The Stopped Heart (33 page)

Wandering down the garden with the dog to get the washing
in off the line and then perhaps uncoil the hose and water the plants, Mary realizes that she is drunk. Not much. Just enough to make her limbs feel light, her edges blurred. The second thing she realizes is that she can smell smoke. A hot sharp odor hanging on the evening air. The dry dirtiness of old-fashioned cigarette tobacco, reminding her of old men, maybe an old army friend of her father's.

She stops for a moment, trying to decide where it's coming from. The air still warm, clouded with tiny evening insects. Unmistakable now, the smell—is someone smoking behind the old apple shed? Her heart begins to race. Is there someone in the garden again?

She looks at the dog. Watches her sniff the air as she squats on her usual bit of lawn. There's no growling, nothing. No sign that anything is wrong.

Calling to the dog to follow her, she walks a little farther. Reaching the washing line and—on a whim, a hunch—not touching it but instead ducking her head and moving on past it.

“Come on,” she calls to the dog who doesn't follow but stays where she is, standing next to the rosemary bush.

Not put off, she keeps on going. As fast as she can now, stepping around the old fallen tree, where the long grass prickles at her knees, and finding herself looking into the mass of dark, scrubby bushes beyond the apple shed, where the ancient and gnarly hedge with its broken fence gives onto the field.

The hacked and beaten body of a young girl is lying there.

O
N THE EDGE OF
Y
ARROW
'
S FIELD, WHERE THE TURNIPS
were pulled in winter for cattle feed, was a ditch used for drainage. For the longest part it was a normal kind of shallow ditch and in hot weather it mostly dried up. But if you went to the place where it snaked around and met the woods, it got so deep for a stretch that even in the height of summer it was filled with thick black mucky water.

It was in this stretch that we put Phoebe Harkiss.

Later, when I tried to think about how we did it—when I tried to imagine how James must have wrapped her in a piece of sacking and put her over his shoulder and how we must surely have gone there together in the silty darkness of that terrible night, loading the sack with some stones from the field and putting her in the cold stinking water and watching till you could no longer glimpse any part of her above its black surface—I found myself struggling. I could not see it.

And I'd wake in the night, my heart nearly bursting out of my chest with panic and fear. Not because Phoebe was dead. Not even because I knew for a fact that it was James Dix who
had killed her. But because I could not for the life of me remember anything about what we'd done with her.

When I told James this, he said it was just as well.

Don't you see? he said. It's God's way of protecting you.

I stared at him and told him I could not see what God had to do with it. But he just smiled.

I tell you it's normal. I've done it my whole life. I make myself forget things all the time.

You do?

He shrugged.

What you don't think about, you don't know. It makes you innocent, Eliza. It takes the thought right out of your head. It means you won't turn into a blabbermouth like that evil little witch.

I tried to think about this.

But I do know it, I said at last. I do know for sure that we both put her in the ditch. I don't think I'll ever be able to forget such a terrible thing. I just can't quite remember the feeling of doing it, that's all.

He looked at me then and his eyes flashed cold.

Well, you should try and forget it, Eliza.

I shook my head.

I can't.

I'm telling you to try—

I can't, James. I can't ever forget it.

He leaned forward, putting his face closer to mine. I wondered if he was going to kiss me, but instead he showed me his teeth.

Listen to me. You need to forget what you know—forget it all—if you don't want to end up like her, that is.

Something tight and cold sank through me. I stared at him.

What do you mean, end up like her?

He shrugged and drew away.

That's what killed her, isn't it? Her big blabbermouth. Why don't you ever listen to a single word I say, Eliza? She had such a mouth on her, that one did. We didn't put her anywhere. We didn't do anything. We've not had anything to do with Phoebe Harkiss. I've barely ever spoken to her in my life and that's a fact.

But—

I was about to disagree with all of this when he grabbed me. He grabbed hold of my neck, gripping it so tight that I gasped.

That's all you need to know, Eliza, if you value this little beating heart of yours and you want to stay alive.

G
RAHAM GIVES HER A GLASS OF WATER FROM THE TAP.
S
HE SIPS
it, glad for once of its sharp, chlorinated taste. But when she sees that he is trying to make her a sandwich—slicing the bread and hacking at the cheddar with a butter knife—she tells him she can't eat anything.

“You've got to. It's what you need. It will calm you down. Low blood sugar. Look at you, you can't stop shaking.”

“How can I eat anything when I've just been sick?”

Now he looks at her, shaking his head.

“Alcohol in the afternoon.”

She shakes her head.

“It was nothing. I told you. One glass of wine.”

Graham stops for a moment, the knife in his hand. He looks at Ruby, still sitting on the bench where she put herself when they came in, the dog sniffing at her feet, bags piled on the floor in front of her.

“Why don't you take your stuff upstairs and sort yourself out?” he says to her.

Ruby stares at him but doesn't move. She keeps on sitting there. Giving the dog's ears a stroke before pulling her sleeves down over her wrists.

“I want to know what she saw.”

“What?”

“Out there. What did she see?”

Graham puts down the knife. Looks at Mary. She lifts her eyes and looks at Ruby not sure what exactly she's looking for. Same old dark clothes, pale frowny face. Her black hair skewered up on her head with some kind of a clip.

“Are you OK?” she asks her. “How are you feeling?”

Ruby shrugs.

“What did you see? He says you saw something. I want to know what it was.”

“I'd rather not talk about it.”

“Why not?”

Mary looks at the floor.

“I don't know if I saw anything.”

“But you thought you did?”

“I don't know.”

Graham comes over, puts his hand on her shoulder.

“Look, my love, whatever you think it was—” Mary waits, her whole body stilled by his touch. She does not move. Holding her breath. “It wasn't there. You know that.”

She lets out her breath.

“All right,” she says.

And she believes him, because how can she not? She knows that when he got home and couldn't find her anywhere in the house and came down to the garden calling her and then found her, white-faced and shaking and sobbing on the ground by the fallen tree, he listened to what she had to say—listened hard, his two hands holding on to her. Then, once he'd taken it in, he let go of her and went straight around the back of the shed and looked. Not knowing what he would find, ready to deal with it, whatever it was.

She waited, still weeping and trembling, for his cry of shock.

But he came back immediately, his face tight, concerned, purposeful. He knelt down and put his arms around her, his head close to hers, his lips against her face.

He told her there was nothing there. Absolutely nothing. Just bushes, he said. The same old bushes. And a few too many nettles and brambles and an old dog rose that had seen better days.

He took her then—still trembling with shock—down through the garden and into the house. Where she didn't even say hello to Ruby but went straight through the hall to the toilet and, still seeing the thick, brownish blood that had been coming from the girl's eyes and nose and mouth, she vomited.

That's when she told Graham about the drink with Eddie.

“You two,” he said. “You can't stay away from each other, can you?”

She could not tell if he was joking.

Now, though, he squeezes her shoulder.

“All right,” he says. “We're going to go back down there and I'm going to show you.”

She stares at him.

“What, now?”

“Yes, now. You too, Ruby, if you're so keen to see. The dog as well. We'll all go down there. Family expedition.”

Ruby shakes her head. For a moment, Mary thinks she sees fear in her eyes.

“I don't want to. I'm not going down there. I hate that place.”

Graham looks at her.

“What do you mean? What place?”

“The horrible fucking shed thing. That whole bit at the bottom of the garden, I hate it. It's creepy and dark. It creeps me out. And people can get in. You said yourself that someone got in there and took your stuff.”

Mary watches as Ruby gets up and goes over to the fridge. Opening it and staring at its contents as if they might at any moment multiply or change.

“I don't want to go down there either,” she tells Graham.

He looks at her.

“For goodness' sake, Mary, don't be ridiculous. We're going down there so you can see for yourself that there's nothing there. Otherwise you'll never be able to get it out of your head. You know you won't.”

Ruby turns to look at her again.

“Get what out of your head?”

Mary says nothing. Watching Ruby's face, solemn and childlike, still lit by the eerie light of the fridge, she feels herself shiver.

“All right,” she says to Graham. “All right. Come on, let's do it.”

So while Ruby picks up her bags and goes upstairs, they make their way together down to the garden, past the washing line—clothes still hanging there, pale and still and warm in the blue dusk. Skirting around the old fallen tree, toward the shed.

“We ought to pull this thing down,” Graham says. “It's not doing anything, is it? Look at it.”

“What?” she says. “Pull down the apple shed?”

He looks at her.

“An afternoon's work. That's all it would be. Get some light in. Ruby's right about it being creepy—it's because it's so bloody dark. It needs to come down. You'd notice the difference. It would mean you could see right across the fields.”

Mary says nothing. Looking at the broken roof, the greenish moss on its rotten walls. Some dry, grassy stuff poking out from under the eaves, a couple of gray feathers, the nest of some bird perhaps—

She stops, unable to make herself go any farther. But he takes her hand and pulls her, straight into the shadows behind it. She
stares into the greenish dark of the bushes. She sees nettles. The dense prickly mass that is the rose. She doesn't see anything else.

Graham lets go of her hand and he stands there, hands on hips, looking around him.

“I should really get my hedge trimmer and tackle this whole area,” he says.

Mary doesn't say anything. Listening to the hum of some insect. A bird cawing loudly in the field beyond. Nothing else.

Moments pass. She tries to summon the cigarette smoke again, to remember its particular, dry, old-fashioned odor. But it doesn't come. All she smells is evening. A darkening sky. Bright leaves. The earth cooling.

Graham takes her hand. Squeezes it.

“OK?”

She nods. Glances up at the house. Sees that Ruby's window is open. She knows that Ruby never opens windows unless she plans to smoke. She thinks about saying that but stops herself just in time.

“How is she?” she asks him then. “Do you think she's OK?”

He hesitates.

“I don't know. I've no idea really. In the car just now, I tried to talk to her. But she wasn't interested. Wouldn't say a word. You don't mind me bringing her back here, do you?”

Mary looks at him.

“How can you even ask me that?”

He sighs.

“Veronica was in such a state. It's all been such a shock, all of this. I don't think she can cope on her own at the moment.”

Mary looks at him.

“You never told me she was on antidepressants.”

“Didn't I? Well, she's had her issues, Veronica has. I don't know if the drugs are helping much really.”

“All the same. You never told me.”

He looks at her.

“You feel that's important?”

“I don't know. Is it?”

He takes a breath. Looks away down the lawn.

“So I'd just said we'll have her here for now. Nothing fixed. We're just going to take it a day at a time.”

Mary looks at him.

“I'm surprised you managed to get her to come.”

He hesitates.

“She wasn't keen. But I've got to take her back to the hospital next week anyway. I suppose I've played it down, the length of time. I've told her we'll see what happens after next week. They want her to see a psychiatrist.”

“What, she hasn't already?”

“Just the one in the ER. They want her to have some formal help. That's the other bit I haven't told you.” He looks at his hands for a moment. “It turns out she's been cutting herself.”

Mary stares at him.

“My God.”

“I know. A bit of a shock.”

“But what do you mean? Cutting herself where?”

“Her arms. Her thighs. I haven't seen it. She wouldn't let me anywhere near her. But Veronica has. All those great big sweaters she always wears, even in summer? Well, now we know.”

Mary is silent. She thinks of the streaks of blood she saw on Ruby's sheets. Her sleeves always pulled down over her hands.

“And Veronica knew all of this?”

“Not for long. She hadn't known for long.”

“But she knew and she didn't tell you?”

Graham looks at the ground, rubs at the back of his head.

“Poor Veronica. I don't think she knew what to do. She really has been at her wits' end.” Before Mary can say anything, he holds out his hand to her, taking hold of her fingers, reaching for her. “Please, sweetheart. Don't go blaming Veronica for everything. All of this, it's been very difficult for her too, you know.”

She says nothing. He holds on to her hand for a moment longer.

“What about you anyway?”

“Me?”

“Are you all right?”

“I'm fine.”

He lets go of her hand.

“Are you?”

“Yes. Why wouldn't I be?”

Graham looks at her in the careful, attentive way she's come to dread.

“I still think you should talk to someone,” he says. “You spend far too much time alone in this house.”

She throws him a cool look.

“I like being alone in this house. And anyway, I do talk to people. I talk to Eddie.”

“To Eddie?”

“This afternoon. I told you. We talked for ages.”

“Right.”

“We went for a walk and we talked and then we went back to his and we drank wine and we talked some more and do you know, it was great. It cheered me up, actually, it really did.” She looks at him. “Don't you want to know what we talked about?”

“What did you talk about?”

“The girls.”

Graham stares at her. She watches his face go still.