Little Girls Tell Tales Read online

  I glanced again at Dallin. It stung a little, to think of him talking to people about me, telling them my private life. How much had he said? Did Cora know about my mum and dad? Did she know about Beth?

  And then I wondered who else he’d spoken to. Perhaps everyone in his life knew about his sister who lived, broken and alone, in her house in the curraghs.

  I shoved my hands into my pockets. For the last year, I’d felt safe and forgotten. No one came to visit anymore. The few friends I’d had – Beth’s friends – had phoned and texted and emailed, with less and less frequency as time went on, until at last, no one checked in with me anymore. I’d ignored my social media accounts for so long they’d probably been deactivated.

  I still received those letters, of course, in their plain handwritten envelopes. Nothing could stop them arriving.

  Possibly it was being out here in the curraghs which had so quickly soured my mood. Me and Beth had walked those pathways so often. It felt weird being there without her. I hadn’t properly taken that into consideration before leaving my house that morning.

  Cora was consulting her smartwatch. She slowed, stopped, took two more paces then a shuffling half-step. ‘That’s us,’ she said. ‘Right here.’

  We’d all but reached the edge of the curraghs. From here, along the rest of the length of the road, there were only sparser trees and hedges. Cora double-checked her watch, which showed a bare-bones map and GPS coordinates, then turned to look at the trees at the side of the road. They appeared no different to any other section of the curraghs. The most obvious difference was there was no path of any sort leading into the wetlands. There was also a ditch separating the road from the trees.

  ‘So, how’re we finding our way, exactly?’ Dallin asked.

  ‘We’re trailblazing.’ Cora half-smiled at him. ‘Shall I lead the way, or do you want to?’

  Dallin muttered something under his breath. There were shadows under his eyes, like maybe he’d been drinking the night before. Not that I blamed him. In a way I was almost jealous. It’d been a long time since I’d last had alcohol.

  How sad do you have be, to be jealous of someone with a hangover? This thought, at last, did bring a smile to my face.

  Cora jumped over the ditch and pushed aside a couple of branches. The twisted, shallow-rooted trees that grew in the curraghs were springy and resistant, and didn’t much like being shoved out of the way. Cora stepped through them with difficulty.

  I looked at Dallin, but he seemed happy to bring up the rear.

  I took a short run-up and leapt across the ditch, but lost my balance on the other bank. I would’ve fallen backwards into the brackish water if Cora hadn’t shot out a hand to grab me.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said, a little breathless, as I regained my footing. ‘It’s been a while since I did anything strenuous.’

  In fact, just that small bit of exercise made me realise how out of shape I’d become. I knew I’d put on weight over the eighteen months, due in part to my medication, but it hadn’t really affected me. Staying indoors so much, I wasn’t bothered when my lightweight summer clothes no longer fit. Loose fitting T-shirts and jogging pants had always been my preferred outfits anyway. Without Beth to encourage me to cook meals from scratch, I’d fallen into the bad habit of easily prepared processed food and ready meals; without Beth to drag me out for long walks in the countryside, I’d lost the inclination to go outside.

  Now, all of a sudden, I felt self-conscious as I followed Cora through the half-gap in the trees.

  There was no path, not even an ill-defined trail left by animals. We were immediately stepping over mud pockets and sunken tree roots. At least the trees were less tightly clumped together here. Weak morning sunlight slanted in through the thin leaves. A few metres to our right, a barbed wire fence marked the edge of someone’s field. Beyond it, tall grass swayed in the soft breeze.

  ‘We’re too near the edge of the curraghs,’ Dallin said. He’d hopped over the ditch without any issues. ‘We need to search further into the middle.’

  ‘We need to search all of it,’ Cora said. ‘If we start in the middle we might miss out whole sections by accident.’ She kept one eye on her GPS as she walked. In her other hand she also carried her compass. ‘Has this area changed much in fifteen years?’ she asked me. ‘I mean in terms of size. Has it spread out, or have people built in on the edges, anything like that?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘The only building that might’ve expanded into it would be the Wildlife Park.’ I pointed south, in the vague direction of the park. ‘But I’m not sure if anyone would be allowed to expand outwards into the curraghs. This is all protected land.’

  ‘Protected by who?’ Cora asked. ‘We’re not going to get arrested for going off-piste like this, are we?’

  Dallin laughed. ‘National Heritage have got better things to do than prosecute ramblers. If anyone complains, we’ll say we got lost. Happens all the time, apparently.’

  Cora set the pace, moving steadily between the trees, keeping to the scant dry patches of land, but never letting herself get drawn off the arrow-straight path she’d mapped. We followed her. I fell into a rhythm, glad we weren’t walking too fast. I worried now about exhausting myself before the day was half done. How had I not noticed my stamina was so low?

  But, even with my internal concerns, it felt good to be out of the house. The curraghs were peaceful that morning. The early birds had flitted off to find breakfast, and the only noise came from the trees quietly whispering as they brushed together.

  It was so peaceful in fact that I completely forgot I was supposed to be checking the ground for signs of the missing skeleton. It was Cora who reminded me. She cast her gaze back and forth with each step, searching the mud on either side, delaying each step forward until she was totally sure there was nothing there to find. I felt a pang of guilt. Neither me nor Dallin were paying as much attention as her. Perhaps subconsciously I agreed with Dallin – we were too close to the edge of the curraghs, and therefore there was no real point in looking out for anything.

  After fifteen or twenty minutes, the trees thinned out further and the ground became a lot boggier. I spotted where a drainage ditch at the side of the field had burst into the curraghs. The water had an oily, polluted sheen to it.

  ‘I knew things were going too smoothly,’ Cora said. She stepped gingerly onto a tussock of grass, testing to make sure it wouldn’t spill her into the bog. ‘I think we can get across like this.’

  ‘I thought you’d figured it all out from your maps,’ Dallin said. ‘How come a patch of bog can sneak up on you?’

  ‘Maps and photos are all well and good,’ Cora said, ‘but no plan survives boots on the ground.’ She hopped to the next tussock. The movement sent ripples through the muddy water. ‘There’ll always be surprises. Not that I’m happy about it, of course. I don’t like guesswork. Don’t like not being sure. In an ideal world, a superior plan will always beat any surprise the world might throw at you. But, what can you do? I don’t—’

  The next clump of grass was too small to bear her weight, and tipped her off balance. Cora made an ungainly leap for the safety of solid ground. She fell only a little short. One foot went down into the mud, almost to the top of her welly, but she was able to grab a branch and haul herself free. Her booted foot plopped free with a sucking noise and a belch of bad air. Still hanging onto the tree, Cora kicked some of the mud off her boots, flapping her free hand in a vain attempt to disperse the silage smell. She glanced at her GPS.

  ‘It’s okay,’ she said. ‘We’re still on track.’

  ‘Balls to this,’ Dallin said. ‘I’m going around.’

  ‘Quitter.’ Cora grinned.

  It took me considerably longer to get across, but with Cora calling encouragement, I made it, via a more circuitous route. I got a high-five and a smile from Cora, which made the whole endeavour worthwhile.

  ‘Great. We’re still on course,’ Cora said. ‘Well, two thirds
of us are, anyway.’ She tilted her head. Some distance away, Dallin was trying with little success to find a dry path. It was possible to track his progress by the steady stream of swearing coming from amongst the trees.

  ‘I’m glad we’re not relying on him for directions,’ Cora said. ‘He’s more … out of his element than I expected.’

  ‘It’s a long time since he’s been home,’ I said, then corrected myself. ‘Since he’s been here. And, I know he lived with all this on his doorstep, but he never … he never felt comfortable out here, in the curraghs. He stuck to the main paths. Never went off exploring like this.’

  ‘He’s missing out.’ Cora consulted her GPS, and pulled her hat down more securely over her ears. ‘This place is something else. What about you?’

  ‘Oh. I lived with our dad. When our parents split up.’ I shrugged. ‘Well, you know what it’s like, when things go bad between people. Me and Dallin were caught in the middle. He ended up living with Mum; I lived with Dad.’

  ‘That must’ve been difficult.’

  ‘You get used to things.’ It hadn’t seemed too strange at the time. Lots of kids at school had unconventional home-lives. ‘But it meant me and Dallin were never really close. We went to different schools, had different friends, only saw each other at weekends and holidays. What about you?’ I asked then. ‘Were you and Simone close?’

  ‘No.’ Cora laughed at my obvious surprise. ‘Not all the time. We could fight like two cats in a bin liner when the mood took us.’

  ‘So why—?’ I bit my tongue.

  Cora smiled sadly, like this wasn’t the first time the question had come up. ‘A lot of the time, I wasn’t as good a sister as I could’ve been,’ she said. ‘It took me a while to realise that. And longer before I knew I had to make up for it. Searching for Simone now is pretty much the only thing I can do for her.’

  I peered through the trees. We could still hear Dallin but couldn’t see him. ‘Should we wait for Dallin?’ I asked.

  ‘He’ll catch up,’ Cora said. ‘C’mon. We don’t want to lose time.’

  Chapter 6

  Dallin did indeed catch up. But he remained sullen and uncommunicative. I couldn’t help notice his trainers and the cuffs of his jeans were covered with mud.

  There was an odd mood to the search party as the morning wore on. We couldn’t forget why we were there. But the very fact gave us a purpose.

  ‘It’s weird,’ Cora admitted. ‘I’ve been planning this for so long. We’ve been planning this.’ She glanced back at Dallin, who was still bringing up the rear. There was a look on her face that I hoped I’d misinterpreted. ‘It’s hard to believe we’re finally here. This feels like … I don’t want to jinx it. But you feel it, right? This feels like something. Like this could be the real thing.’

  I didn’t know what to tell her. ‘You’ve been searching for about three years, right?’

  ‘I ought to say I’ve been looking since Simone disappeared, but that’s not really true. I’ve always been asking questions. Three years ago I started properly searching.’

  ‘Why then?’

  ‘My mother got ill. Pneumonia. For a while we thought – we thought we were going to lose her.’ Cora brushed her fingers against a tree as she passed, letting her touch rest a moment on the bark. ‘She was delirious for a bit, in hospital. She kept thinking I was Simone. It made me realise … none of us ever got closure. When Simone vanished, she ripped a big hole in our family. I hadn’t properly understood what it’d done to us. So that’s why I started looking.’

  I raised my eyes briefly to the tangled tree branches above us. ‘And it led you here.’

  ‘Eventually. There’s been a hell of a lot of false starts.’ Cora pushed aside a springy branch that attempted to bop her face. ‘There were a few times when it felt like we were getting close. Last year I was convinced I’d traced her to a remote part of Scotland. I trekked all the way up there and spent a very long weekend in the weirdest bed and breakfast ever. Ask me about it after a couple of drinks sometime.’

  ‘How do you find those leads?’

  ‘Oh, y’know. Everywhere. Newspapers, websites, gossip, urban legends. I know where to look, and I’ve got friends online who’ll notify me if something new pops up. Like they did with your story about the curraghs.’ She favoured me with a smile. ‘It appeared on the forum about six months ago. I’m a regular on that board so I noticed it pretty quickly. As soon as I did, I thought, this could be it.’

  I paused to catch my breath. The steady pace helped me avoid getting winded. Even so, my calf muscles ached from the unaccustomed exercise. Cora kept walking.

  ‘So, did you have to get time off work to come here?’ I asked as I started moving again.

  ‘Sort of,’ Cora said. She’d unfolded the map from her pocket and held it flat in front of her with the compass laid on top as she walked. ‘I work for a charity. They know my situation and they give me a lot of leeway.’

  ‘That’s good of them.’ I wondered whether she looked forward to a time when she could return to work without this search weighing on her mind. I thought about my own job.

  ‘They employ a lot of people who – who’re like me,’ Cora said. ‘Not my exact circumstances, obviously, but similar difficulties. Believe me, a lot of them are far higher maintenance than I am.’

  ‘What about Dallin?’ He was far enough behind me that I didn’t think he’d overhear. ‘Did he have trouble getting time off from work?’

  ‘Not as far as I know. He hasn’t mentioned anything.’

  ‘You guys must be good friends. Not everyone would drop everything to help a person out. Especially if it involved travelling across the country and wading around a marsh.’ I was fishing for information. I couldn’t help it.

  Cora smiled. ‘We only met for the first time a few weeks ago. There was no way I would’ve asked him to do this. I was already booked on the ferry and ready to go. Then he announced he was coming with me. He said I could use his help when we got here, to find my way around and know who to talk to, stuff like that. Plus I think he wanted to see you.’

  I stopped myself from making a nasty comment. There’d been more than enough opportunities for Dallin to come home. ‘What about your family?’ I asked instead. ‘Didn’t any of them want to come with you?’

  ‘I haven’t told them I’m here.’

  ‘You haven’t?’

  Cora kept walking. It was difficult to be sure what she was thinking, since her eyes were alternating between watching the ground and checking her map and compass. ‘Simone kinda broke our family when she left,’ she said. ‘There were a whole bunch of arguments and fallings out, and half of us still aren’t talking to the other half.’ She brushed another tree trunk with her fingertips. ‘You know what families are like. Anyway, the upshot is, I don’t have a lot of people I can fall back on in times of need. The last time I told my parents I was going on one of these expeditions, it caused a huge argument. Mum thinks I’m wasting my time. Dad thinks I’m deliberately dredging up the past to cause fights. So, I’ve stopped telling them where I’m going.’

  ‘I would’ve thought they’d be keen to find out what happened to Simone.’

  Another faint smile. ‘I would’ve thought so too.’

  I wondered about Dallin. Possibly he was here because he’d genuinely wanted to help Cora. Helping out a friend, I could understand that. Helping a friend he’d only met a short while ago, on what was probably a wild goose chase that would take him away from home for a whole week? That didn’t sound like something Dallin would do on a whim.

  They’re definitely more than just friends, I thought.

  ‘What about you?’ Cora asked, changing the subject. ‘What’re your family like?’

  ‘I don’t have very many people. My dad died when I was twenty.’ I skipped over what exactly had happened to him. I also skipped over Beth. I couldn’t face raising either subject right then. ‘So it’s just my dear brother Dallin, and our mum.’
r />   Cora looked surprised. ‘His mum lives over here?’

  ‘In Ramsey. She’s got one of those new-build flats. It’s quite nice, but I know she misses her garden. She used to own the farmhouse where I live. Still does, technically.’

  Cora’s brows knitted together. ‘Dallin didn’t say anything about her. He made it sound like you were the only family he’s got.’

  I glanced over my shoulder, to where Dallin was plodding along some distance behind us, with his sullen gaze firmly on the ground. ‘Why would he say that?’ I wondered aloud.

  ‘We’ve only known each other a short while,’ Cora suggested. ‘He’s under no obligation to overshare with me.’

  ‘Hmm.’ I didn’t particularly want to speculate. It upset me that Dallin hadn’t mentioned Mum. Had they fallen out? On the rare occasions when Dallin’s name came up, Mum always sounded wistful, as she said how she wished he would get in contact more often.

  I recalled my conversation with Dallin on the doorstep last night. It’d sounded like he didn’t intend to tell our mother he was on the island at all. The callous nature of that made something hot bubble inside my chest.

  When was the last time you felt angry about anything? The thought surprised me. But it was true. There’d been plenty of anger – impotent, directionless, hopeless anger – throughout Beth’s illness, but in recent months a kind of dull funk had settled over my life. I didn’t feel angry or inconsolable anymore. In fact, I pretty much felt nothing. The tablets my doctor had prescribed probably contributed, smoothing out my emotions so I no longer had to deal with the horrific lows and occasional, sickening highs that’d plagued my life after Beth died.

  So, I could look at this sudden bubble of anger towards Dallin with a strangely clinical detachment. The anger was brief and unformed and not even particularly strong – it faded almost as soon as it appeared. But it was something I hadn’t felt for a long time, and that was interesting.