A Place to Lie

by Rebecca Griffiths

  Joanna pulls her eyes away from the Sunday Times . She doesn’t turn the page, so doesn’t see the photograph of Dean Fry as he looks today; doesn’t read the article that would have provided further clarity to their conversation …

  After nearly twenty-eight years, Dean Fry has broken his silence and spoken publicly for the first time about the murder of his stepsister, Ellie Fry. Raped and stabbed, Ellie disappeared on her 10th birthday, and her body was found three days later floating in a lake in woodland near her home in Witchwood, Gloucestershire. Dean Fry – 46, married with two daughters, a successful businessman now living in Weybridge – was 18 at the time. He talks openly about the case that made the headlines in August 1990, revealing his shock and revulsion at his father Ian Fry’s confession of sexually abusing his stepdaughter, Ellie, and killing her because she threatened to tell.

  Dean shares his own memories of the fretful nights he was held in police custody, and although eventually released without charge, how frightening it was to be accused of her murder. A tearful Dean says he’s never forgotten Ellie, and talks of the shame and sorrow he still feels about being driven out of Witchwood.

  ‘The little reputation I had,’ he says, ‘was destroyed overnight. I became someone the vengeful, angry community could vent their fury at and punish because they couldn’t get their hands on the real killer.’ Learning it was, in fact, his own father who killed Ellie – a father who was happy to stand by and watch his own son take the blame – is something Dean doubts he’ll ever recover from. Ian Fry is also currently being questioned by police about Freya Wilburn, an eight-year-old girl who went missing from her home in Cinderglade, Gloucestershire, in 2014.

  ‘What are you two up to?’ Joanna gives a cautious smile at Lillian through the trembling firelight. ‘D’you know, Mike?’ she asks her husband, who has moved to the window to watch a blue tit wrestling with a fringe of crust on the bird table.

  ‘No idea.’ He picks up and puts down the conkers that have been lined up along the windowsill.

  ‘Hang on. Only one moment more, he’ll be back presently. I’ve been bursting to tell you.’ Mrs Hooper licks chocolate from her fingers. ‘He told me when you were in hospital last week, when he was worried you wouldn’t pull through – but swore me to secrecy.’

  What Gordon passes Joanna is a small pink envelope. Taking it, she turns it over in her hands. The letters of Mrs Hooper’s address that begin their lives as neat and round, mutate into smudged, erratic shapes before reaching the opposite side.

  ‘Open it,’ Gordon encourages. ‘It’s a letter your mother sent me just before you and Carrie came to Witchwood that summer.’

  ‘My mother?’ Joanna doesn’t understand. ‘Why would my mother write to you?’

  ‘We were friends. Good friends. Once upon a time. Read it, please . It’ll explain everything.’ And he sits beside her, in the gap Mike left behind on the couch.

  ‘We came to Witchwood because … because … ’ Joanna looks up at him. ‘I’m not sure I want to be reminded of all that again.’

  ‘It’s okay,’ he reassures. ‘I’m here.’

  The letter is thin at the folds from where it’s been read and reread. Joanna holds her breath as she scans her mother’s words; words that begin with Dear Gordon , and snaking from left to right unsettle her. I’m frightened … she reads:

  … my children will be orphans after I’ve done this terrible thing, but I can’t go on, I have to make the blackness stop. I know you’ll understand, the shame I carry is too heavy, the lies I told a good man, a man who died loving me and the daughters he believed were both his own, is too much to bear. I’m only telling you this because my intention is to die today, but if I don’t succeed, you must swear never to breathe a word of what I’m telling you to anyone. Joanna must not know that you are her real father, and that I lied to her, until I’m safely gone from this world.

  Love, Imogen.

  ‘Is it a horrible shock?’ Gordon’s expression is congested with concern.

  Joanna can’t speak.

  ‘D’you understand what it means?’

  ‘Well, I-I … yes … I suppose,’ she answers eventually, her hands shaking.

  ‘I didn’t know how to tell you. Sworn to secrecy, I couldn’t even risk telling Mum.’

  ‘But my mother’s been dead for two years.’ Joanna, searching him with fresh eyes, still can’t fathom it.

  ‘I know, but it’s taken me this long to pluck up the courage.’ Gordon’s hands, balanced on his knees, look as vulnerable as the heads of flowers. ‘It was when I thought I’d lost you … seeing you lying there, in that hospital bed … ’ The feebleness of his explanation fizzles out.

  ‘I can’t take this in.’ Her bruised face flushes. ‘You said something at Carrie’s funeral,’ she says to Mrs Hooper. ‘About that summer Mum came to stay with Dora before I was born. How friendly Gordon and Mum were. Was it then?’ she asks, turning to Gordon. ‘Did you two have an affair?’

  Gordon bows his head and stares at his shoes. ‘I didn’t want to upset you; it hasn’t, has it? I know it’s a lot to take in, but I hope in time, you might be pleased.’

  ‘I don’t know what I am.’ Joanna is thinking how adultery seems to be the overriding theme in this household. ‘What you and my mother did, it obviously caused her a huge amount of stress and unhappiness … read the letter, it’s all in there.’ She flaps the pink sheet of paper at him. ‘She’s so riddled with guilt, she thought killing herself was the only way out. Why didn’t she just tell me? At least when I got older. This swearing you to secrecy nonsense – that’s her all over; so bloody selfish. What harm would it have done? The father I thought was mine had died.’

  ‘I don’t know what to say.’ Gordon, still hanging his head.

  ‘I bet you wish you’d not said anything now,’ Mike says to lighten things. ‘Come on, Jo-Go – it’s a lot to take in, but it’s not so bad. There’s no need to get upset, not really.’

  ‘I’m sorry, love,’ Mrs Hooper addresses her son. ‘But I’m on Jo’s side with this. I’m an old woman – think of the years I’ve missed out on having my granddaughter.’ Mrs Hooper passes Joanna a tissue. ‘Try not to stress yourself, Jo. You’ve been through so much already.’

  Mike puts an arm around his wife in an attempt to rally her. ‘Yeah, but none of it’s really Gordon’s fault, is it? Not if Imogen made him promise.’

  Joanna dabs the tender skin under her eyes. ‘Yes, okay, but what am I supposed to do with the memories of a man I thought was my dad?’ She drops her voice, gives way to further tears.

  ‘Your mother wanted nothing to do with me beyond that summer.’ Gordon squeezes his thin knees. ‘But when she sent me that letter, telling me I had a daughter, and then actually meeting you … ’ He pauses, struggling to supress his own emotion. ‘It was the hardest thing not to tell you.’

  ‘Carrie used to think you were creepy.’ Joanna blinks through wet lashes. ‘The way you used to follow us around as kids.’

  A tight laugh. ‘Did she? I suppose it could have looked like that. But if I followed you around it was only to keep an eye on you. Bit overprotective, I know,’ he admits, almost an apology. ‘Probably because of what happened to my sister.’

  The room goes quiet. Gordon, awkward, looks at his shoes again. The only sound is the crackling flames in the hearth.

  Mike exhales into the general bewilderment. ‘Well, that’s quite something to get your head around, isn’t it, boys?’

  Abandoning their game, Freddie and Ethan spin their heads to him. Open-mouthed, the concern clouding their young faces isn’t about what’s been going on, neither have fully grasped that. Their worry is for their mother, who has suddenly turned a deathly pale.

  ‘What’s wrong with Mummy?’ Freddie, up on his feet, Ethan close on his heels, whispers his fear at his father’s elbow. ‘She isn’t going to have to go back to the hospital, is she?’

  Lost in thought, Joanna doesn’t hear her child. ‘
It’s like I’ve been hit by a train … another train . Honestly, I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with all this.’ She leans back and shuts her eyes.

  ‘It’s quite a shock,’ Mike says, his arms around his sons. ‘But we’ve had worse, haven’t we, Jo?’

  Joanna opens her eyes to him, gives the suggestion of a smile. ‘Certainly been a pretty eventful few months. I didn’t think there could be any more surprises.’

  Meanwhile in Bayswater …

  ‘They say that, don’t they?’ Kyle Norris murmurs to himself as he stands outside the 24-Seven store along Queensway. ‘About always returning to the scene of the crime.’ A little chuckle. ‘Talk about a stroke of luck – or a stroke of the knife, more like.’

  He assesses his reflection in the shop window. Sweeps a hand through his Jim Morrison-style hair. Took a bit of cultivating to look just like his dad did in 1990, but worth the trouble, though. He grins at himself. It had been great fun tormenting her, especially with her falling for it hook line and sinker. Mad bitch. All he wanted to do was shake her up a bit, he didn’t think she’d react as violently as she did, but the first time she set eyes on him, the way it put the shits up her – it’s what gave him the idea. She was in a state already, even before he did anything; the shabby bag of laundry was putty in his hands.

  So, he thinks, stepping aside to allow a mother pushing a buggy inside the shop, she was traumatised by what happened in her childhood, was she? Should’ve had his fucking childhood then. Brought up by that bastard, passing himself off as his dad. And the way he treated his mum – because she’d have had a far better time of things if she’d been able to be with the man she loved, the father of her child. And it was all that bitch’s fault. Poor Caroline . She was the reason why his real dad wasn’t in his life. Those lies she told, trashing his reputation so badly he was kicked out of his home, from the village where he lived … Kyle found all this out when he traced his real father last year – discovering it by accident, not that it came as much of a surprise; Kyle always knew he wasn’t anything to do with that bastard Philip Norris – and when Dean filled him in on what that Caroline had done, the shit she caused, well, she couldn’t be allowed to get away with it, could she?

  And finding himself living just around the corner from her, boy, that was a fluke and a half … or as he likes to think of it: an omen. It couldn’t have been easier, the woman was already a shambles, it took bugger all to push her over the edge. Talk about a crunchy nut cornflake … Thinking, what? That his dad, Dean, hadn’t aged a day since 1990, and had come back to get her? But she wasn’t so crazy in other ways, was she? She knew exactly what she’d done, and it was her own guilt that made her scared. And after their initial encounter, it was simple. Bit of psychological torture, as long as she noticed him – which he made damn sure she did, at every possible opportunity. Kyle enjoyed stalking her through the park, around Bayswater, to the hospital and back. Even the odd silent phone call in the early hours just to put the boot well and truly in. Seeing photographs of his real dad and how he used to look in those days, it was easy for Kyle to model himself on him when he looks so like him anyway. Wearing rock band T-shirts and a nice-fitting pair of Levi’s was no problem.

  Driven by a desire to make that woman’s life as shit as his has been, the very worst Kyle thought he could do by hanging around, turning up unexpectedly and taunting her, was to make her totally lose the plot. He didn’t even know the fat cow was going to be out on that particular night, he’d not seen her for weeks – so that was a bonus. He’d only popped in there for a pint of milk. And there she was. A trolley full of sweets and chocolates. He couldn’t resist terrorising her some more, could he? A cold night, too. He had his leather bike jacket on, and he supposes it just about tipped the scales. She must have thought he was Dean and that Dean was coming to get her. The knife was a bit of a shock, though, not that it took Kyle much to guide it in the right direction. And, as it turns out, being caught on CCTV did him a favour. He was hailed as the victim … to the various witnesses, the police, it was him being attacked by some random nutter. Something even her own sister believes. Yeah, a nice touch, that.

  ‘Ho-hum. What goes around, comes around, don’t they say?’ Kyle continues to talk to himself, as he steps into the 24-Seven store. ‘I think I’ll just grab myself a pint of milk.’