by Daisy Pearce
‘I couldn’t sleep last night,’ I tell her, pulling an errant cobweb down from the ceiling. ‘I can’t believe we went in there. What were we thinking? And, Frances, what if Edie had been in the freezer?’
‘But she wasn’t.’
‘But she could have been. That’s the point. I still don’t know. After all this time, I haven’t come any closer to finding her and now I just feel like I have to do something. Anything.’
‘Are you still drunk?’
I laugh at that, rinsing my cup with the phone cradled against my shoulder. ‘I’m going to go and talk to Nancy.’
‘Is that a good idea?’
‘I don’t know. Honestly, I don’t even care. I’ve always thought she knew more than she let on. Perhaps I can persuade her to tell me.’
I know where Nancy is going to be this morning. I know where she is going to be most mornings, and afternoons too. I don’t think some people realise how easy it is to keep track of them on Facebook. Nancy Renard is a phenomenal Facebooker, updating her status almost hourly, checking herself in everywhere she goes. I’ve got a fake profile I use to keep tabs on her, but she exposes herself so often it isn’t necessary. Just meeting my girls for lunch at Café Rouge! she’ll type, marking herself on the map at Brighton Marina, or Bluewater Shopping Centre, or Gatwick Airport. Nancy Renard checked in to the Odeon, Leicester Square. Date night with this one at Wagamamas! Nancy Renard is at the Royal Sussex County Hospital – in sooooo much pain!!!
People think the over-forties are all digitally illiterate, unable to comprehend the advances in technology. It isn’t true. In 2002 I taught myself code and built a simple website: ‘Where is Edie Hudson?’ A counter at the bottom racked up how many hits it had, and a primitive message function allowed me to categorise all the tips and sightings it garnered. It allowed me a worldwide reach, for the first time throwing a net out there, a lure, a beacon to Edie. I still think of you. Come home.
I managed to find Moya, too – not on Facebook but in a national newspaper. She’s a columnist, her byline photo showing a pretty young woman with good skin and a wide smile. You wouldn’t know it was the same person if it weren’t for the tight curls of her black hair. Her surname is King now, and she’s married with three beautiful children. I think about writing to her often, just to pierce the normality of her life, to take a blade to it the way we did to the palms of our hands that night in the churchyard standing around Quiet Mary’s grave. I SEE YOU, I would write, just that, those three short words. And she’d know. She’d remember.
I looked for Charlie Roper for a long time. Beautiful Charlie, a serpent with glossy black scales, the high witch with her curled fist knocking on the tree to call the soul of a long-drowned woman. I searched through all two thousand of Nancy Renard’s friends and even went through the marriage sections of the local paper as far back as the year 2000, when all three girls would have turned eighteen.
It took me a long time to find her, and when I did she was dead. She’d died in a fall from a second-storey window in the early hours of the morning, aged just twenty years old. The article said she’d been living in Brighton and had called her death a tragic accident, although later reports cast doubt on her rationality at the time. One witness, who didn’t want to be named, had said of Charlie, ‘She seemed like a party girl, always on the lookout for a good time.’ It had sent a shiver through me. They’d used similar language to describe Edie when they’d reported on her disappearance, camouflaged words to conceal the weight of what they were trying to say. Like thinly veiled threats whispered into your ear with a smile.
I closed the paper when I’d read the short article and studied the scar on my hand, white and hair-thin, puckered tissue forming a narrow ridge you can run your finger along.
One, two, three, four,
Rattlesnake hunters knocking at your door.
Give them meat and give them bone,
And pray that they leave you alone.
Earlier this morning I switched on my computer with no intention of seeing Nancy Renard. I’d planned to spend the day wallowing in my unexpected hangover and eating the cold Chinese takeaway I must have brought home last night and promptly forgotten about. You’re too old for this, I thought to myself as I logged in; you’re not eighteen any more. You’re not a party girl, not like Charlie or Edie.
Nancy’s status was the first thing to pop up as I scrolled through the feed on my other, anonymous, account. Looking forward to brunch with this bunch! she’d written. There was a photograph of her with three other similar-looking women – slim, white, neat hair, gold jewellery, teeth as large and polished as marble tombstones. She’s unrecognisable as the girl she once was, thin and stooped, peering out at me from under the cloak of her hair. Nancy, the baby bird with the broken wing. Logging in again now, I see she’s checked in, too, of course. Nancy Renard is at Le Petit Patisserie. 11:02 a.m. I look at my watch. She must still be there. I can’t allow myself too much time to think about what I’m doing. If I do, I worry I won’t be able to go through with it.
Le Petit Patisserie is just off Lewes High Street, round the corner from the brewery that fills the air with rolling, malty steam. I make my way through town with my head down and my hands in my pockets, cap pulled low over my face. It’s not a disguise, but it acts as a deterrent to anyone who wants to stop and talk to me, which happens more often than you’d think. It’s a small town; we all know each other. You ever hear the expression ‘familiarity breeds contempt’? There it is. That’s your little market town in a nutshell. I step through the doors of the patisserie breezily, noticing Nancy’s table right away. Clean pressed shirts worn with fine scarves of linen or silk. They look like colonial missionary wives with eating disorders. I move to the counter as if I am about to order so I can better listen to their conversation. I’m sweating beneath the band of my cap.
‘Don’t,’ Nancy is saying, theatrically rolling her eyes. ‘Don’t get me started.’
‘Oh, do get started. We want you to get started,’ another woman coos. There is a low ripple of laughter and Nancy tucks her hair neatly behind her ear.
‘I just think,’ she says, urgently, ‘that if you’re going to charge someone that much for a service then you bloody well need to make sure you’re doing what I’ve asked you! How long does it take to upholster a chair, really? I mean, it’s staples and a glue gun, isn’t it? How hard can it be?’
More cooing and nodding. Another voice, strident and high, pitches in. ‘When we tiled the en suite I went to Morocco myself to source them. I can buy tiles for twenty pence a time in the souk at Marrakesh, darling, so don’t try to play a player, right?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘It’s a joke.’
I turn around so that Nancy can see me properly. I know she knows who I am, even now. I saw her that day with Frances opposite the pharmacy and I saw the way her face changed when she recognised me. Like a door, slowly closing.
‘Hi, Nancy,’ I say brightly. She sits up. I allow her that pause, that moment of recognition. I savour it. I like the way her baby-blue eyes widen, the way her long fingers play with the collar of her shirt. I know she got divorced last year because the news was all over her Facebook feed, and I wasn’t surprised. From the pictures I’d found of him he was a boring-looking, weak-jawed man at least a foot shorter than Nancy, who wore golfing jumpers and long leather shoes. At least Charlie went out with a bang.
‘Mrs Hudson?’ she says, unevenly. ‘Samantha, right?’
‘That’s right.’
All the women are looking at me with mild interest. I’m the equivalent of the mantelpiece you run your finger along for dust. My smile aches.
‘I was just thinking about you the other day,’ I tell her, reaching out to shake her hand. She puts hers in mine with no enthusiasm. It’s like holding the hand of a corpse. ‘I was hoping we could have a talk sometime. About Edie.’
‘Oh?’ She’s reaching for her phone. ‘I’ll check my calendar. It’s
a busy time of year. The kids are heading back to school, you know?’
‘I’m free any time. I’ve just got a few questions.’ Firm. Refusing to be fobbed off. My pulse throbs in my neck. I realise I forgot to put make-up on before I left the house. I must look deranged. Nancy is scrolling through her calendar wordlessly, her cheeks bright pink as if they’ve been slapped. I’ve ordered a takeaway coffee and the waitress brings it over to me.
‘Shall I get you a chair?’ she asks me, and Nancy looks up sharply.
‘No,’ she tells her. Then she smiles at me, weakly. ‘How about later in the month? After I come back from Capri?’
‘How about now?’
‘Now?’ She laughs uneasily. I see one of her friends mouth to the other, Oh my God. I ignore her.
‘Now.’
‘I’m – you can see I’m here with my friends. I’m busy.’
‘I’ll wait outside. You’ve got to leave sometime.’
All the women exchange thrilled glances. The brunch bunch. I keep my eyes on Nancy, unblinking. She looks around at them all for help but one by one they drop their gaze. They like a drama. Keep watching, I think, it’s only just getting started.
Nancy and I take a seat in the sunlit courtyard out the front, screened off from the pavement by large potted ferns and slender bamboo screens. She orders a chamomile tea, fixing a large monochrome sun hat to her head. Nancy has skin as creamy as alabaster. She is wearing a fringed kimono and large, oversized sunglasses which she takes off slowly.
‘I burn,’ she tells me, pointing to her sun hat, ‘and the sun is very ageing.’ She gives me a look then, a quick up-down flick of the eyes, a sly smile. Too late for you, bitch, that smile says. Too late.
‘Show me your hand,’ I tell her. She rolls her eyes and extends her left palm. I shake my head. ‘The other one, dummy.’
‘Oh my God, what is this? Theatre?’ She thrusts it out towards me. There’s nothing there. No line, no pink scar tissue. She didn’t cut deep enough to leave a mark. ‘Happy? What’s all this about, Samantha?’
‘What do you think?’
She shrugs. ‘Honestly? Darling, don’t you – don’t you ever think, “You know what, Samantha, it was twenty years ago now. Move on.” Twenty years and yet you’re still trying to get information from me that I don’t have. What do you want me to do? The way you’re behaving, following me around – it’s not healthy.’ She leans back to allow the waitress to put the teapot on the table and then tilts her head towards me. ‘Listen. As a mother, I feel for you. I can’t imagine the pain of your child going missing. It’s my worst nightmare. But I think, deep down, it must have been a relief. Oh, don’t look at me like that, you know as well as I do what Edie was like. She was an animal.’
‘Don’t you talk ab—’
‘Well, it’s true! Jesus, you know what you suffer from? Selective blindness. Don’t you remember how she was? You want to see scars? Don’t look at my hand, sweetheart, look here!’ She jerks the scarf away from her throat to reveal a vertical slash just below her left ear, running from her jaw to her collarbone. It’s twisted like rope. I remember all the times I’ve seen her in her fussy, button-up Victorian blouses and thought she was just melodramatic.
She nods at me slowly.
‘My parents wanted me to have plastic surgery. Said if I left it, it would make me look like Frankenstein.’
‘Edie did this to you?’
‘Yup. Every once in a while she would lash out without warning. It was okay when it was just pulling hair or scratching, the way she sometimes did. You could almost laugh it off. But when she started carrying around a knife the whole dynamic changed. Suddenly she was frightening. Deadly, almost. It stopped being fun to hang around her then. Danger’s only attractive from far away, isn’t it?’
I’m shaken. I want to smoke but instead I sip my coffee. Something warm expands inside me, a heat. Shame, maybe. I stammer out my words. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know.’
‘Sure you didn’t,’ she says, in a tone that tells me she doesn’t believe a word.
And she’s right, isn’t she? that sinuous little voice in my head says, the one that coils and twists. You knew what she was like. Remember how frightened you were when she jumped out at you? It wasn’t the shock. You thought she had a weapon. You thought she was going to hurt you. You were scared of her. Why can’t you admit it?
‘You carried a knife of your own, didn’t you? Why was that?’ She looks at me down her thin nose and takes a bird-like sip of tea. She has such a narrow neck. You could snap it like kindling. ‘You know Charlie and Moya used to think you’d killed her? After you pulled a knife on Moya in the churchyard. They thought you were crazy. I’d always argue back that it was Edie who was the crazy one, and then inevitably someone would say, “Can you imagine living in that house?”’
It is as though I’ve been plunged chest-deep into iced water. Like I can’t draw breath. I concentrate very hard on the gold teardrop necklace nestled in the deep hollow of Nancy’s throat.
‘Listen. Listen to me, Samantha. No one would blame you. It must have been hard, right from the start. How old were you when you had her? Twenty?’
‘Eighteen.’
‘Most women now wait till they’re in their thirties.’
I look across at her but beneath the wide brim of her sun hat I can’t see her face, and I can’t tell if it’s a dig. It feels like one. Hurtful, prickling. I’d just turned eighteen when I had Edie. I once overheard someone in the supermarket say to my mother, ‘You must be so disappointed.’
‘They thought I might have killed her?’
‘Nobody would blame you.’
‘That’s absurd. I was her mother. I loved her. She was all I had.’
She looks at me curiously and takes another sip of tea. I straighten up in my seat. I’m not done yet. Down, but not out, as they say. I light a cigarette and Nancy immediately fans her hand in front of her face.
‘You used to smoke,’ I tell her.
She rolls her eyes. ‘I was fifteen. I did a lot of stupid stuff.’
‘Heh. You’ve got that right. Remember Quiet Mary?’
Nancy nods, but I’ve already seen the hunch of her shoulders, the way her eyes widen just a fraction. She’s still afraid of her. Even now. I curl a fist and tap it on the table, slowly and deliberately. Four times.
Her face blanches. ‘Stop it.’
‘Rattlesnake hunters, knocking at your door,’ I say, letting the smoke drift out my mouth like blown silks. ‘Do you think that’s who snatched Edie? Quiet Mary?’
She shakes her head. ‘I don’t want to talk about Quiet Mary.’
‘You know something. What is it?’
‘Leave it, I said.’ Her accent’s slipping. When I arrived, it could have cut glass. Now there’s that twang in it that sounds almost Cockney, home-bred. She crosses her legs, coils around herself.
‘All those spells you did. All the blood and the candles and the wine. Then Edie disappeared and Charlie, well, Charlie left a good-looking corpse, didn’t she? Did it frighten you? Did you think it was Quiet Mary’s revenge?’ I lean in, whispering, ‘Do you think you’re next?’
Nancy is silent for a moment but I can see her fear. It’s visible, like a shiver. She runs the pads of her fingers beneath her eyes, swiping at errant make-up.
‘I do know something,’ she says quietly, pouring tea from the pot with hands that look unsteady. ‘About Edie. She made me do a deal.’
‘What kind of deal?’
‘After this’ – she points to the grisly scar on her neck – ‘my parents wanted to press charges. I was always Daddy’s little girl and Edie knew that if I wanted to, I could talk them out of it. She was frightened she’d go to prison, you see. So she told me that if I could talk my parents out of dropping the charges she would tell me a secret.’
‘And did you?’
‘Yes. I didn’t like it, and honestly, no secret is that interesting, but when Edie wanted you to do so
mething—’
‘You did it,’ I finish.
She nods. ‘Yes, you did, or it was worse for you. She made me promise not to tell anyone or Quiet Mary would get me. Said she’d come for me in the night and strangle me with her burial shroud. Edie told me Quiet Mary was silent, so I wouldn’t hear her coming. The first I’d know of it would be her dripping wet hands brushing against my face in the dark.’
I shudder, despite the sunshine. My cigarette tastes awful but I’m going to smoke it right down to the filter.
‘So I talked my parents out of it. Made them call off the lawyers, the police. “I’m dropping charges,” I told them, and they went along with it because my daddy loved me more than anything in the world. The next day I told Edie at school, near the canteen. “You’re safe,” I told her. “My folks’ll never invite you to my birthday parties again but at least you won’t end up in prison.” You know what she said?’
I shake my head, heart tapping a swift percussion in my chest.
‘Nothing. That’s what she said. Absolutely nothing. Didn’t thank me, didn’t even smile. Later on, she took me into the toilets at breaktime and showed me what she had in her bag.’
‘What was it?’
‘A pregnancy test. She wouldn’t answer any of my questions, just made me stand with my foot under the toilet door so I could hold it closed for her. All the locks were busted, you see. After about a minute she came out and even though I could see she was scared, she put the test face-up on the sink and we both watched those little blue stripes come up just as clear as anything.’
It’s as if a tiny bomb has been detonated. The shock of it rings in my ears. Distantly I can hear a dog barking, a car grinding its gears.
‘She wanted to keep it, she said. But it was making her sick. She was puking all the time, even at school. She told the others she had food poisoning.’