The Girl in the Letter

by Emily Gunnis

  ‘Thanks so much, Sally, it’s been lovely to meet you,’ he said airily, heading for the front door.

  ‘What were you doing up there?’ she asked, flushed with anger.

  ‘Using the bathroom,’ said Fred hastily, desperate now to escape. ‘Bye, Sally, give my regards to your daughters.’ He turned the front door handle, relieved that it wasn’t locked, let himself out and hurried down the path to the road.

  Once he was safely back in his car, he pulled out his phone. He was about to call Sam and update her on his chat with Sally Jacobson when a black Jaguar passed him. A woman with long grey hair was at the wheel. Fred recognised her immediately, but it was several seconds before it sank in: Kitty Cannon. He knew from reading the cuttings on George Cannon’s accident that the road he was parked on, Preston Road, led to St Margaret’s.

  Fred swung his car around and began to follow her.

  As he drove away, he looked in his rear-view mirror to see Sally Jacobson glaring at him stony-faced from her open front door.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Saturday 18 December 1976

  Dr Edward Jacobson woke with a jolt at the sound of the doorbell.

  For a moment he sat motionless in the dark, trying to orientate himself as the outside light triggered by the visitor at the door shone onto the sea of archive boxes carpeting the floor. The carriage clock on his desk told him it was past six. Sally hadn’t mentioned anyone coming over; who would turn up unannounced?

  He shivered. The room felt cold. Condensation had built up on the window while he was asleep, and for some reason the heating hadn’t clicked on. He had no idea what time he’d fallen asleep or why his wife hadn’t woken him. He held his breath and listened for her, but the house was completely silent.

  Bang, bang, bang. Whoever it was had moved on from the bell and was trying the door knocker. They weren’t giving up; he’d need to go down himself and answer it. He eased his stiff frame forward and pushed himself up from his chair, letting out a groan of discomfort as he did so. His neck ached from sleeping awkwardly and his joints had seized up from sitting still for so long. He went over to the window and looked down onto a row of bobble hats and song sheets waiting at his front door. Carol singers. He could hear them talking amongst themselves: ‘The lights aren’t on . . . Sally said they’d be here . . . give it one last try.’ One of them stepped back to look up at the window and Edward pulled back out of sight. He didn’t want to stand on the doorstep in the freezing cold and listen to the local choir warble at him. He had to put up with enough of that at church.

  Bang. One last try, then eventually the crunch of icy gravel underfoot and they were gone.

  He sighed heavily and lifted his spectacles to rub his eyes. It had been an unrelenting week. A winter flu epidemic in the village had meant sixteen-hour days at the surgery, after which he’d come home every night to increasingly urgent messages from Father Benjamin. He’d managed to avoid him for the first few days, but when the priest had resorted to calling in the middle of the night, Edward had picked up the phone in case it was one of his daughters.

  ‘I hope you are managing to get through the files I left for you last week.’ His voice was curt.

  ‘Yes, I’m doing my best, but I could go to prison for tampering with these. They’re harrowing reading to say the least.’

  Father Benjamin let out a heavy sigh. ‘Well, hopefully you will see to it that they become more digestible,’ he said menacingly. ‘So that we can all sleep easier in our beds.’

  ‘I warned you about these records at the time, Father, that they could be open to scrutiny in the future.’ Edward’s chest had tightened with anxiety.

  ‘The parish had no obligation to show any of its records before now,’ Father Benjamin had snapped. ‘We couldn’t have foreseen the adoption laws changing to allow those women access to them – so now you need to provide more palatable explanations of what happened to their children.’

  ‘How?’ He had recalled the contents of some of the faded death certificates Father Benjamin had unloaded from his car. ‘How do you expect me to paint a better picture of . . . psychotic episodes, seizures and chronic neglect?’

  ‘I don’t know, Edward, you wrote them,’ the priest had replied. ‘Destroy the worst of them, and come up with plausible explanations for the rest. You’ve done very well out of St Margaret’s, so I suggest you find us a way out of this. As I said, if any of it comes out, I’ll see to it that your involvement does not go unnoticed.’

  After Father Benjamin had hung up on him, Edward hadn’t slept. He had desperately wanted to wake his wife to share his concerns, but any mention of St Margaret’s was always met with silent disapproval. Despite the fact that the money Father Benjamin gave him for referring pregnant single girls paid for their daughters’ education, her mother’s care home and their large and comfortable house, Sally chose not to dent her clear conscience with thoughts of the place.

  Edward was suddenly jolted back to the present by the faint sound of a dog yelping outside, and saw that Honey’s bed was empty. He had no idea where his constant companion had got to; he couldn’t remember a time she hadn’t come up to see him after her dinner. Perhaps Sally had taken her for a walk to see a friend in the village. But he would have heard her returning from her Christmas shopping earlier in the day; the familiar sounds of keys clattering, cupboards banging and the dog barking for her dinner would have woken him. Even if Sally was still sulking over Father Benjamin’s visit, she’d have let him know where she was going. Maybe something had happened to her, or to one of the girls, and she’d left the house in a panic.

  ‘Sally?’ he called out as he made his way down the corridor towards the stairs. ‘Where are you?’

  After walking stiffly down the stairs he reached the hallway. The slate floor was uncomfortably cold as he walked barefoot across it to the kitchen, grumbling to himself as he went. Where in heaven’s name were they? As he reached the back door, he heard the dog yelping again. He spun his head around in response. Was that Honey?

  Concern began to drown out the irritation that had been brewing inside him. He sat down on a kitchen chair and pulled his wellington boots over his bare feet. Perhaps his wife had fallen in the garden somewhere and Honey was trying to get his attention. He opened the hall cupboard and scrabbled through the pile of coats for his Barbour, sending a basket of umbrellas clattering to the floor. Then he wrenched open the back door, gasping at the shock of the freezing-cold wind, and ventured into the garden.

  The gravel beneath his feet crackled and crunched and the sound of the carol singers in the grounds of the neighbouring house drifted over to him.

  ‘Honey?’ he shouted as he headed for the fence. The winter sunlight had faded completely and the picturesque whiteout from the morning had disappeared entirely so that Edward found himself drowning in blackness. The ground underfoot had turned to a murky sludge and dark clouds threatened more snow. He ploughed on, using the fence to steady him through the rockery, hedgerow and conifers. As he went past the rose bushes, he pricked his hand on the thorns of a fat stem.

  ‘Sally? Are you out here?’ he shouted, wincing as a warm trickle of blood slid down the back of his hand. ‘Honey!’

  The numbness in his feet began to travel up his legs, making it increasingly hard to walk on the uneven ground. He stumbled at every other step, shouting and whistling for Honey until he came to his favourite oak tree. He stopped for a moment to lean on it and unsettled a barn owl above him, which let out a long, harsh scream. Edward craned his neck, looking up through the bare, claw-like branches to see a pair of black eyes blinking down at him. They stared at each other briefly, then the owl let out another piercing scream before taking off, dislodging a clump of snow from its perch. Edward startled at the noise and took a step back to avoid the falling snow, catching his foot on a root. Once he had lost his balance, it was impossible to right himself. He grabbed at the air but his feet were frozen and slow to respond, and as he went d
own, he instinctively put out a hand to break his fall.

  As soon as his palm hit the ground, a shooting pain splintered up his arm into his shoulder. He let out a roar and rolled over onto his side, clutching his arm and sucking in gulps of air to try and cope with the pain. He’d dislocated his shoulder as a teenager and he knew instinctively that he’d done it again. He reached under his jacket and felt his shoulder: the ball joint had come out of its socket and was protruding from his arm.

  He didn’t dare to move: the pain would be too much to bear if he did. But he was soaking wet now from rolling on the ground, and snow had seeped into the neck of his coat and down his back. He was shaking with the cold and the shock. He had to get up; if he didn’t, he’d freeze to death within minutes.

  ‘Hello? Can anyone hear me?!’ he called out. He knew he was alone, that the carol singers would be long gone, but the thought that no one would come to help was unbearable.

  He lay in the cold for another minute, panting through the pain. He needed to move; he couldn’t stay here. He tried to gather his thoughts and calm himself. He had no choice: he had to ignore the pain and pull himself up. He was not far from the house: the porch light had come on and he could see it from where he lay. If he could make it back there, he could call an ambulance.

  He was a bloody fool. He was tired and upset from his week; he shouldn’t have come outside. That yelp couldn’t have been Honey. It must have been another dog, or even his imagination. She wasn’t out here; nobody was. When he got to the hospital, they would track down his wife. She and Honey would be together somewhere. He just needed to pull himself up using the tree roots and get back to the house quickly.

  As he rolled himself over, teeth gritted, he suddenly heard the distinctive sound of Honey whining nearby. Panic gripped him. He had been right after all. She was out here in the freezing cold and she was trapped. He fumbled at the roots around him for one big enough to pull himself up with. Nothing. Using his heels, he pushed himself through the slush, grabbing in the dark until he found the fat root he had tripped over. Letting out a sob, he eased himself over, clutching it in his freezing hands, and heaved himself up onto one knee, then the other, until eventually he was standing.

  He took a moment to steady himself, then, trying to ignore the intense lure of the house, headed in the direction of Honey’s cry. He couldn’t just leave her out here; she could freeze to death. Clutching his arm, dizzy from the pain, he began to shout her name again, desperate for her to let him know where she was. His eyes fell on the pool house. Walking as fast as his trembling legs would allow, he eventually reached it, and cupped his hand to the steamed-up window. For a moment there was nothing – the garden had fallen completely silent – then finally he heard a faint whimper coming from inside.

  ‘Honey?’ He rushed towards the door. The pain from his shoulder shot through his arm so violently that tears filled his eyes. But the image of his beloved spaniel in distress spurred him on. ‘Honey, hang on, I’m coming.’

  He pushed the handle down hard but the door remained steadfastly shut. He rattled at it in frustration, kicking at it frantically, but it was locked. They keys were back at the house; it would take for ever to get back there in his state. Honey let out another faint yelp and he slammed at the door with his good hand. If she was in the pool, she could be drowning. He looked around for something that might help, and picked up a rock. Lifting his arm as high as he could, he hurled it at the door, shattering one of the panes of glass, then pushed his hand through the jagged hole and reached inside to turn the lock. Click. He was into the warm room.

  ‘Honey? Honey, are you in here?’ he shouted, turning on the light and pacing round the pool in his clumsy boots, clinging to his injured arm.

  A panicked yelp came from under the pool cover, and Edward saw something moving.

  ‘Hang on, Honey, I’m coming.’ He staggered towards her, slipping twice on his way. He could see her wet paws clawing desperately at the side of the pool. The cover was tied down tight and he struggled with one arm to undo it and pull it back. Eventually a small, sodden brown face appeared, the dog’s eyes bulging and terrified. He let out a choked cry. ‘Honey! What the hell are you doing in there?’

  The dog was clearly in a state of utter exhaustion, scrabbling at the side of the pool as Edward leant in to pull her out.

  It was then that he heard footsteps behind him, but before he could even turn his head, he had been pushed with such force that he had no chance of keeping his balance and toppled into the pool.

  Water filled his ears and eyes and mouth as he went under. With only one arm, it was a huge struggle to kick his body to the surface again, every movement like a knife twisting in his shoulder. When finally he reached the surface, coughing and choking, he grabbed for the side, looking around desperately for whoever had pushed him. Feet appeared at ground level in front of his eyes, flat black leather boots, soaked through from the water, but when he looked up, the pool cover was being lowered over his head, and though he tried to push it up again, he had no strength.

  ‘Please . . . no,’ he spluttered. ‘Stop, what are you doing?’

  He tried to go on kicking, but the pain in his arm made any movement excruciating and he had no energy left after his fall. Honey was still in the water with him, clawing at his bad arm, and soon her panic began to rub off on him as he tried to keep his head above the surface. But the cover continued to press down on him, and now only one corner was open. He tried to grip the side of the pool with his numb fingers.

  ‘Hang on, Honey,’ he said. ‘We’ll get out of here. Just hang on.’ He was retching water as Honey clambered onto his dislocated shoulder, scrambling up and slipping down his arm. He’d never known pain like it in his life.

  Suddenly a hand plunged into the water, dragging the panicked spaniel out, then in one final movement the last corner of the pool cover was pulled over Edward’s head.

  He began to beat at the vinyl. He couldn’t control the panic now and began to sob uncontrollably. It was Christmas in a week; images of his girls running down the stairs on Christmas morning filled his mind. Now this Christmas, and every one after it, would be ruined for his wife and his daughters. He cried out their names, screaming for Sally with all the strength he had left in him, clawing at the cover until his fingers started to bleed, turning the water red.

  He slipped under, fighting it at first: up and down, sink and swim, sink and swim. Sink. Sink and swim. Sink . . . hold your breath, fight for your girls, fight.

  Don’t do this to them, hold your breath, go back up for more air.

  Sink.

  Sink.

  His lungs began to take in water, sheer terror forcing him back up to the surface to be faced again with the thick, impenetrable cover as he prayed and prayed that Sally would come and find him.

  And then the lights went out.

  Terror like nothing he had ever experienced in his life engulfed him. No one would know he was here, for hours, days maybe. They would find his swollen body eventually, floating in the water.

  His mind raced to the records on the floor of his study. That was what Sally would find when she got home and came looking for him. She would call out for him and then head up to his study, and find the boxes and boxes of death records. The last one he had read forever etched in his mind: 24 years of age, two-day protracted labour. Breech birth, episiotomy. Haemorrhage. Mother deceased. Twin infants survived.

  As he sank under the water again, he could hear Mother Carlin’s voice: ‘Their pain is part of the punishment, Doctor. If they don’t suffer, they don’t learn. We’ll call you if we need you.’

  He had tried to help. It wasn’t his fault; there was nothing he could have done. As he sucked in his last breaths, Dr Jacobson listened to his beloved spaniel scratching at the pool-house door. He struggled for a few seconds more, coughing out Sally’s name as their wedding song began to play over and over in his head . . . Dream a little dream of me.

  Chapter Thirty
-Nine

  Monday 6 February 2017

  Kitty Cannon looked at the out-of-order sign on the lifts of the Whitehawk Estate, then craned her neck up to the tenth floor.

  As she started her climb in the aromatic stairwell, she remembered the first day she had set eyes on the eleven-year-old Annabel at Brighton Grammar School. It was the first day of the autumn term of her upper-sixth year and she had heard a commotion in the playground and looked over. A group of first years were in a circle, around what or whom she did not know. Normally she wouldn’t have cared, but something about the intensity of it had made her take notice. The jeers were particularly loud, the group unusually large.

  So she had jumped down from the wall on which she was sitting, and slowly walked over to the noisy scene. As she got closer, the chanting became audible: ‘Ginger nut, ginger nut, get back in the biscuit tin.’

  As soon as Kitty came near them, a few of them looked round and stopped what they were doing. Most of the sixth-form girls would cause a first year to stop and take notice, but Kitty was a particularly imposing sight: tall, with poker-straight raven-black hair, Mediterranean skin and dark-brown eyes that glared at the unfolding scene.

  A first-year girl was in the middle of the circle, curled up into a ball with her hands over her head as if she had long since given up trying to escape and was protecting herself as best she could against whatever was coming next. Her hair was indeed a sight to behold, long, curly and fiery red. Most of those in the circle fell silent one by one as Kitty stood over them, but a scrawny, mean-faced boy with dirty fingernails and scuffed trousers was too high on the adrenaline of pursuing his prey to have noticed her. He suddenly pulled back his leg, as if he were about to kick the girl like a football on a pitch. As he started to swing it forward, Kitty stepped closer and pushed him hard.