The quarry foreman kitted us out with ruthless efficiency—hard hats, boots and waterproof outer clothing.
‘What shoe size do you take?’ he asked.
‘Three and a half.’
‘We don’t have any
quite
as small as that,’ he said, exchanging a condescending smirk with the other men. ‘Still you can’t wear those, can you?’ He observed my mud-splattered Jimmy Choos with disdain. ‘Here’s a six. If you put on a few pairs of these thick socks they shouldn’t be so big on you.’
I resembled Charlie Chaplin as I trotted out to the waiting buggy. First stop would be the quarry, then the slate crushing plant, and lastly the mine itself.
All went smoothly to begin with. I stayed in the background as Rob asked technical questions on quarrying methods and equipment used, interjecting only to demonstrate that I was adding value. I inferred from Rob’s copious note-taking that there was plenty of scope for tax claims, especially in the crushing plant.
Our final destination was the underground workings. We boarded a narrow gauge train which sped back through the quarry before beginning its dizzying descent to the mine. I thought of Isabelle’s grandfather, making this trip daily and not seeing sunlight all day. Even at its worst, Pearson Malone couldn’t top that for unpleasantness.
According to my online research, only one of three mineshafts was currently being mined. The small train whizzed over the points past a short branch line to shaft number one en route to shaft three. A heavy metal door, which looked as though it hadn’t been opened for years, sealed off the disused area. And yet the railway tracks leading to it were gleaming. Without fully registering the thought, I questioned why.
I’d expected freezing temperatures down the mine, but according to the foreman they maintained the temperature at a constant fifty-four degrees Fahrenheit, or twelve degrees Centigrade. I learned that a significant amount of energy was used to extract the heat generated by all the machinery. In addition, pumping out the water that threatened to engulf the mine periodically required considerable effort. Which explained the humongous electricity bill I’d seen when I’d checked the accounts. We stood around admiring the mechanical diggers and ventilation units, and Rob rattled off another series of technical questions, many of which sailed over my head.
In the gloom, there was something about the looming heaps of scrap slate awaiting removal which reminded me of the hoard house. The miners lived my childhood life in reverse—working in horrible conditions and returning to clean homes. But they didn’t have to lie, or pretend their workplace was pristine, because everyone expected mines to be dirty. I saw now that the deceit had harmed me more than the mess, together with the shame and the guilt my mother laid on me.
As I focussed in the gloom, I picked out more detail in the piles. I peered more closely, and wished I hadn’t.
Because these weren’t piles of slate at all, but towering heaps of junk, piled up to the roof.
No—they couldn’t be, surely… Wouldn’t somebody have noticed? I watched, transfixed, as the others chatted away, oblivious to the unfolding apparition. The piles shifted, closing in on me—menacing and predatory. My dream had come to life.
An unfamiliar tightness gripped my chest and squeezed the breath from my lungs. My head spun—my hands tingled. Surely they had lured me here and poisoned me with some hallucinogenic drug. Seized by a force more powerful than my own free will, I coughed and spluttered as the tsunami of dread swept to a crescendo.
‘
Run, run, or they’ll kill you.’
But if I ran, they would surely catch me—I could have moved faster in my stilettos than those damned stupid clown’s boots. I fought the impulse to bolt, took one step away, and then another, and another, slowly and steadily. Before anyone noticed, I’d slipped away.
Once out of sight, I broke into a trot, back along the railway track, my lungs and limbs screaming for air. Finally my legs buckled and I slumped, opposite the door to Shaft 1—a gasping, shivering wreck drenched in cold sweat, like an addict in withdrawal.
Then the door slid open and as my eyes adjusted to the dazzling white light I understood everything.
***
Through the door, I saw row after row of plants under powerful lights. An overwhelming musky sweetness transported me back to my university days.
Cannabis—they were growing dope—here in the slate mine.
‘
Get moving—you can’t be found here
,’ Little Amy exhorted.
Quite right. Whatever else happened—they mustn’t discover I’d seen the plants. With the last dregs of strength, I dragged myself around the corner, where the foreman discovered me seconds later.
‘What do you think you’re doing?’ he asked. ‘You can’t go wandering off—health and safety.’
‘I’m ill,’ I gasped and promptly vomited, involuntarily adding a touch of authenticity to the story.
Puking had triggered a miraculous recovery, at least physically. My poisoning panic had proved baseless, but anxiety still gnawed at me. Why did I keep hallucinating? What was real and what was not?
As the little train chugged back to the surface, my repetitious apologies were met with half-hearted reassurances. Everyone appeared to accept my claustrophobia at face value. Who knew—it might even be true. I fielded their asinine questions about whether I’d ever had anything similar happen before, and swore to them I was OK.
But was I?
I shunned their offer to put me on a train from Llandudno. The prospect of other passengers eying and judging alarmed me far more than concentrating on a lengthy drive. Besides, I’d have to work out how to retrieve the car if I left it at the mine.
As I reversed the journey I’d made in such a spirit of optimism that morning, there was plenty of time for reflection. If perception was reality, then everything was real, which was palpably false. That gave the lie to Smithies’ favourite mantra, unless I truly was insane and my perception counted for nothing. Common sense told me neither the hoard in the mine nor Little Amy existed. But the rest? I’d not seen a cannabis farm before—how could my imagination conjure one up in such plausible detail? Other evidence pointed to the existence of the drugs. For one thing, the slate mine was an ideal location for growing dope. It must be immune from heat-detecting helicopters and used so much energy already that the powerful lights might not add significantly to the cost.
Suppose the drug farm existed. The local JJ team must be in on it, fraudulently boosting profits to keep head office happy while they all got on with the real, far more lucrative, business. An apparently pointless deception now had a purpose. JJ must be involved too, otherwise why would his car be parked there? But if JJ was implicated, why the cover-up? So maybe I’d imagined the cannabis farm too.
There’s a limit to how long you can swirl around the same unanswerable questions. Once home, and anaesthetised by several large gin and tonics, my brain obligingly shut down for the night.
The next morning found me slightly shaky from lack of food, but otherwise unscathed.
There was no logical reason for the events of the previous day to affect my decision not to pursue my investigations, especially given my unreliable perception. And yet this rational analysis didn’t sit comfortably on an emotional level—I felt a tremendous urge to validate my discovery.
I parked the urge somewhere in my subconscious, lest it should distract me from the busy day I had planned. I’d booked a day’s leave to pick through that gargantuan storage unit—my mother’s house—before the Clearall team came at the weekend. Fortified by a McDonald’s sausage and egg McMuffin, I set off in a determined frame of mind to Croydon.
As I shoved open the door, the foetid odour hit me afresh. For a moment I tensed, preparing myself for another attack of the vapours. But it never came. I breathed deeply and took in the squalor, as a sense of calm washed over me. I was back to normal, or rather normal for me.
By Monday, the rubbish would be nothing more than an unhappy memory. Three decades to create a monster hoard—three days to clear—it seemed impossible. But Clearall had signed up to that challenge.
Despite everything, the corner of my soul belonging to Little Amy still hoped a fresh start would cure my mother. But hope only set me up for disappointment. I would never have the mother I wanted—she didn’t exist anymore. Just as the house had been buried under piles of debris, so any goodness in her was trapped within the bubble of denial and delusion she inhabited.
Before starting, I took pictures—the first interior photographs of the house for more than thirty years. I needed to capture the level of squalor forever, both to prevent me kidding myself it hadn’t been so terrible, and to document my efforts.
Now for the tricky part. My mother had always claimed to keep her valuables in a bureau in the lounge, but I was sceptical. As I unlocked it, a welter of old, mainly junk mail fell out.
If my mother opened letters at all, she invariably replaced them in their envelopes and then noted the contents on the envelope. I’d always found this practice absurd—after all, if you throw away the envelope you can
see
what the letter is. Amid all the crap, two communications from HMRC remained firmly sealed—her phobia of tax demands second only to her phobia of throwing anything out. I ripped them open and laughed—each contained a repayment cheque for several hundred pounds, long out of date.
The valuable stuff was, as I’d suspected, scattered randomly around the house—but that didn’t worry me too much. There’s an instinct to finding items in a hoard. Strictly, locating a particular object might seem impossible given the volume of stuff, but rarely did anything become irretrievably subsumed in the trash heap. Sometimes belongings were damaged beyond repair, but they seldom sank without a trace. That didn’t mean the search would be easy, though.
I can’t explain the subliminal logic that led me to the passport hidden in a plastic storage container in the bathroom, or the jewellery in the piano stool. Nor can I say what prompted me to check inside that old kettle in the kitchen, stuffed with share certificates and the deeds to the house. Anyway, irrespective of the thought process, within an hour, I’d stashed all these items in my handbag. They were probably all that was worth saving—she would have her bank cards and cheque book in her own bag, I guessed.
If you’re concerned about childhood photographs, forget it. They’d all been ruined when the garage roof had developed a leak ten years before. Fortunately I’d already salvaged a precious few from my grandmother’s house—the only evidence that I hadn’t sprung into the world as a fully formed adult. I did discover a college graduation picture while searching though, stained beyond salvation. My mother had used it as an impromptu stand for the teapot. These quasi-accidental acts of malevolence hardened my heart. Yes, she was ill, but it doesn’t take much effort to keep a picture of your daughter’s special day safe.
Next, I dug a canyon through my old bedroom, where crumbling posters of forgotten pop idols clung to the faded kids’ wallpaper my father had hung weeks before he died. After I’d left, my mother had commandeered the room as yet another repository for her rapidly burgeoning wardrobe. Her clothes were now heaped high, the summits of some mounds reaching almost to the ceiling—a remarkable feat for a five-foot-tall woman.
From the piles, I picked out an assortment of clothes for her to wear afterwards. I had no idea if they were the best ones or the most appropriate, and didn’t much care. I marvelled at the collection of exotic outfits she’d managed to accumulate—plenty to see a member of the Royal Family through a year’s engagements. Her obvious yearning for a better life triggered a strange sadness, but I choked it off—this woman wasn’t worthy of my pity.
My old wardrobe was stuffed full of clothes I’d worn at school, including the pale blue batwing jumper, pilled and moth-eaten.
‘
That looks horrible now
.’ Little Amy peered over my shoulder as I examined the sweater.
‘Well it is nearly twenty-five years old,’ I said. ‘Clothes aren’t meant to last such a long time.’
‘
They’re not?
’ she said dubiously.
And then I remembered, Little Amy didn’t realise people threw out clothes. Only several years later at university did she make that discovery.
‘
And I hate those—they’re vile
.’
She pointed to a pair of Doc Martens I’d worn in the sixth form.
‘Don’t worry—you’ll like them in a year or two.’
The sight of Little Amy reminded me painfully of what I was struggling to blank out—what I might or might not have witnessed underground. I knew I should ignore her and bring myself back on track. But the kid was stubbornly persistent.
At lunchtime, I checked my phone and found a missed call from Lisa.
‘Hey,’ she said, when I called her back. ‘Just checking you’re OK.’
Why wouldn’t I be?
‘I’m at the hoard house, picking out the wheat from the chaff, but apart from that I’m fine.’
I deliberately omitted to mention the previous day’s hallucinations, but Lisa had already heard her own version of the story, prompting her call.
‘Are you sure? They say you had a funny turn yesterday.’
Who said
, I wondered?
‘I felt a bit giddy and then lost my way, that’s all.’
‘You’ve done it again,’ she moaned. ‘I’m supposed to be your best friend and you never tell me anything.’
This was my moment to explain what I’d stumbled across in Wales, but I ducked it. It sounded so incredible—she surely wouldn’t believe me.
‘And that’s all it was?’
‘Absolutely. Would I lie to you?’
‘I guess not—are you alright now?’
‘Yes, of course—just getting ready for the big hoard clear-out tomorrow.’
‘So you took my advice.’
She sounded surprised.
‘You bet—I even faked her signature on the agreement…’
‘It’s the right answer,’ she said, without hesitation. ‘And best of luck.’
In its own way, the conversation had been useful. Any suspicion that a client was involved in a crime had to be reported to Pearson Malone’s MLRO (Money Laundering Reporting Officer). He would decide what action to take and whether to pass the information on to law enforcement. I’d been considering reporting the cannabis farm, even though I wasn’t one hundred percent convinced I’d truly seen it. I now realised I couldn’t do it. If I hesitated to tell my closest friend for fear of being disbelieved or thought crazy, how realistically would I summon up the courage to confide in anyone else, especially after Bailey had warned me off rocking the boat? So, either I gathered more evidence, or let it go.