Borrowed Moonlight

by Helen Slavin

  “It’s on the delivery slip.” Vanessa glanced down at the tablet she’d just squiggled her signature over.

  “No, you’re Hettie Way’s girl.” There was a hint of awe replacing the fear. Vanessa did not often cause this reaction in people because, as a general rule, she stayed out of Woodcastle. “Your mam was the Gamekeeper at Havoc Wood,” he informed her. Vanessa struggled not to feign surprise at the news. The lorry driver looked at the tea and the cake plate littered with crumbs, his expression questioning whether he might have been poisoned.

  “You’re not living at Havoc then? Not in the old cottage?” He looked around at the clinically bare kitchen.

  “No, my daughters are the Gamekeepers.” She had not said it aloud before, and a small bell tolled in her head, a mournful sound. It was a huge task they had inherited.

  “Oh, right.” The driver looked awkward, in schoolboy fashion.

  “So. Thanks for the skip. I’ll see you again in a couple of days when it’s full?” Vanessa asked. She swiped at her own tablet, checking the calendar for the date she’d booked the return of the loaded skip. “You’ll know the way next time,” she smiled.

  “Oh. Yes. Right.” He set off towards the door. “Right. Yes.” He hesitated. “How’re they liking it there then, settling in?”

  Vanessa smiled and nodded.

  “Yes. They pretty much grew up there.”

  “Yeah. I remember. Your Anna was in my class at Brabazon school.” He nodded and jabbed his hand forward. Vanessa took it, shook it. They were both sombre.

  “I’ve given the wrong impression. My gran would be pissed off at me. She had a lot of respect for your mam. Lot of respect.” He ceased shaking her hand at last and shifted into a sort of salute of farewell.

  “See you next week,” he said in a lighter tone, as he hefted himself back into the cab of his lorry. Vanessa looked at the skip. There was no putting it off now, so she turned to open the garage door.

  The hoard of belongings was a mixed bag. There were many items from Way Towers, bags of the girls’ old clothes and teenage clutter. There were flatpack wardrobes that yawed easily into the skip. Vanessa pushed on through it all, not stopping to hold up an old stuffed giraffe and reminisce about ‘old, erm…giraffey?’. There was no time and no more room for holding onto things.

  The Way Towers stuff was quickly despatched, a lifetime collection of crap barely seeming to make much of a dent in the belly of the skip. It was only as the last of those bin bags was slung out that she was confronted by the last few bits of her mother’s belongings.

  Anna would want that chair. The rest was the terrible bags of clothing, and Vanessa slung those out, quickly followed by a rickety bookcase to weigh them down. That done, there was just the chunky oak drop-leaf table already rejected by the girls.

  “It pinches your fingers,” Charlie had explained, and so it gathered dust in Vanessa’s garage.

  It pinched her fingers as she dragged it onto the drive, the small hinges proving vicious metallic teeth. She loaded it onto the wheelbarrow and rolled it up the planks. As it landed, the drop leaf snapped off leaving splinters and shaves of wood.

  Nearly there. What was left? There was that odd, stumpy little chest of drawers at the very back.

  It had been her mother’s and it was not pretty. The girls had not taken it back to Cob Cottage after their abortive ‘holiday let’ scheme.

  “The drawers always stick,” Emz had said. Vanessa tested her theory and tugged the top left-hand drawer of the two-over-three-under configuration. The drawer opened with a squeak and there was nothing inside. She might as well check the other drawers just in case. It wouldn’t do to send it to the charity shop loaded with her mother’s old bank statements or stray underwear.

  The other top drawer squeaked even more, though the long drawer beneath was quick enough and bare enough. Vanessa pulled open the next drawer down with no problems. The final, bottom drawer, however, refused to budge. Or, rather more disconcertingly, it budged about an inch and a half, far enough for her to see that there was something inside, a box of some kind, before the drawer grazed shut.

  Vanessa held her breath. Had it shut itself? Or was it just stiff? She grasped the mismatched glass knobs again and pulled the drawer. Again, it slithered an inch and a half before snapping back from her grip. Vanessa looked at the drawers for a moment and was aware that, on some level, the drawers were looking back. This piece of furniture might choose its rightful owner.

  Vanessa had texted Charlie first, hoping she might pop in on her lunchbreak. Now they were both in the garage.

  “Nope.” Charlie was down on her haunches peering at the drawer. “It’s like it’s on a spring or something. Might be catching on something inside.”

  She tugged the drawer open again and was about to put her fingers inside to check for obstructions.

  “No.” Vanessa grabbed her hand just as the drawer clipped shut.

  “Alright Mum,” Charlie snapped, unaware of the danger she’d just escaped. “I’m not three.” She glanced towards the skip. “Why are you bothering about it? Isn’t it going in the skip?”

  “Yes, it is,” Vanessa lied.

  “Need a hand getting it in?” Charlie surveyed the wheelbarrow and the distance between the garage and the planks ramping up to the skip. “I can load it onto the barrow…”

  “Er. No. Don’t worry. I’ll do it later.” Vanessa fobbed it off. Charlie shrugged.

  “Okay. If you need help later just text me.” Charlie looked restive and unhappy.

  “Alright, I will. Everything alright with you?” Vanessa probed. Charlie brushed it aside.

  “Yeah. Fine. Usual Havoc stuff.”

  “Tea?”

  “No. Sorry. No time.” Charlie gave her a farewell hug, and Vanessa watched her car disappear down the hill.

  An hour or so later it was Emz and Vanessa who were staring at the odd little chest. It looked darker. If Vanessa had not known better, she might have thought that…

  “It looks like it’s frowning,” Emz said with a short laugh. “Those top two drawers are like grumpy eyebrows.” She tugged at the left-hand drawer which whipped out so fast that Emz stumbled backwards. “I don’t remember this from when we were kids.” Emz said, attempting to slide it back. It resisted, the wood squeaking and creaking and then suddenly skidding into place so that Emz tripped forward.

  “Maybe just leave it. There’s nothing in there anyway.” Vanessa was feeling edgy about the little piece and its odd energy.

  “No, we can’t not look,” Emz grinned. “I mean, it’s not just to make sure there’s no treasure map or old knickers in there, it’s just being plain nosey.” She laughed and reached for the first of the long, bottom drawers.

  It was stubborn. The glass knobs seemed greased and Emz struggled to get a grip. When finally she did, and yanked the drawer forward, it protested with a sound like an operatic cat. The middle drawer slid in and out with an oiled swiftness, catching Emz on the knees as it did so. The bottom drawer was defiant. After a great deal of effort Emz dragged it open a finger’s width wide.

  “Oh!” she gasped. “There’s something in here… I heard it slide.” She put her face to the small, shadowed gap. The chest of drawers made a faint wooden rasping sound that alarmed Vanessa.

  “Be careful.” She reached for Emz’s shoulder to pull her back.

  Emz leaned closer still, her nose touching the beeswaxed wood. She turned her head, this way, that, trying to peer in. “There’s definitely something in—”

  She straightened and reached her fingers down into the darkness of the bottom drawer. As she did so, the top drawer slid open, clipping her hard on the brow bone. Emz fell back, and the bottom drawer slid silently closed. Tight.

  “It doesn’t like me,” Emz decreed. Vanessa slid the top drawer back into place, the wood giving a satisfied clunk as she did so.

  Later still and it was Vanessa and Anna who were standing in the garage.

  “
I thought I’d give you first dibs on the footstool.” Vanessa flipped up the lid on the stout, boxy bit of furniture. “It’s got the storage bit, remember?”

  Anna liked it but struggled to recall its place in Cob Cottage.

  “Did she get this from Mrs Massey?” Anna traced her hand over the cross-stitched upholstery of the rectangular seat. The carved legs drew her gaze.

  “Oh, that’s a possibility.” Vanessa had not thought about Mrs Massey.

  “This was in her room. I remember. Sitting under the window. Yes, yes I’d love to take it.” Anna was feeling animated by the designs of flora and fauna carved and stitched into the piece. “What else did you say there was?” Anna looked up.

  Vanessa noticed that the stumpy little chest of drawers now looked honey gold in the afternoon sunlight and that the same sunlight caught in the mismatched glass knobs and refracted into small kaleidoscopes of colour.

  “You’re not throwing this in the skip?” Anna was outraged, and in this light Vanessa was beginning to doubt her own sanity regarding this funny little chest.

  “It looked a bit… well… shit, earlier.”

  Sun-basked, it was transformed into a thing of beauty. Anna’s hand smoothed over the grain of the wood.

  “I’ll have this. It can go in my room.”

  “There’s just a bit of a problem with the bottom drawer…” Vanessa advised.

  “Oh? Nothing a bit of candlewax won’t fix,” Anna said, and at her touch the bottom drawer slid gracefully open. Vanessa held her breath. Inside, a small cigar box slid backwards into the rear of the drawer.

  “There’s something in here.” Anna reached for the cigar box. It was brightly coloured in earthy, ochre tones splashed with teal and a burnt looking red. Anna smoothed her hand over the scenes of ships and palm trees that graced the lid.

  “Oooh, lovely box. I don’t remember seeing it before.” Anna opened it. Inside was a small deck of cards bound together with the kind of thick elastic band preferred by postmen. She paused.

  “Cards?” her mother said. “Don’t recall Mum ever bothering with…” She was stopped by the expression on Anna’s face.

  “It’s the Paper Prophets.” Anna’s tone was hushed.

  “The what?” Vanessa felt her neck prickle. She noted that Anna did not touch the deck. There was a lovely scent of cigar, of jam and cream and warm scones.

  “Mrs Massey always kept them in her pocket. In that linen apron she always wore.” Anna stared at the deck. Vanessa remembered the apron, but she had not been privy to knowledge of the Paper Prophets themselves.

  “What do you want to do with them?” Vanessa asked. “Whizz them in the skip? There aren’t many, not a complete deck.”

  “They’re not playing cards.” Vanessa heard the reverential tone in Anna’s voice.

  “Oh. Okay.” Vanessa understood.

  “You couldn’t open the drawer?” Anna asked. Her mother shook her head.

  “Nope, neither could Emz or Charlie.” She watched as a glimmer of excitement flickered over Anna’s face. It had been a long time since Vanessa had seen her daughter look anything other than sad or anxious. She slid the drawer back as Anna shut the lid on the cigar box and held it close.

  “How about some tea?” Vanessa asked and, without waiting for an answer, headed into the house.

  Vanessa had brewed a pot of tea and microwaved more of Anna’s banana and chocolate cake before Anna entered the kitchen. She looked flushed and bright and held tight to the cigar box with her left hand. When she took up her seat at the breakfast bar, the cigar box rested, not on the granite worktop, but on her lap, with her palm placed on the top of it.

  “We could give Emz a ring. Maybe get Winn over here with the Land Rover or get Charlie to borrow the Drawbridge van. We can load up and get the chest and stool over to Cob Cottage.”

  Anna nodded, a fresh smile radiating, if not happiness, then, Vanessa crossed her fingers, something hopeful.

  21

  Truth and Lies

  Emz had not slept well last night. She was tired from the mental effort expended by the recurring deer dream. Once again, she had felt that sense of pursuit, but the predator was just out of sight. It was frustrating, and she found her mind was racing along the tracks the deer had taken her along.

  She’d been sleeping, as was her habit, in Grandma Hettie’s old black waxed raincoat. Emz had asked herself the question whether that raincoat might be protection, and the idea of a kind of black waxed armour surfaced with a mental pop.

  She’d been disturbed enough to rise early and do a swift patrol of the east side of Pike Lake, picking up the trail and finding it led to a spot by the water where, when she looked out, there seemed to be a memory trying to surface but sinking just out of reach. She let the dream deer bob onwards on its path, and her own footsteps followed.

  There was nothing out of the ordinary. No poisoned apples. No lost seamstresses to hint at danger or problems. Nothing stepped out of Havoc, save for a squirrel or two and a flurry of long-tailed tits, a buzzard circling overhead. No horse. No hoofprints.

  Back at Cob Cottage Anna was just leaving.

  “Need a lift? I can roll round that way.”

  Emz usually walked to school, but just lately one or other of her sisters had been troubled and needed the distraction of a detour and so, once again, Emz accepted the ride.

  She was dropped off in the car park, on time for once, and so found that the sixth form common room was full and loud with chatter.

  The second she entered the space it was like an electrical current, the energy as unpleasant a sensation as a fork in a plug socket. This, Emz recalled, was why she tried to avoid the place.

  Her usual remedy was to shut out the negative energy by pulling out a book, but today the pages of Wildwood became strewn with the litter of other people’s thoughts, the strands of chatter nagging at her. When she looked up, her heart lurched. Above the room was a web of black lines spinning and stretching like a web. She’d seen this before, at the terrible party at Tasha’s house. The fibres of it hummed with a low-key drone. Emz tried looking back into the pages of her book, but the web and the sound it made would not be ignored. She began to tune into the conversations.

  “…wrong. You’re wrong.”

  “No. No, it was worse. I heard it was worse.”

  “He did not.”

  “From the car. Just kicked her out into the road.”

  “Into the road?”

  “Left her.”

  “Left her there and then.”

  The web was vibrating around her. There was a message. Something was wrong, but she couldn’t work it out. A feeling of panic crushed her. Phones clicked, screens were swiped. Emz realised she’d left her phone charging on the sideboard at Cob Cottage. The web was inescapable. Emz could hardly breathe, and there was nothing for it but to physically exit the building.

  She was on the stairs as Mia and Katie were walking up. Emz was dismayed to see that the web was winding around them, black fibres connecting their mouths. There was a look exchanged between them, and, at once, Emz felt the sting of it, that it related, in some way, to her.

  “Hey.” Mia greeted her with an unwelcome expression of smugness. Emz, without thinking, glanced full at her, her Strength sliding the girl’s everyday face to one side to reveal her real face, the one that showed her true self. It was a babyish, peevish tantrum of a thing. Katie’s real face was small and pinched and vain. Emz ought to have felt surprise at this revelation but, in truth, this was how she’d always felt about these two girls. It was a strong sensation, too strong. She tried to switch off her Strength and failed. The web trembled, and her Strength was a white-hot piece of charcoal in her chest. The girls whispered together. Emz, unable to catch what they said, was using everything to focus on the charcoal inside her and keep it under control. She hurried past them.

  “Where are you going?” Mia asked. Emz picked up her tone — what was it these girls thought they knew? Sh
e glanced at the web. Something was very wrong.

  “History.” Emz did not bother with a fake smile, or even to stop. She had reached the last step.

  “Not going to see Logan Boyle?” Mia pushed. Emz saw where the web shuddered and halted.

  “No, I haven’t seen him. Are you looking for him?” Her heart was beating fast. The charcoal of her Strength was fierce. She felt the alteration in its energy. Why would they think she was going to see Logan? It didn’t make any sense. Her heart stalled. Had Caitlin or Mark stirred up some rumour about that stupid night at the summerhouse? It was not beyond either of them.

  “No,” Mia snorted. “Thought you might be going to see him.”

  “I don’t get it.” Emz was strong, staring them down. “Why would I see him? Logan doesn’t do History.”

  “He is history,” sniggered Katie, looking smug.

  “What are you on about?”

  “Logan.” Mia’s eyes widened at the obvious gap in Emz’s knowledge, at the pleasure she was going to get from telling her.

  “What about Logan?” The white heat of her Strength glowed like starlight.

  “He’s been arrested.” Katie’s tone was glib. Emz was silent; the web vibrated around their mouths with a deep and unpleasant hum.

  “No. He’s not been arrested. He’s ‘helping police with their enquiries’,” Mia clarified.

  “Whatever.” Katie was snarky. “He’s at the police station either way.”

  “They’re questioning him.” Mia pushed the point home. Nothing like this had ever happened to Emz before. She could not feel the edges of her Strength.

  “Questioning him? What?” Emz stared at them. “Why? What did he do?”

  “He tried to rape Caitlin.” Mia, having pulled the pin on this verbal grenade, walked off up the stairs, Katie trotting quickly behind.

  A door at the far end of the corridor banged closed like a gunshot.