The Cry of the Lake

by Charlie Tyler

  Dad took the phone out of his shirt pocket and held it away from his face, squinting at the mysterious, incoming digits. He shook his head and put it back.

  “We could get a taxi and go into town,” he said.

  The phone rang again.

  “Answer it, darling,” said Grace gathering up the glasses onto a tray and offering around the last of the squidgy berries which were sliding around in their black-speckled juice.

  “What?” said Dad, his voice serious. “No. No. Of course I will.” He put the phone on the table and rubbed his chin.

  “What is it, Dad?” I asked.

  “I’m sure it’s nothing serious. But it seems one of the girls in my class has gone missing. Amelie. Amelie Townsend.”

  Chapter Three

  Grace

  I sat, legs curled up on the sofa, with Tom’s arm draped around my shoulders. The heaviness of his body; the musky scent of his cologne and the graze of his cheek against mine made me feel nauseous. I suppose, if I were forced to be objective, I could see why Annie had been attracted to him and sometimes, when we kissed, the pit of my stomach whirred with a brief flutter of desire. Desire which was quickly followed by a flood of disgust.

  Tom Marchant was a pathetic liar of a man and every ounce of his being repulsed me.

  A thought struck me, and I had to swallow down my laughter. For the first time in ages, we actually had something in common; we were both murderers. Hilarious.

  Today had been a good day for Grace.

  I was still buzzing from the lashings of praise I received simply from saying yes to a man who went down to me on bended knee. When we entered the pub, Tom told the landlord our joyful news and he bought all those in the vicinity a drink to celebrate. A group of café regulars, sitting at a nearby table, clucked and examined the ring, all commenting on how it brought out the flecks in my eyes. There weren’t nearly enough diamonds for my liking, but that was to be expected considering his paltry salary.

  The only slight blemish on an otherwise productive evening was that DS Annie Harper hadn’t been there. How I would have loved to shove my sparkling ring under Annie’s snub nose, the silly whore. What was the saying? Diamonds are a girl’s best friend, but emeralds are for envy.

  I had never understood what Tom had seen in her. My only conclusion; that she was good in bed because she didn’t have a lot else going in her favour with her androgynous haircut and sallow complexion. It had been really hard to break them up because, despite their incompatibility, they had been smitten with each other. I’d heard a rumour that Tom was desperate for more kids, but that Annie was torn between her biological clock and her career path. So, the first thing I created for this new version of Grace was an underlying broodiness.

  The story of Grace so far was this: her partner had been killed in an accident at a tragically young age, leaving her alone with her special-needs daughter, Lily. Grace, however, carried on embracing life for the sake of her precious child and I liked to think that this element of the story gave her an air of vulnerability. Grace Bradshaw was young and beautiful and ready to find love once more. She was blossoming.

  The wanting more kids aspect, however, wasn’t enough to force Annie and Tom apart, so I manufactured a little ‘incident’. There were lots of tears; Annie had said she was drunk and that she had no recollection of the man at all, but somehow the photo found its way into the school email account and the whole village had gossiped about it for weeks. Those crazy people and their alcohol dependence – pathetic but, at the same time, it made life so easy. There was a good reason why I had given up booze.

  In the end Tom listened to the lovely, maternal woman with long, curly red hair who had recently taken over the running of his café. She had made him see with her soft, kind words that, without trust, a relationship was doomed to fail. Grace was sweet and naïve. Grace was whatever he wanted her to be and she made it so easy for him to fall in love with her.

  Grace had Tom’s trust.

  But despite Annie’s drab appearance I knew she was still a threat. I saw the way Tom continued to moon after her. They had a connection and it was something I couldn’t manufacture or mimic because Grace was a piece of fiction and I wasn’t built with those subtle, emotional intuitions – they had been forced out of me as a teenager. I also knew that, if I didn’t take care, Annie would pluck Tom back off me before the job of destroying him was finished.

  Thankfully, the fuss over the missing schoolgirl hadn’t impacted on the good humour of the villagers – the general consensus was that there was nothing to worry about – Amelie was playing truant with a boy. Grace was allowed to bask in the attention she deserved. After all, it had taken a lot of hard work to become such an esteemed pillar of the community; someone who exuded warmth and love. I couldn’t just throw it all away. Plus, it was fun playing Grace and I wasn’t ready to return to being Emily – I had become quite fond of my creation.

  Tom slid his hand up my blouse and fumbled with the lace edging of my bra, his breathing was shallow.

  Typical. Trying to climb into my knickers now that he’s gone and put a ring on my finger.

  “More red wine, darling,” I asked, leaning forward and dislodging his hand. Tom gave a grunt and nodded. I used my purity as an allure – promising him submission – total control over my body but only when we were married.

  “I can’t be too late,” I said, giving a fake yawn. “Besides, darling, I’m not sure, as parents of two sixteen-year-olds, we should be promoting the idea that sex before marriage is a good thing. We should lead by example.”

  Tom slapped his own wrist. “You don’t really believe that though, do you?”

  “No. But we’ve got this far – what’s another few weeks? Also, you know how Lily is – I need to be there to keep an eye on her.”

  “All the more reason for you to move in with me and Flo,” he said as I filled his wine to the brim again and handed him back the glass. “The girls would love being together.”

  Give him a bit of encouragement.

  I leant forward, showing him my cleavage. “As soon as we’re married, we’ll all live together…” I kissed him on the lips. He pulled back and gave a lazy grin. I chucked him under the chin. “So, let’s get married as soon as possible. Then we can start a family of our own.”

  “What are you doing tomorrow?” asked Tom with a laugh.

  I laughed too and tried to move away, but Tom grabbed hold of my arm.

  “I mean it. Okay, so we can’t actually get hitched tomorrow, but let’s drive out and look at some venues.” Tom held out his arms and I tiptoed forwards and wriggled onto his lap.

  “I love you so much,” he said, whispering into the hollow of my neck.

  “I love you too.”

  Well done, Grace! Bravo!

  We kissed again, then we talked about our future family. I told him what a wonderful father he was to Flo and how Lily adored him too. It wasn’t a lie – he had a natural manner when dealing with kids. I remembered how he had talked to me when I was a teenager; made me believe I could trust him. How his honeyed words had led me to think that there was a way out of my miserable existence. How his lies helped shape who I had become.

  His eyelids grew heavy and I turned off the lights and put some banal crime drama on the TV. Soon he was asleep.

  Off I went into the kitchen to put on my latex gloves.

  I had work to do and I pulled out of my pocket the pair of knickers Lily had stolen from Amelie’s P.E. kit.

  Chapter Four

  Lily

  Sleep was the time when my soul crossed to another world; an underwater universe where I was unable to free myself from the clutches of a beautiful mermaid who tried to entice me into the water. She sang, with a voice of unbearable sweetness, about needing my help. Her golden hair swirled about her pale face, offering glimpses of wild sapphire eyes and a neat, rosebud mouth. I wanted to go with her, to find out what secrets lay on the bottom of the lake, but I knew I mustn’t and
then she disappeared, and sadness deadened my limbs and left me hollow.

  At other times, when I was working with Flo in the café, I wondered if I was dreaming with my eyes open. It was only in this sphere I could feel physical pain and it convinced me I was alive, though the joins of my double life were blurred and over the years I made peace with the fact I might never be certain of my reality.

  Grace said it was my punishment for my part in what happened to Daddy.

  I had always been a badly-behaved child; wild and out of control. I roamed around our mansion like a feral cat, slinking about the shadows and hiding in the shady woods which surrounded our father’s estate. I had even created a whole bunch of imaginary friends to keep me company. Sometimes fragmented memories of this came back to me at the strangest times, popping into my head like fluffy clouds nudged along by a Spring breeze: dens woven out of fallen branches and bracken; thwacking the tops off puffball toadstools with a stick so that their chalky dust carpeted the damp moss; my sister telling me over the breakfast table that a mermaid lived in our lake.

  School was as a torture chamber to me. My speech, although bursting to get out, was slow to reach my tongue so I took the focus away from my so-called stupidity by being disruptive. I spent more time being excluded from school than being in the classroom. All the time, my head was bursting with colours, smells and sounds.

  Daddy was working for the government, destined for great things, and my behaviour, although quirky and endearing to start with, was becoming a source of much embarrassment. There was talk of special schools and even hospital. Nannies came and went until eventually I became unbearable and that’s when I was sent to see Tom.

  Even though it was a long time ago, I must have been about seven or eight-years-old, I could still picture Tom’s crystal-blue eyes and recollect his velvety voice. He showed me how to make a safe place within my mind so that my bad thoughts weren’t always there clawing at me, night and day. He promised he would help me take away the prickling under my skin.

  I fidgeted on a spinning chair and he let me gobble up Haribos, three at a time, and he gave me a packet of crayons, really smart ones which twisted up and down, along with sheets of crisp, clean paper. He told me we were going to make a list of things which made me happy and he promised he wasn’t going to go anywhere until we’d found a safe place for my scary thoughts; every single one of them.

  And we got chatting and I remembered a day when I visited a huge oceanarium. Tom made me shut my eyes and describe it to him and thinking about walking through the glass tunnels with shoals of multi-coloured fish swimming over our heads made my knees jiggle with happiness. Tom told me I was a clever girl and that’s what we would do: make an aquarium inside my head and fill it with fish of every colour – no sharks or stinging things, just happy, sparkling, rainbow fish. At the very bottom of the tank he asked me if I could place a little treasure chest, right there, nestled among the smooth pebbles.

  The next time I came to visit him, he sat opposite and stared at me with his cobalt eyes and, saying nothing, pushed a small wooden box across the table top. I lifted the hinged lid and peeped inside. It was full of keys; old-fashioned ones with ridged stems and knobbly collars. The sort of keys I was certain would open secret gardens or enchanted prisons. He watched as I examined them and then told me to pick one. I took my time and the sharp smell of the metal made the tip of my tongue tingle. Eventually I pulled out a small bronze key with a bow interlaced like a spider’s web and the tips of my fingers bulged as I pressed them into the gaps between the woven metal.

  Tom took it out of my hands and said I had found the key to my treasure chest and now it was time to put my bad thoughts inside and lock them away. Was I ready? I said yes and he made me close my eyes and think about the aquarium and describe what my fish were doing.

  Then he told me to recall the thoughts which frightened me, but I wasn’t to tell him, I was to put them into the casket, one at a time. Thought by thought. There was no need for me to say them out loud which was good because they were a bit of a tangle and some didn’t make any sense. I put them away, piece by piece, like they were parts of a jigsaw puzzle. When I was done, he asked if I had shut the lid.

  Yes!

  He gave me the key.

  Had I locked it?

  I nodded.

  And there sat the casket, hidden by lots of emerald weed with my beautiful fish swimming all about it, not bothered by its presence one little bit.

  Tom asked me what I wanted to do with the key, and we decided I would give it to him for safe keeping. He tied a silver ribbon around the top so he would remember it was mine. He said we couldn’t leave the treasure chest on the bottom of the aquarium for ever; we would need to move it to make way for another ornament and did I have anything in mind. I said I fancied the idea of an open chest with glittering treasure spilling out: gold, pearls and rubies to sparkle alongside all the silvery fish scales.

  Some happy weeks passed and then it was time to unlock the casket and take out one of the thoughts. Tom took me outside, and we sat on the lawn with the sun peeping through a canopy of lime-green leaves and the blanket which we sat upon, though soft, also made me want to scratch the underside of my thighs. Tom asked me if I was ready and I nodded. He handed me my key which I clasped in both hands and then I shut my eyes and he took me over to my beautiful aquarium.

  He told me, when I was ready, to take a piece out of the chest and I did.

  He asked if I could describe it to him and I did.

  With a shaky voice he told me to lock the casket, but rather than making me swim back through the warm aquarium water, racing alongside my rainbow fish, he fell quiet. Startled by the silence, I opened my eyes. His face had gone very pale and his brow was all wrinkled. I gave him back the key for safekeeping.

  Then my world stopped spinning and, from that moment onwards, I didn’t utter another word.

  It was only much later, when my sister was restraining me, that I realised Tom never told me what to do with the extracted jigsaw piece and it stayed with me all the time and became another thing Grace told me I must hate him for.

  So much time passed, and I became scared of finding my aquarium. I was frightened it would be in a terrible condition with all my fish suffocated by overgrown algae; their skeletons stuck fast in an emerald soup of stinking, rotting flesh.

  At the very beginning of our new life together my sister said we had to ‘wait for the right time’ and when we first moved to our cottage by the sea, I wondered every day, at breakfast, if it was ‘the right time.’ It was in Norfolk that we changed everything about ourselves. She allowed me to choose my new name and I chose Waterlily, but she, being a typical grown-up, said I had to be just plain old Lily. If you ask me, Grace was a spectacularly unadventurous choice.

  Between visits to the speech therapist, hospital, primary school and collecting shells on the beach, we carved a life for ourselves and I forgot all about finding the elusive right time. Then one day, Grace said it had arrived and we were to leave.

  We moved to a place called Rutland Water and Grace took over the running of Tom’s café and that’s how she trapped him. I didn’t actually remember him until Grace told me I simply must do, but he didn’t recognise me either. Not even a flicker from those big, blue eyes.

  Chapter Five

  Flo

  Annie, or DS Harper to the rest of the planet, came into assembly on Monday morning. Her dark hair was wet and slicked back as though she’d dipped it in the washroom sink just before entering the hall. Sun streamed through the dirty rectangular windows, throwing half of the hall into darkness though the pupils on the other side of the room had to hide their eyes from the nuclear glare. Annie stood behind the lectern, her thin mouth painted a slutty shade of red, ridiculous Easter-egg bow dangling around her neck. She scowled into the huddle of blazers and spotty faces, her eyes flicking from right to left – she’d gone way too emo with the kohl. I managed to catch her attention and gave her
my best reassuring smile, but she completely ignored me.

  She must have been wetting herself. Annie was the coolest, most unflappable person I’d ever met but standing in front of a room rammed with teenagers would scare the shit out of even the toughest of coppers. Dad, dressed like a tramp in a manky velvet jacket, was standing next to his class and avoided catching Annie’s eye by staring at the tips of his old-man loafers.

  I closed my eyes, trying to remember the last time I’d seen Amelie. I raced through my memories one by one, like I was clicking through my kiddie’s view-master. I was a complete fraud, already finding it impossible to recall her image. Here was the whole school fizzing with excitement and all that was running through my head was this: if I went missing would anyone else, apart from my besties, be able to describe me to the police.

  Stella nudged me. “I reckon if they have to do one of those TV re-construction thingies they’ll ask you to do it.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes – you look really similar. It’s the hair.”

  That was it – I knew exactly who they were talking about. I grinned. “Fame at last.”

  Lily was on the other side of the hall, daydreaming as usual and staring up at the ceiling. Sometimes she really didn’t help herself with the whole weird vibe she gave off.

  The headmistress, Ms Phibbs, clapped her fat hands together and we all shut up. She nodded to Annie.

  “Some of you will already know me,” said Annie. A few sniggers swept around the room and the tips of Dad’s ears burned as everyone turned to stare at him. Poor Dad and those fucking awful photos. I glared at any of the rubberneckers who dared to meet my eye. Annie gave a sigh, folded her arms and scowled until the room fell silent again.

  “I’m DS Annie Harper and I’ve come here this morning to talk to you about Amelie Townsend.” She strode out from behind the lectern, square heels clipping the wooden floor of the stage. She was wearing a knee-length kilt – things were serious. The last time I’d seen Annie wearing a skirt and heels and, for that matter, face powder was when she’d been on the telly to give her opinion about a team of robbers who kept thieving the cash machines from our neighbouring villages. She was often accused of being too intimidating and the female get-up was meant to soften the edges, but I thought she looked even more scary when she was made-up; like a freaky doll from a slasher movie. “We’re beginning to get quite concerned about Amelie’s whereabouts.”