Tell-Tale

by Sam Hayes

  ‘It’ll keep her amused,’ I told her.

  ‘Annoy the hell out of me,’ she replied.

  ‘We can have sing-songs.’

  ‘No one can play.’

  ‘We could learn,’ I said.

  ‘You wouldn’t practise,’ she retorted.

  I walked off, determined to get that piano in the common room if I had to push it in myself. I knew Betsy would adore it, and I was right. My pestering paid off. Even as Ted and his mate huffed and swore and humped the dusty thing into place, Betsy was fiddling with the keys, fitting each of her fingers above a note, carefully thinking which sound went with another.

  Some mighty awful noises came out of the piano at first, but gradually, as Betsy sat patiently on a dining chair that was too low, pressing the yellowed ivory keys with arched fingers, something began to emerge. Unusual renditions of ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’ and ‘Oranges and Lemons’ spilled from the common room. And strange, doleful versions of ‘Happy Birthday’ in minor-keyed notes. Betsy knew my eighteenth birthday was only a week away, and knew also that I would soon be leaving. She had no comprehension of what that actually meant, and no idea either that I would be taking her away with me. The thought of leaving her behind was abhorrent. Who, I wondered, would be there to comfort her in the mornings?

  I had no idea where we would go. I expected to be booted out on to the street the minute the council’s funding for me expired. If I was lucky, they’d give me the number of a hostel, perhaps a couple of pounds for the bus, tell me where the job centre was. I was determined that Betsy and I were going to start a new life together.

  ‘Happy birthday . . . de-ar Ay-vaaa . . .’ Betsy’s brittle voice cracked out a contrasting tune to the one she was actually playing. ‘Haaapy birthday to you!’ she shouted in finale.

  Everyone clapped when she’d finished. She turned round, amazed at what she’d done. Her sweet-stained lips tried to mask her delight but couldn’t. Teeth that I nagged her to clean sat discoloured in her open mouth. It was pure happiness – raw and unexpected, steaming from the warmth of her heart.

  I left her contentedly tracking her fingers up and down every single one of the piano keys. Not all of them played a note, and not many of them were in tune. I’d been sent to fetch logs for the big fireplace. In winter we spent most of our time in the common room, huddled by the hearth, watching kids’ shows on the telly after we’d tramped back from where the school bus dropped us off. I was the only one trying for A levels. I wanted to make something of myself.

  I humped the big basket down into the basement. The stack of wood I usually took logs from was pretty much down to curls of bark and twigs that were fit only for kindling. I ventured into another cellar chamber where I knew there was a fresh pile of dry wood. The ceiling level drew down, forcing me to press my chin on my chest.

  As I passed into the next dark area, I heard the rise and fall of voices above me. I glanced up, catching my face in the cobwebs strung between the joists right above my head. I could see chinks of light running parallel between the floorboards. I was directly underneath a room where two men were talking. The wood muffled their identity.

  ‘It’s all ready . . .’ I heard one say.

  ‘I’ll tell the others,’ another butted in.

  I did the geography in my head. It was confusing, but I reckoned I was beneath Mr Leaby’s office, even though I didn’t hear the familiar resonant growl that clung to the end of his words. I’d heard it enough times during the Sunday services. I couldn’t figure out who was up there, but it didn’t matter much. People came and went all the time at Roecliffe; men skulking about the corridors, eyeing us up, making the muscles in my legs go weak.

  Loud clicking footsteps drowned out whatever else they said. It was freezing down in the basement. I wanted to fill the basket and to get back to the fire. I smiled to myself at the thought of Betsy’s piano playing. I wished I’d discovered it months ago. I wanted to make her happy.

  ‘Later, then,’ the first voice said again. ‘Don’t be late.’ Then the bang of a door followed by nothing at all.

  Betsy was getting over a cold. Patricia was quite happy for me to nurse her through the night – to blow her snotty nose, to dose her with hot lemon and honey drinks, except we didn’t have any honey in the kitchen. I made do with orange squash and sugar with a squirt of Jif lemon. I warmed it in the microwave and sat Betsy on my lap as she drank. She pulled a face as the tartness of it spread around her mouth. ‘Drink up,’ I told her. ‘It’ll make you better.’

  ‘Will it stop them coming for me?’ she asked. My shoulders drooped; my eyes screwed up. I tried to keep awake all night to protect her, I really did. Every few breaths I’d sit up in a panic, feeling the space beside me or, if she’d been very brave and slept in her own bed, feeling the mattress next to mine for the length of her warm body. When my hand rested on her skin, I could relax for a while longer. Once, I even bound her wrist to mine with a belt, but in the morning it was on the floor, cut in two pieces. Betsy was lying upside-down in her bed, missing her pyjama bottoms, scarlet welts across her thighs.

  ‘It might,’ I say.

  ‘If I’m a good girl, will that stop them coming?’

  I pinched a tissue round her nose and she blew out.

  ‘You are a good girl,’ I told her.

  ‘But you never get taken. It’s not fair.’

  She was right. It wasn’t fair. ‘They don’t like me,’ I told her. ‘I’m not cute like you. I’m too big.’

  ‘Did they take you when you weren’t big?’ she asked.

  I nodded, feeling guilty. ‘Just once.’ What was it he’d said? Don’t bring her again. She’s a menace.

  Betsy pushed against me on my lap – a kitten shaping against its mother. When she’d fallen asleep, I used all my strength to carry her back to my bed. I sat propped up against a folded pillow, squashed against the wall, while Betsy spread out. I fought the need for sleep, holding her hand as she wheezed through her dreams. I stroked her forehead and kissed her hair. I pulled her close with every creak of the floorboards, every whip of a branch against the tall windows of our dormitory, every cry from the boys’ rooms, and every missed heartbeat as she fell deeper into sleep.

  When I woke up, it was the middle of the night. I don’t remember drifting off, only that I must have done for her to be prised from the crook of my arms. The semi-open door sent a corridor of light across my bed, illuminating Betsy’s absence; showing me the crumpled sheet where she had been only a short time ago.

  I ran my hand over it, just to make sure I wasn’t imagining it. The nylon bedclothes crackled with static as they rasped against the mattress. I could still feel Betsy’s warmth. She couldn’t have been long gone.

  In a flash, I was out of bed. Wind and rain lashed against the window above our beds. I pulled on my jeans and scrambled into a sweater. My nightdress hung loose around my thighs. I didn’t bother with shoes. I was determined to find Betsy. They wouldn’t be taking her this time, not when we were so close to leaving.

  Before I crept out of the dormitory – the other girls sleeping soundly in their beds – I glanced back to where I’d last seen Betsy. I reached out and touched her pillow before going off in search of the little girl who had made my life worth living.

  CHAPTER 47

  He’s got it all wrong. Adam makes it sound like a holiday camp. Clean dresses and white socks, trips to the beach, and weekends with parents who never existed.

  Award-winning children’s home, Roecliffe Hall, has been at the centre of hundreds of children’s lives since the nineteen forties. Post-war Britain suffered a deluge of orphans and unwanted pregnancies. Children’s homes became overcrowded and poorly run, but one institution stood out from the rest. The sprawling estate of Roecliffe Hall, a Victorian Gothic mansion designed and built during the early nineteenth century, sat derelict for nearly a decade before West Riding County Council took it over and converted it into a refuge for kids where they could be giv
en the love they so needed.

  ‘The love they so needed,’ I say indignantly. ‘He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.’ I hate the journalistic style Adam uses in his book. I read on as fast as I can, not missing a word, but barely pausing to digest the claptrap he’s written.

  Roecliffe Hall Children’s Home was staffed by a dedicated and well-trained team of carers. Children idolised the innovative ways of their superiors and flourished under the direction of key players during the later years of the home’s history. Reginald Leaby, Patricia Eldridge and Margaret Maddocks were the three main characters instrumental in bringing about the home’s later success . . .

  Only the thought of Adam’s anger stops me chucking his stupid computer out of the window. Why, if he knows he lost his sister at the hands of these monsters, is he portraying the home in such a positive light?

  I rest the computer on my bed and stand at my window, staring out above the treetops. I’m high enough to break every bone in my body if I was stupid enough to jump.

  Feeling dizzy and nauseous – not just from the height – I sit down at the small dressing table. I don’t want to read any more of Adam’s book. I stare at myself in the foxed mirror. A stranger stares right back.

  The scar on my cheek has knitted to form a raised red welt. It’s more shocking now than it was when fresh. It suggests a knife wound, the claw of a wildcat, a road accident, or a botched operation. I run my finger down its length, noticing the way my cheeks have hollowed out and my eyes dropped back inside ash-coloured rings. I look terrible. An adult version of the child that once lived here. A woman without a family. A grown-up orphan.

  Sighing, I drag myself back on to the bed and force myself to scroll through more of Adam’s book. From the number of pages, I see it’s not so much a book as a long essay. He’s clearly been struggling for information, perhaps writing, then rewriting, then deleting his words in frustration. How could anyone ever get such a story right, even if they did know all the facts? I flick forward, stopping a few pages from the end.

  No one knows what drove four men to take the life of an innocent nine-year-old girl. Until the discovery of her body, at least eighteen other children had already been killed at Roecliffe Children’s Home. Forensic investigations, witness interrogation, and admissions by the guilty prove beyond doubt that for many years the children of Roecliffe suffered degrading torture, abuse, and misery at the hands of the very people they should have been able to trust.

  Patricia and Miss Maddocks looked after us to the best of their abilities. But I can’t accept that they didn’t know what was going on; didn’t believe for one minute that Patricia hadn’t got an inkling of Chef’s intentions when I went to visit him in the kitchen, when once I tried to escape his hands by climbing out through the window. I think back to my ice-cream bribed cooking sessions. How he’d sit me on the worktop, prising his body between my dangling legs, pushing himself against me. A puppy eager to please and a child eager for a treat, for some love, it hadn’t seemed so bad back then. The worst that had happened, I thought, was that I got ice cream around my mouth.

  There’s a knock. I snap shut the lid of the laptop. ‘Who is it?’ I press my ear to the door.

  ‘Frankie, it’s me. I need my computer back.’ Adam’s voice is urgent on the other side of the wood. He is the last person I want to face right now.

  ‘But I haven’t finished.’

  ‘Frankie, just open the door.’

  Reluctantly, I turn the large key. Before it even clicks into place, Adam has wrenched the brass knob and is pushing his way inside.

  ‘What are you . . . ?’ I stop. Adam’s eyes scan my room and, finally, after what seems like a lengthy prying dance, his gaze settles on the dark lid of his computer.

  ‘It needs work,’ he says. He reaches for it; tucks it in the safe place under his arm. ‘I have to speak to more people. Get some things straight.’ He even looks embarrassed. ‘There’s so much missing.’ He shakes his head, paces nervously.

  ‘I could help,’ I reply. ‘If you like.’

  He folds himself on to the dressing-table stool. ‘You haven’t read the real draft,’ he says. I frown, leaning on the door. ‘I gave you the version I write when I’m feeling detached, as if I was never Betsy’s brother, as if we never shared the same parents, or have – had – the same blood in our veins.’

  ‘So there are two versions?’ I’m confused.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Of the same story?’

  He nods.

  ‘Can I read the real one?’

  CHAPTER 48

  Nina had been waiting in the car for Josie for two and a half hours. Did she imagine the shadowy figure as it went up the steps and in through the stage door? Was it really him? Or was her tormented mind playing tricks on her?

  She pushed up the sun visor and squinted. She’d been trying to distract herself with work phone calls while she waited for Josie to finish rehearsals. There was no way she was leaving her at the theatre alone. Nina stared at the old bricks, the paint, the metal railings as if he’d left a dirty trail for her to follow.

  She chucked her notepad on to the passenger seat. Quick talking and help from Tess had temporarily appeased Grave’s producer for another couple of days. Her limbs shook as she got out of the car. She had to get Josie out of there.

  Nina glanced at her watch. It was twenty to twelve. Josie’s first Chicago rehearsal was due to finish at midday. Most likely, she’d find her daughter in the green room, chatting excitedly with the rest of the cast, comparing lines, hunting for lost dance shoes. She swore she’d seen him go in – hadn’t she? – lurking, waiting to make his move. She shook as she approached the theatre.

  Knowing the place as well as she knew her own home, Nina pulled open the stage door and followed the dark corridor down into the belly of the building. Her legs felt weightless, almost incapable of holding her up as she strode on. She heard the familiar banter of the youth theatre group as the excitement of a new show stretched in front of them. She listened at the door.

  Dizzy with anticipation, Josie had spent the last six weeks of summer longing for rehearsals to begin. But when, only twenty-four hours ago, Nina had inexplicably forbidden her daughter to take the lead role in the production, insisting she quit the theatre company, giving absolutely no reason other than ‘things had changed’, Josie had broken into a thousand pieces.

  ‘Mum, please, don’t do this to me. When I act, it’s the only time I feel like me.’ From the floor of her bedroom, behind a curtain of matted hair and tears, Josie had pleaded with her mother not to crush her dreams. ‘Do you know how hard I’ve worked? How long I’ve waited to get a part like this?’ Josie’s pleading was raw and desperate until finally Nina cracked and conceded.

  ‘I just don’t understand, Mum,’ Josie said, still sobbing from the shock, backing cautiously away from her mother, hardly daring to breathe in case she changed her mind again. She limped off to the bathroom to recover from the outburst, wondering if her mother had suffered some kind of breakdown, or one of those mid-life crises that she’d heard her friends go on about. Either way, it was so out of character it was terrifying, and her dad had gone mad too, barring everyone from setting foot in his studio. Alone, confused, shaken, Josie logged on to Afterlife to find solace.

  Nina burst through the green-room door, half expecting Josie to be pinned up against the wall by Burnett.

  ‘Mum,’ Josie gasped. Someone chuckled. ‘What are you doing in here? We’re not finished yet.’ Josie’s indignant look and her mother’s crazed expression sent a ripple of laughter through the teenage cast. Josie turned her back on her mother and pretended to riffle through her bag for something.

  ‘Looks like you are,’ someone quipped.

  ‘Mummy’s here,’ another said. More laughter.

  ‘Josie, it’s time to go.’ Nina’s eyes flashed between the other girls as they busied about gathering their belongings. He would be here, somewhere, she was sure. Lurki
ng, hiding, waiting for their backs to be turned, their guard to be down. She could smell Burnett’s presence. She glanced behind the door. Sweat gathered on her forehead, her top lip, along the length of her back. She felt physically ill.

  ‘Josie, come now,’ she said. She was aware of Josie frowning, of her cheeks flushing red, the snatch of her bag as she whiplashed it over her shoulder. More laughter from the rest of the cast as smart comments rained on their leading lady’s premature departure.

  ‘I . . . I have the dentist,’ Josie said to her friends.

  Striding along the corridors, Nina broke into a run. ‘Hurry up,’ she said, dragging Josie along by the arm. When they reached the stage door Nina paused, panting with fear and exhaustion. She stared at Josie, reaching into the disbelieving depths of her eyes as the gap between mother and daughter widened. It was an abyss Nina had sworn would never exist. Their relationship would be different to other mums and teens – built on trust, respect, confidence, communication. In the last few days, Nina had seen to it that a wide chasm had cracked the ground their lives were built on; made a mockery of all the values she’d held dear.

  ‘Mum, what’s—’

  ‘You just don’t get it, do you?’ Nina lunged at Josie’s shoulders, shaking her at first then pulling her into a painful embrace before opening the door.

  ‘Mum, what’s happened to you? I want to call Dad.’ Josie fumbled for her phone. Her mum was in need of more help than she could give. She was scared; hadn’t had to deal with anything this weird before. She dialled home but before it even rang, Nina had swiped the phone off her and snapped it shut.