Just Before I Died

by S. K. Tremayne

  The lunchbox is lifted higher. Her eyes glisten, but tears do not fall.

  She gazes at me and says nothing. Her eyes express pain, and sadness, and all that she must think of me. The mother who tried to leave her alone in the freezing world. I reach across the car to brush the hair out of her eyes but she pushes my hand away and sits as far from me as possible, in the extreme corner of the car. Gazing at me as if I am mad, bizarre.

  A man’s eyes. Angry. In a car. Dark hair, on a dark moorland night.

  Why do I remember that?

  Dart, Dart, every year thou breakest a heart.

  One more go.

  ‘Lyla, I know this is upsetting, but I really need to ask, to make sure: who did you really see in Hobajob’s? And who did you see the day you arranged the birds?’

  Her voice, when it comes, is monotonous. Her hand is beginning to stim, fluttering up and down. ‘Daddy,’ she says. Her lips tremble, her hands quiver.

  ‘You saw Daddy. How many times?’

  ‘Three times. Four. Three. It was him. It was dark, it was him. Always. Daddy. He was scary. And then … Then maybe it was another man. I’m not sure. Like him. But Daddy really.’

  ‘Another man?’

  ‘Maybe. Not sure. Not sure. Not sure. Daddy, I think. Please stop.’

  Her hands are shaking wildly now, as if she is fitting, having a spasm, and she is rocking backwards, forwards, backwards, forwards. I’ve gone too far, pressed it too hard, making her autism worse. But she saw Daddy three or four times? Does that really make sense?

  ‘Lyla—’

  ‘No, Mummy. LET ME GO IN!’ Her scream is unignorable. I accede.

  Kicking open the car door, she runs for the warmth of Huckerby Farm, and I follow behind. Inside, she makes straight for the dogs, who stir from the baskets and blankets, and race towards her with delight, she hugs them, and they all scamper upstairs.

  It is 9 p.m. Suddenly it feels weirdly normal. Adam is on the way home from the rangers’ meet at Moretonhampstead, which is twelve miles from everywhere, and always a hassle to get to and from. But he will be back soon.

  I hear Lyla upstairs: running to the bathroom, brushing her teeth, as I warm myself some onion soup.

  Is she asleep? Feeling a need to make sure, I climb the stairs to her room. She is flat-out unconscious, the book she was reading – Nonsense Verse by Edward Lear – has fallen from her hands, and spilled the blue plastic cup of water she keeps by her bed.

  My lonely daughter of the moor.

  Kissing her gently on her frownless brow, I inhale the peppermint smell of her toothpaste. My kiss makes her murmur in her dreams, her dreams of the moor, her dreams of dormice and dogs and days at Fingle Bridge, her dreams of Vellake Corner, the Valley of Rocks, the grassy banks of the West Okement, the days in the Gidleigh gardens in the summer, the picnics down at Dartmeet. I kiss them all, and whisper, ‘I love you, darling,’ and her dreaming blue eyes move under her veiny eyelids. But she sleeps, soundly, exhausted. Felix and Randal snooze at the foot of the bed. Knowing I will need to walk them soon, I rouse them, and quietly shoo them from the room.

  The dogs linger by Lyla’s door. I follow my own shadow down the landing.

  Right on time, the Land Rover returns. The engine is killed. The door opens. Adam flings off his fleece and blithely sits at the kitchen table with barely a nod in my direction. He opens a local paper. The Moorlander.

  I stare at him. Adam is reading the paper as if he is a Bible scholar with an early version of the gospels. Buzzard Shot With Air Rifle. Hit And Run Driver Admits Knocking Girl Off Pony.

  Crossing the kitchen, I grab the newspaper from his hand. ‘Adam.’

  He shakes his head, and tuts. His teeth grind but he does not speak. But I hear his thoughts. Not this again, you mad bitch.

  Am I going to say anything about Dan, the bargirl, or the accusations from Tessa? Yes. No. I’m not sure.

  ‘Adam, what if Harry Redway is involved in this? What if Harry Redway did something to my car? What if Lyla saw him, but thought it was you?’

  Now, at last, he looks right at me. Blue eyes colder than I have ever seen them.

  ‘My cousin Harry? Seriously?’

  I rush on, I must not stop: ‘Think about it. He looks like you. He’s all over the moor. We know he likes the ladies. Maybe I got drunk that night, and Harry came to see me. And something went wrong. Because—’

  ‘Kath!’

  I ignore him. ‘No. Because, get this, Adam: I found Harry out on the moor the other day. With a big axe. Under Black Tor. He said he was cutting firebreaks, but no one does that there, do they? Never seen it before. Ever. Not there. And he looked so guilty, it was weird – and I thought at first it was you—’

  Adam is almost snarling with scepticism. ‘If Harry looked guilty it was probably because he was poaching. Though he usually does it with Jack, because Jack likes the killing. It’s Harry who likes the cheap meat.’ Adam smiles, bitterly, and shakes his head. ‘Really. Kath, are you saying Harry, my little cousin Harry Redway, was with you the night you tried to kill yourself, that’s it all his fault and he’s been following you ever since? Are you now blaming it on him?’

  I stare back. Defiant. ‘Yes, I am!’

  Adam waves the idea away

  ‘Harry Redway was not with you on the night you drove into Burrator.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  A pause.

  ‘I just know.’

  I swallow my anger.

  ‘But there’s too much that is unexplained, Adam. I’m sure I saw things. Burrator. Hobajob’s. The hag stones, my hairbrush. And you heard Lyla singing that song. About death, the little blue light. The light which means there is a death approaching, someone is meant to die, very soon—’ I realize I must sound borderline crazy, but my anger is rising. Why is he ignoring my evidence? Why should I spare him the rest of the truth?

  He glares at me. I glare right back.

  ‘And what’s more, now I’ve had an email from—’ I hesitate, but I have to say it – ‘from Tessa. She’s been talking to Dan. She said Mum accused you of things, of, of, of evil things. In a letter. When you and Dan went to India.’

  His eyes glow with real anger ‘Evil? Me? Evil things? Jesus wept! You saw your mum in a fucking bus shelter, and she’s been dead nearly twenty years. You saw her because you have brain damage. You need help, Kath. We need to get help. You’re destroying your daughter. You’re killing all of us. Drowning us the way you tried to drown yourself.’

  He clenches a fist. He wants to use it. I almost want him to use it. Go on, punch me.

  And he is lying anyway. I remember his guilt. Whenever I talked about him staying up at Manaton, near Kitty Jay’s grave, he looked guilty.

  It all connects here. And I think I know how. Like a dazzling chorus, like sunrise over Buckland Beacon.

  It was when I mentioned the place he was doing up that he felt guilty. But it wasn’t when I mentioned it was near Manaton. It was specifically when I mentioned it was near Kitty Jay’s. Where my mother’s ashes were scattered.

  I’ve got him. I’ve found the lie.

  Kitty Jay.

  ‘You do know something about Mum, don’t you, Adam? Tessa said that. It’s something to do with Mum, isn’t it?’

  ‘Don’t be stupid, woman.’

  ‘Mum and you, Dan, or maybe Harry, somehow you’re all involved. A conspiracy. I know it. What the hell did you all do to me, what could you all have done to me that night? You did something, somehow—’

  He comes close, looking as if he is going to slap me, hard across the face, and yet there is also guilt in his eyes. I am right: he is lying.

  ‘Please,’ he says, and he sounds desperate. His voice is cracked, broken. ‘Please, Kath, please. Stop this right here, right now.’

  ‘But you’re lying! You are, all of you. That song. Harry looking guilty. My brother. My mother—’

  He speaks, very fiercely. ‘For fuck’s sake! Lyla’s song was
a song. No one is about to die. And as for your mother – who cares. Your batshit mother gave the house to them because she was a bitch, and because she was crazy from the cancer, and she died, and they burned her by the river, and your lovely brother got all the house, and we got half the ashes, and a lovely doll from Greenland: that’s all there is to it.’ Adam is growling now. ‘And, really, no, there isn’t some huge conspiracy. For God’s sake. It’s ridiculous, stop it all, please. You have to stop it for LYLA.’ A howling stops us both.

  The dogs.

  It’s a howling I have never heard. Felix and Randal?

  We swap glances: everything changes. Adam goes first, running up the stairs, I follow him. It is all dark: he snaps on the lights, and there are the dogs, howling at the end of the landing. They are outside Lyla’s door. It is shut.

  It is dark in there too, judging by the lack of light under the door.

  Adam yells; I scream, ‘Lyla!’

  But a sense of dread tears me up as we run towards the bedroom. Pushing the door. I turn on the light. The room is so cold. Bitterly, nightmarishly cold. The harsh, winter, moorland smell of rotten silage fills the little bedroom, with its glittery pictures of the Disney princess from Frozen.

  The window is wide open. The bed is empty. Lyla has gone.

  Dartmoor

  Monday evening

  Two heartbeats. One bedroom. No daughter. We stare at each other, run to the window.

  She’s climbed out the window. Or someone has taken her.

  Whatever the case: she is gone.

  And the dogs keep howling, howling so loudly they can probably hear them in Princetown. And I fear I will hear this howling for the rest of my life.

  Adam stammers, ‘She – she must have climbed out. Jesus. Christ—’

  ‘Or someone took her.’

  I fight the desperate tears. Panic is our enemy. I point at the window.

  ‘It’s easy to climb down, so it’s easy to climb up?’

  ‘Lyla!’ Adam shouts into the blackness and the slender mists and the rolling moors, shouting all the way to Hexworthy, shouting for our lost daughter. ‘Lyla!’

  There isn’t even an echo. His voice is swallowed in the dark. I am probably the only human that heard it.

  ‘The den!’ I cry, turning. ‘If she’s run away, that’s where she’d hide.’

  Adam turns, calling to the dogs, ‘Felix! Randal! Find Lyla! Lyla! Find her.’

  They look at him, puzzled. Heads cocked. They’ve stopped howling.

  What did they see? Or sense? As we all run downstairs, I work the scenario. Lyla could have climbed out, no problem. It’s a ten-foot drop, if that, with lots of handholds. Easy easy easy. And she’s a good climber, excellent even, with all that clambering up the tors on the moors. She is proud of her climbing skills.

  But why would she run away? Did she hear us arguing? We only shouted right at the end, but that was it, probably it was our fault. Guilt stabs me, brutal, and hard. First I try to kill myself – whatever my excuse – now I make my daughter run away? What did I expect? A reward for my behaviour?

  I pray that she is in the den. Out into the dark, across the yard, we sprint towards her little cave of thorns, eggshells and kingfisher feathers, and Adam pulls open the wooden door.

  Tinkle tankle, say the chains of paper clips, tinkle tankle.

  A soft, cold wind stirs the silvery chains.

  The den is empty, there’s no sign she’s been in here.

  ‘Lyla!’ Adam shouts, his desperate call a cloud of frozen vapour. He turns to me. ‘Could be she’s at the Spaldings’.’

  He might be right but I have the horrible sense he isn’t. What is she wearing, out here in this icy darkness? Pyjamas? Dressing gown? Did she get dressed or was she taken? Her bedroom door was shut. At some point the dogs, just outside, realized she was gone. By her scent, or lack of it, perhaps.

  ‘Lyla!’ Adam shouts again. Louder than I have ever heard him shout. ‘Lyla. It’s all right. Don’t be scared. Lyla! Come back!’

  I am phoning the Spaldings. My hands shake in the cold, the signal is feeble, it comes and goes, but here, if I walk to the top of the yard, I get two bars. Enough.

  ‘Lyla!’

  The Spaldings’ phone rings. Please let them be in. Please let them have her. Please please please. I realize, as their phone rings and rings, unanswered, that we have no idea how long she has been gone.

  My daughter could be anywhere.

  ‘Lyla!’

  The Spaldings’ phone rings, and rings.

  ‘LYLA!’

  There is no answer. She can’t be there.

  Adam is running back into the longhouse. Does he have some new idea? Is she hiding in the house?

  My hands are hurting from the cold as I try Emma Spalding’s mobile.

  Maybe they are already bringing Lyla home to us.

  She answers immediately.

  ‘Emma!’

  ‘What? Hello? Kath?’

  ‘Emma, where are you you’re not at home I’ve been desperate, we’re trying to get hold of you, Emma—’

  ‘I’m in the bath, Kath.’

  ‘Emma, please—’

  ‘Was that you on the landline, ringing just now? We’re going away tomorrow, off to London. Sorry, Kath, what’s wrong?’

  ‘So you’re still at home?’

  ‘Yes.’

  I force the words. ‘We’ve lost Lyla.’ A momentary, awful pause.

  ‘What?’

  ‘She’s run away, or just gone. Disappeared. Is she there? Is she there with you?’

  ‘God, oh my God, Kath, no, she’s not. There’s only me in the house. George is on his way back from Okehampton. The place is empty – but I’ll go and check the outhouses, the horses – you never know – she could be with the horses.’

  The phone shakes in my hand. Emma rings off: I’ll have to wait. The phone shakes so hard I nearly drop it. Cold, and nerves. Cold: and terror. The moorland stretches all around us, with its terrible emptiness, sedge and turf, tors and mire, leats and quarries and deadly shafts. The tin mines at Whiteworks, the reservoir at Burrator. The sky is cloudy, the quarter moon will not help us find my daughter. She is lost.

  Unless she is at the Spaldings’, she is gone.

  Adam re-emerges from the house, carrying two torches and two coats and no daughter. He runs to me and gives me a torch and coat. Our argument is forgotten. We are a marriage again. Team Redway, trying to find Lyla, and I have the dreadful, plunging expectation of failure. This is it, I tried to kill myself, and my little girl is doing the same thing.

  Or someone took her?

  The phone rings, Emma Spalding. Hope soars to the clouded moon, somewhere over White Lady Falls, Raddick Hill, Lookweep Estate.

  ‘Sorry, Kath. No sign of her. So sorry, so so sorry.’

  Adam shines a torch in my face. I shake my head, and give him the news. ‘Lyla’s not there, not at the Spaldings’.’

  ‘I’m calling the police.’ He takes out his own phone. The nearest police station is probably Yelverton. It’s an hour’s drive, or longer in the dark. How many men can they assemble this evening, how many square miles of moorland could they search, how long can my daughter survive in this cold? There won’t be time if she’s in pyjamas. She could be dying NOW.

  Shivering in some field, by some dry-stone wall. Her eyes slowly closing, her heart slowly stopping. Blue beginning to tinge her lips.

  O little blue light …

  ‘I’m calling everyone,’ I say, and I do, while Adam starts exploring the yard, shining his torch into thickets, over bent wooden fences, forlornly hoping she might be hiding nearby. I don’t think he will find her. The dogs would have scented her. Felix and Randal are sitting in the doorway, halfway to whimpering. They’ve lost her, too. And if they’ve lost her, she is really, truly, properly unfindable.

  I call everyone from anywhere who might know anything, or anyone who has ever encountered my daughter. I call parents from the school
.

  ‘Yes, it’s Kath Redway, we’ve lost Lyla. If you know anything – please please help – please call me.’

  I call pubs. ‘Is that Two Bridges, yes, it’s Kath Redway, remember, from Huckerby Farm? We can’t find our little girl – Lyla, remember, blue eyes, black hair.’

  I call my brother. For all our distance, and mistrust, he is still my brother. Her uncle.

  He listens in awful silence And says, ‘Oh. Jesus, Kath. Fuck. Fuck. I’m at a garage on the A30, not far away, I’ll turn round now. Oh my God. Be there in thirty minutes. Jesus.’

  My mind spins, as the world spins. Lyla is on the moor: right now, shivering in the dark, in the bird-killing frost. I feel something like grief, already. Grief and anger and hatred: of everything. I will not let the world do this.

  ‘Adam!’

  He does not hear me. He is yelling down his phone, calling cousins, friends, rangers. Soon there will be people here, scouring the moor, but the roads are so long and narrow it could be ages before they get here. And it will take many hours to search the moor in darkness, and how will we find her in the dark: how do you search three hundred and sixty-five square miles of swamps, drowned quarries, ancient impenetrable woodland, and bottomless tinning pits? Three hundred and sixty-five square miles of places for a child to fall. And die.

  ‘Lyla!’

  Adam is screaming into the frosted mist, his voice sharp with outright desperation.

  ‘Lyla?’

  Now he turns to the dogs, calling them over; bending to their upturned noses; he has something in his hand. He shines his torch on it, and I see it’s a T-shirt, one of Lyla’s, with a big picture of Mowgli on it, smiling. My little feral jungle girl. My collector of shells and snails, and feathers and claws. Could she survive out there, for an entire night?

  ‘Here, boys,’ he says. ‘Here. Smell this. Lyla. Find Lyla. Find her.’

  The dogs sniff at the T-shirt. But they are not bloodhounds, so scenting is not their first instinct: they are lurchers. They hunt and they kill. Dutifully they bury their noses in Lyla’s T-shirt, then they look up, forlorn and scared, and puzzled.