by Jodi Taylor
Published by Accent Press Ltd 2017
Octavo House
West Bute Street
Cardiff
CF10 5LJ
www.accentpress.co.uk
Copyright © Jodi Taylor 2017
The right of Jodi Taylor to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
The story contained within this book is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author.s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of Accent Press Ltd.
eISBN 9781635966688
Also by Jodi Taylor
The Chronicles of St Mary’s
Just One Damned Thing After Another A Symphony of Echoes
A Second Chance A Trail Through Time
No Time Like the Past What Could Possibly Go Wrong? Lies, Damned Lies, And History And the Rest is History
The Chronicles of St Mary’s short stories
When a Child is Born
Roman Holiday Christmas Present Ships, Stings and Wedding Rings
The Great St Mary’s Day Out My Name is Markham The Very First Damned Thing
A Perfect Storm The Long and Short of It – a St Mary’s collection
The Frogmorton Farm Series
The Nothing Girl
Little Donkey
The Something Girl
A Bachelor Establishment (as Isabella Barclay)
This book is dedicated to the Boldurmaz Family.
Prologue
People say, ‘Silence is golden’
They’re wrong.
Silence is white. White and deadly.
My name is Elizabeth Cage. I’m a widow. My husband, Ted, died suddenly.
They took me after the funeral. It was quick and it was quiet. No one knew where I was. There wasn’t a soul in the world who knew what was happening to me. There was no one I could call on for help.
I knew what they wanted but they haven’t got it yet and they never will. There’s more to me than meets the eye. I haven’t spent years cultivating the dowdy housewife appearance for nothing. To look at me – I’m a drab, insignificant, anxious, twenty-something housewife with unfashionable hair and no make-up. Unfortunately, my appearance is the only thing I can tell you about me. Because I don’t know who I am. I don’t know what I am.
Give me ten minutes with a total stranger and I can tell you things about them they don’t even know themselves. I can look at someone and I know. It’s not voices in my head, or visions, or anything like that, but I know. I know when you’re lying. I know when you’re frightened. I know when you’re bluffing. You don’t have to say a word, but you’re telling me, just the same.
Everyone has one. Some people call it an aura. Before I’d ever heard the term, when I was a child, I called it their colour. Everyone has one. A shimmering, shifting web of colours, constantly weaving itself around them, changing from moment to moment as they react to what’s going on around them. They’re all different. Some people’s colour has a defined shape, thick and even. Some colours are rich and strong and vibrant. Others are pale and insubstantial. Sometimes – and I hate this – there’s an ominous dark patch over their head or their heart, and I know that’s never good.
Sometimes, friends or family members have similar colours. Colours that are related in the spectrum. You may have noticed there are those for whom you feel a natural affinity. That will be because your colours are similar. Some people repulse you and you never know why, but it’s usually because your colours won’t merge.
When I was a child, there were three dustmen. One man, the noisy one, was a deep, royal blue; the older one was turquoise, and the young one a soft green. They came every Thursday morning. They ran up and down the street, shedding rubbish and shouting insults in equal measure, and yet their colours reached out towards each other, blending softly. I used to stand at the window, watching their colours swirl about them, a thing of wonder to a small girl. Sometimes, I can see the same thing with a mother and child. That gentle merging of colours as one shades into another.
But with good, comes bad.
I think I was about twelve years old. I was in the High Street in Rushford. The paper boy had missed us again and my father had sent me to pick one up. I stepped out of the newsagent’s with his paper wedged under one arm while I carefully peeled the wrapper off my ice cream.
The sun went in. That’s the only way I can describe it. The day grew dark and cold. The sounds of people and of traffic became distorted and ugly.
I looked up. Everything looked completely normal. I stared up and down the street. Cars passed backwards and forwards. People scurried about, in and out of the shops. But there was something. I knew there was something.
I stood stock still on the pavement, the stream of pedestrians parting around me.
And there it was. A woman. She strolled serenely towards me. There was nothing unusual in her appearance. On the contrary, she was well-dressed and made up and her white-blonde hair was beautiful. I felt my heart stop with fear and the thing that lives in my head said, ‘Hide.’
People are blind. They never see what’s really there. She walked slowly and I could see that although no one seemed to notice her, no one touched her. No one made eye contact. No one got in her way. They might not know why they were doing it – they might not even be aware they were doing it at all – but everyone was giving her a wide berth.
I stood, rooted to the spot. Terrified. Terrified of what was approaching and doubly so because no one seemed able to see it but me.
Yes, she had a colour, but it was the energy emanating from her that frightened me. Most people’s colours swirl a little bit, especially if they’re emotional at the time, but this one … it was as if she was encased in a thick black grease. I saw oily colours that made me feel sick. But the worst part was the movement. Her colour didn’t swirl – it spiked. Like a conker case. I’d never seen anything like it before. And the spikes moved, stabbing in and out. Fast and vicious. Never stopping. In and out. Some of them extended a good eighteen inches from her body.
I was only twelve. I had no idea if the spikes constituted defence or attack but I do know that, as I saw her – she became aware of me.
My ice cream fell to the ground, unheeded. It was suddenly very, very important that she shouldn’t see me. Or even know I was there. I slipped behind an advertising hoarding, easing my way around it as she drew nearer, and when she was level with me, she stopped.
I stopped too and held my breath.
She looked down at the ice cream splattered across the pavement and then she lifted her head, turning from side to side. I knew, I just knew, that she was seeking me out.
The two of us both stood motionless while everyone else, for whom this was just a normal day, streamed past us, intent on their Saturday morning business.
I still wasn’t breathing. I knew with certainty that to make even the slightest sound, the smallest movement would be a very, very bad thing. For me, anyway.
My chest and head were pounding and the pavement swam beneath me. And then, finally, she lifted her head on that graceful neck and began to walk away. I edged my way around the hoarding, watching her disappear into the crowd. She was so tall that her blonde head was easily visible. I watched her until I couldn’t see her any longer and then I turned and ran as hard as I could in the opposite direction.
I was only a child. I thought all monsters were ugly. That�
�s why they were called ‘monsters’. That was the day I discovered I was wrong.
I don’t know who she was or what she was. I’m sorry there’s no neat ending to that story, but I never saw her again. It was, however, the first time I realised that, as well as beauty, there was ugliness in this world. Evil, as well as good. And there were things out there that, for some reason, only I could see.
And they could see me.
Chapter One
All my life I’ve worked really hard at being really average. Exam results – good, but not brilliant. Achievements – respectable but not world-shattering. I used to spend hours carefully plotting how to come fourth at our school Sports’ Day. Not a winner, but the best of the rest. Good, but not quite good enough. I was quiet, well-behaved and – ironically – as colourless as I could make myself. Instinctively, I knew I must never expose myself, or something terrible would happen. Whether to me or to others was never clear.
I’d learned the hard way. I remember a playground quarrel when I told Rowena Platt that if she didn’t stop lying about who took the money from Suzanna Blake’s purse, I’d send the bogeyman to hide under her bed and eat her as soon as she fell asleep. She fled crying and there was a lot of whispering which stopped whenever I turned around.
There was a similar incident when I told another girl – whose name I forget – to lay off Sharon Tucker’s boyfriend. There was a bit of a punch-up after that and we were all dragged into our Year Head’s office.
My dad took me aside that evening and we sat in his little shed at the bottom of the garden.
‘It wasn’t my fault,’ I said, quietly. ‘I was just trying to help.’
‘I know, love.’
‘I can’t help it.’
‘You can’t, no.’
‘Sometimes, I just know things.’
‘You do, pet. Me and your mother, we’ve noticed that. The thing is, though, knowing things is all very well and good, but keeping them to yourself is better.’
‘But she was the one stealing Sharon’s boyfriend,’ I said, the memory of the injustice still fresh within me. ‘Why did I get the blame?’
‘Well, lass, was Sharon any happier when she knew?’
I had a brief memory of two girls rolling across the grass, tearing at each other’s hair as their friends egged them on.
‘No, I don’t think so.’
‘You see, pet, some people think that somehow, saying something makes it come true.’
‘You mean they thought I’d somehow made her steal Sharon’s boyfriend?’
I remembered, in yet another flash, after they’d been hauled to their feet, the way everyone had stared at me …
‘And you, Elizabeth? How did you feel afterwards?’
I remembered Sharon Tucker, sobbing bitterly and declaring her life was over, and how I wished I’d kept my mouth shut.
I hung my head.
‘The thing is, lass, once something has been said, it can never be unsaid. You can’t unsay something any more than you can unhear it, either. You might want to think about that.’
‘What’s wrong with me?’
‘There’s nothing wrong with you, pet. Nothing at all. You just have a set of skills – unusual skills. Some people can sing. Some people can cook. Some people can play an instrument.’
‘And what can I do?’
He looked straight at me.
‘You know things. That’s all. All sorts of things. At the moment, you can’t control it – a bit like falling off a bike when you’re trying to learn – but one day you’ll get it under control. I think it’s important you control it and not the other way around.’
‘How do I control it? I don’t know how?’
‘Well, if you don’t practice the piano then you can’t play the piano, can you? Why not just try ignoring it? You know how it is – ignore something for long enough, and eventually it gives up and goes away. You think about it.’
I nodded. I’d hung around the outside of giggling groups often enough, waiting to be noticed, and it was true. When you find yourself ignored, sooner or later, with as much dignity as you can muster, you go away.
I took his advice. As best I could, I ignored it, and gradually the thing in my head … subsided. Not completely – it was rather like having a TV on in the background. I always knew it was there, but I didn’t have to listen.
And from that moment on, I kept my mouth shut at school and aimed at average. I think my school teachers thought that initially, I’d been attention seeking. Now I stayed apart and my classmates thought I was a snooty cow. But I’d learned my lesson. To keep quiet. And slowly, over time, the thing inside my head relaxed, closed its eyes and went to sleep.
As I grew up, I became better at filtering out the stuff I really didn’t want to know. I couldn’t turn it off completely, but I could relegate it to the back of my mind where it lurked quietly. Waiting.
‘Why me?’ I said to my dad, one day.
We were in his shed again. A magical place that smelled of wood and creosote into which he disappeared whenever, according to Mum, she had something important to say to him. I used to spend hours in there. I always remember it as being warm and golden, even in winter, and full of fascinating odds and ends. When I was small, I was allowed to hold his pencils and the tape measure. Later, I hammered the occasional nail, and even, once or twice, and with a great deal of apprehension on both our parts, my dad allowed me to saw something.
He shrugged.
‘Why can’t everyone else do this?’ ‘Because me and your mum, we think you’re special. We chose you, you know. Picked you out from all the others. Your mum, soon as she saw you, said you were the prettiest baby in the room.’
He picked up his pencil.
I’m sure I wasn’t, but it was just like him to say so. He’s been gone a long time now, and my mum even longer, but the memories they left behind are full of happiness and kindness, and a sense of security.
‘Did you know my parents at all?’
He shook his head. ‘I know what you’re thinking. Could one or both of them do what you can, and the answer is that I don’t know.’
He marked off his piece of wood and tucked his pencil behind his ear.
‘I never knew them or anything about them.’ He looked at me. ‘You could have a go at finding them. The law says you can do that now.’
Silence fell in the dusty little shed. He busied himself looking for screws in one of his many drawers, but I wasn’t deceived. I could see his colour, swirling around his head. My dad was a deep golden colour, rather like the pieces of wood he loved to work with, and when he became anxious or upset, a dark brown stain would begin to superimpose itself. Like ink in water. He was agitated now, although you’d never know it to look at him. Only I could see it.
‘No,’ I said, as casually as I could. ‘I know who my real parents have always been.’
He closed the drawer and gave me a hug. ‘That’s my girl. Now – can you hold this piece of wood for me?’
We worked together quietly for a while. Actually, I mean that he worked and I held things for him. It took a while to pluck up the courage to say it.
‘Daddy, we could be rich.’
‘We already are, lass, but I think I know what you mean.’
‘But perhaps, if I tried, we could win the lottery.’
‘Aye lass, maybe we could, but I reckon you’ve never heard the story of The Monkey’s Paw.’
I shook my head.
‘Well, there was a family – a mother, a father and their child. The man and the woman were very old. Their child came to them late in life.’
‘Just like us.’
‘Well, theirs was a son, but yes, just like us. Anyway, they weren’t very well off and one day, there came into their possession a monkey’s paw, and the story goes that if you made three wishes, then the monkey’s paw would make them come true.’
‘Really?’ I said, excited.
‘Ah, but – and it’s a pretty big
but, lass – the wishes were granted in such a way that you wished you’d never made them in the first place.’
‘But …’ I said.
‘Ah, that’s what the mother said. “But …”’
‘What happened?’
‘Well, she reckoned she’d wish for a bit of money. Not a lot. She reckoned no good ever came of being greedy, so she wished for fifty pounds. A respectable sum in them days. She took hold of the paw …’ he clutched his Phillips screwdriver dramatically, ‘… and said, “I wish for fifty pounds.”’
‘What happened?’
‘Nothing. To begin with. Next day, their son went off to work. He didn’t come home.’
I could see what was coming.
‘A man from the company came around that evening. There’d been an accident at work, he said. Their son had been caught in some machinery. He was dead. He was very sorry. It wasn’t the company’s fault, he said, but here was a sum of money as a gesture of goodwill.’
I whispered, ‘How much?’
‘Fifty quid.’
I shivered.
‘That’s not the end of the story though. The old lady, she thought she saw a way to make things right. Grabbing the monkey’s paw again, she wished they could have their son back.’
I went cold. ‘What happened?’
‘Nothing. To begin with. And then, faintly, in the far distance, they could hear footsteps. As if something was coming from a long way away.’
I held my breath.
‘And they weren’t normal footsteps, either. These dragged along the ground, as if whoever was approaching couldn’t walk properly. And the old man remembered what had been said about their son being caught in the machinery.’
He paused to rummage for something in a drawer.
I swallowed hard. ‘What … happened?’
‘The old woman was running to the door. To let whatever it was into the house. He tried to stop her but she was too strong for him. I suppose she was a mother and she just wanted to see her son again. She pushed the old man away and he fell to the floor. He saw a dreadful dark shape pass the window. He could only guess at what their son looked like after falling into all that machinery. All the time, the old lady was scrabbling to get the door open and any minute now …’