by Perks, Heidi
I’m here because she has been holding something over me for more than twenty years, and I think there is more to the night Heather fell than I know for sure.
I’m here because I’m frightened of your daughter.
Catherine was biting the corner of her lip as she studied me. ‘I told Grace never to go back to Clearwater. I didn’t think she should.’
‘Why not?’ I asked.
‘I thought it was better for both of you if you kept some distance from each other.’
‘I don’t understand.’ I sat in the armchair that Catherine had ushered me into. ‘You wanted to take me to Australia with you. You asked my dad.’
‘I know I did. At the time I couldn’t imagine leaving you behind, if I’m honest. You were like a daughter to me – you know that, Anna. We were so close when you were growing up.’ She perched on the edge of a chair opposite, leaning her body towards me. ‘I should never admit this, but in some ways I felt closer to you than I did to Grace.’
I sucked in a breath as she dipped her gaze away from me. Had I always known this? Had Grace?
‘She was her father’s daughter; they were much more similar …’ Catherine drifted off, her brow furrowed. ‘Very determined, very …’
Controlling? I think, but I don’t say anything.
‘Anyway, I knew your dad would never agree. So I suppose it was something I just needed to do, to ask him.’
‘What if he had agreed?’
‘Then I would have been delighted to have you with us. Still,’ She shook her head, ‘it wouldn’t have been right.’
‘Why not?’
‘Well, I couldn’t have taken you from your father, for one thing. Besides, I think you and Grace needed the space from each other to grow,’ she replied.
I opened my mouth to speak but Catherine held up a hand.
‘You were too entangled in each other’s lives. You had been from such an early age. I always did say you were more like sisters than friends, and I know I treated you that way, but you were very different girls, Anna. I was surprised you didn’t clash more than you did, but I think that was because of you. You were always so easy-going.
‘There was a time when you were both maybe eight years old and Henry and I took you camping for a few nights,’ she went on.
‘I remember. We went to the Isle of Wight.’
‘The weather was awful, and you girls ended up in this kids’ club every afternoon. You made a friend,’ she said. ‘I think her name was Carla.’
‘I remember her,’ I said, thinking of a little girl with two blond plaits hanging down to her waist. ‘She had a new bike that she was always riding round our tent.’
‘She was a sweet thing, but only you were interested in playing with her. She was always asking if you could both come out to play and I could see how keen you were, but Grace … Grace was constantly telling me things about Carla, like how she would make you both steal things from other people’s tents.’
‘I don’t remember that.’
‘That’s because it wasn’t true. I knew Grace didn’t want either of you to play with her, and so to keep the peace I made excuses so you didn’t have to. Then one night there was a disco at the club and you had to get into pairs and for whatever reason you joined up with Carla. Grace was livid,’ Catherine explained. ‘The next morning I woke up to find she’d taken a pair of scissors to your favourite dress, the one you were wearing at the disco, and cut a hole right in the middle of the skirt.’
‘You told me it ripped when you were washing it,’ I said, remembering the pretty dress with its sequin flowers and netting that my dad had bought me for my birthday.
‘I lied because I couldn’t face having to deal with what Grace had done in front of you. I tried speaking to her – making her see that what she did was wrong – but there was such …’ Catherine waved a hand in the air as she fought for the right word.
‘Control,’ I finished this time. ‘She controlled me.’
Catherine smiled thinly. It was a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. Of course she knew this, and yet she allowed it to happen.
‘Did Grace tell you why she cut up my dress?’ I asked.
‘She told me she was angry with you,’ Catherine replied. ‘I thought she just wanted to destroy something that was precious to you.’
‘But she let me think it was an accident. So she didn’t even do it to let me know she was angry,’ I pointed out. It made Grace’s behaviour even more chilling.
‘I think if you were both my daughters I might have handled things differently, but much of the time you always seemed so happy together that I chose to ignore it. I worried that if Gracie didn’t have you in her life she might not have had any friends at all, and rightly or wrongly I couldn’t bear the thought of that.
‘I was proven right when we moved,’ Catherine went on. ‘She never did make any true friends out in Australia – not like the friendship she had with you, anyway. I hated seeing her so lonely, and she was, for a long time, until she met Graham, but that’s a whole different story …’ Catherine trailed off. ‘Anyway, by then I also saw the way she was with people, much more so than I think I ever did with you. You were always more like me, Anna. You put up with a lot.
‘Grace was like her dad in that they both wanted to prove something, maybe that they were always,’ she flung a hand around in the air, ‘in charge. On top. I don’t know, however you want to say it. People like you and me, we just go along with things.’
‘I’m not like that,’ I protested. ‘Or maybe I wasn’t given the chance to be different. I was just a child. I shouldn’t have had to put up with it.’
‘I know, and like I say, I wish for your sake I had done more to stop it, but Grace was my daughter and I was scared for her. She had no one else, no other friends, neither of you ever did—’ Catherine stopped abruptly as if something had swept across her mind. Was it Heather? But she continued speaking before I could ask. ‘So tell me, Anna, what has happened? What’s gone wrong that’s brought you to see me?’
‘It’s about what happened twenty-two years ago,’ I said.
Catherine waited.
‘Heather Kerr,’ I prompted.
‘Okay,’ she said cautiously.
‘Did you know I was friends with her, too?’
She shook her head slightly, a faint movement that was little more than a flicker, but there was panic behind her eyes; I could see it in the way they darkened, and wondered what she was remembering right now. Was it the police officer who stood on her doorstep and told her a girl was missing? The way she quickly shunted me out of her house and told me to get back to my dad’s so she could speak to Grace alone?
‘Are you sure you didn’t know?’ I asked.
‘I never knew anything for certain,’ Catherine said quietly.
But I felt sure there was more to it than that.
Chapter Eighteen
Anna
I look at the clock on the kitchen wall behind Ben’s head. ‘Nancy will be back with Ethan any minute,’ I say. I cannot wait to see him, but I’m nervous about facing Nancy after the last few days; worried, too, about the words we had on Wednesday night.
‘You need to keep speaking to me,’ Ben says.
‘I know I do—’ I’m interrupted by the sound of the doorbell and quickly I push my chair back and get up, but a thought comes crashing into my head. ‘What if it’s Grace?’
‘I’ll go,’ he says, and as soon as he opens the door I hear Nancy’s voice and the sound of Ethan’s shoes as he runs inside. Ben is calling at him to take his shoes off but he is clearly being ignored as Ethan is suddenly in the doorway to the kitchen, his face lit up with delight as he shouts, ‘Mummy!’ and runs into my arms.
I drop on to my knees in front of him and pull him against me. Tears stream down my cheeks. It has only been five days, but it feels like a lifetime ago that I held his little body and smelled his familiar smell.
‘I’ve missed you,’ he says as h
e pulls away and lifts up a hand to wipe away my tears. ‘Why are you crying?’
‘Because I’ve missed you too, my angel.’
‘Okay. Can Elodie stay to play?’
‘I told him probably not,’ Nancy says as she appears in the doorway. I push myself to standing. ‘Maybe some other time. It’s good to see you, Anna.’ She smiles and holds out her arms and I go over to give my friend a hug. ‘You gave us quite the shock,’ she says in a whisper that Ethan can’t hear.
‘Please can I just show Elodie the Minecraft world I built?’ Ethan is asking.
I laugh as I ruffle his hair. ‘Five minutes. If that’s okay with you, Nance?’
‘Of course it is.’ Nancy pulls out a chair to sit on.
‘I’ll leave you two to it for a minute,’ Ben tells us. ‘I need to make a work call anyway,’ he adds but hovers briefly, clearly hesitant to leave the room.
‘Thank you for picking Ethan up for me,’ I say when he’s gone.
‘Oh dear God, Anna, you hardly have to thank me for that.’
‘I know but—’
‘I’m just bloody glad we didn’t have to scour the beaches looking for you,’ she goes on. ‘Honestly, when I got that call from Ben to say you’d been in touch I cried. Can you imagine that? Me, crying?’ She gives me a wry smile. ‘You know I’m not expecting you to tell me everything right now,’ she adds.
‘Thank you.’
‘Unless you want to, of course.’
‘I haven’t spoken to Ben properly yet,’ I tell her. ‘What did he tell you when he let you know I called?’
‘That you had some things to sort out from the past. He said they were to do with Grace, though I’m hardly surprised by that: the woman is clearly nuts.’
I give her a thin smile.
‘He asked me not to tell Rachel and Caitlyn the details so I didn’t. That was a bit awkward, though. I think they believed I knew more than I was letting on. Caitlyn, anyway, the way she was pressing me.’
‘I just didn’t want too many people knowing anything, not before I’d worked out what I was going to do. Grace was always very controlling of me when we were kids,’ I explain as I sit down. ‘Obsessive, almost.’
‘But why did you suddenly run off without telling any of us where you were going?’
‘She said something to me on Wednesday night that spooked me. Something I needed to look into. I was drunk; at the time I didn’t want to get into a cab with Rachel, and after I watched you all go and I was alone—’ I break off. At 2 a.m. I had walked to the bottom of the cliffs and felt my whole life caving in on me. ‘I knew I had to see Grace’s mum,’ I say. ‘Maybe it was the alcohol that took over my brain but I just had to speak to her and I thought I’d get there and back in a day.’
‘You couldn’t have called her?’
I shrug. ‘I needed to see her face to face.’ I know Nancy cannot understand my actions without knowing the depths of my worries. ‘I will tell you everything, Nance, but please, just not right now.’
‘That’s fine,’ she says, though her shoulders sag as if she’s reluctant to accept she has to wait.
‘Thank you.’
‘What for this time?’
‘For not saying anything to the others. For not pressuring me. For being such a good friend when there’s still so much I’m not telling you and you must feel like you don’t even know me any more. For everything.’
‘I do know you, Anna Robinson. And I knew something was eating you up. I didn’t trust that woman one bit, and it kind of all makes sense now that you say she was obsessive when you were kids. I can see it, the way she watches me, she looks furious whenever you and I are together. Shit, should I be scared?’ she jokes.
‘No, of course not,’ I say, although it isn’t the whole truth, because what if Nancy should be scared?
‘That’s good. I don’t want to come home to find Elodie’s rabbit cooking on the stove.’ She leans forward and runs her fingers absently over the table. ‘Anna, you and I spoke about stuff on Wednesday night. Ben’s party? I half thought that had something to do with you running off, so I was bloody relieved when Ben told me it was Grace.’ She smiles sadly as her fingers stop moving. ‘Rachel’s finally admitted what happened. She told me her side of the story anyway: that Eric forced himself on her in your bathroom. And that you saw them.’
‘Oh God, Nance. I wanted to speak to you after the party, I really did.’
‘You knew I knew something was up, though. The way Eric was with me at the end of the party, how he was suddenly so angry, knocking back drinks before he dragged me away from your house. I mean, we all know he can get like that at the best of times, but I was sure something had happened,’ Nancy says.
‘But it had to come from Rachel,’ I insist. ‘I told her she had to be honest with you but she kept putting it off. She was scared it would change your friendship. That’s why we argued on Wednesday night. I was giving her one last chance before I told you myself.’
Nancy nods, though I’m not sure if she accepts this deep down. Whether I made a mistake in not telling her and if I would have been a better friend to her if I had.
‘What did you actually see?’ she asks.
I hesitate. I know she is asking for my version of events, whether she should believe Rachel or whatever her husband might or might not have told her. ‘I didn’t really see anything but I could hear Rachel telling Eric to stop whatever it was he was doing,’ I admit. ‘When she came out of the bathroom she looked really upset and a bit dishevelled. Rachel swears to me he followed her up there and that she hadn’t locked the door properly. She says he forced himself on her. I don’t know, but …’
‘But you believe her?’ Nancy says when I don’t finish.
I do not know which is worse for Nancy to hear: that her friend is lying and has betrayed her or that her husband has pushed himself on another woman. But I owe her the truth. ‘I do believe her. I say.
‘I wish you had told me sooner,’ she says quietly.
‘I’m so sorry, Nance, I really am.’
Eventually she inhales a deep breath and pulls herself up. ‘I need to grab Elodie, I suppose.’
‘Nancy?’ I stop her. ‘What are you going to do?’
‘I don’t know,’ she says, her eyes welling up, though she is fighting against her tears. ‘I haven’t spoken to Eric yet, I was waiting to speak to you first. Then I … I just don’t know,’ she admits, deflated.
‘I know you’re not all right about this, Nance. You don’t need to try to be.’
‘No,’ she laughs. ‘I’m not.’
‘I’m so sorry.’
‘Me too.’ She smiles, adding sadly, ‘But I don’t think either of us is that surprised by my husband, are we?’
It’s true, but it doesn’t make it any easier. Maybe this will be a final straw for her, to give her the strength to move on. ‘We are still friends, aren’t we?’ I say.
‘Oh God, Anna, of course we are.’ Nancy leans forward and hugs me. ‘I think I’m going to need you more than ever in the weeks to come,’ she murmurs.
‘I think we’re going to need each other,’ I say.
‘You told me you were scared earlier,’ Ben says later that night, when Ethan is tucked up in his bed, fast asleep. I know because I have checked on him twice, reluctant to leave his room, longing to stay and watch him. ‘What exactly are you scared of?’
Later in my conversations with Catherine, I had been left with the feeling that there is more to Grace’s story of that night. That she will stop at nothing to get what she wants – but what is that exactly? To keep me to herself?
While I don’t know for sure if Grace pushed Heather, in some ways the uncertainty is more frightening. The very fact that she could have done it and hidden it from us for all these years.
And yet there is nothing to prove she was there. Only her word against mine, if it comes to it.
‘I’m scared of what I might lose,’ I tell Ben.
I
am scared because I have to find a way to get Grace out of my life, or risk losing everyone else.
September 1997
Catherine knew Grace kept some kind of diary and she’d always promised herself she would never invade her daughter’s privacy by looking at it, but right now she felt worried. It was tucked under Grace’s bed, almost out of reach.
She’d taken Grace to see a therapist recently, a woman who had been recommended to her through a friend of a friend. It had been three months since Heather Kerr’s body had been found and she’d told the therapist she thought it was a good idea for Grace to talk about it. The police had searched for Heather for a whole week before her body had washed up further upshore from the cliffs. The little pink café on the front ended up closing for a fortnight. Its owner hadn’t been able to face the constant questions from the press or supposedly well-meaning customers.
Henry told Catherine there was no need for Grace to talk to anyone about the incident because actually she appeared to have taken it in her stride and had come through it relatively unscathed, but surely that in itself, Catherine deliberated, was something to worry about. For once she went against him, finally making an appointment for her daughter.
The therapist was a kindly woman who danced around the subject of Heather Kerr, even though Catherine had prompted her from the outset that this was what Grace should be talking about.
Catherine had been watching both girls much more lately. The incident had been another turning point in Grace and Anna’s friendship, which appeared to have resumed its normal course with Anna staying over again, coming for tea most nights. The girls were often huddled in the old treehouse in the garden during the long summer nights of the school holidays, chatting, sharing secrets.
Catherine had originally told herself that they were getting each other through it. Because surely they needed to talk about what had happened between themselves? Still no one knew for certain what had led to Heather Kerr being washed up on the beaches of Clearwater. The assumption was that she might have fallen off Crayne’s Cliff, where she never should have been in the first place.