The Lost Child

by Ann Troup

  ‘Do you even know where she’s gone?’ Bob asked.

  ‘Yeah, she wrote it down before she went, just in case. The address is out there in the hall, by the phone.’

  Bob went out to retrieve it while Dan looked around for his jacket and his keys.

  ‘Bloody hell mate, you’ll never guess where she is.’ Bob handed him the piece of paper with the address of Meadowfoot Cottage written on it. ‘She’s only gone right back to Hallow’s End.’ The irony of the situation was not lost on him if the incredulous expression on his face was anything to go by.

  Dan snatched the address and scowled at him. ‘I don’t know how long I’ll be gone, but you’d better leave that bathroom alone until we know what’s what. Take a day off or something, and make sure this place is locked up tight before you go otherwise I’ll have your ass. Got it?’

  Bob nodded. ‘No problem. Good luck.’ He had a feeling Dan was going to need it.

  At the door Dan paused, turning to Bob. ‘You know, there could be a hundred different explanations for this. It might not be her at all. And I’m sorry for being shirty mate, it’s just all a bit much to be honest.’

  Bob just raised his eyebrows and said nothing.

  *

  Miriam staggered through the door of Hallow’s Cottage hauling two heavy bags. Her trip to the village had been productive in more ways than one. Not only had she been given a bumper crop of vegetables by an old friend, she had been in receipt of gossip too.

  She dumped the bags on the kitchen table and walked through to the lounge eager to impart her news to Esther.

  ‘Well, that was a trip worth making. I called in on Alf Truman and he’s had a glut of stuff this year, so I’ve got us some lovely kale and a good lot of home-grown new potatoes, and he’s given me blackcurrants, so I’ll have to find the jam pan later. But he was telling me that poor Albert is in hospital; that foreign woman they’ve got up there now, what’s her name? Pavla I think, well she told him that Albert had a fall. Well, he’s only gone and broken his wrist and a couple of ribs. Poor old bugger managed to puncture a lung and was in a right old state so they had a fair panic yesterday. Had to shut the house up and go to the hospital. I’ll bet Ada is in a bit of a state about it, do you think I ought to go and see her? I mean there’s not much we can do, but it’s nice to show a bit of support isn’t it? Esther? Don’t you think we ought to let her know we’re thinking of them? Esther?’

  She could have continued this soliloquy indefinitely, but the silent pall that lay over the room niggled at her perception. It caused her to stop in her tracks. Esther wasn’t moving, the constant pinching had ceased and her hand lay still and blue on the fabric of the chair.

  For a moment Miriam tried to convince herself that her sister was just sleeping. But something about the slack jaw and the flaccid greyness of Esther’s skin told her that this wasn’t just an afternoon nap; her sister was taking a much longer sleep.

  ‘Oh Esther,’ she cried, not even needing to touch her sister to know that she was dead.

  *

  Jack Pearson regarded the little toy dog that now sat on his kitchen table. It was looking straight back at him with its one beady eye. Its occupation of his domestic space felt like an accusation.

  He sighed, acutely aware of the girl’s brooding presence to his left.

  When she had pounded on the door again he hadn’t been exactly thrilled to see her, but he admired her tenacity and he had to admit that when she had produced the toy and the missing eye with the accompanying note he’d been intrigued. If he was honest, there were elements of the Mandy Miller case that still bothered him; there were inconsistencies that he had never been able to resolve. It was tempting to have faith that this new discovery would provide some satisfying conclusions, but doubt was stronger than hope.

  ‘Well?’ Brodie demanded.

  Jack crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair. He should be in the garden planting out by rights, ‘Well, it doesn’t really tell me much.’

  Brodie bristled with impatience, ‘Yes it does. It tells you they were lying, she was in the house, and someone put that dog in the crypt after she went missing otherwise you would have found it. Derry said Esther knows what happened.’

  Jack turned to her, his eyes narrowed, his abundant eyebrows nearly meeting as he scrutinised the girl. ‘We all know what happened, a kid disappeared. This turning up all these years later is curious, I’ll grant you that. And yes, it implies that she was in the house at some point that day, but it doesn’t point to anything new or anything concrete that will tell us something more about what happened before she went missing. Esther Davies is a no go, as I understand it she had a stroke which left her mute, so she can’t tell us anything. I doubt that Derek Tyler knows any more than he’s said already and as for Albert Gardiner-Hallow, he’s an oddity at best and the fact that he found a toy eye just tells me that he found a toy eye. So where does that leave us? None the wiser, that’s where.’

  Brodie couldn’t accept this, ‘But someone was lying, you have to see that. You have to do something!’ She banged the table with a tightly clenched fist.

  Jack’s eyebrows raised in surprise. ‘Now hang on there a moment young lady, I’ll have no temper tantrums thank you. I can see you’re upset, and I understand, but I’m asking you to look at this from my point of view. What do you expect me to do? Motivate half the local coppers to go out there and re-question everyone based on the discovery of this? Mandy could have dropped that toy anywhere, it could have ended up in that crypt in any number of ways, it could have lost its eye at any time. Who knows? What I do know is that it’s not enough to re-charge the case. I’m sorry, but if you go to the police with this you’re on a hiding to nothing, it’s as simple as that.’

  Brodie closed her eyes and took a breath, debating with herself whether she should admit that she had terrorised an old lady to get information. She felt pretty rubbish about having done it now, ‘I showed it to Esther, I know she can’t speak, but she freaked out when she saw it.’

  Jack pursed his lips and looked at the tenacious, determined girl, ‘I expect she did, most people would if they were confronted with something that brought up painful memories.’

  Brodie couldn’t let it go, ‘So why did Derry give it to me, and why did Albert give the eye to Elaine? Why now?’

  ‘No idea love, perhaps because they’re both bloody odd? You’re her sister, that must have dredged up all sorts for people, you turning up in the village. Who knows what goes through the minds of people like that?’

  Brodie let out an exasperated sigh, ‘You’re not going to help me are you?’

  Jack shook his head, the movement told Brodie that he felt sorry for her. She didn’t want his pity, she wanted his help.

  ‘Look, I really don’t see that there’s much I can do, but I’ll tell you what, I’ll drive you back and have a chat with Miriam, she’s a sensible sort. Maybe she’ll remember something that will settle your mind about this, OK?’

  Brodie gave him a sulky nod. The only thing that would settle her mind would be somebody finding out the truth. Whatever Jack was telling her, however reasonable it might sound, she knew there was more to this and she wasn’t going to rest until she found out. Her whole life had been a miserable shambles because of what had happened to Mandy, and if that was because someone had royally fucked up, then they were going to pay. However, being the pragmatic type she wasn’t going to turn down the opportunity of a lift home, or the chance to show Jack Pearson that he needed to take her seriously. ‘OK, let’s go and talk to Miriam.’

  *

  A traffic jam on the M5 had brought Dan’s progress to a halt, and it had also given him the chance to come to his senses. Was he really about to tell a woman, a woman he was fond of, who he cared about, that she wasn’t who she thought she was?

  The envelope with the ‘evidence’ sat on the passenger seat alongside a brown paper bag containing the child’s clothes. Two big, brown reminders that he c
ould be about to make a complete fool of himself. It could ruin any chance of a relationship with Elaine – but even though he could be a temperamental bugger at times, even he wasn’t so selfish as to allow his own wants to get in the way of the truth. He didn’t used to have a temper, he had always been a pretty even keel sort of man, but ever since he’d been working in that house it felt like everything had become a big deal. The slightest things seemed to get to him. Despite the tricky situation he was heading into, just being away from the place made him feel calmer and more rational. The items that Bob had found under the floor were compelling; added to what was in the envelope it would be easy to believe that the evidence was conclusive. As the brake lights of the stationary traffic stretched out before him in a seemingly infinite line of red, he tried to make proper sense of Bob’s discoveries.

  The clothing under the floor could have been there for any amount of time. Given the state of the house it was clear that no one had touched the place for years. The house was a museum piece, so antiquated it could have been donated to the National Trust as a prime example of a slice of life in the seventies. Who was to say that the items under the floor hadn’t pre-dated Jean Ellis’s residence there by decades? The fact that they were there at all was disturbing, but didn’t necessarily prove that she had put them there. As for the contents of the envelope, it was clear that Jean had been a hoarder. In stripping out the house they had found all sorts of pointless rubbish that the woman hadn’t been able to part with.

  Missing kids were big news, perhaps she’d just developed a fixation with the case and had collected cuttings out of voyeuristic curiosity. The presence of the death certificate was the rub. Dan couldn’t really find an adequate explanation for that. It had become abundantly clear to him, through getting to know Elaine, chatting to the neighbours and working in the odd, time-locked house, that Jean had been a strange and deeply private person. Who was to say that she hadn’t lost a child, had another one and used the same name? Stranger things had happened.

  If it wasn’t for the traffic jam he would have pulled off, turned around and gone back home, giving himself the time to really think the thing through. As it was he was stuck, fate was forcing him to take this direction. Besides, no matter how many rational explanations he came up with he was still left with a niggling feeling that Bob was right, Elaine Ellis wasn’t who she thought she was.

  If the traffic cleared he would still have the chance to turn round, stay out of it and let Elaine live the life she had. Whoever she might be in reality. But once something was known, it couldn’t be unknown and Dan wasn’t sure he wanted to live with the knowledge alone. In addition to that, Bob wouldn’t keep his mouth shut even if someone held a gun to his head. Bob was a great bloke in many ways, but he was nosier and more gossipy than a soap character on acid. No, this thing was going to come out one way or another and it would be better if it came from him. He knew that he should have taken the things they had found straight to the police, and that whether he was right or wrong about the situation there was a good chance that the boys in blue wouldn’t be too impressed with him interfering. He’d at least taken the precaution of putting the clothes in a paper bag, if they constituted some form of evidence it was important that they were preserved properly. Christ! What was he playing at? What kind of straight thinking man walked headlong into a situation like this?

  *

  Fancying Elaine wasn’t the only thing that was motivating him, it went deeper than that and he had to face it before he went bowling in and made a bad situation even worse. He knew what it was; he just didn’t want to admit it. Was a grown man supposed to feel bad about the things he’d done as a teenager? Dan didn’t know, but he did know it was how he felt, rightly or wrongly. The fact was he felt guilty. For years he had felt bad about Elaine, about giving up so easily when her mother had found them out and gone on the warpath. He might have fought harder if his father hadn’t died and left the business in chaos. If he hadn’t had to put everything into keeping a roof over the family’s head he might have been able to take Jean on and stick with Elaine. He’d been eighteen and the world had been on his shoulders, he hadn’t known what to fight for first and had just put one foot in front of the other and trudged through. Elaine had been left behind; when he had paused to look back she had gone. No matter what life had thrown at him since, letting Jean Ellis win had always been his biggest regret.

  There was movement ahead. Brake lights blinked on and off informing Dan that things were moving. Progress was slow and ponderous, but the traffic was moving. He had no choice but to move right along with it. The course had been set.

  *

  Elaine woke from a migraine-fuelled nightmare in a fog of pain and nausea. She had dreamed of damp, foetid darkness, fear and blood. The memory of it turned her stomach and she threw up in the bowl that Brodie had left by the sofa. She felt drunk and disorientated, as if she was still trapped in the dream and that what her aching eyes saw was a surreal pastiche of reality. Thick, velvet blackness clouded the edges of her vision with dark menace, making her pulse pound like a hammer and her head feel as though it had been battered with a meat tenderiser. She needed air.

  She half crawled to the door, clinging to the furniture for support and promptly threw up again once she was outside, spattering a scrambling rose with bile and that morning’s breakfast.

  Something was going on next door in Miriam’s cottage. Several cars were parked outside. An ambulance, its flashing lights battering Elaine’s still delicate senses, stood with its doors open. She couldn’t look at it, the glaring colours of its livery and the whirling lights made her want to vomit again. There was too much yellow, too much blue, too much movement. Instinct made her stagger in the opposite direction, far away from the sensory intrusion. There was no rationale in what she was doing, no consciousness, she simply staggered forward hoping to find some dark, cool place where she could lie undisturbed until the storm of pain passed.

  There was a moment when she was aware of arms wrapping around her and the ground disappearing from beneath her feet. She could feel rough fabric against the skin of her face. It smelled of earth and the musk of unwashed flesh. Her stomach lurched again but there was nothing left, so she clung on, unconcerned and incognisant. Everything hurt too much for her to care. She drifted in and out of consciousness, aware of movement, aware of the changing light through her closed eyelids, and aware of being taken down into cold, dark blissful silence.

  *

  As gently as he could Derry placed Elaine’s inert form on the slab of marble where he had found her all those years before. Then she had been Mandy, then she had been small and then the wound on her neck had oozed blood onto his hands as he had tried to stem it with her cardigan.

  She had been asleep then too, but he’d taken her outside and tried to wake her up, but she had cried and been sick and it had scared him. He hadn’t been able to stop her crying and it had scared him. Then Jean had come, she scared him too, now she was just dust under the trees and on the soles of his shoes, but she still scared him. Mandy had come back. She was big now and sad, and now she was poorly again, which scared him, so he put her back where he had found her. Now everything would be all right. Just like when Rosemary told him to put the chicks back with the hens, because she didn’t want the chicks to die. Now everything would be all right, you just had to leave things how you found them, that’s what Rosemary said.

  Chapter Eleven

  Brodie had never felt so awful in her life. Esther was dead and she had killed her and she couldn’t tell a soul what she had done. Misery wrapped itself around her like a claustrophobic quilt. In the lounge Miriam was weeping as she told the doctor how guilty she felt for leaving Esther, for letting her die alone. Every word brought a fresh wave of guilt to Brodie who felt like King Canute, powerless to stop the oncoming tide of responsibility.

  The doctor was saying that it hadn’t been anyone’s fault, that Esther had been living on borrowed time for years and
that another stroke was inevitable. Her death had been a blessing, a release from a locked-in existence worse than any prison cell. Miriam had been a saint to care for her the way she did and she should feel proud of herself and comfort herself with the knowledge that Esther was at peace now and had slipped away without pain. Brodie winced at his words, she knew different, knew that Esther had died in an agony of silent unspeakable things conjured up by a bitter, angry girl.

  Esther’s body was still in her chair, covered with a sheet, waiting for the undertakers to arrive and take it away. Jack Pearson had stayed for a while, his appearance not impacting Miriam in the way that it could have under the circumstances. He had hovered around, made tea in the big brown pot and had eventually made his excuses and left them to it, probably relieved that something had happened to divert Brodie from her mission. Brodie was glad he’d gone, convinced that her guilt was writ large on her face and that he would sense it and be forced to act.

  In an agony of self-pity she looked up as Miriam, her pudgy face tearstained and fraught, came into the kitchen. ‘Brodie love, do you think you could pop next door to Elaine’s for a bit? Only the undertaker is on his way and I don’t want you to have to see her being taken out.’

  Brodie nodded and stood up, then on instinct turned to the kind woman who had never done her any harm and hugged her. ‘I’m so sorry’. The apology had a hollow ring.

  Taken aback, Miriam froze for a moment, then wrapped her arms around the weeping girl and began to stroke her hair, ‘Oh bless you my love, don’t be upset. She had a good life, she’s at peace now.’

  Her words only served to make Brodie cry more and she clung to Miriam like static clings to nylon, ‘Hush now, come on, or you’ll start me off again. You go and see Elaine and I’ll call for you when everything’s sorted out, all right?’

  Still snivelling, Brodie extracted herself and made her way over to see Elaine, wondering if the woman she barely knew, but who she had bonded with so quickly, would be able to help her make sense of what she’d done. Would Elaine still want her if she knew she was a murderer?