Supper was early at the house, just the three of them. It consisted of an assembly of cold foods, hustled together with limp salad, Grace saying it was too hot to do anything else. Ernest was in charge of the wine, the homemade variety with Grace’s own label, which tasted as if it was made of acorns. Rachel did not like it much, but Grace was edgy, so she praised it all the same and Ernest filled her glass again. The second glass felt heavy in her hand. By the end of a solid cold pie, all appetite had gone. A scratch meal, without much of the festive feeling which had been present in the other meals eaten here. The effort was being saved for the next day and Rachel thought that perhaps this was what it meant to become a true member of a family. Eating the leftovers, like real family members did, and following instructions to hold back for guests. It could have felt like really being accepted, but it didn’t quite. Grace said she felt tired, and blamed the heat; Rachel simply felt dull. There had been talk of maybe going down to the pub, but that faded. Ernest had to milk the cows later, on his own this weekend because the cowman was away. By tacit consent, talk of Carl was left until later.
The only cause for celebration was Ernest being so entirely himself, in full command of his memory, as if everything he had said down by the lake really was part of an ongoing dream he visited in that particular place and nowhere else. Ernest, at least, boded well for tomorrow. He was sweetness and light, talking intelligently of how he would miss the cows when they were gone, but really he was too old for milking at midnight, and he would still have the pigs. They could maybe develop the barn, what did Rachel think? There were grants for such things. They would simply do what the government wanted farmers to do, which was to cease farming. They could develop the lake. He talked of the future, and did not mention the past, as if food restored him to hope. He smiled at them both, looking for approval, particularly from Grace. She patted him on the head, and fetched his boots, and at about ten o’clock he set out to do the milking, as the last of the light finally fled.
Rachel wanted to talk to Grace about Ivy, but the tiredness seemed to mushroom between them into apologetic smiles; there was suddenly little to say, punctuated by awkward silences, without Ernest. Grace did not ask her about Carl, and Rachel did not say what she wanted to say, and it seemed as if Grace wanted her out of the kitchen. Grace was ashamed of being tired, so sorry, love, not like me, it’s the stress, you see, and I’ve been so worried about Ernest. It’s sometimes hard to be cheerful. At least I can be tired with you. It’s just this. You being in the kitchen, like Ivy was, when he came back into the house without Cassie. Him coming here, it’s like an anniversary, brings it all back. Makes me stupid and sad. I can’t think of anything else. I haven’t been sleeping. Let’s call it a day, shall we? Tomorrow, well, tomorrow, this time we’ll really be celebrating something, won’t we, love?
‘Tired’ varied from flu-type exhaustion, to nice exhilarating tiredness after a long swim, to this kind of tiredness which was like amnesia, and felt like being drunk, although Rachel wasn’t. Just tired, from anxiety and relief, punching from different sides and making bruises, tired from the effort of suppressing unease. She was glad to be back in her very own room, with a spray of lavender by her bed. It reminded her of Carl’s flowers. She struggled to stay awake; she had a huge desire to phone him and say, It really is nice here, it will all be fine, then she fell asleep. Everything was taken care of, everything.
She was halfway awake, then dozing again, dreaming of voices and closing doors and the sound of an owl. Her eyes opened wide and recognised the clock by the bed, reading three a.m. Grace was shaking her shoulder, jolting her awake, her voice high with anxiety.
‘Rachel, love, can you help me? Ernest hasn’t come back. Sorry, sweetheart, we’ve got to put on our boots and go and find him. Sorry, petal, it shouldn’t take long, he’s probably fallen asleep somewhere. Come on.’
Grace was clad in a floor-length nightie and a very old dressing gown. She held out another one to Rachel. Rachel got out of bed and put it on.
‘Boots downstairs,’ Grace said. ‘What a bugger. Sorry.’
They went down, down, down to the kitchen, which felt as warm as toast. Tired as she was, Grace had cleared it, and it was as clean as a surgery.
‘Won’t take a minute,’ Grace repeated, proffering a pair of boots, which Rachel scooped over her feet. They were too big, her feet slopped around in them, and they were out into the night, the air chill after the kitchen, flapping along with Grace in the lead, talking over her shoulder.
‘Wouldn’t have bothered you, lovey, but it might be a bit difficult to rouse him by myself.’
‘Does this happen often?’
‘No. Once or twice.’
It was all different in the darkness; she would not have known the way. The path seemed smooth; Rachel followed, trying to keep up, infected by Grace’s urgency. Grace carried a torch which wavered ahead, scarcely piercing the darkness. Rachel remembered the route to the cow barn and milking parlour as being a couple of hundred yards, tried to remember the layout of the place, wishing she had paid more attention, the cow barn first, the pigs and their stench furthest away, the hay barn to the left, and then the buildings looming ahead of her, with the milking parlour first, lit up like a ship floating on a dark sea. They drew close, Rachel stumbling and Grace sure-footed.
The milking parlour was empty. The well of the room, surrounded by the higher railings and stalls, was sluiced down, clean and wet, achingly silent apart from the hum of machinery. It smelled of milk and detergent and the lingering presence of animals, a factory at night, with all the contours stark in the harsh overhead light.
‘Ernest!’ Grace yelled.
She went through to the anteroom with the milk tanks, from which the humming sound came. Then she came back. She was trembling.
‘Come on. Maybe in the shed.’
They went down the ramp into the cows’ barn. Semi-lit, it seemed far larger than it had looked in daylight. The sweet smell of hay, silage, molasses caught at Rachel’s throat. The standing cows stirred; the place was suddenly full of the subdued noise of shuffling movement, and all she could see was a series of enquiring eyes, resenting disturbance. Her feet moved awkwardly across the hay-strewn floor, clumsy in the boots. Grace shone the torch around the feet of the cows as she walked past slowly. Perhaps she thought Ernest had lain down with his beasts. Rachel kept close. The cows lumbered towards them; Grace shooed them away; they came back. Rachel could feel the presence of tons of flesh and bone ready to walk over them, mash them into the ground with the hay and the shit, and she wanted to scream. She clutched at Grace’s sleeve. Grace pulled away.
‘Don’t be silly,’ Grace said angrily. ‘They’re only curious. Where the hell is he? Come on.’
The cows were so close, Rachel could smell their breath. It made no difference that they meant no harm; it was the crushing weight of them. They reached the far side of the barn, facing open fields and fresher air. Grace paused.
‘The daft sod’ll have gone to say good night to the damn pigs. That’s where he’ll be. Come on.’
‘I don’t want to go there,’ Rachel said.
The smell of the pigs was already in her nostrils and her legs were trembling. Grace turned on her and shone the torch in her face.
‘Oh come on, Rachel love. Don’t be so selfish. You really don’t know much about the real world, do you? Do you want me to go by myself? If he’s in there, we’ve got to get him out. What kind of daughter are you?’
She moved off, confident that Rachel would follow, and Rachel did. There was another faint sound of humming as they passed the incinerator of which Ernest was so proud, heating itself at night, for what? The small box of stone radiated heat as they passed. She remembered it was like a safe containing fire, remembered the small particle of bone Ernest had given her. She was ashamed of her cowardice. It was all beginning to feel like a bad dream, and yet she was stung. You really don’t know much about the real world, do you? What kind of daughter are you?
She stumbled again on the steps leading into the pig barn. Grace pulled at the great wooden bolt of the door, a piece of rustic efficiency Rachel had admired for its simplicity before she had been stunned by the smell. Pig smell, a reeking, penetrating, throat-filling acidic stench which clung to clothes and hair worse than any real filth. Such clean animals to stink like that with their own unforgettable smell and revel in the way they repelled those who did not love them. A pig was a pig was a pig. It knew what it was, and loved no one but its own. Rachel thought of Ernest, talking about pigs. Maybe he had come to talk to them.
‘Ernest!’ Grace yelled. ‘Come on out, you daft sod.’
The pigs had none of the silent curiosity of the cows. The sows and the piglets in the ten pens, ranged five each side with the aisle in the middle, reared in their confinement and squealed and snorted. The long, narrow barn was lit by two wavering lights, which moved in the draught from the open door, and the light of Grace’s torch, which showed the exit door at the far end and the contours of the metal pens, full of writhing, moving, stinking shapes, pushing snouts through the bars of their cages. They knew no reason for human presence other than food or violence. Someone was there to give food or take the babies away. Rachel felt a snout, protruding through a metal bar, making contact with her bare knee, and heard deafening squeals underlaid with a cacophony of grunting. She swayed on the uneven wooden floor, steadied herself on the nearest rail, and felt another pig nuzzling her hand, and she recoiled as if stung, her scream inaudible above the din, the stench of them making her gag. She crossed her arms and took a tentative step forward, telling herself, they’re pigs, where’s Grace, where’s Ernest, this is hell, and why … are they always hungry? What makes them so angry? Why am I here?
She screamed for Grace.
Then it grew quieter.
‘If you stay still and do nothing, they’ll stop in the end,’ Grace said. The voice seemed to come from a distance.
Grace was sitting at the far end of the barn on the step which led to the other door. The light of her torch played on her feet; the light of the building showed the glow of a cigarette. Rachel moved towards the light and the boots, which was all she could see.
‘Just stay still, would you?’
The pigs shuffled, disappointed, resigned, grumbling.
‘What I really want to know is are you going to help us?’ the voice said. ‘I thought you would; now I’m not sure. C’mon, darling, give us a hug. Everything’s going to be all right.’
Rachel tottered towards the end door. The torchlight swung towards the ceiling. The pigs began to squeal again. She felt a fist connect with her stomach, and all the air went out of her as she stumbled over the boots and fell to her knees and stayed there, clutching herself.
A door slammed, far away. Everything was quiet. Someone was stroking her hair. She was crouched at the foot of the step, still curled. The torchlight played on booted feet. Not the same feet.
‘Honestly, Rache, you’re such a patsy. Fancy believing a single thing my bloody mother says. Or anyone else for that matter. But you do, don’t you? Because it’s all true. In a way.’
Ivy.
Rachel raised her head and stared. She could do nothing but stare and saw nothing when she did. She was crouched at Ivy’s feet, saying nothing, doing nothing, listening.
Ivy lifted her, effortlessly, so that she sat on the step with her torso grasped between Ivy’s knees, Ivy’s big hands on her shoulders, pinning her down, and Ivy’s hand on the back of her neck. She remembered that. She had a dim memory of when that was nice.
‘Cat got your tongue?’ Ivy said. ‘Nothing to say? Well, I bloody have, you bitch. Who’s been cosying up to my husband with lots of chummy mobile calls, then? You. Who’s the one person I love best in the world? You. Who do my mummy and daddy love so much? Who wants to manage everything and goes in my room when I’m not there? You. Who’s sorting everything out where I can’t? You. Who’s sicked some fucking policeman up on my doorstep, making old Blaker spill his guts, and you don’t even tell me except by mistake? You.
‘You were supposed to help, you bitch. You were supposed to stop me.’
Rachel leant back against her and nodded. The world and the stench of the pigs came back. There was no sound except shuffling, grunting. Ivy’s granite knees increased their grip, forcing Rachel’s arms to stick out in front from her hunched shoulders. She could see Ivy above her, adopting a pose. Venus clutching a serpent between her knees. She wondered why she was not so surprised. Ivy the savage, what a nice word that was. She could see her own hands, resting on her own knees; she looked down the alley of the barn. Cows were nothing. Her head could not stop nodding. She was beginning to get the picture she should have got. Bile filled her throat. She hurt all over. Grace loved me. She said I was a daughter.
‘So are you going to help us, or what?’
‘Do what?’
‘What I was always going to do. Kill Carl. Oh, sweetheart, you’ve been very good. You’ve got him to come here, do you think I didn’t know? I’ve been practising to kill Carl for months now, ever since I found him. Knew I didn’t have the nerve, not without practice. Animals are one thing, humans are another. You’re not supposed to do it, for a start, can’t think why. Killing the thing you loved takes nerve, you know. I’ve had to learn cold blood. They were all a waste of space, why not? They steadied the hand. But I’ve got to get away with it, which is all that matters. I’ll get away with this now, and bring Sam back. You’re my friend, Rache. You should have stopped me.’
Rachel bent her head. There was a click as Ivy lit another cigarette.
Rachel heard the sound of her own, controlled, admiring voice.
‘You’re amazing, Ivy. I love you. Who did you kill for practice?’
‘Got in the neck, like Cassie? Oh, one by persuasion, a man who stayed here. He was awful, he had no respect, you know, couldn’t swim as well as he thought either. Shit face. Carl can’t swim at all. A man in an office who wanted to die, so I helped him swallow it. That one in the ambulance, had to be so quick, I just had to do it, so I’m ready and skilled, Rache, for the main kill. Nerves like steel now. Not quite sure of the method, sure of the nerve. Everything’s gotta be learned. So, are you going to help? Are you with us or against us?’
‘Does Grace know?’
It was a stupid question.
‘Does Grace know what, you silly little thing? It was Grace wanted you here in the first place. Grace suggested it. Grace thinks ahead, see? She said dear Carl would like someone like you. Far less risk if we got him here and killed him than if I killed him somewhere in London. That was the original plan. Flush him out, scare him, kill him, as soon as I knew I could do it. But not good enough, do you see? Not after he sent back Mummy’s letters and we knew he would never let me see Sam as long as he was alive. He’d stop Sam coming home to Granny, it would be over his dead body …’
‘That’s not true.’
She could feel the stirrings of anger. She could see more clearly now, wanted to explain, kept her voice low.
‘It’s Sam who doesn’t want to see you. Carl’s a good man, he’ll do everything reasonable. He must be a good man, because he agreed to this. Oh, Ivy, have you thought …’
‘So you admit it, you bitch. You’ve got into bed with him. Yes you have. You’ve fucked my husband, you’ve got it out of him. Well, you weren’t quite supposed to do that. Christ, you’ve probably fucked my son as well. I’ve watched you, Rache, this last week, ever since you snuck out on the Sunday, you’ve been in some fucking dream. His number on your mobile, messages from coppers you don’t tell me about. Quite funny, really. I should kill you now, but I love you, you know, and I thought you loved me. You’re a thief.’
‘I do love you. If you love me, let me go. Let me tell him not to come. Let me stop you.’
Ivy stroked her hair. She tried not to flinch from the touch, and failed. Ivy noticed.
‘Oh no, my darling. Too late for that now. Things have changed, ambitions change, you said that once. I don’t just want him dead, I want him to know. I want him throttled and drowned in the lake, and I want him to know, right to the last minute. Like Cassie did.’
‘Why? Ivy, why?’
‘Because it was all his fault. Because he killed her, and then he killed me. He shut me out and shut me away. He poisoned Sam against me, he made my life hell, he sent me right down to the bottom of hell. And when I got better, when I got to know he was a fucking judge, well, that was it. I tell you, Ivy love, it’s like having a cancer eating at me, just knowing he’s strutting around there, and I can’t live knowing that. Strutting round in the big wide world, with my son. Not his son, my son. I can’t live with that.’
Not his son, my son.
Ivy giggled. It was a horrible sound, worse than the pigs who looked on, quietly now, still hoping for food. Rachel could feel them breathing from the shadows of the pen.
‘You’d better not tell anyone else I said that,’ Ivy said. ‘Ernest only wants Sam because Sam is Carl’s. Grace’d go demented. Carl’s fucking grandson is all he wants. Now, are you going to help or not? I think I know the answer. Ernest said you wouldn’t. Grace said you would. She didn’t know you’d fucked him.’
Rachel knew she was damned either way. Ivy was strong and Ivy was mad, and the pigs stank. All she felt in the semi-darkness was an overpowering hurt.
‘Didn’t I make any difference?’ she said. ‘Didn’t knowing me make any difference? Didn’t I make anything better for you, the way you did for me? Did I really not make a difference to that cancer of yours?’
The stroking of her hair had stopped. In the silence that followed, she began to hope that Ivy was pausing for thought. Ivy laughed. She laughed like a hyena.
‘Of course you made a difference. It was through you that I could see what it would be like to have life without a curse on it. Not a care in the world, a father who loved you instead of wishing you were a son, no real losses, no mistakes, nobody’s victim. Lucky you, no scars to speak of, just your pathetic little tragedies and pathetic little morals. I doubt if you’ve ever made any difference to anyone in your life.’
She laughed again.
‘Although you’ll certainly have made a difference to Carl’s. God, you useless, innocent women make me sick. Besides, you didn’t really love me. You don’t know what love is.’
She bent forward and whispered in Rachel’s ear, her breath on her neck.
‘It means being willing to do anything for that person, anything to make them better. I would have done that for you, Rache, but you’re not going to do it for me, are you?’
Rachel jerked her head away. She felt icy cold, but she could speak. She could open her silly big mouth.
‘You’re mad, Ivy. Madder than you know if you think I’d watch you kill another human being and not try to stop it.’
She could feel Ivy nodding, rocking, still gripping her and holding her still.
‘Grace realised that. She said you didn’t love us enough. Well, I’m sorry about it.’
She got up to her feet, talking as if to herself. ‘Strange, isn’t it, I can’t actually kill you myself. I can only do it to men. Big mistake, you being here, but Grace didn’t think Carl would come unless you were here first. Sorry about that. Shame you don’t love us enough.’
Rachel did not move. She wanted to plead, she wanted to spit at Ivy, she wanted to fight, but she did not move. She felt a massive punch to the side of her head and sprawled forwards to the floor. The pigs began squealing again. Rachel was lying with her face against the rough wooden slats of the aisle between the metal pens, facing the curious snout of a huge young pig. They were touching distance.
‘It won’t hurt much,’ Ivy said, almost sorrowfully. ‘But the pigs haven’t been fed today. Ernest’ll come back in a couple of hours and let them out. He just has to press the button outside to release the traps. He said you were scared of them. Don’t worry, they won’t eat you until they’ve trampled all over you, you won’t be conscious. Don’t fight it, but then you never do, do you? You’ve never had to fight.’
And, as the final valediction, Ivy bent forward and touched her hair one last time.
The door slammed and Rachel heard the heavy wooden bolt slide across. It was the same noise she had scarcely registered from the door she had entered with Grace. Grace had gone out the same way as Ivy came in, her part in it done. Grace might have listened, might have waited behind the heavy door, made to contain an army of giant pigs, which moved about her now, sniffing hungrily. The stench at floor level was overpowering. Her head was thumping; she could feel the imprint of Ivy’s fist and she wanted to weep, for everything. For sheer fear, for being hated and loved and betrayed and left to die like this, for what was to follow, until gradually, it was the horror at what she had done that paralysed her most. She had led Carl back to be slaughtered. She rehearsed in her mind all that Ernest had said by the lake, all the lies Ivy had told. How she had ignored what she really knew by instinct, again and again, for the sake of being loved. Ivy had tried to kill her father, Ivy had stolen his pills and inhaler, and she, Rachel, had believed her.
Ivy told lies: that thought comforted her for a moment. It could not be true that hungry pigs would eat a live human being; they ate processed protein, already mashed into pieces. That must be a lie – how could hatred be so extreme? – but she did not know if it was. You don’t know anything. Pigs eat anything. There was a memory of a woman minced and fed to pigs.
Lying there, it was her own ineffectuality and awful grief which finally angered her into movement. No, she had never had to fight, Ivy was right, but she would fight now. She had to get out before Ernest came and released the pigs to fight over her. She got up and walked unsteadily towards the door, keeping her arms crossed and avoiding touching the railings on either side. As soon as she moved, the pigs squealed; if she stopped, they stopped. She reached the door, pushed it, found it immovable. Then she retraced her steps and went to the other end, accompanied by more racket. It was tempting to stay still, just to stop the noise. She began humming to herself to drown it out. The second door was immovable.
Wearily, Rachel sat down on the step where Ivy had sat, and kept very still.
Silence fell again. Then she was violently sick.
The supper she had eaten in Grace’s kitchen spewed forth in volume, hitting her oversized boots and then the planks of the floor. It felt as if she was ejecting poison, and she heaved again and again, feeling the wretchedness of being sick, distant enough to wonder how her own small body could manufacture so much bile and junk from the small amount consumed. It was as if whatever she had eaten and drunk had trebled in volume and gushed forth in a projectile flow. Rachel watched her own emissions with objective distaste. Then she felt slightly better, as if she had at last done something positive. Ejected indecision along with the homemade wine, which had tasted nasty and sent her to sleep, making her biddable and ready for Grace. At least she had got rid of that. There was a glimmer of daylight in the cracks round the far door. It must be cold and bleak here when the wind blew; she supposed pigs made their own insulation. Pigs insulated themselves, pigs were clean, even if they smelt; they would not lie in their own shit. They lay on open slatted wooden boards, cushioned only by straw; the shit and the urine fell through the slats into the cavity beneath to be hosed and swept away, as and when. Not a task for a rainy day, Ernest had said. Dirty straw was swept away, also through the floor.
Rachel lay down and peered through the slats. Dawn was breaking. She could see the dull glimmer of liquid a few feet below. A lake of ordure. That was the way out. She swallowed. The only way out.
Ignoring the piggy protests, grateful for the extra light, which also added to the urgency, Rachel felt for the edges of the boards, looked for the joints. Went back to the other end, worked forward, looking for anything loose, trying to remember where the floor creaked most, trying to recall what Ernest had said about sweeping out the straw: he carried it in, he swept it not out, but down. Not a board in the end, a metal drain in the centre of the aisle. She tried to prise it open, broke her nails on the edge. Worked round, felt for each corner, tried again. Ernest would use a tool; she had no tools. She finally stood on one side of the drain, felt the other side lift slightly, grabbed it and pulled. It fell back, trapping her fingers and she shouted in anger, freed her hands and did it again, held it and danced round, put her boot in the space and heaved. The metal moved with a sticky sound, revealing a hole and intensification of the smell. Rachel paused, then sat on the edge of the hole, her booted feet dangling, her empty stomach heaving.
You’ve never made a difference to anybody’s life. They really are going to kill Carl. Never mind you, you have to warn him. Even if it’s the very last thing you do. All this is you own fault.
Rachel dropped through the hole, to the sound of enraged piglets, and sank into liquid manure.