by Anna Wharton
Hollie is irritating her now, picking at a scab that is already healing. She always does this. Why can’t she leave the past where it belongs? Her blood is burning now, hot and red. She takes another sip of her tea and thinks of Maureen. She would understand. But she can’t even tell Hollie that, and now she wants to cry because she feels so alone, so misunderstood. She wants to be back at Elm House, in the safety and sanctuary of Low Drove. She knows now why the Kyles picked such an isolated spot. So no one can find them.
Hollie tries to take both of her hands across the table. Chloe shakes them free, pushing her chair back. She just wants to be back at the Kyles’ house.
‘I shouldn’t have come,’ Chloe says.
‘Don’t be like that.’ Chloe sees that flicker of rejection on Hollie’s face and feels better somehow, stronger. It reminds her of the same expression that woman had on the bus. Confusion, a hint of hurt sitting beneath it.
‘Can we just talk about something else?’ Chloe says.
‘Of course,’ Hollie replies, although she sounds less sure as she twists her thumbs inside her hands. ‘It’s just these people, they needn’t be ghosts, they—’
That’s it. Chloe gets up from the table. The cup clatters in its saucer, tipping over and spilling what was left onto the floor.
‘Look at this mess you’ve made,’ Chloe snaps at her friend.
Hollie is instantly wounded and a couple of people look round in the cafe. Why did it have to be like this? Why couldn’t she have just left it like she asked?
‘I just wanted to help,’ Hollie says.
‘Well, you’re not helping, you never help, you just go on and on and on at me every time. But you don’t understand what it’s like. You think you do, but you don’t know what you’re talking about. I know what I’m doing. I know who I am.’
‘Chloe.’ She reaches for her friend, but Chloe is already pushing past the table. She knocks the one opposite as she goes; a chair that had been balancing on it clatters to the floor. She doesn’t stop, not until she’s out of the door, not until she reaches her bus stop, not until she’s on the bus and she’s leaving the orange lights of the city and she’s heading out on the A47 into the blackness of the Fens, where she will be safe at last.
THIRTY-THREE
The moon shines brighter out here in this flat land. Chloe walks back towards Elm House under its glare. Tonight it feels like a lamp tilted directly at her, nature’s own interrogation.
Maureen told her a Fenland folklore story about the moon a few nights ago, as they both stood out in the garden in their dressing gowns, hugging mugs of warm tea and staring up at the stars before bed.
‘They say the moon couldn’t believe how wicked humans are to each other,’ Maureen had told her. ‘So one night, she came down to earth in disguise to witness all the bad that humans can do to one another. She became stuck in the marshy bog and was caught by witches, who trapped her under a huge stone. When the moon disappeared from the sky, the Fens really were filled with ghouls and ghosts and, so the story goes, it was the locals who eventually found the moon and helped her return to the sky. That’s why she shines brighter out here.’
Mostly the moon feels more like a guiding light leading Chloe home to Elm House. She feels bad about what happened with Hollie. But then why did she have to bring up all that old stuff? Why are people so determined to cling on to the past? And then she thinks of Maureen, who has no choice.
When Chloe sees the warm yellow glow of Elm House leaking out of the inky blackness, she puts the rest of the day away somewhere. Nan is back in a box, along with the woman on the bus, even Hollie. They feel somehow like another lifetime. And in some way they are, once Chloe has walked back through that willow curtain.
Chloe steps through the back door and Maureen calls to her from the lounge. She pops her head around the door. Patrick sits in his chair, his feet up on the pouffe. He doesn’t turn around.
‘Good day at work, Chloe, love?’ Maureen asks.
Chloe senses something in the air. She looks between Maureen and Patrick, his expression set, her smile that bit too wide. Somehow they appear further apart in here than usual, though they’re sitting in the same seats they always do.
‘Busy,’ Chloe says, faking a yawn.
Maureen makes to get up, and Chloe notices Patrick looking over for a split second from his chair before he returns his gaze to the TV.
‘Sit yourself down and I’ll—’ Maureen starts.
‘No, it’s OK,’ Chloe says, putting her hand up before Maureen can offer to make tea. ‘I think I’ll go upstairs and have a shower.’
Patrick turns back to the TV and increases the volume.
‘That’s it,’ Maureen says, ‘scrub the day off.’
Upstairs, Chloe tiptoes across the landing, pausing to cock her head over the bannister. She can’t hear voices, only the low hum of the evening news downstairs. The atmosphere feels the same as it did after Maureen and Patrick’s fight. Every couple argues, she thinks, before looking again at the padlock on the spare room door. She knows so much more now about how they live, though. How controlling Patrick is. At least, that’s how she sees it.
In her room she strips off her clothes and wraps a bath sheet around her naked body. She closes her door and steps out onto the landing towards the bathroom, and finds herself pausing outside Maureen and Patrick’s bedroom. Might more answers lie in there? She had always thought that it was the spare room that would hold the clues to Angie’s disappearance. But wouldn’t the real clues be found somewhere altogether more private? In any ordinary circumstance, she might feel bad for snooping around, but what if she found some clue that has been overlooked? What if her new eye on this story could actually help find Angie?
She looks behind her, backing up a few steps and leaning over the top of the stairs. She hears Maureen say something to Patrick about the programme they’re watching, him grunt a reply, then Chloe looks back at their bedroom door. She tiptoes towards it, puts her palm on the handle, feels it turn and release before she can stop herself. Inside the bedroom, cool air hits her. One of the windows in the bay is open and deep salmon-pink curtains and nets billow at it, beckoning her inside. She obeys them and steps through the boundary, closing the door behind her. She stands there, her heart banging against the towel she holds in place with her hand. The room is painted white, but the pink of the curtains bleeds colour into the walls. Now she’s in here, the curtains are still as if they’d never invited her in in the first place. She looks back at the door, wondering why she hadn’t left it open. But then she’d only ever known this door closed, and it would raise suspicions if someone came upstairs and saw it ajar, she supposed. Anyway, she was in here now, it made sense to have a look.
Along one long wall facing the bed are fitted wardrobes, not too dissimilar to the ones in Nan’s bedroom. The bed is made neatly with a frilly valance and a quilted eiderdown. There are two bedside tables that match the wardrobes, and on the side that she presumes is Maureen’s there is a slim vase with a short fake white rose inside. Chloe thinks of the white rose etched into the front door at Chestnut Avenue – perhaps it had pained Maureen to leave it behind? Beside the rose is a box of tissues, and a pair of reading glasses, and beside that, a tiny charm. Chloe picks it up. It looks like a pendant, as if it should belong on a chain, but instead it rests here, next to Maureen’s pillow. Etched into the metal is St Anthony and there is a picture of the saint cradling a child who Chloe presumes is Jesus. She turns the pendant over in her palm. On the back are three words: Pray for us. Chloe puts the pendant down exactly where she found it.
Patrick must sleep on the other side of the bed, nearest the window. Silently – and quickly – she crosses the room, around the bed, until she’s standing in front of where he sleeps, feeling the cold of the wind at her bare shoulders. On his side of the bed there is a lamp, nothing else. She feels disappointed, as if this intrusion owed her a better insight. She opens the door to his bedside table: there�
��s a nail file, a pair of reading glasses, an out-of-date slim green horse-racing diary. She closes the drawer quickly, flinching at the sound it makes. There must be more to him than this. She looks around, but there’s nothing out of the ordinary that she can see. She goes to walk back around the bed and that’s when she hears it, a footstep out on the landing, a sigh she knows as someone reaches the top step of the stairs – Patrick. She looks about her frantically. She’s standing, clutching the towel around her, stuck between the bed and the window. If he comes in here now, that’s where he’ll find her. What would she say? She can’t go out. Not now. She’s trapped.
She throws herself down on the floor at his side of the bed just as the door starts to open. She rolls on her side, the towel coming undone, but more than half of her body disguised under the bed. She moves silently, shuffling an inch or so further under the bed. She lies on her back. Holding her breath, breathing with the very apex of each lung. There’s less than an inch between the valance sheet and the floor. She sees his feet at the door. To her right, the towel trails out under the bed. If he walks around, he’ll see it. But she can’t risk moving a muscle. She holds her breath, her nose almost touching the underside of the mattress between the wooden slats. Patrick’s feet start to move slowly round the bed. The valance sheet has caught on her bare shoulder, exposing it. She wriggles, only a little, and feels the sheet loosen, dropping towards the floor. She can’t see his feet now, he must be at the very bottom of the bed. Then suddenly, she hears a faint sound from downstairs. Maureen calling him. Please say he hears it too.
‘Yeah?’ Patrick shouts downstairs to his wife.
Chloe’s whole body tenses.
But there’s no reply. He sighs, she hears a foot shuffle on the carpet, although she can’t see it. Another sigh, this one longer. And then the creak of a floorboard as he walks out of the room, pulling the door shut behind him.
Chloe lets out a long breath. But she doesn’t move, not until she hears him going down the stairs.
‘What is it, Mo? I’d just gone to get my . . .’
What had she been thinking? Chloe knows she has to get out of the bedroom quickly. She shuffles back the way she came, only as she does, she sees what she disturbed when she launched herself underneath here. She can’t tell how many there are, but there are dozens of them, more books than she’s seen anywhere else in the house. But why would they keep them here under the bed?
She rolls out, dragging one with her. She rearranges the towel around herself and turns over the book so the cover is facing up. There’s a black and white picture of some police tape on the front. It’s a true crime book. Chloe picks up another, another, they’re all the same: true crime, forensics, all real-life crime scene investigations – just like the programmes Patrick watches so obsessively.
Chloe stands up. She needs to get out of this room. She throws the two books in her hand back under the bed. The duvet cover is slightly askew where she has leant on the bed to get up and she quickly – frantically – tries to smooth it out, but she sees that her hands are shaking. She needs to get out of this room.
She opens the door to the landing. All is quiet. She takes three short steps and she’s in the bathroom, she’s closing the door, she’s turning the shower on and she’s leaning against the cubicle. Chloe steps under the water and its only then that her breathing returns to normal. She turns the dial hotter until her feet are pink and the air is thick with steam. She breathes deeply until she feels her pulse start to steady. She imagines the steam sterilising her from the inside, right down to the very core. She stands under the shower until the hot steam permeates her lungs, until she feels new again. She steps out and opens the window, and her day hurries away into the night.
She dries quickly with a rough towel, agitating her skin until it stings. She has been in the Kyles’ home for almost five weeks now. The smells of the place have embedded themselves in her clothes; the scent of Maureen’s washing powder is tucked in every cotton weave of her shirt and knitted into her jumpers. She sniffs at her hair. She has her own shampoo but recently she’s preferred to use Maureen’s. Two months ago she wouldn’t even have known the toothpaste brand she uses, now they squeeze from the same tube. But who knows how long this will last? How much longer she can carry on paying rent here without a job? How much longer she can get a bus into town every day for a desk that doesn’t exist? She pushes it to the back of her mind. She thinks instead of the true crime books she’d found under Patrick’s bed. Her work in Elm House is far from done.
Who knows how long it is until she hears footsteps climbing the stairs. They stop outside her door and Chloe puts her magazine down. There’s a knock and then the soft turn of her door handle. Maureen’s head appears around the frame. Chloe sinks against her pillow.
‘I baked today,’ Maureen says. ‘Banana loaf. I thought you might like some?’
‘Oh thanks,’ Chloe says. She shuffles up towards her pillow, still under her duvet.
‘You’re not cold, are you, Chloe?’ Maureen crosses the room to check the radiator and as she does Chloe glances at the floor beside her bed, checking that her pale blue notebook hasn’t been left open.
‘No, no, I’m fine. Just wanted to relax, you know?’
Maureen nods, unconvinced. She hands Chloe the small plate she’s brought up with a slice of cake on it. Chloe takes it, then hesitates for a second. Chloe hasn’t seen this plate before. It has a pattern on it that she knows – tiny brown rabbits chase each other around the edge of the plate. She looks up to see Maureen watching her.
‘I just had some bananas that were past their best and . . .’ Maureen says, sitting at the bottom of Chloe’s bed. She waits for her to take a bite.
Chloe picks up the slice of cake. As she does the image in the centre of the plate reveals itself: it’s a river scene, bunnies in red and blue cardigans bathing in the water and lazing on the riverbank. Chloe knows it so well and yet can’t quite remember . . . Maureen is still watching her. She takes a bite.
‘It’s lovely,’ Chloe says. ‘The cake, I mean.’
‘Banana loaf was Angie’s favourite,’ Maureen says, smoothing out the cover of the duvet as she does.
Then it comes to her. Bunnykins. That’s the design on the plate. She sees Maureen note her moment of recognition.
‘Banana loaf is my favourite too,’ Chloe says.
Maureen glows beside her dim bedside light. Chloe takes another bite and this time the cake tastes even sweeter.
‘Really? Is it really?’
Chloe nods. ‘It’s been years since I’ve had it,’ she says between mouthfuls. ‘In fact, I think the last time was when I was a little girl.’
‘Really?’ Maureen says. She goes to speak again, but seems unsure about how her words are going to sound. She rearranges her legs, crossing them over, and leaning one hand on the bed as she does. ‘Chloe, I . . . well, I hope you don’t mind me asking but . . . do you remember anything about your mum. Your real mum, I mean?’
Chloe stops chewing.
‘My mum?’
‘You said you were adopted and . . . I just wondered whether you have any memories of life before, you know, before . . . I mean you said you weren’t curious about your background, but why?’
Chloe remembers and swallows a chunk of cake too quickly. She coughs and Maureen leans towards her. Chloe’s eyes are watery again when she looks up. She has to think fast, distract her. She’s not prepared for this.
‘Like I said, they offered to tell me, but maybe I’m afraid, afraid of finding out that my real parents were bad people,’ Chloe says.
‘But why would they be? They might be good people, they might be . . .’ Maureen stops and looks down at the sheet.
‘I guess after Mum and Nan . . . it would have felt like a betrayal, as if they weren’t good enough. It’s hard to explain.’
Maureen nods her head, but Chloe can see that she doesn’t understand. Why would she? This woman who hasn’t stopped searching
for her own lost family for decades. Maureen stands up from the bed then, straightening the legs of her trousers as she does and then her hair. She takes two steps towards the door, then pauses as if there’s something she wants to say.
‘I’ll leave you in peace.’
Her footsteps down the stairs are filled with more purpose.
Chloe finishes the cake slowly and leans back on her pillow. She hears Maureen’s voice floating up through the floorboards, not the words, just the tone – a persuasive, urgent quality to it. There’s no reply from Patrick, just the sound of the TV turned up a notch or two.
THIRTY-FOUR
Chloe is in bed in Low Drove when her mobile rings, a rare moment when the signal is strong. It’s one of the carers from Park House. Chloe lowers her voice to a whisper to speak to her and keeps an eye on her bedroom door. The carer is calling to see if Chloe has any special plans for Sunday. It takes Chloe a moment to register what she is talking about, then she sits up quickly and slaps her hand to her head. It’s Nan’s birthday tomorrow. What with everything that has been happening recently, Chloe has forgotten.
‘No, I, er . . . just the usual really,’ Chloe tells her, biting down hard on her lip.
The carer says they can bake a cake and Chloe promises she’ll be there in the morning.
‘We’ll have your grandma ready,’ she says.
As Chloe hangs up she thinks, ready for what? She doesn’t like this panicky feeling. Her legs tangle in the duvet as she tries to get up. She starts making her bed. It almost feels as if the carer rang just to catch her out. Suddenly, she stops still. There it is again. Through the bedroom floor, the clatter of pans drifts up. And again. Then raised voices.
Chloe tiptoes quickly to the bedroom door. She opens it expertly, without a sound – something she has practised here – and she leans her head against the cool door frame. There’s another clatter, more raised voices. Maureen and Patrick. From the sounds she pictures them: Maureen cleaning up after breakfast, Patrick sitting at the table – a rattle of his newspaper confirms it. Then a fist goes down on the kitchen table.