Tell Tale (35 page)

Nina found herself watching the end titles for a low-budget made-for-television adaptation of a little-known novel. ‘There. You see that?’

Nina shook her head.

‘My name in black and white.
Special effects advice Ethan Reacher
.’ He pointed the remote at the machine and selected
a certain scene. ‘Sued the pants off the bastards for that one. The only advice I offered them was to cut the damn scene entirely unless they could do it properly. If you ain’t got no stunt man, then less is more in your suicide scene.’ Reacher mimicked a fake Hollywood accent.

‘There’s no stuntman in my movie,’ she said solemnly. ‘The . . . the actress insists on doing it herself. For real.’

‘A woman?’ Reacher’s interest was kindled. ‘A bridge, you say? How high?’

Nina swallowed. ‘About two hundred and fifty feet. Maybe a little more.’

Reacher guffawed with laughter. ‘You’re having me on, right?’ Nina shook her head. ‘I want a front-row seat to the premiere then. This is going to be a box-office smash.’

Reacher hit play and talked Nina through the scene. He paused and flicked backwards, illustrating over and over how not to create a convincing suicide jump. ‘That cut was wrong. Did you notice how attention was lost at the crucial moment? How our eye was drawn back to the car when it should have been focusing on the body? The car shot should have come later.’

‘But can you tell me about the stunt, the equipment, the conditions?’ Nina asked. She hadn’t come to find out how not to do it, or to learn about camera shots. ‘How can the actress do this and survive?’

Again, Reacher roared his trademark laugh. Then he became serious and Nina waited for the pearl of wisdom she needed to make this work. ‘The only truly convincing suicides in this business, Nina honey, are the real ones.’

The last time I saw Betsy alive, it was as if spring had wound its way through her veins. Even though it was November, even though there was a biting wind that sent our toes purple and numb, even though there was nothing at all to look forward to, her heart beat with the lightness of new life. The reason for Betsy’s happiness was because of an old piano. I’d convinced Patricia to have several of the caretakers drag it down the corridors from the storeroom where I’d found it.

‘It’ll keep her amused,’ I told her.

‘Annoy the hell out of me,’ she replied.

‘We can have sing-songs.’

‘No one can play.’

‘We could learn,’ I said.

‘You wouldn’t practise,’ she retorted.

I walked off, determined to get that piano in the common room if I had to push it in myself. I knew Betsy would adore it, and I was right. My pestering paid off. Even as Ted and his mate huffed and swore and humped the dusty thing into place, Betsy was fiddling with the keys, fitting each of her fingers above a note,
carefully thinking which sound went with another.

Some mighty awful noises came out of the piano at first, but gradually, as Betsy sat patiently on a dining chair that was too low, pressing the yellowed ivory keys with arched fingers, something began to emerge. Unusual renditions of ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’ and ‘Oranges and Lemons’ spilled from the common room. And strange, doleful versions of ‘Happy Birthday’ in minor-keyed notes. Betsy knew my eighteenth birthday was only a week away, and knew also that I would soon be leaving. She had no comprehension of what that actually meant, and no idea either that I would be taking her away with me. The thought of leaving her behind was abhorrent. Who, I wondered, would be there to comfort her in the mornings?

I had no idea where we would go. I expected to be booted out on to the street the minute the council’s funding for me expired. If I was lucky, they’d give me the number of a hostel, perhaps a couple of pounds for the bus, tell me where the job centre was. I was determined that Betsy and I were going to start a new life together.

‘Happy birthday . . . de-ar Ay-vaaa . . .’ Betsy’s brittle voice cracked out a contrasting tune to the one she was actually playing. ‘Haaapy birthday to you!’ she shouted in finale.

Everyone clapped when she’d finished. She turned round, amazed at what she’d done. Her sweet-stained lips tried to mask her delight but couldn’t. Teeth that I nagged her to clean sat discoloured in her open mouth. It was pure happiness – raw and unexpected, steaming from the warmth of her heart.

I left her contentedly tracking her fingers up and down every single one of the piano keys. Not all of them played a note, and not many of them were in tune. I’d been sent to fetch logs for the big fireplace. In winter we spent most of our time in the common room, huddled by the hearth, watching kids’ shows on the telly after we’d tramped back from where the school bus dropped us off. I was the only one trying for A levels. I wanted to make something of myself.

I humped the big basket down into the basement. The stack of wood I usually took logs from was pretty much down to curls of bark and twigs that were fit only for kindling. I ventured into another cellar chamber where I knew there was a fresh pile of dry wood. The ceiling level drew down, forcing me to press my chin on my chest.

As I passed into the next dark area, I heard the rise and fall of voices above me. I glanced up, catching my face in the cobwebs strung between the joists right above my head. I could see chinks of light running parallel between the floorboards. I was directly underneath a room where two men were talking. The wood muffled their identity.

‘It’s all ready . . .’ I heard one say.

‘I’ll tell the others,’ another butted in.

I did the geography in my head. It was confusing, but I reckoned I was beneath Mr Leaby’s office, even though I didn’t hear the familiar resonant growl that clung to the end of his words. I’d heard it enough times during the Sunday services. I couldn’t figure out who was up there, but it didn’t matter much. People came and went all the time at
Roecliffe; men skulking about the corridors, eyeing us up, making the muscles in my legs go weak.

Loud clicking footsteps drowned out whatever else they said. It was freezing down in the basement. I wanted to fill the basket and to get back to the fire. I smiled to myself at the thought of Betsy’s piano playing. I wished I’d discovered it months ago. I wanted to make her happy.

‘Later, then,’ the first voice said again. ‘Don’t be late.’ Then the bang of a door followed by nothing at all.

Betsy was getting over a cold. Patricia was quite happy for me to nurse her through the night – to blow her snotty nose, to dose her with hot lemon and honey drinks, except we didn’t have any honey in the kitchen. I made do with orange squash and sugar with a squirt of Jif lemon. I warmed it in the microwave and sat Betsy on my lap as she drank. She pulled a face as the tartness of it spread around her mouth. ‘Drink up,’ I told her. ‘It’ll make you better.’

‘Will it stop them coming for me?’ she asked. My shoulders drooped; my eyes screwed up. I tried to keep awake all night to protect her, I really did. Every few breaths I’d sit up in a panic, feeling the space beside me or, if she’d been very brave and slept in her own bed, feeling the mattress next to mine for the length of her warm body. When my hand rested on her skin, I could relax for a while longer. Once, I even bound her wrist to mine with a belt, but in the morning it was on the floor, cut in two pieces. Betsy was lying upside-down in her bed, missing her pyjama bottoms, scarlet welts across her thighs.

‘It might,’ I say.

‘If I’m a good girl, will that stop them coming?’

I pinched a tissue round her nose and she blew out.

‘You are a good girl,’ I told her.

‘But you never get taken. It’s not fair.’

She was right. It wasn’t fair. ‘They don’t like me,’ I told her. ‘I’m not cute like you. I’m too big.’

‘Did they take you when you weren’t big?’ she asked.

I nodded, feeling guilty. ‘Just once.’ What was it he’d said?
Don’t bring her again. She’s a menace.

Betsy pushed against me on my lap – a kitten shaping against its mother. When she’d fallen asleep, I used all my strength to carry her back to my bed. I sat propped up against a folded pillow, squashed against the wall, while Betsy spread out. I fought the need for sleep, holding her hand as she wheezed through her dreams. I stroked her forehead and kissed her hair. I pulled her close with every creak of the floorboards, every whip of a branch against the tall windows of our dormitory, every cry from the boys’ rooms, and every missed heartbeat as she fell deeper into sleep.

When I woke up, it was the middle of the night. I don’t remember drifting off, only that I must have done for her to be prised from the crook of my arms. The semi-open door sent a corridor of light across my bed, illuminating Betsy’s absence; showing me the crumpled sheet where she had been only a short time ago.

I ran my hand over it, just to make sure I wasn’t imagining it. The nylon bedclothes crackled with static as
they rasped against the mattress. I could still feel Betsy’s warmth. She couldn’t have been long gone.

In a flash, I was out of bed. Wind and rain lashed against the window above our beds. I pulled on my jeans and scrambled into a sweater. My nightdress hung loose around my thighs. I didn’t bother with shoes. I was determined to find Betsy. They wouldn’t be taking her this time, not when we were so close to leaving.

Before I crept out of the dormitory – the other girls sleeping soundly in their beds – I glanced back to where I’d last seen Betsy. I reached out and touched her pillow before going off in search of the little girl who had made my life worth living.

He’s got it all wrong. Adam makes it sound like a holiday camp. Clean dresses and white socks, trips to the beach, and weekends with parents who never existed.

‘The love they so needed,’ I say indignantly. ‘He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.’ I hate the journalistic style Adam uses in his book. I read on as fast as I can, not
missing a word, but barely pausing to digest the claptrap he’s written.

Only the thought of Adam’s anger stops me chucking his stupid computer out of the window. Why, if he knows he lost his sister at the hands of these monsters, is he portraying the home in such a positive light?

I rest the computer on my bed and stand at my window, staring out above the treetops. I’m high enough to break every bone in my body if I was stupid enough to jump.

Feeling dizzy and nauseous – not just from the height – I sit down at the small dressing table. I don’t want to read any more of Adam’s book. I stare at myself in the foxed mirror. A stranger stares right back.

The scar on my cheek has knitted to form a raised red welt. It’s more shocking now than it was when fresh. It suggests a knife wound, the claw of a wildcat, a road accident, or a botched operation. I run my finger down its length, noticing the way my cheeks have hollowed out and my eyes dropped back inside ash-coloured rings. I look
terrible. An adult version of the child that once lived here. A woman without a family. A grown-up orphan.

Sighing, I drag myself back on to the bed and force myself to scroll through more of Adam’s book. From the number of pages, I see it’s not so much a book as a long essay. He’s clearly been struggling for information, perhaps writing, then rewriting, then deleting his words in frustration. How could anyone ever get such a story right, even if they did know all the facts? I flick forward, stopping a few pages from the end.

Patricia and Miss Maddocks looked after us to the best of their abilities. But I can’t accept that they didn’t know what was going on; didn’t believe for one minute that Patricia hadn’t got an inkling of Chef’s intentions when I went to visit him in the kitchen, when once I tried to escape his hands by climbing out through the window. I think back to my ice-cream bribed cooking sessions. How he’d sit me on the worktop, prising his body between my dangling legs,
pushing himself against me. A puppy eager to please and a child eager for a treat, for some love, it hadn’t seemed so bad back then. The worst that had happened, I thought, was that I got ice cream around my mouth.

There’s a knock. I snap shut the lid of the laptop. ‘Who is it?’ I press my ear to the door.

‘Frankie, it’s me. I need my computer back.’ Adam’s voice is urgent on the other side of the wood. He is the last person I want to face right now.

‘But I haven’t finished.’

‘Frankie, just open the door.’

Reluctantly, I turn the large key. Before it even clicks into place, Adam has wrenched the brass knob and is pushing his way inside.

‘What are you . . . ?’ I stop. Adam’s eyes scan my room and, finally, after what seems like a lengthy prying dance, his gaze settles on the dark lid of his computer.