Secrets in the Shadows

by Hannah Emery

  Brandy. Louisa stood a little straighter. Brandy was better than sausages, or pineapple, or cheese.

  Soon, the room was spinning gently, and the smoke from people’s cigarettes brushed over Louisa. She took one from somebody and inhaled lightly, coughed, inhaled again and did better. She took another cigarette, and another. Her head felt light, as though it might fall off her shoulders. If it did fall off, she thought, she could pop it onto the table, onto the empty sausage tray.

  What a silly thought. Louisa shuddered. Hatty wouldn’t ever have a thought like that.

  Four days after the funeral, Louisa took the train to Blackpool. She glanced up as she left Talbot Road station, sticky and creased from her journey. It was a hot day, and the oppressive air hung heavily from the deep blue sky. Louisa wiped her forehead and pushed her damp hair from her skin. She paused for a moment when she reached the gaudy promenade, her suitcase falling against her legs like a devoted dog. Louisa pulled at it to stand it upright and wished she had packed a little more lightly.

  She and her suitcase ambled on, through the haze of colours and people. South Promenade and the Pleasure Beach was a dot in the distance when Louisa first wandered from the station towards the bustle of the Golden Mile. But after almost an hour of winding between the slow-moving crowds, past Mr Bee’s Amusement arcade, past the horses who rested between their stints of pulling landaus along the packed road, past the screeches and jingles of the Pleasure Beach, Louisa reached her destination.

  Louisa had expected the place she stood in front of to give her goosebumps and make her tremble; she had expected it to do to her all those things that long-lost places always did to the heroines of the stories Louisa had read. But Louisa’s insides felt still, and her heart continued to beat calmly and quietly.

  She looked up, taking in the sight of the house she used to live in with her mother.

  It was a boarding house now, like most of the other houses down Burleigh Road. The houses around it remained as they were when she had left. They still stood tall and grey, brightened here and there by a yellow hood over the door or a red sign by the front window. Her old house had a neat burgundy hood over the front door, and the stained glass windows that Louisa remembered so well were scrubbed and bright. With a surprisingly still hand, Louisa pushed forward the gate, lifted her suitcase onto the garden path with her aching arm, and took four neat steps towards the front door.

  Even when the landlady opened the door and the scent of roses and green carpets and home that flew out to greet Louisa stirred something inside of her, it was more of a twinge than the full wave of emotion that she had anticipated. She had thought of this house so many times since she had moved to her father’s in Yorkshire: she had dreamt about it and daydreamed and wondered. There was a part of Louisa that thought she might not even be able to stand in the house; a part of her that expected her body to crumble to the ground like ash. And yet, here she was, making polite little sounds as the landlady, Mrs Williams, showed her around and spoke briskly of the rates per night.

  The house wasn’t altogether different to how Louisa remembered it. The dining room was the most changed, with its lines of mahogany tables shrouded in white linen. The room at the front was the guest lounge now. Louisa felt another little twinge as Mrs Williams spoke.

  ‘You’re most welcome to use this room. It has a television,’ she said, pointing to the little brown table in the corner. Louisa remembered sitting in the lounge night after night, listening to her mother’s colour-filled stories about Blackpool and love and loss. She wondered, as Mrs Williams ushered her to Room 1, which used to be her mother’s bedroom, if she should tell her landlady that she knew the house: knew its breaths and moans and sighs as intimately as she possibly could.

  ‘You can see the sea from Room 1. And the noises from the Pleasure Beach won’t bother you so much from this end of the house,’ Mrs Williams said, her powdered face smiling carefully.

  ‘Ah,’ Louisa said. The noises, she knew, were the splitting screams, the freakish laugh of the famous clown in his glass case, the eerie silence of the closed night. ‘Ah. I see.’

  ‘Well. Teatime at five,’ Mrs Williams said as she bowed out of the room, the scent of face powder following her.

  Teatime was what did it. Sandwiches, made in the very kitchen with the blackberry stain on the cool stone floor, brought on the trembling hands and the shortness of breath that Louisa had waited for and missed when she first arrived at the house.

  ‘I was wondering if I could perhaps have a little glass of wine with my meal?’ Louisa asked.

  A disapproving crack appeared in Mrs Williams’ face. ‘I have a bottle of red if you would like a drop of that?’

  Louisa nodded and stared through the gap in the door as Mrs Williams swung into the kitchen. Was it the same? She wondered if she could somehow go into the kitchen. She wondered if she wanted to.

  As Mrs Williams poured Louisa’s wine into a cloudy glass with an ugly short stem, Louisa closed her eyes for a fleeting moment, blocking out the room and the house, and instead focusing on the face that hovered in her mind: a kind, sad expression and a wiry beard.

  ‘Do you know a Dr Barker?’ she asked, her eyes flickering open and focusing on Mrs Williams.

  ‘Dr Barker from around the corner? Yes, I knew him a long time ago, but he moved. I’m not sure if he’s still in Blackpool, or alive.’

  Louisa didn’t answer. She could hear the thud of the wine bottle as it was set down on the table, and the ticking of the clock in the hall, and the tedious hum of the other guests’ chatter.

  ‘I have a telephone directory, if that’s any help?’ Mrs Williams offered.

  ‘Yes!’ Louisa stood straight up, knocking the table with her thighs so that the red wine sloshed out of the glass and bled onto the white linen.

  ‘It’s just in the hall,’ Mrs Williams said, eyeing her tablecloth sadly.

  She passed Louisa the volume for the north-west of England and Louisa fumbled hungrily for the B’s. ‘Barker,’ she mumbled.

  There was no Dr Barker in the book.

  ‘I wonder why he’s not in there?’ Louisa asked, the answer stinging her. She picked the book up and checked for his name again. Nothing.

  Mrs Williams shrugged. Louisa sat down at her table, shaky and disappointed, trying to banish the image of her mother walking into the sea from her mind. Without Dr Barker, she didn’t feel as though she would know what happened in those lost, shadowy days.

  ‘Well, wherever he is, he’s better off. Blackpool’s changing, if you ask me. And not for the better,’ Mrs Williams replied eventually, eyeing Louisa’s wine glass as she spoke, as though it was to blame.

  That night, Louisa lay in her bed and thought about the past. The curtains that Mrs Williams had hung at the window didn’t quite meet in the middle and a sliver of light sliced through the blue-black of the room. Louisa was silent. After frequent nightmares, she used to sit up in her own crumpled bed, tiptoe through the velvet black of the landing and tap on her mother’s bedroom door. Her mother would peel back her blankets and cocoon Louisa into the folds of her nightdress until the morning. The room was the biggest and the coldest of the whole house and Louisa would lie shivering until the heat from her mother seeped into Louisa’s own skin and warmed her.

  The night around Louisa was still: the noises from outside had died. Louisa wondered if any part of her mother still lingered in this bedroom. She listened hard, trying to hear her mother’s breathing, until she could no longer decipher between her own breaths and her mother’s and those of the sea; until she was dreaming that she was cocooned and safe once again.

  The next morning, Louisa walked along the promenade to the police station in the centre of Blackpool, the ugly scent of eggs from Mrs Williams’ dining table clinging to her hair and her favourite electric-blue dress.

  ‘I was wondering if you could help me,’ she asked the man at the front desk. His hat, Louisa noticed, looked rather too small for him, as
though it would fly off his head with the slightest movement. He seemed aware of this too and moved only very slightly as he gestured for her to sit and wait.

  ‘Got a pile of papers to go through, miss. I’ll be with you shortly, if you’d like to take a seat on that bench.’

  Louisa had never been in a police station before. She wondered now, as she sat on the bench, what would have happened if she had gone to the police station on that day when her mother died, instead of Dr Barker’s house. She supposed she should have done. But Dr Barker had always told her to go to him if anything ever happened. He’d always said it in hushed tones, so that her mother couldn’t hear. But she had only been a child, and not quite at the stage to question why he might do that. Now that she was, there was nobody to question. Louisa kicked the side of the bench softly with her shoe.

  After around twenty minutes, the man with the small hat cleared his throat with a tight little sound. He employed a small, plain smile and Louisa stood and made her way back to him.

  ‘How can I be of help, miss?’

  ‘It’s my mother. She went missing quite some time ago, and I have been unable to find out what happened to her until now, because I have been out of the area.’ Louisa’s words sounded clipped as she spoke, as though somebody was trimming them into neat, clean shapes. ‘I wondered if you could check your records from 1960 and see if anything happened to a woman called Rose Ash.’

  The man turned, and his hat wobbled precariously with the movement. He clutched at it and turned around to enter a little office behind his desk. Louisa heard the shuffling of papers and the rolling of cabinet drawers. After a few minutes, she took her seat on the bench again and allowed herself to indulge in a short daydream of what might follow. The policeman might re-emerge from the office clutching a pile of papers, a photograph of her mother perhaps, and a nearby address for somebody who would take Louisa’s hands in theirs and tell her why her mother had gone. Louisa closed her eyes and leant back, resting her head on the hard, polished panelled wall until the policeman returned, his hat more secure and his smile sad.

  ‘I’m afraid there’s absolutely nothing on your mother.’

  Her heart sinking, Louisa stood, nodded in thanks, and rushed out into the hot blue Blackpool morning. She walked and walked until she reached the glittering promenade, walked through the sweating crowds until her steps sank into the sand. Her breathing, which had been quick and shallow when she left the police station, began to return to normal. She bent and took off her shoes so that her toes sunk into the gritty, warm sand.

  She was beginning to feel calm again. She would find out what had happened to her mother. She had only tried two ways of discovering why Rose had vanished into the slicing waves. Two out of thousands. If Dr Barker wasn’t here, and there was nothing recorded about her mother at the police station, Louisa would have to dig a little further into the soil of the past. She squinted across the beach at the barefoot teenagers and the squawking children and the chattering parents. She would have to look for the boy with the purple eyes who her mother had talked about so much before she disappeared. Someone, somewhere would know where to find the boy, and he would be able to tell Louisa what had happened to her mother. He would be able to tell her that there was nothing that Louisa could have done.

  As she mulled over this and walked along with her shoes swinging in her hand, a running child stopped Louisa in her tracks. She went dizzy for a moment as she watched the child, almost transparent, run through the swarms of people, into the sea. It was a girl in a red bathing costume, her hair in pigtails. Louisa watched, mesmerised, as the little girl crashed into the water, being carried out further and further by the waves. She watched everybody else ignore the girl as though she wasn’t there. And she watched as the girl was suddenly a flash of red, flipped under the water by a brutal wave. Horrified, Louisa screamed.

  ‘Help her!’ she cried. A few people turned to look at Louisa; not with looks of concern or fright, but looks of confusion and scorn, as though she was making things up. She gestured wildly to the water. But the red, and the wave, and the horror, had all gone. The water twinkled calmly, clear and hiding nothing. The people who had looked at Louisa turned away again. Everything was as it had been before.

  Louisa scrambled away, towards the promenade and away from the sea.

  She should have known straight away. That sickly, dizzy feeling; the transparency of the girl, the blur of everything around her. She scrambled through the crowds, squinting in the sharp glare of the sun for the little girl she had seen in her vision. Eventually, Louisa found her. The little girl in the red bathing costume was playing on the sand while her family dozed nearby. Louisa watched as the girl said something to her father, who dug in his pocket and gave his daughter a coin without opening his eyes. Before Louisa had reached the little girl, she had darted away from her family. Louisa hurried her pace.

  ‘Excuse me! Excuse me!’

  The father sat up slowly and glared at Louisa.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Louisa said breathlessly. ‘Your little girl is about to go in the sea and it’s far too strong for her. She’ll get into trouble if you let her swim out there.’

  The two women looked up now.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ one of them said, fingering her carefully constructed curls.

  ‘I can’t explain how, but I just know. She’s going to get herself into trouble, somebody needs to go after her and make sure that she’s safe.’

  The woman who hadn’t yet spoken glanced at the man.

  ‘Jack, do you know this lady?’

  ‘Never seen her before.’ He looked up at Louisa again. ‘Our little Suzie’s gone to get an ice cream. She’s nowhere near the sea. I don’t know who you think you are, coming over here telling us how to parent.’

  ‘Jack!’ the woman suddenly yelped, clutching his arm. ‘Look! She’s right! Suzie’s over there, wading into the sea! Oh, please, go and get her! She’s too little to go in the water on her own!’

  Darkness clouded Jack’s face as he gazed out into the sea and saw Suzie. He jumped up and sprinted off, leaving a salty scent of sweat behind him. Louisa watched as he threw himself into the waves and pulled Suzie towards him. They bobbed closer and closer to the shore and reached the sand just as a huge grey wave swooped behind them.

  ‘Suzie!’ one of the women yelled as Jack came into earshot, dragging the dripping little girl behind him. ‘What on earth were you doing?’

  ‘I saw something sparkly in the water and I wanted it for my Blackpool box,’ Suzie said, her voice babyish and scared. ‘I’m sorry, Mummy!’ she finished, before exploding into sobs.

  Suzie’s mother eyed Louisa as she began rubbing ferociously at her daughter with a towel.

  ‘How did you know? Did you set us up? Did you tell her to go in the sea?’

  ‘Sheila! Why would she do that?’ the other woman interjected. She held out her hand. ‘I’m Mags. This is my sister Sheila. What you just did was amazing. And we’re all thankful.’

  Louisa shook Mags’s hand and was lost for a moment in the woman’s firm grip.

  ‘I’m Louisa,’ she said eventually, as Mags let go of her hand.

  ‘So,’ Mags said, lighting a cigarette. ‘You’re psychic?’

  ‘Yes,’ Louisa answered. ‘I am.’

  It felt like someone had let go of an invisible thread running through Louisa. She felt light and free. She hadn’t told anybody about her gift since she had moved to her father’s as a child.

  ‘Brilliant. I want to know what’s going to happen to me. Come out with us tonight. A load of us are going to the pub.’

  Sheila tutted and plonked Suzie down on the sand next to her. ‘I’m sure Louisa has better things to do than watch you lot drink.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. We’re pretty good fun to be around. You’re just jealous because you’re stuck at home ironing,’ Mags retorted, and winked at Louisa. ‘We’ll be in Yates’s at eight-ish. You should co
me. I’ll tell them all what you did today and you’ll never have to buy another drink again.’

  Chapter Twelve

  Louisa, 1965

  At dinner, Louisa chewed on an indestructible piece of lamb and considered Mags’s invitation. She pictured her room upstairs, her suitcase in the corner, her single book, which she had finished, on the bedside table, and the invisible, silent ghost of her mother all around.

  ‘May I have a key for tonight?’ Louisa asked Mrs Williams as soon as the lamb had finally struggled down her throat. ‘I’m going to meet some friends.’

  ‘I don’t give keys out. Be back for eleven.’

  Louisa ached with the heavy thought of Mrs Williams being the sole owner of the key to a front door she used to think would always, always be hers.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, pushing her plate away from her and standing. ‘Eleven is fine.’

  In her room, she tipped out the contents of her make-up bag onto the bed. Blusher spilled from its pot and was lost in the creases of the bedding. She plucked her eyeliner out from the sparse selection and wandered over to the mirror. She thought of her old friend Hatty as she applied thick strokes to her eyelids. Louisa still hadn’t heard from her. But then, Hatty probably had no idea where Louisa was now. Louisa would just have to make new friends. She stood back from the dim mirror to check her work. Her eyes hung heavily in her face, draped in black cloaks of kohl. She needed something to brighten things up. Some red lipstick, perhaps. She would buy some tomorrow. For tonight, this would have to do.

  When Louisa entered the wine bar, she looked for Mags, but couldn’t see her. She stood at the bar, wondering if people thought there was something wrong with her overly black eyes. Nobody seemed to be looking at her, though. They carried on with their business of drinking and talking and smoking. She ordered a white wine and sat on the end of a long bench full of rowdy men. The memory of the night with Hatty loomed in her mind, and Louisa tipped the alcohol into her mouth in a bid to cleanse herself of the image of Nicky’s hairy fingers and his forceful, heavy body on top of hers. Eventually, she saw Mags at the bar, and pushed her way over to her, the wine glass, now empty, in her hand.