A Place to Lie

‘But it suited the vicar to have Dean out of the way too, didn’t it?’ Wearing a poppy-red bruise on her temple and a butterfly stitch on her brow, Joanna watches fast-moving clouds obscure then expose the sun through Pludd Cottage’s windows.

‘Didn’t like him ?’ Joanna blurts. ‘I know I was only a kid, but even I could tell he hated him.’

‘Was the complicated how Carrie persuaded him to talk to the police on her behalf about Dean?’ Joanna asks this through the continuous drone of a headache: one of the many leftovers she’s living with after her terrible ordeal just over a week ago.

‘I think Tilly Petley was the driving force there; you said yourself she was keen to shift police focus away from her husband.’

‘Maybe.’ Joanna doesn’t sound sure. ‘But reading Carrie’s notebooks in hospital – scribbles, most of it nonsense – she kept making references to a dreadful secret the vicar was hiding.’ She lifts her eyes to Mrs Hooper’s. ‘You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?’

‘Because you said you and the vicar have been friends for years. From what you told me about Amy when I was last here, he obviously confides in you.’

‘Okay, okay. I suppose it’s safe to tell you.’ Joanna watches a blush travel up from Mrs Hooper’s neck. ‘The person it would have hurt’s no longer alive.’ She inhales deeply, as if about to dive into a swimming pool. ‘Carrie may well have seen us together; Timothy and I weren’t always as discreet as we should have been.’

‘Seen you together! What – you and the vicar?’ Joanna presses her damaged knuckles to her lips.

‘You’re telling me it’s still going on?’ Joanna looks away, her incredulity muffled by her fists.

‘We don’t have furtive meetings in the woods any more – we’re both too old for blankets and picnics, but yes, we keep one another company,’ Mrs Hooper whispers, even though Gordon, Mike, Freddie and Ethan are still out on a walk, and they’ve the place to themselves.

‘That was you, was it? Yes.’ Joanna answers her own question and drops her injured hands to her sides. ‘It makes sense now. Us kids … we found one of your abandoned picnics down by the lake. I should have guessed it was you, Carrie obviously did. There were chocolate brownies, weren’t there? We ate them in the boat … you used to give us them when we came round.’ A brief smile into the memory. ‘I can’t pretend I’m not shocked.’ She skims her gaze to Mrs Hooper again. ‘Honestly, though, I’d never have put the two of you together in a million years.’

‘I know Timothy’s a bit of an acquired taste.’ Mrs Hooper fiddles with the cuffs of her blouse. ‘But he’s been good to me. I was at my lowest when we started seeing each other, worn down from providing round-the-clock care for Derek. And, of course, he had troubles of his own at home.’ She bunches her shoulders. ‘I’m not proud of it.’

‘No, I don’t suppose you are.’ Joanna is having difficulty picturing Mrs Hooper as the scarlet woman. ‘Did his wife ever find out?’

‘You hope she didn’t. But whether she did or not, it was pretty mean of you to be carrying on with her husband when she was … was … stuck in that wheelchair.’ Joanna runs out of steam.

‘I’m not making excuses, but –’ Mrs Hooper seems to want to explain – ‘I think Timothy was a symptom of what living in a place like this did to me. Looking out, day after day, on nothing but greenery. You could forget you were human.’

‘I can understand that much, I suppose. Coming back to Witchwood as I have as an adult, there’s nothing here, is there? You can’t even get the internet, for goodness’ sake.’ A sigh. ‘So,’ Joanna, wanting to move things on, ‘that’s how Carrie got the vicar to take her to the police station, is it? By threatening to expose the pair of you.’

Their heads dart to the opening door and the bubbling chatter of Joanna’s children.

‘Oh, you’re back – did you have fun?’ Joanna cuddles Freddie and Ethan with as much gusto as her battered body allows. ‘Your dad given you a towelling?’ she asks the wagging Buttons, ruffling his damp head. ‘We don’t want you bringing mud into Mrs Hooper’s cottage.’

‘I’m boiling the kettle,’ Gordon announces, and bends to remove his cycle clips. ‘Anyone for tea?’ Lean as ever inside his usual shirt, tie and suit trousers. His full head of steel-grey hair gives him a distinguished look. ‘Great,’ he says to a show of hands, and pitches from the room.

‘You all right, Jo?’ Mike asks, giving her a kiss. Keeping Gordon company in the kitchen since they arrived that morning – peeling vegetables, stirring the gravy – he looks scruffy by comparison in jeans and Sunday stubble. ‘’Cos, you’re looking a bit pink – isn’t she?’ He twists his question to Mrs Hooper.

‘I’m fine,’ Joanna smiles. ‘It’s probably the fire – lovely as it is, I’m a bit over-warm.’

‘You’re not running a temperature again, are you?’ Mike tests her forehead with his hand. ‘Isn’t it time to take your painkillers?’

Joanna checks her watch and unbuckles her handbag to dig through its rattling innards. Unscrewing the lid of prescribed co-codamol and tipping the recommended dose into her palm, she puts the bolus in her mouth and swallows with a sip of the tea Gordon’s just made her. Tasting the bitterness on the back of her tongue, she wishes the distress of nine days ago, along with her week-long stint in Gloucester Infirmary, could be as easily numbed.

‘Thanks for that delicious lunch, Gordon,’ Joanna says. Then, determined to banish her recent trauma, along with the news Mrs Hooper’s just divulged, she swivels her attention to her fair-haired sons. Back from their yomp through the woods, they sit rosy-cheeked on Mrs Hooper’s peacock-patterned carpet, Buttons spread between them, totally absorbed with an old Monopoly set someone fetched from the loft.

‘Glad you enjoyed it.’ Gordon draws on the last of his gold-tipped cigarette before extinguishing it in an ashtray. ‘You must come again.’ As elegant as ever, he folds his violin-making hands in his lap.

‘It’s a real treat not to have to cook – not that I’m in any fit state.’ Joanna continues with her gratitude. And with the cup of tea balancing on the arm of the couch, her bruised legs and bandaged foot tucked under her, she scans the front page of the Sunday paper Mike brought in from the car.

‘No, you’re not in any fit state. You’re to take it easy, Jo – d’you hear? It’s going to take a long time to get over what that brute did to you.’ Mrs Hooper fiddles with the garnet brooch Joanna returned to her, which is now pinned to the collar of her blouse. ‘You were lucky to get out of there alive, you poor love. What a thing to happen.’

‘Gave as good as you got, though, didn’t you, Jo-Go.’ Mike, proud from his position by the fire.

‘What I can’t get over,’ Mrs Hooper shares her amazement with the room, ‘is how your search for Dean Fry ended up solving Ellie’s murder. But I have to say, I always had a bad feeling about you digging around in the past – and now I know why.’

‘I never liked Ian.’ Gordon, from his armchair. ‘And the cheek of the man, calling me a pervert.’

A resigned ripple of agreement from the grown-ups. Freddie and Ethan, heads bowed, throwing dice, counting out pretend money, don’t look up.

‘I always said he was a nasty piece of work. He was vile to Gordon,’ Mrs Hooper adds for the benefit of her Sunday guests, then turns to her son. ‘He was only like that to you to deflect any blame and suspicion from himself. It’s clear as day now, love.’ Her cup clatters noisily into its saucer.

‘All I can say is, thank God Gordon arrived when he did. He meant to kill me, you know.’ A glance at her sons; Joanna is thankful they aren’t listening. ‘I reckon he’d been watching the cottage from the moment I arrived. Liz must’ve told him I’d come here when she said she’d given me the suitcase. He knew I’d be alone until Mike arrived later Friday night.’

‘Only in conversation, though,’ Mrs Hooper says. ‘I’m sure Liz didn’t have the first idea what he was up to.’

‘Oh, no.’ Joanna shook her head. ‘She can’t possibly have known what Ian was hiding in that suitcase, or how desperate he’d be to get it back. I was working it out in hospital – that suitcase was the key to everything. And while he had it safely stashed away, he was in control. No wonder he went off his head when he realised it was, for the first time ,’ she stresses, ‘out of his control, and that someone else had it. And he wasn’t able to contain what he’d been holding in for the last twenty-eight years. It didn’t matter that he’d have to kill someone else, me –’ aware of her children sitting close by, Joanna drops her voice – ‘all that mattered to him was getting his suitcase back and being in control again.’

‘Yes. But what d’you expect? The man’s a murderer. Imagine the sort of twisted mind he’d have. But, I tell you,’ a tentative touch of her temple, ‘I wish I’d never taken the damn thing.’

‘I was going to ask why Liz gave it to you.’ Gordon throws one knee over the other. ‘If it was so easy to get rid of, then surely it could’ve been lost years ago?’

‘I suppose. Except it wasn’t hers to get rid of, was it? Ian told her it belonged to Dean, making out it contained precious things belonging to Dean’s mother, and he was keeping it for him,’ Joanna explains. ‘The only reason Liz gave it to me was because I said I was going to find him.’

‘Fair enough. But Ian took a hell of a risk keeping hold of those photographs, anyone could have found them.’ Mike shares his thoughts and sits down next to Joanna on the couch.

‘It was only the two of them living there, and Liz had no reason to question what Ian had told her. Liz wanted nothing to do with anything belonging to Dean or his dead mother. As far as she was concerned, they were just keepsakes he forgot to take with him in his rush to get out of Witchwood.’

‘Thinking about it, Liz was only able to give me the suitcase because Ian was at work. I was the one who prompted her to it. It was buried under a heap of junk and took her an age to dig out. She told me she’d wanted to sling it years ago, but couldn’t because Ian was so precious about it – and we all know why now.’ Joanna pauses into the weight of the revelation. ‘My fault for looking inside the damn thing.’ She hugs herself. ‘Talk about curiosity killing the cat – it nearly killed me.’ Another glance at her sons.

‘But then we’d never have known what he’d done, would we?’ Gordon defends Joanna’s recriminations before they have the chance to properly form.

‘And how were you supposed to know what was in there? You thought it was all perfectly innocent,’ Mrs Hooper adds.

‘I did, yes.’ Joanna squeezes out a smile. ‘But after I’d seen those photographs of his … and then him confessing what he’d done –’ she sucks in air through her teeth – ‘there was no way he was going to let me go.’

‘But how can he have got away with it for all these years?’ Mike quizzes. ‘He’d have been the first person they’d have suspected, wouldn’t he?’

‘You’re right, and it’s not like the police didn’t have him in for questioning enough times,’ Mrs Hooper says. ‘He can’t have had an alibi, can he?’

‘Liz told me there was some confusion about when Ellie actually died.’ Joanna shares what she discovered a week or so before. ‘Everyone knew she went missing early on the Saturday, but because me and Carrie didn’t find her until the Tuesday, it was difficult to pinpoint the exact time.’

‘More to do with her being found in fresh water, I should think. It must have been like keeping her in cold storage. Sad thing is,’ Gordon pulls a face, ‘there may well be ways to test the body temperature more accurately now, but not back then.’

‘Talk about a muddied timeline – must’ve made it near on impossible for the cops to establish exactly where anyone was.’ Mike rubs a hand over his stubble.

‘It’s why the police kept on at Dean,’ Joanna says. ‘With so little to go on, Carrie’s claim about seeing him being rough to Ellie would have seemed pivotal.’

‘I dread to think what would have happened to you, Jo, if I hadn’t phoned Gordon to say you were here.’ Mrs Hooper is the first to speak. ‘You were so keen to see her, weren’t you, love? You drove from London as soon as you could.’

‘Anyway, like I said, he was a nasty bugger,’ Mrs Hooper pipes up again. ‘And to think he was happy to let the whole village blame his own son for Ellie’s death.’

‘Happy for the police, too,’ Gordon adds. ‘It was only by the skin of his teeth Dean was released.’

‘Liz as well, don’t forget. Living as man and wife, lying to her all those years, letting her believe her stepson had done it. What kind of man does that?’

‘And all to protect his own scrawny arse,’ Joanna affirms, before remembering her boys are within earshot. She flicks her eyes to Freddie and Ethan again, relieved to see them still engrossed in their game of Monopoly.

Lamplight leaches into what remains of the day as they sit on mismatched armchairs and sofas. To stop himself from dozing off, Mike gets up to rekindle the fire from a basket of hazel sticks.

‘Freddie.’ Joanna gets her son’s attention. ‘Be a darling, offer the chocolates round.’

‘Oh, just the one. Thank you, dear.’ Mrs Hooper plucks one and bites it clean in half.

Joanna takes a coffee cream herself, closes her eyes as it dissolves on her tongue.

‘Gordon?’ A slightly flushed Lillian jabs a finger in the direction of her study. ‘Wasn’t there something you wanted to show Joanna?’

‘Righty-o.’ Gordon slips to his feet in one easy movement, as lithe as he ever was. ‘Be back in a jiffy.’

Joanna pulls her eyes away from the Sunday Times . She doesn’t turn the page, so doesn’t see the photograph of Dean Fry as he looks today; doesn’t read the article that would have provided further clarity to their conversation …

After nearly twenty-eight years, Dean Fry has broken his silence and spoken publicly for the first time about the murder of his stepsister, Ellie Fry. Raped and stabbed, Ellie disappeared on her 10th birthday, and her body was found three days later floating in a lake in woodland near her home in Witchwood, Gloucestershire. Dean Fry – 46, married with two daughters, a successful businessman now living in Weybridge – was 18 at the time. He talks openly about the case that made the headlines in August 1990, revealing his shock and revulsion at his father Ian Fry’s confession of sexually abusing his stepdaughter, Ellie, and killing her because she threatened to tell.

Dean shares his own memories of the fretful nights he was held in police custody, and although eventually released without charge, how frightening it was to be accused of her murder. A tearful Dean says he’s never forgotten Ellie, and talks of the shame and sorrow he still feels about being driven out of Witchwood.

‘The little reputation I had,’ he says, ‘was destroyed overnight. I became someone the vengeful, angry community could vent their fury at and punish because they couldn’t get their hands on the real killer.’ Learning it was, in fact, his own father who killed Ellie – a father who was happy to stand by and watch his own son take the blame – is something Dean doubts he’ll ever recover from. Ian Fry is also currently being questioned by police about Freya Wilburn, an eight-year-old girl who went missing from her home in Cinderglade, Gloucestershire, in 2014.

‘What are you two up to?’ Joanna gives a cautious smile at Lillian through the trembling firelight. ‘D’you know, Mike?’ she asks her husband, who has moved to the window to watch a blue tit wrestling with a fringe of crust on the bird table.

‘No idea.’ He picks up and puts down the conkers that have been lined up along the windowsill.

‘Hang on. Only one moment more, he’ll be back presently. I’ve been bursting to tell you.’ Mrs Hooper licks chocolate from her fingers. ‘He told me when you were in hospital last week, when he was worried you wouldn’t pull through – but swore me to secrecy.’

What Gordon passes Joanna is a small pink envelope. Taking it, she turns it over in her hands. The letters of Mrs Hooper’s address that begin their lives as neat and round, mutate into smudged, erratic shapes before reaching the opposite side.

‘Open it,’ Gordon encourages. ‘It’s a letter your mother sent me just before you and Carrie came to Witchwood that summer.’

‘My mother?’ Joanna doesn’t understand. ‘Why would my mother write to you?’

‘We were friends. Good friends. Once upon a time. Read it, please . It’ll explain everything.’ And he sits beside her, in the gap Mike left behind on the couch.

‘We came to Witchwood because … because … ’ Joanna looks up at him. ‘I’m not sure I want to be reminded of all that again.’

The letter is thin at the folds from where it’s been read and reread. Joanna holds her breath as she scans her mother’s words; words that begin with Dear Gordon , and snaking from left to right unsettle her. I’m frightened … she reads:

… my children will be orphans after I’ve done this terrible thing, but I can’t go on, I have to make the blackness stop. I know you’ll understand, the shame I carry is too heavy, the lies I told a good man, a man who died loving me and the daughters he believed were both his own, is too much to bear. I’m only telling you this because my intention is to die today, but if I don’t succeed, you must swear never to breathe a word of what I’m telling you to anyone. Joanna must not know that you are her real father, and that I lied to her, until I’m safely gone from this world.

Love, Imogen.

‘Well, I-I … yes … I suppose,’ she answers eventually, her hands shaking.

‘I didn’t know how to tell you. Sworn to secrecy, I couldn’t even risk telling Mum.’

‘But my mother’s been dead for two years.’ Joanna, searching him with fresh eyes, still can’t fathom it.

‘I know, but it’s taken me this long to pluck up the courage.’ Gordon’s hands, balanced on his knees, look as vulnerable as the heads of flowers. ‘It was when I thought I’d lost you … seeing you lying there, in that hospital bed … ’ The feebleness of his explanation fizzles out.

‘I can’t take this in.’ Her bruised face flushes. ‘You said something at Carrie’s funeral,’ she says to Mrs Hooper. ‘About that summer Mum came to stay with Dora before I was born. How friendly Gordon and Mum were. Was it then?’ she asks, turning to Gordon. ‘Did you two have an affair?’

Gordon bows his head and stares at his shoes. ‘I didn’t want to upset you; it hasn’t, has it? I know it’s a lot to take in, but I hope in time, you might be pleased.’

‘I don’t know what I am.’ Joanna is thinking how adultery seems to be the overriding theme in this household. ‘What you and my mother did, it obviously caused her a huge amount of stress and unhappiness … read the letter, it’s all in there.’ She flaps the pink sheet of paper at him. ‘She’s so riddled with guilt, she thought killing herself was the only way out. Why didn’t she just tell me? At least when I got older. This swearing you to secrecy nonsense – that’s her all over; so bloody selfish. What harm would it have done? The father I thought was mine had died.’

‘I bet you wish you’d not said anything now,’ Mike says to lighten things. ‘Come on, Jo-Go – it’s a lot to take in, but it’s not so bad. There’s no need to get upset, not really.’

‘I’m sorry, love,’ Mrs Hooper addresses her son. ‘But I’m on Jo’s side with this. I’m an old woman – think of the years I’ve missed out on having my granddaughter.’ Mrs Hooper passes Joanna a tissue. ‘Try not to stress yourself, Jo. You’ve been through so much already.’

Mike puts an arm around his wife in an attempt to rally her. ‘Yeah, but none of it’s really Gordon’s fault, is it? Not if Imogen made him promise.’

Joanna dabs the tender skin under her eyes. ‘Yes, okay, but what am I supposed to do with the memories of a man I thought was my dad?’ She drops her voice, gives way to further tears.

‘Your mother wanted nothing to do with me beyond that summer.’ Gordon squeezes his thin knees. ‘But when she sent me that letter, telling me I had a daughter, and then actually meeting you … ’ He pauses, struggling to supress his own emotion. ‘It was the hardest thing not to tell you.’

‘Carrie used to think you were creepy.’ Joanna blinks through wet lashes. ‘The way you used to follow us around as kids.’

A tight laugh. ‘Did she? I suppose it could have looked like that. But if I followed you around it was only to keep an eye on you. Bit overprotective, I know,’ he admits, almost an apology. ‘Probably because of what happened to my sister.’

The room goes quiet. Gordon, awkward, looks at his shoes again. The only sound is the crackling flames in the hearth.

Mike exhales into the general bewilderment. ‘Well, that’s quite something to get your head around, isn’t it, boys?’

Abandoning their game, Freddie and Ethan spin their heads to him. Open-mouthed, the concern clouding their young faces isn’t about what’s been going on, neither have fully grasped that. Their worry is for their mother, who has suddenly turned a deathly pale.

‘What’s wrong with Mummy?’ Freddie, up on his feet, Ethan close on his heels, whispers his fear at his father’s elbow. ‘She isn’t going to have to go back to the hospital, is she?’

Lost in thought, Joanna doesn’t hear her child. ‘It’s like I’ve been hit by a train … another train . Honestly, I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with all this.’ She leans back and shuts her eyes.

‘It’s quite a shock,’ Mike says, his arms around his sons. ‘But we’ve had worse, haven’t we, Jo?’

Joanna opens her eyes to him, gives the suggestion of a smile. ‘Certainly been a pretty eventful few months. I didn’t think there could be any more surprises.’

Present Day