That Still andWhispering Place

by Kathy Shuker

  It was three-quarters of an hour later and he had started drinking wine instead of beer - he must be getting old because he couldn’t drink beer the way he used to - when he saw Tim take Shannon by the hand and walk purposefully with her to the door.

  *

  ‘Does Tim have any sort of burglar alarm?’ Claire had asked Fiona.

  ‘No. He never used to anyway.’

  ‘And where does he keep the key to the wardrobe normally?’

  ‘In the drawer of his bedside cabinet.’ Fiona had looked at her warily. ‘Why? What are you going to do? I’m not going back there.’

  ‘I don’t expect you to.’

  Clouds in the night sky kept obscuring the fitful moon. Claire jogged carefully but quickly along the track, flicking the beam of her torch sparingly to check her tread where necessary. With the patio doors of the restaurant open to the night, the throb of dance music still came to her on the air. She reached Tim’s house and paused, barely daring to breathe, looking all around. The house was in darkness; the place looked deserted. Why wouldn’t it be?

  It had always been Tim’s habit to leave spare keys to the front door underneath a stone at the back of the house. The clouds had scudded over again but she used the torch to pick it out and she found the keys, both on the same ring: one for the mortice lock, the other for the latch. She grabbed them and straightened up, taking a long breath, letting it out slowly. She could do this. She would just let herself in, look round, check out the place for any sign that Gilly had been there and she would be long gone before Tim even considered leaving the dance.

  The door moved easily and she pushed it closed behind her. The house was silent.

  ‘Hello,’ she ventured hesitantly.

  Her voice echoed into emptiness. She repeated it a second time, more firmly, unable to stop herself from hoping. There was nothing. No young voice, trapped in the darkness.

  Reluctant to put the lights on, she shone the torch round, refamiliarising herself with the layout: the sitting room to her right at the front; the dining room behind with an arch through to the kitchen. Apart from some new units in the kitchen it looked much the same as it had on her last visit, years before. She glanced round, opened a few drawers and cupboards but didn’t see anything of interest and went upstairs.

  The room at the front was the bedroom. The clothes draped over a chair and the perfume on one of the bedside tables suggested Shannon regularly stayed there. Claire walked to the other bedside table, opened the drawer and grunted in relief: the key was there. She carefully looked through the drawer and elsewhere round the room, just in case she could find Gilly’s necklace. She was clutching at straws. If Tim had been in possession of the necklace as well as the slide, it would have been in the shoe box. Even so, she checked everywhere, just in case, trying to leave each drawer and cupboard as she’d found it. There was no sign of it.

  She went into the next room, the study cum photo studio, then into the one at the back which was the dark room. She hadn’t realised before how seriously Tim still took his photography. But there was no sign of Gilly and she didn’t expect it any more.

  She returned to the study. It was just as Fiona had described it with its chaise longue and lighting. A desk stood in one corner with a laptop computer and printer on it and behind her was the crucial cupboard which was tall, maybe three foot wide and made of waxed pine. It had one long door and two drawers at the bottom. She pulled on each drawer in turn. The top one contained packets of photographic and printer paper; the second held silk stoles and scarves in neatly folded piles.

  Her nervous fingers fumbled the key in the lock of the door and it creaked open. Four shelves were crammed with narrow box files of photographs, the boxes carefully stacked one on top of the other, each dated on the front. Pulling out a few to examine them, she noticed other key words scribbled on the labels too, such as landscape, seascape, portrait or still life.

  Uncertain what exactly she was hoping to find and with a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach, she pulled file box after file box out, checking the dates. She was looking for 2008, convinced that there was something here which would give a clue to Gilly’s disappearance.

  She found a file for 2008. It was labelled Still Life, Mar - Aug. It contained countless photographs of flowers or fruit, arrangements of shells and pebbles or linens, open books or pottery but nothing significant that she could see. She kept looking.

  On the bottom shelf several boxes labelled Art had been stacked together right at the back. Claire pulled them out and opened the first one. Here were the pictures of Fiona. In the first she was naked, reclining on the chaise longue, draped solely with one of the stoles Claire had seen in the drawer. The second was the same with a minutely different pose. There was a big pile of them. Fiona looked so young, her body so immature. It occurred to Claire - something she had never realised before - that Timothy’s girlfriends were always like Fiona: slight, gamine, sweet and almost childlike. Like a little girl.

  Something banged and Claire jumped, her heart hammering in her chest. She stayed absolutely still and listened, not even breathing. Nothing. She put down the box she was holding and tiptoed to the door, slipping out silently onto the landing and leaning on the balustrade to look down into the hallway. There was no-one there. The bedroom door banged against the frame again and she almost smiled. Her heart settled. The wind had got up outside and there were a couple of windows open creating a cross-draught. She pushed the door further back and returned to the study, conscious that she ought to hurry, but pausing to put the pictures of Fiona on one side. The girl wanted them back.

  Claire opened another box. It was labelled Art, Dec 2007 - May 2008, and she pulled wedges of photos out in her haste, flicking through them. They were pictures of a different girlfriend this time, standing in the boathouse in the nude, leaning suggestively against one of the walls, looking towards the camera with a sultry expression. Claire worked through them meticulously, photo after photo, then froze when she came to a picture of Laura. And another. And another. She was naked in all of them. And here was another - though badly bent and crumpled, the image was still clear to see.

  Claire put a hand to her clammy face, closing her eyes, wishing she could blot out the images but they were still there, imprinted on her retinae. Laura pictured draped over the chaise longue, one knee carefully crooked up; or sat pertly on a stool, looking over her shoulder at the camera; or stood with a long silk scarf draped around her neck, holding one end away from her lithe pubescent body in an affected, hips-thrust-forward pose. A child playing at being a woman. She had been barely twelve when these were taken, a shy, introverted girl, and her mother struggled to take it in. Laura must have been terrified - embarrassed simply couldn’t cover it - and yet she had never said anything. But of course she would have been too scared to. So what tactics had the bastard used to persuade her to do this? And how had Claire never guessed? She had completely failed her little girl.

  Claire pawed her way desperately through more photos. None of the poses was frankly obscene but they looked it to her. It was painfully obvious now why Laura kept making excuses for not coming back to Bohenna, for not doing things which threw her together with the Pennymans.

  Rage bubbled up inside her and Claire wanted to rip all the photographs apart, one by one. They were damning evidence of her brother-in-law's perverted obsession. She wasn’t a prude. She didn’t care that Timothy wanted to take pictures of naked women. He was male; he was human, and if the woman didn’t mind, fine. But the way he did it was unhealthy: it was secretive and worse than that it was coercive. And he’d proved it by making his twelve year old niece pose too, something Laura would never have done from choice. So what else had he done to her? And what had he done to Gilly?

  Thinking of Gilly forced her to calm down. She had to find out what had happened to her; she was certain now that Tim knew. Had Gilly been photographed too? Had she been forced to pose but had something gone wrong? Claire scrabbled thro
ugh the rest of the files labelled Art but could find no pictures of her younger daughter. He had probably destroyed them. She checked randomly through the other boxes, just in case, but there was no sign of her.

  Again the door banged. She jumped a mile and her heart went into its headlong drumbeat again - but this sounded like someone rapping on the front door. That was crazy: Tim wouldn’t knock on his own front door. Still, maybe she could leave through the back, unseen.

  She gathered the pictures of Laura and Fiona together, tried to replace the file boxes the way she’d found them, then panicked and began putting them back any old way. She closed the cupboard door, locked it and dropped the key in the bedside drawer, then tiptoed down the stairs with her stolen photographs, peering towards the front door. It had gone quiet again.

  She was standing in the hall, ramming the photos in the bag with her pumps, when someone rapped on the door again.

  ‘Claire?’ hissed a man’s voice. ‘Are you there?’

  ‘Adam?’ She grabbed the latch and snatched the door open. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Thank God. Keep your voice down, will you? Are you all right?’

  ‘Yes, I’m fine.’

  ‘Good. Then we should go.’ He stuck out a hand and pulled her roughly towards him. ‘It’s past midnight and the music’s stopped. Tim might be back any minute. Come on. You can tell me what’s going on later.’

  ‘OK, OK, I’m coming.’

  She pulled the door to, turned the mortice lock and ran round the back to replace the keys under the stone.

  ‘Go through the woods,’ Adam murmured, already putting a hand to her back, urging her forward.

  They struck out along the path into the trees.

  *

  Claire mechanically put one foot in front of the other, her thoughts fragmented and reeling. She tried just to focus on the route ahead as they walked swiftly and silently along the footpath towards the clearing. Adam had a torch but used it little, scared that it might be seen. She wondered how he had known where she was but he strode ahead of her now, grim-faced, saying nothing. She knew he would expect an explanation but she wasn’t sure yet how much she was prepared to tell him.

  ‘What the hell were you doing?’ he whispered eventually, reaching the clearing.

  ‘Someone told me something that made me wonder if Gilly was in Tim’s house. But she wasn’t.’

  They turned right and began to cut across towards the southern bank of trees, walking side by side. The clouds had cleared again and weak moonlight blanched their route over the tufted grass. She could feel Adam watching her but wouldn’t look at him.

  ‘Who told you?’ he demanded.

  ‘No-one you know, Adam. Anyway, like I said, she wasn’t there. There was no sign of her. Nothing.’

  ‘Well it was bloody risky, letting yourself in like that. And alone too.’

  ‘I know but I couldn’t very well ask him, could I? And I didn’t want to waste your time.’ She glanced across, offered a pinched smile and looked away.

  He frowned. ‘You’re hiding something.’

  ‘Of course not. What were you doing there?’

  ‘I saw you leave the dance and thought something was up so I followed you out. But there was no sign of you and I went back in. Later on I saw Tim and his girlfriend leave.’

  She stopped and turned to look at him.

  ‘They left?’ She automatically glanced back towards the path to the house. ‘How long ago? I didn’t see them.’

  ‘A while now. I followed him out too and I saw him lead her towards the vineyard. To judge from the way the girl was giggling, I got the impression they were planning a bit of passion under the night sky. I wasn’t sure how long they’d be or if they’d go back into the dance afterwards. We should keep on walking.’ He moved off and she went with him. ‘I kept thinking about the odd way you’d left and I figured that if you were trying to escape the Pennymans while they were all busy in the barn, then maybe it was because you were going round the winery or perhaps the house. I thought I should find you before Tim did. Then I saw your earring on the track and that pointed the way.’

  He held out his hand, palm up with her earring on it.

  ‘You’ve worn these before.’

  She took it. ‘Thank you. That was stupid of me. But you didn’t need to bother to follow me.’

  ‘It was no bother. I’d only have got drunk if I’d stayed.’ He hesitated. ‘And I was worried about you.’

  She turned away and walked on, past the boathouse and on to the footpath back towards the river where they had to walk in single file and conversation was impossible. They reached the fence with the Private sign, climbed over it and Claire walked to the entrance to the wooden bridge, stopped and turned to face him.

  ‘Thanks for worrying about me Adam.’ She half-smiled, affecting insouciance. ‘But you didn’t need to. I’m OK.’

  He didn’t reply and clearly wasn’t fooled. He was looking at her expectantly, wanting answers.

  ‘Look, it’s late,’ she said. ‘I don’t think I should ask you back. Do you mind? I couldn’t explain it to Neil.’

  ‘No, I suppose not.’ He reached out as if to touch her but didn’t. ‘You look awful, Claire. What's happened? Surely you can tell me?’

  ‘No Adam. There’s something I have to work out by myself this time.’ She let go of him and hesitated. ‘Don’t judge me, will you?’

  He stared at her, frowning. ‘Judge you? That’s a strange thing to say. Why? What are you going to do?’

  ‘I don’t know why I said that. I’m very tired. Just forget it.’

  His expression hardened. ‘OK,’ he said coolly. ‘Night then.’ He walked away without a backward glance.

  Her heart ached to part with him like that but she couldn’t bring herself to tell him. Not yet. She needed space.

  Back in her house, with slow deliberate movements, Claire put the photos face down in a drawer of the sideboard and closed it. She made herself a mug of tea and sat in the armchair, her mind flicking through a succession of images, many of them memories from years before.

  She fell asleep in the end, still in the chair with the table lamp on. She had that dream again, only this time Tim was in the woods too and he was chasing her. She was running for her life and screaming at him in her sleep.

  Chapter 23

  Claire’s neck hurt and she rubbed at it and rolled over. She had come to around three in the morning and had crawled into bed but now sleep eluded her. The sun was well up and her bedroom glowed with bright early morning sunshine. Even with her eyes closed, it seemed to burn at her retinae. There was no chance of more sleep.

  In any case her brain was too active. Over and over she kept thinking through what she knew, trying to work out its significance, uncertain what to do next. She wondered what time Laura would surface that morning, what time she would return home. Claire would have to ask about those pictures and she dreaded that conversation.

  And she wondered again if Laura knew anything about her sister’s disappearance. It seemed unlikely but now everything felt up in the air and possible. Claire thought she had been walking around for years wearing a blindfold and her thoughts still whirled with all the implications. This was family. Whatever she thought about the Pennymans, they were her family too. And Timothy, of all people. She was amazed how much it hurt, this betrayal, and amazed too at how scared she was of saying it out loud or sharing it with others, astonished at her reluctance to accept an obvious truth. And how could he have had anything to do with Gilly’s disappearance anyway? What could he possibly know, and was she wrong to tie the two issues together?

  By six o’clock, she had had enough. She got up and went out for a jog, knowing it was the only thing which might clear her head. It was over forty minutes later when she returned home, sweating and weary, but the run had worked its usual magic. Pounding along the footpaths, something had surfaced in her mind which had made a lot of things fall into place. The way forw
ard now seemed obvious.

  But first she had to talk to Neil; this was something they had to do together. She watched the clock and waited. At eight o’clock, she rang him.

  He answered promptly. ‘Claire? You’re up. I didn’t want to ring too early, just in case. Are you better? I’ve been worried. You never used to get headaches.’

  ‘I’m OK. Thanks.’

  ‘Are you sure? You don’t sound good.’

  ‘I’m a bit tired.’ She cleared her throat. ‘Neil?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘We need to talk. Would you mind coming down here?’

  ‘Why? What’s the matter?’

  ‘It’s not something I want to talk about on the phone. But it’s important.’

  ‘Oh…OK. Now you’re being mysterious. Well, I’m just about to go in the shower. I’ll grab some breakfast and come along after.’

  ‘Fine. Only come alone, Neil. OK? Alone.’

  *

  She handed Neil the photos of Laura.

  ‘Tim took these,’ she said simply. ‘He’s been keeping them hidden.’

  She had made coffee, had made herself hold back until they were sitting in the living room. Horrific as this situation was, it was at least a relief to share it with him. She watched his face, waiting for his reaction.

  Neil scanned each picture, eyes getting narrower, mouth pinched. He got to the last one and bundled them tightly together again, put them down on the coffee table and pushed them away as if they scorched his fingers.

  ‘Well?’ she prompted.

  He picked up his mug of coffee and sipped it, eyes staring straight ahead.

  ‘How did you get these?’ he said to the air in front of him.

  It wasn’t the reaction she had been expecting. She frowned.