The Stopped Heart (27 page)

You have to come, he said.

What?

I froze and stared at him, his body large and sudden in the open doorway, the black dark of the night solid behind him. I glanced straight back at where the shape had been. Nothing. I looked again at James.

What? I said again.

He swallowed.

Just come.

Slowly, I let go of Lottie and let her slide to the floor. I thought she would complain but she remained silent; she did not make a sound.

Why? I said. What is it? What's the matter?

His face did not change.

I need help, he said. I need help, Eliza, and I need it right now.

M
ARY
'
S MOBILE SHUDDERS INTO LIFE
. T
HE SOUND MAKES HER
jump.

“I'm fucking begging you,” Ruby says, “to talk to Dad. He's somehow got it into his head that I have to spend the whole summer with you guys like I'm some kind of underage retard or something and I thought I could get Mum on my side at least, but now he's fucking well brainwashed her into it and she won't listen to a single thing I say.”

Mary, sitting on the old bench and watching the dog sniff around the bricks she's just laid over the roots of the clematis, thinks about this.

“Well, it doesn't necessarily have to be the whole summer, does it?” Mary says at last.

She hears Ruby take a breath.

“Doesn't it? That's not what they're saying. You ask Dad. I swear they want me on a train the very moment the term ends, so they can incarcerate me in the fucking countryside.”

Mary brushes a ladybird off her arm.

“I'm sure it won't be for the whole holidays.”

“Won't it? Try telling them that and see what they say. Seriously, Mary, will you talk to him? I mean it, I think I might be able to bear a long weekend or something but any more than that is going to be fucking torture.”

“Torture?” Mary says, still watching the ladybird's dark blur of wings. She hears Ruby gasp.

“Yes, torture. Don't you get it? That's exactly what they want. It's supposed to be awful. It's some kind of a punishment for whatever it is that I'm supposed to have done. Mum wants me away from all my friends and all my social life that I've taken so long
to build up and basically away from any possibility of the tiniest shred of fucking pleasure I have left in my life.”

Mary hesitates.

“And you don't think it might be good to get out of London for a while?”

Ruby lets out a wail.

“Oh my God. Please don't tell me you're in on it too? You were my last hope. I thought you at least still had a mind of your own.”

Mary thinks about this. She thinks about her mind and she wonders, for the first time in what she imagines is probably quite a while, whether it really is her own. At the same time, she reaches out with a hand and tries to wave at the dog, who is now starting to scratch at the earth under the bricks.

“Hold on a moment,” she tells Ruby, “I just have to shout at the dog. The thing is,” Mary says as she wrestles the dog away from the roots and forces her to sit at her feet, “your dad is really quite worried about you. And so am I. I'm worried about you. And I know for a fact that your mum is worried—”

She hears Ruby gasp.

“Worried? What in fuck's name is wrong with you all? It's ridiculous. I've done absolutely nothing for ages except try to please you all, but at the end of the day, it just doesn't work, does it? All I am is a bloody scapegoat. Lisa thinks that too. She thinks it's really unfair. The trouble with you guys is you're so fucked-up by what happened and you're just looking for someone to take it out on.”

Mary is silent. Letting go of the dog and smoothing a hand over the leg of her jeans.

“That's what Lisa thinks, is it? And what else does Lisa think?”

Ruby sniffs.

“All right and I'll tell you another thing, but you won't like it.
I haven't even told Mum this, but your house is scary. I don't like sleeping there. It seriously creeps me out. I'm not being funny, and I swear I'm not making it up. And it's not just me either. Lisa felt it too.”

Mary says nothing. She stays very calm. The air is warm and bright and sharp around her. It smells of apples, leaves, soil, baby's fingers, the fuzzy brown hair of small girls. She doesn't feel at all upset. She doesn't feel bad or afraid or worried. In fact, she realizes she hasn't felt so perfectly and conveniently comfortable in a very long time. A sinking euphoria, that's what this is, blurring all her edges, a bit like the medication they gave her straight after it had happened.

“Mary?” Ruby says.

“What?”

“You still there?”

Mary swallows.

“I know,” she says.

“What?”

She hesitates. Feeling Ruby on the other end of the line, waiting.

“I know there's something in the house,” she says at last.

S
EVERAL HOURS LATER, SHE RUNS INTO
E
DDIE IN THE FARM
shop. Both of them buying milk. He's carrying Deborah's big straw basket with the flowers on it. “Mary Coles!” he says. “Now isn't that funny—I was just on my way to see you.”

Her spirits drop. She knows she won't shake him off now. He waits while she pays. Outside in the sunshine, he stops and looks at her more closely. “Mary? What's the matter? Are you all right?”

Mary tries to smile.

“I'm fine. Why? Don't I look fine?”

He hesitates.

“You look very pale.”

“I'm always pale.”

“No, really. I don't think I've ever seen you so pale. You look like a ghost of yourself.”

“Well, I'm fine, really.”

He smiles.

“All right. If you say so.” Keeping his eyes on her face, he puts his hand into the basket and brings out something wrapped in newspaper. “Here.”

“What?”

“I wanted you to have it.”

“Oh, but, Eddie!” Mary unwraps it, pulling off the paper, the glass suddenly cool beneath her fingertips. “You can't possibly give me this.”

He grins.

“It seemed to chime with you—that time I first showed it to you, remember? I could tell it meant something. You showed an interest. You even saw things in it that I'd never noticed.”

The shadow. Mary tries not to look for it now. It might not be anything—might not ever have been there, she thinks.

“But that doesn't mean I should have it,” she tells Eddie.

“Yes, it does. Really. Please don't make me explain it. I just wanted to give it to you. I feel that you're its rightful owner.”

Mary looks again at the picture—the country lane, familiar and barely changed except for the presence of those long-ago faces—all those small children lined up against the hedge, the stout little girl staring straight ahead, the other child hanging upside down, skinny dark legs in dark stockings, hair sweeping the dust. She sees with relief that it all looks quite different in the bright sunlight—bleached out and in some way benign. She turns back to Eddie.

“But what about Deborah? You had it on your bedroom wall.”

He makes a face.

“She won't even notice it's gone. She never liked it—she's not keen on old stuff. And anyway, I told you, there are two more of the things at home waiting to be framed.” He lifts his eyes to meet hers, his face suddenly shy. “Your hair really suits you like that, by the way. I've never seen you with it up.”

“Oh.” Mary, hating herself for flushing, reaches up and touches the clip she'd forgotten all about. “I had a shower and forgot to take it out.”

“Well, it's good. Makes you look a bit French.”

“French?” Mary laughs and his face falls.

“Anyway. You should wear it up more often.”

Mary doesn't know what to say. She looks at Eddie, suddenly worried that she hasn't thanked him properly.

“How are you anyway?” she says. “How's your boy?”

“My boy?”

“Is he OK? When does the term end? Will you get to see him soon?”

Eddie looks at her for a long moment.

“It's nice of you to ask,” he says. “No one ever asks me that. I'm trying to arrange a visit at the moment, in fact, but it's difficult. Deborah gets quite upset if I even mention him.”

Mary looks at him.

“Does she? Why?”

“It's complicated. It's not her fault. Just maybe best if you don't go mentioning him to her, OK?”

“OK,” Mary says.

Clutching the basket to him, Eddie looks at the ground.

“It's just, some of the stuff I told you—it's best if it stays between us.”

“All right,” she says, unsure what she's just agreed to.

She extricates herself and walks back home down the lane carrying the picture and the milk. Away from Eddie, she feels
oddly light, unencumbered—noticing all over again how bright the air is, dancing with insects and bits of something seedlike that seems to come floating down from the trees.

When she gets to the house, she sees that the gate is swinging open again. She closes it and goes inside and moves briskly across the kitchen, fast and purposeful, ignoring the feeling that there are other people in there—hands and skirts and faces, the plump wrist of a child, a blur of voice and limb and the quick childish gasp of breath.

She unclips her hair as she goes, shaking it out over her shoulders and, putting the milk on the table and drawing back the heavy bolts on the back door, she lets the dog out into the garden. And she stands there for a few moments, holding the picture and still hardly daring to look for the long shadow of the man who waits just around the corner for she doesn't know what.

J
AMES DRAGGED ME DOWN THE GARDEN WITH HIM BUT BEFORE
we even got near, I could hear it—a thick, throaty sound that wasn't crying and wasn't screaming, but something else much worse. And as we went around the old fallen tree and he began to pull me behind the apple shed, I knew that whatever was there, I could not look at it.

At first there seemed to be nothing, and for a quick second my spirits calmed. Then, as my eyes got used to the dark and the faint moonlight, I saw that she was farther back, in the dry, grassy shadow cast by the old wall, the same hidden place where him and me so often had our fun with each other.

You could see that she'd dragged herself quite a way across the grass, because even the tallest stems were flattened and broken and slicked with a trail that shone blackish in the moonlight. She must have got herself as far as the wall before reaching out with her hand and scraping her nails against the cold brick and giving up.

Her pinafore was dirty and torn and her skirts all hitched up and you could see the backs of her legs, which were smeared and bloody. One of her boots had come off and was by the wall, the other still on but unlaced. She was lying with her head on one outstretched arm almost as if she was sleeping, but the other was twisted harshly around and pointing the wrong way entirely and the hand was bloody and partly severed and one of the fingers was hanging right off.

There was blood all over her neck and face and in her hair—it came from her mouth and nostrils and even her eyes—and I saw with a shock that she was burned and blackened under the arms and around the chest, as if her clothes had been set on fire and then put out. But that wasn't the worst thing. The worst thing was that she was looking right at me and her mouth was still moving.

I couldn't help it, I turned away. I thought I would begin to be sick. I was gagging and heaving. I wanted to run, but he grabbed me by the shoulder.

You've got to help me, he said.

What? I cried.

We have to finish her off.

I covered my face with my hands. I was shaking so hard I could not breathe. When I took my hands away, there was wet there. I did not know if it was sweat or tears.

Oh God, I whispered. Oh God, oh God, James. What have you done?

I swear she's not meant to still be alive, he said. Honest to God, Eliza, after what I did to her, I don't know how she can be.

With his eyes still on me, he picked up a spade.

“H
AVE YOU MOVED ANY OF MY TOOLS?”
G
RAHAM ASKS HER.
“From behind the apple shed?”

She looks at him, standing there on the step in his old gardening clothes. “No,” she says. “What tools?”

He scratches his head.

“There was the rake and the hoe and a couple of spades. And a mallet, I think. I don't know. I can't remember what I left there.”

“And they're gone?”

“All gone. Really annoying. It was the brand-new hoe, the one we got the other day. But my fault, I suppose, for leaving them there. And for not getting around to doing that fence.”

Mary stares at him.

“You think that someone came in from the fields?”

He shrugs.

“Must have. How else? Don't fret. It doesn't matter. Nothing we can do about it now.”

He looks at the table. Eddie's picture propped against the fruit bowl.

“What's that?”

Mary explains and shows him that it's just around the corner. “If you went around there,” she says, pointing into the photograph, “you'd come to this house.”

This house. She looks at it again. For a moment she doesn't know what it is that's changed. Then she does. In the picture the lane now seems entirely light and bright, all shadows gone.

Graham frowns at her over the top of his glasses.

“But why would he give it to you?”

“What—Eddie?” Mary feels the color go to her cheeks. “I don't know. I asked him that myself and I didn't get much of an answer. You know what he's like. He didn't say anything really.”

A
FTER THE GIRLS WERE TAKEN, AFTER WEEKS HAD PASSED AND
they realized they were probably gone forever but still didn't know why or in what circumstances, Mary slept.