After Anna

by Alex Lake

  Oddly, you and Julia are alike in that way. You are class conscious too, you know that. Just like Julia is one rung above working class, you are one below upper class. Nearly there. Nearly.

  You’d hoped Brian might get you there. Might get a degree from Oxford and make millions in the city, or enter government and end up with a ‘Sir’ before his name. Failing that he might marry some impoverished posh girl with a titled father.

  But no. He had scraped into a provincial university and become a junior school teacher. God, it was embarrassing. Not even a high school teacher, which would have at least had him teaching A levels and preparing young minds for university, but a junior school teacher. He reads stories to eight-year-olds. Any fool could do it. You hated it. Hated it. Woke up at night enraged about it. And it wasn’t even an act of rebellion against you. It was his level.

  His father, Jim, hadn’t done much to stop it. He had smiled and said it was a fine job, that those early years were the most important in a child’s development, that some people had a gift for educating eight-year-olds and that it was cruelly undervalued in society. Any fool could not do it, and those who thought otherwise were fools themselves.

  You’re glad to be a fool, in that case. And anyway, as far as Jim was concerned you were not too much of a fool to sort out him and his girlfriend, Lindsey Wilkinson, that fucking star-struck floozy Lindsey Wilkinson. When he told you about his affair you pretended to be unconcerned.

  I’m leaving Edna. I can’t stand our marriage anymore. And I’ll be honest, I wish I’d done it sooner but I didn’t have the courage. Now I do. And Lindsey gave it to me.

  Just like Julia. Leaving a marriage just because they were unhappy. It was not acceptable.

  You knew Lindsey, of course, you did. You’d seen her at school functions, fawning over your husband.

  Well, you said. I understand. I won’t make trouble.

  Thank you, Edna he said. I appreciate it.

  You didn’t mean it, of course. You were not about to suffer that humiliation. Edna Crowne did not let that kind of thing happen to her, and Jim should have known.

  Yet he was surprised when she killed him, after making him watch his girlfriend die.

  And you had no regrets. He deserved it, and a divorce was out of the question. So what choice did you have? You had to act; had to take charge of the situation. It was a necessary evil. The strong asserting itself over the weak.

  A necessary evil. That is what separates you from the common run. You are prepared to do what has to be done.

  And now you have to do it again.

  It will not be an elegant solution, like your mother’s or Jim’s.

  Circumstances dictate that this will be crude.

  You push open the kitchen door.

  You heft the hammer in your hand.

  Yes, it will be crude.

  But crude can be effective.

  ii.

  Julia heard the kitchen door close behind her. It was probably Edna, come to try and persuade her of her innocence.

  No chance. She knew what had happened and she would not be deflected. Edna was going to pay for what she had done, Julia would see to that.

  She turned around. Edna was moving rapidly towards her. Her eyes were wide open and staring, her face pale, her lips drawn back over her teeth. She looked, Julia thought, like a drawing of a psychopath.

  And she was holding a hammer in her right hand. She lifted it, and swung.

  Julia put up her hands to defend herself.

  And then, nothing.

  iii.

  Julia felt the first stirrings of consciousness as she began to wake up. She did not want to. She was not even sure she could; it felt as though some great tidal weight was pulling her down, down into dark oblivion. And she would have let it. She had nowhere near the strength to resist the urge for unconsciousness, an urge which had the force of necessity, a necessity she dimly recognized from her student days, when she foolishly and occasionally drank herself into a blackout. The weight dragging her down was chemical in origin, and it was near irresistible.

  But not quite. Something equally powerful was forcing its way into her consciousness and waking her up.

  Pain.

  She was in a lot of pain.

  Her back ached, her shoulders felt as though someone was pulling them from her body, and her hands throbbed in time with her heartbeat. No need to take her pulse: she could just count the bursts of pain in her hands.

  The pain, though, was worst in her head, which felt like it had been hit with a hammer. She tried to move it, but her neck was stiff, and the muscles protested loudly. She felt something on her temple crack and flake and fall down her shirt: dried blood, she realized.

  She had been hit with a hammer. By Edna.

  She opened her eyes. She was in pitch-black silence. Perhaps it was the middle of the night; she had no way of telling. She was lying on her side on a hard, cold stone floor. She was in the foetal position, her knees drawn up to her chest. There was a wall against her back and another against her forehead. Wherever she was it was a very small space. She tried to move her legs, but they were tied together. The same for her hands, which were tied behind her back.

  She didn’t know what was going on, but she knew one thing. She was in trouble. She was in a lot of trouble.

  She heard voices. Faint, unclear. It was Brian, saying something. Edna’s cut glass tones in reply. A pause.

  So she was in the house, somewhere.

  Then laughter. Anna’s laughter.

  She opened her mouth to speak, and there was more pain. There was some kind of gag, a hard, thin metal band, which pressed against the corners of her mouth when she opened it. She tried to make a noise with her mouth closed, but there was something else in there, something holding down her tongue, and all that came out was a low moan.

  The pain. God, the pain. It was unbearable. Her shoulders were screaming. It felt as if the muscles were being taken apart, fibre by fibre. It reminded her of childbirth, of the excruciating feeling of the body working as hard as it could to push the baby out, working as hard as it could to destroy itself, to tear itself apart. At least, that was how it felt, and it felt endless and impossible, but always, always you had a place you could go to, a place that offered reassurance and comfort; a thought you could cling to.

  It’s worth it. I’m going to meet my baby. At the end of this I’ll meet my baby. I’ll see their face, hear their cries, give them a name, a home, a place in this world. At the end of this there will be a new person, a new life.

  And that got you through. That gave you the strength to fight the pain.

  But this. There was nowhere for her to go. Just the thought that this might be it. That her crazy mother-in-law – and God, Edna was crazy, crazier than Julia had ever thought possible – was going to kill her, and then bring her daughter up, and God alone knew what damage that would do to Anna.

  She almost felt sorry for Brian. No wonder he had mummy issues. It was surprising he was as normal as he was. What must it have been like to have Edna hovering around you, getting herself in your business, in your head, all your life? Julia saw it now; saw why Brian was so obedient, why he never argued with his mother. She’d always thought it was devotion, but it wasn’t. It was terror. He was scared of her, but being a grown-up he had learned to hide it.

  It must have been awful, growing up in this empty house, with a distant father and Medusa for a mother. She pictured him, a little boy, a puppyish longing for affection driving him to try and please Edna, to seek her approval, an approval which was not forthcoming, leaving him scared and lonely and damaged.

  And this was the life Anna had in front of her. A tyrant for a grandmother and a craven father, unable to protect her.

  She closed her eyes. Her cheeks were wet with tears. She shifted onto her back and pressed her feet against the wall. She pushed against it and levered herself into a more upright position, the back of her neck off the ground. The position was u
ncomfortable but it eased the pressure on her shoulders and the pain subsided slightly.

  It was enough. Slowly, she slipped back into darkness.

  17

  War of the Roses

  i.

  You are ready now.

  The risky part is over. The risky part was yesterday, knocking Julia out with the hammer and then dragging her to her hiding place without Anna seeing you. It was quite a commotion and could easily have attracted the attention of a curious young girl, and you did not need that. You did not need Anna to see what was going on, or you would be forced to kill her as well, and then – probably – Brian.

  You chuckle. Imagine if it came to that! How ridiculous.

  So you switched on the television in the living room, put on a DVD of some infantile talking train show that Anna’s mother let her rot her brain with – there’d be no more of that, soon enough – and closed the door.

  Then you pulled Julia into the dining room, sedated her: a good, heavy dose. It didn’t matter if it harmed her. Then you bound and gagged her and stuffed her away in the secret place.

  You chuckle again. It was ironic that she was in the same place Anna had been. She had spent all that time wondering what Anna had experienced, what she had been through, and now she knew. She knew everything there was to know about where her daughter had been kept.

  Of course, it was more pleasant for Anna. It was perfectly big enough for a five-year-old. She could stretch out. You had made sure you moved her around when she was in there, manipulated her joints, made sure she did not stiffen. No hope of that for Julia. It was a tight fit for an adult, but then it was not designed for someone to spend prolonged periods there.

  Not that she would be spending a prolonged period in there.

  Her time in there was about to come to a sudden end.

  You hadn’t done it yet, as you had to get rid of Brian and Anna before you could get rid of Julia. In their case, temporarily, to a surprise night away in Blackpool.

  An awful place, but irresistible to kids.

  So when Brian dutifully returned with fish fingers and ice cream she told him what she had planned.

  You need to get away. Spend some time with Anna, you told Brian.

  I don’t know, Mum. She seems happy here.

  Nonsense. Some father—daughter time will help put all this behind her. And you’re still off work. Might as well make use of the time.

  You think?

  I do. I’ve booked you into a hotel in Blackpool. Tomorrow night. It’s close to the Pleasure Beach. She’ll love it.

  And now they were gone. Headed out this morning, waving goodbye as they drove away, all the while completely unaware that Julia’s car was in the neighbour’s garage – who could have thought that it would be so useful – that garage? You’d always regretted selling that land, but it had turned out to be a blessing in disguise – and Julia was inside the house.

  Alone. The police – such fools, so easily manipulated – were gone, too. Have a day off, you told them, Anna’s going away with her dad and you hardly need to guard me!

  So now for Julia.

  It was a simple plan, really. It is one of your strengths, simplicity. You know that simple is always better. There is less to go wrong.

  So you will wait until evening, then give her a lethal dose of sedative. It is important not to wait too long before you dispose of the body after killing her, or lividity will set in, and, in the unlikely event that the body is found, it will be obvious she was murdered.

  It needs to look like she drowned after taking a combination of sedatives and whisky.

  Perfectly understandable, given her history. No one would question it at all. An unstable woman who had recently attempted suicide takes her own life while under immense strain.

  That is, if she is found at all, which you doubt. What will be found is her car, parked in a remote location near the mouth of the Mersey Estuary, with an empty bottle of whisky and a syringe emptied of the sedative you plan to give her. She will be gone. Disappeared as the tide was flowing out to the Irish Sea. Fish food.

  Just like Jim and his floozy. You’ll take her to the same place. Jim, Julia. It’s neat. You like neat.

  You know it is all about narrative. Humans like their stories to be neat, to make sense. It gives them the impression the world makes sense, that it is safe and predictable, when the reality is that the opposite is true. You know that. You know that the world is a brutal, vengeful place and the only way to survive is to take control, which is what you do.

  But you are not normal. Which is why you are so successful.

  So Julia will disappear, neatly.

  And, just like after Jim and Miss-fucking-Wilkinson disappeared, the world will go on as before.

  ii.

  Julia had figured out quite a lot of things. Amidst the agony, she’d had quite a lot of time to think about them.

  She’d figured out that, if she twisted her torso so that her weight was on one shoulder, then moved her hands towards the opposite shoulder, that side of her body would get some relief from the pain caused by the position she had been forced into. After a while she could reverse the movement, relieving the other side. She had no way of gauging time, but she thought that, initially, she had moved every ten minutes or so; now the intervals were much shorter.

  She’d figured where she was. She was in a priest’s hole behind the fireplace in the living room. That would explain why she had heard Edna, Brian, and Anna’s voices.

  She remembered Edna showing her the priest’s hole some years ago. It was a rectangular box, about four and a half feet in length and four feet in height, and about two feet deep. Just big enough for an adult male priest to squeeze into during the sixteenth century, when Queen Elizabeth outlawed Catholicism and sent her pursuivants up and down the country, searching for priests to torture and kill. The pursuivants were skilled searchers and measured the external dimensions of houses and the internal dimensions of rooms so as to determine whether there were any secret compartments; the priest’s holes had to be built so cleverly that they could not locate them, and they also had to be small.

  Edna’s priest’s hole was in the side of a large inglenook fireplace. The fireplace itself was the correct dimensions; the priest’s hole had been built into an area above the fire where the chimney would normally have been, so it was undetectable by measurement.

  And undetectable by police searching the house.

  Julia could not shake the image of the police here, in the house, mere feet from Anna, with a calm, smiling, helpful Edna standing in the doorway of the living room, watching them fail to find her granddaughter, and congratulating herself on her ingenuity in selecting such an effective hiding place.

  It was so Edna. If she had only thought it through when Anna was missing, she would have seen it. Where else would Edna hide someone, but in a sixteenth-century priest’s hole? It would have appealed to Edna’s sense that modernity was not all it was cracked up to be, not to mention the air of Gothic that she carried with her. She could almost hear Edna thinking about it.

  It’s been hiding people for a long time, no reason why it should stop now. Might as well use what you have in front of you. No point in reinventing the wheel. Keep it simple.

  And it had worked. The police had been to Edna’s house twice and found nothing. She might be batshit crazy but she wasn’t stupid.

  She’d figured out that her earlier suspicions that Edna had leaked stories to the press in order to discredit her and get custody of Anna were almost certainly correct. Then, she’d thought that Edna was simply taking advantage of Anna’s abduction but now she couldn’t help wondering whether Edna had planned all this from the start.

  It was obvious, really; what better way to get custody than to utterly discredit the mother in the public eye? It was an amazing, twisted plan: take Anna, make Julia look bad, and, when she was public enemy number one, return Anna, ready for a custody battle Edna couldn’t lose. If Julia hadn’t b
een in so much pain she might almost have admired her mother-in-law’s crazy ingenuity.

  Although, if that was what it would have taken to keep Anna, she might have done the same herself.

  She thought back to the day itself. When Anna was taken, Edna had supposedly been at home, fixing the plumbing. Instead, she had gone to the school and picked up Anna. Julia went over the day in her mind, replayed the phone call when she had asked Edna for help that afternoon, told her that she might be late. Had Edna seen an opportunity and simply acted, or had she formed the plan ahead of time and been looking for a chance to put it into action? Either way, she had done it, had turned up at the school, and, unseen, taken Anna. Maybe she’d beckoned to her from a distance, and Anna, recognizing her grandmother, had gone willingly. Maybe Anna had wandered off and Edna had picked her up. It didn’t matter, and Julia doubted she’d ever find out, because she’d figured out one other thing.

  She’d figured out that Edna was going to kill her.

  But she could not, for the life of her, figure out what she could do about it.

  She switched her weight to her left shoulder. The right side of her body relaxed a little, the relief immense. It wouldn’t last long.

  And then she heard footsteps. Quick, decisive footsteps, approaching the priest’s hole.

  They stopped. There was the sound of metal moving on metal – bolts, maybe – then the wall in front of her slid back.

  It took her eyes some time to adjust to the light. When they did they were not pleased to see what they saw.

  It was Edna.

  iii.

  Edna did not look the same as she usually did. Her hair, normally frozen in an elegant, chin-length arrangement that she modelled on Helen Mirren, was scraped back from her forehead. She was wearing an old, blue wool sweater Julia thought had maybe once belonged to Brian. That was all she could see of her mother-in-law; the priest’s hole was about five feet above the floor, so all that was in the frame of her vision was Edna’s head, neck, and shoulders.