A Place to Lie

by Rebecca Griffiths

  ‘She thought she was being followed too,’ Sue Fisher announces. ‘That the flat was being watched. But,’ a shrug, ‘when I pushed her to elaborate, she clammed up. Whatever it was, it seemed to be at the centre of her fear … oh , what was the name of the place again … Hang on, let me get it right … ’ Sue Fisher spins on her chair, checks something on her screen. ‘Witchwood.’

  ‘Witchwood ?’ Joanna blurts. ‘But that was nearly thirty years ago … the same time as that lie I was supposed to have told about Dean Fry. What did she say?’

  ‘Not much – as I said, she didn’t clarify fully.’ A rasp of nylon as Sue Fisher plaits her slender legs together. ‘Caroline said something about you staying there one summer – is that right? When you were children.’

  Children. Summer . The implied innocence of those words, when in reality what actually happened there was far from innocent. Because Witchwood – that quaint little village, that delightful country idyll – turned out to be the most dangerous of places.

  Summer 1990

  Pludd Cottage and Pillowell were dwellings unequivocally set apart from Witchwood’s community. Not that there was much of a community. The village, hugged by the broad-leafed wood it was named after, was little more than a cluster of old farm labourers’ cottages arranged around a rectangle of green. Apart from the pub and the Post Office stores, there was little else, and the wind of tarmac from nearby Slinghill tapered to an end when it reached the crossroads: its choices limited to the church and its vicarage, or the woods itself.

  Out under a golden light, Caroline, on her way back from a shift at the pub, was to collect Joanna from Mrs Hooper’s. She read the Boar’s lop-sided chalkboard boasting of Home Cooked Food and her stomach growled. She hoped there would be something worth eating back at Dora’s. Passing hedgerows thick with berries that were yet too green to pick, Caroline was happy in the belief that any day now Dean was going to make his move. Convinced by what Joanna had told her, she believed he was as besotted with her as she was with him. The weight of silver coins Ian gave her was a bonus; she’d work at the pub for free if it meant she could be close to Dean.

  Skipping up Pludd Cottage’s driveway, Caroline pushed against the already open door. Music – raucous, ornamented – filled the hall. But not from Mrs Hooper’s piano, this was like the stuff Dora set to play under her stylus. Caroline paused to untangle the laughter floating above the swell of strings, and when she had, she charged full-pelt into the front room.

  What she found nearly stopped her heart. Joanna and Gordon were dancing. Little feet balancing aboard big feet. Gordon was doing what Caroline’s father once did with her. And with a hand pressed to her mouth, she watched the leggy grace of Gordon swirl Joanna over Mrs Hooper’s peacocks, making her saffron-coloured bunches swing.

  ‘What are you doing? Where’s Mrs Hooper?’ she yelled, expecting Gordon to be ashamed and relinquish his grip. But no, he couldn’t care less that Caroline had sprung him – if anything, he twirled Joanna faster.

  Only when the record wheezed to a stop did the dancing cease; not that either of them acknowledged Caroline. Absorbed in Joanna, Gordon proceeded to position his well-dressed self on his mother’s couch and patted his long, lean thighs as if to encourage Laika – impassive in a strip of sunshine – into his lap. But it wasn’t his mother’s dachshund he was after, it was Joanna, and she dutifully climbed into it to play along with the trotting-pony game.

  ‘I said – where’s Mrs Hooper ?’ Caroline leapt to Joanna’s defence without fully knowing why. It just seemed wrong: a grown-up man they barely knew cuddling her baby sister. Surging with love and a need to rescue Joanna from this danger, she tugged at Gordon’s well-manicured hands, but, stronger, he wasn’t surrendering his prize. ‘Mrs Hooper’s supposed to be giving you a lesson – where is she?’ Crying in frustration, Caroline put her arms around her sister’s waist to try and wrench her free.

  ‘Stop it, Carrie. Stop it.’ Joanna smacked her away. ‘I don’t know where she is.’

  Caroline stepped back, pressed herself against the knobbly woodchip wall and glared at them through the slanting rays of early evening sunshine. It was a shame, she used to like coming here, it used to feel safe – but not any more.

  ‘Come on, Jo,’ she insisted as Gordon remained unnervingly silent, his wolf-eyes glazed and dreamy-looking. ‘Let’s get outta here.’

  ‘It’s all right.’ Joanna snuggled deeper into Gordon, and Caroline watched them swap glances she couldn’t read. ‘I’ve been learning to waltz … Want us to show you?’

  ‘No, I don’t,’ she snapped. ‘You’re coming with me.’

  ‘But what about my lesson?’ Joanna whined.

  ‘Yes – what about your lesson?’ Gordon turned his gaze to Caroline, registering her at last. ‘Mum won’t be long – I don’t know where she could’ve got to?’ And releasing a hand to look at his watch, Caroline seized her chance and pulled Joanna free.

  ‘Let her go, you pervert,’ she shrieked into Gordon’s face, tears brimming in fear and vexation. ‘Let her go .’

  Gone eleven and Dora, tucked up in bed with a set of earplugs jammed in her ears, was dreaming of Gordon Hooper’s beautiful luthier-skilled hands. Oblivious to her thirteen-year-old niece inching downstairs for the kitchen scissors to cut a fringe into her plain brown hair.

  Snipping, snipping, Caroline got it as even as she could in the reflection supplied by the night-blackened windowpane, before tugging open the kitchen door and zipping outside. She was off to the Boar’s Head – something she often did under the cover of darkness – hoping for a glimpse of Dean. The idea of Dean reminded her of Dora’s dagger. He had expressed an interest in it, so she said she’d show him. She dipped back inside to retrieve it from its new hiding place behind the vegetable rack, but her arm collided with a cauliflower and it bounced to the floor with a sickening thump. It rolled heavy as a severed head across the cracked linoleum, and she froze, anticipating her aunt’s shout from above, but was relieved to hear nothing.

  The night, warm as a living thing, pressed itself against her. And stepping into the lane that was as dark as a nostril, she listened to something rustling within the tunnel of nocturnal trees.

  ‘Who’s there?’ she pleaded with the blackness, playing with her new flap of fringe. ‘Hello ?’

  Nothing but the bark of a faraway dog and hoot of a tawny owl as the skipping moonlight pinched out the silhouettes of things she didn’t recognise. What she heard was probably the rush of the river, which in this stillness was loud as London traffic. Familiar only with the grumble of tube trains, the petrified squeal of sirens, people shouting and banging in the street, sounds of the countryside were ones she was coming to learn. Caroline tried to envisage what Witchwood would be without people, if nature were allowed to take over as it was doing with Dora’s holiday cottage. It wouldn’t take long, she decided, identifying her insignificance amid the abundant vegetation.

  Reaching the carousels of postcards the Petleys left outside the shop, she caught her reflection in the window, but not clearly enough to see the mess she’d made of her fringe. She ducked into the beer garden through a gap in the rhododendrons as the moon slipped free of its moorings, washing the rear of the pub in a cold vein of light. The shadowy wilderness spooked her, as did the geese Liz let out to roam after last orders. Benches and parasols: innocent objects in daylight which under the cloak of darkness mutated into shapes of a far more sinister nature. Something brushed her cheek: a bat. She stifled a scream as it swerved away, her eyes drawn to the tawny light from an upstairs window. Thrown wide to the curious stars, it pumped heavy rock music into the hush. It was Dean’s feet she saw first, the grubby soles of his trainers, propped on the window ledge. Then the amber-end of his roll-up, lolling like a drunkard’s eye. She sniffed the now familiar, yet persistently elusive sweetness that was nothing as chemically smelling as cigarettes; not those girly, gold-tipped ones Gordon Hooper was forever puffing on anyway.


  Then it was Amy Mortmain’s backside she was looking at, squeezed into acid-washed denim, wriggling around on Dean’s windowsill. Until Dean appeared, leaning out to screw his expended roll-up against the exterior wall, lobbing it high into the bank of rhododendrons. What happened next made Caroline yelp in disbelief. What was he doing? He was supposed to be in love with her, Joanna said so. It was why she chopped her hair off, took Dora’s knife; things he wanted her to do. Her face fell open in dismay as Amy pressed her shapeliness against Dean’s muscled torso. The lovers were backlit by a single lamp, which meant she missed nothing, and she watched them kissing through the continuous crash of music. Caroline pressed a hand to her chest and felt the corkscrew that already pierced her heart give another three-quarter turn.

  Dean was going to pay for this, she promised herself as she spun round and ran. Leading her on, letting her think it was her he wanted … how dare he! Caroline’s pain hardened into something dark and dangerous as she pulled her mouth into an unforgiving line. Then she remembered the knife she was carrying, her hand still curled around its scabbard. She had to dump it, it was too much of a risk to take it back to Pillowell; Dora could catch her with it. Hang on – she turned, saw the corrugated doors of Dean’s motorbike shed had been left open. She could hide it in there. A solution finding her that, coupled with the possibility it might land Dean in trouble if it was ever discovered, went some way to balm her choking humiliation. But Caroline wasn’t stupid enough to leave her own prints on it. If it was found, she didn’t want to be the one accused of nicking it. And in the same way she’d seen criminals do in that Morse programme on the telly, she gave both the leather casing and the knife a thorough wipe with her cardigan first.

  ‘Jakkes! What in God’s name have you done to yourself?’ Dora cried when she saw Caroline the following morning. ‘Your mother’s going to skin me alive.’

  ‘Doubt she’ll notice.’ Caroline, still reeling from what she saw Dean and Amy doing, believed everything, not only her hair, had been spoiled. Like a fountain, the pain of Dean kissing and touching that girl replenished itself each time she ran the scene over in her mind.

  ‘I’ll book you an appointment at my hairdressers,’ Dora said. ‘She’ll tidy you up.’ Behind her, the sun was rising, gathering strength over the trees. In the morning light Dora’s own hair looked thin and dry. Caroline appraised it coldly.

  ‘Difficult in this heat, isn’t it?’ Dora confided.

  Caroline nodded.

  ‘Breakfast?’

  Another nod.

  ‘What d’you fancy? There’s toast, or fruit. Got some of that cherry Ski yoghurt you like … or what about a bowl of Coco Pops … ?’ Whatever remained of Dora’s breakfast menu was lost to the rattling throb of the lawn mower. ‘Ah, Dean’s here, is he?’ Dora, knotting the belt of her dressing gown. ‘I’d better go and make myself decent, hadn’t I?’ She giggled, raising her voice a notch to compete with the approaching motor. ‘Won’t be a jiffy. Help yourself to anything you want … you’re good at that.’

  Caroline’s insides flip-flopped. The unexpected sight of Dean, or the startling undertone of Dora’s instruction? She tapped the pocket of her baggy jeans to check the gold ring with its pretty blue stone was still there, her mind darting to the other things she’d stolen. Were they safe? Had her hidey-hole been discovered? She pushed a hip-bone against the sharp metal side of the sink and peered through the window at Dean: Walkman clamped to his ears, dancing as he lugged the mower over the parched lawn. Fears she’d been rumbled ebbed away, exchanged for the new thoughts she was incubating … deadly, dangerous thoughts. Casual in stonewashed jeans and U2 T-shirt, Dean looked happy and she hated him for it. What right did he have to be happy after he’d betrayed her so badly? If she had anything to do with it, he wasn’t going to stay happy for long.

  Utterly absorbed, Caroline didn’t hear her sister push open the kitchen door.

  ‘You love him.’ Joanna, effervescent, despite the malevolent heat of the morning. ‘You want ten thousand of his babies .’

  ‘Shut. Up.’ Caroline turned on her. ‘And you’ll stop going on about it with Ellie if you know what’s good for you.’

  On seeing her sister, Joanna burst out laughing. ‘What have you done to your hair? It looks like a dog’s bit it.’

  ‘You girls all right?’ Dora: a puffball of perfume in a dress as colourfully suggestive as a Georgia O’Keeffe painting. Only gone minutes; Caroline didn’t believe she’d had time for a proper wash. ‘So.’ Their aunt squirted a blob of hand-cream on to her palms. ‘All set for Ellie’s party, are you, my little putti .’ She chucked Joanna under the chin.

  ‘It’s gonna be brilliant.’ Joyful, Joanna twisted from her sister’s sulkiness.

  ‘I bet. I love parties.’ Dora rubbed her hands together, dispersing the sweetness of magnolia as she anticipated an afternoon to herself. ‘What about you, Carrie? Are you looking forward to it too?’ The question was hopeful as her mind raced ahead to the big bar of Dairy Milk secreted in the sideboard.

  Caroline grunted, peeled her eyes from Dean.

  ‘Wish I was coming,’ Dora said.

  ‘No, you don’t.’ Surly, Caroline lifted a hand to her mouth. ‘Not if Gordon’s not going to be there.’

  ‘Stop it!’ Dora smacked her niece’s fingers away before she had the chance to bite them. ‘What man’s going to want you with ugly nails like that.’

  ‘Like you’d know.’ Caroline blinked back tears she didn’t want her great-aunt to see.

  ‘Here.’ Dora ignored her, opening her purse. ‘Both of you; come on.’ She rallied them together. ‘Once you’ve had your breakfast, why don’t you both nip down the shop, settle my paper bill and fetch me a couple of twits and a Double Decker while you’re at it.’

  ‘Twits ?’ Caroline took the tenner. ‘Don’t you mean Twix?’

  ‘If you say so.’ Dora, irritated. ‘And anything you girls want.’

  ‘What’s the matter, Carrie?’ Joanna asked when they were in the lane. ‘Don’t worry, the hairdresser will sort you out.’ Wanting to comfort, she slipped her arm through her sister’s.

  ‘I don’t care about my hair … It’s Dean – I saw him snoggin’ that sodding Amy girl,’ Caroline snapped.

  ‘Uch , that’s gross.’ Joanna, disgusted. ‘You don’t want him to do that to you, do you?’ A nervous sideways glance.

  ‘Why not?’ Caroline yanked back her arm. ‘It’s what proper women do.’

  ‘Is it? Yuk .’

  ‘It’s not fair. You said he was going to ask me out. Why would he be with her if he wanted me?’

  ‘I dunno, but it’s what he told me.’ Joanna persisted with her lie, too afraid to admit otherwise.

  Into the awkward gap in their conversation dropped the mocking coo, coo of a wood pigeon.

  ‘I didn’t think you were serious about him,’ Joanna said eventually. ‘He’s way too old for you.’

  ‘No, he’s not. We’d be perfect for each other. I don’t understand it, he’s really nice to me at the pub – telling me I’ve got pretty eyes and stuff. If he wasn’t serious about me, he wouldn’t say things like that, would he? He wouldn’t have said those things to you?’

  Joanna kept quiet as she struggled to keep pace with her sister’s longer strides.

  ‘It’s not fair,’ Caroline prickled again. ‘That Amy … she could have anyone.’

  ‘She is pretty, isn’t she?’ Joanna, forgetting herself.

  ‘No, she’s not, she’s a bloody tart. I hate her.’

  ‘She’s all right.’

  ‘That’s it, take her side.’ Caroline started to cry. ‘I’ve got no one.’

  ‘You’ve got me.’ Joanna, her voice small.

  ‘You? What use are you? You’re gonna get married and leave me on my own soon as you can.’

  ‘So will you.’

  ‘Yeah? Who to, then?’ Caroline, switching from angry mode to feeling-sorry-for-herself mode – Joanna was never sure which wa
s the easiest. ‘Who’s going to want to be with someone as horrible as me?’

  ‘You’re not horrible,’ Joanna reassured. ‘Not all the time.’

  ‘Shut up, will you,’ Caroline shouted, angry again. ‘You’re supposed to be on my side.’

  ‘I am on your side.’

  ‘No, you’re not, you don’t care. Why would you? You don’t have the first idea what it feels like for me. Everyone loves you.’

  ‘No, they don’t.’ Joanna cowered under the allegation and pulled back her arm.

  ‘Yes, they do.’ Caroline was definite. ‘Want me to list them?’

  In the hush of the traffic-free lane, the girls were mindful their breathing kept strange rhythm with the breeze.

  ‘Why d’you cut your hair?’ Joanna’s gaze followed the row of tiered cottages curling round the green: painted alternate strawberry, lime and lemon; she pictured them as neatly arranged Opal Fruits.

  ‘’Cos Dean said it’d look nice.’ Caroline sneaked a look at the pub, felt her face burn with shame.

  ‘Right.’ Joanna stifled a laugh with a fist.

  ‘This is serious.’ Caroline turned on her. ‘I’m going to get him back for everything he’s done to me.’ Vehement, hateful; something in her tone scared Joanna.

  ‘How are you gonna do that? You gonna get that dog to bite his hair off too?’ she asked, weighing up whether to slip an arm back through Caroline’s to calm her down.

  ‘Shut up, Jo.’ A flicker of a smile. ‘You’ll see.’

  ‘You’re to stay on the bench. Don’t wander off.’ Caroline gave her instruction to Joanna at the same time the vicar emerged from the shop doorway cuddling a brown loaf to his chest like a pet. ‘Want me to get you an ice-lolly?’

  Joanna grinned her reply before raising her eyes to the rather peculiar sight of a heron – impassive and hunchbacked in its raincoat of grey feathers – balanced aboard the shop’s corrugated roof.