SILENT CONVERSATION
SILENT CONVERSATION
GRADY
“Me and you need to go back to the cabin right now,” Sandy says, staring at me with a strange expression on her face. She and Midge exchange a glance. They share a silent conversation the way only people who really know each other can. “I need to see these bones for myself.”
Before we can leave the room there is a loud bang on the ceiling, followed by several more in short succession. We all look up at the miniature crystal chandelier as it starts to creak and sway from side to side, casting an eerie pattern of moving shadows on the table.
“What was that?” I ask.
Once again they converse without words before answering me.
“It’s nothing to worry about. Just Mother,” Sandy says, glaring upward as the banging starts again. “She uses her walking stick to tell us when she needs something.”
It doesn’t sound like a walking stick.
“Is she all right?” I ask.
“Oh yes,” Midge says with a nervous smile. “Fit as a fiddle, but with one or two broken strings. Our mother, Morag, used to run Amberly Tweed on the island before she retired, created some of the most beautiful handwoven fabrics you’ll ever see.” I think I might have seen some of them tonight, glancing around their tweed-clad home. “Sadly tweed isn’t as popular as it used to be and the business closed down. She needs constant care these days—there are no facilities for the elderly on the island—but I don’t mind looking after her,” Midge says, sounding as though she does mind. The banging from above resumes. This time it sounds more like someone trying to force down a locked door. “I’d better go and see to her. I’ll take her a wee glass of the good stuff, that normally settles her down.”
Sandy drives faster than seems sensible on the dark and twisty roads. Given the amount she has had to drink tonight, I’m not convinced she should be driving at all. I wish I’d never mentioned the bones beneath the floorboards. All I can think about is Charles Whittaker’s manuscript, which I left on the desk. Whatever happens, Sandy cannot see that. Nobody can. The letter I sent to Kitty was a proposal for a similar story. A very similar story. I’m obviously not going to copy it word for word—Charles had an extremely distinctive voice—so I need to edit the book. Make it my own. But for my plan to work, nobody can know about the original version.
We reach the forest clearing and it is a relief to get out of the truck. The night is still, silent, and cold. It’s too dark to see anything except the silhouettes of trees. Sandy turns on a torch and starts marching toward the cabin, so fast that Columbo and I practically have to run to keep up with her. The branches of the tall trees sway, and lean, and groan, and the leaves on the forest floor swirl around us, almost as though the place is coming to life as we walk through it. I hear what sounds like screaming in the distance, but Sandy doesn’t stop striding ahead.
“What was that?” I ask.
“Just nature. Haven’t you ever heard a fox before? They’re quite harmless.”
I’ve heard plenty of foxes, even when living in London, but they never sounded like that. Something flies too close to my face at high speed and I wave my arms in the air before stumbling into Sandy.
“I thought you said there were no birds here,” I say.
“That was a bat.”
“A bat ? I suppose they’re harmless too?”
“There are two species on the island. One is, one isn’t.”
She doesn’t elaborate and I don’t ask.
We carry on walking and I hear the sound of twigs snapping somewhere close behind us. Columbo growls and I spin around but there is nobody there, only darkness. I wish I wasn’t scared—even admitting it to myself makes me feel like a wimp—but I am, so I walk a little faster to catch up with Sandy.
“This’ll be why the bats are out,” she says. I’ve been too busy looking over my shoulder to see what she is seeing, but when I look up there are hundreds of tiny lights all over the forest. They’re everywhere. In the trees and the air around me. I wonder if I might be dreaming.
“What are they?”
“Fireflies,” Sandy replies. “I bet you’ve never seen them in London.”
“I’ve never seen anything like this anywhere before.” The glowing yellow lights seem to dance in front of me. It’s magical.
“One of the benefits of having no birds is having more bugs,” Sandy says. “We’ve got a lot of rare beetles, moths, and spiders as well as these special old trees to protect. The fireflies are a favorite of mine. These little fellas thrive here. Their bioluminescence is to attract a mate and to communicate with each other, but the light they produce also warns bats not to eat them.”
“Why? Are they poisonous to bats?”
“No, they just taste horrible . Like Midge’s cooking.” She laughs at her own joke, then looks suddenly serious. “They light up when they’re in danger too. If they get caught in a web, for example. If they’re trapped and can’t get away.” Sandy stares at me with an expression on her face I don’t like or understand. Her eyes narrow, and she takes a step closer toward me. Too close. “Some fireflies can still light up the world around them after dying. Not forever, of course.” She smiles and looks more like herself again. “Nice to look at though, aren’t they?” she says, continuing to walk through the forest. Her mood swings are unsettling but I try not to overthink it. Most people are contradictions of themselves.
When we reach the cabin I unlock the door and it gives a theatrical creak when I push it open. I turn on the lights and am relieved to see that everything appears to be exactly as it was. Including the precious manuscript on the desk.
“Where are the bones?” Sandy asks as soon as we step inside.
“Just under here,” I tell her, pulling back the sheepskin rug. She bends down to take a closer look at the loose floorboards, then lifts them with her bare hands in no time while I attempt to casually walk over to the desk. Sandy shines her torch in the hole and I wonder if this means I won’t be able to stay in the cabin. I’m guessing it might be a crime scene now and I wish I’d kept my big mouth shut. I turn the first page of the manuscript over so it cannot be read. A bit like Sandy’s expression.
“ Do you think they are human bones?” I ask, coming to stand by her side.
She looks up at me. “There’s nothing here.”
“What?” I say, crouching down to see for myself. She’s right. There is nothing but wood and dirt. Even the red velvet cushion is gone. “I... don’t understand. The bones were right there.”
Sandy looks past me at the old brass drinks trolley in the corner of the room. Then she sighs, dusts off her hands on her jeans, starts to stand.
“You said your books had a hint of horror about them. I can see you’ve been working on something,” she says, nodding toward the manuscript I was so desperate to hide. “Perhaps the tiredness from the journey, a little whiskey, being alone out here when you’re more used to city life... maybe your imagination got the better of you.”
“I didn’t imagine it. I...”
But I can’t explain it. Or understand how something I’m sure was there last night has vanished.
“Well, honestly, I’m relieved,” Sandy says. “The island is very proud to be crime-free and—apart from one dead body on the beach a year ago, which Midge should never have mentioned—a safe place for everyone who lives here. Don’t give it another thought. There’s nothing there, so let’s pretend it never happened.”
I nod.
But it did.
“I meant to ask you earlier, but I forgot,” I say. “When is the next ferry back to the mainland?”
Sandy frowns. “Not leaving so soon are you? I thought you said you liked it here—”
“Oh I do, very much so. It’s just... there are some things I left in my car that I need.”
“Well, give me the keys and I can get them for you next time I’m on the mainland. No sense in you losing precious writing time.”
“That’s very kind, but I would like to know when the next sailing is. Just in case I need to get back anytime soon.”
She stares at me. “Hard to say with the weather. But I’ll be sure to let you know.”
I might have had too much to drink but her behavior seems a little strange to me.
After Sandy leaves, I pour myself another glass of whiskey. Then I stare at the empty space beneath the floorboards, in case the bones might have reappeared. They haven’t. But there is something in the cabin that wasn’t here before. Something I quickly picked up before Sandy saw it. An envelope with the words Read Me written on it was slipped under the door while I was out this evening.
I open it and am shocked by what I see.
23 rd March 2017 The Times Page 5
WOMAN FREED AFTER THIRTY YEARS IN PRISON
A Wrongful Conviction and a Broken Justice System
Abby Goldman
T hirty years ago, on a cold October afternoon, Coraline Thatcher’s daughter did not come home from school. Late that night, after reporting her missing and making several calls, she suspected that her fifteen-year-old child was at a party at a friend’s house. The friend’s parents were not home. On arrival, it was clear that the party had got out of hand. The house was filled with young people, loud music, and the smell of drugs. Coraline eventually found her teenaged daughter in a bedroom, unconscious, and being raped by a twenty-one-year-old man.
Coraline reached for a bottle of Jack Daniels that was on the bedside table and smashed it over the man’s head. She was still holding the broken bottleneck when he climbed off her daughter, grabbed Coraline by the throat, and pushed her up against a wall. He was six feet tall and weighed fourteen stone. Witnesses concur he spat in her face and threatened to “end her.”
Coraline’s lawyer claimed that sticking that broken bottle into the man’s throat and severing an artery in his neck was self-defense. But a jury, which astoundingly included a cousin of the rapist, found her guilty of murder and she was sent to prison. For life.
The courts have now ruled, thirty years later, that Coraline Thatcher should never have been convicted. The man she killed had been arrested numerous times, before he raped her daughter, for violent sexual assault and stalking. He was known to the police but he was never charged. A woman is killed by a man every three minutes in the UK, and yet when a woman tries to defend herself she is the one who loses her freedom. Our justice system is broken. Coraline did what she did to protect herself from a man the police failed to protect her from, and she lost everything as a result.
Her daughter was put into care and Coraline was not allowed to see her. She lost her home and her business. Her mother died while she was in prison. Her daughter, now forty-five, the same age Coraline was when convicted, refuses to speak to her, and she has grandchildren she has never met. Coraline now lives in a halfway house in London and is dependent on charity to get by.
I met with her in the hope of an exclusive interview. But she met with me only to tell me why she wouldn’t give one. “There’s nothing anyone can do to give me my life back,” she said. “All I wanted was to run a little shop and take care of my daughter.” Coraline was dressed in green and looked older than her years. The dead man’s family also had no comment, and threatened me and this newspaper with legal action. “Justice is only for those who can afford it,” Coraline told me. Freedom, it seems, also comes with a price.