Chapter Twenty-Five
TWENTY-FIVE
As we leave Bert’s house I tell Alice that I have something I need to do. She looks at me, concerned.
“What about the curfew?”
“I won’t be long. Just go inside, okay?”
Overhead the sky is a vast, soaring blue. Sunlight glitters on chrome and glass, the air dusty in my throat. The news report this morning said two hundred and thirteen people had been treated for heat exhaustion in a traffic jam yesterday, with four people pulled dead from their cars. The words “You are advised to stay indoors” flashed up on the screen, bookended by red exclamation marks. No wonder everyone is so jumpy. Even the weather is against us.
Billy. Why had Mary talked about Billy? As far as I knew, he was the only one of the children that hadn’t spent a lot of time with Bert and Mary when he was growing up. I wonder if I’ll get the chance to speak with him. Paul said Lisa would be back today. I resolve to try.
The video store is open, dark and cool inside. There is a faint odor of incense and damp carpet and the ripe, fruity smell I recognize from my first year in a student flatshare: weed.
“Fern?” I call out to the empty shop. I turn to the hagstones stacked on the knotted string which hang in the doorway. The pebbles are washed smooth and streaked with veins. “You here?”
There is a doorway opposite, standing ajar. Beyond, it is dark. I move closer, trailing my hand along the ice-cream freezer that drones noisily like a swarm of bees. Or wasps, I think.
“Fern?”
The doorway leads to a narrow staircase that crooks out of sight. Upstairs I can hear the rustle of movement. Had Fern told me she and Stevie lived above the shop or had I just assumed it? I lift my hand and knock at the door. Outside, a car engine backfires and I jump skittishly. What’s happened to you, Mina?
“It’s this town,” I whisper to myself. “That’s what it is. It’s all the bloody witches in it.”
“Mina?” I look up. There’s Fern at the top of the staircase, peering down at me. Her face is a study in concern; puckered brow, pinched, frowning lips. “You talking to yourself?”
I give her what I hope is a reassuring smile.
“Only way to get a sensible conversation,” I reply. “Can I come up? I just need five minutes.”
The stairs are narrow, the floor not quite level. I follow Fern through another doorway that opens into a large, open-plan room with oriel windows that look out over the green and the peat-colored hills beyond. The floorboards are covered with a patchwork of rugs and a tiny kitchenette has been sectioned off with a small bamboo divider. A little table sits in front of the window and Fern leans across to unlatch it, looking at me curiously.
“You sure you’re all right, Mina?”
I smile tightly.
“People always ask that, don’t they? But they’re never really interested in the answer.”
“Maybe you’re just talking to the wrong people.”
I stare at her. Kindness will undo me. I don’t have time for it. I feel another wave of tears and I swallow against it, the backs of my eyeballs tingling and burning.
“I’m fine. Just had some bad dreams.”
“I’m making coffee. Do you want one?”
“Yes. Thanks, Fern.”
I take a seat at the table. On it is a scattering of drawings—child’s drawings of little chubby animals and tall stick people in crowns and robes all sketched out in chalks of pale green, pale pink, a soft baby blue.
“Those masterpieces are Stevie’s,” Fern tells me, looking over the door of the fridge. “She’s decided she wants to be an artist when she’s older so now I’m finding chalky fingerprints and blobs of paint all over the house. Just put them to one side.”
I do so, letting my gaze drift toward the green. It is empty of course—no dog walkers, no picnickers, no children playing by the pond. Fern seems to read my mind because she looks over from the hob and says, “Weird, right? How quiet it is out there. Summer holidays and not a soul around. I’m starting to find it a bit creepy.”
“Bert said the curfew is playing havoc with his shopping.”
“Tell me about it. No milk yesterday, this morning no bread. It’s a worry.”
I brush aside a sprinkle of tobacco into my cupped palm and scatter it into the ashtray. Upstairs, a thud and Stevie’s voice exclaiming, “Kabloo-hoo-hoo-hooey!”
“She’s got them all,” Fern tells me. “Michelangelo, Donatello. The whole bloody set. It’s cost me a bomb but it keeps her busy and what price a little freedom for her mother, huh?”
“I like your place.”
She looks at me over her shoulder, one eyebrow perfectly arched as if judging whether I’m being sarcastic or not.
“It came with the shop. Used to be just for storage before I bought it. It’s a pit, but it’s our pit.”
“I think it’s great. Cozy.”
“Huh.” She passes me a mug of coffee and sits opposite. “I bet you’ve got one of those houses with fitted carpets and double glazing, haven’t you? A double garage for both your cars.”
“One car,” I correct her. “I don’t drive.”
“I’m right about the house, though?”
I nod. Oscar’s house, the voice says primly. Not yours. Nothing in it belongs to you and now it never will. I swallow my coffee. It’s so hot it burns but it dissolves the lump in my throat.
“Is that what I look like to you? The sort of woman with a big posh house?”
Fern looks me up and down.
“To level with you, Mina, what you look like is shit. That’s why I asked if you were really all right.”
I put down my cup and point to her cigarettes.
“Can I get one of those?”
“God, yes. Help yourself. Misery loves company.”
I take one and light it, blowing a long stream of smoke up toward the open window. I haven’t smoked since university and almost never since I met Oscar. He used to take great delight in telling me the grave effects each inhalation had on my lungs.
“How is it?” Fern asks.
“Making my head swim.”
“Ooh, that’s the best part.”
We smile at each other and just in that moment it’s as if all the horror is bleached and faded away. We are just two women in a messy room full of rugs and plants on a bright sunny morning, talking the way I’ve seen friends do. It’s nice. I wish it could be like this always. But it’s a bubble, and like all bubbles, it has to burst.
“Fern, I’ve got to ask you something. About Bert.”
“Uh-huh.” She tips her head to indicate that she is listening. “I thought this was coming.”
I stare at her in confusion and surprise.
“What do you mean?”
“This is about the basement, right? At Bert’s house?”
I’m so confused I can only shake my head. I was going to ask her about Mary, about their relationship. I planned to tell her about the tapping on the wall but now, my interest piqued, I lean forward in my chair as she continues mildly, “Only Sam came by early this morning and asked me the same thing. ‘What does Bert keep in the basement?’ Tamsin said something in her interview and he said it’s been worrying at him ever since.”
I think of the video camera hooked up to the television. It’s too easy to picture Sam, a man who appears to be coming undone at the seams, cigarette burning between his fingers, watching the taped interviews over and over all night, face lined with concentration.
“Go on.”
Fern shifts uncomfortably. In the golden light her hair shines a dark, polished auburn.
“Well, it-it’s just that. He came and asked me and I told him what I know.”
“Which is?” I roll my hand to encourage her to keep talking.
She sighs. “I’ll tell you exactly what I told him which is that I don’t remember ever going down there. That’s the truth. It was a long time ago, Mina, and you have to remember I wasn’t in a good place. I was a teenager and I was angry. I was taking a lot of speed, a lot of pills. So much of that time is just darkness in here, you know?”
She taps the side of her temple with a polished nail.
I nod, but I’m not done. “Did they ever argue? Bert and Mary? Did she ever seem as if she was frightened of him?”
Fern takes a sip of her coffee and leans back in her chair. “You know what, I think there was something. Yeah. Mary was telling Bert he couldn’t have them in the house.”
“Couldn’t have what?”
Fern screws her face up in concentration. “God, I tell you—motherhood softens your brain, don’t let anyone ever tell you any different. I honestly don’t remember. Or maybe they just never told me, and I overheard. It was nearly ten years ago after all. I do remember Mary saying to Bert, ‘I won’t have those things in the house.’ She sounded angry, like properly mad. And Mary never got mad. Not with Bert.”
“You don’t know what ‘they’ were?”
“I don’t, hon, and even if I did it might have nothing to do with Alice or the basement or any of it. It just stands out to me because, like I said, Mary never got mad at Bert. She’s a sweetheart, really.”
“Oh,” I say, visibly deflated. I stub the cigarette out in the ashtray. Fern puts her hand on my arm, leaning toward me so close I can see the freckles on her skin under her pale, creamy makeup.
“Listen, Stevie told her teacher once that I had a pet anaconda that I kept in the bath. Kids say weird things, don’t they? Their brains are all glitter and explosions. Maybe Tamsin is just repeating something she heard or saw on the television?”
I’m struck by an idea then, straightening up in my chair.
“Could I talk to her?”
“To Stevie?”
“Yes! She’s at Bert’s a lot, isn’t she? Maybe she’ll know something we don’t.”
Fern’s whole expression changes. Her eyes flatten, narrowing a little. Her mouth is drawn in a sharp, tight line.
“Absolutely not. It’s out of the question. She’s seven years old for fuck’s sake. Don’t drag her into this.”
I realize I’ve gone too far, even as Fern snatches up the coffee cups and stalks away to the kitchen. Alice is tainted and even if I can knock the supports out from under her delusions, the town will remember. That’s how superstitions thrive, after all.
“Fern, I’m sorry. Of course. I wasn’t thinking.”
I push my chair back and grab my bag, suddenly keen to be out in the cleansing sunshine, hotter than fire. Another thud from upstairs rattles the windows and Stevie cackles a big, full laugh.
Fern studies me, unsmiling, seeming to be bracing herself against a fall. Then her eyes soften a little and she releases a long, shuddering breath.
“No, I’m sorry. I overreacted. I just don’t want her swept up in all this, you know?”
I nod, stepping forward to shake her hand. Ignoring me, Fern grips me in a tight, clammy hug, pressing me to her close enough to whisper into my ear.
“Mina, I meant what I said. I really am interested in how you are. If you ever want to talk about it, you know where I am.”
The mind can turn on you, can’t it? That’s what Paul told me. I try not to think about poor Terry bleeding out in his beloved Ford Escort, try not to think about those white, groping fingers hanging from the chimney in the dark of the fireplace. It’s just fear, making my brain play tricks on me. It’s not real. None of it is real.