In a Cottage, In a Wood

by cass green

  ‘I didn’t know before, I swear I didn’t,’ he says, stricken red eyes still lowered as he hunts for a handkerchief in his pocket. It is grubby and off-white and he honks loudly into it before continuing. ‘I was pissed off about the cottage, of course I was,’ he says with a bitter laugh. ‘I assumed she really had done one of her mad things and left it to a stranger. But then, that day, that day when I collected Jarvis …’

  He breaks off and sniffs, shoulders hunched miserably. Meaty hands clasped around the small glass.

  ‘What?’ says Neve. ‘What happened that day?’

  ‘It was …’ he stutters, ‘it was the way you were standing in the doorway … the light. I don’t know. And, you know, looking a bit … well, tired. Plus, your hair was up or something. But I worked it out. I could … see it. So clearly.’

  Neve is on her feet now. She doesn’t mean to screech but she can’t stop the high timbre of her anguish.

  ‘Worked what out, Richard? What was this thing you worked out?’

  Richard gazes up at her, his expression naked with grief.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Neve,’ he says. ‘You really don’t know? It’s not my, it’s not really my place to … to be the one to …’

  Neve slams both her hands down onto the kitchen table.

  This time she speaks slowly and quietly.

  ‘If you don’t tell me what you are talking about, Richard, I swear to God I am going to do something seriously fucking violent. I am so not kidding.’

  Richard avoids her eye and nods, repeatedly.

  ‘Yes, yes, alright,’ he says, ‘but first, tell me do you know the circumstances of her adoption? Christ please, tell me you do.’

  ‘Yes,’ she says curtly. ‘I know about Denville.’ Saying the name aloud again causes a hard shiver between her shoulder blades.

  ‘Well, that’s … good,’ says Richard and tosses back the rest of his drink in one go. He stares at the table and takes a deep breath. ‘Did you know she had a sibling?’

  ‘Yes,’ says Neve. ‘A baby brother. He was there too, at the murder scene.’

  Richard finally meets her eye. His expression is filled with so much sorrow that it forces her back into her seat. Ice spreads in crystalline branches through her bloodstream and into all her limbs. Her fingers might snap off at the knuckles. Her legs have no feeling.

  ‘No,’ says Richard, so gently that his voice is almost inaudible. ‘The press got confused by the Swedish name, you see. One reporter got it wrong and because of restrictions on details about children, the few facts available just got repeated and repeated.’ He pauses and continues in a rush. ‘It sounded like a boy’s name; Hannes. They thought it was like, well, Hans. But it was a little girl.’ Richard takes a deep, shuddering breath. ‘I’m so very sorry if you knew nothing of this, Neve my dear,’ he says.

  ‘No,’ says Neve, getting to her feet. ‘I don’t think I want you to—’

  ‘I’m sorry, but—’

  ‘No!’ Neve yells. ‘Fuck off! Stop fucking speaking right now!’

  ‘Neve,’ says Richard, getting up and reaching for her, his face wretched.

  She bats his hands away. ‘Don’t touch me.’

  He steps back, his eyes searching her face, breathing noisily.

  ‘I’m so very sorry that you had to find out this way,’ he says in a croaky voice. ‘Do you understand what I’m saying to you? Do you? Tell me you do.’

  ‘No!’ Neve screams and sees flecks of spit fly at Richard. He doesn’t flinch. ‘Stop talking shit!’ Then, ‘I’m not even adopted!’

  Richard lifts his hands to his face.

  ‘I think you were,’ he says through his fingers. ‘Don’t you see? You have to be. You are Hannes. You’re Isabelle’s sister.’

  42

  17th November 2016

  Dearest Hannes,

  You’ll never see this letter but I want to write it anyway. I will burn it with everything else when the time comes.

  I only wanted to see you from a distance, to know that you were safe. I knew that Denville had no way of finding you, but I had to see for myself that you were happy and unaware of it all.

  I feel guilty that I forgot about you for so long.

  I remember talking about my sister when I was small but was somehow made to feel that I had imagined you into being. That I had never had a sister at all. But when the memories really started to return, then I knew. I knew that I hadn’t been alone with Mor that day.

  It was hard enough for me to find you, I must admit. And I do feel a little guilty for reeling Bob – dear Bob – into this. He wouldn’t do it at first. Refused point blank. But I told him I would never have peace if I didn’t know your new name at the very least. Told him that it would help me heal. Help me to stop being obsessed about Denville. Even Bob has stopped believing he means me harm now but he knows I’m not coping well.

  I promised him I wouldn’t act on it if he could only tell me your name.

  I lied.

  Easy enough to find you then, especially as I have discovered you are hopeless about things like online security.

  I actually held my breath when I sent you the Facebook friend request, but you didn’t seem to question it and when ‘You and Neve Carey are now friends’ pinged on my screen, I felt the first stirring of happiness in such a long time.

  I couldn’t stop looking at the pictures of you. I wonder if you know how beautiful you are? You’re one of those people who seems to exude energy with a little bit of mischief. When you’re unhappy, it’s like the light gets switched off.

  It’s fair to say that you weren’t the prettiest baby! I even heard Mor say once, ‘She looks like a little potato, but I love her all the more for it!’ At the time I was cross. Felt that a mother shouldn’t say things like that about her baby.

  But later I was glad. Because when the reporter for whatever tabloid it was said that there was an ‘angelic little girl’ at the scene they also reported on the ‘stout baby boy’.

  It was the name too. It confused them with its foreignness.

  But look at you now, darling Hannes.

  Neve.

  I must call you Neve.

  I wish I could talk to you. Tell you about how I used to push you round in that funny old trolley all the time. Mor used to call me Lilla Mamma – Little Mother.

  But maybe you don’t know anything about where you came from.

  About our heritage of blood.

  43

  Neve ignores Richard’s cries as she thrusts open the back door and runs outside. She can only run. Has to keep moving. It’s the only way to avoid the impact. If she keeps moving, this new knowledge can’t shatter her bones, squash her organs, splatter her blood.

  So she runs on, feet slamming into the cold earth of the lane, rain soaking through her clothes and running down her chilled cheeks. The light is leaching away. Dusk drains colour from the hedges and turns the world monochrome.

  The woods are stark against the sky now. Branches reach into the growing darkness and merge with it, so it feels as though the world is closing in.

  Panting painfully, Neve arrives back at the cottage. She has left the door open but she doesn’t care now. Denville can come and find her. She’ll kill him herself if she must.

  This is all too much, much too big. It has blotted out all the light on everything else.

  She wants her sister so badly. When Lou answers Neve can only breathe heavily into the phone for several seconds and a panicked Lou says, ‘Neve? Is that you? What’s happened? Are you hurt?’

  Then, finally, Neve starts to cry.

  Now she is busy throwing things into a rucksack. The door is locked. Richard has been banging on it for several minutes but she ignores him.

  Finally, he goes away, after shouting through the letterbox that he is there to talk, if she needs him.

  Lou was too shocked to speak at first, then she told Neve to ‘come home’. To get on a train and come to London where they could be together and
talk.

  She clearly didn’t know about any of it. That Neve was adopted. It is all new information to her too. She cried when Neve told her, in great gulping sentences, about the murder, and about Isabelle and about the real reason she had been left the cottage.

  Now, as she stuffs clothes into the open mouth of the rucksack, a thought comes to her. Maybe Isabelle got the wrong person? The relief this brings feels narcotic but it doesn’t last. Something terrible occurs to her and she runs to the sitting room to the photograph of a young Isabelle sitting on the tiled floor.

  The childhood accident. The cut head.

  The blood.

  She had been so sure that this was the flooring they’d had as children but Lou had said no, hadn’t she? And Lou never got that stuff wrong.

  Now Neve sinks onto the sofa, clutching the picture of young Isabelle, with her curly hair and little daisy dress, Lego scattered around her. It is suddenly clear to Neve.

  It was this floor, the one in the picture, she remembered.

  Blood on the tiles. But it wasn’t after having an accident on her tricycle. That happened much later, when she was with her new family.

  It was this other woman’s blood. Sofie Lindstrom’s.

  Her real mother’s blood.

  The shock finally catches up with her now. All her energy seems to drain out of her limbs and she sinks back onto the sofa, numb.

  She can’t cry any more. This is too huge for tears.

  She doesn’t know how long she sits with her head resting back on the sofa, staring up at a frilly damp patch on the old ceiling above. But the wind rattling the letterbox brings her back to herself and she gets up. It’s time to get away from here.

  Ten minutes later she is locking the doors. She doesn’t glance back at the cottage as she walks down the lane. She will ask one of the Gardners to drive her to Truro. She will get on the first train out of Cornwall and never come back.

  Then she will try to find a way to survive this new knowledge.

  It is dark now but the rain has stopped and she’s grateful for this small thing as she makes her way up the lane, following the beam of a torch she found in the cottage.

  The hedges drip and rustle. An owl hoots. But it no longer feels so sinister. It’s simply what happens here. And what more horror could there be now?

  44

  11th December 2016

  When Bob told me the news, I felt only numb. He thought I would be relieved, but he doesn’t understand. He doesn’t understand.

  ‘Don’t you see, Isabelle?’ he said. ‘Denville can’t hurt you any more.’ But he can.

  A stroke, that’s what Bob said. A starburst of blood exploding inside the brain. But that doesn’t mean HE IS OVER. I still hear him, even when I climb into my safe place, I hear him. He knocks at the windows and he taps on the door. He calls to me in my sleep.

  I know now that I will never be free from him because the monster lives inside my head.

  It’s time to leave it all behind. I know this will hurt Richard and poor Matty, who has become a real friend. But it’s time.

  First, though, I want to find a way to reach out to you, Hannes. I have been watching you from afar, for months, ever since the night you lost your phone in that club. (I wish you would take better care of yourself!!) It won’t be hard to find you during this party season and to pretend we are strangers.

  Now that I have decided what to do I feel calm. I will wear Mummy’s dress and I will get my hair and make-up done so I look the best I can be. I will watch and wait and then I will find a way to make it all stop.

  But first I will give you all I have. I couldn’t be a sister to you in my lifetime, but maybe I can help you in my death.

  And now I need to get organized. All of this must go in the fire.

  45

  The lights are on at the Gardners’ place.

  When she knocks, it takes some time before Will opens the door. His shaggy eyebrows shoot up at the sight of Neve. But his eyes look dull and he smells a bit stale.

  ‘What’s the matter? Has something happened?’ he says in a low voice. He moves forward a little, his expression now concerned.

  Neve swallows deeply. If he hugs her, she will dissolve. She must remain strong. To get away.

  ‘I want to ask you a really big favour. Please, please, can you take me to Truro?’

  ‘Er … now?’ says Will and leans against the doorjamb.

  ‘Yes, now. I’m going back to London. Please. Can you take me to the station?’

  Will stares at Neve for a few moments. His eyes are reddened and puffy, his face more jowly than usual because of a silvery beard dotting his chin. The collar of his rugby shirt is turned inwards and there’s some kind of whitish stain on his chest. He looks as though he is carrying a bad hangover from the excesses of the night before.

  She squashes the flicker of worry down inside herself. She has no choice about this. Must get away right now.

  ‘Right,’ he says finally. ‘We’ll have to go in my car. Let’s go.’

  They climb into a battered old Volvo. It is much tattier and smellier inside than the Range Rover. There are clumps of mud all over the foot well. Will sighs irritably as he adjusts the seat to accommodate his long frame. It had been set for someone much smaller; Sally presumably.

  Neve is braced for questions but he doesn’t say a word as they pull out onto the main road. Something about this feels ‘off’, but she is too upset and wired to tell whether it is her own judgement that is skewed. Maybe, she thinks, she’s looking so crazy that Will is afraid to ask what’s going on. But perhaps this is a good thing. It will only take the tiniest kind word to make her cry all over again.

  All her senses feel oddly heightened. Maybe this is what shock really feels like, she thinks.

  Will seems to be driving quite fast. But everyone does here, in the country. When they know the roads …

  There’s a close, sweaty smell in the car. The headlights wash icily over the landscape and a wooden sign looms out of the dark. The bright wall speeding by on her left seems too close. Neve sees the quick bright flash of animal eyes and then the road is dark again.

  She clutches her phone, hoping Lou will send her another message just for the comfort of it. Her thumb toys with the home button as she glances at Will. He is frowning deeply at the road ahead and hunches forward, as though employing all his powers of concentration.

  The strange silence in the car feels suffocating. Isn’t he at least curious about what has happened? It is only now, as she sees the slow, heavy blink of his eyelids, that she realizes he is not just hungover, but still drunk. A new anxiety squeezes her, just when she felt she had no energy left to be frightened.

  Neve taps her phone against her thigh in an attempt to distract herself but her fingers are sweaty and the phone slips out of her hands, landing somewhere in the darkness of the foot well.

  ‘Shit,’ she murmurs, reaching down. Feeling around with her fingers she finds it wedged close to where the seat meets the car floor. As she lifts it her fingers brush against something cool and soft. Neve puts the phone in her lap and then reaches down again, pinching whatever it is between her ring and forefinger.

  Holding it up, Neve feels as though something has slammed into her chest. She lets out an audible gasp.

  Will turns to look at her and says, ‘Oh shit.’

  46

  It’s a black and white feather, oily to her touch.

  The silence is booming pressure on her eardrums until Will breaks it.

  ‘Neve, let me ex—’

  ‘What the fuck?’ she says in a low voice. She’s surprised to find she isn’t scared. Instead what she feels is a pure wash of hot outrage. ‘Why did you have a magpie in your car, Will?’

  Will’s face looks hollowed out in the dim light of the car. His eyes are like dark holes.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ he says quickly. ‘But you must understand it wasn’t personal. I like you, Neve.’

  Neve lets
out a bitter laugh of incredulity.

  ‘Oh that’s alright then. Not personal? How could you do that? You utter …’ she’s yelling now. She can’t find a word big enough to encompass her disgust.

  ‘I never approved of any of it!’ Will’s voice has taken on a high-pitched, almost whiny timbre. ‘It was Sally, really! We just wanted, she just wanted, you to sell quickly, that’s all!’

  Sally?

  ‘I don’t believe you. She wouldn’t do that.’

  Will barks a humourless laugh. ‘Oh, believe me, she would. And she did. She’s not what you might think, with all her homemaker stuff. She’s a woman who gets what she wants and what she wants is that cottage.’

  Neve’s fingers curl against the seat. She’s sure they’ve speeded up. ‘All those scary things? And what about the gross way I found the house? The axe, for Christ’s sake?’

  Will is breathing heavily. Almost panting. He looks at her, his expression stricken in the dim light of the car.

  ‘I did block the toilet,’ he says in a feeble voice. ‘And I’m very very sorry for that. But everything else … well, that was all her. My darling fucking wife. Started before we even met you. She lifted someone else’s sack of rubbish on the way home one night and trashed the cottage as her version of a welcome. Ha! We didn’t know who was getting the place but she wanted the first impression to be … well …’ he trails off. ‘And,’ he adds, heated again, ‘she destroyed the flowers someone left at Isabelle’s grave. As well as, oh I don’t know, lots of things she had no place doing.’

  ‘Wait,’ says Neve, sitting up straighter in her seat. ‘Did you mess with the radio too?’

  Will lets out a small moan. ‘Sally did, yes!’ he says. ‘Easy enough with the remote, even from outside. But … we do have keys.’

  He pauses and then his words come out in a rush, skating into each other in their haste. ‘I would never have hurt Jarvis! And I told her, I fucking told her,’ at this he slams one hand against the steering wheel, ‘she’d gone too far that time. I let him out – okay that’s all on me! – but she kicked him in the ribs! Actually kicked the poor old mutt! That’s the kind of woman we’re dealing with! And I told her! I did, I said “This has gone too far now!” But no, Sally knows best. She’s all, “Do it for Matty. Think about Matty!” as though that made it all alright!’