Little Black Lies

by Sharon Bolton

‘What will happen to him?’ Chris asks, as we sit down.

  ‘I’m sure he’ll be fine,’ I say. ‘He’ll be cold and a bit frightened, but there’s no real harm can come to him. The weather forecast is good tonight. Do you want to take Peter, so I can help Grandma?’ I hand the small boy over to the bigger one.

  ‘Will he die?’ asks Michael.

  ‘Of course not. How could he die? Pecked to death by a penguin?’

  Quick as a flash, Michael becomes a penguin, arms stiff by his sides, hands sticking out at right angles, mouth pursed like a beak. He starts pecking away at his little brother, who naturally decides it’s the best game ever.

  ‘Sam Welsh’s mum says he’ll die of exposition,’ says Chris.

  ‘Exposure, and that’s very unlikely. Lots of people sleep outside in the summer.’

  ‘More,’ demands Peter.

  ‘In tents. In sleeping bags.’ Chris still looks troubled.

  ‘I’m not saying he won’t be uncomfortable, just that a night out of doors won’t do any permanent damage.’ I can tell no one is fooled by my determination to look on the bright side.

  ‘We blew out the pumpkin candles,’ says Michael. ‘So that if he comes near here he won’t be frightened.’

  ‘I said they should.’ My mum won’t let an eight-year-old take the praise that is her due. ‘I expect his parents were there,’ she says, in a low voice, as though Chris and even Michael aren’t hanging on to every word. ‘You never know what you have till you lose it.’ Mum puts two mugs and a covered plastic cup down on the table. ‘Goodness, what that poor mother must be going through. Oh, did you want some, Rachel?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ I say, although I’ve eaten nothing since lunch.

  Mum helps me tuck the boys into their respective beds and then I walk her out to her car.

  ‘Do the police think there’s any connection?’ she asks me as she opens the door, and I press into the hedge to avoid the wind. ‘With the other two?’

  ‘No one’s said anything.’ Except my father, I think. He’s determined to see a conspiracy.

  ‘All three vanished from near water.’ She lowers her ample frame into the driver’s seat and looks up at me. ‘Maybe we have to be thinking about people with boats.’

  Half the people who live here have boats and she knows it. ‘I’m sure we’ll find him tomorrow. Goodnight, Mum.’ I bend to peck her on the cheek and pretend not to notice when she half flinches away from me. ‘Thanks for all your help.’

  She snorts and drives away before I have the chance to step clear. She doesn’t drive over my foot but it’s a close-run thing.

  * * *

  An hour or so later, a startled cry rouses me. I wait for a few minutes; there is always a night light in the little one’s room and he’s pretty good at settling himself. Not tonight, though. He starts crying in earnest and I know he’ll wake the others.

  A flicker of light outside the house catches my attention as I’m making my way down the corridor. I step closer to the window, knowing it’s unlikely I’ll be seen from outside.

  There is a vehicle in the road. One I know immediately, even if I didn’t recognize the pale-faced, dark-haired woman in the driver’s seat. Once again, Catrin is parked outside my house at night, looking up at my youngest son’s bedroom.

  * * *

  I lock the door as I leave the house, which I almost never do, but the missing child, not to mention my anonymous correspondent, is bothering me. The wind that has been absent for much of the day has picked up now, forcing the buildings to creak and groan in protest.

  Unusually, also, I left a note on the kitchen table for Chris. I’ve never known him wake and come down in the night, but this doesn’t feel like a normal night.

  Gone to check on the horses, I’d written. Back soon.

  ‘Oh, you are kidding me,’ moans my horse.

  ‘Come on, you lazy bastard. Earn your keep for a change.’

  I have him saddled in a matter of moments and then I lead him out of the yard along a strip of grass that effectively muffles sound.

  Catrin’s house is several miles away by road, but across country I can get there in a little over half an hour. We’ve been playing this game for a while now. She drives past my house at night, sometimes stopping for minutes at a time. I ride over to hers. I seem to know when she’s out there and I can’t help thinking she knows when I’m close too. Yet we do nothing. One night, maybe tonight, one of us will do something to break this deadlock.

  And maybe, if we do, maybe I can start to find myself again. To pull myself, with penance done, from the depths in which I’ve been floundering.

  For over twenty years, most of our lives, Catrin was the other half of me. Even when I was sick with jealousy that she had Ben, I still needed her in my life. Now, years after we last spoke, I am lost without her. I would cut off my own arm, rip my face to ribbons, if it were sufficient penance for what I did. I sometimes think there is nothing I would not do, no sacrifice too great, to get Catrin’s forgiveness.

  To wash away the albatross’s blood.

  The islands are transformed by the setting of the sun. As the colours fade to monochrome, as the fine contours of the landscape melt into shadow, so the sounds and scents and textures of the land wake up. People who live in the populated parts of the world talk about the quiet, the stillness, of night. Here, when the sparse population goes to its rest, the opposite happens. Here, night-time means an endless cacophony of noise. The nesting birds that Bee and I ride past chuckle and gossip, in a constant, squabbling carpet of sound. Overhead, avian teenagers carouse in high-pitched revelry, drunk on flight and freedom. Hawks sing, penguins on the nearby shore bray at the howling of the wind, while the clifftop albatross colony might be discussing politics, so varied and intelligent seem their conversations. Beneath it all is the endless grumble and roar of the ocean.

  I leave the track, heading out across open countryside, knowing from the sweetness around me that I am travelling through gorse. When we reach the peat, the smell will become one of dank, rotting vegetation. The wind has gained in strength, irritating Bee, but we soon arrive at the point where I can turn him, and now the wind is behind us, urging us on.

  DON’T LEAVE HIM ALONE

  Halfway, I almost turn and go home. I have left all three of my boys alone. If someone has been watching me, maybe they saw me leave the house.

  ‘Maybe they’re there now, sneaking around, looking for a way in.’

  Trust my horse to make a helpful contribution to any internal debate. And it’s a ridiculous idea. No harm can come to sleeping children here. I tell him so.

  ‘Archie West’s parents left him alone.’

  ‘Archie is lost. He wandered away. That’s as sinister as it gets.’

  ‘You keep telling yourself that, love.’

  ‘We go home when I say so. Now shut it.’

  There is light in Catrin’s bedroom. I see it when I’m still over half a mile away. It’s not so unusual, though, for Catrin to be awake late. She takes her boat out at night, anchoring in some isolated bay. Maybe she, too, has trouble sleeping.

  The last stretch takes me along the road, although I keep to the verge to muffle the sound of Bee’s hooves. I can see the upper storey of the house, the tips of the skeletons, but the gorse hedge that grows around the garden screens most of it from view. I get down and in a sheltered spot behind a rocky outcrop I tie up Bee.

  There is a weak point in the hedge. It’s uncomfortable, pushing through thorns, but I’ve done it before. Head down, I squeeze myself in tight and I’m soon through. The light I saw from a distance is still shining. As I step closer to the house, I think I’m half willing her to look out and see me, or for Queenie to sense my presence and start barking.

  A short distance away, Bee snickers and a second later, I hear a soft, low, human sound. A grunt of effort, a fraction more than a sigh. Someone is coming. I slip back into the hedge and wait.

  A tall man strides to the gate
and steps over it. He stands on the edge of the garden looking around.

  ‘Hello?’

  I recognize the accent immediately, if not the voice it belongs to. This is a Scotsman. Coupled with the man’s height and breadth, it can only be Callum Murray.

  Who seems to see me, to be looking directly at me as he crosses the garden to the point where I’m hiding. I shrink back further, but know I can’t get away without making a sound. I’m saved by the fact that he doesn’t know this garden as well as I do and doesn’t see the stack of harpoons. His foot catches one. Thrown off balance, it falls and dislodges the others; they clatter to the grass.

  I take advantage of his distraction to get further into the hedge, but as I’m about to turn and go, the back door of the house opens.

  ‘Bit late for trick-or-treat.’ Catrin is in the doorway, barely visible against the darkened room. Callum mutters something about thinking he’d seen her in the garden. As he steps closer their voices are masked by the wind, and I can no longer hear what they are saying. The voice in my head, though, is loud and clear. Catrin and Callum are together again.

  Three years ago, I’d known there was something Catrin wasn’t telling me. I’d known for months. She’d changed. Her time was suddenly much more limited, for one thing. And she’d lost that openness, that willingness to share everything that was going on in her life. I knew she was holding something back. I toyed with the idea that she and Ben might be having problems, but deep down I knew it wasn’t that. There was no sense of unhappiness coming from her. Then, one day, I rode Bee up here without telling her I was coming. I tied him up, in the exact spot he’s tied now, approached the door and heard her voice from round the back of the house. I made my way round and stopped at the corner.

  At the rear of Catrin’s house, the side that faces the sea, is a suntrap. When the wind is light, and the sky clear, it forms a small patch of bright warmth. It was late spring, and this was a hot day by Falkland standards.

  Catrin was lying naked on a cluster of scatter cushions with a man, also naked, whom I knew instantly wasn’t Ben. The broad shoulders reaching over her were fair and overly muscled, his legs so much longer than those of her husband. The tension in her body, the way her toes curled and pointed, her fingers clutching his shoulders, told me they were about to make love. Then he raised his head and I recognized the sandy hair.

  I fled the scene, wondering how I’d keep a secret so immense, so important. It was beyond belief – for me anyway – that a woman whom Ben came home to every night could even think of looking elsewhere. At the same time it made perfect sense, and Catrin’s barely concealed interest in the Scotsman who’d fought in the conflict became entirely understandable.

  What I felt that day, when I got over the shock, was nothing less than joy. Catrin had met someone else. I knew her well enough to be sure she wouldn’t be having an affair with a man she didn’t care for. Catrin had fallen in love with another man. Ben could be free again. Free to be with me. It would be complicated, of course, and I would feel bad about taking the boys from their father, but we could work something out. Suddenly, my life was full of possibilities. For the first time in years, there was hope of happiness, not just consolation. Something more than solace.

  I’m feeling something of that now, as I lead Bee away. Catrin is seeing Callum again. If he’s back in her life, is it a sign that she’s recovering? If she can find happiness again, maybe she can find a way to let me back in too.

  DAY TWO

  Tuesday, 1 November

  29

  The search for Archie continues the next day. All morning, the horsemen of the apocalypse, as my father insists on calling us, patrol the beaches, looking for the sand-smeared remains, the tiny shoe poking out from behind rocks. Others, including Catrin and Callum, fine-tooth-comb the hills. As noon approaches, optimism is becoming an effort. If the child did nothing more than wander off, he would have been found by now. If he died on the moor, he would have been found.

  There remain two possibilities. The first, that he fell into the river and was swept downstream and out to sea. In which case, if the tide hasn’t brought him up already, it is unlikely to do so. We may never find him.

  The other possibility, over which opinion is sharply divided, is that someone may have taken him. No islander, other than my father, will admit openly that this is a possibility but the visitors are thinking it. The military are thinking it. Everywhere I look I see an undercurrent of concern building in strength. People are openly dissatisfied. They are starting to take sides.

  I have to leave the search at midday. Mum, who had Peter all morning, has a hospital appointment, and it’s one of my days for picking the boys up from school. I collect my youngest and, not being able to face even an hour at home alone with him, I head into Stanley.

  There are more people in town than we would ever normally see. A lot of them are service personnel, in town to help with the search. Others are coming off the Princess Royal. Nothing new in that, of course, but visitors typically come ashore for a few hours at a time, to watch wildlife, travel to the less accessible beaches. They don’t hang around in Stanley. This lot, though, seem drawn to trouble the way flies are to rotting meat.

  It’s not as though any of them can know Archie’s family, because the Wests came here independently, not on the cruise ship. These people with their big hair, their bright man-made fabrics and their gleaming white trainers are here for the drama. They are here to inhale the stench of our trouble.

  I collect a bundle of post, tucking it into my bag without looking properly. In the store, I see Roadkill Ralph buying roll-up paper and tobacco. He nods to me and seems about to say something, but the woman at the counter speaks to him and he turns away.

  When I’ve got everything I need, I still have an hour before school finishes, so I head to Bob-Cat’s Diner for coffee. The swing door is heavy, difficult to manoeuvre with a buggy, so I’m not really concentrating on who’s inside.

  ‘Bang, bang, bang!’ A child’s voice. My child.

  Something shatters on the stone-tiled floor as the door slams shut. Behind the counter, Bob-Cat curses. Everyone else in the room has fallen silent.

  Callum, standing between the counter and the door, is staring down in horror at my son, at the gun in his hand. The remains of a coffee mug are scattered across the floor. My child bursts into ugly loud sobs.

  ‘For God’s sake, mate, it’s a kid’s pop-gun, what’s with you?’ Bob-Cat is seriously pissed off about the broken mug and spilled coffee.

  Callum is still staring and there is a light in his eyes that I don’t like, certainly don’t recognize. I pull the buggy back as Bob-Cat leans across the counter and tugs at Callum’s shoulder. It does the trick. He shakes his head, as though to clear it, then looks down at the mess on the floor.

  ‘Shit, I’m sorry.’ He bends down, starts to gather up the broken pieces, then stops. ‘Rachel, I think the coffee caught him. I think he’s burned.’

  Suddenly, everyone in the diner is an expert on first aid, determined to make a massive fuss of the child, who stops wailing once he realizes he’s the centre of attention. There is a pink mark on his left shin and coffee stains on his sock, but we strip it off, wrap cold, wet cloth around his leg, and in a minute or two there isn’t a mark to be seen.

  While the rest of us are seeing to Peter, Callum clears up the mess and offers to pay for the mug. Bob-Cat takes him at his word and charges him enough to buy a set of bone china.

  ‘It was my fault,’ I say, when some semblance of peace is restored. ‘I didn’t realize he had that with him. It’s his brother’s. It must have been tucked away at the bottom of the buggy.’

  ‘No harm done.’ Callum has also insisted on paying for my coffee and my son’s milkshake. I’d intended to head for an empty table at the back of the room but that seems rude now. Besides, Callum and Catrin? I take a stool beside him at the counter. The child complains, predictably enough, so I unfasten his reins and lift
him on to my lap. He tries to climb off, on to the counter, but is distracted by a biscuit.

  ‘No luck this afternoon?’ I ask.

  Callum lowers his voice. ‘Stopford’s a fool. He won’t accept any possibility other than the kid wandering off. So he’s keeping the search in one area only. No one’s looking anywhere else.’

  I think about this for a second. About the sheer size of the islands. ‘Yeah, but fair play, where would he start?’

  ‘There’s been no real attempt to find this other Land Rover the kid’s brother saw.’

  Behind us, the door opens and a smell of frying food, seaweed and diesel fumes blows in, as though we are at the end of a wind tunnel leading directly to the harbour. When I turn, I see Roadkill Ralph, his nicotine-stained fingers clutching a half-smoked roll-up.

  ‘Them boys o’ yourn been playing on the wreck?’

  It takes me a second to get over my surprise that Ralph has actually spoken. ‘I don’t think so. They know they’re not allowed to go out there by themselves.’

  He nods and sucks on the thin, straggling cigarette, before turning and leaving the diner.

  ‘Must get him and the girls round for dinner some time.’ Callum’s face is completely deadpan and in that moment I see exactly what Catrin saw in him. Sees in him? I am amazed to find myself laughing. A second later, he joins in.

  I stay too long in the diner, too long chatting to Callum about nothing, when all I really want to say is, how is Catrin? Will she talk to me, do you think? And by the way, I know I never thanked you for what you did that day. I know you went into the water looking for me, for my sons, that you risked your life to save ours, but that was the day when her sons died, when I became the monster that nobody can quite bring themselves to look in the eye, and we can’t talk about that, can we? Not ever?

  He leaves first. I follow more slowly and push the buggy up the hill to my car. I must be more distracted than usual because I actually get in the wrong one. It’s easy enough, no one locks their vehicles here and we have a lot of light-coloured Land Rovers. I open the rear door and think that someone has stolen the child’s seat. Then I see the cardboard box of bacon labels, register that my car has never been this filthy, this covered in sand, and realize I’ve opened Bob-Cat’s by mistake. Embarrassed, I climb out and look around, but no one seems to have spotted me, so I take hold of the buggy and slink a few yards further up the hill to my own car.