by Frances Vick
‘Then, a few days later, it was on the news. She loved that. That’s when I got scared. I took her to the youth club. I had this idea that she’d tell me more if we were there, maybe she’d remember more, or feel like telling me more… I remember she started talking about a treasure hunt, she wanted to take me on a treasure hunt. So she led me to the canal, under the bridge, and then she points up to the bank and says, “There.” “There what?” I said. “That’s where the treasure is,” she told me, proud as punch. “I put it there.” So I went and looked and there was a coat. Well, I’d watched the news and I knew what the police were looking for. So I asked her, very gently, very carefully, “How did you know the big girl’s coat was there? Was it a feeling you had, or did you dream it?”’
‘And what did she say?’
‘She laughed at me. I got angry then, I said, “Did you put it there?” and she laughed again and said, “I didn’t say I put it there, I just said it was there. You found it. Maybe you put it there.” Like it was a game.’ Sylvia closed her eyes. ‘I should have asked her then, did you do anything to that girl? Did you see anyone do anything to her? But I didn’t.’ She opened her eyes again. ‘I didn’t because I was scared to. That’s the truth. I thought, I’m here, now, by the canal and it’s dark and there’s no-one here and… something might happen to me!’
She looked at Kirsty with naked, guilty appeal. ‘I have to tell the truth, that’s what I thought! I got away from there quickly. The next day I went to the police, said I’d just happened to see it.’
‘You were the —’
‘“Anonymous Passer-by”? Yes.’
‘But why did the police believe you? I mean, that canal bank had already been searched.’
‘You met them, didn’t you?’ There was an edge of amused contempt in Sylvia’s voice now. ‘They weren’t the brightest colours in the paintbox, were they?’ Her face became serious again ‘Anyway, afterwards I went home and had a few drinks to steady my nerves but I ended up getting drunk for the first and last time of my life. I needed to forget what I knew, I wanted to wake up the next day and have it all blurry in my mind, like it was a dream. And it almost worked. After they had the coat and they caught that lodger, I thought it was all over with, and I convinced myself that Marie had nothing to do with any of it. That she’d just heard news reports and was letting her imagination run away with her. Or maybe she had known the coat was there but that was because of her gift.’ She shuddered to herself and closed her eyes once more.
‘Did Marie ever mention it again?’
‘No. And for a month or so everything was OK, she let me start teaching her, she seemed to have decided to be nice again, gentle. I thought she was over it – whatever it was that made her so… cruel sometimes. I thought I had my little girl back.’ She smiled sadly. ‘It didn’t last, of course, but I put any suspicion I had to the back of my mind. Even when that man took back his confession, and the witnesses, the girls? When they said they’d lied, even then I didn’t let my mind go anywhere near thinking…’
‘What changed?’
‘After Mervyn died, just when Marie had come back, I was sorting through things, and I found a loose floorboard in her old room. I angled it up, and I found Marie’s old jewellery box from when she was little. This was one of the things in it.’ She brought something out of her bag. ‘You’ll probably recognise it.’
The notebook was covered with a thin patina of dried mould, and the pages gave off a smell, an ancient reek of decay and damp. The edges were mottled and waved, but the writing was still clear. The pictures were still clear.
Angels Times Two
* * *
WE like BOYS and FASHION and HAVING FUN!!!!
There was the logo – more hesitant and childish than it seemed at the time. Here was the list of practice interview questions that Lisa had culled from old copies of Smash Hits: ‘We should learn them so we know what to say.’
Q: If you were an animal what animal would you be?
* * *
A: A cat cos they are beutiful and elegent and mysterius
* * *
OR!
* * *
A dog – playful and loyl and cuddly
Q: Whats your favourite make-up tip?
* * *
A: BLOT YOUR LIPSTICK
* * *
OR
* * *
By good quality make-up
Kirsty had had a problem with that one, she remembered, and so she’d aped something she’d once heard an Avon lady say. It never occurred to her that Lisa had probably done the same thing.
There were more questions, more silly doodles, and then (and this was what caused Kirsty, finally, to let the book fall, close her own eyes with a moan) a strip from a photo booth. Two weeks before Lisa had disappeared, they’d pooled their ten-pence pieces and gone to the passport photo booth at the Co-op. There they’d arranged themselves, giggling and awkward, one buttock each on the little twirly stool: One Two Three CUTE. One Two Three CRAZY! One Two Three HAPPY! One Two Three SEXY! And in that last black and white square they were so, so young, so ignorant, their ‘sexy’ faces more redolent of nausea, eyes narrowed, necks contorted. Bless them, she thought. Bless us. Lisa had written on the back:
Best Friends 4 EVA!!!!
‘She must have taken it from Lisa’s pocket. Before she dumped the coat,’ Kirsty whispered.
‘I found it just after your sister’s party. I put it back where it was, but since then, since I started believing that she might really have hurt that poor little girl, I hid it somewhere else. There’s… there’s more things in it.’
‘What things?’
‘There’s… oh this is awful! There’s some hair. It looks as if it’s been torn out from the scalp.’
‘Jesus!’
‘And some other things… a lipstick?’
‘Lip balm? Orange lip balm?’
‘Yes! Like… keepsakes. Treasures. God forgive me, I didn’t have the heart to look through it all. I hid it somewhere else thinking I’d give it to you, to the police. But then, when Marie came over—’
‘When did she come over?’
‘Last night. After Lee left I managed to get back to the house and I called her from there. I – stupid of me I know – but I thought she’d help me, take me away somewhere safer. But it didn’t happen that way.’
‘What happened?’
‘She came over right away, and she was angry. She was really angry. I hadn’t seen her like that since she was small. Lee had gone back to your sister’s house, he’s been telling her that you’re delusional, that you’re obsessed with digging into what happened to Lisa again. Your sister must have told Marie, and that panicked her. She’s… ill. She’s like she used to be. She wanted the box and when I said I didn’t know anything about a box, that maybe Mervyn had thrown it away, or moved it, that made her more upset. So… she did what she used to do.’ Sylvia gestured at her injured arm, her bruised scalp.
‘How did you get away?’
‘I did what I always did, I played along. I said sorry and I pretended to look for it. We searched all over the place until she eventually began to trust me a bit, and then I told her to come back this evening. I said we’d start going through the workshop, the cars, everything. When she left, I waited for an hour and I left. I walked all night. I thought about going to see you at the hospital, but I worried that Peg might see me and she’d tell Marie. They’re close, those two, and she must have told Peg so many bad things about me over the years; the whole family hate me now. I didn’t want to put you in danger, so I… I just kept going. Then that nice man found me and called you.’
‘We have to call the police.’
Sylvia nodded grimly. ‘I know. And I nearly did last night, but then I realised that we need the box.’
‘Why?’
Uncharacteristic irritation distorted Sylvia’s face. ‘Think about it, Kirsty! The box has hair in it, lip balm in it; they didn’t have DNA analysis
and all that back then, but they do now, don’t they? If we have the box, we have more proof. You know as well as I do that they won’t believe me, or you, not on our word alone! Since when would the police believe one old lady and a disturbed woman about something like this?’
Kirsty’s semi-hypnotised gaze cleared just slightly. ‘What d’you mean, “disturbed woman”?’
‘I mean that Marie’s awfully convincing. She’ll have told your sister you’re crazy, Lee will have too. She’ll have used your argument with Lee as proof and she’ll make sure we’ll be written off as cranks and nothing will happen, you know this!’
‘Vic wouldn’t do that, though. She wouldn’t believe someone saying that about me.’
‘Wouldn’t she?’ Sylvia looked at her with pitying shrewdness. ‘I met her, remember? I saw how much she was under Marie’s thumb then, and imagine how it must be now, months later? No, believe me, Marie thinks you’re out to get her, so she’ll be doubly out to get you. You need to go and get the box.’
‘What? No! That’s dangerous! What if she’s there?’
‘She’s not there. I made sure she’s not there.’
‘Where is she—’
‘Listen to me, Kirsty.’ There was a hard urgency in Sylvia’s voice now, a grim rebuke. ‘This isn’t a request, it’s what has to happen, OK? She did something to Lisa, and that won’t be the only bad thing she’s done, will it? Some poor man is rotting in prison because of what she did, and what you told them. I’ve done my bit, now it’s time for you to do yours! This has to happen. Lisa wants this to happen. You know that.’
‘Yes,’ Kirsty murmured.
‘You’ve always known that, haven’t you? Deep down?’
‘Yes,’ Kirsty whispered again.
Sylvia’s voice softened. ‘You’re a good girl.’
‘Am I?’
‘Yes. And here’s your chance to put everything right. Now, listen closely and I’ll tell you where to find it.’
Twenty-Eight
The house, under its awning of grey clouds, looked very different from the rear. Sylvia had specifically told her to hide her car in the overgrown scrubland at the back so it wouldn’t be seen by anyone approaching from Beacon Hill. The front of the place was, as ever, a bit scruffy, littered, but elevated by that oblong of welcoming light from the kitchen; the back of the house was a disaster zone. A row of small, mean windows showed that the rooms were filled with garbage – it pressed against the panes, even bursting through at odd intervals. Some of the broken windows were covered with cardboard taped down with electrical tape; some remained broken. Kirsty had seen hoarder houses before, and Sylvia had said on that first day that she had trouble keeping on top of things, but this was… different. These rooms spoke of a deliberately wanton, almost aggressive chaos, and Kirsty realised she was afraid of going inside, not because of Angela, not because of the box and what its contents would reveal, but because the house itself felt… insane. That was the word for it. Insane.
She told herself to stop being so stupid, to stop letting her imagination run away from her. She told herself that this had been Mervyn’s house, that he had been the hoarder, and she willed herself to feel familiar pity for Sylvia, having to endure living in such a place. It worked enough for her to get through the back door and into a thin, fetid-smelling channel that led, according to Sylvia, to the ‘back stairs’. Even though the room was small, only two or three metres in length, it took her twenty minutes to navigate the newspapers piled up in ancient rows, and topped with books, the broken chairs, the bags of clothes and stained duvets and mouldy plastic flowers, all covered in cobwebs. Each column teetered as she squeezed past, releasing little puffs of noxious dust that made her splutter. The floor itself was a trodden-down path of cardboard and discarded food, all condensed into slippery rot. Things were moving, too, sinuous things that weaved in and out the tiny free spaces. Rats? Probably.
The stairs, when she finally got to them, were also unsettling. They didn’t belong in this house. They wouldn’t belong in any house, as far as Kirsty could see. They were curved into a steep spiral, stately, like the grand staircase from a country home, or a movie set – Dracula’s house maybe – and made of some dark, gloomy wood that still shone, despite the pockmarks and the moss. Kirsty saw that it wasn’t fixed to the floor and was only attached to the wall with a few cheap-looking brackets. She placed one tentative foot on the first step, and the whole staircase wobbled alarmingly. Surely Sylvia didn’t mean her to use this staircase? She peered up into the gloom; maybe the top half was more secure? She hoped so. Each cautious step she took caused the stairs to tremble, the brackets squeaked and sighed but after a nerve-racking five minutes, she finally made it to the top, and stood on the L-shaped landing. ‘You’ll find the key in the bathroom,’ Sylvia had told her, ‘in the cistern, wrapped in cling film.’
The bathroom was large and cold. The bottom of the bath was stained brown, like the toilet, like the linoleum. Kirsty shivered, opened the cistern, dislodging the calcified remains of long-dead spiders and, wincingly, peered into the water. There the key was, nestling at the bottom of the murky water.
‘Turn left at the end of the corridor,’ Sylvia had told her. ‘The door’s marked “Lily”. The lock might be stiff, so take this.’ She had given her a long knife with a bent tip. ‘I use this to jimmy the lock, it’s the only thing that works. When you’re inside the room, look behind the wardrobe. There’s a hole in the wall and the box is in there.’
‘Nearly there. Nearly there now,’ Kirsty whispered to herself as she dug into the wet cling film with cold fingers, and slid the key into the door, turned it forcefully, prepared to use the knife if the lock stuck.
But the lock didn’t stick. The door wasn’t locked at all.
The force she used swung her inwards and she stumbled, fell, landed painfully on her knees, and hit her head on something hard and metal. Dazedly she saw that she was at the foot of an old-fashioned camp bed in a child’s room, that the knife with the bent tip was still in her hand and she could feel that someone was behind her. She turned clumsily and instinctively lashed out with the knife, heard a sharp gasp, jabbed the knife again, and again she heard a gasp, and saw something drop and tip. The lid opened and a ballerina twirled to ‘A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes’.
Kirsty had time to see one thin, brown hand, a flash of dark blonde hair, before some unknown instinct told her to grab the box, get back on her feet and charge back to the still open door. She got as far as the staircase before she was tackled from behind and taken down and she watched, helplessly, as the knife skittered behind her and the music box slithered out of her hand, down the stairs, landing with a dull slap on the filthy floor below.
Both women scrambled up, but Kirsty was quicker. She launched herself onto the top step of the rickety stairs, pulled herself upright by the bannister, and felt the whole thing lurch to the right. Both brackets were pulling themselves out of the cheap plasterboard wall, and the whole thing was twisting, groaning, about to fall. Kirsty tried hard to outrun the collapse, but suddenly it gave way with one violent crack. The whole thing now hung from one remaining bracket, and Kirsty was trapped, her feet dangling into the blackness of the lower floor, her forearm clamped in something, she couldn’t see what for the dust. Her body twirled, swung, her head slammed painfully into plasterboard, and she tried desperately to twist her arm out of its clamp – better to fall than to be left with Marie! Better to break her leg than never get out alive. She struggled; she struggled harder to free herself, twisting painfully, peering through the blood running into one eye, to see what was trapping her and how she could get loose.
Angela Bright was lying on the landing, two feet above her, with both strong, thin hands clamped around Kirsty’s wrist. The tendons stood out on her neck.
‘Don’t let yourself drop! Please!’ she said. ‘Hang onto me!’
‘No!’ Kirsty struggled, kicked.
‘Please!’ Angela pleaded. ‘You�
�ll get hurt! Please! Let me help you!’ And just then the remaining bracket gave way. The whole staircase collapsed with a groan, like a dying dinosaur, and with almost superhuman strength, Angela Bright pulled Kirsty, no longer kicking, upwards. Back onto the landing, where they lay together, choking on the cloud of fetid dust rising from the lower floor.
Twenty-Nine
‘Yes. Why, why did you help me?’ Kirsty asked dazedly.
‘You were falling,’ Angela answered. ‘I had to.’
Angela rolled away then, grabbed Kirsty’s knife on what remained of the ragged landing, one hand behind her back. ‘I’ve got this, now. Just in case you try to hurt me.’
‘I didn’t bring it to hurt you!’
‘Oh, c’mon.’ The local accent was back. ‘I know why you’re here. You were going to hurt Mum, or me.’
‘What? No! I love Sylvia!’
‘If you love her so much, why’ve you been sending her those notes? Why’ve you’ve been frightening her, showing up at the house? Why did you sneak in through the back with a bloody knife?’ Angela sounded so much like Mona now, it was incredible. ‘She’s told me all about it. No matter what her faults are, Kirsty, she’s an old woman now. It’s me you want, so deal with me, not with her.’
‘Wait, what? What are you talking about?’ Kirsty asked breathlessly. She shuffled herself into a more upright position. Angela’s hand was shaking, and her eyes were fearful. This wasn’t the Angela she’d met or the Marie she’d been told to expect. ‘I haven’t sent any—’
