by R. P. Bolton
William Brennan was a well-known local figure. Born in 1933 to a teacher father and housewife mother, he attended the local grammar school and, after the war, secured a post with the local council’s planning department where he met his future wife, Elizabeth ‘Betsy’ Walker. They bought a plot of land and built number six Moss Lane on it. Sadly, Betsy died less than two years after giving birth to their only child, Mary. Becoming a widowed father to a small child did not hinder Brennan’s progression through the ranks and, by 1971, he was deputy leader of Stockfield Council.
However, dark secrets lurked under this respectable façade. Allegations of widespread corruption had begun to surface as early as the mid-Seventies. Rumours of a culture of bullying and abuse circulated around the chambers of Stockfield Town Hall. Most worrying of all, were the allegations of sexual misconduct made by junior members of staff against members of Brennan’s inner circle. Time and time again, they fell on deaf ears or were quickly quashed by Brennan, a man who seemed, at the time, untouchable. These were different times, times when influential men everywhere had the power to brush the misdemeanours of their friends under the carpet.
Perhaps this situation would have continued indefinitely but for the brave actions of a whistle-blower who described Brennan as a cruel bully and a tyrant. Although no charges were brought at the time, the spotlight turned on members of the council and an internal investigation began. Accusations levelled against the council leader, William Brennan, included bribery, violent attacks on staff, embezzlement and, most sickening of all, turning a blind eye to abuse in council-run children’s homes. However, the investigation folded with no further action. So why, only weeks later, did William Brennan take his own life at Moss Pond, a beauty spot a short distance from the Brennan family home? Did guilt finally get the better of him?
His daughter, Mary Brennan, only eighteen years old at the time, continued living in the house on Moss Lane until her own recent death. She consistently refused to co-operate with both the initial and the most recent inquiry.
In the light of other reopened historic cases, Greater Manchester Police has been re-examining the evidence submitted at the time and a recent appeal led to many other witnesses coming forward. Numerous council employees and former children’s home residents have also given evidence against the few surviving members of the council. For the majority of the others, William Brennan included, justice will be served posthumously.
Rain lashed against the window and the late-afternoon gloom wrapped around the house. Ellie switched the light on. There was a sharp plink, like the flick of a fingernail on glass, as one of the candelabra bulbs burned out. She glanced at the ceiling, blinking in the sudden brightness that blazed like her anger.
A traumatised woman who literally did not have a voice ‘refused to co-operate with the inquiry’. How could Norah, a woman with daughters of her own, write such self-righteous victim-shaming bullshit?
Six decades earlier, Mary’s mother must have stood in this spot and kissed the velvety skin stretched across her daughter’s unfused skull bones. She must have murmured the same promises to love and protect her, not for a moment imagining the tragedy of her own death. And Mary finding herself scared and pregnant under the roof of a tyrannical father. Had she cradled her own child here years later before he or she was taken away?
Ellie’s heart ached for the two women.
She held Trinity close and impossibly long eyelashes tickled her. So vulnerable, so tiny, so dependent. She lowered her face to the baby’s. But those round navy-blue eyes swivelled upwards, to the smooth white plaster and the nursery above.
A room with bolts on the outside in a house owned by ‘a cruel bully and a tyrant’.
Poor Mary. Tears leaked from between Ellie’s closed lids and ran down her cheeks.
‘I will always keep you safe from harm,’ she whispered, burying her nose in the sweet, fresh hay scent of Trinity’s scalp. ‘You know that? No one will ever touch a single hair on your head. I will protect you and—’
The lights flickered.
There was a bang.
Ellie screamed.
32. Now
Darkness. Absolute darkness. And a smell, like fireworks or just-pulled Christmas crackers.
Gunshots? No, of course not.
Light switch. Flick. Flick. Nothing. The red standby light plinked off on the TV. Ellie scrabbled for her phone and found the torch icon. Fragments of glass sparkled on the coffee table. She tipped her head back: the candelabra held six brass bulb holders. Each one no longer containing a bulb.
‘Shit!’
Using her fingertips, she delicately examined the exposed areas of Trinity – scalp, face, hands – and blew gently across her face, trying to dislodge any dust. No sign of glass, thank God, but she needed to get her in the bath to be sure.
It was even darker in the hall. No reassuring lights winked from the boiler or the appliances in the kitchen and Tom’s phone rang out until his voicemail kicked in.
This is Tom Hartley. Please leave a message.
‘Are you nearly home? The bulbs exploded in the lounge and I don’t know where the fuse box is.’
Her own phone beeped – only one per cent battery remaining. She hung up, switched the torch off.
No power, no heating. No phone. A shudder engulfed her.
The only light was a beacon glow from Diane’s conservatory. She whispered, teeth chattering against Trinity. ‘Come on, baby girl. We’re going next door.’
She trailed her fingers along the hallway’s cold wall. And stopped. Tom had stripped the embossed wallpaper and repainted. So why did her imagination feel ridges and swirls?
The darkness eddied around her. A cold panic trickled down her spine and she groped frantically at the front door handle.
Where were the keys?
Her blind fingertips probed the wicker basket, assessing and discarding objects.
No keys.
Even the faint glimmer of streetlamps had been snuffed out and darkness wrapped around her so tightly she couldn’t tell if her eyes were open or shut. Silence swelled and her mind convulsed with the terror that someone – or something – was about to materialise.
Like the air above a candle, the darkness shimmered. She slid to the floor and drew her knees up as close as the baby’s body would allow and, like a child herself now, she huddled small and motionless, knowing if her foot sneaked out of the blanket, a monster would grab it.
Blood pulsed in her ears and she knew she wasn’t alone.
She held her breath. The house held its breath.
Upstairs a voice began to sing very quietly.
‘Mary, Mary, quite contrary,
How does your garden grow?
With silver bells and cockle shells …’
Ellie moaned, pressing her hand over her eyes until colours exploded against the lids.
‘And pretty maids all in a row.’
33. Now
‘I think I got all of it,’ Tom said, pressing the pedal to open the bin. The broken glass tinkled off the dustpan. ‘But we haven’t got any spare bulbs. I’ll get some tomorrow.’
The radiator threw out a force field of heat, but the bone-deep chill remained. Ellie clasped the hot mug so tightly her fingers burned.
‘Trust me. Someone was upstairs,’ she said for the third time. ‘I heard singing.’
Tom closed the bin lid with a soft thud and set the dustpan on top.
Carefully, he pulled out a chair and sat by her side, his knee touching hers as he rubbed the circulation back into her still frozen hands, one at a time.
‘You’re completely safe now. I’ve checked and there is no one in the house apart from us.’
The boiler hummed. The innocuous sounds of a house getting on with the business of being a normal family home. Not a place where things exploded and invisible women sang in the dark.
She gnawed the skin around her thumb, teasing a tiny strip with her teeth. The irony was the fuse box had been
inches away, to the left of the front door. If instead of freaking out, she’d reached a hand across, she would have felt the little brass knob of the meter cupboard.
Which is exactly what Tom had done when he’d finally managed to push the door open. Terror had slowed time to a crawl although in reality, only a few minutes had passed before Tom found her cowering in the dark. With a flip of the tripped switches, the hallway flooded with light.
‘It’s OK, love,’ he had said, gently helping her to straighten her stiff, cold legs. He took the baby and with a sniff, said, ‘Someone needs their nappy changing.’
His reassuring smile jarred with the deep frown line between his eyes.
The aftermath of terror turned her hands to claws and it was only when he winced she remembered the deep scratches on his arm.
‘Please don’t take her to the nursery.’
‘She needs a bath and a clean nappy. Clean clothes. All those things are upstairs,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you come with me and we’ll do it together?’
With Trinity cradled in one arm, he started up the stairs. After a second’s hesitation, Ellie followed.
But there really was nothing to be scared of. Everything in the nursery – the baskets, the mat, the sad-eyed teddies – sat neatly under the pastel glow of the night-light. Benevolent jungle animals gazed down from the wallpaper. Hanging on the back of the nursing chair was the fleece hoodie she’d been wearing earlier. Cosy, warm, and scented with fabric conditioner.
In fact, the only note of discord came from the baby bawling on the changing mat. The nappy sagged almost to her knees and when Tom unfastened the Velcro, foul sludge oozed out.
‘Why don’t you have a lie-down for half an hour?’ Tom suggested, reaching for a wipe. ‘Go,’ he said, kindly when she didn’t move. ‘I’ve got this.’
When Trinity was clean and safely tucked up in their room, Tom led Ellie back into the nursery and to the night-light.
‘Can you see the timer?’ he whispered, tapping the controls at the side.
She nodded. If that’s what the clock icon next to the on/off switch symbolised, then yes.
‘Well, when the bulbs blew, they tripped all the fuses downstairs, but the sockets stayed on up here. It must have triggered the night-light to start playing.’
His lips grazed her forehead. ‘What I don’t get is why you didn’t go round to Diane’s. I’m sure she wouldn’t have minded.’
‘I told you. We were locked in and I couldn’t find the keys.’
‘But they were in the basket.’
When she replayed her fingers frantically sifting through pens, coins, sunglasses, earbuds, a plastic sack for a charity collection, all the flotsam of ordinary life, the keys hadn’t been there.
Had they?
‘I’m not surprised you missed them, though,’ Tom continued. ‘It was pitch-black.’
‘What made the bulbs blow?’ Ellie said.
Tom shrugged. ‘I don’t think the wiring is dangerous, but maybe it’s more knackered than we originally thought.’
‘Knackered but not dangerous,’ she said. ‘Is that me or the electrics?’
There was a short pause.
‘Me. You. The house. Everything,’ he answered. ‘Look, Els, it might be a good idea to go to the doctor’s tomorrow to change your blood pressure meds to one without so many side effects. I know they said it’d settle down when you got used to them, but it doesn’t seem to be happening.’
Ellie was about to say, ‘No thanks’ or ‘Don’t start, I get enough of that from Mum’. But then she had a fleeting vision of herself, wild-eyed, numb with cold. Ranting about keys and mysterious singing.
Change the medication? That simple?
‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘I think that’s a good idea.’
In the lounge, the floor lamp cast a warm glow over their baby sleeping peacefully in the basket. Ellie squashed a cushion against the arm of the sofa and sank onto it. On screen, the chateau couple stared horror-struck at the scaffolded exterior wall. The camera zoomed in on a cordon of orange tape and panned across fallen clumps of render, like plaster scabs picked off to reveal old brick. Standing next to a Danger: Falling Debris sign, the presenter made a show of jamming his hard hat down.
‘Buying this grand wreck was a huge leap of faith for this young couple and I admire their passion for seeing the potential beyond the crumbling façade. But still.’ He let out a regretful sigh.
‘Every day presents new problems, new setbacks. I hope I’m wrong, but I can’t help thinking that these two young people have no idea of the horrors still lurking within these neglected walls.’
Hours later, hours after they’d gone to bed, something woke Ellie.
A woman’s voice, whispering so close to her ear the soft breath caressed her skin.
‘Pretty maids all in a row.’
Ellie’s eyes sprang open and she scrabbled back against the headboard. Except the headboard had gone. She flung her arm out but her groping hand couldn’t find Tom’s reassuring bulk. Instead of the warm cocoon of duvet, cold air wrapped around her.
A moan escaped her throat and she frantically scanned the shapes emerging from the gloom. Where were the chest of drawers, wardrobe, the Moses basket?
She flailed wildly, desperate to find a landmark to orient herself. Reaching, grabbing, kicking. Invisible objects scuffed across the floor. Her left elbow connected with something solid and darts of pain fired to her fingertips. She grasped her arm with the other hand, hugging it to her hip.
Then there was the sound of footsteps. A door creaked and Tom’s voice came out of the darkness.
‘What’s going on?’
The light switch clicked and she blinked in the sudden glare. His silhouette filled the doorway. It took a few seconds more for the familiar shapes of the kitchen to register.
She was sitting on the floor facing the table with her spine pressed against the drawers. There was the boiler. The fridge. The pile of bills.
‘Are you all right?’ Tom said.
She bit her lip, hard, trying to quell the rising panic. How had she got down here?
‘Come back to bed,’ he said, shutting the cupboard doors. ‘We can sort all this in the morning.’
‘All this’, she realised, was the contents of the kitchen cupboards. Packets and tins, old Tupperware, place mats and assorted jumble littered the floor. When she didn’t move, Tom squatted down on his haunches.
‘Come on, love. It’s freezing down here.’
‘Where is she?’ she gasped, digging her fingers into Tom’s arm.
‘She’s fine. She’s upstairs asleep in our room.’
‘Not Trinity. The woman.’
Tom rubbed his eyes and stifled a yawn. ‘It’s just a dream, love. Let’s go back to bed, eh?’ She held on to his arm and he helped her up the stairs, murmuring all the while: ‘That’s it … come on … everything’s fine.’
Trinity slept on in the basket, her lips pursed in an ‘o’. Ellie laid her hand very softly on her daughter’s chest and felt the reassuring patter of her heartbeat against her palm.
The toilet flushed, water ran and then Tom’s quiet footsteps came back into their room. He held a glass of water and rummaged in his bedside drawer as he spoke.
‘Els, we can’t go on like this,’ he said. He popped two paracetamol from the foil packet and swigged them down. ‘We’re both going to be ill at this rate.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said in a small voice.
He folded her into a hug. ‘Doctor’s tomorrow. Let’s get it sorted. I know that must have been terrifying for you.’
His hand slid over to cradle her face and she felt his thumb rub rhythmically against her cheek.
‘Let’s talk about it in the morning,’ he said finally, getting under the covers.
Less than a minute later, Trinity started to cry.
Tom moulded the pillow around his ears but Trinity’s lament swelled to don’t-ignore-me pitch and he started to get up.
She faltered at the end of the bed. Nothing to be frightened of. No one there, she told herself.
As Trinity sucked, every part of Ellie strained to believe Tom’s explanations. The timer started the singing. She’d missed the keys in her panic. As hard as it was to admit, she must have started sleepwalking again. She knew it made sense.
But an insistent voice clamoured against all the rationality, because she had heard the night-light’s rendition of ‘Mary, Mary’ a hundred times before.
And every time, the vocalist had been male.
34. Then
‘Come on, you know it makes sense.’ Mia placed both hands on Ellie’s windowsill at Henderson Hall and gazed out at the grey Manchester sky. ‘Attic of a Victorian house overlooking the park. Kind of. One minute from a tram stop and’ – Mia did jazz hands – ‘only a couple of streets from the boys.’
‘It does sound good,’ Ellie said cautiously.
‘Good?’ her friend echoed in mock incredulity. ‘It sounds abso-bloody-lutely perfect.’
Ellie unzipped her rucksack. ‘But I told you: I’ve got a lecture at eleven.’
Mia glanced over her shoulder. She was wearing denim dungarees and holding an apple. Her eyes were ringed with black liner and she’d wrapped her hair in a Fifties headscarf, like a glamorous Rosie the Riveter.
She bit into the apple. ‘Can’t you get the notes from someone? I only got us in because she’s showing the flat underneath at nine thirty.’
‘Can’t you ring her back and see if we can go later?’
Exams were coming up and while Mia and Danny’s portfolio work had them up all hours of the night, Ellie’s course required her to hit the books, same as Tom, and it hadn’t left much time for flat hunting.
‘It’s the perfect flat in the perfect location. And I’ve already told the landlady we’ll be there. We can’t let it slip through our fingers. Come on. Please?’
The thing about Mia was her enthusiasm always hooked you in. Even now, with revision lectures and reams of tiny, scribbled notes calling, Ellie found herself replying, ‘Give me ten minutes.’