by Sue Wallman
Evan lowers the passenger-seat window and says, “Hey, how’s it going?” His smile is startling. It encompasses the four of us. “I hope I didn’t freak you lot out yesterday about the…” He smiles awkwardly. “The dead body. I felt bad afterwards.”
“No worries,” says Tatum. “We’re not traumatized.”
“We’d have found out anyway, I’m sure,” says Ivy.
“Phew,” says Evan.
Marc yells, “OK, troops! Let’s go! On to Chandler’s Hill.”
“Have fun!” calls Evan and waves as the car moves off.
“See you later,” responds Tatum.
I’m never sure how things evolve into tradition at Roeshot House. I imagine with Chandler’s Hill the adults trudged to the top two years in a row and the third year someone said, “Are we going up Chandler’s Hill again?” We Amigos couldn’t care less about the view at the top, but the adults like to make a big deal of it. The bits that interest us are the Wi-Fi outside the pub, the stream with perilous stepping stones, the steep gravel slope on the way up the hill that you can slide down, and the triangulation pillar at the top.
The adults must have started the tradition of climbing on the triangulation pillar, and I never understood why the pillar had four sides and wasn’t a triangle, or how it could ever have been used to measure the land for a map. Even when we were little, we were hoisted up so we could jump down. It felt really high up and scary. Now we still get a thrill, but it’s from balancing on such a small surface area on the top. I find it easier than the other two, probably because of my dance training. We like to strike poses as we jump off and there are some classic Amigo shots in existence, of ballooned jackets in the wind, rain-drenched faces and out-and-out panic of falling before being ready.
Up ahead Steve has stopped walking and is pointing his binoculars at a bird. A blur of brown with wide wings.
“Sparrowhawk,” he says as we come level with him.
“Bird of prey?” asks Ivy with more politeness than I can dredge up.
Steve nods. “Yes. Look how it gives a few wing beats then glides, going quite close to the ground. They’re secretive birds, relying on surprise to catch their prey.”
“Do they eat sparrows?” asks Ivy.
“Yes,” says Steve. “And other small birds. Sometimes birds as large as pigeons.”
I pull a face. “Gross.”
We walk on, Steve tagging along with us, and as the sparrowhawk swoops, Steve whips his binoculars up to his face again. “It’s got something.”
I shudder and look the other way, at the sky that’s darker in the distance, threatening heavy rain, while Steve goes on about wingspans and beak shapes.
The actual hill is still a way off, but we’re at the stile that marks the start of the Chandler land. There’s a bunch-up because of Marc’s dodgy knee. He’s manoeuvring his leg as if it’s a new addition to his body that he hasn’t got used to yet.
“Ouch,” says Tatum loudly. “That hurt.” She leans over, clutching her hands together.
“What have you done?” asks Elaine. “Show us.”
Tatum holds up her hand. There’s blood all over the fleshy part of her hand, below her little finger.
“Oh no,” says Mum. She rushes over with a crumpled tissue. “It’s not as bad as it looks,” she says. “A superficial cut.”
“I must have done it on the fence,” Tatum says.
“We’ll find you a plaster when we get back,” Elaine says.
“I’d like to go back now,” says Tatum. “I remember the way.”
“Honestly,” says Elaine. “You’ll be fine. Marc’s battling on with his knee.”
“No offence,” says Tatum, “but an open wound is different.”
I can’t help thinking she might have done this so she can go back to the spot near the pub for Wi-Fi.
“I’ll come back with you,” says Ivy.
“Me too,” I say. “The four of us could go.”
Mum shakes her head. “Tatum, you go back with Ivy, if that’s what you want. Leah and Jakob, stay with us.”
I could argue, but there’d be a scene, and that rarely happens at Roeshot House. When we’re in Pinhurst there’s a code I’ve become aware of over the years. I don’t show Mum up in front of Auntie Gabs or Elaine, as if they’re still the older kids who look down on her.
I don’t say anything as the other two leave, but I glare at Mum before we carry on. I stick with Jakob, and do my best not to look at Steve, who keeps stopping to swivel round with his binoculars for murderous wildlife.
When we reach the triangulation pillar, Jakob helps me up, and lets go of my hand so I can stand upright. I teeter on the edge, holding in my stomach muscles for elongated seconds, waiting for the moment when falling is inevitable.
I love the swoop of adrenaline as my body prepares for disaster, and I visualize my theatrical pose, springing off as high as I can, imagining coils on the soles of my trainers. I don’t pull off the facial expression quite how I want because I can’t help breaking into a smile.
Jakob films me, adding whoops and a general standard of eccentric filming that Tatum would be horrified by.
I land elegantly, like a dancer should. Jakob stops filming, and awards me a couple of Munchies from an old stub of a packet containing just three. The caramel in the middle is solid from the cold. I help Jakob on to the triangulation pillar, which is hard because he’s so much taller, and Elaine starts squealing about there not being long until his violin exam and to be careful. He does a rubbish jump, and then we run to the gravel slope and surf down, screaming about the little stones that find their way into our shoes, laughing when our bums hit the slope too soon. We’re an Amigo down, but it’s still fun.
NINE
When we arrive back at the house, Auntie Gabs informs us that Tatum’s hand wound is nothing to worry about.
“Tell Evan he can stay for lunch if he wants,” says Auntie Gabs.
“Evan?”
“Yes, he stayed after he and his father dropped off the logs. He’s outside with Ivy and Tatum.”
Did I get it wrong? Did Tatum cut her hand so she could be back here with Evan?
Jakob and I go back outside, to the garden. The three of them are on the trampoline. Tatum is sitting next to Evan, and Ivy’s opposite them.
“How’s your hand?” I say pointedly to Tatum.
“Quite sore, actually,” she says, and holds it up for me to see the big plaster on it.
Evan pats the trampoline. “Come on up, you two.”
I tell him he’s invited to lunch as I sit between Jakob and Ivy. I notice Tatum takes the opportunity to move even closer to Evan. “What have we missed?” I ask. “Have you been talking about Alice and Rose?”
“I don’t know any more than you do,” says Evan. “The police haven’t said anything for a while.”
“But,” says Tatum, with an added pause for emphasis, “Evan’s going to do me a big favour. His mum’s friend works in Silverways, the care home, and he’s going to ask her if we can go and talk to her.”
“Seriously?” says Jakob.
“That would be brilliant,” I say. “Is she allowed to talk to us?”
“Well done, Leah!” says Tatum sarcastically. “You’ll put Evan off asking her.”
He shrugs at me. “I’ll see what Donna says. She wasn’t there when Alice died, but she’d be a good person for your documentary. She could tell you about Alice. As long as you promise to keep it quiet from my dad. He’s still annoyed about me telling you.”
“Did you ever meet Alice?” I ask.
“I don’t remember ever speaking to her,” he says, “but I knew who she was. Everyone living in the village knows each other, pretty much. She was one of those people who run things. You know, village fairs and stuff?”
We nod. I’m thinking of the photo of Alice in her daisy cardigan.
“My sister says she saw Alice’s ghost last night,” says Ivy. Her tone is cautious.
“What?” explodes Tatum. “Why didn’t you tell me?” She demands the details, then asks Evan if Alice ever had long hair like the ghost.
“I don’t know,” he says. “Maybe?”
Tatum tilts her head to the end of the garden. “Those woods there – Alice would have had easy access to them. Did the police do any digging there?”
Evan shakes his head. “That’s private land, owned by someone else. Anyway, the police were only looking for one body.”
“Ah, right,” says Tatum. “They just look kind of sinister. How do the police know there aren’t more bodies? What if she was a serial killer?”
“Those woods? Sinister?” Evan turns to look at them. “Nah. And nobody thinks Alice was a serial killer.”
I huddle into my coat. “D’you remember telling us there were landmines in the woods, Jakob?”
He smiles. “That’s because I didn’t want to go in there. Not after that time we played spies and got lost.”
“Sounds like a good place to do some filming at some point,” says Tatum. She pulls her phone from her pocket. “I need to interview you, Evan, about this house, and what you know. I think you’ll be a natural on camera.”
I hate the little laugh she does after saying this.
“Were you an eyewitness to the body being dug up? Anything like that?” Tatum continues.
Evan breathes out with a sort of laugh. “Eyewitness? Only reporters and TV people were allowed up the driveway. There were some rubberneckers in the field trying to get a look, but nah. To be honest, seeing that pop-up forensics tent made me feel…” He clutches his stomach and mimes being sick. “But I can tell you about the house.”
“Great!” Tatum swipes her screen and accesses her video. “Happy to do this right now?”
“Go on, then,” he says, shifting himself on the trampoline so he’s a little more upright. The rest of us shuffle out of the way.
Tatum coughs then presses record. “Evan from Pinhurst Properties, the company that rents out Alice’s Billings’s old home, tells us about the house and garden where the body of Rose Strathmortimer was found.”
Evan grins and it’s a full second before he says, “Hello.”
“Evan, what was the house like when your dad’s company took over?”
“It was about twenty years ago, so I hadn’t been born then. Dad bought the place from Alice after he promised her he would keep it as a house and garden and not try and develop it before she died.”
“Aha,” says Ivy. “We know the reason why.”
Tatum glares at her for interrupting.
Evan nods. “She sold a lot of the furniture to my dad because she didn’t have room for it in the bungalow and her son didn’t want it, you know, before she went to the nursing home.” Evan looks at me, straight past Tatum and at me, and I smile and do a raised eyebrow, nodding thing, meaning Go on. Add something else. He’s not as much of a natural when the camera’s on him as Tatum led him to believe, but that doesn’t make him any less attractive.
“So, er, the big desk in the attic, that was Alice’s husband’s, and some of the beds were hers, and a couple of wardrobes and a few pictures. The house is pretty much the same as when she left and, um, so’s the garden. My dad’s sort of doing things slowly because we have other properties and, well, cash flow. Hey, I’ve just remembered—” He stops, momentarily distracted, and we notice Steve standing a few metres away, watching us.
“Gabs sent me out here to say lunch is ready,” Steve says. He blinks, unsure whether or not to wait for us.
“Thanks. We’ll be there in a minute,” says Tatum. She reviews what she’s filmed, stopping it before the interruption, and jumps down from the trampoline. “That was really good, Evan, thanks. I told you the camera would love you.” She is so annoying.
“What were you going to say?” I ask Evan.
“There’s a book in the attic. There was a book in the attic, not sure if it’s still there. About local gardens. Super boring, right? I remember Dad pointing it out to me once. He thought someone renting the house might be interested, and I said, ‘You must be joking,’ and Dad said, ‘Just put it back on the shelf.’”
We’re puzzled until he says, “The garden at Roeshot House is in there. Photos of how it was years ago. You should see if you can find the book.”
“We’ll look for it straight after lunch,” says Tatum.
Lunch is vegetable soup, and the adults quiz Evan about life in Pinhurst (hanging out at the Holiday Village or on the recreation ground, depending on the season) and what his plans for New Year’s Eve are (hanging out at the Holiday Village). As Auntie Gabs places a bowl of clementines on the table, Jakob says abruptly, “Someone here might be sleeping in a murderer’s bed.”
I say, “We don’t know for sure it was murder.”
“Not this again!” says Elaine, tutting.
Evan looks embarrassed and explains about Alice leaving furniture when she sold the house. “I’m pretty sure Dad bought new mattresses, though,” he says.
“I don’t like this house any more,” says Poppy.
Evan doesn’t know how to respond so he keeps quiet, his ears turning deep red.
Auntie Gabs inspects the ingredients on a box of biscuits Mum and I brought with a “hmm” and Mum snatches the box out of her hands and says, “For heaven’s sake, Gabs, open them. Nobody has to eat them if they don’t think the ingredients are up to scratch.”
Ivy asks to look at Poppy’s row of paper people from the morning. It transpires she made a mistake, so they are separated as individuals.
“Ah, there are eleven of them. They’re us?” asks Ivy.
We take a good look at them and try not laugh as we work out who is supposed to be who. I especially like the representation of Steve, with his glasses and gormless expression. She’s stuck a skirt on the person who’s me with an extra bit of paper even though I’ve been wearing jeans since I’ve been here, and given me thick black eyelashes which Tatum says makes me look as if I’ve been in a fight.
“If you lot clear the table, you can go,” says Elaine. “I said I’d make a trifle with Poppy for tonight.”
As we finish clearing the table, Baz vomits up something unpleasant from the walk in the middle of the floor, and we are only too happy to leave the kitchen. We run up to the attic.
“I’m going to find that book,” says Tatum.
“You reckon?” says Evan. “Game on.”
The gloom makes it hard to scan the titles on the book spines. Evan says he’ll have to bring a new light bulb next time he comes. At first look it’s not there, but Evan finds it after a more thorough search. We were expecting something wide and substantial, not the floppy pamphlet he pulls out triumphantly from between two fat paperbacks.
The cover shows a flowerbed full of different types of daffodil. Not very relevant so far. He flicks through it. From what we can see there are more black-and-white photos than colour.
“Let’s have a look,” says Tatum, but Evan holds the book in the air. She tickles him simultaneously in both armpits and he crumples, laughing. The flirting is hard to watch. I look at Ivy and she rolls her eyes.
“Give me a moment,” Evan gasps. “I just saw the photo.”
Tatum stays right up next to him as he turns the pages hurriedly. “Here.” He turns the book outwards and we see a rose garden with a central flowerbed and three borders filled with different roses. The ones in the middle are blood red.
“It’s like something from a stately home,” says Jakob, whose parents often drag him round historic houses.
We focus our attention on the three figures to the left of the photo. The caption says: Alice and Doug Billings with their son, John. Their spectacular rose garden is open to the public once a year. John is in shorts and his legs are podgy. He has white-blond hair and the classic young-kid-trying-to-smile expression. Alice’s smile is awkward, as if she’s been cajoled into having this photo taken. Doug’s arm is curled behind his wife’s back, his hand
emerging at her waist. Is he steadying her?
Ivy says, “The central flower bed must be where Rose was buried. It’s the burial site.”
We nod.
“Yes, you’re right,” breathes Tatum.
“And then she had the garage built there, and destroyed the rose garden in the process,” I say.
“Maintaining those roses was probably too much,” says Evan. “She wouldn’t have wanted anyone helping her, would she? When she sold the house to my dad, she said she wanted everything in the garden to stay the same until she died, and then she didn’t mind what he did with it.”
“Didn’t he think that was odd?” I ask.
Evan shakes his head. “He knew she really loved her garden. I know it’s overgrown now in places, but he did his best.”
“Are there any more photos of the house?” asks Ivy.
“One more,” says Evan. He turns over the page and we see a black-and-white photo of the back lawn, taken from the end of the garden. The caption is: Peace and tranquillity at Roeshot House. There are borders bursting with, presumably colourful, flowers. Part of the neat lawn has croquet hoops in it. By the conservatory door there’s a stone dragon statue, and along from that is a bench. Alice is sitting on it. The garden looks huge, and so does the house. In contrast, Alice seems small and lonely.
TEN
When Evan leaves, saying if he doesn’t his dad will show up and that would be embarrassing, we stay in the attic and Tatum takes photos of the book, then searches the old desk to see if anything could have been left behind from when Alice lived here. Apart from clumps of grey dust, it’s empty, as I told her it would be. Clive was bound to have checked the furniture that was left as soon as he took over the house.
I gaze out of the window to the garden at the side of the house. I can see part of the garage from here, sticking out above a tangle of bushes. The window doesn’t open far because there’s a rusty metal bar in the way, to stop people falling out. The rose garden would have been visible from here. I sit on the window seat and run my fingers over the chipped paint, and random grooves where somebody before me was bored, and scored it with a tool of some kind.