Текст книги "Lost Girls"

Автор книги: Celina Grace

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Chapter Sixteen

I stayed in the field until it got dark, roaming the sun-baked edges of the crop, sitting myself down and jumping up again. As the sun sank slowly beyond the darkening horizon, I trailed back home down the lane. Again, I paused outside the gate to our cottage and looked up at the lighted kitchen window.

               I could hear cooking sounds coming from within; the splash of water and the crash of a saucepan on the stove. There was the pop and glug of a wine bottle being opened. I rubbed my face; it felt tight and hot after being in the open air and sunshine all day and my eyes felt gritty from the tears that had dried along the lids. I could hear Mrs. McGaskill calling from the kitchen and froze. A second later, she came out into the corridor.

"Oh, Maudie," she said. "I'd wondered where you girls had got to. Can you go and root out Jessica for me, please? We'll be eating soon."

I didn't answer her straight away. I couldn't take my eyes off her.

"Maudie?"

"S-sorry," I said, stuttering. "I don't know where she is either."

"Well, go and find her for me then, there's a love." She turned back into the kitchen. "Dinner in five minutes."

I dithered for a moment and then walked up to my room. Why should I do anything for her? She wasn't my mother. I'd seen her kissing my father and that was wrong. I stomped about my room for a bit and then heard Jessica's voice outside my window. When I looked out she was leaning out from her window.

"There you are," she said. "Where've you been all day? I've been at the stones for hours."

I shook my head. I felt sulky with the whole world, even with my best friend.

"Mum says it's dinner now, anyway. Come on. I'll tell you all the plans afterwards. Come on!"

She whisked back into her room, her blonde hair fluttering behind her like a golden flag. It was full twilight now and the midges were beginning to bite. I made my way slowly down the stairs, not wanting to see anyone but unable to pluck up the courage to stay in my room.

Everyone sat outside, as was usual for our supper time. The citronella candles were lit and a breeze ruffled the paper napkins.

That was the last evening we were to dine in the garden. My eyes kept returning to Angus and Mrs. McGaskill, trying to spot a significant glance between them, a softer look, or even a touch out of sight of any eyes but mine. I looked across at Jessica’s dad, calmly forking potato salad into his mouth. He caught my eye and smiled at me and I dropped my gaze, feeling hot in the face. All around me, everyone was behaving as they always did; Angus and Mrs. McGaskill talking, although not exclusively to each other, Mr. McGaskill eating and helping me and Jessica to seconds. I felt as if I were sitting alone, behind a plate of glass; able to observe but totally removed from their world.

After dinner, Jessica and I carried the plates into the kitchen and washed up, as we were expected to do. The kitchen window was wide open and a cloud of moths and insects flew loopily around the unshaded kitchen lightbulb. I went to the kitchen sink and jammed the plug into the plughole. Jessica crashed the plates down beside me and leaned forward, her blonde hair swinging towards me.

"Tonight," she whispered.

I could see the lightbulb reflected in both of her eyes and for a strange moment, it seemed as if the light itself was shining out of her pupils.

"What?"

"It's tonight," she said. "We'll do it tonight. The ritual. It's perfect – it's a full moon. It's the most powerful time. We've got to do it tonight or it won't work."

I struggled to show – what? Enthusiasm? Agreement? In truth, the shock of seeing Angus and Mrs. McGaskill had driven any concerns about Jessica's plans out of my head. At last I managed to paste a smile on my face.

"Yeah, okay. What shall we do?"

She looked annoyed. "Maudie, I've been telling you for the past week. Why don't you listen to me?"

"Sorry," I muttered. I reached for the plates and began to wash them, as much to have something to do with my hands as because I wanted to help.

"What's the matter with you, anyway? I saw you at dinner, sitting all quiet. What's up with you?"

I opened my mouth to tell her. Then I closed it again. "Nothing."

She lost interest. The stones were all to her; I could tell. She was there already – in her head – under the white moonlight, chanting to the night air.

"We'll sneak out at half eleven," she said, leaning close to me again. She was almost whispering. "Can you get a torch? Oh, never mind, don't worry, I know where one is. Meet me out the front of the house... No, that's too close, they might see us. Meet me at the start of the track and we'll go up together."

I nodded, helpless in the face of her obsession. I rinsed the last plate under the tap and watched the glob of dirty foam slide back into the washing up bowl.

"Maudie." It wasn't a question.

"What?"

"You're not going to let me down, are you?"

 "No," I said.

"Are you?"

For a moment she sounded like her mother and that made me even angrier. "No."

 I slammed the plate down on the draining rack and it broke, clean across. The two pieces fell to the floor, and smashed into smaller pieces. Jessica and I looked at each other in shock and then we both burst out laughing. We were still laughing when the adults came into the kitchen with questions and exclamations and for those few minutes, it was okay.

Most nights after dinner, we all congregated in one of the living rooms, normally in the McGaskill’s cottage, as they had a small black and white television. Sometimes Jessica and I played cards or occasionally Scrabble, or we read, or talked or squabbled quietly in the corner. Tonight though, Jessica announced that she was going to bed early and so was I.

"Are you sickening for something?" said her mother, laughing and going to feel her forehead. Jessica jerked away.

"No, I'm just tired."

"You're never tired. What are you planning?"

I felt first a thump of panic and then, almost immediately, a surge of relief. Tell your mother, Jessica, and then she won't let us go – and I won't have to walk up to the hill in the dark, small and scared.

"I'm not planning anything," said Jessica in a scolding sort of voice. She managed not to look at me while she spoke. "I want to read my new book."

"Okay, then. Don't stay up too late. I'll be up at nine thirty and I want that light to be out, understood?"

Jessica nodded, her mouth solemn. I felt a giggle build up in me, despite myself.

"What about you, Maudie?" said Angus. I noticed that his sunburnt nose was peeling. "Are you tired enough for an early night too?"

I shook my head. Jessica glared at me from behind her mother's shoulder. I tried to make a 'calm down' face without the adults noticing.

"I'm a bit tired," I said carefully. "But I want to watch TV for a bit."

Jessica grabbed me out in the corridor when I went to get myself a biscuit. "What did you say that for?" she hissed. "We both have to go to bed early so we can both sneak out."

"I know," I said, shaking off her hand. "But if we'd both gone at the same time they would have known something was up. Come on, Jess, we never want to go to bed normally, do we?"

She looked at me and smiled suddenly. "Alright, you're right. Smarty-pants! But don't really fall asleep, will you? Remember we're meeting at the start of the track at half past eleven."

Again, I felt a little thrill of fear. I didn't want to do this. I was too scared. I watched Jessica’s hand slide around the newel post as she turned the corner. That was the last time I ever saw her.

Jessica needn't have worried that I would fall asleep. I lay in my narrow bed, watching the tree branches outside my window throw their shadows across my bedroom ceiling. My mind would not stop; it threw up a cavalcade of images from the day. My father kissing Mrs. McGaskill. Jessica's shining eyes. The endless field of corn where I'd crouched and wandered for hours. I lay on one side, then another, flipping my pillow in a vain attempt to find a cool patch of cotton. I kept squinting at my watch. I heard Angus come up the stairs at about half past ten and the creak of floorboards as he made his way to the bathroom, and then back down the stairs afterwards. Only an hour to go. My stomach was clenched and my hands were rigid fists beneath the covers.

At eleven fifteen, I got out of bed and began to get dressed. The darkness pressed itself around me but I didn't dare turn on a light. I tried to lace up my plimsolls with shaking fingers and couldn't form the knots – in the end I just shoved the ends of the laces inside the shoe. I fumbled for the torch and made my way over to the door.

The house seemed bigger in the dark. The hallway was endless; it stretched off into near eternity. I inched my way along the floorboards, my heartbeat loud in my ears. I was breathing shallowly but, despite this, my intake of breath seemed to boom around the house, filling the silent rooms with a rush of noise.

The beam of the torch washed over the front door, illuminating my shaking fingers as I reached for the handle.

I got one foot outside, onto the cold stone of the doorstep. The night sky was huge and black and shining coldly with stars. I stood for one frozen moment, with one leg in and one leg outside. Then I retreated inwards, crying quietly. It was just too dark, too quiet, too scary. I pushed the door so that it almost shut and stood with my head against it, my tears dripping on the floor.

It is there that my memory fades out. The picture in my head of the hallway, the open door, the cold night beyond, bleaches out like an over-exposed photograph and there is nothing beyond. Did Angus find me, crying in the hallway? Did I manage to step outside, out into the moonlight? Did I see Jessica, walking up the hill to the stones?

There is nothing left of the memory, not even the faintest, tattered scrap.

Chapter Seventeen

I became aware of an insistent voice and eventually a hand shaking me awake.

"Maudie! Maudie-"

The shaking became more insistent.

Angus was bending over my bed, frowning. When I saw his face, I woke up properly. His skin looked grey and his face was tight, as if his features had been pulled together by an invisible hand.

"What's the matter?"

I struggled to sit up but the bedclothes weighed heavily on me. For once, the sun wasn't shining and, outside, I could hear the faint but insistent patter of raindrops. My bedroom looked grey.

"Maudie, Jessica's missing. She's not in her bed, and we can't find anywhere in the house or the garden. Do you have any idea where she might be?"

"No," I said automatically, not even remembering my panic of the night before. I was still clogged with sleep.

"Are you sure?"

A faint, creeping unease began to seep through me. I remembered what we'd planned and how I'd chickened out. I remembered the hallway, the open door, the blackness beyond. I opened my mouth to confess... and then shut it again.

Angus gave a quick, hard nod. "Alright, Maudie. Can you please get up and dressed as quickly as possible and come downstairs?"

I was already scrambling out of bed and reaching for my dressing gown. Angus paused in the doorway to my room.

"Try not to worry," he said, and managed a smile. I felt the first sharp pang of guilt. “I'm sure she hasn't gone far."

He left the room, leaving the door ajar. I pulled on my dressing gown. I looked at the door and was suddenly swamped by nausea. My stomach clenched and I ran for the bathroom, kicking the half open door wide open.

I vomited for some minutes. When I stood up, my legs felt wobbly. I washed my face, looking at my red eyes in the mirror. Then I went downstairs.

The kitchen seemed full of people when I walked in. In fact, there were five: Angus, Mr. and Mrs. McGaskill, the farmer from next door and a policeman. I stood in the doorway, hanging onto the frame, eyeing his dark blue uniform.

Angus walked quickly to stand beside me and put a hand on my shoulder. From the safety of his side, I looked at Jessica’s mother and flinched. She was pale, her skin almost greyish, rigid with the effort of keeping control. She had her hands clasped in front of her, so tightly her knuckles shone through, chips of bone under translucent skin. Mr. McGaskill looked more desiccated than normal.

"Now, don't worry, Maudie," said Angus. "This policeman just needs to ask you a few questions about Jessica. You don't have to worry; I'll be with you all the time. Just answer his questions as best you can."

The policeman seemed old to me, although he was probably only about thirty-five. He had a receding hairline and the sun had pinked the exposed skin of his forehead.

"Hello, Maudie," he said. "Now, you look like a clever girl, so you can probably tell we're all a bit worried about Jessica. It's not like her to run off, is it? Do you have any idea where she might be?"

My mouth was dry. I felt as if I'd been eating lumps of dry bread, a whole loaf of bread with no butter or jam or anything.

"I don't know," I said. My voice sounded like a mouse's voice – thin and wispy and edging on a squeak.

"You're not in trouble, Maudie. It's just that, well, we're trying to find Jessica. You can see her mum and dad are terribly worried. You want to try and find your friend, don't you?"

"Yes," I said. My hands were shaking and I clutched hold of my dressing gown belt.

"So can you tell us where you think she might be? Was she upset about anything?"

I shook my head and then, because some other response seemed called for, said 'I don't know."

"You've no idea? You girls didn't have some secret hiding place she might have gone to? No little hidey-hole?"

I shook my head again. I didn't want to; I knew I should have been telling them the truth, about the stones and our plans to go there last night, but something was making me say and do all the wrong things.

"Well," said the policeman, disappointed. My stomach rumbled, loud enough for us all to hear and I blushed.

Mrs. McGaskill got up from the table and walked over to me. She stalked across the room, her body held upright and rigid. I shrank back against the wall but she took no notice. She crouched down and held me by the shoulders, almost shaking me. I could feel her fingers digging into me and the tension that made the bones of her hands judder against me.

"Jane..." said Angus.

She took no notice. Her burning eyes were fixed upon my face. I was afraid.

"Maudie-" Her voice clogged and she cleared her throat and started again. "Maudie, if you know where she is, you must tell us. You know that, don't you? You must tell us."

Her nails were digging into my skin. I tried to say something, tried to speak. There was a lump in my throat too big to force words around. Instead I burst into tears.

"I don't know, I don't know," was all that I could say. "I don't know where she is."

I must have convinced them. It was, I suppose, literally the truth – I didn't know where she was. Mrs. McGaskill released me and stepped back, clenching her fists. Angus patted me as I sobbed into my hands. His palm kept connecting with my shoulder over and over again, as if he were doing it without thinking, without meaning to give comfort, more as if he’d forgotten what he was doing. It began to feel so strange that I managed to stop crying and moved away from him, my sobs tapering off into hiccups.

All of the sudden, the house seemed full of people in blue uniforms. I was sent up to my room and sat on the windowsill, biting my nails and watching people mill about in the front garden. I tried not to look at the window of Jessica's room, right next to mine, but it loomed there in my peripheral vision, black and empty.

There was a concerted movement in the small crowd below in the garden and they all began to walk out into the lane, spreading out until they were walking abreast of one another, in a straggling line. I saw Mrs. MacGaskill, her face rigid, walking slowly, her husband five steps behind her. I couldn’t see Angus.

The door creaked and made me jump. I swung round but there was no one in the open doorway. I was suddenly scared of being left on my own in the house. I looked fearfully again at the door to my bedroom. It didn't have a lock. Supposing – supposing someone had stolen Jessica from her room and now... now they were coming for me? Suddenly, my whole body felt cold. I looked for Angus in the disappearing search party and couldn't see him.

I'd never been frightened of being on my own before now. I'd spent hours and hours roaming the Lakeland countryside on my own. Now, quite suddenly, I was terrified.

It was then I heard the creak of a floorboard on the stairs. I froze. I tried to tell myself it was nothing, that I was imagining things. The creak came again – there were footsteps coming up the stairs. A dark figure loomed in the open doorway and I began to scream.

Angus rushed in. "Maudie, what's the matter?"

I managed to stop screaming by bringing my hands up to my mouth, pressing inwards so hard I could feel the sharp edges of my teeth against my palms.

"Maudie, what's wrong?"

I felt tears rushing up towards my eyes. A sob came out of me and I put my face in my hands, not wanting to see my father's tight face, still grey with shock from all that had happened over the past twenty four hours.

"Maudie..." He sat beside me, hesitated, and pulled me close. For a second, the fear rose to a peak that was almost unbearable; I thought I was going to choke. I put my face against the wall, the plaster cool against my cheek. I must have made a noise or flinched or something, because I felt Angus move back from me and the fear receded a little.

"Angus-" My voice came slowly and thickened so I couldn't say more for a moment. I tried again. "Dad-"

He didn't say anything. He sat unmoving and silent. I told him everything.

Chapter Eighteen

That was the first night I had the dream. In the nightmare, I saw the stones and the black figure and Jessica disappearing into darkness. I lay there in the dark with the blankets tangled about my legs and stared upwards. The nights here were so dark, lit only by the moon and the stars. When Jessica had been next door, I hadn't been able to hear her breathing or moving around – the walls were too thick, the distance between our rooms too great. But the silence in my room now seemed somehow deeper and more awful.

Today had been the worst day of my life. I thought that quite dispassionately, staring into darkness. I thought back, unwillingly, to the scene in the kitchen; to Mrs. McGaskill’s furious anger.

Her face was a dull red, her eyes glittered and her teeth were bared. For one terrifying second, I had thought she was going to bite me. "You wicked, wicked girl! You little cow! How dare you tell us you didn't know where she was!"

Flecks of saliva from her mouth landed on my face. I was too frozen with horror to move. I saw her raise a hand to slap me and flinched.

Angus was there immediately, pulling her back. She whipped round and her outstretched hand caught him on the cheek. I heard him give an ‘oof’ of protest and watched his eyes squeeze shut as her rigid fingers slapped against his face. For a moment, the whole room seemed to rock. Mrs. McGaskill and Angus were frozen in a tableau of upraised arms and flying hair. My vision shimmered.

After a moment of stillness, sound and movement came rushing back. She was shrieking, Angus was shouting, Mr. McGaskill was hurrying forward, his face creased. I put my hands up to cover my ears but I couldn't stop my mouth from opening and the screams emerging. I shut my eyes to block out the chaos going on before me and screamed and screamed.

It worked, for a moment. I couldn't hear the shouts of the adults, or see them and their twisted up faces. For a moment, all I could hear was myself screaming, wordlessly at first and then repeating 'stop it, stop it, stop it!' over and over again. Eventually I ran out of breath and opened my eyes, gasping.

Angus had moved to put his hand on my shoulder – I hadn't even noticed. I was barely aware of Mr. McGaskill. It was Jessica’s mother who drew my eye. She was standing rigid, in the middle of the kitchen floor, her arms held stiffly by her sides. On her face was an expression of such loathing, I flinched at the sight of it.

"That's right, cry," she said, her voice vibrating. "You go ahead and cry. If we've lost her, because of what you've done, if she's gone because of you, I'll-"

She shut her mouth with a snap. Then she wheeled round, as stiffly as a soldier on parade, and marched from the kitchen.

"Come on, Maudie," Angus said. "Let's leave her for now."

I think that was when we started losing hope. Before there had been shock and confusion, and, on her parents side, a roiling, bubbling anger. But the thought of Jessica gone forever had been too big to grasp.

              The search parties went out again, as soon as the sun came up. Again, I sat in my window seat, watching the blue uniforms of the police, and the holiday clothes of the tourists and the sunlight reflecting off of the cameras of the journalists that had gathered to report on the search. Sometimes they rang the doorbell of the cottage and I cringed back against the curtains, hoping they wouldn't spot my anxious face peering from my bedroom window. I stayed there for most of the day, biting my nails, watching and waiting. I kept imagining Jessica coming up the lane, a miracle, her blonde hair tossed about by the sea breeze, smiling and shouting up to me bet you can’t guess where I've been, Maudie....

After that dreadful scene in the kitchen, Mrs. McGaskill never spoke to me again. If I came into the room, she would walk out of it, keeping her face turned away, as if I exuded a stench too disgusting for her to bear. Every time, I would feel my stomach drop and twist, as if a heavy weight were falling through me. I stopped crying, though. If I felt tears prick my eyes, I would hear her voice saying cry, that's right cry, and that somehow stopped me. At night, I would pinch myself under the covers, just to have a different focus of pain. Somehow, physical pain was easier to deal with.

After two weeks, the search parties stopped. The tourists drifted away, the journalists dwindled to one or two from the local papers, desperate for news. The national dailies all had other stories to occupy their front pages. The photograph of Jessica that had smiled at us from every front page gradually disappeared. She dissolved before our eyes.

I watched her parents set out every morning to roam the fields and hills and comb the beaches, endlessly searching, refusing to give up. The original police search had found only one thing; one of Jessica's hair clips, on the path to the Men-an-Tol.

               Before Jessica vanished, we'd all lived in one another's cottages, having breakfast in one kitchen one day and in the other the next, sharing the sunshine in the one big garden, running in and out of front doors without stopping to think whether it was one house or the other. Once Jessica was gone, and her mother had turned against me, that all stopped. It was two houses standing separate; two families living apart. One wasn't even a family anymore, they were just two people who happened to be married. The four of us left were now firmly split into two groups. We ate separately. The doors to the cottages remained firmly closed.

After two more weeks, Angus and I returned home.

Mr. McGaskill came to the doorway of the cottage to wave us off. Mrs. McGaskill didn't. I caught a glimpse of the pale oval of her face at one of the downstairs windows and then she was gone. We drove away, bumping slowly over the pitted surface of the lane, past the stony track that led up to the stones. I stared desperately up at the hillside, looking in vain for Jessica once more. In our fairy stories she would have been there, a little figure on the hillside, suddenly restored to us whole and sound and healthy. But of course, there was nothing there, nothing except the blue arc of sky and the mass of green that made up the hills. We drove on, out of the village, out of the county, out of Cornwall.