A Place to Lie

by Rebecca Griffiths

  ‘I should have been there for her. I should have tried harder. I was a rotten sister.’

  ‘No, you weren’t.’ Mike slips an arm around her, cuddles her close. ‘Everything we ever did she threw back in our faces. And I don’t mean to sound disrespectful, babe, but your sister was her own worst enemy.’ He buries his nose in his wife’s saffron curls. ‘And I’m sorry to say it, but I could see it a mile off, even if you couldn’t – Carrie resented you, pure and simple.’

  ‘I suppose.’ Her response smothered by his shoulder. ‘But she was my sister – I was all she had.’

  ‘Then she should have looked after you better then, shouldn’t she?’ Mike is firm.

  ‘I know what you’re saying, but I should’ve tried harder to stay in touch. Just because she could be a bit difficult—’

  ‘A bit difficult ,’ Mike splutters, releasing his hold. ‘Remember when you were going through your chemotherapy, the way she spoke to you. The way she slammed the phone down on you.’ His face is serious. ‘That was the most terrible time in your life and she treated you like that? What was it she said – oh, yeah, that’s right: “It’s all about you , isn’t it?” – well, yeah, for once it was, and if that wasn’t a sure indication of how little she cared, then I don’t know what was.’ He tips his head to the bald bulb above their heads, blinks back tears. ‘I’m sorry, Jo, but I can’t forgive her for that, and neither should you. Yes, of course I’m sorry she’s died, that she died in such an awful way, but I’m not having you blaming yourself for the way her life worked out – you did nothing wrong, you’ve nothing to reproach yourself for.’

  ‘I know.’ Joanna forces a smile. ‘You’re right. I know you’re right.’ She listens to the emptiness of her words. This isn’t what she feels, not deep down, but her relationship with Caroline has been a bone of contention between her and Mike throughout their fifteen years of marriage and she hasn’t the strength to argue about it now.

  ‘I’m only thinking of you, love.’ Mike softens, conscious of the opening door and the re-emergence of DS Pike. ‘I just don’t want you making yourself ill again, that’s all.’

  ‘Sorry to abandon you like that,’ the detective apologises and passes Joanna a large plastic box. ‘Your sister’s things,’ he explains. ‘They were found on her when she died.’

  Joanna squints through wet lashes at the array of objects. There isn’t much, but in the same way Mike does, she looks at them carefully. Aside from a large handbag, there’s a decent-looking watch, its leather strap smeared with what can only be blood. A credit card. A ten-pound note along with some coins. A thin gold chain knotted with her sister’s brown hairs.

  ‘And, I’m sorry if it’s distressing, but I do need to ask … ’ The detective holds up a clear plastic bag, its insides streaked with blood. It contains a hefty-looking knife with a German inscription etched along its blade. ‘You don’t happen to recognise it, do you?’

  Joanna sucks back her breath. ‘Is that it? Is that the knife … the knife t-that … that killed her?’

  The detective’s expression confirms it is.

  ‘But … but—’ She struggles to unravel what it is she’s seeing. ‘That was Dora’s … Dora’s dagger … ’ she splutters, jabbing a finger at its silver cross-guards and swastika logo. ‘It belonged to her father … our great-grandfather. I thought Dora chucked the bloody thing out years ago.’ Her revelation splinters the unforgiving light. ‘What the hell was Carrie doing with it?’

  Summer 1990

  Dora had driven into town. She said she needed the supermarket and they could entertain themselves for a few hours, couldn’t they? It wasn’t a question, more a demand, and one the sisters mulled over as they watched their great-aunt reverse her Morris Traveller with its rotting mock-Tudor sides out into the lane and beetle away. They hadn’t minded being left behind, far preferring a day playing in the woods with Ellie Fry to crowds and pavements. And besides, they were used to fending for themselves with a mother too weighed down by her own misery to bother with them – things in leafy Witchwood under Dora’s care weren’t all that different.

  The sisters slotted into a certain routine and soon forgot the troubles at home in London – the mother they loved and feared in equal measure, the nastier elements of school. It all dispersed like pollen from forgotten flowers. Even their Camden flat was like a distant memory. Fitted with a frugal mismatch of their landlord’s furniture, the mildewed tiles in the bathroom they needed to share with another family, their mother’s tights drip-drying above a sink of dirty dishes. Pillowell Cottage, with its opulence and abundant clutter, harboured a surprising amount of space for their fantasies and at least seemed to want them. Home, with its upset smiles and their mother’s hopelessness, was no place to return to.

  Washed and dressed in record time, they flung what they could find for lunch into a pair of khaki knapsacks, fastened themselves into matching pink jelly sandals and headed off to find Ellie.

  ‘Your auntie home?’ Clean-shaven with an unnerving Plasticine sheen, Frank Petley at Dora’s gate blocked their egress. ‘I’ve come to collect paper money,’ he said, jingling coins in his trouser pocket.

  ‘Sorry, she had to go out,’ Caroline told him, then instantly regretted it – Mr Petley knowing she and Joanna were alone made her uneasy.

  ‘Mind you tell her she owes us in shop.’ Frank, devoid of smile. ‘Memory like a sieve, that woman. There’ll be no more deliveries of Telegraph till she settles bill,’ he warned in his ripe Yorkshire accent before striding away.

  Sweltering already and it wasn’t even ten o’clock. Caroline, Joanna and Ellie grappled with ways to kill the time. Hidden in trees and cloaked in a relentless melancholy, Witchwood, with its tall, dark forest, had frightened the sisters to begin with, but left to their own devices they have become enchanted with its fairy-tale beauty.

  Not that everything was as it should have been in this idyllic playground. There were maleficent forces at work. But chattering happily the girls were unaware of the eyes in the dense, dark shade, watching them.

  The children left the main section of the village behind and ambled along the traffic-free lane, stopping when they reached the crossroads.

  ‘Dare you.’ Joanna pointed in the direction of Dead End Lane: a narrowing stretch of tarmac hooded in greenery that led to St Oswald’s church and its spooky, high-sided rectory.

  ‘I’m up for it.’ Caroline, inspecting her bitten nails, began to gnaw her middle finger.

  ‘We could look round the graveyard?’ Ellie suggested brightly, scissoring back and forth on her wheels.

  ‘Did that yesterday.’ Caroline scowled, her attention momentarily snatched by a red tractor inching its way along a farm track beyond the trees.

  ‘I don’t mind what we do,’ Joanna said.

  At the end of the lane, the girls straddled the squat church wall, the stones hot against their bare thighs as they traced the tapestry of lichen with outspread fingers. Mindful of the repetitive coo-coo of a woodpigeon: a far sweeter sound, the Jameson sisters judged, than the fume-choked song of London pigeons that their mother called vermin. It was difficult to stoke up the spirit of sadness in the champagne sparkle of such a morning, but over the children’s backs was the most romantic necropolis for miles. An extraordinary nirvana flaunting gleaming sandstone monuments and pink gravelled paths that criss-crossed beneath the glamorous spread of oaks and sycamores.

  ‘Wanna try my roller skates?’ Ellie fiddled with her bunches and swung her feet high into the air to tempt them.

  ‘Me first.’ Caroline relinquished her nail-chewing and jumped down from the wall. ‘I’m the oldest.’ She unlaced the skates and slipped them free of Ellie’s feet.

  ‘Best sit down to put them on.’ It was clear to Ellie from Caroline’s huffing and puffing that she was about to lose her temper. ‘You tried them before?’

  ‘Course I have, stupid – I’ve been ice-skating; it can’t be any harder than that.’

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p; ‘You look like one of the ugly sisters in Cinderella .’ Ellie throttled a giggle.

  Red-faced from the effort, Caroline balanced on one leg. ‘It won’t go on,’ she snapped at Joanna as if this was her fault, and flung the skate at her.

  Joanna took it and spun the plastic wheels, making them rattle and whirl. The sound reminded Caroline of the windmill teaspoon she’d pinched from Dora. Not that the teaspoon was the only thing she’d stolen, and it made her quiver with unease to think of the brass table bell, the snuff box and the little beaded drawstring bag she found in her great-aunt’s jewellery box. Trinkets, that along with other things pilfered from the pub and Mrs Hooper’s, she’d squirrelled away by the reed-edged lake. But observing Ellie and Joanna’s togetherness, their easiness, sensing they were deliberately shutting her out, Caroline understood exactly why she stole things. Things could be relied upon, it was people who let her down. Her thoughts were gloomy ones as she listened to Ellie encouraging her sister to ‘Have a go, it’s easy when you get the hang of it.’ Then watching her kneel down to lace them up, the pair of them laughing, indifferent to her.

  The roller skates were a perfect fit. Upright and trundling over the apron of lawn that skirted the churchyard, Joanna, blind to her sister’s seething disapproval, appeared to be enjoying herself.

  ‘You can have them if you want – I’m getting a new pair for my birthday.’ Ellie beamed. ‘Hey,’ she added. ‘You two have gotta come to my party next Saturday. It’s gonna be brilliant. Daddy’s doing me a pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey and everything.’

  ‘You’re lucky to have a daddy,’ Caroline said, dampening the mood. ‘We haven’t got a daddy, have we, Jo?’

  Joanna shook her head, the baby-blue of her eyes downcast.

  ‘He drowned in the sea. Five years ago. We were on holiday in Wales, he saved me from the waves.’ Caroline, her voice proud, wholeheartedly believed it was necessary to share this painful history to make herself sound more interesting.

  ‘Oh, that’s horrible.’ Ellie looked shocked.

  ‘It’s why we’re here. Mum’s been so sad about it she tried to kill herself. Dora’s the only family we’ve got to stay with while she recovers in the loony bin.’ Caroline shared the cruel taunt she suffered in the playground as if it meant nothing.

  Ellie reached for Caroline’s arm. ‘Later, if you want,’ she said, squeezing it, ‘you can play in the Wendy house Daddy made me?’

  ‘No, thanks, I’ll manage.’ Uncomfortable with being touched, Caroline stepped away, pretended the Judas tree propped against the churchyard wall was of interest. ‘But we’ll definitely come to your party,’ she said stiffly, kicking through what remained of the pink blossom embedded at its roots.

  ‘I love birthday parties.’ Joanna spread her arms to balance as she skated round and round.

  ‘Like you’ve ever been to any,’ Caroline sneered.

  ‘I love these too.’ Joanna ignored her sister and looked at her feet. ‘You sure I can have them?’

  ‘Course you can – I won’t need them, will I?’

  ‘Ellie! You’re brilliant.’ Joanna laughed her thanks to her new best friend, but clocking her sister’s annoyance added, ‘I’d better give them back to you for now. We should go and do something else.’

  ‘Yeah, come on.’ Caroline lifted her hands, scooped her damp hair from the back of her neck. ‘Dead boring watching you on them – I wanna go down Drake’s Pike.’

  ‘We could take the boat out,’ Ellie said as she re-laced her skates.

  The sisters, contemplating the miserable supplies scraped together from Pillowell’s kitchen, hoped Liz had thought to pack extras for them.

  ‘Can we go through the tunnel?’ Joanna asked.

  ‘Yeah, be cool in there.’

  ‘If you go down to the woods today … ’ one of them piped, and within seconds all three were singing their version of the vaguely sinister tune, ‘ … you’d better not go alone … beneath the trees where nobody sees … ’

  One rolling, two skipping – the children were still being watched as they pushed open the five-bar gate and dissolved into the dark-throated woods. Not only by the menace hiding among the gravestones, or the quizzical-eyed buzzard fixed to a telegraph pole, but a woman doomed to look out on a world she could no longer move within. And had any of them stopped to look up at the imposing rectory – a Georgian manor rising incongruously from the regal layering of blue-green cedars – they’d have seen the Reverend Mortmain’s wife, Cecilia, trapped by her multiple sclerosis inside its wisteria-smothered façade. Spectral and seated at a lofty window with only her Rapunzel-long hair for company, even if she had been aware someone was watching the children, she’d have been powerless to rescue them had they found themselves in trouble.

  Present Day

  More flowers than mourners at Caroline’s funeral and even these are thin on the ground. Joanna grips Mike’s hand and tries to hold it together as she stares at the pale wood coffin. Unable to join in with the feeble warbling of ‘Abide With Me’ – her sister’s favourite hymn – she hears a sweet and strong soprano from somewhere at the back take the lead. She is grateful for it; grateful things at least go without a hitch. She doesn’t flinch once during the service. Not when the Reverend Hugh Mumford fluffs the lines she wrote for him and needs a glug of water from the bottle by his elbow, or when the coffin slides behind the curtain and disappears forever.

  Some of her father’s relatives are here. Huddling together at the back of the east London crematorium, clutching wreaths they don’t know what to do with. Dressed in black, they’re like the scavenging crows that crowd the bins in the park on sunny afternoons. Barely recognising them, Joanna has nothing to say and refuses their frosty sympathies, their automatic shoulder squeezes. She recalls their ineptitude, and worse, their condemnation at her mother’s failed suicide attempt when she and Caroline were small. Every member of her family, apart from Great-Aunt Dora, turned their backs on them, reluctant to sully their sanitised lives with their troubles. Joanna can’t forgive them, not that they’ve asked for forgiveness, and having them within her sights makes her skin shrink inside her clothes.

  She hasn’t the faintest idea how they got to hear about Caroline. Yes, she supposes – even though she’s been avoiding the newspapers – her sister’s violent death would undoubtedly have been reported, but she and Mike haven’t told a soul. Her colleagues at the Royal College of Music haven’t been informed yet, so even if they had read about Caroline’s death in the papers they wouldn’t know she was Joanna’s sister. But this is how bad news travels – it was the same when their mother died two years ago – because not one of her father’s lot congratulates Joanna on her sell-out performances at the Wigmore Hall last month. Not one of them seems to have caught that.

  She can’t help but be embarrassed by the lack of numbers, the lack of occasion; sitting with Mike in an otherwise empty row at the front of the chapel of rest, Joanna’s thankful the boys aren’t here to see it. The place provides no more reverence than a village hall, with its pine-clad walls and high glass ceiling. And afterwards, chivvied along by a team of obsequious undertakers, they are ushered out under a stone-hard sky in time to see another cortege move up the long avenue of gravestones. Like a bloody death factory, she thinks, her mind whirling as she watches funeral cars disgorge themselves of mourners who, whiplashed by the tails of their coats, stand shivering in the December wind, waiting their turn.

  ‘Joanna.’

  A voice beside her: timid, hesitant, breaking her mood. She turns to a tall, stylish, white-haired woman, her dark wool coat buttoned to the neck.

  ‘No – it can’t be?’ Joanna clamps a sodden tissue to her mouth in disbelief.

  As slender and upright as ever, Mrs Hooper has barely changed. Impossible to think – Joanna does a swift calculation of the years to have fallen between – Lillian Hooper must be at least eighty.

  ‘How lovely to see you.’ Mike gives Mrs Hooper a kiss.

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nbsp; ‘Are you coping all right?’ Mrs Hooper enquires and Joanna sees again her kind, knowing eyes. ‘Such a terrible thing to happen, I’m so very sorry about Carrie.’

  ‘It’s so good to see you.’ Joanna presses her lips to Mrs Hooper’s powdered cheek. They stay like this for a long time, Joanna’s gratitude crackling like static into Mrs Hooper’s hair, its scent of lily-of-the-valley opening the door on to that childhood summer in Witchwood. The two of them singing and playing the piano together, before everything was blighted and a blackness descended on the village.

  ‘It’s amazing to see you,’ Joanna reiterates when they finally pull apart. ‘I can’t believe you’re here – how many years has it been?’ Trembling against the cold, she finds a dry corner of tissue and dabs her nose.

  ‘Ten. Dora’s funeral.’ Mike does the maths.

  ‘Well remembered … and what a fraught day that was.’ Mrs Hooper digs Joanna a fresh tissue from her bag.

  ‘That was the last time I saw Carrie,’ Joanna says. And fearing she will cry again, focuses on the impossible shine on Mrs Hooper’s patent-leather shoes. ‘Are you still living in Witchwood?’

  ‘Yes, still there.’ A small smile.

  ‘However did you manage the journey?’ Mike poses the question Joanna was about to ask, the pair of them noticing that as well as a matching patent-leather handbag, Mrs Hooper is also armed with a stick.

  ‘I’m staying with my sister in Wandsworth – she invites me now and again.’

  ‘And how did you hear about Carrie?’ Joanna sniffs, plucks a Labrador hair off Mike’s coat.

  ‘Oh, that was Gordon – one of the rare occasions he actually telephoned me.’