29

“What greater gift than the love of a cat”

—Charles Dickens

I’m troubled. The nightmares have returned since we’ve been home and twice now I’ve imagined a face at the window. The second time I was alone in the kitchen and I had that same odd sensation of a fleeting memory. I’m losing the equanimity I found at Trebarwith, it’s slipping through my fingers like sand. The familiar nub of anxiety is back. It sits in a hard lump behind my sternum waiting to spread and grow. I’m just so glad that I’m not here alone at the moment. I don’t think I could stand it. I’m glad of the chatter and noise from the decorators and bathroom fitters as they go about their work.

The things Bill told me about Alan Harris seem to have wedged in the folds of my brain. His words are feeding my unrest, particularly the mention he made of a girl. I think I understand why she troubles me so; she feels somehow linked to the hair clip I found in the coach house. Its shiny petals sparkle in my mind’s eye, accusingly, like an unanswered question. Gemma knew nothing about the storeroom so who did the hair clip belong to and how did it get there? I wish I’d not been so quick to dismiss the clip and throw it away.

I’m better when I’m away from here. I lose the haunted feeling I so often have of being watched. That sensation of hidden eyes following my every move and burning into my skin. My anxiety fades as the distance grows so I find excuses to be out of the house. I’m driving into the town today to pick up some varnish and to let the Carters know how well the course is going. As well as Carter’s art shop, Paul and Leanne Carter run evening art classes and have enlisted my services for “Intermediate Acrylics.” I’m enjoying it but can’t help wondering which prodigious talent got to teach “Advanced.” Tom thought I’d find it too challenging but it’s done the opposite, it’s helped me feel more rooted here. I get to meet people like me. People who speak my language of color and form.

While I’m there I could call on the Harrises. Part of me knows that I shouldn’t, that it’s an odd thing to do in anyone’s book but odd’s never stopped me before. I just need to know. The spikes of their fear will have been smoothed by the passage of time, so perhaps they’ll talk to me. Perhaps they’ll tell me what, if anything, happened back then.

I’ve found their address thanks to Bill, Twenty-Four Bluebell Court. Eat your heart out Nancy Drew.

Bluebell Court is ill-named. I doubt a bluebell ever graced these concrete courtyards, or winked like lapis lazuli amid the gray. It is a depressing place. It leaches the color from the sky and deadens my soul. I feel slightly panicked. I can’t tell if it’s the place that’s doing it or the thought of what I’m about to do.

The block where Ivy Harris lives is one of four. Built of dark brick and concrete, it’s streaked and stained by pollution and the elements. Although it’s only four stories high, it’s overbearing, hunched over its communal garden of cheery dogshit and litter. Luckily number twenty-four is on the second floor so I don’t need to consider the lift with its graffiti-covered doors that yell entrapment. The stairwell I use instead is concrete and steel. It’s gently fragranced with the uplifting scent of the urine that’s crystallizing in its dark corners. I so don’t want to touch the handrail. I didn’t know such places existed in towns like this; I assumed they were the preserve of the inner cities, all sunk in deprivation.

I reach the second-floor landing where there’s a row of doors, each a depressing clone of its neighbor. As I look for number twenty-four I become aware I’m being watched and turn to see two small boys observing me. “They’re scrawny and guarded, squeezed into younger children’s clothes.”

I knock and wait. Eventually I hear the sounds of a bolt pulling back and the turn of the lock, and I come face to pinched face with Ivy Harris. She’s a steel wire of a woman, rake thin and somewhere in her early sixties. Her hair is dyed a harsh black and badly cut. The roots are a silver skunk streak across her scalp. She eyes me suspiciously and draws in the skin of her cheeks, emphasizing her smoker’s kiss. She folds her arms in the universal gesture of defense and waits for me to state my business. I was expecting this to be difficult, but now I’ve seen her I realize just how difficult it’s likely to be.

I start tentatively, “Hello, my name’s Isabel. I wonder if I could speak to Alan if he’s in?”

I was hardly anticipating an effusive welcome, but her stark response throws me for a moment.

“Why? What do you want with him?”

Gosh, someone even less versed in the social graces than me. I suspect she would sniff out dissemblance so I decide to be at least half-honest.

“I’ve recently moved into The Lodge and I know Alan used to do gardening and odd jobs there and I was wondering if he could help explain something that’s been worrying me.”

“Why? He don’t know nothing about The Lodge, he hasn’t been there for years. He hated the place so why have you come here bothering him?”

“Please, Mrs. Harris. I’m not going to bother him, it’s just Jill Arthur said he might speak to me.” That’s the less honest bit.

At the mention of Mrs. Arthur’s name she relents slightly.

“If you knows Jill you’d better come in then but I’m not promising anything mind, and don’t you go upsetting him.”

She closes the door behind me and for some inexplicable reason she pulls the bolt across. I suspect it’s only habit—God, I’d bolt myself in too if I had to live here—but I immediately feel myself starting to panic and struggle to calm my breathing.

“Please,” I say, randomly.

She looks at me rather oddly as though she can sense my desperation.

“Please, could I just speak to your son for a moment?”

She relents but with the stark warning, “Remember, I won’t have you upset him mind, he’s not well.’

She moves away from the door and points me through to a living room. It’s cluttered with newspapers and piles of washing, all redolent with the smell of ashtray. Her sleeve falls back to reveal an arm marked with the scars of ancient needle tracks.

Ah, IV Harris. That must be the past Bill alluded to.

“Alan! There’s a woman ’ere wants to have a chat with you or something. You okay to talk to her or shall I tell her to go?”

There’s no answer. Instead a mountain of a man lumbers into the room, his thighs straining against his jogging bottoms and his feet spilling over crushed slippers. He looks to be in his early forties, although it’s difficult to tell, and has a thin scar running from the edge of his left eye and down his cheek. He looks at me warily and as his eyes meet mine I experience the feeling that I’ve seen him before. The jolt of fear almost sends me running to escape. I know it’s irrational so force myself to steadily meet his gaze. I try not to think of the bolted door.

“Hi Alan,” I say, keeping my voice low and steady, “my name’s Izzy and I live at The Lodge. Is it okay if I ask you a few things?”

His eyes are like glittering slits in raw pastry. Watchful.

“What, what you want?” he says.

I notice at the mention of The Lodge he moves across the room to be slightly nearer to his mother.

I’m nervous now and don’t really know what to say or where to begin, so I start gently.

“I’ve not been happy since I’ve been there,” I smile at him encouragingly, “and it’s getting worse.”

I don’t know that I want to go into detail about my dreams or the space behind the wall. I can feel Mrs. Harris’s eyes upon me so I need to tread carefully.

“Jill Arthur, your mum’s friend, mentioned something that happened back when you worked there and I wondered if it would help me understand something I’ve found.”

I fizzle out a bit and nobody speaks.

I clear my throat nervously. Here goes. “Jill Arthur said there was something about a girl there and that whatever happened upset you a bit?”

Immediately his eyes fly open and I can see the fear in them, still alive and well. He physically recoils, wobbling back from me like a startled mollusc, almost as though I’d struck him.

His mother’s voice is strident and angry. “He don’t know anything about any girl, he never did. What are you saying?”

“I’m not accusing him of anything. I just wanted to know if he ever saw a girl there or knew anything about the room in the coach house.”

Alan has started moving again, edging ever closer to his mother. His eyes flicker nervously toward hers. She puts his arm around him and looks at me accusingly while he stares at the floor. He starts a low humming, with his hands pressed to his ears. My panic shrieks and spirals along with his.

His mother seems reluctant to let him go but she leads him to a chair, her eyes blazing at me. He leans into her like a child but lets her release him so she can usher me to the door. Her hand is hard and bony on my arm.

“I warned you not to upset him. I suggest you clear off and don’t you be coming back ’ere, poking around into things that don’t concern you. The Connors were nothing but trouble, that’s all. Nothing but trouble, scaring the wits out of my boy. He’s a good gentle boy and he never done nothing, you hear. Don’t you let that lot be saying different.”

As she tries to bundle me out I turn back to Alan and our eyes lock for a moment.

“Alan, I’m so, so sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you. I’m sorry.”

His next words are so quiet I hardly catch them but they make my blood freeze.

“She looked just like you.”

I call out to him in desperation, “Alan, please, what did you mean?”

It’s too late. He’s shuffling away down the hall and his mother is pushing the door closed behind me with a string of expletives.

“Go on, fuck off, get the hell out of here.”

I all but run down the landing, my chest rising and falling with the raggedness of my breath. I didn’t mishear him, he definitely said, “She looked just like you.” Who did and when, and why did I feel so afraid of him?

The two boys are still on the landing, laughing at me now and pointing.

I turn angrily and shout at them, “Fuck off you little shits, before I smack you one!”

Perhaps on reflection I could fit in here after all.

All I can hear in my head is “She looked just like you.” I remember what Bill said about nineteen ninety-four or five and I’m starting to wonder if there’s really something that links my past to The Lodge. Dr. Stedman is wrong. Tom’s wrong. It’s time for me to make Tom listen and believe me. He needs to take me seriously for once and help me unravel it all. They need to speak to Alan Harris. Someone official needs to find out what he knows. Someone needs to listen to me about the room. I need this house to unlock its secrets and set me free.

Tom is late again. I’ve made dinner and I’m waiting for him to come home. Once we’ve eaten we need to talk. He can’t brush this off as me “having a bad day” or being “upset and confused” by the move. Not anymore. He has to hear me out.

While I’m waiting I need to look for Mina again. I’ve called and I’ve called; I’ve banged dishes and put out food by the door but there’s no sign at all. Tom says cats wander off, which they do, and he’s told me reassuring tales of ones that reappear after years on the run. But not Mina. Both she and Major are house cats. They never went out at all back in London, so I hardly imagine her straying far. It’s horrid out, dark and raining; she’ll be cold and wet. I must try and find her.

I really don’t want to go outside alone in the dark but I can’t just leave her if she’s out there somewhere, lost and afraid. I turn on the outside lights to flood the lawn with as much brightness as I can. I’ll try to venture out as far as I’m able.

I fetch a jacket and torch and tentatively go out to the garden calling her name. I’m afraid she’s lying hurt somewhere. I shine the torch into the flower beds and under the shrubbery. The shadows make everything sinister and threatening and I fight the urge to run back in the house. I notice there’re footprints in the freshly dug soil by the window. It’s as if someone has been standing there looking in. There’s only Bill Arthur and I really can’t imagine “my Bill” spying and lurking under our windows or standing in a bed he’s just dug. I can’t think about that now. I’m spooked enough already.

My torch beam picks out a flash of white by the sundial and I feel the first prickle of dread slowing my limbs. I don’t want to look. As I draw closer, I see a tiny body there in the dirt. Mina. Her fur is all matted and wet and her little limbs are stretched out as though she’s in flight.

Somewhere I register a low keening sound and I realize it’s me; my throat with a will of its own is signaling my grief.

I gather her up in my arms, weak with fear. She’s unmarked bar a smearing of dark soil but her head lolls unnaturally off to one side. Her eyes are glassy and blank. Someone has killed her, they’ve broken her neck.

I fall to my knees in the wet grass and curl my body over hers. She is my baby and she’s hurt. Someone has done this to her.

I stay there gently cradling her in my arms as the rain lashes and swirls. My mind has closed down for a while. It’s gone somewhere safe.

I can hear Tom calling my name, loud and urgent, but I can’t answer.

“Izzy, Isabel, where are you?”

I am spotlit in his torchlight. I hear feet pounding across the wet lawn.

“Oh God, Izzy, what are you doing? Why are all the lights on?”

He sees Mina’s bedraggled body in my arms and stops, shocked.

“My God, what’s happened, what have you done?”

My grief gives way to rage and I scream at him, “What have I done? You did this, this is your fault.”

“Izzy, what are you talking about? I haven’t done anything, what on earth do you mean? Come in, please, you’re freezing cold and soaked to the skin. Tell me what’s happened. Talk to me.”

He tries to pull me to my feet and I lash out at him. Fighting him, arms flailing, as the wind and rain seethes around us.

“You did this. You made us come to this fucking place and now someone has killed her. It’s all your fault.”

I feel the grief and defeat wash over me pushing my anger aside. This place hates us, I can feel it.