The Wayward Girls

by Amanda Mason

  She looked over at Bee’s paper. It was a view of the same bit of garden, but Bee’s picture couldn’t have been more different: wild lines chased each other across the page, shadows had been cross-hatched with such force she’d almost torn the paper, and beyond the wall Bee had sketched in the suggestion of the moor that overlooked the house. She probably wouldn’t do any more to it. Bee abandoned her drawings on a regular basis, leaving them in the garden, the kitchen, their bedroom; pages torn roughly from their pads and left to gather dust or to be swept away in one of their mother’s periodic tidying fits.

  Loo had seen her father looking at one, once. She hadn’t been able to work out what he thought about it, but he’d looked at it for a long time before putting it carefully on the kitchen table. The picture had vanished by supper time. It wasn’t even one of Bee’s good ones, but Loo wished Joe would look at her own work like that, once in a while, just really … look, even if he decided he didn’t like it. He was supposed to be back by now, back from Scotland, and Loo wondered what he might make of their visitors and all the fuss that was going on.

  She was starting to need the toilet, but she didn’t think Bee would let her go. She shifted around a bit. Maybe if she offered to get them both a drink of water …

  ‘Hello.’ The man was standing in the doorway, a leather satchel over one shoulder and a glass in his hand. She felt Bee stiffen beside her. She could almost hear her sister counting in her head, one, two, three … all the way to ten, before she looked up at him and smiled.

  ‘Hello,’ she said.

  ‘Do you mind if I join you?’ he asked, and he actually waited for an answer.

  ‘If you like,’ said Bee, pushing her hair off her face and looking up at the man.

  ‘Thanks.’ He walked across the garden to where they sat, unlooping his bag from his shoulder and dropping it onto the grass, somehow managing to sit by crossing his feet at his ankles and dropping down onto the bed cover, arriving at eye level with them both in one easy movement, and without spilling his drink.

  ‘I’m Simon,’ he said, as the sun caught the water droplets in his glass and bounced tiny mirrors onto his white cotton shirt. He took a sip and waited.

  ‘I’m Bee and this is Loo.’ Bee put her pad down. Loo closed her own sketchbook and placed it to one side. She drew her knees up close to her chest and rested her chin on them, her thick hair lying heavy against her neck, as she stared at the man. He was young, older than Dan, but younger than Joe. They’d had a student teacher once, in school, back when Loo still went to school, and this man, Simon, reminded her of him.

  ‘This is nice,’ he said, looking around the garden. The grass on the little lawn was overgrown, and the vegetable patch was dry and crumbly. Against the far wall, runner beans were tangling themselves around some sagging and splintered stakes. Above them in the tree, hard little apples were forming on the branches. They weren’t ripe yet. Bee and Loo had tried one and, finding it sour, had fed it to Flor. But it was pleasantly shady there, and Loo liked the patterns the gently shifting leaves made on the sun-bleached eiderdown.

  ‘It’s all right,’ said Bee. ‘We had a bigger garden at our last house.’

  ‘Do you know why we’re here?’

  Loo pressed her lips together.

  ‘Yes,’ said Bee.

  The man took another sip of his drink – not water, Loo realised, but her mother’s home-made lemon barley water, cloudy and with little bits floating in it. It was sour stuff too, like the little apples. No one ever asked for more. Because he was looking at Bee, she felt all right about looking at him, as if she might put him into her picture if she felt like it. He wore jeans and a shirt, they were faded but clean, and he had light brown hair, quite long and with blond streaks in it. He has browny-green eyes, she thought, before looking away, hugging her knees closer.

  ‘Can you tell me a bit about what’s been going on?’ he said.

  But before either of the girls could answer, another voice interrupted them.

  ‘Hello.’ Isobel, from the newspaper, in the doorway, holding a glass of water.

  ‘Did you bring our photos?’ said Bee, standing up, as if the man didn’t matter at all.

  They decided to interview the girls in the front room. Bee and Loo sat on the sofa, and Michael, the professor, took the armchair by the fireplace. He was a tall man, serious, with thinning grey hair and clothes that looked expensive but old: summer clothes, soft and worn in.

  Simon sat cross-legged on the floor next to him. He looked up at Loo and smiled. She wriggled into the back of the sofa, hugging her knees close. She didn’t smile back.

  Simon propped his satchel against the fireplace. It contained notepads and brown cardboard folders and a portable tape recorder, and it seemed to be his job to manage all these things.

  ‘Can you say your names for me? For the tape?’ he said. His voice was nice, friendly, posh: it made Loo think of old books and people off the telly. The girls looked at each other, then did as he asked, Bee first, then Loo.

  The afternoon was bright and hot. That was all they talked about these days, the grown-ups, the weather, as if sunshine in July was unusual, and it was all they could find to discuss as they waited for Simon to get everything ready.

  The professor asked the questions. He listened to their answers carefully, and made notes in a little black book. He seemed very nice, he seemed to accept every word they said, but Loo noticed that the same questions kept creeping into the conversation, circling their way back as if by accident. Questions about the noises they heard upstairs at night, about the way things, little things, pens and pencils, house keys and bits of change, kept vanishing. This was beginning to bother her. She had the feeling that maybe neither she nor Bee were getting the answers right, and a nervous, ticklish sensation started to nudge at her insides.

  In the corner of the room Isobel was leaning against the sideboard, a camera in her hands. Loo couldn’t see her without turning her head, but she could hear her, the stammering click click click of the shutter. The professor didn’t seem to notice, but it was driving Bee mad, Loo could just tell.

  Bee sat with her hands locked in her lap, her head down, peering up occasionally at the professor from under her fringe; if you hadn’t known her, you might have thought she was shy. She was taking little glances at Simon too, as he bent over his tape recorder. From time to time she stretched out a long leg and rotated her foot thoughtfully as she answered a question. Simon didn’t look up, though.

  Cathy had stayed for the first bit. But she hadn’t been much help. She’d kept interrupting, correcting the two of them, filling up the silences if either girl hesitated. The professor was very polite, but anyone could see that he wanted Cathy to shut up; that it was the girls, Bee and Loo, who were important.

  After a while Bee said that she was getting tired and wasn’t it too crowded in here anyway, and then, luckily, Flor had burst into tears and Cathy had to take him away. He’d been stung by a wasp, he’d said, refusing to let anyone look at his arm, which he kept clamped to his chest.

  They had listened to him carrying on, inconsolable, as Cathy practically carried him all the way down the hall to the kitchen, and Loo had edged forward on the sofa, the better to see the little wheels spinning round in the tape recorder with their white plastic teeth. She wondered idly if Flor’s sobs had been recorded, if they might rewind the tape and wipe it clean and restore some peace and quiet to the room.

  It didn’t seem to occur to the professor that they should stop and wait for Cathy to return. He just carried on with his questions, not minding if either girl stumbled or hesitated when they spoke, smiling pleasantly at every answer, in a distant sort of a way. Simon flipped over the little cassette once, then a while later he replaced it with a new one, making neat notes on the label with a blue Biro.

  The clock on the mantelpiece ticked softly. Cathy didn’t come back. She might be making tea, Loo supposed, maybe even opening a packet of biscuits as a special trea
t.

  The professor, Michael, looked through his notes. ‘Do you remember the night the policeman came to the house?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ said Bee.

  ‘And something happened here, in this room, didn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Can you tell me what happened, Lucia?’

  ‘We were standing there, by the door, and he – the policeman – was talking to Cathy,’ said Loo.

  ‘He was telling her not to be stupid,’ said Bee. ‘He didn’t say it out loud but that was what he meant, anyone could see that.’

  ‘She called him because of the noise and everything.’

  ‘She made him go all around the house.’

  ‘But he didn’t believe us.’

  ‘He thought it was a joke.’

  ‘Then I said, look at that, look there,’ said Loo, ‘and he stopped talking and he looked.’

  ‘And he sort of forgot what he was saying. He just stared. Cathy grabbed hold of his arm – she went really pale and grabbed hold of him.’

  ‘The chair was moving,’ said Loo.

  ‘That chair,’ said Bee, leaning forward and pointing at Michael’s chair.

  He was silent for a moment. ‘Can you describe how it moved?’ he asked.

  ‘It—’ Loo stopped.

  ‘It was shaking,’ said Bee, ‘like it was going to burst or something.’

  ‘Then it slid forward, as if someone had pushed it.’

  ‘But there was no one there.’

  ‘Really?’

  The little wheels of the tape machine moved on.

  ‘Do you think the chair might move again?’ said Michael eventually. ‘Do you think it might move now, for instance?’ He placed each hand carefully on the chair’s arms and braced his feet on the floor, looking at the girls. The atmosphere seemed to thicken, the warm air close against Loo’s skin, and she half-expected the knocking to start up again, the thuds and bangs that had been rolling through the house at night. It had been fun at first, but sometimes now, she had to admit, it was a little bit scary.

  She hoped they would stop soon. She was getting tired of talking. It was hard work, going over everything that had happened, and it made her head ache.

  Bee flopped back into the sofa, grinning. ‘It might,’ she said. ‘You never know, do you?’

  ‘No, I don’t suppose you do,’ said Michael. He turned towards Simon, who was still sitting at his feet. ‘I think that’s enough for—’

  He was cut short by a sharp crack which seemed to echo through the room, making everyone jump.

  ‘What the hell?’ Isobel still held her camera, but she had no idea where to point it. Everyone stayed perfectly still, as if moving might set it off again, whatever it might be.

  ‘Are we still recording?’ asked Michael.

  Simon checked the little black box. ‘Yes.’

  The professor stood, slowly unfolding himself from the chair.

  ‘Are you familiar with the term “apport”, Simon?’ he asked, speaking slowly, clearly, for the tape.

  ‘The transference of small objects from one place to another.’

  ‘Good. Very good.’ As if they were in a classroom and Simon was the pupil. The professor examined the cold fireplace, running his hands over the pale mauve tiles surrounding the dusty grate.

  ‘Look,’ he said, ‘here.’ One tile was cracked, a spidery line running diagonally from corner to corner, and just below it, on the flattened rag rug, a marble lay. He picked it up, holding it gently between thumb and forefinger.

  ‘How curious,’ he said, ‘it’s warm.’

  Isobel raised her camera and took a shot of him holding the clear glass ball with its bluish-greenish twist in the centre.

  ‘I don’t like it,’ said Loo, although whether she meant the marble or the clammy sick feeling in her belly, she couldn’t say.

  ‘Where’s Cathy?’ said Bee, standing up. ‘I want to stop now. We want to stop. Come on, Loo, let’s go.’

  But Loo couldn’t move. Her headache had turned into an itching, a buzzing in her ears, like the noise the radio in the kitchen would make when it needed tuning in. The noise seemed to press down on her, to hold her in place.

  ‘Loo.’ Bee was standing over her now, both close and far away all at once, and Loo wondered if this was what it was like when people fainted. ‘Come on,’ said Bee.

  But before she could move, Loo heard Issy gasp. The professor told Simon to stand back and to keep recording please, as more marbles began to fall out of nowhere: blue and green, red and yellow, clear and speckled, shimmering briefly in the sunlight, before thudding softly onto the faded living-room carpet, and Issy lifted her camera and pressed the shutter release over and over again.

  10

  Now

  ‘Hi.’

  Cathy is still in bed, but she’s awake, sitting up, a sketchbook propped open on her lap. She looks tired. The bruises on her face are worse today, purple and blue stains on her pale skin. ‘Lucia.’

  Lucy edges her way into the room. ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘Don’t fuss,’ says Cathy, but her heart’s not in it.

  Lucy closes the door behind her, crosses the room and pulls back the curtains. The sky is a pale grey, the garden below, empty. ‘I was worried,’ she says, ‘when Jean rang.’

  ‘I didn’t know where you were,’ said Cathy.

  ‘No. Sorry.’ Lucy doesn’t know where to start. She’s spent half the night lying awake, rehearsing what she’ll say to Cathy, and to Nina should she speak to her again.

  Cathy is picking at the corner of a page, a still life composed of flowers in a stubby glass vase. ‘I thought of something,’ she says.

  ‘You could have rung me. Texted.’

  ‘You never answer.’

  ‘That’s not true. You know that’s not true.’

  ‘I remembered something,’ Cathy says, ‘and I needed to check. But I couldn’t find it, at first. And then, when I did, they wouldn’t listen, none of them would listen. I just wanted to show you.’ She turns a page, then smooths it down. ‘Here.’ She hands the sketchbook to Lucy.

  ‘The first time I saw her, I didn’t realise she wasn’t there, you see. I was sitting in the garden, working on a sketch of the kitchen, and there she was, by the door – she was there, and I was looking at the page, and the next time I looked up, she’d gone. I didn’t think anything of it. I just – carried on. I put her in the drawing without thinking about it, and then I forgot – until last night. But I couldn’t find it. Then I did, but you weren’t here.’

  Lucy takes the book to one of the armchairs and sits. The girl is half in shadow, captured in profile, a long braid of pale hair falling over one shoulder. She is unfinished, indistinct. She’s standing by the kitchen door, looking across the garden.

  ‘And this is her?’ Lucy asks. ‘This is the girl you saw?’

  ‘Yes. I thought – well, if you showed this to Sarah—’

  ‘Mum, no. They see her because they want to. They’ve made her up. She’s not real.’

  ‘I saw her.’

  ‘Well, maybe you – I don’t know – maybe you wanted to see her.’

  Cathy leans back against her pillows. ‘Where were you?’ she says, and her tone is fretful. ‘I wanted to talk to you, but you weren’t here.’

  She takes it better than Lucy had expected. The business about the book, about Simon’s daughter, his death. ‘Oh,’ she says, ‘the poor girl. What’s she like?’

  ‘Mum. No.’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘She’s – I don’t know. She’s very like him. She’s very young – determined, I think.’

  ‘To complete his research?’

  ‘That’s what she said.’

  ‘You had no right,’ says Cathy mildly, ‘to go behind my back.’

  ‘You’re not well.’

  ‘I’m perfectly fine.’ Cathy raises a hand, runs her fingers through her hair, her pyjama sleeve falling back to reveal the strapp
ing around her wrist. She pushes back the bedclothes.

  ‘I could fetch you a tray,’ Lucy says.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ Cathy slides her feet carefully into her slippers, then stands slowly, testing her balance.

  ‘I told them not to come.’ Lucy feels oddly guilty making this confession. ‘I told them you wouldn’t see them. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Oh, Lucia, what were you thinking?’

  ‘They’re just kids, Mum. They have no idea what they’re getting into, what they’re dragging up.’

  Cathy walks to the window and looks down into the garden. ‘Did they mention her?’ she asks. ‘Bianca?’

  ‘No. I didn’t give them the chance.’

  ‘And she has Simon’s research? All those notes he took? All Isobel’s photos?’

  ‘Apparently.’

  ‘You should go down and get something to eat,’ says Cathy. ‘Go on. I won’t be long.’

  The dining room is busy and Lucy stands in the doorway, unsure which table she should take. She suspects that the residents probably have their regular seats, and she’s fairly sure her mother wouldn’t want to sit with anyone else.

  She can’t decide and it’s all too much, the polite clatter of the dining room, the smell of cooked breakfasts and milky porridge. She makes her way to the French windows and slips outside, heading towards the bench by the fountain. She’s not hungry anyway.

  She sits and looks back at the house. It’s a dull morning, with the promise of rain in the air. She’d like to think she’s put her off, Nina, but she doubts it, and she couldn’t possibly leave Cathy to deal with them alone.

  Nina Marshall.

  Simon’s daughter.

  He had tried to keep in touch for a while. He had certainly written to Cathy, once when he’d got back to London, and again six months later, to tell them about Michael, and the accident – such a shock to everyone – and a third time, announcing that he had been asked by the Society to complete the book Michael had begun, as a memorial to him and his life’s work. Lucy doesn’t know if Cathy ever wrote back.

  She didn’t allow them to talk about it, any of it. Not the investigation, not what happened afterwards.