The Beloved Girls

by Harriet Evans

  Coming here again, she couldn’t stop thinking of that departure, which she remembered in forensic detail. The drive across Exmoor to Plymouth, in sleeting rain, trying to handle Joss and Kitty’s temperamental car. At Plymouth, she had ditched the car in a quiet residential street not far from the ferry where there was a corner shop at the end of the road, and then she had thought to send Sylvia a card, written in capitals.

  THE CAR IS ON PARADE STREET, PLYMOUTH.

  DON’T LOOK FOR US. WE’RE FINE. THANK YOU FOR RESCUING US. RESCUE YOURSELF, NOW.

  The shaking terror as she showed the ferry tickets, which were like shiny cheques in a book, with multiple carbon copies, as though they were Charlie’s Golden Ticket and must be preserved. Leaving the country in the pouring rain, on the ferry, the stink of fried bread and cigarettes everywhere, and the newspapers still full of the same news – as if the world hadn’t changed – the Marchioness, a drug that could stop those who were HIV positive from developing AIDS, and Princess Anne separating from her husband. She had huddled in the corner of the café, hiding behind a fug of smoke and a cup of tea, and, as the night wore on, she allowed herself to sleep. Only that morning she’d woken at Vanes, in the little bedroom she’d come to know so well, with a measure of security. Now, she was alone, and terrified, and yet she kept on going. She wouldn’t go back to Vanes. Kitty was right, there was nothing left for her there. She had to keep travelling.

  The next day she woke in France. There was a delay allowing the drivers back to their cars, and a straight-backed army type in a tweed jacket had rapped his passport loudly on the iron barriers, so that they rattled, and the cavernous deck had shuddered. ‘I’m British!’ he’d shouted, almost screaming.

  The rain started again as it kept doing, a bright, glittering shower casting rainbows across the bay. Catherine pulled her thin fleece tightly around her, feeling the ache in her shoulders from the swinging rucksack. It was late afternoon. Time to press on.

  In France, where it was about ten degrees hotter, and where everything was opening up after August, she had taken a train south, travelling without knowing it towards her husband, towards the love of her life, but on some level sure she was journeying towards something.

  Davide knew her feet were always cold, and that she liked a strong black coffee first thing in the morning. He knew she despised the Royal Family, and was more left-wing than most French people, which was saying something, but made straight for any copy of Hello! at a hotel or someone’s house and could identify the most obscure of the Queen’s grandchildren. He knew her shoulders were painful because she hunched over her desk. He knew she loved London, knew every street in the place, and that she adored her work, the discipline and the focus her job required.

  She still loved him as much as ever, maybe more. His dark beetling brows, his expressive eyes, his perma-tanned skin, his Gallic elegance and precision, his humour, his pragmatism. He was not moody. He was reliable. He was sometimes rather too precise and reliable, and tedious over matters of what to give the children for tea, more formal than other people she knew, but then none of these things were bad, necessarily. Her children ate spinach, and were never late, thanks to their father. ‘Everyone should have a Davide,’ mothers at school would say wistfully, as Davide took Tom out for steak on his eleventh birthday or travelled to Hertfordshire on a rainy Saturday in February to attend a glitter-slime-making conference with Carys, aged thirteen. Catherine would want to laugh, to say: I had a good template. I was raised by a good father.

  As she walked along the old paths, bursting with new life, she saw again that those years of wonder with Simon had given her the ability to navigate a difficult childhood and adolescence. She had grown up with a father who took her to the library every week, who taught her to cook spaghetti, to sing jazz standards, to love his adopted city, who had imbued in her a sense of curiosity about everything, a passion for fairness and justice. Losing him had almost broken her, but she had survived, because of his love and what he had taught her, his beloved daughter.

  She had got in late to Taunton the previous night and stayed at an anonymous hotel at the edge of town. That morning she’d watched a report on breakfast TV that Grant Doyle was in intensive care. They didn’t know if he’d make it. The tide of sympathy was turning towards him. There was talk of a petition by former pupils demanding an inquiry into bullying past and present at Jolyons school. The other members of Dan Hammersley’s gang, the others who’d tortured Grant, were openly being named in newspapers.

  Catherine had noted almost as if she were a spectator that there was no mention of her. She had stopped being of interest. She was just a missing woman, a bit crazy (probably menopausal), someone who’d fallen out with her husband – she was not the story any more. Women went missing all the time, after all.

  She stood still as the rain thundered heavily down, dripping onto her shoulders, thinking about Grant Doyle. How much he had reminded her of someone, not her, she knew, but Kitty. His intensity, his insecurity, his too-confident way of walking which hid his fear: everything about him. She had made him into a bogeyman, when he was just a bullied child: she had made Kitty into a goddess, when she was no more than the same. She saw this calmly, again from a distance.

  Perhaps she will be there. So I have to go, she said to herself. I have to see it, see what it’s become. I can decide what to do afterwards. I’m not sure I can go back home again. I don’t think I’m good for them. But first I have to go back up there.

  She stood shivering, waiting for the skies to clear, staring up at the hill.

  The path was the same. Narrow, twisting, dangerously close to the edge. Bramble blossom, hawthorn and elderflower sprang out impulsively, the rain and sudden spring heat making everything look obscenely, wildly green. The sun was out again, slipping towards the western horizon. She had to stop a few times to catch her breath – it had been four days since she’d disappeared, four days of sitting around in hotel rooms or on park benches or in trains and she could feel her muscles ossifying, her taut body slackening. Her tendons ached with the pull on her legs as she climbed; sweat oozed down her back, and Catherine felt alive, exhausted, exhilarated.

  She put her hand up to her eyes, as she looked around, orientating herself, and then she walked west, up towards the outline of a ruined building, cast into golden relief by the sun.

  The tall stone gateposts topped with pine cones at each end – they were still there.

  The long, low house turning itself towards the sea, it was still there, the stone gleaming whiter than ever before. But now black marks dotted the walls, like hundreds of spiders, still clinging to the brickwork. She realised it was where ivy had been pulled down.

  The shutters were closed tight in almost every window, and the gate was fastened shut. The curious hive-shaped gables, curving up into the roof, four of them – she hadn’t noticed how strange they were that summer. Her tired brain kicked in, asking questions, seeing patterns. What came first? The windows shaped like hives? Or the bees, looking for hives? It wasn’t so big, really, nor so grand. It was a lovely, large house, but not the mansion she’d held at the humming centre of her imagination all those years. It was just a house.

  Catherine shook herself. She felt depleted, a bit like the bars of the battery on her pay-as-you-go phone, down to one. Wherever she was she had been waking, at two, at three, then five, mouth working, eyes snapping open. The house grew larger as she approached, no signs of life, though she felt it was watching her.

  She crossed over the path that threaded through the edge of the wood towards the driveway, and kept on along it, following the northern boundary of the house, until she was standing in front of the chapel. Her trainers were soaking wet with mud and spring rain.

  Catherine stared at the chapel, blinking. It was more a collection of stones now than a recognisable building, only this time there was some almost comically ineffective red and white plastic tape draped around it, fluttering like a large ribbon around a
present, and a ‘Danger: Keep Out’ sign propped up against the listing north wall, next to a Building Preservation Notice signed by the local planning authority.

  Butterflies fluttered in and out of the dark, overgrown clump of faint-flowering brambles and trees that had sprung up around the ruins. One wall was partially erect, the curious diagonal iron bars on the window that splayed out in a half-fan pattern still there, though they were rusted half away to spindly points, like used sparklers. The rest was all rubble, the floor barely visible. No one was looking after the place. It was silent, the droning gone. The bees had never come back.

  Picking her way carefully across the threshold, she remembered how she’d looked at the thyme and wildflowers springing up in the cracks and thought: this place isn’t anything special. And then she saw it.

  It was laid out on the altar, the carved stone rectangle at the back of that small stage. Half of the altar still stood, the stone roundels of skulls and bees and crosses abruptly terminating where one jagged edge showed how it had been broken in two. Such violence required, to break a monumental object like that apart.

  On top of the altar was a comb. And, littered around it, like soft, dark amber petals, dozens of dead bees. She blinked – surely it was the light, her tiredness, her mind, playing tricks, tricks upon tricks. What was real? She didn’t know. Wasn’t even sure, in that moment, if she had made it here, if this wasn’t some dream. Golden, drenched in light, oozing amber, thin hexagonal walls pricking through the honey, some palest yellow, some the colour of deep, unguent toffee, and Catherine knew, knew that it was real. She knew if you stuck your finger in, it would taste like no other honey she knew, caramel notes of raw, rasping sweetness that melted on your tongue, caught at the back of your throat, lingered on your lips . . .

  Someone had been here, and had left a slab of honeycomb on the altar. She turned, expecting to see a face at the leper squint, but there was no one.

  Carefully, Catherine dipped first one finger, then two, then three, into the honeycomb. She did not stop to think who’d left it there, where it had come from or even why it was there at all in May. She simply feasted on it. It was glorious, sating, unimaginably delicious.

  A movement made her look up out of the cracked building towards Vanes. She saw that in the gathering dusk, a light had been turned on in the hall of the shuttered house. Catherine wondered what it would be like to simply walk across the lawn, knock on the door, ask to be let in. How her younger self, who idolised the family and the place so much, would have loved that.

  The gardens were overgrown, so different from Sylvia’s day. The back door through which they had run in and out was cracked, faded from red to a weather-beaten pink. The wooden table and chairs on the terrace were dark grey. One chair had lost a leg, listing onto its side, like on that final day here when she had seen the furniture toppled, everything upended amidst the chaos of the swarming bees.

  She realised the house was dying now, in its last stages, sloughing off its final skin. The feeling of the summer heat reaching even the flagstones on the soles of her feet, the back door that swung inwards too violently – there was a small recessed circle in the brick wall, from the door knob, centuries of people coming and going. Catherine suddenly remembered with a jolt how carefully Kitty used to open the door, so as not to disturb her mother when she was working. None of the others had bothered.

  Her trainers were so wet now she could feel water pooling between her toes. Catherine unlaced them and took them off, and the socks, and she stood on the stone in her bare feet. She wanted to feel more than she did, to experience some kind of elemental connection to the place, something transformative, symbolic. She took out of her rucksack the pamphlet written by Pammy Hunter, which she had held on to all those years. She would leave it there, leave it behind, a memorial to Pammy, and Kitty, and all of it. She reached out, to place it on the altar.

  But she couldn’t do it. She wanted to keep it with her. It was part of her life, her story, and not to be left. She didn’t want either of the girls to be forgotten. She wanted to be able to reread this story, if she needed to.

  So there was nothing there for her. Only the sweet taste of the honey, and the feel of damp stone under her feet.

  ‘Bye, Kitty,’ she said, gently. ‘Bye, Janey. I miss you both. I’m sorry it happened. I’m so sorry.’

  Then she stooped down and picked up one of the dead bees. She held it in her hand, feeling the tiniest prickle of the body against her skin, just as she had that first time Kitty had given her the bee, that October weekend, all those years ago. And something made her say: ‘Hey! Kitty! Wherever you are.’ She could hear her voice bouncing against the bricks of the chapel, echoing on the wall outside. ‘I came back. Thank you. Thank you for the days you gave me.’

  She stood in silence for a while as the wind blew through the ruined building. She could hear the tape, clicking against the wind, like Morse Code, tapping out a message to the air, the sea, the sky. And for a moment it was easier not to move, to keep herself utterly still.

  When she felt she could, and before she lost her nerve, Catherine took the little blue Nokia phone out of its bag and tapped in Davide’s mobile number, blinking hard to try and remember it right; she never called it because it had been programmed in her phone for as long as she’d had a mobile phone.

  He answered after one ring. ‘H-hello?’

  ‘Davide.’ She had to clear her throat, then terrified in a tiny second that she wouldn’t be able to speak, that he wouldn’t hear her, that they’d be cut off, that she’d lose him – ‘Davide? Davide –’ And she was crying.

  ‘My love – my love.’ She heard the breath whooshing out of him. ‘Hey. Hey! It’s Mum.’

  ‘Mum!’

  She could hear screaming, a thudding noise.

  His voice was a sob, whispered. ‘Where are you? Are you OK?’

  ‘Yes, yes, yes. I am. I’m totally fine. I’m so sorry. For everything –’ She swallowed, trying not to cry. She could hear him, crying. She had never, ever heard him cry. ‘I had to get away. I had to, for a bit –’

  ‘Mum!’ Carys’s voice was loud, as she spoke right into the phone. ‘Mum, where are you?’ She wasn’t even angry. She just sounded terrified.

  ‘Hi, Mum,’ Tom called. ‘Hi.’

  ‘Hi, darlings,’ she said. Tears slid down her cheeks. She looked around, at this place she’d thought about for so many years that held no power for her any more.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t cope any more. It burst.’

  ‘What burst?’

  ‘The – thing I had around me. I can’t explain. Not yet. I had to get away. I know I shouldn’t have done it. I know – I know how much you must have worried.’

  ‘Um – yeah,’ said Carys. ‘Um – a bit.’

  ‘We’ll talk. When I get back.’

  ‘When will that be?’ said Davide.

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘Mum – you won’t do anything – will you?’

  ‘I promise I won’t. I promise. I shouldn’t ever have put you in this position.’ She couldn’t stop crying, heaving sobs that she tried to keep as quiet as possible. ‘I’ll tell you all about it. Tomorrow. I promise.’

  Tom broke in: ‘They found your phone in the canal, Mum. And your stuff. It was like you’d –’

  ‘I know. I know. I am so sorry. Mothers aren’t supposed to run off. They’re not supposed to break down. They’re supposed to – not do this.’ She cleared her throat, wiping her face, but the tears came again as she thought about her own mother, and Sylvia, pressing Wellington Bear on her all those years ago. ‘Look,’ she said, turning around and around in the hexagonal skeleton of the chapel. ‘I will talk to someone, when I’m back, someone who can help me. Things happened to me, when I was your age, darlings. And I spent so long thinking I’d caused it. And . . .’ She glanced at the sealed-up tombs, ‘It really wasn’t anything I did. None of it. And it’s taken me a long, long
time to realise that.’ She scratched her head. ‘In fact, I’m not that sure I even believe it now, saying it out loud, though it’s true.’

  ‘Did you go back to your home?’ Davide said, clearing his throat.

  His voice – to hear his kind, low voice, here in this place.

  ‘Sort of. My love, where are you?’ she said. ‘Can you just tell me where you all are?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Carys. ‘We’re in the sitting room, and we’ve got a takeaway, and Tom has his weird pale-blue joggers on, and I’m in my unicorn onesie hoping for a miracle, and Dad’s started smoking again so he’s been out the back and stinks of fags. And . . . Mr Lebeniah brought round some flowers this evening, and Jake came by earlier for a drink. He said that guy is out of the woods.’

  ‘What guy? Grant?’

  ‘That’s it. The creep. Anyway. And someone called you. Some old school friend. She saw the picture in the paper. She said she knew you in West London, Mum, but you were called Jane? Is that right? She was called Claire. She looked you up in the phone book, who even does that? She sounded really nice . . .’

  Catherine held the little phone away from her ear. ‘OK,’ she said. She nodded. ‘That’s great. Yes, I was known as Jane, back then. Claire was – she was my best friend.’ She felt sick at what would have to be explained, and then she shrugged at how easily Carys had just unpicked it for her. She looked down at the bee in her hand. It was time to remember other things.

  ‘I didn’t go back to my home,’ she told Davide. ‘I went back to Vanes. And I’ll tell you all about it when I’m back.’

  As she spoke, she turned towards the house, and a door opened. She could see a figure emerge, stand on the terrace, looking out. Catherine backed herself against the wall.