A Place to Lie

by Rebecca Griffiths

  Summer 1990

  A break in the rain and Dora took Joanna – back from her piano lesson – out into the dripping garden to feed the horses. The invitation wasn’t extended to Caroline, and it spoke volumes. Caroline stomped upstairs, making the most of every tread; knowing she was being impossible, not that the realisation stopped her from doing it. She had lost the ability to be reasonable since she caught Dean and Amy smooching. And ambushed by the weather that hadn’t let up since they found Ellie’s body, trapped within the oppressive interior of her aunt’s holiday home only frustrated her further.

  Pillowell Cottage, with its treasures and dainty-legged furniture, had seemed idyllic at first, but on closer inspection, it revealed woodworm-riddled skirting boards, blooms of mushrooms behind the bath, dripping taps and draughty windows. The grubbiness and dust, decay and rot, was rather like life, she thought despondently – it looked all shiny from far away, until you started delving into what was really going on. Witchwood was the same, in that it was a place that began by answering her prayers, but since Dean’s betrayal, it had spiralled into a nightmare.

  Watching the dramatic sunset from the bedroom window, it surprised her how the dull afternoon had suddenly ripened into a glorious evening. Not that it tempered her mood to see the sky – a crumpled piece of silk – turn from blue to yellow to pink. ‘ … When other helpers fail and comforts flee; help of the helpless, O abide with me … ’ Fortified by the line of a favourite hymn from school assembly, she strode across the landing, bold as the bullfinch seen outside the kitchen window, and into Dora’s bedroom, determined to do some damage. Marching up to the dressing table, spying her aunt’s favourite lipstick in its expensive gold case, she untwisted it until it was fully extended and pressed it forcefully against her mouth. So hard it snapped clean off. Seeing its ugly artificial pinkness, she squashed it into the carpet with the toe of her sandal and proceeded to walk around the room, dragging the ravaged stump over the backs of furniture and Dora’s bedcovers. Delighting in seeing the candy pink on the frilly white pillow cases, she scrawled JO in baby-big letters on the floral headboard. Serves her aunt right for not believing her about Dean, she thought as she tilted her head to the call of the telephone.

  Chirruping from the hall, sunny as a canary. Caroline dashed downstairs to answer it. Brown and shiny as a cockroach she found behind the toilet on her first morning there, the phone, a leftover from the seventies, was congested with grime. Caroline, careful not to let the handset make contact with her face, heard a male voice introduce itself as Detective Sergeant Scott Gallagher.

  ‘Is Dora Muller there, please?’

  ‘Sorry, she’s not in at the moment, but this is her great-niece speaking – can I help?’ Impressed with how grown-up she sounded, the detective’s reluctance to share whatever he was calling for surprised her.

  ‘When will she be back?’

  ‘Not sure.’ Caroline didn’t tell him Dora was only in the garden. ‘But you can tell me what it’s about, can’t you?’

  ‘No, sorry, miss; if you could ask her to call me back on—’ DS Gallagher began to reel off a number Caroline wasn’t ready for.

  ‘Is it about the dagger Dean Fry stole from my aunt’s cottage?’ She cut him off. ‘Did you find Ellie’s blood on it?’ The question, callous, as she appreciated the blobs of alarming pink lipstick that, stuck to the sole of her jelly sandal, she’d trailed down the stairs, along the hall. ‘That was my great-grandfather’s dagger; I’ve a right to know if Dean used it to kill Ellie,’ she insisted, recalling the conversation between Dora and members of DS Gallagher’s team.

  ‘Well, um … ’

  She could tell she’d flummoxed him, that he toyed with whether to share what he’d called about.

  ‘It’s okay,’ she assured. ‘I know all about it. We knew Dean took it, like he took all those other things that belonged to my family.’

  ‘It is about the dagger, yes,’ Gallagher relented. ‘If you could please ask your aunt to call me the moment she comes back.’

  ‘I knew it, I knew it!’ Caroline, joyous, noticed stubborn traces of Dora’s lipstick on her hand and wiped it against the plush velvet cloth covering the telephone table. ‘He really is a very bad person, isn’t he? I hope you’re going to punish him for all the horrible things he’s done.’

  ‘You’ve got to talk to the police, tell them that bitch lied.’ Amy, waiting by the front door, was ready to waylay her father as soon as he put his key into the lock. ‘They’ll listen to you.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Timothy Mortmain, standing in the subfusc of the rectory’s hall, looked tired.

  ‘Dean ,’ she shouted. ‘Tell them that Caroline girl retracted her story, that she changed her mind.’

  ‘But she hasn’t changed her mind,’ he said mildly.

  ‘Who cares, you know she’s lying; you’re the only one who can get him out.’

  ‘I don’t know anything of the sort, and anyway, I can’t go interfering with police procedures.’ Timothy flourished a white cotton handkerchief from a pocket and polished the tip of his nose. ‘This is a murder investigation, for goodness’ sake; Dean’s not been done for speeding.’

  ‘You interfered with police procedure on that cow’s say-so.’ Amy flapped her arms through the air. ‘You’ve made the biggest mistake of your life siding with that vicious little bitch … Dean’s got a record, you know – they’re bound to use everything they can against him. The tabloids are already having a field day – they’ve already got hold of his name somehow, and according to them he as good as did it. What happened to innocent until proven guilty ? He doesn’t stand a chance – his name’s mud whether he’s guilty or not. For god’s sake , Dad, you’ve got to do something – the police are going to throw the book at him.’

  ‘And if they do, there’s nothing you or I can do about it. Now, if you would please let me pass, I’ve had a busy day.’ He tried squeezing between Amy and wall, but she blocked his way with a kind of baulked ferocity.

  ‘What’s she got on you? What does she know?’ She challenged him in a way she never had before. ‘It must be something pretty big – how else has she got leverage? There’s no other possible reason why you would take the word of a thirteen-year-old. Why can’t you see that she’s invented these things about Dean being violent with Ellie because she’s obsessed with him?’

  ‘I haven’t a clue what you’re talking about.’ The vicar groaned as Cecilia’s cats, slinking down through their shadows on the stairs, circled his calves. ‘Now, come on, stop this silliness.’

  ‘Dean doesn’t stand a chance.’ Amy’s expression was one of grim determination; she was not letting her father dismiss her as he usually would. ‘They’re going to lock him up for something he didn’t do – he’s had a shit time of it. That stepmother of his, you may think she’s all sweetness and light, but since she got together with Ian she’s been desperate to get shot of Dean. Can’t you see what you’re doing, Dad? Please . You’re playing into their hands.’

  ‘Look, Amy, I’m sorry about Dean, really I am – but justice must run its course, I can’t be seen to interfere.’ Mortmain, unmoved, pressed his soft vicar’s hands together.

  ‘Justice ,’ she shrieked. ‘You make me sick. I’m never going to forgive you for this – you’ve no idea the damage you’re doing. Don’t you care? You’re supposed to be a man of God; you’re supposed to be a bloody Christian. You can’t let them do this to an innocent person just to save your own neck.’

  ‘Save my own neck ?’ The reverend looked uneasy for the first time during their exchange. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Dean takes the blame, they lock him away … the police won’t come after you then, will they?’

  ‘What ?’ Mortmain wrung his hands. ‘Come after me ? I had nothing to do with Ellie’s death.’

  ‘No ? Then how d’you explain this?’ Amy handed him the same Polaroid of Ellie she showed her mother. ‘Mum said she saw you heading of
f to the lake just before Ellie, the day she went missing.’

  ‘This is absurd.’ His turn to shout, kicking his wife’s cats away. ‘Where d’you find this? You’ve no business going through my private things.’

  ‘You admit it then?’ Amy, pleased to have provoked him.

  ‘I admit nothing.’ He gave her a black look. ‘Your mother has an overactive imagination, and not enough to occupy her mind.’

  ‘I think Mum knows exactly what she saw, and you know it too.’ Amy stuck to her argument and refused to be sidetracked by the unfair accusation made about her mother. ‘It makes sense to me. Why you were so keen to lead those searches, for one. Why you convinced the police you were the best man for the job, saying you knew the woods like the back of your hand. I heard you tell them, so don’t bother denying it,’ she said, watching him shake his head. ‘I reckon you deliberately took them the wrong way. It’s not that vast out there, and you and your parishioners were out looking for two solid days. What other reason could there be for you not finding her? I’ll tell you, shall I?’ she persisted, denying her father the opportunity to speak. ‘You didn’t find her because you knew exactly where she was.’

  Present Day

  In the morning Joanna props open the windows with Dora’s old paperbacks, lets the fresh air fill the cottage. Tired after a fitful night sleep, she yawns and stares out on to the vaporous, wet sunlight. She hasn’t the energy for a good long yomp so once outside, she lets Buttons off the lead to exercise himself.

  When her dog bounds away into the bare-branched wood, Joanna is alone. The smell of mulch and damp decay that hangs in the emptiness unnerves her. A violent flapping, high in the treetops. It has her spinning to what looks like a peregrine falcon; its dark shape wheeling above her. Mike would know, would probably give her the Latin name for it too. She smiles, thinking of their conversation only minutes before. Calling him from the shop phone to explain the lack of mobile reception and the disconnected telephone at Pillowell, she was grateful to see no sign of Frank Petley, and refrained from mentioning the cigarette ends she hoped she’d imagined, but were still by the gate this morning, as Mike shared his plans to be with her by eight o’clock tonight.

  Accompanied by an unfolding thought of finding Ellie Fry’s grave, Joanna pinpoints the direction of the churchyard by what can be seen of St Oswald’s spire. Swathed in the hush of the woods and carrying the spray of roses, she walks the length of Dead End Lane. She suspects, had she not been so enthralled by Witchwood as a child, if she’d been just that little bit older, as Caroline was, then she too would have been aware of the dangers lurking beneath the idyll, because there is something undoubtedly unsettling about this place. The wind is oddly human, an ancient language licking through trees made bald with cold. Aware of the involuntary rise and fall of her ribcage beneath her thick winter layers, Joanna visualises medieval huntsmen with bow and arrow, the Tudor horse and hound, deep in the sun-starved heart of a forest that dates back to the Magna Carta. She shivers, not from the cold, but because of the yawning barrenness spreading around her. She quickens her pace, tries to keep her imagination in check; it’s bound to feel weird in this grey winter stillness. No wonder Dora was only a fair-weather visitor, she thinks, tightening her scarf.

  The little wrought-iron gate leading into the churchyard squeaks its complaint as she pushes it wide. The rectory, with its majestic cedars, is as imposing as ever, but its buttery façade isn’t half as glamorous as it was in her memory, and the fat-rooted wisteria, now gnarled and brown and devoid of foliage, snakes across its frontage like arthritic fingers. She remembers the vicar’s wife who used to look down from its upstairs windows and is about to check if she’s still there, when something shimmers within the tombstones. A nebulous shape she tries to compute, to categorise, but to focus on anything beyond the irregularity of darkened trunks multiplying off into the distance is impossible. Her breathing light, she waits. Nothing , the wind tells her. It’s nothing . Probably Buttons meandering along the track, but checking the lane there’s no sign of him.

  To the cold accompaniment of a crow, Joanna finds Ellie Fry’s curved headstone, her eyes prickling with tears as she reads the smallness of life recorded in those ten short years. Tugging a single white rose from the spray bought for Mrs Hooper, she places it at its base. All the graves in this cold corner of St Oswald’s are set among trees. Ellie’s is a Japanese cherry, but there’s everything in here: vast spreading oaks, rowans, cascading weeping willows, a magnificent copper beech or two, but only Ellie’s tree is decorated with toys, hanging from the branches in an attempt to cheer. ‘Ellie’s Special Place’, Liz said they call it; as if to give it a name saves them from having to say where she is. Not that it looks special to Joanna. The cherry tree is quite bedraggled on such a wintery day. What it needs is a good hard pruning to make it ready for spring, and someone should take down the grimy Tiggers and Eeyores pinned to its bark. So old, they’ve almost dissolved into the featureless moss, and the only splashes of colour come from the tawdry ASDA labels sprouting from their backs. Surely Ellie would have been too old for them. Joanna reaches out with a gloved finger to press the tummy of one. She’s sure she wouldn’t miss them.

  From the lengthening shadows, it must be time to head to Mrs Hooper’s, and she calls for her dog. Joanna hears the piano long before she sees the cottage with its grey stiletto of chimney smoke, and checks the lane for the umpteenth time. But with no sign of Buttons, her eyes wander to the abundance of catkins dripping like coloured water from the otherwise naked hedgerow. Nature’s jewels, she’s always thought of them as, and a sign the dense belt of hazel and willow will soon be in leaf and shielding Pludd Cottage from the world again.

  Buttons joins her as she steps on to Mrs Hooper’s lawn. With boots instantly saturated by the recent rain, she lifts the little fox knocker that is easily reachable now she’s fully grown, but the door is already open and, pushing it wide on to the warm, smoky smell of burning wood, she tells Buttons to wait as she steps into the familiar hall, calling as she goes.

  ‘I’d forgotten how lovely it was to sit and hear you play.’ Joanna, perched on a couch she remembers from childhood, sips sherry from a dainty glass. ‘You certainly are as good as you ever were.’ Extending her compliment, she watches her dog lying spread-eagled before the roaring hearth. ‘D’you still teach?’

  Mrs Hooper, in a polo neck as reddy-gold as her hair had been when Joanna was last inside this cottage, swivels on her piano stool. ‘The odd pupil, but no one as special as you, m’dear,’ she says. ‘You’re a natural, and to play with such unique passion … ’ She makes a whooshing sound of admiration. ‘That’s a true gift.’

  ‘It was you who gave me the head start – I might never have looked at a piano.’

  ‘But your facility for feeling ,’ Mrs Hooper stresses. ‘That can’t be taught, Jo – you play the way you do because you’ve felt things. It wasn’t all Caroline, you know? You channelled yourself into your music.’

  ‘I’m sorry I never came to see you.’ Joanna, bubbling with emotion, gets up to hide her face. ‘It wasn’t that I forgot you.’ She moves to the shelf of photographs. ‘That summer … ’ An awkward pause. ‘It was such a precious time for me, but after Ellie … ’ The words die in her mouth.

  ‘I understand, luvvie,’ Mrs Hooper assures.

  ‘I took two of your curlers.’ Joanna picks up a framed snapshot of little Laika captured in a perpetual summer garden. ‘Hid them in the ottoman in my mother’s bedroom.’ She kisses the photograph of the little sausage dog she had loved and set it back down. ‘And whenever Mum was rowing with Carrie, which was nearly all the time, I’d get them out to smell them so I could have you close again.’

  She sets down her glass and goes to sit beside Mrs Hooper; strokes the hands that loved her.

  ‘I called in on Liz Fry yesterday.’

  ‘Did you?’ Mrs Hooper pulls back her hands. ‘That must have been a nice surprise for her. However did you
find her?’

  ‘Easy. I rang the pub.’ Joanna neglects to fill her in on the exchange she needed to have with Frank Petley first. ‘Ian wasn’t there, he was at work.’

  ‘Good. I never liked that man. He used to say terrible things about Gordon.’ Mrs Hooper tugs down her jumper. ‘How was she, the dear? I’ve not seen her since they left, which wasn’t long after Ellie’s funeral.’

  ‘Greatly changed, but I was only a kid when I last saw her. Whereas you,’ she looks up, ‘you haven’t changed a bit.’

  ‘Thank you, dear.’ Mrs Hooper rubs her arms and shivers. ‘But it’s all so horribly sad. If only they’d caught the person who did it. It’s a horrible term, but it might have helped if there’d been some kind of closure .’

  ‘Liz is convinced it was Dean. Even now.’ Joanna, sombre, shifts her gaze to the comforting fireside. ‘When I was little, I used to think it was the bloke who owns the shop.’

  ‘Frank Petley?’ Mrs Hooper is shocked. ‘You can’t be serious.’

  Joanna wrinkles her nose.

  ‘Why would you think that?’

  ‘Because he was creepy. Because he was always watching us girls.’

  ‘Did you ever tell anyone?’

  ‘No – but his wife knew; I’m sure of it.’

  ‘Why d’you say that?’

  ‘Because she was the one pushing Carrie to tell the police she’d seen Dean mistreating Ellie. Tilly was keener than most for the focus to be on Dean – they weren’t looking at her husband then, were they?’ she says dryly.

  ‘There were lots in this village who were happy to pin the blame on Dean Fry for one reason or another.’ Mrs Hooper is about to include herself in the count, but changes her mind.

  ‘Oh, I’m just being silly.’ Joanna flaps her hand. ‘I was only nine – what would I know?’