FRIDAY THE 13th – APRIL 2018Viola fills a glass, the squealing of the tap so loud in the silence of the cottage. She pours half of the water into a cereal bowl and places it on the floor for Dot, who is panting expectantly at her feet, then walks through to the tiny living room, eyeing the fine fissures in the walls, the quality of the carpet, the small pieces of furniture, as if she were a prospective tenant.
Through the oatmeal glow of the closed curtains, Viola can clearly make out the large paint splat coating much of the front window, the shadow of it like an oversized hand. She turns her attention to the charred stillness of the fireplace next, to the shelf above, where there is a framed family portrait. Peter Cedars, the gamekeeper, stands at the back. He is upright, smiling, would be almost unrecognisable if it weren’t for the distinctive crinkle of his eyes. Viola feels a tightening of her throat at the sight of him, at this strange, lighter version. He is holding hands with a woman – Susannah Cedars it must be, though she too is hard to recognise. Her hair is long in this picture, and Viola has only ever seen the woman from a distance, her face raw from crying.
Leah Cedars poses stiffly, soldierly, at the front, looking around thirteen or fourteen years of age. Her dress with its velvet yoke and ribbon at the neck belongs to a much younger girl. Her smile is wide but rigid, and she has a very late gap in her teeth at the side of her mouth. The boy beside her is eight or thereabouts, wearing tailored shorts, cut high on his skinny legs. He doesn’t fit in; he isn’t even trying to smile.
Viola finds herself staring at this boy, who is real and not real, wondering why she hasn’t met him yet, if she has failed to recognise his corresponding adult walking past her on the cobbles. But it is not just the anonymous boy that makes this picture feel off-kilter. It takes Viola a moment to realise what unsettles her: no one takes photos on Lark. On the mainland, every moment is captured, a phone is pulled from the pocket, and snap – happiness recorded, memories logged, shame inescapable forever.
People back home complained that photos never got printed anymore, that they sat idle and unlooked-at on hard drives, but that wasn’t true. Cabinet tops were clustered with framed holiday pictures, and school portraits trailed up stair walls. Bleached-out studio sessions looked down upon kitchen tables. Viola’s mother had gone around their house after the tragedy and taken down every single picture, not able to cope with the way a gaze might catch your eye and seem so alive. She’d put them all in a box, shoved behind the vacuum cleaner in the understairs cupboard, perhaps so Viola would not find them and be tempted to put them back. Her mother did not realise that that cupboard was the first place anyone would look.
Viola had found them, of course, taking one framed photo for her suitcase – all four of them in an open canoe, oars aloft, victorious. It was taken the summer before; the family at its zenith, joy unsullied, because no one in that picture knew that it would soon end.
The only other photos Viola has seen on the island, apart from this staged mantelpiece portrait, are on the wall of the Customs House – historic pictures of the estate.
And, of course, there are the pictures that Mr Hailey took.
It occurs to Viola that Mr Hailey might have taken pictures of Leah too. It feels good to think of the teacher by just her first name. The Eldest Girls still called her Miss Cedars out of habit; Viola always hit the L hard, demeaning her, making her small.
She heads upstairs, cautiously, as if someone might be sleeping there. The stairs are steep and the landing is but a metre squared. To the left, there is a step that leads down into a bathroom with a pastel blue curtain around the tub. Viola enters, feeling the air still misted from an early-morning shower. She opens the cabinet above the sink, finds very little, just moisturiser, aspirin, an almost empty tube of steroid cream. She presses a muddy boot to the pedal of the small bin by the toilet and is hit by the stale smell of blood. Inside are sanitary towels soaked through, bright red – too red, almost. She exclaims and backs away.
Across the landing is the bedroom; the curtains are open here, the window framing the tallest bobbing masts of the harbour. On the outside of the glass, there is a small spray of red paint spots from the main splash of it below. A crudely carved wooden heart hangs on a length of brown cord wound around the window catch. The object is almost as lumpy and malformed as an anatomical heart, rather than smooth and symmetrical, like the symbolic one it is supposed to resemble. That Leah Cedars would display this in her home and not be reminded of all that has happened only deepens Viola’s mistrust of the woman.
To the right of the window is a door that she pushes open, expecting to find a cupboard within, or a walk-in wardrobe. It is larger than that, though not much. There is a paper frieze of illustrated ducks dancing around the centre of the lemon-painted walls. There is space enough for a cot, but the room is bare. The emptiness of it makes Viola shudder and she shuts the door again, eager to be rid of the sight, of the feeling too.
Leah’s bed is made just so, with cushions on top of pillows, a counterpane folded back from the duvet – Viola expected as much. She also knew she would find the full suitcase on the bed, ready to close, but still she tuts and shakes her head – disappointed. There is a glimpse of petrol-blue fabric beneath the piles of neatly folded items in neutral colours. Viola tugs the blue thing free – a gaudy pleated skirt – and holds it up before tossing it, watching it slide from the bed into a clump on the floor.
She sees now the track of muddy footprints she’s made across the cream rug. The damage is done, so she lies down, right in the middle of the bed, letting her feet mess the counterpane too. She is Goldilocks with the wrong-coloured hair. Who’s been eating my porridge? Who’s been sleeping in my bed?
Mr Hailey has slept in this bed, has done things with Leah in it. Viola closes her eyes and imagines him crawling across the blankets until he is there, above her, his mouth close, the scar fresh on his chin.
She could never admit it to the Eldest Girls, but she understood his charm after seeing him that night at the stones – a man who feels like a boy, a boy who is so obviously a man. She pictures herself succumbing, having him press down on top of her, slide his warm hands under the layers of her clothing. Viola slips her own hands between her legs, pulling upwards against the fabric of her pyjamas, and feels the beginnings of a shiver of pleasure.
Then Dot leaps onto her, red lead dragging, licking Viola’s face.
‘Get off!’ she squawks, shoving the dog onto the floor. ‘Get off me!’
She growls at the ceiling to keep Dot at bay, to be free of the moment. She sighs. What is she doing anyway, messing around like this? Viola swings her legs to sit on the bed’s edge and picks up a tall stoppered bottle from Leah’s night table. Mercury’s Lavender reads the handwritten label. The purple liquid inside is half-drunk. Viola opens it, sniffs its pungent floweriness, puts the bottle back.
She is wasting time, she knows it.
The quiet of the cottage is a gift to exploit. This is her chance to hide away, to breathe, to work out every possibility that could come from Leah meeting Saul in the woods, of her seeing that body.
That body.
Viola doesn’t want to think of it as a real person with a name. It is easier that way. Anyone could be lying dead in the ferns. Don’t take it personally – that was the phrase the boys at her mainland school used if a girl was ever upset by an insult. Why do you have to take everything so personally? Calling a girl a sket or a ho was no excuse for that girl to think she was something special. All girls are skets and hos, if boys decide they are. The insult is universal, and so, in that case, is the body in the woods.
Viola lets Dot leap onto the bed this time and nestle beside her thigh. She pets the animal’s head as an apology for shouting.
Beside the bottle on the bedside table there is a wooden jewellery box. Viola lifts the lid, fingering through the few silver pieces there, plucking out a brooch shaped like an arrowhead, set with green stones.
She puts it in her pocket. It feels like a fair exchange. Or rather, it’s not quite enough. For now, Viola will take it as part payment.