The Lost Child

by Ann Troup

  ‘Ha ha very funny, I mean it though, we’re going out.’

  ‘We’ll see, I’m going now.’

  ‘I mean it – you and me, dinner, wine…’

  ‘Bye Dan.’

  ‘Candlelight, music…’

  ‘Goodbye Dan,’ she said less firmly than she should have. Even then she hung on, waiting to hear that comforting chuckle before finally ending the call. She was too embarrassed to admit to herself how much she was enjoying the light-hearted flirtation. And much too frightened to admit how much his invitation terrified her. The gawky, frightened teenager was still inside, holding on with a grip of iron.

  *

  Elaine woke abruptly from a tangled and tormented dream. Blessedly brought to wakefulness by a rapid hammering on the cottage door. Bleary and harassed she fought the cloying sheets and once free stumbled across the bedroom to the window. Below her stood the sulky kid, Brodie. Elaine squinted at her phone, which lay on the bedside table. It was only nine. She wondered, with ill temper, if all the guests were so rudely awoken here.

  The hammering started again. By the time she had reached the bottom of the narrow stairs, her feet squirming on the cold wood, the girl had started her third demand for attention. She was persistent, Elaine would give her that. Almost on the point of shouting, she hauled the heavy door open. The terse response she had planned stifled by the fact that the girl was holding something out to her. A basket, lined with gingham and containing homemade bread and fresh eggs. So fresh that they were still feathery and warm.

  ‘Miriam said to bring you this for your breakfast, sorry if I got you up’ the girl said. She ran her eyes over Elaine, appraising her from her tousled head and crumpled pyjamas to her cold, bare feet. Her eyes rose and settled just below Elaine’s chin.

  Instinctively Elaine reached for her neck, covering the naked scar with her hand. ‘Brodie, isn’t it? Come in.’ she said, swallowing down her embarrassment. As the girl passed her, Elaine grabbed a woollen scarf from the coat pegs and covered her neck quickly, despite the fact that the day promised to be lush and warm with fat yellow sunshine. She would rather be uncomfortable than show off the scar.

  Brodie hovered in the kitchen doorway, ‘Should I put this in here?’ she asked, holding up the basket and appearing nonchalant. She was clearly pretending not to notice the incongruous addition of the scarf. It made Elaine look like a woebegone snowman.

  ‘Yeah, anywhere.’ Elaine said, waving her hand. ‘Look, I’m just going to go and find my dressing gown, why don’t you put the kettle on?’ She felt bad that she’d been so offhand. The child clearly felt awkward.

  Back in the kitchen, more comfortable now that she was swathed in thick fabric that covered her modesty, Elaine contemplated her young guest. Brodie was busily making coffee unaware that she was being observed so closely.

  A thick curtain of dyed black hair swung out from underneath a black hoodie – both, Elaine assumed, intended to shade the pale, intense little face. There was a thinness about the girl, despite the bulk of baggy clothes that hung as a sullen statement from her small frame. Rapid hands with red rimmed, bitten nails moved deftly as she filled the cups with instant coffee before presenting the finished article for approval. With her pale skin and dark hair she looked like a shy geisha compelled to please her host. Her efforts made Elaine feel like smiling. An urge that was rare.

  ‘Thank you, that looks perfect.’

  ‘I always make the drinks at home, I’m used to it. Miriam and Esther only drink tea, I’m lousy at tea and they use that bitty stuff, not teabags, so I leave them to it.’ Brodie said it with a shudder that implied that loose-leaf tea was the stuff of the devil.

  This time Elaine did smile. She pointed to the basket. ‘It’s really kind of you to bring breakfast, would you like to stay and share it?’

  Elaine watched a flicker of eagerness flit across Brodie’s face before it was quickly replaced by a look of resignation. ‘Better not, Miriam will think I’m bugging you.’

  ‘Well, it didn’t seem to bother her when she sent you across to bring it. Besides, I want you to stay, it will make it worth cooking.’

  Brodie’s response was to give an acquiescent shrug. It made Elaine think that the girl wasn’t used to experiencing her presence as something desirable. It was a concept that caused her to experience a sensation of inexplicable sadness, far out of proportion to anything she would have expected to feel for someone she had only just met. She recalled the incident with the ashes and felt a flush of shame.

  Over breakfast she learned that Brodie was fifteen, that her birthday was soon, that she had a brother who she adored and a sister who she despised and a mother who worried her in the same visceral way that Jean had worried Elaine.

  Not that Brodie had stated any of this. It was just there, like an oil slick, sitting toxic and ominous on the surface of Brodie’s story. It bothered Elaine so much that she felt compelled to ply the girl with more toast in a vain attempt to mop up the almost tangible misery. When finally they had finished, and Elaine was wiping the last streak of liquid butter from her chin, Brodie surprised her with a question.

  ‘Elaine, do you believe in ghosts?’

  She had to consider it for a moment, both because it had come out of the blue and because she didn’t have a concrete answer.

  Eventually, with a pensive frown, she said, ‘If you mean the kind that go bump in the night and waft about in the form of “orbs” throwing things at gullible people on dodgy satellite TV channels, then no, I don’t. But if you mean the kind of ghosts that sit on the edge of your reality like something unrequited, the kind that you will never see and will never hear. The kind that suck at your life like greedy tadpoles, getting fat at your expense, then yes, I believe in those.’

  Brodie nodded sagely, ‘Yeah, those kind. Do you think they’re dead people, the tadpoles?’

  Elaine fought a smile as she thought of Jean as an embryonic frog, ‘Sometimes, maybe. Not always. I think living people can be ghosts too.’

  Brodie pulled a face, ‘Yeah, I reckon Esther’s one of those. She sits there like that witch in the gingerbread house, picking and poking at her chair with her witchy fingers like she wants to eat the lot of us,’ she accompanied her words with a shudder. ‘She creeps me out.’

  Elaine laughed, ‘Yeah, old ladies can do that. Is that why you asked, because of Esther?’ Elaine hadn’t met Esther, but she had formed a mental picture from Brodie’s description that didn’t incline her to want to.

  Brodie looked down at her plate and prodded at a congealing lump of scrambled egg with the tines of her fork, ‘No, because of Mandy.’

  If Elaine hadn’t consciously decided to be the grown-up in this conversation she would have sworn that a cold chill had swept over her at Brodie’s words. As it was she explained to herself that the creeping sensation was a reaction to sitting around in her nightwear in a north facing kitchen. Certainly not because anything sinister had just happened. ‘Who’s Mandy?’

  ‘My dead sister.’ Brodie said baldly. ‘She disappeared when she was three, and they never found her body, but they did find some clothes with blood on them so they think she died. My mum never got over it, it’s why she’s ill and keeps taking overdoses.’

  Elaine really didn’t know what to say.

  ‘Don’t get me wrong, it’s really sad and that, like she was really little and it was really awful, but it was thirty years ago. Don’t you think people should get over it by then?’

  ‘Probably, but maybe things got stuck because she was never found. Is that why it feels like she’s a ghost?’

  Brodie shook her head, ‘No, she is a ghost. She’s there all the time, everywhere. Mum has pictures of her all over the house. You can’t even have a wee in our house without Mandy watching you. She sits on top of the telly, on every windowsill – even if you open a drawer she’s there, lurking next to Mum’s hand cream and the paracetamol. I know I shouldn’t but sometimes I hate her. I hate her cute face and
her pigtails and her bloody pink cardigan!’ She said it so vehemently that the force of it brought tears to her eyes. She swept them away with the sleeve of her black hoodie.

  Elaine wanted to stretch out her hand, to touch Brodie and soothe her, to take her under her wing and wrap her in feathers that would keep out all ills. She even started to reach out but thought better of it as her fingers sensed the ethereal spines of misery that had sprung out to shroud the unhappy girl. ‘Perhaps…’ she faltered, ‘perhaps being here will help, give you a break from it. Step back a bit.’ she said, knowing that it sounded trite and insipid.

  ‘Yeah, wouldn’t that be nice.’ Brodie scoffed. ‘Let’s send Brodie for a break, I know let’s send her to the exact place where Mandy went missing, that’ll help!’ She spat the words out as if they tasted of angostura bitters.

  The words smacked into Elaine like a brick dropped onto concrete. She didn’t know where to begin with all that hurt and anger. ‘I’m so sorry Brodie, I’m not really very good at this.’ She wondered if she looked as feeble as she sounded, sitting there clutching her dressing gown up around her neck like a timid rabbit caught in the trap of Brodie’s unhappiness.

  Brodie stood up and sniffed, dragging her sleeve across her nose as she spoke. ‘S’all right, not your problem is it? Anyway, ta for breakfast.’ She turned and made for the door.

  ‘Whoa there, where are you off to? You don’t need to leave – I’m sorry, I’m a just a bit useless at this. Don’t go.’ Elaine had no idea what in the hell was drawing her to this abrasive, unhappy teenager, but she couldn’t just let her walk away.

  The girl paused at the door, her hand resting on the latch ready to secure her escape. Elaine watched patiently as Brodie’s black clad shoulders sagged, the tension of the previous few minutes ebbing out of them like a soft sigh. Eventually she turned.

  ‘I’m sorry Elaine, you’re a really nice lady, and you cook mean scrambled eggs and I know I can be a right bitch sometimes.’ Brodie mumbled it in a typical adolescent approximation of an apology.

  Elaine pulled her dressing gown around her, tightening it where it had fallen open during her bid to get Brodie to stay. ‘Don’t worry about it, no need to be sorry. I can’t imagine anyone being ecstatic about what you’ve just told me, and you’re not a bitch. You are allowed to be upset about this, you know.’

  ‘You sound like my social worker.’ Brodie accompanied her words with a smirk that reassured Elaine that the ice was beginning to thaw.

  ‘Well, she sounds like a sensible woman then.’ Elaine said with a smile of relief. Wrangling recalcitrant teenagers was not exactly her area of expertise. She had always been rather compliant herself, not that she’d been given a choice. Jean hadn’t entertained anything less than full compliance from anyone.

  Brodie shoved her hands into the pockets of her hoodie and scuffed the toe of her trainer against the floor. ‘Let’s not go there, or you really will think I’m a bitch,’ she said, her mouth twisting into cheeky smile.

  Elaine laughed. ‘OK, I’ll promise not to talk like a social worker if you wash up while I get dressed. Then I’m going to go into town to find a supermarket so I can buy some decent food, why don’t you ask Miriam if you can come with me?’

  Brodie’s eyes seems to light up at this prospect, as if she scented the whiff of freedom on the air. ‘Cool, I can go to the cashpoint.’

  She said it with such glee that Elaine couldn’t help finding the contradictions in the girl both funny and beguiling.

  Chapter Three

  Miriam squeezed her bulk between the chair and the stove to reach the squealing kettle. Steam lingered above her head. Wraith-like, it reached down with misty fingers and curled the ends of Brodie’s hair like a trickster might, much to the girl’s frustration. Miriam impatiently flapped it away with her tea towel and filled the giant teapot.

  ‘Well, someone’s in a good mood this morning,’ she said, giving Brodie a knowing look.

  Brodie picked up her phone, ‘Tony gave me some money, I got credit for my phone yesterday so I’m back in touch with civilisation.’ She was unaware of the hidden judgement in her words.

  Miriam bristled, ‘You can use the phone here if you want to.’

  ‘I know, it’s not that. I can get on to the internet now, and I can log on to the school’s website and get my results when they come out.’

  Miriam’s mouth formed a round O of understanding. ‘Well, that’s important. I don’t suppose they will post them here. Anyway,’ she said, cramming herself onto a chair with a sigh that told of aching joints and weariness, ‘I wanted to talk to you about Miss Ellis.’

  Brodie looked up from the screen that had not been showing the school’s website at all, but her Facebook feed. ‘What about her?’

  Miriam didn’t meet her gaze and instead delayed her response by sloshing milk into mugs. ‘Well, it’s just that I don’t want her to think you’re taking advantage by hanging around too much, that’s all. She is a guest you know, and it’s my job to make sure she has a good stay.’

  Brodie felt her face flush, ‘I’m not bothering her, she asked me to go yesterday, and she wants me to go round there today too. She’s going to show me how to draw. She’s an artist.’ She was bridling at the inference that she wasn’t wanted.

  Miriam poured the tea, ‘An artist? Well, that’s nice. As long as you’re sure she’s happy to have you around. Will you take this in to Esther and tell her I’ll be there with her breakfast in a minute?’

  Brodie scraped her chair backwards along the hard floor and stood slowly, hoping that both the noise and the gesture would demonstrate her reluctance. It was lost on Miriam who just passed her the sippy cup that Esther drank from. Brodie took it, her lip curling with distaste as she ventured into the sitting room.

  Esther sat as she always did in her chintz-covered chair, plucking and pinching at the arm cap as if something upon it profoundly offended her. Brodie found this incessant habit both repellent and irritating. The gesture suggested a contained malevolence, tempered only by the impotence of Esther’s condition. As Brodie approached, the old lady’s eyes flicked away from the cottage door, which she watched almost constantly. She appraised the black clad cuckoo with a withering look.

  Brodie skirted the chair with extreme caution and placed the tea on a side table. She whipped her hand away with whistle stop speed lest the old woman should reach out and grab her with her one functional, claw-like hand. It was hard work for her to suppress the shudder that threatened to reveal her fear of the woman.

  ‘Miriam says she’ll be in with your breakfast in a minute.’ It was statement for which she received a curt nod before Esther resumed her vigil of the door.

  Brodie struggled to imagine who would want to willingly visit the old lady. She had a fleeting mental image of the grim reaper, complete with scythe, popping in for tea. ‘We can live in hope’ she muttered cruelly under her breath.

  Once free of Miriam’s fussy ministrations she escaped into the garden. Breathing in the prospect of her few hours of freedom like a condemned man might relish his last meal, she walked towards the holiday let and tried to push away the niggling worries that begged her to contemplate her burgeoning attraction to Elaine. Perhaps she was looking for a mother figure? It wasn’t weird, she told herself, it really wasn’t. She just really liked her and she needed a friend, especially now. Elaine seemed like the first adult she had met who had time for her, who wasn’t more concerned with something – or someone – else. Even the social worker was always looking at her watch and willing Brodie’s time away

  She thought Elaine was pretty. She had merry eyes and dimples when she smiled. It made Brodie want to copy her and smile back, and that didn’t happen very often. If she were honest, the vast majority of people irritated the hell out of her, but she was drawn to Elaine and she had no real idea why.

  *

  Elaine lay on the grass, propped up on her elbows, watching the fascinating, prickly girl who sat cross
-legged and diligent, quietly struggling to capture the essence of a tree with pencil and paper.

  ‘Relax, just let your mind guide your hand’ Elaine said, as the girl scowled and scrubbed at the paper yet again with her dwindling eraser.

  Brodie rolled her eyes, ‘It’s easy for you to say, you can do it.’ She pointed at the delicate drawing of a beech tree that Elaine had completed with a few strokes of her pencil.

  Elaine laughed, ‘Yes, but I couldn’t draw like that when I was fifteen. I had to go to college and learn. You’ll get there.’

  ‘Where did you go to college?’ Brodie asked, as if it was something she had been giving some thought to for herself.

  ‘Bristol, where I live.’

  Brodie flung the sketchpad aside, frustrated with her feeble efforts. ‘How come you didn’t move away? I’d have gone to London.’

  ‘I wanted to,’ Elaine was picking at a blade of rye grass and stripping it with her nails, ‘but my mum didn’t really want me to be away from home. I think the thought of me in a big city on my own frightened her. She was a bit clingy.’ It was a massive understatement and Elaine knew it, but this girl didn’t need to be burdened with that kind of information.

  ‘Huh, I reckon if I wanted to go to London my mum would have my suitcase packed and by the door before I’d finished the sentence. She can’t wait to be rid of me.’ Brodie’s voice was loaded with dull resignation.

  ‘Mothers eh? Bloody hard work. Anyway, tell me about you, what do you like? Tell me about your friends.’ Elaine was eager to change the subject. It was bad enough that Jean’s continued presence in the boot of the car was weighing on her conscience, without having to go into territory fraught with mother issues.

  Brodie shrugged, ‘There’s a few people I hang out with at school I suppose. But no one likes coming round to our house, Mum freaks them out.’