He smiles and walks to the bar, his wallet taken from his jacket. He is addressing some girl, behind the bar. She is young, blonde, petite. Pretty. Tying her apron behind herself, like she is starting a shift. She has bruises on her neck; like finger bruises. Her nose is pierced with a silver ring. She is wearing one of those fashionable black lace chokers.
She takes Adam’s credit card and looks at the name, as she puts it in the card machine.
‘Adam Redway?’ she says, casually.
‘Uh-huh.’
‘You’re the park ranger, aren’t you? The famous one, rescued the tourists?!’
My husband shakes his head, humbly. And chuckling.
‘They were in about a foot of water, I’m not Superman.’
‘Hah.’ She smiles. ‘And I’ve seen you hiking near here, haven’t I? Do a bit of it myself, when I get the chance.’
‘Possibly,’ he says. ‘Though it’s also my job.’
The girl hands him the card, and the receipt.
‘Sure I have, I saw you hiking down at Hobajob’s week or two ago, when we had that freeze. I had to go home it was so cold.’
Adam takes the card. And does not blink. He must know that I can overhear all this. And yet his innocent bewilderment is entirely convincing.
‘Nah, must be mistaken. Not Hobajob’s. Never go hiking there, I like it up on the moors, on the tors with the wind. That’s my place. OK, talking of hikes, we’ve got a big yomp to Wistman’s. Ta for the party!’
The girl nods, and puts away the card machine, blushing, and slightly frowning. Following Adam with her eyes, as he saunters out of the Hotel. Then she turns, and she notices me for the first time. And her face is filled with curiosity. As if she recognizes me, in a slightly unnerving way, but is not sure why. And with that, she disappears again, behind the bar, through a door.
Embarrassed, or busy, whatever.
What just happened? I am not sure. But this girl claims she saw Adam at Hobajob’s. And he almost never goes there, unless it is to drag Lyla in for tea. But he was at Hobabjob’s, and it seems he was there on the day of the ammil, the freeze – I am sure that’s what she means.
So perhaps it was him. Scattering my rubbish. My blood, my hair, my tampon, even though I know this is absurd. Why would my own husband want to frighten me? And his daughter?
I walk out into the cold, half-hearted sun. The rest of the party is already over the road, climbing stiles, heading up the slopes towards Wistman’s Wood, tucked away in its little green valley. Half an hour away, but worth the trudge. I can just about see Lyla, amongst them, skipping happily.
My daughter is happy. The dogs to either side of her.
I am about to follow, when something else alerts me. There’s an old bus shelter here, plastered with peeling adverts: a memory of when Dartmoor had proper public transport. There’s a rusty bench inside the shelter: hikers use it to hide from the rain.
And today, through the cracked and dusty window, I can see there’s someone sitting inside, staring out. It’s not a hiker, though: not some rambler in a cagoule, not some birdwatcher with expensive binoculars.
I can the distinct profile of a lady. A rather old lady.
The recognition makes me reel, once more. A hand lifts to my trembling mouth.
It is my mother.
I know this is a hallucination; I know this is an apparition, some vapour of my damaged mind.
But I am, nonetheless, looking at my own mother, through the cracked glass panel of a concrete moorland bus shelter. She is staring blankly out at the road: waiting for a bus that will never come. And now the horrifying face of my mother turns and gazes my way. Her expression is curious, as if she is surprised to see me, but not overly surprised. She stands up. She is coming outside the shelter, to talk to me.
No.
This must not happen. A sickening cold overcomes me. I look away, hiding my eyes with shivering hands. When I look back, the face is gone.
But I saw it, I know it: I saw my mother. I am hallucinating dead people.
And now I hear that voice. Frailer now, but so distinct.
‘Katarina? Darling?’
No. Too much. Too too much. I am running now, running running running, running across the road, running away from Mummy, running over the little bridge, running back into the warmth of the pub.
I can’t face Wistman’s Wood. I can’t face anything. Slumping into a burst leather sofa, curling into a foetal position, I try to calm my drumming blood. I don’t know how to explain this terror to myself. I have seen a ghost; my mind is cracking open.
The bargirl with the bruises stares at me, inquisitively. Slowly drying a glass.
Morrice Town, Plymouth
Wednesday morning
Tessa and Kath stood together, and looked out at the huge and brutal walls, and the rolls of steel razor wire, coiled along the top, like Christmas decorations in a nightmare. Naval ensigns flapped, eagerly, in the wintry breeze; oversized concrete hangars squatted above the dark waters of the Tamar: the home of the nuclear submarines, with their missiles ready to destroy the cities of the world. Yet hidden from sight.
‘It looks like Princetown Prison,’ Kath said quietly.
‘Exactly what I thought,’ Tessa replied. ‘They moved a load of us here a month ago, while they’re doing up the main campus. And as soon as I walked in, I looked out of that window and I thought, Oh My God, I’m right back in Princetown. Big high walls like a jail. Do you want some coffee?’
‘Sorry?’
‘Before we chat, Kath. I can send for coffee. There’s a little place right outside does a great flat white.’
Kath’s face was pale. Her expression puzzled, ‘What’s a flat white?’
Tessa called to her assistant, in the room next door. Who appeared, promptly: keen and cheerful.
‘Sara, could you nip down to Drake’s and get me a flat white and …?’ Tessa turned. Kath was squirming, tugging nervously at the sleeve of her baggy jumper.
Tessa yearned to help. To do anything. ‘Kath? Would you like some coffee?’
‘Uh, oh, uh, uh yes, I’ll have, um, a cappuccino. Thanks.’
Kath was offered a seat. Tessa pulled her own swivel chair from behind her desk, to make it all seem less formal.
Whatever reason Kath had for coming here, Tessa wanted Kath to feel relaxed, if such a thing was possible: she didn’t want this to appear like some kind of interview, or, even worse, a consultation, therapy, psychiatric assessment.
Kath smiled, unhappily. ‘Thanks for giving up your time, Tessa.’
The idea was waved away.
‘Oh God, don’t worry. Wednesday mornings are good for me, no seminars, no lectures, I usually use them for watching cat videos on Facebook.’
Kath’s eyes widened. ‘Really?’
‘That was a joke.’
‘Oh. Oh. OK.’ Kath forced a timid laugh, ‘Ah God, Tessa. I don’t even do humour any more. I don’t notice sarcasm, or irony. My brain is a mess, so much has been happening, and I haven’t been able to tell anyone – all these things, everything,’ she paused, flushing slightly – and rushed on, ‘I have to talk. Have to tell someone, tell you.’
‘OK – try me – please.’
‘I will, I really, I mean, there’s so much, like, OK, like there was this time in Hobajob’s. The woods near Huckerby, similar to Wistman’s? It was a freezing day, there was an ammil, a proper ammil, and I was with Lyla and the dogs and we got to the clearing in the middle, and, and there was all this rubbish in the frost, but it looked like it came from our house: a hairbrush with my hair, bloodstained tissues, things like that, worse than that, and Lyla thought she saw someone, and she keeps seeing some man on the moor, sometimes says it might be Adam, I don’t know how, but this girl, at Two Bridges, said she saw Adam at Hobajob’s around the same time, so what does that mean? And I reckon Adam has been watching me. Following me. I saw him at Burrator. And there’s so much more, Tessa, too much, way too much. Everything is
in pieces.’ A pause. ‘Everything.’
Tessa was numbed. Silent.
Kath looked across, her face white. ‘And you know what makes it worse, Tessa? I actually thought I was good at coping with this stuff. I’ve coped with Lyla, I coped when Adam was ill, but this time I just feel pathetic. Loving people isn’t enough. Not this time.’
The sad, stiffening silence was interrupted. Sara had returned with the coffee. The cups had pictures of Sir Francis Drake imprinted on the cardboard. And the slogan, Our Mocha Will Bowl You Over.
Grateful for this intrusion of normality, Tessa took her flat white, and sipped, confused and pained; wondering how to react. Kath was tugging nervously at her bobbly sleeve. The jumper looked as if it needed replacing. The winter coat she’d hung on the hook had seen better days, as well. Tessa felt the pang of her usual guilt.
She and Dan had everything, Kath and Adam had almost nothing, and struggled even for that. She and Dan had two happy, bouncy boys; Kath had one beautiful but difficult daughter. Tessa and Dan had at least three holidays a year: a week of skiing, a fortnight of Mediterranean sun, a city break in Barcelona or New York or Siena. And last night they’d got back from a winter holiday in the Canaries, via Disneyland Paris.
Kath had spent most of Christmas alone, and had tried to commit suicide. And was now possibly falling apart, once more.
‘So what do you think?’ Kath shook her head and put down her coffee. ‘Maybe I just need more medication?’
‘Well, that’s the one thing I cannot do, I’m afraid,’ Tessa shook her head, ‘I’m a psychologist, not a psychiatrist, only psychiatrists can prescribe. But I can give advice, and I can refer, and,’ Tessa gently touched Kath’s arm. ‘I can really listen, I’ve got all morning, I will cancel the afternoon as well, I want to help. You and Adam and Lyla. We love you guys. Anything you want, just ask. It’s often good to simply share. But, Kath, I need to hear it calmly, and slowly and in order, as best as you can remember.’
Kath offered a quiet nod, and finally, at last, in a halting but reasonably lucid monologue, she talked about the memories of a man, in a car, an argument, or some vivid interaction, and how the scent of lemon was connected. She told Tessa about Lyla’s new wariness towards both her parents, but, strangely and especially, her father. She told Tessa about Adam watching her at Burrator.
And then Kath told, in a more coherent way, the peculiar tale of the spooky afternoon in Hobajob’s wood, with the pattern of rubbish, tissues, a hairbrush, even a used tampon. She described the way they both panicked, imagining a man, pursuing them, when there was no one at all. Except for the fact that a bargirl at the Two Bridges had claimed she saw Adam, in the wood, around that very same time, the afternoon of the big freeze, the ammil.
Kath shook her head. ‘And the thing is, Tessa, even if Adam wasn’t there, even if we totally imagined a presence, that hairbrush could still have been mine, it looked like my hair, and I think I lost one like it a few weeks ago. But who would have taken it to Hobajob’s? Lyla? Me? Adam? Maybe it was Lyla. She loves that wood, goes there all the time. But why that stuff? It was just so creepy, and Lyla is acting even more strangely in other ways. A while back I caught her making a pattern, in the yard, out of dead birds.’ Kath visibly shuddered. ‘It was so eerie. These little dead eyes, arranged in rows and spirals. It reminded me of the books Mum used to read, on witchcraft, spells and symbols. Those rubbish antiques she left us. The masks from Namibia, in the hall, all that. The stuff we couldn’t sell.’
Tessa nodded, not knowing quite what to say. Searching for a source of rationality, to stabilize her sister-in-law. ‘And what does Adam think of all this?’
‘He denies everything. Says he’s not following me. Denies he was at Hobajob’s.’
‘The rubbish in the clearing?’
Kath shrugged, ‘Fly-tippers, he says. Perhaps he’s right. And he reckons Lyla just made a random pattern. It’s what she does, she likes patterns.’
‘Which is true enough?’
‘Yes.’ Kath sighed. ‘Yes. It’s true. But even Adam is a little bit troubled, because Lyla is singing songs that we don’t understand, we don’t understand where she learned them. Songs about death. An approaching death. And anyway I don’t know if I can even trust Adam, trust my own husband, because he seems guilty, and it turns out he was alone over Christmas, he has no alibi. And Lyla says she sees him, on the moor, near the house, she said it when she was arranging those birds.’
Tessa went to interrupt, but Kath rushed on. ‘And I’ve also realized Adam was the last person to touch my car, to fix the brakes, did Adam do something? Did he come back and do something around that day, did he want me to have an accident? And why am I even using the word alibi? It’s all ludicrous – yet it’s all frightening me, Tessa. Frightening, and destabilizing. Horrible.’
Tessa’s concerns deepened. She tried to hide them. ‘What else, you said there was more?’
Kath closed her eyes tightly for a few seconds, as if trying to block a memory. Then she told Tessa about the birthday party that went horribly wrong.
Tessa winced. ‘Ah. My God. I’m so sorry, we should have been there.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Kath. ‘It’s done now, and anyway, Adam saved the day – he called up all his friends and rellies. They came over and made it fun for Lyla. Ironically, that was when the bargirl said she saw Adam at Hobajob’s, and after the party they all got lost in Wistman’s Wood like you’re meant to, under the mossy trees.’
‘That’s good. I love Wistman’s, we really will take the boys up there again soon.’
Kath looked at Tessa, directly, as if none of this mattered. ‘Yes, thanks, thank you, but this is one of the reasons I need to talk, to someone, to anyone, but most of all to you – this isn’t all of it. There’s a couple of other things. But they are much harder to say.’ Kath’s words stumbled into silence.
Tessa sat in the quietness, which was prolonged. Kath clearly needed time.
To take the pressure off, Tessa swivelled in her chair and gazed out of her window. A huge warship was making its way out of Devonport towards the open sea. These boats always surprised Tessa. They were so big, bristling with antennae and aggression. She had been working in Plymouth for six years, and still hadn’t quite got used to it. War in peace, evil behind walls.
But that was it. Evil was kept behind walls: submarines were kept in concrete bunkers. Tessa simply could not believe Adam was somehow implicated in Kath’s suicide bid – this stuff about the car, the need for an alibi, it didn’t add up, there was no motivation, he wouldn’t risk Lyla’s life – but she couldn’t believe Kath had attempted suicide for no reason, either.
Moreover, Lyla’s confusion about her father, and wariness towards him, could be discounted. It was, Tessa reckoned, simply the distress of a child who nearly lost a mother, subsequently looking for someone to blame. And the other parent, the other carer: that was the obvious choice. Not the beloved and threatened mother herself. So it was Dad who got the anger.
The warship was almost gone. Heading out into the cold and furious Atlantic.
At last Kath spoke, once again: this time whisperingly quiet.
‘OK, here goes. I have to tell. There’s two more things, and I want you to hear them both.’
Tessa felt her own nerves tingling, as her sister-in-law explained, ‘Remember I said I was with Emma Spalding?’
‘No. But go on.’
‘Well. I was. And I tried to call you straight after, wanted to tell you this as soon as I heard, but you went on holiday, and it didn’t seem right.’
Tessa leaned a little closer. ‘What did Emma tell you?’
‘She said that I went to her twice, that day, the day – I went to Burrator.’
‘And?’
Kath looked down at her scuffed trainers.
‘I was excited. Made up. Agitated. And I was – I said something, about that day – said something to Emma.’
‘What?’
> Tessa leaned closer still, as Kath’s muttering got even quieter.
‘Kath?’
‘Emma said I’d told her, that day, that I was off to see Dan, your Dan, to see my brother, at Two Bridges, that evening I drove into Burrator!’ Kath’s eyes were wet and wide, gazing at Tessa. Helpless, apologetic, and hurt. ‘How can that be, three hours before I tried to commit suicide, I went to meet Dan? Where? Why? How? He was in London, wasn’t he? What the hell does that mean?’
Tessa gazed at Kath. She gazed through Kath. Around Kath. Trying not to react, to show her own roiled emotions. Instead she would be her professional self. Somehow.
Kath was sitting straight, still needing to speak.
‘And there’s one more thing, Tessa. This is the worst of it all. I know you’re going to think I’m crazy, and maybe I am.’
‘Please.’
‘I saw my mother. On the moor. My own mother. I know it was a hallucination, an apparition, but it’s what I saw.’
The stiff silence returned. Tessa frowned. ‘You saw a ghost?’
Kath looked at her hands, examining her slightly dirty fingernails.
‘Yep. I did. It was after Two Bridges, the party, I was following the big hike to Wistman’s. And I walked past that old concrete bus shelter. The one with the broken windows, and I looked through the window, and I saw my dead mother, but much older, she was sitting in the bench and she turned, to look at me—’
Tessa sat back, holding her breath.
‘And I couldn’t cope, Tessa, simply couldn’t, I just raced – as fast as I could, back to the Bridges. Because I had seen a ghost. My mind was that far gone. And you’re the first and only person I’ve told this, because if I tell anyone else this they’ll know I am not capable, they’ll take Lyla away, won’t they?’
Kath gazed, long and hard, at her sister-in-law, saying nothing.
‘I am having a breakdown, aren’t I, Tessa? My brain isn’t getting better, it’s falling apart.’
‘No, wait—’
‘Because if I’m not falling apart, that means something is happening to me.’
‘Sorry?’
Just Before I Died Page 15
