Little Girls Tell Tales Read online

  Three days later, I went back into the curraghs, with a search team of five people, in the hope I could lead them to the clearing with the bogbean growing up through the stripped bones. But, just as I couldn’t find my way out before, now I couldn’t find my way back. Every path looked the same. Nothing was familiar. It was as if the wetlands had shifted and rearranged overnight.

  The search team reassured me, but I could see annoyance on their faces.

  ‘She’s had a nasty scare, being lost,’ one of Mum’s friends said later. ‘It’s enough to play tricks on anyone’s mind.’

  ‘It’s no surprise she’d make up something like that,’ a few people whispered when they thought I wasn’t listening. ‘She’s always had an overactive imagination, that one.’

  ‘She did it on purpose,’ only one person said to my face – Dallin. ‘She must’ve heard us shouting for her. We yelled like crazy. She heard us. She just wanted to stay lost.’

  I knew other people thought the same. I told my story as many times as I had to, and only stopped when I realised no one believed me. Not my family, not my friends, no one.

  ‘The police would’ve found something,’ Mum said, at her most diplomatic. ‘They searched everywhere. They took sniffer dogs in to help. I’m sorry, pumpkin, but if there was anything to find, they would’ve found it.’

  The only person who supported me was Beth. ‘I’ll help you search again,’ she offered one day at the end of summer, in her soft, sincere voice. ‘We’ll keep looking until we find it.’ And every time we went into the curraghs after that, I knew she was scrutinising the ground as we walked, both of us looking for the bones that haunted me.

  In time though, everyone else quietly decided I had, at best, been mistaken. The phantom skeleton in the curraghs was forgotten.

  Chapter 2

  Fifteen Years Later

  In the mornings, mist would collect in pockets throughout the curraghs, like fragments of stuffing caught on a thousand thorns. It was slow to disperse, waiting until the sun rose high enough to burn it away.

  I liked to stand at the back door and watch the sun come up. It hit the slopes of the hills to the south first, soft and golden. The air around our house stayed chill for another hour or so, even after the sun found its way to our garden. Sometimes, I couldn’t help but think the curraghs were to blame for this; that the chill seeped outwards from the wet, shaded ground.

  Early morning was the only time I could bear to look out at the wetlands. In those soft, half-awake moments, when the land was still slumbering, I could look at the gnarled and twisted trees and feel a shadow of the peace they’d used to inspire. When we’d first come to live here, six years ago, to the house Mum had treasured, the trees gave me a sort of reassurance. We shared a secret, after all, them and me. I would listen to their whispering and smile.

  Now, though, I couldn’t stand to look at the trees for long. Their whispering voices sounded harsh. Like they knew too many of my secrets.

  As the sun reached our garden, I turned away from the wetlands. The birds had woken up with a dozen competing songs in their throats. The top leaves of the trees twisted in the breeze as the branches stretched to greet the sun. But the marshy ground beneath the trees was still dark. The shadows would linger there for a while yet.

  I shut the porch door and put my cup down on the table. The herbal tea I’d made half an hour earlier had cooled, half-finished. I still hadn’t found a tea I liked to drink first thing in the morning. They were all either too sharp or too sweet.

  I miss coffee. The thought cropped up quite often and always made me sigh.

  The next step in my morning routine was to go through the house and open all the curtains. As usual, I had to force myself do it. Over the last eighteen months, I’d been careful to maintain the necessary, everyday routines to keep the house in shape, even when there seemed no point. Especially when there seemed no point.

  Sometimes I struggled to remember when I’d had an actual schedule, imposed by factors outside my own head. When I’d had to get up and dressed and out of the house in time for work. How had I ever coped? The idea of rushing around in the early morning to meet a deadline made my chest tighten. And yet, I’d used to love how busy I was. I’d used to love my job.

  Strange how quickly everything could change.

  I opened the kitchen blinds to let in the morning sun. That was relatively easy. The curtains in the front room were more difficult, because allowing light into that room illuminated Beth’s trinkets and ornaments, which covered almost every flat surface. I hadn’t wanted the knick-knacks cluttering up the house, but Beth loved them, so we compromised. Beth had restricted them to the front room. And now, even though I couldn’t bear the sight of them, I also couldn’t face getting rid of a single one. Wherever Beth was now, she would’ve laughed to see me forever tethered to the hundreds of tacky ceramic animals.

  I swished the curtains open and left the room quickly. It was too early in the day to deal with heartbreak.

  Out in the hall and up the stairs. Here were more reminders of Beth, her face smiling from almost every framed picture on the wall. But there were also reminders of Mum. The wallpaper was her favourite shade of green. There were ring marks on the pale wood of the lowermost three stairs, where she’d rested her cup of tea while she’d chatted on the phone to my aunt for hours. After Mum moved out, we could’ve changed the wallpaper or sanded the stairs, but again Beth had talked me round. ‘It’s charming,’ she’d said. ‘Gives the place character.’

  After I’d opened the curtains in the two upstairs bedrooms, I went into the study and sat down. There were no blinds in here because the dormer window was such an awkward shape, and the sun hit the room squarely at this time of day, gradually warming the dusty air. I rolled the chair into the rectangle of sunlight and closed my eyes.

  The house was too big for me on my own. Together, me and Beth had filled the rooms, but now I was too aware of the echoing hardwood floors and high, cavernous ceilings. It’d turned out Beth was right – we could’ve used more clutter. It might’ve disguised the hard edges of the house that I’d never noticed.

  But I knew I could never move. For a start, there was no way I could afford anywhere half as nice. The house was still in Mum’s name, but after I was signed off work, she quietly stopped asking me for rent. My benefit payments covered the utilities and my daily expenses. I knew exactly how lucky I was. Not everyone in my position could live somewhere so lovely.

  Lucky. My mouth twisted. Lucky me, to be living in a beautiful house in a beautiful location, where every little thing reminded me of what I’d lost.

  I’d taken a week off before and after the funeral. Then my doctor had signed me off for another week. My employers had been understanding; how could they not? They’d told me to take as much time as I needed. Maybe they would’ve thought twice if they’d known how long I genuinely needed to recover. Like maybe forever. Eighteen months later and here I was. Still not whole.

  In fact, if it wasn’t for Mum I’d probably never leave the house. It was a ten-minute journey into Ramsey, where Mum lived in her conveniently pokey flat. I made the drive once a week, every Sunday afternoon, combining it with a visit to the supermarket. I stuck to the routine for the same reasons I made myself draw the curtains each morning. Because it was too easy to sink. I had to keeping kicking my legs, at least a little, if I wanted to stay above water.

  It frightened me how simple it was to give up. Although my employers had told me they’d keep my job open, in case I ever came back, I’d long ago accepted I wouldn’t return. I’d felt nothing but relief when I’d finally admitted it.

  Since then, the house had become a sanctuary, despite the constant, unavoidable reminders of Beth wherever I looked. It was the one thing that rooted me to the world. I tidied, I sorted, I tended the garden. The garden in particular never failed to calm me. Here, the influence of my mother was strongest. Mum had planted these flowers, tended these beds, pruned these sa
plings. I would smile at the smallest things, such as the chicken-wire still wrapped loosely around the trunks of the fruit trees to guard against marauding wallabies.

  ‘A garden’s a promise you make to yourself,’ Mum would say. ‘You’re promising you want to be here to see it grow.’

  It made me sad Mum couldn’t visit more often to see the garden growing. Every couple of months, I would take her for an outing, driving her back to the house so she could visit the garden and the curraghs. Those trips had been more frequent before Beth died, of course. Everything had declined since then.

  I got out of the chair in the study and went back downstairs. Time for another cup of tea before I got dressed. I checked the doormat automatically and breathed a silent sigh of relief to see there was no post that morning.

  After that I changed the bedsheets, hoovered the bedrooms, and put the bedding in to wash. That took me until lunchtime. After lunch, when the washing machine had finished, I hung out the sheets, in time to catch the sun at its warmest. Then I worked quietly in the garden. I spent a considerable amount of time tying up the honeysuckle at the side of the house, which had exploded into a million trailing shoots, each determined to burrow its way into the gutters or drainpipes. I loved the honeysuckle, but between it and the clematis at the opposite side of the house, I was fighting a constant battle for control.

  Maybe that was the attraction of the garden. Mum had been smart to encourage me to spend as much time as possible with my hands in the dirt. As if she’d known I’d someday need this to occupy my mind and my hands.

  I’d just come inside to make my fifth cup of herbal tea when the doorbell rang.

  I washed my hands quickly and wiped them on my jogging pants as I went to the door. It was half past four on a Thursday afternoon. I wasn’t expecting any callers. But answering the door was an accepted part of life. I didn’t want to become the sort of person who hid from the outside world.

  As I approached the door, I saw a letter lying on the mat, and my stomach dropped like a lead weight. I recognised the plain Manila envelope with the sloped handwriting on the front. It must’ve come while I was in the garden, unless … unless it’d been delivered right now, by the person outside.

  Through the frosted glass of the upper half of my front door, I could see the fuzzed outline of my visitor. They rang the bell again, then cupped their hands to peer through the glass. I was sure they saw my shadow.

  ‘Rosie?’ the person called. ‘Rosie, you there?’

  The voice was muffled, but I recognised it.

  I snatched up the envelope from the mat and dropped it facedown onto the phone table before opening the door.

  ‘Rosie,’ my brother Dallin said with a smile. ‘Hi! How are you?’

  I took a bit too long to answer. I blinked several times, as my brain processed this shock, on top of the unpleasant nausea provoked by the arrival of the envelope, before I remembered to smile back. ‘Dalliance,’ I said. If he could use childhood nicknames then so could I.

  Dallin laughed and swept in to hug me. I was taken by surprise but didn’t try to stop him. Over the past couple of years, I’d become used to people hugging me, whether I wanted them to or not. Plus, it gave me another moment to deal with the fact that he was back, suddenly, inexplicably.

  ‘What on earth are you doing here?’ I asked into his shoulder.

  Dallin pulled away, although he kept hold of one of my hands. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he said. ‘I should’ve called. I’ve got a million excuses why I didn’t.’

  I kept the smile on my face. Yes, I thought. I’m sure you do.

  ‘Here.’ Dallin took a step back. ‘This is Cora.’

  I’d been so fixed on Dallin I’d barely noticed the woman who hovered awkwardly nearby. She looked as if someone had stapled her feet to the floor to keep her from fleeing. As she made eye contact she flickered a smile. It looked like she’d coached herself to smile at strangers. Honestly, that made me warm to her. It looked like we both knew the difficulties of social interactions that everyone else took for granted.

  ‘Thank you for this,’ Cora said, with another flickering smile.

  I frowned, but Dallin was already leaning past me to look into the house. ‘Wow,’ he said, ‘the place is going great. I love the … those, y’know, those flowers there.’

  He was pointing to the vase of sweet peas I’d placed on the phone table. ‘You should come in,’ I said, standing aside, because that’s what was expected of me.

  Dallin stepped into the hall. ‘That’s brilliant, thank so much. Hey, I’m glad you kept the wallpaper, Mum always loved that colour.’

  It was so familiar, the flow of thought and speech that characterised Dallin. Hearing it again, in this house, was a weird mix of jarring and comforting. The house was missing voices, I realised. The hardwood floors and high ceilings cried out for warm conversation and soft laughter. I hadn’t been able to provide either recently.

  I ushered Dallin into the kitchen. The woman, Cora, followed. Briefly, I wished today had been the day for tidying the downstairs rooms rather than the bedrooms. It wasn’t like the place was a mess, just not as spotless as it might’ve been. I picked up a pile of magazines from the kitchen table then, realising there was nowhere better to stash them, put them back down.

  ‘The kettle’s just boiled,’ I said. Although, now I thought about it, I would need to boil it again, with enough water for three. ‘And – I don’t have any coffee. Or tea. I mean, I’ve got herbal tea. Peppermint. Or mint. Or spearmint.’

  ‘Tea sounds great,’ Dallin said. It was likely he’d only heard half of what I said. He was making a slow circuit of the room, examining everything. He studied the fridge magnets as if they held the secrets to the universe. I was glad I’d brought him and his friend into the kitchen rather than the sitting room. I couldn’t have coped with Dallin examining Beth’s ceramics with that somehow mocking, supercilious smile on his face. At least there was nothing in here except those stupid magnets, most from places me and Beth had never been.

  I busied myself with the kettle and tried to gather my thoughts. Dallin was here. That was unexpected, to say the least, given it was six years since he last set foot in this house. But what could I do, tell him he wasn’t wanted? Shut the door in his face? Maybe I should’ve. But when I considered it, I almost felt Beth poking me between the shoulder blades. She never would’ve tolerated me acting like that towards my brother. Even if Dallin deserved it, and a million times more.

  ‘What were those kinds of tea again?’

  I jumped. I hadn’t expected Cora to appear at my elbow. ‘Sorry?’

  ‘The teas.’ Cora tried another smile. This one didn’t look like she’d practiced it. ‘Three types of mint, right?’

  ‘Yeah. The peppermint is shop bought, but the mint and spearmint are from the garden.’

  ‘Like, leaves?’ Cora’s eyes crinkled. Her blonde hair was cut into bangs which fell forward whenever she dipped her head. Her ears had five or six piercing holes each, although she wasn’t currently wearing earrings.

  ‘Leaves. Yeah.’ I tucked my own hair behind my ears. I hadn’t showered that morning or done anything more with my hair than pull it into a messy topknot with tangled strands hanging down on all sides. All at once I was aware of how I must look to outsiders. I’d got used to no one seeing me for days at a time. ‘I’m sorry I don’t have any proper tea.’

  ‘It’s okay. I can’t have proper tea anyway.’

  ‘No? Why not?’

  ‘Because proper-tea is theft.’ Cora smiled, a little wider, a little more genuine, with a shrug that acknowledged the pun but refused to apologise for it.

  I laughed. ‘So … mint?’

  ‘Sounds good. Thank you.’

  I fished two extra cups from the cupboard. ‘So, why are you—?’

  ‘I can explain all that,’ Dallin said. He adjusted a seat at the kitchen table before sitting down.

  Immediately he looked at home. Which was fair eno
ugh, I thought, since technically this had been his home before it was mine. The thought caused a twist of discomfort deep in my stomach. If Dallin had stayed, instead of running, it might’ve been him living here instead of me. I might’ve never had those beautiful years here, with Beth.

  ‘Cora’s looking for her sister,’ Dallin said.

  I crinkled my brow. ‘Oh?’

  ‘Simone went missing twenty years ago,’ Cora said. Her attention stayed on my hands, watching as I made the tea, as if eye contact was too difficult right then. ‘She was fifteen. I was only nine. We never found out where she went.’

  Dallin fidgeted in his seat. It was obvious he wanted to tell the story. ‘Cora thinks—’

  ‘I’ve been trying to put together what happened to her.’ Cora’s voice was soft but she spoke over Dallin with ease. ‘Trying to … piece things together. I’ve spent a lot of time chasing down vague hints and old clues. The police were involved at the time, I guess, but not for very long. Simone ran away. Nothing more to it than that. If she didn’t want to be found …’ Cora shrugged one shoulder. There was a softness to her movements as well. I got the sense she’d said these words a dozen times or more, and she’d become used to crushing the emotion so her voice didn’t shake, so now there was no inflection to her words at all. ‘It was only recently I started asking questions. My parents refused to talk about it.’

  I stirred the mugs and scooped the leaves into the compost bucket. I wasn’t exactly sure why Cora was telling me all this. But I was used to people telling me their stories. It seemed to come with the territory. I had lost someone I loved. Apparently that meant other people needed to tell me their own traumas.

  ‘We know she went north.’ Cora took one of the mugs from me with a grateful half-smile. ‘The night Simone left home, she was caught on CCTV, getting onto a train. After that, she vanished. Never seen again.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ I said it automatically, even though it always annoyed me when people apologised. Everyone’s sorry. It goes without saying. But even so, the quiet sadness in Cora’s expression made something twinge inside me. I’d spent so long pretending to be hardened, careful not to feel anything in case it set off the tsunami inside me. As harsh as it sounded, I didn’t want to feel sad over Cora’s story. I wanted to stay as I was. Feeling nothing.