The Wayward Girls

by Amanda Mason

  By the time the book was published Lucy was in her teens, although she’d not been allowed to read the copy someone, Simon she supposed, had sent to her mother. That had gone straight into the bin.

  She had waited for over a year for it to appear in the local library, and had read it that first time in secret, a few pages at a time, only risking taking it from its hiding place when she was sure her mother was out of the house altogether.

  It had puzzled her at the time, the difference between what she remembered and what she read; she barely recognised any of the people in the book. Cathy seemed paler, less substantial, and they, the children, were artificial, flat and two-dimensional. No one sounded like themselves any more. It was like being in the newspapers, but worse, somehow. Permanent.

  And there was nothing about Joe, just a blurry photograph and a paragraph or two which had made it seem that he didn’t care about them at all. That had hurt, the way Simon had got rid of him, and Bee too. What had happened to her had been reduced to a footnote, and that seemed to be the worst thing of all.

  remarkable footage

  She can’t go through that again. None of them can.

  She won’t think about it. She should call Eloise, she should check her emails, but she can’t bring herself to move. She tilts her head back and closes her eyes. The farm is nothing to do with her, not any more, and she tries to focus on that. And whatever Cathy might think, the girl in her sketchbook has nothing to do with the farm either, nothing to do with Lucy, or with Bee.

  Something hard catches her on the shoulder, making her gasp, and she opens her eyes. Her first instinct is to look up at the house, but all the windows are firmly closed, blank and dull in the damp morning air.

  Lucy stands, scanning the ground, trying to ignore the faint, familiar crackling sensation in the air. It doesn’t take long to spot it. Nestled in the slick, wet grass is a small glass marble with a blue-green twist at its centre.

  After a long moment, she picks it up.

  It’s still warm.

  11

  Then

  The weekend had turned into a week, then two. Michael had taken up permanent residence in the Red Lion, but Simon, unable to afford such luxury indefinitely, had been reduced to borrowing a tent from one of Isobel’s friends. The two of them had pitched it a little way up the field behind the farm with much bad-tempered swearing and argument.

  The girls had been delighted with this development. They seemed to regard the field, and therefore the tent, as an extension of their own home and thought nothing of bringing their school books and sketchpads to show Simon two or three times a day. If he’d gone off on an errand for the professor, they would set up camp, waiting for him to return. Sometimes they’d feed him too, carrying up thick cheese and tomato sandwiches and mugs of sweet lukewarm tea. There were times when Simon wasn’t sure who was observing who.

  He sat on a faded red cushion, a recent gift from Loo, outside his tent, reading over his notes. The incident with the marbles hadn’t been repeated, much to the professor’s disappointment, although they had managed to record several incidences of the inexplicable knocking in the walls.

  All the usual reasons for the disturbances, which took place mostly at night, had been discounted. And over the past week or so everyone had been plagued by small items – pens, pencils, cigarette lighters – going missing. Sometimes these items would be found again, usually in the oddest of places – a Biro popping up in a mugful of toothbrushes, for instance, or a pencil in the cutlery drawer – but this wasn’t always the case; a few days ago, Isobel had lost a small mirror that had yet to be returned.

  According to the professor, they were dealing with a classic poltergeist manifestation and Simon knew he intended to stay on for another week or so to complete his observations, and to interview Joe when he got back. He’d been in touch with several members of the Society and had received a couple of lengthy letters from Roland Miskin, although he hadn’t seen fit to share their contents. For a while now Simon had been half-expecting to be replaced by someone more senior, more experienced, and he wondered how he might feel when that happened.

  He looked up from his notes and saw Isobel walking up the hill. He waved but made no move to go and meet her. He looked down at the professor’s work again – his work. Their scribbled notes transformed by his careful transcribing into something formal, official, lasting.

  ‘Hi.’ Isobel flopped down on the grass next to him.

  ‘Hi.’ He put his papers to one side.

  ‘What are we up to today, then?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Is Michael here?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You don’t know much, do you?’ Isobel lay back on the grass. As she stretched her arms above her head, the hem of her skirt lifted a little and her T-shirt rose, exposing a narrow slice of her pale white belly. Simon looked away.

  ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘So, is he falling for it, Simon? Are they the real thing?’ Isobel lay still with her eyes closed.

  ‘What do you think?’ he said.

  ‘Oh no, I asked first,’ she said. ‘Besides, I don’t have to believe, my opinion doesn’t count.’

  ‘It’s not a matter of opinion, it’s …’

  Evidence.

  ‘Poltergeist phenomena are often recorded around young girls,’ he said.

  ‘Really? So, what, this is all run-of-the-mill stuff, is it? Up there with acne and mood swings and puppy love.’

  ‘That’s not what I meant and you know it.’

  There were books in the tent, borrowed from the Society, containing accounts of similar cases, of unquiet spirits drawn to adolescent girls. When he couldn’t sleep, which was quite often, Simon read about them, these young women plagued by noise and chaos and confusion.

  ‘Well, enlighten me.’

  ‘Puberty is a time of change, of physical and emotional growth – it’s turbulent, it’s powerful. So the theory is that anyone experiencing it might well be more open to – well, to psychic phenomena.’

  ‘And that’s what we’ve got here, is it? Psychic phenomena.’

  In the distance a bird called softly and Simon wished Issy would sit up, so he could see her face, read her expression.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes, I think so.’

  Bee and Loo were lying in the grass a little further up the hill, spying on Simon and Issy. Behind them the dry stone wall cast a deep band of shadow over the rough ground. Loo rested her head on her arms, flattening herself against the sharp and scratchy grass as Isobel’s voice drifted over the field. Issy, she had noticed, always sounded as though she was laughing at Simon, even when she was saying the most ordinary things. Simon’s voice was harder to make out; it was lower and didn’t seem to carry so well. Bee nudged her.

  ‘Ow!’

  ‘Ssh!’

  ‘But it hurt.’

  ‘Don’t fall asleep.’

  But Loo couldn’t help it. It felt like months since she had last slept the whole night through with no noises to wake her, no hands tugging at her bedclothes, no pinching and nipping, no sudden shocks echoing through the house. And it was so hot. She closed her eyes and felt herself begin to drift again. Bee prodded her, her sharp fingernail digging between Loo’s ribs.

  ‘This is boring,’ she said. ‘They’re boring. Let’s go back to the house.’

  Bee didn’t usually find Simon boring. She was – Loo was fairly certain – as fascinated by him as she was, only Bee spent a lot of time pretending she wasn’t: rolling her eyes and looking away as he spoke, walking past him out of the room, tossing her hair over her shoulder, producing one-word answers if he ever stopped to pass the time of day. Someone who didn’t know her might think she didn’t care much about Simon at all; Loo knew better, though. She saw the way her sister looked at him. It was – she didn’t quite have the words for it – as if she was greedy for him.

  It was Issy Bee couldn’t stand to look at. ‘Come
on,’ she said.

  Loo didn’t really want to go. It would be much nicer to stay and listen to Simon, to close her eyes and fall asleep to the sound of him. Not that she would ever dare tell Bee that.

  Keeping as low as they could, the girls crawled down the hill, hidden by the fall of the land as it dipped to meet a ditch which ran alongside the dry stone wall. Behind them, Issy and Simon’s voices faded into the landscape. Even if they thought to look, neither would catch sight of them.

  It didn’t prove to be a satisfactory session. They started out in the living room, Michael in the armchair – his chair – and Simon sitting on the floor with the tape recorder. Cathy didn’t stay, she had lunch to make and there were Flor’s lessons to think of, but they left the door open and they could hear her moving around, talking to Flor and the baby in her singsong voice. Issy stood behind the sofa, out of sight of the girls, her camera clicking away – it was odd, Loo thought, how normal this all seemed these days, how everyone had so quickly got used to taking up the same position without any discussion.

  ‘So,’ Michael began, ‘did you sleep well?’

  ‘Not really.’

  The same questions every time, and always it was Bee who answered first.

  ‘Ah. What happened?’

  ‘It was noisy,’ said Bee. ‘Again.’

  ‘Lucia?’

  ‘Yes,’ Loo said. ‘It was banging on the walls.’

  ‘It?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So it’s one thing – not a person, but a – personality, perhaps?’

  ‘It doesn’t like us,’ said Bee. ‘It waits until we’re asleep and then it pulls the bedclothes off us.’

  ‘I don’t like it,’ said Loo.

  ‘I’m sure you don’t,’ said the professor and Simon glanced up, smiling sympathetically at her.

  ‘We don’t like it,’ said Bee.

  ‘Who is it, do you think?’ Michael had asked this before.

  ‘We told you,’ said Bee, ‘we don’t know.’

  ‘But it doesn’t like you? You said that.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So perhaps,’ said the professor, ‘it knows you. Do you think that might be possible?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ Bee said, slowly, as if she suspected some sort of trick.

  ‘It might even – be watching you?’

  ‘It might be watching you.’

  Bee’s answer made Michael smile, although Loo didn’t think it was so very funny. ‘What will happen when Joe comes back?’ he asked.

  ‘I dunno.’

  ‘Do you think everything will stop?’

  ‘No,’ said Bee.

  ‘Yes,’ said Loo.

  ‘Why?’ the professor asked.

  Loo wished she hadn’t said anything. She could feel Bee looking daggers at her. ‘He won’t like it,’ she said. ‘He’ll get rid of it.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I – I don’t know. He just will.’

  ‘Yes. Well,’ the professor consulted his notes, ‘I wondered if we might sit and wait quietly for a while this morning, just to see if our friend will make an appearance. Would that be all right?’

  That wouldn’t work; it hardly ever did. Their ‘friend’ mostly played tricks when their backs were turned, when everyone least expected it.

  ‘If you like,’ said Bee, settling back on the sofa.

  Loo never really knew what to do in these long silences; it seemed rude to stare at Michael or Simon, silly to close her eyes. Mostly, she settled for staring at the mantelpiece, watching the second hand on the clock tick round, trying not to fidget. It was nice, having their photos taken and everything, but this part was always boring.

  Lunch that day turned out to be bread and cheese and tomatoes, and because there were so many of them, they decided to take everything out into the garden. Issy bagged a place under the tree and Simon made sure to sit next to her. The girls, sent to fetch cushions from the living room, arrived last, and had to sit in the full glare of the sun, Bee finishing her food first and lying back on the parched grass, spreading out her arms and legs.

  The grown-ups talked about the weather and the drought and about when Michael and Simon would leave, and Isobel even let go of her camera as she ate.

  ‘I’m thirsty,’ Bee announced, eyes still shut, unmoving.

  ‘Well, you know where the kitchen tap is,’ said Cathy.

  ‘I’ll make some tea, shall I?’ said Isobel.

  ‘It’s too hot for tea,’ said Bee.

  ‘I’d like some,’ said Simon.

  ‘Cathy?’ Isobel was on her feet, brushing bits of grass from her legs.

  ‘Yes please. You know where everything is.’

  ‘I’ll help.’ Loo got up. ‘Can we have biscuits?’

  Issy filled the kettle and put it on to boil, then stood at the kitchen window, staring idly at everyone grouped under the tree. ‘That,’ she said, ‘makes a pleasing composition, don’t you think?’

  Loo joined her and looked. ‘Dunno,’ she said.

  Isobel rolled her eyes. ‘And you the daughter of an artist.’

  Loo looked again. ‘It’s all right, I suppose.’

  ‘Do you miss him, your dad?’

  Loo nodded, but she didn’t much want to talk about Joe, not with Issy, anyway, because it was hard to explain. Missing him was only the half of it. Sometimes she wondered if he’d ever come back.

  ‘When’s he due home?’

  ‘Dunno,’ Loo said. ‘Are you going to take a picture?’

  Isobel glanced down at her hands. She seemed mildly surprised not to see her camera there. ‘Can’t,’ she said.

  ‘I’ll fetch it for you, if you like.’ Loo went to the door. Maybe Issy would let her have a go.

  ‘Don’t bother. By the time you get back one of them will have moved, or will have noticed us. The moment will be gone.’ Issy smiled at her and appeared to be about to say something else when she stopped. She looked around the kitchen, frowning.

  Loo could hear it too. A faint scratching. Nails perhaps, maybe even claws scrabbling, worrying at the scullery door. ‘What’s that?’ she said. This was different, new.

  Issy, paler than ever, took a step backwards and shook her head. ‘I don’t know.’ She looked frightened, which might have been funny if Loo hadn’t felt it too, a prickly feeling all over her skin. ‘A cat,’ she said, but she sounded uncertain.

  It was still there, it sounded trapped.

  ‘But how?’

  ‘It could have wandered in,’ said Issy. ‘The kitchen door’s been open all morning.’

  The noise stopped, but that didn’t make things better. The silence was heavy, cold, despite the bright sun outside.

  ‘Shouldn’t we let it out, then?’ said Loo.

  ‘I suppose so.’ But neither of them moved. Outside in the garden, the warm summer afternoon carried on. One of the men asked a question, and Cathy answered. Flor was playing, making his stupid engine sounds, and a bee buzzed hesitantly around the window before vanishing.

  Loo waited for Isobel to move. She was the grown-up. But she didn’t.

  Loo licked her lips, wiped her hands on her skirt and crossed the room. She raised one hand to the old-fashioned iron latch, but instead of opening the scullery door, she laid her head gently against the wood and listened. She felt the sound this time, a deep thrumming that seemed to travel through the door and into her head, and if she concentrated, she thought, then maybe Issy would feel it too.

  ‘Don’t.’ In one movement Issy had pulled her back and opened the door.

  The scullery was empty.

  ‘It likes to play tricks, that’s what Michael says,’ said Loo, walking the full length of the narrow room. ‘There’s nothing here.’

  ‘Right.’ Isobel hovered near the doorway.

  ‘I can’t reach the biscuits,’ said Loo, looking at the top shelf. ‘Will you get them down?’

  Behind Isobel the kettle began to squeal.

  ‘Well, there’s not
hing here now,’ said Simon as he and Michael finished examining the scullery. Isobel had retrieved her camera and was blocking the doorway taking pictures as everyone else milled around the kitchen taking up too much room.

  ‘A scratching sound, you said?’ Michael was examining the back of the door.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘We thought it was a cat,’ said Loo, who knew Isobel had thought no such thing. ‘We were going to let it out.’

  Michael smiled down at her. ‘How very kind of you.’

  He led the way back into the kitchen and out again to the garden with Simon and the other grown-ups following. Bee and Loo hung back, Bee making a show of finding a glass and getting a drink of water until she was sure they’d all forgotten them. ‘Well,’ she said, putting the glass down on the kitchen table, and turning to the scullery, ‘let’s have a look.’

  The shelves were stacked with food, bags of flour and rice, bread, sacks of onions and potatoes, some tinned stuff too, jars and bottles, and all of it well out of reach. At the back underneath the single window were piles of old newspapers – not the ones with their pictures in, just ordinary out-of-date ones – some logs and bundles of kindling. The lower shelves held spare pots and pans, boxes of candles, washing powder and old plastic bowls. It was all exactly the same as it had ever been and Bee stood still, taking it all in. ‘Weird,’ she said, rapping her knuckles on the back of the door.

  ‘Don’t,’ said Loo.

  ‘Are you scared?’ Bee’s grin was wicked.

  ‘No. Course not.’ Loo wondered if Bee could feel it too, the funny crackling sensation in the air. ‘Can we go now?’

  ‘In a minute.’ Bee stepped back and craned her neck. ‘I reckon she’s got chocolate up there on the top shelf,’ she said.

  ‘So?’ Loo was edging back towards the door.

  ‘So they’re all out there, aren’t they? Busy.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Well, then.’

  Cathy kept an old stool wedged underneath the bottom shelf; it was a little low thing like the ones they used to have in the kids’ section of the library back in Leeds, and she needed it to reach the top shelf. Bee dragged it out and hopped onto it, then reached up to the top shelf and began feeling around. ‘I can’t,’ she said, going up onto her tiptoes. ‘Shit.’ She shifted her weight and the stool wobbled furiously.