As they burst into the muddle of Pillowell’s kitchen – wet clothes, muddy legs – Dora’s bulk blocked their way. She was comfortably propped against the Formica work surface, chopping onions for their evening meal, her bright blue eyes moistened by tears. Does she know? The sisters’ first thought. How can she, they’ve told no one, they came straight back here. Joanna, who up to then had been calm, began to cry; her narrow body painfully heaving in air, her ribs pumping like little bellows.
‘You are naughty girls,’ Dora started, sputtering, an engine warming up. ‘I’ve just been told that Gordon’s going back to Italy tomorrow.’ She directed her complaint to Caroline – for it was Caroline she held responsible. ‘You were so rude to him when he took us to Cinder-glade. So rude.’
Caroline turned away, painfully distracted; she was trying to put what they’d just found floating in the lake into some kind of order. But all she could focus on was the small metal sign hanging on a hook beside the cooker that read Chicken Today, Feathers Tomorrow ; the letters a blur through her tears.
‘We’ve found Ellie.’ Joanna was the one to speak, holding her neck as if to squeeze the words free. ‘She’s … she’s … ’ But they wouldn’t come.
Caroline gripped Dora’s hand, shiny with onion juice and still clutching the sharpened stump of a paring knife.
‘Ellie,’ she said, shaking it, wanting her aunt to understand the horror of what they’d seen. ‘She’s in the lake.’
‘Can you get that?’ Liz, on high alert for news of Ellie, was too anxious to answer the door in case of bad news. ‘Ian?’ she called through to her husband who, back after yet another search of the woods led by the indefatigable Reverend Mortmain, was finishing the bottle of Scotch he’d started at breakfast. ‘It’ll be Dean; he’s probably forgotten his key.’
It could be true, she supposed, fear thumping in her chest; they had taken to locking up early since Ellie went missing. The flood of journalists, the fierce police presence, keeping their regulars away. Not that she was capable of opening for business, consumed by fears for her missing child.
The front doorbell trumpeted again. ‘Ian?’ she shouted, holding her breath for his answer. But nothing came.
Running through the darkened, empty bar, her heart fluttering like a trapped bird behind her ribs, she saw the distorted shapes of two black uniforms through the mottled glass of the pub door.
Liz and Ian were still sitting in their numbed silence when Dean, back from seeing Amy safely home, loped along the passageway and into the living room.
‘Shit.’ He jumped at the unexpected sight of his father and stepmother’s silhouetted backs, indistinct in the orange glow of the electric fire that was needed since the temperatures dropped. ‘You scared the life out of me. What’s going on, what’s the matter – why you sitting in the dark?’ His fingers, agitated and fretful, twirled the curls at the nape of his neck.
‘Don’t .’ Liz’s voice, sharp from the shadows, prevented him from switching on the lamp. ‘Just sit down; we’ve something we need to tell you.’
‘Liz, you’re frightening me – what the hell’s the matter?’
‘Sit down, son.’ Ian now.
‘Dad? ’ Dean tried his father.
‘Do as Liz says. There’s a good lad.’
And he did. Whipping off his leather jacket in the over-stuffy room, he pulled up a chair opposite them.
‘Ellie’s dead,’ Liz announced with no preamble.
‘Ellie? Ellie’s dead?’ Dean sprung to his feet.
‘The police were here,’ his stepmother’s voice, still bereft of emotion.
‘Ellie? What? What are you saying?’ Dean threw his arms around in panic.
‘The Jameson sisters found her.’
‘What? Where was she?’ Dean heard himself: shouting, hysterical. ‘What are you saying? For God’s sake, what are you telling me?’
‘She’s been murdered, son.’ Ian, his cheeks soaked with tears. ‘They found her floating in the lake.’
‘The lake? What the hell was she doing in there?’
‘We don’t know, lad.’ It’s Ian who answers.
‘Liz?’ Dean reached out for her through the dark. ‘Liz? ’
But Liz couldn’t move, couldn’t speak. Fighting for breath, the sound when it came was akin to the braying of a cow in nearby farmland. A raw, base, animal sound. A sound the men in her life were forced to listen to, there being nowhere to run and hide from it; nowhere to shelve their feelings and detach themselves as they usually might.