Memory Scents (4 page)

              The problem with Tim’s box of tricks was that all the items were slowly losing their scent. Even Alice’s pretty embroidered cardigan.

              A warm exciting feeling began to stir in the pit of Tim’s stomach as he screwed the cap on his rum bottle and thought about where his next memory scents would come from.

*

           Chrissie ambled down to the local pub at lunchtime on Sunday and felt quite relieved when she spotted Grace in the distance. She didn’t fancy entering a close knit village pub on her own. She could just tell it would be one of those pubs where they’d all stop talking, put down their drinks and stare at the stranger who’d dared to enter their domain. She waved frantically and Grace half heartedly raised her hand and nodded in acknowledgement. Chrissie was a bit uncertain as she approached Grace and her husband as to whether she’d made a mistake coming along. Grace seemed a bit subdued and not at all how she’d been yesterday. Chrissie scolded herself for her over-sensitive nature and put it down to it being Sunday and maybe they’d had a late night.

              Grace gave Chrissie a brief hug and then introduced her to Tim. He wasn’t what Chrissie had expected at all. She’d imagined a large man, the life and soul of the party with evidence of it written on his face. But instead, she was faced with a fairly short person, of not quite medium build, from what she could gather under his checked shirt and jeans, and a full head of floppy salt and pepper hair and a moustache to match. His face was very well lined but not, thought Chrissie, from laughter. His small brown eyes seemed to be dark pools of nothing. As he shook Chrissie’s hand he breathed in through his nose, very strongly lifting his head to lock eyes with hers. Chrissie frowned at him and decided he was very strange indeed. She saw Grace watching her face and quickly smiled and exchanged pleasantries with him. Maybe that’s why Grace was a bit subdued; having to put up with him, thought Chrissie.

              “Are you ok? Is it still alright for me to join you?” Chrissie said as they entered the pub.

              “Yes, course it is!” Grace gave Chrissie’s arm an affectionate squeeze. “Sorry. I’m a bit subdued today. Had a few more glasses of wine when I got home last night, which I’ve now decided was not a good idea!”

              “I nearly did that,” Chrissie laughed, “but I’d frightened myself so much during the day that I thought I ought to get some supper and myself to bed compos mentis!”

              “What did you frighten yourself over?” Grace asked, walking over to a table and pulling out some chairs so that they could all sit down. The pub was empty apart from a couple of regulars in the corner, who they politely said hello to while Tim got the drinks.

              “Oh it’s nothing I’m sure. Just tiredness I think.” Chrissie didn’t want to appear like a tall story teller. She wasn’t keen on sharing ghost stories with people she didn’t know too well, just in case they thought it was a load of rubbish or they were terribly religious and found it offensive.

              “I remember now! You nearly jumped out of your skin when I knocked on the door. That didn’t look like nothing to me. What had you seen?”

              Chrissie relayed her story of the previous day’s events to Grace and then reluctantly to Tim who joined them with the drinks half way through.

              “Well it’s obvious why you saw that little girl,” said Tim smugly, “it’ll be because of that child killer who committed murder in the village, committed offences over quite a long period.”

              Chrissie and Grace both turned to stare at him, but not for the same reasons.

              “What child killer?” asked Chrissie; the tiny hairs on her arms lifting at the words.

              “Oh, it was years ago now but there was someone going around the area topping children of different ages. Some of them were found not far from the village and one of them was in your garden.” Tim said with a slight smirk wavering on his lips.

              Chrissie’s blue eyes were the size of saucers and she had begun to feel slightly sick.

              “Stop it Tim, that’s enough!” Grace leaned in his face, the words coming out a bit sharper than she’d meant them to.

              “Well someone’s bound to tell her sooner or later, it may as well be us,” Tim leaned back in his chair with his pint, thoroughly enjoying the attention he was getting, “Yeah, they reckon the one found in your garden was strangled with an old dog chain, very grim business. But as I said it was a very long time ago.”

              “Just ignore him Chrissie, he’s winding you up.” Grace tried to dilute the situation. She glared at Tim, unable to believe how cocky and arrogant he was being. Grace tried to distract everyone by handing out menus.

              “But its true isn’t it, what you’re telling me?” Chrissie wanted to continue the conversation; she was feeling very unnerved. It wasn’t just what Tim was telling her that was making her feel uneasy; it was the odd flashes that had passed the screens of her mind. She was unable to interrupt them long enough to see what they were or work out what they meant.

              “Yes, it is true Chrissie but it all happened a very long time ago and the family that lived in the house before you had a very happy time there. You were just very tired my love and your mind can play tricks on you when you feel like that. Now let’s change the subject and order some food before the crowds get here.”

              And that’s exactly what they did; talked about something else. But it didn’t change anything for any of them because all three had their minds set on the same subject and all three of them were feeling completely different emotions to each other. One was frightened, one was furious, and the other was full of anticipation.

CHAPTER THREE                                                             

Dear Alice,

              I found a box of your old toys in the attic yesterday and it set me off on one of my bad days again. Daddy is still insisting that we go on holiday but I just can’t do it, Alice. And the very thought of it is making me feel ill. What if I missed you? What if the one time that I don’t get up in the morning to look out of the window, you appear at our door?

              Daddy has even mentioned selling up and moving away but that is just unbearable to think about. We have hope, which is something other families don’t have. There is always hope my darling and I think it’s this that somehow keeps me alive and enables me to get through each day.

              Aunty Jenny brought round some pictures of your cousin Emily’s wedding. They’re gorgeous and were all taken in black and white. Nana and Granddad managed to go, and there are some lovely pictures of them dancing together. We have chosen the ones we want and framed a couple and put them in your bedroom for you. They look nice against the newly painted walls.

              I think that’s another reason I’m having such a bad day. The photos are beautiful but they were just another reminder of what you would have looked like had it been your wedding day. You and Emily are so alike.

              Daddy says I should go and see a therapist to talk about how I’m feeling. He thinks it will help me to move on. But apart from my bad days, I’m fine Alice. I’ll never get over it, but then who would having lost their precious daughter? No not lost, not lost, not lost! I don’t know why I said that my darling Alice, please forgive me.

              I don’t need to move on. I am here in the present, living each day without you, without my beautiful daughter, but I know one day that you’ll walk through the door and we will make up for all the time we’ve lost together.

Loving you always – Mummy

*

Norfolk 1984

              Jody was happy to go with the nice man because he’d promised to find her mother, who she’d lost in the commotion of the Christmas shoppers. Her mother had told her not to run off but she’d been distracted in the large store by the little Russian dolls that were on display. She wanted one of those so badly and she’d written about it in her letter to Father Christmas. Her mother had helped her put it together and they’d added lots of other things to the list of items including a copy of The Velveteen Rabbit and a pram to push her teddy around in. She was filled with magical excitement at the thought of it all, as if Christmas was a brand new invention and she would be one of the first to experience it. Until today, where the excitement had melted like snow and had been replaced by a sickly fear. She had run and pushed through people and turned in circles searching for her mother’s familiar face. Eventually she had found herself near the main doors and had walked straight into the man’s legs as if they were fated to meet.

              The man’s hands were large and warm around her tiny cold one and he smelled like her father.

              Jody chatted away to him, totally distracting herself from the fact that he had walked her out of the department store and down the street to his car. They looked like any other father and daughter shopping for mother a few days before Christmas and went unnoticed by the passing public, who smiled at the pretty five year old who appeared to be chatting to her father.

              By the time they reached the car it was too far away for Jody to hear the panicked shouts of her mother out on the street. A mother who was already filled with a heavy dread and fear as she turned round and round in the street, frantically calling for her little girl in the busy town; knowing all too well that there was a child killer on the loose.

*

Norfolk 1998

              The suffocating heat and stench of over-boiled vegetables and urine hit Tim in the face as he was bleeped through the double doors of Poppy Field’s retirement home. He was used to it after visiting his Mother religiously every week for the past eight years.

              She’d had a series of strokes when she was sixty seven and never fully recovered. The doctors had put it down to the stress of losing her husband and suddenly being on her own. But Tim felt as though it wasn’t the fact that she was ‘being’ on her own, it was the fact that she had to ‘cope’ on her own after a life with a husband who saw to her every whim.

              Daphne had actually grown up in a working class family with lots of siblings, all living hand to mouth, appreciating every tiny little luxury that rarely came their way. Luxuries that wealthy families took for granted. She didn’t fit into her family at all and they looked upon her as a stranger. They felt that she had ideas of grandeur. There wasn’t much resemblance with any of them, physically or mentally. Daphne held herself differently, daydreamed often and read books, which was unheard of in the household. She came from generations of a repetitive theory, a school of thought that you accepted what you were given, ‘your lot’ as it was so aptly put.

              The community she lived in frowned at her attitude of wanting to improve her situation. So she was generally an outcast and no one was surprised or pleased when she met Jack Charlesworth, a very wealthy lawyer. They fell in love quite quickly and Daphne fled as fast as she could, not realising that she may have just used Jack as a scapegoat to get away from her circumstances. She loved him, but not as he loved and adored her. As his adoration grew stronger throughout their marriage, Daphne’s love turned into bitter resentment for him. The life she’d spent years wishing for hadn’t turned out to be the one she wanted after all and she made him suffer for it. Money didn’t buy you happiness or put right life’s tragedies, she’d found that out the hard way. But as horrible as she was to him he still loved her, until the day he suffered a massive heart attack in his green house at the unripe age of seventy. Daphne had seen it more as an inconvenience than a tragedy, which was really how she’d treated him their entire married life.

              But, as Jack had adored her, so did Tim. However frequently she pushed him away, he went running back, seeing her in his younger days as an independent and powerful woman instead of the bitter, twisted person he was to see her as later in his life.

              And this is where she’d ended up; Poppy Field’s retirement home. She’d more or less recovered from the strokes eight years previously but was deemed too unstable to live alone. Tim thought that a lifetime of being waited on hand and foot had left her fragile and slightly pathetic; a side to her that very few people glimpsed. So Tim had been quite happy to keep her in the retirement home. As much as he adored his Mother, he didn’t want her interfering with his life and spoiling his routine. He had learnt only too well from her that you treated people like you treated your possessions. Getting them out when it suited you and then putting them away when they grew tiresome. So Daphne was safely ensconced in the box that Tim had put her in; boxed with a memory scent like everything else in his life.