Where the Wild Cherries Grow

by Laura Madeleine

  ‘Emeline Vane, the person I’m trying to find, for the case. For the client. The person I’m trying to find for the client.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Never has one syllable been more baffling. I should’ve gone home, shouldn’t have gone to meet her at the chip shop just because I felt guilty.

  ‘Hey, I brought you something!’ I reach for my suitcase and the get-out-of-jail-free card it offers. Inside is a bottle of Jem’s sloe gin. I smile as I hold it in my hand, remembering her gran’s cottage, how she listened, the way an oldest friend would.

  ‘Here.’ I hand it over. ‘I thought we could drink it together, maybe go down to the park one night.’

  ‘What is it?’ She looks suspicious.

  ‘You’ll like it. It’s sloe gin, my friend Jem made it.’

  Steph’s face slips from suspicious to downright angry.

  ‘And who’s Jem?’ Her voice could split rock.

  ‘Jem’s a friend. She’s Hillbrand’s cousin or something. She calls him “Dicky”.’ I try for a grin but Steph isn’t budging. Worse, her cheeks are reddening up to her eyes, which are filling with liquid. Oh God.

  ‘First this Emeline person, then Jem—’

  ‘I’d never like Jem in that way,’ I say desperately, ‘she’s way older than me, and she’s a hippy, you should see her hair.’

  I hate myself as soon as it’s out of my mouth, but Steph’s face softens a bit.

  ‘A hippy?’ she gulps, almost smiling. ‘Really? Did she wear those silly dyed tops? And sandals?’

  I force a smile. ‘You have no idea.’

  ‘Did she …?’ Steph leans forward to whisper, and I’m engulfed in perfume, strong enough to mask the scent of the fryers. ‘Did she take drugs?’

  I wonder what it would be like to tell the truth. Horrible, I realize. Steph would tell my mum, who would tell my dad, who would snarl about responsibility and the youth of today.

  ‘Look, I was there to work,’ I snap. ‘How should I know? I barely got outside the bloody house.’

  I drain the drink to the halfway mark in one, hoping it covers my red face. By the time I look back, Steph’s staring at her hands in her lap.

  ‘Sorry, Bill. I know you’d never do anything like that. I just missed you, and you didn’t call.’ She smiles and shuffles closer on the carpeted bench. ‘I’m dead proud, you know, you doing so well on your first big case.’

  I raise my arm and tuck it around her, feeling like a terrible person.

  ‘Thanks, Steph.’

  That night, in the lounge, my parents grill me for what seems like an age. I try to answer their questions, using bland lies to cover a skeleton of truth. The cold gas fire looks like a toy after the huge grate in Jem’s gran’s house, stained by the smoke of generations. My dad claps me on the shoulder when I finally escape towards my room, and Mum doesn’t even comment on the state of my suit. It just makes everything worse. If they knew …

  Knew what? They’re allowed to be proud, I tell myself, as I trudge up the stairs. You should be proud. You went to Hallerton, you got the evidence, did the job, like you were meant to. That makes you a solicitor, sort of. Maybe Hillbrand will make you a partner one day.

  But all of those thoughts die at the sight of the briefcase on the bed. Carefully, I take out the photograph of the group outside The World’s End. Jem said I could keep it for the time being. Emeline gazes back at me. The sight of her face is jarring so far from Hallerton, out of place in a suburban bedroom. I take out the diary and smooth its stained cover, wishing I could write back.

  What are you going to do? Jem asked.

  I could present a solid case to Hillbrand: use the doctor’s bill, Emeline’s words to prove she was not in her right mind, that she no doubt met with an unfortunate end by her own hand, that there is nothing to stop the sale of Hallerton from going ahead. Take credit for a job well done. Take a bonus, turn away as Mrs Mallory and her brother shake hands with a developer and sell Hallerton from under their father’s nose, to be torn down for ever, for Emeline to be forgotten. It’s not my business after all. I should be pleased. I should buy a new suit. I should be planning for my future.

  Or, I could never go back to Hillbrand & Moffat. I could finish what I’ve started and find Emeline: take off, with nothing but a bag of clothes and hope. I could change everything with one decision …

  But I know I won’t. Not Bill, not brave enough. I’m sorry, Emeline. Resignedly, I pack the diary, the photograph, the doctor’s bill back into the file, ready to place into Hillbrand’s hands on Monday morning.

  March 1919

  It was a smell that brought me to, a putrid stench that filled my nose, made me pull away and cough. By the time I opened watering eyes, a stranger was leaning back, a wooden pail in her hand.

  ‘Fish guts,’ she said, matter-of-factly. ‘Stink would wake the dead.’

  She was small, shorter than me, but looked a good deal stronger. Her face was round, deeply tanned. Although lines creased her eyes and mouth, she did not look old. A headscarf was wrapped tight to her brow.

  She was speaking French, I registered belatedly, not the strange language of the women at the station. The station … what had happened? I remembered the young man, his silver eyes, but then?

  ‘Where am I?’ It came out as a whisper, but I saw her frown at my accent.

  ‘You’re in my kitchen. My son dragged you in here, like something from the bottom of a fishing net, or don’t you remember?’

  ‘Your son?’

  She opened her mouth to answer, but was interrupted by a noise of protest. I looked around for the first time. We were indeed in a kitchen, rough but homely and warm. The young man from the station was seated on a stool near the stove. He caught my eye and smiled. I felt my cheeks flare.

  ‘Your son tried to detain me at the station,’ I told the woman, trying to muster some decorum. ‘And he refused to answer me, even though I was clearly distressed.’

  The young man did something strange; he caught his mother’s eye and made a series of gestures, pointing at me, then himself, tapping at his hands where the bandages were on my own palms. He finished with a shrug, half a smile.

  When the woman spoke next, she angled her body so that he could see her face. Her manner was still brusque, but her expression had changed.

  ‘He said he saw you hiding at the station, and thought you were scared. When you fainted he decided to bring you here, in case you were in trouble.’ She slid a glance at her son, who was watching her face carefully. ‘He said he is sorry if you hurt your hands.’

  The young man nodded at me, made a gesture.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ I said, feeling more lost than ever.

  ‘Aaró is deaf,’ she told me bluntly. She crossed her arms over her chest. ‘Now, I think you should explain yourself before I report you to the railway officials as a runaway. Then they can send you back to your family if—’

  ‘I’m not a runaway!’ The lie dropped from my mouth before I could think. ‘And I don’t have any family. At least, none to be sent back to.’

  The woman’s eyes were calculating. The young man made a noise and she absent-mindedly gestured at him. Evidently they had their own way of speaking. I tried not to look at either of them in the silence, but I could feel her hard stare.

  ‘Do you have any money?’ she said.

  I shook my head, gaze fixed on the tiled floor.

  ‘Are you in trouble with the army or the police?’

  ‘No. I have done nothing wrong. But—’

  She nodded impatiently. I could see her feet agitating within her worn leather boots. There was a third question on the other side of her lips; I could sense it. Finally she turned to her son and made a few signs. He looked indignant, but eventually got to his feet. I didn’t realize I was watching him go, until he glanced back from the door and we locked eyes. He frowned slightly, half-amused, half-searching, and was gone.

  ‘I don’t want him listening,’ the woman
said. I looked back at her, trying not to blush.

  ‘I thought you said he couldn’t hear?’

  ‘He hears in other ways.’ Her feet rested, perfectly still upon the floor. ‘Tell me the truth now, are you with child?’

  The question was so sudden, so unexpected, all I could do was stare. It had never occurred to me that someone might presume … Is that what Puce thought? And this woman’s son?

  ‘I …’ I shut my mouth, opened it again, ‘no, I—’

  ‘All right.’ The woman looked relieved, though a frown still lingered. ‘You are red enough to cook an egg on, obviously you’re ignorant of such things.’

  She brushed past me and took up a coffee pot, clanged it down on the stove.

  ‘This is not a charity,’ she said. ‘If you truly are in trouble, you may stay here while you consider your options. Two days. I can’t afford to keep you any longer than that.’

  I started to stammer my thanks.

  ‘And you will have to tell me your name.’

  You can find another, Puce had said, the world has ways of giving you another. My eyes fell on the wooden pail, waiting by the door.

  ‘Fischer,’ I told her, ‘my name is Emilie Fischer.’

  The woman, I learned, was called Clémence Fournier, but everyone knew her as Maman.

  ‘We all have our roles,’ she told me as she leaned against the doorjamb. We were in the scullery, separated from the kitchen only by a threadbare curtain.

  ‘What makes you their mother?’ I said, wishing she would leave me to undress alone. ‘Are they all orphans?’

  ‘Many of them. That’s the way with border towns.’

  ‘What border?’

  She smiled curiously.

  ‘We’re the last town in France. Spain is all of a mile or two away, over the hills. Funny for you not to know that.’

  I said nothing. Although I had been vague about my circumstances, my clothes gave away too much. Beneath the grime, there was no denying that they had once been expensive, with their velvet and embroidery.

  ‘And your son’s name is Aaró?’ I said to fill the expectant silence. ‘I have never heard it before.’

  ‘It’s Catalan. Like half the people here.’

  ‘But not you?’

  Her accent, though rough around the edges, sounded like the French I had learned from my tutors: urban, respectable. She frowned at me. Impossible to guess at the thoughts gathering behind her brown, lined face.

  ‘No,’ she said slowly, ‘not me. But I speak it. Aaró does too, in his way.’

  She held out a hand for my clothes. Between us, water steamed in a tin bath. It had been heated on the huge kitchen stove, carried through to the scullery in pans.

  ‘Better get in,’ she told me as we stood, eye to eye, ‘before it gets cold.’

  I had no choice but to strip off the rest of my clothes, trying to cover myself with my bandaged hands as I did so. Her eyes lingered over my ribs, showing through the skin, the bones of my hips.

  ‘Thin,’ she observed, before bundling up my garments and sweeping back into the kitchen.

  The hot water stung as I lowered myself into the dented tub. She’d left a sponge and a block of hard soap and I scrubbed myself pink. With that layer of grime came away a layer of Emeline Vane. Emilie Fischer, I repeated, working the name into my skin. Emilie Fischer.

  I unwound the sodden bandages. After three days, the cuts were still raw in places, but in others they were scabbing, knitting slowly into new skin. I flexed my fingers carefully.

  Clémence had left me some clothes, old ones of hers. There was a dark red skirt, too big around the waist, a much darned cotton blouse, a shawl. I didn’t have any pins for my hair, or a mirror, so I plaited the tangled strands and left it at that.

  The smell of coffee drew me back into the kitchen. Clémence was removing a pot from the stove. The young man, Aaró, was there, slicing bread at the table. His hands paused when I walked in. I got the impression he was studying me, from my wet hair down to my scarred hands, holding the skirt at my waist to prevent it from falling down.

  He made a noise to catch his mother’s attention and a couple of signs, before brushing the crumbs off his hands and taking off his belt. I watched in confusion as he used the sharp point of the bread knife to bore another hole in the leather.

  ‘He said you don’t look so wild any more,’ Clémence translated, placing a jar of honey on the table.

  Aaró strode towards me and the next thing I knew, his arms were encircling my waist. His head was bent close to my own, and I saw every strand of his black hair. It was matted in places, with sea-salt, I realized. I could feel the heat radiating from him; he smelled of coffee and faintly of tar.

  When he pulled back, it took my mind a moment to catch up. The skirt was now secure; his own belt cinched about my waist.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said, forgetting he could not hear me. The blood rushed to my face. ‘How do I tell him …?’ I asked Clémence.

  At first I thought she would not answer. Then she lifted her fingers to her lips and extended them towards Aaró. Awkwardly, I did the same.

  He laughed, a strange breathy sound, and nodded. Not knowing what else to do, I sat down. Aaró was scooping honey from the jar on to a piece of bread. Some pooled stickily on to the table, and Clémence slapped at his hands, but he only winked, stooped to kiss her on the cheek before disappearing out into the morning, eating as he went.

  A trio of cats sauntered in when he left. They milled around the stove, obviously waiting for their breakfast. Clémence put a bowl of fish scraps on the floor and they fell upon them.

  ‘They’re his handiwork,’ she said, hacking another slice from the bread. ‘He’s always been this way, bringing home lost things. He’s got sharper eyes than most, sees things trying to hide themselves. Half-starved cats, gulls tangled in fishing line.’ She pushed the food towards me. ‘I feed them, so I might as well feed you too.’

  Part of me balked at her words, but I didn’t have the energy to argue. Perhaps it was the warmth of the kitchen, or the bath, or the fact that I was safe beneath a roof, but weariness was washing over me.

  ‘Go on, girl, try and eat before you sleep,’ she said gently.

  I barely saw the room she showed me to, only knew that it was up a dark, narrow staircase, at the very top of the house, where closed shutters kept out the light. There was a wooden floor and a creaking iron bed that had seen better days, but it was cosy and there were sheets and blankets smelling of soap and the sea air that had dried them.

  Whatever she told me next, I don’t remember. I sank into the blankets and slept the dead sleep of fugitives and runaways.

  June 1969

  The break in the weather doesn’t last and by Monday, London is back to its old, sticky self. Between the buildings, the sky is a strip of perfect blue, like the posters that advertise holidays to Spain. Can solicitors afford to go to Spain? Hillbrand only ever goes to his sister’s caravan at Bognor. Maybe he’ll get a cheap deal at Hallerton when it’s finally turned into a holiday camp.

  The streets are crammed, all sputtering buses and swerving messenger bikes; nothing like Saltedge with its endless reeds that are one long hussssssssh and a sky so big and empty it makes you feel like you’ve been turned inside out.

  I pause at the door of Hillbrand & Moffat. Emeline’s diary is in my briefcase. Time and time again over the weekend I’ve tried to make sense of why I feel so bad, without success. Now, all I’m left with is a sense of unease, dogging me as I trudge up each stair.

  ‘Billy!’ Jill exclaims as I round the corner. She beams up at me, in her eternal blue twinset and pearls.

  ‘Morning, Jill.’

  ‘And what time d’you call this, lad?’

  ‘Sorry, Mr Hillbrand, that A13 was a right mess—’

  The answer drops from my mouth before I see that he’s grinning, hands on his hips, or at least hands on where his trousers fasten around his belly.

 
‘No clock-watching today, Perch, not from my man in Havana! You got it there? All the bits of business?’

  The leather of the briefcase is warm. I place it on the table.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Good lad! Sit down, sit down, let’s see it.’

  He uses his belly to shepherd me towards his own chair. I sink into it with a vague sense of horror. It’s more comfortable than mine, the leather pummelled into submission by years of his weight. He leans over me, all eagerness as I open the clasp of the briefcase.

  My instincts are yelling for me to stop as I take out the diary, but it’s already too late. Hillbrand snatches it up, pores over the pages, and all I can do is watch as Emeline’s secrets, whispered into the darkness of her room, are laid bare.

  ‘I know a diary doesn’t really prove anything—’ I start.

  Hillbrand brushes my protestations aside. ‘It’s just what we need, lad. I’ll get us a doctor’s statement to back it all up. Lithium bromide, was it? Jill! Get Dr Berger on the phone, he’ll give us a quote.’ He seizes the photograph of the group in Saltedge. ‘Which one is she then?’

  I have to point out Emeline, sitting there, so real and sad in the middle.

  Hillbrand whistles. ‘Bit of a looker, wasn’t she? Pity she was out of her tree.’

  I jam my hands between my knees, fighting the sudden urge to punch him in his big, red face. ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Perch, this is sterling work, lad. Really is. Won’t go unrecognized.’

  Last week I would’ve jumped for joy. Now, I just feel wretched.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Hillbrand.’

  ‘Well, shift yourself,’ he bustles. ‘Got some calls to make before we can go for a victory pint.’

  The towering stack of triplicate forms is almost a relief. Perhaps the repetitive typing will drown out the shame I’m feeling. That’s the idea, anyway. By the time Hillbrand puts down the receiver half an hour later, I’ve barely managed to complete one.

  ‘That was Mrs Mallory,’ he says, cracking his neck with relish. ‘She’s delighted, lad. Delighted. She’s meeting the property developer at her club for luncheon, asked us to join them.’ His face is shining at the prospect. ‘How about that, eh? Jill, any appointments this afternoon?’