Lacey's House

by Joanne Graham

  Whenever I thought about Norfolk it always seemed to be night time. I had pushed away the beauty of the daylight, the majestic forests, the triumph of the sunsets as they bled across that huge canvas sky. I had cast aside all seasons there apart from winter, when the earth lay barren and frozen beneath a bleak, wet sky and the fog rose up to meet the low cloud until it was impossible to distinguish where one ended and the other began.

  Yet sifting through the past to find the path to a possible future didn’t only lead to dark places. There were the distant memories of blazing sunshine on a Devon beach. Of ice cream melting between fingers, sticking them together, a lure for flies and the tongues of the dogs that ran across the beach. There were brief flashes of easy laughter that bubbled from my chest, spilling out of my mouth like a waterfall that had been dammed for too long. Legs buried in the sand, cold and tight while the tender skin on my shoulders burned a delicate pink. Of the seaweed that brushed against ankles in the water, clinging on to my skin and turning my insides to liquid when I thought they might be crabs that would snap at my toes.

  I remember the two of them standing with their backs to the sunshine so their faces couldn’t be seen. Their hair had caught the sunlight and glowed like bright halos around their heads; Diane and Richard, my foster parents. The two people that I would forever think of as my family. Whenever I thought of them, the Devon beach was the first place I looked. The memory pushed forwards on a rush of emotions that carried the warmth of that day.

  Other memories would follow close behind, two figures diminishing through the rear window as I screamed and held my hands up. The guilt that would tear at me because of a hastily written letter that I posted and then regretted forever. The realisation that the two people I loved so much had become little more than a full stop at the end of a sentence, the last sentence of a book. But these things were pale and cold against the day at the beach and it was those sunshine memories that meant Devon reached out with bright fingers to pull me in.

  When a programme came on about people house hunting in South West England, I took it as a sign and made a final decision. I didn’t allow myself to think about the magnitude of such a choice being hung on something so flimsy. I pushed aside the worry and knew that I would choose to go anyway. The urge to leave surpassed the worry about what might happen and as I fixed my gaze on one spot on the horizon all I could feel was relief.

  The next day I contacted letting agents and told them what I was looking for, I spent hours researching properties on the internet. I wanted to live near a city but in a rural location, in a small village or the middle of nowhere rather than a town, a house with a decent garden and at least two bedrooms, no flats, no house shares. I had made the decision not to live near the beach, worrying that the link to Diane and Richard would be too strong and then there would be nothing left for me but disappointment that they were not there to share in the experience.

  After more than a dozen phone calls to various agencies I found myself growing increasingly frustrated. Perhaps I was being too fussy. The properties available were too small or in the cities; they had no garden, not enough rooms, or too many people to share with. I began to wonder if Devon was the wrong choice after all. If perhaps my lack of success in the search was some kind of divine intervention trying to point me in a different direction. The phone calls had grown ripe with repetition from both ends of the line and I had to clamp my teeth together to prevent myself from snapping at the hapless agent on the other end, who could not help this lack of choice.

  Several days later I finally found what I was looking for. A little, detached cottage on the edge of a small village, surrounded by a large garden, described as ‘slightly unkempt but charming in its own way.’ It sounded perfect.

  The cottage had been empty for six months but there had been little local interest. Perhaps foolishly I agreed to take it there and then, sight unseen. I promised that the first month’s rent and bond, along with my references would be in the post the following morning. I felt that I couldn’t take the risk that someone would take it from me before I had the chance to travel down to see it for myself. I felt an attachment to the house even then. Perhaps it was simply the success after days of frustration, but I carried with me a strange sense of homecoming, of rightness. I imagined the house waiting for me. Dove Cottage, Apple Tree Lane, Winscombe. Six chocolate-box words that already felt at home in my mouth.

  Chapter 5 ~ Lacey

  “What is your name?”

  “Lacey Eleanor Carmichael.”

  She sees him pause for a moment as he writes on the pad in front of him, as if he’s not quite sure he has heard it correctly, as if he is uncertain about what to write.

  “It’s a family name, Lacey, after my Grandmother. And in my case, sadly, it is far more exotic than the person it belongs to.” She offers a smile that falters and dies as she sees beyond the young policeman’s shoulder, and notices the black shiny eye that tells her she is being watched, that eyes other than his will see her sitting there, pale and afraid. He finishes writing and stabs a full stop onto the pad before turning to her with a wry smile that lifts one side of his face and leaves the other dimpled.

  “Mine is just John, plain and simple. I think you got the better deal.”

  There is silence for a few seconds and in the distance she hears a door slam. He remembers why she is there and thinks that perhaps it is better in this moment to be plain and simple John. His face begins to colour a little as her eyes sweep across him and he remembers reading somewhere that when people blush, their stomach lining blushes too. He wonders how they know.

  “How old are you, Lacey?” His stomach must be glowing even more now. He hates having to ask, as though in doing this job he is breaking the unwritten rules of social nicety. He clears his throat and wiggles his pen back and forth and she frowns a little, like she can’t quite remember. She looks up into her eyebrows and moves her eyes from side to side as though reading the answer from the air.

  “I’m eighty-four.”

  Sergeant John smiles, “Are you sure?”

  “Is it 2008?” she asks and he smiles some more, but this time there is more of a question in it, as if she is trying to trick him.

  “Yes it is.”

  “Then I’m sure.”

  He writes it down, and Lacey reaches for the cup of tea that someone had brought her when she first came into this room, and looked at the pale walls that reminded her of another time when she felt equally helpless and afraid. The tea is lukewarm but at least it is in a proper cup, not a flimsy paper thing that she could squeeze too hard and spill on herself. There are even biscuits. They have jammy centres and look like they should be on a plate at a children’s party, not here where people are locked behind metal doors. She wondered who it was that went out and bought them, who it was that thought they were a good idea. But she doesn’t ask, she just waits to see what happens next.

  She sees Sergeant John talking to the lady that drove her here in the back of the police car. There had been no flashing lights, no sirens. There had been no hurry. She hears the policewoman justifying why she has brought Lacey in and the custody sergeant nods and writes something down, as if he is little more than a waiter taking someone’s order. They talk in hushed tones and Lacey loses the words in the space between her and them. She looks at her mug and wishes it were full again.

  Before she can ask if it is possible to get another, the sergeant approaches and asks her to follow him. Through a door, down a corridor, all painted the same shade of cream until she is shown into a tiny room with a cot bed and little else. A different policewoman comes in and the room shrinks even more. When the sergeant leaves she is asked to remove her clothes, all of them. Turning her back, she hunches into herself as she strips. Handing her clothes to the woman as she tries to cover her flaccid breasts with her arm, she grasps at the grey material passed back in return. The officer turns her back as Lacey dresses again, and busies herself putting the removed clothing into
a clear bag.

  “Someone will come for you soon.” She closes and locks the heavy door behind her and Lacey covers her face and cries into her palms beneath the black, watchful eye of a camera.

  She doesn’t know how much time passes before Sergeant John comes back. She has lost track in front of the pale walls that she stared at and looked for blemishes. He gestures her to follow and she does. He leads her to a new room and tells her to sit at the table attached to one wall and then he stands by the door and waits until it opens again, revealing two new faces.

  Sergeant John moves towards the door. He doesn’t say goodbye, merely turns and offers a half smile and she realises how awkward the moment is, in this room where the usual conversations and departing words don’t matter, in this room where no-one talks as equals.

  The new arrivals reach over and shake Lacey’s hand. The first almost reaching all the way to the table top before she realises that she needs to raise her palm to meet his. The handshake is dry and impersonal before he passes her over to his female equivalent, as though they were dancing, the three of them. They introduce themselves but within minutes their names have disappeared from her mind. She will see their faces for days afterwards; she will wake up with her heart hammering in her chest from the dreams in which they laugh at her, but their names are gone forever and she is not sorry about that.

  The man and woman opposite her could have been cut from the same cloth, both dark eyed and dark haired. The woman is slender and pretty in a way that she has tried to hide with ill-fitting clothes, heavy framed glasses and hair scraped back in a tight bun. The man is thicker set with a five o’clock shadow and a heavy brow. They look at Lacey and she feels the weight of their eyes, flinching away from them before the questions even begin.

  “I understand that you have waived your right to legal representation, Ms Carmichael?”

  He raises an eyebrow in a gesture that says so much. He thinks she is doing the wrong thing but he says nothing more, he doesn’t tell her that she is foolish. Lacey nods in response, staring at the strip that runs past the table and around the room. She recognises it as a panic strip and wonders who it is meant for, her or them. There is a sigh but she is not sure who it comes from.

  “Do you understand why you are here, Ms Carmichael?”

  She frowns at the question. “Call me Lacey, please. Ms Carmichael sounds too formal.”

  His own brow creases in return. How much more formal could this situation be? He wonders about her, about whether she is altogether with it, about whether or not he should have her evaluated by the mental health team before going any further. But he decides that he will ask a few questions first and see how aware she actually is.

  “I’m here because I’ve been arrested for murder,” she says, as her chin trembles. The policeman nods, satisfied, and begins to talk randomly, a list of instructions. She realises it is for the benefit of the tape recorder that will capture her every word and make her afraid of what she might have said later when she can no longer remember clearly.

  “In your own words, Lacey, could you tell me what happened last night?”

  And she does, because this she can remember, all of it up to a point. She takes a deep breath and feels her knee begin to shake under the table, her right knee, the one with the arthritis that grips and bites at her whenever she tries to stand. She moves her hand under the table to push it into stillness. It helps a little.

  Four eyes stare at her with questions behind them, but they disappear as she puts herself back into the world she lived in yesterday, a better world where Albert wasn’t lying dead in his hallway, with his blood as a pillow.

  Chapter 6 ~ Rachel

  Dove Cottage sat empty for another five months. I pictured it there waiting for me as the grass grew longer and flowers lifted their faces towards the sun. The days became weeks, steamroller slow, as I posted yet another rent cheque and wished the time away. This chapter of my life was over and yet it clawed at me with dying fingers, desperately clinging on and refusing to let go.

  It wasn’t simply a case of packing up and moving. There was a painting to finish, a portrait commissioned by a local councillor, a fleshy, stern dowager who was insistent that she sit for the portrait in her drawing room, almost certainly for the prestige rather than the convenience. She had no desire to have me paint her from photographs, which was always how I preferred to work. Much though I loved my work, right at this moment I felt a twinge of angst at my chosen career. Unfortunately I had agreed to do the portrait before deciding to move and the lady was paying good money. I couldn’t afford to turn her down.

  As I lifted the brushes to transfer the councillor’s round, ruddy face onto canvas, the frustration coiled within me like a viper, I could sense it waiting to strike at any moment. As the subject fidgeted and grumbled, I fought hard not to do the same as, with agonising slowness, the portrait was completed.

  The finished piece turned out better than I had expected under the circumstances and drew glowing praise from the pinched mouth now immortalised in acrylics. The councillor gave me a bonus and promises of recommendations to wealthy friends. I replied that my days in Moseley were finished, that I would still happily take commissions to work from photographs and I passed over my agent’s business card. The lady smiled as she showed me to the door, lifting her soft, doughy hand to touch lightly upon my tense shoulders, and in that moment showing more life and warmth in her face than she had during the entire time she had sat for her portrait.

  I filled the moments in between work commitments planning everything about the move in detail. I made lists upon lists of all that needed doing, all I had done, all that I would do once the move was complete. Everything was planned with military precision, in total contrast to how I would normally accomplish anything.

  Two weeks after finishing the portrait I found myself drifting through each of the rooms in my attic flat. It looked bigger and my footsteps echoed back at me. Light filtered through the skylights in the room I had used as the studio, perfect rectangles of sunshine on the bare floorboards that I stood in for a moment, allowing the warmth to fill my body now that the rest of the rooms seemed so lifeless and cold.

  The walls, once a kaleidoscope of colours from the many paintings resting on them, now appeared naked. Empty picture hooks punctuated the plaster. I hoped that whoever came here after my departure would make use of them; the thought of bare walls reminded me too much of institutions.

  The rooms looked bleached, sterile. Nothing was recognisable. The flat had been reduced to little more than square walls, square floors, square boxes. The rich fabrics and rugs which had adorned every space, the eclectic canvasses painted by my own hands, all of these things had reflected so much of my personality that I felt as though it was me who had been packed away, my life reduced and surrounded by cardboard and parcel tape.

  Pouring wine into a plastic cup, I sank down onto the sofa, legs curled up beneath me. I felt out of place in the middle of the room, facing the empty space where the TV had been. I was worn out, exhausted yet excited too, counting down the seconds until tomorrow when I could close the door for the last time and drive away without looking back.

  I thought about the village I was moving to. I had tried to research it, but found little information. I knew that it was to the south of Exeter, I knew that it was tiny compared to Birmingham, as most places were, but beyond that there was nothing. I felt anticipation run through me at the thought of discovering everything for myself.

  “To new beginnings.” My voice was loud and echoing against the empty walls as I raised my cup in a toast to nobody. I knocked back what was left of the wine before unfolding my sleeping bag and curling up on the sofa to try and get some sleep.

  The next morning I pointed my car towards the noon sun, pulled back the bowstring and let myself fly. With every mile that blurred and faded beneath the tyres I felt my shoulders become lighter, my breath become easier until it felt like I floated high above the road with a
bird’s eye view of the horizon. I drove as fast as I could and didn’t bother to stop and break my journey. I was too impatient to be on my way and as the miles disappeared I felt my anxiety fade away. I watched the hills grow bigger and greener as I passed, until I finally reached my destination.

  From the broken, pitted road that wound its narrow way down the edge of the valley I saw Winscombe for the first time. The sky was a brilliant blue with no trace of cloud, light reflected from thatched roofs and white-washed walls, the whole scene dazzling in its old world perfection. Would I have felt differently about the village if the sky had been overcast and heavy with rain? If the scene had been tinged with grey? It was possible but somehow I doubted it.

  Before my eyes rested on the village, I had carried with me a sense of things being as they should. Maybe it was wishful thinking but Winscombe felt like the right place to be. The warmth of the sun shining on the gentle swell of the hills added an air of energy, creating an image of such clarity and perfection that it would stay with me always.

  I pulled into a lay-by at the crest of a bend where the road doubled back on itself. The village nestled below, a vague comma shape curving along the valley, with the church and the village green in the centre of the rounded section. The streets twisted and turned randomly, as if they had been built by someone who had designed the layout while chasing a butterfly. I loved how unpredictable it was, the way some houses seemed to lean drunkenly against each other with barely a hair’s breadth between them, like friends staggering home after a night in the pub. I loved that no two houses were the same. Overwhelmed that after so much waiting I had finally made it, I reached up a hand to brush away the warm tears that clung to my eyelashes as I blinked in the sunshine.