by Amanda Mason
‘What will you do now?’ she asked.
‘I’m not sure. I’m heading back to London once my car’s fixed and we’ll probably come back for, well, if there’s an inquest.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Then, I don’t know. Try university again, perhaps.’
‘Something safe, with lots of books.’
‘I suppose so. What about you?’
‘I’ll go back to work: golden weddings and cricket matches. Small-town stuff.’
They would all leave in a little while. Once Simon was ready, they’d collect Olivia from the pub, drive her and the professor to Whitby, and Issy would say her goodbyes. The paper would cover this story, no doubt, reusing her old shots, perhaps, and she would do her best to stay out of the way, if she could, while she looked for another job.
‘We could catch up, when I come back, if you like,’ Simon said.
‘Yes, I’d like that,’ said Issy, knowing that if she was still here when he returned she would be busy.
‘Good.’ Simon put the folder carefully to one side and they sat quietly for a while, not speaking as they looked across the valley, watching the clouds roll in across the darkening sky, waiting for the rain to fall.
37
Now/Then
They listen to the radio for a while, a station Sarah’s not that fond of, to tell the truth, but she’s sort of got used to it in the time she’s worked at Blue Jacket House.
‘I like your ring,’ says Cathy and Sarah looks down at her hand. The engagement ring has been there just long enough for her to get used to it, but not so long that she doesn’t still feel a secret rush of joy when it catches her eye.
‘Thanks,’ she says. She’s pretty sure she showed Cathy when she first got engaged, she’s fairly certain she showed everyone at work, staff and residents alike. But she’s used to her being a little forgetful.
‘I wish you every happiness,’ says Cathy, looking down at her own hands. ‘It can be so wonderful, being in love.’
‘Like you were with Joe?’
‘At first,’ says Cathy. ‘For a little while, anyway.’
Sarah hopes she’s not going to try to warn her off marriage. ‘Then what happened?’ she asks.
Cathy closes her eyes. ‘He couldn’t stand it, after a while, me, the children, me, all of us. He couldn’t settle, couldn’t work. So he took a job. I told them he was teaching, painting – he wasn’t of course, he was labouring on a building site, like he used to do when we were students. We needed the money, that’s what he said. But that’s when it all started, all the – trouble. We had parted badly, there was an argument – in his studio – and I did, said, some foolish things. I picked up a knife, threatened to damage a painting. I was being childish. But we’d quarrelled before, I’d said worse, done worse, and so had he; I thought we would make it up. I thought there would be time.’
She’s very still and Sarah wonders if she should suggest getting ready for bed.
‘I should have been – kinder – I think. He was a wonderful painter, you know,’ says Cathy. ‘And he came back, when we lost Bee, he came back for a while.’ Her eyes fill with tears and she brushes them away, impatient. ‘We divorced when Lucia was about thirteen. He died ten years ago.’
‘I’m sorry,’ says Sarah, and she wonders if she should ring Lucy Frankland.
I think my mother will need some company tonight. I don’t want her to be alone.
‘Have you ever seen her?’ Cathy asks, abruptly. ‘The girl in the garden?’
‘I’m not sure,’ Sarah says, hoping Cathy won’t ask any more questions about the barefoot girl. Mrs Wyn Jones would not be happy about that conversation. ‘I don’t think anyone’s seen her, since, you know, your accident – but I’m not sure.’
‘No, nor am I.’
The loft is smaller than Lucy remembers, of course. The roof is lower, and is pitched more steeply into the darkened corners. At the far end the double doors have been pulled open, revealing a view of the distant valley and the cloudy night sky.
She takes a single, careful step away from the ladder and a floorboard gives a little under her weight. Dry rot, Dan had always insisted. ‘It’s not safe,’ he’d say in his mock-serious voice, conjuring images of bony ankles snapping and splintering like twigs. ‘You’d be better off back at the house.’
As far as she can tell, the loft is empty.
‘Hello?’ She makes her way towards the open doors, moving cautiously, not so much from a fear of falling, but because there’s a part of her that’s no longer sure she’d be able to resist the temptation to jump.
She puts her hand on the bolt, grips it firmly and risks a look to the ground below, but it’s too dark to see anything. She steps back again. She sits down carefully, pressing her back against the wood, and then she can feel it – the energy, the charge as she has come to think of it, humming inside the wood, building again. She closes her eyes and waits.
There are voices below, a thump as Hal or Nina smacks something against the door, the rattle of the hinges floating up into the loft.
A car slowing to pass through the village.
There’s a chill in the air and an insistent buzzing starts to fill her head. She feels dizzy still, sick.
‘Lewis, can you hear me?’
‘’Course.’
Hal kneels down next to Lewis. He should check his pulse again or something, for all the good it will do; he’s not used to feeling helpless. Lewis is alarmingly pale and he has a distant look in his eyes as if he wants to go elsewhere. ‘We’re going to find a way out and then we’ll get you to hospital,’ Hal says.
‘Yeah, right.’ Lewis glances down at his leg, the wrongness of it bulging under Lucy’s coat, and looks hastily away.
‘Look at me, Lew,’ says Hal. The last thing he wants is for the poor bloke to throw up or, worse, pass out.
‘I’m fine,’ says Lewis. ‘Go and help Nina.’
Hal breathes. ‘Yeah,’ he says, getting to his feet. ‘Just, stay awake, all right?’
They’ve had to give up on the door for the moment. If he didn’t know better, he’d think the bloody thing had been locked on them. But there are windows running either side of the building; they’re small, but he’s pretty sure one of them could get through. He can hear Nina at the back of the building, shifting stuff out of the way. He picks up his torch, flicks the switch off and on again and it comes back to life, casting a pale beam through the dark. He can’t rely on it of course, but it’s better than nothing.
‘Nina?’
‘Here.’
He finds her creating clouds of dust as she drags an old cement bag across the floor.
‘Up there, I think,’ she says. He turns his torch on the window, set at about head height. Like all the others it’s shut, but the latch hangs loose and the panes of glass are rattling in their frames. Nina drops the bag on the floor, sending up more dust. ‘It was open this afternoon. If I can just get up …’ She unwraps her scarf and undoes her coat, fumbling in her jeans pocket for a tissue to cough into. ‘There’s another bag in the corner.’
‘You OK?’
‘Yeah, it’s the dust, that’s all.’
‘And Lucy?’ He looks up at the loft. ‘Do you think she’s OK?’
‘I hope so.’
She pulls her coat off and throws it into the corner. ‘Give us a hand, will you?’
They drop the second bag on top of the first and it’s just high enough for Nina to boost herself onto the deep window ledge.
‘Fuck.’
‘You all right?’
‘There’s no fucking room.’ She’s balancing on her knees and he can hear her pulling at the window latch. She fills up the whole space and even if she can open the window, he doubts that she can pull it back and manoeuvre her way through.
‘Let me try,’ he says.
‘You won’t fit … oh …’ Without warning she pushes herself backwards. ‘Fuck it, the bloody thing’s stuck,’ she says as she land
s clumsily on the cement bags. ‘We’ll have to smash it open.’
Lucy can feel someone moving across the floor and she tries to let her in, her soft tread, back and forth, back and forth. Her bare feet pressing down on the dusty boards, and her face – she’d never been able to give Tib a face. She slows her breathing, tries to control the rising nausea, tries to call the girl out of the shadows.
With a final kick, Hal forces himself through the window. He has to go headfirst in the end, once they smash it with an old broom they find. It isn’t that bad, his jeans and sweater have protected him from the worst of it, although his hands are scratched. Falling into the dark, he manages to wind himself and he lies on the grass for a moment, profoundly grateful to be out of that place.
‘Hal?’ Nina’s voice is muffled by the thick stone walls.
‘Yes. I’m here.’ He stands, fumbling in his pocket for his phone. The moon is bright enough to see by, and he makes his way along the side of the barn to the front. He treads carefully; it wouldn’t do to fall now. There’s still no signal. He could drive into the village for help, he supposes; it would only take a few minutes and it would get him further away from the barn, which is a very appealing idea, but he should check the door first. Just in case.
Nina can hear him on the other side.
‘… stuck … the bolt’s loose, but I can’t …’
‘Ambulance, Hal, just get a signal and ring an ambulance. Hal?’
He doesn’t answer, but the silence that follows convinces her that he’s gone away to do exactly that. She hopes so. All she can do is go back to Lewis, who is trembling under Lucy’s coat. Shock, she supposes. ‘Not long now,’ she says.
‘No. Not long,’ says Lewis. ‘Poor old Loo.’
‘Lewis?’
His head falls forward, and she reaches out to steady him.
‘Lew? Can you hear me?’
His hand shoots out from under the coat, gripping Nina’s arm fiercely. ‘No,’ he says. ‘Don’t go.’
‘I’m sorry, Lew. I have to.’
‘Why?’
She doesn’t know what to say.
‘You can tell me, you know,’ says Lewis. ‘You can trust me.’
But it’s beyond her, there’s too much to say.
‘Oh God, Lew.’
I’m so sorry.
‘Don’t go.’
Above them the floorboards creak and bulge, dust trickling down onto the two of them before settling again, silent.
‘I think I have to,’ she says. ‘Lewis?’
But his eyes have closed. Nina gently frees herself from his hand and once she’s sure she can detect faint but regular breathing, she covers him with Lucy’s coat again and heads towards the ladder.
Hal can’t understand why the door is stuck. He’s put his back into it, lifting and pulling, his feet slipping in the mud. He can see the grooves the door has worn in the ground through the years, curving parallel lines scored into the long grass, and he’s tried its twin, the left-hand door, the one no one seems to use, but he can’t move it. What he needs is something to force it.
He runs back to his car, avoiding the shortcut through the garden, around the house, heading instead across the field to the road. He has a vague idea that he might flag down a passing car, fetch help that way.
He gets to the car, opens the boot, and begins to rummage through the random tools that have collected there over the years. Eventually he finds a crowbar – God knows why it’s there in the first place, but it should do the job.
He stops and checks his phone again; he could ring and wait for an ambulance here.
He doesn’t have to go back at all, not really. He could get in the car and drive away. Get to the pub and ring from there. He’s standing with his hand on the door, car keys in his hand. Every instinct telling him to run.
It had been awkward, clambering up the ladder without dropping the camera, trying not to make a noise and Nina felt a bit bad about Lewis. But she wasn’t doing him any good holding his hand downstairs.
She’d had to place the Sony on the floor when she got to the top, climbing carefully up onto the rough floorboards, then picking it up again, trusting that it could cope with the light levels and the shaking in her hands.
She moves quietly, lifting the camera and framing the scene as well as she can.
Lucy is sitting with her back to the door, her head drooping slightly, her eyes closed.
The buzzing has filled her head, settling to a dull throb, and Lucy has the feeling that if she could only focus, she might break through, adjust to it somehow, and this noise, this flat pressure, would resolve itself. She might make contact, after all.
She hears something take a step towards her, real enough to place pressure on the wooden floor. Lucy opens her eyes. It’s Nina, the camera in her hands, the light cutting through the dark. ‘No,’ Lucy says. ‘I told you to stay with Lewis.’
‘I want to see—’
‘No.’
‘But she’s here? There’s something here, right?’ She lifts the camera and scans the loft.
‘I don’t know,’ says Lucy, ‘but you should go back down and—’
One, two, three.
The thuds force their way through the wooden floor, vibrating through their feet, up their spines.
Something skitters across the floorboards and Nina turns, sweeping the camera in front of her again, trying to catch whatever it is in her viewfinder. Rats, Dan and Bee used to tell Lucy, rats as big as cats, Loo.
It seems to Lucy that the air in the room is thicker now, heavier, pressing in against her skull once more. It makes her head ache. She wonders if Nina can feel it too. ‘Please,’ she says, scrambling to her feet. ‘Don’t.’
‘Is it her?’ Nina says. ‘Is she here?’
One, two, three.
Then, silence.
At first Hal thinks he’s too late.
Lewis is lying motionless on the floor, his head drooping onto his chest. Blood is beginning to seep through Lucy’s expensive coat.
‘Lewis. Lewis.’
His eyes flutter open. ‘Here. I’m here,’ he says. ‘Phone?’
‘Yes. I had to go back to the car, but yeah, I got a signal.’
Hal looks behind him to check that the door is still open. He’s forced it back as far as it will go, dug the crowbar into the ground to hold it in position.
‘We’re going to have to move you, get you outside.’
‘No. No.’
‘Yeah, I know, it’ll hurt. But best not to stay in here, don’t you think? There’s an ambulance coming, it won’t be too bad.’
He and Nina should be able to lift Lewis between the two of them. They’ll worry about explaining why they moved him later.
‘No,’ says Lewis again. ‘Nina.’
A breeze wafts in through the window. It makes Lucy’s skin pucker, chills her to the bone. Whatever this is, they have given it a focus, they’ve given it a form and they’ve let it in.
‘Lucy?’ Nina takes a step closer.
Hal glances back at Lewis, still slumped against the wall, and at the barn door, still wedged open. He doesn’t want to leave him alone, not really. He particularly doesn’t want to leave the comforting sight of the open door. But he needs to get Lucy and Nina down. Between them they can take Lewis outside. ‘OK,’ he says, as if Lewis can still hear him, ‘it’ll be OK. Not long, Lew. Not long.’
He shoves his torch into his pocket and climbs the ladder carefully. He tries to not think about falling, about the way Lewis’s leg has twisted and fractured, about what happened to Bee Corvino, the crushing impact of skull against stone.
Nina is standing with her back to Hal, holding his camera. Lucy is beyond her, too close to the sudden drop into the dark for Hal’s liking.
‘Hello?’ he says, stepping off the ladder, and the moonlight brightens, there’s a buzz in the air, in his head. ‘I got the door open,’ he says. ‘We should go. I’ll need some help with Lewis.’
&nb
sp; Reluctantly he steps closer, not quite convinced the ladder will stay in place, that they won’t all end up trapped here. ‘Seriously, both of you. You need to come and help.’ He looks past Nina at Lucy and there’s a jolt of something, recognition perhaps – a thickening of the atmosphere as a shadow in the corner of his vision shakes itself free, solidifies and then fades away. ‘Lucy?’
Something cracks in the rafters, splintering the silence.
He can feel it again, the buildup of pressure. They don’t have much time. ‘Nina,’ he says, ‘time to go.’
Nina turns to face him, swinging the camera round on him, when she’s there between them, caught in a patch of moonlight. Tall, pale, white-blonde hair, her muddy brown dress torn at the hem, her bare feet grimy and bruised. Flickering. There and not there.
The moon disappears behind a cloud and the girl vanishes.
‘Jesus.’ Nina saw her, it, too. ‘Do it again,’ she says, looking at Hal, then at Lucy. ‘Bring her back.’
‘I can’t,’ says Hal. ‘I don’t know how.’ That’s not quite true; he can feel her there still, just out of sight, it’s as if all he has to do is adjust his focus and – but he’s not sure he wants to, he’s not sure that would be wise. It’s the same for Lucy, too, he’s almost certain.
She looks dreadful though, as if she may collapse at any moment, and he wishes she’d come away from the open doors. ‘We need to move Lewis.’
Neither Nina nor Lucy answer. The chill evening air seems to crackle with energy. The silence stretches until …
Three sharp raps in the far wall.
Three in the doors behind.
Then in quick succession, three above them, dancing down each oak beam, and below them, beneath their feet, thudding along the floorboards.
Surrounding them.
Angry.
Lucy makes a visible effort to pull herself together. ‘Stop it,’ she says, and the noise dies away. ‘Right. Enough. There’s nothing here but conjuring tricks. Hal’s right. It’s time to go.’ She looks puzzled, coughs, tries to clear her throat, then – covering her mouth – she coughs again.
