The Taken (20 page)

Her mouth felt dry and she needed something to help mellow her soul and give her the strength and courage she wasn’t sure she had.

“Get me a gin and tonic, will you please, Crouch? Make it a double.” Rising quickly, the man didn’t argue with her and she waited silently till he brought the tall cool glass back, pouring only a small amount of the tonic in and taking a long slow sip, wanting the spirit to burn her throat. To purify her voice.

Carter leaned forward in his chair, repeating his question.

“So? What happened?” His voice was eager, and Mary wondered for a second if she could hear the edge of the hyena in it. Not that there was any real surprise there. Nothing about people had surprised her for a long time. Except perhaps their gritty need for survival. Well, she was getting over that one.

“We panicked her, that’s what happened. I don’t know who caught her legs with their stick first; whoever it was I’m sure didn’t mean to, but once it was done, once she’d yelped with that first sting of pain, well… it was like a veil came down. Did I hit her? Probably. Almost certainly, but I just don’t know. I’m not lying when I say I don’t remember. I remember most of that day clear as a bell, couldn’t forget it if I tried, each

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image is etched into my head, burned there, filling my dreams, but not those few minutes. They’re gone.”

From the corner of her eye, she could see that Alice was looking up, drawn into the story too, the part that she hadn’t known, the hour or so before she became involved, only once before heard, many, many years ago. She looked better than she had in a long while. Maybe the telling was doing her good too, poor soul.

“We weren’t hitting her hard. Just those kind of stinging shots, the sort children do to each other, almost like tea towel slaps, but we were scaring her.

Because grownups didn’t do that kind of thing. They weren’t supposed to. And I think she could see our knowledge, that we knew about her, and that scared her.

Maybe out there by the ravine, she thought we were as capable of evil as she was.

“We had closed right in on her, laughing and whooping, soaking wet and loving it in a strange way. We must have looked like some kind of crazy witches out there in that clearing. We must have looked like that to Melanie anyway, because she stepped further and further back, desperate to keep out of our reach, terrified of what we were going to do to her. She kept shuffling backwards until she was right by the drop away into the river.”

Mary paused, her eyes almost shut, remembering the expression of surprise on that forever-ten face as the wet ground behind Melanie crumbled and she tumbled backward, her arms flailing forward trying to hold onto the air. Mary’s wrinkled face flinched as she remembered how none of them had reached to grab her, their own shock freezing them, the rain that attacked them and their anger all forgotten, their

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vision filled with those pinwheeling arms and small, stretched fingers.

She let the words out that were eating her inside.

“And then she fell. She was gone, screaming backwards over the ravine.”

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“Oh Mary, oh sweet Mary mother of God …” The words were like punches coming out of Enid Tucker and Mary, the Mary that was never going to heaven, not anymore, the Mary that was here full of flesh and blood and fear, wished her friend would just shut up, just please shut up.

Leaning carefully over the edge of the drop-off, Charlotte beside her, Mary could see Melanie’s twisted body on a small ledge a few feet above the torrent of the rising river. The girl’s eyes were wide and terrified, her lower body bent out of shape.

“Melanie? Melanie? Can you hear me?” There was no animal in Charlotte’s voice anymore; she was all human, all pathetically human and full of realization. The small voice drifted up to them, jagged and wet.

“I can’t move my legs! I can’t move my legs!”

Turning round, Mary saw Ada Rose desperately searching the ground around them for something long enough to reach the ledge, which was a good ten feet 200

below them, and wanted to scream at her that it was useless. Ada knew as well as she did that there were no twigs or branches at their feet that were going to be able to go that far.

The air above her flashed bright before thunder raged again, the downpour that surrounded them stinging at their skin, sucking the warmth out of them. She shivered.

“It’s no good, we’ll have to go back for help. We need a rope.” She had to raise her voice to make it carry over the sounds of nature that screeched in her ears and pulled at her hair.

“Melanie? Melanie?” Charlotte screamed down to where the girl lay, the water of the river steadily rising. Coughing and spluttering came back at them, the little girl crying.

“I can’t move my legs! I can’t feel them!”

“We’re going to get a rope. You’ve got to hold on! We’ll be as fast as we can.

Just please hold on!”

Listening to the panic in her friend’s voice, Mary squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, wanting to keep them that way, to block this nightmare out forever. To make it so it never happened. Her heart thumped too hard, and behind her lids she pushed away the tears that came with the truth that she couldn’t ignore. It would take too long to go back to the village. It would take too long. The freezing river was rising too fast. It would overwhelm her. Drown her. To go back to the village would take too long for Melanie.

She felt a hand on her arm and reluctantly opened her eyes. Enid was tugging at her. “Come on, Mary. Let’s go. We need to hurry”

Fora moment the pointlessness of what they were 201

doing was on the tip of her tongue, but then she bit it back. She just wanted to get away, to get away from there.

None of them volunteered to stay, to wait with Melanie, and her small cries of “Don’t leave me alone! Don’t leave me!” were the last Mary heard from her, carried carefully on the wind, the words mercilessly clear.

If only as she ran down the bank, her feet twisting and turning as she stumbled from going too fast in the rain, the life bursting inside her, if only she’d known then how long she’d be hearing their echo.

Charlotte had fetched dry towels for each of them while checking that Kay was sleeping upstairs, but Mary’s sat on the chair beside her untouched. It didn’t seem right to take that comfort, to have that warmth. The silence in the confines of the small lounge was putting her teeth on edge. How much longer? How much longer?

The women had all been exhausted when they’d staggered back to the village, so it was Reverend Barker who’d left ashen-faced with the rope, running through the storm back to the ravine. One more guest at the party.

Alice Moore had been emptying the small post box at the far end of the village, the one the farmers used when they didn’t want to come down to the post office.

The small sack of letters she clutched almost fell from her hands when she saw them, shocked at their bedraggled, haunted appearances.

Letting the others go past, Mary had asked her to gather up their children and get them to help sort the post or something. Anything to keep them occupied.

Just for an hour or so. Alice had wanted to know why, and her whole body shaking, the words surreal, Mary told her, needing to tell someone. Nodding and quivering, agreeing to do as she was asked, Alice aged thirty 202

years in that five minutes of intense listening, and watching it happen broke something inside Mary. Alice Moore would never have children of her own. She wouldn’t even think of it, not after that day.

Breathing almost against her will, Mary let her head rest in her hands, not wanting to look at the faces of her friends, and they not wanting to look at her or each other they listened to the tick of the clock in the hallway and waited.

Eventually the door creaked open and the vicar was back, soaking and muddy, the rope dangling impotently from his hands. Forty-five minutes had passed since they left the clearing. Shaking his head, he sank into the old hard-backed chair in the corner. His voice was dull, empty. “She’s gone. She was gone when I got there. I called and called, but there was nothing. I dropped the rope over the side until it hit the water and shouted and shouted. But there was nothing.”

The silence that followed threatened to eat Mary up. Her head buzzed as the truth sank in. Melanie was dead. She’d known it. She’d thought she’d known it, but this, this final confirmation was almost too much to bear. What had they done? Oh Christ, what had they done?

“I think I may be sick.” Ada rocked slowly back and forth.

“What are we going to do? What on earth are we going to do?” Enid Tucker chewed the skin at the edge of her fingers, something that took Mary back to when they had been children themselves, the tears prickling behind her eyes.

Charlotte stood up and crossed to the window, staring at the rain that pummeled the old square panes of glass, accusing them with what it knew.

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“Go home and have a bath. Give your children some tea. We’ll meet again when our husbands are home.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know.” She shrugged and it seemed to Mary that the effort took all of her energy. Before she could stop herself, the words were out.

“I’ll speak to Alicia. I’m sure we can go to her cottage. We don’t want to be where the children can hear us.”

The silence confirmed the plan, and Mary pulled herself to her reluctant feet, wondering how she was going to be normal, wondering how she was going to make Paul’s tea, and smile and listen while looking for burns and bruises and hearing the echo of that little girl’s panicked screams ringing constantly in her head, monster or not. Suddenly the reality of the future pierced her insides. As the women filed out into the rain, they knew the world had changed. Nothing would ever be the same again.

Mary took the last swallow of gin, enjoying the slight hum it had created inside her. Maybe she’d take another upstairs. Yes, maybe she would. But first she had to finish her tale. And finish it she would.

“We argued long into the night, once we shared what we’d done. The men couldn’t believe it. Sometimes I think they never really did. It was easier not to, and men aren’t good at dealing with such things. They didn’t want to see the cruelty that we were capable of. Surprising really, because women are so much harder underneath our soft skin.” She smiled wistfully.

“We were hard that night. Our guilt had turned to self-preservation in the hours we allowed ourselves, those hours in which the cold truth sank in. She’d hurt 204

our children. She’d forced us into it, and after all, it was an accident, so why should we have to suffer more? She was an evil child. If she could do that to Joe Barnes’s cat at her age, then what would she grow up into?”

She raised a wry eyebrow. “Anyway, of all of us law-abiding adults, it was only Alicia who insisted that we should go to the police. We should explain ourselves. We would live to regret it if we didn’t. She stuck to her guns for hours, wouldn’t budge, not until I cried and cried, begged her to just keep quiet, asked her where was the harm in that? I beat her down with sisterly love.”

Throat tightening, Mary forced herself to continue. “She changed after that. She still played the piano, gave lessons, but the fire in her music was gone. She didn’t play for pleasure anymore. I don’t think she found pleasure in it, or wouldn’t allow herself to enjoy it. She … how shall I put it, she sought solace with people she barely knew, with men she barely knew. At least one of those helped her produce the lovely Alex.” Looking up, she sought out her niece, but Alex wouldn’t meet her gaze. No matter. It was to be expected. “No one frowned on Alicia for that, for her single-motherhood. We carried her sins, you see. We caused them.” She sighed.

“Alex revived her for a while, but not for long. Her guilt turned to disease and that took her from us.”

Her cheeks were wet with silent tears. “We killed her just as surely as we killed Melanie. An accident, but our fault all the same.”

She sat in silence for somewhere between a minute and an eternity, staring into the flames and slowly settling back into the present. She could hear Alice’s 205

breath hitching as she sobbed beside her, and Mary squeezed her knee. “It’s all right, Alice. None of it was your fault.”

“But the dead can’t come back, Mary.” Under the hardness of Ada’s voice there was a slight tremble. “No matter what we did. Melanie Parr’s gone. Dead and gone, and I’m glad!”

Mary wasn’t the only one to hear the slight edge of hysteria in her old friend’s voice. Alex finally raised her head, and it hurt Mary to see the sadness and shock on her face. The truth hurt, there was no denying it. And more often than not it was the innocent who felt the pain most. “Why don’t you go home, Ada?

Help Daniel get that radio of his working.”

Alex turned to Crouch, and Mary noticed the man couldn’t look her in the eye, as if he was somehow ashamed for her.

“I need a shower. Can I use one of the rooms?” He nodded before opening the cupboard and pulling out a key. She lowered her voice slightly. “And a couple of Paracetamol if you’ve got some. Make that four if you can. Save me asking for more later.”

Taking the packet from him, Alex turned back to face the silent throng. “I don’t care how crazy it makes me sound. This village did something terrible to that little girl and now she’s come back. And we can either ignore that and carry on dying or try and think of a way to stop her. It’s up to you.” Mary felt her heart ache as her niece headed upstairs without even a backward glance.

After Ada had left and Alex had gone upstairs, the tension eased out of the room a little. For the younger

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villagers that had known nothing of Melanie Parr or whose relatives had not been part of the events of thirty years ago, Mary’s retelling had been awful but unreal. As if Melanie herself had never really existed except in this awful tale and the outcome of it couldn’t touch them. Perhaps that was the way it always was with these things. Nobody ever truly believed the world existed before they were born. A world without yourself was never easy to picture, especially for the young. Slowly the quiet hum of conversation filled the bar, although no one seemed too keen to come close to Mary, everyone avoiding guilt by association.