‘I dunno.’ I haven’t got her full attention.
‘Well, I found it under your bed.’
‘Then it must be.’ She’s not being helpful and I can feel my rage building but know I need to keep a lid on it.
‘I can only find one. Any idea where the other one might be?’ I ask in my sweetest voice.
‘No.’
‘I need you to look at me Eva. This is important.’ I spin her around to face me, her eyes wide with shocked.
‘I don’t know where the shoe is.’
‘Are you sure this is yours?’ I hold the old plimsoll out to her.
‘Maybe.’ She examines it with uncertainty. ‘I don’t remember.’
As much as I want to continue to push the subject I refrain.
‘That’s OK. Go and watch the cartoons. We’ll go home soon.’ She starts to walk away still holding the shoe.
‘Can I have that back please?’
‘Yes.’ She hands it back to me, looking at me strangely.
‘Thanks. I’ve just got a few more bits and pieces to do then we’ll go. OK?’
Eva shrugs and returns to her position on the sofa as I turn and go back upstairs clinging to the shoe, my head a mess of thoughts.
Libby
After taking the girls to school, I go to see the vicar. I need to talk to someone about my discovery.
Robert is not used to me turning up at his house, so when I knock on the door he is surprised to see me.
‘Libby, what can I do for you?’ He sniffs loudly. The man seems to have a perpetual cold.
‘I need to talk to someone. I’m going mad. Can I come in please?’
Robert looks uncomfortable and suggests we walk around the graveyard instead.
‘I found her other shoe,’ I blurt out.
‘Sorry?’ Confusion furrows his brow.
‘Hope’s shoe. I found the missing shoe. The one they never discovered.’
‘Where?’ Robert turns very pale all of a sudden.
‘In Mike’s house.’
‘That isn’t possible.’ He shakes his head.
‘But I did,’ I remove the plimsoll from my bag and hold it out to him. Above us in a tree a blackbird calls out to his wife.
‘How do you know it belonged to her?’ Robert is looking at me as if I am mad.
‘I just do.’
‘Libby,’ he turns to me and takes hold of my shoulders with his bony hands, ‘Amit killed Hope. The police and the papers said so. The case is closed. You know that. He confessed.’
‘But what if he didn’t? We’ve never found her. What if someone else has her?’
Robert takes the shoe out of my hand and examines it. ‘I know Mike is not capable of that. So do you. You are pregnant and under a lot of pressure. Go home and put your feet up. Stop tormenting yourself.’
Unable to look him in the eye any more I turn my attention to watching Mr and Mrs Blackbird, who hop about on the ground pulling up worms.
‘Amit killed Hope.’ Robert says it again stroking the shoe.
‘You’re right. I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s come over me.’
‘I appreciate you must have been very upset, finding this shoe, but it cannot belong to Hope. You must be mistaken.’
‘I don’t know what I’m doing. Sorry to have wasted your time.’
‘You can always come and talk to me.’ He scratches his skull and a shower of white specks falls.
‘I’m going to go home and get some rest. Thank you, Robert. Can we please keep this thing between us?’
‘Of course.’ He smiles showing his aging crooked teeth.
‘I’ll see you soon. Thanks again.’ I wave turning to leave the churchyard.
When I’m sure Robert has returned to the vicarage, I go back to Mike’s house determined to find the other shoe. I’d not slept well the night before, tossing and turning, worrying about what my discovery meant.
I didn’t mention the shoe to Mike last night. I didn’t want to sound like a mad woman. I’d slipped the plimsoll into my handbag, certain that Mike wouldn’t find it there.
I walk along the damp street hugging my handbag to my side, feeling the shape of the shoe pressing against my body. The baby has been kicking violently since I discovered it. It’s as if she knows that something is wrong.
When I let myself into the cold, deserted house a shiver runs through my body. The place feels like a tomb. I hadn’t noticed before now. I’ve been so busy packing everything up into boxes it had not occurred to me how strange it was to be in Mikes’ home, surrounded by objects from a life that does not belong to me. He should be here doing this. It isn’t my place to decide what happens to Eva’s baby things or his dead wife’s belongings.
As I close the creaking front door behind me I remind myself not to be so easily spooked. But finding that shoe has sparked something inside of me.
All the questions I had after Danny died have come flooding back. What if Amit didn’t do it? What if Danny was wrong? What if Hope is still alive? What if I will never really know what happened to her? I am driving myself mad again, but there is nothing I can do to stop it. Everything I have tried to leave in the past has come crashing into the present and refuses to disappear.
I try telling myself that it is just a shoe and that hundreds of children will have owned the same pair as Hope but the voice inside my head screams something isn’t right. Doing my best to remember back to when Eva used to come and play with Hope, I wonder if I ever saw her wearing the pink shoes. But my memory will not answer the question. I keep coming back to the fact that Eva can’t remember if the shoe is hers. Why can’t she remember? Surely she’d know if she owned a pair of shoes like that.
Then I start to worry about what it means that I found the shoe in this house. If it were Hope’s shoe, why would it be here? What does it mean?
Taking myself into the kitchen I drink some icy water straight out of the tap. The temperature sets my teeth on edge and the water tastes nasty, as if there is too much iron in it. I guess the tap hasn’t been used for a while.
Leaving the empty kitchen behind I move from room to room, checking that I haven’t missed something, hoping to find the other shoe. But I don’t and the feeling that I had when I left Danny to go to Cornwall returns with a vengeance. In my bones I know something is wrong.
My handbag feels heavy on my shoulder as I climb the stairs to Mike’s bedroom. When I discovered his dead wife’s belongings in his wardrobe I’d decided I would leave them there and tackle them last. I dread going through items belonging to someone deceased. It reminded me of having to do it with Danny and Hope’s things. Of course I couldn’t bring myself to throw any of it away and so it was all stored in my attic. When I discovered I was pregnant for the third time I counted it as a blessing that I’d kept everything – as if it was meant to be.
Going through the bag of clothes that once belong to Emma Kelly I feel dirty, like a peeping tom or something. I never met her so it seems strange to be handling her things.
Pushing that feeling aside I take each piece of clothing out and fold it neatly on the floor. Her taste was very different to mine and I start to wonder what she was like. Mike has spoken about her, and I’ve seen photographs, but sitting here going through the clothes she once wore makes me feel closer to her somehow.
After the bag is emptied and I still haven’t located the missing shoe, it occurs to me that perhaps the thing that brought Mike and I together was loss. We’ve both lost important people in our lives. Not everyone knows what that is like. I worry that maybe our grief is the only thing that connects us – and then I remember the life growing inside of me.
I’m being silly, I tell myself getting up from the floor and putting the folded clothes back into the bag. Since finding the pink plimsoll I’ve been shaken up. Twin that with the hormones and I’m bound to be all over the place.
I lift the sack and put it back into Mike’s cupboard and close it. I don’t want to look at those things
any more. I’ve violated the dead woman’s privacy enough for one day.
Going downstairs I know what waits for me – The dreaded cellar. I’ve left it till last because I hate spiders. Mike said he’d got rid of them all when he came and had a clear out at the weekend but I doubt he managed to find them all.
I am still clinging to the plimsoll as I push the door to the cellar open. My large belly makes me feel off-balance as I stand at the top of the stairs peering down into the darkness. I need both hands to negotiate the stairs so I cram in into my pocket. The smell of damp floods my nostrils as I fumble about hoping there is a light switch. When my fingers connect with one I breathe a sigh of relief as a low light is cast down the stairway.
Trying my best not to examine the naked brick walls either side of me for webs, I slowly descend into the basement. When I reach the bottom my eyes adjust to the faint light in the small room. Against one wall I can see some tools hanging up. Below them is a bag of coal, an old broken chair and a few grubby cardboard boxes, bursting at the seams.
On the other side of the room are a few old shelves, home to forgotten items smothered with thick dusty spider’s webs. Looking around I don’t know where to start. I’m not touching those boxes in case a tarantula comes crawling out. Other than that there isn’t much down here. Deciding there is nothing for me to do I turn to leave the room when something brushes against the back of my head. Before I’ve had time to think I’ve grabbed a rake that is leaning against the wall and swung it round behind me.
The rusty metal teeth make contact with the back wall and pierce through it like butter. I let go of the rake. My heart is thumping hard when I realise it was only a web I’d brushed against. Feeling foolish I bring my hand up to my chest and catch my breath.
The rake is still sticking into the wall. I try and remove it. The surface it made contact with is a stud wall. Standing on tiptoes I try to peer through the small holes and see what is on the other side. The baby inside me kicks my ribs as if she is trying to tell me something, but I ignore her warning and start to pick at the crumbling holes.
The smell that comes through the wall is unlike anything I’ve ever smelt before. It is stale, rancid and bitter. The scent is unfamiliar but suggests something rotten lies behind the hollow wall.
Pushing my finger through one of the holes I manage to get a hook and pull a chunk of the plasterboard away. A cloud of dust explodes up into my face causing me to cough violently.
When the coughing fit subsides and despite the foul smell, I return to tearing chunks of the wall down. The splintered plasterboard digs into my palms breaking the skin, but I carry on regardless.
Something is behind that wall. Something hidden and I am desperate to know what it is. Like a woman possessed I continue to pull at the wall, watching as the hole expands with each new tug. My fingertips are bloody and the smell is growing stronger but still I keep going until I hear a sound behind me and spin round.
Mike is standing at the bottom of the stairs watching me.
‘What are you doing?’ he asks with his head tilted to one side.
‘I, well, I–’
‘Fancied some DIY?’ His chuckle fills the room.
‘It was an accident. I made a hole and then, I don’t know, I just wanted to see what was behind the wall,’ my words come quickly tripping over one another.
‘Ah Lib, you shouldn’t be doing that in your condition. Come upstairs and I’ll get you a nice cuppa.’
‘Did you know about this wall?’ My hands are shaking as the adrenaline starts to kick in.
‘Nope. No idea it was there. Come on, let’s get you cleaned up. You’re covered in dust.’ I can sense that he wants me to leave but it makes me more determined to stay.
‘I want to see what’s behind that wall, Mike. Are you curious?’ I brush some dust of my jumper, unable to look him in the eye.
‘Probably just an old chimney breast or something.’ He positions himself across the stairs and I instantly feel like a trapped animal. Then it dawns on me.
‘What are you doing here? I thought you were at work.’
Mike lowers himself slowly until he is sitting on one of the damp steps and puts his head in his hands.
‘Why couldn’t you just leave it? That damn shoe. Eva told me about you questioning her.’ His voice sounds different now, as if it belongs to someone else.
‘I don’t understand.’ I feign ignorance.
‘You had to come snooping about, didn’t you?’ He shakes his head from side to side and looks at me with dead eyes.
‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand. What are you talking about?’ My hand comes down to my belly and I try to soothe the life growing inside of me.
‘We could have been happy, the five of us. Then you go getting all upset about a shoe. It wasn’t even Hope’s. It must have belonged to Eva. But you wouldn’t let it go. You had to keep sticking your beak in where it wasn’t wanted.’ He stands up and takes a few threatening steps towards me. Moving backwards trying to keep some distance between us I fall through the hole in the wall and land on the sweaty ground on the other side. Scrabbling about like an animal caught in a snare, my hands find something cold and hard and I pick it up, hoping to use whatever it is as a weapon to defend myself.
It takes a moment for my eyes to make out what it is I am holding. My brain cannot process the object in my hand at first. Then I drop it and it crashes onto the floor, setting off an echo which dances around my head.
Petrified and unable to speak I stare down and the human bone I had been holding. Disgusted I push myself away from it and huddle in a corner of the dark dank space.
‘You weren’t meant to find her, Lib. No one was. It all got out of hand. It was an accident.’ Mike stands blocking my exit, looking down at me. The child I am carrying starts doing somersaults and I think I might be sick. Searching the small claustrophobic space I try to look for some way out but what I find instead is the small skeleton of a child lying in a heap on the ground.
‘It’s not what it looks like. I offered her a biscuit. She was so pretty and I just wanted to give her a kiss but she freaked out. I told her to stop screaming but she wouldn’t so I brought her down here. I’m sorry, Lib. I really am. I tried to get her to be quiet, to calm down but she wouldn’t listen.’
My eyes can’t look away from the remains that lie a few feet away from me.
‘I told her, you know, if you let me give you a kiss and a cuddle then you can go home. She liked it, she did. I promise I didn’t hurt her. She wanted me. I was really gentle but then she tried to bite me and I had to stop her.’
Tears stream silently down my face as I crawl on my hands and knees towards the bones.
‘I just wanted to show her how pretty she was. I didn’t want to kill her.’
‘Say her name.’ I choke through my tears cradling the bones in my arms. Mike just looks away. ‘Say it!’
‘Zoe.’ Mike speaks her name as if she is an angel.
‘Who is Zoe?’ I drop the bones, confused and revolted.
‘She was my first. Such a pretty little thing. Bright auburn hair and these dark eyes you would get lost in. Poor kid was neglected by her mother. She needed someone to love her.’
He makes it sound so pure.
My brains whirls round like a tornado trying to put the pieces together.
‘This isn’t Hope?’ I wipe the snot away from my face, still clinging onto the remote chance that my daughter may still be alive.
‘No, silly.’ Mike takes a flashlight and a set of keys from his pocket and flips the bunch round in his hand before squatting down to face me. I can smell the coffee on his breath and for a moment manage to forget the smell of death that hangs in the stagnant air.
‘Where is she?’ I stutter. He turns the flashlight on and points it into the furthest corner.
‘There she is.’
The bright light illuminates another pile of small bones. The skull, which lies lopsided on the earthy ground,
has a hole in it the size of a fifty pence piece. As I take in the scene of horror I notice a shackle around the leg bone. Only then do I vomit.
‘I wanted to love her. She was meant to be mine. She came looking for Eva. But she kept biting me so I had to do something. When I put the chain round her ankle she kept pulling and shouting. I told her to shut up but she wouldn’t. She kept pretending she didn’t want me to kiss her. She was mine for less than an hour. She’s been resting here ever since.’ Mike steps through the large hole in the wall and comes over to rub my back.
‘Get away from me,’ I push him away spluttering through waves of sick that pass over my body.
‘Don’t be like that, Lib. I told you it was an accident.’ He sounds genuinely offended. I look up at the monster trying to recognise the man I thought I loved. ‘We’ve got another little girl to think about now.’
For once the baby is not kicking. She is very still as I look down at the small bump protruding from my jumper. My entire body starts to shake as I wriggle away from Mike.
‘You need to take better care of yourself.’ He stands up, towering over me, and brushes the dirt from his trousers. ‘It’s not all about you anymore.’
‘If you think for one moment that you are ever going to lay a hand on this child you are wrong.’ I try to stand up but my legs won’t let me.
‘Come on now. That’s not very nice.’ Mike rests his hands on my shoulders and pins me down, long enough so that he can fasten the shackle around my ankle.
‘What are you doing?’ Immediately I pull at the thick metal chain trying to rip it from the wall.
‘You need to take it easy from now on.’ He goes over to Hope’s skeleton and runs a finger lightly along one of her bones.
‘You can’t do this. Someone will find me.’ I keep tugging hoping to loosen the shackle.
‘Shhh.’ Mike approaches and pushes a piece of stray hair away from my face. ‘You need to rest. We have to think about the baby.’ His eyes fill with a twisted love. ‘I’m gonna take good care of you. Both of you.’
Then I remember Gracie.
Frailty: a haunting psychological page-turner Page 22