Weirdo

by Cathi Unsworth

  “To the garden of earthly delights,” said Rivett. “Where the fun never stop and the sun never set.” The dark towers of the deserted Leisure Beach lay just ahead. “You can start indicating now,” said Rivett.

  34

  Eve Black, Eve White

  June 1984

  “Can you see what she’s now doing?” Debbie spoke under her breath, tilting her head towards the other end of the corridor where, like the rest of the O-Level Art students, Samantha was hanging the highlights of her coursework for the final part of the examination, the end-of-year display.

  Darren was standing at the top of a ladder, putting his favourite painting in place. It showed 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 were taking flight. Old Witchell had been pretty impressed by it, said it was in the best traditions of East Anglian watercolour painting. Didn’t realise Darren had copied it from the front cover of his favourite LP. Well, his second favourite now. Darren had practically worn the grooves off the new Bunnymen album in the space of the last month.

  He turned his head, leaned forwards to get a better look. Samantha was kneeling on the floor, her portfolio open in front of her. Leaning forward, her hair fell in front of her face, shielding hers from prying eyes.

  “Don’t look like she’s doing anything,” he said. “She in’t put a single thing up yet.”

  He started to lower himself down the rungs. Debbie’s eyes were full of trouble. “I don’t like it,” she whispered. “I reckon she’s waiting for us to finish.”

  Darren jumped down beside her. “Yeah, then what’s she gonna do?” he asked. “We already got into art college, she can’t do nothing to stop us now.”

  “I don’t know,” said Debbie, “I’ve just got a bad feeling.”

  * * *

  Debbie started to feel sick later that afternoon, on the way home, in the Norfolk Kitchens tearooms near Darren’s house. One sip of tea made her feel nauseous, so she pushed her cup back across the tabletop, tried to concentrate instead on the conversation.

  In less than a month, school would be over. Julian was going to do A-Levels at the Sixth Form College. Darren had been accepted for the BTEC Graphics course at Ernemouth Art College, Debbie herself for General Art and Design. Alex had got into St Martin’s after all, and Corrine had her apprenticeship at the hairdressers sorted out, thanks to the new YTS scheme.

  But right now, all Darren could talk about was music, the York Rock Festival at the end of the summer. They were going to save up their money from their summer jobs for it, go on their first adventure. The Bunnymen, The Sisters and Spear of Destiny were playing, all their favourite bands.

  Corrine was playing a game with Julian while they talked. She had a packet of sugar in her fist that she kept emptying into Julian’s cup when he wasn’t looking. He meanwhile, was flicking bits of foam off the top of his coffee at the back of her head. Both pretended not to notice what the other one was doing, but this would only last so long.

  Debbie’s cup felt cold now and the very thought of the tea made her stomach heave. She started to get up from her seat just as Julian slammed his cup down, shouting: “Oy, you tart, what you done to my coffee?”

  “Urgh!” Corrine screeched, putting her hand up to the back of her head. “What you done to my hair?” A fistful of sugar flew across the table into Julian’s face.

  Debbie shot out of her seat before he could retaliate and made it to the toilets just in time. It felt like a mule was kicking her in the guts. Or like she had been poisoned.

  * * *

  Mr Pearson put his red pen down, the pile of marking finally done. He yawned as he got to his feet, stretched his arms. The clock on the wall said five-thirty and he allowed himself a smile of satisfaction as he put the books into the bottom drawer of his desk.

  He walked up the corridor, thinking about the weekend. He’d pick his daughter up from the station now, go straight to his wife’s restaurant on the sea front, their favourite way to spend Friday night. Frannie’s commute meant she had longer hours than most schoolgirls of her age, but she seemed to be thriving at the prep school in Norwich she’d started last September. Mr Pearson was glad about that. It might make him a hypocrite, but he had not wanted his daughter to attend the school he taught at. He wouldn’t have wanted her to be bullied. Wouldn’t have wanted her to have to come up against a girl like …

  He stopped in his tracks as he turned the corner past the library. Samantha Lamb was standing just a few feet away, reaching up with a black marker pen and drawing something onto the display of fifth formers’ art. So involved was she in her task that she didn’t even register her form teacher’s presence until he was standing right behind her.

  “What d’you think you’re doing?” said Mr Pearson.

  * * *

  Corrine banged hard on Debbie’s front door with the one hand that wasn’t supporting her friend. “Mrs Carver!” she bellowed.

  Beside her, Debbie swayed, trying to force down another wave of nausea.

  “You’ll be OK,” Corrine tried to reassure her. “You’re home now.”

  * * *

  “I understand entirely, Mr Hill,” said Amanda. “And it’s me who should be sorry. I stupidly thought she might learn something of value, going to my old school.”

  The headmaster stood on her threshold, seeing for a second the erstwhile Amanda Hoyle with her Crystal Tips hair and platform heels, the bright smile suddenly extinguished, sometime around her fifteenth birthday.

  “I wouldn’t be too hard on yourself,” he said. “I’m sure this is just a phase.”

  Amanda saw the sympathy in Mr Hill’s watery grey eyes, an expression of understanding that she had never expected to find there. It was as if the old man had looked right into her soul and she had to catch hold of the doorframe to stop herself from wobbling.

  “Well,” she whispered, “thank you for bringing her home, at least.”

  Mr Hill put his hat back on. “Good evening, Amanda,” he said.

  Amanda closed the door, catching her breath and shutting her eyes for a second as she gathered her strength. When she opened them again, she could only see red.

  “Samantha!” she screamed. She ran up the stairs to the top of the house, the music emanating from her daughter’s bedroom getting louder and louder, pushed hard against the door.

  Sam had obviously been expecting this, had wedged herself on the other side, as it opened an inch before slamming shut again with a violence that made the record player jump, the needle screeching across the vinyl.

  Amanda banged her fist against the door. “Let me in!” she bellowed.

  “No!” screamed Samantha. “I don’t want to talk to you! I don’t want to hear anything you’ve got to say!”

  “I thought you said you weren’t a coward, Sam,” Amanda yelled back. “So what are you doing, hiding in there? Same as what you were doing at school, isn’t it? Sneaking around, ruining things behind people’s backs?”

  Amanda felt a superhuman strength pulse through her, and this time, when she put her whole weight against the door, it flew open, catapulting Sam across the room. Amanda strode across the threshold, turned off the record player and stood above her daughter. “Now you listen to me,” she said.

  “Get away from me!” screamed Sam, wriggling away across the floor. “Don’t touch me!”

  “You spiteful little coward,” Amanda’s eyes glittered, her voice dropping to an icy whisper. “I don’t know why I ever bothered with you.”

  “Nor do I,” Sam spat back. “I know you never wanted me, you made that obvious from the start. You never wanted me and you never loved me. Is that why you made a point of taking me away from everyone who ever did – first Dad, and now Nana and Granddad? Why didn’t you let me stay with them, eh? Why couldn’t you leave me where I was happy? Why do you want to make me suffer so much?” her voice began to crack, tears of self-pity flooding into her eyes.
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  “Make you suffer?” said Amanda. “You don’t know the meaning of suffering, Sam, you never have. I was protecting you, more fool me.”

  “What?” Sam gulped indignantly. “Protecting me from the father who loved me? Protecting me from the house I grew up in and all my friends, to bring me here? To this bloody dump, to watch you and your stupid, embarrassing Wayne drooling all over each other, day in, day out? To watch that,” she pointed to Amanda’s stomach, hysteria crackling through her words, “that thing inside you that’s going to take my place, grow up and be loved like I never was?”

  Sam jumped to her feet, picking her schoolbag up off the floor. “If that’s what you call protection, Mother, then I’d rather be out on the street. I’m going back to Dad. I don’t care what you say, he loves me and you don’t. He’ll take care of me; protect me like you never will! I hate it here and I hate you!”

  Amanda felt something snap inside her as she moved to block Sam’s path, to dig her nails into her daughter’s arm so hard she could see the pain of her rage reflected back in Sam’s expanding pupils.

  “If I had left you with him,” she said, surprised to hear her own voice sounding so calm, “you would have ended up babysitting an alcoholic while you watched that house, that school and everything else being taken away from you, bit by bit. Malcolm’s bankrupt, Sam. I wanted to protect you from that too, but there you have it, that’s the truth for you. Go back there and you go back to nothing. Find out the hard way if you have to, but you’ll see.”

  Disbelief danced in Sam’s eyes. “You’ll say anything, won’t you, Mother?” she hissed, struggling to shake off Amanda’s grip. “Absolutely anything to make yourself look good and everyone else look as if they’re in the wrong.”

  “And what is more,” Amanda went on, knowing she couldn’t stop now, knowing she was headed for the crash barrier at the end of the line and even that was not going to prevent her from ploughing on, over the cliff. “I couldn’t leave you with your beloved Nana and Granddad either. Not now that you’ve got to the age he likes. It’s not safe any more. She wouldn’t have done anything to protect you from him and I’ve seen the way he’s started to look at you, it was exactly the same with me.”

  Sam stopped struggling. She stared at Amanda hard, her mouth dropping open. “What are you saying?” she breathed.

  “All that effort I’ve gone to on your behalf, none of it was worth it. I thought you were an innocent baby,” she shook her head. “But the apple never falls very far from the tree …”

  “What are you saying?” Shock struck across Sam’s white face. Amanda let go of her arm. The lump in her throat prevented her from speaking.

  “Mother!” hysteria rose in Sam’s voice. “What are you saying? Tell me!”

  But Amanda could only fall back on her daughter’s bed, shaking her head, tears streaming down her face.

  “No,” Sam croaked, looking down on Amanda who had begun to shudder violently.

  “No!” she screamed, running out of the room and down the stairs, leaving Amanda cramping up on her bed, the pain in her stomach kicking in. She heard banging and crashing below her like a dervish had been let loose, turning out draws and shattering glass, cries becoming a keening, high-pitched wail. Then, with a shocking finality, the front door slammed behind her.

  * * *

  Corrine watched Debbie’s house from over the road, saw the doctor talking to Maureen on the doorstep. To Corrine’s relief, Mrs Carver was smiling as she turned back to go into the house. It meant it couldn’t have been anything really bad, or Debbie would have gone off in an ambulance. Probably just a tummy bug, Corrine thought, as she drew back the curtain and slumped down on her bed. She picked up her schoolbag and upended it, spilling the contents over the counterpane.

  Frowned as her fingers raked through the books, the pencils and rubbers. Picked the bag up again, as if by some miracle, a fat, leather-bound tome could have stayed hidden inside it. Panic welling inside her, she checked the altar, under the bed, went through all her drawers until the floor was awash with clothing and underwear. Tore back through the bag again, tears of frustration pricking the back of her eyelids.

  It wasn’t there. She had definitely had it with her when she went to school this morning. She never left it anywhere that Gina might find it.

  But it hadn’t been a normal day. She hadn’t been in class all afternoon; she’d been putting her display up on the wall instead, must have left her bag unattended for a while as she went back and forth to the art room.

  And now, The Goetia was gone. Corrine fell back on the bed. A face appeared in her mind, with a mocking smile and a wonky front tooth. Sam had said goodbye to her today, the first time she had spoken to her since that day at the salon, smiling like she knew something Corrine didn’t. Hitching her bag over her shoulder and winking, giving a little, mocking wave.

  An ice-cold fear flooded through Corinne.

  * * *

  Wayne woke with a start, his mouth dry, his neck cricked from sleeping at an unaccustomed angle. It took him a moment to get his bearings, realise what the alien smell and dim lighting, the electronic beeping sounds that surrounded him meant. Then it all came back to him in a rush – finding the house in disarray, the kitchen turned over as if they’d been burgled. Amanda’s cries from upstairs leading him to Samantha’s bed, where she lay, sobbing her heart out, clutching her stomach, blood pooling around her, seeping into the duvet. Knowing already that it was too late even before they got to A&E. Their baby girl was gone.

  Amanda was sleeping now, in the bed next to the chair that he had fallen asleep in, an expression of serene peace on her face that he’d never once seen while she was awake. She’d had to be heavily sedated.

  “It’s all my fault,” was all she would say, over and over again.

  He had been so panicked, so concerned with her health that he hadn’t given a second thought to anything else. But now, in the sepulchral light of the hospital room, at the lonely hour of 4 a.m., one face came into his mind, with a jolt like an electric shock.

  Samantha. Where was she?

  * * *

  Corrine swept the hair up off the floor like she was moving through a dream. She hadn’t been able to sleep all night. She’d rung Noj, but his mum had answered, informing her flatly that John was out and she didn’t know when he’d be back. So she had trailed up the seafront, spent hours circling around the lavatories opposite the pier. Knowing in her heart that she wouldn’t find him. Trudged back home before she was due to start work, splashing water on her face, trying to make herself look respectable, while down below, loud music blared and male voices hollered. Her mother, entertaining again.

  The night in the graveyard kept coming back to Corrine.

  Never look back, don’t ever look back.

  She had broken the spell. Or worse. She had made it turn back on itself. Yes, that must be it, she thought as she swept. All the signs were there. Debbie being taken suddenly ill yesterday, that was the start of it. Then the book vanishing … Or being stolen … Taken from her bag …

  Corrine lifted the dustpan and her eyes along with it. Nearly dropped the thing back on the floor as she looked through the window.

  Sam was standing outside. She didn’t look her normal neatly ordered self – quite the opposite, in fact. Her face was smeared with dirt, her hair a tangled mess and there was a big graze across one of her knees, like she’d taken some kind of tumble. But the worst thing, the most shocking thing that Corrine couldn’t pull her eyes away from, was the smile of demented triumph on Sam’s face as she held up a big black book.

  35

  What Difference Does It Make?

  March 2003

  From where she sat on the sofa in her lounge, Sandra Gray saw the light finally go off in her husband’s shed at the bottom of the garden. All afternoon he had been in there, the place where he kept all his old police things, saying that he needed to dig something out for the private detective before he could tell h
er anything more.

  Sandra had tried her best to distract herself with the TV, with preparing the meal that was now in the oven, with pretending that everything was as normal. But she hadn’t seen her husband in this way for nigh-on twenty years. Paul had fallen apart once before, because of this case. She didn’t know what she would do if he got that way again.

  The porch light blinked on, illuminating his passage back up the garden path. Paul’s face looked stern and resolute. He was carrying a book in his hands.

  * * *

  “The Leisure Beach?” said Francesca.

  “That’s right,” said Rivett. “Pull in just here, the guard’ll wave you through.”

  A frown crossed her face and she glanced down at the dashboard clock as she slowed the car down to make the turn. It was coming up to ten past seven. The panic that had gripped her earlier began to subside as her mind began to focus.

  Those documents Ross was sending her must have come through the fax. Dad would probably have them in his hands right now, be speaking to Sean, telling him about the business links between Rivett and Smollet she’d asked her ex-husband to look into. Did they have something to do with the old funfair? What other possible reason could Rivett have for bringing her here?

  There was a security booth by the entrance and sure enough, when the shaven-headed young man inside caught sight of Rivett, he smiled and pressed the switch that brought the barrier up, waving them through into the car park.

  “Seem a bit strange to you, do it?” said Rivett. “Coming here?”

  Francesca turned off the engine, keeping her expression deadpan while her mind shifted gears. Maybe the former DCI did not know quite so much about her as she assumed.

  “Are you making fun of me, Mr Rivett?” she said, fixing him with a stern gaze. “If DCI Smollet really didn’t want to do an interview, he only had to say. There’s no need to go to this much effort to try and put me off.”