I hear footsteps and see a woman coming from the church. She’s carrying flowers and picks up the bouquet from the bench beside me too. She looks at the damage to my face and flinches, her eyes slipping away quickly.
‘Are you the mother of the bride?’ I say, gesturing to the flowers.
‘Oh yes,’ she says, ‘I’m going to dry some of these for her as a keepsake. Just glad the rain held off until today.’ Her eyes crinkle up into a smile, ‘Are you a friend of Vikki’s?’
‘No,’ I say, ‘I was just admiring the flowers.’ She pauses, as if she wants to say something else, and, for a moment, I want to throw myself into her arms just to see how that feels. Instead, I hug myself tight around my stomach to make myself still.
The woman pauses for a minute and then checks her watch, ‘Oh, look at the time! I have to go.’ She walks away with her arms full already.
I carry on into the churchyard. The headstones I come to first are green with lichen and crumbly, and then I reach the newer area with its flowers and tidy graves. It takes me a while to find the one I’m looking for, and I see that there is a faded bouquet beside it. The card reads, ‘Always in our thoughts, Matthew, Christopher, and Robyn’, and I wonder whether Matthew ordered it or Kit.
I put the rest of my flowers down beside it. Then I sit down, not caring that the ground is damp, and tell the woman who kept us together and safe for as long as she could that I’m not angry with her any more. And that I’m sorry for my part too. By the time I’ve finished, the sun is completely up, and the children are in their classrooms.
I’ve already cleared away the mud and pine needles we tramped through the house and made the rest of my phone calls by the time Kit comes down, hollowed out from the night. I put a mug of tea and some toast down in front of him and watch his colour return. Then I push a sheet of paper across the table to him with the flight details and the address of the beach house that Matthew has rented.
‘Why isn’t your name here?’
‘I’m not coming.’
‘But I can’t just leave you. Or my job.’ I push the postcard across towards him, the picture side up.
‘It’s all sorted, Christopher. The school’s not expecting you.’ He stares at the golden sand and the colourful boats on the sea.
‘Aren’t you afraid of him?’
‘No, I’m not afraid. I have a plan.’ I make my smile broad because I know he needs to go, and I want him to feel alright about it. He looks at me, his brow furrowed too much for his age.
‘I’ll help you pack, then there’s a couple of things we need to do on the way to the station.’
We visit the solicitor’s office first. He’s prepared the documents and we just need to look through the list of charity names that Eva gave me and pick one.
‘We’re giving our half of the farm to a charity?’ Kit looks surprised. I grin and pass him the list. Eva has written down the names of organisations that help the victims of domestic violence. We choose one and write the name into the space left for it and then we both sign where we’re shown. The solicitor asks Carol to witness it, and she gives us a thumbs-up.
‘But what can they do with it?’ asks Kit.
‘They could sell their half to him and use the money,’ the solicitor says.
‘Or they could force a sale of the whole farm.’ I can feel myself beam. I’d almost like to be around when Ray finds out.
‘He’s going to be furious.’ Kit is still mulling it over, as we walk out along the High Street.
‘He is.’ I squeeze his hand. ‘But we know where the body’s buried, as it were, don’t we?’
We walk up to the graveyard in silence to visit Jemima, and Kit tells her goodbye again. I run my thumb over the engraving on the silver bracelet in my pocket; I already had a little bit of Jemima and Rose with me all along.
We step out and turn towards the heavy metal gates to the park.
‘Have you been down to look?’ I ask, nodding towards the stream. He grins, and we set off across the grass, the case bumping on the rough ground between us.
The willow appears out of the mist that hangs in the shallow valley, its leaves yellow and drooping. There’s no sign that any child ever tried to build a dam where its weeping branches now trail in the chilly water. I duck inside, and the bed of twigs and leaves is springy under my boots and releases a damp woody smell. Kit follows me in and looks around.
‘You were a funny thing, in here drawing and reading all the time.’ I pull a face. We step back out and look at the stream now swollen and noisy with bubbles and whirlpools.
‘We never did get to see it finished, did we?’ Kit picks up a large twig and throws it on to the water, watching it bob and twist away. Then he looks me in the eye and says, ‘It isn’t bloody fair, is it?’ I hug him because I know he’s said it out loud so that I don’t have to. And it helps me to say the thing I need to tell him before he leaves.
‘I’m alright now, Kit, I really am. You don’t need to watch over me anymore.’
I watch his face carefully until he smiles.
‘Maybe I never did. You remind me of her a bit too much.’
I shove him hard, but I’m grateful too that he’s not still angry with me. And if he thinks I’m a bit like Jemima, then that feels okay too.
I take his arm and we walk back to the path, the damp grass lapping at our boots.
At the station we see them first. Eva is glancing up at the platform notices while Neil leans against the wall slowly scanning the ticket office. When he sees us, he touches Eva’s shoulder and they walk across towards us. Before they get close enough to hear, I take out Mum and Matthew’s wedding rings, still wrapped in my old sketch, and hand them to Kit.
‘Tell Matthew I want him to have these.’
‘Come and tell him yourself.’
I shake my head. ‘I think I’ll stay here for a while.’
Kit glances at Neil and says to me, ‘Be kind to him, he’s my friend.’
‘What?’ My cheeks heat up. ‘He’s with, um, thingummy.’
‘No, he’s not,’ Kit rolls his eyes, ‘never was.’
Neil comes over with Eva.
‘Neil told me about Danny and Ray.’ Eva purses her lips. ‘I’ve had a chat with that boy myself, and he swears blind he hasn’t been visiting Ray. Admitted he’s being going to see someone but says he can’t tell me who it is.’ Danny, with his floppy hair and charming grin, has been innocently caught up in our drama twice now
‘Leave him be, Eva, it doesn’t matter now.’
‘The Walkers are going to sort Bill out,’ Eva looks at Neil with a large grin on her face, ‘I expect he’ll be on the receiving end of some of the town’s justice this time. Nothing like a collective guilty conscience to make people do the right thing.’ We must look alarmed because she laughs. ‘Oh, don’t worry I didn’t give them the full details.’
‘I don’t even want to know what you’ve cooked up, Eva,’ Neil puts his hands over his ears. She laughs. ‘Anyway, I thought Kit should know there are folk keeping an eye out for Robyn.’
Eva gives Kit a quick hug and walks back out into the sunlight.
‘She may have lost her job after your mum’s death, but she never did stop doing the work.’ Neil grins.
‘You’d better go,’ I say to Kit, and he gives me a kiss and picks up his case. Neil puts a friendly arm around my shoulders, and we stand watching as he walks across the same station concourse we walked through in a storm all those years ago.
My brother turns at the platform and waves goodbye to me. I raise my hand in response and, for a moment, I move to fall into step behind him as I have a hundred times before. Instead, I turn to Neil. ‘What happened to Sue and Ray’s baby? What was its name?’
Kit climbs into the carriage and pulls the door shut behind him.
‘Um, Melissa. Or Melanie?’
‘Or Michelle?’ Her name rolls off my tongue, and I know it’s true even as I say it.
Neil’s eyes wide
n. ‘Jesus Christ, you don’t think —’
Little Michelle waiting for her dad to come home.
We fly out of the station. I grab Neil’s hand, and we run together so that my feet are barely skimming the ground and my hair twists like flames in the wind, and we are a blaze of warmth in the icy air.
Epilogue
1976
Dear Christopher and Robyn,
I’m writing this quickly, God forbid, in case I don’t get a chance to talk to you myself.
I’m so sorry for everything. I know you’re angry with me for lying to you and that’s okay. When we first got here, letting Matthew think I was your mum made it easier, fewer questions. I never really thought we’d stay, but then, it was years later, and I hadn’t said anything.
I want you to know that your mum’s name was Rose. She was sweet and funny, and she loved you both very much. You would have loved her too. I met her at the local fun fair when we were both fourteen. When the fair left, Rose stayed with us because she didn’t have any real family. She worked hard and even your Grampy liked her, although he didn’t show it much. Then my brother, Ray, started hanging around with us too and putting on his charm like he can. When Rose got pregnant, Grampy made them get married, and Rose moved out of my room and into Ray’s.
Rose loved being your mum, she kept you with her all the time. There’s a place on the hill overlooking the farm where we used to sit, and she’d take you up there too. One of the pines had fallen over and left a natural hollow in the earth where you could look out across the valley without a single soul knowing you were there. She said it gave her peace.
The night we left, I came home and found Ray standing in the kitchen with a bottle of beer in his hand and that damn hat tipped almost off the back of his head. Your mum was on the floor, not moving. She was face down and the back of her head was a mess, the blood still shiny on the floor. I was shocked, couldn’t move until I saw you, Kit, standing in the doorway behind Ray, frozen still.
You started to shake, and I figured I didn’t have long to distract Ray before you began to cry. Ray hates crying. I screamed at him, and he walked over and hit me hard too until I shut up. I knew we had to get out fast, so I sent him for something to wrap Rose. While he was gone, I grabbed both of you, a bag of special things Rose’d saved for you — Matthew will show you where they are — and a bottle of formula from the fridge. And I ran as fast as I could with you. I couldn’t risk going to your Grampy and him sending us back — ‘family is blood and pain’ he’d say. I flagged down the next passing car, and they dropped us at the station. I bought a ticket for the furthest place we could get to with only the coins I had in my pocket. And that was here.
I know I should’ve gone straight to the police, and I wish I’d told you all the truth in the first place. If only I had, but I was afraid he’d come for you. I was afraid of what he’d do to us, to me and Kit. We knew what he’d done.
And then we met Matthew, and it was like a dream come true, and I thought we might be safe here.
As soon as I saw those wooden babies, I knew Ray was back for the farm. And I knew he was going to come after you too. We should have run then.
I went to the farm to tell him he could have it but that I’d go to the police if he didn’t leave you alone. He laughed in my face. Said it would be my word against his.
But I knew where he’d have buried her. When your daddy was a boy, he had a puppy, a stray that he found by the side of the road. He fed that dog from his own plate and taught it to walk to heel and shake a paw. Grampy ignored it until one day when he found one of the pregnant ewes had miscarried. He went straight to your dad and told him to get rid of the dog. Your dad refused, Grampy went back to the house, got his .22 and shot the dog between the eyes. Ray showed me the grave he made, right at the edge of our land, down by the stream where there is a little cave hollowed out under an overhang, so Grampy would never see it. He’d carved D O G on a piece of wood and knocked it into the ground
I was so sure he would have put her there too, but when I went back with Sergeant C, that poor girl of his wouldn’t get out of our way, and we couldn’t find her.
I should never have left her there. I knew what Ray was like, what he did to her when he drank. I can’t ever look away again when I see that happening.
And that’s the truth. I’m so sorry.
Please, believe that you can’t stay here if he knows where you are. That man is a snake and dangerous. You won’t ever be safe until he gives up. And I’ve never known him do that.
In the end, lies and secrets catch up with you. Remember that — and try and look after each other. You’re both good kids. Listen to what your own hearts tell you is right.
I love you both very much, and I’m so proud of you. I know your mum would be too.
With all my love,
Your Mum (and Aunt)
x
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Sam Brace and Kate Evans at Agora Books for all their support and faith and especially Sam for her patience and insight during the editing process.
I couldn’t have done it without the support of family and friends.
Special thanks to ‘The Bonnets’ — Eleni Kyriacou, Liz Ottosson and Kate Wheeler — who’ve tirelessly read and commented on draft after draft and provided me with much needed moral support in so many ways.
I’m grateful too to Lisa Evans and the West London Writers’ Group for encouraging me to turn the initial short story into a novel and letting me freewheel the plot backwards and forwards as I found my way. And to the Bath Novel Award — making the longlist in 2016 gave me the boost I needed to keep on keeping on.
And so much love for James, Beatrice, and Louis, who bring me joy and laughter and ground me in the real world.
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A Little Bird Told Me Page 25