Unraveled Visions (A Shaman Mystery) (22 page)

He had uttered no more than two words in his sons’ direction and they had left immediately, to seek retribution for the family honour. But, as she’d brought water from the fire, she’d felt his eyes on her, as if registering a lack of presence.

“Where is Kizzy?”

“Out. Who knows?” said her mother.

He sucked air between his teeth as she mopped the wound. “She makes my head crazy. She will destroy our honour, even as my sons exact my vengeance.”

“Marry her off, and quickly,” said Mama, knotting the rag tight around his chest.

Only in stages did Tatta return to normal life. But once he had, she and Kizzy pulled the bare mattress from the bunk and carried it into the sunshine to wash their father’s blood from it.

“Tatta wants you married,” she’d whispered to her sister as they worked.

“Let them try.”

Now she lies in the dark, moving in and out of restless sleep, remembering all the moments of her past, sweet and bitter and bittersweet. She is so restless that she long ago pulled the bottom sheet into a crumpled heap and now she’s lying on the bare mattress, where a dark stain, the colour of a cow’s hide, has spread.

She puts the flat of her hand over the stain, but even stretched wide her small hand can’t cover it.

Blood, she knows, is an impossible stain to wash away.

twenty-one

Laetitia was sitting on
a sofa in Costa’s, a recently drained espresso and a glass of iced water in front of her. She was copying from a book onto an A4 pad but raised her pen as she spotted me.

On Sunday afternoon, my mobile had chirped a text:
Ma says okay. Costas@bwater, 4pm 2mor? Do say you will. Lv lettice xxx.

It was almost exactly one week since my previous text from Lettice. Maybe she put Sunday afternoons aside for important texting tasks. I read it several times, looking for the catch. I was intrigued, I couldn’t pretend I wasn’t. And if nothing else, all this—this sudden, so-called family—needed explanation. And possibly closure.

C U there
. It was a reluctant message, not over-friendly. I didn’t want her to get her hopes up. I doubted that Mrs. Mitchell and I would ever become buddies. And now I looked around the coffee shop, I realized there was no Mrs. Mitchell. I stood, hovering by the table.

“D’you want a drink?” asked Lettice.

“No thanks, I’ve only just had one.”

“Oh, okay,” said Lettice. “Carbon footprint reduction and all that, I suppose.”

The truth was, coffee shops like this were outside my price range and I didn’t want to start by owing her even for a cup of tea.

“And I can’t stay very long, Lettice, because I’m supposed to be delivering for Papa Bulgaria right now.”

Her hair was held into a low, mid-blond ponytail and she was still in her school uniform of navy blue jacket and skirt with checkered blue and white shirt and a stripy tie. I was thinking how cute she looked in it—a lot younger than she’d appeared at the Hatchlings—when a cheerful rendition of Beethoven’s Fifth broke forth from her mobile. “Oh, just a sec.”

Lettice buried herself into a long, frenzied conversation with someone she’d probably left only moments before. I was hoping that Mrs. Mitchell would appear from the loos at any minute (presuming Mrs. Mitchell was human enough to use loos), but she was nowhere to be seen. I couldn’t help feeling a teeny bit relieved. I placed my helmet on the table and went to buy a herbal tea, hanging the expense. When I got back, Lettice was still fiddling with a mobile that could probably do everything except her ironing. On reflection, it could probably do her ironing as well. Watching her, I felt all grown-up and sensible.

“Okay, Lettice,” I said. “Fill me in. Shouldn’t you be here with your mother?”

“No prob. Ma’s coming independently from home. And she’s not used to parking in Bridgwater, so puhleese don’t panic. Ma has awful panics, she hardly lets me out of her sight for a moment as it is.” She waited while I settled opposite her then went on. “I think there are particular deeply rooted causes for the way my mother restricts my freedom. That’s sort of why I’m here.”

“What d’you mean?”

“You see, I’m an only child and Daddy is too. Ma’s no better off. She never
never
talks about her older sister. It’s like she’s ashamed.”

“Your mother’s sister?”

“Ya. Isabel Dare. Your ma, of course.”

“Lettice, I don’t know—”

“See, no one will tell me anything, except that she’s as different from Ma as chalk is from cheese. That’s how Grandma put it, anyway.”

“Do you want … that I talk about my mother?”

She furrowed a peachy brow. “Not precisely … it’s just … I never had a cousin, and that’s what we are.”

“Are we? I don’t want to upset your family. I’ve never searched for my relations. It was complete chance I bumped into them.” I steadied myself with a too-hot sip of ginger-apple tea. “People can get very distressed when things suddenly change.” I looked out into the street. “You’re not trying to fool me, are you Lettice? I’m not easily fooled. If your mother’s not coming, I will leave.”

“It’s absolutely imperative you stay until Ma arrives.”

“Really? If your mother is ashamed of her sister, she’s not going to take to me.”

She played with the strap of her homework bag, a big, square leather case. “I saw Ma chuck your card in the kitchen bin. I got it out and wiped it down when she wasn’t looking. I knew you were trying to tell her something. But, honestly, there is no point in talking to clamp-mouth. So after Grandma had retired to her room for the night—she goes off about nine—I made her a cocoa, just how she likes it, and took it up to her.”

I suppressed a grin. She came across as a blend of devious minx and sweetheart. I could visualize her, standing there in her grandmother’s chamber between the whatnot and the washstand, with cocoa in fine china on a solid silver tray, while the old lady, who (sorry—
whom
) I’d never met, was propped in her four-poster, up to the neck in Barbara Cartland lace.

“Grandma was watching
Trial & Retribution
on Sky
.
She said, ‘thank you, glorious child’ like she does, so I went over and sat on her bed, and asked her to tell me a story of when Ma was young. She didn’t suspect. She started on about when they all lived at the Hatchings and ran amok in the grounds, and I went, ‘and Aunt Isabel, too?’ and she went, ‘yes, she was a dear girl, then’ and touched my nose. ‘You are like her, Lettice, in that there is a little unlit taper in your heart. Please don’t allow it to explode, as she did.’ And I went, ‘how did she explode, Grandma?’ and she went …” Lettice screwed up her face. “Bloody hell, I’ve forgotten what it was!”

“What?”

“How Aunty Isabel exploded. It was typical of Grandma.” She giggled. “She loves alliteration.”

“
Alliteration
?”

“Yes. Ah, I’ve got it: ‘Licentious lefty libber.’ That was it.”

“Blimey. Do you even know what those things are?”

“Of course. I
am
having an education.”

“Did she say anything else about her?” Suddenly, knowing about my mother felt urgent.

“She did mention where she went …” She fiddled some more with the satchel straps, and when I glanced at her, I saw that the back of her neck, lowered over the bag, had flushed a pretty rose colour.

“Where?”

“I don’t want to say.”

“Why ever not?”

“It might offend you.” There was a pause. “Grandma is like a time warp.”

“Tell me, please.”

“She said …” Her voice changed, and I guessed she was mimicking her grandmother’s clipped 1950s accent. “ ‘Isabel went to live with the blacks. Last jolly straw. Couldn’t have her back after that.’ She did say where, but I’ve forgotten. A saint.”

“A what?” But I knew immediately. “St. Pauls?”

“That was it.” She looked up at me, her face solemn. “I’m really sorry my family are such freakwits, Sabbie.”

“It’s okay, I’m trying to make sense of all this too. I’m not sure if I want to take it further or bury it again.”

“Can’t you ask your ma?”

I turned my head slowly. “What d’you mean?”

“Aren’t you in touch with her anymore?”

“She died when I was six—that’s twenty-two years ago.”

“Oh my god! I don’t think even Grandma knows that.”

“They don’t know Izzie is dead? But surely they’d’ve been informed.”

“They
are
good at keeping family secrets. But there’s a sort of
tone
oldies use, you know? When people have died? I’m sure Ma doesn’t know about
you
. No one’s ever told me I had a cousin.”

“I can’t believe this.” I shook my head. “It’s crazy.”

“I didn’t want to stir things up,” she said. “I just knew that if I didn’t meet you, I’d be thinking all the time,
I’ve a cousin,
and it would bug me to death.”

I smiled. “Actually, you are the first blood relative I have ever met. Apart from Izzie, that is.”

“Inconceivable! How come? What happened to your father’s people?”

“I never met him. I didn’t even know his name until the birth certificate arrived.”

She looked at me with understanding beyond her years. “You poor thing. And here’s me worrying over not having a cousin, while you—”

“Lettice?”

“Oh, hi, Ma.”

Mrs. Mitchell was standing by our table. Her car keys (platinum plated, as far as I could see) were in her hands, and an expression of unconcealed repugnance was plastered all over her face.

“Who is this?”

“Ma,” said Lettice in what can only be described as a drawl. “Don’t lose your rag.”

“What are you doing with my daughter?” Her face focused on me, like a spotlight in an interrogation cell.

“You didn’t tell her,” I said to Lettice.

“I’m about to, aren’t I?” She turned to her mother, almost formally. “This is my cousin, Sabrina Dare. Oh, and Ma—guess what! Aunt Isabel is dead.”

Lettice was accomplished in many skills that I’d not been blessed with at her age, but I can’t believe that even the twelve-year-old Sabbie could have been more blunt, less compassionate. Mrs. Mitchell didn’t expect it, that was for sure. She put both hands to her face, as if masking a collapse was the first thing a sensible person did in public. She stumbled backwards, her shoulder knocking against the plate glass door, moving mechanically through passing shoppers and off the kerb. Both of us jumped to our feet, but Lettice was first out of the door, yanking her mother back onto the pavement.

“Ma! Ma, it’s okay. Sorry—sorry—sorry …”

The words brought Mrs. Mitchell to her senses, and the information hit home. Her faced screwed uncontrollably.

I’d expected her to roar at me. But all she could do was sob.

_____

Over the top of an Americano, my aunt’s eyes branded me; daughter-snatcher, bringer of nightmares, gold-digger, demon risen from the past. Not to mention the source of acute embarrassment in a public place. She took a tiny sip and placed the cup on its saucer with precision as she tried to prevent her hand shaking.

“Where is my sister?”

“Ma,” said Lettice. “Ma, you weren’t listening.”

“I could hardly fail to hear what you said, Lettice. Sometimes, you can be quite
fishwifelike
.”

Lettice snorted then rearranged her face. Even she could see this was not the time to giggle.

“It is hard to believe,” I said, trying to make things feel reasonable. “At least, take in. And maybe my mother wasn’t your sister at all—it’s speculation.”

“Precisely.” Mrs. Mitchell wore her chin high, as if purposely exhibiting the antique cross she wore round her neck. Today she had let her massive hair down, so that the ash blond glittered around her shoulders as if spun by millions of small spiders. She still had that awful tan, but I was beginning to realize it was neither from a bottle nor a machine, but gained on a pool-side sun bed in Biarritz or wherever.

“Look. I don’t want to pursue this either. I never did. Coming to your mother’s house was a massive coincidence and we can forget it completely and all go home.” There was a short silence, which I filled by blabbering on. “I don’t want anything from your family.”

“But I want something from you.” Mrs. Mitchell knew how to make someone feel uncomfortable. Inferior. She was using her eyes as if they were drills.

“Well … anything.”

“I want to know where she is.”

“But …” Then I saw. “Oh. Right. She was cremated. That’s all I know.”

“My sister … has no headstone … no remembrance?”

This seemed to upset her more than anything. I imagined sepulchres and charnel houses of great antiquity deep in woodland somewhere in the grounds of the Hatchings. “I don’t understand why you weren’t informed. Your mother must have been her next of kin.”

“Frankly, we had rather lost touch.”

“I can’t see how that makes any difference. The authorities … someone must have made the arrangements.”

“Were you there, Sabbie?” asked Lettice. “At the funeral?”

“No.” I cupped my palms over my eyes and rubbed at my face. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to revive those memories, buried in my mind. But I hadn’t forgotten. Not really. “I was the one who found her. I’m not sure about the timescale, but looking back it feels as if it might have been hours … days … before I went for help? I think it took me a long time to accept that she wasn’t deeply asleep.” I glanced up. “She did sometimes sleep all day. I used to get my own food, if there was any. And my school had got used to my absences, so they certainly didn’t turn up, but suddenly there was this old lady—she lived downstairs, I think—warbling a scream. I do remember that scream. The police came, and some chap who turned out to be a social worker.”

“You were taken into care?” asked Mrs. Mitchell, in a voice that trembled with revulsion.

“Yes. I grew up in care. Because I didn’t know I had a family.”

“They should have contacted Grandma,” said Lettice. “I would’ve had a cousin. I would’ve looked up to you.”

“No, you wouldn’t,” I shot back. “I guess I was fifteen or so by the time you were born. I’d walked out of school. I was a right mess.”

“But that’s because you didn’t have us.” Lettice turned to her mother. “You would’ve taken Sabbie in, wouldn’t you Ma? Like in
Wuthering
Heights
?”

Mrs. Mitchell must have been more familiar with the book than I was, but she didn’t respond. She raised her Americano to her lips, took a slow sip, and placed the cup on its giant saucer. “She must be somewhere.”

“Her ashes were scattered, I think.”

“And who did the scattering?”

“I don’t know.”

“I think you could have taken a little more interest in your own mother’s death.”

“She was only six, Ma,” said Lettice.

“I’ve never taken an interest. I hate the woman.” That made them sit up. “She abandoned me. Don’t you see? She killed herself, more or less.”

“Suicide?” whispered Mrs. Mitchell.

“No. Drugs overdose.”

My aunt seemed to reel backwards, even though the chair back prevented it. She pressed her knuckles to her lips, like they do in films.