by Caro Ramsay
He stamps down hard.
He is standing on me, with his full weight.
I am pinned down, my face is on the bottom of the pond, my cheek against the plastic lining. I try not to breathe in the silt. The small plants jag at my eyes as I struggle to get my arms free to push myself up, but Grant just presses harder.
My pulse pounds in my ears; I try to get my adrenaline, try to fight, but there is nothing. My eyes are ready to burst, my throat burns, my lungs explode. I trickle air out the corner of my mouth; it bubbles lightly through the murky water, weaving through the fronds of the plants in a pretty dance. My next breath will be my last.
I try one more time, dragging every bit of energy together. My body does not respond. No ice in my veins, nothing.
Then I let go.
I feel myself drift, my face is skewered into the bottom of the pond, a pull on my hair, my face slammed back into the silt as Grant’s foot stamps the back of my head. I feel the cartilage in my nose give. The pressure eases, I twist my neck and think I see a shadow fall over me. The darkness is complete.
Then I am sick, relentlessly sick. In the grass. Lying. Solid ground.
Rod stands up. He was either checking Grant’s pulse or holding his head under water. Either way my brother is not moving, just floating.
I know Rod heard.
I know that Sophie is here.
Rod tries to hold me back as I crawl across the grass. ‘She is here.’ His grasp releases me. I am slipping in the grass, blood in my eyes, blinding me, but I know.
I climb up to the raised flower bed, devoid of flowers – things cannot grow where a body has been buried. My bare hands scrabble about in the earth, Rod’s hands join mine. Then he stops me, pointing to a sliver of silver catching the moonlight. Sophie’s locket.
Rod collapses beside me. ‘She never left, she never got away …’ He is crying now, his arm round my shoulder.
As I cradle his head I lie back and look at the heavens. White fluffy clouds race across the indigo sky but I feel no wind on my face, the night air is warm and still. And peaceful.
In the hushed garden, the words float into my head. I hear them, I can hear Sophie’s voice.
Must your light like mine be hidden,
Your young life like mine be wasted,
Undone in mine undoing,
And ruin’d in my ruin …
EPILOGUE
It’s nearly midnight, the deep chill in the air bites into my bones. Icy stillness hangs all round me. I am a living statue amongst the other statues that are already grey and cold. The trees of Eric’s garden are now bare; skeletal twigs stretch out into the night, birdless, lifeless.
The death of night, the endless sleep. This is my routine now that I have Sophie back.
I sit down, pulling my jacket under my thighs, resting my feet on the wall of the raised garden opposite. The bricks are peppered by diamonds foretelling an early frost. Autumn has already bowed out, winter is now centre stage.
I settle myself, wrapping my fingers round my mug of strong hot coffee. It is the one coffee I am allowed in a day and I savour every sip. In the dark I can make out the heap of rubbish near the back door of the house. Drawers, doors, and the old Belfast sink, which is now full of frozen rainwater and rotting leaves. Eric Mason’s kitchen will be in a skip tomorrow.
I am alone here. Mum and Rod are away cruising somewhere hot while I sort out the builders. I’m not sure how Mum felt when I suggested selling our house to buy Eric’s. I’m sure the neighbours thought it odd, buying the house where your only son drowned in the garden. But Rod told the guy across the road that it was a sound economic decision. Eric’s house was run down and cheap because nobody wants a house that belonged to a serial killer. Rod’s own interest was the big garden. Mum said that Grant had loved this garden. She didn’t want other people living where her only son had died.
I never realized what a good liar my mum can be.
They agree now that Eric’s house already seems like home. This garden is the right place to be. Good for reflection, contemplation and conversation.
I usually come out here at night. I started the habit when I was trying to make sense of it all. Just as I had felt Lorna guiding me on the hill, I feel Sophie talking to me as I sit here.
I now know that my brother killed my sister the minute she walked out the door, hiding her up in the long grass in Eric’s garden. It was Grant who drove her car to the reservoir and then ran back across the fields. It was Grant who forgot to adjust the car seat back to where it was.
My brother had a full hour to find a hole in Eric’s garden, easy in a garden full of ongoing landscaping. As the minutes slipped by, Sophie was later and later and Mum began to cry, Rod paced the floor. Grant pretended to go out to look for her and came back dirty from digging my sister’s grave, sweating from digging the hole that hid her.
I know all this now. But we have Sophie back with us, nobody is taking her away. Mum has stopped drinking. Losing Grant and finding Sophie have both eased her troubled mind. It has eased mine. I know that Sophie can hear me now, talking about my day.
‘We had the lunch today, Soph, it was awful,’ I say, my breath billowing into the steam from the coffee. ‘I thought it was Mary who wanted to meet me but when she walked through the door, there were two other women with her. Guess who?’
I sip my coffee. ‘Vera was there. Dressed up and looking ten years younger. The other one I only knew by the double plait in the hair. The hairstyle you nicked although you’d never admit it. But it was Magda, or Mags as she calls herself. She was kind of in disguise. She’s keeping out of the way of the press until the price is right. I read you that bit from the Mirror last week, didn’t I? Cow!’ I sniff; the night air is making my nose run. ‘Then it got difficult. Mary gave me an awkward hug, Vera tried to do the same, but Mags just summoned the waiters to pull the seats out for us.’
There is no comment. I sip my coffee again.
‘I read it all wrong, Sophie. They were celebrating. Mags ordered champagne. They were celebrating Mags being free of Eric, Vera being free of Alex, Mary for being with Eddie. She says the fiscal is throwing the book at Parnell. I hope it’s a big book, hope it kills him.’ I pause. ‘But Mary kept giving me funny looks. That lunch was not her idea. I’m not sure she has forgiven me for dragging her back. And you know, Sophie, I’m not sure I care.
‘But good God, they wanted all the details, the horror of the tunnels under the hill. But I didn’t tell them anything. Mags doesn’t need any more fodder for her tabloid exclusive. Exclusives? Can that be plural?’ Sophie remains quiet on the subject. ‘She wants to interview me for more details for a book deal she’s been offered. She had approached Costello, who told her where to go.’ I smirk. ‘Mags is a pain. I think I preferred the porcelain version with Eric doing her voice. At least he got a word in.’
I look at our own statue at the top of the flower bed; Rose, we call her. She too is being dusted with frost as she holds her harp, looking over her shoulder like someone might nick it.
‘What I never realized is that Mary and Mags have known each other for ages. Why did I not see that? We’d never have known if it wasn’t for that copy of Catch-22. I thought we were good at secrets, but Mary beats us hands down. You’d have rumbled her straight away.’
I sigh.
‘I asked Mary about Charlie. All she managed was “he’s well but he’s …” before Vera starts on about her Charles. The half-brothers are in competition already. Vera will get some money out of this, won’t she? You’d know about the legal side of it. I was zoning out when Mary slips her palm on mine and passes me this wee card, secretly. Like I say, good at secrets.’ I pull the card from my pocket. ‘It’s a drawing of me in a white coat wearing a miner’s hat. I have a huge head and a hairy face. This is what Charlie the Coco Pops kid thinks a doctor looks like.’ I show it to Sophie before folding it up.
‘But they never mentioned Lorna, Katrine, or Gilly or Carla. They are
too wrapped up in themselves. What kind of celebration of life is it that forgets the dead, or celebration of freedom that forgets the incarcerated? And the missing. They never mentioned you. Never mentioned Billy. Never mentioned what he did for them, what he gave …’
Sophie seems to contemplate this.
‘What did Rossetti say … Pleasure past and anguish past, Is it death or is it life? It’s all past. I said I needed to go to the loo, took my jacket and left. I sat in the car outside and wished I was meeting Billy for chips and cheesy sauce. I wish you had met him, you would have hated him.’ We share a giggle.
It is starting to rain now. The garden comes alive with pitter-pat noises, and the surface of the pond starts to dance in an echo of the Goblin Market. I can’t help but shiver when I think about the pond, the water, the noise of my nose breaking, my cheekbones shattering. I lift the mug to warm my face. But the injuries, the bruises, the water in my lungs made Costello’s job easy. Not that she was totally convinced about the self-defence, less convinced when she later spotted Sophie’s silver locket round my neck. She doesn’t miss much but I get the feeling she didn’t push as hard as she could have. Those cold grey eyes of hers see the bigger picture.
I kick the wall with my toe as if I’m shaking a bed to wake a sleeping friend. In this case it is a flower bed. Rod has reseeded it, some flowers that might bloom in the early spring.
Might.
I sip at my coffee. ‘If Mags and Vera are the alternative then I’m glad I am as I am. But why did they never mention you, Soph? Not even once?’
The silence intensifies, as if she’s thinking about it. The rain is streaming down my face, joining the tears. The surface of the coffee is spotting with raindrops.
A vulpine cough breaks the silence. In the night air it sounds like somebody stifling a laugh. I smile at Sophie, glad we are here, close by, still together. Glad that she never left. Glad that she never got away.
Then joining hands to little hands
Would bid them cling together,
‘For there is no friend like a sister,
In calm or stormy weather …’