by A J Waines
Stuart took me on a scenic route back to the cottage. It was starting to snow again, as I knew it would. I sat back and let everything wash over me; his idle chatter, the bare trees and patchwork fields, the vacant road winding ahead of us. I coiled in on myself, thinking and thinking about what was going to happen next. Stuart took it that I was horrified and confused with the revelation about Karen and didn’t appear to expect any conversation in return.
The divers would find Charlie. The police would go round all the cottages asking about him. They’d check the byre again. They’d look through the remains of the bonfire. They’d find something. Someone might identify Karen or me from the boat.
I needed to warn her. This was happening right now and we had to deal with it – regardless of what Karen had done in the past. We needed to run through our story again. I needed her steely resolve, because I could feel mine unravelling.
I gave Stuart a firm hug at the front door, but didn’t invite him in. I felt appalling guilt for keeping from him the one thing he was here to find out.
‘I just need…you know…to let things sink in…’ I said. Part of me wanted to tell him the truth, but somehow the words refused to form. I had too much to lose.
He seemed to expect nothing more. He brushed my cheek with his hand and said he’d call later.
The three of them were in the sitting room. Mel was in the sling, tucked against Karen’s body, asleep.
‘Come and play cards,’ Mark called out. ‘Small stakes, nothing too risky.’
‘It’s okay, thanks,’ I said wearily. ‘Karen…?’
‘What?’ She looked up, holding her cards in a fan in front of her. I barely dared to look at her – unable to square the intelligent, poised and captivating woman I had known with someone who had apparently been tried, convicted and spent time in jail.
‘Can you come…a minute?’
‘What is it now?’ she huffed, standing up, trying not to disturb the baby.
I led her upstairs, out of earshot of the others and told her the news.
‘They’re going to find him…they’re going to find him…’ I chanted. Everything was collapsing.
‘Keep your voice down,’ she snapped.
‘Shit – the police will check for blood. They use special lights and it comes up blue.’
‘Shush – calm down. We burnt the rug.’
‘What about underneath it?’ Panic was bolting up to the surface. ‘The blood could have soaked through.’
‘It was dry, clean. Honestly.’
‘But, we’ll have left traces on the carpet when we dragged him down the stairs, won’t we?’ We couldn’t burn the stair carpet.
She sighed heavily as if I was overreacting. ‘They have no idea he was here,’ she said. ‘Just wipe that whole story from your mind – finding him, moving him to the byre, taking him to the lake. We don’t know his name. We don’t know a thing, okay? He was never here.’
If only it was that easy. I didn’t want to tell her Stuart was looking for him – I didn’t think that would go down too well.
‘What if they find something – his shoe might have slipped off, or—’
She cut me off. ‘They won’t find anything.’ She took a step towards me. I flinched, expecting her to grab me again. ‘Don’t let me down on this, alright? Don’t cock it up!’
At that moment Jodie called up the stairs shouting, ‘Your turn, Kaz,’ and I lost her.
That evening I was glad to have the distraction of cooking supper. I was on autopilot from the start; chopping carrots, peeling potatoes, slicing cauliflower, dicing onions. I called it Lancashire Hotpot, but I simply threw in a random mix of ingredients without thinking. The only thing you could say about it for certain was that it was hot.
I’d called Stuart three times by then, but he hadn’t yet heard from Jim.
The atmosphere around the table was unexpectedly subdued and I suspected something had happened – another row between Jodie and Mark, a telling off from Karen, an ultimatum from Mark? I scrutinised each of their faces to see if I could work out who the injured party was, but they all seemed equally downcast, barely communicating, only looking up to pass the salt.
Jodie and Mark offered to do the dishes without any prompting and, while Karen was upstairs settling Mel, I tried the landline again. Jim had called Stuart, but he had only a handful of details about Karen. She’d ended a sentence in May, but he didn’t yet know her crime, or how long she’d served.
By the time I put the phone down, I was overwhelmed with exhaustion. There was nothing for it, but to go to bed.
Chapter 39
I didn’t take a sleeping tablet that night; I wanted to stay alert – apart from anything, I was concerned for my own safety.
I spent most of the night tossing and turning, working out my next move and waiting for dawn to rescue me. I turned to my clock, but it was only 4am. By 4.05, I’d made my decision.
My bags were packed within ten minutes. As soon as it was morning, I was leaving.
The brave thing to do would be to ask Karen what was going on, of course, but I was afraid of what she might do to me. There was now an alleged prison sentence to factor in and, while that still seemed preposterous, Karen had Mark and Jodie to call on. If I caused any trouble, they would be at her side in the blink of an eye. It would be three against one.
Everything felt slippery and insecure. I no longer had a handle on the truth; the landscape was shifting drastically at regular intervals within these four walls, just as it was outside.
What was the truth about the night Charlie died? In my gut, I felt certain it had been Karen who’d hit him over the head with the stool. It must have been self-defence, but why didn’t she just come out and admit it? I would have protected her – after all she’d done for me – she must have known that.
Would the divers find him in the loch? There was no way I could hold it all together if they did. Every waking hour I was on full alert, expecting a police officer in the doorway at any time.
As soon as my alarm went off at 7.30, I scurried to the bathroom and grabbed my toothbrush and final toiletries without making a sound, then I crept down the stairs with my bags. I did a final check to make sure I hadn’t left anything, unlocked the front door and stepped out into freedom.
Outside, the night was still refusing to let the light take hold, but the dense snowfall from yesterday was beginning to thaw. I wished the weather would make up its mind.
I hurried down the track, not daring to look back. The landscape was like a vintage postcard, completely still, apart from tiny silvery white chunks that dropped from branches on the edges of my peripheral vision. Always just to one side or behind me. I turned each time but not quickly enough. Bit by bit the world was crumbling around me.
At the end of the track, I took the path towards the village. There was a phone box at the far side of the green, where I could ring for a taxi to get to Fort William. I’d make calls to Stuart and Nina once I was there.
Stuart could then decide if he wanted to collect me, but I had my sights set on Edinburgh or London – I didn’t want to stay anywhere near Duncaird. I couldn’t spend one more hour in this place. I’d send a text to Karen as soon as I was far enough away that she couldn’t come and find me.
A tractor clattered past me, kicking up brown slush. There was no other traffic. I’d considered going straight to Stuart’s cottage, but I was starting to doubt whether I could be with him when I wasn’t able tell him the truth about his nephew. Besides, I hadn’t paid attention when we’d driven over and there was no way I’d find my way.
It occurred to me how inhospitable it was up here, how cut off I was from civilisation. Anything could happen to me and no one would know.
It was quicker to stick to the lanes; from past experience out here it was too risky to head through the undergrowth, especially before the sun came up fully.
I had reached the second crossroads when I had the strange sensation I was being follo
wed. There were sounds around me all the time – creaking trees, the rush of the wind, the rattling of faraway freight trains – but they were mostly sporadic. There was a more regular sound, hard to pinpoint and muffled because of the remaining snow. Every time I stopped and turned, it stopped too, so it was difficult to track it down. After a while I decided it must be the fabric of my anorak catching as I walked.
I had to put all my effort into not slipping over in the crunchy banks of dirty snow at the side of the road. I thought again about the duplicity of snow; hiding things, but also revealing what was normally invisible – footprints, for example. I thought back to the trail we’d made getting Charlie’s body to the lake in the wheelbarrow and wondered if the thaw would throw up fresh clues that would link us to Charlie’s death.
There was another sound behind me now, like a small tractor. I came to a standstill to swap my suitcase from one hand to the other and as I turned I saw two headlights, like beasts’ eyes, in the road. It was a Land Rover.
Stuart wound down the window and called out, trailing alongside me as I started walking again. ‘I’ve found you – what are you doing?’
‘I was going to ring you as soon as I was on the train.’
‘Train to where?’
‘Fort William to start with.’
‘What – without saying goodbye? What’s happened?’
I stopped and dropped my bags. ‘It’s time for me to go, that’s all.’
He rubbed his forehead, dislodging his cap. ‘What’s going on? Are you hurt? Was it Karen?’
I pulled myself up tall. ‘I’m okay – I just can’t carry on here anymore.’
‘I can’t let you go like this – this is awful.’ He pulled over onto the verge and got out to bundle my bags in the back. He wrapped his arms around me. ‘Come on…’ He opened the passenger door.
I climbed in, my body inert. ‘I didn’t want to leave you behind, but I didn’t feel I had much choice,’ I said.
‘You could come to mine,’ he said. ‘You don’t have to stay with them.’
‘I don’t want to be anywhere near here,’ I said.
‘But you’ll be safe with me at my cottage.’
I hesitated. ‘What are you doing out at this hour? How did you know I was here?’
‘Karen rang me.’
‘Karen rang you? How did she get your number?’
‘She rang the cottage…maybe the owner gave it to her. Karen said you’d gone and she was worried about you.’
Stuart switched up the heater and I dropped my head back against the headrest. I didn’t have the energy to insist on getting to Fort William. He was hunched over the wheel, giving me a sideways look every few yards with concern in his eyes and deep grooves in his brow.
‘What did Karen say exactly?’
‘That you had a kind of seizure in the bathroom.’
Bloody Karen. ‘That you’ve been sleepwalking and doing strange things during the night,’ he went on. ‘Is this true – is she telling lies again?’
I shut my eyes. She’d taken it upon herself to tell him about the sleepwalking. She was making me sound like I was completely off my rocker. ‘You know I’ve been having the occasional panic attack,’ I said, too tired not to sound defensive. ‘Well, I had one in the bathroom that’s all.’
‘She said you completely blacked out – she thought you’d had a stroke.’
‘She’s exaggerating,’ I huffed. ‘What did she tell you about the sleepwalking?’
‘That she’d found you in the kitchen in the middle of the night…that you’d been taking sleeping tablets…acting out of character.’
‘Out of character! Oh, great!’ I banged my fist on the dashboard, then realised it only confirmed any suggestion that I was unstable.
‘She said you’re still troubled by the headaches,’ he added. ‘More than you let on. Is that true?’
‘I’ve had a few headaches,’ I admitted. ‘But, you’re the one who told me Karen has a criminal record and isn’t to be trusted – why are you paying so much attention to her all of a sudden?’
‘Because I’m worried about you – because you haven’t denied what she told me.’
‘I’m fine. I’ve just had enough – that’s all.’
He pulled away from the next junction with a squeal of the wheels. ‘We’ll get a decent breakfast inside you and talk this thing through properly. Then we’ll decide.’
I didn’t appear to have a great deal of choice, short of throwing myself out of a moving vehicle. I said nothing further until we got to his cottage. I was angry that he’d intervened but also touched that he cared enough to rush out and find me.
We left the bags in the car and he unlocked his front door. The sun had come up by now, splitting open the sky like a wide yawn.
‘Bacon and eggs, or cereal?’ he offered.
‘Just coffee, please,’ I said, as he led me through to the kitchen.
He switched on the oven, unhooked an apron from the kitchen door and tied it around his waist.
‘Help yourself,’ he said a few minutes later, putting a pot of coffee, orange juice, granola, muesli, cornflakes and a plate of hot croissants between us on the table. The aroma of buttery pastry won me over and I took a croissant and scooped a teaspoon of black cherry jam on to the side of my plate.
‘Thanks for this,’ I said.
Stuart sat back looking at me, his eyes wrapping me in a glowing warmth as I ate.
This was what true attachment felt like and it came to me then that our little group – Karen, Jodie, Mark and I – were connected only through a volatile tangle of secrets, bribery and deception.
‘I can see how people get taken in by Karen,’ he said, as if reading my mind. ‘She’s very charismatic.’
‘When I first knew her she was like a warm apple pie giving off an aroma that drew people towards her before they had any inkling as to what was happening.’
‘And how do you feel about her now?’ he said.
‘Regardless of what you find out about her,’ I said. ‘I don’t feel the same way anymore.’
I was still beholden to her because of what she’d done at Uni, that was true. But the adoration was over. Since being here, I’d seen things afresh. Our association wasn’t really a friendship at all; it was a trade-off, based on a series of subversive errands I’d felt coerced into running, because I thought it was the only way to be accepted. I’d been a performing monkey in her little troupe of followers.
I tried to explain. ‘Coming to the cottage has been like a time-travelling exercise,’ I said. ‘Throwing the four of us in the ring together: Mark, the cocky layabout, Jodie, the insecure wannabe, Karen, the shining light, and me. I used to be everyone’s puppet, but not anymore. The dynamics have shifted.’
Mark didn’t scare me anymore – I could send putdowns straight back to him and he had nothing more substantial in his arsenal. Jodie was taking anti-depressants, trapped in a subservient role with Mark. And Karen? I was no longer under her spell – she wasn’t enviable to me anymore. She seemed unhappy and there was an undercurrent of aggression and manipulation about her. She was little more than a bully.
‘I’m not sure there’s any genuine friendship left,’ I went on. ‘It’s all an odd kind of barter system.’
I thought about the ten thousand pounds I’d found in the attic room. Surely it must play a part in this too? I recalled Karen’s words: leverage – never give up leverage easily, Alice, she’d said.
I wondered if blackmail was involved. Perhaps Karen was making Mark pay in order to keep secret other misdemeanours I knew nothing about.
Stuart’s phone rang at that point and he took the call. ‘It’s Jim,’ he said.
I cleared the dishes, catching snippets of his end of the conversation. I knew they were talking about Karen; I heard certain key words, sentence…Holloway…guilty. When he ended the call and turned to me, he looked concerned.
‘Sit down,’ he said. ‘You need to hear this.’
I dropped heavily into the chair, staring at his face.
He hesitated. ‘Tell me,’ I said. ‘What did she do?’
‘In February 2008, Karen gave birth to a baby girl. The child cried a lot and…when she was nine months old, Karen shook the child to make her stop. She shook her so violently that she died.’
I felt like I’d wandered blindly out of a safe dugout onto the frontline, with bullets flying at me from all sides. ‘Oh, my God – she killed her own baby?’
Stuart’s words kept coming at me. ‘It used to be called “shaken baby syndrome”; now it’s known as “non-accidental head injury”. She was sent to Holloway prison in 2009. She came out in May, this year.’
Now it made sense. Of course Karen had changed. She was completely removed from her former self. It was suffering I’d seen. That’s what it was – suffering – dragging at her face. Now I knew why. In the years I’d not seen her, she’d been locked away behind bars. All that guilt. She’d had all the softness hammered out of her.
I couldn’t stop staring. ‘Why didn’t I hear about it?’
‘Her case was overshadowed on the news at the time by another big story – remember the Arvon Bank data scandal in 2009?’ It vaguely rang a bell. ‘Jim said that computer discs containing bank details and National Insurance numbers went missing. It left millions of households susceptible to identity theft. Karen’s case didn’t even hit the local London news.’
‘Are you sure it’s her? I mean – her child is that kind of age now…and she’s called Melanie. I don’t understand…’
‘Well – it’s her alright. Convicted, fair and square in 2009.’
‘I still can’t see it – I can’t imagine her wanting to…harm her own child. I’ve seen her with Mel – she’s been amazing, making special things for her, doting on her – going to see her all those months when she was ill.’