But there came a point, as dusk turned to night, and I made my way back and headed by the theatre and down towards old Felixstowe and the Ferry, where I simply did not care any more about how I appeared or what people thought.
I could not find her. No matter where I looked.
On the seafront. Towards the docks. Down towards the Ferry. Even up the town.
My hopes raised and dashed. Time and again.
And now, hours later, wet and exhausted and close to collapse, I have to accept that she has gone. This girl who looked a little like my daughter. Whom I would have brought back to my cottage. To look after. To care for. To love; maybe even to be loved back.
I searched in all the places she could possibly be. Hideaways that nobody would think of. Behind the bins at the back of supermarkets. Underneath the arch of the railway line. The alleyway by the Wimpy in the high street and all the little backyards there.
She has left town. To Ipswich, perhaps. Where there might be more money to be had up by the railway station. Or to Woodbridge. Where they have more money than sense. Richer pickings than Felixstowe, where dockers cut their coupons and shop in Poundland and haggle over every fifty pence at the market.
I have looked everywhere she could possibly be.
She is nowhere.
It is over. And I am finished.
I am locked up alone.
In a tiny cell.
So small I cannot even stretch out.
I try to sleep.
To shut out the sing-song voice that calls to me.
Behind the bangs.
Beyond the shouts.
And everything all around me.
And I lie here.
In the dark.
Wondering where the sing-song voice is.
Whether it is close or far away.
And what it wants from me.
5
Thursday, 21 November, 11.57 Am
I lie here in my bed, dozing fitfully, after another troubled night. Nightmares in my mind. Fluffy restless at my feet.
Other than getting up to go to the toilet at dawn and letting Fluffy outside, I have lain here since I came back from the seafront. I am still in my dirty and crumpled clothes.
Apart from Fluffy, I have nothing to get up for. Nothing to do. I can’t even be bothered to finish the half-played solitaire and chess games on the coffee table. Nor use my binoculars to look for the robin. And I have nowhere to go. I just lie here with everything going round and round in my mind.
The girl has gone for good. I know it. I have to leave it now. It was madness, anyway. I realise this. The idea that, somehow, she would change my life. Take me out of my misery. Make me a different person to who I am today. All nonsense. I understand that. And my insanity is rising inside me again. For that is what it is. Just beneath the surface. Only the chance of finding someone to love and be loved by was enough to keep it down. And now that chance has gone.
The medication I used to take dulled my thoughts and feelings. I would not say the tablets made me happy, nor that they took away the pain. They made everything fuzzy, so that things did not matter quite as much as they might do. Should do. What I have done should matter. It should destroy me. I deserve to die.
I think, without medication, everything is sharper and more intense. There were greater highs as I chased the girl through what was little more than wishful thinking. And the lows now will be deeper and longer. I could just lie here until I die. And why not? These terrible, bloody memories inside my head are too much for anyone to bear.
My daughter is dead. All I see, all I ever see, in my endless, recurring dreams is her face as I look down upon her corpse.
And my wife. All I remember is the screaming, on and on, and then into silence.
The time I spent locked away. On my own. Until I was released, supposedly rehabilitated – and to what?
I just want to be at peace. Yet there is noise all around me. What sounded like a van pulled up next door, at No. 5, an hour or so ago. Lots of men shouting. Loading things, I think. Then a car reversing quickly, the screech of brakes. I assumed, but could not rouse myself to go and look, that the Man in the Suit was back, or that the woman and the children were packing up and leaving before his violent return. I do not know which. I do not care.
And the Lump will be there. By the fence looking over, watching and waiting for me to come out into the back garden. To have an inane conversation, as he tries, with his slow and feeble brain, to recount his news of the day. How he was offered seventy-five pence for a computer game he owned by a second-hand games store in town. How the bakers had run out of the chocolate brownies he so likes. Such important stuff to him. I would smile and frown and pretend something pressing needed doing indoors. But not today. I will not go out at all. I will just lie here, right through.
And there is the knocking. Always the endless knocking. Tap. Tap. Tap. Pause. Tap. Tap. Tap. I ignore it. It is Widow Woman, taking her fat and smelly dog out across the fields and wanting me to join her. Tap. Tap. Tap. Pause. Tap. Tap. Tap. Eventually, she stops and moves on. But she will be back, in an hour or so, after the walk. Tap. Tap. Tap. Pause. Tap. Tap. Tap. Driving me mad.
What’s the point of it all?
This wretched existence.
What’s the bloody point?
It is now the evening. I spent all day in bed. Stewing in my own juices. It is the worst thing to have done. I know that.
I am up at last. But I can barely move. Nor function. Washing. Dressing. Getting ready to go out. All an agony for me.
Fluffy wandered about. Then returned and sat there by the side of the bed. And whimpered. And growled at the back of his throat. And did his funny little circular walk when he needs to go out. Now I am walking him over the fields.
It is dark. There are no lights down this end of Bluebell Lane. A few at the top, near the junction to the high road. And there is little to illuminate the fields. The lights of the docks and the outline of the cranes are in the far distance. But I like the anonymity of night. That I can walk head down with my own thoughts. Not that there are ever many people out and about here at this time of the day. Sometimes I nod at those who are. Most times I don’t. It is easier since COVID-19; people expect you to veer off and away at the sight of them. And I do.
It is cold and breezy, and the snow is coming and will be here for some time; so they say on the BBC. A week at least, maybe longer, initially, and more after that. Months, possibly. I cannot remember when we last had heavy snowfall, inches and inches of the stuff that stopped the world and trapped everyone indoors and seemed to go on forever. There are comparisons being made now on the BBC to the winters of 1947 and 1963, where life seemed to be put on hold for months on end. I will drive out in the morning and stock up, filling my larder and the fridge-freezer with enough to see me through for weeks.
If it were not for Fluffy, I would give up, as simple as that. I would lie face down in my bed and not get up again. I would just stay there and let myself fade away. Other than Widow Woman and the postman with his junk mail, no one comes to my door. Nobody would miss me. Widow Woman would simply assume I had gone away. I could maybe leave a little note. And lie down to die. But I could not bear to see Fluffy being taken back to the Blue Cross. He is an old dog. No one would take him on. He would die alone in a tiny cage, surrounded by other dogs yelping and barking and scaring him. I cannot let that happen.
Fluffy pulls at the lead, dragging me faster along the path that runs by the main field.
I have my torch held out in front of me, illuminating the path, and swing it left to right to see what Fluffy has seen.
Something darts away across the field, maybe a rabbit, perhaps even a fox – enough to rouse Fluffy to give chase.
These fields and lanes and ditches are creepy at night. In daytime, I have enjoyed the bleak but beautiful landscape stretching out ahead of me. At night, my troubled mind sees movement in the trees and bushes in the distance and imagines bodies in the ditc
hes by the side of my feet. I am a tormented soul, and I twitch and turn at sounds and movements beside and behind me, my head forever twisting to check my footsteps. But no one is there. There never is. It is just my conscience with its hand resting heavy on my shoulder.
These waifs and strays on the streets. So many teenagers go missing from home and are never seen again. They just vanish as if into thin air. You read about them in the papers all the time. I am an avid reader of the local press, albeit much of it online these days. Those who are loved make it into the papers. Many don’t even get a mention. Those who are troubled. Unwanted by a step-parent. Forced out, as often as not. The reality is that most of them end up dead soon enough, either through drink or drugs or by their own hands, tablets or a knife. And they are never found.
Some, especially young teenage girls, are taken by predatory older men without love in their hearts. They are used and disposed of in makeshift graves in cellars and gardens and under patios. And elsewhere. Further afield. There are bodies out here, in ditches, buried deep in winter and by summer, with leaves and debris and foxes and other animals, they have all but disappeared. I hurry on my way.
Fluffy squats in or close to his usual place. To do what he does. Over by a ditch that is deep and long and dark. I have walked by it so many times.
I see a red leather glove, stiff and clenched in the cold, beside it. My daughter had a pair of red gloves.
I pick it up and look at it. Cracking the stiff fingers and slipping it into my pocket as I turn and head for home. Glad to be away from this horror of a hiding place.
I am at the bottom of the stairs in the hallway. I turn and open the cellar door with a big heavy key, twisting it time and again in the stubborn lock before it finally opens to me.
The cellar is a dark and dank place, lit by a solitary 40-watt lightbulb casting more shadows than light in every corner. The room smells. I know why.
There is a single kitchen chair on its side on the ground, a mix of dug-over soil and stones, lumpy and uneven. A broken, rotted beam hangs down at an angle.
I ignore the detritus on the ground – a taken-apart trampoline and its tarpaulin cover, a full bin bag, a torn coat, a length of rope, an axe and a spade – and move to the chest freezer on the far side. It is full of joints and cuts of meat. Two long butchered lengths with white bones and red meat covered in frost are closest to the surface. Other lumps and lengths, some wrapped, some not, are hidden away beneath them.
I do not know what to do. If I am to stock up for weeks, months even, perhaps all winter, this huge freezer is the only place I can store food, nice, cellophane-wrapped chicken breasts and packets of beef burgers and the like. Yet I cannot empty this freezer of its contents. Out with the rubbish bins. Buried in the garden. Maybe burned on a bonfire. Tipped into ditches over the fields. I cannot do any of that.
And I think how long this freezer has been like this. Full of bones and meat. A while now. Without being frozen, I suspect they may have rotted away. Well, perhaps not the bones. Outdoors, those would have been picked clean by birds and foxes and creatures of the night. But still there. The bones. Always there. I think of my wife and my daughter and the happier days we once had. And what I did. Have been doing ever since. Up to and including today, if the girl by the pier had not disappeared. And I am suddenly overwhelmed by it all.
I sink to my knees, my forehead resting against the side of the freezer.
I do not pray. For I am not a religious man. I do not believe in all of that heaven and hell mumbo jumbo.
But if I did, I would surely now be on my way to hell.
I rest there, crouched and sobbing for a minute or two, maybe longer. My emotions, my feelings, my moods are all over the place. I think it is because I have come off the medication. At least when I was taking the tablets, I was steadier. Since stopping – going cold turkey, to use an old-fashioned phrase – there are more highs and lows. Higher highs and lower lows.
I fear these, in a way. The higher highs and lower lows. The highs push me on to greater extremes and excesses – running down the promenade with a copy and pasted photo of the girl took me to the edge of insanity. I know in my heart there is literally nothing I would not have done to find that girl and to bring her back here to live with me happily ever after in Bluebell Lane. Nothing.
And now the lows are lower than they have ever been. The grief. The shame. The horror of it all. Filling my mind. That hand of conscience on my shoulder. Gripping it. Pushing me towards the end. To take my own life. I literally do not know what I will do next. The madness inside almost overpowers me. I must be strong. To keep going. To get through this. One day at a time. Tomorrow may be a better day.
I get to my feet, wiping my eyes and face with the corner of my sleeve.
I look down at all the different butchered parts in the freezer and pull down the lid.
They can stay there. I’ll stock up with food that I’ll cram somehow into the kitchen larder.
I turn and look up the narrow wooden staircase towards the half-open door onto the landing. Fluffy is there, and he is pawing the ground, waiting to be called down in the hope of a piece of meat or a bone to chew on. The thought of either revolts me. I make a “tsch, tcsh” noise and wave him away. He ignores the gesture and stands there expectantly as I climb back up the stairs.
I turn back and look down before I lock the door. I have not been in here for so long. I do not know what drew me down there now. The chest freezer is the only place to store bulk-bought items. But I knew the freezer was full and that I could not empty it. Some part of me, deep down inside, made me do it.
I lock the door and make my way to the kitchen. I hang the big old key on one of a row of mismatched nails in the wall by the back door. I vow to myself I will not go down again. I fear what will happen if I do. I could easily go insane down there. I sit at the kitchen table and start making a list of what I need to get for the larder. I will stock it with tins and packet meals to last me a month.
Baked beans. Spaghetti hoops. Ravioli. Soups.
Packets of rice. Things I can put in the microwave.
I will take the car tomorrow morning and drive out to the supermarket at Warren Heath to stock up with supplies. I am ready for this new lockdown.
I am in the forest.
It is night-time.
There is moonlight.
Amongst the trees.
And I am standing.
By a grave.
Newly dug.
And filled by me.
But the soil moves.
And I cannot stop it.
And I cannot turn away.
I want to run.
But I know that I must stay.
I awake, tormented as ever.
6
Friday, 22 November, 5.22 Pm
I am walking out of the Tesco Express on the high street, laden with carrier bags full of bits and pieces I forgot to bulk-buy this morning. Cupboard stuff such as soya milk and Mr Kipling’s cakes. Snow is coming tonight and is expected to last on and off for days, the first of many heavy snowfalls this winter.
And I see her. Just like that.
The girl by the pier is sat, head down, hood up, on the pavement by the side of the road in front of me.
I stop. Surprised. Bewildered. Overjoyed. I stand for a moment, by the Tesco exit, uncertain what to do. An elderly man behind me tuts and huffs, as I am in his way. I apologise. Move two or three steps forward. Put my carrier bags on the pavement. Look down at her.
She seems to sense my presence. Or maybe it’s just that my shoes are in her line of vision. She looks up at me, mumbles a request for change, almost mechanically. I am shocked. Her left eye is bruised, her lip cut. I wonder what has happened to her since we last met.
She is wearing much the same as before. A thin and threadbare fleece with a hood. Jeans. Clunky old-woman shoes. But no blankets or bedding. I am sure she had some last time. They must have been stolen, ripped away from her. She will struggle ton
ight. The forecast is for sub-zero temperatures and a 90 per cent or higher chance of heavy snow. She needs shelter and warmth.
“I saw you … on Monday … down by the pier,” I say. Casually, almost conversationally.
“Have you got any change, please?” she replies. I don’t know if she heard what I said. Whether she remembers me.
“You gave my dog a treat.” I go on. “He’s a Jack Russell. I gave you some loose change.”
“Have you got any change, please?” she says again, the mantra of every beggar.
I check my jacket pocket. My wallet. A debit card. A credit card. A ten-pound note. A twenty-pence piece and a fifty-pence piece. The ten-pound note is too much, too soon, I think. She will think I want something from her for that. Seventy pence in change is too little these days. You can’t give less than the cost of a cup of tea.
“I’ve only seventy pence in change … and cards.” I hesitate before going on. “I can get you a hot chocolate from the coffee shop if you like, over the way. A sandwich.”
She nods – agreement, I think – and holds her hand up for the change anyway. I notice she is wearing fingerless gloves and that her fingers are dirty, and one of them is bloodstained, I’m sure.
I drop the coins into her open palm. “Wait here. I’ll get you something nice to eat and drink.”
As I turn, she speaks. “Thank you,” she says simply. I nod, walk away, towards the coffee shop, ten, twenty metres down the high street.
I have left my carrier bags by her side. To show I trust her. This is the start of getting her to trust me, too, of course. It will take time, be a long journey, but it will be worth it in the end. If I get it right. I have to.
The Girl Downstairs Page 5