Authors: Gayle Eileen Curtis
“You are as bad, if you do this!” Tim sobbed like a small child, snot running down the side of his face.
“I don’t think so, Timothy. Have you forgotten what you did to all those children? Do I need to remind you?” Dennis leaned in Tim’s face.
“No. I thought not.”
“Dennis, please? Don’t do this! Let me go and I’ll move away. You and Grace can have the house to yourselves. I won’t cause you any trouble. I’ll just leave quietly.”
Dennis picked up the lid to the box and placed it over Tim as if he’d pressed the mute button to his mouth. As if Tim didn’t exist and Dennis was merely sealing a crate of fishing gear.
He ignored Tim’s protests. He’d dealt with enough tossers at work to know how to switch off from them when they protested about being arrested or going down to the cells.
Dennis lifted the lid back up, remembering something.
“Thank you, thank you, thank you!” Tim gasped, “I knew you wouldn’t do it.”
“Wrong, Timothy! I found something in your coat pocket that might come in handy. There you go. Nighty, night, Timothy!” Dennis threw a packet of Fisherman’s Friends onto Tim and banged the lid back down.
He chuckled to himself. Tim’s Fisherman’s Friends weren’t going to help him out of this situation.
Dennis took a few moments to think about what he was doing. Relief and panic swept through him simultaneously, albeit briefly.
*
Eve peered around the door of Daphne’s room to see if she was in.
“Hello? Daphne?” she spoke gently in case she was asleep; she didn’t want to startle her.
Daphne was sat in her chair, staring out of the window, her back to the door.
“Hello Eve, I haven’t seen you for a while. How are you?”
Eve wandered in slowly and laid the flowers she’d brought for Daphne, on her table. She was still feeling fragile after recent events.
“I’m ok, thanks.”
Daphne turned from the window to look at her.
“Oh my goodness, have you been poorly? You look ashen.”
Eve perched herself on Daphne’s bed and examined the old woman’s troubled face.
“And you’ve been crying. What’s wrong?”
There was a long pause as they both locked eyes with one another.
“Memories sweetheart, that’s all. Now then, I asked you first.”
Eve took a deep breath. “It all got the better of me Daphne. That’s all.”
Eve chose not to tell her she’d tried to kill herself. It wasn’t that she couldn’t, she just didn’t have the energy to talk about it. She was bored of her life being one trauma after another and she was slightly ashamed that the last one had been self inflicted. It was like a perpetual nightmare.
Daphne reached out to Eve and grasped her hand.
“I know sweetheart, I know. You feel like your whole world’s collapsed, like someone’s catapulted you off it and there’s no point going on.” She patted her hand.
Eve stared at her, sensing she was going to say more.
Daphne picked up the fresh roses Eve had cut from the garden and buried her face in their fragrance.
“They’re beautiful. Your garden?”
“Of course. I didn’t steal them!” Eve laughed.
“Well you never know dear, I thought you might have taken a fancy to old Mrs. Newark’s prize flowers on the way!”
They laughed together. For a moment the atmosphere lifted but was soon smothered by the dense emotion that had been there moments before.
“My daughter, Verity was murdered. Seven years old she was. I didn’t want to go on, after they found her, didn’t see the point really.” Daphne sat back in her chair and gazed out of the window. She was mentally travelling back in time, back to an era she’d locked away since it’d happened.
“I had no idea…I mean I remember Grace saying you lost a baby before Tim was born but…”
“I’ve never talked about it, that’s why you didn’t know. It became too unbearable. The longer I left it, the harder it was, so in the end I locked it away.”
Eve stared at her. Shocked she’d become so close to this woman and had never known she’d experienced the same awful trauma. Something began to shift inside Eve. She knew of the other people in the area who had lost their children in the same way but they had seemed distant because she didn’t know them well enough. It had made her feel terribly lonely. And here she was sat in front of someone who was carrying the same battle scars as her. A kind of relief flooded her, causing her to blush with embarrassment. It wasn’t something she’d wish on anyone but she was glad of the company in her lonely, cold world.
“Did they catch who did it?”
“Oh yes. He was caught a few months afterwards, hanged for it.”
Eve frowned.
“It was 1950. The death penalty was still punishment for murder.”
“How did that feel? Knowing who it was and seeing them hang for what they’d done.”
Daphne turned away from the window to look Eve in the eye.
“Empty. It made me feel empty. At first there was a strong urge to see him get what he deserved. I wanted him to feel the fear he’d put Verity through. I wanted to kill him with my own hands. But then it was all over and there was nothing. I knew it was for the best, that he wouldn’t be able to harm anyone else. But he was free of it all and we were the ones left with the whole nightmare he’d caused.”
Eve nodded, understanding totally what she was saying. She’d run through the scenario in her head many times after Alice went missing. Not that she had ever voiced it out loud, that would have meant admitting Alice had been murdered. Death was the easy option in her eyes, which was why she’d tried to end it all only a few days earlier.
“I know there’s no excuse for what he did, but was there any explanation?”
Daphne sighed, her eyes watery with tears.
“She smelt nice, he said; took her school shirt as a souvenir. He mutilated my beautiful little angel all because she smelt nice. All I could think about afterwards was that we were halfway through ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’. It’s strange what goes through your mind when you’re in shock.”
“I’m so sorry…”
Daphne flinched at the words she hadn’t heard for so long, hadn’t wanted to hear, especially not from Eve. She put her hand up to stop her saying anything else.
“But I am Daphne, you’ve listened to me endlessly talking about Alice, which must have been excruciating for you, and you never said a word.”
“It wasn’t the right time to tell you and I wasn’t sure if I was right.”
Eve frowned at this last sentence, wondering if she had missed part of the conversation and they were now talking about something else.
“Eve, I’ve got something to tell you and I need you to listen carefully. Don’t interrupt me. I can tell you, now he’s dead.”
“Who’s dead? Daphne, what are you talking about?”
“Tim, who do you think?”
“Tim’s dead? Dead? Don’t be daft, Daphne!” She stared at her, for the first time seeing her as a fragile old woman. She wondered for a few moments if she was going senile.
“Yes Eve. It was all over the news. Lost at sea on one of his fishing trips, you must know, Grace called me. Where ever have you been?”
*
After the dramatic events of the last few days, Chrissie had felt much more settled in her new home. She couldn’t quite believe Tim was actually dead and she wasn’t totally sure how she felt about it all. Everything that had happened since she’d lived in the house was hitting her like pelting hailstones. She’d been so bombarded, she could have been told that the village was being wiped out by a plague and she would probably have shrugged it off.
In the last couple of days she’d had time to digest it all. She felt relieved and fairly calm but there was still a slight uneasiness surrounding her. The activity in the house had almost stopped but there were still a few strange things occurring. The radio continued to have a mind of its own and things kept going missing. She’d spoken to Sarah about it over the phone, which had resulted in her inviting herself over for a few days, firstly to support Chrissie, and also to take the opportunity to do some house hunting.
Sarah had felt that the ongoing activity could be caused by Chrissie’s anxiousness or maybe an unsettled spirit not willing to move on. She’d promised her some therapy sessions during her stay to help her to come to terms with it all. Chrissie was having a problem going into the garden, especially down the bottom near the shed.
The trouble was, it didn’t matter how many times Sarah told her it was all ok, something still wasn’t sitting right with her. She couldn’t shake off the overwhelming feeling that someone was trying to get through to her. She brushed the thought away as if she was swatting an insect from her arm; she just needed to let go of it all.
She busied herself preparing supper for Sarah’s arrival, trying to concentrate on the task in hand. A movement outside caught her eye and she put down her vegetable peeler and strained her eyes to see through the window.
It was hard to see, the rain was thrashing down and the clouds had shed a premature darkness over everything. Thinking it was probably the wind blowing the trees, she continued peeling her potatoes, taking deep breaths to calm herself.
There was a creaking noise from the far end of the house which caused her to drop her peeler again. She went to the kitchen door to see if it was Sarah; she was beginning to feel uneasy. She strained her eyes to look through the window of the stable door. She was hoping to see car lights coming from the drive at the end of the house, so that she could explain it all away, but there was nothing. Telling herself she was being silly, Chrissie locked the door. Better to be on the safe side. Glancing up at the garden as she turned the key, she caught sight of someone sitting on the swing. She quickly glanced back but there was no one there. The swing was moving violently backwards and forwards as if it was possessed by the wind. Chrissie could have sworn she saw a child sitting on it. She shivered and rubbed her arms, taking a few moments to scan the garden. A shadow passed the small door window and it wasn’t coming from the outside. The screeching of a wooden chair across the tiled kitchen floor startled her. Chrissie turned slowly.
“Hello Christine.”
There sat a very soaking, dripping, dirty Tim.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Dennis and Grace held each other tightly for what seemed like forever.
“Do you know what my first thought was when the police knocked on the door?”
Dennis kissed her forehead. “No, what?”
“That you were dead or missing too. I was more worried about that than I was about Tim.”
Dennis got up to get them both a drink.
“You know they’ll find him don’t you? Alive I mean.”
“No, the police called round yesterday and said it was unlikely now.”
“Grace, listen to me. I’m telling you, he’ll be found alive.”
Grace was digesting this news; she wasn’t thinking about why or how but the fact she’d felt quite elated by the thought that he was dead. Grace sat down on Dennis’s sofa, her head in her hands. The heavy feeling she had carried for so many years began to descend over her body like a black cloud. After quite some time she took a deep breath that seemed to started at the very bottom of her stomach.