‘What happened?’ Claire asked weakly, picking up a chair.
‘I don’t know. God. Tea?’ Marianne had her hair pushed over one side of her face. Her expression was hard to read.
‘Tea? No. Marianne? What happened?’
‘Something upset her. That’s all I know.’ She kept her back to Claire, and fiddled in a drawer for a teaspoon.
‘What?’ Claire was dazed. There was glass on the floor; not a kitchen glass, but the toothbrush glass from upstairs. Lorna must have brought it downstairs specifically to break it in the kitchen. ‘What happened?’
Marianne took some deep breaths, and swung around dramatically. ‘She just went crazy! She was so upset. Something about the cellar. She said she’d lost something, and couldn’t find it.’ Then she turned round again and busied herself with a tea bag.
‘In the cellar?’ Claire asked stupidly.
‘Yes. In the cellar.’
‘What?’
‘Well I don’t know! All I know is she came streaking up here, looking for you, and when I said you weren’t back yet she went crazy. Smashing things. And then she just tore out of the door, still in her dancing kit. And then you didn’t have your phone—’
‘What did she say was in the cellar?’
‘I don’t know, Claire, it’s not my house. I’ve never been down there.’
‘Didn’t you look?’
‘No! It’s not my cellar, is it? I thought maybe you kept private things down there. And I wouldn’t pry.’
‘This doesn’t make sense.’
‘I know that!’ Marianne stared at her angrily. ‘I just felt so helpless. And you not being here, and everything. She just tore out of the place like a hurricane. If you’d been here, I know she would have been able to calm down. She needed her mum, Claire.’ Marianne gave a small, tight smile.
‘Have you looked for her?’
‘She’s only been gone a few minutes. Look, I’ll take the car and go down the lane looking for her, you go down to the cellar, and try to find out what upset her so much.’ Marianne was all eyes and flurrying fingers. She hustled Claire through the door to the cellar, banging the light switch down with one mottled hand.
The cellar steps smelt of damp, and there was a rottenness underneath it, like tooth decay. It was dark here, despite the bare bulb, and cool as a tomb. Claire could hear Marianne tapping one fingernail on the door frame.
‘Hurry up, I want to know what’s down there before I get in the car.’
‘Why?’ asked Claire, negotiating the faintly slippery steps.
Marianne hesitated. ‘So when I find her, I can reassure her.’
‘But there’s nothing down here that could possibly have scared her! She never kept anything down here.’
‘But at least I can tell her—’
Claire stopped. ‘This is silly. We could both be out looking for her now.’ She started back up the steps.
Marianne huffed and lumbered down the steps in her cowboy boots, blocking Claire’s exit and forcing her back down towards the cellar door. ‘Well, we’ll both go, then, OK? And we’ll both go and look here first, and then we’ll both go and look for her.’
The cellar door, a thick, ancient slab, stood slightly ajar. Claire shivered. ‘I can’t think why she’d come down here. She said it scared her. I even wanted to make it into a playroom at one time – silly . . .’
‘Is there a light?’
‘Yes, somewhere, there’s a pull light in the middle. Hang on, I’ll get it.’ Claire walked into the darkness in her stockinged feet. ‘Prop the door open a bit more, so I can get to it. Marianne?’
Marianne stood framed in the door, backlit by the dim light from the stairs. She said, ‘Put the light on.’
‘I’m trying to get it, but I can’t see it. Open the door a bit more, won’t you?’ Her fingers groped for the light pull, touched a cobweb instead. ‘Marianne?’
And then she heard something behind her. A flurry and a rush. The dark walls wheeled crazily and Claire fell heavily, clumsily, her head smashing into the stone floor. Cold shock and nausea kept her prone, as Marianne sat on her back and wound something tight and painful around her wrists. Claire, her face pressed to the dirty floor, tried to cry out, but Marianne’s weight was such that even breathing was hard. Claire could smell the panic on her, the fury.
Then Marianne stood up, swaying dizzily on her heels.
‘Don’t try to scream,’ she muttered. Claire heard the heavy wood of the door being wedged back into the swollen frame, the bolt pushed, and Marianne’s hurried steps and coarse breathing as she ran back upstairs.
36
Lorna came a few hours later. She hovered in the doorway, standing on one foot, then the other. She held something behind her back.
‘How are you?’ she asked at last. She sounded concerned.
‘What’s happening, Lorna?’ Claire tried to keep her voice steady.
‘How are you? Do you need water or something?’
‘What’s happening?’
‘God, Marianne’s really mad at you. Really angry. She didn’t even want me to come down and see you, but I said I had to. I mean, it’s scary down here, isn’t it? I bet you need the toilet too.’ She giggled, now.
‘Are you going to hurt me?’ Claire’s voice cracked.
The girl sounded injured. ‘Course not! How could I hurt you?’
‘Why am I down here, then?’ Claire moved forward a little.‘Don’t get close.’ Lorna backed away and partially hid behind the door. Something heavy landed on the steps. ‘She’s up there in the kitchen and she’ll grab you if you try to run.’
‘Does she know you’re called Lorna?’
‘Well, she calls me Lola and things anyway.’
‘She doesn’t know who you are, though, does she?’
The girl shrugged and began backing out into the stairwell.
‘Is any of it true? Lorna? The stories you told me?’ Claire croaked.
There was a pause. ‘What do you mean?’ She began picking at a plaster on her elbow.
‘About Pete? About him hurting you?’
‘Oh of course.’ She scraped one toe on the floor. ‘Of course it is. I wouldn’t lie.’