‘Oh,’ she sounded disappointed. I guess only John Lewis would do.
‘Look at us,’ I said with a little shake of the head, ‘all growed up and moved on.’
‘All except Janey, who hasn’t,’ said Clara, bringing us back full circle.
‘She’s a strange one,’ Katie said. ‘She always was odd, though, don’t you remember? She was hanging around with us by the time we finished little school and I can’t remember when that started.’
‘Wasn’t she always there – from the start?’
‘No. Mrs Walters sat me in the front next to Clara, and Sal was next to you, Flip, in the row behind. It was always our little gang of four. Janey was there somewhere, but not at the start. Then she was just there and we couldn’t shift her.’
‘Come on, that’s a bit unfair, K, we had a load of good times. She was just as much a part of the gang as the rest of us,’ I said.
‘She was odd, though.’
‘We all were.’
‘I wasn’t.’
‘You were odd just for hanging around with us,’ said Clara.
‘When I was with you guys, I could be myself and nobody was judging me.’
‘It was practically like you invented tits, just because you grew some before anyone else. And they did bring all the boys to the yard!’
‘Damn right.’ We all smiled and Katie sat a little taller and gave her shoulders a shake to make her chest bounce. ‘But it’s shit when everyone calls you names. And you lot didn’t.’
‘You did always have a boy in tow, though, sometimes more than one.’ I shrugged.
‘Yeah I did, and I kissed a few guys, but I wasn’t off shagging guys left-right-and-centre like people said I was.’
‘Sensibilities were different then.’
‘‘Getting off with’ meant a snog, and then suddenly you were an item.’
‘Not sure anyone would look twice at that now.’
‘None of us really fitted in with the ‘in’ crowd. It’s maybe why we gravitated towards each other. I don’t think we were that weird though,’ said Clara.
‘Janey dissected birds in her spare time,’ Katie wanted to illustrate her point. ‘Pinned out on a chopping board. Then she pulled their guts out and put them on her wall. That’s beyond ‘normal’ odd. I liked Spider-Man comics.’
‘There is a difference,’ Clara agreed.
‘Yeah, you were a nerd,’ I said.
‘Fuck off!’ Katie responded.
‘Hey, get your own catchphrase.’ Clara mimed aiming a pistol at Katie.
‘So what’s your point about Janey?’ I asked.
‘We don’t hear from her in years and now we get summoned back. That’s not ‘normal’ odd as far as I’m concerned, that’s all.’
‘We have all had dreams, King.’ Clara used Katie’s old nickname, ‘King’ Edwards. ‘All the same, and all at the same time. That’s gotta mean there’s something more going on.’
‘I’m not sure. I’m not convinced.’
‘So what are you saying, that she’s invented all this to bring us back here?’ I asked. ‘Like Friends Reunited on medication?’
‘Is she on medication?’ asked Clara.
‘Dunno, it just came to mind.’
‘Bet she is though –’
‘Oh come on.’ I cut Clara off with a dose of reality. ‘Janey hasn’t been out of her house for thirty years. She had half her body horribly burned and lost a leg – essentially saving our skins, by the way. You were expecting, perhaps, a well-adjusted, middle-aged woman with a knitting fetish?’
‘I’m not middle-aged.’
‘What do you mean, ‘saving our skins’?’ asked Katie.
‘What?’ I glanced at her with a frown.
‘You just said about Janey getting horribly burnt by ‘saving our skins’.’
‘Yeah, I did, didn’t I?’
‘So where did you get that from?’
‘I dunno.’
‘You must fucking know, or you wouldn’t have said it.’
‘Yeah but that’s the point, I don’t know. I’ve got no idea how Janey got burnt.’
‘So why’d you say that then?’
‘I don’t know, I just said, didn’t I? It just came out, K. Maybe it was another piece of the façade falling away.’
‘The what?’
‘Nothing.’
‘That’s maybe what this is about, though,’ said Clara.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Maybe it’s about us coming here to revisit those bad memories, maybe it’s time to deal with whatever happened. Process things.’ I remembered the feeling I’d had earlier, that there’d been something – a presence – in my room.
‘This is about a very lonely woman who’s not had a proper conversation in thirty years and has got scared of a dream. That’s why we’re here.’ Katie sounded sure there was nothing else in this other than Janey’s fragility.
‘No, it’s more than that. It’s about us. Even if Janey had a load of friends, I don’t think she would’ve called anyone else, because we were there. This is about what happened that summer, remembering all we forgot.’
‘There’s no purpose to this, surely, Flip, it’s just Janey and a dream.’
‘So why did we all have the same dream when she mentioned it to us? It triggered something we’ve been suppressing,’ said Clara.
‘What’d I miss?’ Sally came bounding in, looking somewhat dishevelled in t-shirt and jeans.
‘A post-sex shower by the looks of you,’ Katie said with a wink. Sally sat down and set a bottle of Prosecco down on the table, pouring herself a glass. ‘And how was it – I mean he – I mean, oh fuck it. How are you?’
‘I’m good, and he’s a doll. It’s almost thirty years since I last shagged him. He’s a bit less spotty now.’
‘A bit?’ said Clara pulling a face.
‘Nice.’ I shared her expression.
‘Well, nobody’s perfect, you know.’
‘We were just wondering if there was a reason behind us all coming together here, other than Janey being spooked by a dream and you wanting to get laid. Whether the dreams have done something to make us remember things. To unlock our memories.’ I summarised for Sally.
‘Sorry, babe, but I’m not buying any metaphysical nonsense on top of this, but even if you’re right… Why?’ Sally asked.
‘Don’t know. Maybe we’ve got to put all the pieces together to find out. Maybe we’ve got to remember everything,’ I said.
‘Maybe. But something bad happened that summer – and not just to those people who got burned either. Do you really wanna know it all?’ There was a warning note in Clara’s voice.
‘Don’t you?’ I asked.
‘Sorry, how do we know that bad things happened?’ Sally asked and took a long drink from her glass. We all chipped in to describe the events of the afternoon at Janey’s – the dreams, the Shadow Man and Ethel Grimshaw. ‘We don’t know for sure that more bad things happened.’ Sally took a long drink from her glass.
‘We know people died.’
‘Well, one person.’
‘Yeah, but how many more?’ asked Clara.
‘And what has any of this got to do with us? Maybe it was all a coincidence?’ asked Sally.
‘There’re a lot of missing pieces, Sal,’ I replied. ‘One person burned to death and I don’t know how, but I’ve got a feeling there were others that we haven’t remembered yet. And none of us can remember what happened to Janey.’
‘Do I want to find out that something terrible happened to us, to Janey, that we might have done something equally terrible? Some things are better left forgotten.’ Clara shrugged.
‘I’d just as soon be at home, having had a barbecue and planning to go and watch my son play cricket tomorrow, but now we’re here, I think some closure would be good,’ I reasoned.
‘So you’re not pleased to see us?’ Sally asked with mock offence.
‘Somebody was,’ snorted Clar
a.
‘De-fucking-lighted, darling. No, it is nice to see you, but that isn’t what this is about,’ I said.
‘So what’s happened to Janey?’ Sally asked.
‘Nothing’s happened to her, that’s the problem,’ Katie replied.
‘No, this place has,’ Clara was clearly working up to something.
‘You’re starting to sound like Janey now,’ I said.
‘What do you mean? You’re not suggesting this place is evil and getting all spooky-majooky on us again are you?’
‘No, K, I’m not. But if she’d got out of here, gone to university, got herself a decent leg, been trained to walk again and had some plastic surgery, she could’ve met someone and been living with her two kids in Whitstable or somewhere. She could be a school governor or something.’ Clara shrugged.
‘Maybe she doesn’t want plastic surgery, maybe she’s happy how she is,’ I said.
‘Oh fuck off. You’ve seen her, she has to be careful that her eye doesn’t fall out of its socket when she looks down. She’s as trapped here as she is in that body.’ Clara looked at each of us, and we all knew it was true.
‘This place is the back of beyond. It’s run down, it doesn’t offer anything. It’s like admitting defeat, living here,’ Sally added.
‘So it’s draining her, she’s got no… got no hwyl, as the Welsh say,’ I said.
‘What the hell is that?’ Katie asked, her immaculately plucked eyebrows raised.
‘It’s like your energy, King, your life, your drive. When someone gives up, they’ve lost their hwyl.’
‘Nice.’
‘That’s just it then, she’s a bit flat ’cos this place is a shit hole? And because of that she’s having dreams, or inventing dreams that we then somehow have too? How the hell is that happening?’ Katie asked.
‘If you’re not buying the story, what do you think it is? Is she imagining things? Because if she is, how are we imagining the same thing too? Group hallucination or delusion?’ Sally pressed.
‘Do we think she’s just imagining things?’ Clara asked.
‘The dreams?’
‘Yeah.’ Clara nodded
‘I don’t know what she thinks is out there,’ Sally said with a shrug.
‘Very Fox Mulder.’
‘The Shadow Man,’ Katie said it because someone needed to.
‘Yeah but what is it? To her it’s an idea, a concept, a thing. But what is it really? A monster? A religious cult that burns people? Aliens? What?’ Sally was being quite aggressive.
‘Hang on now girls, let’s take a step back, there’s no need to get in each other’s face.’ Like always, I was the moderator.
‘Yeah, okay. Sorry. I’m talking through the prosecco filter.’ Sally gave a cheeky what do you know shrug and finished her second glass.
‘Okay. I’m sorry too.’ Katie playfully punched Sally on the shoulder.
‘But let’s think. We’ve all forgotten things from when we were teenagers. I’d forgotten you fell through the ice, Flip, but Katie and I were chatting about it earlier and she’d remembered,’ Clara said. ‘You see, we forget things, but others remember, and two people might remember the same thing in different ways. When you fell through the ice, Katie thought it was funny, but you thought you were gonna die. That’s the point. We don’t all forget the same thing, or groups of things. As far as I can make out – and I haven’t done masses of research, but I did some – the only way that people forget whole periods of time is when they don’t want to remember, when the thought of remembering is too traumatic. So what the fuck happened that made us all deliberately forget it for thirty years? Just what could have been so fucking horrible?’
Chapter 5 – Then – The Lake
WE CYCLED FROM Janey’s to the end of Stow Lane and turned onto Lake Road, an old lane running by the park entrance then out into the countryside. The tarmac meandered lazily along the verge like it had spread up to the edge of the grass rather than the other way around. Crisp modern bungalows, built just ten years before, sat awkwardly amongst ancient weeping willow, sycamore and oak, their large gardens and ‘modern’ planting of eucalyptus and palm trees destined to merge with the old over time. Middle-aged people worked in their front gardens, separated from the verge by low walls of the same yellow brick as their homes. Occasionally a tractor would roar past like a giant green dragon with a mysterious tail of tines and blades and murderous intent. Aside from that, the road was so quiet that the residents treated the verge as an extension of their gardens, lovingly tending the grass and even planting shrubs and bulbs.
We cycled slowly, snaking wildly across the road, talking about nothing in particular, five-abreast in the knowledge we’d hear cars before seeing them. On that hot summer day even the breeze was warm, offering no respite from the heat as we passed the old signpost denoting that we were leaving the village. Hedgerows replaced gardens, large swathes of brambles clothed the hawthorn hedges with swarms of butterflies in attendance, and the breeze was thick with pollen. Huge patches of nettles stood guard just off the verge, waiting with a world of pain for the wayward cyclist.
I heard the distinctive ‘peewit’ call of lapwings as they drifted and tumbled on the wind that blew across the wheat fields and bustled around the trees and bushes, sounding almost like the sea gently rising and falling on the shore at Bridlington on a summer day out.
‘I’m sweating like a pig,’ said Katie, taking one hand off the handlebars and wafting the bottom of her ‘Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go’ t-shirt to create some airflow.
‘Look out, look out, she’s getting ’em out!’ shouted Clara, then, pleased with her rhyme, she said it over and over again until everyone joined in. ‘Look out, look out, she’s getting ’em out! Look out, look out, she’s getting ’em out!’
‘Alright you lot, you can all –’
‘She can’t be though, Chris Whiteman isn’t here,’ Clara corrected herself.
‘Yeah, she’d get ’em out for Chris, alright,’ Janey said.
‘Shut up you lot!’
‘You did though, didn’t you?’ I joined in.
‘No! Someone caught us and he had his hand inside my top.’
‘And that’s sooooo different because..?’ Janey heard the noise of a car engine as we approached a sharp right-hand bend ahead. ‘Car!’
The car appeared ahead of us like liquid, shimmering in the heat haze above the tarmac. It was travelling at speed, wheels on the edge of screeching as it hugged the bend, seeming to lose traction before the rubber regained purchase and drove the car straight toward us.
‘Sh–’ said Clara, wobbling precariously after she’d drifted almost to the other side of the road. The rest of us tucked into single file on the left, but she was stranded and neither car nor bike had anywhere to go. Clara aimed for the open gateway of a field, pushing down hard on the pedals, overcoming inertia to increase her speed. Her front wheel left the tarmac and hit the edge of a large wheel rut, hard-baked mud behaving more like concrete, stopping the tyre dead, flipping bike and rider into the air. She executed an almost perfect flip over the handlebars, landing in a sitting position – a pile of fresh, ripe cowshit breaking her fall.
‘Oh fuck off!’ Clara said, slapping her hands angrily on the ground. ‘Fucking road hog!’ she shouted to the driver of the car who’d slowed almost to a stop, Van Halen’s Jump blaring through the open windows of the car. I could only see the silhouette of the young driver and didn’t recognise the car. He gunned the engine and tooted the horn repeatedly as he roared off down the road.
Clara found a patch of dock leaves and used them in a vain attempt to clean herself up, but only succeeded in smearing the slimy green shit more uniformly over her stonewashed denim cut-offs. Eventually she gave up as she realised it was only going to come off with Persil and a power wash. We started cycling down the road again, Clara taking the lead, the rest of us following close behind, making moo-ing sounds, or asking each other in exaggerated stage-whispers if th
ey could detect a funny smell?
‘Fuck. Off.’ Clara turned to fire off an angry expletive. We kept repeating ourselves and she kept repeating the same response.
‘Fuck off.’
‘Fuck off.’
‘Fuck off.’ We found this and her reaction so funny that it became her catchphrase – swearing did seem to come naturally to Clara.
After another mile we passed the giant modern mansion on the left, complete with ostentatious lion statues on the gateposts, and the Parthenon-esque pillars of the front porch. Someone had said that the guy who owned the house was an ex-footballer who’d ended up in prison for handling money from gangsters, and that’s how they could afford such a big house. We’d never hear of money laundering back then, and I remember asking my dad about it whilst having this image of someone washing huge bags of money in the launderette and then tumbling it in one of those big dryers.
We’d left the village far behind and the wide-open farmland stretched away to our left, falling gently away on a slope from our slightly raised view, fields of wheat, corn and rapeseed filled the land. The hedges on the right were replaced by thick woodland – decidedly different but just as dense and impenetrable. Hidden away in here was the narrow track leading to the first lake. Further on up the road was a right turn onto a ‘Y’-shaped farm track, deeply rutted from heavy farm vehicles during the wet winter.
‘Good job there’s no shit for you to land in here, Clara!’ I said, wobbling off the edge of a rut, having some sympathy for the tumble she had taken. It was almost impossible to ride along the track, and after several falls we decided to push our bikes. The lane forked, curving slowly away to the right and the second lake, with the left-hand fork turning sharply up toward farm buildings. A large sign guarded the fork stating Keep Out – Newlands Farm and Quarry – Private Property. The farmer never liked people coming on to his land, and the sign deterred dog walkers and other kids from the village, but it was actually a public right-of-way, meaning he could do nothing but grumble when we did. We always enjoyed seeing him outside in the yard as we passed by, giving him a cheery wave as he glared back at us, disapprovingly, no doubt wondering where we were going. Or maybe he always knew. It wasn’t rocket science.
The Shadow Man Page 4