The Silent Girls (11 page)

‘I think she’s a bit upset.’ Matt said as Lena glowered at him.

‘Upset? Upset? I’m not surprised she’s upset with the likes of you harassing her, now get out, you heard her – you’re not wanted here, you never were. If you don’t leave I’ll get my Sam to make you leave. It took me while to place you, but I’ve got your number now Matthew Bastin.’

If he hadn’t already been on delicate ground Matt might have laughed, it had been many years since he’d been afraid of anyone like Sam Campion, bully-boys with their bluff and bluster held no fear for him. Neither did vicious old ladies, and Lena was certainly one of those. He treated her to a benign smile. ‘I was just leaving Mrs Campion.’ He turned to Edie, ‘I’m sorry to have troubled you. My apologies.’ He gave her a curt nod, skirted around Lena and slipped through the gate, aware that the glare from the older woman would have scathed his skin if she could have given it the power that she clearly wanted to.

***

Sophie left the library a few hours older but a hell of a lot wiser than she had been when she’d first walked through the doors looking to dish the dirt on the Morris family. She had found some dirt all right but it hadn’t been what she was expecting, and somehow she doubted that Edie had a clue. If she had, there was no way that Sophie would have been left to poke around the house unsupervised.

Bearing knowledge that others did not have gave Sophie a little thrill, as if the information might be some kind of surprise she could spring, or perhaps some sort of gift that she could bestow. The truth about Beattie Morris didn’t feel like a gift or even a bit of salacious tittle-tattle. It wasn’t like the knowledge that your best mate’s boyfriend had snogged someone else behind her back, or a snippet of gossip that might tear your worst enemy’s world asunder. The truth about Beattie Morris was a shocker and there was no glee to be had from it. In fact Sophie was beginning to wish that she’d left well alone, because the last thing she wanted to do was dump
this
little nugget on Edie’s plate. As she trudged back to the square, her backpack hanging from one shoulder, her hands in her pockets and her head hunched down, she contemplated the wisdom of telling Edie about it at all. The evidence had been thrown away; there was no reason that Edie had to know if Sophie chose not to tell her. She was so absorbed in these thoughts that her mind didn’t register the figure that loomed up in front of her as she began to turn the corner onto the square. As a consequence she ran smack bang into the man, the dangling straps and buckles of her backpack becoming entangled in the handle of the bag that he was carrying. As Sophie pulled away, mumbling a grudging apology, the man’s bag came with her. Her instinct was to yank the backpack away from whatever was restricting it. She hauled on it, promptly ripping the strap from the man’s leather bag and causing it to fall from his shoulder and disgorge its contents all over the pavement.

Sophie’s first thought was to run, tangling with strangers never ended well in her experience. She set off with only one glance back, a glance that nearly stopped her in her tracks as her eyes spied what the man was picking up. She immediately recognised the notebook and the tin. Sophie’s gut feelings had always been greater than her curiosity and she kept running, finally bursting into the kitchen of Number 17 in a breathless flurry of panic and subsequent relief that Edie was back and the man hadn’t followed her.

Edie was sitting at the kitchen table sorting through a pile of tangled jewellery. As Sophie launched herself through the door, taking her by surprise, Edie leapt from her seat and sent a gold locket that she had just disentangled flying from her fingers – it landed at Sophie’s feet. ‘Bloody hell! You frightened the life out of me, what the hell’s going on?’

Sophie bent to pick up the locket. ‘Nothing, just saw someone I didn’t want to run into, that’s all. What’s this then?’ she said, holding the locket up so that it caught the light. The sheen on the metal made it look far more glamorous an object than it actually was.

‘Are you in trouble?’ Edie asked, reaching for the necklace.

Sophie handed it back and slumped into a chair. ‘No – I’m avoiding it. What you doing?’ she said, nodding towards the knot of jewellery.

Edie frowned at her for a moment, a look which Sophie pointedly ignored. ‘Trying to sort out Dolly’s stuff. My sister reckoned there were some nice pieces of jewellery that might be worth something, but all I can find so far is this old tat. I mean, look at this.’ She held up a diamante earring in a dull grey setting, which glinted and sparkled like a tiny chandelier as she dangled it from her fingers. ‘Hideous eh? I can’t see this kind of thing being worth much.’

Sophie took it and examined it. Edie was right; the thing was vile. ‘Bloody hell, I never had old Dolly down as a glamour puss.’

‘Me neither, she was always pretty shambolic as I remember. Look. There’s a ton of it.’ She pushed a small heap of glittering paraphernalia towards Sophie. ‘She must have looked like a Faberge bag lady in this little lot!’ she said, laughing at her own joke.

Sophie offered a polite snigger in return, then she began to poke around in the pile, fishing out a particularly over the top necklace and holding it against herself ‘What d’you reckon, could I get away with this in a T-shirt and jeans?’

Edie laughed. ‘It’s very “you”. You can have the locket if you like, it has some pretty engraving on the front.’ She passed it across the table.

‘You sure? Cool, cheers,’ the spontaneous gift made Sophie feel quite touched. The locket wasn’t her taste, not that she’d had much of an opportunity to develop a taste in jewellery, but the gesture was kind and who knew when she might need a few quid. Someone would buy the thing for a tenner if she ever got desperate. She tried to open it, but it was stiff and she had no nails to use as a lever.

‘I couldn’t get it open either, but it’s yours if you want it. Might as well have something from the spoils – I mean, there isn’t much!’

Sophie shrugged and hooked the long chain over her head, dropping the locket beneath her T-shirt where it nestled, cold and hard against her skin. ‘Ta. I’ve never had a necklace – unless you count daisy chains and I was never any good at those.’

Edie smiled. ‘Neither was I. Anyway, put the kettle on will you, while I untangle this lot? I’m parched, I haven’t had a cuppa since Lena called in earlier full of high dudgeon.’

Sophie stood up and moved towards the sink. ‘Oh yeah? What was up with her then?’

‘Oh I lost the plot with a neighbour, she heard it and came round. It’s fine, I think she’s just upset that this place is being sold. I suppose it’s been a big part of her life and she doesn’t like change – and she wasn’t too keen on losing me as a house guest. She almost cried when I gave her the flowers I’d bought to say thank you.’ Edie grimaced in an attempt to illustrate the awkwardness of the interaction with Lena.

‘Yeah? So she knew them all then, Beattie too?’ Sophie filled the kettle and set it on the gas to boil. Why someone couldn’t have bought a decent electric one she didn’t know.

Edie didn’t look up, but carried on picking at tangled chains. ‘Oh yes, she grew up with them. Has known them all her life. I think her mum and Beattie were thick as thieves way back when. Speaking of Beattie, the room looks good, you did a great job clearing it out by the way.’

‘Yeah, well, didn’t take long. What was she like? Beattie I mean.’ Sophie wanted to know how well Edie had known her grandmother before she even contemplated dropping any bombshells.

Edie paused, screwed up her face and cocked her head to the side. Sophie thought it made her look like a naughty little kid. ‘Hmmmm. I don’t remember her that well, she was mostly quite quiet and brooding. She never missed a trick though, and had a filthy temper, seemed to lose it with me on sight.’ She said with a weak giggle. ‘Rose reckons that she never quite got over my dad leaving like he did. Apparently he was the apple of her eye.’

The kettle was far from boiling, so Sophie sat back down. ‘Your dad left you? I never knew mine. My mum said he came from round here, and I suppose that’s why I came, to see if I could find him. I mean – he has to be a better bet than my mum, she’s nothing but an old slapper.’

Edie put down the clump of jewellery she had been fiddling with and looked directly at her. To Sophie’s surprise she didn’t have the look of shock on her face, which most people had when she “disrespected” her mother. ‘I was still a bump when he left, so I didn’t know mine either. He just walked out on us one day – said he was going for cigarettes and never came back. My mum never got over it, she had what people would call a breakdown I suppose. Being a mum isn’t as easy a thing as people assume.’

She looked wistful, and it bothered Sophie more than she wanted to admit. Sophie had thought that she was a rarity, that neglected kids only came from scruffy sink estates and from single parent mothers with overactive sex drives and a propensity for recreational drugs. Edie seemed quite middle class and was the last person on earth that Sophie would have expected to report a tough childhood. Neither did she seem the kind of woman who might have struggled with being a mother. ‘Have you got kids then?’

Edie looked away again. ‘A boy, Will. He’s abroad now, so I don’t see much of him. That kettle’s boiling.’

As a diversion it worked perfectly and Sophie allowed herself to be distracted by making the drinks. There had been an edge to Edie’s voice that had suggested that any discussion of her son was no go territory. She placed a mug of tea in front of Edie just as the woman gave up on her task of unravelling the jewellery.

‘I bloody give up on this, it’s like the Gordian knot!’

Sophie had a vague idea what the Gordian knot might be, something to do with Greek myths and seemingly impossible tasks. ‘Give it here, I’ll have a go.’

Edie sighed and pushed the lump of tangled metal and stones across the table. ‘Getting all that hair out of it was bad enough, and I doubt any of it is worth much. Just a load of old paste costume jewellery and a bit of market stall tat by the looks of it. Still, it might be worth something to someone I suppose. If we can get it undone I’ll take it somewhere tomorrow and see if I can get it valued. But right now it feels like the least of my problems. The whole house is full of dry rot by the look of it.’

Sophie froze, a cameo broach half untangled from its gilded bonds in her hand. ‘Oh. You found the hole, I was going to mention that…’ She went on to explain what had happened with the bed, but didn’t mention what she’d found under the floorboards.

Edie rubbed her face, as if the action would erase the weariness that pinched her features. ‘Don’t worry about it. I have a feeling that this whole house is rotten to the core. Anyway, what shall we eat tonight?’

Sophie said that she didn’t mind and thought to herself that Edie didn’t know the truth of her own words. With what she had found out about Beattie Morris that day, the house was indeed rotten to its core.

Chapter Eight

Lena straightened the net curtains with a sigh and turned around to face the empty room. The house wasn’t the same without people in it and not even Georgia had called round today. She was used to seeing a fair bit of Sam too, but even he had been conspicuous by his absence. And now Edie had gone after much too brief a stay.

Lena didn’t enjoy being alone, the distraction of other people helped to keep the phantoms of the past at bay. Since Dolly’s death they seemed to be swarming thick and fast, coming out at her from the shadows with demonic glee and latching on to her with their cat claw determination. Lena might be old, but she wasn’t stupid. She had been sitting in the way of the past for too many years and, like King Canute, had to face the fact that the tide was coming in – whether she wanted it to or not.

Matthew Bastin turning up like a bad penny wasn’t helping. That kid had always been like a dog with a bone and his long absence from the square now seemed like an all too brief reprieve. Had it really been over twenty years since their last run in? Lena remembered it as if it were yesterday. Him, on Dolly’s doorstep, shouting the odds as if he knew it all, Dolly quaking in her boots and she, Lena, having to wade in and sort it out. It had always been the same – Dolly screwed up, and Lena fixed it. The truth was that Matthew probably knew more than he realised. What he didn’t know, and couldn’t know, was why.

Lena knew, and she’d carried the burden of it for a lot of years, too many to think about, and more than she cared to dwell on. It was all water under the bridge, and she’d always figured that the bloodstains had been washed away with the flow. How wrong she’d been to make that assumption, and equally wrong to believe that time was the healer everybody said it was. What you buried then was twice as bad when it got dug up. Past events were like wine and cheese; they just got stronger with age, more pungent and probably harder to stomach.

Not that there was anything she could do now, she was too old and too tired to want to worry about it. Edie was going to find out for sure, and trying to pin her down and distract her was only going to delay the inevitable. Perhaps it was time anyway, time to just let it unfold and be done with it. Lena was seventy-six years old, she had varicose veins, a dicky ticker, a dodgy hip and not that many more years left anyway – if she was forced to spend them in prison, so be it.

Sometimes she pondered whether she felt guilty for her part in things and whether lying on the witness stand about John Bastin’s guilt ought to feel like a burden. In her mind she often balanced the scales by telling herself that a lot more innocent people would have died if she hadn’t and it had put a stop to things. It wasn’t as if Bastin hadn’t played his part, he’d been as guilty as any of them, cheating on his wife and playing the lothario like he was God’s gift. And she’d believed it at the time, had got caught up with the baying mob and bought into the belief that someone had to be accountable. Five girls had died, the police had caught their man and though Lena couldn’t undo what had gone before she’d certainly done her bit in bringing about a satisfactory conclusion. It might not have been the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, but it had brought an abrupt stop to things that couldn’t be controlled by law or reason. No, Lena did not feel guilty – burdened, yes – but the load she carried was not the unbearable weight of guilt, it was more the weight of secrets, secrets gone stale and mouldy from years of being kept in the dark.