A Place of Hiding

The dog bared his teeth. He snapped at him. The constable gave a cry and kicked him soundly. Paul flew off the bed to go to his dog, but Taboo ran yelping down the stairs.

Paul tried to follow, but he found himself held back. His mother was crying, “What’s he done? What’s he done?” as Billy laughed wildly. Paul’s feet scrabbled for purchase on the floor, one of them accidentally kicking a constable’s leg. That man grunted and his grip on Paul loosened. Which gave Paul time to grab his rucksack and make for the door.

“Stop him!” someone yelled.

It was a small matter to do so. The room was so crowded that there was nowhere to go and certainly no place to hide. In short order Paul was being marched down the stairs and out of the house. He existed within a whirlwind of images and sounds from that moment forward. He could hear his mum continuing to ask what they wanted with her little Paulie, he could hear his dad saying, “Mave. Girl, try to be calm.” He could hear Billy laughing and, somewhere, Taboo barking, and outside he could see the neighbours lined up. Above them, he could see the sky was blue for the first time in days, and against it the trees that edged the lumpy car park looked like impressions rendered in charcoal. Before he knew what was happening to him, he was in the back of a police car with his rucksack clutched to his chest. His feet were cold and he looked down at them to realise he had on no shoes. He was still in his tattered bedroom slippers, and no one had thought to give him time to put on a jacket.

The car door slammed and the engine roared. Paul heard his mother continue her shouting. He screwed his head round as the car began to move. He watched his family fade away.

Then from round the side of the crowd, Taboo came running after them. He was barking furiously and his ears were flapping.

“Damn fool dog,” the constable who was driving murmured. “ ’F he doesn’t go back home—”

“Not our problem,” the other said.

They pulled out of the Bouet into Pitronnerie Road. When they reached Le Grand Bouet and picked up speed, Taboo was still frantically running behind them.

Deborah and China had a bit of trouble finding Cynthia Moullin’s home in La Corbière. They’d been told that it was commonly called the Shell House and that they wouldn’t be able to miss it despite its being on a lane the approximate width of a bicycle tyre, which was itself the offshoot of another lane that wound between banks and hedges. It was on their third try when they finally saw a post box done up in oyster shells that they decided they might well have found the spot they were looking for. So Deborah pulled their car into the drive, which allowed them to note a vast wreckage of more shells in the garden.

“The house formerly known as Shell,” Deborah murmured. “No wonder we didn’t see it at first.”

The place looked deserted: no other car in the drive, a closed-up barn, curtains drawn tight against diamond-paned windows. But as they climbed out of the car onto the shell-strewn driveway, they noted a young woman crouched at the far side of what was left of a fanciful garden. She embraced the top of a small shell-crusted concrete wishing well, with her blonde head resting upon its rim. She looked rather like a statue of Viola after the shipwreck, and she didn’t move as Deborah and China approached her.

She did speak, however, saying, “Go away. I don’t want to see you.

I’ve phoned Gran and she says I can come to Alderney. She wants me there, and I mean to go.”

“Are you Cynthia Moullin?” Deborah asked the girl.

She raised her head, startled. She looked from China to Deborah as if attempting to make out who they were. Then she looked beyond them, perhaps to see if they were accompanied by anyone else. There being no one with them, her body slumped. Her face settled back to its expression of despair.

“I thought you were Dad,” she said dully, and lowered her head to the rim of the wishing well again. “I want to be dead.” She went back to clutching the sides of the well as if she could force her will upon her body.

“I know the feeling,” China said.

“No one knows the feeling,” Cynthia rejoined. “No one knows because it’s mine. He’s glad. He says, ‘You can go about your business now. The milk’s been spilt and what’s over is over.’ But that’s not how it is. He just thinks it’s over. But it never will be. Not for me. I will never forget.”

“D’you mean you and Mr. Brouard being over?” Deborah asked her.

“Because he’s dead?”