The living space smells of stale cigarettes and whatever was cooked for their midday meal. Liz flicks a wrist at the sofa, forcing Joanna to sidestep the television set that dominates the room like a prattling relative.
‘D’you mind if we switch it off?’ Joanna asks, and is surprised at Liz’s bovine compliance as she does so without question. Seated, Joanna absorbs the run-down décor, the mismatched furniture and nicotine-stained walls. Depressed further by the sight of Liz’s once-white knickers, spread out to dry like flags on the clothes airer, she hunts for things she might recognise, then tells herself: how could she, she’s never set foot in here before.
‘It was the brewery what shoved us out, we didn’t necessarily want to leave Witchwood … ’ Liz’s words, given as some kind of apology for the dilapidated state of her home, slip into one another as she reaches for a packet of Embassy Regal. ‘Said the pub was going belly-up, that they needed to rename it, get new people in right away. God, they were heartless – Ellie was barely in the ground.’ She shakes a cigarette free, puts it between her lips and lights up. ‘Never mind the hounding we got from the press.’ She exhales, lowering her eyelids. ‘Not that they spent money in the pub, mind you. That would’ve been too much to ask. Anyway, it got so we couldn’t go out.’ She nods as if reliving it again. Lifts the red-hot end of her cigarette to draw squiggles through the air. ‘Our lives weren’t our own,’ she wheezes, ‘punishment, I suppose, for not keeping Ellie safe.’ Glazing over, she is lost in private thoughts.
They seem to bring plenty to occupy her. In the dangling minutes, the two of them sitting in silence. Joanna watches Liz readjust herself: ironing the grubby viscose skirt smooth with her palms, picking fluff off her jumper – an item of clothing Joanna wouldn’t give Buttons to sleep on. Her movements are listless through the ever-thickening smoke screen. Joanna tries not to lean her weight too far into the sour-smelling sofa. She could do with something to drink after the drive, but isn’t offered as much as a glass of water, let alone a tea or coffee – suspecting these aren’t the sorts of beverages served in this house.
‘It ruined our life, you know.’ Liz, unexpectedly forthright from her armchair, as Joanna, on her feet, leans over the electric fire to peer at a framed photograph of Ellie on her roller skates. ‘It nearly split me and Ian up.’ Liz takes a protracted drag on her cigarette and coughs. ‘I think we only stayed together because we couldn’t afford not to.’
‘I’ve never forgotten Ellie,’ Joanna says as some kind of compensation, sitting down again. She’d already guessed that Liz and Ian kept to their sides of the house, that their love for one another had long expired – she knew it the moment she stepped beyond the garden gate. And what a strange house this is, with its faded tapestry announcement of Home Sweet Home hanging on a nail in the hall, because this is no place to return to. ‘She was such a special little girl.’
‘You got kids?’ Liz asks, dropping ash on her skirt.
‘Two. Boys.’ Joanna touches her wedding ring, the large diamond Mike bought her on their tenth wedding anniversary.
‘That’s lovely.’ Liz smiles: warm, kind; a chink of the woman Joanna once knew. ‘You still playing the piano?’
‘You remembered.’ Joanna scoops up her smile, throws it back.
‘Course. You were very talented. Mrs Hooper always said you’d go far.’
‘Are you still in touch with Mrs Hooper?’ Joanna resists telling Liz what a success she’s made of things: the sellout recitals she gives throughout Europe; the lucrative recording contract; her significance at the Royal College of Music. Acutely sensitive to this woman’s loss of a child who never had the chance to fulfil her potential as Joanna has done.
‘No. We don’t have anything to do with anyone from there.’ Liz coughs, mucus rattling in her throat. ‘We try and visit Ellie’s grave now and again, but when we do, we make sure never to see anybody.’
‘Gordon’s retired. Apparently he’s not in Italy now, he lives in London.’
‘Ooo .’ A flimsy laugh. ‘Ian never liked him. Didn’t trust him. Said he was a bit odd with you kids. Not that I saw any harm in him, I liked him – thought he was a real gentleman. Are you going to see her?’
‘Mrs Hooper? Yes. I’m on my way to Witchwood now.’
‘Going to be strange, isn’t it. You ever been back?’
A shake of the head.
‘You staying at Pillowell?’
A wry smile communicates Joanna’s intention.
‘Nice for you.’
‘That’s not what my husband, Mike, says.’ Joanna pulls a face. ‘He’s worried it’s not habitable. It’s partly why I’ve come ahead: it’ll give me the chance to see if it’s doable. Mike and the boys are joining me tomorrow night.’
‘You said on the phone you wanted to ask me something, something to do with Carrie?’ Liz moistens her lips. ‘We heard what happened, we’re ever so sorry.’
‘Thanks,’ Joanna says. ‘I’ve been trying to find out what went on – we lost touch, you see.’
‘That’s a shame, you seemed so close as kids. But I don’t know how we can be of any help?’ She blows out a snake of grey smoke, and into it, a series of hacking coughs.
‘I’m looking for Dean,’ Joanna says quickly. ‘I thought you might know where he is.’
‘Dean? ’ Liz, watery-eyed, loads the word with enough venom for Joanna to taste. ‘What the hell d’you want him for?’
‘I think he might have had something to do with Carrie’s death – apparently she shouted his name out the night she died.’
‘Christ.’ Liz twists her face away.
‘For some reason, I think Carrie was frightened of him.’
‘Not surprised.’ Liz returns her gaze to Joanna, takes another pull on her cigarette. ‘Nasty bastard, especially to little girls. It’s a wonder he didn’t do anything to you … and if Carrie was still frightened of him all these years on, perhaps he hurt her and she was too scared to say.’ She blows smoke through her words. ‘I know he did it. I know he killed my Ellie. I’m the one who watched him grow up – he was trouble from the off. I could never control him: drugs, thieving … I’d have kicked the shit out soon as it was legal, but not Ian, no , he wanted to give him another chance, didn’t he? Said Witchwood would be the making of him: a steady job, a stake in the pub.’ The force of Liz’s conviction makes her voice crack. ‘Ian’s still sentimental about him, insists on keeping stuff of his in case he turns up here one day. Turns up here ? I’d skin the bastard alive.’
‘I’m really sorry,’ Joanna responds to the distress it causes Liz to talk about her stepson. ‘I didn’t mean to upset you.’
‘It’s not you, Jo,’ Liz softens. ‘It’s just hearing his name again, so out of the blue. I can’t bear to say it to myself, even though I live with his face in my head every day.’
‘I’m sorry to keep on, Liz.’ Joanna waits a moment before asking again. ‘But if you had any idea where he might be, it might help me get to the bottom of this mess, I’m sure it would. It doesn’t matter if it turns out to be nothing to do with him, I just have to know. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to rest otherwise—’
‘It’s the not knowing that does you in, isn’t it?’ Liz butts in, a remote look in her eyes. ‘Like a maggot gnawing at your brain. You can’t grieve properly, and the idea you may never know the truth is the hardest thing to bear. But, no, I’m sorry, Jo – I’ve no idea where he is, and nor do I want to know.’ A final pull on her cigarette, and she makes room in the crowded ashtray to screw it out.
More coughing, followed by silence. Far more awkward this time. It’s as if her child’s death has been steadily taking her with it, and Joanna wishes there had been some other way to find Dean Fry rather than churn all this up for Liz again. Her attention wanders to what can be seen of the kitchen, to the spilt smiles and unwashed crockery Liz and Ian have eaten their happiness from; a happiness neither would have tasted since Ellie was killed.
‘Bu
t, I suppose, if you’re set on finding him.’ Liz stands up, unsteady inside her animal print slippers. Her lighter slides from her lap and she bends at the waist to pick it up. Joanna notices the joints in her fingers – how they are swollen like her ankles – and how the effort leaves her so breathless she is forced to sit back down. ‘You could start in Weybridge. It’s where he was from. Ian had a card, years back, no address or anything, just saying someone had been stupid enough to give him a job. He could still be there, I suppose; in the same way Ian could still be in touch with him, for all I know. He wouldn’t tell me if he was, he knows how much I hate him.’ Tightening her grip on the arms of the chair, Liz turns the bitten-down ends of her fingers white. ‘But you’ll take care, won’t you? Make sure you take your husband with you if you see him. I wouldn’t trust him not to hurt you too.’
‘No, don’t worry. I’ve promised Mike I won’t go on my own. Weybridge, you say. That’s in Surrey, isn’t it?’ Joanna asks. ‘Well, it’s a start, thanks, Liz. There can’t be many with his name living in that neck of the woods.’
Liz, lost in thought for a moment, snaps back to her, saying, ‘D’you wanna come and help me feed the chickens?’
‘I should really go and check on Buttons,’ Joanna says feebly.
‘Oh, go on, your dog will be all right for a minute.’ A sad smile. ‘It’ll be like old times.’
Joanna follows Liz outside, into what is left of the daylight, and they wander to a collection of ramshackle coops. The merriment from a nearby primary school playground floats over to them from beyond the nettle-filled lane at the bottom of the garden.
‘We had a little girl go missing from here four years ago.’ The laughter of children obviously triggering the memory. ‘Freya Wilburn – her parents still live on the other side of town.’ Liz rolls her cuffs higher up her arms. ‘You might have heard about it, it was all over the papers.’
The child’s name is strangely familiar, but because Joanna can’t be sure where from, she shakes her head. ‘No, I don’t think I did.’
‘Awful time. Huge police search – not that they found her, poor little thing.’
Joanna says nothing, thinking of Ellie; she suspects Liz is too.
‘They did house-to-house searches, everyone was under suspicion – bit like it was in Witchwood after Ellie died. Although, the police were more thorough about Freya and hauled us all in to give statements; necessary, I know, but it was a horrible time. They called Ian in twice. Yes! ’ Liz raises her eyebrows. ‘Alleging there were discrepancies in his statement, that he wasn’t where he said he was – which was ridiculous, as I’d told them he was with me. Ian wasn’t the only one, of course, but he felt as if he was being victimised, I can tell you.’
‘I bet,’ Joanna says, wondering why she’s being told all this. ‘Must’ve been upsetting.’
‘Same they did with him when our Ellie was killed. Interviewing him over and over … but I told Ian at the time,’ Liz continues, ‘it was textbook stuff – because they always suspect family members rather than strangers, don’t they.’ It isn’t a question, and Joanna is grateful she doesn’t have to answer. ‘Anyway, they soon, quite rightly, lost interest in him when they arrested that son of his. Until the idiots let him go. They really screwed up there.’ Liz grimaces. ‘Might have helped if the autopsy had been more use. But it was so vague, it couldn’t even tell us when she died … and with her being in the lake like that … any evidence was washed away … ’ Her eyes full of tears. ‘The police took statements, checked out alibis, but no one could be entirely sure who was where. The investigation was a bloody shambles from start to finish.’
‘Did they ever find who took Freya?’ Joanna is far more comfortable talking about an anonymous child than Ellie.
‘No.’ Liz rubs her nose on her sleeve. ‘They had someone in custody for a while, but it didn’t come to anything; like everyone else they questioned, it turned out he had a watertight alibi. Honestly,’ she lifts her eyes to Joanna’s, ‘it was like living through it all again, except –’ she inhales deeply – ‘at least we were able to bury our daughter, poor Freya’s parents didn’t even have that awful closure – they don’t know where she is.’
Joanna watches Liz take a handful of grain from a bucket, scatter it for the chickens flapping at her ankles. ‘Freya would be twelve now.’ Liz stares down at her slippers. ‘It makes me think of everything we missed out on with Ellie. She’d be your age, wouldn’t she? She could’ve had little ones like them playing in there.’ Liz swings out an arm, points beyond the unruly laurel. ‘I, we— ’ She breaks off. ‘We could’ve had grandchildren. If that bastard hadn’t destroyed everything.’ Liz spits out the expletive for the umpteenth time. ‘Hang on a minute, I’ve just remembered … there’s stuff Ian’s been holding on to for him. Come on.’ Liz encourages Joanna inside the house again. ‘If you’re so hell-bent on finding him, well, you can give it back to him, can’t you?’
The rustle of plastic bags and newspapers as Liz rootles through the cupboard under the stairs. ‘I know it’s in here somewhere … Ian keeps it in here … ’ Her voice muffled by its darkened caverns. ‘Hang on a tick, there it is, I can see it … it’s just … let me … ’ Liz, straining from the effort it takes to pull whatever it is she’s looking for free.
Hovering in the passageway, Joanna sees Liz’s slacked-stringed guitar on the bend in the stairs and is stirred by a fluctuating image of Ellie. Sitting cross-legged, the guitar that was almost as big as her in her lap, plucking the chords of ‘Yellow Bird’, getting on Caroline’s nerves. Joanna summons Ellie’s singing until a choking pain squeezes its fist around her heart and she is forced to fold the memory away.
‘Here you go.’ Eventually tugging out a small, old-fashioned suitcase, Liz gives a glimmer of a smile as she wipes away decades of cobwebs. ‘Give the bastard this when you find him; it’s about time he had it back.’
‘What’s in it?’ Joanna asks.
‘Keepsakes of his dead mother’s. He should’ve taken them with him when he left Witchwood, except he just cleared off, quick as you like. It’s got nothing to do with me, I’ve never gone near the damn thing.’ Liz raises a hand. ‘Like I said, it was Ian – he insisted we hold on to it, treating it like some bloody shrine.’ Joanna listens to the bitterness in Liz’s voice. ‘I’ve been living in that woman’s shadow all my married life, and if Ian hadn’t been so precious about it, I’d have chucked the blasted thing out years ago.’
‘Won’t Ian mind you giving it to me?’ Joanna wants to double-check.
‘He’s not here to mind, is he?’
‘But supposing I don’t find Dean – do you want me to bring it back?’ Joanna considers the suitcase Liz hands her, decides it’s the sort of thing that ladies of a certain age own; Mike’s mother has one she uses when she goes into hospital.
‘No. Throw the damn thing away. No one’s going to miss it, trust me.’ Liz is vehement.
Joanna gives it a shake, feels whatever’s inside it slide around, ignorant of the danger she has put herself in by accepting it.
Summer 1990
Rain: sluicing down windowpanes, flooding out gardens, turning roads into fast-flowing rivers. ‘That’s summer done with, then,’ those who have congregated beneath the dripping awning outside the Petley’s shop grumbled. Their sarcasm worn in thick layers beneath the iron-weight of weather needed to be shared with the hiss of tyres on asphalt and the drenched piles of grass cuttings the council left to rot on verges around the village.
Caroline and Joanna, dressed in the matching yellow cagoules Dora was forced to buy when the weather broke, thought the hunchbacked storm-clouds hanging over them looked close enough to touch. With summer well and truly over – abruptly, angrily – Witchwood had been cast into a gloomy darkness, but not simply by the weather. The sister’s playground had mutated into a shadowy underworld of sopping vegetation, and the woods, with its brooding malevolence, wasn’t a setting they felt safe in any more. Heading to t
he shop on an errand for their great-aunt – Joanna on Ellie’s old roller skates, Caroline in a mood – they descended with the final bow into the village. Rain crackled against the synthetic material of their hoods and spiked their cheeks. Viewing the world through a tunnel of yellow plastic, they saw the first bright blackberries they’d watched ripen from green to red to black.
The weather hadn’t let up for days. It whispered against the eaves of their bedroom, keeping them awake. On and on, the plump, rural kind; it annoyed Caroline in the same way it annoyed her to see Joanna so proficient on her skates. She was getting as good as Ellie.
Lillian Hooper saw the sisters drift past; the discord in their pairing screaming at her even from this distance. She heard about the dreadful goings-on, but as always, was keeping out of village affairs, even if recent events were unprecedented. Such awfulness, it could drag her down if she let it; sad enough that in a day or two her little protégé would be going back to her London life. Silly to expect the sisters to stay in touch – Lillian doubted Joanna would give her a second thought after Dora waved them off from Gloucester station, but she hoped she would continue with her music.
Peering out from a downstairs window on a morning as dark as the dusk, she listened to the rising wind garnering the leaves in a rush of excitement. Determined to drown it out on the piano, she sat down to play; the counterpoint of Bach mimicking her heartbeat. The house felt empty without Gordon, but she wouldn’t go so far as to say she missed him. Pulling up at the end of the first Goldberg variation, reluctant to launch into the others, her mind tiptoed to the flaky relationship between her and her son. Cross with herself for missing the opportunity to talk to him when she caught him looking at a photograph of Ursula the evening before he left. Slipping an arm around his waist, thinking he might like to talk now his father wasn’t around to ridicule. But he stiffened and backed away, not knowing how to yield to it. Ursula’s death still hurt. And why wouldn’t it? It still hurt her. The death of a child wasn’t something you could ever get over, it was something you just had to find a way to live alongside, and all Lillian hoped was that her son’s sudden decision to return to Tuscany didn’t have anything to do with what had happened to Ellie Fry.
A Place to Lie Page 22
