I look at him in quiet wonder. ‘How did you do it?’
He laughs softly. ‘I didn’t. I couldn’t, in the end. Wasn’t brave enough. Mum stepped in. Thank God. She slipped one of Dad’s belts around Edie’s neck. She’d brought it with her. I think she must have planned it all along.’
I lean against the wood. It is dark and good and heavy. Without it I feel like I might fall down. William stares past me, seeing something I don’t.
‘Edie brought the whole gang with her, though. The Rattlesnakes. Jesus, those girls. You know what I did?’
I shake my head.
‘I threw stones at them. You should have seen them. They lost their minds! Thought it was Quiet Mary coming out the trees. Only Edie didn’t run. She walked right on in to see what was going on. She had no fear. It’s what killed her, Mum said. Fear keeps you safe. Keep going, Frances.’
I’m so close to the trunk now I can smell the damp wood, the old, musty scent of rot and age. Under my fingertips the ridges are cavernous, a map to another world. A world where a young girl, long dead, is waiting for me.
‘I was meant to help Mum but in the end I just watched. I was shaking too much. Her face, Edie’s face, was beautiful. First time she’d ever looked that way. She reached a hand out for me and I stepped away. But I didn’t stop watching. I made myself. Right to the end.’
No wonder they all thought she had disappeared, I think. There would have been no noise, no blood, no crime scene, no struggle. A silent murder. I swallow. My mouth is so dry and I am cold all over. I keep thinking of William saying to me, ‘My mum is going to love you.’ What if she hadn’t? Would I have ended up like poor Edie Hudson, strangled in the cold and the dark until her heart stopped?
‘You know the thing I remember most? How Edie was so heavy that it took both of us to lift her. I asked Mum, “How do we know she’s really dead?” and Mum said, “Because she’s not breathing, dummy.” Then she laughed. Like it was a joke. Like it was fun, just a fun thing the two of us were doing together.’
I can barely breathe. I stare at William as if I have never seen him before, and it’s true: in a way, I haven’t. He is a statue with eyes as cold and hard as fossil. I think of all the times he’s talked about how much he loves his mother, how she made so many sacrifices for her boys, what a good person she was, so giving. Then I think of Edward Thorn, implicated in a crime he didn’t commit, and my heart sinks.
‘Your poor dad,’ I say.
‘What else could he have done? The murder weapon was his, his car was parked nearby. He’d have taken the fall for it, too, if they had ever found Edie’s body. Mum knew that. But in the end, just like all the Thorn men, he lost his nerve.’ William’s head turns slowly to look at me. ‘What about you, Frances? Will you lose your nerve?’
I stare at the hole he has beaten into the tree. It is an empty socket, black as the devil.
‘Go on, Frances,’ William says.
He’s right behind me. I’ve forgotten about the hammer in his hand. I take a deep breath, stand on the ends of my toes and shine the torchlight into the hollow.
Samantha – Now
I run. Alex won’t let me drive, saying I will end up wrapped around a tree. He insists we take his car but his hands are shaking so much it takes him three tries to get the key in the lock. I can smell alcohol on his breath. By the time we get to the edge of town there is a queue of traffic that grunts and inches along; flared red brake lights and fuming exhausts.
‘Why are you doing this, Alex?’
He stares wordlessly ahead, eyes red and watery. Finally he says, ‘Because this is my fault. I showed Frances the photo of Edie. I made sure she saw it. Then I made sure William knew she was asking questions about his past. But I never meant for all this to happen.’
I put my hand gently on his arm. ‘No. None of this is your fault.’
‘I just wanted him to suffer for a change. He deserves it.’
I stare at him, head throbbing. Poor Alex. Watching as his older brother – the apple of his mother’s eye, by her own admission – moves away and gets married and settles down while he’s left behind meeting lovers in the dark and confined at home, too cowed by a matriarch to break free. He wipes his face with his hand, swearing as we approach yet another set of traffic lights turning red.
‘It’s rush hour. We’re not going to make it. I’ll try a different way as soon as we get past these traffic lights.’
‘No. Not quick enough.’ I’m opening the door. A car blasts its horn as I lurch out on to the road. I can hear Alex saying, ‘Sam, Samantha, don’t do this’, but I stumble over to the pavement and then around the corner, down through an alleyway that will take me to the end of Eastleigh Avenue. I pinball off the walls, my woozy head clotted with dried blood. There is an urgency buzzing in my chest, those bees again, building their hives. I laugh aloud.
As I emerge through the end of the alley I realise I can see the spire of St Mary de Castro through the poplar trees. There is a sudden flare of agony in my head, white flashing lights popping in my field of vision. I bend double with my hands on my knees and wait for it to pass. I can feel the knife in my back pocket, my phone in the other, and I wonder about calling the police. But there’s no time. I have to keep moving.
As I round the corner the perfume of the honeysuckle and jasmine that grow over the church walls overwhelms me. I lean against the iron railings and use them to prop me up, staggering towards the large iron gate. Thank God. I’m coming, Frances. I’m coming, Edie. I reach the gate and push against it. It doesn’t move. I lean harder, straining until the muscles in my arms tremble and a fresh blast of agony detonates in my skull.
‘Fucking move!’ I yell, rattling the gate back and forth. The large padlock holding the gates closed rattles uselessly. What now? I think, hopeless, knees buckling, head pounding. What now?
I think of Peter Liverly’s bungalow and the wall that runs along the back of it. Didn’t Edie once say they’d got in that way, over the wall maybe? I can’t scale that.
I have to.
I stumble towards the bungalow but a horrible feeling – something akin to dread, bloated and toxic – balloons inside me. I’m too late, I think, desperately, I’m already too late.
Frances – Now
The torchlight lances through the hollow like a needle, a single beam revealing cobwebs and wood slick and black with damp. A nest of woodlice, startled by the intrusion, scuttle deeper to safety. I lift myself higher on my toes, pointing the light downward. The smell in here is rich and pungent, the smell of rotting leaves and black earth. There is a rustling as something in the bowl of the hollow – a mouse, maybe, or a rat – escapes.
‘I don’t see her.’
‘You’re not looking hard enough.’
I draw the light down, down. The faint shimmer of sunlight that comes through the leaves is lacy and finely grained like an old photograph. Behind me I hear a sound – it’s familiar and yet I don’t place it, my concentration elsewhere, falling into this dark hole with the wavering needle of light. A whisper of leather, the clink of a belt buckle. I’m not listening, not really, and by the time he puts the belt around my neck – gently, like a caress, so I don’t flinch or fight back – it’s too late. I feel it draw tight about my windpipe and try to make a sound; it comes out like air from a puncture, whiiiii. I put my hands to my neck and it’s funny because it’s William I’m looking for to save me, William who I’m trying to call out for in my high, whistling gasp. Help me, William, someone is attacking me. It takes me a good minute to realise that the person attacking me is him. My fingers scrape uselessly for purchase against the strap and I hear him grunt as he tightens his grip, leaning against me, crushing the air from my chest.