by Ali Gardner
There was a big book all about New York, with a picture of the Statue of Liberty on the front. Janey had been learning about cities at school, and recognised the woman in a big crown holding a huge torch. She carefully lifted the book and decided to look at the pictures inside. As she lifted it from the shelf, a couple of photographs fell out of it. Janey picked them up and studied them.
The first one was a photograph of the Pig in a wedding dress getting into a car. The second was of the Pig again, in the same dress, stood outside a church. Janey was struck by two things; firstly, how much the wedding dress looked just like Mum’s wedding dress, and secondly, how much the Pig looked like her mum. Although she had noticed a likeness in build and hair colour between Mum and the Pig when she first started as their childminder, she had never thought that they were similar. But in these photos, the likeness was far greater, and Janey slowly realised that it was the smile and the twinkle in the Pig’s eyes, which was so different from any way she had ever looked while she was childminding.
Janey wondered what the photographs were for, and who the Pig had been marrying. She had told Dad and the girls that she had not been married and preferred to be single for now. Janey decided to do something quite naughty and put the two photographs down her school jumper. She carefully returned the book to its original place and sat quietly, thinking about everything she had seen in the Pig’s house. Some time later, the Pig opened the cupboard and told Janey to put her coat on, as they needed to collect Libby from school.
Janey had forgotten about feeling ill, as she was concentrating so hard on keeping the two photographs inside her jumper.
Janey and the Pig walked to school hand in hand, whilst Janey tried to keep her other hand close to her jumper to prevent the photographs from slipping. They collected Libby and walked home. As usual, Libby and Janey were sent upstairs to take off their school uniforms. This gave Janey a chance to hide the photographs in her bedroom. She had decided to wait until the Pig had gone home before even mentioning it to Libby. Keeping this secret for the next three hours nearly killed her and, as was often the case with Janey, nervousness led to headstands. The rush of blood to her head as she lifted her legs to the sky helped calm her down a little.
The Pig hated Janey’s headstands, shouting “Get down! I see more of your knickers than your face, young lady.” Janey obeyed, but then sneaked off to her bedroom to carry on with a few more headstands before tea.
After the Pig had gone home and Dad was busy eating his tea in front of the TV, Janey signalled for Libby to come upstairs. Libby could tell that Janey had been preoccupied about something, but had also decided it was best not to ask until the Pig was out of sight. Janey told Libby everything about the Pig’s house, the photographs that she had seen, the strange man, and the watch for ‘Tom and Helen’. Finally, Janey opened her hamster ’s cage and took the two photographs of the Pig in a wedding dress from underneath all the hamster ’s bedding.
“Urghh, what have you put them there for?” asked Libby as she shook the sawdust off them and held them in a way that meant she only touched the very edges. “Pepper goes to the toilet in there.”
Nevertheless, the photographs intrigued Libby, as did the stories Janey had told her. Libby agreed that she could not believe how different the Pig looked in the photographs, and how much the dress resembled their mum’s.
“Look, it even has the same buttons on the back.” Libby decided that they needed a better hiding place for the photographs and that she needed more time to work out another plan. The girls agreed to hide the photographs in the bottom of the cash till that Grandad had given them with the pretend money in it, which they used for their sweet shop. Janey carefully placed the two photographs right at the bottom, underneath the two ten pound notes.
Chapter 16 - Dresses and Deception
It had been over a week now since the dreadful day when the Pig had found the girls dressing up in their mum’s wedding dress and had shown them the letter. It was a sunny afternoon, and the Pig decided that the girls could play outside in the garden and that they must not come back inside until she told them that they could. She said that she was busy in the kitchen and she didn’t want the children running in and out. Libby and Janey were so pleased with this freedom, and with the rare chance to play outside after school before doing their homework or even getting changed out of their school uniforms, that they raced outside before the Pig could change her mind.
That very same evening, Grandad had decided to make a surprise visit to see the girls. He had missed them dreadfully, and as Grandma’s sister Clarice had visited for the week, Grandad had arranged with Dad to visit the girls for a few days. He arrived outside the girls’ house after the three-hour journey, and started to feel very excited to see the girls’ faces when they saw him. He walked up the drive and gently knocked on the door. There was no response, and so Grandad tried the door; it was open, so he stepped inside, thinking the girls would be even more surprised if he just walked into the kitchen as they were having their tea. As he walked in, he could hear singing upstairs and somebody walking about.
Thinking it was the girls doing one of their shows, he crept up the stairs quietly.
As he reached the top step, his gaze followed the singing voice and he could see into Dad’s bedroom. As he stared into the room, he felt his chest tighten as there, stood in front of him, was his daughter Enid in her wedding dress. He could only see her from behind, but the beautiful buttons and her dark brown curly hair and petite build left him in no doubt that it was Enid. Grandad had struggled for the last year following the loss of his daughter. The image of her in her wedding dress came flashing back to him, as he remembered her coming downstairs on the day of her wedding to Dad. This image had revisited him in a recurring dream for several months, and each time he would wake up to find tears in his eyes. He could not comprehend what was happening here, as he remembered that Enid was no longer here. He thought he must be seeing her ghost, and if he was, he wanted to speak to her. He was not going to let this opportunity slip by, even if it was in his imagination. “Enid, darling, Enid…” he whispered. At this point, the woman in the dress, clearly startled, turned and faced Grandad and began to scream. At that moment, a sharp pain pierced through Grandad’s chest and he fell backwards onto the stairs, slipping all the way to the bottom.
Chapter 17 - Pandemonium and Paramedics
Libby and Janey heard the scream and, without thinking, ran into the house. As they turned towards the stairs, they saw the Pig dressed in Mum’s wedding dress, running out of the front door screaming. Libby ran out of the door and down the drive in pursuit of the Pig, but was stopped in her tracks by the sound of Janey screaming from the house.
“It’s Grandad! It’s Grandad, he is hurt and he won’t talk to me.”
Libby ran back into the house and saw Grandad strewn across the bottom two stairs, his head at the bottom and his feet facing upwards. Libby and Janey panicked. Libby jumped around in a circle twice, flapping her arms, whilst Janey was trying to hug Grandad. Neither girl could quite understand what was happening. They had not expected to see their Grandad in the house, and they certainly had not expected to see him unconscious in a heap at the bottom of their staircase.
“An ambulance, Janey, that’s what we need! Quick, ring an ambulance!”
Libby ran to the phone and remembered the emergency number, 999. She frantically told the first person who answered the phone, “My Grandad is at the bottom of the stairs, he won’t talk, please help!”
It took the ambulance service a short time to arrive once Libby had been able to explain where they lived.
The next thing they knew, a police car arrived and two police officers walked into the house. The first was a very tall and kind-looking woman. As she saw the girls, she bent down and introduced herself in a friendly manner, telling the girls that her name was Julie.
The second police officer moved
straight over towards the paramedics and Grandad without introducing himself. Julie started by asking the girls what had happened. Both girls tried to tell the police officer about the Pig in Mum’s dress and how she had run from the house, but it wasn’t making much sense and Julie’s first question was, “Who is the Pig?”
“Oh, sorry,” said Libby, “the Pig is our childminder, but she is horrid and mean to us. She locked my sister in a cupboard and she lies to Dad all the time.”
Julie was finding it very difficult to follow this story, but she also needed to keep the girls as calm as she could, so she decided on a different approach.
“OK, girls, where is your mum?”
At this point, the emotions were just too much for Libby. “She’s dead!” sobbed Libby, falling to her knees. Julie was starting to panic, and decided to request ‘backup’ from her colleagues at the station. Speaking into the walkie-talkie attached to the front of her uniform beneath her shoulder, she spoke to the staff at the police station. “Please send out more officers to this address; I think we may be dealing with a murder!”
“A murder?!” screamed Janey. “Oh no, the Pig has murdered Grandad!”
At this point, Janey ran towards the front door to see the ambulance doors closing and driving away with, she presumed, her dead Grandad! Julie had to calm Janey as she explained that Grandad was not dead and was being taken to hospital now, and that the girls could see him later.
“Who has been murdered and who is dead then? Is it the Pig, I mean Maggie?”
Julie the officer tried to get a few more details from Janey about this Maggie, or “the Pig” as the girls called her. At that moment, Dad came into the house followed by two more police officers.
“Dad, Dad, there has been a murder and Grandad has gone to hospital!”
Julie interrupted and said to Dad, “I am sorry, Mr Scott, but we are concerned about the safety of your wife. The girls seem to think she is dead.”
Dad stopped and turned to the police officer and, for some unknown reason, he burst into a nervous laughter; he didn’t mean to, but he just couldn’t get his head around what was happening. You could see the disbelief in the police officers’ eyes at Dad’s reaction, and they moved slowly but surely towards him like a swarm of bees whilst Julie took both the girls’ hands to move them away.
“No, no, no, my wife is dead. She died of cancer twelve months ago. Sorry, I am just not able to think straight.”
At this point, Libby interrupted, “Yes that’s what I told them, Dad. I told them that Mum was dead.”
Julie was starting to see how this piece of the story had been misunderstood, but she needed to get to the bottom of what the Pig had to do with it. “Mr Scott, can we ask you who this Pig is, and why the girls think that she has hurt their Grandad?”
Dad looked towards Libby. “Sorry Dad, we call Maggie the Pig because she is so mean. She has got Mum’s wedding dress on, and after she hurt Grandad, she ran out of the house with it on.”
At this point, Dad raced upstairs to his bedroom. There on the bed was the cream bag that protected the dress, along with a heap of clothes which he recognised as belonging to Maggie. Anger gripped Dad as he raced back downstairs, jumping three steps at a time. Dad flew out the house at an incredible speed and ran down the road, shouting that he wanted the dress back. At this point, more police cars arrived with four more police officers, presumably following Julie’s request for ‘backup’.
On seeing Dad racing away from the house where a ‘possible murder ’ had been committed, the officers jumped out of the car and pounced on Dad, bringing him to ground. Before Julie and her colleague could get to Dad, the police officer who was now sat on Dad, holding him face down on the ground, quickly put handcuffs on him and sternly told him to calm down.
“Stop! Stop!” yelled Julie. “This is an innocent man, he is just very upset.”
At this point, neighbours were gathering outside the house, aghast at the sight of Dad handcuffed on the ground and three police cars outside the house. Libby and Janey were screaming and running towards Dad.
The police officer quickly released the handcuffs and apologised to Dad for the misunderstanding. By this stage, Dad was in a complete daze, and was gently guided back to the house, holding both of the girls’ hands. The red anger painted on Dad’s face visibly drained, and was quickly replaced with a pale shade of grey. As it did so, a series of red veins sketched across his cheeks seemed to appear. Janey watched Dad intently, and thought that his face now reminded her of a page from one of the road maps in the front of the car. Recognising the signs of shock, one of the police officers made a cup of tea for Dad and suggested putting a couple of sugars in it to help him with the shock.
“I want the wedding dress back, now” was all Dad could say. He seemed in another world, and could not focus on the questions that the police officers were asking him.
Chapter18 - Chaos and Clues
Suddenly, Janey ran off to her bedroom, saying that she had something that might help find the Pig and Mum’s dress. She went into the cash till in her bedroom and retrieved the two photographs, which confirmed her thoughts. Until this point, she had not focussed on the other parts of the photograph; instead, she had just noted that the Pig’s wedding dress was very similar to her mum’s. But now, with a closer look, she started to see other things – she recognised the church itself, and she recognised the pond in the background as the one to which Dad had taken her and Libby last summer to feed the ducks. Quickly, she took the photograph downstairs and thrust into the hand of the police officer.
“This is a photograph of the Pig, and this is the church she will be at,” proclaimed Janey.
The police officer took the photographs from Janey and instantly recognised it as St Chad’s Church, which was about ten minutes’ walk away. Soon, two of the police officers were in their cars and off to the church, although no one knew if or why this church might be connected at this stage. Janey had just appeared so convinced that the Pig was there, and it was the only lead the police had, so they tried it.
As the police officers left, Dad was asking the girls where they had found the photographs. The girls just remained very quiet, and seemed afraid to say anything about the photographs or about what had been happening. The police officer Julie, noticing the girls’ reluctance to explain things to Dad, asked Dad if he knew anything about the childminder locking Janey in a cupboard.
Libby suddenly plucked up the courage to tell Dad. “It’s true, Dad. She has been so mean to us, and she has lied to you so many times.”
Dad seemed confused; he knew the girls did not care much for Maggie, and he knew that there had been that incident with the bruise, when the girls themselves had lied.
Dad asked, “Why didn’t you tell me that you had been locked in a cupboard?”
Janey blurted, “Because we were afraid you would send us away to the children’s home.”
“What children’s home? What are you talking about, Janey? I would never do that.” Libby calmly and quietly said, “But Dad, we have seen the letter you got from the social worker. The Pig showed it to us.”
“What letter? There is no letter, what do you mean?”
Slowly but surely, Dad and the girls started to piece together what had been happening at home whilst he was at school. Dad took the girls in his arms and just held them whilst he buried his own head in theirs. Libby could not tell if Dad was laughing or crying, but she could at last feel that Dad believed her, and that she was not going to be living anywhere else but here with him and her sister.
A few moments later, a call came through from the hospital to say that Grandad had suffered a heart attack and a blow to the head. It was unclear how this had happened and, although Grandad was now awake and talking, he could remember very little of what had happened to him. He was on Ward 8C at the local hospital, and the family could visit that evening. S
econds later, the police officer received a message on her walkie-talkie to say that a woman had been found at St Chad’s Church in a wedding dress.
Again overtaken with emotion, Dad called out, “I want my wife’s wedding dress back NOW!” Julie, the police officer, responded to Dad’s agitation and relayed the importance of retrieving the wedding dress to the officers on the scene. Julie continued to talk to the police officers through her walkie- talkie, but moved into another room to conduct a more private discussion. After a few moments, she returned and reassured Dad that the return of the wedding dress was being dealt with as a matter of urgency. Janey wondered why police officers always spoke in such an official way when they were really just saying normal things. She did, however, believe that the wedding dress would soon be returned to Dad.
Dad apologised to Libby and Janey for not believing them, and asked if Maggie had really been that mean.
Libby, conscious not to make Dad feel any worse than he already felt, said, “She was quite nasty, but we played some horrid tricks on her too.”
The girls were just relieved that there was no truth in the letter, and Dad reassured them that Maggie would not be coming back to the house ever again. All three, however, were still perplexed as to the Pig’s behaviour, and wondered why she had pushed Grandad down the stairs and why she was wearing Mum’s wedding dress.
The dress was delivered to the house two hours later in pristine condition. The police informed Dad that the suspect was being questioned at present and that he could not provide any more details at this stage. Janey asked Dad what ‘suspect’ meant, and Dad explained that a suspect is a person that the police think may be guilty of a crime. “The police think Maggie has done something wrong. She has stolen the wedding dress, and it sounds like she has done many other things wrong too.”