‘Use the south entrance,’ shouted one of them, gesturing down the road. She didn’t hear him. She wasn’t happy. Her fingernails raked the inside of her palms. A prickly flush crept up her neck.
‘They’re digging up the road,’ said a voice loudly in her ear.
‘What the—’ Then she saw who it was. She recognised him. Patrick, he’s a runner like herself. A local legend. Big, grey, bushy beard – a skinny Father Christmas in lycra tights. He’d had a heart attack, two weeks after his fifty-fifth birthday. It took him six months to learn to walk again. When she first met him, he said God gave him another chance at life. He’s making the most of it now – six stones lighter, running seven-minute miles and winning his age category at 10k races.
She’s on her second chance too—but only I know that. I know lots of her secrets.
‘That short-cut… the one next to Weatherspoon’s… it’s grim though!’ He panted the words out as he jogged backwards down the street.
So, it shouldn’t have been much of a problem really, not for a runner like herself. A small detour. She was disappointed nevertheless. I could tell. It’s the way she lifted her chin; that clenched jaw, the tiny pout on her lips. Stuff that she’s completely unaware of.
Lily is my specialist subject – I know all her visual tics.
The High Street was two hundred yards away and an obstacle course – screeching children being dragged along by the scruff of their coats, pensioners wheeling their trollies. Teenage girls sauntering along as though auditioning for Britain’s Next Top Model. Clamped on each other’s arms, that’s if they’re not texting. Heads straining forward like monkeys. Fingers tapping and clicking, completely oblivious to anything around them. Stop-start all the way.
‘Pillocks,’ she whispered under her breath.
Her swear word of the day. She allows herself just the one. That was part of her transformation, her moving on. Her grand progression up Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. It’s a model. A diagram shaped like a pyramid. At the bottom, there’s basic needs, for safety and sex. That’s one thing that’s rarely been ticked off the list—sex. At the top, self-actualisation. You are the best you can be. Confident, happy. Total control, that’s what she really wanted. And, for that reason, I had to disappear from her life – completely.
So, she’s jogging down the High Street at a snail’s pace. Eight-minute miles drop to twelve, then sixteen; she was the salmon swimming upstream. Everyone headed for the New Year sales. She hates crowds—can’t cope with all those bodies pressed against hers. Can’t see who’s coming her way. Can’t get a feel for who’s behind her. Her pulse races like an underground train.
‘I’ll pick up the pace later,’ she probably told herself that through gritted teeth, frustration simmering towards anger, as she squeezed her way through the ten-deep queue outside Glanville’s Tea House. The air nebuliser under the front entrance pumped out its little tease of freshly baked pork pies. The smell wove its way into her senses. I knew the image of a thick buttery crust and sweet onion gravy would be growling in her head. It certainly was in mine. She’s a veggie now though, so those are off the menu.
Her training as a counsellor taught her to control her impulses. Like I said, she has this range of tools and techniques to keep her on the right track. Still, it must exhaust her, keeping all that anger in. She was going zero-minute miles right then. It said so on her Garmin. She swerved to the right.
‘Wetherspoons – shortcut – it’s a bit grim.’
It was.
Miss Therapist doesn’t like alleyways. Places of shit and shadows she calls them. That commonness sometimes leaks out. Never in front of her clients, though. She’s Miss Prim and Proper with them, no trace of that northern accent either. The one that held her back for years. She is the product of the full weight of her investment in elocution from that online subscription company on YouTube.
I’ve never seen her go down an alley. But like I said, she’s trying to make progress. Facing her fears and all that. When she gets home she’ll write it on her to-do list, then tick it off. She believes in retrospective recognition. Tick off what you’ve done; make it count.
I remember thinking, I hope she’s careful running over those cobbles. Covered in frost, slippery as hell. It wouldn’t have been the first time she’d fallen.
The stink hit her first. The alley was littered with cigarette butts, half-eaten bags of chips, plastic bottles, a used condom stuck against the brick wall. Her face reddened as she held her breath. In the shadows there’s a man, she hasn’t noticed him yet. His head protrudes from behind a large green waste bin. His back to her, his shoulders hunched against the wall. It was the noise that startled her—a spluttering stream of piss hitting the cobbles. The smell got a whole lot worst. Ammonia, flat beer, stale sweat. His boots stamped on the concrete. As he turned away from the wall, his eyes fixed on her.
He was barely out of his twenties. ‘Hello,’ he said, tucking his shirt into his trousers with a damp hand. ‘Hello,’ he repeated, leaning forward, his mouth widened into a supercilious grin.
Her whole body pulled back in disgust. It must have hurt him, that water bottle. Her fingers curled around the handle, striking him full in the face. Then with her right foot, she lashed out. Hit him right in the balls. He squealed like a pig, dropped to the ground, slid in his own piss. His left knee hit the cobbles with a crack.
That expensive self-defence programme finally paid off.
‘Hello,’ she said, without missing a beat.
Part of me was proud. Another part of me thought—shit where did that come from?
She leant over him. Whispered something under her breath, I didn’t catch it. He shrank back against the wall.
A look of bewilderment crossed his face, ‘Get… get away from me, you…’
I was shocked, completely shocked. She’d turned into a weirdo. Top of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs – not taking any shit and all that. Someone I didn’t recognise, and I’ve known her all her life.
‘Okay,’ her voice devoid of concern.
She looked over her shoulder. She must have decided the way back was better than the way forward. Moments later she was back on the main street, her teeth gritted, weaving her way through the crowd.
This story doesn’t end yet, though. The weirdness continued.
Her eyes latched onto something. There was a massive flat screen TV in the centre of a shop window. She was drawn towards it like a magnet. The news silently played to all that looked.
The large plate glass window reflected a ghost of her image. The oval shape of her face, blonde hair, shaved short into her neck, her lean frame. Around her a stream of self-admirers. Their eyes flickering across the glass. Catching their likeness.
Her own eyes were captivated by the images of Scots Pine trees ripped from the ground. Their pale roots bursting through the soil like the arms of drowning men. The trees faded as they cut to another image – a girl. Hazel eyes with long black lashes stared out. Miss Therapist read the banner of text on the screen.
“Human remains found at Winter Hill construction site have been identified as those of Karen Albright – fifteen-years-old at the time of her disappearance on the seventh of January 1973. Police continue to excavate the site for the body of eighteen-year-old Veronica Lightfoot who went missing the same night.”
I bet the hairs on the back of her neck stood on end.
White snowflakes clung to the reporter’s slight frame. The camera scanned the crowd behind her, behind the yellow police tape. The camera zoomed out, then in, the scene changed. An old face with bright blue eyes and hooded lids came into view. Her hair glistened with tiny beads of hairspray. She blinked as the camera flashes bounced off her.
A sliver of recollection ran through Miss Therapist’s head. I felt a tightness form across my chest.
The mother, that’s what it said on the screen. The interviewer thrust a microphone out, the mother stepped forward, loosened her scarf – a pale white sca
r ran across the goitre on her neck.
The words travelled across the screen. She placed her forehead against the glass. Tried to hear what was being said. A look of confusion strewn across her face.
‘Veronica, if you’re watching this, please come back, we can start over. We love you. Rosie and I love you. We just want you home.’
Miss Therapist’s mouth gaped open, she took a step back, her fingers let go of the water bottle – it clattered to the ground. The image faded, the news moved on. She stood in silence, tears stung her eyes. She rubbed them away. Strands of memories pulled themselves out and flexed.
Then she let out a low groan. Her legs crumbled beneath her. Someone, a young girl, grabbed her arm to steady her.
‘Your… water bottle,’ said the young girl who’d helped her up.
Lily, I think I’ll call her Lily now, well, she bolted like a horse. Shoved her way through the crowds, didn’t say sorry or I beg your pardon. Ran through the traffic. Almost got hit by a minibus. She kept going at full speed over the bridge. Out of town. Off road. Her eyes blind to everything around her. She scrambled over rubble and scree, her legs dragging her up onto the moors without her consent. Salty sweat ran down her forehead. Stinging her eyes. Blurring her vision. The snow blustered around her, pushing her back, then tugging her forwards. The sharp blade of the cotton-grass cut at her legs.
She ran on. Possessed by the face on the screen. By the bright blue eyes peering through hooded lids.
As though slapped back by the wind, she stopped dead. Her chest heaved. She couldn’t breathe out, she couldn’t breathe in. Her fingers fumbled for her water bottle. Gone. Lying by the plate glass window on the High Street. She had no idea where she was. Trembling uncontrollably, she stumbled to the ground. Perfect white snow crystals melted on the heat of her burning skin.
She covered her eyes with the palms of her hands. That life she mislaid, the one between hypnotherapy and Pentobarbital and things far worse. It flickered, like a light bulb about to blow. Splinters of memory cut through her like a knife through butter. The dance floor, the music, the Pakistani boy. Other memories. Her fingers in the soil, the foot, sticking out at an angle, refusing to be buried. Her hands, piling clumps of wet peat over bare toes. The pungent smell of newly turned earth, suddenly evoked within her.
Faces came out of the shadows, watching, judging. People, places. Forgotten on purpose, years ago. They butted against each other for her attention. The past flooded in, ruined the present, poisoned it. Her tools and techniques useless against the onslaught.
She wretched as the snow settled upon her – its cold embrace slowing her heart.
Her last image my face.
I couldn’t save her.
4
A freezing fog obliterates everything. Drivers, unable to see beyond the vehicle in front of them, slow the M62 to a snail’s pace. Images of the meeting with Hardacre and DCI Phillips replay in Thomasine’s head. The words she should have said mock her relentlessly.
The wind brings tide after tide of thick snowflakes that turn everything in their wake a glaring white. As she turns into the moor road, the tyres on her bright red Mini Cooper lose traction, the car unceremoniously sliding off to the left into a shallow ditch, she cannot stop it.
‘Shit!’ Her heart slams against her chest, her whole being shakes, she looks in the rear window.
Thank God there was no one behind me.
She tries to manoeuvre the car out, the wheels turn, fail to get purchase, the engine stalls. She turns on the hazard lights, pushes open the driver’s door, clambers out. Still trembling, checks the car for damage; everything seems to be okay. An olive-green parka lies across the back seat, she tugs it on, zips it up. Her fingers fumbled with the latch on the boot, it springs open with a click; perching on the rim she struggles to get her feet into the thick red socks and black wellingtons she keeps in the boot for work.
The access to the farm is further down the road, the farmhouse is a couple of miles up the track – it’s going to be a long trek. First, she must clamber over the lower gate, the lock is frozen shut.
Her progress through the thick fog of snow is painfully slow, feet soaked, her clothing her only defence against the freezing wind. Chilled to the bone, she cannot turn back for fear of getting lost; all evidence of her footsteps gone in minutes. As she presses on, a flock of horned sheep shiver behind a dilapidated drystone wall; their jet-black eyes fix on her, silver droplets of ice cling to their coarse woollen coats, their noses root in the snow for food.
Beneath its glimmering white sheet, the world before her has lain almost untouched for hundreds of years. Winter and summer alike, covered in purple moor grass and blanket bog. On the tops, shale and slate poke up through the shrub and heather. She tugs her hood down over her face, recovers against the wind for a moment. She loves this place. It was her escape. Her playground.
Outcrops of trees, like old men with twisted spines, cower amongst lumps of gritstone torn from the earth thousands of years ago. Too heavy for a man to carry, too many to make it worthwhile clearing. Her father’s family has lived here since the early 1800s – she was forged in this landscape.
She hears a sharp crack, a gunshot going off.
Am I at the farm?
It’s the barn door—still some way off. The wind is snatching it, slamming it to and fro. She follows the sound. Every few minutes she hears the dogs howl. She takes her mobile out of her pocket, squints at the screen. No signal; she cannot ring her mother for help.
Somewhere ahead, hidden by the weather, is the farmhouse. Two stories high with a steep roof, surrounded by a broken-down wall, a ramshackle of moss-covered stones. It is as though the wall itself thrust them out. They lie in piles of ten or twelve waiting to be put back in their rightful place. In clear weather, it can be seen from miles away. The lichen-covered slate roof, tall chimney and grey stone walls – a shadow on the moor, a darkness.
I can’t understand why she still lives here. She can’t cope with the place. She’s on her own. Her foot sinks into another pothole, her father’s voice rings in her ears.
‘She’ll never leave until Karen comes home.’
The day of Karen’s disappearance, he’d hurt his back moving hay bales in the barn; that night he’d downed four painkillers with a pint of bitter, he’d barely been able to make it up the stairs to bed. He was out flat until the morning.
He said he’d never make that mistake again. He didn’t – his side of her parents’ marital bed lay empty from that night onwards. Each morning Thomasine would wake to find him slumped in the armchair, dozing, blocking the door to her bedroom from the inside. A blanket tucked under this chin, his eyes closed. Terrified that she, too, would be taken.
The rest of the time he’d be out on the moors, minding the sheep—looking for Karen even when everyone else had stopped.
A stroke followed by a massive heart attack. Forty-years-old. Dead within minutes. That’s what the family doctor had said. Everyone else said it was a broken heart. That the guilt had taken him. They found him in the barn – he’d been working on the tractor, trying to change a wheel.
Oh God, I hope she doesn’t ask me to stay the night.
With her father gone, the house became a time capsule. Karen was with them, yet not. Her mother had insisted their bedroom must stay as it was. Karen’s made-up bed ready to be slept upon; her dressing table covered in her essentials. Small tubes of lipstick, matching bottles of nail varnish, creamy nudes, pale pinks, deep purples; their white plastic tops yellowed, their insides solidified. Long strands of dark brown hair lying in a small china pot, carefully eased from a plastic comb that her mother found behind the dressing table after the police had done their work. Her childhood dolls still rest on the shelf, their pale blue eyes open in constant surprise. Waiting.
Thomasine lifts her face to the wind and snow.
Their bedroom became a mausoleum, never to be left untidy. An irony, Karen’s side of the room had always
been a constant tip, clothes cast on the floor, half-read teen magazines thrown carelessly beneath the frame of her bed, makeup streaks on the white melamine top of the dressing table. Spots of pale pink nail varnish on the rug.
‘See how nice Thomasine keeps her side.’ Her mother would respond. ‘Why can’t you be like that?’
Karen would tilt her head to the side, put her hand on her hip. Say nothing. But it didn’t end there, not for Thomasine, she’d pay one way or another for her tidiness. Usually, a Chinese burn on her wrist or a sharp pinch on the inside of her arm when she was least expecting it.
Now, Thomasine’s side of the room is clear of clutter; her dressing table, her wardrobe never used.
The anniversary of Karen’s disappearance—she always had be home for that. This year was the exception, she’d been working on a case, didn’t feel she could ask for the time off.
Maybe we can clear all that stuff away, make it a decent place to stay.
To walk from one side of the bedroom to the other is to cross a time zone. Two countries, past and present. The window looks out across the valley, to Anglezarke, to Belmont. Where she lay hidden all those years. Thomasine knows that she will never be able to look out of that window again, neither will her mother. She’ll want it sealed up.
The slamming of the barn door gets louder, the dogs howl. The stench of the slurry pit behind the farm catches in her throat. Even the snow couldn’t snuff it out. She’s nearly there.
The dreams started after her father had died, so vibrant, so real.
‘They’ve found her,’ her father would say, ‘in Australia. She’s very happy there. She’s not coming back.’ There was always relief in his voice.
In the dream, they’d sink down onto the settee beside her, her father’s fingers linked through her own, her mother’s arm around her shoulder. There was to be a new beginning. One where they could celebrate Christmas and she could have a birthday party every year, like the other kids in the village. The fire in the grate would be stoked high, yellow flames would lick up the chimney. Her mother would clean and cook; she’d make bread again. Thomasine would be their number one daughter. They’d walk the moors, the dogs scampering behind them.
She Lies Hidden: a spell-binding psychological suspense thriller Page 3