by C. J. Tudor
“Shall we get you sitting up?”
“But I need to get home. She’ll be expecting her tea.”
“Of course, but first, how about we get you some water?”
“I can do that,” I say.
I walk over to the serving hatch.
“Can I get a glass of water?”
By the time I bring the water back the old lady is sitting on a chair, looking a little less dazed.
“Here you go.”
She takes the paper cup in a wavering hand and sips from it.
“I’m so sorry. I don’t know what came over me.”
She smiles, embarrassed. And I remind myself that old age is not a disease but a destination.
“That’s okay,” I say. “We can all have a dizzy moment.”
“Do you have anyone who can take you home, Doreen?” the short-haired woman asks.
Doreen. Why is that name familiar? Doreen. And then it comes to me. The conversation I had with Joan:
“Joy’s mother, Doreen, suffers from dementia.”
Joy’s mother. I stare at her. Doreen must only be in her early seventies, but she looks closer to ninety. She’s so frail. Her face is like flaccid dough, hair spider-web fine and spun into wispy curls.
“I was going to walk, dear.”
“I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” short-haired woman says.
There’s a pause, during which I could make a perfectly reasonable excuse about having to go shopping and get back to my daughter. Instead, I hear myself say:
“I can give Doreen a lift home.”
Short-haired woman smiles at me. “Thank you.” Then she glances back at Doreen. “That’s okay, isn’t it, Doreen? If the nice lady drives you home?”
Doreen looks at me. “Yes. Thank you.”
Short-haired woman sticks out a hand. “I’m Kirsty. I run the youth group and help out here when needed.”
“Jack.” I shake her hand. “The new vicar.”
“I guessed. The dog collar kind of gave it away.”
I glance down. “Ah. Yes. That’s the thing with dog collars. They’re a bit like tattoos. You forget you’ve got one until people give you odd looks.”
She laughs and hitches up the arm of her T-shirt, revealing a bold tattoo of a leering skull.
“Amen to that.”
* * *
—
Doreen lives on a narrow lane off the high street. Packed with higgledy-piggledy terraces, most brimming with window boxes and hanging baskets.
I would have known Doreen’s house even if Kirsty hadn’t given me the address. The brick is dirty, the small front garden overgrown and the windows grimy and dark. Grief and loss hang over the place like a widow’s veil.
I pull up outside. Doreen hasn’t spoken much on the short journey, sitting, twisting a handkerchief around in her gnarled hands. I let the silence be. Sometimes, trying to fill a silence just makes it heavier.
I climb out of the car and hold the door for her, helping her out and then guiding her up the path to the front door. She fumbles in her handbag and brings out a key.
“Thank you again, dear.”
“No problem.”
She opens the door. “Would you like to come in for a cup of tea?”
I hesitate. I really shouldn’t. I shouldn’t even be here. I need to go shopping, then get back to Flo and finish sorting out the cottage. On the other hand, I look at the forlorn terrace. Something twists inside.
I smile. “That would be lovely.”
The hall is dark and smells of stale cooking and damp. The patterned carpet is threadbare. An old dial phone sits on a chipped side table under a large picture of the Virgin Mary. Her mournful eyes follow us into a dingy kitchen that looks untouched since the mid-seventies. Cracked linoleum, Formica worktops and sagging green cupboard doors. A tiny semicircular table is wedged against one wall, two chairs tucked in either side. A cross hangs directly above it and two plaques: “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord”; “Be still, and know that I am God.”
Doreen sheds her jacket and shuffles toward the kettle.
“Would you like some help?”
“My mind might not be what it once was, but I can remember how to make a cup of tea.”
“Of course.”
And the elderly have their pride. I pull out a chair and sit down beneath God’s soundbites while she makes tea in a proper teapot.
“So, you’re the new vicar?” She brings the teapot over with shaking hands.
“Yes. Reverend Brooks. But please call me Jack.”
She walks back over to the cupboard and returns with two slightly stained cups and saucers.
“No sugar.”
“That’s fine.”
She eases herself into the seat opposite. “Oh dear. I forgot the milk.”
“Shall I get it?”
“Thank you.”
I walk over to the small fridge and pull it open. Inside, there’s nothing but a couple of ready meals, some cheese and a half-pint of milk. I take out the milk. It went out of date a day ago. I take a quick sniff and bring it over anyway.
“Here we go.” I add a splash to both brews.
“We never had lady vicars in my day.”
“No?”
“The Church wasn’t a place for women.”
“Well, times were different then.”
“Priests were always men.”
I hear this view a lot, especially from older parishioners. I try not to take it personally. We don’t always move at the same pace as progress. Life, at some point, starts to leave us behind. We struggle along with our walking frames and mobility scooters but, ultimately, we’ll never catch it up. If I make it to seventy or eighty, I’ll probably find myself staring at the world around me with the same sense of bewilderment, wondering what the hell happened to all the things I thought were true.
“Well, things change,” I say, sipping my tea and fighting a grimace.
“Are you married?”
“Widowed.”
“I’m sorry. Any children?”
“A daughter.”
She smiles. “I have a daughter. Joy.”
“That’s a lovely name.”
“We called her Joy because she was such a happy baby.” She reaches for her tea, hand trembling slightly. “She went away.”
“Oh?”
“But she’s coming home. Any day.”
“Well, that’s good.”
“She is a good girl. Not like that other one.” Her face darkens. “A bad influence, that one. Bad.”
She shakes her head, eyes clouding, and I can see her drifting away from me, slipping through those invisible gaps in time.
I swallow. “Do you mind if I just use your bathroom?”
“Oh. No. It’s—”
“I’ll find it. Thank you.”
I walk out of the room and up the narrow staircase, past more biblical quotes on the wall. The bathroom is on my left. I shut myself inside, flush the loo and splash my face with some cold water. Being in this house is getting to me. Time to leave. I walk back out on to the landing and pause. There’s a door to my right. A small sign tacked on the front reads: “Joy’s room.”
Do not do it. Get down those stairs, make your excuses and go.
I gently push the door open.
This room, like the rest of the house, is frozen in time. A time when Joy still lived here. It doesn’t look as if it has been touched since she disappeared.
The bed is neatly made with a faded floral bed cover. At its foot is a small dressing table. A brush and comb are arranged on top. Nothing else, no jewelry or makeup.
A plain wardrobe stands in one corner and beneath the window a low bookcase is stuffed with dog-eared paperbacks. Enid
Blyton, Judy Blume, Agatha Christie, plus a few more turgid titles such as Jesus in Your Life, Christianity for Girls and, wedged on top of them, on its side, a large, leather-bound Bible.
I walk over to the bookcase and pull out the Bible. It’s light. Far too light to contain the word of the Lord. I sit down on the edge of the bed and open it. Like my Bible, there is a hidey-hole inside. But unlike mine, this one is self-made. The middle pages have been hacked out with scissors or a knife to create a small space, just big enough to hold a few precious, secret things.
I take them out carefully, one by one: a pretty shell fashioned into a brooch. A packet of Juicy Fruit chewing gum. Two cigarettes and a mix tape. Of course. Swapping mix tapes. It’s what best friends did, along with clothes and jewelry.
The writing on the inlay card is tight and crammed. It always was when you tried to write the titles and bands in such a small space. The Wonder Stuff, Madonna, INXS, Then Jericho, Transvision Vamp. I smile fondly. Those were the days.
I put the cassette to one side and take out the final item. A photograph of two girls, arm in arm, smiling into the camera. One girl is winsomely beautiful, with wide blue eyes and blonde hair in a long plait. A teenage Sissy Spacek. The other girl is brunette, hair cut into an unflattering bowl. She’s very thin, her eyes dark hollows in her face, and her smile is guarded, more like a wince. Both wear silver necklaces with letters dangling from them. M for Merry. J for Joy.
“Fifteen years old. Best friends. Disappeared without a trace.”
A chair scrapes across the floor downstairs. I jump. I replace the items in the Bible and put it back in the bookcase where I found it.
The photograph still lies on the bed. I stare at it.
Merry and Joy. Joy and Merry.
Then I pick it up and slip it into my pocket.
* * *
“You know, when you’re sixteen you can leave home. No one can stop you.”
They were sitting on the bed in Joy’s bedroom. Merry wasn’t often invited in. But Joy’s mum was out shopping.
“We’re not sixteen for almost a year.”
“I know.”
“Where would we go?”
“London.”
“Everyone goes to London.”
“So where?”
“Australia.”
“The water goes the wrong way around the plughole there.”
“Really?”
“Yeah—I read it somewhere.”
Joy nudged up the volume on her small stereo. They were playing the mix tape Merry had made her. Madonna blared out—“Like a Prayer.”
“I love this song,” Joy said.
“Me too.”
“Oooh.” Joy suddenly turned. “I got you something.”
“What?”
She reached into her bookcase and pulled out the hefty black Bible. She had carved out a secret compartment inside. Merry knew this was where Joy hid things she didn’t want her mum to see. She opened it up and took out a small paper bag. She held it out.
Merry took it and tipped the contents on to the bed cover. Two silver chains fell out. One with the letter M dangling from it. One with a letter J.
“Friendship necklaces,” Joy said.
Merry held one up, letting the letter catch the light.
“They’re beautiful.”
“Let’s put them on.”
She smiled at her friend.
“I’ve got an idea—”
The front door slammed downstairs. Their eyes met.
“Shit.”
“Joy Madeleine Harris. Are you playing that heathen music up there?”
Joy leaped from the bed and ejected the tape from the stereo. She stuffed it in the Bible. Footsteps marched up the stairs. Nowhere to go. The bedroom door burst open.
Joy’s mother stood framed in the doorway, a slight woman with a haze of golden hair and fierce blue eyes. She was smaller than Merry’s mum, and less prone to violence, but she was still scary when she was mad. She glared at Merry.
“I should have known.”
“Mu-um,” Joy said pleadingly.
“I’ve told you. She’s not welcome here.”
“She’s my friend, Mum.”
“I’d like her to leave.”
“But—”
“It’s okay,” Merry said. “I’m going.”
She snatched up the necklace, face burning, and hurried from the room.
On the landing, she glanced back. Joy’s mum had picked up the stereo. She walked over to the window and dropped it through. There was a dull crash. Joy buried her face in her hands.
Merry clenched her fists.
Leave. Now. If only they could.
“Just running a quick errand, then going shopping. If hungry, money in kitty jar.”
Flo looks at her mum’s text—which she has sent three times, presumably because the first two wouldn’t go through—and glances at the clock. Already after eleven.
Mum’s timekeeping can be haphazard at the best of times and this morning she was really out of sorts. Something happened last night, and although Flo believes her mum when she says she saw a light in the chapel, she gets the feeling that there’s more to it. Mum probably thinks that she’s protecting her, but Flo often feels like saying, You’re not protecting me when you keep stuff from me, you’re just worrying me.
That’s the problem with mums. Despite them saying they want to treat you as an adult, Flo knows that when her mum looks at her, she still sees a six-year-old girl.
After her mum had rushed out of the door, still fumbling with her dog collar, Flo searched the kitchen cupboards for something for breakfast, coming up with half a packet of digestives and a pack of cheese-and-onion crisps, which she demolished while finishing the King book (definitely one of his best). But her stomach is rumbling again. Also, she has the nagging feeling that she’s wasting the day. No TV, no internet. She needs to get up and do something.
She could take a look in the cellar, see if it’s any good for a darkroom, but she isn’t wild about the thought of creeping around a dark, cobwebby space right now. Although she is loath to admit it, she’s still a little freaked out by what she saw in the graveyard yesterday.
Of course, in daylight, with a night’s sleep behind her, the memory is growing less distinct, her mind working hard to rationalize it. Perhaps it was a trick of the light. Perhaps it was someone playing a joke. It all happened so quickly. She could have been confused, her eyes fooling her. And if there really had been something there, the camera would have captured it.
Flo has never believed in ghosts. Because of her mum’s job she’s been around graveyards and death more than most kids her age. She has never felt there was anything remotely scary or spooky about them. The dead are dead. Our bodies just lumps of flesh and bone.
On the other hand, she could kind of get on with the idea that we leave imprints upon the world, a bit like a photographic image. A moment captured in time by a combination of chemicals and conditions.
Her stomach grumbles again. Okay, enough dwelling on ghosts. She wanders into the kitchen and picks up the glass kitty jar on the windowsill. It’s filled with loose change and a few pound coins. She empties seven quid’s worth out. There’s a small shop in the village and it’s only about a fifteen-minute walk.
She stuffs the change into her pocket and lets herself out of the house, locking the door behind her and stuffing the key in her pocket. And then she hesitates. Her camera. There might be some cool things to photograph on the way. She darts back inside, picks it up and slings it around her neck.
* * *
—
The pavement leading to the village is narrow. At times, it dissolves completely into overgrown grass and stinging nettles. Hardly any traffic passes. The drone of farming machinery and the occasional mournful moo
of a cow are the only sounds. It feels weird everywhere being so quiet.
She stops a couple of times to snap photos. A derelict barn, a lightning-scarred tree. Pretty soon, she can see the beginnings of habitation. A village hall to her right surrounded by playing fields, an ancient-looking children’s playground, where a mum pushes a toddler on a swing.
Further on, there’s a small primary school on her left and the houses start to nudge up closer together, a couple of side streets running off in both directions. She passes a whitewashed pub, abundant with hanging baskets. “The Barley Mow,” the sign proclaims.
The village shop is next door to it. Carter’s Convenience Store. She shoves the door open. It jangles with an old-fashioned bell. A middle-aged woman with a thick helmet of grey hair sits behind the counter. She stares at Flo as she walks in.
Flo smiles. “Morning.”
The woman continues to stare at her, as if she has two heads. Finally, she summons up a gruff: “Morning.”
Flo tries to ignore the feeling of being watched as she wanders around the shop. People are suspicious of teenagers, especially if you look a bit different. She sees it all the time. The worried glances older people give you, as though every single teen harbors a secret desire for their handbag. She often wants to shout out, We’re just young. We’re not all muggers, you know.
She buys a loaf of bread, butter, a bar of chocolate and a Diet Coke. That should sustain her until Mum gets back from the supermarket. The woman serves her quickly, as if eager for Flo to leave the shop. You and me both, Flo thinks.
She eats the chocolate bar sauntering along the pavement and washes it down with a swig of Coke. She’s almost at the village hall when it occurs to her that she might be able to get a half-decent phone signal in the village. She takes out her phone. Three bars. A miracle. And enough to message Kayleigh and Leon. She glances around. The mum and toddler have gone. The playground is deserted. She walks in and sits down on a rickety bench near the roundabout. Then she takes out her phone and brings up Snapchat.
She’s barely started typing when she hears the gate to the playground creak. She glances up. Two teens walk in. A glossy blonde girl in skinny jeans and a tight vest and a well-built dark-haired boy in a T-shirt and shorts. Not her tribe. And straightaway, something about their swagger tells her that this could be trouble. But it’s too late to get up and walk away. Not without looking lame. This is the stuff that parents don’t understand. The everyday minefield of being a teen. Trying to avoid situations that could blow up in your face.