That Still andWhispering Place

by Kathy Shuker

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘So Laura didn’t come after all.’

  ‘Didn’t she tell you?’

  ‘She sent me a text. I wasn’t impressed.’

  ‘She’s got exams, Neil. We can’t expect her to drop everything and come down to Cornwall.’

  ‘Possibly. But I got the impression she didn’t want to come. We are talking about her grandmother here.’

  Claire drank some wine and didn’t answer. She had formed the same impression when she’d spoken to Laura a few nights previously. Claire found it harder to blame her daughter, though it was a special birthday so maybe Laura should have made the effort.

  ‘Adam’s here.’ Neil was still watching her face. ‘He’s going to do the big reveal of the painting later on. Shame we can’t arrange a drum roll really. I guess you knew about the painting. Have you seen it?’

  ‘Yes. I mean yes, I knew about it and no, I haven’t seen it. Have you?’

  ‘Yes, he brought it up in the week.’

  ‘Pleased?’

  ‘Sure, it’s fine.’ He looked like he didn’t care one way or the other. He paused. ‘He’s brought a girl with him.’

  ‘Oh?’ Claire immediately searched the room with her eyes.

  ‘They’re over there.’ Neil nodded towards the windows.

  ‘Right. Yes, that’s Zoe. She’s the girlfriend who used to live with him.’

  ‘I see. Someone suggested that you weren’t seeing him any more. Is that true?’

  ‘Who?’

  He shrugged. ‘I can’t remember now.’ He studied her face. ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Was it him who finished with you?’ Neil flicked a malevolent glance towards the other side of the room.

  So her ex-husband didn’t like Adam going out with her, yet now he was ready to dislike him for throwing her over. She grinned at the absurdity of it.

  ‘It wasn’t like that, Neil. I told you it wasn’t serious. We’re just friends.’

  He still scrutinised her.

  ‘Were you jealous?’ she teased.

  A wry smile. ‘Maybe.’

  They moved round the room and chatted to a few people. Eve spoke to them in passing and was at her most gracious. Then the food was served. A caterer had laid out a buffet in the dining room and had put extra seats and tables anywhere they could find a space. Neil and Claire took their plates of food to a table in the corner where Timothy and his new girlfriend, Shannon, were already installed. Shannon was young, dark-haired and petite. She looked terrified and Claire felt sorry for her, trying repeatedly, without much success, to engage her in conversation. When most people had finished eating, they were served sparkling wine and Eve’s brother was standing in front of the fireplace, clapping his hands to get their attention and inviting everyone to toast the birthday girl. Then Adam was uncovering the painting, looking as if he wished he were somewhere else while Zoe stood nearby, looking luminous and smiling incessantly. Claire noticed them both slip away as soon as the presentation was over.

  It went quickly - more quickly than Claire had expected - and it was over, and there were people already saying their farewells. Eve stood talking to people by the door and Claire took the opportunity to cross to the painting to take a look at it. A couple of minutes later, Neil was at her side.

  ‘Is it any good?’

  She turned to look at him and frowned. ‘You commissioned it. Why ask me?’

  ‘You know more about these things.’

  She shrugged. ‘I think he’s caught the view well - the light especially. And I like the texture on the vines. Clever. Yes, it’s good but it’s a personal thing, isn’t it?’ She turned away. ‘I’d better say goodbye to Tim and Shannon before I go.’

  ‘They’ve already gone.’ He was staring into her face again, imploring her with his eyes. ‘You could stay over. You can’t drive home after all that wine.’

  She refused to meet his gaze. ‘I’ll walk and come back for the car in the morning.’

  ‘In those shoes?’

  ‘I’ve got a jacket and some flatties in the car.’

  ‘Then I’ll walk with you.’

  ‘If you like.’

  They fell into step down the hill and walked in silence, listening to the settling, soothing sounds of a spring night. She wondered if, like her, he was remembering all the times they had done this when they were young. She suspected he did because she felt his hand nuzzling against her own, rubbing back against back then taking it to hold the way he always used to. Time plays such tricks on you, she thought. It was surreal, as if the preceding years hadn’t happened, as if there had been no abduction, no escape to Kent, no separation and no divorce.

  ‘Tim was right about Shannon being shy,’ Claire remarked. ‘But he seems quite taken with her.’

  ‘I think he is. And she seems like a nice girl. It’s about time he settled with someone.’

  Claire grinned. ‘I’m sure Eve wishes he would. She probably can’t wait for him to produce more little Pennymans.’

  Neil didn’t reply, then squeezed her hand, like a warning of the blow to come.

  ‘Mum wants me to ask Laura if she’d like to get more involved in the vineyard.’

  ‘No,’ Claire immediately stopped, turning to look at him. She would have pulled her hand away but he held it too tightly. ‘No, Neil. Laura’s got her own career ahead. She’s never shown much interest in the vineyard. Why would she want to throw up her own plans for it? No, you can’t do it.’

  ‘I’m not going to pressurise her, Claire. I’ll just ask. It’ll satisfy mum and then it’s over with.’

  ‘It’s never over with, not with Eve.’

  ‘It will be. I won’t push it. I’m not sure Laura would be any good for the place anyway.’ He started walking again, gently pulling her along with him. ‘There’s no point her doing it unless she’s genuinely interested. Eve’s just panicking about the future of the family business. It’s her and dad’s legacy and she thinks it’s going to end up leaving the family. You’re right: I’m sure she would like more grandchildren. Danny’s not showing much interest either.’

  ‘Don’t you think children should be allowed to create their own legacies, follow their own stars? Why should they take on the dreams of their parents? Or, worse still, their grandparents?’

  ‘I love it when you get this passionate about things.’

  ‘Don’t patronise me Neil.’

  ‘I’m not. I mean it.’

  ‘You’re just trying to change the subject. I don’t want Laura’s life to shrink to Bohenna and whatever plans Eve has for her. The whole world is before her. Let her fly. I mean it, Neil.’

  ‘I know. And I agree. But I’m puzzled. If you think Bohenna is so small, why come back? You’ve shrunk your world. Do you ever draw or paint any more? You were so good at it. Those illustrations you used to do were brilliant. So why this? You’re still young enough to fly too. And you’re freer to do it now.’

  She looked across at him, frowning, trying to see his face in the weak moonlight.

  ‘But you didn’t like me doing the illustrations. You used to get frustrated when I let things go in the house. You said I was impossible to talk to when I was working on a new idea.’

  They were close to the bridge now and a car came down the road, dazzling them with its headlights. They pressed into the verge out of its way then started walking again.

  ‘I know,’ said Neil. ‘But I was younger then and a fool. I didn’t appreciate a lot of things.’ They walked several more steps in silence. ‘I’ve made mistakes, Claire. I can’t deny it. Some of them were huge.’

  She flicked him another look, uncertain. It wasn’t like him to admit a fault.

  ‘Me too,’ she admitted. ‘I was impossible to live with. I think I was trying to punish myself for what happened to Gilly - well both of us really - and it all ended up a tortured mess.’

  He gave a short laugh and lifted her hand up to kiss the back of
it. ‘Hey, how many years has it taken us to say that? We’d have saved a lot of money on lawyers if we’d done it ages ago.’

  She smiled ruefully but said nothing.

  ‘Do you remember the holiday we had in Brittany before the girls came along?’ he said suddenly. ‘That tiny little gîte with the wonky plumbing?’

  ‘Yes, of course I remember. The weather was amazing but, God, that bed was uncomfortable.’

  He glanced across at her. ‘We hadn’t been married long. Who cared how comfortable the bed was?’

  She felt self-conscious and flushed. What a nonsense, after all these years.

  ‘We should go to Brittany again some time.’ He grinned. ‘Maybe somewhere more upmarket this time - with decent plumbing and comfortable beds.’

  ‘Do you mean that?’

  ‘Of course I mean it.’ He glanced sideways at her. ‘Would you like that?’

  She paused. ‘Maybe.’ She felt a bubble of excitement forming in the pit of her stomach. ‘Yes, that would be fun.’

  They reached Dark Lane and the end cottages. Eddie’s house was in darkness but Claire had left her outside light on. Neil walked with her up the path.

  ‘You seem to have a carton of eggs on your doorstep,’ he said.

  ‘Eddie leaves them.’ She bent over to pick them up. They had been pushed in beside a pot of geraniums she’d recently put there. ‘From next door.’

  ‘An admirer?’

  She laughed. ‘You must remember Eddie. Not exactly an admirer but he does at least speak to me occasionally now. Short sentences.’

  She put her key in the lock and, as she turned it, she felt Neil’s hand slide slowly, seductively, down her back. Again, her mind played tricks, flicking back in time. She could feel the old passion welling up in them both, the insistence of it, the pull that would not be denied. Jane had simply never understood the way it was between them: there had been no plots or tricks or subterfuge.

  Claire quickly pulled away and turned to face him. She had to fight this attraction. Her desire was more complicated now and too intermingled with fear. After all the pain and failure of the past, she needed to be sure.

  ‘Neil, look. I’m not going to ask you in. I don’t want us to rush anything.’

  ‘Rush anything? Hell, Claire, we were married for twenty-one years. We’re not two adolescents looking for a sweaty grope while our parents are out.’

  ‘No. We’re divorced, that’s what we are. And the last seven years don’t disappear overnight.’

  ‘No, no, I know.’

  ‘The thing is Neil, I don’t understand what’s happening here.’

  He pushed some gravel around with his shoe. ‘I’m not sure I do either.’ He shrugged, glanced around as if someone might be eavesdropping, then looked back at her expectantly. ‘I think maybe we made a mistake. But it’s not too late to put it right. Or is it?’

  She didn’t reply.

  ‘When’s your day off next week?’ he asked.

  ‘Friday.’

  ‘Perfect. I’m going away on the Saturday for a wine conference. No-one will mind if I take the Friday off. Let’s go out for the day. What do you think?’

  ‘On the Friday?’

  ‘Yes. Why?’

  ‘Oh nothing.’ She nodded slowly, warily. ‘Friday would be good. Perhaps we could go to St. Mawes?’

  ‘St. Mawes it is.’ He took hold of her hand and lifted it, this time opening her palm and kissing it with a soft, erotic brush of his lips, then closing her fingers around it.

  ‘Neil?’

  ‘What?’

  She hesitated, then shook her head and smiled. ‘It doesn’t matter now. I’ll see you on Friday.’

  ‘I’ll give you a ring.’

  She watched him walk away before letting herself in. Once inside she leaned her head forward against the wall, hands balled up into fists on either side, and enjoyed the coolness of the plaster against her forehead. It was a shock just how much she wanted him back. She had been so close to telling him about the hair slide too but that wasn’t the right moment, standing there on the doorstep.

  And he had forgotten what Friday was so maybe that would be a good time to tell him everything.

  Chapter 18

  Gilly disappeared on a Thursday, the twenty-second of May. Claire remembered the day every year - knew she would remember the date for the rest of her life - and, whatever she was doing, always tried to put time aside to look at old photographs of Gilly and remember her properly: her daughter, Laura’s sister, a little girl who did normal little girl things.

  For a brief spell after she disappeared, Gilly was stolen from them by the media. She became ‘the Cornish girl’ who evaporated from an ‘idyllic coastal village’; the ‘golden angel’ taken by an ‘evil monster’. ‘No child is safe,’ roared one tabloid, ‘when an innocent can be stalked on her own doorstep.’ Little of it was true. Bohenna wasn’t on the coast; it was five miles inland. Gilly wasn’t taken from her doorstep; she had left the house to play. And she was no angel, golden or otherwise. She was a delightful but perfectly normal little girl who could be both good and naughty. She was affectionate and - for a nine-year-old - surprisingly generous of her time if someone needed help; she loved her parents and her sister and was never slow to show affection; she was quick-witted and funny with an unconscious sense of timing. Claire loved her unconditionally.

  But she could grizzle and complain like any child, especially when she was tired; she was terrible at putting her things away and hated being stopped from doing something she had already planned; and she was stubborn and sometimes reluctant to apologise even when she knew she was in the wrong. But for the fact that they put a spotlight on the issue and therefore might bring some information to light, Claire wanted the media to lose interest. She wanted to reclaim Gilly. She didn’t want her to be just a propaganda tool or a way to increase the circulation of a flagging title.

  The newspaper journalists and television crews hadn’t brought anything to light however and they’d quickly left and gone on to the next story. It hadn’t crossed Claire’s mind for years that there would be any point chasing the media afterwards to help. All that had happened after their exposure was that all the worms had come out of the woodwork, all the twisted people who had to criticise or joke about it or offer knowingly false leads.

  But the situation had changed and Claire’s new idea was a carefully worded advertisement in Cornwall Now, the regional newspaper most read around those parts. An advert which was targeted, specific, asking for anyone with information about a hair slide given to the fête in Bohenna the previous year to come forward, something like that might produce a really useful result. This was a traditional area where people still read the local newspaper and pored over the advertisements. On the Friday, when the bulk of the advertisements appeared, it was particularly well read. It could work. Someone, somewhere - probably nearby - had given that slide to the stall. Someone, close to that person, or maybe even an onlooker, might know who it was.

  And then the idea had grown. She could risk mentioning Gilly - she might even hear from someone who knew something about that day. She’d buy a box number from the paper for the replies. It wasn’t a fashionable story any more; it wasn’t the buzz. Most people would have forgotten about it. But not someone who knew something. Maybe they were just waiting for an opportunity to share what they had seen?

  Claire contacted the newspaper on the Monday after the party and arranged for the advertisement to go in the paper for the first time on the Friday, the twenty-second, exactly seven years to the day since Gilly had gone out and never come back. Maybe using the anniversary would spur someone’s memory, maybe not. Either way, it felt poetic. It felt right. Her informer could be anonymous if they chose so why wouldn’t they get in touch? She wasn’t sure how she was going to manage to wait until the advert appeared and the responses came in but she felt uncannily good about this. This was going to bring an end to it. And after that last talk with Neil,
she felt sure that now she could tell him and he would understand. It would be wonderful to bring him on board.

  *

  For Adam, the new dawn with Zoe wasn’t working out quite the way he had imagined. She had stayed with him the night after the birthday party and had shared his bed. He had made her breakfast and brought it back to the bed and afterwards they had made love again. Lying afterwards with her head on his chest, the scent of her hair in his nostrils, he had felt at peace, certain that he had done the right thing. But she had left that Sunday evening insisting that she was going to continue to live in her flat in Fowey. It was more convenient for her work, she said, and anyway, they needed time to adjust again.

  It seemed that he had misjudged things again. The problem was that the issue of where they were going to live had not gone away. Zoe was adamant that she wouldn’t live in Bohenna and she wanted them to start looking immediately at other places they might live, somewhere that suited them both. He was no fool; he could see what she was doing. It was a test. She was making certain that he would stick to his promises. If she moved back in, she expected that he would let things ride again and avoid the issue and, in his heart, he suspected that she was right which made it hard to argue the point.

  So he was alone again and the week felt interminable. Adam tried not to think about the course he had set with Zoe but the spectre of living somewhere else - a neat semi somewhere on a neat estate with a neatly fenced garden for the children to play in - hung at the back of his mind. He wasn’t against moving in principle but he was scared of where they might end up. He found it hard to concentrate on his work.

  On the Thursday afternoon, time hanging heavily, his eyes wandered once more from the stretched paper on his painting board and he watched a handful of people idling around the yard. Tim didn’t do a vineyard tour on a Tuesday or Thursday and there were always noticeably fewer people about. He dragged his gaze back to the painting and worked desultorily on. A couple strolled in and disturbed his concentration long enough to buy a set of greetings cards; a woman came in alone, looked through the prints, picked one out and took it to the door, then replaced it in the browser the wrong way up and walked out. He continued working for another hour, then glanced at his watch. It was only four o’clock but he’d had enough. He packed up for the day.