by Ann Troup
‘Too right, I’m not staying next door. Tony can have my bed if he wants to stay. I’ll tell them.’ As she reached the door she paused, ‘So, what about you? Where are you going to sleep?’
Dan shrugged, and held his hands out as if to say that her guess was as good as his, ‘In the van?’
Brodie shrugged. ‘Whatever.’
‘Brodie, before you go I wanted to say sorry, about earlier. I was pretty nasty to you and I shouldn’t have been. I suppose we’ve all forgotten how this must feel for you.’
Brodie shrugged. ‘S’all right. Everyone was a bit stressy. I’m sorry too, I shouldn’t have been so pushy, but I want to stay with her, and I did say sorry to Miriam.’
‘Good, and you are welcome to stay as long as you both want to.’
Brodie nodded. ‘Cheers. Right I’ll go and tell Tony. See you in a bit.’
When she had gone, he made a bed on the sofa, using the blankets that had been wrapped around Elaine in Hallow’s Court. He didn’t know where anything else was kept. When the bed was made he made his way upstairs and knocked tentatively on the bedroom door. Elaine called for him to come in.
She was sitting at the dressing table, a glass of water pressed to her forehead, ‘My head is killing me, I don’t suppose you know where my pills are, do you?’
As it happened they were still in his pocket, where he had put them all those hours before when he and Brodie had gone searching for her. He popped a couple out into his hand and passed them to her.
‘Thanks.’ Gratefully she pushed them into her mouth and washed them down with the water. ‘It’s been a long and very trying day and I admit I’m not thinking straight, Christ I don’t know whether I’m Arthur or Martha right now, let alone Mandy or Elaine,’ she said with an incredulous laugh. ‘This is a one bedroom cottage, with one bed, and I’m assuming Brodie is going on the sofa. So I’m offering you half a bed.’
Dan looked at her then looked at the bed, ‘Wouldn’t you be better off sharing with Brodie under the circumstances?’
Elaine shook her head, which made her wince, ‘No, she’ll want to talk to me, and I’m all talked out. It’s half a bed Dan, nothing else, no agenda.’
He looked at the bed, and looked at her again, ‘Mind if I have a shower first? I’m still covered in muck from that tunnel.’
‘Dan, I couldn’t care less if you were covered in pig shit right now, but help yourself. I just need to sleep.’
When he emerged from the bathroom, followed by a cloud of steam, Elaine was already asleep. She was modestly swathed in pyjamas and wrapped in the duvet, as good as her word. All he possessed in the way of nightwear were the same pair of boxer shorts he had been wearing all day. On the occasions when he had indulged himself with thoughts of sharing a bed with Elaine, this set-up wasn’t quite what he’d had in mind.
He crawled in beside her and lay on his back, unable to relax, wondering if he should have attempted to sleep in the van after all. Before he’d showered off the grime of the day, the thought that he should have got in the van, driven away, changed his identity and moved house had crossed his mind several times. But that was unfair, Elaine was innocently embroiled in this mess just the same as he was. No, not the same, for her it was much worse. He would be ten kinds of bastard to walk away from her now, and an even worse one to brush the kid off. Now that it was quiet, and he had time to think about it, the fact that Brodie’s own brother was prepared to let her stay with strangers bothered him profoundly. He felt rubbish that he’d shouted at her, and wondered what on earth had got into him lately; it felt as if an evil twin possessed him. His thoughts spiralled and came to nothing while sleep found him and nursed him into rest. Maybe it would all look much better in the morning.
*
Brodie launched herself back into the cottage, bursting to tell Dan about Tony’s reaction to Elaine’s rejection and how Miriam was fit to burst over the whole debacle. She was surprised to find the room empty. He had made up a bed for her on the sofa as promised and had disappeared. Disappointed by the lack of an audience for her tale, she sat down on her makeshift bed assuming that Dan had gone outside to sleep in his van.
As quietly as she could, so as not to wake Elaine, she crept upstairs to the bathroom. Surprised to find it damp and steamy, she assumed that Elaine had had a shower. Not wanting to make more noise than she had to, she had a quick lick around with a face cloth, cleaned her teeth and slipped into her onesie. Halfway down the stairs she paused, mildly amused by Elaine’s snoring, she suppressed a giggle and made her way to the sofa. For the first time in hours she was left with entirely her own thoughts, and they were strange and thrilling. She had found Mandy.
Ever since Jack and Dan had told them about the things in Elaine’s house and had showed them what had been found, she had been studying Elaine to see if she could find a trace of the little face which was so familiar to her. In Brodie’s assessment only the dimples had remained. Anything else Mandy-like had disappeared long ago. She wondered how her mother was going to feel when she heard the news; she hoped it would make Shirley happy, though in her gut she doubted it. Happy and Shirley used in the same sentence were strange bedfellows.
She turned over under her blankets, and thought about Dan, deciding that she did like him after all. At least he’d had the guts to say sorry, most blokes that she knew would have rather died than say they were sorry, which made her think about Steve, who didn’t bear thinking about on any level. She tried to think about something else to put him out of her mind and ended up thinking about children, which brought her back to Mandy, and the fact that even though she had been found, no one knew exactly what had happened that day. Except maybe Derry, and she wouldn’t see him now, not if they were going to Dan’s house. She drifted off to sleep with the vague thought of finding a medium floating around her fifteen-year-old mind, someone who could communicate with Esther from beyond the grave and make her spill her secrets.
***
Elaine woke just as the first tendrils of dawn light began to ease through the curtains. For the first thirty seconds she felt fine, until the scenes of the day before began to intrude much less gently than the dawn.
She was aware of a weight over her body, and looked down to see that Dan was holding her in an unconscious embrace. Oh God, had she really asked him to share her bed? With no idea of what had come over her the night before she cautiously extracted herself and made her way to the bathroom. Brodie’s clothes lay in a crumpled heap, damp with condensation and the sink was streaked with dribbled toothpaste. With a sigh she cleared it up and hung the clothes on the landing to air.
Sure that the events of yesterday were just some elaborate confusion, she undressed and climbed into the shower, hoping that the water would wash away the fog that was clouding her mind. She leaned against the cold tiles letting the hot water stream over her, convincing herself that none of it could be true. People had false memories all the time. The incident with the barbed wire had just been a flash, an image that had whipped through her mind as quickly as a lightning strike. It couldn’t be a memory, memories were concrete and known. No, it was something she had manufactured as a result of the circumstances and the suggestion that she was the missing child. That had to be a more rational explanation than acknowledging that she had grown up with a woman who had abducted her. Whatever had happened to Mandy was a tragedy, but it couldn’t possibly be related to her. The whole thing was just a series of weird coincidences, which was all it could be.
As she soaped herself her fingers slipped over the scar, it had stretched and distorted with the passage of time, but it had never really faded. Her mother had said that it was the result of her falling into a pane of glass in the garden. It was a logical explanation, kids were accident-prone. It had always puzzled her that Jean hadn’t felt the need to take her to hospital and have it stitched, but that was Jean – averse to medical interference to the point of phobia. No, the scar was the result of a simple childhood accident, not the m
anifestation of a nightmare. She was Elaine Ellis, thirty-three years old, neurotic and shy, and that was that. Everything else had been a horrible mistake. Awareness dawned that she would have to break the news to Brodie, and apologise to the world and his wife for wasting their time. It would be awful, but not as awful as continuing the pretence. Resigned to her task she switched off the water and wrapped herself in a towel.
On the landing she bumped into Brodie, who was coming out of the bedroom. The girl looked her up and down with pained disappointment. ‘I made you a cup of coffee when I heard you get up, you should have told me I needed to make two’ she said with a note of contempt, which made Elaine feel even more naked than she was beneath the towel.
She called after her, ‘Brodie…’
Brodie was stomping down the stairs in her onesie, looking like a sulky oompa loompa who had traded its orange complexion for radiant puce. She raised her arm, presenting the flat of her palm to Elaine, ‘Whatever.’
In the bedroom Dan was sitting on the edge of the bed sipping the coffee that Brodie had relinquished with the grudge of ages. It was probably the bitterest coffee he would ever drink.
‘Well, that went down like a pair of lead knickers didn’t it?’ he said, not looking at Elaine. ‘What’s with that kid? It’s like she’s in love with you.’
Elaine pulled her towel tighter and sat at the dressing table, ‘I suppose that with everything that’s happened she feels a bit protective of me. I don’t suppose she sees me as an adult really. I dread to think how she’s going to react when I put her straight.’
‘What do you mean? Put her straight about what?’
Elaine blinked at him with wide-eyed innocence, ‘That I’m not her sister, that I can’t be and that this has all been some horrible confusing coincidence.’
Dan paused and looked at her, coffee cup halfway to his mouth, ‘Is that what you think?’
‘No, it’s what I know. It’s impossible. My mother was a strange fish but I don’t think she was the type to snatch a kid. Whatever was going through my mind yesterday was just a result of the hypothermia, I must have been hallucinating or something.’ She was convinced by her own logic.
Dan put the coffee down, ‘Wait there, I’ll be back in a minute.’ He slid off the bed and went downstairs.
Whilst he was retrieving the envelope and regretting the fact that the police had taken the bag, Brodie walked in from the kitchen, a second cup of coffee in her hand, ‘Are you two going to be sleeping together when we go to your house?’ She scathed him with a look of abject disapproval.
Dan looked at the envelope, then across at Brodie, ‘Nothing happened, we just shared the bed that’s all. Or would you rather I had frozen to death in the van?’
Brodie raised an eyebrow as if to tell him that in her opinion it would have been a preferable outcome. ‘It’s July,’ she said pointedly.
Dan sighed, ‘Look, if anything ever happens like that between me and Elaine I promise I will respect her in the morning, and every other morning for that matter. In the meantime we have bigger problems.’
Brodie gave him another scathing look. ‘Like what?’
‘Well, our favourite lady is currently enjoying a gentle cruise up a river in Egypt.’
Brodie was confused, ‘Eh?’
Dan sighed again, ‘She’s in denial. Thinks it was all a horrible mistake. I think we need to convince her otherwise.’ He waved the envelope, ‘Time to show her this again, I don’t think she really took it all in yesterday.’
Bemused, Brodie followed him up the stairs.
*
Elaine looked at the array of newspaper cuttings that Dan had spread out for her on the bed, ‘This doesn’t prove anything, just that my mother had a thing for collecting cuttings. I’m sure that whatever happened to Mandy was compelling stuff at the time, I expect lots of people showed some curiosity.’ She was interested but dismissive.
Dan unfolded the death certificate and passed it to her, ‘We found this, and the clothes under the floorboards. People with a sense of idle curiosity don’t hide bloodstained clothes.’
Brodie was sitting close, her arm around Elaine’s waist, her hand attempting to stroke and soothe as the woman fought to understand what she was seeing.
Elaine’s confusion and burgeoning distress were palpable, ‘I don’t understand, I know what you’re all saying, but why is there a death certificate with my name on it?’
Dan shook his head, ‘I don’t know, but I asked Jack about it. Apparently it used to be a way of getting a new identity. You could buy a birth and death certificate of a baby who had died shortly after birth and use the birth certificate as ID. He said it’s impossible to do now, but back in the eighties it was a common scam.’
‘But my parents’ names are on my birth certificate, so that can’t be the case,’ Elaine reasoned.
‘Jack thinks that your mother might have lost her own child, and that’s why she took you.’
Elaine stared at the document as if her gaze could alter the arrangement of the ink and change the information. She turned to the girl, ‘I’m sorry Brodie but I don’t want any of this. I don’t want to be Mandy. I have a hard enough time being me.’ She dropped the paper onto the bed then walked into the bathroom and locked the door.
Brodie made to follow her but Dan put out an arm to restrain her, ‘Leave her, she needs time for it to sink in. If you want to do something helpful, pack her things – we need to leave, and soon.’
Brodie hesitated, ‘But Tony wants to see her.’
‘Tony will have to wait. When I was downstairs I saw a news van drive past. If we don’t get out of here soon all hell is going to break loose and I don’t think she’s going to cope with it. Pack her things, Tony can come to my place and see her if he wants to. But we’ve got to go.’
The implication of his words struck Brodie hard, and she, as much as anyone, wanted to avoid a further debacle. Without a word she slid off the bed and began gathering Elaine’s belongings, unceremoniously shoving them into a bag.
Dan knocked on the bathroom door. ‘Elaine, we need to go soon. Brodie has put some clothes out for you in the bedroom. I’m going next door for a minute, when I get back we’re leaving, no arguments.’ He left them to it and made his way to Hallow’s Cottage.
Halfway there his phone rang; the display identified the caller as Bob. He answered, ‘Bob, what’s up?’
‘What’s up? What’s bloody up? I’m still in the van. Elaine’s house has been cordoned off, it’s crawling with coppers and the whole street is knee deep in reporters, that’s what’s up you plonker! I take it we were right and it is her then?’
Dan answered him with a weary sigh, ‘Looks that way.’
‘Bloody hell mate, I hope you know what you’ve got yourself into. Anyway, what do you want me to do? I can’t exactly go in there and start fitting units can I? They won’t even let me pick up my tools.’
‘Go back to the yard and get on with something else, keep yourself busy until I get back. I’m bringing her back with me today, to my place. She’s going to stay there until the fuss dies down.’
Bob gave out a derisive snort, ‘Don’t look like that’s likely any time soon, mate. Have you seen the news this morning? Besides, are you sure it’s a good idea you getting so involved? I mean, it’s a bit of a mess, you don’t want to be saddled with this for the sake of a quick leg-over do you?’
Dan grit his teeth, ‘Fuck off Bob, because right now I don’t feel very much like your mate. If you still want to be employed tomorrow get your sorry ass back to the yard and keep your mouth shut.’ He had known Bob for a long time, but sometimes he could have cheerfully throttled him.
Bob coughed. ‘Ummmm, about that, the keeping my mouth shut bit. I tried Dan, I really did but they were on me like a pack of hounds, I didn’t have a choice mate…’
Dan cut him off in mid flow. He was so angry he was liable to crush the phone in his hand if he had waited to make a response.
&
nbsp; He took a deep, calming breath and strode towards Miriam’s door, knocking as gently as he could despite the fact that he wanted to slam his fist through the wood.
Miriam opened the door and beckoned him in, shushing him and pointing to the television. Tony sat in front of it, mesmerised by what was unfolding on the screen.
Dan followed his gaze and watched the strap line smoothly slip across the screen, ‘Missing girl Mandy Miller found’ it said. Above it a newsreader was talking. ‘In the early hours of this morning police confirmed that Mandy Miller, who has been missing since 1983, has been found. Unconfirmed reports say that she has been living in Bristol under the name of Elaine Ellis since the early eighties. Police suspect that she was abducted by a woman known as Jean Ellis, who recently died. It has been suggested that Elaine Ellis had no idea of her true identity until it was revealed yesterday in an extraordinary turn of events. Police have confirmed that they will be continuing their enquiries into what happened on that fateful day in 1983. Over to our correspondent, June Silverman, live at the scene.’
Dan watched in despair as the camera panned in to show the outside of Elaine’s house, crime scene tape fluttered from the edge of the skip as the reporter started her spiel.
‘Thank you Peter, as you can see I am standing outside the house thought to be the home of the woman police suspect is Mandy Miller. A builder, working in the property, confirmed this morning that he uncovered substantial evidence which led him to believe that the people that lived here, in this unassuming semi-detached house, might have something to hide. Bob Roberts, who was reluctant to appear on camera, told us that he had found documents in the loft of the house that led him to suspect that Elaine Ellis might indeed be Mandy Miller, subsequently he found items of bloodstained girl’s clothing buried under floorboards. From these macabre discoveries it would seem Elaine Ellis’s true identity has been revealed. A bizarre twist of fate saw Miss Ellis return to the place where she was taken, Hallow’s End in Devon. Sources have told us that the woman police are holding responsible for the abduction, Jean Ellis, recently died, and her supposed daughter returned to the scene of the crime to scatter her ashes. Jean Ellis is thought to have been born in Hallow’s End. The circumstances surrounding the abduction of little Mandy remain shrouded in mystery, but are now subject to a reinvigorated police investigation’