The waterlily pads were curling up around the edges. Flo fished out the carp with a long-handled net and plopped them into the wheelbarrow which, only last night, I had used to transport the slug pellets from the shed and down to the water. Thankfully, when the bedroom light went on, I’d had enough presence of mind to wheel it away from the pond, abandoning it on the other side of the grassy divide. No one had noticed – the garden, like the house, was always such a mess.
Tom smoothed his fringe out of his eyes. “Why would anyone come into the garden in the middle of the night to poison some fish? Unless they were a crazy person.”
Tom stretched out his legs and put on a pair of rubber gloves and waders which came up to the top of his thighs. “If it’s okay with you Annie, I think it’s best if I drain it before any other creature comes into contact with the poison.” I wanted to shout no, but Annie nodded, and he clambered in, wading through the dark water, momentarily stopping his journey to pick up the remaining carcasses for Flo’s net.
Flo looked up from her funeral pyre. “Grace are you okay? You’re bleeding.”
I stared at my hands. I’d been pulling at the skin around my fingernails.
I nodded, dragging my eyes back to the pond, willing Tom to stop.
At the far left-hand corner of the pond, he stooped and fiddled around with something under the surface. There was a glugging sound and the water level lowered until the dark weed, which coated the bottom, was visible. A frog hopped out from underneath the base of a jaundiced lily pad.
“What’s that?” asked Annie, pointing to a mound of rocks stacked against the opposite side of the pond’s rectangular shell. Tom, slipping and sliding, went over to take a look. I hoped he would fall over and bang his head, but instead he shrugged and looked at Flo who mimicked his body language. There was black plastic poking out from underneath the stones and he began to disassemble the heap to reveal a bag which he picked up and placed at Annie’s feet.
I stifled a groan. They weren’t meant to find this yet – it was too soon.
Annie put on her gloves, opened the sack and pulled out a pair of black shoes. Small, black lace-ups. School shoes tied together with a pair of white, lacy knickers.
Chapter Ten
Lily
Grace and I left Spinney Cottage. The white and blue police tape which boxed in the empty pond rippled in the breeze whilst Tom and Flo continued to stare at each other with bewildered expressions.
Annie’s reaction to discovering the shoes and pants was strange; quiet, contained. She refused to communicate further without the use of stock police phrases; no comment, process the evidence. Flo took it very badly saying for God’s sake why was Annie being such a prize bitch and how could she possibly think they had anything to do with either item. Annie rebuffed her with silence. She moved everyone away from the scene and made a few phone calls. Within ten minutes an army of police people arrived, and a cloud of suspicion fell over the house.
Grace couldn’t keep still, her eyes darting all over the place. This wasn’t part of her plan and she was fidgety and awkward – my sister at her most dangerous.
Annie sent the ginger-haired constable off to the police station with the bagged-up shoes.
Eventually Annie came over to us, female police officer at her side. She told Tom and Flo they needed to pack a bag and go and stay with Grace for a couple of days. The police officer would accompany them into the house.
“Fucking hell, Annie,” said Flo. “Do you really think that’s necessary. Besides, don’t you need a search warrant or something?”
Annie nodded. “It’s being sorted.”
“Well until then, I’ll bloody well go where I like in my house.” Tom reached out and put a hand on her arm. He shook his head and gestured for the policewoman to lead the way.
Grace gave me a sly grin which knocked me off balance.
Having Tom staying at ours obviously wasn’t part of her great plan, but as he crossed the lawn, she called out to him that she would hurry back first and get the rooms ready. The lies were coming so fast, I couldn’t keep up.
Either Tom didn’t hear her, or he was ignoring her. She clenched her jaw.
We took a right turn out of Tom’s house and wandered along the broken tarmac path which led into town, Grace muttering all the time under her breath. It was as though she was having some kind of conversation with herself; her expression swinging from fierce to sad and back again; her emotions suspended from the rocking pendulum of a grandfather clock.
Fat white clouds were building themselves into enormous haystacks in the sky and, as they assembled, brought with them a chill to the air that nipped at my bare toes.
Through the tall row of wispy ash trees, I saw that the lakeside car park was already full. We slipped through the red and white barrier and took the narrow gravel path which led down to the lake. There were people everywhere, only they weren’t smothered in their usual Lycra outfits – they were dressed in smart clothing; all designer jeans and jackets.
It hadn’t taken long for word to reach the wider world that Amelie’s body had been found.
We emerged from the brick archway which led onto the cobbled road lining the south side of the lake. I blinked. The lake had disappeared, replaced by huge white vans parked on the green verges, wires trailing all around, strangling the keep off the grass signs. One of the journalists was perched on the war memorial, eating a sausage roll, her bare calves pressed against the engraved names of the fallen.
We stopped outside the café. “Wait here,” hissed Grace, fishing the keys out of her pocket and unlocking the door. The clouds had turned battleship grey, casting monstrous shadows everywhere.
I stood in front of the windows, a pinching sensation at the back of my neck – this was serious. This was real. Someone a couple of metres away was making a broadcast; the light of the camera shone onto the presenter, making their skin glow an eerie pale blue. The logo on the nearest van belonged to a regional news team and I recognised the tiny female reporter who was busy typing onto an iPad. Sandy something-or-other.
Loud hysterical chattering, interspersed with pinging, punctured my train of thought. The self-appointed cool clique had arrived – faces lit by the activity of their phones as they created hashtags and facebook pages to advertise their own personal traumas. I wondered how many sad face emojis Amelie’s disappearance had generated. Their leader, Bea, was wearing very expensive pistachio-green shorts with tight black tee and white trainers. Her caramel hair was piled on top of her head in a dishevelled bun, escaping tendrils coiled around her neck. A hairstyle which had been constructed with care. Bea’s face was thick with a biscuit foundation, as though mindful of the possibility of a TV appearance for which pancake was essential to blot out the shine.
There was a gentle tap on my wrist, and I turned to find myself looking down the bridge of a nose which belonged to Sandy, the TV reporter.
“Hi. I’m Sandy Baker,” she said with a faint Birmingham inflection. I nodded. She was incredibly small – her feet wedged into patent, aqua heels were, at the most, a size three.
“I’m a reporter with East Midlands Today. Can I ask you a few questions?” Before I had time to shake my head, the camera was angled at me, drenching my body in white light. My gaze was drawn to a hypnotising crimson dot which encouraged my useless tongue to stick to the roof of my mouth.
“Did you know Amelie?” asked Sandy.
Someone barged into my shoulder, knocking me to one side.
It was Grace.
She placed a flattened palm in front of the camera lens. “Have you no shame? Someone has died and all you want is salacious gossip.” Sandy raised an eyebrow, but the cameraman continued filming.
Grace grabbed me by my elbow and frog-marched me away. Her breathing was fast and shallow. Beads of perspiration coated her upper lip. She hadn’t wanted to be there when they found Amelie’s shoes and she hadn’t wanted to draw any attention to us. She had failed spectacularly on both
counts.
“Did you know her?” called out Sandy to the back of our heads.
Two minutes later we arrived home and I was banished to my room. With a sinking heart, I heard the clunk of a key turning in the lock.
***
I looked down into the dark water, my own reflection swallowed by her heart-shaped face which smiled up at me, just below the surface. Her hair had spread into a blonde fan around her head and it gyrated in slow-motion, fighting against an underwater eddy. Emerald weed rose from the depths and twined around her wrists as though she was off to the opera, wearing her best feather boa. Her ruby lips were parted and, though she was singing, I could only catch hold of a faint melody, but it was enough to set my heart on fire and my body trembled with the need to hear more. She carried on, the notes leaving her rosebud mouth as a funnel of bubbles and I heard her voice reverberating within my chest, tickling against my ribs.
O sisters, let’s go down,
Let’s go down, come on down
O sisters, let’s go down
Down in the river to pray
She raised a slender finger and beckoned me closer. There was something about the scent of the water; the bitter aroma of the algae which warned me against reaching out to her. My mind, however, was slower than my body. As I leant over, an arm shot out from beneath the surface and clutched at my wrist. I was paralysed with fear. This arm was fleshless – it was bone, the fingers were knives pressing into my wrists, but she had no strength to pull me under. Only one arm emerged from the lake and the rest of her body was surrounded by water. I remained rooted, staring at her face as her white skin peeled away, leaving a skull; eyeballs bulging from the sockets while her teeth crumbled into the water and settled as ivory flakes on top of the sediment.
“Help me,” she screamed and now my face was an inch away from the surface of the lake. I felt tiny water droplets splashing against my cheeks. “You have to look. You have to find me. You. Have. To.”
Her voice morphed into a wailing – a song of unbearable lament which thudded around my eardrums, sending waves of sadness into my heart.
“It was you who let me out and now I can’t return. Only you can see what has become of me. You must unlock the casket, my darling girl, I loved you so much. Do this for me.”
Then I saw it. To the left of her was a chest, hidden amongst the pebbles and silt at the bottom of the lake. It was barely visible but for a greenish-gold lock at the base of the lid which, at that very moment, caught a moonbeam and caused a splinter of light to pierce my eye.
Tears streamed down my face and dropped onto the water. For a few seconds my vision clouded and, when the fog lifted and I looked again, I saw she had disappeared. My insides ached and I sobbed. I wrung my hands together, my heart churning. The casket had vanished too. I was staring into an empty cavern of blackness. Guilt flooded my body and I began to howl.
***
I sat up. It was dark. Something bit into my ankles. I rubbed my eyes with my hands as familiar silhouettes registered within my mind. I was at home, lying on my bed. As I shifted on the damp mattress the pinching in my legs deepened. My pyjamas were soaked with sweat and as I shifted into this other sphere of existence, my skin chilled to gooseflesh. I cast my gaze towards the end of the bed; both of my ankles were tied by a washing line to the iron railings of the bedframe.
“Lily,” said a familiar female voice. It was Grace.
As the sweat evaporated from my body, my teeth started chattering. I thrashed around, trying to locate her. She was sitting on the armchair in the far corner of the room beneath the windowsill. Her body cast a chequered shadow on the wall as the grey dawn filtered through the gingham curtains.
“I’m sorry this had to happen,” she said, her voice harsh.
I hunched myself over trying to pull at the plastic-coated cable, but my fingers were trembling and could make no inroads into the knots.
“You left me no choice.” My mind stumbled around trying to pull ideas out of the creases of my memory. What did I do?
I mimed putting pills on my tongue and I heard the creak of her smile, her pearly teeth glinting in the gloom.
She narrowed her amber eyes. “Why didn’t I give you your medicine?” She drummed her long fingers on the arm of the chair. Experience had taught me how to play this game. The rules were always changing, but the skill required to partake remained the same: buckets of patience. I thought back to yesterday, racking my brains to pinpoint what had caused this outburst. Sometimes I had to use fairy steps to retrace my journey towards the tipping point; the trigger; the switch.
Grace folded her hands across her chest. The hairs on the back of my arms stood to attention; a premonition of what I was about to see. In the next second the blade appeared – it shone as the first rays of sun peeped under the curtain hems. Grace held it underneath her chin, running the fingertips of her left hand across the point of the blade.
“You,” she said, her voice deepening.
I knew this bit. It was as though she was telling me a favourite bedtime story – her favourite not mine. “I gave up everything for you.” I steadied my breathing and began counting to ten.
“Tom Marchant may have been the one who forced Daddy to kill himself, but you…you were the one who told the lies in the first place. Didn’t you?” She was staring at me.
I nodded, but I really couldn’t remember.
Grace always listened to my nightmares. I think she enjoyed watching me suffer; saw it as my eternal punishment for bringing Tom into her life.
“When Daddy killed himself, who was left to pick up the pieces?” Her voice had taken on a sing-song tone.
I pointed to her.
“Who had to abandon everything just to bring you up?”
I bowed my head and pressed my palms together as though in prayer. I had learnt over the years that sometimes this obsequiousness softened Grace’s thirst for blood.
Not this time.
She widened her eyes in mock surprise. “Then why are you being like this?”
I hung my head.
“You are being like this because you are bad. You were born bad.” Grace sniffed and this intake of breath was my cue to act. I knew if I didn’t get to the thing that displeased her soon my punishment would be more severe. A broken arm once.
“All I’ve ever done is love you.”
I placed my hands on my heart. A gesture of love. I suppose deep down I did love her, but, if we were to get the scales out at that moment, my hate for her would have tipped the balance.
“You don’t,” she said, and a bubble of spit flew into the air. “Otherwise you wouldn’t have drunk all that alcohol and made yourself sick. That Flo girl is a bad influence. She has you wrapped around her little finger.”
I made an F with my hand and bowed my head.
“You are getting too close. You will jeopardise the plan. You must keep away from her. I told them they couldn’t come here with us and they are staying at a B&B on the other side of the village.”
I nodded.
Bile ran up my throat and the walls of the room spun around my head. My mouth hung open in protest, but I snapped it shut again. I needed Flo.
Grace got up off the chair. “You know what you must do.” She reached for a small hand towel which was draped over one of the arms. There was no getting out of what was coming. She had already made up her mind. She shook out her hair and walked towards me. She stood in front of me and gave a sad smile, as though she was doing this for my own good. She placed the towel over my lap. “Three.”
She handed me the knife.
I took a deep breath and plunged the blade into my skin. The familiar pressure spread across my arm and I heard a soft tearing before the rip of pain filtered through to the rest of my body. Stinging. Burning.
“Good girl,” she said, patting my head as the beads of blood dropped onto the towel. “I’ll make us a nice cup of tea while you finish up.”
Chapter Eleven
; Flo
I woke to the annoying buzz of my phone alarm which grew angrier with each passing second. It was way too early and way too bright; the curtains of the B&B looked like they were made out of fishing nets and speckled sunlight bounced onto my face.
How could Annie even suggest that Dad had something to do with Amelie’s death? It was dumb. I mean, that time I’d burst into the classroom and he’d had his arm around Amelie’s shoulder – I knew it wasn’t a thing…
This was all Annie’s fault. She was the one who’d slung us out of our own home, but it was weird that Dad wouldn’t let us stay the night at Grace’s – come to think of it there had been a funny vibe between them long before the shoes were found.
I swiped the noise away and clamped my eyes shut, trying to burrow my way back down into the covers but, as I closed my eyes again, the image of my new super expensive Triangl bikini popped into my head. I flung off the duvet – might as well get it over and done with. I had to admit, I was also a bit curious as to why Lily wanted to meet me for a swim at the Bather’s Pond. We’d run and cycled around the lake before but had never set foot in its freezing water, plus, I was fairly certain that Lily couldn’t swim. The forensics team had swarmed in and Dad and I only had a few minutes to pack our bags, so it was only by chance that I found Lily’s scribbled note.
Please meet me for a swim. Bather’s Pond, 6.30am. Don’t message me. I don’t want Mum to know where I am.
Thank God it wasn’t the same stretch of lake where they had found Amelie’s dead body. I squeezed myself into my disgusting school swimming costume which pinched the tops of my thighs, there was no way I was getting my new bikini covered with lake slime, and shoved a comfy tracksuit over the top.
Dad’s snoring rumbled through the interconnecting door and I was glad that, at last, he’d managed to nod off. We’d stayed up way too late last night, working our way through the coffee sachets and UHT milk pods, winding ourselves into knots thinking about those fucking shoes and how they had got into the pond.
The Cry of the Lake Page 7
