Dan Collier heaved the last of the old kitchen units into the skip that dominated Elaine’s driveway. He breathed a sigh of relief in thanks for the fact that it was a decent, quiet neighbourhood. Which meant that no one else had decided to use the skip to dispose of their own junk. It was always a hazard – nature and neighbours abhorred a vacuum, present them with an empty vessel and they would fill it.
He paused, hands on his hips, stretched out his aching back and wondered why he hadn’t considered a career that involved sitting at a desk, rather than one that made him feel like he’d run a marathon every day.
‘Hard at it?’
Dan squinted against the sunlight and shaded his eyes with his hand while trying to locate the source of the voice. A woman had paused at the end of the drive, a small dog ambled at her feet sniffing the ground and lifting its leg every now and then to mark its territory. ‘Always am,’ he said. These encounters could often be a good source of future work, so he was always happy to chat.
‘I see Elaine’s not home then. Gone on holiday has she?’
That kind of question made Dan wary, you never knew who you were talking to and as he was responsible for the security of the house in Elaine’s absence he answered carefully. ‘She has been, but she’s due back soon. Don’t worry, we’re always careful to leave everything locked up tight,’ he announced, making it clear that the house was not vulnerable. For good measure he crouched down and made a fuss of the dog, chucking it behind its ears and receiving a series of enthusiastic licks for his trouble.
The woman seemed pleased by his attention, ‘I’m glad she’s having a break, poor girl. That mother of hers was a trial I’m sure, not that I want to speak ill of the dead or anything, but do you know she wouldn’t let that girl out of her sight?’ she paused as if to check that Dan was interested in her tale.
‘I know she had a bad time of it.’ He knew it was true. He remembered Jean Ellis well and could still recall the sting of her tongue when she had warned him away from her daughter all those years ago. He had liked Elaine then, and he liked her now but hardly knew anything about her these days, except that she was still lonely and still shy. He wanted to know her better and if indulging in neighbourhood gossip was a way to get there then he was game. Why not?
The woman warmed to her theme, apparently pleased by his response, ‘When my girls were growing up they’d often call for Elaine, see if she wanted to come out to play, come for tea, you know how kids are. They felt sorry for her. Do you know, not once would that bloody woman let her out, not once. I don’t think she gave that girl a minute’s peace from the day she was born, and she’s such a nice girl.’
Dan nodded to indicate that he shared her indignation, which encouraged her to go on.
‘Wouldn’t even let her go away to college, I mean kids have to have their own lives don’t they? My girls both went to university – one’s a lawyer and the other’s in HR, I don’t see them much, but they’ve got to have their own lives haven’t they?’ Dan wasn’t sure whom she was trying to convince. ‘But that Jean, always was a strange one. I said that to my husband the day they moved in. There was something shifty about her. I know people are entitled to keep themselves to themselves, but she took it too far I reckon. I mean, there’s being private and there’s being strange isn’t there?’
He made a movement with his head, half nod, and half shake. He could agree that people were often strange but was loathe to commit himself to such an opinion.
‘I went to the funeral, not a soul there that wasn’t a neighbour, and no wake. Everyone came to me after for a cup of tea and we all really felt for that poor girl, all on her own in that house. We all said it was probably a blessing really, Jean going like she did. So, is she going to sell up?’ The woman was peering into the skip, her eyes wide with curiosity.
‘Well, after we’re finished I think that’s the intention.’ Dan said.
‘Good for her I say, though it will be funny to have new neighbours after all this time. I hope she sells to the right kind of people. It’s a nice neighbourhood. Anyway, we’re thinking of having a bit of work done ourselves, I fancy a conservatory. I might give you a call for a quote.’ She said it as if she was bestowing a great honour on him.
Dan smiled and reached into his pocket for a business card. It was always worth schmoozing the neighbours when it might be good for business.
He waved goodbye and walked back into the house, heading for the kitchen where he had just finished ripping out a seventies monstrosity that didn’t even look good in satellite channel re-runs of old sitcoms. If he’d had to assess Jean’s personality based on her taste in décor he would have labelled her as frugal, possibly even tight to the point of meanness.
It was obvious that she had not been a woman who embraced change, or thought it necessary to spend money where it wasn’t absolutely essential. If it wasn’t broken, she hadn’t fixed it. Perhaps she thought her daughter wasn’t broken either, but it wasn’t what Dan pictured when he thought about Elaine, and he thought about Elaine a lot. She was like half a person, present but not whole. He knew he was attracted to her and he knew he didn’t care about the scar that transected her flesh and which she tried hopelessly to keep covered, to the point where he suspected that she used it as an excuse for avoiding people. What he didn’t know was why he felt the need to pursue someone who so clearly had baggage. Did he really want to take that on? But she’d had baggage when he’d very first met her. He could still picture her as a teenager, all trussed up and awkward in her neat school uniform and sensible shoes. Other girls her age had been blossoming and bandying their burgeoning sexuality about like fairground hawkers. There had been nothing wrong with it, life was life and kids were kids. He hadn’t turned it down where it was offered freely, but he’d rarely wanted to go back for more. Elaine’s control and her conservatism had been perversely attractive to him back then, and he had been surprised to find that it still was.
With a sigh he picked up a hammer and bolster and started to hack at the patchy plaster, which clung stubbornly to the kitchen wall.
Bob, his colleague, calling down from the bathroom where he was busy re-laying copper pipe, rudely interrupted his reverie regarding Elaine. ‘Oi, Dan, you’d better come and have a look at this mate.’
With a weary sigh Dan lay down his tools and made his way upstairs. ‘What’s up now?’ he said, expecting to hear that Bob had discovered yet another ancient, potentially dangerous relic left by the Edwardian builders.
In the bathroom Bob was kneeling astride a gap in the floorboards. He was holding a piece of cloth in his hands. ‘What do you make of this?’ He held the item up.
Dan scrutinised the fabric, it looked like it had once been a child’s dress. It might have been white at some point in its history but it was grey and mouldy with age now and had been badly torn by something. ‘Where did you find it?’ He took the garment and examined it more closely.
‘Under this board, wedged under the pipe. Look there’s these too.’ Bob reached into the cavity and pulled out a pair of tiny shoes followed by, more distressingly, a pair of tiny knickers, which he handled with a great degree of discomfort. ‘What do you make of it?’
Dan really didn’t know, but he was pretty suspicious that the dark stain on the dress, which had stiffened the fabric, was probably blood, ‘God knows, but it’s pretty odd.’
Bob scratched his head and stared at the little shoes. ‘I’ve found some stuff in my time; remember that cat skeleton we turfed up once in that woman’s loft? But I’ve never come across anything like this before.’ He looked at his boss. Dan was still staring at the dress which he held in his work calloused hands like it was a precious piece of silk. ‘What do you reckon, should we report it to someone? I mean, that looks like dried blood doesn’t it?’
Dan nodded, ‘I dunno, it might be nothing.’
‘Who buries nothing under the floorboards Dan? Come on.’
Dan and Bob had worked together for a long time, they knew each other well; each knew how the other one ticked. ‘What aren’t you telling me mate?’ Dan asked, aware that Bob was angling at something.
Bob’s face flushed, ‘You know that box of stuff I found in the loft? Go and take a look at it, then tell me what you think.’
Dan frowned at him, he knew Bob could be a bit of a nosy bugger at times. ‘You went through it didn’t you?’ he accused.
Bob shrugged defensively, ‘Well you never know what you’re going to find in these old places. Go and take a look, you’ll see what I mean.’
Dan gave Bob a look that told him he wasn’t happy, not happy at all. They were in a position of trust in someone’s home and prying through their personal effects was not part of the remit. But the find had piqued his curiosity, and he cared about Elaine. Consciously he decided to break his own rules and meddle in things that didn’t concern him.
He retrieved the box from the garage and spread the contents on Jean’s highly polished dining table. Most of it was rubbish. Ancient magazines mingled with laughable old knitting patterns, amidst old bills and receipts. As Dan sorted through he was puzzled as to what Bob had found so interesting. He came across an envelope, the brown manila worn soft with age and damp.
Inside he found a pile of newspaper cuttings, carefully clipped and folded. He unfolded the first, careful not to tear the fragile paper, and found himself looking at the face of a little girl, all smiles and dimples. Underneath the photograph was a headline, which read ‘Missing’. The other cuttings were the same, each one following the story of Mandy Miller, the child the police had never found. Dan picked up the envelope and shook it out to see if there was more. A small, folded document fell out onto the table. He wasn’t sure he even wanted to look at it, and for a few minutes he just stared, his mind reeling. Eventually he picked it up, unfolded it and saw it for what it was, a death certificate. According to the document Elaine Ellis had died at ten days old in 1981.
Ada Gardiner-Hallow sat down at the kitchen table and contemplated her evening meal. The days when meals had been served in the formal dining room were long gone, as were the staff who had served them. Pavla had prepared the meal, a light summer salad, and had left it, neatly covered in cling-film on the long pine table. Next to it she had left a paper serviette, which was almost as distasteful to Ada as the prospect of the cling-filmed salad.
Times had changed, and she was trying very hard to change with them. With desultory indifference she prodded at a piece of limp ham and listened to the house. The history of nearly a thousand years creaked and groaned around her as long dead Hallows stalked the halls to remind her of the weight of their presence and her responsibility. Heritage had become a burden. The burden wouldn’t have been so great had those other Hallows not spent their fortunes on constantly remodelling the house, to the point that it had become quite a mongrel. Albert didn’t care, the whole place could fall down around him and as long as his blessed library stayed intact he wouldn’t bat an eyelid. Alex only cared what it might be worth.
Ada knew that people envied her, they imagined that with a great house, great wealth was always a companion. They imagined that privilege was a desirable element. But privilege meant obligation and obligation meant duty, and duty meant enslavement. That’s how Ada felt, indentured to a position that modernity abhorred and made ridiculous. If she could sell her position to raise funds for Alex she would do so in a heartbeat, but incumbency was a deal made with the devil marked down for posterity between the pages of the Domesday Book.
Albert had never felt the weight of it and Alex refused to. Albert had never felt the weight of anything except his own flights of fancy. Even as a child he had always seemed to be elsewhere, buried deep in his own thoughts. While Ada had been moulded into a lady in the most pointless ways imaginable (a well-bred lady never gesticulates Adeline! One must be quiet and serene at all times) Albert had been catching butterflies and cataloguing pine cones. While Ada remained quiet and serene Albert had gesticulated unabashedly and without censure, and he still did. There had been a process of delegation in the family, Mother had delegated to Nanny and Nanny had delegated to Ada. Ada had deferred to Albert’s superior gender, and Alicia had simply done as she had pleased. It had pleased her to marry and produce a son, and it had pleased her to die and delegate her motherly duties to Ada, who could not endure another nanny or the regimens such a woman might impose. Alex had been allowed to run wild with only the imposition of a good school or two to curb his freedoms. It was a system that had worked for Albert and had formed him into an affable, if eccentric man. However, Alex had inherited his mother’s peccadilloes and under Ada’s inept but well-meaning care, had planted the seeds of his predilections in youth where they had sprouted and spread like Japanese knotweed. With Esther’s loving care they had flourished. Not that Ada wasn’t grateful to the woman, she would never have coped without her, and indeed owed her a great debt of gratitude. Another duty, signed over to the devil but not held on record, only on trust. She ought to go and see her, do her duty, but it had been a long time since she had been able to sit in a room with Esther Davies and not feel that their roles had been reversed. Ada laughed out loud at the irony and the sound of it rattled wickedly around the cavernous kitchen, to think, the mistress serves the servant!
She looked down at her untouched meal and pushed it away in disgust. Perhaps she would die soon and join the other Hallow ghosts, wringing her hands and haunting these walls for all eternity, in mourning for her bartered soul. She was wrenched from her maudlin thoughts by the sound of the library bell ringing in the kitchen hallway. Her brother was calling for his tray, as if there were still a battalion of staff to do his bidding. There was only Pavla now, and she for only seven hours a day. Since 1970 there had only been Esther and Miriam and the odd woman from the village. Yet still he rang, like Perrault’s Beast, summoning his invisible servants to attend his whims. With a sigh of resignation Ada rose, she touched the pearls that circled her throat and grimaced slightly at the thought that she was the lady of the house, queen of all she surveyed. She picked up Albert’s supper tray and made her way to the library.