Where the Memories Lie
By: Sibel Hodge
Something strange. Damn, what was it? Something like ‘Well, if he thinks I’m going to fuck him again, he can fuck off.’ She had an odd smile on her face, equal parts secretive, sly and spiteful. I vaguely remember laughing it off. If she’d met Chris since the break-up to have sex I didn’t really want to know about it. It wasn’t my business, and I wasn’t going to judge her for it. I knew how hard it was for her to let go of him. Maybe enticing Chris with sex was her last-ditch attempt to get him back, but it hadn’t worked.
That was the last time I ever saw her. After PC Cook left me, I went to see Rose to try to find out what had happened, but Rose was drunk and angry. Jack was strangely quiet, sitting in his favourite armchair, already with a glass of amber liquid in his hand, staring into space while his wife ranted and raved about how ungrateful Katie had been and what a sad excuse for a daughter she was. I’d left then. They were a pair of hypocrites. They’d never given her a happy home life, and what with Chris breaking up with her, it had obviously been the last straw so she’d gone in search of something better. Something happier. What I do remember distinctly is silently wishing she found it.
Over the next few days, there were whispers in the village. The rumour mill had started, of course, as it’s bound to in any village.
The gossip was that she’d stolen something from Rose and Jack who had then chucked her out. Then it changed to she’d run away to London to work at King’s Cross as a prostitute. Then something about her aunt had collected her one day and taken her on holiday.
She didn’t even have a bloody aunt!
After that, I frequently went to see PC Cook to ask if he’d found anything else out but he always said no. Since Katie was eighteen 90
Where the Memories Lie
and an adult, and had obviously left of her own free will, there was nothing really they could do. After finding out from Mr Google just how many people go missing each year, I’m not surprised it had gone no further.
But now there was a big question mark in my head. Had she really left of her own free will?
91
Chapter Ten
It was 9.30 a.m. when I knocked on Rose’s door. She lived in one of the few remaining local authority-owned houses in the village. The same one they’d lived in all those years ago.
Recently, the council had sold most of them off to private buyers in an attempt to boost their sagging budgets. You could spot the difference between the private ones and Rose’s a mile off. Her con-crete path had suffered years of wear and neglect, broken in places with thick weeds protruding through and covered with moss. It was an obstacle course just to get up to the front door, whose navy blue paint was peeling in thick flakes onto the step. Ivy clung in a death grip on to the front of the house, trailing over the windows, even, and the guttering bowed in the middle. I didn’t fancy being around when that fell down. I bet there were tons of leaves and mud inside.
Probably a few dead birds, too.
A memory flooded in then. Just after we’d bought the barn from Tom and he was living with us, we had a dove nesting in our guttering outside Anna’s window. Anna had called it Mrs Lovey Dovey and was so excited to watch her tending an egg, spending hours with Tom in her room just staring at it. When the chick finally did arrive she’d called it Baby Davey Lovey Dovey, and Tom had Where the Memories Lie
gone out in the garden and dug fresh worms for Mrs Lovey Dovey every day, leaving them in the guttering for her, saying to Anna how hard it was to be a bird parent. Those aren’t the actions of a killer, are they? Someone who could murder and bury a young woman couldn’t possibly gather worms to feed a baby bird. They’d more likely kill animals, wouldn’t they? Isn’t that how serial killers start?
A smell hit me as I knocked on Rose’s door. Urine. I hoped it was cat’s and not human’s. Rose wasn’t the first drunk I’d ever dealt with as a nurse, and I was sure she wouldn’t be the last. I knew whatever would greet me inside wouldn’t be pretty.
I knocked again when I got no response.