She doesn’t answer for a minute or so. Her chest rises and falls softly and her glazed eyes stare out through the window to where the robin has returned to the garden, swinging on the birdfeeder.
When she finally speaks her voice is slurred and almost incomprehensible. ‘She would have ruined his life.’
Alex pulls something from his pocket. It is my knife. I shrink back against the chair again. Mimi’s head slumps forward.
‘What are you doing?’ I babble. ‘Alex, what’s going on?’
He approaches me silently, with a calm confidence that sets my nerves singing. Alex moves behind me and I’m convinced he is going to slit my throat. My heart gears up. I drum my feet on the floor, I gnash my teeth. It’s feral, this feeling. I want to bite him. I switch my head from side to side and then try to bolt. It’s useless; the chair lifts with me, strapped to my back, and I half-run, crabwise, towards the door, hair hanging in my face, breath pinched in my tight chest.
He tackles me as I reach the doorway, pulling me back towards him so roughly I cry out. He yanks the chair back and me with it, head whiplashing as he sets me back on the floor. From this angle I can see Mimi’s prone body, the way her chin rests on her breastbone, eyes open and vacant.
Alex sets a firm hand on my shoulder. ‘Hold still. I can’t do it if you keep struggling.’
I hear the soft chink as the knife slides open. I’ve handled that knife often enough to be able to recall the way the mother-of-pearl handle will be cool to the touch, the satisfying sheen of the blade, the whisper of it. I would never have hurt her, I tell the voice in my head, and it replies, I know.
‘Hold still, I said!’ Alex presses against the chair and I slump forward, exhausted. He is cutting into the place where the ropes are tight across my back. I feel the heat of his hands, the coolness of the blade on my feverish skin. I let my breath fill my lungs, close my eyes. I want to tell him to be quick.
‘What are you doing?’
‘I can’t untie the knots. You’ve struggled too much and pulled them too tight. I have to cut you free.’
My arms are shrieking with pain after being pinned behind my back for so long. There is a crimson tint to my vision, as if my eye has filled with blood.
‘What have you done to her?’
‘Sedated her. She has a lot of medications; it’s easy to get them mixed up. Can’t think how they got added to her pot of tea, though,’ he remarks, drily. ‘I’m sure she’ll wake up in an hour or so. Here.’
I hear the fssst sound of the knife sliding against the ropes. I’m waiting, tensed. Alex’s hand grips my shoulder. His fingernails are rimed with dirt.
‘Did you do it, Alex? Did you push her down the stairs?’
‘Hold still.’
‘Alex? Is she right? Did you do it?’
Silence. I can feel the bonds weakening, the blood flow into my arms increasing in warm waves. The ropes slither away from me, ends frayed where Alex has cut them. When I turn to look at him he is folding the knife and holding it out to me.
For a moment I just look at it blankly. ‘Alex, did you push her? Yes or no?’
‘We have to get to the churchyard.’
My eyes widen. ‘Frances?’
‘Plan B.’ Alex nods. ‘He’s going to kill her.’
Frances – Now
The throb in my jaw has settled to a low hum, the blood drying in streaks all the way down to my neck. I am thinking about our old life. Back then I thought the worst of our problems was William’s gambling and my nagging boredom. How little I knew.
It is getting dark. The shadows stretch and shiver, the sky turning from peach to pink. A small electric light, designed to look like an old Victorian gaslight, hangs outside the back of the church. Moths, drawn to the soft glow, circle and flutter beneath the bulb.
We pass the grave of Mary Sayers, also known as Quiet Mary, who went into the river and never came out, just like Edward Thorn, pale and drowned. We stop when we reach the large yew, the one known as Quiet Mary’s Tree. The trunk is thick and ridged with scars, deep fractures splitting the wood. Sap has oozed and trickled and hardened. Beneath my feet the floor is soft with fallen needles.
‘You know what Peter Liverly once told us?’ William says, touching the trunk. ‘He said, “The roots of the yew are very fine and will grow through the eyes of the dead to prevent them seeing their way back to the world of the living.”’
He holds his hand out for me to take. I think about running. The shadows swell where the trees huddle close. I might be able to hide, hunkered down in one of the thickets back there. I might get all the way to the wall, find my way back to the hole they created, Squeezeguts. I might even be able to get round the church to the front gate and flag a car down. I might.
I take his hand. I don’t know why, but I do. Part of me still thinks he won’t hurt me. Part of me wants to see what he is going to show me. That’s the worst of all. I want to see.
‘Here.’ He hands me a small pocket torch. ‘Switch it on.’
William approaches the trunk of the tree and knocks against the wood, head cocked as though hearing a distant sound. He moves a little to the left and does so again. And again.
‘One, two, three, four,’ he intones, eyes glittering in the half-light. ‘Rattlesnake hunters knocking at your door. Give them meat and give them bone, and pray that they leave you alone.’
He curls his fist and taps a final time, listening, and this time I hear it too. The sound is different. Not a thud, but a thunk. A dead echo. In this part, the tree is hollow. William moves forward. He lifts the hammer two-handed, his face in the torchlight a perfect carving of concentration and force; lips drawn back from his gums, brow lowered, the cords on his neck standing out like cables. The hammer hits the tree with a thud, spraying flecks of wood into the air. He brings it back up and down, again and again, succeeding in making a small, splintered hole about the size of a saucer.
Breathless, he turns, cheeks flushed, oily with sweat. ‘Go on then. You wanted to know.’
‘What?’ I’m stalling, of course. My heart has fallen all the way to my knees. Goosepimples ridge my arms and shiver up to my neck. I know what’s inside there. The ring of my torchlight quivers.
‘It’s where we put her. When she was really gone.’
‘Who’s “we”, William?’
‘Me and Mum. She wasn’t about to let some jumped-up little goth ruin my life. I was going to university. I was going to get a good job. I had a future. Edie Hudson was about to destroy all that.’
I step forward, heart pounding, trying to take a deep enough breath to stay upright. Lights flash across my eyes. I wonder if I’m going to faint. The collar of my T-shirt is damp with blood. Another step. Another. I’ll need to stand on tiptoe to see inside; use the torch with my right hand and hold myself steady with my left.
‘“We’ll just make her see sense, William.” Those were Mum’s words. I didn’t wonder why Mum wasn’t mad. I was just so relieved that she could solve the problem for me. Because that’s what it was, Frances. A problem that I couldn’t fix. I had no control over it.’
He sighs. I watch his face soften with memory, his whole body seeming to go slack. I wonder how it must feel to have held on to this secret all your life, how heavy it must be.