by Daisy Pearce
Marco knocks on the door. ‘Are you all right in there?’ I tell him fine, and still I don’t move. I stare at the wall and I think of Carmel at four fifteen on a Sunday morning sitting by my bed in A&E. The way her face had been gaunt and haunted, asking me, ‘Do you want to die, Stella?’ I wonder what she would say to me if she saw me now.
I tip the pills carefully back into the bottle and put the bottle into the drawer. Not tonight. I lie back on the bed with my hands folded over my chest. I think I will never sleep but suddenly I’m gone, and I don’t wake up until morning when I notice two things. The sunlight is thick and golden and Marco is not beside me.
I find him downstairs on the couch, beneath one of the blankets kept for storage in the airing cupboard. His arm is folded outside the cover and there is that white bandage wrapped round it, spotted slightly with blood. I shake him awake and he looks at me groggily. Down here it smells of red wine and cigarettes, the butts crushed out into a cereal bowl. I shake him gently awake.
‘What are you doing down here?’
‘I thought it would be best,’ he says shortly, his eyes still closed. ‘I got a knife in the arm last night, Stella, in case you’d forgotten.’
I kiss his forehead. ‘I’m so sorry, baby.’
‘I need you to be well, Stella. I need you to show Jackie that you can manage, so she stops worrying about you. All of this – it’s hard for me too, Stella. It really is. You’re not the only one suffering.’
‘It would help if you were here more.’
‘I’m working on it. You want to get in with me?’
He lifts the covers and I consider it, just for a second. Then an idea comes to me, as simple and sudden as an exclamation mark. ‘Actually I was going to go into town and get breakfast for us all.’
I kiss him gently on the temple, sweeping his hair away from his face to do so. He murmurs ‘You’re so good to me’, but already his eyes are closing and he is turning over.
As I stand I reach out and grab his phone from the table, quickly carrying it into the kitchen. I’m expecting it to be locked, but as I slide my finger across, it opens easily. I go straight to the phone book without hesitating, staring at the doorway to the front room as I do so, expecting any minute for Marco to walk through asking me what the hell I think I’m doing. I find the number on the second attempt (nothing under caretaker, so I looked under ‘Kennecker’) and write it on a tiny scrap of paper, which I fold and fold to the size of a postage stamp and tuck into my bra.
Chapter 22
I walk down to Tyrlaze, the sun warm and soft in the morning light. It is too early yet to call Mr Kennecker, but I have resolved to do so later today, and that buoys me a little. I am Taking Action. I am Normal. Overhead, a cornflower-blue sky laced with white clouds. I stop to take a picture of it and only as I am about to walk on do I realise where I am. I’m outside the chicken house, the one which looks as though it is about to collapse any minute. The woman, Penelope, is outside in the yard, watching me. She is wearing pearls and a red lace shawl and wellies thick with mud. She does not smile.
‘That of interest, is it? The sky?’
‘I think it looks beautiful.’
‘It’ll rain later. That’s a mackerel sky. Ask any fisherman, he’ll tell you.’
She reaches into the bucket, throwing grain for the chickens pecking about her feet.
We are silent for a moment. She is scrutinising me.
‘Saw you in the paper. Saw all of you, in fact. You didn’t look bad, you know. Hell, I’d have done the same at your age if the right man had asked me.’ She smiles slightly, drawing back her lips to reveal uneven, yellowing teeth. ‘Saw Marco arrived yesterday. Won’t be long now.’
Before I can ask her what she means she takes a step towards me, the bucket swinging at her hip. I back away a little, afraid.
‘He told you yet? About Ellie?’
I shake my head. ‘Who?’ I hear myself say. She laughs, dry and nasty, and turns away, walking back into the house.
When I get back to the cottage Jackie is walking in the garden with her hair wet, her phone lifted up towards the sky. She frowns at me as I walk past.
‘Can’t get a signal. I’ve only gone and brought Darren’s statins with me and left mine at home. His cholesterol will be through the roof by Sunday.’
She looks me up and down kindly and draws me to her in a bony hug I find surprisingly comforting.
‘Oh, darling. You’ve always been such a good girl. Your daddy used to say you were the apple of his pie. Do you remember how he always got it wrong?’
I nod.
‘He was so proud of you as Katie Marigold. He used to watch them all the time, although he never admitted it. Pretended it was junk.’
I nod. I remember that too. ‘Load of old rubbish,’ he’d say, ‘I don’t know why you put her through it, Marion.’ My mother, Marion, with her slantways smile, had only nodded and rubbed her fingers together – money – replying: ‘This is her university fund. Someone has to help her out, and we can’t rely on you.’
Of course by the time I’d got to university most of it had gone. The dogs and the horses and the slow spin of the fruit machines. My dad, with that line furrowed between his eyebrows.
Jackie follows me into the kitchen. I’d been to the deli and picked up fresh bread, bacon and freshly ground coffee. Jackie is still talking.
‘Marco suggested we go out for dinner tonight. We need to properly celebrate your engagement, for one thing. He’s done so much for you, been an absolute angel. And you need some food, you’re wasting away.’
‘I can’t, Jackie. Those pictures that got put in the paper. I’m so embarrassed.’
‘Nonsense. “Woman takes off clothes” is hardly news, is it? It’s your friend who should be embarrassed, the one who sold you out like that. She should hang her head in shame.’
‘Thank you, Jackie.’
‘It’s only a meal in town, love.’
‘For everything, I mean. Thank you for everything.’
I have to turn away from her because I am so close to tears, and I don’t want her to see me crying. I’m normal, remember? I need to act normal.
Inside, the knife has been washed and cleaned and put away, somewhere where I don’t have to look at it anymore. Marco is on his phone, reading the news.
‘I need you to look at these damp patches,’ I tell him, taking the milk out of the fridge. Marco doesn’t look up at me.
‘What are you talking about?’
‘In the hallway. You can’t miss them. They’re as big as I am.’
‘I haven’t noticed.’
‘Are you kidding?’
Now he looks up, blinking slowly. Shakes his head. I feel a throb of anxiety.
‘Marco, come and see. Put your phone down, come on!’
We walk through, and I look at the wall and back to Marco again. He is watching me levelly.
‘It was here. Frankie saw it too.’
‘It must have been a shadow, honey.’
He comes closer, placing the flat of his hands on the wall.
‘It’s cold, but not wet. Feel.’
I do, reluctantly. He’s right, of course. Cold but not wet. There is no musty smell of damp, no crumbling plaster. Even the spots about the doorframe which had appeared on my second night seem to have gone. I take him into the bedroom, but the walls are plain, unblemished. The lace curtain moves a little in the breeze.
‘I swear, Marco, I swear I’m not making this up.’
‘No one thinks you are, honey.’ He steps closer to me and touches my lips with his thumb. He speaks to me so quietly I am forced to lean in so I can hear what he says.
‘Do you know what happens when you’re under a lot of pressure? Something cracks. Inside you. Something cracks and sometimes what comes out is black and frightening and thick as molasses. But we’re fixing that, aren’t we?’
I think for a moment. Jackie is in the doorway, peering around the room with her bl
ue doll’s eyes.
‘I think someone’s been coming in here when I haven’t been around,’ I tell them after an uncomfortable silence. He looks up at me.
Jackie pulls a face. ‘I had that with a plumber once. Going through my knickers and my personals while I wasn’t in the house. We only found out when he’d left. He took all my Marks and Spencers but left the Ann Summers. Darren said it proves he was a pervert.’
‘Who?’ Marco asks.
‘What?’
‘Who is coming in here when you’re not around?’
‘I don’t know. I mean, I thought it was Frankie at first—’
‘I thought you liked him.’
‘I trusted him. I do, I do like him. I don’t know.’
Marco laughs a good, solid laugh. I’m feeling stupid now, in the bright morning sunlight. I’m tired and headachy. My whole body throbs, my jaw tight.
‘Honey, I can’t accuse him without proof.’
‘Things have been—’
‘Things have been what?’
‘Moved around,’ I finish lamely, and even as I say it I feel ridiculous.
‘Well,’ Jackie says brightly, ‘maybe we can dust for fingerprints?’
‘Or, or it could be Joey Fraser. I know he’s in Cornwall. What about the other caretaker—’
‘Mr Kennecker? Come on, Stella, he’s nearly eighty.’
‘You know I met him. His story about the hospital doesn’t match with what Frankie told us.’
‘You’re paranoid,’ I hear Marco say. I catch him right at that moment, tapping his finger against his temple and looking over at Jackie. Suddenly I am angry – furious, in fact. The way they’re both talking to me: softly, softly, like I am cracked bone china recently glued together. Frankie is the same, and even Heidi, the careful way she’d looked at me.
‘Come with me,’ I snap, and lead them to the sitting room, striding with a purpose I haven’t felt in weeks. I hand Marco the note and the photograph and watch him carefully for signs of recognition – a flare in the eyes or a breath quickly drawn. There is nothing. He looks at the picture blandly, almost without interest, turning it over in his hands before handing it to Jackie.
‘I don’t know what to say, babes. I don’t know who this is, and I don’t recognise the writing. It’s creepy though.’
Jackie actually performs a double take when she sees the poor woman in the photo, the swelling around her eyes, the dark and painful smudges on her skin.
‘It’s uncanny,’ she says, holding it up next to my face. ‘Marco, we have to call the police.’
Marco sighs. ‘I’ll talk to Frankie this afternoon. Maybe we can get some extra security up here – cameras or something.’
Jackie is nodding so violently it seems as though her head might fall off. ‘You know, I read about a family that discovered a man secretly living in their loft! He’d been there seven months before they found him! They caught him on security camera.’
‘Don’t give her ideas,’ Marco says, rolling his eyes.
They’re doing it again, talking about me as though I’m a baby. I slam my hand down so hard on the table that the cups rattle. Their heads snap up, eyes widen. Marco steps away from me, creating distance. He’s probably remembering the scratches I’d left on him, the imprints of my teeth on his skin. Am I dangerous? Where’s your muzzle, Katie Marigold? I’m suddenly frightened all over again.
Chapter 23
I escape upstairs and sit on the bed, arms folded, heart racing. Without the medication I feel plugged in, mobile. Every so often I get up and cross the room to the window, peering out of the curtains at the grey skies, the sea. Through the window I see Marco in the garden smoking a cigarette. I take the folded piece of paper from my bra and dial it into my phone quickly, before I lose my nerve. It is a landline. Kennecker’s phone rings only twice before it is picked up.
‘Hullo?’
‘Mr Kennecker, it’s Stella. We met the other day an—’
There is a click as he hangs up. I call back again, and there is no answer. I am sweating lightly, and when I see Marco coming back to the house, I get into bed and pull the covers up over my head, heart racing.
Marco comes into the bedroom about ten minutes later, and I pretend to be sleeping. I remain under the covers, keeping my eyes closed, my breathing steady. After a while I hear the front door close, Marco whistling for Blue and Jackie’s heels on the path. Finally, there is the sound of Sadie’s catlike engine as the car pulls away. Suddenly I am on my feet, running to the door and down the stairs, only knowing that I have to move. I have to be fast, and be home before Marco. I pull on my coat and trainers and tuck a scarf about my neck. Outside the day is chill, gloomy with the threat of rain. I start at a run down the narrow track, feeling weightless, only half knowing what I’m doing, half thinking. I need to be fast but more importantly, I need to be sure.
Once in town it takes me some time to find the little mews and even longer to work up the courage to knock on Jim Kennecker’s door. I am sweating. My legs tingle with exertion. There are sprays of mud up my calves and thighs. I knock and then knock again, impatient. My heart is thumping and I’m starting to wonder what the hell I’m doing. Suddenly the door is yanked open so hard it showers dust. I plant my hand on it to prevent him slamming it closed again.
‘Mr Kennecker, please don’t – don’t close the door. My name is Stella Wiseman and I need to know why you lied about being in hospital.’
Jim Kennecker blinks but at least he doesn’t look as he did the other day, morbidly afraid. I refuse to drop my eyes and so after a moment he opens the door wider and nods for me to come inside.
The workshop smells of sawdust, cedar and beeswax polish and it is immensely comforting. There is no warmth in his voice as he offers me a cup of tea which I turn down, and a seat which I accept. I tell him I do not have much time.
‘You gave me a fright the other day when I saw you.’
‘I know that. What I don’t know is why.’
‘Is Marco up there too? At the cottage?’
‘For the weekend. He’s working in London in the week, at least for the next few weeks.’
‘But you been on your own, haven’t you?’
I nod.
‘You notice anything up there, Stella? Anything odd or out of place?’
I swallow. I could tell him. I could tell him about the taps and the pools of dark water and the feeling that someone is following me from room to room, right on my heels, cold breath on my neck.
Jim Kennecker leans on his knuckles and looks me in the eye.
‘There’s a ghost in my house,’ I whisper.
He nods. ‘I won’t go up there no more. I’m done with it. It’s a bad place and bad things happened there.’
‘Is that why you lied?’
‘I don’t want to get blood on my hands.’
I open my mouth when I hear the crunch of tyres outside, and I think of Marco pulling up in his gleaming car. He is coming, I think, panicky, with his strong white teeth and long fingers he is coming. I have a sudden olfactory memory of cigar smoke and cooked pork, strong enough to make me double over. I tell Jim Kennecker I have to go.
The door opens. Frankie is standing there in his fur hat looking like a frontiersman, Blue by his side. He looks from me to Jim with genuine surprise.
‘Frankie,’ Jim says, straightening. ‘All right?’
‘Not really.’ Frankie is looking at me, his brows drawn. He looks puzzled. ‘Your fiancé just fired me.’
Chapter 24
The dark is creeping in as the weather gets colder. By four o’clock I can barely see the edges of the cliff or the apple trees at the end of the garden. I take a shower and dry my hair with my fingers, letting the extensions fall apart like cobwebs. My roots are showing through, dark as coffee. There are freckles on my skin, the imprints of summer.
When I come downstairs I find Jackie and Marco in the sitting room watching Marigold!; Jackie is soft-eyed, doughy-faced wi
th emotion. Marco has his hands planted on his knees, showing occasional flashes of teeth. I sit on the arm of the sofa and he looks up at me, his eyes soft and glittering. I recognise the episode immediately. It is one of the later ones: ‘Katie Marigold, Best in Show!’, in which I enter Frisky in a dog competition in order to win the prize money to pay off Daddy Marigold’s parking fine. Hilarity ensues.
‘Katie Marigold, this show is for pedigree dogs only. What breed is your dog?’
‘Sir, I don’t know what that means.’
‘What kind of dog is he?’
‘A bloody hound, sir.’
‘Do you mean bloodhound, Katie Marigold?’
‘No, sir! My daddy calls him a bloody hound, sir, ’specially when he’s mad.’
Audience laughter.
It has me cold. I am remembering again, in that tiny room (a caravan, a trailer), me and Joey Fraser, then thirteen years old. He was holding something away from me, out of my reach, and I was screaming and screaming.
‘You’re in trouble now, Joey,’ I was shouting, and his face was pale as milk. ‘You’re in big trouble.’
My skin had been burning, hot. Had he hurt me? He must have done. Where was my mother? Why had no one come to help me?
I shiver. Marco squeezes my leg.
‘You look beautiful,’ he tells me. But he isn’t looking at me. He’s looking at the screen.
The wind is rising, bringing with it a fine rain which laces everything with glitter. Overhead the moon is ringed with frost as I link my arm through Marco’s, and we walk towards the pub. I enjoy the bulk of him, his weight against me. With Jackie a little way ahead of us, he pulls me beneath a streetlight and kisses my cold lips. I lift my head as his hands move around to the back of my neck where the fine tendrils of hair are coiled. I flinch only a little as he brushes against a tender spot there, moving the tips of his fingers with exaggerated slowness over my shoulders until he finally pulls away.
