by Sarah Till
'Yes, someone is frightening me. Julia. But other than that, I don't know who else is frightening me. I just don't know.' It was true. I didn't know for sure who it was who was threatening me, only that they were somewhere in the village, watching me, warning me. I had my ideas, but I just didn't know for sure 'So what happened? You know...'
We both look at the tent that had been erected, white this time, one side of it resting against the rocks.
'Well, she fell off the top of the waterfall and she was found here.'
Mia lights another cigarette and I notice the yellow nicotine stains on her fingers. Our eyes meet and she sighs.
‘Don’t start, Lizzie. It’s a vicious circle. I know it’s not good for me. Well, for the baby. If there was one. But what with the job, and all that, the stress. This is turning into a major incident.’
‘Stress won’t help either.’
I see the tears form.
‘Yeah, well it’s not easy. Four years and two infertility clinics. I transferred here because I thought it would be stress free. Small Cornish Village. Then this happens. Not easy at all. But I shouldn’t be telling you this. It’s not your problem.’
We both stare at the tent.
'Is she...'
Mia looks at me now.
'Yes Lizzie, She's dead. This is very serious.
'But she could have fell?'
Mia nods.
'Yeah. She could've. But if she did, how would you explain this?'
She reaches into the pocket of her suit and pulls out a folded-up piece of paper which has been neatly placed in a plastic evident bag. I immediately recognise the photocopied letter and look away. But Mia reads it out.
'Kill You Next Time.'
Scrawled along the bottom in black marker pen is another sentence, which Mia reads slowly.
'Time is running out. I just want what's mine. Tick tock.'
She holds it up in front of me.
'Look familiar, does it? You went quite pale, Lizzie, when I showed it to you. Have you seen one of these before?'
I shake my head.
'I've got to go now. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.'
Mia watches me as I rush up the pathway, grab Macy and hurry back to the village. Just as I reach the crowd of villagers, she shouts after me.
'So is Jenny Booth, your next-door neighbour. So is her family. Tick tock, Lizzie'
I stop in my tracks and stare at the tent. Lovely Jenny, who let me use her phone a couple of times. Lovely Jenny dead. I'd been in her house and seen her friends going in and out. Some of them stayed the night.
This is the part of the reason I like living alone, even in a shed. No audience. As soon as you start to have anything to do with other people, you have to react. I learnt my lesson the hard way with my family, and here I don't have to do anything, just sit and watch people. Today, as I hurry back to sitting on the cliff-top, I think about Julia with her highly organised life and Alice’s kindness and the rest of Tintagel. Even Mia Connelly, who never in her wildest dreams thought she would be dealing with a double murder in the village. She was looking forward to a quiet life and getting pregnant. They're my audience now, and I keep them at a distance, with a full orchestra pit between me and them. However, we can't seem to avoid backstage confrontations, those moments when they rush me as I'm trying to leave the stage. I've managed to escape today, up to the windy heights where the only sound is the buzzing of the breeze in my ears. I watch the waves rush in and flow out. I know the tides like they are my own heartbeat, and I spend much of my time on the beaches and in the coves with the seagulls perched beside me. The moon is already visible in the afternoon sky, it and the sun being my only point of reference to time. Over the years I've learnt to read it, and the tides and know what the clouds mean. Reading the weather is a skill that I've heard fishermen talk about, and, more lately, the surfers who come to the Cornish Coast.
A kestrel swoops in and sits on the rocks just over the path, waiting for me to call him. With no human animals to talk to, I've taken to talking to the birds. It's amazing really, what birds know. The travel the length and breadth of the globe, some of them, following the same paths and returning year after year to their own nesting area. This particular kestrel uses an old crows’ nest in the crack of a tree. I see him duck inside now swiftly followed by his mate. I've seen the same two birds here year every year, scrabbling for food in the tufts of scrub and swooping for mice on the paths. They find food where they can and live in other bird's ready-made lives. That's what it feels like for me living in the village. As if they consider me to be the only alien being to ever taint their land. As if I have walked into a film set where I haven't been cast.
I know every inch of Tintagel, and everything that goes on here. I know all the shortcuts and hidden paths. Most of the summer trade is tourism, people drawn by the Arthurian Legends. They trickle in around April huffing and puffing up the hill to the castle to find a pile of old ruins. I've heard the guide telling them that there's no proof that Arthur was born here. I smile and remember my Dad's stories. No one said he was born here, just conceived. Like most stories, this great legend has been twisted through the years, tugged into place and ironed out onto the current landscape. Not unlike my story, even to myself it's half remembered and obscured through the filter of time and my hazy recollections. When there is no audience, no one to tell the story to, you have no choice but to keep telling yourself.
I stay on the cliff edge a little longer, until the light begins to fail. As I stagger back towards the village, I spot laminated posters strapped to every lamppost. At closer inspection I see it's a calling notice for the Village Committee. Unusually, the full agenda is on the poster. And it's me. Item number one. Get Rid of Lizzie Nelson. No need to wonder who the Chairman of the Committee is this year. And every year. It's the beginning of spring, mid-March and the tourist season is just about to begin; she means to get rid of me before then. Never mind Joe the alcoholic or Thomas the serial drink-driver, the committee just tsk and nod at these over boisterous men of the village. I seem to be the only nuisance around here, keeping the price of a scone-tea-jam cream tea down to just six pounds twenty-five pence. I pull one of the posters down and shove it under my coat. So far, I've managed to keep my history a secret. Julia thinks I'm sleeping in the field behind Coombes Cottage and I heard her telling two other busybodies that she can get the owner to evict me. I think Julia Scholes is in for a few surprises.
CHAPTER 6
I know it shouldn't matter, but that it's my next-door neighbour who's dead has shocked me to the core. In some ways I will miss her. If I was shocked by Susan Blake's murder, I am devastated by Jenny's.
I swear that if I had the object, and if it is what I suspect it is, then I would give it to the police straight away. But it's not as simple as that. The whole reason that's I'm here, in Tintagel, living like this, is because one night, many years ago, something terrible happened and now I have to make sure that no one finds out. It was bad enough anyway, but how could I ever have known that a piece of scrap metal would bring it all back into focus?
I go back up to Coombes Cottage and stop dead as I reach the door. There's a splash of blood on a piece of white paper, beak and feathers squashed on my step. Another message for me, this time it's telling me they know I have something for them and time is running out. I clean it up and sit in the garden. I can hear the police at the cottage next door, feint voices that I can't even bear to eavesdrop. Rustling around in Jenny's outhouse, searching for anything that might help them see what had happened to her. I know that it's only a matter of time before Mia asks to search my house, and then my shame will be out in the open; they'll all see how I live, know how, all those years ago, my son took almost everything I own and left me to live in a washed-out shell of a house. There would be questions about how I'd managed, how I got food, how I got Macy. Maybe they'd take her away.
It was just before I realised I was a bag lady I acquired my vehicle. I set off from C
oombes Cottage, full of the joys of spring. I had a vague idea that maybe I'd had a mini breakdown, and it had taken me a while to recover, and who wouldn't, under these circumstances? But today was the day I would get on the road to putting things right. It was a sunny day and the lane looked pretty, with the primroses and forget-me-nots peeping through the high hedgerows. I started to hum a Disney tune and imagine bluebirds around my head as I waited for the bus into Padstow.
I had most of the money left I had drawn out of my account, and as I got off the bus I saw my bank logo. Today was going so well that I smiled to myself in congratulation. In the bank, the counter assistant eyed me suspiciously.
'Any ID?'
I handed her my passport to back up my request for the remaining money in my account. She whispered to another clerk, who came and peered through the security barrier. Finally, she passed the money through.
'You've only left enough in your account for your next direct debits.'
I laugh. Direct debits I didn't even know I had.
'What are they? Please.'
'British gas eighty pounds a month. And the water board thirty-five pounds a month. And a community fee payable to Tintagel Council for upkeep of the National Monuments. Five pounds per week. Oh, and Council Tax. One hundred and seventy-five pounds per month.'
I left the bank and called all these places, where I found that if I cut off my gas and electric, I would possibly have no power to the shed and I would have to pay a reconnection fee. The lady on the phone told me that despite there being no one living in the house, there was a basic fee payable. I could apply for a credit in six months. The water board told me that if I was still a resident, I was required to pay water rates. It suddenly occurred to me that I had paid for the water that had flooded my own house and replaced the receiver. I remembered the Community Fee. It was something residents had to pay to keep the village tidy, contribute towards plants. I remembered the estate agent saying that it wasn't voluntary. And the Council tax was high on my expensive new house. So, I had to somehow find three hundred and ten pounds per week from somewhere before I even thought about shopping.
My next call was at the Department of Social Security. In Padstow this doubled as the Job Centre. I'd get a job and, that way, I could perhaps get a loan to sort the house out as well as paying the bills. Despite the long wait, I was still humming 'Whistle While You Work' and thinking about doing some shopping back in Tintagel. Eventually my name was called. I sat in front of someone who looked about seventeen. He coughed and frowned at me.
'Mrs Nelson? What can we do for you today?'
We went through the procedure. There were no jobs for someone like me. My bills, for living in a shed, but let's leave that out for a moment, are two hundred and twenty-two pounds fifty pence per month. 'Oh, and you would have to come here to sign on every week, to let us know you have been looking for work as an, erm, artist.' I told them I could paint, so he put me down as an artist. So that would be another five pounds in bus fare ever week, totalling twenty pounds. I would have exactly twenty-seven pounds fifty pence to live on.
'I'd have exactly twenty-seven pounds fifty pence to live on.'
The boy smiled.
'Well then. That's enough for a weekly shop.'
'No. That's per month.'
I signed the forms and filled in my bank details. It was all that I could do and at least this way people could still find me if they wanted to, I was registered somewhere and traceable. It was almost proof that I was still alive, because at some point during the past three months I had wondered if I had gone to hell.
It wasn't so much the house or living in the shed, although I certainty contributed. It was the unbearable pain of being separated from Andrew. The first couple of days had been soothing and quiet, but with plenty of time to think, I was left with a lot of questions. Why had he done it? How could he do this? To his own mother. It was a recurring question since he was fourteen, and although at times I thought I saw the light of innocence and childlike love shine through, he was mostly in his own world. And I was in mine. Maybe we hadn't been as close as I had imagined. Maybe he had a whole other world where Mum had no part. He had now. I was excluded. His life no longer required me, no matter how much I pined for him. Even on that day in Padstow, when it all became clear that I wouldn't be able to recover this situation that no one would help me, not the bank, not the social security, not Andrew, I still stood outside his office and looked up. Where I could only imagine he was working quietly, studious over his calculations. Maybe he had some celebrity client up there, a 'do not disturb' sign on the door. I stood outside the door for a long time, then a receptionist came out and asked me to move on.
Andrew. I suddenly remembered finding him searching through my wardrobe just before we moved to Tintagel. I stood at the bedroom door watching him rifle through my things before he saw me.
'What are you looking for, Andrew?'
He turned around and for a moment I saw my father's madness in him.
'That thing Grandma gave you.'
'Grandma? My mother, you mean. You've never met her.'
He sat on the floor, legs crossed.
'I just wanted something to remember her, you know. Family.'
I marvelled at him. Since when had he been interested in my family? Then I remembered John and his sudden interest in Mum's paint box.
'Has Uncle John put you up to this? Has he asked you to get him something?'
Andrew stared at me, his eyes cold.
'He told me to tell you you'll always be Morgana. Whatever that means.' He pushed the contents of my wardrobe roughly back and shut the doors. Walking up to me slowly, he faced me. 'But I guess that's between you and him.'
I followed him downstairs and he sat at the table.
'He wants the charm Mum kept in her paint box. He wants it for Granddad.'
Granddad. Grandma. Uncle John. Suddenly Andrew seemed deeply embroiled in a family I had left behind.
'It's precious to Granddad.'
I leaned on the door and folded my arms.
'It's precious to me. She's my mother.'
Andrew smiled.
'Was. She's not now, is she?'
'Yes, of course. Of course, she's still my mother.'
He sighed.
'No, no. She stopped being your mother when she went off with her fancy man. You know, like you stopped being mine when you fucked your English tutor. Wasn't much older than me, was he?'
I turned and went upstairs, but he was behind me.
'I didn't Andrew. Now, for the last time, I don't have the thing John wants. I haven't got it. You should keep away from him. He's trouble.' Like you, Andrew, I thought.
It was true. I didn't have it. It was somewhere else, far, far away, somewhere that I would soon guard with my life, as it turned out.
It was in Tintagel. The place where, now, people see me as a parasite. It took me a while to see myself like this, if anything, it was a slow descent.
It all became clear one day when I was out shopping. I put a coin in the shopping trolley and dashed around throwing tins in until it was half full. I was the only customer and the staff watched me, mouths open and half dazed, as I picked the contents of the larder in Manchester by memory, counting out the shelves and locating items out loud. Finally, I reached the checkout with my bounty. The girl at the cash register took each can between a finger and thumb, touching as little area as she could, and leaning right away from me. At first, I thought she had some kind of condition, but then I saw the rest of the staff, arms folded, standing behind me blocking the entrance. She thought I was a shoplifter. I sniggered a little at the thought of it and watched as an assistant pulled bread from the shelves and walked towards the back doors.
'What happens to those?'
No one answered at first, then the checkout girl, obviously realising that I would stand there until someone did, spoke.
'Puts em outside for the seagulls. In the skip at the back.'
&nbs
p; 'So, what's the difference between it being on the shelf, and me having to buy it, and me going around the back now and just taking one?'
She shrugged her shoulders.
'About one pound twenty, I reckon.'
I paid her for the tins then ran around the back of the shop and put my hand inside the high blue skip. I pulled out a seeded batch loaf and a malt loaf, both expiring today. The supermarket had closed by the time I got around to the front again, and there was no audience for my guilt at, what I still considered, stealing the bread. I stood and waited to see if there would be any taxi's along, then realised that it would be better if I could get the shopping home on foot. I had the trolley and I could bring it back in the morning. Again, it felt like I was doing wrong, and I pushed the heavy load along the street, arguing with myself. Was it wrong to just borrow it? Would the supermarket staff mind? I could go back in the morning and explain. Suddenly, through the mist, I saw an old woman with a trolley, pushing her shopping home just like me. I remember thinking it must be OK and hurrying forward to meet her and ask her if they mind. I'd lost my bearings anyway, and I needed to ask directions back into the centre of town. I hurried along until the trolley clunked into the hard glass door of the museum and ground to a halt. I stared hard into the glass, at the old woman with the shopping trolley like mine. The old woman was me.
I'd backed away, terrified that I was going bloody mad. My reflection didn't look anything like my smooth, youthful image of only just a month ago. I started running along what I now knew was the main road, towards the lane. For the first time, I considered just running and running until I couldn't run any more, then just collapsing. Someone would have to help me then, wouldn't they? But I knew deep inside that even then, I'd have to leave hospital and come back here. I sped through the village, stopping only to dodge families venturing out for a holiday meal. I rested for a while on the Excalibur Car Park wall, catching my breath. As the tourist passed, several of them threw money into my trolley. One woman stopped and put her hand on my shoulder.
