The Paradise Trees
Read The Paradise Trees Online
Authors: Linda Huber
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Contemporary, #Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, #Thrillers & Suspense, #Suspense, #Thrillers
Legend Press Ltd, 2 London Wall Buildings, London EC2M 5UU
[email protected]
www.legendpress.co.uk
Contents © Linda Huber 2013
The right of the above author to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act 1988. British Library
Cataloguing in Publication Data available.
Print ISBN 978-1-9095935-7-2
Ebook ISBN 978-1-9095935-8-9
Set in Times
Printed by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY
Cover design by Gudrun Jobst
www.yotedesign.com
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to
criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
Linda Huber
was raised in Glasgow and trained in physiotherapy. Her writing is heavily influenced by her experience learning about methods of behaviour and how
different people react and deal with stressful situations.
Linda now lives in Arbon, Switzerland where she works as a language teacher, based at a school in a 12th century castle. Linda has had over 50 short stories and articles published.
The Paradise Trees
is Linda’s debut novel.
A huge ‘thank you’ to the many people who have helped and encouraged me with this book.
Special thanks go to Ann Durnford for reading
The Paradise Trees
first, and believing in it.
Also to the team at Legend Press for all your hard work and for making the whole thing such a positive experience.
And to Christine Grant and Johnny Gwynne for answering my questions about police procedure; I hope I’ve got it right.
And not least to my sons for their invaluable IT support, couldn’t have done it without you guys!
To Matthias and Pascal
Chapter One
Friday, 7th July
He had found exactly the right spot in the woods. A little clearing, green and dim, encircled by tall trees. A magical, mystery place. He would bring his lovely Helen here, and
no-one would ever find them. No-one would hear her when she screamed and begged for mercy, and no-one would come running to rescue her, like they’d tried to with the first Helen. This time it
was going to be perfect. A sacrament - something holy. He was looking forward to it so much.
He’d first noticed her in the village shop last weekend. She was buying bread and fruit, and he’d even helped her when she dropped an orange and it rolled down the aisle towards him.
He’d picked it up and handed it back to her, and just for a second their eyes had met. In that brief moment he’d known. He had found another Helen. She had Helen’s brown eyes,
Helen’s long dark hair; even the shape of her body was Helen. Slim, but with delicious curves in all the right places.
Of course he hadn’t said anything then, just ‘you’re welcome’ when she smiled a quick ‘thank you’. Her eyes were dark and troubled, and a sudden rush of sweat
prickled all over his body. He went and hung around behind the shelf with the soap powder until she’d paid and left, and then he asked old Mrs Mullen at the checkout who she was. Mrs Mullen
was the biggest gossip in Lower Banford, and usually he was very careful not to start her off. He didn’t want to be seen chit-chatting about the village people in their local shop. Now,
however, he listened gratefully as she prattled on.
‘That’s Alicia Bryson, Bob Logan’s daughter. She’s up for the day to see poor Bob after that last little stroke he had, his fifth one I hear and he’s not doing so
well. Margaret Cairns – his sister, you know, she looks after Bob but it’s getting too much for her, she’s nearly seventy herself after all – was saying yesterday that
Alicia and her little girl were coming for the summer too. I suppose... ’
He hadn’t listened any more. Alicia Bryson? No, she was Helen... his Helen. And she’d be in Lower Banford all summer, that was all that mattered. He would find her and make her his
own darling love. And there was a child, too, another Helen? Little Helen? How perfect.
And now it was Friday and the sun was setting behind his beautiful woods. Most schools had broken up today, so his Helens might be packing now, getting ready for their journey even as he was
thinking about them. Mrs Mullen would know when they were due; he would go and find out first thing tomorrow. And then, whenever it was, he’d be waiting for them. Big Helen and little Helen,
and very soon they’d be on their way to join his first Helen, in Paradise.
He would do it all in a beautiful ceremony at the holy place in the woods, and surely then he’d be able to lay the ghost of his own special darling to rest. Helen, haunting him from
Paradise.
She wouldn’t be alone for much longer.
Sunday, 9th July
Alicia
Alicia Bryson eased her elderly VW back into fifth gear after what seemed like the hundredth lot of road works, and glanced across at her daughter. Eight-year-old Jenny was
dozing in the passenger seat, dark hair already escaping from her precious pigtails – Pippi Longstocking was the latest craze – and a selection of soft toys on her lap. Poor kid. This
wasn’t the best start to the holidays for her, a long, boring drive up the motorway when she could have been out celebrating the start of the summer holidays with all of her friends in
Bedford.
Alicia grimaced. This was so not what she wanted to be doing today. Just exactly how was she supposed to give her daughter a fun-filled summer holiday in a tiny Yorkshire village where they knew
no-one except her father and Margaret and there wasn’t as much as a swing park?
And now they were stuck behind a smelly white van, hell, even on Sunday everyone and his dog was travelling up the M1. Tight-lipped, Alicia pulled out to overtake. Lower Banford here we
come.
You’re going back to the bad place.
The thought came into her head as clearly as if her childhood self had spoken aloud, and Alicia winced. Other kids had had loving homes. She’d had ‘the bad place’, the house
where her father still lived, and it was even coming back as a ghost in her head now.
It just hadn’t seemed fair. How she’d longed for parents like her friends had: friendly, strict only when they had to be, and caring. Instead she’d had family prayers for hours
every evening, listening to her father’s rants about God and the good life and lectures about the devil and all his works. The devil’s works included things like women wearing trousers,
novels, all music except hymns and psalms... As a child Alicia had been afraid of her father, and when childhood gave way to puberty the accompanying hormones and tantrums had turned life into a
nightmare. The climax came when she was fourteen and her punishment for sneaking off to the cinema with a boy was the loss of her hair, hacked off by her father in a sickening fit of
self-righteousness.
Remembering her teenage angst brought tears to Alicia’s eyes, and she blinked repeatedly. The fast lane of the M1 wasn’t a good place to start bawling about something that had
happened half a lifetime ago. How lonely she had been back then. Mum had been no help at all; she had prided herself on being obedient and submissive right up to her death. Alicia had been left to
fight her own battles.
‘Bo-ring. Are we nearly there?’ said Jenny, sitting up and pouting out of the window.
‘We are, and you’re being very good,’ said Alicia, patting Jenny’s jeans-clad leg. It wasn’t all doom and gloom, Jen was here too. Time to put stars into her
daughter’s eyes.
‘You know what? Aunt Margaret’s got a dog now. We kept it a secret to surprise you. His name’s Conker and he’s huge, he’s a Newfoundlander. Chocolate-brown colour.
You’ll love him.’
Jenny stared, her face lit up like Christmas and Easter rolled into one, stuffed animals clutched to her chest. ‘Did you hear
that
?’ she whispered. ‘A new friend.
Conker.’ Eyes shining, she gazed back out of the window, and Alicia smiled to herself. Oh, how very much she loved Jen. Her dreamer.
‘Why did we never go to Grandpa’s for the holidays before?’ said Jenny, turning back so quickly Alicia jumped. ‘Tam goes to her Grandma’s all the time.’
‘Just a sec,’ said Alicia, thankful that a speeding motorcyclist halfway up her exhaust was giving her a couple of minutes’ thinking time. What could she say to that? That
‘Grandpa’ had been a terrible father and she had run away to Margaret the day after her sixteenth birthday and could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times she’d
been back in Lower Banford since?
Hardly. She didn’t want to shatter Jen’s illusions about her one remaining grandparent who was going to die soon anyway. And how awful did that sound?
‘Well, Grandpa hasn’t been well for a few years now,’ she said. ‘And before that you were just a baby.’
And the whole purpose of this ‘holiday’ was to find another solution for her father, she thought grimly. A care home was going to be the best option, and as his next of kin –
as uncomfortable as that felt – Alicia knew that she was the person to organise it.
A road sign loomed above them and Alicia flipped on the indicator. At last, here was their exit. She swung off the motorway, her shoulders up to her ears with tension.
Here was Merton, first place on the road back home and nearest big town. The fateful cinema was still here. Alicia glared at it as they passed, then grinned. It had got her a free haircut,
hadn’t it? Better just practise the irony, she’d need it again before the summer was over, she could see that coming a mile off.
After Merton came the Banfords, a trio of villages along the River Ban. Her old secondary school was in Upper Banford, with memories of French homework done on the bus, and agonising over boys
and spots. And always being the outsider, the only one who didn’t have eyeliner or jangly bangles or whatever the latest fashion was. Then came tiny Middle Banford whose one claim to fame was
the ambiguously-named Ban Theatre Festival; four weekends each June when the South Yorkshire Drama Club performed whatever it was they’d spent the past several months rehearsing. This year it
had been
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
, and the press reviews for once had been favourable.
Two miles on was Lower Banford, nestling between the river and the wooded hillside, quiet and peaceful.
The bad place.
‘Lower Banford!’ said Jenny, sitting up straight as they passed the road sign. ‘Mummy, we’ve arrived!’
‘We have indeed,’ said Alicia. Her voice came out a hoarse whisper, and she cleared her throat a little too hard, aware that Jenny was still looking at her.
The village street was deserted. Apparently shops still closed on Sundays here. It was a yesterday kind of place, old houses with old people living in them. Her father’s house was right at
the back of the village, the garden bordering on the woods that crept round the hillside. A pretty place that held dark memories.
Alicia turned up the narrow lane, inching past the row of cars parked along one side, and then through the gateway to pull up under the Scotch pine in front of the house. Two storeys of
crumbling red brick covered in green ivy, a weed-and-gravel driveway leading round to the long back garden. Home sweet home. Or something.