2018
I’M SITTING IN A SMALL room with cream walls and uncomfortable chairs. I seem to have been here a long time. I’ve gone to the bathroom along the hall twice. A woman in uniform has to stand outside the door of the ladies’, perhaps to make sure I don’t run away. ‘I’m not a fast runner,’ I tried to explain. ‘I was always better at cross country.’
The woman had smiled a little. ‘I’ll be right outside, Edie.’
And now I’m back in this room. I’ve already spoken to someone, a woman who arrived with a tag around her neck. She came to assess me, they said. She asked me all sorts of questions, just like the ones before at the hospital, as though I was a contestant on a quiz show. What day of the week is it? Where do you live? Who is the Prime Minister? I’m pretty sure I got that one wrong. It all changes so quickly, it’s hard to keep up. Once they decided I’d done well enough at the quiz, they brought me back here and explained lots of things to me. I’ve tried to remember them all. I keep repeating the words they used, wanting to make sense of them. Under caution, they said. Due to your admission. Anything you say can be used as evidence. Video- and audio-recorded. Entitled to a legal adviser.
Two police officers enter the room. They’re sitting in front of me, a man and a woman. The man is slim, clean-shaven, not much more than a boy. But then I remember, it isn’t him who’s young but me who’s old. There is a woman officer too; she’s got reddish-brown hair that’s been neatly tied back, green eyes, pale skin.
‘Did I pass the quiz?’ I ask them.
‘Yes,’ the female police officer says. ‘We’re going to begin the interview now, Edie. Are you sure you don’t want a legal adviser at this stage?’
‘Oh, no,’ I say. ‘I know I’m going to prison.’
The two officers exchange glances. ‘This is an interview, Edie,’ the female officer says. ‘We’d like you to tell us what you told the officer on the telephone, what you said about Lucy Theddle, her disappearance.’
‘She disappeared in 1951.’ I know I have got this question right. I’m sure it’s been on my mind. The answer, Lucy’s name, rises easily to the surface. The typewriter key has finally come unstuck.
‘Yes,’ the female police officer says. ‘And you say you have some new information, about what happened to Lucy?’ She glances at the male officer.
I fumble for the piece of paper in my pocket, the one that answers all the questions, but it doesn’t seem to be there. ‘I had it just a moment ago,’ I murmur.
The female officer is looking at me but her face doesn’t give much away.
‘She was on the kitchen floor,’ I say, my voice wobbling a little.
The female officer keeps her eyes on me. ‘Where was this, Edie?’
‘At home. Reg was there. He said it was an accident. He said we mustn’t say anything, because of my mother, how awful it would be for her. He said we were to pretend we didn’t know anything.’
The female officer glances down at her notes. ‘This was your home. Six Sycamore Street?’
I nod.
‘And you’re referring to Reginald Drakes, your stepfather?’
‘Yes,’ I say, remembering the half-empty church, the paper taste of the confetti on my tongue. ‘My mother wanted to go dancing, you see. They’d been courting.’ Before I can stop it, a small sob escapes my throat. ‘She’s dead,’ I say.
‘Lucy?’
‘My mother.’
‘Yes.’ The female police officer exchanges another glance with the male officer, who is leaning forward in his chair.
I can see my mother smoking in the kitchen, Lucy’s picture in the paper. Eddie Fisher is singing on the radio. I hope they’re doing all they can to find her, she had said, and I’d wanted to tell her then but of course I couldn’t.
The male officer coughs and I’m back in this small, bare room with the recording device on the desk and the two officers waiting patiently for me to remember, for me to get it right.
‘Can you tell us how Lucy died, Edie?’ the male officer asks.
I frown and look down at my hands in my lap. I shift my sitting bones on the uncomfortable chair. It is very uncomfortable. They don’t need to torture me, I’ve already confessed. They should have cushions. Perhaps being this uncomfortable helps people to remember. I think of Lucy crying on the bin bench, dancing in Rupert’s arms. I’ve got a secret, Edie. We’re on the beach, our legs stretched out in front of us. Mr Wheaton is at the board, a piece of chalk tucked behind his ear. The ordinary house with the neat driveway and the pictures of feet on the walls, Lucy’s cry of pain.
‘Death and mess and wasted lives,’ I mutter.
‘Sorry, Edie. Can you speak up?’
‘It was all because of my diary. We were ready to leave but she didn’t want anyone to find it.’
The police officer tilts her head, just a fraction, perplexed. I know how she feels: it’s taken me so long to make sense of it all.
‘Reg was blackmailing her about the abortion. It was the final straw. We decided to go. But then she went back.’
The officer nods encouragingly.
‘Reg found Lucy in the house. He thought she had stolen the money, but she hadn’t, I took it. We were going to use it to run away with. Reg must have pushed her. She hit her head on the doorstop. That’s what Reg said. My mother predicted it. Eggs and rabbits, you see.’
No one says anything for a moment and I wonder if I’ll be allowed a cup of tea. I wouldn’t mind a biscuit, but then the female officer is speaking again.
‘Do you know what happened to Lucy? After the accident?’
I shake my head. ‘Reg was gone all afternoon. He took the van. He took the keys to the garages too.’
‘Which garages would this be, Edie?’
‘The garages at the abattoir. Reg used to drive a van for them. He was a mechanic too. He was always up there, fiddling about with that van. My mother said he loved the van more than he loved her. When I got back, the kitchen had been cleaned, and when Reg came in his boots were covered with a thick grey dirt.’
The male officer frowns. ‘Are you saying, Edie, that you believe Reginald Drakes disposed of Lucy’s body, after she died in an accident in your house?’
I nod. I can see Lucy lying on the floor. Blood, dark and sticky, pooling around her hair. Her hand limp underneath her body. I close my eyes, not wanting to think of it, not wanting to remember anymore.
‘Take all the time you need.’ The female officer is speaking to me but her words sound far away, distant and echoey.
‘We couldn’t tell my mother. She wouldn’t have coped. That’s what Reg said. He didn’t want to go to prison. He didn’t think he’d be believed when he told them it was an accident. He said they could both go to prison because of the abortion. I thought my mother might have another breakdown, that they might send her away. I only remembered because of the rabbit. It was on my crossword. And I was wearing Lucy’s necklace all along. I bought it back for her, from the pawn shop, but I never had a chance to give it to her. I’ve had it with me all these years. It slipped under the lining of my jewellery box.’
‘I see.’ The female officer glances at her notes. ‘You had time off school, Edie. A month or so in September 1951, due to a fever that began in August, a few weeks after Lucy Theddle disappeared. It’s here in your medical records. Do you remember?’
I screw my eyes tightly shut – flannels, damp sheets, anxious bumps on my skin, ginger tea, small spoonfuls of chicken soup, drawn curtains. And then, one afternoon, when I was feeling a little better, I walked to the park and saw Miss Munby. I finally broke down then. I sobbed and sobbed and I remember how she put her arm around my shoulders and said: Oh, Edie. Of course I couldn’t tell her why I was really crying, what I knew about Lucy’s disappearance. But I told Miss Munby about living with Reg, how I couldn’t be there any longer, how I had to get away, how I’d had a plan but it had all gone horribly wrong. By October I had moved in with Miss Munby. She had two rooms she let to lodgers and I took the smallest. I realised, after a while, that the lady who had the other room wasn’t really a lodger at all but was a particular sort of friend of Miss Munby’s, only things like that weren’t acceptable in those days. They took care of me and didn’t charge me very much, which meant I could stay on at school and only work at the weekends. I saw my mother regularly but I never went home, I never saw Reg. Then I went away to a teaching college in London. I went even though Lucy couldn’t, perhaps because Lucy couldn’t. And then there was that afternoon when I’d stood in the hallway of the college holding the telephone. Girls coming in and out, bringing in grey sludge on their winter boots. A cold, icy day in February. Reg had been caught stealing from his employer, my mother told me on the telephone. He was going to prison. Two years, she said. My mother only went to visit him once, after which she declared he’d turned religious. Apparently he thought my mother finally coming to visit him meant he was on the path to forgiveness. My mother said that kind of pressure was a bit too much and never went back. The Lord’s forgiveness! He only stole a few sausages, she said to me once. By the time Reg came out, my mother had sold the house and moved to the coast. She got a job as a doctor’s receptionist and bought a little flat with a balcony and a sea view. Reg found her of course, but by then she wanted nothing more to do with him.
I heard that not long after Lucy’s disappearance, Mr Wheaton left Ludthorpe, that he moved away. Several years later, my mother mentioned to me in passing that she’d heard from someone who knew June that Mr Wheaton had lost his job at a school somewhere in Surrey, after allegedly having a relationship with a fifteen-year-old girl. I never found out if he was prosecuted but this acquaintance of June’s, so my mother told me, said he was unlikely to ever be able to teach again, and that June had taken her child and moved in with her parents.
*
‘Edie?’ Someone is saying. ‘Do you need to take a break?’
‘I forgot what I did,’ I tell the two police officers, dropping my chin to my chest, a thickness in my throat. ‘I never told them what I knew.’ My shoulders begin to shake and my face is wet. Why is my face wet? I reach up to touch my cheek and realise my hand is shaking. I can’t seem to breathe properly. The room is too bright and I hide my face in my hands. A large, fat teardrop falls onto my lap. A machine is being switched off. The door is opening. The young male officer is helping me to my feet. Is this it? I wonder. Is it all over now? Am I being led to my cell? I don’t know what happens next, but I know I’m ready.