by Daisy Pearce
‘Ugh.’
‘Yeah. It reeked in the summer.’
‘So why did you hang out there?’
‘It was where the youth club was, in the hall that we used to go to on Fridays, back in the days before we could get served alcohol and go and drink in parks like normal teenagers. Of course, Dad was involved in the church too – he wanted a protection order put into place for the old trees that grew there. He said some of them were centuries old. He and the caretaker used to cross swords about it all the time. Us kids, we didn’t give a shit about a few old trees or the bad smell or the dead animals. I mean, look at us there’ – he taps the photograph of the black-clad teens – ‘all doom and gloom. William loved that stuff. He’d take me along to the youth club with him but we always used to sneak off into the churchyard and play dare and spin the bottle. Dad would be out the front with his placards and his petitions and me and Will would be round the back trying to get off with the girls.’
‘Oh, those kind of dares?’
He winks at me. ‘Yeah. Kissing mostly. Sometimes we’d dare each other to go into the old Prevett family tomb and touch the wall. I didn’t like doing that. It smelled really bad in there, and it was always cold. This girl here, with the ponytail?’ He points to a girl in the photo to the other side of William. Her dark hair is piled high on her head and her skin is coffee-coloured, in striking contrast to William’s unhealthy pallor. ‘Her name was Moya. She would do the craziest dares. It got so we were just thinking of the stupidest stuff – dangerous stuff – just to see if there was anything she’d say no to.’
‘And was there?’
‘Nope. One time we dared her to go into the caretaker’s cottage and bring something out, a souvenir or something. We watched her over the wall as she climbed in through the back window and came out again with a gas mask. Horrible thing, it was. From the war. I don’t know why the caretaker had it in there – he was always an oddball – but I know that none of us wanted to touch it. We stopped playing dares after that.’
We’re silent for a moment and then he slides the photo to one side, putting his hand over mine. His skin is soft and slightly damp.
‘Is everything all right, Frances? With you two?’
I think of Kim, her back arched in see-through knickers just so she can afford the rent on her Tufnell Park flat, her expensive handbag and her scuffed ankle boots, the way her hair darkens where her roots need doing. I think of William setting up a separate bank account, hiding money from me, hiding the photos of her squeezing her tits together and lifting her leg a little so you can see the creases inside. It’s just photos, she told me. It’s not real life.
‘Yeah,’ I tell Alex. ‘It’s fine.’
The next few mornings I am up early, watching a bright dawn mist curl into the valley, slithering between the trees like a living thing. The dewy hedgerows glitter in the sunlight, all nodding meadowsweet, campion and snarls of bramble. I walk into town one morning, with a shopping list in my back pocket and the weight of my dreams upon me. Since we’ve arrived at Thorn House my sleep has been fitful, dreams stuttering like a blown engine. I’ve been waking up with a jerk and a gasp, eyes snapping open, one hand reaching as if to grasp something – or to ward it away. The dreams are always of Mimi and me sitting in front of the French windows, her thin body propped up by her pillows. It’s a sunny day, and we’re watching the birds. The old box of photos is on her lap but when she opens it the pictures inside aren’t old family portraits. They’re of me, in the past. I try to snatch them back but I can’t seem to move my hands and William’s mother’s saying, Is this you, dear, you don’t look well, and there I am aged nineteen with a nosebleed and pupils dilated to wide black saucers from the ketamine, the MDMA. There’s me in the years before I met her son, slumped in the corner of a squat party in Ilford, calling my parents crying because I couldn’t make my rent, cleaning my neighbour’s car while he sits inside and watches me and jerks off his stubby penis and when he pays me it’s five pounds short so I don’t eat that night. I’m trying to take the photos away but she has seen them all, and the bruise is spreading over her face, black threads working their way over the bridge of her nose, even into the whites of her eyes, down her neck and shoulders like the diseased roots of a plant. There’s me trying to kiss Gary Webster at the bus stop aged fifteen and he recoils and calls me a stupid bitch, there’s me thrown out of a pub for selling wraps of speed, there’s me, there’s me, there’s me. Don’t look, I tell her, don’t look at them, and when she finally turns her head towards me she says, No wonder he wants to leave you, Frances.
I walk the long way to town, past the river, which gleams like polished brass in the sun. I arrive at the chemist’s just after nine o’clock and hand over Mimi’s prescriptions to the woman behind the counter. She looks up at me, smiling. ‘Will you be waiting for these?’
‘Sure.’
She turns away from me and I find myself looking at the display of baby products: soft blankets and dummies and smooth wooden rattles. I pick up a brightly coloured octopus designed to rustle and squeak under tiny, seeking hands. I press it to my chest and hold it there, eyes closed. I think of the box room back in our Swindon home, the way it seems to hold the mellow afternoon light like spun honey. The day we moved in I sat in there on the bare floor and William came in and saw me, and he smiled.
‘I’ve never seen you so quiet,’ he said, crouching beside me. ‘What are you thinking about?’
‘Where the cot could go. And the toy box. It would be so beautiful in here.’
He kissed me, slow and hard, with his hand cupping the back of my skull. But he didn’t say anything. I suppose, even then, I should have known. He didn’t want this.
The bell over the door rings and a woman walks into the pharmacy. She has shoulder-length hair that falls in amber waves, thick and bouncy. Everything about her is long and almost perfectly straight: her figure, her nose, her long, lean legs. She walks right past me as if I’m not there, trailing a cloud of floral perfume so sweet it makes my teeth hurt.
The woman behind the counter looks up and gives her a perfunctory smile. ‘Miss Renard, I’ll get your prescription. One second.’
I slide my eyes over to her from beneath my fringe. She’s tall, slender, tapping her manicured fingernails on the counter impatiently. The pharmacist comes out from behind the counter, her glasses lowered on her nose, a prescription in hand.
‘Mrs Thorn?’
‘That’s me,’ I say, stuffing the octopus back on the shelf. I’ve been feeling absurdly close to tears just holding it.
‘You’ve got a medication here that reduces intracranial pressure. I’m going to need to know if she’s taking any other medication before I can prescribe.’
‘Oh, yeah. I’ve been given a list.’
I pass it to her and she notes something on her prescription pad, making a noise under her breath. ‘Goodness. There’s a lot going on here. Was it a bad injury?’
‘She had a fall. Some stitches in her scalp but we were told it’s superficial. She’s having memory problems, though, and struggling with her speech. It looks like she’ll need to see a specialist in the next few months.’
‘Well, that’s a real shame to hear. I’ll see what we’ve got here – anything else can be ordered in.’
She turns to the woman with the auburn hair who came in after me and nods towards her. ‘Someone taking care of you, Nancy?’
‘Apparently,’ the woman says. She’s smiling as if she’s making a joke, but the words seem cold and unfunny. She looks at her gold watch. ‘Good job I paid for parking.’
‘I’m sure she’ll be with you soon.’ The pharmacist smiles, then turns back to me. ‘It’ll take us a little while to get this lot ready. Do you want to come back? There’s a cafe over the road. Shouldn’t be longer than fifteen minutes.’
Okay, I tell her. Fine. I risk another glance at the woman waiting at the counter. There it is again, that strange familiarity, like the prick o
f a needle. Close up I realise she’s not as old as I’d first thought; her pale skin and hooded blue eyes are only finely lined, the irises the colour of old porcelain Wedgwood plates.
Miss Renard. Nancy. I take my phone from my pocket, remembering. Alex pointed to the photo and said, ‘That’s Nancy Renard . . . She was nice. I don’t know why she hung around with that lot of bitches.’
‘Excuse me,’ I say to her. She looks at me, smiling that taut, cold smile. ‘I know this will seem strange, but – are you Nancy Renard?’
She nods. Still smiling. Still cold. Oh God, leave me alone, that smile says. I open my phone and scroll to the photograph, turning it around to face her.
‘That’s you, isn’t it? Right there on the end! Wow. So weird!’
Nancy takes the phone from me and studies the picture. There’s no light of recognition in her face, but a crease appears between her eyebrows and she smiles tightly. ‘Goodness, that’s a blast from the past.’
She hands it back to me coldly, her smile rigid. Her eyes are suddenly hard, glazed marbles. There is an iciness coming from her in waves. I feel a blush building in my cheeks, a growing swell of embarrassment as I slide the phone back into my bag, muttering an apology. Nancy turns her back to me in one swift movement, walking towards the desk, hair swishing in a long shimmering curtain behind her, leaving me standing in her Arctic wake.
The bell rings over my head as I open the door and scurry out, heading to the cafe over the road, dizzy with awkwardness. I don’t know what response I was expecting but it wasn’t that flat, dusty stare, nor that coldness, brisk as winter. My ears buzz, blood rising high.
In the cafe the young man behind the counter is good-looking in that sunken-cheeked Brat Pack way I loved in my teens. It makes me think again of William in the photo, thin and moody, that pout, the way his head was cocked like a pistol. I order a pot of tea and take a seat at an empty table towards the back of the room. The cafe smells of pastry and a light sweetness of honey, making my stomach rumble. I skipped breakfast. Bad dreams shrink my appetite. I watch as Nancy Renard leaves the pharmacy and heads directly for the cafe, a white paper bag in her hand. She approaches the counter and talks with the young man there before walking over to my table in the corner.
‘You’re not going to put that on Facebook, are you?’
I’m surprised by her tone, abrupt and almost accusatory. I’ve become good at reading faces over the years – the years I spent working as a counsellor will teach you that, right off the bat – and hers is anxious and tight, close to tears.
‘The photo?’
‘Yes. I don’t want it on there. On anywhere.’
‘Of course not. I just – it was just a coincidence, that’s all. I found it a few days ago and then, boom, there you are in the same shop. I wouldn’t dream of putting your picture online.’
She relaxes but only for a second. As a counsellor I specialised in post-traumatic stress disorder and anxiety, and I can see the way a person holds trauma – for some it is in the set of the shoulders or the way it compresses their face into a tight knot. Others can’t keep their hands still or stop their leg jittering. It’s how I noticed the way William tugs at his hair when he’s lying. Nancy Renard is uptight, sure, but there’s something else there, something she maybe isn’t even aware of. She licks her thin lips and conjures up another cold smile.
‘Where did you find it?’
‘Do you want to join me, Nancy?’
She hesitates, and I don’t think she does, not really. That coldness is a shield, a way to keep people at a distance. But also there’s that element of curiosity, isn’t there? All this worry over a photograph, I think, and then immediately I remember Kim saying, It’s just pictures, that’s all. It’s not real life.
‘Fine,’ she says eventually, making a show of checking her watch and jingling her car keys.
I catch a glimpse of the gold crucifix she is wearing over her polo neck, the small pearl earrings, iridescent in the overhead lights. Nancy rubs at her arms as if she is cold.
‘I got a shock when I saw that picture, too,’ I tell her. ‘I had no idea William went through a goth phase.’
‘Oh, you know William?’
I lift my hand so she can see my wedding band. ‘I married him.’
‘Well.’ Her eyes sweep me then, up and down. Sizing me up. She doesn’t try to hide it. ‘Good for you. I’m at the tail end of a nasty divorce.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that.’
‘Don’t be. You know why divorces are expensive? Because they’re worth it.’
I laugh politely but she isn’t laughing. Just that same, tight smile. A sweep of the eyes, up, down, before she asks, ‘Any children?’
That pang, like elastic snapping somewhere inside my chest. I shake my head.
‘I’ve got three. They keep me busy. My oldest is nearly the same age as I was in that photograph. I hope she keeps better company. Did William give you that picture?’
I tell her about Mimi’s fall and Thorn House and the box of photos. When I mention Alex her eyes light up. She clasps her hands together. It’s almost sweet.
‘Alex Thorn? He was a sweetheart. I think he had a bit of a crush on me. Is he married?’
‘He’s still single, as far as I know. He spoke highly of you.’
‘Really? What did he say?’
I don’t know why she hung around with that lot of bitches.
‘Just that you were the nicest of all of them.’
‘Well, that wasn’t hard. None of us were particularly likeable. Teen girls, you know? Think they rule the world. Ah, Alex. Such a sweetheart, he was. Shy. William was always a handsome devil. I used to feel intimidated by him, and Edie of course. He was whip-thin and he had a Dead Kennedys T-shirt with the sleeves cut off. Everyone thought he was the greatest.’
I laugh. ‘It’s a side of him that’s completely new to me,’ I admit, pulling up the photo and enlarging it. ‘He doesn’t talk about his life down here much.’
‘Well, he wouldn’t, would he? Not after everything that happened.’
I lower my cup into the saucer. Nancy sniffs and presses a tissue to her nose. Everything about her is dainty and bone-white, like a china tea set.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Sorry?’
‘Just now. You said “after everything that happened”.’
‘Oh, just. You know. The stuff we did as kids, all of us. Messing around.’
‘Like what?’
She looks at me with a trace of a smile. Her cupid’s bow is a sharp inversion, an arrowhead. ‘You know what we called ourselves? A coven. We used to write poetry and light red candles and let the wax burn our skin. At the weekends we used to head down to Brighton and go to the car boot sale there, looking for leather jackets and bullet belts and old top hats. My mum must’ve aged ten years every time I walked out the door.’ She points at my phone. ‘That picture you’ve got there was taken in St Mary’s churchyard. It was where we all gravitated to with our preoccupation with’ – she flutters her fingers to indicate something fanciful – ‘death and rituals. Saint Mary de Castro. We used to hang dead roses from the branches of the trees. That was where we met William and Alex too, at the youth club there. And it was William who told us about Quiet Mary.’
‘Who?’
The man behind the counter brings Nancy a cup of black coffee. Nancy thanks him, and turns back to me. ‘Mary Sayers. Died in 1897, of drowning. That’s what it says on her gravestone. It was William who first took us to see it, hidden away near the back of the churchyard. It was covered in ivy and moss, and very, very old. And it was William who told us the story about her.’
‘What story?’ I’m fascinated, despite myself. I lean forward in my chair, arms folded on the table. I’m aware of someone standing by the counter, the itching feeling of a gaze having fixed on us. It’s there in my peripheral vision like a swelling blot of ink, but I dismiss it.
‘Ah, God. You’ll have heard versions
of it over the years. These sorts of stories always end up that way. The way William told it, every winter a girl – this “Quiet Mary” – is seen hitchhiking on the road from Newhaven into Lewes. She only appears on nights when it’s raining, along the stretch of road by the river as you come into town. Drivers who stop to pick her up have spoken of a chill that seems to come into the car with her, and that even if it’s not raining she’s always dripping wet, like she’s just climbed out of the Ouse. You can smell the river on her. She doesn’t speak, and as they enter Cuilfail Tunnel some people have said they can see movement out the corner of their eye, frantic, like she’s clawing at the window to get out. When they turn around she’s disappeared.’
I laugh uneasily. Nancy straightens up, brushing her hair away from her face, finishing her coffee.
‘We all got caught up in it. Took it too far. The romance, the drowned girl, the haunted road. When I look at that photo I don’t see four girls on the cusp of the rest of their lives. I see frightened young women who didn’t fit in and couldn’t find a valve to release the pressure. That picture is probably one of the last ones of us all together.’
‘How come?’
Nancy is silent for a moment, her pale eyes grazing me, the table, the window. Her fingernails tap against her cup. They are highly polished, a delicate shade of coral.
‘A couple of days after that photo was taken, Edie Hudson disappeared right in front of us.’
I open up the picture again. There’s Edie, William’s arms draped around her. She isn’t smiling, and her pretty kohl-ringed eyes look defiant.
‘What happened to her?’
Nancy shrugs. ‘Don’t know. They never found her. One minute she was there, the next? Gone.’
Shock is a detonation, a hollow boom in the chest. I stare at the girl in the picture, so like Kim, so like Samira. That attitude. That sneer. It unsettled me at first, how similar she was to both women, but now there’s something else. The girl who is not there. My mouth is dry and dusty. I reach for my tea, sip it. It’s gone cold.