A Little Bird Told Me

by Marianne Holmes

  ‘She asked me why Mum lied about Mace.’ I push my plate to the side. ‘Do you remember that?’ Kit shakes his head, but not because he can’t remember, but because he doesn’t want to. You were angry with her too, I want to tell him.

  ‘Doesn’t it seem a bit odd to you, to find them fighting like that?’

  Kit shrugs.

  ‘Looked to me like he’s bullying her.’ Kit sighs and shakes his head. ‘And she has bruising round her wrist, Kit.’

  Kit considers it for a moment. ‘I can’t see it,’ he tries to laugh. ‘She’s just a bit out there. Reminds me of you, actually.’

  Even as he smiles, there are lines that shouldn’t be there on his forehead. They make me think of Matthew, and I wonder if his lines have been smoothed away, now he doesn’t need to watch over us. There was another postcard from him yesterday, another beach with palm trees.

  ‘Robyn,’ Kit’s voice is gentle, and I can tell he’s picking his words carefully, ‘I think you might be overthinking this because of the Wendys or whoever they were. We’re not all heroes or villains, and Danny is not his father.’

  Kit’s not his father either, but his patience with me is wearing thin.

  ‘By the way, why are you raking up all this stuff about the Maces too?’

  I shrug. It’s all mixed up together in my head — what happened that summer.

  ‘I’m just trying to see if it helps me remember anything. Please, look at Matthew’s box with me?’ He must know something, if only he’d try to remember. ‘Just help me pick up the threads, Christopher, I’ll do the horrible bits.’

  He shakes his head. ‘I’d like to know where she is too, you know, Little Bird.’ He stands and walks across to the mantelpiece. ‘I really would, but if it means dealing with that bastard,’ his chin sets, and he picks up the clock in his hands, ‘then it’s not worth it. I don’t want you to go anywhere near him. Please, promise me you won’t.’

  He waits for the answer I can’t give him and then turns back to the clock. Sometimes I can see the real burden I am for him and wonder how long he can bear it. And each time we talk, he becomes more determined that we should stop before I get to the end of my list.

  As I leave the room, Kit releases the door on the back of the clock and starts winding it up, spinning the little dial forward through the years.

  Sitting on my bed, I think about the flattened pieces of newspaper stacked in the cupboard under the stairs and the image of Danny Mace reaching out from the past. And of that other box, the one I pushed right back into the dark angles under the steps. Eventually, my heart slows enough, and I reach for the box Matthew gave us before he left. I pull out the envelope addressed to ‘Christopher and Robyn’. It’s in Mum’s curling handwriting. I take it into Kit’s room, but he’s already asleep, so I sit with my back against the doorjamb in the triangle of light from the hall. My hands are unsteady as I pull out the folded paper and start to read.

  It’s very late when I’ve finished searching the contents of Matthew’s box. There’s nothing else there I didn’t already know.

  ‘That man is a snake and dangerous,’ Mum says in the letter.

  I close my eyes. How many times did I see him, how many conversations did we actually have? I’m sure he never meant me to get hurt. After all, he said we had a special connection, he and I, that he had plans for our future. If he’d trusted me with the truth from the start, if anyone had, then maybe it would have turned out differently.

  I return to my room and pull out a writing pad. If Kit finds out I’m doing this, he will be so furious I don’t know what he’ll do. But he didn’t tell me the truth when it mattered. And neither did Mum. And now she’s not around to tell me what to do and I wish I hadn’t messed up so that she was. I wonder if she would feel afraid. I don’t think so, I think she would put her shoulders back and step up.

  I start the letter, formally like they taught us at school. ‘How are you?’ I write.

  How am I? I think. I’m waiting, trapped. I didn’t know it before, but I do now.

  I cross it out. ‘I hope you are well.’

  But that’s not true. I hope you are wracked with guilt and desperate to make good.

  I cross that out too. He’s a snake with icy blue eyes, and he’s not sorry. His face hangs in the window, and he smells of leather and smoke and all his words twist and lay false trails.

  My writing is barely legible, and my hand is shaking. If I send this letter, he’ll know we’re back.

  Kit turns over heavily in his bed and I jump. The face goes from the window. If I can get that job at the solicitors, then maybe I can work it out without sending the letter.

  I crumple up the sheet of paper and climb into my own bed. I make myself tune into Kit’s steady breathing, into the present, because otherwise I won’t sleep tonight.

  We still haven’t managed to open the shed. In the end, Kit went round to the neighbours to borrow a hover mower. I rigged the cable over the old washing line and then stood and let it spin around and around me creating my own series of crop circles until Kit came out and laughed. He took over while I heaped up the cuttings, and then we both ran into the piles of dried grass kicking seed heads and showers of grass over each other until we were exhausted, and it felt good. And now we have a lawn again, still choked with bolting clover and dandelions but good enough until spring.

  Inside, the house is quiet. Even the air is still; the curtains smothering any breeze that dares to drift through the windows. I turn the radio on, but the sound is rude in the hush and the house rejects it. I have stuck my lists to the fridge, out of the way. The day of my interview is coming up, and I can almost taste the relief of finding the answers in his solicitors’ files. If I believed in fate, I’d say it was definitely on my side.

  There was another crank call from the newspaper advert. Not an actual sighting this time, but a muttered threat to leave things alone. I haven’t told Kit.

  I found some old books among the boxes. The stories keep pulling me back in time and I long to curl up on my window seat and pretend we have gone back to the time before that summer, when everything in the world was still possible.

  A hint of autumn is in the air and reminds me that we have deadlines here. I decide to go out to clear my head. The sun has burned away the morning mist and feels warm on my face, so I fetch a towel and my swimming costume and walk towards the Lido. I’m so pleased with my plan I almost turn down towards The Coppice to pick up Debbie before I remember she’s not there.

  The pool is nearly empty, despite the late September weather, and there are posters everywhere appealing to me to Save our Lido. The old turnstile is still at the entrance but inside the changing room there are lockers instead of the old cloakroom system with those sinister old hanging baskets. The ice cream kiosk outside has gone too, and in its place is a vending machine. Everywhere there are signs of change, layered on to the town I remember.

  I sit for a while with my legs dangling in the cool water and the sun heating my back. Already, there are a few leaves swirling around my feet as I kick them back and forth, careful to avoid the odd wasp stupid with sugar and trapped by sodden wings. When I can cope with the temperature, I fetch the net and clear my side, tipping out leaves and insects into a soggy pile. Then I swim up and down flipping over from front crawl to back as I go, head under, head over as the water pops and sucks out of my ears until I lose count of the lengths.

  I stop only when the pool has filled up so much that lengths aren’t possible anymore without colliding into children. On the grass, there are heaps of school bags and uniforms that no one pays to put in the lockers. The girls are clustering around the edge shouting at the boys who dive and bomb and tumble over each other in a great watery display of bravado.

  I pull myself out and move back to the solitude of the trees near the high fence. I set down my towel and lean back against a tree trunk, reading and putting off the moment when I have to see Kit after another empty day. The shade is cool,
and my skin prickles up with goose bumps. I pull my shirt back on and feel strangely vulnerable while my head is caught in the material. As I settle the collar around my neck, I take a long look around almost expecting to see a tall figure in a hat behind me. I know that’s impossible, but when a fat drop of water does land on the page of my book, I still jump like a fool. A body drops on to the ground beside me.

  ‘That book sucks.’ It’s Daniel Mace. Danny. He shakes his hair, careless of how the drops fall so I have to wipe them from the book with my towel.

  ‘Oh,’ I pull my legs up crossed in front of me and my bag a bit closer like a barrier. ‘You’ve read it then?’

  ‘Nah, seen the film though.’ He puffs out his chest for the benefit of anyone watching. ‘Guess it’s okay for girls.’

  I’m pretty sure he’s not here to talk about literature, so I don’t reply. I hold my nerve, waiting for him to tell me why he’s really come over, but he doesn’t speak either, just sits watching the pool. Up close, he looks young and less certain of himself. There are shadows under his eyes like the bruising around Michelle’s wrist.

  ‘Why were you picking on that girl the other day?’ I ask, more curious now than angry.

  ‘What? I wasn’t!’ He looks around as if she might be here. ‘It was nothing.’ His jaw tenses and it gives his profile a hard outline. He’s holding something back, not looking at me straight, and the effort shows in his face. I let the silence hang, a trick the counsellors used on me all the time. Tried to use.

  ‘I don’t remember coming to your house,’ he says after a while.

  ‘Well,’ I reply, ‘you were only a little kid.’

  ‘I did ask my dad about you, though. He don’t like your family very much.’ He picks up a leaf from the towel and rolls it up between his fingers. Oh. That was unexpected. I can’t think of how to reply.

  ‘Well, apart from Ray.’ His lips pull into a sort of smile, but there’s something behind his eyes that’s full of sorrow. ‘Says he could be a useful man to know.’ He shakes his head as though stopping himself from saying any more, and a drip of water falls from the hair on his forehead. He plasters his fringe back off his face.

  ‘Useful for what?’ I’m not sure I really care what he could do for Mace. There’s only one way that man could be useful to me.

  Danny ignores the question and his jaw stiffens. ‘Anyway, my dad reckons you don’t want to stay here. Said someone should tell you.’ I put my pool ticket inside my book to keep the page and slip it back into my bag.

  ‘Is your dad threatening me?’ My guts twist under my scar, but I try not to let it show on my face.

  I search for signs of his father in Danny’s face. As if the shape of his nose or the colour of his eyes will tell me who he really is.

  Danny doesn’t answer. I know I should ask whether Mace’s threat is real, but I can’t think how. He glances back towards the pool, and I look along his line of sight. There’s a group of boys messing about in the pool, plumes of water kicking up around them. Danny pulls his knees up too and hugs them tight.

  ‘Anyway, what’s he got to be angry about now?’ I make my voice light, as though this has been a long-standing joke between us. He shrugs, and I think of that photograph of him stretching away from his dad and wonder who he was trying to reach.

  ‘Dunno, really,’ he mutters, turning back towards me and the hardness in his eyes has been replaced by something else that feels sad and lonely. ‘Why did you come back?’

  ‘I’m looking for something.’ I swallow hard and change the subject. ‘Does your mum think we should go too?’

  ‘How would I know?’ He answers as if this is the question he was waiting for. ‘Left when I was three, didn’t she?’ I hear the accusation and wince.

  ‘Without you?’ That must have been around the time of the trial. Danny looks confused.

  ‘Dad says I’m better off without her.’ He pulls at the leaf and doesn’t meet my eyes. ‘So.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say, thinking of the crying and the hair. I reel my favourite list of curses off in my head, annoyed that I didn’t know this already, despite my research. That she left anyway makes everything worse. ‘I can’t believe she did that.’

  He looks at me through the fringe of wet hair that has stubbornly fallen back into his eyes and shrugs.

  ‘Really, I didn’t know. Sorry.’ It makes no sense that the woman I saw clinging to little Danny could have just walked away and left him behind. Before I can ask him what happened, he’s up and poised to leave.

  Little pieces of the leaf drop between his fingers.

  ‘None of your business anyway.’ His cheeks redden, and the set of his shoulders reminds me in a rush of that man again, pushing his way in the door and the sound of Mum’s bangles clanging as she lost her balance.

  I stand up and pull on my shorts and a wolf whistle rings out from the pool. A row of boys at the edge are looking our way, whacking their left hands into the crook of their right elbows to bring their fists flying up in a row of rude salutes. Danny flicks two fingers back and gets up.

  ‘They think you came over for a bet?’ I say. He grins, charming Danny shrugged on again, and I can’t help laughing with relief.

  ‘Cheeky bugger!’

  He starts to walk away and then stops and turns back. Another whoop from the boys at the pool. ‘This town,’ he jerks his head towards the fence, ‘I’d leave it if I could.’

  Danny performs an elaborate bow and then runs to the pool, taking two of the other boys in with him in a splash that brings the lifeguard to his feet.

  I double check the address with the driver before I get off the bus. He looks amused when I tell him where I’m headed, but the lungfuls of fresh air away from the town are making me feel lightheaded and hopeful. The man on the phone said she was working behind the bar, last time he saw her. A woman with a slow smile and an empty past.

  From the bus stop, I can see the pub up on the crest of the hill. I pull my bag higher on to my shoulder and walk along the verge, overgrown with cow parsley and seeding grasses. Hanging brambles are laced through the hawthorn, and I pull off the blackberries, letting the juice stain my fingertips. Crows wheel and dive above the ploughed fields and the blackberries taste lush and bitter on my tongue.

  I lift my hand to block out the sun as I climb and see a lone hawk high above me riding the thermals, its head gleaming as it twists to scan the ground.

  I’m close enough to see the pub sign when I notice that the car park is empty, and thistles and horsehair have burst up through the buckling tarmac. The building itself is square and ugly and casts its shadow right across the road. I walk out of the sun and look in through the windows, some of them broken, for signs of life that’s long departed.

  The closure notice has been taped to the door for so long the date is barely legible. I pull it off and sink down on to the step. That man on the phone didn’t see her here because the pub had been closed down for a good two years before the date he said he’d visited. I’m not surprised, not really, but my heart feels heavy with disappointment. Why would he make such a thing up? Who would do that?

  The roar of a motorbike bursts into the peace and sets my nerves jangling as it comes over the hill and screeches past, leaving the acrid smell of burning rubber in its wake. The birds rise into the air, screaming and flapping, like a black cloud.

  In the silence that follows, a crow settles on an upturned picnic table and inspects me with its beady eye, head cocked. I pick up my bag and step back into the road, trying to dislodge the feeling of being watched. I have a long wait for the bus home, so I climb into a field to get out of sight. If I’ve been sent up here on my own deliberately, I don’t want to be easy to find.

  Chapter Five

  1976

  I am awake in the dark because if I sleep the chasing dream will come back. The one where there’s someone’s trying to catch me. Even though I’m running really hard, my legs won’t go fast enough, and I can hear the ai
r whistling as the thing behind me speeds up. I only wake up when its fingers curl around my shoulder. Mum says it’s the sort of dream that everyone has now and then and perhaps I should stop watching Doctor Who.

  I can’t call out because the night things hiding in the corners might notice me. Mum and Matthew wouldn’t hear me anyway. I can hear them though. Sometimes they play music really loud or have friends round for drinks after we have gone upstairs, but tonight I can hear them because they are shouting. I wriggle down the bed until I am completely under the sheet.

  Kit shut his bedroom door when we came up last night even though he knows I hate that. When I asked him to leave it open he told me to stop being such a baby. He says he’s going to close it all the time when he’s a teenager, which is really soon, and I should get used to it. I think it might really be about the wooden babies because I have never seen his leg shake like that. He was really cross when I asked him what he was scared of in front of Neil. Luckily, Neil didn’t even make a joke about it like he normally would.

  When Matthew got home, Mum was still in the kitchen scrubbing the oven. After he’d been in to see her, he sent us over to the Cadogans’ for our tea. Mrs Cadogan let me stir the custard for the pineapple upside-down cake and lick the spoon. When we got home we were sent straight to bed. Kit called me an idiot and that’s when he went into his room.

  I hear the lounge door open and Matthew’s footsteps walking through to the kitchen and then Mum’s following.

  ‘God, just give me a minute, Jemima!’ Matthew says. ‘I can’t take it all in.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Mum says, and I can hear her pull out a chair and sit down while Matthew paces around.

  ‘What on earth were you thinking; that he wouldn’t come for them?’ Mum doesn’t answer which makes me think this is what they’ve been shouting about, that she’s already said her bit, like when we’re getting told off for something. Why would you plant the cutlery in the flower beds? Did you really think I wouldn’t notice half the cake was missing? That sort of thing.