A Place to Lie

by Rebecca Griffiths

  She doesn’t smell the dinner burning. Her nose is clotted with blood and she must open her mouth to breathe. Pressing an agitated hand to her churning insides, she watches him on his hands and knees, sickened by the way he drags a heavy arm across his wide, wet brow, panting as if he’s just finished running a race.

  They stop moving.

  They watch one another: the killer and the prey.

  Has he had enough – is he going to let her go?

  Listening to the silence, all she can hear is her own heartbeat.

  The cold is moving in. Spilling into the cottage through the gap in the doorway, filling up the rooms, its icy breath creeping under her clothes. Conscious of a chronic numbness spreading over her, Joanna holds him steady in her sights: her eyes big and pleading, it’s the lack of pity she finds reflected in his that makes her shiver. She isn’t going to get out of here, this is it. This is the end.

  His boots. Brutish black, steel toe-capped workman’s boots. Joanna registers them in a flash of horrific clarity. One well-placed kick will kill her.

  Rolling to the right, up on her knees, with a single movement she spreads her strong pianist fingers and clasps the dog’s yellow bone. Heavy at the end of her arm, she dodges the boots, the clumsy fists that pummel the white puff of her breath, and swings it wide to clobber Ellie’s killer hard on the side of his head. The force is enough to knock him sideways, and he wheels away to tend to himself, an animal sound bubbling in his throat.

  This is her chance. And hoping her dog has the sense to follow, she breaks into the night. Straggling thoughts of her husband, her children, how they might never find her, how she might never see them again, she staggers out into the quivering blackness.

  Summer 1990

  Joanna stared out at the weather through the bedroom window and fiddled with a loose-fitting milk tooth. She pressed her cheek to the cool of the windowpane, as rain thrashed the roof and the wind shook out the trees against the glass. Nothing was visible beyond the patio with its table and chairs and sodden cushions. As with the rest of the village, Pillowell’s garden had been nibbled away by the sallow light. Hard to imagine only days ago they were basking in a hot, high sun, but that, along with so many things, had been snuffed out since Ellie, and she doubted it would ever shine again.

  Watching a row of silver birch being blown inside out, the metallic backs of their leaves close enough to touch, Joanna didn’t think she could be any sadder until she dredged up what Caroline said she saw Dean doing to Ellie. One thing bothered her, though: Joanna, more than most, knew how much her sister liked inventing stories, liked an audience if she could get one. But not about this? Caroline had never said things like this before, this was serious; it had got Dean into big trouble and made everyone turn against him so badly he was forced to leave Witchwood. To leave Amy.

  Joanna’s mind twisted to the little bruises she saw on Ellie’s upper arms in the boat the afternoon they talked about pain – or Ellie’s horror of it. The bruises Ellie hadn’t wanted them to see. Did Dean give her them? She supposed if Caroline said he hurt Ellie, then he must have done. The police seemed to think so, for a little while anyway; why else did they lock him up for two whole nights? But then they let him go, and this was where it got confusing – maybe he was cleverer than he looked at hiding what he’d done. Didn’t her teachers tell her that bullies were clever, that they could disguise their nasty side from those they didn’t want to see it by only hurting you in invisible places; like Ellie was hurt in invisible places?

  But Joanna knew she, too, was far from perfect. What about the lie she told Caroline about Dean wanting her to be his girlfriend? She should have kept her mouth shut, even if her intentions were good and she wanted to make her sister happy. She should come clean, tell her it wasn’t Dean’s fault. He wasn’t the one who tricked her, it was Joanna, and she was sorry. If she had kept her mouth shut, it’s possible Caroline would simply have carried on loving Dean from afar, expecting nothing; never building her hopes up for something that wasn’t ever going to happen. Joanna knows her lie made her sister’s discovery of him and Amy all the more crushing; it would have seemed to Caroline – believing it was her that Dean wanted – like the ultimate betrayal.

  She watched the rain, anxious that all traces of Ellie would be washed away. She didn’t know much, but she knew Ellie’s death wasn’t an accident like her daddy’s was – reading in the Cinderglade Echo words like raped and stabbed and left for dead … before the newspaper was whipped out of reach, to the accompanying cry of: ‘You’re too young; it’s far too awful for little eyes.’

  ‘But I’m almost the same age as Ellie,’ she’d tried to reason. ‘And no one stopped those awful things happening to her because she was too young.’

  With temperatures dipping to record summer lows and the rain showing no signs of stopping, Dora had to concede to firing up the boiler. What it meant was a continuous supply of piping-hot water and, taking advantage, in a chin-deep bath of bubbles, the fear Caroline had about the lies she’d told to the police, to the newspaper, to Liz and others in the village – lies that meant Dean had been driven out of Witchwood forever – burned in her mouth. She positioned a flannel at the nape of her neck to make a pillow and eased her head back against the rim of the bath. Loops of vapour coiled over the water. Scribbles in the steam, she thought, breathing through them, trying to decipher what the scribbles meant. Probably a list of her wrongdoings, she thought miserably. Her wrongdoings were polluting both her dreams and her daylight hours; they were making her as unrecognisable to herself as a visitant from another planet. But had she been so very wrong? Dean did say he wanted to be her boyfriend, he’d told Joanna. Was it really her fault she’d built her world around his promise, that she’d pinned her life on a belief she was going to be close to him? To then have it thrown in her face by him taking up with that Amy cow. Dean had to take some responsibility for the part he played, for what she’d been driven to do.

  Woken early by the insistent drum of rain, Caroline was already packed for the London train the following morning. With the rest of the day to herself, knowing the unlikelihood of ever coming back here, she had planned to say a proper farewell to Witchwood and collect her steals from the lakeside. But, too afraid to go down to Drake’s Pike, the snow globe, the gold ring she took from the pub, and the red-stoned brooch she found in St Oswald’s were all she was going to be able to take home; it was a shame, but the other trinkets would have to stay here.

  The translucency of her skin, so alabaster-white, always had the facility to frighten her. But locked inside Dora’s bathroom seeing its blue-veined intersection mapped across her body frightened her more. She traced it, searching, but couldn’t find a clear route out of the mess she’d got herself into because there simply wasn’t one. She knew what she had done to Dean was wrong, and how much worse she’d made things for him with his family, with the villagers, but despite being sorry about this, what plagued her too was a billowing unease about the Polaroid of Ellie. The one she found at the pub and deliberately planted between the last plate and hardback cover of the Book of the Dead for her to find that day. It was wicked of Caroline to want to show Ellie that the world she lived in was as nasty as hers and Joanna’s, and that no one, no matter how special they were, or how much their family loved them, could get off that lightly. Regretting it now, it was horrible of her to taunt and scare their friend that way, because now their friend was dead.

  While thinking of her badness it was as if a cold moth landed lightly on her heart. And, despite the hot water she was immersed in, where its icy dorsal tufts touched, she was left with goose bumps. There would be consequences, she told herself; she would be made to pay for what she had done. It mattered little that by this time tomorrow she and Joanna would be on a train heading back to London. Caroline knew she would never be allowed to forget what she did to Dean, to Ellie, regardless of the distance she put between herself and Witchwood, or however long she lived. One day she wo
uld be punished. One day she would pay. It was all she deserved.

  Present Day

  Out under a fretwork of stars, Joanna, eyes wild, rotates on the spot, and for a few frantic seconds her legs don’t seem to want to work. Teeth chattering and feverish, the night slaps its clammy skin to hers and holds her upright. She fumbles for the exterior wall of the cottage and gropes her way along, the brown-stemmed rose bushes by the gate ripping her jeans as she pushes herself into the luminous black lane. Blood mixes with her tears. She has no idea which way to go. She swings her head in panic, tastes the lake’s breath drifting towards her through the trees.

  She risks a quick look over her shoulder. Sees Ellie’s killer. His unwieldy silhouette gaining on her through the dark. She’s blind in her left eye and the evil air sharpens in her throat as she springs headlong into the brushwood, the icy wet mulch of last year’s leaves sliding beneath her feet. One soaked sock on, one sock missing, the pain is severe, but her fear drives her on. Fresh blood from the cut above her eye trickles down her face, but she doesn’t stop, won’t stop. Branches and twigs snap against her – scratching, wounding – but still she crashes on, hurling her terror against the frozen rime of night. But there is no one to hear her. No one to save her.

  Tarmac under her feet. It hurts to run. Her breathing ragged, her heartbeat banging in her ears. There is a flicker of hope in the squares of ochre light in the distance. Beacons through the dark. Pludd Cottage. Mrs Hooper. Her hope curdles to dread. She can’t lead the monster there and put her in danger.

  Breath on her shoulder. She is knocked to the ground. Lies dazed and sprawled full-length on the lane. His big black shape is above her. Everything hurts, but it’s the cold that strikes her. A small spot where her cheek meets the icy asphalt. Head down. She mustn’t provoke him. Her eyes roll to the left, to Mrs Hooper’s gate, as if by some miracle there might be someone there to rescue her. She squints, lifts her head an inch or two and wriggles forward on her belly. Someone is shouting. Buttons is barking.

  Then the sound of a car. Headlamps swing with the bend in the road. And like the fox and the rabbit, she crawls instinctively towards the cones of light. A screech of brakes. The big dark car stops just in time. Up on her knees, she slams her hands down on the hot bonnet.

  The next thing she knows she is screaming.

  ‘Help me. Help me.’

  The driver: ghost-white and open-mouthed behind the wheel.

  ‘Help me.’ She thumps the bonnet. ‘For God’s sake … stop him. Stop him! ’

  The driver’s door of the BMW opens and a tall, grey-haired man slips out. Bewildered and silent, his sizeable onyx ring winks in the indeterminate light.

  ‘Stop him,’ she bawls at the driver again. ‘He killed Ellie … he killed Ellie.’ Her eyes wide with fear. ‘And now … now … he wants to kill me.’

  The following morning

  Joanna wakes up. Freddie and Ethan are watching her with red-rimmed eyes. Mike is here too, gripping the metal bar at the foot of the bed, his expression fretful. The room is as warm as a bakery. The air sluggish. She turns her head to the large window, looks out at the day. A day she didn’t think she would see. She stares at bruised black clouds gliding above the hospital car park. Thinks again of the previous night and lifts an arm to brush hair from her clammy forehead. Pain shoots from shoulder to wrist. She’d forgotten for a moment the extent of her injuries and how much they hurt.

  ‘Careful, Jo,’ Mike responds to her whimper, and reaches over the starched sheet that feels as rough as toast against her bandaged ribs. ‘Remember, you’ve an IV tube attached to you.’ And he gently helps to reposition her arm at her side.

  Tears, hot and painful, roll over her cheeks. Mike looks desperate, then turns to the creak of the opening door.

  Mrs Hooper, buttoned into a thick winter coat, dithers with her stick and a bunch of chrysanthemums on the threshold.

  ‘Come in. Come in,’ Mike encourages quietly, his relief clearly visible. ‘Jo’s awake, it’s all right.’

  Mike and Mrs Hooper stand opposite each other in the cream-walled side room, holding hands as if caught in a still moment during a dance. They talk for a minute, but things turn quiet when they run out of things to say. Joanna’s eyes flutter and close … the scattered fag butts, the violence of those brutish black boots flickering behind her eyelids.

  ‘Is it okay if Mrs Hooper stays with you for a bit?’ Mike whispers near her head, and she opens her eyes in time to see him tug on his jacket. He looks shattered, Freddie and Ethan too. ‘The boys are a bit restless.’ His voice low. ‘I’ll take them to the canteen, get them some breakfast. We won’t be long.’

  Mrs Hooper answers for her. Joanna can’t unstick her tongue in time. ‘Yes, yes,’ she tells him, dropping the flowers into the hand basin and scanning around for something to put them in. ‘Off you go, poor loves; you’ve been here all night.’ She steps up to Joanna, plants a gentle kiss above the bloodied butterfly stitch on her brow. ‘The three of them have been here all night,’ she repeats for Joanna’s benefit, supporting herself with her stick and frowning her concern. ‘I’ll stay with Jo until you get back. Go on. Take your time. She’s safe with me.’ A forced smile to reassure.

  When Joanna’s family leave, Mrs Hooper props her stick against the wall and pulls up a chair. Sitting beside the bed, she cautiously strokes the exposed skin on Joanna’s forearm between the tubing and the welts and grazes. Behind her back the clamour of a hectic hospital ward, and the rise and fall of unknown voices. Together they listen, neither knowing what to say.

  ‘Would you like some water?’ Mrs Hooper gestures to a clear plastic beaker on the bedside cabinet.

  Joanna nods that she would and waits for Mrs Hooper to guide the straw to her damaged lips before lifting her head. She drinks the tepid liquid, holding it in her mouth for a long time before swallowing. Swallowing is agony, and her discomfort is reflected in Mrs Hooper’s strained expression.

  ‘ … be out tomorrow.’ Joanna begins halfway through a sentence, it is all she can manage.

  ‘I think they’re going to want to hold on to you for a while longer than that, luvvie. You’ve had concussion. They’ll want to run tests, keep you under observation. And you don’t want to rush things, that was a nasty blow you had to the head … never mind the broken ribs.’ Mrs Hooper heaves down air. ‘It’s a good job Gordon turned up when he did.’

  Joanna pushes the straw away with her tongue, drops her head back on her pillow.

  ‘He’s admitted it. Admitted to killing Ellie.’ Mrs Hooper replaces the beaker on the bedside cabinet with a clunk. ‘They’ve charged him.’

  A grunt from Joanna as she tries and fails to shift to a more comfortable position.

  ‘It’s quite something to get your head around,’ Mrs Hooper shares her thoughts. ‘Him keeping it quiet all these years … Twenty-eight years he got away with it.’

  ‘But why Ellie?’ Joanna croaks. ‘She was such a lovely little girl.’

  ‘Think there was rather more going on there than any of us knew … or want to know.’

  ‘But his own child? Sweet little Ellie,’ Joanna again. ‘How could he kill his own child?’

  ‘Oh, no, luvvie.’ Mrs Hooper is keen to set her straight. ‘Ellie wasn’t his. Ellie wasn’t Ian’s – Ian was her stepfather.’

  Autumn 1990

  Mid-October. The chill had tightened its hold on Witch-wood, and the blackberries in the hedgerows, plump and ripe only a week or so ago, had already rotted and grown their mildew coats in readiness for winter.

  Standing outside in the cold drizzle, Liz, minus a coat and still in her slippers, didn’t budge. She propped her elbows on the roof of the car and pulled on her sixth cigarette of the morning. Exhaled thin grey streams of smoke. Soon they would be in Cinderglade: in a dull little house, with dull little rooms, on a rundown estate where everyone was a stranger. No pub. No business. No nothing. Just her and Ian. Liz had hardly spoken to him since Ellie’s f
uneral, she didn’t know where to begin, so she watched him instead. Today he was taking his frustration out on a set of muscled removal men the brewery arranged for them along with the haulage truck that blocked the lane. Liz wondered if they were dawdling deliberately, to provoke her husband: a man they could tell from his frenetic hand gestures and gruffness was struggling to keep a lid on his anger.

  With lips shiny from his own spit, Ian gave a little rub of his hands and glanced behind him. ‘Careful with that, you idiots,’ he barked, aggressive, surly; close on their heels as they transported a heavy oak table to the open-doored truck. ‘Do I have to do every flamin’ thing myself?’

  The men swapped looks Ian was too slow to see. But Liz did, choosing to turn away in case they caught her eye; she was no one’s ally. Her cigarette finished, she dropped it to the kerb, screwed it out with the heel of her slipper. Was she going to be able to put up with him? Her doubts folding in on themselves. Wouldn’t she be better off starting again on her own? She’d wanted to share her misgivings about Ian with Mrs Hooper when she called round to say farewell to her the previous evening. So caring, so kind, it would have been easy to be unburdened of what she carried in her heart. Thoughts of Mrs Hooper’s beautiful organist’s hands had Liz assessing her own – the bitten nails, a habit she’d been cured of for years. Not that her hands were ever her best feature, but they were completely ruined now. The skin on her palms was rough and mannish, the knuckles broadened from years of mopping out and washing up; her wedding band couldn’t be removed even if she’d wanted to.