The Devil in the Snow

by Sarah Armstrong

  Mariana, coming back in now with more glasses and a different bottle, was so smug, and why? She had a husband who didn’t look at her without sneering and a house that was too big without children to fill it. Mariana poured the drinks and set one in front of Shona and another in front of Fernando.

  Shona picked up her glass. ‘I’d love to stay.’ Fernando clinked his glass against hers.

  The light brightened momentarily behind the curtains and then faded. The sound of the voices carried from downstairs but left the words behind. Shona tried, again, to close her eyes, but it was too painful. Lack of sleep had left her eyes too dry.

  Mariana came back into the room and pulled open the curtains. Shona squinted and covered her head with the duvet.

  ‘No, no, no,’ Mariana murmured. ‘We never stop fighting, Shona. Not if it’s important. Up.’ This time she left the door open.

  Shona dressed and walked down the two flights of stairs to the kitchen sat down on a heavy kitchen chair and placed her left cheek on the solid table.

  ‘I don’t care if you don’t talk,’ said Mariana. ‘But you are going to eat today. One week of sulking, that’s all you get. Jude’s at school, quite safe.’

  Shona felt a tear run from her eye across the bridge of her nose, across the eyelid and run onto the table. She hadn’t even wondered where he was. Every day she’d just assumed Mariana would do everything. ‘Thanks for taking him.’

  Mariana looked away. ‘Fernando took him.’

  Shona felt sick. She had no reason to think Fernando suspected anything, but it felt wrong for them to be together. He could suspect. He would have had time to ask questions and count the months.

  ‘Are you all right?’ asked Mariana.

  Shona nodded.

  The kitchen had large terracotta floor tiles and a black slate worktop. There were no religious icons in here, just rows and rows of jars containing pickled vegetables and large bunches of herbs in oil. Not decorative, their levels varied.

  She watched Mariana as she made toast, made tea, fiddled with the radio and cut up the toast into tiny bite-size squares. The plate was placed just out of her eyeline, the tea a bit closer. Shona watched the steam rise from the mug.

  ‘I have news. Fernando talked to Maynard last night about you going back home.’ Mariana sat down next to Shona. ‘Not that there is any rush.’

  ‘He won’t let me. He’s got actual reasons now. I’ve lost it.’ Shona lifted her head to look at Mariana and turned to the kitchen window. The sun had come out again, lighting the wine glasses on the windowsill.

  ‘We need to work out what happens next. Do you want to sell the house?’

  Shona shook her head and cleared her throat. ‘I will never leave that house.’

  ‘Do you want to stay with Maynard?’

  ‘No.’ Shona took a sip of tea.

  Mariana sat down. ‘You do realise that it isn’t his fault. She has gone, but sometimes teenagers do. And usually they come back.’

  ‘He knows, he knows something. He’s hidden her away somewhere.’

  ‘He’s abroad. Bulgaria. He says he’s working and the police say she has not been abducted. She’s in Britain.’

  ‘He’s got her, somehow. Why would he work if he didn’t know where Cerys was? He killed one of my daughters and now he has stolen the other. How can he not be responsible for all of it?’

  Mariana took a breath. ‘It’s just a terrible, terrible thing, but babies sometimes die for no reason.’

  Shona shook her head again. ‘It wasn’t cot death.’

  ‘The coroner . . .’ Mariana changed her mind. ‘Have one bit of toast. It’s just a tiny bit.’ She pushed the plate towards Shona.

  Shona counted them. Sixteen pieces of wholemeal toast, lightly buttered. Cut as if for a child.

  ‘Think about what you want and what you need, Shona. Why do you want to go back to the house?’

  Mariana picked up a square of toast and held it out.

  ‘My baby died in that house. I hid her things so he couldn’t touch them, but she’s still there. I feel her there, and I’m not leaving her.’

  Mariana put the toast down. ‘It’s like a shrine?’

  ‘Not one of your shrines. A living shrine. My office was her bedroom. That’s where it happened and there’s no way I’m going anywhere. It was all for Meghan. That’s why I stayed. And now Cerys . . .’ Shona pushed the plate away and put her hands to her eyes.

  ‘You think you need the house and that means you have to deal with Maynard.’ Mariana pushed the plate back. ‘The police are content that Cerys is making decisions of her own free will. Leave that aside. We can look into that, I know how. We need to think about your legal position and then we can worry about what is and isn’t known. And you need to eat.’

  Shona looked at Mariana’s serious expression. She knew that she was saying anything, absolutely anything to get her to eat that bloody toast. She picked up the nearest piece of toast and chewed it slowly. When she couldn’t feel any solidity, she swallowed it with a sip of tea.

  ‘Good girl,’ said Mariana.

  ‘Don’t the police have to tell me where she is?’

  ‘They’re investigating. I think there are stories being told, Shona. They are stories which mean things are going to get very hard. At the moment they are waiting.’ Mariana sighed.

  ‘Who is telling the stories?’

  ‘Cerys.’ Mariana put her hand on Shona’s. ‘But they aren’t her words. Fernando thinks that Maynard will allow you to go back until the house is sold. It will take a few days, but it will give you time to come to terms with everything. And the deal is Cerys’ silence for yours, it seems. Does that make sense?’

  Shona nodded. ‘She’s saying things that might endanger me and Jude?’

  Mariana nodded. ‘My advice is to agree.’

  Shona opened her mouth to speak but Mariana gripped her hand.

  ‘Think about whether you want to tell me what it is he doesn’t want you to say. Don’t say anything now. Eat and think.’

  Shona obeyed. All this time she’d thought she was playing her game but Maynard had always been in charge, slowly taking Cerys from her. He’d taken charge of Meghan’s funeral too. All Shona had done was turn up, Cerys in her arms, and stand dry-eyed as the vicar praised a baby he hadn’t known and hadn’t done anything and would, now, never do anything.

  Shona had attended the coroner’s court too and listened to all the sympathy and all the lies. The statistics on sudden infant death (which exonerated everyone), the possible genetic links (which gently led the blame back to her) and the painful impossibility of ever knowing (because she didn’t speak). She refused to speak, keeping her lips pressed tightly together and her arms wrapped around a wriggling Cerys. She wouldn’t let Maynard take her, or anyone else. She listened to all of them, at the court and at the funeral, but all she really heard was the final cries of Meghan that she hadn’t gone to.

  Mariana cleared away the plate. ‘What do you think about what I said?’

  ‘You’re right. Tell him I agree. I won’t chase Cerys and I won’t say anything about what he did.’ She waited for Mariana to ask what it was, but she didn’t. ‘He would have Jude taken away, wouldn’t he?’

  Mariana raised her eyebrows. ‘I think Jude isn’t his concern. Destroying you is.’

  ‘I want my house too.’

  Mariana nodded. ‘I know. But one step at a time. And just remember that you don’t need the house. It’s a symbol and we can create those anywhere. It’s become something he can use against you. You need to behave in a certain way to get what you want. And Jude needs his home, even if it’s just for a while. I can take him to school and I can give him dinner, but he needs you back.’

  Mariana looked stern. Shona realised that this was her work face. She had become a client. Mariana storming into the police station had been a wonderful sight, fully made-up and suited at two in the morning; arms open and the full weight of the law in her voice.


  ‘I know what you’ve done for me,’ said Shona. ‘I know you’re the only reason why I wasn’t arrested the other night, or committed.’

  ‘I just want you to be safe, from yourself as well as him. You will find a way through this, even if you don’t get exactly what you want.’

  Mariana played with the silver crucifix that nestled against her breastbone.

  Shona snapped a warning. ‘Don’t you dare mention God to me.’

  She let the cross fall. ‘I wasn’t going to. It’s just habit.’ She folded her hands together. ‘A bad thing has happened, I know, but you have a purpose now and it’s probably best to draw a line and have nothing to do with Maynard. You will have to deal with him when you’re strong enough, but keep your focus.’

  ‘Mariana, all this means that she chose to leave. My daughter chose to go and didn’t even tell me. They’ve both gone.’

  Mariana bit her lower lip and then got up from the table and stood behind Shona, her arms wrapped around her. She felt the whisper before she heard the sound.

  ‘Do you want me to take you to the cemetery?’

  ‘Yes.’ Shona pushed herself up from the chair.

  The cemetery was set out like formal Victorian gardens with wide, sweeping driveways and mature trees. Of course, they’d need to swap the chapel for a bandstand, and the gravestones for feral clumps of daisies.

  Shona directed Mariana through the lanes and they parked. Shona led the way to the grave. She’d never taken Mariana there before. She realised that she didn’t really know anything much beyond their working relationship and the past few days she had lingered on the top floor of her house.

  The gravestone was clean and the carving still starkly cut: Meghan – Taken. Shona ran her hand across the curved marble top. There was a small posy in the vase at the foot of the grave, not that Meghan’s feet would have reached to the bottom. She was tiny, in the middle of a double bed of space. Mariana crossed herself.

  ‘I never wanted her buried in the ground. Or cremated. I wanted to build a shrine, to keep her out of the earth but Maynard just organised everything while I was,’ Shona exhaled, ‘wherever I was. I heard him arranging for her things to be collected so I got my mum to take them first. He was so angry with me I thought he might kill me too. When I got the call from the stonemason, I didn’t tell him.’ Shona pointed. ‘Maynard hated the inscription.’

  ‘It’s individual.’

  Shona looked up. ‘That just sounds rude.’

  ‘Sorry.’ Mariana didn’t sound sorry.

  ‘You should have seen what I wanted to have.’

  ‘Gravestones should be a comfort, not an accusation.’

  Shona didn’t look away. Mariana had the look of someone familiar with graves, with the look and tending of them, with the importance of tradition and the right words in the right order.

  ‘Have you lost someone?’

  Mariana shrugged. ‘That’s not for today.’ She crossed her arms and rubbed both shoulders. ‘Sometimes you have to think about one death at a time or . . .’ She threw her arms up and recrossed them. She closed her eyes. Shona wished she could pray as well. She thought of Mariana’s large home, bought for children but holding none.

  ‘Mariana, Kallu says he has a message from Meghan.’

  Mariana didn’t move. There was no wind, no clouds. It was one of those trick days in the middle of October where the ozone gets blown in from the coast and the summer seems coarsely imminent.

  ‘Is that why he stays with you?’

  Shona had forgotten she said anything. ‘I suppose, yes.’

  ‘And has he given you a message?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Six, seven weeks and no message? Throw him out, Shona, if that’s why he’s staying. I know about people like that. You don’t need parasites around you.’

  Shona sat down with her legs beneath her and, eyes closed, lifted her face to the sun. Maynard may have already done that, she thought.

  Mariana said, ‘He’s a fraud, and you’re a fool for believing him.’

  Shona stared at Mariana who didn’t look away, but held her gaze with the absolute certainty only she could convey. As relieved as she was to have her house back and as guilty as she felt about the way she’d betrayed her, sometimes Shona felt Mariana was the most toxic person she knew.

  8

  Mariana drove away after checking that Maynard really had left as he promised. Gone straight from Bulgaria to Berlin for work, he’d told Fernando. He wouldn’t speak to Shona any more and Mariana had become an unofficial legal representative, but he preferred to deal with Fernando. He reported back that he would only use the flat from now on, but he wanted the house sold. If she agreed, Shona could use it until then. Shona didn’t agree but Mariana managed, over the days, to phrase it in a way which sounded acceptable to him.

  However marvellous she was, Shona was glad to be shot of Mariana, who had continued to be rude about Kallu for the rest of their stay. Every comment she made felt to Shona like a personal insult. Finally she was gone and Shona relaxed.

  Shona stood by the front door clutching the brown bag which Maynard had let Mariana pack for her and Jude. All the clothes needed washing. Toothbrush and hairbrush needed to be replaced upstairs. There was nothing else in there. Shona let the bag fall to the floor where it made a reluctant thump. Jude sat on the stairs.

  ‘Do you want to watch TV while I do some washing?’

  He shrugged and then shook his head. ‘Is Cerys on half-term too?’

  ‘Yes, I expect so.’

  ‘Is she upstairs?’

  ‘No.’

  His head sank into his hands. ‘I’m bored.’

  ‘No, you’re sad. I’m sad too, but we’re home now.’

  ‘He’ll make us go again.’

  Shona sat next to him and drew him to her. There was occasional noise from beyond the door, slamming, clanging, cars pulling away. From inside the house there was no noise at all. She’d been waiting for half-term since he’d started school, time to spend with him recovering the relationship they’d had before. Now she couldn’t even think about leaving the house with him. What if Cerys came back? What if Maynard sold the house from underneath them? At least, if she was here, she could stop people viewing the house.

  She thought of all the time Maynard had alone in the house.

  ‘I just need to check something. Do you want to come up with me?’

  Jude nodded and followed her to the bedroom. It looked tidier than usual.

  ‘Do you want to get changed, Jude? I’ll put a wash on in a minute.’

  She left him in the bedroom and went through to the office. Something prompted her to check the file of small browned press clippings. She looked through the bottom shelf where it always was, tucked in amongst A4 files and her encyclopaedia. It wasn’t there. The information on the cyclist, his name and age and where he’d died, all gone. Maybe she could find his trace on the Internet, but it was going to be hard. Cyclists got killed and forgotten all the time, and the fact that she’d saved the clippings had always seemed evidence in itself. No wonder Maynard felt confident enough to break their agreement and put the house on the market.

  She went back through to the bedroom. Maybe they’d just been moved. She had to search the house for them, but she didn’t want to unsettle Jude.

  ‘I’ll phone Callum’s mum and see what they’re up to.’

  ‘Can’t we go out? Just us.’

  She held him tighter. ‘Not today.’

  He nodded. She looked at him. She’d been putting off the question, but now they were on their own she had to ask.

  ‘Jude, what did you think of Fernando?’

  He shrugged.

  ‘Did you talk about anything?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘OK. He didn’t ask how old you were?’

  ‘Everyone asks that.’

  ‘True. I’ll call Thea.’

  She opened the door to Cerys’ room. The clothes had been pu
lled from the wardrobe and drawers, the mattress had been pushed from the bed. It was as if Maynard had been searching for something. Something big, as the little things, the books and files hadn’t been moved. Or Cerys had been back and made a statement. She couldn’t hear Jude downstairs and she didn’t want him to come up and find this. In any case, she wasn’t ready to look at anything yet, to acknowledge the last music Cerys listened to, or that she’d left the top off her cleansing lotion.

  There was a knock downstairs and she opened the door to Thea.

  ‘This is really kind, thank you,’ she said.

  Thea said, ‘No problem at all. It’s only a couple of hours, I’m afraid. We’ve got plans later.’

  ‘Two hours in a play centre deserves some gratitude.’ Shona pressed a ten pound note into Jude’s hand. ‘Bring me back the change, OK?’

  He thought about it for a moment before nodding.

  She watched them drive away and thought about going back to Cerys’ room. Not yet. She fetched her mobile from the bag and took it to the kitchen to recharge it. The kettle boiled three times before she remembered to make a cup of tea.

  She sat at the kitchen table and leafed through the letters and papers Maynard had left there. He may have left them there for her to look at, but she didn’t read any of them. She was only interested in what he was hiding. She went back to the front room and pulled down the handle. The door didn’t move. She banged against it with her hip. It was locked.

  Back in the kitchen she switched the mobile on. It sang to her and then registered its search for a signal. Twenty-two messages. Voicemail started to ring. The first message was Rob, and the second. She only listened until the sixth message, by which time the swearing and insults had become incoherent. She put the phone down on the table and held her head with both hands. The deadline for the Tower of London paper had expired at some point in the last couple of weeks.

  ‘Fuck.’ Her voice sounded dull in the empty room. She knew she should phone, explain, apologise. She also knew he wouldn’t answer. She could barely face him again, seeing only Cerys’ embarrassment and shock whenever she thought of him.