August 19th
Dear Adrian, when will I see you in real life? I have many times been looking at your photographs the one of you looking handsome on a boat is my favorite but also I like Adrian skiing and Adrian playing the guitar for his friends while drinking wine and eating what I think perhaps is potato chips. I wonder if soon you will play your guitar just for me? That is my greatest dream come true. You are so handsome with your blond hair that is so thick and sticking up, your healthy pink cheeks, and your blue British eyes.
Why can’t we talk on the phone sometime or Skype? Are you too shy? That is okay I do not mind, I like it when boys are shy. Did you ask your aunt about the job again? I don’t care if pay is not much good—I will work just to sleep in a bed and eat. I will even sleep on floor and not eat a lot, maybe some chocolate though, English chocolate is so good, a friend gives me one time from holiday!
August 29th
Did you forget again to ask your aunt and uncle about the job? You are always forgetting things and I have to remind you! I am angry with you Adrian. No, I was joking, of course I am not really angry! When you don’t email for a few days I am scared you are bored with me and sometimes I feel you are my only friend in the whole world. Adrian. I think about you so much. If I am to be your girlfriend I promise not to be annoying and ask you for things all the time. I will be a good little mouse. I think the English girls they will hate me for stealing you. Why don’t you have an English girlfriend? Maybe you do and you are just pretending. Sometimes I get scared that you meet a pretty and nice English girl and you forget about me and I don’t get anymore messages.
You are so much nicer than the boys here, all they want to do is smoke drugs and talk about stupid motorbikes.
Sept 10th
I received your letter and money today. Angel Adrian I will pay you back in a thousand kisses when I see you. Thank you thank you thank you. I am a little scared because I haven’t been to foreign country before, I will be a little lost girl and you will be the prince who is rescuing me.
Now I will tell Maria and all her little bottles of shampoo to go to hell.
Tell your aunt and uncle I don’t mind to do any job and I know good English and I can work very hard. I am good at cleaning things, being polite to people, mathematics, fashion, cookery and historia. I would like very much to learn to drive a car. I think if you will teach me I can learn things very quickly and I know you will be a good teacher and not get angry if I make mistake!
I will meet them as agreed on the 27th. They will be parked in the silver Mercedes car in the park of McDonald’s near to the port. I hope they are very nice people. It is just a little disappointing that you will not be there to meet me yourself. Since you are going to be on the ski trip until end of month—then we will be together and able to have some fun times I hope.
All my love and kisses
Violetta
xxxx
• • •
IT WAS ALMOST six years ago when they had gone to collect the first visitor. John told her he needed to meet someone arriving on a ferry at some port hundreds of miles away. He said she was a young woman who didn’t speak very good English and that she would be staying with them for a while. The news sent Marion into a spin. They had never had a visitor staying in the house before.
“But who is she, and how did you meet her? Is she going to be staying long? I suppose we could put her in Mother’s room, but I would have to change the bedding, and there is water leaking in near the front window. Will I have to buy foreign food or will she eat what we eat?”
But John wouldn’t say anything more about the guest, and when she quizzed him, all she got was silence and black looks. It wasn’t until a few days before they were supposed to make the trip that Marion said she wouldn’t go with him unless John explained exactly what was going on.
Her brother confessed. He said he had met Sonya through an internet chat room, and they had been corresponding for several months. Marion was shocked when he told her that he had posed as a twenty-one-year-old university student called Adrian Metcalf. He showed Marion the emails and photographs that he had sent to the girl. The photographs came from the Facebook page of one of his former sixth-form pupils at Broadleaf Academy; they showed a handsome blond youth on a yacht with his arm around two friends, playing the guitar at a party and skiing. The boy, he told her, was now deceased. Walking home late after a New Year’s Eve party, he had slipped on ice and fallen into a freezing-cold lake.
Marion couldn’t believe what her brother was telling her. How could a good, decent man like him be capable of lying to a stranger?
“You have to tell her the truth, John, immediately,” she insisted.
“Marion, you don’t understand, we’re in love,” John replied.
“How can she be in love with you? She thinks you’re someone else.”
“You don’t realize how lonely I am, Mar. I feel like I’m dying inside.”
“Then why don’t you be honest with her, John. Come clean. Send her a real picture of yourself, that lovely one you had taken in your good suit for the Oxford reunion bash. You never know, perhaps she’ll still want to come over and stay with us.”
“Look at me, Mar, what young woman would want an old fella like me?”
Then John went down on his knees and began to cry, his face twisting up.
She had seen that stricken look on his face the day they found Sir Isaac Newton in the middle of Grange Road, his thin, tabby body mangled by a car. Nine-year-old John having befriended the stray displayed an unusual degree of tenderness towards it, buying tinned tuna and condensed milk from his own pocket money, yet Mother had refused to let him keep the “filthy creature” in the house on the grounds of its extreme ugliness and the likelihood of it carrying disease.
“I just want to find a nice girl who’ll love me and give me children,” he said. “You know, this Sonya comes from a very poor background. She grew up in an orphanage and has no family. Perhaps if I am kind to her, she won’t mind that I’m older.”
• • •
LYING AWAKE FOR many nights, she went over it all in her head again and again; of course it was wrong to bring the girl all this way on false pretenses. The whole business had to be stopped. She just wouldn’t accept it. Then she would think of the look of suffering on John’s face when he told her how lonely he was. Wasn’t there a chance that the girl might see past his baldness and potbelly and perhaps appreciate him for his intelligence and decency? And if the two of them married and started a family, wouldn’t that be wonderful? Certainly there was no longer any chance of Marion herself becoming a mother, yet she yearned to have a child in the house, a little person who would call her Auntie Mar, someone she could take for walks on the beach and play games with.
She loved her brother, he was her only living family, and wasn’t it her sisterly duty to make him happy? Of course she had doubts about what he was doing, who wouldn’t have? But if she refused to help him, what would happen then? Might he go away and leave her alone in this huge house, wandering from room to dusty room, imagining footsteps and whispers that were not her own? How long before she went quite mad with only teddy bears and ghosts to talk to?
Finally she said to him:
“Please, John, you must promise me this: that you will behave like a gentleman towards the girl. And if she refuses to accept you, if she says she doesn’t want to stay here with us, then you will pay for her to go back home?”
And John had agreed.
• • •
WHEN MARION FIRST set eyes on Sonya’s round, pale face with those large terrified eyes, she was shocked how young the girl looked, perhaps no more than seventeen. She was shaking with exhaustion and too shy to speak when they picked her up at a McDonald’s restaurant near the port. She wouldn’t let go of her suitcase, a battered old thing that had been decorated with stickers of horses and ponies like something belonging to a little girl. When she asked about Adrian, John said that Adrian was their nephe
w and she would meet him when they got home. Marion was too afraid to say anything at all.
As soon as they got back to Grange Road, John sent Marion upstairs so he and Sonya would have time to talk alone. She lay on her bed with her stomach tightened into a fist. It seemed almost impossible that this young woman and her brother could fall in love, yet Marion did her best to persuade herself that with time and patience, John might win her heart. She recalled May to December: a Heartfelt Production in which the heroine, a young Victorian kitchen maid, rejected a reckless stable lad in favor of a kindly squire with white, muttonchop whiskers who could offer her a good home and financial security.
The next morning when Marion went downstairs, she found John sitting in the kitchen alone.
“John, what happened? Where is she?”
“Marion, I don’t know how to tell you this—but Sonya is an unsuitable sort of person.”
“What do you mean?”
He picked up a slice of Marmite and toast.
“She’s a prostitute. It seems I have been the victim of deception. This young woman has already slept with dozens of men.” He tore at the toast with his teeth and then licked melted butter from his lips. “She offered to perform acts that I wouldn’t dream of describing to you.”
Marion felt her neck and face become fiery hot.
“Is she still here? You have to get her out of our house.”
“I can’t. Not yet. She brought drugs with her on the ferry. She wants me to sell them and give her the money. Of course I refused, but then she threatened to go to the police and say that we kidnapped her.”
John looked at her with such an awful expression in his eyes that Marion thought her heart was going to stop.
“I don’t understand. She seemed like such a sweet young girl. We have to go to the police at once, John, we have to tell them the truth.”
“No, they won’t believe us. Not after what they think happened at Broadleaf.” And then his mouth twisted into a peculiar smile. “You’ll be in trouble too. We both went to get her, didn’t we?”
Marion imagined herself being arrested and then taken to prison; it would be like school again but a hundred times worse. Nasty, rough women making fun of her, calling her names. And she would never be able to sleep if she had to share a room with others. She would most likely drop dead from the stress of it all; in fact, it would be better to die.
John told her he would keep Sonya in the cellar for a few days, just until she calmed down, and then he would send her back home.
• • •
A WEEK LATER when Sonya still hadn’t left, Marion demanded to know what was happening.
“I’ve come to a decision, Marion,” John announced, looking as excited as he did when he was a teenager and got accepted into Oxford. “She is going to stay with us for a while. I’m going to educate her, to improve her English, to teach her science, mathematics, literature. This way she can aspire to be something more than just a whore or a criminal.”
“She’s going to live with us? In this house?”
“Yes, but she’ll have to stay hidden. In the cellar. I’ve made it quite comfortable for her. The young lady has everything she needs.”
“But why does she have to stay down there?”
“The people who gave her the drugs are looking for her. She worked for a gang of very dangerous men, and if they find her, they’ll kill her. They’ll probably kill us too, for protecting her.”
Marion was terrified. What choice did she have but to trust her brother? She had relied on his judgment her whole life.
“John, it doesn’t seem right—her living down there—just how long will she stay?”
“Until it’s safe. You mustn’t tell anyone, though. Not a soul. And I don’t want you going anywhere near her—”
“Why ever not?”
“Girls like Sonya can be very clever and manipulative, Marion, someone as softhearted and unworldly as you would be no match for her. That little lost kitten has come from the streets. In the past she’s had to protect herself—you know I found a knife in her pocket?”
Marion recoiled, feeling her plump flesh shrivel as though the blade were already being pressed against it.
“Of course the poor soul can’t be blamed for being that way,” John continued in his soft, cajoling tone. “I want to help her, to teach her to trust people again. But that will take time, like taming a feral animal. Until then you promise me you won’t go down there?”
She nodded solemnly like a child vowing not to run out into the busy road lest she be struck by a car.
John kept the cellar locked, but Marion would have been afraid to go down even if he hadn’t.
• • •
THEN, SIX MONTHS later, John announced they were going to pick up another girl. Of course Marion had said no, she would have nothing to do with it, but her brother insisted. The girl, who was called Alla, he said, if they didn’t help her, she would end up working as a prostitute for a criminal gang. According to him, they made these girls do dreadful things, and many of them became drug addicts or killed themselves if the gang leaders didn’t beat them to death. If she came here, he could help her get an education and a good job. They were saving this girl’s life, how could she refuse? Weeks of arguing and sleepless nights left Marion exhausted and confused. Eventually John wore her down and she agreed to go with him to meet the girl.
And Alla had been so different from Sonya; though only in her twenties, she had had the jaded eye of experience. Tall and glamorous in her fur coat, winding manicured fingers through her long blond hair, she had looked Marion up and down with a smirk as she identified the older woman as someone of no significance.
The girls had to stay down the cellar. He said that was very important. People were looking for them, perhaps watching the house. They couldn’t even risk being glimpsed through a window. But did they have to stay hidden all the time, every minute of the day? And could they possibly want to stay down there? Wasn’t that even worse than anything these so called “gang members” might do? She had so many questions, yet whenever she challenged John, darkness would fill his eyes and the air would become so thick, it was impossible to breathe.
Truth be told, Marion was a little relieved that the visitors remained down in the cellar. She had always been shy of people. Company made her anxious, and she had never learned how to make small talk. The girls would probably giggle about her behind her back, making fun of her clumsy body and scruffy clothes.
• • •
THE INSIDE OF the Mercedes had a damp, mildewy smell from being locked in the garage for months. A silky cobweb that covered the wing mirror clung on until they reached the coast road, then blew off into the wind. By the time they were on the motorway, driving along between green fields and trees, Marion began to feel a little better. It was a sparkling autumn day, and just being in a car and away from Northport was such a novelty, she realized she was almost enjoying herself.
They passed a wrecking yard. The top of a crooked Ferris wheel poked over the wall.
“There’s Frank’s place,” said Marion excitedly. “Remember when Dad used to take us there?”
John just shook his head and grunted in reply.
It was nearly half past one when they reached the McDonald’s car park, half an hour before the girl was due to meet them. As they waited, John kept looking at his steel watch. Condensation from their breathing began to build up on the windows of the car, and Marion wiped hers with the sleeve of her coat and peered through the glass for signs of the girl. Three children, their tummies and bottoms sticking out aggressively, followed a large woman with a drab blond ponytail across the car park and into the low, redbrick restaurant. Even inside the car, you could smell the sweet, rancid odor of fat coming from the building. Marion’s back began to ache, and her mouth was dry. She wriggled her toes to get some life back into them, but it didn’t make them any warmer.
John kept flexing his fingers and cracking his knuckles. Perhaps s
he isn’t coming, thought Marion. Once they had come to this car park, waited for hours and hours, but no one arrived. John became a dark tornado of fury, ranting about all the months of preparation wasted, not to mention the money he had sent. He had called the girl all the names under the sun, saying she was a vile, thieving bitch and what he would do to her if he ever caught hold of her. His driving on the way home had been so reckless, she was surprised they weren’t killed.
Marion was afraid even to suggest the same thing might have happened again. After they had been waiting nearly an hour, she finally dared to speak.
“John, you don’t think she might have missed the ferry—?”
“Why don’t you leave the bloody thinking to me?” he snapped. “She’ll be here.”
The wriggling anxiety inside her grew claws and teeth. She tried to breathe, but her chest was too tight. She wanted to get out of the car and run, as if she were being kidnapped. What if she went into the restaurant and told everyone what was happening? Would they even believe her?
“I—I think I’m going to be sick.”
“Oh, for God’s sake—”
“I’m sorry—”
She opened her car door and heaved. Of course she hadn’t eaten, so there wasn’t much to bring up—just some clear liquid that formed an egg-white froth on the dark gray tarmac of the car park. Luckily, no one saw, and when she was done, she wiped her mouth and closed the passenger door.
“What the hell is the matter with you now?”
“I can’t help it, it’s my nerves. I just want to go home, John,” she said shakily, then buried her chin in the collar of her coat, unable to look directly at him.
“Marion, just—just pull yourself together.”
“I can’t, John, I can’t, I don’t want to do this.”
“We are helping these girls,” he reasoned. “If they didn’t come to us, then God knows what would happen to them.”
“But if we are helping them, then why do we have to lie?”
“Because some people don’t know what’s in their best interests. Other more intelligent people have to make decisions for them.”
The Visitors Page 16