A Place to Lie

by Rebecca Griffiths

  ‘Shut up,’ Caroline said to Dora fiercely, pirouetting on her toes. ‘This has nothing to do with you. You weren’t there.’

  ‘But Carrie, dear … please ,’ Dora said feebly. ‘Whatever would your mother say?’

  ‘She’d want me to tell the truth, so I am.’

  Dora disliked doubting her niece, she wanted to trust her own flesh and blood over the say-so of some long-haired dreamer, but the child didn’t make it easy – look at her, the little madam, there was more of Imogen in her than Dora first appreciated. All she could hope was that the police investigated this crime thoroughly; that they didn’t leap to conclusions by putting too much emphasis on what Caroline said she saw. She cheered a little when the liaison officer sneaked a look at her watch, and the uniformed constable stifled a yawn; they didn’t seem to totally believe her either. Dora just had to trust the rest of the village had the brains to follow suit, but suspected they’d only taken Caroline’s assertions this far because Timothy Mortmain had got behind it.

  Dora envisaged the vicar rubbing his hands together in delight. Timothy hated his daughter hanging out with Dean, and if Caroline’s story could be proven, then it could be the answer to his prayers – as what jury wouldn’t find Dean guilty of murdering Ellie if there was a witness claiming he’d been mistreating her shortly before she disappeared? And besides, Dean was just their sort of man: a history of drug abuse, a whiff of petty theft – it would be easy to pin the blame on him, and a way to be rid of him once and for all.

  God help the boy, Dora sighed, hoping that, along with the dagger, Dean had the sense to sell the trifling baubles she reported missing; things she wished she’d kept her mouth shut about now. Because stealing a few baubles from a silly old spinster who had too much stuff to begin with, didn’t mean he had it in him to kill a child. Dean wasn’t a bad lad; why people were so quick to hate, to presume the worst, she didn’t know.

  ‘You have to lock him up.’ Dora had tuned into her niece again. ‘He’s dangerous to little girls.’ Confident in her assumption, Caroline threw the recently acquired vocabulary into the room. ‘You have to lock him up before he hurts someone else.’

  Dora dragged a hand across the striations on her forehead; grooves she swore weren’t there a month ago. Yes, she accepted Caroline may well have heard Dean shouting at Ellie now and again – her brother, Lion, used to shout at her all the time – but the rest of her allegation about Dean hitting Ellie and making her cry, then almost running her down on his motorbike … Dora decided, in the tapering moments of this conversation, was preposterous.

  Dora needed to set the police straight, Liz too – hearing how she’d swallowed Caroline’s story hook line and sinker. Enlighten them on the warped personality they were dealing with. But she knew it was going to take rather a lot more. Even if the police didn’t pursue this, what future was there for Dean in Witchwood now? The lad was undoubtedly as ruined at home as he was in the village – true or false, Caroline had probably blackened his reputation forever. The only chance he had to fully clear his name was if they got on and caught the murderer, but even then, now Caroline had planted the seed, there would still be no way for him to prove he hadn’t been maltreating his stepsister.

  Cecilia used to be so industrious, now she had all the time in the world. And living within the smallness of things, confined by her illness on days she couldn’t go out, she had come to realise just how precious her memories were, how precious life was. Reduced to the essence of herself, an essence that was unconnected to her failing body, helped to process the pain – a word she never understood the meaning of until seven years ago. A pain so severe, it transcended everything, so that only the extremities of her existence were identifiable to her any more. It was why Amy was so important. Amy was her legacy – she was what she was leaving behind.

  She watched her daughter in the reflection of her mirror and heeded the pulsating rain. Amy was brushing Cecilia’s hair. Cecilia hadn’t the strength to lift her arms today and was enjoying the ritual, the way her hair crackled with static, its fine flyaway strands rising up to follow the brush.

  Amy, oddly unforthcoming, looked, now Cecilia had noticed her properly, as if she’d been crying.

  ‘What’s the matter, love?’ she asked eventually.

  ‘They’ve arrested Dean for Ellie’s murder.’ Amy dropped the brush to her side. ‘They found a dagger that belongs to Dora Muller in his motorbike shed. It’s got traces of blood on it, so they’ve sent it away for forensic examination … They’re saying Dean stole it, that he used it to kill Ellie.’ Cecilia saw the awful turn of events was almost too much for her daughter, and that she needed to sit down. ‘But he can’t have, anyone could have put it in there,’ Amy continued from a dainty balloon-backed chair, ‘and, anyway, Dean’s fingerprints aren’t on it, they tested it, said it’s been wiped clean.’

  Cecilia didn’t respond right away. She let the horror of it settle over them as she looked beyond her reflection at the room behind her. A lovely space her daughter had helped to fill with beautiful things, all of which held special meaning; when life was still a country for her to explore, and she was able to use her limbs and her nervous system wasn’t shot through with painful spasms, these were things she’d taken for granted.

  ‘Wiped clean , you say?’ Cecilia spoke at last. ‘But why would it be wiped clean if whoever’d been handling it wasn’t guilty of something?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Amy wrenched her eyes wide.

  ‘I’d say that was more incriminating.’ Cecilia knew she must tread carefully, but she also knew her daughter needed to hear the truth. ‘Your father says the older Jameson girl saw Dean being pretty aggressive with Ellie the morning of her birthday.’

  ‘Well, that’s just rubbish, that is.’

  ‘Is it?’ Cecilia turned her head to the window, watched veins of lightning zigzag between the clouds.

  ‘Course it is, it’s a pack of lies,’ Amy asserted from her chair. ‘She also said she saw him go after Ellie on his bike, but he didn’t.’ Then, dropping her voice and sounding less confident, ‘You didn’t see him, did you, Mum?’

  ‘I don’t see everything, love. I saw Ellie, but then I went for a lie-down.’

  ‘Yes, you did, didn’t you?’ Amy picked at the hairs on the brush. ‘But anyway, there wouldn’t have been time – I only left him for ten minutes max.’

  ‘I don’t know, sweetheart. All I know is that the police are taking the girl’s claims very seriously. She’s the only witness they’ve got.’

  ‘Yeah, but you can’t believe what she’s saying.’ Amy, on her feet.

  ‘But it’s not about what I believe, is it?’ Cecilia sighed. ‘You just want to hope the police don’t go finding Ellie’s blood on that knife he stole.’

  Her daughter staggered backwards, threw her arms in the air. ‘He didn’t steal that knife! And you know Dean wouldn’t hurt a fly – how can you even say that?’

  ‘It didn’t magic itself there, did it, love? And you don’t know that about Dean, not absolutely.’ Cecilia looked uneasy. ‘I’m not sure any of us know the harm our men are capable of.’

  Amy placed the brush on the dressing table. ‘I found this in Dad’s room.’ She tugged the Polaroid of Ellie Fry in pink legwarmers from the back pocket of her jeans. ‘In his desk … I wasn’t snooping, I was looking for stamps,’ she explained hurriedly. ‘What the hell’s he doing with that?’

  Cecilia knew her husband was a man in crisis, but she didn’t think for a moment it was this kind of crisis. What was Timothy doing with a photograph of Ellie Fry? Was this the photograph she saw him looking at the afternoon the children ran out of the church in such obvious distress?

  Cecilia turned it around in her ineffectual hands, corner to stiffened corner, the sharpness almost puncturing her flesh … She saw him, didn’t she? She saw Timothy go into the woods not long before Ellie that Saturday morning. Is that why they didn’t go to the party? Not because Timothy was too lat
e back, but because he knew there wasn’t going to be one? And she found she preferred the pain of the physical to the dark thought that was crawling into her head uninvited. The thought her husband could be a child killer.

  Present Day

  Lofty trunks of trees loom like spectres in the drag of dusk. Joanna senses them shift when she cuts the engine. These invisible spirits are all she has to invite her back to this place she knew as a child, and it takes her a moment before she feels brave enough to get out of the car. Grateful to have the dog for company, she strokes his ears and gathers the roses, chocolates and handbag, deciding to come back for her other stuff when she’s established the cottage is habitable.

  Mike will be with her this time tomorrow, she’s only got to get through one night on her own. Digging out the keys, she unhooks the side gate and navigates the path with its rain-filled potholes. Instantly identifying the terrace: a crumbling affair of cracked paving slabs plundered by thistles where she, Caroline and Dora occasionally ate alfresco meals. The abandoned wrought iron chairs with their mouldy cushions are so unchanged she could almost imagine the three of them had just stepped away for a moment.

  Encouraging the dog to wander the garden, it surprises Joanna how small everything looks. In less than a few strides she’s reached the fence where the horses used to come for apples. Could they still be here? The thought is ridiculous. She scans the spread of darkening horizon. Those creatures would be long gone. It will be night soon, and remembering how it draped everything in a tangible blackness, an infinitesimal tremor runs the length of her. She wonders if it’s the same nowadays, or whether the sprawl Cinderglade has become in the intervening years now pollutes the night-time dark. The world beyond the village’s barricade of trees doesn’t feel closer, but neither does she recall the rumble of the M5 that is clearly evident now. Everything changes, she thinks a little gloomily, watching phantoms of her and her dead sister, the spilt light of childhood in their eyes as they canter across the lawn on their hobby horses.

  Unlocking the back door, she flicks on the overhanging bulb. Mrs Hooper did say the electricity was connected, but it still comes as a relief to see she’d been right. Strange to be back, she inhales Pillowell’s stale, unlived-in smell, blinking against the brightness. A white dust, thick enough to draw your name in, hangs over everything, but it’s not as bad as she anticipated. Aside from the mottled brown marks on the walls above the sink, the hammocks of cobwebs quivering in the rush of air, the place looks pretty sound, and although obviously in need of love, it is at least warm.

  Placing the Belgian truffles on a work surface littered with the bodies of desiccated insects, she brushes them aside and strains low into a cupboard under the sink for something to soak the roses in. The white petals, to her disappointment, are already fringed with brown, and she doubts they’ll last much beyond tomorrow. She retrieves a grimy jug; the tap creaks when she untwists it, spewing a draught of brown water that takes a few minutes to run clear. Investigating further, she finds the cutlery weighting the drawers is corroded; likewise, the array of cooking utensils suspended from rusted hooks. And a quick poke inside the fridge displays a jar of pickled gherkins, a saucer of something furred in blue, bulbs of wizened onions, which makes her close it again.

  ‘Hey, Buttons,’ she calls to the dog. ‘Fancy a shot of penicillin?’

  Moving to the cooker, turning a dial to the corresponding hob, she is reassured by the building heat as she opens up cupboards, empty but for three rusty tins of minestrone soup and mismatched crockery. Exploring the hall, with its musty smell and lumpy rugs, she finds the radiators are warm to the touch as she leans into the sitting room. With its bare walls and minimal furniture, it looks sad, but they could fill it with the stuff in the London flat after it’s sold; it wouldn’t take much to restore Pillowell to its cluttered beauty. Brightening when she spots a neat stack of wood by the hearth, she decides she’ll light a fire tomorrow, make it cosy for when her family arrives. Kind of Tilly to see to things here, suspecting Mrs Hooper told her she was coming and she went the extra mile. Joanna toys with the idea of dropping into the shop to thank her until the thought of seeing Frank Petley bumps up against her and she changes her mind. The bloke was disturbing enough to her nine-year-old self, she doubts the effect would be any less so now she’s thirty-seven.

  ‘Come on, boy – let’s go fetch the rest of our stuff.’ She claps her hands at Buttons who, nose to floor, doing a room by room, insists on giving their temporary quarters the once-over first. Watching him, she falls in love with him all over again. ‘I don’t know who you’re trying to kid,’ she jokes. ‘Pretending you’re some kind of guard dog.’ A jerky laugh that makes him look up at her. ‘You’d lick a burglar to death.’

  It takes three trips to empty the car. Black bin bags of linen and towels, bags of groceries, a box of cleaning products, her holdall, the dog’s bed. She leaves the suitcase Liz gave her in the boot. Satisfied the fridge is clean enough, she fills it with the foodstuffs bought on the way, loading the fruit and vegetables for the weekend into Dora’s old vegetable rack. Seeing it has slipped down, she repositions the little kitchen sign – Chicken Today, Feathers Tomorrow – to its nail behind the taps, and smiles into a thinning memory of her and Caroline reading it aloud and giggling. Joanna carries her sister’s remembered laugh, along with the bumper bags of linen, through the glow upstairs, stopping halfway to slide an arm over the cobweb-covered Ophelia .

  She makes up the beds – Freddie and Ethan are to have her and Caroline’s old room, her and Mike, Dora’s. The carpet and curtains smell damp, but the overall impression isn’t too bad. The duvets and pillows she brought from home, with their pretty cotton covers, are fresh, and the boys, much as she and Caroline had done, will think it’s a great adventure. The latch on the window is stiff and rust comes off on her hands, but prising it open, a fresh breeze travels the room. With it another memory: netted in shadows that never cut her free, she turns to see the spirit of her younger self, staring out at the thrashing rain on her final afternoon in Witchwood. A time when she feared the sun would never shine again after the death of her summertime friend.

  Shunted back to the present, Joanna believes those last few days in Witchwood were the saddest in her life. And touching the windowsill, avoiding a toxic spray of mushrooms sprouting from the wall, she picked around the peeling paintwork, her mind spinning to Caroline again. What the hell was the vicar going on about? Referring to Kyle Norris by his first name, as if he knew him. Joanna’s mind, working overtime, scrapes around for something, anything, that allows her to sew the truth together.

  Head buzzing, Joanna needs a glass of wine to relax her, help her sleep. ‘Bugger,’ she says, back in the over-bright kitchen, realising the most important provisions have been left in the boot. ‘Another trip to the car it is, then,’ she informs Buttons who, reading her mind, is waiting and wagging by the back door. ‘Come on, boy.’

  The screech of a barn owl, amplified against the cloth of night. It spooks her. Grabbing a bottle of Shiraz from the net in the boot, she snatches up the torch Mike keeps in here for emergencies. Stabbing the beam into the flickering undergrowth, her frantic searching triggers a long-buried memory of torchlight around Witchwood: fierce shafts of white, poking the crevasses of the woods as villagers, piloted by the vicar, searched all night long for Ellie Fry.

  What was that ? Human or animal, Joanna doesn’t know, and Buttons, soppy as he is, misses it. But something definitely scurried into the trees. She swallows, hears the ancient creep of Drake’s Pike’s undercurrent in her ears, and waits for confirmation; for whatever it was to show itself again.

  But nothing does. And breathing into the dangling moments of eerie calm, what the torchlight claims next makes her jolt in horror. A scattering of spent cigarette ends littering the back gate. Bending to examine them, she’s surprised how dry and fresh they are. Someone’s been here, watching her moving around inside the cottage – the assumption, a shocking o
ne, has her pulse bouncing wildly in her wrists.

  Rushing inside and locking the door against her fears, she excavates a wine glass from Dora’s old sideboard, noticing the tremor in her hand as she wipes dust from its insides with the tail of her scarf. Untwisting the cap and pouring a generous amount, she gulps it down to steady herself, and wishes she hadn’t come back here, sensing she isn’t welcome. Mike, she thinks, her heart rate slowing; she’ll feel better if she talks to him. Pulling herself together, telling herself the cigarette butts were probably there before she arrived, she takes another fortifying mouthful of Shiraz and retrieves her Samsung Galaxy from the pocket of the coat she hasn’t bothered to remove.

  It’s dead.

  Not the battery, she’s plenty of that, the problem is the lack of internet or mobile signal. She shakes it through the air, switches it on and off, all to no avail. Maybe – the thought a desperate one – Witchwood is one of those rural blackspots she’s heard about. Just her luck. It’s okay. Determined to stay calm, she hastens to the twilit hall, reaches for the brown shiny-shelled telephone that’s familiar from childhood. She lifts the receiver to her ear. Nothing. The silence communicating the line has been disconnected.

  Now what? She promised to call, Mike will be worried. In the unravelling seconds, it dawns on her with a cold clarity that she is totally cut off from the world and, apart from her Labrador, utterly alone. Mrs Hooper will have a phone. But the idea shrivels before it properly forms – there’s no way she’s setting foot out there again tonight. Trailing her billowing unease through Pillowell’s downstairs rooms, drawing curtains and dropping blinds over the blackened window panes, she shuts out the eyes she fears are peering in from outside. No one would hear her scream if she was in trouble. Her trepidation: a bolting horse she can’t rein in, as she feels the pinch of danger.