Killing
The Girl
Elizabeth Hill
Copyright © 2019 Elizabeth S Hill
All rights reserved.
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination and are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Contents
Part 1
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
Part 1
Prologue
Perry Cutler and I buried Frankie Dewberry in the orchard. He lies not far from the garden wall, under the shade of the apple trees. Over the last forty-odd years I’ve spent many hours sitting on the wooden bench we placed next to his grave. It’s a peaceful spot near the boundary wall running to the south-west of my estate. Sitting near him gives me great comfort. I tell Frankie how restricted my life has been since his death. I tell him how sorry I am that our daughter, Francine, died so young. Although I loved him, I never tell him I’m sorry he’s dead.
Outside my study window, the trees and bushes sway stiffly in the winter breeze; their shifting branches stripped bare in the cold air. January is my least favourite month, with its grey, joyless days and cruelty towards my garden.
On my desk, my notebook lies waiting for my reluctant attention. The sick feeling I’ve had this last month stirs as I touch it. It lists the many tasks I have to complete; inventories to write and documents to sign. Chilly air surrounds me as Frankie’s spirit enters the room. Shivering in his ghostly presence, I reread the newspaper article. My house is to be demolished to make way for a ring road. They will find Frankie’s resting place when they cut into the soil protecting my lover, my darling man. Police will ask questions. Strangers, who know nothing about me or my pain, will look at me in disgust. After they have finished with his skeleton, we can arrange his funeral so that he can be laid to rest in consecrated ground. We will say prayers and sanction his long-awaited trip to heaven, although when I killed him, I was sure that he went straight to hell.
Chapter 1
Now - January
There’s not been a schedule requiring my strict adherence since the birth of Francine and motherhood duties. Now the number of things that must be done to enable me to leave my home overwhelms me. Doing nothing is preferable. No one will die if I stay in bed and read; inactivity tempers the crushing sensation that my life is out of my control. But dread edges closer, carrying with it the knowledge that I have to act, do, process, move. Those verbs build into a crescendo threatening to stifle me. I pull the sheets over my head and, to distract myself, ponder that I hate verbs. But now my feet itch with frustration at my inability to step up to the tasks required to secure my future, and I should get out of bed to calm them.
I’m moving into Perry’s house until a new replica of my home, Oaktree House, is built using many of the bricks, tiles, fixtures and fittings of the original. We will be kind to the environment as we churn up the green belt and replace it with tarmac. My new home will be built on the other side of Perry’s farmhouse, in one of my fields. There will be a house, a copse and an orchard in the new setting. It will be exactly the same. But Frankie will not be resting close by. I will miss him. It will be the first time we have been apart in over forty years.
My post is left in a letterbox next to the locked gate at the end of the lane adjoining the main road – the road that will be extended and carve through my land as it progresses along its destructive route. Leaving my home once a day to collect it is a must, as failure to collect it will cause alarm to the post-person. Then the police will be called. A police presence upon the land concealing my dead boyfriend is not conducive to a quiet life. That thought spurs me on as I shower, dress and eat breakfast.
Wearing my heavy coat and wellington boots, I hesitate on the threshold. One day, I chide myself, I will leave the confines my home without giving it a second thought. Gathering my nerves, I step out as though into the unknown, instead of into an area secured by walls and locked gates. The twelve-bore and air rifle sit in the hallway cupboard and on days when I need extra support, I rest one of them over my arm. Why an empty gun that I’ve no intention of using calms me defies explanation; I suppose the weight comforts, and the menace any trespasser might imagine when confronted boosts my confidence. There’s no intention to kill anyone else. I’m not a killer. I’m someone who makes bad choices.
In front of me, in a circle of grass, is the magnificent oak tree. It has a twin growing behind the house, in Dawnview Wood, on the path leading down the hillside to the rabbit warren of council streets below. That other tree has distressing memories surrounding each branch and leaf. Guilt and damnation ooze from its core like poison gas. That tree will remain untouched by the coming destruction – an act of God, or whoever it is that decides I need reminding of the frailty of human nature. It will remain, to symbolise what happens when faith and trust in someone are misplaced. My new house will be further away from it, so that is some consolation.
My driveway is large and circles the tree. Making my way across it, I try not to think about a time when all this will be tarmacked over; to be, as one of my counsellors puts it, ‘living in the moment as it is now, not the future, nor the past’. Nevertheless, I cannot shut out the imagined noise of future traffic screeching along. Or the disturbance to nesting birds and scurrying voles, field mice, foxes and arguing magpies as they live, die, and kill, unaware that their time is running out. There’s a wish on my breath for strength as I suck the atmosphere in and commit it to memory. More sadness to add to the depressiveness of life. Reaching the lane, I hang on to a fence post and breathe and count and breathe and count.
The lane
runs through a wooded area that conceals my house from the road. No one can come along here, as the gate by the road is padlocked, except Perry. Perry has keys to every lock on my estate and in my home. Not that he would enter my home, but he has them anyway. He will only venture into the orangery adjoining the kitchen. There’s a reason why he won't. I shall explain in my confession.
There’s time for me to write down the reasons why I became a killer and it’s better to do so and be judged on the truth than be unable to explain my actions under the duress of police questioning. Perry would be horrified if he knew I was doing this, even though it will help us.
My fingers press my forehead above my left eye, and I worry at an imagined dent in my skull. Aged seven, I knocked myself unconscious when falling from the gate between Dawnview Field and Dawnview Lane. Thoughts of Perry always incite this automatic response of fingers to my forehead, as the injury happened the day I first met him.
My father had died suddenly from a heart attack, leaving me distraught. The sense of loss was so overpowering that I feared to leave my bed. My mum was losing patience with repeatedly assuring me that he was safe in heaven. Two weeks later a storm raged, rousing me from my bed to watch as lightning sparked above the hills behind our council house. The hills that are now my home. It became clear to me as I watched that the lightning was showing me a path to heaven, a path leading to my dad. If I ran as fast as I could, I would find him, and he would kiss and reassure me, and maybe let me stay with him.
Leaving my bed in the middle of the night, I’d run the gauntlet of rain and wind to take myself up above the city, to the top of the world. Climbing the gate leading to Dawnview Lane, I’d balanced on the slippery rails. For a moment time seemed to stop, the wind calmed, and the cold rain no longer cooled my body. Then gravity won and zapped me like a puppet, slapping me down onto the gritty edge of the lane.
Waking, I’d stumbled on, concussion interfering with my consciousness. Up ahead, the cows were making their way to milking. Wavering amongst them, they greeted me; their swollen sides brushed my hands, their snorts deafened, and their size engulfed. They filed past, surrounding me with heat and the smell of grass and earth. Joyfully I shouted into the heaving mass, ‘Daddy, I’m here.’
The strong arms of Perry’s father, Mr Cutler saved me from being crushed to death. He took me to Cleave Farm where Mrs Cutler put me to bed in their dead son’s bedroom. As my world shifted in and out of focus, Perry came into the room. An unsettling awareness of fear came with him. There was no reason for my skin to prickle cold under the blanket that had once covered Perry’s dead brother Simon. Perry didn’t touch me or abuse me or shout at me. But something about the way he watched me as I lay helpless and alone in that bed stirred anxiety. From then on, he seemed infatuated with me. He was aware that I disliked him, and he suffered silently. Until the day I killed Frankie. That day he gained the upper hand. Unfortunately for the pair of us, our financial security depended, and still depends, upon our mutual respect. We have respected each other ever since, and dance a strange waltz around each other, both grateful for the other’s strengths and weaknesses.
Perry’s home, Cleave Farm, lies to the south of mine and adjoins my land. Perry rents many of my fields for his organic farm and lavender crop. Oaktree Cleave Village lies ahead to the west, and the main road cuts up through the Cleave, separating my house from the church and village. That road will branch across and destroy everything I’d managed to salvage after Frankie’s and Francine’s death.
There is a letter in the postbox along with flyers for pizza and gutter cleaning. It’s from Lily, my solicitor’s legal executive. She deals with the day-to-day running of my affairs. She does not like females addressed with a prefix, so instead I am ‘Carol Cage’ and have lost the ‘Miss’. The heavy vellum envelope is stamped ‘Thwaite & Hamilton’, and although Thwaite ‘Junior’ died a few years ago, his name was of significance in the city, and the associated celebrity was still highly regarded, so the name remains. I pocket this and make my way back. Today I will begin the long process of writing down each moment that led to me destroying Frankie’s life. Kicking at the gravel, I drag my feet back home, determined to find the strength to commit this painful recall to paper. Whether it will do me any good only time will tell. But as my dad used to say, ‘If you don’t try, then you don’t know.’
Chapter 2
Saturday, 6 September 1969
The orchard at Honeydew Farm was three miles away, south-east and over the hills surrounding the southern edge of the city. Sarah Burcher and I made our way there to scrump apples. We wore gym shoes that made our feet sweat, with shorts and blouses of thin cotton and cardigans tied around our waists.
Sarah pulled her hair tighter through its elastic band. She eyed the air rifle I had taken from the Cutlers’ house, Cleave Farm. She expected it to discharge of its own accord, so stayed away from it.
‘Did Perry see you?’ she asked.
‘No.’ Perry Cutler was probably following us, I thought, dipping in and out of the field alongside us, like the pervert he was. Hard to believe he must have been seventeen. He was such a child. Best that Sarah didn’t know.
‘Why get the air rifle, Carol? We’re in trouble.’ She fidgeted, picked a nail and shuffled her feet in the dusty grit at the edge of the lane.
‘No one’s gonna know. Need to practice. Gotta wipe that smirk off Denny’s face. He’s not beating me again. I can shoot better than him. Stop worrying.’
‘I’ll get a pellet in my eye just because you won’t let your brother win.’ She scuffed her foot and I contemplated that she would tell on me. She was becoming contrary, cantankerous, and getting podgy. ‘Filling out’, my mother said, as she looked at my athletic body with disappointment. I didn’t want to be like Sarah; her ability to climb fences had lessened as her thighs had widened. ‘You’re not gonna tell are you, Sarah?’
‘’Course not!’ However, her look was fragile, like ice in the melting sun, and the feeling that we were growing apart assaulted me again. That she would betray me wouldn’t have crossed my mind in the past, but the tide of hormones seeped in relentlessly, already altering my skin, bones and brain. Too much was changing. Leaving school or not leaving school. Boys. Clothes. Boys. Make-up. Boys. Virginity. Boys. Why were we talking about these things?
Footsteps crept behind us, making Sarah jump.
‘Oh, it’s you,’ she said, and moved to me to shield the air rifle.
‘Don’t be afraid of him, Sarah. He’s harmless. You haven’t grown up yet, have you, Perry. Still a little boy. Try standing in some fertiliser. Might help you grow up a bit. You short squirt.’
Grabbing Sarah’s arm, I pulled her along. Taking the rifle had been easy, as Perry was well aware. The front door of Cleave Farmhouse was always open, and the gun cupboard was in the hallway, with the key on top. Mrs Cutler had been in the kitchen, and Mr Cutler had been working on the tractor in the backyard.
‘Give me the rifle. Carol! Stop where you are right now. Or I’ll, I’ll …’ Perry strode after us.
‘You’ll what? Fetch your Dad? Go on then. I don’t care. I’ll tell him you got the rifle for me; that you’re showing off. Trying to make me your girlfriend.’
‘You wouldn’t dare, you little cow. Sarah will back me up, won’t you, Sarah. She won’t lie in case something happens to her.’ He stared at her left arm. She’d broken it, aged nine, when Perry had pushed her over. Her parents blamed her, for playing with the boys when she should have been helping her mum with the cooking.
Sarah put a restraining hand on my arm. Pushing her off, I snapped the rifle shut and drew it to my shoulder. Anger slipped through my finger and I pulled the trigger. The pellet scooted past Perry’s foot with a mechanical crack, sending up puffs of dirt. Sarah squealed and jumped.
‘You stupid cow. You hit me, you bitch.’ He sat on the dusty lane and examined his daps.
‘Stop being a baby. I missed. But I won’t next time if you don’t
piss off.’
‘No, you didn’t. Look at my dap. A hole straight through it.’ He held it out to me.
‘There’s no way from this angle…’ But my curiosity was spiked, so I placed the rifle down and went to him. ‘Where?’
‘Here.’ He lunged at me, grabbing my shoulders and pushing me back onto the lane. As I fell off balance, I flailed and tensed my neck to stop my head from hitting the floor. He was on top of me. His sweat-gleaming skin slid over mine as I frantically pushed at him, scrabbling for leverage. ‘Get off, you creep.’
‘Got you.’ His arm swept up across my neck, pinning me down, as his other hand grabbed my breast. Sickening heat squeezed into my flesh. His pimpled face hovered over mine as I inhaled his breath into my lungs. Before he could bring his lips down, I pulled my knees up, dug my heels in, thrust my body up in an arch and rolled left.
‘Piss off, you pervert.’ Scrabbling up, I ran forward and punched his nose before grabbing the rifle. ‘Run, Sarah. Now!’
We took off up the lane, leaving Perry to cover his bloody nose with a handkerchief. He wouldn’t be happy. A frisson of nervous tension fired through me.
Chapter 3
Saturday, 20 December 1969
Perry’s auntie Thora wanted to learn how to bake and had recruited Sarah and me to teach her. In return, Thora helped us with our homework. She was an excellent teacher, explaining difficult subjects calmly and logically. Much better than the ones we had at school. Except she wasn’t a teacher but a psychiatrist, Doctor Thora Kent. She had just retired from the psychiatric hospital, Maytree, known by us kids as the ‘nut house’.
Thora first invited us into her home, Oaktree House, the day Perry attacked me. We came upon her as she sat alone and crying in her broken-down car. We decided to leave our apple scrumping mission until the next day and try to help her. Luckily my brothers had taught me everything about cars, including how to drive, and with a mixture of rallying and turning the engine over in first gear, we got her home.
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