Little Black Lies (29 page)

‘Peter’s asleep,’ I tell her. I give her a smile, although they increasingly seem to hurt my face.

She looks at her watch, registers that it’s nearly four. ‘What if he wakes up and you’re down here?’

‘He doesn’t. He’s a very good sleeper.’

‘I’d better go and get him.’ She sets off and I feel those invisible threads again, the ones that pull me away from the house, that make it so hard for me to go back. I follow her, reluctantly, trying to think of a polite way of asking her why she’s here. ‘To what do I owe this pleasure?’ is the best I can come up with. I smile again, or try to, to take the sting from the words.

‘Your father sent me. There’s a child missing.’ Her voice drops low, as though to thwart eavesdroppers. ‘Another one.’

I have a sudden picture in my head of the oystercatchers turning to each other in pretend dismay.
A child missing? Another one? What are these people like?

‘What child? How?’ I glance back. The second child to vanish, in recent times anyway, was last seen on the beach directly below us.

‘One of the visitors. There’s a big panic in town. People are going out searching.’ My mother isn’t particularly fit. She leads the way up and we go slowly. ‘He and his family were fishing over near Estancia. The kids got bored and started playing hide-and-seek. The youngest still hasn’t been found.’

‘I take it they contacted the police.’

‘People have been out looking for a couple of hours.’ She stops, her sweater has caught on the gorse. I reach out to free it and she looks back, over my shoulder. ‘Ralph’s very interested in your boathouse.’

I follow her gaze to see that Ralph is directly below us on the beach, and has moved towards where the old boathouse is tucked against the cliff wall.

‘He’s welcome to anything he finds.’ I give her sweater one last tug. ‘There you go.’

We carry on up. Mum’s already breathing heavily. She’ll make me pay for this at some point. At the top, she pushes open the gate that separates the cliff from the garden. ‘Are you sure this catch is safe enough?’ she asks me, not for the first time. ‘We wouldn’t want Peter being able to open it.’

‘So what’s the plan? For the search, I mean?’

‘I think he’s gone in your boathouse, you know.’ She’s peering down at the beach again.

‘That door hasn’t been opened in years,’ I tell her. ‘And he isn’t anywhere near it. Look, you can just about make him out, in front of the
Sanningham.
’

She sees I’m right and snorts. The dirty brown and grey of Ralph’s clothes make him hardly visible against the prow of the old ship. He’s getting close to it, his eyes intent on the sand. He must still be crabbing.

At that moment, a freak wave hits the ship. Spray flies high into the air and almost seems to hang there. For a second, maybe longer, I honestly feel as though time has paused. Please, God no. My days drag enough as it is.

‘Where’s the search meeting?’

‘Near the farm. The spot where the family parked. They want you to take Bee. I’ll take Peter and pick the boys up.’

Bee, or to give him his full name, Beelzebub, is my horse. An eight-year-old, seventeen-hand gelding from Chilean bloodstock. He’s beautiful as the sunrise and has the nature of the devil he’s named for. I’d have sold him years ago, but nobody else has ever been able to ride him.

In the old days here, before motorized transport became as sophisticated as it is, long before halfway decent roads were built, people got around by horse. My paternal grandfather, an Englishman, was the general practitioner on the islands. He learned to ride very quickly, visited all his patients on horseback, and the Duncans have owned horses ever since. Even today, huge tracts of land here are pretty much inaccessible by vehicle.

When a search is important enough, we do it on horseback.

We hear Peter complaining when we’re halfway across the lawn. He’s not distressed, just grumbling, but Mum shoots me a look. She waits for me to pick up my pace before pushing past. ‘I’ll do it,’ she declares.

Makes no difference to me. I head round the back to hitch up the trailer. As soon as I appear, my horse starts kicking his stable door. I find tack and make sure the hay in the net is fresh. He’s rubbing his neck against the side of the stall now. Horses can do a lot of damage to themselves that way, but he only ever does it when I’m around. He is a bloody great equine drama queen.

Beside him, a pale grey nose appears. Strawberry, the children’s pony, is barely able to see over the door of her stall. I stroke her nose and slip her a mint, earning myself a pissed-off whinny from the horse next door.

‘Come on, you grumpy old bugger. We’ve got work to do.’ I flick the bolt on his door. He kicks it open himself and walks out into the yard, his coat gleaming in the sunshine. Officially, Bee would be described as a black horse, but that barely does him justice. I’ve counted over a dozen different shades in his coat, from deepest black to rich red brown.

‘Any of those brats around?’ He looks disdainfully for the kids he despises. ‘I’m peckish.’

‘Grandma’s on the premises.’ I drop my voice at this point. There are windows open in the house and you never know where she might be lurking. ‘Plenty of meat on that ass.’

‘Where the fuck are we going now?’ I’m leading him to the trailer and he’s not that keen. ‘We’ve been out once.’

‘Estancia. You like it there.’

‘Fuck I do. Blue clay sticks to hooves for weeks.’

These conversations I have with my horse are imaginary, of course, I’m not completely mad. But so often these days, I find I’m spoiling for the fight I can never have in reality. Punching from both corners, sparring with myself in a make-believe skirmish, can sometimes be enough to calm me down. Sometimes.

‘Get in there.’ I slap him on the rump. He dilates his anus and lets fall three perfectly round, sweet-smelling balls of shit. One rolls on to my foot.

‘Thanks,’ I mutter.

‘Welcome,’ he grunts.

‘Peter wanted to say goodbye.’

Mum has followed me into the yard. The child, still creased and grumpy from sleep, is balanced on one hip, clinging to her shoulder. He sees us and starts to cry.

‘We don’t bring him round here. He’s scared of Bee.’

About a year ago he was on Sander’s shoulders when my delightful horse decided to take a chunk out of him. Sander moved at the right moment, and all the nag managed was a tuft of hair. The child understandably took umbrage.

I walk over to say goodbye. He never leans towards me or holds up his arms to be lifted, although I see him do it all the time with Sander and even the boys. His big blue eyes, still damp from sleep, stare up at me with something like curiosity. ‘Go with Grandma now,’ I tell him. ‘See Mike and Chris. I’ll come get you later.’

‘Ike and Kiss,’ he repeats. ‘Ike and Kiss.’

‘Did you make that appointment?’

‘I will, but I’m sure he’s fine. Children develop in their own time. He’s a bit lazier than the other two, that’s all.’ Recently, my mother has taken it into her head that my youngest son’s speech isn’t sufficiently developed for his age. ‘Have you got everything you need?’

Lips pursed, Mum nods. ‘Your father will meet you there.’

Oh joy, my father’s involved too. I wait until Mum’s car has disappeared down the road before getting what I need from the house.

‘Have a nice time,’ trills Strawberry as I climb into the car. Bee gives her the finger, which, in his case, is a desultory flick of both ears.

I’m about to set off when I see the corner of the plain white envelope sticking out of my bag. It was waiting for me this morning, in our box at the post office, sent from someone on the islands. I didn’t recognize the handwriting. Neat, rather bold, a bit shaky around the extremities. Maybe someone who doesn’t write that much, or who is trying to disguise their hand.

I pull out the single sheet of paper. Plain white, like the envelope. Handwritten, in the same blue biro pen. Four short words.

DON’T LEAVE HIM ALONE

27

I make good time out of town but have to slow as I climb into the hills between Stanley and the great sea inlet of Port Salvador. As I drive across the stone run some small, grey birds that have been sheltering among the rocks fly up and, for a few seconds, I am surrounded by them. It’s as though the rocks themselves have taken flight.

The stone runs are strange, almost unearthly rock formations. Barely known in other parts of the world, they are common here, snaking across the landscape like rivers. I like to think of them as ancient pathways, built for travellers as distinct from man as we are from the thousands of other creatures we share these islands with. There is a purpose to these stone runs, I’m convinced, a reason why ribbons of boulders should snake across the countryside.

There have been times when I’ve driven this way and sworn the stone run has come to life, started flowing again as scientists believe it once did. It happens when the light is playing a peculiar trick, when the clouds are low and both the wind and the sun are strong. Then, shadows are cast, millions of small absences of light that race across the ground, and the stones, which are anchored as firmly as any rock could possibly be, seem to slide, tumble, roll on down the hill. Blink hard and they stop. Glance back from the corner of your eye and they resume their crazy, imaginary flow.

A lot of visitors head out this way to see the stone run.

Estancia, too, is popular. The owners of the farm, George and Brenda Barrell, run tours in the summer months, most of them to see the king penguins at Volunteer Point. As I drive over the ridge and head down the other side, I can see most of the inlet ahead of me and so winding and fractured is the coastline around it that sometimes it is impossible to tell where land ends and sea begins. There are days when the sea seems to hold still and the land to be in constant, undulating motion. Not today though. The clear air is exaggerating the colours below me. The blue ocean, white beach, green, grey and yellow hillside. There are stagnant pools too, water that can’t quite find its way back to the ocean, and these glow some of the most remarkable colours that nature can produce. Emerald greens, deep azure blues, even shades of violet.

On a dull day, my homeland looks barren and desolate, but when the sky is shining, these islands seem to have been spun from rainbows.

The search party has gathered at Estancia farm, using it for their base. As I get closer I can see several police cars, a couple of trailers, including my father’s, and a few four-wheel-drive vehicles. One particular car seems to be the focus for the people milling around. I don’t recognize it, so wonder if it’s perhaps the hire car of the family concerned. It’s a new Land Rover, silver, with black trim.

I park as far away from my father’s trailer as possible and get out. Faces turn towards me and look away again. It’s been like that for a while now. I’m something of a ghoul on the islands. No one looks at me and doesn’t think:
woman who killed two kids.
I wonder if any of them are thinking,
Where’s her own kid today? Has she left him alone? Again?

DON’T LEAVE HIM ALONE

What does it mean anyway, ‘Don’t leave him alone’? Don’t go into another room? Don’t step into the garden if he’s in the house? Don’t exercise the horses unless he’s in my sight?

I lean against the side of the car, thinking about it. We have no close neighbours, no one who can possibly know whether I am within touching distance of my youngest son or not. Friends have long since stopped dropping in, especially when Sander is away. Ralph sees me on the beach, but I doubt Ralph can even write.

And yet someone has decided that the shame that fills my head from the second I wake up in the morning isn’t enough. Apparently, when it comes to guilt, a woman can never have too much. I lean back into the car and find the note, tucking it firmly into the pocket of my jodhpurs.

Bee starts kicking to be free.

‘Shut it for one minute,’ I snap.

‘Sorry?’ The voice does not belong to my horse. I turn and see the policewoman, Skye McNair, hovering at the back of the trailer.

‘Hello, Skye. How’s it going?’ I smile too brightly, in-appropriately, given the circumstances, but she answers politely enough.

‘Not well. He’s been missing for two hours now.’

Closer to the farm, people are mounting up. Six riders that I can see; my father on his huge chestnut mare, trying to take charge.

‘What do you want me to do?’

‘Your father thinks the mounted searchers should work together. I think the plan is to spread out and make your way directly west. Those on foot will take the other side of the road. He really can’t have gone far.’

Someone calls for her. She thanks me for coming and wanders away. In the trailer, the kicking resumes.

‘OK, OK.’ I lower the door, make a quick guess as to where the horse from Hades is most likely to aim his feet and slip past him.

‘Someone’s been watching you,’ he tells me, as I toss the bridle over his head.

‘Bite me.’ I ease the bit in at arm’s length in case he takes me literally.

‘Been hanging round the house. Spying on you.’

‘Shut it, will you?’

‘Well, someone has to say it. You need to watch your back.’

I lower the saddle. ‘Breathe out, Bozo. I’m not stupid.’

Like many horses, Bee puffs his chest out as I fasten the girth so that it’s dangerously loose when I mount. On the one occasion I fell off, I swear I heard him laugh out loud.

‘Bandits at six o’clock,’ he tells me now.

From outside the trailer comes the sound of hooves. I take a deeper breath than usual and push my horse backwards into the world of judgement, negativity and point-scoring that is my relationship with my father.

‘Afternoon.’ I lower the stirrup, double-check the girth and mount. Bee staggers backwards as though I weigh fifteen stone not nine.

‘Bad business,’ my father tells me, nodding towards the mountains in the west. ‘Fog coming in as well. We should have started before now. Afternoon nap, was it?’

I turn Bee and push him towards the other riders, all now mounted. There is no sign of fog that I can see. First thing in the morning, it’s common around the water, not at this time of day.