The Stopping Place

by Helen Slavin

  It was very cold. One of the cisterns was dripping water, a hollow plinking sound. The envelope tore open easily to reveal the newspaper cutting. It shivered in my hand as if it were alive.

  * * *

  Tickety-tickety. My heart. My breath. Angharad driving that night. Tickety-tickety of the rain on the windscreen. Afterwards, the tickety-tickety of the night creatures in the muffling quiet of the paintball forest. The mizzling rain diamonded in Iris’s hair as, afterwards, she and Martha and Mrs Milligan got into her car. Angharad and Ellen, watchful as bouncers.

  ‘How will you get back?’ Angharad’s keys clutched in her hand. Ellen poised at the car door.

  ‘I should stay with you. You can’t wait here alone.’ Mrs Atkinson anxious. Nathan, his left eye swollen closed, turned his right eye upon her. Laughed. A low wolfish growl. But I shook my head.

  ‘Go. It’s better that you go.’

  They were gone. We were alone.

  Nathan lay weary, but still cursing through duct tape, on the bark-strewn floor before me.

  ‘Finshit, Bch.’

  I took his mobile from my pocket. As I scrolled through his phonebook there was a photo of a hairy arse and the subtitle Liam. A photo of Bailley popped onto the screen. I took a photo of Nathan, his eyes burning fury above the duct tape, his face almost obscured by the marker-pen tattoos. I clicked send and we waited. Nathan lolling his exhausted head backwards, wincing at the pain of his eye. Laughing. Harsh. Smothered.

  As we tracked him down. As we pushed Nathan to his edges it felt as if, at the end of it all, I might be able to pounce on him. As if, with my animal self, I might be able to reach into his ribcage and find his true heart still beating there. As if, through all and everything there could be some part of him that I could recognise and salvage.

  NeveragainNEVERnevERneverAGainneverRAgainNEVerNEVERNEVErAgainNeVEREVERagainNEVERnevereveragainnevereveragainNEVERAGAINNEVER AgAiN we had written it over and over every inch of him in permanent marker from the library. Stained him. Blotted him out. Already the mizzling rain had begun to sluice some of the paintball splats and mud from him and the clear message would be revealed. Never again. I wondered how long it would mark him for. Long enough for him to understand? I wondered how long it takes for your skin to rub and replenish and rub and replenish until the surface is new and clean.

  ‘Yllfuingpyfrthsbch.’ The words seemed sharp enough to cut through the tape. His look, a cold blade of fury.

  ‘Finshit.’

  A challenge. A dare.

  ‘FINSHITBCH’

  I looked at him, a wave of panic washed through me. A knowledge.

  Ijo o desu. ‘It is finished.’

  A moment. He rolls himself over, struggling and surging upwards. His arms flexing furiously, unable to wrench themselves free of the tape. His face muscles contorting as the roar bellows out of him. The log. Clips him neatly. He falls. A red star of blood by his eye. Fear, like a whip, smarts across me. I reach for his belt then, spilling his belongings from the carrier bag. My shaking hands tie his hands, secure him with his belt.

  The same belt. Supple. Buckled.

  The phone rings out.

  ‘Nat? That you? What the fuck is going on?’ Bailley’s voice.

  ‘If you want him, come for him.’ I hung up, texted in the map reference, neatly written out for me by Ellen on a scrap of Paintball Pandemonium headed paper. And waited.

  It was almost dawn when she arrived.

  He was still bound and she made no move to free him, just helped me wrap him in his mackintosh, fretting and obstructive as an oversized baby while we tied the belt around his waist. He could still be scornful even with his own blood on his face.

  Still I was not prepared for the moment when, instead of opening the door, she opened the boot. I opened my mouth to speak but, as we lugged his writhing body into the hatchback, the torch beam flashed across her face. I saw at once how she was thinner. Wasted. Her gaze was unsteady as she leaned onto the boot to shut it with a muffled click.

  ‘How did he find me?’

  Bailley took a deep breath.

  ‘Your dad. He put his house up for sale. After that…it was just a matter of digging.’ She looked down, ashamed. ‘Nathan wouldn’t let you go, Jeannie. He was never…Nothing I did…I’m sorry for what I…’ Her voice trailed off. I couldn’t see the woman from the party anymore. I could see how he had dulled her; tarnished her.

  ‘Don’t be sorry,’ I said.

  ‘Too late to be sorry…’ her voice thin as smoke.

  Bailley’s face slithered and trembled, her smile glassy.

  ‘Too late Jeannie,’ a cold dry voice, her gaze edged raw. I had a sudden vision of my wrists, Nathan’s belt, the creak as he pulled it tight around the chair back.

  ‘Can’t make it right…but…’ Her voice lowered, her lips pinching inwards at the sourness. ‘Atonement.’ The word like a stone.

  ‘Atonement?’

  Her eyes flickered away from mine, across the boot latch, ‘…for Geraldine.’

  She took three steps to get into the car. Words wouldn’t come to me. Only the lightning flashes of memory. The engine growling now. I took a step forward as the wheels skidded slightly on the claggy forest floor. I reached out. Afraid.

  ‘Wait.’ My hand catching for a second on the rear wing. Me, running, the mud sucking and tripping, not letting me go. Bailley pulling away. ‘Wait.’

  My eyes caught by Bailley’s as she gave me one last look in the rear view mirror. The headlights moving, torch-like, away through the trees.

  * * *

  In the cold enamel of the sink, the flames caught at the edge of the clipping.

  DETECTIVE VICTIM OF PUNISHMENT KILLING

  Detective Sergeant Nathan Flynn caught with a bright bronzed flare edged with black victim of punishment killing singed and flittered into dust police suspect curled and blackened criminals he was pursuing scorched and shrivelled undercover operation ends in bizarre ritualistic murder. A thin, bitter thread of smoke gasped and was gone.

  ‘Ruby?’ Martha, come to find me. Upstairs Angharad was topping up everyone’s wine.

  ‘A toast?’ said Mrs Atkinson. She reached a thin, gold-papered packet from her bag. ‘Ruby? Catch.’

  I caught the packet. All the faces were turned to me.

  ‘Open it, then.’ Martha’s eyes were sparkly with tears. I opened the paper.

  ‘We want you to know, you’re going to be missed over at Space Station Zebra,’ said Mrs Milligan raising her glass.

  ‘It’s not much, just a token,’ Mrs Atkinson said as I looked up from the gold tissue paper, from the white conservator gloves within.

  ‘To Ruby,’ said Martha, and we raised our glasses.

  * * *

  In December 1890 Mary-Ann was taken from Kite House to Southampton by Lady Breck to become a paid companion and lady’s maid to Lady Breck’s sister, Tilly Buller. They never parted from that day. Of course, the same can’t be said of Viscount and Lady Breck who parted quite soon afterwards.

  Mary-Ann lived at St Heliers Villa, No. 5 The Heights until her death in 1958. Her name is there on the deeds from the time she was bequeathed the property by Matilda Buller in 1932. And if you’d care to look, the will is on microfiche.

  In the sixties a local architect, Humphrey Burnage, bought numbers 5 and 7 The Heights and demolished them. He wanted to make way for neighbouring Scandinavian-style single-storey houses, low slung and leafy, for himself and his ex-wife Irma. Or so the estate agent told me.

  Dad put his house on the market in readiness; ready for me to return, ready to leave quickly if I should need him. He will never need to know how Nathan made the dog cough up the jigsaw pieces for him. It is better that everyone believes Nathan picked up my trail from the scowling newspaper portrait that accompanied the knicker-thief story.

  Dad’s piano was in need of tuning after being manhandled through the doorway at No 7 The Heights. I stood in his new kitchen waiting for his n
ew kettle to boil. As I put milk from his new fridge into two of his new mugs I saw that even in its current overgrown state, his new garden has a lovely view of the bend of the canal. Then I had to yell that I was just popping out for some sugar. The piano tuner takes five per mug, averaging three mugs an hour. Neither of them heard me, they were discussing the rights and wrongs of Shostakovich.

  I walked along the curved road that is The Heights. That morning, before Dad and the removal vans arrived, I had been standing in my kitchen at No. 5 (‘recently updated to an exceptional standard’, the estate agent details had declared). I noticed, for the first time since I moved in, that there is a gap in the trees on the opposite bank. From there I can just make out the scaffolding where roofers are repairing the flashing on the dome of the old library.

  I don’t think about Nathan now. Only occasionally, if I have to take the bus. You might think it would be the memory where we are walking, that particular Wednesday, when everything seemed to be beginning, his hand so tender and gentle in the small of my back as we moved up the hill together to the walled garden.

  No. I think about him on that very first day. When I said, ‘My bus is here.’ I can see his lips forming the words, ‘Miss it.’ I can feel the brown workboots I was wearing as I stepped aboard the bus. Feeling his eyes on the back of my neck. Watching as I showed my travel pass. A moment. The bus pulled away. Then I looked back, saw that he was still standing there.

  Nathan, leaning against the stone pillars of Cromwell Park gates. He didn’t wave. It was only a moment before he turned, walked up the hill. His back to me.

  An Extract From…

  The Extra Large Medium

  The Extra Large Medium

  I don’t get to see Heaven. Once, there was an unseemly tussle with what I think was an angel. Muscular. Lots of feathers. It was pushing against the other side of a door. That’s what I chiefly see. Doors. Not the huge gothic style doors hewn from oak that you might imagine. Not Pearly Gates either. Bog standard blank doors. Made from MDF.

  Angels are intimidating. The bouncers of Heaven. At least that is the message I get from a lot of my clients. The angels aren’t keen on dead people communicating with living people. Once you’re dead the angels think you cross a line and that in fact a line should be drawn under you. Or possibly a cross over you.

  You should put up and shut up. You’ve had your time. You’ve said your piece.

  Which brings me to me. I have always been able to hear the dead speak. That makes it sound very high flown, as if I am some semi-celestial messenger tap dancing up and down that staircase they had in A Matter of Life and Death with a series of life or death communications. What I should say is that I have always been able to listen to dead people whingeing on, moaning and groaning (without chains) about the myriad petty gripes and grumbles of life. That is the key. If your Aunt Mildred was a sour old bat when she was alive the addition of harp lessons and being allocated a cloud is not going to turn her into a philosopher. It has been my experience that most dead people who come back to haunt others, or in fact pester me, do so because they’ve got some unfinished business of a particularly tedious sort. Lost cats, squabbles over wills, Crown Derby coffee sets and leather pouffes are about the limits of it. No one has anything earth shattering to say. I exist as a kind of customer service department, running a stream of endless errands just to keep these people quiet.

  I’m on the side of the angels. Shut up is what I say. Or else tell me what it’s like. Tell me something. Anything. Protect me.

  Love Helen Slavin? Join the Readers Club

  Get your next Helen Slavin story for FREE

  * * *

  If you sign up today, this is what you’ll get:

  * * *

  1. Helen Slavin’s bewitching novella The Ice King: A Witch Ways Whisper, a little backstory to the off-beat world of the Ways;

  * * *

  2. Details of Helen’s new novels and the opportunity to get copies in advance of publication; and

  * * *

  3. The chance to win exclusive prizes in regular competitions.

  * * *

  Interested? It takes less than a minute to sign up. You can get your free story by visiting www.helenslavin.com