Bess laughed but not when she saw Maya’s face. ‘What’s going on?’
Frank was alert to trouble and popped the last of his pork pie into his mouth. Nadia opened her eyes and Maya only hoped the lot of them would understand what she was about to tell them. She never dreamed she’d do it today, but everything was coming to a head and perhaps a conversation that couldn’t last too long given the event today was better. Like ripping off a plaster, it would be quick, over with just like that.
She pushed the door closed. ‘I need to tell you all something and if I don’t do it now, I’ll lose my nerve.’
‘Go on, love,’ Frank urged. She wondered whether that same concern would show on his face when he heard what she had to say.
‘You guys have known me for years, ever since I moved to Whistlestop River. I’ve lived in the area for over two decades and I love this town. It’s a part of me. I’d do anything for Whistlestop River and its people, for The Skylarks.’ She felt the hard ridge of the sink as she leant against it.
‘We know you would,’ said Bess to a chorus of agreement from the others.
‘Then here goes,’ said Maya. But if she was ousted, she wasn’t sure how she would be able to pick up the pieces. She’d worked hard to earn a place in the town, respect, friendships and ties, and to lose them would break her heart.
All she could do now was start at the very beginning, the first day she’d ever come to Whistlestop River. She wouldn’t say all of the details out loud, just the basics, the dreaded bullet points to explain.
But it didn’t mean the details of what had happened all those years ago weren’t still in her head.
37
When Maya finished school, she soon became restless. She had part-time jobs but nothing that engaged her fully. She lacked focus, she was lost. All she knew was that she still wanted to fly helicopters as much as she had as a little girl and without much of a relationship with her father, she was going to fund her training herself. But getting all that money together took time, patience.
The summer Maya turned twenty-one, she was bored and desperate for change. Temporary work had dried up and she spent more time out with old school friends. One evening, she got left in the pub with a girl she barely knew, a girl called Liz who seemed a whole lot of fun. Liz seemed dangerous. Like nobody Maya had ever been friends with before, like someone her father would totally disapprove of. Perhaps that was part of the appeal. The pair of them carried on drinking, they had a ball, a real laugh. They played the slot machines, they danced in a park, laughed their way down the slide, swung high on the swings, used the seesaw until it turned them both green.
They left the park, stopped at one more bar and then kept on walking until they ended up in Whistlestop River. Maya hadnever been to the town before; she’d always headed further afield in search of more excitement than her home county.
That night, Maya was ready to jump in a taxi home by the time they reached Whistlestop River. She wanted her bed badly but her father’s house wasn’t really home any more. It was a place with walls, somewhere to lay her head but with very little warmth apart from her sister’s love.
‘We need to amp this night up,’ Liz declared as they lay on a grass bank not far from the town’s main street, before Maya had a chance to mention the taxi.
Maya groaned. ‘I need to go home.’ She was beginning to feel the aftereffects of the alcohol rather than the buzzy high that came initially.
Liz leapt up from the bank and pulled Maya’s hand to haul her to her feet. ‘We need more booze.’
Maya thought about disagreeing but perhaps another drink enjoyed beside the river might send her to sleep right here in the fresh air, with nature and its sounds all around them. She’d never been scared of the dark, or of creepy crawlies; she wouldn’t mind one bit sleeping outside for the night.
And so she agreed and they headed off – so she thought – to the shops to find one that was open for them to buy a bottle of whatever took their fancy.
When Liz stopped at the back of the Whistlestop River pub and bent down, Maya assumed she was tying her shoelace but it didn’t take long to realise she wasn’t when Liz stood up clutching a handful of gravel.
‘What are you doing?’
Liz threw some to the upper windows of the pub. ‘Let’s make the owners think they’ve got a ghost.’
Maya had a bad feeling about this. ‘We should go.’
But Liz already had another handful and she’d scooped some up for Maya too.
Maya didn’t throw hers but Liz did. And then Liz began making animal noises – Maya had no idea what they were meant to be; she assumed owls. All she knew was that she didn’t like this, particularly when Liz got frustrated that her plan wasn’t working. She wanted to scare the owners and grew impatient when it seemed she couldn’t.
‘All we’ll do is give them a fright,’ Liz told Maya, who by now was begging her to leave it alone. ‘We’ll leg it as soon as we see the upstairs lights go on.’
After another ten minutes of getting no reaction at all, Liz went in for the kill. She picked up a much bigger stone and lobbed it at the window. And not just any window. Her aim was at the fancy stained-glass picture window. It was ornate, most likely it had been there since the pub was established hundreds of years ago.
In that instance, Maya felt sober enough to see the seriousness of what they were doing here, or what Liz was doing as the stone left her hand and hit her target head on. The window was smashed to smithereens.
A light went on, Liz grabbed Maya’s hand and before Maya could take in the enormity of what had just happened, they were running away. Liz’s laughter echoed in the moonlight. Maya’s fear pumped through her veins. And when they reached the little wooden boat moored beside the sign that indicated it belonged to the pub, both girls leapt in and set off down the river.
Maya rowed for her life; Liz was too weak to help, she was laughing so hard. Maya stopped about a hundred metres away when she could no longer hear voices, when she was so spent, she couldn’t carry on rowing, no matter how much she wanted to.
