Guilty

by Siobhan MacDonald

  Now

  Crow Hall

  Saturday 13 April

  Frantic, Luke flipped open the glove compartment. His phone was vibrating. It slithered over the car manuals like a snake. He grabbed it as a call rang off.

  Ten missed calls.

  Engine running, he dialled Nina.

  Straight to voicemail.

  He tried again.

  Still no answer.

  He’d try Alison.

  You have reached the voicemail of Minister Alison Forde-Thompson. Please leave a message. Alternatively, you can try the constituency office.

  He’d try Cornelius.

  ‘Ah, Luke, it’s yourself.’

  The old bastard had his television voice on. There was the sound of chatter in the background. Strangely too, the sound of barking dogs.

  ‘Have you seen the paper?’ Luke asked, breathless.

  ‘We’ve seen the notice.’ The old man sounded cagey. ‘I don’t know what to say—’ He broke off, talking to someone in the background. ‘Look, it’s bedlam here. The best thing is to come up.’

  The line went dead. Cornelius was gone. Luke wound down the window as he reversed. Sophie was standing at the front door.

  ‘I’m heading to Crow Hall,’ he shouted. ‘There’s no answer from Nina.’

  ‘Drive carefully,’ she called.

  Twelve miles to Crow Hall.

  Little Nina. Five years old. Her earnest face. Kneeling at her doll’s house, alive and crawling with caterpillars. Alison going crazy. Bad girl, Nina. She was never one for dolls.

  Nina, older now, watching him through curtains of dark hair as he inspected an agar plate she’d cultured in the fridge. Again, Alison complaining. Hell, Nina. Not where we keep food. The child behind her round glasses, staring from him to her mother. Trying to figure out what it was that she’d done wrong this time.

  Nina scratching her scalp. Alison eyeing her warily. A scene that spools back in painful detail:

  Alison is icy. ‘Didn’t I warn you about what would happen if you came home from school with nits again? I’m done with washing my hair in that stinking lotion.’

  ‘It’s not my fault,’ Nina says, looking sheepish. ‘It’s Laurie Hogan who sits in front of me.’

  ‘I don’t care. It’s coming off. Every last strand.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Alison,’ Luke intervenes. ‘She can’t go into school with no hair.’

  ‘She can, and what’s more we’ll be saying she did it for charity. Might as well reap some benefit.’

  He leaves for St Matthew’s shrugging off what he sees as an idle threat. Returning the following morning, he is aghast to see Alison has followed through.

  ‘Look what she did,’ a bald and tearful Nina says.

  ‘Stop blubbing, child,’ says Alison. ‘It’s not like it was great hair.’

  Nina looks at her mother. ‘Sometimes I think you are a horrible lady. Sometimes I think you should have left me in the orphanage.’

  ‘Believe me, Nina, I wanted to. It’s not like you were my choice.’

  Teenage Nina. Her quiet pursuit for meaning. Her habit of keeping him company, silent, as he worked on papers. Her dubious dress sense. Fake-tan stains over her bedroom, all over the cream linen sofa. Hissy fits from Alison.

  Incoming call.

  Luke’s eyes darted to the touchscreen. It was Fran, his secretary. She’d probably seen the Herald. He’d let the call ring out. She’d be distraught. He couldn’t deal with Fran just now.

  Two more miles.

  He was on High Shore Road. With steep drops and corkscrew bends, he wouldn’t normally choose this way. He raced past the Fog Catcher Inn. Below him, Creasy’s Gully was thick with rhododendrons. He tore past the old workhouse, past the famine graveyard. The roads beneath the Range Rover were slippery. He hit a Flood sign, sending it skidding across the road. Wrestling with the steering he avoided a pole. Mud sprayed up all over an election poster. His wife’s one-eyed, half-mouthed face looked down on him:

  A name you can trust. Your voice in Government. Vote Alison Forde-Thompson.

  Much of her face was eaten by the weather and what remained was airbrushed. Posters at this side of the lough had never been taken down, their edges curling and blistering in the rain.

  When he reached the crow-topped pillars, he was forced to slow. The gates were open. He turned in off the narrow lane in a screech of tyres, tearing up the avenue.

  Around a bend of beech hedging, he met a scene that stunned him. Horseboxes were parked on the verges and packs of yelping dogs circled the lawn. He had to drop a gear for riders. They glared at him from their mounts. Luke glared back.

  Pulling up outside the house, he jumped from the car and raced across the gravel up the steps. He crashed against the great oak door. The smell of damp and polish hit him in the entrance hall. He hurried towards the voices coming from the drawing room, his footsteps echoing eerily off the terrazzo floor.

  Alison rushed towards him. ‘Luke, there you are …’ She was wearing riding boots and jodhpurs.

  ‘You’ve seen this?’ He held up the rolled-up paper. ‘What the hell’s going on outside?’ He pointed the paper towards the window.

  ‘Steady.’ Cornelius leaned against the trophy cabinet, phone in hand.

  Luke focused on Alison.

  ‘You’ve spoken to Nina?’ he asked. ‘This is a hoax, right?’

  ‘It’s OK, Dad.’ Alison turned to her father. ‘Luke’s upset. We all are.’ She turned to Luke. ‘I’m sure Nina’s fine. We’ve been on to the Herald and they’re adamant the protocols for inserting a death notice were observed. They’ve apologised and said they’re looking into it.’

  ‘That’s it? They’ve apologised?’

  ‘Well, no, obviously not.’ She put a hand on her hip. ‘Dad’s on to JC just now.’

  ‘Jesus Christ?’

  Was he really expected to know who all their cronies were?

  She raised an eyebrow. ‘No. But close. Johnny Costello – the press liaison officer from Dad’s party days. If anyone can find out how this happened, JC can.’

  ‘You seem surprisingly calm about this.’

  ‘Of course I’m not calm.’ Her eyes grew wide. ‘What makes you think—’

  ‘I don’t know what to think. All I know is this is sick.’

  ‘I was just about to call you. You were next on the list.’

  He was Nina’s father, and he was next on the list?

  ‘Have you even spoken to Nina?’ he asked again. ‘Does she know? I called but no answer.’

  ‘I couldn’t say.’ Alison shrugged. ‘You’re the one she talks to.’

  ‘Are you telling me you haven’t contacted her since you dropped her off?’

  ‘You saw what she was like.’ Nina hadn’t even waved as Alison had whisked her away. ‘Should we fill her in?’ She cleaned her boot of imaginary dust.

  ‘Of course we should. We need to know that she’s OK. She’s going to hear about it some other way if we don’t speak to her. It’s bound to find its way onto Facebook or something else.’

  ‘There’s no need to go off like a dog with a mallet up its arse.’ Cornelius’s cheeks billowed in and out, like sails catching the wind. ‘Alison’s only thinking of the girl.’

  ‘Let me try her again.’ Luke dialled. Straight to voicemail. He was racked with guilt. Though he’d called and left voicemails, she hadn’t taken his calls or phoned him back since that day. And all the while he’d been trying to claw his way out of the dark pit that had become his world. ‘You haven’t explained why that lot are here.’ He nodded towards the window.

  ‘It’s the last hunt of the season,’ said Alison. ‘It’s late this year but so many meets were cancelled because of the weather. Roddy said to meet here for eleven, then to head onto his land. It’s not as flooded there. Everyone had arrived before I knew about that.’ She pointed at the paper. ‘But don’t worry, Roddy’s taking care of things.’ She rubbed her hands together
. ‘Now back to this nasty business. Dad won’t be much longer. Come here by the fire.’ She took Luke by the arm as if cajoling a fractious child.

  Cornelius had moved to the writing desk. He was still on the phone, his backside spilling over the edges of the chair.

  ‘A drink?’ Alison offered. ‘You’re shaken.’

  ‘I’m driving.’ The springs on the leather sofa squeaked as he sat down.

  ‘That’s JC in the picture then.’ Cornelius stood. He slid his glasses down, letting them dangle on the chain outside his neck scarf. ‘The old codger owes me. If there’s one thing I know about JC, he has connections. Being a shirt-lifter can have its advantages, I suppose.’ He perched himself on the armrest next to Alison. ‘Don’t worry, Ali.’ He rubbed her hand, indulgently. ‘We’ll find out how this happened.’

  ‘We handle this ourselves?’ She looked up at her father.

  ‘I think so, Ali.’ He smoothed the wrinkles of his flannel shirt over his belly.

  ‘Excuse me?’ said Luke.

  ‘Yes, Professor?’

  There was a time Luke had found this form of address amusing, but the time for that had long since passed. ‘It strikes me that neither of you is asking the right question.’

  Cornelius and Alison tilted their heads, their faux attention choreographed to perfection.

  ‘Who has something to gain by printing something like this?’ asked Luke. ‘Whose interests does it serve?’

  Alison and Cornelius exchanged glances. The question hung like words on a gibbet.

  ‘Who indeed?’ Cornelius blinked.

  ‘Let’s wait and see what JC comes back with,’ said Alison. ‘And you, Luke, you’ll try and make light of this to Nina? Dress it up as some kind of prank?’

  The delegation as usual was seamless.

  ‘I would have thought that was more in your line.’

  The drawing room was airless. They waited in silence, each with their own thoughts. The old man’s phone rang, breaking the silence.

  ‘Ah, JC, good man.’ Cornelius shot a look at Alison. ‘Back with the usual alacrity.’

  Taking this as a cue, Alison stood and stretched herself, catlike. She linked Luke’s arm.

  ‘I’ll walk you to the door.’

  The Thompsons were finished with him.

  ‘It’s just as well I didn’t go today,’ Alison remarked. ‘It wouldn’t have looked clever, me out with the hunt, when I should really be dealing with the floods.’

  Rain was falling steadily over the churned-up grass as they stepped from the entrance hall to the porch outside. Alison walked him to the car.

  ‘Still seeing Sylvie?’ she asked casually.

  ‘I’ve told you before. It’s not Sylvie. Her name is Sophie – Sophie Ellingham.’

  ‘So you did. Sorry.’ She touched his arm. ‘We need to work together on this. Agreed? You track Nina down. Let her know and play it down. I’ll put something together for social media. I need to kill this before it becomes a story.’

  ‘That’s what’s important here?’

  She just didn’t get it. She gave him a puzzled look, opened her mouth as if to say something, then shut it again.

  ‘Don’t be difficult, Luke.’

  He stared her in the eye, piercing her with a look.

  ‘You know, don’t you? Or at least you suspect?’

  She hesitated. She looked at him. Blinking. Saying nothing. Not wanting to incriminate herself.

  ‘You know what all of this is about.’

  He was on to something.

  ‘Listen, why don’t you just follow things up from your end, Luke? And Dad and I will tidy things up here.’

  He’d heard those words before. The blue vein that ran up the side of her neck pulsed steadily. She knew her words had struck a chord, that they echoed down those murky corridors to a place they’d been before.

  ‘We’ll be in touch,’ she said. Her lips brushed his cheek. She smelled of soap, shampoo and toothpaste. She smelled scrubbed clean.

  Pulling away from the house, he could feel the long hard stare of Cornelius Thompson from the drawing-room window.

  Out on the laneway, the water ran fast in the gullies, a jaundiced foam bubbled on the surface. Did Alison know more than she was saying? And if so, should he probe? The chatter in his head was building. His temples throbbed. He felt a migraine brewing. He couldn’t handle a setback now. The panic and despair. He’d spent enough time in therapy already.

  Deniability. Plausibility. Culpability.

  The rhyming words tripped off his silent tongue. And just like goldfish, they swam round and round his head.

  The Curse

  Back out on the open road, Luke pressed his foot to the floor. He needed distance between himself and Crow Hall. He wished this incessant rain would stop. He wished the heavy sky would lift. His head filled with dark thoughts. Crow Hall always did that to him. A Stygian gloom would descend on him any time he went there.

  The house had a bad history that had started with a game of hide-and-seek. When Crow Hall was being extended in 1812, a local child named Marigold Piper went missing. She and her companions had been playing hide-and-seek in a field close by. When she failed to return home that evening to her cottage on the grounds, a search party from the town had set out to look for her.

  They searched for Marigold for a full eight days. The search party grew with volunteers joining from towns and villages all over County Clare. But little Marigold was never found. Years later, it was rumoured that the child must have fallen asleep while hiding, and that stonemasons had unwittingly buried her into the new wall at the eastern gable of Crow Hall.

  Isaac Thompson, the owner at the time, dismissed the rumours, refusing to tear down his expensive cut-stone wall. Local folklore had it that, at night, Marigold’s ghost could be seen feeling its way along the narrow passageways looking for a way out. People said Marigold had put a curse on all those who ever dwelled in the old hunting lodge. When children on the estate misbehaved they were threatened with the ghost of Marigold Piper, a threat that Cornelius had used on Nina.

  Conversations would dry up whenever Luke walked into a room in Crow Hall. Nina had noticed too. When she was little, she complained that when she walked into the drawing room or the kitchen, people would turn to stare. Luke and Nina were the blow-ins. Unlike most of the staff that lived on the grounds or in cottages bordering the estate. They were the interlopers.

  Crow Hall had been home to four generations of Thompsons. It reeked of subterfuge and mystery, of dark hatchings and whispered exchanges. At night the old building creaked and groaned, straining to contain its secrets.

  Five miles down the road, Luke pulled into a local beauty spot, a car park with a view of Lough Carberry. Finding the number he wanted, he dialled. He waited. He was trying to calculate what time it would be there. It took a few seconds for the ringtone to sound. He waited. She picked up immediately.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Wendy, it’s me.’

  ‘Everything OK?’ His sister sounded frosty.

  ‘Something strange has happened. I need to talk to Nina.’

  ‘She’s not here.’

  His stomach did a flip. ‘Do you know where she is?’ ‘She left us last week.’ Wendy now owned a bar with her girlfriend, Toni, in downtown Sydney. ‘She went off travelling in the bush. You haven’t talked to her?’

  ‘No.’ He tried not to panic. ‘I tried ringing her mobile earlier. I’m guessing she has an Australian number by now. She hasn’t contacted Alison or I since she left.’

  ‘I guessed there was a problem there all right. She didn’t want to talk about it,’ Wendy’s tone grew cooler. ‘She’s pretty messed up over something.’

  ‘I know that. I need to talk to her. How can I track her down?’

  He could hear her breathing. Thinking. Christ. He didn’t have time for his sister being all judgemental right now.

  ‘Hang on,’ Wendy said. ‘She gave me a number before she left. S
he took off with a bunch of English kids she met at the bar. In some kind of combi van. You could try that but you don’t always get a signal out in the bush.’

  He took down the number and filled his sister in on the events of the morning.

  ‘That’s sick, Luke. That’s really going to freak her out.’

  ‘I know, I know. I’ll figure it out later. Right now, I need to talk to her. To be honest, I just want her home.’

  He hung up and dialled the number Wendy gave him. Again he waited.

  ‘Who’s this?’ came a whispered reply.

  ‘Nina?’

  ‘Dad, is that you?’

  ‘Nina, thank God you’re OK—’

  ‘What do you mean? What’s going on?’

  ‘Everything’s fine. We need to talk.’

  ‘Just a minute. Everyone’s asleep …’

  There were muffled sounds. Sounds of doors opening and shutting. The sound of footsteps.

  ‘All right, I’m outside. If you’re ringing to apologise, forget it. Don’t expect me to forgive you, Dad. You just stood by. You didn’t stop her.’

  ‘Before we get on to that, are you OK? Something kind of silly has happened here. Some kind of prank.’

  He made as light of the death notice as possible, saying that while it was in the worst possible taste, it was likely some fool’s idea of a joke. Probably some political opponent of Alison or an old adversary of Cornelius. Luke explained that there would be a printed apology, that they were following it up, and that he didn’t want Nina to learn about it on social media or hear it from someone else.

  ‘Read the announcement,’ said Nina.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Just do it, Dad.’

  Reluctantly, Luke read out the death notice.

  To his astonishment, there followed a snort and then a laugh. A bitter rattle of a laugh.

  ‘It’s better than I could have hoped for.’

  ‘What do you mean? I don’t understand.’

  ‘“Beloved only daughter of Alison Forde-Thompson”, I couldn’t have hoped for better if I were actually dead.’

  ‘Ah Nina, come on,’ he said softly. ‘Your mother loves you. You know she does.’