In Her Wake

by Amanda Jennings

  I lift my shoulders, size up to him, feel myself growing taller and stronger, fuelled with an indignant rage. ‘Why am I here? I’m here because this is my house and I want you out.’

  ‘He left it to you?’ He chuckles to himself and crosses his arms. ‘Fancy that. My little girl done good.’

  His little girl. This person’s little girl? No. I’m nothing to do with him. This man is removed from me. A stranger. I am not his little girl.

  ‘Did he know you lived here?’

  ‘I have a key, don’t I?’

  ‘And he gave you money? Did you sell me? Your own flesh and blood? Is that what you did?’

  I am hit by images of me as a wide-eyed toddler, scared and veiled in a dark French alley, my wrist is gripped in this man’s large hands as Henry Campbell looks over his shoulder and counts out used fifty-pound notes.

  ‘Sell you?’ He looks taken aback, but instead of shaking his head or saying no, he nods. ‘I wouldn’t put it that way myself, but I suppose it’s a way to see it.’

  ‘Why would … you…? How…? You’re my … father. It’s—’

  I can’t finish my sentence. The thought that this man could have knowingly left me with my abductors then profited from that abandonment with no idea if I was being hurt or abused or just locked away from my mother and sister behind heavy bolted doors and curtained windows, leaves me hollowed out.

  He rubs the side of his face and drops his head and for the first time shows some sort of contrition.

  ‘Tell me,’ I manage to say. ‘Tell me why you helped him to abduct me.’

  ‘I didn’t give you to them, OK?’

  I want to scream at him, No, it’s not OK. It’s not OK at all, but he continues to talk, his voice rolling out of his body as if he’s on autopilot. I jam my mouth closed, bracing myself for whatever he’s about to say.

  ‘We searched everywhere. Searched every shitting nook and cranny of the caravan, that shithole of a campsite. The room with the table football and the drinks machine. The shower block. The swings. Under the slide. We checked the swimming pool, the woods around – lots of us checking by then – but I knew you were gone. I was drunk, but I knew you were gone. And when I realised that, all I could think about was having a drink. Lots of them. I don’t think I’ve had a day since then when I haven’t woken up without my first thought being my next drink.’ He stares at me, his eyes dead. ‘That’s the kind of man I am, Morveren. A drunk. You know they thought I’d took you? Those foreign police? They took me in and questioned me again and again, that sneering woman turning their foreign nonsense into English I could barely understand. Bloody frogs, bloody French frogs. They thought I killed you. Can you believe that?’

  I shake my head. It’s hard to take it all in. The pictures that are forming in my head. The chaos triggered by my taking. All the while I was oblivious.

  He laughs. ‘I didn’t even want to go to bloody France! It was your mother’s idea. She thought a fancy-pants holiday would help our marriage or some shit like that. Forgot people like us don’t go to France. But no. She said we needed a holiday, that it was our last chance. She said it would be good for us to spend time together. Get me out of the pub, she said. I told her there was no problem. Things were fine. Jesus, I should’ve been allowed to relax without her harping on at me, don’t you think? But she went on and on. Always nagging. Always wanting more.’ His voice has grown tight. He pauses, screws up his face, and angrily jabs the air with a pointed finger and I ball my fists to make myself feel braver.

  ‘The stupid cow went on and on all the bloody time. Said she was going to leave me. Said she’d made a mistake about France. That it was over, that we were over.’ He sighs and rubs his face. ‘And then I gave her a slap. Nothing bad, mind, a light slap, but you should have seen the look she gave me.’

  He whispers these last words. I swallow. Recall the fear in Dawn’s voice when she spoke about this man. I don’t want to be here anymore. Nobody knows where I am. I’m a dead girl going by a made-up name. I don’t exist; if he hurts me I’ll vanish.

  I’ll vanish again.

  ‘How is she? How’s Alice?’ His voice is lighter, gentler, and the change in it sends a shiver through me. ‘She was such a pretty little thing. All the boys wanted a go.’

  I lean back on the wall, my palms flat against it. The solidity helps, as if I’ve anchored myself. ‘Why did you take money from him?’

  He pulls the cardigan tight across his body, wipes his nose with the back of his hand. ‘After we buried you, your mum, well, she just stopped living. Sat there day after day, staring out of the window, waiting for you to come home. Moping, living inside that head of hers, blaming me, hating me. I started drinking more. Couldn’t get work. And then one day, a few weeks after your funeral, I picked up the box of cards that people had left us that day. I was going to throw it away, hoped that might help. But I sat, poured a drink, and started to read them. I couldn’t read some of them for crying.’ He pauses and the corners of his mouth twitch in a soft smile and for the first time I detect the shadow of something that might pass for affection. ‘And then there was this one. Written so neat. All fancy writing on fancy blue paper and it said, She’s here and then there was an address.’

  My hand shoots to my mouth. ‘Did you go to the police?’

  He snorted. ‘Fucking pigs. Couldn’t find their arse with a mirror. No, of course I didn’t go to the police. They knew for certain you’d drowned, didn’t they? Once they knew they couldn’t pin it on me that said that over and over. They just wanted to get rid of us. They didn’t give a shit about you. No, I would never have gone to them.’

  Mark Tremayne leans back against the sink and folds his arms.

  ‘So I took the van and drove up there. Took hours. And I parked outside and saw him drive through the gates. And I recognised him. He was on the campsite. He was one of them that had helped us look for you. It was dark, pitch black. And raining. The wall was high but I went over it. Didn’t want to risk them not opening their fancy electric gates. Then I knocked on the door.’

  And as he speaks I have a flash of the man I sometimes see looming out of the shadows in my nightmares. His features uncertain. His presence petrifying. I don’t want to hear any more, yet at the same time I’m riveted.

  ‘Campbell answered and I told him I wanted my daughter back. Fuck me, that mad bitch screamed like I’d ripped out her stomach with my bare hands. And then you were there and, God, it was like all the weight of the world left me. I smiled at you. Well, I think I smiled, maybe I didn’t, because you hid behind her. I suppose I was jealous, but Jesus, that got me cross. How could you hide from me? Your own dad? I pushed past him. Went over to you, all the time that crazy woman screaming in my ear. I took hold of you and pulled you towards me, and then,’ he says, with a loud and incredulous burst of laughter, ‘you bit me. Like a mangy pit bull, you bit my bloody hand. I let go of you and you fell backwards into her.’

  Again I search my mind and finally I can see it. It’s him, this man, standing in the doorway. His hand reaches out to me. And I’m scared. So scared I hide. Elaine’s skin is soft. She smells of Pears soap. She is warm and curls herself around me so I feel safe and protected.

  ‘She picked you up. Held you close, whispered to you, held you like you were made of eggshell. Then she went for this poxy little knife on the table and started waving it around like it was a Samurai sword. She was mad as a rabid dog, that one. That house was nice, wasn’t it? Smart. With that long driveway and those pictures on the walls.’ His eyes drift to the window, to the hungry pigeons who still jostle and push for the last scraps of seed. ‘And then she stopped screaming and the doctor offered me money.’

  ‘You are an animal,’ I say through gritted teeth. ‘You should have taken me home. They would have gone to prison and you could have taken me home. How could you leave me? You knew it was wrong and you could have stopped it. Even if you didn’t love me, she did, Alice did. You should have taken me home to
her.’

  His mouth twists into a foul grimace. ‘Home? There was no bloody home! Your mother was a ghost. Nothing in her eyes. And that silence, that God-awful quiet. The only thing that blocked it was the drink.’

  He goes quiet for a moment and I catch a glimpse of the sadness, or perhaps loss, that thrives in the warm, damp darkness within him. He shakes his head.

  ‘And anyway, you didn’t want me. You wanted them, what they could give you. And it didn’t take a genius to see what they had was better for you – fancy clothes, your hair brushed neat, in that big house, all warm and cosy with money. You were better off without me. You were all better off without me. I knew then that out of that Devil’s mess, you’d fallen on your feet. Those people were your ticket to a better life.’ He takes a deep breath, rubs his face, his movements those of someone weary of life. ‘So I shook his hand.’

  The air around me has grown thick as tar. I need to leave. I need to get out. I want to be back in St Ives. I want to be back where I belong. With my sister and mother in the flat that smells of soup.

  ‘It wasn’t right to do what you did,’ I say. ‘You should never have kept me from my mother.’

  Tremayne begins to walk towards me.

  ‘Stay away,’ I whisper. But he keeps coming.

  I press my body back against the wall. He is close to me now and leans in. His smell seeps into me, acrid and ripe, the stench of drink hangs on his breath. He reaches a hand out towards my face. I recoil. Turn my head to avoid his touch. Flinch as his fingertips graze my cheeks. I squeeze my eyes closed as my throat constricts.

  ‘Look how beautiful you are,’ he whispers, each word a poison feather brushing against my skin.

  Leave. It’s time for you to leave.

  ‘Get off me.’ The words sound so weak. My heart is beating faster, my palms are clammy, but I won’t show him I’m scared. I won’t. I sidestep towards the doorway. He doesn’t move, but his eyes follow me. ‘You’re worse than the Campbells,’ I breathe. ‘I hate them and I hate you.’ I move through the doorway and start to walk backwards, worried that if I turn away from him he’ll come after me.

  ‘Oh, no, don’t hate, Morveren. Hate will eat you up and spit you out like gristle. Living with hate will be the end of you. And I should know.’

  ‘And who exactly do you hate? The family you abandoned?’ I have reached the front door. I’m nearly free. ‘The Campbells who kept you in this house, who gave you money?’

  ‘No, not any of them. Me. It’s me I hate.’

  Then he turns and walks back to the sash window, which he lifts open again. The pigeons aren’t there but he leans out of it and whistles, as one hand reaches for a loaf of sliced bread on a small table beside him. He takes a few slices out and tears them into bits, which he scatters on the ledge. The pigeons are back within moments. Even though he is facing away from me I can hear his voice as he talks to the birds.

  ‘There, there, you hungry little rats.’

  ‘Don’t you have any scrap of decency?’ I shout. Everything I feel – the hurt, the confusion, the loss, the grief – erupts at once. ‘You can’t even say sorry? Don’t you feel any shame or remorse at all?’

  He bends forward for a moment or two and then turns and walks forward until he’s standing in the kitchen doorway, no more than fifteen feet away from me. He holds out his hands, which are cupped around a pigeon.

  ‘Know anything about pigeons, Morveren?’ he asks. ‘They flock together to protect themselves against cats and foxes. They keep each other warm, accept strangers into the flock, and pair for life. The parents both look after their young. They can even find their way home from thousands of miles away. But still folk don’t like them.’ He lifts the bird closer to his face, whispering under his breath as he does. The pigeon watches him warily. ‘People think they spread disease.’ He touches his lips to the bird’s head, causing the creature to struggle. ‘They don’t though. You’re more likely to be struck by lightning than get sick from a pigeon.’

  ‘You ruined my life.’

  He shakes his head. ‘You’re young. Not even thirty. You’ve got all your life to come. You got any kids yet?’

  I don’t answer.

  ‘No? Well, when you do, look after them nicely. Tuck them into their beds, read them stories, feed them well. That way you can right all the wrong that was done to you.’ He turns slowly and goes back to the window to release the pigeon. ‘And,’ he says with a laugh. ‘Don’t lose them.’

  My stomach turns over, nausea rising inside me. ‘You disgust me.’

  ‘Dare say I do.’

  I reach for the latch on the door.

  ‘You think you had a bad deal,’ he calls after me. ‘But you did alright, you know.’

  My hand falls from the door and I face him, my head spinning, drunk on the impossible ugliness of it all. ‘You stole my childhood.’

  ‘No, you had a childhood, a different childhood I’ll grant you, but you had one.’

  ‘You’re going to hell.’

  A haunting sadness settles over him like a mist. ‘I’m there already.’

  And then I tear open the door and fall out of the house, dragging deep lungfuls of fresh air into my body. The sun is strong and the golden streets of this part of Bristol shimmer all around me. I stare at the people walking the pavements, shiny as the sun, happily ignorant of the horrors that exist behind doors like the one I’ve just closed, the hidden world of child abductors and soulless men in empty houses with nothing for company but bitter memories and ravenous pigeons.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Henry Campbell – 20th February 1991

  Henry Campbell recognised the man as soon as he opened the door.

  His face was emblazoned on his dreams. He looked ill. His eyes rimmed red, rheumy with drink, his black hair plastered to his face by the rain that fell heavily. The last time Henry had seen him was the funeral, and he’d changed, even since then. It was as if the world had been kicking him repeatedly, constant blows to the stomach, the head, and the heart.

  ‘My daughter. I want my daughter.’

  Henry didn’t speak. He should have been expecting this, he’d left that note after all, but the shock of seeing the man floored him. He tried to form words, but none came. Then from behind him came a scream, the like of which he’d never heard. He watched Elaine run towards the man like someone possessed. She grabbed hold of the door and pushed it closed in Tremayne’s face, but he was too quick and shoved himself forward with all his weight, jamming his foot between the door and the frame. The force of his counter knocked Elaine backwards. Henry turned to see her tearing at her hair, her body shaking, piercing the air with her screaming.

  ‘Get out! Get out! Get out!’

  ‘Where is she?’ Tremayne’s voice was an ominous rumble. ‘Where’s Morveren?’

  Henry Campbell watched in horror as his wife’s face twisted and snarled, but then, amid the chaos and noise, he felt a mantle of calm settle over him, relief that soon this nightmare would be over and the lying, the guilt and the fear would all finally stop.

  Out of the corner of his eye he saw the girl.

  ‘Mama?’ she said softly. ‘What’s wrong?’

  Henry swore under his breath, angry at himself for his inactivity. Why didn’t he pick her up and hand her to her father? Or call the police? Why did he stand there? Impotent, ineffectual, useless.

  Weak.

  Tremayne dropped to his knees. A strangled sobbing noise escaped his dry, cracked lips. He dragged his hands through his hair, smoothing it back from his face as if smartening himself for royalty. ‘Hello Morveren,’ he said. The uncertainty in the man’s voice surprised Henry. ‘How are you?’

  Henry watched as the little girl curled herself in behind Elaine’s legs, her thumb wedged in her mouth, her head lowered to avoid this man’s eyes.

  Mark Tremayne held out his hand and beckoned to her. ‘Come on, don’t be like that. Come here. Come to your dad.’

  The girl looke
d up at Elaine. Her thumb dropped from her mouth. ‘Don’t want to, Mama. Don’t like him.’

  Though she whispered it, they had all heard.

  Elaine bent down and picked her up, wrapping her arms around her tightly, pulling her into her shoulder, a protective hand shielding her head.

  Henry watched as a switch went off in Tremayne. The man jumped to his feet and ran towards Elaine. Henry reached out to try to pull him back, but Tremayne swatted his arm away like he was an irritating fly.

  Tremayne lunged for the girl, his big, grimy hands grabbing at her.

  Elaine gave out yet another guttural scream that came from the very centre of her being, as if he’d driven a blade into her stomach.

  ‘Get away from her!’ Elaine screeched. ‘Get your filthy bastard hands off my daughter!’

  ‘She’s not your daughter! You took her. You fucking took her.’ Tremayne’s fingers closed around the girl’s arm, digging into her tightly, so hard that she shrieked too. ‘Stop it, Morveren! You’re getting me teasy. For God’s sake come here. I’m taking you back.’

  As he pulled again on the girl’s arm, her eyes widened, exposing the whites around their brilliant green centres, and then in one swift movement she opened her mouth and sunk her teeth into his hand. Tremayne yowled and snapped his hand away, grasping it with his other.

  ‘You little bitch,’ Tremayne growled. Then he lifted his hand above his head and moved as if he was going to swipe at her. Henry knew he should stop him, but he was glued to the floor, horrified by what was unravelling, his voice vanished, limbs rigid.

  ‘Don’t you dare hit her!’ Elaine turned the child away from the man’s raised hand, whispered into her hair, soft, indecipherable words, stroking her, soothing her as she snivelled quietly into Elaine’s shoulder. Henry saw his wife’s eyes fall on the hall table, then one of her hands darted out to grab at an ornate, bone-handled paperknife. She locked eyes with Tremayne, brandished the knife in his direction, waved it about like a magic wand. ‘You will take this child over my dead body!’ she screamed.