by Heidi Perks
I don’t know what to say so I wait for her to continue.
‘No, actually I’m lying,’ she says. ‘I know very well what made me think of him. I saw this weird older kid at the boys’ rugby game. He was standing on the sidelines, just staring at the others. It reminded me of the way Danny used to do that.’
I pull at the paper napkin in front of me, tearing a little corner off and rolling it between my fingers.
‘Our brother freaked everyone out. I hated him for that …’ Her words trail off as if she’s no longer talking to anyone but herself. Bonnie pours soup into two bowls and brings them over to the table, going back for a loaf of bread and a knife.
‘You didn’t hate him,’ I say quietly as she sits down.
She widens her eyes at me. ‘I did. Since the moment he was born. I swear that was when everything changed – at least, that was when Mum started taking me to those stupid Stay and Play sessions on the mainland with the woman who used to try and make me talk.’
I open my mouth to ask about the sessions but Bonnie is already going on. ‘I could never believe you didn’t hate him. I never knew what you found to talk about when you both used to sit in that treehouse. You spent hours in that thing together.’
We did, but we’d never really talked. Instead we did our own things alongside each other, like little kids do before they learn how to play. Danny would draw while I read or played with my Barbie dolls.
‘Do you remember that time he fell out the tree and I thought he was dead?’ Bonnie says. ‘He didn’t move, he just laid there.’ She hangs her arms out to the side, her tongue lolling out of her mouth. She looks comical and it’s hard not to smile. ‘He’d been secretly watching Iona and me and the branch had snapped beneath that heaving body of his and he just plopped on the ground at our feet.’
‘Vaguely.’ Was that the time she’d been screaming at Mum in the kitchen about him?
‘I wished for him not to move for a moment, and then he did, and I wanted to kill him. He was always watching us. He embarrassed me so much,’ she says. ‘No one understood that boy.’
‘No one tried,’ I murmur.
‘As far back as I can remember he was always playing on his own, wheeling those cars of his round and round in the sand. I used to ask myself why they spent so much effort trying to work me out when anyone could see it was Danny who needed help.’
‘When did those sessions stop?’ I ask her. ‘The ones Mum took you to.’
‘Stay and Play?’ Bonnie shrugs and scoops up a spoonful of soup. ‘When I was about seven. I don’t know. Whenever it was that Mum suddenly whisked me out of there one day and said she didn’t need to know any more.’
‘Any more about what?’ I ask but I know Bonnie won’t go further. She tells me she doesn’t have any more answers, but I’m not sure if it’s the truth or if she simply doesn’t want to face them.
‘He only got worse as he got older,’ she says, turning the attention back on Danny. ‘That last summer he was a nightmare. You must remember the sleep-out at the beach?’
‘Of course I do.’ I had been there too when Danny was accused of grabbing one of the girls.
‘And the way he was with Iona,’ she murmurs. ‘He made it awkward for me. I was surprised she hung around as much as she did when Danny was there.’
‘He liked her,’ I say, ‘because she was so nice to him.’
Bonnie looks away, but not before I notice the tiniest flicker of a cloud passing over her face. ‘I went to Mum’s grave the other day,’ she says. ‘Did you put those flowers there?’
I sit back in the chair. I shouldn’t be surprised by Bonnie’s change of topic but she still manages to catch me off guard. I don’t bother answering when she knows I go every week and leave flowers.
‘She would have hated what’s happened, wouldn’t she?’
I nod, and in a way I’m glad she’s not here to see it.
‘Do you want coffee?’ Bonnie asks after we’ve finished lunch.
‘Please,’ I say as I help her tidy the plates.
‘You know it’s times like this when I could murder a glass of wine,’ she says, looking at me as she waits for a reaction.
‘Bonnie, I don’t know what you want me to say to that.’
‘Oh, come on, you’re the counsellor. If you can’t come up with something no one can.’
‘I counsel families whose relationships are in trouble. Not recovering alcoholics.’
‘Isn’t it all linked?’ she asks as she watches me carefully. When I don’t answer she says, ‘It’s not like I want to get drunk. I just get bored with coffee and tea.’ She turns and glares at the kettle. ‘How’s work going, anyway?’
‘It’s good,’ I say. ‘I’m really enjoying it.’
‘Any interesting clients?’
I laugh. ‘You know I can’t tell you.’
‘Oh, come on. Don’t I get any perks for being your sister? Just a little something, you don’t need to tell me names.’
‘No!’
‘You’re boring. I’d tell you.’
‘I don’t doubt it,’ I smile.
‘So, no men you like the look of?’
‘Bonnie!’
‘Seriously, how else do you think you’re going to meet someone? And some of them are in the perfect position – unhappy in their marriages. All you need to do is give them a nudge in the right direction.’
‘Well, there aren’t any I like anyway.’
‘Maybe you’re better off single.’ She pours hot coffee into mugs and we fall into a silence before she says, ‘Do you ever think about finding Danny?’
‘Of course I do, but I wouldn’t know where to start.’
‘Do you think Mum knew where he was?’
‘I can’t imagine she didn’t,’ I say, taking a mug. I’d always blamed Mum for letting him go. Even at twenty-two, Danny hadn’t been old enough to really fend for himself and I couldn’t understand how she’d allowed it.
That had been eighteen years ago and I’d wanted to scour the country looking for him. I’d imagined us finding him curled up, shivering on a dark street corner, and we’d pile him in the car and take him home where he belonged. But all Mum had said was, ‘I lost him a long time ago.’
She was right about that. Anyone could see how Danny had withdrawn even more since we’d left the island, only no one commented on the fact he hadn’t once picked up his pencils and drawing pad. ‘Maybe she kept in touch with him but never told us for some reason,’ I go on.
‘Why would she do that?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe he asked her not to.’
‘Why would he—’
‘I don’t know,’ I snap. ‘That’s the problem, isn’t it? We’ll never know.’
Bonnie nods and I wait for her to say something about Mum, but instead she says, ‘Do you think he’s still alive?’ She offers me a biscuit, grabbing one for herself and pushing it into her mouth as she looks at me expectantly.
‘God, Bonnie. What a thing to say.’
She shrugs and continues to watch me as she chews intently. ‘I think Mum probably did know where he was,’ she says finally, her voice much quieter. ‘I can’t imagine her never looking for him.’
That evening, while the news is still spilling out the same brief headlines, I finally pick up my iPad and scour the pictures that various websites are showing, poring over them in search of familiar faces.
I have always wondered what happened to the people I grew up around and who might still be on the island. Those who were once such a part of my life that I could never have imagined one without them. I zoom in close on a picture of a crowd near the police tent, studying their faces for a hint of recognition, but the more I enlarge the photo the more granulated it becomes. Despite this I trace my finger across the people until I stop. Standing a little further back, away from the huddle, is a woman I’m sure I recognise.
I click off the picture and open another and now I can clearly see it is Jill’s mothe
r, Ruth Taylor. She is standing alone by the café in a photo the press have captioned ‘The local village’. I study her face, its roundness, her mouth skewed as she stares at something out of the shot. She looks older, of course, her hair now completely grey.
So, they never left the island. For many reasons I’d always hoped Jill had.
I sigh as I return to the first photo and lean back. Every one of these people will have to answer questions in the next few days, and I’m sure that if the police don’t already know who the body belongs to, they soon will.
No one is able to set foot on or off the island without everyone else knowing about it. No one could have been buried under its earth without at least one of its residents knowing who it is.
Chapter Four
I used to beg Mum to take me back to Evergreen. I’d done so ever since the night we left right up to just before Danny had packed his bags and a year after Dad had gone.
‘We could still go back,’ I suggested over breakfast. ‘Dad was the one who made us leave and he’s not here now.’ Whatever level of truth there was in the reasons they gave us, it was clear it had been his decision for us to get on that ferry.
‘I don’t think so, Stella,’ Mum said.
‘I don’t understand why not. We were happy, we—’
‘The time isn’t right,’ she cut me off, eyes jerking towards Danny who was spooning Cornflakes into his mouth.
‘Danny was happy there,’ I persisted, annoyed she still wouldn’t consider it. ‘Weren’t you, Dan?’
My brother looked up but didn’t answer as he pushed his chair away, carried his bowl to the sink, and hurriedly left the kitchen. Mum had to see how miserable living in the city was making him.
‘You know he’d be happier,’ I told her. ‘At least say you’ll think about it.’
She muttered she would, but less than two weeks later, Danny left. One day he heaved a heavy rucksack on to his back and told me he was going. Mum stood by the gate as we watched him, her face pale and haunted. She wore the exact same expression she’d had when she’d picked up the phone to the hospital the first time Bonnie had been admitted: like her world had fallen apart.
Her arm stretched up as if she was trying to reach for him, but as far as I knew she never made any effort to stop him. After that I began to question how Mum could have let the others leave too. Throughout my childhood she’d been the one holding us together, but each time one of them walked out the door I felt the snap of my family breaking further.
After Danny, I gave up asking about Evergreen. My heart was no longer in it and, once Mum died, the thought of the island without her seemed impossible. But the news has dredged up memories and stirred emotions I’d all but forgotten and, for once, I envy Bonnie’s ability to paper over it with her usual detachment.
Sunday morning I call my sister early. More than twenty-four hours after the news and I’m still procrastinating over speaking to Dad. ‘They say the body is female,’ I tell her. ‘But I don’t understand how she’s never been reported missing. Surely someone noticed she’d disappeared.’ I pause. ‘We knew everyone on that island. I still can’t help thinking we know her.’
‘Like who? Tess Carlton?’ Bonnie says, plucking a name from nowhere. ‘One of the Smyth twins? You think one killed the other?’
‘Bonnie, that’s a dreadful thing to say.’
‘We’ll find out soon enough,’ she murmurs, already losing interest in what I want to dissect. My attention drifts to the TV. They are in the garden again, the cameras panning around it and the dark woods that lie beyond, thick with trees where the sun only catches the very top of them. They look ghostly from this angle. Most visitors steered clear of them, but as children we’d run through the woods to the parts the light didn’t reach without a moment’s pause and no one thought anything of it.
Somehow the cameras have managed to catch a menacing side to the woods and for a moment I see them how everyone else will too: like they are haunted.
When I hang up the phone to Bonnie I think of the girls I knew back then. We ranged in ages, many of which fell between mine and Bonnie’s: Tess Carlton, the daughter of my mother’s best friend; Emma Grey; Bonnie’s friend Iona; and of course Jill. Yet my memories of most of them are sketchy apart from Jill.
The last time I saw my friend was after Mum’s hurried attempts to tell me about the plan for us to leave the island. I wasn’t interested in the rental house in Winchester or the extra income from Dad’s new job and had raced to Jill’s house where she’d told me to meet her in our secret place in the clearing.
I hadn’t accounted for her dad following. It meant she had to whisper in my ear when she told me she couldn’t bear the thought of me leaving.
Tears flowed down our cheeks as her dad stepped nearer, telling her she needed to come back to the house. Now he was too close for me to ask her what was so important he couldn’t give me and my best friend some time together. But by then nothing Bob Taylor did surprised me.
I’d clutched on to Jill’s arms, searching her face as she trembled in my grip. ‘Don’t be scared,’ I said, hoping he wouldn’t hear. I chanced a look in his direction, but she was shaking her head at me. How I wished he would leave us so I could talk to her properly. ‘We’ll write to each other,’ I went on. ‘I’ll write first and send you my new address. Promise me you’ll write back?’
Jill nodded, her eyes glazed with tears she tried to blink away. ‘Promise. We’ll always be best friends.’
‘Blood sisters’ promise,’ I replied and we pressed our fingers together until her dad yelled at her and she finally pulled away. ‘I’ll miss you,’ I called out, my voice cracking with the weight of my pain.
‘I’ll miss you too,’ she cried back.
I kept my promise and wrote to Jill a week after we’d settled into the first house in Winchester. I rushed to the door every time the letterbox rattled. A week later I wrote again, begging her to write back, adding my address to the envelope, just in case she’d lost it the first time. I never once heard from her.
That afternoon the doorbell rings, rapidly followed by a loud knock.
‘Give me a chance,’ I mutter, putting my cup down, tea slopping over the rim and on to the coffee table. When I open the door two men are standing the other side, one tall with closely shaven hair, the other at least a head shorter.
‘Miss Stella Harvey?’ the taller one asks. ‘I’m PC Walton and this is my colleague, PC Killner. Nothing to worry about, we’d just like to talk to you about an incident you may have heard of on the news. We’re hoping we can come in and ask a few questions.’
‘I don’t understand,’ I say, shaking my head, but at the same time stepping aside so they can enter my narrow hallway. ‘Why do you want to ask me questions?’
‘We’re talking to everyone who’s lived on Evergreen, but like I said, it’s nothing to worry about,’ he assures me as they both walk forward and stop at the point where you can either go left into my small kitchen or right into the living room.
I gesture to the latter where there’s more room for us to sit but don’t think to offer them a drink as I perch awkwardly on the edge of Mum’s old rocking chair. ‘I lived there a long time ago,’ I say. ‘We left in 1993.’
PC Killner nods as he pulls out a notebook and clicks a pen. He traces his finger along his notes and then looks up at me. ‘And could you confirm when you moved there, Miss Harvey?’
‘I was born there,’ I tell him. ‘In 1982. My parents arrived in …’ I pause and think back. ‘It was ’76 or ’77. My sister was a baby.’
He nods again and glances down.
‘Why?’ I ask, shuffling forward until I’m nearly falling off the edge of the chair. ‘I mean, it was so long ago, I don’t understand how this could help you.’
Walton smiles. ‘Routine procedure.’
‘But it was ages ago,’ I repeat, trying to work out what it means. Do they think the body has been there years? Do they want to talk to me becaus
e I was living there at the time it was buried?
‘I know.’ He smiles again. ‘And we realise you were young when you left, Miss Harvey, but we’d like to gather some information and then we’ll be on our way. I don’t intend taking up much of your time.’
I purse my lips, pushing myself back until I can feel a small cushion pressing into the base of my spine. My heart flutters, threatening to race, but Walton’s smile seems genuinely warm and I remind myself there’s nothing I know about the body.
He asks me to confirm who I lived with and where, and I tell him that along with Mum, Dad, Bonnie and Danny, I lived in the Quay House. My heart skips a beat at the thought he might have already spoken to Bonnie, but again I tell myself there’s nothing she can add. We’ll only be giving them the same information.
Regardless, having two policemen in my living room is making me on edge and I try relaxing my shoulders and loosening my jaw. Will the policemen be watching my mannerisms the same way I do my new clients, or are they purely interested in gathering facts and moving on?
‘Who were your closest neighbours?’ Walton asks.
‘We didn’t really have neighbours,’ I tell him, explaining how the Quay House sat at the end of the jetty away from any other houses. Killner turns over his sheet and looks at what appears to be a map of the island. I can’t help but strain to get a better look at it.
‘To the left you have the Pines pub?’ He peers up at me.
I nod. ‘That was where my friend Jill Taylor lived with her mum and dad. Ruth and Bob,’ I add when they look as if they are both waiting. ‘I don’t know if they’re still in the same house.’
Killner gives me a thin smile and I realise it doesn’t matter what I know because they already know more. ‘And on the other side is the village,’ he is saying. ‘Perhaps you could confirm who lived in the closest terraces to you?’
I think back to the rows of small houses that backed on to a cluster of shops. Calling it a village is an overstatement, but it was a central hub, a place where the adults caught up and bought essentials. ‘The doctor always lived in the end terrace nearest us,’ I say, ‘but there were a few different doctors in the years I lived there.’
