The Summer of Secrets (20 page)

‘Have you seen Victoria?’ Her voice came out in a croak, and Piet cupped a hand around his ear. ‘Victoria?’ she said, more loudly.

He shook his head. ‘Try the cottage.’

The back door was open but there was nobody about. Helen called out, her voice absorbed into the empty space with no reply. She had been there before when the cottage was empty and it had felt friendly, ready for her. Today it seemed to be waiting for something. She hovered outside, wondering what to do. A flapping of something behind made her jump, but when she turned, it was only a T-shirt hanging on the washing line. She put a foot inside, straining for a sense of life. A box of cereal lay on its side on the table, cornflakes spilling out in a scatter of orange. It didn’t necessarily signify that anyone had been there, eating breakfast. The Dovers all grabbed handfuls in passing at any time. She stepped back out again. Had she missed Victoria? She was probably back at the house, wondering where Helen was. But the house had been empty … There’d be no harm in running up the stairs to check Victoria’s bedroom.

She was halfway across the sitting room when she sensed something was wrong. She paused, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the dim light. The room smelled of stale cigarette smoke. Nothing so very unusual. One of the curtains hung off its rail, the fabric falling in a bunched up pile at the end of the sofa. The bundle twitched, and Helen had to stifle a cry. Then the outline took on a shape. It was Alice, rocking herself in tiny jerks, her hands crossed over and gripping her shoulders. Above her was the oil painting, the whiteness of the painted skin glowing out in the half dark. Helen took a step back, trying again to locate sounds to tell her where someone, anyone, was. But the house was quiet and still, other than a relentless low humming, which seemed to be coming from Alice.

Without warning, Alice’s head came up, her face barely visible under the curtain of hair. It made Helen gasp again, the reflex moment of shock leading into an equally automatic giggle. The high-pitched sound lingered in the air, but Alice didn’t appear to have heard. She had stopped rocking and her gaze was fixed on a point not quite in line with Helen’s own eyes. As Helen waited, her voice picked up again, this time in a rapid garble. Helen resisted the urge to glance over her shoulder. Was there someone there, a shadow, a weight in the air? She couldn’t check, though; she was hypnotized by the force of Alice’s focus. She was going to have to do something though. Should she aim for minimal disturbance and slide out of the frame without saying anything? Or should she at least try to help, hold out a hand to connect, even comfort? The thought made her squirm.

Before she could decide, Alice’s tone of voice changed and her eyes began to focus.

‘Was it you?’ She sounded puzzled.

Helen managed to shake her head. Alice seemed normal, as if the past few minutes hadn’t happened. But the question, what did it mean? She took a step back as Alice floated to her feet and came closer, one hand extended until it was cupping Helen’s face. She put her own head to one side.

‘You’re not the sort.’ Her hand fell. ‘Where did he go?’

Helen sensed the air behind her change again, but this time in a way she could recognize. A second later there were footsteps, but she didn’t turn. She was pinned by Alice’s gaze: blue, intent, demanding something of her she wasn’t able to give.

‘Help me find him.’ Alice’s voice was urgent, and her hand gripped at Helen’s wrist. ‘My Jakob. You can help me.’

Her pulse quickened under the pressure of Alice’s fingernails. Again, she felt the urge to say something. The presence behind her intensified and Seth was there, prising Alice’s fingers away and wrapping them around his own hand instead. He stepped in front of her, repeating a barely audible sequence of words. Eventually his eyes met Helen’s, and he gave a nod. She slid out of the room but hesitated when she reached the back door, trying to decide what to do. There was Victoria to track down, but the decision of where to look for her felt overwhelming. Besides, Victoria would want to talk, and Helen was struggling to make sense of what had taken place. She found herself looking at the apple tree. It seemed as good a place as any to go and think.

She was still up there when Seth came out. Helen watched him come out of the door and stop, looking around. She gave a half call, but he didn’t seem to hear, so she stayed in her perch and watched him. The sunlight glowed through the white fabric of his shirt as he linked his fingers together and pushed his arms above his head. A slice of belly bisected with a thread of dark hair showed above the waist of his jeans. He leaned to one side and then the other, and then stretched up again to the centre before letting his torso flop down. His hair brushed the grass and his shirt fell over his shoulders. His back was pale and the skin seemed delicate, the bump of his spine leading down to the flat triangles of his shoulder blades. Helen felt her chest swell, a wave of goosebumps run over her skin. A narrative reeled through her head so fast that she only saw the end picture: Seth standing behind her on a sunny beach, running his hand through her perfectly cropped hair.

Footsteps came from the side of the house. A voice sounded, and she came out of her daydream to see Piet approaching. He walked up to Seth, laid a hand on his shoulder and leaned in to say something, a concerned expression on his face.

‘… talking about Jakob again.’ Seth was talking now as he and Piet walked up the garden. Helen gripped the branch more tightly. She couldn’t let them know she was here. A second earlier she could have called down, made it casual, but the moment had gone. She felt a tickle in her throat, needed to cough. They’d come to a halt right below her.

‘I’ve put her to bed.’ Seth was talking. ‘She was asleep when I left her.’

‘What set it off this time?’ Piet struck a match, lit a cigarette, and Helen felt the smoke blow past her face.

‘It’s possible she’s not been taking her medication. There were too many pills left over.’ There was a pause, and she heard the faint rasp of Seth’s hands in his hair. ‘Would it not be best to tell her?’

Piet had put an arm around Seth’s shoulders. Helen could almost feel the weight of it on her own neck. On the top of his head, the hair was thin, the glimpse of sun-reddened scalp on show only to her.

‘Seth, I know it’s hard. But you’re going to have to trust me.’ She saw Piet’s arm lift and give Seth a gentle shake. Her heart felt as if it was never going to beat again. Piet’s next few words made no sense to begin with.

‘Jakob was bad news from the start.’

Seth had his head down and was picking at the bark of the trunk. He didn’t appear to be listening. Piet carried on talking: ‘But Alice wouldn’t see it like that, she never did.’

Seth gave his shoulders a jerk, dislodging Piet’s hand, and punched a fist into the tree. Helen, gripping onto her branch, felt the tree sway. Seth pulled back for another strike, but this time Piet caught his hand before it connected.

‘Why did he have to die, though?’ Seth sounded on the edge of tears. Helen held her breath. Victoria thought her father was alive, Helen was sure about that. So what was Seth talking about? She bent her head, torn between catching Seth’s low voice and staying hidden.

‘I know, buddy, I know. But he wouldn’t have stayed away. It’s better like this.’ Piet rubbed his hand on the nape of Seth’s neck. It looked huge, a weathered knot against Seth’s pale skin. His voice changed. ‘Did you say Helen was there?’

Helen froze, panic flooding down her arms and up her spine.

‘Yeah.’ Seth sounded flat. Helen dared a glance down – he was examining the skin of his knuckles. ‘But Alice wasn’t making much sense. I got her out of the way as soon as I could.’

Out of the way.
She felt the words hit her, one at a time. She hadn’t shared a special moment with him after all. She was nothing but a nuisance, intruding on their family.

‘OK. I don’t want her involved. Victoria’s been spinning her tales, let’s leave it there.’ Piet held both of Seth’s shoulders now, forcing him to engage. ‘Are you all right?’ He waited for a response, which to Helen’s watching eyes didn’t happen. He seemed satisfied though, and pulled Seth into a hug. ‘It’s the best way.’ He sounded as if he was trying to convince himself as much as Seth.

At last they left. Helen kept her grip on the trunk until she was sure they were out of earshot. One leg had gone to sleep and, as she slid down, she caught her T-shirt on the stubby leftover of a branch and scraped a long red trail down her ribs. The tree felt solid in front of her, and she gripped at its roughness, willing the sick giddiness to go. Victoria, she had to find Victoria. But she couldn’t tell her. Opposing arguments ran through her mind, catching up with each other and tangling around. A faint sense of importance played an underlying beat, one she tried to ignore. She’d been trusted with a secret, and it was her task not to let Seth down, Piet down. Victoria mustn’t know. She ignored the internal voice telling her that she wasn’t supposed to know either.

She stood up. The warm air seemed to her to be humming, but whether it was with excitement or indifference, she couldn’t tell. She needed to go, though, before Seth or Piet came and found her there. As she went along by the hedge, Mrs Tyler’s voice made her jump.

‘She sorted out, is she?’ The old woman didn’t wait for an answer. ‘Screaming round the garden like that. Enough to scare the crows.’ She turned away, muttering to herself as she went. With a twist of her head, she spoke again: ‘I’ve got the young’uns here. You tell ’em now. They’ll be all right with me.’

‘Where’ve you been?’ Victoria was rooting through the drawer of odd bits under the sink, only lifting her head for a second before going back to her search.

‘Trying to find you.’ Helen stood for a second, the Helen who knew hovering sideways of the Helen who mustn’t say. Even as her mouth opened, she wasn’t sure which one would win out. ‘I saw Mrs Tyler. She’s got the twins.’

‘What does she want, a reward? She’s welcome to them.’

Beyond the sound of Victoria’s rummaging, Helen could hear small, distinct sounds from outside. A bird sang, then stopped. There was a distant whine of engine noise. Victoria’s voice punctured the space.

‘What have we here?’

She was holding a pair of scissors, proper hairdressing scissors with the extra hooked bit on the lower finger hole. Helen couldn’t recall them ever being used, wasn’t sure she’d even seen them before. She doubted they would be very sharp; picking them up from the table, she tried an experimental snip across the ends of her own hair, and the blades dragged, pulling at the strands instead of slicing through them. Her mother’s six-weekly visits to the hairdresser and her and her father’s less frequent ‘trims’ were still on the calendar, planned in advance for the whole year. Funny, now, with no mother to read them. Had she known when she pencilled them in that the information would be obsolete? Presumably she still had her hair done somewhere in town. Mick on the other hand had stopped combing over his balding patch, and his hair now touched the edge of his collar. She should have offered to trim it for him.

Victoria grabbed the scissors back and tried them on the end of her own plait. With a bit of effort, she got through. She turned and gave Helen an assessing look.

‘Have you cut anyone’s hair before?’

‘No. And I’m not starting with yours, so don’t even ask.’

‘Come on, everyone has to start somewhere. I’m sick of having it long.’ With a challenging stare, Victoria started to hack away right at the top of one of her plaits, working the blades backwards and forwards across the fat strands until she was left with it dangling from one hand.

‘Victoria …’ Helen couldn’t hold it in, she had to say something. ‘You know your mum?

‘Yes, she’s bonkers. And what’s that got to do with anything?’ Victoria dropped the severed hair and held up the other plait. ‘Now you can balance them up. And if you don’t, I’ll sneak in one night and cut one sleeve off every item of clothing in your wardrobe.’ She waved the scissors as if they were a sword, ending the pass with blades pointing at the middle of Helen’s forehead. She leaned in, widening her eyes in mock hypnosis. ‘And when you’ve cut my hair, I’m going to cut yours.’

Helen reached up and wrapped her fingers around the metal, pulling Victoria’s hand away. She pitched her voice at the same singsong tone.

‘Oh no, you’re not. I don’t want any of my hair cut off. And if I did, I wouldn’t let you do it.’

The plait lay on the table in a limp spiral, the twist starting to unravel where it had been sawn off. She rummaged in the drawer herself and found an elastic band.

‘What’s that for?’ Victoria was watching her, her stool tilted on to its back legs.

‘I was going to tie up the top of the plait. You’re not going to throw it away, are you?’ Victoria’s hair was soft in her hands. It looked different to the one hanging over its owner’s shoulder, as if it had lost some degree of spirit. She registered a feeling of desolation under her ribcage. Hair is always dead, she thought to herself, don’t be so stupid. She wound it round her fist like a bandage, then let the length unravel and fall on to the table.

‘Would your mum like to have it?’

Victoria let her stool down with a bang, and picked the plait up herself.

‘What for?. Not much she could do with it.’ She held it at arm’s length to consider. ‘Use it for a
Sound of Music
revival?’

Victoria wrapped the plait across her head and tilted the stool sideways so she could see her reflection in the oven door.

‘Ah, such a pretty
mädchen
!’ The stool wobbled as she tried to keep one hand on the table, one on the plait and stay at the right angle. ‘
Ach, nein, wie nicht die blumen haben!
’

The stool slipped further and, with a shriek, she slid down on to the floor. Helen bent double and peered down at her.

‘Are you OK?’

Victoria was lying on her back.

‘Yes, but something’s happened to my hair.’ She waved the plait with one hand and beckoned to Helen with the other. ‘Come here, I want to tell you something.’