by Mairi Wilson
‘No, no, no!” She was screaming the words again and again as she lashed out with the broom, ignoring the sickening crunch of bone, the squelch of flesh. It twisted at her feet in a flickering dance, until the writhing slowed and stopped. Lexy continued to beat at the mess on the floor, her arm like a metronome keeping time as her breathing slowed.
“Lexy!” She spun round. Robert was in the open doorway, a look of utter shock on his face. “What on earth— Oh my God.” He grabbed her arm and pulled her back behind him as he took in the scene, the dead snake, the now upturned desks. “What … How did that get in here? Are you okay? Lexy? Lexy, speak to me!”
Lexy was shaking and sobbing, her gaze fixed blankly on the bloody mess at her feet.
“It’s all right, Lexy. It’s dead. You killed it. Here, give me that.” Gently, Robert took the broom from her and stood it against the wall behind them. He turned her to face him and ducked his head to look up into her eyes.
“Lexy, look at me. You’re safe. It’s dead. Lexy?” Her sobbing had slowed but she was still shaking as he pulled her into his arms and held her tight against his chest. “Shh, now. I’ve got you. You’re safe now. Shh.” He held her, crooning as if to a child until the shaking stopped, until her breathing came more evenly and the tension began to ebb from her taut frame.
He led her out of the schoolroom, cradling her in the crook of his arm, and pulled the door shut behind them.
“Here, sit down,” He drew her down beside him on to the steps of the porch. “Tell me what happened.”
She just shook her head wearily and looked down at her hands, clasped tightly in her lap.
“Lexy? What happened? Why are you here?” A tinge of annoyance shaded his questions as his arm fell from her shoulders. “You shouldn’t be here on your own, you know, not at this time of night. Anything could have happened to you!”
Lexy looked up at him, surprised and hurt by the irritation in his voice.
“But the note …”
“What note? For goodness’ sake, Lexy! What were you doing? And what in God’s name possessed you to attack it? Didn’t anyone ever tell you discretion’s the better part of valour?”
Yes. Her mother. Frequently. Lexy’s breathing was returning to a more regular rhythm, her head clearing.
“Why didn’t you just get out? If you see a snake, back off. Anyone would think you had a death wish or—”
“It was locked.”
Robert stopped his tirade abruptly. “What was locked?”
“The door.”
“No, it wasn’t.”
“Someone locked me in.” Lexy saw doubt come into his eyes.
“Don’t be ridiculous. Why would anyone do that? But it wasn’t locked, anyway. Jammed, maybe, but it opened perfectly—”
“It was locked, Robert. I tried to get out. Of course I did! But it wouldn’t open.” She was shivering again. He rubbed her arm, then helped her to her feet and started to lead her back towards the hospital.
“Look, you were in a state of panic. It was probably just stuck and—”
“You don’t believe me.”
“Well, it doesn’t seem very likely, does it? And it certainly wasn’t locked when I got here.”
Lexy took a couple of steps down the path, hugging herself, shivering still despite the warm night.
“Lexy, think about it. Why would it be locked? Who would … That would mean …”
The cicadas chattered away in the pause that hung heavily in the air.
“That would mean someone deliberately shut me in the schoolroom. With a snake.” She turned and faced Robert. “And no one knew I was coming here. Except you.”
“What? I didn’t know you were … I was at the research lab and—”
“Read it.” She thrust the crumbled paper at him, watched him frown as he read the words.
“You think I did this? Is that it?”
“You sent the note.”
“No, I didn’t.” He held his hand up as she tried to interrupt. “My name, Lexy, not my writing.”
She scrabbled in her bag, pulled out a pen. “Prove it.”
“What? No! Why would I have shown up like that if I’d … if I was … How can you think I’d do something like that?” He sounded indignant, but Lexy wasn’t buying it.
“So I’m just lucky you happened to be passing and came to rescue me, then?”
“I didn’t rescue you, Lexy. You’d already killed the snake. You didn’t need me.” His voice was cold. “I’ll take you back to your hotel, arrange for someone to come over from the hospital first thing in the morning to clear up that mess.” He jerked his head back towards the schoolroom as he stood and took her elbow. “My car’s out front.”
She stiffened but let him lead her along the path, trying to make sense of what had just happened. Why had Robert denied that he had written the note? And why had he been there at all if he hadn’t sent it? She didn’t believe he’d been in his lab. Nobody, not even this man, worked in a dinner suit. And that door had definitely been locked. Yet strangely unlocked when Robert had appeared.
As they neared the lights of the hospital, she shook off his arm and picked up her pace.
“Wait, where are you going?”
“Taxi rank. I’ll make my own way back, thanks. I’m sure you’ve more research to do.”
“Lexy, wait!”
But she didn’t look back. And he didn’t follow.
22
The Residence, June 16th
Lexy woke feeling woozy. It was still dark, but she could just make out the beginnings of the green dawn through the slats of the shutters over her windows. She stretched and rolled over. Consciousness came slowly, memory returning, and then suddenly she was sitting up, one fist jammed into her mouth to stop the scream she felt rising to her lips as she remembered the night before, the snake, the terror. Her heart raced and she curled up into a ball, pulling the cotton sheet over her head. Tears sprang to her eyes and she felt sick, bile rising in her throat.
Someone had tried to kill her. And made it look as if it had been Robert.
By the time she’d got back to the hotel, last night, she’d realised it couldn’t be Robert. Not just because she didn’t want to believe it of him, but because he wasn’t that stupid. That careless. He hadn’t sent the note. She was sure of it now. Why summon her and then turn up to save her? But that didn’t mean she could trust him. What had he really been doing there? Following her? Why? Why would he care where she went, what she did? He’d made it quite clear he wasn’t interested in her, and disapproved of the time she spent with Evie.
No, Robert wasn’t behind this. He had no reason to be. She got up and opened the shutters, stepped out onto the balcony, arms folded across her chest, eyes gazing unseeing over the gardens that had so enchanted her when she first arrived. There was only one person with a reason to want her dead: David. David Buchanan, her new-found uncle. He stood to lose everything if she found a way of proving her birthright. Perhaps he wasn’t as sure as he claimed that he had all the bases covered, that there was no way she could prove the incredible story of her past.
She’d seen Robert getting into David’s car yesterday morning at the hospital. Yet Robert had told her he hadn’t spoken to David since he’d refused to help with the Blantyre case. Had made it clear he disliked him. Had lied to her.
And yet … She remembered Robert’s face. The look in his eye, the look of … what? Regret? Disappointment? She’d thought she could trust him, maybe even be something more than friends with him … She cringed with embarrassment remembering how she’d misread that situation. Blame it on the rebound. Oh, Danny. She never thought she’d miss his steady predictability as much as she did. So why had Robert been there?
The phone rang and she let out a short scream. Was she really that jittery? She snatched it up.
“Yes?” Her voice was shrill even to her own ears.
“Lexy? Did I wake you?” Robert’s voice was even, steady, as if nothin
g had happened. “Evie’s been asking for you. She wants to talk to you. I’ve advised against it, of course.” Yes, of course, Lexy thought bitterly. “But she’s adamant. Will you come? I can pick you up.”
“No.” Lexy was thinking fast. “No, don’t come. I … I’ll make my own way.”
“But you will come, won’t you?” Why was he so insistent?
“Yes. Of course I’ll come.” She had to hear what Evie said, but the thought of being alone with Robert in his car, at his mercy, was frightening. She really didn’t know if she could trust him any more.
“She’s very weak, Lexy, but they can’t wait any longer. They’re operating later today … So no more histrionics. Give me your word.”
“Of course not!” Lexy knew, though, that her behaviour so far had done nothing to suggest she could be trusted to be gentle.
“She wants to make you see why you have to leave this alone and go home.”
And Evie would succeed where attempted murder by snake had failed, would she? Lexy swallowed the retort.
“The only thing that will do that is the truth, Robert.”
“That’s what she wants to talk to you about. Against my better judgement, I should point out.”
Well, of course, Lexy thought again.
23
Blantyre Hospital, June 16th
Evie had been waiting for her, the words tumbling out of her like a river in full spate the moment Lexy had entered the room, scarcely giving her time to sit down before the recollections began. Lexy was shocked at the evident pain in the older woman’s voice as she spoke.
That evening in early June 1963, just as she had every evening since the news, Evie was trying to distract herself, to stop the relentless flow of bittersweet memories that left her exhausted and hollow. Bereft. Sleepless. Just as she’d been after Douglas had died. Helen had been with her every day, then, to help her, hold her together, soothe her. Now there was no one and Evie was struggling, still reeling from Helen’s death, ten days after the awful news had reached them in Blantyre of the devastation at the lake, of the dozens of lives lost. Four days after the search for survivors had been called off, hopes destroyed, families forced to face their losses.
She’d been sitting reading, looking at pages, turning them occasionally but not taking in a single word, until she’d snapped the book shut, slapped it down on the side table, the lamp shuddering and sending shadows dancing across the walls.
She’d looked out into the night garden, found no comfort there so come back to sit at the piano, stroked the keys, but found herself distracted by the photograph looking down at her. Three young women, standing on the deck of the Aurora, so eager, so excited, so different, but each so certain this would be their promised land.
“It was extraordinary,” said Evie, leaning back in the pillows of her hospital bed, “the three of us becoming such friends. We weren’t at all alike, you know. Helen … oh my, but she was dazzling, Ursula and I anything but. Poor Helen. She’d changed so much, since those days. The sparkling young woman who’d captivated Blantyre society, Zomba too, she’d dimmed, but her spirit never weakened, her heart never shrank. So generous with her love. She loved Ursula’s child as fiercely as she loved her own, never betraying our secret even when … even when that vile man …”
Evie turned her head away, but Lexy knew there were tears in the old woman’s eyes; she could hear it in the quivering voice.
“It was so unfair. That he should live when Helen didn’t. And to have the sympathy of everyone we knew for his loss, their admiration for his desperate attempt to save his wife, battling against the wind and the rain, the river and the mud. Quite the hero. I didn’t believe a word of it.
“Well” – the voice sounded steadier – “now three had become two, and we two were a world apart. Small comfort to each other at such a distance. Ursula so busy being the impeccable professional in Scotland, determined to leave the past firmly behind her, and me still here in Malawi, unable to go ‘home’ because it wasn’t home any more. Father was long dead, of course, and, growing up as the minister’s daughter, I’d not had too many friends. Piety and adolescence rarely sit comfortably together, you know. So here I stayed, busy with my charities – my interfering, as Robbie likes to call it – and I’d just have to get used to things and carry on. No use crying over spilt milk, Ursula would have said, I expect, or something equally stoic. That woman had steel inside her, not breakable bones like the rest of us. And dear Helen, what would she have said, I wonder? Nothing, most likely. She’d just have been there. Her presence soothing enough, her silence saying it all.”
Evie coughed and Lexy leapt up to get her water, desperate for her to continue her story, realising she had to be patient. This was a frail body, no matter how strong the spirit that still clung to it. Evie sipped gratefully. Leant back and closed her eyes. Just as Lexy was about to despair, believing Evie had fallen asleep again, she continued her tale.
There’d been a tap at the door, and the housekeeper had appeared, wanting to check Evie was alone, before pulling the door open wide, her sturdy body stepping aside to reveal another: slimmer, taller.
“Evie?” Helen said. “Evie, it’s me.”
Evie had grabbed the piano for support as the room blurred around her. “Helen?”
Helen stepped fully into the room and the housekeeper disappeared into the darkness of the hallway, closing the door behind her.
Evie rushed forward and wrapped her friend in her arms, felt her living, breathing warmth.
“It is you! It’s really you.”
They were both laughing and crying as they hugged each other.
“Helen, I can’t … I thought you were dead. I thought … Oh sweet Lord, you’re alive!”
Helen disentangled herself and took Evie’s hands in hers, exhaustion, desperation etched on her face.
“I’m alive, yes.” Helen took a deep breath. “But I’m not sure I want to be.”
“You can’t possibly mean that.”
“Yes, I do. But not in the way you think. If I’m not alive, I’m free.”
“Darling, I don’t know what’s happened, but it’s obviously been dreadful.” Evie led her towards the sofa. “You’re not thinking clearly. Shock or whatever, but—”
“I know, I know. But that’s why I’ve come to you. You’re always so calm and practical and know what to do and right now I … I don’t. I don’t know what’s best … if I’m being selfish … or …” Helen was struggling to keep her composure, her breathing tight, shallow gasps that tore at Evie’s heart. She held her while her friend’s frail body heaved and tears dampened the fine cotton lawn of Evie’s blouse.
“Shh, Helen. You’re safe. I’m here. I won’t let anything happen to you, I promise.” Evie comforted her friend, trying to sound reassuring, not really sure what she was promising but knowing she needed her help. That was enough.
Eventually, the sobbing eased and Helen’s breathing became more regular. Tears still slid down her cheeks, but she was calmer. She pulled herself upright and leant back against the cushions of the sofa. Evie clasped her hand and the friends sat in silence as the tree frogs sang their night songs.
Evie waited, her mind racing. Why was Helen here, alive, when Cameron had told everyone she was dead? She was impatient to know, but knew her friend needed time. She poured them both a large Scotch and came back to the sofa.
“Drink.”
Helen looked up at her blankly.
“Take it. It will do you good.”
Without a word, Helen took the crystal glass, looked at it for a second and then drank the contents down.
“Errgh!” she spluttered.
“I know, darling. But it’s worked. You’re back.”
“Yes.” Helen nodded, attempting a smile. “Yes, I suppose I am.”
Evie took the empty glass. “I suspect you could do with another.”
“Oh, no, I hate Scotch—”
“Medicinal. Sip slowly. You’ll get us
ed to it.”
Evie sat in the chair opposite the sofa and crossed her legs. She swirled the contents of her own glass round, sipped it delicately and then sat back. She watched Helen raise the glass to her lips, but not drink, just inhale the fumes, tears welling again, but whether from the sting of the whisky or whatever she was remembering, it was hard to tell.
Helen closed her eyes and began to speak.
“I’d warned him,” she began, “the last time he’d tried … ‘Touch me again and I will kill you,’ I’d said, but I knew he didn’t believe me. Thought I was bluffing. Said I wouldn’t risk being branded a murderess, being locked up, hanged. That I loved the children too much to do that to them. And of course he was right, or I’d thought he was, until …”
Evie heard Helen’s teeth chink against the crystal, watched her face grimace as she swallowed.
“Why would he believe me, Evie? Everything I’ve done, ever done, has been for the children. To protect them. It still is. Only I’ve failed. Dreadfully. And now I can’t … I don’t know how to save David from his father.”
Helen seemed to have forgotten Evie was there, and Evie had to lean forward in her chair to hear her friend.
“I hadn’t seen him for nearly two weeks. God knows where he’d been. In the early days, I’d have been angry, shouted at him about damaging our reputation, the business, the children’s future. But it made no difference, so I stopped asking and he stopped telling me where he’d been, what he’d been doing once he realised he couldn’t provoke a reaction any more. I ignored him. Kept the children from him as much as possible, and kept him away from Buchanan’s. I did my best to pretend he didn’t exist.”
She drained her glass, looked down into it as she clasped it in her hands. Evie reached across and gently took it from her, worried that the tightness of her grip would make it shatter.