Текст книги "Lost Girls"

Автор книги: Celina Grace

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PART TWO

Chapter Thirteen

When I met Jessica for the first time, we were seven years old and she wore the most beautiful pair of red leather shoes. On the toe, a flower was appliquéd in blue and yellow petals and in the centre was a shining brass button.

"I like your shoes," I said shyly.

"Oh – thanks."

Jessica was taller than me, her hair was longer and she seemed altogether more grown up. She'd been assigned to show me around the school and by the set of her resentful shoulders, I guessed she would rather be out in the playground with all the other kids.

We walked a little further up the corridor.

"Why do you talk funny?" she asked.

I hung my head, stung. "I'm Scottish. Well, I was born there. My dad's really Scottish but he doesn't talk funny because he went to school in England."

"Oh," said Jessica and we walked on in silence.

We sat next to one another in the classroom. By then, she'd thawed a little. She showed me where she'd written her name in tiny red letters on the underside of the desk. I gaped in amazement at her daring.

"You can write your name there too," she finally said, conspiratorial.

Sweating with fear, I scribbled my name on the grain of the wood.

"Cool," Jessica said, and from then, on we were friends.

We sat together in the classroom, we played together at lunchtime. Jessica had two other friends, Sophie and Beth, who were giggly and friendly but didn't have the same force of personality Jessica exhibited, even at seven. She was the leader of our little group, the one who told us what we were going to play, the one who directed us, scolded us, encouraged us. When Robert Fallway made fun of my scar, calling me Frankenstein and making me cry, Jessica was the one who chased him off and punched him, just for added emphasis. She got a talking to by the headmistress for that and I loved her even more.

I think that was the same week she invited me to her house for the first time. Normally, I was collected from school by whichever au pair Angus was employing at the time, or sometimes Mrs. Green. That day, though, Jessica and I walked home from school to her house, right in the middle of the village, next to the post office. For me, shepherded about, overseen and driven everywhere, it felt rather thrilling to be walking along the pavement with my best friend, swinging our bags and chatting. It was a beautiful day; we kept turning our faces to the sun and shutting our eyes, half blinded by light.

I knew most people didn't live in a house as big as Caernaven but even so, the first sight of Jessica’s house momentarily surprised me. It was a tiny cottage, one of the many stone-built terraces that made up the majority of our village housing. The front door was painted a cheerful shade of blue and the door knocker was of the same shiny brass as the button on Jessica's shoe. She had her own key to the door which impressed me.

Jessica's house was empty, humming with silence.

"Mummy's at work," said Jessica, showing me into the tiny kitchen. "She leaves me my tea – look, there it is. She's done yours, too."

There were two plates on the kitchen counter, both covered in clingfilm, heaped with salad and a slice of quiche and some grapes. We each took one and I followed Jessica through to the back garden. It felt rather delightfully like a picnic and I felt envious. I wanted to come home to this tiny cottage and have my dinner in the garden too. After we'd eaten our tea (and that was another thing that I found strange, as tea in our house was always drunk in a cup), Jessica showed me the playhouse that her dad had built, the old robin's nest in the hedge, the fourteen goldfish in a tiny, weed-choked pond.

Finally, we climbed the stairs to her bedroom.

The front door opened as we were halfway up and a tall, grey-haired man walked in. He was thin and slightly crumpled and, for an odd second, I thought he looked as though he were made out of paper.

"Hi, Dad," said Jessica. She bounded down the stairs and kissed him. He seemed to fold in half as he bent down to her.

"Hello, darling. Who's your friend?"

I stood where I was on the stairs, one hand on the banister. I was shy with adults I didn't know.

"This is Maudie, she's from Scotland."

He smiled at me from his withered face. "Hello, dear."

It was fully dark by the time the front door opened again and Mrs. McGaskill appeared.

It's hard for me to remember how I felt about her then, untainted by subsequent events. I know that from very early on, I liked her. Very quickly, I loved her. By the time of our holiday in Cornwall, I almost worshipped her. It was that intensity of feeling that made what happened later so exquisitely painful. Of course, I was looking for a mother-figure and any woman would have done.

She was thirty-two when I met her. In looks she resembled Jessica, tall and slim with messy blonde hair that fell to her shoulders. Both she and Jessica, and myself, were the same 'type'; Scandinavian in colouring, fair-skinned, blonde and blue-eyed; lanky and fine-boned with delicate joints. I was a little frecklier than the both of them and didn't tan so well in the sun, but for all that, my secret pleasure was to imagine they were my mother and sister. I felt a fierce, private joy when strangers mistook us for just that.

Jessica and her mother had a tempestuous relationship. Both were quick anger and they constantly pitted their wills against one another. There were often raised voices, slammed doors, short storms of tears. "You're driving me mad!" I heard Mrs. McGaskill shout one day and Jessica retorted, "I'm not – I'm not even trying." But lying underneath all these histrionics, like a solid slab of bedrock, was a deep love, obvious to all. Perhaps it was because Jessica was an only child.

I wasn't aware of any rift between her mother and father, not really. I was too young. But even then, I could see how dismissive Mrs. McGaskill was of her husband, how easily he seemed to fade into the background when Jessica and her mother were there. When he wasn’t directly before me, I had trouble remembering what he looked like. I had my own father, hard and forbidding as he was; I wasn't looking for another.

It was Angus who suggested Jessica come to our house for a change. For once, he was waiting for me at the school gates when classes finished and a tsunami of children streamed out. I was listening to Jessica tell me a new joke about a gorilla and a hamster and laughing so hard that at first I didn't recognise the tall figure leaning against the bonnet of the car and talking to Mrs. McGaskill.

"What's wrong?"

"It's my dad," I said. Suddenly I was excited and embarrassed at the same time. Jessica caught sight of her mother standing next to Angus and grabbed my hand, dragging me forward as she called to her mother.

"Hello, you two," she said as we ran up, flushed and breathless. "Maudie, I've just been talking to your daddy."

I felt suddenly shy of them both.

"Hello, Maudie," said Angus, holding out his large hand. I took it uncertainly; I wasn’t used to him touching me. "And you must be Jessica."

"That's right," said Jessica, bold as you like. "Is it okay if Maudie comes to my house for tea?"

The two adults exchanged amused glances.

"Well now," said Angus. "We thought you might like to come to our house for tea, for a change. How about that?"

I felt an enormous burst of excitement but I said nothing, watching Jessica's face for a clue to her feelings.

She grinned broadly. "Yes, yes, yes!"

Mrs. McGaskill laughed. "Well, that's easily settled. Jessica, I'll drop some clothes off for you later tonight and you can stay the night. How about that?"

We clambered into the back of the Land Rover. I felt a momentary qualm as Jessica perched on the uncovered metal of the wheel arches; it looked so dirty and uncomfortable in the back, the floor smudged with mud and wisps of straw. But Jessica seemed oblivious to it all, almost bouncing with excitement as we pulled away from the school.

The Land Rover crunched over the gravel of the drive as we neared Caernaven. I looked out of the window. It was odd, but it was almost as though I were seeing with Jessica's eyes. We rolled to a halt and Jessica fell silent, her almost ceaseless chatter falling away in a sigh. I watched her eyes widen as she looked out of the window.

We walked through into the hallway. Jessica seemed diminished by the house: her usual effervescence gone flat and quiet. I took hold of her hand and pulled her after me, running her through the hallway and the dining room and the other corridor and finally into the kitchen, where Mrs. Green was preparing our evening meal.

"Hello, Maudie," she said, her hands busy with a vegetable peeler.

I introduced Jessica to Mrs. Green and asked whether we could have something to eat.

"You'll have to wait for dinner, love. Why don't you take Jessica out and show her the garden?"

I pulled Jessica down the kitchen corridor, past the cellar door and onto the side terrace. Heat shimmered up from the flagstones beneath our feet and the air was sweet with the scent of herbs. I picked a leaf from the lemon balm and held it under Jessica's nose.

"Smell."

"Mmmm," said Jessica, sniffing. Then she drew her head back.

"Was that your gran?" she said.

Something in me recoiled. Mrs. Green, my grandmother?

"No, silly," I said, trying to laugh. "She's the housekeeper."

"The housekeeper? Are you rich, then?"

"No," I said and then wondered whether that was true. "Come and see my hiding place," I said, pulling at her arm.

I normally ate my supper at the kitchen table, with Mrs. Green bringing me my food. On the rare occasions that Angus was home at dinner time, only then would I make my way to the cold and cavernous dining room to sit on his right hand side and eat with him. Very occasionally, if family friends or relatives came to stay, I would also be summoned to the dinner table to sit quietly and listen to the adults talk. As the clock ticked around to six o'clock, Jessica and I scampered across the lawn and the terrace and piled into the kitchen.

Mrs. Green was heaving a casserole dish from the oven. "Not here, children, not here. Come on, out the way."

We jumped back against the table as she whisked the steaming dish past us.

"Aren't we eating here then?" I asked, confused.

"No, you're dining with your father tonight. Come on, look lively! I bet you haven't even washed your hands."

The dining room table was set with three places. I gestured to Jessica to sit opposite me, on the other side of Angus’s chair. He wasn’t in the room but somehow, the chair seemed already filled with his presence. We sat down, subdued.

“Are we allowed to talk?” whispered Jessica.

I could hear the faint knock of her sandal against the chair leg. I pushed at my knife and fork, straightening them against the dark, polished wood of the table. Reflected in the surface, faintly grey and ghostlike, was my worried face.

Angus came into the room, rubbing his hands before him. “Faring well, girls? Hungry, are you?”

I nodded. Jessica said nothing, but simply stared down at her plate.

It was a quiet meal. Angus tried to talk to us, peppering the echoing silence with questions; about school, about Girl Guides, about animals and plants and space travel and families. I was too young to realise he was trying to put our guest at her ease and too young to realise that his efforts were in vain. I just knew that Jessica was quiet, that she muttered her answers and pushed her food about on the plate. After a while, I began to feel my own throat close up in sympathy, and stopped eating too.

After the chocolate pudding and cream (left almost untouched by both of us), we were released. Once we were out of the dining room, Jessica broke into a run. I was so surprised that for a moment I did nothing; I just stood and watched her bright blonde hair jump and flip in the wake of her movement. She ran into the garden and out of my sight.

“What’s the matter?” I said, when I finally caught up. She had stopped by the fountain, her hands on the stone wall.

She turned a red and tear-stained face to me. “Shut up, Maudie,” she said fiercely. “I want my mummy. I want to go home!”

“Why?”

She burst into tears. “I just do! I want my mummy!”

I can’t remember exactly what happened after that. I think Jessica spoke to her mother on the phone and somehow Mrs. McGaskill soothed her down. She probably told her daughter she’d be over shortly with Jessica’s clothes and she would see her then, and if Jessica still wanted to come home, then of course she could. I’m guessing, obviously, but it’s the sort of thing she would have said; practical, sensible, loving. Everything a mother should be. Everything I’d never had.

Chapter Fourteen

 

"I can see the sea! Angus – Angus – I can see the sea!"

I bounced in my car seat and pointed at the slice of blue ocean I could just make out in distance. Angus made a ‘shushing’ gesture with his hand.

I sat back, abashed. We'd been driving for hours and I was cramped and stiff and thirsty but somehow, the first glimpse of the sea had taken all my discomfort away. I craned my neck to see if I could see the other car behind us.

"I can't see Jessica."

"They'll catch us up. Stop worrying about it."

I pressed my nose up against the window. All about the road was glorious, rolling countryside, above us a wide blue cloudless sky. I wondered whether Jessica had seen the sea yet too.

The two stone cottages were nestled into the green curves of a gentle valley, side by side and facing the distant sea. The village itself was tiny, a mere strip of a main street with a pub, a tiny corner-shop and a church. Next to our cottages stood one of the four farms in the area and as we drew up, I could smell the heady reek of cow dung and hay.

"Is this ours?" I asked, wide-eyed.

Angus was busy lifting our bags from the boot of the car. I stood for a moment on the driveway, staring at the flat grey front of the house. Its windows glittered in the sun as if it were winking at me.

I heard the crunching of gravel and turned to see the McGaskills’ car draw up behind ours. The wheels had scarcely come to a stop when the back door opened and Jessica tumbled out.

"We're here," she shouted as she picked herself up off the gravel and brushed off her palms.

"So I can see," said Angus.

I pulled at Jessica's arm. I was wild to explore; the house, the garden, the farmyard beyond. I climbed the narrow stairs inside our cottage and into the two bedrooms. The one at the back of the house would be mine, I decided. It had a small wooden bed and a battered old chest of drawers, a small flower-shaped rug on the floor and a brown-shaded bedside light with a pottery base. That was all, except for the yellow curtains at the single window. I struggled with the sash window and managed to shove it upwards, leaning out to look at the cottage that stood beside ours. To my delight, I saw Jessica poke her head out from the nearest window. She was waving and giggling.

"I'm next to you!"

I reached out – we could almost touch our fingers together.

"Can you hear me if I knock on the wall?" I tried but there was nothing – the stone walls were too thick.

Jessica pouted. "Shame – we could have had a secret signal."

I was too happy to really mind. "Meet me downstairs, I want to explore."

We didn't go far that first day. We didn't go to the Men-an-Tol, I'm certain of that. There were too many interesting things closer to home. The cows in the field that came lumbering over to us as we stood by the fence, holding out hopeful handfuls of grass. The ginger farm cat that came twining round our ankles as we stood on the driveway, debating whether to go further. The remains of an old stone shed at the bottom of the garden. By the time we were called in to a late supper, we were drooping, exhausted by the long journey and the excitement of endless discovery.

               After supper, the others went next door to their place. I was sent up to bed and submitted without protest, almost too tired to walk up the stairs. As I lay in my new little bed, my last conscious thought was of Jessica, lying near me, just feet away in the soft summer dark.

*

It was Jessica who first found the stones. As usual, she was the one who explored further and faster than anyone else, walking while I lazed about near the cottage. One morning, I wandered down to the river after breakfast. I was sitting dangling my fingers in the rippling water when she came panting up, eyes bright and hair flying.

"You'll never guess what I've found," she said, throwing herself down.

"What?"

She flicked water at me, giggling. "You've got to guess."

"You're a pain," I said, flicking water back at her.

"You're a pain. Go on, you've got to guess."

I rolled my eyes. "Alright. I guess that you've found... a dead badger."

She snorted laughter. "No. Even better. A magic stone."

I stopped flicking water. "What?"

Jessica smiled in triumph. "A magic stone. A sort of stone circle, up on the hill. It's probably been there for millions of years."

"Let's go and see it!"

"Wait." Jessica caught my arm as I prepared to gallop away. "We have to tell them we're going. Mummy told me off for going walking on my own yesterday."

               It was about a twenty minute walk to the stone, a hard slog up a stony track that became almost vertical at one point. We slithered over loose flints in our summer sandals and rested halfway up, leaning against a rock warm from the sun.

"This had better be worth it," I said, panting.

I'd like to say that the place gave me a cold chill when first I saw it. That I had a premonition, an inkling of what was to come. It didn't. Instead, the emotion I was aware of on my first sight of the Men-an-Tol was delight. We stood looking in silence at the stone. Through the hole, I could see blue sky and, as I watched, a solitary crow flapped its slow dark way across.

“If you walk round here,” said Jessica, demonstrating. “This stone lines up with the hole. Go on, do it.”

“It does!” I said, amazed.

We stayed there for hours that first day, watching the stone shadows creep across the grass with the movement of the sun. The stone with a hole was furred with moss and lichen, one side warm beneath our palms, the shadow side damp and cool.

From the start, this holed stone fascinated us. We didn’t know its name then – we just called it the magic stone. We were standing before it that afternoon, watching the clouds blow across the space in the middle, and I put my hand out to reach through the hole.

"Don't!" Jessica cried.

I nearly shrieked. "Why? What's wrong?"

"Don't reach through the hole. You don't know what powers it has. Your hand might disappear... or when you pull it back, you might just have bones."

She had that look I knew well; half mischievous, half earnest. I knew that at least a small part of her actually believed it.

That was when we started to believe the legend. Jessica's words planted a little seed and day by day, our homespun tale began to grow. Soon the stone would become all-consuming to us – a grey monolith of myth and legend. We would draw it and photograph it and talk about it endlessly. But that first day, we just wandered about, circling the Men-an-Tol and its companion stone, and watched their shadows move like long black fingers over the whispering grass.

Chapter Fifteen

 

               Most days, Jessica and I would wander up to the stones. We were fascinated by the ever shifting view through the centre of the Men-an-Tol. We'd stand, one on each side, and look at each other through the hole. As our tales and fantasies grew, there was always the small fear that one day I would look through at Jessica and she wouldn't be there. Some days we walked down to the tiny beach to swim and, from the little crescent of pale golden sand, we could stand and look back at the hill and see the faint grey smudges that were the two standing stones.

              "I don't want to go home," said Jessica, one day.

I misunderstood. "We don't have to be home for ages. We can stay out until supper, Angus said so."

"No, stupid. I mean I don't want to go home. Back home. Our real home."

That made me sit up and open my eyes. I was aware of a little finger of cold nudging me. "What do you mean?" I thought for a moment and then spoke again. "I mean, why don't you want to go home?"

Jessica was silent for a moment. She still had her eyes shut and her blonde hair was splayed out against the grey surface of the rock, drying slowly into stringy little rats’ tails.

"I just like it here," she said, eventually. "I like it here with the stones and it always being sunny and never having to go to school. Mummy isn’t so cross with Daddy here.”

I glanced across at her. “What do you–”

She didn’t let me finish. “I just wish it could be like this forever," she said.

I hugged my knees and stared out at the shifting blue sea. I was vaguely troubled by her words.

"We have to go back to school," I offered. "It's the law."

Jessica sat up abruptly. "Hey," she said. "I've got it."

"What?"

"It's easy. We have to harness the power of the stones. You know."

"What do you mean?"

"Oh, come on. You know. We do a magic ceremony, just like we've been talking about."

I felt another little cold nudge. She sounded so serious. For a moment, I wavered; I wondered whether I could ask her what she meant. But we'd spent days discussing the magic rituals that the stones had been used for – I knew she wouldn't believe me if I pleaded ignorance.

"Yeah, we could," I said, trying for enthusiasm. I looked back at the stones on the hilltop. My eyes fell on the distant ellipse of the Men-an-Tol and I felt a little shudder pass through me.

Jessica stood up, stretching her arms above her head. She flung her head back and shut her eyes against the sun.

"We'll do it at midnight," she said. "That's the most powerful time of all. We'll sneak out just before midnight and go up there and do our ritual. And you know the Men-an-Tol will be open to the other side, then. Hey Maudie, perhaps we’ll even go back in time!”

I thought of being there at midnight. The enormous black sky stretching overhead. The stones looming up through the darkness, solid, somehow implacable. The cold wind, the blank white light of the moon. I looked down and saw my arms had humped up into gooseflesh, despite the warmth of the sun.

Jessica picked up her towel from the rock and wrapped it around her shoulders.

"I'm going up there," she said. "I want to see what kind of ceremony we can do. I know it won't be the same as it will be at midnight, but I still want to do it. Coming?"

I shook my head. "I'm going to go home. I'll see you later."

I gathered up my beach bag and towel and began the slow struggle up the hill. The grass was slippery beneath the soles of my sandals and once my foot jagged backwards and I banged my knee on a rock. Eventually I reached level ground and the path that led back to the village. When I looked back, I could see the little moving dot that was Jessica, making her way up the circle. She shimmered in my vision.

The stone track gradually led to the rutted, dried mud of the lane which ten yards further grew a skin of tarmac. Despite the heat, I began to run, the soles of my plimsolls slapping against the road. My ponytail bounced and grew looser as I ran faster, past the groups of pink-faced walkers, bent underneath their rucksacks. Soon I was puffing but somehow my legs carried me forward towards home, the home that that been known by that name for two short weeks. I stopped briefly outside the garden gate to tie my shoelace and get my breath back.

I don't know what made me stop and look up, before putting my hand to the gate. If I hadn't, the gate would have given its long, tortured squeak as I pushed it open and the sound would have alerted them to my presence. But I didn't push it, and so I looked up and saw them, Angus and Mrs. McGaskill, framed by the kitchen window, locked in an embrace. They were kissing in the way that people kissed on TV, or in the films that I'd seen; liplocked, pressed up against one another, his hand underneath her jaw.

For a moment, I was dumbstruck, transfixed. My feet felt welded to the hot tarmac beneath them. Then the shockwave hit me and I ducked down behind the hedge out of sight, my face hot and my heart thumping. For a moment, I dithered, wondering whether to walk back through the gate and pretend I'd seen nothing. I knew I couldn't. My knowledge was written in the blood running into my face. Instead I turned and ran back down the lane, back towards the beach. Again, my plimsolls slapped against the dusty surface of the road.

I had some thought of going to find Jessica, but instead I found my feet taking me off the track and into one of the nearby fields. I stumbled over the stile that led over the fence and walked along the hedgerow. I felt hot all over, prickly with prurient curiosity and embarrassment. For a while, I stood looking out over the field, hugging my elbows and seeing the kiss again and again. I tried to construct an innocent scenario. Perhaps I'd imagined it? No – I couldn't have, I was seeing it now, unfolding in front of my eyes. Perhaps Jessica’s mum had had a fit and needed the kiss of life... even at ten, I could see that that was ludicrous. Did Jessica know? I wondered suddenly. Did Mr. McGaskill know? I found I had my fingers in my mouth, nibbling at the nails. I could taste gritty sand in my mouth.

There was a pile of wood heaped at the edge of the field, bleaching under the hot sun. I sat down on a log, rubbing my dirty knees. Beyond the hedge, in the next field, I could see a tractor trundling slowly round and round.

For the very first time in my life, I realised that things would change. I realised that we would all get older. One day, Angus wouldn't be here anymore. One day, I wouldn't be here anymore. A kind of panic took hold of me and I leapt up and began to run. Only, this time, I couldn't run home. I stopped at the edge of the field, at the gate, holding onto its rough wooden spars with both hands, gasping for breath and shaking the gate until its hinges rattled, shaking it with the tears running down my face, and my teeth clenched in sudden fury.