DEAFENING SILENCE
DEAFENING SILENCE
T he Stumble Inn looks inviting, and I wouldn’t say no to a drink before the long walk back, but when I try the pub door, it’s locked. The sign in the window says CLOSED , even though I’m sure I could hear the clink of glasses and the murmurings of people talking inside only a moment ago. I wander through the village and discover that the rest of the shops are closed as well, all of them, which seems strange for this time of day. Given that there is nowhere else to go, I cross the village green and start heading toward the cabin.
That’s when I hear ringing.
It takes me a moment to translate the sound as I slowly spin around trying to locate its source: the old red telephone box.
The phone inside does work. I can hear it. Which means I could call Kitty.
I sprint across the grass, Columbo running alongside thinking this is a game, then I yank the door open. I’m out of breath, but the sound of ringing is even louder now and I grab the receiver.
At first I don’t hear anything or anyone on the other end of the line.
Then I hear what sounds like the sea.
“Grady, it’s me,” says a distant voice I haven’t heard for a long time.
“Abby?”
“Can you hear me?” she asks, her voice so quiet I barely can.
“Abby? Is that you?”
The line crackles and I think I’ve lost her but then she speaks again.
“Grady, I’m so cold. It’s so dark here. Why won’t you come and find me?”
She sounds so far away.
“Where are you?”
“It’s so cold and so dark—”
The line goes dead.
But I can still hear a dial tone.
There must be some way to reconnect the call.
I stare at the receiver in my fingers. My hand is trembling. All of me is trembling. I hang up and when I lift the phone to my ear again it doesn’t make a sound. It’s completely dead now. I try once more and this time I do think I can hear something, the sound of the sea again. But then it starts to sound like the wind howling outside and I realize that’s all it is. Did I imagine hearing a voice?
Someone knocks on the door of the phone box and I literally jump off the ground.
“Are you okay?” asks Cora Christie, peering in at me through the glass. She’s wearing a green coat and a green woolly hat and appears to be heading home for the day. “This phone is broken, has been for months now, I told you that already,” she says, pointing at the OUT OF ORDER sign with a green fingernail.
“I thought I heard...” From the look on her face I think it might be best to stop talking.
I’m already worried that the whole island will think I am crazy.
I remember that I haven’t slept for a very long time. Maybe my mind is just getting more creative with the tricks it insists on playing on me. I’ve imagined seeing my missing wife before, maybe now I’m starting to hear her.
“Thought I might just borrow a book,” I say, picking up a random paperback.
Cora nods but her beady eyes are still full of suspicion. “Good for you,” she mumbles before sticking her hands in her pockets and walking away.
When she is out of sight, I press the buttons on the phone one more time, just in case.
But there is nothing except a deafening silence.
I think I really am losing my mind.
The sky has already dressed itself for twilight by the time we reach the forest. I find my way without using the compass, and as soon as we are inside I pour myself a large glass of scotch. My hands are still shaking, my head is pounding, and I don’t feel at all well. I know it’s an old-fashioned concept, but husbands are supposed to protect their wives and I didn’t. I know what happened wasn’t my fault, but I still sometimes blame myself. I should have done more to keep her safe.
Everyone had their theories about her disappearance at the time. Her friends, the press, the police. The large amounts of cash that Abby withdrew from our joint account made other people—including Kitty—think that my wife left me. I still have no idea what she needed all that money for, despite searching every inch of our home for clues, but I’ll never believe that version of events.
We loved each other more than any other couple I know.
I know that even if nobody else does.
Something happened to Abby, something bad. And until I know where she is and whether she is okay I don’t think my life can ever return to anything resembling normal. I need to know the truth. I see the Magic 8 Ball and decide to give it another try, picking it up to ask a question.
“I must have imagined it but... did I hear Abby on the phone in the village?”
Two words appear on the screen: VERY DOUBTFUL .
I nod as though a toy has just confirmed my deepest fears: I am going mad.
Maybe it’s the tiredness catching up on me.
Perhaps it’s the result of still being so desperate to know what happened to her.
Or it’s possible my mind has broken due to the stress caused by what I’ve just done.
Seems to me I had three options when I found Charles Whittaker’s secret tenth novel:
Tell Kitty what I have found.
Tell Kitty I’ve had a great idea, then steal Charles’s book and pretend it is mine.
Tell Kitty nothing.
I always tell my agent everything—writing can be a lonely business, and I don’t have anyone else to talk to—so the third option wasn’t really an option at all. And, until relatively recently, I’ve always told my agent the truth. I ask the Magic 8 Ball another question.
“Have I done the right thing with the book?”
Four words appear on the screen: MY SOURCES SAY NO .
I throw it back down on the chair, reminding myself that it is just a silly toy, and that whatever message it displays means nothing. But doubts are already starting to whisper themselves inside my head. It’s too late to do anything about it now, the letter has been posted, but maybe it wasn’t a smart thing to do. Regrets, by definition, are the least punctual of emotions.
Abby was always very good at doing the right thing. It was something I loved about her from the start. She was good at being likable too; everyone who met her adored her, including me. I feel jealous of people who are naturally outgoing and friendly, even toward people they can’t possibly like. I would love to be that way, but for me all social situations with people I do not know are stressful and uncomfortable. Parties are my idea of hell. Even a brief encounter with an elderly shopkeeper has left me feeling exhausted. I decide to rest my tired eyes for a moment. I haven’t slept properly since I left London. That’s a lie—I haven’t slept properly since my wife disappeared—but maybe sleep is finally going to find me.
I can’t see a thing when the sound of someone knocking on the cabin door wakes me. I don’t know where I am at first, or how long I’ve been sleeping, and I blink, adjusting to the low light. The darkness that had gathered at the edges of the evening sky has now wiped it black, so I must have been asleep for a while. I turn on a lamp as Columbo rushes over to greet whoever it is outside—Labradors do not make good guard dogs—then I hurry to the door myself but hesitate before unlocking it. I feel a little disheveled and disorientated having just woken up. “Who is it?” I ask.
“Who do you think it is? What other eejit would be traipsing through the woods in the dark to knock on your door? It’s Sandy! We said seven o’clock, and it’s already five past. If we’re late and the dinner is ruined I’ll never hear the end of it.”
I completely forgot. I’ve been forgetting a lot of things lately, and brain fog is becoming a permanent weather warning in my daily forecast. I’m just so tired all of the time I can’t seem to function at full speed.
“Sorry,” I say, unbolting the wooden door. “I lost track of the—”
“Time? Yes, this island will do that to you,” she replies, looking over my shoulder and peering into the cabin. “I haven’t clapped eyes on the inside of this place for a wee while, nice to see it restored to its former glory. You’ve done a grand job cleaning it up.”
“I didn’t—”
“Did you not hear me? We’re late. Are you ready?”
I grab my jacket. “As I’ll ever be. Sorry, I should have checked, is it okay to bring my dog? I feel strange leaving him in an unfamiliar place so soon.”
“Of course, the more the merrier! We love dogs. Anything you can’t stomach you can feed him under the table. You’ll understand once you’ve tasted my sister’s cooking.”
We step out of the cabin and everything is black. The tall trees, the night sky, the forest floor. It all looks the same to me in every direction, but Sandy has a torch and clearly knows the way. We walk in silence and I try to think of something to say. It’s so quiet. Too quiet.
“I never hear birds in the forest.”
“You won’t hear birds anywhere on the island. There aren’t any,” she replies.
“What? Is that true?”
“It would be an uncanny thing for me to lie about.”
“But... why? How is that even possible?”
“I’m no bird expert, and it all happened long before my time, but birds were banned to protect the trees.”
“How can you ban birds? Surely they just fly back.”
“In 1888 there was a terrible famine on the island. Almost all of the crops failed, not unlike the potato famine in Ireland a few years earlier. Nobody could understand what caused it, but then the islanders noticed that the redwoods were dying too. The bark on these giant trees was peeling away and huge branches snapped off like broken twigs. Trees talk to each other, did you know that? Through their roots they can send messages or warnings, and the islanders thought that something terrible happening to the trees had somehow caused the crops to fail.
“They noticed something in the redwoods they hadn’t seen before: woodpeckers native to the Scottish Hebrides. Hundreds of them had made their nests in the branches and holes in the trunks. Those holes left the trees vulnerable to disease, and some redwoods started dying. The islanders were hungry and frightened, so the men on the island did what men always do when they are afraid, and started killing the things that scared them. Not everyone knows the difference between a woodpecker and other birds, and I doubt everyone had twenty-twenty vision back in the 1880s. Soon all birds were getting shot, regardless of what they were, but, when they were all dead, the trees recovered and the crops started to grow again. Problem solved. The next season new birds came to the island and they were killed too. Mother nature has a way of warning her children, and somehow the birds learned not to come back. There hasn’t been a famine since.”
“Or any birds?”
She shakes her head. “I’ve lived on Amberly all my life, for over sixty years, and I’ve never seen so much as a sparrow. Seagulls sometimes follow the ferry when it leaves the mainland, but they always turn back before it gets to Amberly. I don’t know how they know, but they know. So we don’t have any birds but we do have thousands of these precious, beautiful, life-giving trees.”
“I can’t get my head around it—an island with no birds.”
“The trees take care of us and we take care of them,” Sandy says.
“But—”
“But nothing. It is what it is. Besides, I think birds might be smarter than people. They’re certainly more loyal. Did you know that ninety percent of bird species have the same partner for life? Not like humans. And, unlike people, birds know when they’re not welcome and when to stay away.”