Little Black Lies (30 page)

‘I thought your engine was missing when you drove down.’ Dad is right by my side, stupidly close, given Bee’s foul temper. ‘When was it last serviced?’

‘Sander takes care of that.’

‘Along with everything else.’

I wonder how my father might react were I to tell him about the note I received this morning. Declare himself 100 per cent on the side of its author, I imagine.

‘Be one of the buggers up at the barracks that’s had the kid,’ he mutters. ‘Every couple of months we get a new lot in, we have no idea who they are or what their history is. I’ve told Bob Stopford he needs to check who was off duty earlier.’

‘I’m sure no one’s taken him. He’ll just be lost.’

‘Oh, excuse me for not seeking your opinion immediately.’ My father raises his voice now, eager to drag in others to fight his corner, or witness my humiliation when I’m crushed by the weight of his argument. ‘I imagine we can all go home, now Rachel thinks he’ll be found in ten minutes.’

Why is he this way with me? Crikey, where would I start? For one thing, unlike 75 per cent of my peers, I didn’t come back to the islands immediately after finishing university. God, how proud we are of that statistic: 75 per cent of our young people – our intelligent young people, mind you – come back to the islands at the first opportunity, so great a place is this cluster of rocks in the South Atlantic. By delaying my return, I joined the 25 per cent whose actions are inevitably seen as a personal and cultural rejection.

I told everyone from home who asked that the experience I was getting with an English newspaper would prove invaluable, make me a better reporter, eventually a better editor. That I was sacrificing my own inclinations for the good of the islands. It was a complete lie, of course; I didn’t want to come home.

When people in the UK asked me why I stayed, I told them I liked London. I even wrote a piece about it for the paper. I loved the anonymity of the crowds, the sense that anything was possible and that no one from home would ever know; that I could be anyone I wanted, a different person every day, if I chose: demure and ladylike in the morning, all floating tea-dresses and violet-ink fountain-pens; a hard-smoking, hard-swearing Goth in the afternoons, with ripped black leather and white make-up; and in the evenings, I could put on sports clothes and run around the endless London parks. And nobody would say to me: Rachel Duncan, when did you take up running? Rachel, does your mother know you’re dressed that way? Good Lord, Rachel, are you off to a fancy-dress party?

You have to come from a small island, in the middle of nowhere, I wrote, to truly value anonymity. That was all a lie too, of course. My real reason for staying away was quite different.

My father, though, took this stamp of independence as an assertion of superiority on my part. By not coming back immediately, I was saying as clearly as possible that I considered myself better than everyone I’d grown up around. In my father’s behaviour towards me I see the contempt we reserve for those who try to outgrow us, who want to leave us behind.

Or maybe it’s much simpler than that. Maybe he just can’t stand to be around the woman I became three years ago.

And I had done an hellish thing.

A hellish thing that I will never be allowed to forget.

*   *   *

‘Tally-ho!’ I tell him now, heading off on to the moor. He kicks his mare, Primrose, and follows close behind.

The land we cross first is dry and windswept. Bare rocks poke out through thin soil and low-lying shrubs form dense, cushiony mats across the ground. They’re soft enough to step on, but create a ground surface so pitted and uneven as to make travelling at any sort of speed impossible. Flowers poke through, though, as if to symbolize the resilience of Falkland spirit.

‘Watch where you’re going.’ I’ve ridden too close to my father and Bee has aimed a bite at his mare’s rear end.

‘Sorry. Got my eyes peeled for a small child.’ I steer further away, though. I have no desire to spend the rest of the afternoon chatting with my father.

There is a sudden shout over to my left. Something has been found. For a large, finely bred horse, Bee is pretty good on uneven ground and we soon catch up to the next rider, the island counsellor, Sapphire Pirrus.

After the accident, one condition of my avoiding prison time was that I would seek counselling. By the end of the third session, I was starting to think that prison would have been preferable.
How are you feeling today, Rachel? How does that make you feel, Rachel? What did you feel at that moment?
Good God above, how did she think I felt? My world had fallen apart. I could barely close my eyes without seeing the faces of those two dead boys, of hearing their screams as the car fell, and she thought talking about my feelings would help?

During my last session, I told her about the Coleridge poem, the one I’d never much liked, but had learned because I’d thought that Catrin, coming from a long line of mariners, would appreciate. As Sapphire’s eyes glazed over, I told her the story of the long, perilous voyage south, about the albatross, something akin to a pet or surrogate child to the sailors, being shot dead by the titular Mariner.

The Mariner’s remorse haunts him for the remainder of the story, and, either literally or metaphorically (I was never quite sure), he carries the dead bird, an outward symbol of his spiritual burden, around his neck.

I feel like Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner, I told Sapphire. I did a stupid, thoughtless thing and now its consequences are impacting upon everyone around me. I feel as though I’ve cursed everyone I care about. I feel as though the people of these islands have hung the albatross around my neck, I told her. I feel as though everywhere I go, I carry the stench of a rotting creature with me, that everyone who looks at me sees the blood that still drips. Will always drip. What I didn’t tell her was that it is only towards the end of the poem, when the Mariner finally learns to pray, that the albatross falls away.

It’s going to take a lot more than a couple of minutes in church to cut the rotting carcass from around my neck.

Sapphire, on the grey gelding that matches her hair and clothes, and I on my mahogany-coated devil, make our way over to the small group to find a man holding up a piece of red fabric. We have already been told that Archie was wearing red.

‘May I see it?’ I press Bee forward. Sapphire keeps up with me and we approach together.

He gives it up reluctantly. Red check. A large print. A piece of brushed cotton about ten inches by eight, ripped from the bottom of a shirt, with the washing instructions still attached.

‘No.’ Sapphire shakes her head. ‘I know this label. It’s a clothing range sold in Stanley. Nothing to do with the little boy.’

People look at me for confirmation. We are the only two women and must naturally be experts on all matters of clothing.

‘I recognize the label too. I think this belonged to someone who lives here. And the pattern looks quite faded. I’ll keep it though, in case.’

I tuck the fabric into my saddlebag before Dad can get hold of it, because I can see his fingers itching. He suggests we re-form the line and we move on.

‘We need to find him soon.’ I glance round to see Sapphire is keeping up with me. ‘Even if he’s dead – and I pray to God he’s not – but one way or another we need to find him. Nothing stirs up panic in a community like missing children.’

I think, but don’t say, that few communities are fond of dead ones.

‘It’s our worst, most primeval fear.’ I can hear her breathing. She’s working hard to keep up with my bigger, fitter horse. ‘The possibility that someone could be taking our children. Your father wrote an excellent piece about it about a year ago. Did you see it?’

Not only had I seen the piece in question – a consideration of how communities react to missing children by incorporating their tales into folklore – I’d written it. Dad had argued, probably correctly, that no one wanted to read a piece by me about mishaps to children and so he’d put it in the paper under his own byline. I think in the time since, he’s actually convinced himself he wrote it in the first place.

‘The little boy was playing,’ I say. ‘I’m sure he just got lost.’

‘Let’s hope you’re right. But fear changes a community.’

‘Watch Bee.’ I pull ahead. ‘He kicks. He’s a nasty piece of work.’

‘Look who’s talking,’ snorts my horse.

*   *   *

We see no sign of the child that afternoon, even though we stay out until the sun sinks below the mountains and the sky around us turns violet. As we near the farm, I edge closer to Tom Barrell, the farmer’s youngest son, who is riding on my left. He is talking to Sapphire, who is on his other side.

‘I’m not sure I’ve seen your dad around,’ she is saying to him.

‘He went out early this afternoon. He doesn’t even know.’

‘Do you think the little boy fell in the river?’

Tom’s face creases, he has a young child himself. Of course, nobody wants to think that the child may have drowned, but given how close we are to water, it has to be a possibility. In spring, after the winter rains and snow, the rivers can be deep and fast.

‘Starting to look that way,’ he says. ‘Tide will probably wash him up overnight or tomorrow.’

I close my eyes, take deep breaths. Ned and Kit didn’t drown, their post-mortems made that perfectly clear, but so many times I’ve taken that sickening plunge with them. Every bad dream, every waking nightmare is the same. So, I know what it’s like to feel water all around me, to see nothing but water, feel it hitting my face, forcing its way into my throat. I know what it’s like to be lost, in a world of water, not knowing whether I will ever get out. Ned and Kit didn’t suffer that, but I do, on a daily basis.

Water, water, everywhere.

No one should have to die in water, especially not a three-year-old child.

We’re back. Bee sees his hay net and starts capering. He skitters over towards it, nearly sending Constable Skye flying.

‘Tom, I wanted to ask you something,’ she calls up to him. Bee reaches the hay and starts eating before I’ve even jumped down.

‘One of Archie’s brothers says he saw another silver Land Rover parked down the road earlier.’ Skye is jumping about like a nervous colt, scared of being stood on by one of the horses. ‘Did any of you over at the farm notice anything?’

Tom thinks and shakes his head. ‘We can’t see that spot too well from the house, to be honest. But we do get a lot of people parking there in the summer. Sometimes a dozen cars a week. It’s possible.’

‘And this second Land Rover wasn’t part of the group?’ My father has crept up. He invariably has to be at the centre of things.

‘Archie’s family and friends came in two hire cars,’ Skye explains. ‘The Land Rover and a red Ford Mondeo. There was another group here when they arrived, in a blue Vauxhall estate, and those people are still here, helping with the search. So, three cars. Now we have the possibility of a fourth.’

Every second vehicle here is a grey or silver Land Rover, I think. The child could be confused.

‘We really need to talk to your dad,’ Skye tells Tom. ‘He could have seen the unaccounted-for vehicle. He could even have seen the child. What time did he go, did you say?’

Leaving them to it, I lead Bee into the trailer, fasten his head collar and step back out to collect his tack. At the bottom of the ramp, I turn and almost bump into a man I know. Medium height, slim build, dark eyes that blink frequently and heavily. Sallow skin. His once dark hair is now sprinkled with silver.

Ben Quinn. Whose sons died at my hands. While we’ve been out searching, an ambulance has arrived and I guess he came with the medical team.

‘Oh. Hello.’ He seems as surprised as I am. He can’t have recognized my trailer.

There is a moment when neither of us knows what to do. So we simply stare at each other. I must be the last person he wants to be anywhere near, and yet the rules of civilized society demand that, at the very least, he offer a token social pleasantry.

‘You OK?’ he asks, blinking hard, as though trying to break whatever spell is keeping him within reach of the woman he has probably fantasized about choking to death.

‘Good. You?’

What next? Ask him about his family? His seven-month-old baby? I don’t get a chance to do anything so stupid, thank God, because he turns away first, half stumbling over a clod of earth. Forgetting the tack, I head back into the trailer. I go in as far as I can and lean, trembling, against my horse’s solid front quarter.

Bee shifts, uncomfortably. ‘What is it now?’

‘Shush, give me a minute.’ I let my head fall. Bee’s coat is warm and damp with sweat. I can feel his heart beating.

‘You are pathetic, you know that?’ He tosses his head.

‘Yeah, I know.’

Dust makes me want to sneeze, but still I don’t move. I stay cuddling my horse, telling myself I need a minute, just a minute, and all the time knowing that a thousand minutes, a million, would never be enough.

*   *   *

Being in the same school year, Catrin and I went to England together, although not to the same university. She was studying marine biology at Plymouth, I’d chosen English and drama at Bristol.

I don’t think I’ll ever forget the excitement of that first trip. There were five of us heading to academia on the RAF TriStar, including Ben, in his third year at medical school. The older ones slept but Catrin and I stayed awake all night, watching the light fade and reappear unnaturally quickly as we crossed time zones.

We told each other this was simply a new phase in our friendship. We planned to buy travel mats and sleeping bags so that we could sleep on each other’s floor at weekends. Catrin’s new friends (she’d be selective and particular, she had high standards when it came to the people she allowed into her life) would be my new friends too, and mine (I was planning to spread my net as widely as possible, dip my toe into every river, lake and puddle –
because how else will I know who I really like, Catrin?
) would be hers. In the last months before we left, I seem to remember talking endlessly about the nature of true friendship, of the synergy of two souls growing closer as each individual part gets stronger. Catrin checked railway timetables and worked out how much of our annual grants needed to be set aside for train fares.