The Girl Downstairs

by Iain Maitland

  She swallows again. Knows that she has been seen. Has to play along. She looks at the happy girl. Then the cheerful boy. And smiles back. There is nothing else she can do but go with it. As must I. For now.

  I gesture to her to let them in. As I go to the front door to greet Widow Woman and her wretched dog, who puts his nose straight into my crotch as if we are long-lost friends.

  And we are all then in the hallway. Introductions. Smiles. Laughter. False bonhomie. Hats and coats and gloves and boots on for her and me. She is coming, too.

  And off we go down the path. The five of us and the dog. The Famous Five on an utterly pointless Enid fucking Blyton adventure. I just hope nothing out of the ordinary happens. That we get back to the cottage as soon as possible. And I can finish what I was about to do.

  It is a dull and overcast morning, with black clouds in the distant sky. It is still cold. Snow and ice lie on the ground as we head towards the first field.

  The boy leads the way. Head down. Determined. As if he is in charge. He knows where he is going. The girl keeps up with him, anxious to be by his side, if not in front. She follows close behind the two children. But on her own.

  I am at the back, a little way behind, with Widow Woman next to me when she can. We take it in turns to go in front when we cannot walk side by side. I would rather walk alone. Her dog gets in the way as often as not.

  Widow Woman asks who the young woman is.

  Rosie, I reply simply.

  And who is Rosie, she asks.

  My niece, I answer nicely.

  I do not want to say much. If Widow Woman questions her later, there is a chance she will give different answers.

  What does she do? Widow Woman persists.

  I pretend I cannot hear. With the wind and all.

  I add that she has been staying with me since the snow fell. So I sound friendly.

  Where does she live? Widow Woman goes on.

  I pull a face. As if I cannot hear her clearly. But I want to be polite.

  I then say she will be leaving shortly.

  When she disappears, nothing will seem strange about it.

  I turn and move in front of Widow Woman. I walk ever so slightly faster. Closing the gap with her in front. And the children who are pulling ahead in their enthusiasm. Widow Woman slips back, the fat Labrador by her feet, as she walks along as fast as she can to keep up.

  We march now in line.

  Single file along the path by the side of the first field.

  Heads dipped in the wind on our way to the farm.

  As I walk, the storm clouds gathering ever closer, my mind turns to Freya, the stray from the East End of London. I picked Freya up by the amusements at the seamier end of the seafront. I handed her a plastic bracelet I won on a penny cascade machine. She was standing next to me. She laughed and took it. I searched for and found her several times in the days and weeks after that. One arcade or another. Struck up conversations. Gave her money. Bought her blankets.

  I invited her back. She accepted. I thought I was a clever man who picked well. I think, with hindsight, she picked me. I told her whatever I had was hers. Said she could spend her life here. I gave her money. And little surprise gifts.

  One day, I came back from Tesco, with my bags full of goodies, to find she had gone. She had not taken anything from me, nor left anything behind. I searched far and wide for her without success. Six weeks later, I read of her death, almost in passing, in the local newspaper. An accidental drug overdose. A paragraph, that’s all.

  The boy stops as he gets to the edge of the first field. The girl stands by him, holding his hand.

  They wait for the rest of us to catch up.

  We stand there all together, the children full of breathless excitement. I glance at her face. She seems caught up in the moment, too.

  Somehow, as we regroup and the children lead on again, Widow Woman and her dog are ahead of me, walking next to her. I am at the back, now stomping through the snow on my own.

  And I can hear Widow Woman starting a conversation with her.

  Rosie’s a nice name, Widow Woman says.

  I think she inclines her head, but does not reply.

  Your uncle says you are staying until the snow clears?

  Widow Woman’s attempt to start a conversation.

  She nods her head, but does not seem to add a comment to that.

  I wish Widow Woman would shut up.

  Are you at college? Widow Woman persists, desperate to find out all she can.

  This busybody of a woman. Who gets on my nerves.

  She says something in reply. I do not catch it. Widow Woman doesn’t seem to either.

  Widow Woman moves in closer. And, for a few minutes, their heads together, the fat Labrador between their feet, the two of them have some sort of prolonged conversation.

  I cannot hear what they are saying. But it looks as though they are sharing confidences. Their heads almost touching as they pick their way carefully through the snow and ice.

  They are pulling away slightly, quite naturally, as they continue walking. And she moves ahead, and Widow Woman and the dog fall behind. And Widow Woman turns towards me. She gives me a strange, triumphant look. And I wonder what has been said between them. And what it might mean for us all.

  We move slowly, step by careful step, to the side of the second of the three snow-covered fields we are crossing. The two children at the front. Then her. Widow Woman and the dog. Me at the back.

  This farce. This nonsense. This pretence. That we will find Fluffy. And live happily forever.

  We won’t. She will be dead soon after our return to the cottage. Not immediately. I need to know what was said between her and Widow Woman first.

  Widow Woman has her head ducked downwards, concentrating on her footsteps on the path.

  Pulling the dog along. Its paw prints pattering out in the untouched snow of the field beside her.

  I wonder what Widow Woman now knows. And what she is thinking about me. I know what I am thinking about her.

  Nicole was a former drug addict from Norwich. She had been with me at the cottage for five, almost six weeks. We had become good pals. I was happy. And I thought she was, too.

  But she kept disappearing. Weekend nights. I confronted her. I knew what she was up to. With men. I could almost smell them on her. She would not talk of it. We had words, strong words.

  In the morning, she was gone. I did not try to track her down, I was so angry. And I stopped getting out and about for a while. Later, much later, someone in an amusement arcade told me she had died, choked to death on her own vomit. That didn’t even get a mention in the newspapers.

  We move towards the far side of the second field, to cross the lane that takes us over to the third field and the last lane and then the farm.

  Widow Woman turns and looks at me again. A smug and self-satisfied look this time. I cannot make it out. It does not bode well. No, not at all.

  I am not a man who makes excuses. I killed Andrew Lumb in anger. When I lost my temper. And I will kill her because I have to. It is her or me. But I do not know if I can kill in cold blood. To keep my secrets.

  Widow Woman.

  The boy.

  And the girl.

  We stop again after we have crossed the lane and stand looking across the third and final field before the farm.

  We group ourselves around the boy, who is jigging about with excitement. The girl is jumping up and down. I’m not sure she knows why.

  There are glances between her and Widow Woman and smiles. Knowing looks. I let them pass. For now, anyway.

  “We saw the paw prints all across this field,” the boy says proudly, pointing ahead. Somehow, this Little Lord Fauntleroy charms rather than irritates me. I think it is his gleeful innocence.

  “We all saw them,” he adds. “Didn’t we, Bella? Granny?”

  The girl waves her hands in the air. Then spins round like a ballerina before falling over.

  “We did
,” Widow Woman replies, and leads the way across the side of the field.

  One long line this time.

  Widow Woman. The dog. The little boy. The small girl. Her. Then me. On this endless march to nowhere.

  Freya and Nicole have haunted me ever since. Both of them came from the streets. Had long since disappeared from society. And, with or without my intervention, were almost certainly on an endless downward spiral that could only ever end one way. Even so, I still blamed myself.

  Emily from Bury St Edmunds was a posh girl from a private school. She had a falling-out with her parents. Then her boyfriend from nearby Stowmarket. Turned up at the pier. Needing a bed for the night. I obliged. We became close over the following days. Just good friends, as they say. But then she bumped into the boyfriend, who was searching for her on the prom one afternoon, and decided to go back to him.

  I tried to persuade her not to. I should have tried harder. A few months later, in the local newspapers, I learned about her death at the hands of that boyfriend. The local press featured stories for simply ages. It even made the national newspapers for a while. And the television. I felt I failed her, too. She haunts me still. The three of them, really. In my dreams. My nightmares.

  Widow Woman has her head down, just plodding on and on, occasionally pushing the dog out of the way with her right boot. Labradors are such stupid animals.

  The boy and the girl are walking along hand in hand. The little boy is gazing across the field for signs of paw prints. The small girl is ambling along as best she can. She asks the little boy questions. He bows his head to answer them.

  She walks comfortably enough, that strange stride in boots that look too big for her feet.

  I am tiring now. I would really rather like to stop and turn back to the cottage. Be done with this stupidity. This childish adventure. But I cannot risk leaving them all together without me. I have to go on to the farm and back again.

  She and I will then stand face to face in the kitchen.

  I will ask her what was said between Widow Woman and her. Why the smiles? The sniggering? The looks?

  I will make sure that she tells me before I strike the blow.

  20

  Sunday, 1 December, 10.04 Am

  “Here!” The boy shouts excitedly, pointing and moving towards the middle of the field as quickly as he can. He looks, with his gawky, awkward strides, like he is walking on the moon. “Paw prints!”

  The girl tries to go after him, but her left boot gets stuck in the snow, and she stumbles over. Widow Woman and she go to help the girl up. Like a proper happy family, they are.

  I stride by them and make my way over to the little boy. I rest my arm on his shoulder as if to balance myself. In truth, I am drawn to him and his eager cheerfulness. I then pat him on the back.

  “There!” He grins and points.

  “And there … there … there … there … all the way over there!”

  He points across the field towards the next lane.

  I look down and can scarcely believe what I see. There are paw prints, lots of them, just like the boy says. They are of a small dog that could so easily be Fluffy.

  I know in my heart that these could be the paw prints of any small dog. And that Fluffy would be unlikely to have come this way. Nor this far. But there is hope. And hope is the best feeling of all.

  The worst, too, if it is not fulfilled.

  The little boy looks up at me as I struggle to speak, my words choked by tears. And the others then come towards us, and they start chattering away, as if this is the greatest adventure they have ever had.

  “It’s a dog that’s lost,” Widow Woman announces loudly over the top of everyone else. “And it is not a dog that was being walked. Look … there are no boot prints anywhere nearby. This dog was walking on its own.”

  This is true. I had not really noticed. In my emotional state.

  “And,” she goes on, pointing to her Labrador, “these are the paw prints of a little dog, like a terrier. Like your dog. Look at Barry’s paw prints.”

  I look at where the Labrador has just walked. The paw prints are clearly larger.

  “And,” she adds, as if she is Sherlock Holmes concluding a case, and all of us are hanging on her every word, “the lights from that farmhouse there would have been like a beacon to a lost dog in the snow.”

  I glance up and to my right, to the lane and along, and I can see the tall old building of the farmhouse. There are four or five windows on the upper floor. They may well all have been lit up when Fluffy got out in the early hours of the morning.

  This is the farm where I buy my meats – where I bought two halves of a pig and other joints that filled my freezer before we first went into COVID-19 lockdown, and I was expecting Armageddon. That I have pretty much left untouched since then.

  I have a thing about sawing bones. I don’t know why. I don’t mind the squelch of cutting meat, but the sound of a saw on bone sets me on edge. So it’s all just sat there.

  This is also the farm where I bought sausages up to being snowed in, great long strings of home-made sausages, which I would cut up and fry and feed to Fluffy at teatimes. I wonder if, somehow, some happy memory has led my lost little Fluffy to this place.

  There are looks of delight on everyone’s faces. Even hers.

  And Widow Woman speaks, pointing to telegraph poles in the lane that leads to the main road to the left and to the farmhouse to the right.

  “I should have said … there are posters up over there, too.”

  I rummage in my pockets for my binoculars. The ones I use to search for robins. I look through them, adjusting the focus until I can see the poster that is nearest to us.

  And I see Fluffy’s happy little face.

  It is all I can do not to break down completely.

  Instead, I hurry on, leading everyone towards the poster on the telegraph pole in the lane.

  FOUND! is written in big black capitals across the top, although the black ink has run in jagged streaks down the poster. The damp in the night air turning into water, I assume.

  There is a photo of Fluffy in the middle. He is being held by a teenage boy with bleached hair. It is what’s called a selfie. Fluffy’s tongue is lolling out. He is panting. I think it must have been taken just after he had been found.

  There is a telephone number at the bottom, although the last two numbers are blurred and hard to read. “Fuller’s Farm” is clear enough though. The farm that is a minute or two’s walk up the lane.

  “He must have got out overnight … gone exploring,” I say, slightly choking on my words. I stop and gather myself together. “This is where we come to buy sausages … he must have had a fancy for sausages for breakfast.”

  I wink at the little boy.

  He gets the joke and smiles. Then thinks for a second or two, as if daring himself to respond in kind. He winks back at me. A big, over-the-top, theatrical wink. It’s hard not to laugh.

  I do an equally exaggerated wink at the small girl, who is looking at me with her ever-so-serious face.

  Then she does a big clumsy wink with both eyes, more of an eye twitch, over and over again, than a plain and simple wink.

  Widow Woman and she both see what we are doing, and they smile and laugh.

  We stand there, the five of us with the Labrador on the lead, and I can sense the complete and utter joy in the whole group. I feel very emotional.

  The little boy is now holding the small girl’s hand. They are both jigging about. Full of happiness.

  She grins at me and looks embarrassed. To show such emotion. I think suddenly that maybe she likes Fluffy. I had thought she had led him away. Maybe hurt him. Now, I am not so sure. This is not the reaction of a horrible person.

  Widow Woman steps forward and pats me on the back. There is a brief moment where I believe she is going to lunge in and hug me. I hold my nerve. Keep still. And she does not. Instead, she speaks, taking charge.

  “Well,” she says emphatically, “
let’s go and get him!” And we do.

  I lead us all on to the farm.

  To be reunited with Fluffy.

  My dear old pal.

  We walk up the long, wide drive to the farm. Snow and ice have been swept clear from the middle of it to the sides. I have been here with Fluffy many times. He would always stop about halfway and sniff the air. That farmyard mix of animals and manure. Maybe the anticipation of sausages for tea.

  The farmhouse is to the left. The farm shop to the right. It usually opens 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on a Sunday, but what with the snow and the cold and the difficulty of driving in and out, it is shut today.

  Other buildings and fields, with pigs and cows and chickens and more, are behind the farmhouse and farm shop, stretching into the distance. The reality of a working farm. I have never been further than the shop; the smells and the thought of some sort of abattoir are enough to keep me away.

  We stand there for a moment. The five of us and the dog, who seems to have picked up the scent of animals in barns somewhere close by. Head up and slobbering. This fat and greedy Labrador, always wanting food.

  We are waiting for something to happen.

  Widow Woman takes charge again, taking us towards the farmhouse. The rest of us follow. The boy and the girl tuck in behind her, the little boy looking back over his shoulder and grinning and giving me a thumbs-up sign.

  I respond the same way. A smile. A thumbs-up. A lovely moment.

  If I had had a son, I would have wanted him to be like this little boy. Polite and friendly. All innocence and unconditional love.

  The small girl is cute, too. Full of mischief. Loves her big brother to bits. I’d have been a good father to children like these. I know I would. Given the chance. Or a grandad. Grandpa. I like the name Grandpa. I love the idea of being Grandpa.

  She drops in behind Widow Woman and the children to walk by my side for the first time since we set off. I glance at her. She is looking at me and smiling. It is a warm smile that unsettles me. She has not smiled at me like this before. With something close to genuine affection.