That hallway. That door. Those wings…
She stopped flinging herself repeatedly onto the bed and turned a wobbling lower lip and tear-streaked face to me. ‘Nice house?’
‘Not really but it’s going to be fun. Go and find your boots and I’ll help you put them on. The house is in the woods and we can go for a walk and find some lovely leaves for you to take to nursery next week.’
It worked, as a stream of words sometimes did. Distracted from the idea of breakfast by the prospect of a walk somewhere new and being able to find things for the continuous round of ‘showing to nursery’, Tilly pulled herself upright and went in search of her wellies.
I dragged my own coat from its hanger on the back of the door and wondered what I would do when she was older. Or, more precisely, I wondered how we’d manage to live when she was older. Sharing a small room and a double bed with a toddler was one thing; here we were safe and protected and Tilly’s nursery place was funded, my rent was nominal, and bits of jobs were thrown my way. The restricted space of our accommodation was reassuring: cosy and contained with everything we needed in here with us. We were managing. But when Tilly started school I’d need to be out – this hostel was provided for those in need and once she was in full-time education I’d be expected to have a proper job, be earning enough to rent us somewhere to live, and anyway I couldn’t share a bed with my daughter forever. I had no support network; my only family – I twisted that train of thought onto new tracks, away from the way it wanted to run – was in Australia and not to be trusted.
Clawing. Always clawing. Trying to climb my way up out of the desperation of the way everything had turned: a situation from which I couldn’t so much claw myself to safety as need crampons, a harness and nylon rope.
Deep breaths. We were here, we were safe. There was time now to think about what to do next. We had a roof over us, a bed, Tilly had Brass – who was now tucked under her arm and was receiving a somewhat miscellaneous lecture on no breakfast and a walk in the woods – and I had Tilly. Everything was… no, not good, not in comparison to the past, but satisfactory.
I bundled us out of the door, coats on against the sweeping wind of autumn, and booted because of the accompanying rain. The visual sweep of the car park that I did was now more habit than anything, but it reassured me that there were no unknown cars parked with people in who might be watching. I did a second glance at a small Volvo, but that had a woman behind the wheel who was evidently searching through her bag for something. No. It was safe, and for added reassurance Tia came out at the same time, marshalling her children in an orderly line towards the school bus which picked up in the car park.
‘Feeling better?’ she asked Tilly as they passed like a line of goslings setting forth for the pond.
Tilly just waggled Brass in acknowledgement. Her thumb was in her mouth and she was trying to jump onto the leaves that blew around our legs from the weedy sycamore that someone had planted in the hope of fooling everyone that this wasn’t a car park in a corner of York but a field in Tuscany.
We would go to Elm Cottage, I’d do a quick sweep for occupants, put a sign on the door to state that the place was about to be demolished, meet Ross, hand over paper… We’d be back in time for lunch. Easy money.
That door. Those wings…
It would all be fine.
5
The woods were on the edge of a small village which bore no trace of human life. It had wide roads and verges, and was dotted with the sheep that had come down from the moors to avoid the wild weather. There was a boarded and shuttered pub, large houses all blank-windowed and a bridge under which the river ran, gurgling with intent. It was practically a horror-film set. Truly nobody would hear me scream.
I tightened my grip on the steering wheel and checked Tilly in the mirror. She was playing with Brass and hadn’t been sick again, thankfully, although she was muttering rather rebelliously about toast. She’d levered off one of her boots and it rattled around, discarded, under the back seat with a disturbing clopping sound every time I turned a corner. There were a lot of corners. These old roads, built to follow ancient drainage ditches or even more ancient boundary lines, wound and twisted like yarn, intersecting briefly to give a glimpse of an alternative way and then disentangling to venture onward in a lonely strip of grey. All the landscape outside the city gave me a vague feeling of agoraphobia. Roads that seemed to go nowhere, looping back upon themselves, and skies that held the whole of infinity pinned above our heads in ever-changing streaks of blue and grey.
I sighed and bent the car around another sharp corner. This marked the beginning of the woods, a few isolated trees in a field at first, gradually building to a wall of trunks and branches as impenetrable as if they contained a dormant castle. They had, once upon a time; this had been a king’s hunting ground and a pile of mouldering rocks on a slumped hillock a couple of miles away bore testimony to the ancient lodge that had guarded this land. But here there was nothing but trees, and that cottage.
I pulled up where I’d parked the day before. The tyre marks of my speedy departure were still scribed into the mud, and I parked alongside them with a grimace. It couldn’t be avoided. But it would be over soon, and at least Ross Ventriss wasn’t here to witness any nervous breakdowns.
‘Come on, Tils, let’s go and have a look at this house,’ I said, assuming a bravery that ought to have won me a medal. ‘I just need to go inside for a few moments’ …those wings… ‘and check that it’s empty and then we can go for our walk.’
Brass was tucked firmly under Tilly’s arm, his felt teeth snagging against the toggles of her duffel coat. I raked about and located the missing wellie, popped it on and then decanted Tilly from her seat.
‘Trees, Mummy.’ Tilly stared around her.
I felt that this ought to be a teaching moment – I should be pointing out the species of trees and showing how the undergrowth was thickest where the light reached the ground – but I couldn’t bring myself to. The atmosphere was oppressive; the wind didn’t reach under these trees with their stern grey trunks and their leaves, which fell every so often as though to emphasise death and decay.
‘Yes,’ was all I could say.
With Tilly huddling against my coat and me clutching her hand as though I feared the trees may spirit her away, we advanced on the cottage. It seemed to have degraded even since yesterday. The roofline was surely a little more slumped, a window frame had parted company with its fixing on one side and a crack had become visible which showed a surrendering flag of wallpaper waving inside.
It practically screamed haunted.
Even more worryingly from my point of view, there was a dim light gleaming from the broken remnants of one ground floor window at the side of the house. It was so faint as to only be visible out of the corner of my eye; if I looked directly at it the entire space seemed to have the same level of illumination as the rest of the place, which was not very much. It looked as though the whole house had pulled the shadows from the trees and surrounded itself with them, trying not to be noticed. But still, that faint glimmer, which could have been simply a reflection of light on broken glass. Or not.
‘Bugger,’ I muttered. Tilly tugged at my hand.
‘Don’t like it,’ she said, around her thumb. ‘Horrible house.’
Well that was it. I couldn’t show weakness, not in front of a two-year-old. I was the mum here, I had to appear in control and show no fear. It had been an attitude that had carried me this far and kept us safe, away from David and all that entailed, and ensured that I kept emotion squashed down as far as it would go.
‘It’s just an old house, Tilly,’ I said, with a strictness that made her lip wobble. ‘It only looks scary because of all the trees.’
