The Lost Child

Brodie Miller shivered, a movement that seemed to rattle the very bones of her small frame. Miriam asked her if someone had walked over her grave. Brodie replied that if that was true it felt as though they had decided to hang around and perform act one of Riverdance on it.

Miriam speculated that Brodie might be coming down with something and foisted a mug of honey and lemon on her then sent her upstairs to bed with a hot water bottle, just in case. Neither remedy had arrested the strange feeling that had entered her bones, but both had provided a good excuse for her to remove herself from the unnerving presence of her Great-Aunt Esther.

Esther’s unrelenting beady-eyed stares, her wrinkled puckered lips and that thing she did – pinching and plucking at the arm of her chair with her spindly fingers – were all driving Brodie spare. So much so that she would have faked a cold long before if she’d thought it would get her off the hook so easily. Being in the same room as Esther was awful, it was like being eyed up by a hungry witch. Esther had a way of stripping you bare with her eyes, which bothered her no end. Especially because she suspected that Esther saw things which Brodie would prefer she didn’t.

Smug with relief at her easy escape she settled onto the creaking bed and peered out of the window. Her room was the only thing she had instantly liked about Hallow’s Cottage. The fact that she was up in the eaves and could see the world below from the comfort of a warm bed pleased her no end. Whoever had built the place, God knows how many hundreds of years ago, had been forced to put the window near the floor to fit it in so it felt like a vantage point, somewhere she could observe unseen.

Since arriving at the cottage she had spent many hours lying there watching the windswept trees perform their strange and urgent ballet, bowing this way and that, as if beckoning towards the big house beyond. Brodie had only glimpsed Hallow’s Court, too unsure of this place yet to want to venture further into something that already felt like a time-slip. It was unsettling enough to have been foisted on these unfamiliar relatives with no warning to either party. Miriam was nice enough, Esther downright scary – but the whole Downton Abbey set-up was frankly weird when you were fifteen and freaked out already. Exploring Hallow’s Court at close quarters wasn’t high on her list of priorities at that time, despite the urgency of the leafy invitation. She had to admit that the big house beyond the trees did intrigue her. It housed a family with such ancient origins that their centuries-long occupation of the land had given the place their name. Hallow’s End served Hallow’s Court and vice versa. Brodie felt quite proud that she had worked out the significance of the apostrophe in the village name. It meant that the place belonged, that it had sprung from some feudal right bestowed by an archaic ruler. It meant this place was really old and had been spawned by the presence of the Hallow family. Imagine that, owning the land and the people who lived on it? Of course it wasn’t like that any more, but it was still weird, the idea that a place could be born from someone’s name. The problem was that the whole concept made you feel like you had to be part of it, be encompassed by all the oldness and sucked into the history. Brodie had grown up on a council estate where the only things that made you belong were a lack of money and the lack of any ambition that might get you out. The concept of wanting to embrace the place you lived was entirely alien to her.

The thought of how freakish it all was provoked a gobbet of anxiety, which forced her to fumble for her mobile phone and scroll down the contacts list until she found her brother’s name. It was necessary to send a text asking him to call her; she didn’t have much credit. No one had thought to give her any money in the melee which had ensued when her mother had been taken to hospital. The memory of that day made her shiver again. She could imagine little worse than coming home from school to find her mother lying in a sea of spilled pills, vodka and vomit. Actually that was a lie, what was worse was having to come home and see it again, and again, and again.

She was relieved when a few minutes later the phone began to vibrate in her hand. ‘Tone, thanks for ringing back. I’ve got no credit.’

‘No probs Squidge, what’s up?’ Tony asked, his voice tinny and more distant than she would have liked. It felt like he was a million miles away.

‘Nothing really, just wanted to speak to someone, you know,’ she said, her voice cracking as the unbearable worm of misery wriggled, causing her lip to wobble and a tear to bulge ominously at the corner of her eye. She hated herself for being so weak.

‘Awwww, Squidge! Don’t cry, I know it’s crap, but it won’t be for long. As soon as I can get leave I’ll come and get you, OK?’

‘OK’ she said, sniffing.

‘How are the old bids? Treating you all right?’

‘Yeah, they’re OK. Miriam’s nice, but Esther’s a bit freaky. She looks at me like I’m something nasty someone brought in on their shoe. And I’m supposed to earn my keep by helping with the guests, Miriam had me lugging people’s bags today, and I had to change beds and vacuum,’ she said in a decidedly sulky tone.

Tony laughed, ‘Well a bit of work won’t kill you, and it’ll keep you out of trouble. Don’t worry about Esther, she’s always been like that – thinks hers doesn’t stink as I remember – but she’s relatively harmless, especially now. I can remember getting a few slapped arses when I was a kid though. Now she’s confined to a chair you should be safe enough. But remember to wipe your feet and mind your p’s and q’s. Anyway, I’ll put a few quid in your bank OK?’

‘Cheers Tone. Look, do I really have to stay here? I could cope on my own ‘til you get back, you know I could.’ She heard his weary sigh and could guess what face he would be pulling.

‘Look Squidge, you know the score. I’m sorry love but I had no choice, you can’t stay on your own, no way. Not that I don’t trust you, but those scumbags on the estate would take the piss no end if they thought you were on your own. Besides, your social worker would have you in care before we could blink. I know you don’t know the old bids, but they’re OK, and it’s got to be better than foster care hasn’t it? At least they’re family.’

Brodie snorted, ‘Yeah, family I never even knew existed we’re so bloody close! Speaking of family, have you heard from Fern?’ At the mere mention of their sister’s name she could sense Tony bristling with contempt.

‘Yeah I spoke to her, she’s not interested. She’s got a holiday booked and can’t get down to see Mum or you. She doesn’t care Brode, you know that.’

‘Yeah I know. Still…’

Tony changed the subject, ‘Anyway, I called the hospital earlier. Mum’s OK, she’ll probably end up having ECT sometime this week and hopefully that’ll sort her out, eh?’

Brodie rolled her eyes, it came to something when zapping people with electricity and turning them into dribbling simpletons was the only answer. ‘Maybe. Won’t bring Mandy back though will it?’

There was silence, and for a moment she thought Tony had gone and the connection had been broken. ‘You still there?’ It took a second longer, but finally he answered.

‘Yeah, still here, sorry. I wish she’d get over it, it was thirty years ago for Christ’s sake! Shit happens and we just have to live with it. I wish she’d just bloody get a grip and concentrate on the family she has got. Perhaps then Fern wouldn’t be a complete fuck up and you wouldn’t be shipped off to all and sundry every five minutes!’

And perhaps you wouldn’t have run off to the Navy and left me alone to deal with it, Brodie thought but didn’t say. ‘I suppose…’ was what she did say, reluctant to embark on a confusing and emotive debate about how a woman should deal with the abduction and probable murder of her child. ‘I just wish we didn’t have to live with it so much’ she said, picturing the council flat that she called home, which had become a shrine to the missing Mandy, the perpetual toddler who clung to Brodie’s existence like a hungry ghost. She didn’t want to think about it. ‘Anyway, when can you get leave?’

Tony sighed again, ‘I don’t know Brode, it’s difficult. I know it’s crap but no one died and it’s hard to make the Navy understand that I should be looking after you. But I’m doing my best, OK?’

‘OK’ she said, not entirely sure she believed him. Much as she adored her brother, he wasn’t always as honest as she’d like him to be. She knew for a fact he couldn’t handle Shirley, their mother. Besides, she was pretty sure that Tony’s girlfriend Kerry might have some influence on the situation. Brodie had only met her twice, and though she was nice enough she got the distinct impression that Kerry wasn’t a girl who embraced complexity. Their family was complex if it was nothing else. Brodie knew it by instinct, but had seen it confirmed on the referral to Young Carers that her social worker had recently made. ‘Complex family issues’ she had written. As far as Brodie was concerned, if it was written down in black and white, it was gospel.

‘OK Squidge, I’ve got to go, but I’ll put that money in for you all right? It’ll be all right Brode, I promise.’ He ended the call before she had chance to interject with an emotional reply.

Brodie stared at the screen for a few minutes, waiting for the light to fade from the display and blink out. She’d wanted to talk more, to ask him why he’d sent her to stay in the very place where Mandy went missing. Even though she already knew the answer – there hadn’t been anywhere else. Brodie Miller wasn’t wanted and never really had been. Which reminded her that there were other things she needed to say.

She’d wanted to ask him how he thought their mum would take it, knowing that he’d entrusted Miriam, the woman she still blamed for Mandy’s abduction, with the care of her youngest daughter? However – Brodie wasn’t three, she wasn’t a vulnerable baby. She’d been looking after herself for a long time. But beyond all that, beyond the past, she wanted to know why nobody told her anything and just expected her to work it out for herself and then suck it up. And why, all in all, she was worth less than a dead child. Especially one like Mandy. The child had been endowed with such saintly attributes in her long absence that she couldn’t possibly be real. Ok, Brodie was neither cute nor beguiling, but she was there, she was real, she existed.

There had been times, recent times, when Brodie would have been lucky to have found a tin of beans for her tea. Whereas complete strangers still lit candles for the missing Mandy.

*

Elaine emptied a tin of mushroom soup into saucepan and while she waited for it to heat through, buttered a few slices of bread. Her exploration of the village that afternoon had yielded the knowledge that if she wanted to eat well during her stay, she would have to drive into town to buy food. Hallow’s End wasn’t going to provide anything more than the absolute basics. The village store seemed to exist as a place to exchange gossip rather than as a shop. Other than the fast turnover stuff like bread, milk and butter, the other stock had been rimed with a film of dust suggesting that it was there for show and was only bought by those in abject desperation. Elaine had been both abject and desperate and had paid for her shopping under the curious and pitying stare of several village residents.

The walk back had been a hairy experience, it hadn’t occurred to her that rural areas weren’t overburdened with street lighting. The combination of descending darkness, rough terrain and inappropriate footwear had resulted in a sore ankle and not a little embarrassment. She hadn’t anticipated showing herself up as such a rube. Fortunately her only witnesses had been a herd of unimpressed cows. In falling she had managed to dent the tin of soup, which made the prospect of eating it even more unappealing.

The truth was that she hadn’t really thought this trip through. The whole thing had been motivated by a desperate need to get away and be anywhere else but at home surrounded by reminders of Jean. Dan, her philosophical builder, had suggested she might be having a delayed grief reaction. It was possible she supposed, but didn’t quite explain the sense of guilt-ridden relief she’d felt at her mother’s demise. Not that she hadn’t loved her mother – if the loyalty she had shown was love, she had. Jean had been a loving, attentive, caring, cloying, claustrophobic, hovering, demanding, frightened, needy…

‘STOP Elaine’ she told herself. ‘Just stop, it’s gone. Breathe.’ But the feelings clutched at her, forcing her to pull at the scarf around her neck to make room for more air. As she pulled, her fingers brushed against the ragged scar that ran halfway round her throat. Instinctively she left the garment in place, patting it down to make sure it hid the ugliness beneath.

‘Get a grip Elaine, for God’s sake!’ she chided out loud, deliberately turning her attention to the soup which had started to burble and slop in the pan.

It was a pretty disgusting meal, but she was hungry and ate the grey tinged soup for the sake of filling the hollow in her belly. Time was passing very slowly in the cottage, so much so that she was almost tempted to release the clock from its hidey-hole. But she knew that its insistent clamour would do nothing but transport her straight back where she didn’t want to be.

The first thing she had done after Jean’s funeral was to walk into the lounge and smash the mantel clock. Dropping it repeatedly onto the floor until it was nothing but a pile of steampunk paraphernalia and splintered wood. Yet even after that, at night particularly, she could hear it ticking in the background. As if the accursed thing had acquired a spirit and had come back to haunt her.

Dan had been shocked at the destruction and had told her that the clock was antique and worth a substantial amount of money. Elaine had responded by telling him that it was a shame it had fallen off the mantel the way it had, but never mind, it was probably insured… As if any intrinsic value could offset its role as her warder. It had been that single point of reference which drew long suffering and disappointed glances from her mother each time Elaine was late, or wanted to go out. Or wanted to just be alone.

Dan had offered to source a replacement for her, saying he had a friend in the antique trade. Elaine had been hard pressed to keep the look of horror off her face at the suggestion. Thinking of the incident now reminded her that she needed to ring him, check on progress. The new kitchen and bathroom he was installing were intended to make the house a lot easier to sell, something she was eager to accomplish as soon as she could. Checking her phone she was relieved to find it had almost full signal. A pleasant surprise in a location that didn’t believe in protecting pedestrian safety by having street lights. She hesitated before making the call. She had known Dan for a long time, since school. Since he had been one of the cool lads who had hung around outside the gate of the Girls’ High School waiting for the cool girls to come out. Elaine had not been a cool girl. She had been shy and awkward, and usually the butt of jokes and bullying. Most of it centred on the scar, her nickname had been Scaramouche (she still couldn’t listen to Bohemian Rhapsody without cringing). She had always been too intimidated to tell her tormentors that Scaramouche didn’t mean ‘scar face’. Had she decided to tell them that Scaramouche meant ‘skirmisher’ and that he was a character from Punch and Judy and was portrayed as a cowardly clown, she might have compounded her reputation as a snooty little know-it-all. Or worse, found out that they knew already and were being deliberate in endowing her with the epithet. The rest of the animosity focused on the fact that she had been a complete dork with her regulation uniform and knee high socks. Not to mention having a mother who insisted on picking her up from school until the age of fifteen. Childhood had not been a joy for Elaine. Dan, however, had been the single bright spot in her non-existent teenage social life. She’d had a crush on him since she was thirteen when he had smiled at her as she’d waited for her mother. That any boy had noticed her was a bonus, that it was Dan – who’d she’d thought of as an Adonis – was unbelievable to her shy, adolescent mind. When she was fifteen she’d been allowed to go to a school disco, where the staff had played chaperone and the only drinks available had been weak orange squash and flat coke. Had Jean known it was a joint affair with the boys’ school she would never have allowed it, but Elaine had lied. She’d felt awkward in her unfashionable clothes and flat, sensible shoes and had wished she hadn’t agreed to go, especially when a group of girls from her year had requested Bohemian Rhapsody three times in a row from the DJ and were busy singing it at her with great emphasis. She had been about to make a run for it and take herself home when Dan had appeared like a knight in shining armour (actually on seeing him she had tripped over a chair in her rush to leave, launched a cup of orange squash all down his shirt and had run from the school hall in tears of humiliation). He’d chased after her and she had hidden in an alley, snivelling with shame. He’d found her, told her she owed him a new shirt and had walked her home. Halfway, he’d held her hand and she remembered feeling as though her heart would burst out of her chest at the excitement. It hadn’t, but she had felt sick with anticipation. When they reached the end of the drive where she lived he had kissed her (she had been so shocked she had forgotten to breath and almost passed out). He’d asked her out, and she had nearly died of happiness – until Jean stormed out of the front door yelling and screaming at him, calling him a pervert and a stalker. Elaine didn’t think there was a moment when she had hated her mother more. What she had liked about Dan most after that was that he hadn’t given up, he had been the one person who had defied Jean. Their relationship had been a tentative and furtive thing, squeezed into lunch hours and walks home where she’d had to say her goodbyes in an alleyway away from the sight of neighbours. They had dated for a year, if dating was the correct term for a bunch of clandestine fumblings. It had ended for two reasons – a girl who disliked Elaine but liked Dan had taken it upon herself to tell Jean what her daughter had been up to, which resulted in Jean grounding Elaine and picking her up from school at lunchtimes and at the end of the day just to add insult to the injury. Then Dan’s father had died and Elaine hadn’t seen much of him after that, not until after Jean had died and the solicitor had recommended him as a decent builder. Stupidly she hadn’t connected the name on the card with her teenage crush and had suffered a great degree of mortification when she had opened the door to find ‘D. Collier, Builder’ was that D. Collier. Oh how they’d laughed…

Elaine wasn’t sure she would ever get past the abject humiliation of that puppy love. A frisson of vintage embarrassment rippled through her every time she thought of Dan. It was difficult to equate the memory of the louche teenage Dan with the contained, mature man who was currently tearing her house apart. He’d kept his looks, though his features had been fine-tuned by time. A neighbour, who had been loitering at the end of the drive when Elaine had shown Dan out, had commented as they had watched him pull away ‘I wouldn’t kick him out of bed in a hurry’. Mrs Cooper had to be seventy if she was a day and Elaine hadn’t been sure who the comment had embarrassed more, the elderly Mrs Cooper, or herself for silently agreeing.

Back in the moment Elaine looked down at her phone and dialled Dan’s number, squashing down the shy teenager and forcing herself to be the confident, mature woman she ought to be. It was a constant struggle.

He answered on the third ring.

‘Dan? It’s Elaine, just checking the tiles arrived today,’ she said in response to his cheerful hello.

‘Yep, no problem, arrived this morning. Old ones are off but we won’t be able to start tiling until everything else is in. We hit a snag though, I don’t suppose you knew that you still had lead piping, did you?’

Elaine wasn’t sure that she would recognise a lead pipe if she were hit over the head with one. Pipes were pipes. But lead didn’t sound good. ‘No, I didn’t, is it dangerous?’

‘Not as such, not in the bathroom anyway, the lime scale build-up makes it mostly safe, but we’re obliged to replace it with copper. I kind of went ahead, I hope that’s OK?’

Elaine sighed, it would be extra money, but the job couldn’t be done otherwise. ‘That’s OK Dan, do what you’ve got to do, hang the expense!’ She was rather enjoying the warm chuckle that her words had elicited from him, but was glad that he couldn’t see the flush on her cheeks.

‘Well, it is going to be expensive, there’s a lot to strip out, and it looks like you might need a re-wiring job too. Most of the electrics are pre-war by the look of them.’

‘Doesn’t surprise me, she never did like spending money, it was like living in the basement of the science museum, living history and all that. Good job she stuffed it in the bank instead. Do what you’ve got to do, I can’t sell it as it is.’