The Woods, page 14
“Ooh, meow. Cat-fight alert,” Jack says, laughing.
“We thought we could do our own investigation,” Lena says, flicking her cigarette into the stream. “Go to the town where she lived, see if we can find out who might have done it.”
I notice Sean hasn’t said a word since I got here. He stands up, kicking at the dead leaves on the ground.
“That’s the stupidest idea ever,” I say. “It’s dangerous and…stupid.”
“Ah, poor Tessie is scared,” Jack says. “You were right to leave her out of this, Bella. Why don’t you go home to Daddy?”
I grit my teeth and stand and walk away. I hear someone following but don’t stop until I hear Bella call my name.
“Wait up, Tess,” she says.
“I hate him.” I shout it without meaning to. “Him and his brother. Did you hear him?”
“He was just trying to wind you up.”
“Well, he bloody succeeded. Why the hell is he here in the woods talking about some poor murdered girl when his own sister just died? I don’t think he cares about Ellie at all. He’s probably glad she’s gone.”
“Tess Cooper,” Bella gasps, grabbing my arm and giving me a shake. “What a horrible thing to say!”
Tears are burning in my eyes as I stare at my sister. “It’s true,” I say, my voice breaking. “And I can’t believe you’re here with them joining in with all this morbid…shit.”
I turn and march away from her. Poor Julia. No wonder she’s spending so much time with Dad when her own sons are so awful.
May 2007
I wait for Bella outside the house, heart thudding, desperate to share the gossip.
“Guess what?” I say as soon as she opens the gate. “Julia’s gone.”
“What?” She’s frowning, looking down at her phone, not at me.
“Julia packed her bags and left! She’s left Greg, run off somewhere.” I can hear the tremble in my voice and I look at Bella, wanting her to reassure me or share my fear or…I don’t know what I want her to do.
“She left him? Jesus…are you sure?”
She sounds shocked but already she’s back on her phone, tapping out a text.
I clench my fists, feeling a surge of irritation. Doesn’t she believe me? Is she texting one of her mates to ask them about it? Who does she think is going to know more than us? Julia’s been coming round to our house more and more recently, but when I asked, Dad said he knew nothing about her leaving. No one in the village seems to know where she’s gone or why she left, but it’s all anyone is talking about.
Her phone dings and her face goes blank as she reads her text. “Wow,” Bella says, finally looking at me, her voice flat. “That is…strange. How are the boys taking it? And Greg?”
“The boys are both away, I think, and no one’s seen Greg.”
“Right.” She walks past me and I grab her shoulder.
“What’s going on? Don’t you even care that your precious Greg’s wife has walked out?”
She pushes me, two hands shoving me so hard I stagger. “Stop it, Tess. Bloody grow up. He’s not my Greg and of course I care. But she’ll be back—her and Greg…you’ve seen them together. Of course she’ll come back.”
“Wait,” I say, as she moves past me. I glance toward the house to check that Dad’s not around. I ignore Bella’s impatient sigh as she turns back to me, her arms folded.
“I think Dad knows,” I say.
She frowns. “Knows what?”
“I think Dad knows where she is. I think he’s been going to see her. I heard him on the phone.”
Bella’s face goes white.
“I’m worried, Bella.” I get the words out at last. “I’m worried Dad’s the reason Julia left Greg.”
Bella shakes her head. “No. No fucking way is that going to happen.”
June 2007
We sit in shock. Me and Bella, the distance between us closed by this…this thing that’s happened. Dad is downstairs with Julia. With her. He came home from the pub with her and they were holding hands and laughing. Bella saw them from her bedroom window and came and woke me up. Together we watched as Dad leaned in and kissed her, her fake red hair shining under the outside light.
I was right. Awfully, horribly right.
But neither of us can quite believe it. This is why Julia left Greg? For my dad? Ten years older, four inches shorter, my permanently broke dad?
Bella suddenly starts laughing. “Can you fucking believe this?” she says.
I start laughing too—what the hell else are we supposed to do?
“Girls? Are you still awake?”
Dad’s voice calling up the stairs cuts through our laughter. He’s waiting in the kitchen when we go downstairs, still holding Julia’s hand.
“What’s going on?” Bella asks.
Dad glances at Julia. “We…that is, I…Julia’s going to be staying with us for a while. With me.”
“What?” I half laugh as I say it. This has to be a joke, right? Or a dream. It’s a bloody bad dream.
“We’ve become closer. In the last few months. Since…”
“No fucking way.” Bella’s voice cuts Dad off. “You are not serious?”
“Bella…”
“No. Just no. She is not moving in here—into my mother’s house. Into my mother’s bed.”
“Bella—come on,” I say, stepping up to touch her arm.
She shakes me off. “Stay out of it, Tess.” She turns to Julia. “And you—what is this? You kill your own daughter in a crash, so you think you can move in and get two new ones?”
“Arabella,” Dad says again, his voice raised in anger. “How dare you—”
“How dare I? What the damned hell is this? You two have been sneaking around having some seedy affair and now you’re moving her in? What—are you going to move Jack and Sean in as well, expect us to play happy fucking families?”
She whirls around, looks at me. “Are you happy with that, Tess? Having Jack and Sean in your house?”
I shake my head, struck dumb by her rage. Julia’s face crumples and I feel awful. I like Julia, I really do, but this…
“And Greg? Your husband, Julia?” Bella is still shouting. “What’s he going to have to say about this?”
We’re interrupted by a hammering on the front door. Bella and I stare at each other. Oh God—it must be Greg.
But when Dad comes back into the room, he’s trailed not by a furious Greg Lewis, but by Mr. and Mrs. Wallace, Nic’s parents.
Mrs. Wallace is crying and Mr. Wallace rushes straight up to Bella. “Is she here? Is she with you?”
Bella looks startled. “Nic? No—I haven’t seen her today.”
“But last night—she was with you last night?”
Bella shakes her head. “What? No, I haven’t seen her all week. What’s going on?”
Mr. Wallace sinks into a chair. “She left a message yesterday to say she was sleeping over here. So we didn’t think…but then she didn’t come home. And she’s not answering her phone. No one knows where she is.”
Dad crouches next to him. “Steve? I think you need to call the police.”
Dad’s thinking about that other girl, the one who was murdered, I know he is. It was only a couple of months ago and they never did find who did it. But…that was miles away. It would never happen here, not to someone we know.
I bite my lip to stop words I’d regret from pouring out. Nicole is the worst of Bella’s friends. I don’t believe she’s really missing, not properly. She’s forever pretending to be with Bella when really she’s off with some boy or at a party she doesn’t want her parents to know about. She’s probably gone off to see Jack—she was all over him at their New Year’s party. She’ll turn up, basking in the attention. She isn’t worthy of Bella’s concern. She isn’t worthy of Bella’s friendship. Wouldn’t it be better if she really had disappeared forever?
I wake with a start. What was it—what did I hear? The night silence is thick. I can hear my breath, quick and harsh. I strain my ears and hear it eventually—voices from downstairs, rising and falling. I get up, stuff my feet in slippers, and pull on my bathrobe. Bella’s door is open. I can see her sleeping in her bed, a tangle of blond hair, a bundle under the quilt. It eases my thumping heart—it wasn’t her sneaking in or out that woke me. I creep down the stairs and the voices get louder. I recognize Dad’s voice, but not the other male voice. They’re in the kitchen, the door ajar. I hesitate outside, wavering between advance and retreat. In the end, I do neither; I tuck myself away in the shadows behind the door instead to listen.
“Jesus, Steve, I’m so sorry.”
Dad’s voice. And Steve? It must be Steve Wallace, Nicole’s dad. Nicole—Bella’s missing friend. God, it’s been awful the last couple of days. The police even spoke to Bella. I don’t like Nicole, I never have. She’s been stepping up the bitchy, snide comments, even in front of Bella, always covering herself by laughing after and saying only kidding. Like saying only kidding does anything to lessen the cruel comments. It’s like stabbing someone and then trying to cover it up with a bandage. I know it was her that started the Tessie the Elephant nickname, now picked up by half the school.
When the Wallaces turned up saying she was missing, though, I never thought something might have actually happened to her. I thought she’d run off to see Jack, or some other boyfriend, run off to piss off her parents.
But she hasn’t come back.
I risk a peek around the door. Mr. Wallace has his head in his hands. There’s a bottle of whisky between him and Dad on the table, two half-full glasses.
“I shouldn’t have shouted at her,” Mr. Wallace says. “But those texts on her phone…She got so mad at me, screaming about how she was seeing a real man, who was going to take her away. Jesus Christ, Nicole is only seventeen and the things in those texts—they were sick, Leo, perverted.”
I hear the scrape of a chair, the chink of glass against glass and tuck myself back into the shadows, holding my breath.
“Who do you think it is?” my dad says.
“She was seeing Jack Lewis—I told the police that. But Greg bloody covered for him, said he was away working and it couldn’t be him. Oh yeah, he had alibis for the whole lot of them when Nic went missing.”
I let my breath out in a whoosh. I did honestly think Nicole had sneaked off to visit Jack.
“That bastard. I know he’s lying, covering for his boys. There’s something about that family. Nicole was always over there. You need to watch your girls, Leo. You need to protect them.”
I feel sick. God, all the time Bella’s been spending over there—with Jack and Sean, with Greg, even. Dad doesn’t know any of that. No, I’m being stupid—Jack and Sean, they’re not much older than me, they wouldn’t have done anything awful to Nicole. And Greg. Well, he’s nice. He’s kind.
“Did you tell the police about the texts?”
My stomach flips as I hear Mr. Wallace start to cry. Grown-ups shouldn’t cry. Dad did after Mum died, but I only ever saw it at the funeral. I wanted to close my eyes and cover my ears then. It frightened me seeing my dad cry.
“Of course. And I told them it had to be one of the Lewis boys, but they checked their phones and there are no messages to Nicole. They must have deleted them, or got another phone,” Mr. Wallace says. “So the police think she’s just run off and she hasn’t. She’s seventeen, they keep saying. She’ll come home when she’s ready. There’s no evidence anything’s happened to her.”
“They could be right.”
“No. She would have texted one of her friends—Bella or Caitlin—even if she didn’t want to talk to me or Liz. But no one’s heard from her. Something’s wrong. Something bad has happened, I know it.” His voice rises. “What if she hasn’t run off with Jack Lewis, Leo? What if whoever killed that other girl has got her?”
Bella won’t come out of her room. She’s been out with Caitlin all the time since Nicole went missing, searching their local haunts, asking everyone they know if they’ve seen her. But today…the news has been on nonstop since we got home from school, the same story repeated by all the local channels. A body has been found in the woods. Not our woods—a few miles away, but close enough. No identity yet, but enough of the reporters have said it’s a woman to convince Bella it’s Nicole. Nicole Wallace, queen bitch, dead in the woods. I know I couldn’t have wished this into happening with my wicked thoughts, but it feels like I did. I never said the words out loud, but I think Bella heard them anyway. I went up to her room to say…I don’t know what I was going to say, but I didn’t get chance anyway. Bella just stared at me and her face was cold and blank. A million unsaid words passed between us and then she slammed the door in my face.
The village is alight with rumor and the rumors all say the same thing. Nicole Wallace was murdered like that other girl.
I didn’t wish this into happening. I didn’t. I wouldn’t.
NOW
Chapter 15
The house is different at night. During the day, it’s cozy and warm, cradled in the encroaching trees. At night, there’s nothing to see out of the windows but blackness. Creaks that go unnoticed during daylight become sinister and my breath comes out in white plumes. I sit up in bed. It’s barely ten o’clock, but I haven’t slept for three nights, not since I got back from the hospital. I’ve tried, but my eyes keep snapping open, staring into the dark. The creak of a floorboard sounds like a groan. I can hear voices downstairs but I don’t want to be around Jack and the others.
I get up and pull on leggings and sneakers, zip up a fleece hoodie. I can’t stay indoors listening to the house get quiet as everybody else falls asleep. My mind gets too busy, sends creeping thoughts down unwanted corridors, asking what if and why and when…thoughts of death and blood and ghosts. And bones. God, bones…
Neither Jack nor Sean said anything when they came back from the police station and all our questions are hovering unspoken, thick and heavy in the cold air. I hear them as whispers in the night. Who is it? Who is it? Whose bones are they?
I tiptoe across the landing and almost scream, hands over my mouth as the bathroom door opens and Sean steps out, rubbing his hair with a towel. I take a step back toward my room but it’s too late, he’s seen me.
“Is Julia…?”
I shake my head.
He looks at me. “Where are you going?”
“Out for a run. I couldn’t sleep. I was restless.”
He sighs. “Same here. I can’t stop thinking about the police swarming all over Dean House. Want some company?”
Not you, I want to say, but the presence of his dying mother in the house stops the words from coming out. And also…he looks so sad. He looks lost, shoulders slumped, eyes tired and shadowed.
“I prefer to run alone,” I say instead.
He cocks his head. “At ten at night?”
I shrug. I’ve run later than this. Not here, though.
We both pause by Julia’s room. “How was she when you saw her?” I ask. It’s not really what I’m asking. I’m asking if he and Jack have made things worse. If they took their hostility and anger and stories of buried bones into their dying mother’s room.
“We didn’t scream recriminations and throw things,” he says with a ghost of a smile. He knows what I’m asking.
The landing feels too small with both of us here. The house feels too small. It always did, when they were in the house. I wasn’t running back then, but I used to spend more time out of the house than in it while they were here. Even now, I feel as awkward and self-conscious as I did at sixteen in his presence. I turn away, eager to leave before the walls close in even more, and his voice stops me.
“Do you think she ever knew what her leaving did to us?” he asks.
I hesitate. Do I tell him I tried not to think about it? Tried never to think about them? “Yes. I do. Sometimes…she used to cry.”
“But was it for me and Jack, do you think? Or for Ellie?”
“I don’t know. I never asked.”
“I was going to. It was one of the things I came back to ask, before it’s too late. But when I went in to see her…I can’t be angry anymore. She’s dying, there’s nothing left of the woman who made me so angry.” His face twists and I think maybe there is still some anger left there.
“Jack got expelled from school after Ellie died. Did she ever tell you?”
I shake my head. “I thought he dropped out.”
We’re talking in whispers. Julia’s door is ajar and I take another step away. Sean follows, standing too close, so I can smell the toothpaste on his breath, the fading scent of shower gel. His hair is still damp.
“He refused to go back after her funeral, so Dad got him a job, packed him off so he wouldn’t embarrass the family. And then Mum left. We were there, floundering after Ellie’s death, and she just walked away and left us. She didn’t tell us, didn’t come and see me at school or go and see Jack. We just got a call from Dad to say she’d walked out. No one hears anything from her and then a few weeks later she moves in with Leo. Jack was so pissed off when she moved in here—he walked out of his job to go and see Dad.”
“I’m sorry.” As I say it, my heart is hammering. When Julia moved in it was the same time as Nicole went missing. Didn’t Greg claim both the boys were away—Jack working and Sean at school? “Did you come back as well?”
“No. I stayed at school. I know Dad tried to persuade Jack to give school another go but he flat-out refused, so Dad packed him off to work with yet another of his construction mates.”
“Did he…was he here long?” How long was it between Nicole going missing and her body being found?
Sean looks at me oddly. “I don’t know. A couple of days or so.” He pauses. “He said he was going to see Dad, but I think he was looking for Mum.”
The shock of Julia moving in got lost when Nicole went missing. Nicole’s murder stopped any of us from wondering about Dad and Julia’s relationship and how long it had been going on. They must have been seeing each other in the months before she left Greg, but Dad never said a word. And if Jack was looking for her, why not just knock on the door? He knew where she was. Was he spying on us? I think of all the time I used to spend alone in the woods back then and repaint it in my imagination, Jack watching from behind every tree. I go hot at the thought of what else he might have seen.
