‘OK,’ I said, my patience wearing thin. ‘But I still don’t get it. Why did Nel have it? And why did you take it from her?’
‘Questions, questions,’ Nickie said with a smile. ‘Well. As to why I’ve got it, I needed something of hers, didn’t I? So’s I could speak to her properly. I used to hear her voice nice and clear, but … you know. Sometimes voices get muted, don’t they?’
‘I’ve really no idea about that,’ I said coldly.
‘Oh, get you! You don’t believe me? It’s not like you’d ever talk to the dead, is it?’ She laughed knowingly and my scalp shrivelled. ‘I needed something to conjure with. Here!’ She offered the lighter to me. ‘You can have it back. I could’ve sold it, couldn’t I? I could have taken all sorts and flogged them – your sister had some expensive things, didn’t she, jewellery and that? But I didn’t.’
‘Very good of you.’
She grinned. ‘On to the next question: why did your sister have that lighter? Well, I can’t say for sure.’
My frustration got the better of me. ‘Really?’ I sneered at her. ‘I thought you could talk to the spirits? I thought that was your thing?’ I looked around the room. ‘Is she here now? Why don’t you just ask her directly?’
‘It’s not that easy, is it?’ she said, wounded. ‘I’ve been trying to raise her, but she’s gone silent.’ Could have fooled me. ‘There’s no need to get sniffy. All I’m trying to do is help. All I’m trying to do is tell you—’
‘Well, tell me, then!’ I snapped. ‘Spit it out!’
‘Keep your hair on,’ she said, lower lip stuck out, chins wobbling. ‘I was telling you, if only you’d listen. The lighter is Lauren’s, and Patrick had it last. And that’s what’s important. I don’t know why Nel had it, but her having it is the thing, see? She took it from him, perhaps, or maybe he gave it to her. In any case, it’s the important thing. Lauren is the important one. All this – your Nel – it’s not about poor Katie Whittaker or that silly teacher or Katie’s mum or any of that. It’s about Lauren, and Patrick.’
I bit my lip. ‘How is this about them?’
‘Well.’ She shifted in her seat. ‘She was writing her stories about them, wasn’t she? And she got her story from Sean Townsend, because, after all, he was supposed to be a witness, wasn’t he? So she thought he was telling the truth, and why wouldn’t she?’
‘Why wouldn’t he? I mean, you’re saying Sean lied about what happened to his mother?’
She pursed her lips. ‘Have you met the old man? He’s a devil, he is, and I don’t mean in a good way.’
‘So Sean lied about how his mother died because he’s afraid of his father?’
Nickie shrugged. ‘I can’t say for sure. But here’s what I know: the story Nel heard – the first version, the one where Lauren runs off in the night and her husband and son go chasing after her – it wasn’t true. I told her as much. Because you see, my Jeannie – that’s my sister – she was around at the time. She was there. That night—’ Abruptly, she plunged her hand inside her coat and began fishing around. ‘Thing is,’ she said, ‘I told your Nel our Jeannie’s story and Nel wrote it down.’ She pulled out a sheaf of papers. I reached for them, but Nickie snatched them back.
‘Just a minute,’ she said. ‘You’ve got to understand that this’ – she shook the pages at me – ‘is not the whole story. Because even though I told her the whole story, she wouldn’t write it all down. Stubborn woman, your sister. Part of the reason I liked her so much. So that’s when we had our little disagreement.’ She settled back in her seat, swinging her legs more vigorously. ‘I told her about Jeannie, who was a policewoman back when Lauren died.’ She coughed loudly. ‘Jeannie didn’t believe she went in without a push, because there was all sorts of other stuff going on, you see. She knew that Lauren’s old man was a devil and that he smacked her about and told stories about her meeting some fancy man up at Anne Ward’s place, even though no one had ever seen hide nor hair of such a man. That was supposed to be the reason, see? The bloke she was doing the dirty with, he’d run off and left her and she was upset about it, so she jumped.’ Nickie waved a hand at me. ‘Nonsense. With a six-year-old at home? Nonsense.’
‘Well, actually,’ I said, ‘I think you’ll find that depression is a complicated thing—’
‘Pffft!’ She silenced me with another wave of her hand. ‘There was no fancy man. None that anyone around here ever saw. You could ask my Jeannie about that, except for the fact that she’s dead and gone. And you know who did for her, don’t you?’
When at last she stopped talking, I heard the water whispering in the quiet. ‘You’re saying that Patrick killed his wife, and that Nel knew about it? You’re saying that she wrote it down?’
Nickie tutted crossly. ‘No! That’s what I’m telling you. She wrote down some things, but not other things, and that’s where we disagreed, because she was perfectly happy to write down the things Jeannie told me when she was still alive, but not the things Jeannie told me when she was dead. Which makes no sense at all.’
‘Well …’
‘No sense at all. But you need to listen. And if you won’t listen to me,’ she said, thrusting the pages towards me, ‘you can listen to your sister. Because he did for them. After a fashion. Patrick Townsend did for Lauren, and he did for our Jeannie, and if I’m not mistaken, he’s done for your Nel and all.’
The Drowning Pool
Lauren, again, 1983
LAUREN WALKED OUT to Anne Ward’s cottage. She went there more and more often these days – it was peaceful in a way that nowhere else in Beckford seemed to be. She felt an odd sort of kinship with poor Anne. She, too, was locked into a loveless marriage with a man who couldn’t stand her. Here, Lauren could swim and smoke and read and not be bothered by anyone. Usually.
One morning, there were two women out walking. She recognized them: a policewoman, Jeannie, a stout WPC with a ruddy face, and her sister, Nickie, the one who spoke to the dead. Lauren rather liked Nickie. She was funny and seemed kind. Even if she was a con artist.
Jeannie called out to her and Lauren waved in a dismissive way that she hoped would see them off. Usually she would have gone over to chat. But her face was a mess and she wasn’t in the mood to explain.
She went for a swim. She was conscious of doing things one final time: one last walk, one last smoke, one last kiss of her son’s pale forehead, one last dip in the river (next-to-last). As she slipped under the water, she wondered if this was how it would be, whether she would feel anything. She wondered where all her fight had gone.
It was Jeannie who arrived at the river first. She’d been at the station watching the storm when the call came: Patrick Townsend had been panicking and incoherent, shouting something over the radio about his wife. His wife and the Drowning Pool. When Jeannie got there, the boy was under the trees, his head on his knees. At first she thought he was asleep, but when he looked up his eyes were wide and black.
‘Sean,’ she said, pulling off her coat and wrapping it around him. He was blue-white and shaking, his pyjamas sodden, his bare feet caked in mud. ‘What happened?’
‘Mummy’s in the water,’ he said. ‘I’m to stay here until he comes back.’
‘Who? Your father? Where’s your father?’
Sean disentangled one skinny arm from the coat and pointed behind her, and Jeannie saw Patrick dragging himself on to the bank, his breath coming in sobs, his face twisted with agony.
Jeannie went to him. ‘Sir, I … The ambulance is on its way, ETA four minutes now—’
‘Too late,’ Patrick said, shaking his head. ‘I was too late. She’s gone.’
Others arrived: paramedics and uniforms and one or two senior detectives. Sean had got to his feet; with Jeannie’s coat wrapped around him like a cape, he clung to his father.
‘Could you take him home?’ one of the other detectives said to her.
The boy began to cry. ‘Please. No. I don’t want to. I don’t want to go.’