I waited till they were on the covered bridge, empty except for the litter blown into the corners, and called out, ‘Hey!’
They both looked back at me, turning slowly. I saw, very clearly, Moya mouth Oh shit. Charlie, of course, was unfazed. She put a hand on her hip and jutted it out, tilting her head and smiling sweetly.
‘Mrs Hudson. We were just talking about you.’ She looked at Moya from beneath her long eyelashes. ‘Weird!’
‘You know something,’ I said abruptly. ‘About Edie. You know something happened to her, and I know that you know that Peter Liverly had something to do with it.’
‘Who?’ Moya said. She looked frightened, but I was too overwrought to be gratified by it. I kept my eye on Charlie, who was still smiling and looking at me with her head on one side. It was like that day back at the beginning, in those numb, strange hours after Edie had disappeared and I’d tried to talk to them in the headmaster’s office – tried to talk to them like an adult would a child, cajoling, patient. I wasn’t going to do that any more. They didn’t deserve my consideration.
‘You mean the old guy from the church? That pervert?’ She said the word ‘pervert’ like a cat purring, rolling her ‘r’s. ‘It wouldn’t surprise me if he’s kidnapped her. You should ask Moya, she’s been inside his house.’
Moya looked from Charlie to me and back again. She was wearing a tight skirt of a rubbery material, like PVC, and torn fishnets. Her ears were pierced in neat little rows following the curve all the way to the top.
She pouted crossly. ‘Don’t tell her that, Charlie, you dick.’
‘When? When were you in his house?’
Moya shifted uncomfortably.
Charlie gave her a nudge with her sharp, pointed elbow. ‘Tell her, Moya. She won’t tell on you. Will you, Mrs Hudson?’
‘No,’ I said immediately, unsure if that was true or not. ‘Of course not.’
Moya considered, and when she did finally answer she wouldn’t look me in the eye. ‘Everyone dared me to.’
‘Dared you to what?’
‘Go into his house. There’s a window. I was the only one small enough to go through. I used to bring things out to show them.’
‘Things? What things?’
‘You can see if you like,’ Charlie said brightly, and held out her hand for me to take.
They took me to the back of the churchyard. It was the first time I’d been there since Edie disappeared. My blood roared in my ears. My baby. My little girl. She had been here. Right here.
‘Come on then,’ Charlie said, laughing now. She turned towards me and pressed her face against mine. It was so intimate I could smell her perfume, the powder on her skin. When she spoke her breath fluttered along my cheekbones. ‘We’ll show you our treasures.’
Then she was walking away, swinging her schoolbag by the handle. Moya hustled to catch up with her. I’m drawn to trouble. That’s what my mum always said. So of course I went with them, through the large wrought-iron gates, veering off the overgrown path, which had narrowed to a single line. The air was scented with pine and muddy water and something else, rotten and ripe-smelling, almost sweet. I pulled the collar of my coat up over my mouth. Charlie looked back at me and laughed.
‘It’s the rabbits,’ she told me. ‘See?’
I looked down to where she was pointing and saw a small, furred corpse lying in the grass, leaking a black ichor from its mouth. Another lay not far away, thick with flies. The eye sockets were black and empty, sightless voids. I gagged, feeling the contents of my stomach rise, burning the back of my throat. I remembered the day I’d met Peter Liverly at the back door of the church, the way he’d held the bloodied bag in his meat-like fist. Why has he stopped picking them up? I thought, following the girls with my hands pressed deep into my pockets. The place is full of them. I wove through crumbling headstones and sunken graves, wrong-footing myself into a pothole and nearly stepping on a small pile of rabbit bones, picked clean. I had a single, terrifying image of Peter Liverly sitting here in the moonlight, squatting on his haunches and gnawing the meat from these bones with his yellowing teeth, his sunken, witless eyes glittering in the dark. Jesus Christ, listen to yourself, I thought. He’s a caretaker, not the Wolfman.
Back in the summer Peter Liverly had told me that the graves would flood and sink right into the ground. He’d been right about that. Days of rain had left the churchyard waterlogged and swampy, thick with mosquitoes and mayflies. Puddles had formed in the cradle graves on which floated brown leaves like small, rudderless boats. As we headed further in, the headstones grew smaller, less stately, becoming grey and blotchy with algae. One or two had crumbled away entirely, leaving unadorned humps of grass. Up ahead was the deep grove of trees, swimming with shadows: the yews, black against the sky and studded with waxy berries, a clutch of holly trees, gospel oaks wrapped in ivy. I could hear crows calling to each other from the branches.
‘In here,’ Moya said, and pointed through the treeline. I squinted into the gloom. Up ahead there was an elm tree, the trunk thick and gnarled with age. Its leaves were a burned amber colour, mottled with decay. I peered closer. There was something hanging on the low branches. It looked like a face.
‘Go on,’ Charlie said. ‘Go in.’
I turned and looked at them both. Moya was chewing her sleeve, round eyes watching me closely. Charlie gave me a flash of teeth, the tip of her tongue just brushing her upper lip. I suddenly realised that I was afraid of these girls and told myself not to be ridiculous. I had nearly twenty years on them. I’d survived birth and death and divorce. I was older and wiser and uglier, so why did I feel so afraid of following them into this dark, shaded copse? Why did I feel that ripple of unease? Is this what Edie felt the night she disappeared? I ducked my head and walked slowly behind them across the grass. My head will be caved in with a stone, I thought, unable to help myself, and the hand that holds it will wear chipped black nail varnish.
‘Slow down,’ Charlie snapped at Moya as she stumbled across the damp ground in her heeled boots. She tugged at the hem of her skirt, swearing. Moya put on a baby voice, pretended to suck her thumb: ‘I’m sew sowwy.’
Under the canopy the light was grey and diffuse, like old film. There was a hush under here that was almost unnatural, the drip-drip-drip of rainwater from the leaves. Something caught my eye as I turned my head. A little to the left, through the trees. Movement, something caught there and blowing in the breeze. Police tape.
Edie.
I took a step or two forward and then hesitated. The tape had obviously been there a while – it had come untethered from its mooring at one end, sagging limply to the ground. I remembered Tony saying they had cordoned off an area of the churchyard where Edie had gone missing so as to preserve any evidence that might be found there. ‘What did you find?’ I’d asked him, and he’d shaken his head. ‘Nothing. Not a button,’ he’d replied.
I lifted the end of the tape up and tied it back around the tree. There was a squirrel in there, a grey one – my little brother Danny had always called them pirates because they’d seen off all the reds – and it sat on its haunches, quivering at my approach. It was even darker over here, where the yews pressed thickly together. What little light fell through was milky and cold. The squirrel stared at me with round black eyes. He was sitting on a cantered gravestone, old and weathered. I peered a little closer, careful not to cross the tape, and read the inscription there: Mary Sayers. Departed this life 1897, Eighteen years old. Lost to the Waters, She will Return.