The Faceless (3 page)

H
ER LITTLE TERRACED
house on Trafalgar Road. Slate-roofed houses of grey or yellow stone. Hers was yellow. Dad’s old house. Mum and Dad’s. Hers now. She filled the kettle, put it on. Coffee, milk, sugar. Checked her mobile.

“There’s plenty of time yet.”

“Mm? No, it’s not that. Just checking to see if Carole’s called.”

“Carole?”

“From work? The library?”

“Oh.”

“There was something I was trying to find, about Ash Fell.”

“That place again.”

“Anyway, she was going to let me know if she found it.” Change the subject, Anna. Something less morbid. “There’s some of your stuff in the bedroom. From... anyway, it’s there.”

“From Alma Street.”

“Yes.”

“You can say it. I’ll not fall apart if you do.”

“OK. Look, I’d better go pick up the princess.”

“Already? School’s not out yet, is it?”

“Mrs Hartigan wants to see me.”

“Alright. I’ll... unpack.”

“She’s really glad you’re back.” She didn’t say
back home
. For Martyn,
home
was still Alma Street, radioactive with the past.

“Mrs Hartigan?”

“Mary, you silly sod.”

“Aye?”

“We both are.” But Mary most of all. “I got her a present from you.”

“Eh?”

“Christmas. You’ll need to sign the label for it.”

“Right.”

“You’ll be OK, yeah?”

“Aye. Go on.”

“OK.”

“Anna.” She turned at the front door. Martyn drew himself all the way upright, took a deep breath. “I’ll do me best not to let you down.”

“It’s Mary you’ve got to not let down.”

“I know,” he said. “What Eva would’ve wanted.”

His whole face trembled when he spoke her name.

M
RS
H
ARTIGAN LEANT
back in her chair. A Newton’s Cradle clicked on her desktop; a small Christmas tree wrapped in threadbare tinsel perched on the windowsill.

“So how is Mary’s Dad?” she asked.

“He’s only come home today.” Click, click, click. The headmistress steepled her fingers. “He seems OK. But... the whole point is that it’s on a trial basis. Just for Christmas. For now anyway. The doctors at Roydtwistle thought it might help. A first step.”

“Sounds to me like they’re treating his daughter as a guinea pig. It’s been less than a month since–”

Ten days after the college fire, two days after the funeral, Mary had called her at the library, scared and weepy. Anna had come over; Martyn had been slumped in his chair, conscious, but unmoving and silent. Once Mary was out of the room, he’d calmly told Anna how he’d spent the night planning to hang himself from a ceiling beam. Anna had called their GP straightaway. Sod
keep it in the family;
better Mary saw her dad sectioned than dangling from a rafter.

Anna kept her voice level. “Mary loves her dad. And he’s pretty much all she’s got right now.”

Click, click, cl– “She has you.”

“And I love her. I’ve given her all the love and care I can. But she’s still, effectively, lost both parents. At least she sees one of them for Christmas this way.”

“Well,” Mrs Hartigan sniffed and glanced away. “The decision has been made.”

Bite your tongue, Anna. Don’t rock the boat. Martyn’s not out of the woods yet. And no-one else knows you’re gay. That shouldn’t stop them letting you care for Mary. Times have changed and it’s not even as if you
do
anything about it. But this is Kempforth, and here old attitudes die hard.

Click, click, click.

“Where’s Mr Griffiths now?”

“At mine.”

“Alone?”

“He’s not a suicide risk anymore.”

“Let’s hope not.”

It won’t come to that. It won’t. But if it does, make sure Mary doesn’t see. She comes before everything else now. She blinked. Calm down, Anna. Don’t be silly. He’s not at risk. With your past you ought to be more understanding.

Mrs Hartigan tapped a pencil against her teeth. Then smiled. “I’ll walk you to the classroom. May as well meet Mary there.”

“Thank you.”

Children ran shrieking down the dim corridor, fell silent when they saw Mrs Hartigan. Watercolour paintings of Father Christmas in various guises grinned from the walls. Mary’s classroom was at the far end, the door open. A few children still struggled into coats. Miss Rhodes, Mary’s teacher – a sweet, rather vague woman with unruly hair, huge glasses and a liking for baggy sweaters – tidied papers at her desk.

“Hi Mary.”

Mary’s blue eyes flicked to Mrs Hartigan, then back to Anna. A heart-shaped face, achingly solemn for a child of ten; Eva’s copper hair.

“Say hello to your aunt, Mary,” said Mrs Hartigan.

“Hello, Aunty Anna.”

“Hey, princess. Guess who’s waiting for us back home?”

Mary’s eyes went wide. “Daddy?”

“Got it in one.” She took Mary’s hand. “And how about fish and chips for–”

Thud
. The crack of glass. Mary grabbed Anna’s arm. A black shape at the window, hands splayed against the glass. Thin silver cracks fled outwards from them; a HAPPY CHRISTMAS banner peeled loose from above and fell.

Anna’s heart thudded. Her last fight had been thirty years earlier, in the playground outside, and she’d lost. But she stepped in front of Mary. It wasn’t courage; just simple necessity.

“Get away from the window!” Miss Rhodes shouted.

Two other figures stepped up to the window to flank the first. Miss Rhodes – vague no longer – strode towards them, metre ruler in hand. “Children, get out into the corridor. Do as you’re told.
Now.
”

Anna recognised them. But from where? The man seemed very tall and very thin; a black cloak hung in tatters around him, clinging to him one moment, then flapping loose. His face – pale, immobile, like a mask. You’d remember a face like–

The newcomers spread their hands against the window. Fingers long and thin as broom twigs scraped the glass. They couldn’t be real.

And Anna remembered. No, they couldn’t be real – not just the fingers, but the men themselves. They couldn’t be real. Couldn’t. She’d seen them when she was–

More screams, further down the corridor.

“You!” Miss Rhodes advanced on the window, aiming the ruler at the central figure two-handed, like a sword. “This is school property. Go away at once.”

The three stiff, smooth faces all turned to stare at her. Miss Rhodes stopped in her tracks. “I’ll call the police,” she said, but with less authority than before.

Anna thought Miss Rhodes would look away from them at any moment, but it was the three cloaked figures who turned away, as if they’d been called. Perhaps they had, further back in the mist Anna saw a fourth figure: tall and cloaked like them but different, somehow. The fourth turned and vanished into the mist; the others trailed almost meekly after it, and were gone.

Mary’s fingers dug into Anna’s arm; she covered the small hand with hers. Miss Rhodes put the ruler down and went to one child who was crying. In the corridor, Mrs Hartigan was still pressed, frozen, against the wall.

“W
ERE YOU FRIGHTENED
?”

“No. I know how to deal with nasty men like that.”

Anna had to laugh. “Oh do you now?”

“
Yeah
. Kick ’em in the goolies and run. That’s what Mummy–” She stopped.

Anna almost ruffled her hair, but didn’t. Mary was sunk down in her seat, looking dully out of the window. When she spoke again, her voice was quieter – older, even. “We shouldn’t tell Daddy about this, should we?”

“No,” Anna said. “Probably not.”

“No. He’d get upset.”

“Do you want some music on?”

Mary grinned, eyes bright again. “Yeah. Please.”

“OK, princess. What shall we listen to?”

“Silly-bellus?”

“Sibelius it is.”

She let the music fill the car, focused on that and driving Minnie the Micra safely back across town. Better that than thinking of thin, immobile faces, black cloaks blowing tatters around bodies of sticks; she’d seen them when
she’d
been in Roydtwistle. Her and no-one else. Because back then, she’d been insane.

CHAPTER THREE

S
HE DROVE OUT
of their way, through the town centre; Mary loved the Market Hall, a Victorian gothic beast in sulphur-coloured stone. The town centre’s lampposts were Victorian too: black-painted, wrought-iron, electric bulbs installed in what had been gas-lamps. Any days of greatness Kempforth had known had been in the nineteenth century; no wonder it looked back to it. If it made Mary smile, Anna didn’t care.

Mist and dusk thickened together as they drove; when they got home visibility was down to five feet. “There we go.” She turned off the engine, cutting off
The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.
“Come on princess, out you get.”

Mary turned back to Anna at the front door, grinning.

“How about Chinese for tea tonight, princess?” She knew one that delivered. Better that than braving the mists again.

“Yeah!” Fish and chips were forgotten; Chinese food was the one thing Mary loved more. Anna smiled back at her, feeling her eyes prickle. Other people never know what they do to us, how their tiniest act can melt us somewhere deep.

Better to think of that than what she’d seen at the school. Or that others had seen the same. She unlocked the front door and pushed it wide. Silence. A faint whiff of cigarette smoke. She’d have to speak to him about that.

“Martyn?” Her hand on Mary’s shoulder – hold her back, she mustn’t see if–

“Daddy!” Mary shot past into the house; Anna’s hand grabbed only air.

“Who’s that I can hear?” Footsteps on the stairs.

“Dad-
dy
!”

Martyn embraced Mary slowly, as if she’d break. Anna hung up her coat and went into the kitchen. Martyn said something Anna couldn’t quite catch. She only heard the low-pitched timbre, so very like Dad’s voice: solid and rooted, like an old oak tree. Mary still thought he was. God knows what Dad would’ve said if he could’ve seen his son now. Nothing good, most like. In the living room, Mary laughed.

There was a voice message on her mobile. Anna played it back.

“Hi, Anna. It’s Carole. Just wanted you to know, I found that file you were looking for. Had a root around in my lunch hour.” Nervous giggle. “Anyway, it’s in your desk drawer. Hope everything’s OK. Byeeeeee.”

Anna put the kettle on. Her hands had almost stopped shaking now.

T
HEY ATE IN
silence, but not the kind that’d filled the car on the way back from Roydtwistle; this was easy, companionable, comfortable, broken by the occasional giggle from Mary at a wink from Martyn. For the first time, Anna had the genuine sense things might work out.

Afterwards, she took the dishes into the kitchen. Normally Mary helped her, but tonight she was snuggled up to Martyn on the sofa in the warm glow from the gas fire and the glimmer of the Christmas tree’s fairy lights, both arms wrapped round one of his. Clinging fast, so as not to lose him. Let her have this time.

“I’ve got an idea, for the weekend,” she told them. “How about we all go to Witchbrook for the day? I’ll pack us a lunch. Make a day of it.”

“In this weather?”

“Be alright if we wrap up warm.”

Martyn nodded. “Sounds right to me. What about thee, poppet?”

“Yeah. Suppose.” As long as she was with Daddy.

They was a comedy programme on the television; Martyn stretched out on the sofa and Mary curled up beside him, punctuating his rumbling chuckle with giggles and shrieks. Anna felt a strange, bitter pang watching them.Yes, he was Mary’s father and she was just an aunt – it was natural Mary should love him best – but even so she ached to be the centre of Mary’s world, as Mary was of hers. Jealousy: was any emotion so pathetic?

“Best get off,” she said. Martyn blinked up at her. “Promised I’d go see Nan.”

“OK. Give her my love. Have to go see her soon.”

“Maybe Saturday.” Anna fetched her coat. “Sithee later, princess.”

“Bye bye, Aunty Anna.”

A tight hug. The sweet clean smell of the child. Anna’s eyes prickled; she kissed the soft cheek, smoothed the red hair. “Be good for Daddy now.”

Small arms tightened round her. “You’re coming back, aren’t you?”

“’Course I am, daftie.” She squeezed back. “Just going to see Nan.”

Martyn saw her to the door. “Look after yourself.”

“You too.”

“No. I mean... out there.”

“I’ll stick to the backstreets.” He didn’t look reassured. “You OK?”

He shrugged. “Feels like I’m learning everything all over again.”

“It will, for a while.”

“Was it that way for you?”

“Let’s not talk about that now, please.”

“OK. Just... I’m scared, sis.”

She squeezed his arm.

“Thought I were better than that.”

“Than what? Me?”

“Stronger, then. That I’d hold up.”

“It wasn’t just one thing. You know that.”

“Aye.”

“The fire was just the last straw.”

“Big bastard straw.”

“I know.” She pecked his cheek. “Don’t worry about me. Worry about yourself. And
her
. Her most of all. The rest’ll sort itself out.”

The door clicked shut behind her. She stepped out onto the cold, shrouded pavement and started walking.

A
NNA HAD KNOWN
the maze of backstreets between Trafalgar Road and Stangrove Wood Residential Home all her life, but that didn’t seem to help just now, in the dark and the mist. At least she could hear the murmur of televisions in front rooms as she passed the houses, see the blurred glow of lit windows. It wasn’t exactly reassuring, but it felt safer than the main road, which had heavy traffic even in these conditions.

She walked at a brisk pace, tugging her coat tight around her and wishing she’d brought a scarf. Footsteps clicked behind her. Her breath caught. Foolish. Just a late-night shopper, or someone like her, with commitments, obligations. She walked faster, all the same.