Weirdo

by Cathi Unsworth

  Debbie had first encountered Corrine Woodrow in a needlework class, halfway through last autumn term. She’d sat down beside her and started chattering away, like they had known each other all their lives. Debbie, who had been trying so hard to cultivate an aura of impenetrability, was completely taken aback.

  Corrine didn’t look friendly. She didn’t wear a shirt or tie, just a tight, V-neck sweater with an equally skinny pencil skirt and a worn-down pair of stilettos. Long, dark brown hair fell into heavily kohled eyes. The smell of patchouli oil clung to her like a cloud.

  She hadn’t come from far away, Corrine told Debbie, just the other side of Norwich. But her mum had lived here before, her mum was Ernemouth born and bred, in fact. Corrine blushed when she said this, her fingers flying deftly across her sampler, working far faster and with more accuracy than Debbie could have managed while talking so much.

  All the other girls in Debbie’s class were soon talking about Corrine’s mother too. Kelly Grimmer had it on good authority that Mrs Woodrow had a reputation. Debbie already knew where that had come from. There were motorbikes parked outside Corrine’s house all day and all night.

  But Debbie had never particularly liked Kelly Grimmer. She’d not been immune to the whispers herself when she had started to subtly alter her appearance, going a little bit further each time she got away without a bollocking from her dad. The black eyeliner, the pair of crimpers that had transformed her brown hair into a thatch of corrugated spikes. All the sanctimonious warning chunters only served to bring her closer to Corrine, and the more she had found out about her new friend’s life, the more Debbie had wanted to protect her. She’d even got Corrine a job in the guesthouse where she worked the summer season – and had six long weeks to regret it.

  Corrine worked away at the Pac-Man, chewing gum furiously as her fingers pushed the buttons. Unconsciously, her left foot moved to the rhythm, skinny ankle rising and falling out of her turquoise shoes. Corrine had been so proud of them, bought with her first pay packet. She’d not had a chance to spend any more on herself since; her mother snatched her wages off her as fast as she could earn them. Now those shoes, so pretty back at Easter, were scuffed and marked, the sides boated out and the heels in need of repair.

  Debbie chewed at her black-painted nails, thinking about where she could have been tonight, if only she were a year older. How she could have been with Alex.

  Alex Pendleton was the boy next door. Tall, black-haired, hauntingly handsome, he had taught Debbie all about music and style, implanting within her the desire to do anything he could. In the long term, that meant following him to Ernemouth Art College, where he was already in his second year. But right now, Alex was travelling around the country on Mars Bars National Express tokens and a hitcher’s thumb, following bands with his friends, Bully and Kris. They wouldn’t have minded Debbie coming. But her mum did. “Not until you’ve finished your O-levels,” was what she had to say about it.

  If she hadn’t been lumbered with Corrine, Debbie could at least have tried to get through the doors of the pub they all drank in, Captain Swing’s on the South Quay. There were a couple of boys in her class who had managed it, Darren Moorcock and Julian Dean, who had turned into goths over the summer and looked much older with the hair and make-up. But if she so much as mentioned the place to Corrine she would stick her bottom lip out like she was about to burst into tears.

  Michael Jackson gave way to Wham!’s “Club Tropicana”. Debbie shuddered inwardly.

  * * *

  Outside, the Golden Mile glittered and flashed, beckoning the punters with a neon wink. Horse-drawn carriages full of tourists clopped north from The Mint, past the new indoor leisure centre, the landscaped gardens and miniature village, all the way to the next pier.

  Unlike The Britannic, The Trafalgar Pier had been commissioned with some civic pride in mind, to celebrate Nelson’s famous victory. That it took another fifty years to erect suggested that the enthusiasm of the townsfolk had not been equal to that of the Aldermen who conceived it. Still, it was the grandest building on the seafront, twin towers surrounding a glass and steel pavilion. During the winter this became a roller-skating rink, but in its present summer incarnation as a beer garden it represented the ultimate triumph of the will of the people over any misplaced ideas for their betterment.

  At the end of the Golden Mile, the horses would stop to deposit their excited cargo at the gates of the very pinnacle of Ernemouth’s pleasure palaces, where the snow-capped tops of painted wooden mountains, spinning Ferris wheels and redand-yellow-striped helter-skelter towers announced they had arrived at the Leisure Beach.

  Its mile-long rollercoaster was the longest in all Europe. Its latest attraction, the Super Loop, spun revellers round in a gigantic circle at 100 mph. There was a queue beside it that had stretched the length of the park ever since the ride had been installed.

  A queue that, from his office eyrie in the tower at the centre of the park, Eric Hoyle would, on any ordinary night, look down on with a smile, counting each head and the £5 entrance fee, £2.50 concessions, they represented. With the soft clack of an adding machine as a soothing soundtrack, he might pour out a finger of Scotch, light a cigarette and gaze out on his kingdom, eyes wandering across the cobweb of illuminations and out to sea, where the lights from the oil platforms would wink back at him.

  But tonight was not an ordinary night. Tonight, Eric’s eyes were fixed on only one thing, a photograph that he normally kept locked in his safe, a photograph Edna believed he had long ago thrown away in one of his fits of pique.

  His daughter Amanda, wearing a psychedelic kaftan, her blonde hair tumbling out of a matching headscarf, holding in her arms the tiny bundle of his first and only grandchild.

  The cigarette in his right hand was burning down to the filter, but Eric hadn’t noticed. His shirt open at the collar, his tie thrown on top of a pile of paperwork next to the bottle of whisky and the tumbler that held more than three fingers tonight, he continued to stare, his eyes narrowed and his mouth set into a thin, grim line.

  Beyond the Leisure Beach, Marine Parade carried on past the caravan parks and the windswept dunes of the South Denes to the very tip of Ernemouth, where the spit from which the town had first risen gave way to the North Sea. Here, atop a column that was a twin to the one in the London square, Admiral Nelson stood guard over the county of his birth, his eyes forever cast towards the horizon, warding enemy outsiders away.

  3

  Reality Asylum

  March 2003

  An hour later, Sean had found his way out of the forest and onto the A11 towards Norwich. The landscape began to alter, pine and scrub heath giving way to wide, brown, ploughed fields, fringed with coppices and long lines of poplars. He passed villages with duck ponds and flint-towered churches, gatekeeper’s cottages and farmsteads, the sky getting bigger and the land lying lower as he went. Traffic kept up a steady flow around him and, though the clouds still lay sullen, he could turn off the windscreen wipers. But he kept the radio on.

  He wasn’t really listening to it now, just wanted the background hum of voices to distract him from what he had seen in the secure unit. What he had felt there. The appearance of Corrine Woodrow had come as a shock, nothing like what he expected. Stupid to think that she would be, but photographs had a way of doing that to you, of keeping a face suspended in time. Sean had been as much of a sucker for that as any other punter.

  The doctor in charge of the institution had taken Sean into his study for some mild interrogation before allowing him to see her. Robert Radcliffe was an elegant man in his early sixties, his still-dark hair clipped neatly around his bald pate, a Jermyn Street shirt and Savile Row trousers visible beneath his white coat. For such a man to be in charge of a place like this, rather than coining it in Harley Street, suggested to Sean a dedication that ran deep and did not expect to be trifled with.

  Dr Radcliffe had peered at Sean over half-moon spectacles, across the desk that, like everyt
hing else in the room, was bolted to the floor. “And what are you expecting to achieve by coming here today?” he enquired, in a rich baritone with a hint of Scots burr.

  “I’m not entirely sure,” Sean replied, opening his palms as if to assure the doctor of his honesty. “I’ve never worked a case like this before. I just wanted to meet Corrine before I hear what anyone involved in the original investigation has to say about her.”

  The doctor nodded, explained to him how Corrine was not regarded by anyone who worked here as a security risk, nor a potential danger to anyone other than herself. She was only on very mild medication now and had been responding well to courses of cognitive behavioural and art therapy. She had at last started to get something out of life again, discovering a talent she had abandoned long ago.

  “Until the blessed Janice Mathers descended again.” Dr Radcliffe fixed Sean with a granite stare. “I’m sure you are aware this is the second time Ms Mathers has made an attempt to have Corrine released, so I’ll repeat to you what I said to her. This is a misguided cause and no good will come of it. Not for Corrine.”

  Sean kept his tone neutral. “Why do you say that?” he asked.

  “It’s all very well being liberal in theory,” Dr Radcliffe closed the file that had been resting open on his desk. “But in practice, if these doors were to shut behind her, what do you think would become of Corrine? She has no friends, no family, no means of support. How long do you think she’d survive?”

  “I was thinking just the same thing as I was driving here,” Sean admitted.

  “Well, then,” the doctor raised his thick black eyebrows quizzically.

  Sean offered him his blandest smile. “I’m sorry if by coming here I’ve caused you or Corrine any anguish. But I’m afraid I …”

  “Have a job to do,” Dr Radcliffe finished his sentence for him and stood up. “And there’s nothing I can do about that. Very well, Mr Ward, if you would like to follow me.”

  Their footsteps echoed down grey-green corridors, past unadorned walls and the rows of windowless doors six inches thick. Sean’s skin prickled as he followed the doctor, sensing myriad SOS signals emanating from inside the padded walls.

  How long would it take before their madness infected you?

  The wing where Corrine was kept was not as austere as the solitary blocks. Beyond the security checkpoint, inmates were allowed to move about unshackled; there were classrooms and common rooms where the art and craftwork they were encouraged to make was displayed on the walls, as if they were in a sixth-form college rather than a prison. Except for the omnipresent hum of CCTV cameras watching from every corner.

  Dr Radcliffe stopped before one wall of paintings, pointed to a watercolour. A long blue wash of sky meeting sea, four figures in black with their backs turned, gazing out at the horizon where a flock of gulls took flight. Sean was no expert, but he could see how well the subdued palette had been employed to reflect the pale yellow of the sand and the gradually darkening blue of the sea. He rapidly assessed the other offerings on the wall, took in blacks and greys, violent splashes of red and green, cruder images that distinctly lacked the three dimensions of the maritime panorama.

  “That’s hers,” the doctor said. “She probably doesn’t realise, but this is in the best traditions of East Anglian watercolour painting. It takes real skill to get the light on the water like that.”

  There was pride in his voice as he said it, and if the comment had been designed to make Sean feel more uncomfortable, then it worked.

  “Now then,” Dr Radcliffe turned briskly, “this way, please. I’ve arranged for you to speak with Corrine in one of our quiet rooms.”

  Sean grimaced as he thought about it now, approaching the ring road around Norwich and spotting the first sign for Ernemouth.

  That shy, shuffling figure, bloated from two decades on meds and little physical activity, hiding behind a long, dark brown fringe, threaded with grey. The pathologist’s report from the autopsy running through his mind as she lowered herself into her seat.

  Blunt force trauma to the rear of the cranium, blow forceful enough to leave a crater …

  “Hello, Corrine.”

  Corrine sitting on a grey plastic chair, looking at the floor.

  Multiple cigarette burns to the arms and face …

  “I’m just here to ask you a few questions. I won’t take long.”

  Corrine slowly shaking her head, her fingers twisting round each other in her lap.

  Sixteen separate stab wounds to the chest and abdomen, patterns indicating wounds inflicted in a frenzy …

  “Corrine, do you think you have been a victim of injustice?”

  Corrine continuing to shake her head while rocking backwards and forwards in her seat. Sean facing her with his throat drying up, the words coming out all wrong.

  The sign of a pentagram drawn in the victim’s blood on the floor around the body …

  “I mean, do you think it’s fair that you should have been sent here? Or is there somebody else who should be here instead?”

  Corrine finally speaking, wrenching out the words in a faint, childlike voice: “No … please … go …”

  Sean leaning forwards in his seat, trying to make eye contact. “Corrine, was there somebody else there? Somebody else there with you?”

  Looking up at him at last, repeating the words with rising hysteria. “Please … go … Please … go!”

  And all he saw in her eyes was naked fear.

  The rush-hour traffic was kicking in now and Sean was glad to shift his concentration to navigating his way through the system of flyovers and bypasses. The Ernemouth signs were getting bigger, adorned with jolly symbols of a racecourse, a funfair and caravan parks. One right turn and the road to his destination lay before him.

  A long, straight ribbon cut through wide, flat marshland, dotted with white blobs of sheep, and the wingless remains of crumbling windmills. On the skyline, a row of wind turbines soared above these remnants of an earlier age, propellers cutting swathes through the darkening sky. But even they seemed like dwarves against the vastness above them.

  The town crouched on the horizon, an illuminated clocktower staring out like one baleful eye. To his right, a vast expanse of water opened up a dramatic view of the estuary. Only the water could compete with the sky. Streetlights coming on as the road drew level with the train station and the sign that read Welcome to Ernemouth.

  4

  Fire Dances

  September 1983

  In the long hours since they’d had their lunch, Eric and Edna had been sitting in the lounge, straining to hear above the ticking of the clock, the rustling of Eric’s papers and the clack of Edna’s knitting needles, the sound of a car pulling into their drive. But when Noodles sprang from Edna’s feet to stand on top of the sofa, yapping a staccato warning, they both looked up with a start, as if it was the last thing they had been expecting.

  A Morris Minor, spray-painted purple, had stopped in the driveway. Edna tried to ignore the sinking feeling in her chest as she looked from the car to her husband, his expression propelling her towards the front door.

  Amanda was the first to emerge from the ridiculous motor, in a cloud of honey-blonde hair and a pair of huge, brown, oval sunglasses. She hadn’t lost her figure, Edna noted bitterly. Tight blue jeans and a denim jacket were worn casually over her slim hips and bulging chest, a pair of brown leather boots giving her height, gold glinting around her neck. The smile Amanda had plastered on with red lipstick was a mirror of her mother’s and Edna could smell the Youth Dew from her doorstep.

  “Mum,” Amanda said, walking towards Edna with painted talons outstretched. The two women touched palms for the briefest of seconds as they strained to avoid closer contact, kissing the air around each other’s faces. Edna’s nose wrinkled as her daughter’s perfume settled around them, a vaporous outrider encroaching on her territory.

  “You’re looking well,” Amanda said as she stood back to take in the figure o
f her mother, regulation perm, pastel twinset and theatrically pained facial expression all present and correct. Silly little dog standing at her feet with its top lip drawn back, body shaking indignantly as it growled at her.

  For the past fifteen years, their contact had consisted mainly of phone calls arranging Samantha’s summer visits and an exchange of gifts each Christmas that neither looked forward to unwrapping. Yet Edna seemed to Amanda to have been untouched by time. She stood on the doorstep exactly as she had left her.

  “Thank you,” Edna touched her hair self-consciously, wondering what had happened to her daughter’s voice, why she sounded so different in the flesh to on the phone. There was not a trace of Ernemouth in it any more, Edna realised. You would have believed Amanda had been born within the sound of Bow Bells if you didn’t know better.

  Behind the brown lenses of her shades, Amanda’s eyes flicked nervously to the space behind Edna’s head that still hadn’t been filled by her father and then back towards the Morris Minor. Slouching out of the passenger seat, as reluctantly as one would expect from someone his age, came the reason for all of this.

  “This is Wayne,” she said, the bonhomie in her voice as phoney as the accent.

  He didn’t look like much to Edna – a scrawny lad with a bumfluff moustache, a head of unkempt brown, curly hair, a bomber jacket and bovver boots. Nineteen years old, a painter and decorator: that was all he was.

  But enough for Amanda to leave the artist husband she’d run off with all those years ago, Sammy’s dad, Malcolm Lamb who, despite his unpromising beginnings, had ended up owning a large advertising agency in London. Employed to do up the family house in Chelsea, Wayne had ended up wrecking their marriage instead. Amanda had tried to convince Edna that some harebrained scheme about property development would keep them in riches once she got here. That a bit of sea air would be better for Sammy than any thoughts of staying with her dad, her public school and all her friends in London …