Five

Why didn’t you keep your mouth shut? Haven’t you heard what happened to the cat when it became too damn curious?

Laura Parris turned down the quilt ready for bed. At midnight Badsworth Lodge could have the dead silence of a tomb. She pictured all those empty rooms downstairs. Vaults filled with darkness. Damn the local authority for housing troubled kids in a creepy old pile like this. Savagely, she started to brush her hair. A tangle made her hiss. Damn it, she was really angry with herself. When Jay had asked about crossing the river by boat she’d made light of it, telling him that she heard it was just a short ferry ride. That had made him happy enough to make a light-hearted comment about them needing a boat to cross the lawn if it didn’t stop raining soon, so carelessly she’d asked the question that had been bothering her. ‘Jay. You’ve told me that you took both Maureen and Tod for a walk. Will there be a day when you take me for a walk?’ His shoulders had scrunched as if he’d been doused in cold water. Trembling he’d climbed into bed and pulled the sheet over his head. She’d wished him good night, while cursing the looseness of her own tongue. What made me ask that?

She dragged the brush through her hair. ‘What’s got into you, Laura? You looking for a death wish?’ Grimacing, she set the brush down. ‘It’s fine. Don’t get all superstitious. You need a break, too.’ She leaned to the mirror to study her eyes. ‘Look at those bags. Big enough for the week’s groceries.’

Quickly she climbed into bed, then switched out the light. Outside, the rain fell with a steady murmur. Through her mind streamed the kind of night-thoughts that keep sleep away. She needed to collect the flowers for Maureen’s funeral. A temporary team of carers would arrive early to cover while the permanent staff were at the chapel service; they needed briefing on meal and medication requirements. Also she had a list of numbers to call to confirm the children’s arrival at the island. And don’t forget the children’s cards for Maureen. They’re collected at 10.30. As she lay in the darkness, the rain finally stopped with a suddenness that made the silence heavy against her ears. Then soft footsteps in the corridor. Puzzled, she sat up in bed. Her door swung open to reveal a figure in the gloom. Its eyes glinted, sparks of unearthly flame.

Then a voice. ‘Laura. I’ve come to take you for a little walk.’

‘Jay? Is anything wrong?’

‘It’s time for your walk.’

‘Jay, it’s gone midnight. You should be in bed.’ Quickly, she donned her dressing gown and slippers. ‘Give me your hand. There . . . come on back to your room. We’ve got a busy day tomorrow.’

Again, he spoke in a whisper. ‘It won’t take long.’

When she took his hand to walk through into the corridor she flinched. Drops of rain struck her face. A breeze sighed through the trees. They walked beside a high wall topped with razor wire.

‘Jay . . . no . . . no!’ A sense of cold dread filled her. ‘I didn’t see where . . .’ Confusion swirled her senses. ‘Jay, how did we get outside?’

He glanced up at her. His normally golden skin had turned white as bone. In the darkness all she could make out of him was a face that blazed like a skull, the huge eyes dark as midnight. Suddenly, the boy dragged her by the hand.

Dear God, how did he bring me outside without me knowing? ‘Jay. No, I don’t want to go. Don’t make me . . . please . . .’ Fear scrambled her senses. She could barely see, only confused images of trees that towered over her with all the menace of giant men. The sense of the masculine, a raw animal power was so overwhelming she staggered before it. She’d never felt so vulnerable. Someone’s waiting out there for me. They’re going to hurt me. Air currents in the branches hissed . . . an impression that they murmured suggestions. Come into the bushes, Laura, dear. We’re waiting for you. Still being dragged along by Jay, her gaze was drawn to a seething mass of hawthorn. A figure in a bright blue dress stood there. ‘Maureen . . . Stop Jay! I don’t know where he’s taking me.’ Maureen wore an absurdly cheerful smile, only her mouth had been daubed so thickly in crimson lipstick it resembled the fixed grin of a clown. ‘Maureen?’ But Maureen’s dead. Crushed between two buses. Her body reduced to a sack of jelly. Every bone broken. Teeth squeezed from their sockets. Eyes ruptured . . . ‘Jay, stop this. I don’t want to walk any further.’ Terror became a peal of church bells. Panic, fear, distress, dread – all had a different note, but all clanged mercilessly inside her skull.

All of a sudden they were running hand-in-hand across a lawn to a forbidding building. Its windows gazed coldly at her. Through one window a man and woman in green uniforms that suggested medical care writhed together on a sofa. Quickly, frantically, they were stripping one another. The man pushed up the woman’s top to reveal her bare breasts. Dark nipples against brown skin stood out as they hardened. The man kissed her nipples before moving down her stomach to a smudge of hair. When he worked her with his hungry tongue she writhed on the sofa in pleasure.

Even though Laura closed her eyes she still felt herself slip through solid brickwork like a ghost.

‘Here,’ Jay whispered.

She swayed in a bedroom with green walls; vertigo tugged at her. A steel door with a peephole stood firmly shut against the outside world. Stuck to one wall, a huge poster seemed to act as a window to the Arctic. In the picture a polar bear swam in deep blue ocean.

‘Why haven’t you visited me before?’

A grey-faced figure sat on the bed with the edge of the blanket grabbed in his two fists. One eye was swollen from a punch; his face had bloated since she last saw it, but she knew the identity of this teenager.

‘Tod? Tod Langdon? What happened to you?’

He stared at her with blazing eyes. At last he choked out, ‘Laura . . . Why haven’t you visited me?’ His voice got louder. ‘I don’t like it here. I don’t!’

She backed from him as his fear turned to anger.

‘Don’t leave me! Don’t you dare!’

As he stood up on the bed, still holding the blanket in front of him, Laura tried to push Jay behind her to relative safety. She knew the crazed youth had reached breaking point.

‘You’re not leaving me again!’ He leapt from the bed. As he did so he threw the blanket over her like he would net a wild animal. ‘You’re going to stay and see how they torture me.’

She cried out as she fought to free herself from the blanket. The light that struck her so forcefully made her blink until her room came into focus. For a moment she lay there, savouring the tranquillity. Sun shone through the curtains. She heard the gardener whistling as he trundled the wheelbarrow across the patio. The nightmare image of Tod Langdon hurling the blanket over her head came back so strongly she kicked her bedding off her entirely. For a moment she lay there, the cool morning air on her bare legs, just thankful to be free of the dream. Such a darkly terrifying dream, too. A shudder ran through her as she recalled it: Jay’s appearance with the promise he’d take her for ‘a little walk’. Then the stroll through the forest to the mental hospital where had Tod sat in his room, his face bruised from beatings and mad with fear.

‘Stop it,’ she told herself. ‘You’re having bad dreams because you’re stressed.’ Chasing the remnants of the nightmare away, she headed for the bathroom.

Lou suggested they take her car to the funeral so they could pick up not only the flowers but three dozen flip-flops, assorted sizes.

‘Knowing these kids,’ she said as Laura sat beside her in the car, ‘they’ll be in and out of the water all day. Their shoes will get ruined.’

For a moment they chatted about everyday things, especially arrangements for the stay on the island. Then, when they pulled up at the red stop light and they both had a clear view of the hearse containing Maureen’s coffin in pale brown wood, they fell silent. Laura knew that Lou must be thinking about Maureen, too. The usually happy-go-lucky Jamaican woman sighed; a tear ran down her cheek. Laura didn’t like the silver handles on the coffin. The way they shone seemed far too bright. Nothing had the right to glitter cheerfully on a day like this.

As the cortège pulled away, Lou shook her head. ‘Maureen was younger than me. Married to the job like you and me. Remember to learn from our mistakes.’ After a pause Lou spoke again. ‘They’re burying her in that dress she liked so much. Remember the one at the Christmas party? Electric blue. Whoa, girl, I told her. Wait until I get my shades before you go exposing that dress to the public. That fabric’s giving the Christmas tree lights an inferiority complex.’

Laura tried to sound as if she was making conversation, but when she asked the question Lou shot her a surprised glance. ‘Pardon?’

Laura repeated it. ‘Do you ever visit Tod Langdon? He’s at that secure unit on the other side of town, isn’t he?’

Lou clearly wondered why Laura was so suddenly interested in one of their – let’s face it – failures. ‘From time to time. Since they committed him six months ago.’

‘Does he know who you are?’

‘Not really. One of the nurses there said, “You’ve heard the term brain-dead? Well, he’s mind-dead. Does nothing. Doesn’t interact.”’ Lou shot her a probing look. ‘Why the sudden interest in Tod?’

‘Oh . . . I found myself thinking about him this morning.’

‘Because Jay did that thing? Repeating his name, just like he did with Maureen then – pop. Bad thing happens out of the blue.’ She pressed her lips together, annoyed with herself. ‘Pay no heed, Laura. I’ve been thinking a bunch of nonsense about Jay. Huh, I’ve found myself surfing the Internet looking for stuff about curses, prophecies, portents of doom.’ The funeral cortège crossed a railway bridge. ‘In the end I helped myself to a glass of gin with sugar in it. My grandmother always said if you add sugar to booze then it’s medicine not liquor.’ She read Laura’s expression. ‘What happened to Tod is bothering you, isn’t it?’ She gave a world-weary sigh. ‘Have you ever been to the secure unit?’

For a moment Laura nearly poured her heart out about the nightmare. All about seeing Maureen in the bright blue dress, the medical team making whoopee at midnight, the dour corridors, the cells with steel doors all firmly in lockdown. Instead, she gave a tiny shake of the head. ‘I’ve seen it from the outside. Razor wire. High walls. It looks grim.’

‘Yup, it’s no sweeter on the inside. All the walls are painted green, a dull, dull green. I used to go along with Maureen to visit Tod. We always feel responsible for our charges. Success or failure. We could do nothing for the boy, but we couldn’t let go. Story of our lives, huh? They locked Tod in his green cell, all so damped down with tranquillizers he could barely move. All he did was stare at nothing. Maureen hated the idea of him staring at a blank wall so she bought a poster. A huge one. Once it was up there on the wall it could have been a big picture window on the outside world.’

Laura tingled. ‘Good idea. He loved animals.’ Images from the nightmare shot back with such a pungent reality that she clenched her fists so tightly her fingers ached. For a moment she stood in the green cell again, steel door locked, a drugged Tod Langdon cowering on the bed, the only homely touch a poster on the wall of his favourite animal.

‘More than anything –’ Laura heard her voice as if it came from some other place – ‘he loved polar bears.’

‘And that’s what Maureen bought him. A big poster of a polar bear swimming in a bright blue sea.’ She sighed. ‘Well . . . here we go.’ The line of cars followed the hearse through the gates to the chapel. The handles on the coffin flashed silver, as if they sent out a warning: danger ahead. Take care . . .