The Moors: Some secrets are better left buried (9 page)

‘I hope it went well,’ said Karen, unable to hide her bitterness.

‘Very well, thank you,’ Amanda replied, feigning total satisfaction.

If there was one thing Amanda hated, it was being goaded. It created a rush of blood to her head that often led her into irrational actions and without even thinking it through, she thought of another way to get at Karen.

‘Oh! I’d like to take Malcolm into town tomorrow, if you don’t mind?’ she blurted.

‘What?’ screeched Karen, irately.

‘What would you do when you got there?’ asked Christian.

‘I don’t know. I haven’t been there myself yet and I’d like to know my way around. With your permission, I’d like to take him,’ Amanda replied.

‘It’s completely unnecessary. He wouldn’t take anything in,’ Karen dismissed.

‘That’s your opinion, but I happen to think the occasional trip may be useful. It certainly wouldn’t do any harm,’ Amanda countered.

‘Go to town. Yah! I’d like to go to town. Haven’t been there for 464 days. 464,’ Gordon muttered.

‘Well, maybe if tomorrow goes well, I can take you next time, Gord. And then you, Georgina! What do you think about that?’ she asked the young girl.

It wasn’t often that an adult asked a question of a child within the house, and a subtle smile graced Georgina’s face as she considered the possibility.

‘Yah! I’d like to go. Me and Georgina would definitely like to go town,’ Gordon continued.

‘I’m sure Walter would be happy to take us. You do go there to get your morning papers, after all,’ Amanda prodded.

Everybody’s eyes landed on Walter, but it was Karen’s gaze he felt most of all, her piercing stare burning through his skin like acid.

‘H-m,’ he grunted, resisting the urge to get too heavily involved.

‘I wanna go town!’ added Reuben.

‘Of course, Reuben! We wouldn’t leave you out,’ Amanda assured him.

‘Yah, 464 days,’ Gordon reminded them.

‘Can we go?’ asked an excited Georgina. ‘Can we?’

Margaret attempted to hide her delight as the scene unfolded around the table. Christian suddenly felt the pressure from all angles.

‘You don’t have to decide now. Please, talk it through while I do the dishes,’ said Amanda, who gathered some plates, looked defiantly into Karen’s eyes and then stepped victoriously out of the room.

CHAPTER ELEVEN
Serpent’s Kiss
Sunday 13
th
February, 1972

It had been a long day and nobody had felt the strain more than Christian, who sat drinking his favourite whiskey in his office. He loved his space and often found he was most comfortable in his own company. The fact he so revered privacy could partially explain how he found it so easy to turn his back on the outside world and move his family to Exmoor.

On a nearby record player, Jonny Cash’s
Ring of Fire
played quietly as Christian studied an old photograph of himself with his parents. The picture captured what was a much happier time. Within the frozen image, Christian practically glowed with optimism, Margaret brimmed with happiness and Stanley, with his hands wrapped lovingly around both of them, wore a huge grin of content.

Christian smiled as he stared at the image of his father, becoming lost in a series of rarely visited memories; memories that soon made the smile fade. So invested was Christian in his mind’s offerings that it took him a few moments to respond to the gentle knock at the door. When he answered, he was unsurprised to see Amanda, who on this occasion waited for an invite before stepping into his office. Just before she entered, she noticed Karen watching from the shadows but acted as though she hadn’t. 

‘I’m sorry to bother you again,’ said Amanda. ‘I know you’re probably busy.’

‘Oh yeah! Busy getting through this,’ he joked, raising his glass as if toasting her before taking another swig of his drink. ‘What do you need?’

‘Well, I really just wanted to say I’m sorry if I’ve upset Karen. I don’t want to step on anyone’s toes here, but I really do feel there are things I’d like to explore.’

‘I think we get that,’ he replied.

Unsure of how to take his mood, Amanda fell into an awkward silence.

‘It’s fine!’ insisted Christian. ‘Like I said, if I believe your ideas have credence, I’ll support you any way I can.’

Amanda smiled. It was just the kind of response she was after.

‘Great!’ she said, encouraged by his support.

She hesitated for a moment before glancing towards the phone that sat on his desk.

‘Is there anything else?’ he asked, noticing she was in no hurry to leave.

‘Umm... I wondered if I could use your phone?’

‘Of course!’ he said, pointing to it with an open palm. ‘It’s here any time you need it.’

Amanda stalled for a moment to see if he would excuse himself. Instead, he headed over to the record player and sifted through his vinyl collection, making it clear she would have to deal with him being in the room. Slowly, she sat on the chair trying to think of the best way to approach her conversation with Tony as she dialled the number to the editorial office. As the phone rang, Christian poured himself another short, leaning against the large wooden unit on which the record player stood. He chose the song
She’s Not There
by The Zombies and closed his eyes as it played. He looked like a man actively trying to unwind, but it was an aim that proved difficult. On his neck, Amanda saw the string necklace on which she knew the claw was attached.

Odd that he should wear it without his hunting gear.
She thought.

Suddenly, Tony answered, stealing her focus away.

‘Hello?’ he asked, somewhat gruffly.

‘Oh! Hi! It’s me,’ she replied, astutely aware that Christian could hear everything she said.

‘Where are you? You’re supposed to be here already!’ he reminded her, sounding agitated.

‘Yeah. I’m very well, thank you. How are things at home?’

The warmth of Amanda’s voice was in stark contrast to the worry in Tony’s, but he was savvy. He could tell by the way she spoke that somebody was listening and that could only mean one thing. She was still at the home.

‘You promised me you’d leave!’ he hissed, under his breath.

‘I’m sorry, Dad. I just… it’s been so busy here that I’ve only just had the chance to call.’

Dad? Where did that come from?

Ever since her departure, Tony had been craving to see her, hear her voice and hold her. He had scarcely eaten and had been counting the minutes until she returned so he could make sure everything was alright between them, and there he was dealing with the crushing fact she would not be coming home, forcing the torture to continue. For Amanda, all she wanted was to tell him the great news; that she loved him, she missed him and she believed she was carrying his child, but all of those emotions had to be swallowed.

Tony took a breath and tried to clear his head.

‘Just let me know you’re okay,’ he said.

She looked up towards Christian, who still had his eyes closed, his body swaying to the music.

‘Yes,’ she replied.

‘And if you’re still there, you obviously still believe there’s a story?’

‘M-m, h-m,’ she confirmed.

‘How much longer do you need?’ asked Tony.

‘A few days,’ she speculated.

‘A few? No,’ he said, assertively. ‘Tuesday night you’ll be back here. And I mean
here
! Not a phone call. Whatever you have on them by then, we use, but if you have nothing, we assume there
is
nothing. Understand?’

‘Of course!’ she agreed, with added enthusiasm.

There was a short silence on the phone as both Tony and Amanda sat stuck in their own conflicting sadness.

‘It’s nice to talk to you,’ Tony finally admitted.

‘You too,’ she said. ‘I love you!’

With that, Amanda put the phone down. She looked back to Christian, who finally opened his eyes, and smiled appreciatively.

‘Thank you,’ she said, before pushing herself to her feet.

‘No problem,’ he insisted.

As Amanda readied herself to leave, she saw a framed photograph hanging behind Christian’s desk in which he caressed a woman’s belly.

Lydia!
She thought, suddenly becoming aware this was the only pictorial evidence she had seen of his wife within the house. The pregnant couple appeared the epitome of happiness.

‘Are you alright?’ asked Christian, snapping Amanda out of her daze.

‘Oh! Yeah. I just… stood up too fast! I’ll see you in the morning,’ she said, leaving the room with haste.

‘She was pregnant!’ exclaimed Amanda into her Dictaphone as she paced around the room. ‘This means Christian must have lost them both! It finally explains why both families came here. They were bonded through trauma. It makes sense now why Maggie didn’t want to talk about it. It was a tragedy that must have broken their hearts. I have to say, there are many things I don’t like about their methods, on which a full report will follow, but I believe when both families moved here, their intentions may have been good.’

She switched the Dictaphone off, continuing to think over what she had just learnt. She placed her hand on her belly and felt incredibly lucky. To have lost a child must have been awful, but for the family to lose the mother as well. Well, it must have been almost too much to bear. Suddenly, Amanda felt a pang of guilt about having come into their home in order to analyse their lives; lives that were tinged with unfathomable tragedy.

In Christian’s office, the needle no longer touched the record. Instead, it hovered in mid-air, bobbing amidst the gentle hissing sound of the vinyl as it went round and round. Christian sat still in his chair, his eyes were red but he was wide awake. 

‘I see the way you look at her,’ said Karen, who prowled around him somewhat menacingly.

‘You do? And how’s that?’ he asked, despondently.

‘You know exactly what I mean,’ she said. ‘You used to look at me like that.’

A sudden sadness washed over Karen’s face as she found it within herself to be vulnerable. Very few people had seen her in such a way. Indeed, when Walter first courted her, it was a very singular combination of traits that had won his affections. She was fierce and unafraid to speak her mind. She had strong morals and acted with conviction. However, during the moments they shared alone together, she would reveal a soft and loving nature. That Walter was the only one to see her true self made their relationship all the more special to him. Life, however, had a very uncanny knack of changing things.

Standing by helplessly as cancer ate away at her mother changed Karen. Suddenly, the glimpses of beauty that had appeared in the world became harder to find, as did her God, who never answered a single one of her prayers as she pleaded for her mother to be spared her humiliation and pain. The disease took a heavier toll on Karen’s father, who never recovered from watching his wife’s demise. The man, renowned for being eternally cheerful, became a shadow of his former self. Within three months of his wife’s funeral, he wilted away like a broken flower, dying through what Karen believed to be a broken heart.

Time did not prove to be a healer as so many people claimed and in one fell swoop, Walter lost his mother, father and beloved younger sister when an over-tired lorry driver fell asleep at the wheel and ploughed straight into their car as they journeyed up to the Lake District. Walter’s sister had talked about her wedding day ever since she was eight-years-old and when she finally met the man of her dreams she was desperate to introduce him to her parents. The Scot, who came from Aberdeen, had arranged for his immediate family to spend the weekend at a holiday home with her parents. The only reason Walter was not in the car was because he had already met and approved of her fiancé during an impromptu trip to Oxford, where he was working as a butler. The fatal accident achieved two things: it led Walter to ask for Karen’s hand in marriage so that he might live out his sister’s dream of creating a glorious white wedding, but although she accepted, it pushed Karen further into her belief that the world was a bad place where only awful things happened.

One day, shortly after their wedding, Walter found a small notebook lying on the kitchen table of their home. He opened it out of gentle curiosity and what he found disturbed him greatly. Through a series of manic scribblings, Karen had vented her inner anger, describing how she felt the fire of hell growing inside her, burning her insides and leaving her dead to the world. She noted how everything around her had lost its innocence and that, in hating herself to the point she no longer wished to live, she could find nothing but hatred for others and could not abide their happiness. Walter returned the book to the table and never spoke of his findings. Instead, he kept a close eye on his wife and took painstaking efforts to pull her out of her depressed state. One day, quite by accident, Karen fell pregnant and for a while it seemed to have returned her zest for life. However, this was to prove a temporary relief, and mothering her own children would eventually provide the final push towards bitter and twisted delusions that spiralled out of all control. 

*
 

‘I won’t have this conversation,’ said Christian, adamantly. ‘What we did was wrong,’ he added, simmering with regret.

It was not a rejection Karen was prepared to take and, moving towards him like a ravenous snake, she wrapped herself around him and kissed him on the mouth. Christian pushed her away, his face distorted as though he’d swallowed poison.

‘What are you doing?’ he yelled. ‘I told you
never
again!’

‘Lydia left us, Christian.
She
left
us!
Remember that,’ she spat, angrily, before slithering back into the darkness of the downstairs hallway.