Tell Tale (26 page)

Without a word she turned to leave, but an unexpected band of pain around the top of her arm stopped her.

‘I said, I can see everything I need.’ Burnett levered Nina against him. ‘This is all the art, all the beauty, all the convincing and proof I need. Your husband’s skill doesn’t lie in his paintings.’ Burnett laughed. His breath smelled sour, like the mudflats at low tide. ‘It lies in his choice of wife.’

Nina whipped her face away. She screwed up her eyes – unable to cry, unable to scream. What did he mean – Mick’s choice of wife? It wasn’t coincidence that he had come to their house, and neither was it coincidence that he was using her husband as a way to get at her. He had no real interest in Mick’s art. For twenty years she had tried to deny that this moment would ever happen. A comfortable existence, a loving family, her own home and business had left her with no reaction, no instinct, no grand plan. Even McCormack had failed her when it came down to it.

‘I . . . I don’t know what you mean.’

Burnett laughed deeply. He pulled her closer still and prised her face round with his fingers clipped beneath her
chin. ‘Haven’t you even thought about me once over the years?’

Nina shook her head. Words were out of reach.

‘Well, I’ve thought about you,’ he continued. ‘I’ve had your little-girl charms in my head every day for the last two decades.’ He was so close that Nina could smell – almost
taste –
the sweat on his face. ‘Thought about what I would do to you when I found you.’

He pulled Mick’s work chair towards him and sat down. It creaked under his weight. He yanked Nina down towards him, but she suddenly whipped her arms away and kicked him in the shin.

‘No!’ she screamed, lunging for the door. Before her hand was even on the handle, Burnett grabbed hold of her again, this time pulling her roughly down on to him as he sat in the chair. She hated the feel of his muscles against her legs.

‘I thought of nothing but you during those lonely nights,’ he crooned, stroking her hair, tucking it behind her ears. ‘And life’s been good to you, Mrs Nina Kennedy.’ He snapped out the syllables of her name. ‘You’ve hardly changed a bit.’ Burnett dragged a finger up her cheek, through her hair, pinning it back at the temple as if a clip were in place. ‘And I hope you liked the gift I sent you. Pretty, isn’t it?’

Nina swallowed, nearly choking on her own spit. She thought she was going to pass out.

‘Do you know what it’s like to have two decades of your life taken from you because of . . .’ Burnett panted stale breath in her face. ‘Because of a
little girl?’

Nina shook her head. She couldn’t look at him. Her body was stiff with fear.

‘I spent nineteen years, four months and seventeen days in that shithole because of you.’ He suddenly stood, and Nina was pushed back against the wooden wall of the studio. Something crashed from a shelf beside her.

In the dim light, Burnett tracked his finger over a canvas propped on an easel. ‘I don’t care much for your husband’s paintings,’ he said quite normally, as if he were choosing something for his living room. ‘And I don’t care about your airhead daughter, either.’ He picked up the large canvas and carried it across the studio to Nina. ‘But I do care about
you.
Life won’t be so good any more.’

Nina let out a little whimper. It didn’t sound like her voice. Her fingernails dug into the rough-sawn wood of the studio wall.

‘You are going to die.’ He said it quietly, although it expanded to fill the entire studio, bursting through the thin walls and out into the night. ‘Tell anyone, and your daughter dies first.’ Burnett drew a line with his finger across his veined neck. ‘She looks like you,’ he said pensively.

‘Keep your filthy hands off her.’ Nina could hardly speak.

‘Oh, she’s too old for me now. You should know that, Nina.’ He reached out and caressed her face. ‘Once you’re dead, I’ll be on my way.’

Burnett slammed his foot through the large canvas just as the lights came back on. Nina stared at the painting as her eyes adjusted to the brightness. It was the beautiful
picture that Mick had done of her. Burnett’s greedy eyes drank up every inch of naked flesh that hadn’t been destroyed by his boot. There was a gash right through Nina’s heart.

‘You’ll just have to tell Mick you had an accident, won’t you?’ Burnett pushed the canvas and watched as it toppled flat on its face.

‘You’re evil,’ Nina sobbed. ‘Pure evil.’ Fighting hard against the terror binding her muscles, she turned and ran out of the studio, through the floodlit garden, and up towards the house. She batted away the tears as they poured from her eyes – tears of fear and anger because her perfect life was being destroyed. She held back the wail that filled her chest, and tripped as she ran through the grass.

How did he find me?

As she came up to the back door, she saw Mick through the kitchen window. Nina was sure of only one thing – that by the time she got inside, she must appear composed and calm, as if nothing at all had happened, as if she had had a perfectly pleasant time in the studio with Burnett. Nina knew that when she faced her husband, she must be a different woman entirely.

I tried to tell them. It took two days before I could get the words out. They thought I had laryngitis. Patricia gave me some medicine.

‘And Chef was there,’ I told her. She looked at me for a moment, shook her head, then decided she didn’t have time to listen to the rest. When Miss Maddocks came on duty, she told me off for messing up my clothes.

‘What are these doing crumpled and bloody under your bed?’ She whipped out the stiff, sticky garments that I’d been wearing when they took me. She screwed up her nose at the smell.

‘Those men hurt me,’ I whispered. ‘And Chef was there.’

Miss Maddocks stared at me, stretched her mouth in thought. Then she went around the dormitory harvesting dirty clothes, picking up toys off the floor. ‘When will you girls learn,’ she mumbled. ‘Mess, mess, mess.’

‘Miss Maddocks,’ I begged. ‘Please listen. They did bad things to me.’ I started to cry. ‘Things they shouldn’t do.’ They were tears of frustration. Why wouldn’t she listen? Why hadn’t any of the other children told?

‘Ava Atwood, you are the biggest tittle-tattle I know. One day those dogs are going to have a feast of your tongue.’

Men from the council came. An inspection, Patricia told us. We had to scrub the place from top to bottom, even the horrid old dusty rooms that never got used. The building was huge and we weren’t usually allowed in half of it. Betsy trotted after me, too young to be of any real help.

‘What’s a spekshun?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know,’ I admitted. ‘But I don’t like it much if it means we have to do all this cleaning.’ I slopped a wet mop on the old floorboards. A warm musty smell rose from the wood. Betsy jumped in the wet bits and made footprints in the dry areas.

There were half a dozen of them, five men and one woman, all wearing dark suits. We were made to line up in the dining room and sing a song while they drank coffee. I recognised one of the men, remembered his red nose, the brown flecks on his forehead. I screwed up my eyes.

‘Very commendable,’ one of them said to the home director, Mr Leaby. We only ever saw Mr Leaby when there was an emergency or someone from the council came. ‘You’re running a tight ship.’

There was a clatter of crockery as they finished, a clap of hands as one of the older male carers sent us away, and then the people from the council spread like an infestation of beetles throughout our home. They spent three days observing what went on, watching how the staff dealt with us, poring over files and accounts in the office, and making
a note of what we were fed. It was the best few days of my life at Roecliffe. We ate better food, all the staff were nice to us, not just Patricia and Miss Maddocks, and they even played games and allowed us to watch what we wanted on television.

And then my father came.

‘My little Ava bird,’ he said, standing in the doorway to the living room. They’d lit a fire. It was warm and cosy and Chef had made us cakes. I was sitting on the floor with Betsy. We’d been given a jigsaw puzzle to do. It was new because of the inspection. I had my hand over half a face and a bit of sky. I was forcing a piece in.

‘Dad?’ I said quietly. Was I seeing things?

There were two men from the council sitting at the other end of the room. I stood up, not taking my eyes off him in case he disappeared again. My legs fizzed from pins and needles. ‘Dad, is it really you?’ I walked over to him. He was still wearing that old sheepskin coat.

‘Ava bird, how you’ve grown!’ He held out his arms and blanketed me in a hug that I’d dreamt about for years.

‘I’ve been waiting for you,’ I told him. On my fingers, pushed deep into the shaggy lining of his coat, I counted the years. ‘I’ve waited for five years, Dad.’ I wanted to hit him, but my arms went limp at the sight of him. ‘Have you come to take me home now?’

‘I’ve come to see Patricia,’ he said. His eyes darted around the room. My heart slopped from my chest, into my belly, and down into my feet. I couldn’t even cry.

‘She’s not here,’ I said. ‘It’s her day off.’ I knew all the
staff schedules; knew when to keep out of the way when the nasty ones came on duty.

‘Damn,’ my dad said. ‘When’s she back?’ He pulled a packet of cigarettes from his inside pocket and put one between his lips. It wiggled as he spoke. ‘I need to see her.’ His eyes darted everywhere, as if doing that would make Patricia appear.

Grudgingly, when he realised that he’d had a wasted journey, Dad drove me to McDonald’s. On the way, he told me that he and Patricia had got married two years ago.

‘But she left me soon after,’ he said, adding a third sachet of sugar to his coffee. I had a Coke and a cheeseburger. We were sitting in the smoking area and it made me cough.

I didn’t say anything about him getting married, about him not telling me, about him not even asking me to the wedding. He showed me a photograph of it, all crumpled in his wallet. ‘Doesn’t she look beautiful?’ he said.

That would explain that hairdo, I thought, remembering, noticing the way it was pinned up, ringlets at her cheeks. Ages ago she had come into work looking like that, but a bit less neat, and with rosy cheeks. There was a boy in the photo, wearing a smart suit.

What’s worse? I wondered after I told Dad that the photograph was nice, that Patricia looked pretty, that I was happy for him even though she had left him; what’s worse, I thought, swallowing away the lump in my throat, your dad getting secretly married, or being raped by a stranger?

I wasn’t sure. And to be honest, I wasn’t sure if I’d even been raped. I’d seen some things on the news, and at school
I’d overheard the bigger girls gossiping. What I didn’t understand was that, in all the cases I’d heard about, the victims had wanted to die. I’d felt a lot of things, but not that.

The first time Betsy went missing, it was for a whole day. They found her up a tree, stuck like a kitten. She clung on to the knotty branch of the apple tree, her arms and legs wrapped round it. Her face was pressed into the bark.

‘I wanted an apple,’ she wailed. Patricia called for the gardener to fetch a ladder. ‘And I was going to get you one,’ she told me. Instead, what she got was a whipping by one of the nameless nasty carers, and an early bedtime with no supper. I saved her some sausage and some bread.

I sat on the edge of her bed and took them from my pocket. The sausage had gone cold and was covered in fluff. Betsy didn’t care. She nibbled at it and cried, telling me she wanted to go home, wherever that was. I couldn’t help her, and that made me angry. When I got angry, I bound it all up and stashed it deep inside. If I couldn’t help myself, how was I supposed to help her? Like everyone else, we just waited for one day to turn into the next.

That sausage was pretty much the last thing, apart from sweets, that Betsy ate for a year. The next time she went missing was one winter evening. She was back in her bed by morning, seemed fine, stared at her cereal, so I didn’t ask questions, didn’t think to probe into the secrets that lay behind her silent eyes as she drizzled milk off her spoon. I knew better than that by now, and besides, there was
nothing to say. Simply nothing to tell about the ones who got taken. They went, they came back, they got on with life. What else were we to do? And if they didn’t come back, there was certainly nothing else to be said – just a race for their clothes, their toys, and, if we were lucky, a bag of sweets left behind in their cupboard.

When I told Miss Maddocks that Betsy wasn’t eating, that she was getting thinner, she stared at me. She carried on filling out the forms. Some tales, I’d learned over the years, weren’t even worth telling.

I’m risking my job as well as expulsion for Fliss and Jenny. But they’re up for it, especially when I tell them I’ll give them twenty pounds each to keep their mouths shut. ‘Even if Mr Palmer strings you up by your necks and whips your bare backs with a willow branch?’

‘We’re not stupid.’ Jenny’s voice is crisp and sieved of all lazy accents. Fliss wears an expensive perfume and carries the latest iPod.

The girls look at each other as if I’m their mother; as if I’m so old they can’t contemplate ever being my age.
Yeah, right, Mum,
they would say before skulking off to their rooms to text or instant message their mates.

‘It’s probably best if we go to the IT room now,’ Jenny says. ‘It’s nearly study time and won’t look too odd if we’re in there. If anyone asks why you’re there with us, just say one of us came to get you because the other was feeling ill.’

‘I’m excellent at fake fainting,’ Fliss adds with a smile that is no doubt costing her parents thousands in orthodontic treatment.

‘You’ll only have to do this the once,’ I tell them. ‘I won’t bother you again.’ I flicker a smile back, not wanting them
to think I’m weird or stalking someone online. They don’t need to know reasons and, with twenty pounds pressed into their palms, I doubt if they’ll ask why.

The IT room is hot and humming and, thankfully, empty. Jenny boots up a terminal and Fliss drags over a couple of extra chairs so we can all see the monitor. Fliss looks at me sympathetically. ‘There are websites that adults go on, you know, to meet people their own age. Do you want me to find one of those for you?’