bell in the pub, drying pint glasses, stirring tea.

  But whilst her heart filled with hope, Maggie’s head still screamed, no, no, no!

  A glimmer of light refracted off a piece of broken glass on the floor, caught her eye. A picture frame. James was hidden by the splintered wooden casing but Nuala was there, looking, smiling, taunting Maggie with the face of the woman she’d expected to see.

  She shut her eyes, rubbed her face.

  She was dead. Maggie had buried the girl herself, thrown soil on the chipboard lid.

  This woman was a ghost, a phantom, a terrible lie. She wasn’t real, she couldn’t possibly be.

  But this woman coughed and rubbed her neck, looked up with wide, blue eyes.

  Maggie opened her mouth and tried to speak but she couldn’t, she could barely breathe.

  She forced her eyes up and finally looked, finally saw her.

  Emma.

  Emma.

  ‘I thought you were her!’ She looked around her, the photo smashed on the floorboards, the Persian rug. Anything but look at her face. ‘I thought you were Nuala.’

  Emma pulled herself upright, stood facing Maggie.

  ‘I could have killed you, oh, Jesus!’ Maggie’s hands were at her face. ‘Oh, Emma, my God! I could have—’ But no more words would come, replaced by a sob that squeezed her throat tight.

  She could see her more clearly now, her eyes adjusting to the gloom of the hallway. Emma’s skin was sallow, body thin, arms barely more than bone.

  But she was alive. She was standing, breathing, living. And Maggie had almost—

  What had she done? How could she? She would never have been able to live with herself if she had done to Emma what she had wanted to do to Nuala Greene.

  She forced her eyes to rise above Emma’s scrawny shoulders and jutting collarbone, saw her face.

  She was smiling.

  Her lips were smiling and tears had gathered in her eyes.

  Maggie reached for her, held her head to her chest, kissed her hair, felt her skin beneath her fingertips, electrified by the very touch of her.

  ‘You’re alive.’ She held her away at arm’s length, marvelling at her hands, her face, her shoulder blades. Marvelling that her scent, that mixture of gardenia and bleach, was filling her senses again. ‘You’re alive!’ she repeated and Emma laughed, nodded, held Maggie’s hands in her own and squeezed.

  ‘I don’t understand. How is it that you’re here? I thought …’ Maggie looked at the photographs still on the wall, Nuala and James in monochrome, their cheeks pressed together. ‘It doesn’t matter what I thought.’

  Emma shook her head, said, ‘It was Nuala,’ and tried to say more but her eyes filled with tears, her face crumpled.

  ‘You need a drink, a cup of tea to get over the shock.’ Maggie took her hand, tried to usher her down the hall, but she dug her heels in the rug, wouldn’t move, forced Maggie to look at her again.

  She mouthed something that Maggie couldn’t hear.

  Moving closer, her mouth millimetres from Maggie’s ear, she tried again.

  Maggie jumped back as if burnt.

  ‘Of course I won’t tell anyone, not a soul!’

  The pictures on the walls looked on, Nuala smiling, James with one eyebrow raised.

  Emma breathed out and nodded, slipped out of her boots, took Maggie’s hand and led her to the kitchen. Maggie could feel each of Emma’s knuckles, each bone and tendon on the back of her hand.

  They passed the living room, the door ajar. Inside, a phone began to ring. Another started upstairs, and another in the kitchen.

  Emma looked into the room and shrugged, waved her hand and let the phone ring. She continued into the kitchen, flicked on the kettle and poured herself a glass of water from a filter jug in the fridge.

  Maggie leant against the butcher’s block, eyebrows raised as she contemplated the miracle before her, trying not to grin like an idiot, trying not to laugh, sing, spin Emma around and dance her across the floorboards.

  ‘Did Nuala tell you to come here? What happened
?’ Maggie asked, but Emma had lifted the water to take a sip, watched Maggie over the rim of the glass.

  The room was long, painted white with bleached floorboards. A wall of windows overlooked the overgrown garden. At the far end, on the opposite side of the winter-stripped hedge, Maggie could see the fields and trees of the park where James had worked.

  ‘Lois had been writing to James, anonymously. Did you know that?’ She looked at Emma. ‘I think Nuala must have thought it was you.’

  The phone stopped ringing and they both looked towards it. Only the grumbling boil of the kettle remained.

  ‘I thought Nuala had come to confront you,’ Maggie said, ‘that she killed you for the letters and Lois for tormenting her, but clearly not. She must have killed Lois and then herself, the grief having driven her mad. I thought her unbalanced, she’d obviously been affected by James’s death, Lois must have pushed Nuala beyond her limit when she started talking about you, your history with James. Maybe we’ll never know why Nuala did it, what was going on inside her head.’

  ‘Maybe not,’ Emma said, placing the glass on the counter with a ting. ‘But those letters drove her over the edge.’

  A steel cook’s knife rested by the kettle. She opened a drawer below it and withdrew a teaspoon. From an overhead cupboard she took a packet of chocolate digestives, throwing them over for Maggie to catch. Duchy Originals. Clearly, Nuala’s tastes exceeded McVitie’s.

  Maggie took them and sat at the kitchen table, solid oak with eight ladderback chairs and an embroidered cloth running down its centre line. A dark stain marked the wood at the edge of the tablecloth. She lifted it with her finger, exposing smudges of browns and greys and catching a faint, sweet smell of rotten fruit.

  Her stomach was churning, head light from hunger. She turned to see how Emma was getting on with the tea, waiting for her before opening the digestives. Emma’s back was turned to Maggie, her fingers drumming the countertop as she waited for the kettle to boil. When she found the tea she stood, staring with a furrowed brow. Teabag in one hand, loose leaf in the other.