Five

LAUREL TOLD the policeman the truth. She sat down cautiously on the other end of the sofa, waited for her father’s reluctant encouragement, and then she began to recount her afternoon. Everything she’d seen, just as it had happened. She’d been reading in the tree house and then she’d stopped to watch the man’s approach.

Why were you watching him? Was there something unusual about him? The policeman’s tone and expression gave no hint as to his expectation.

Laurel frowned, anxious to remember every detail and prove herself a worthy witness. Yes, she thought perhaps there was. It wasn’t that he’d run or shouted or behaved in an otherwise obvious way, but he’d nonetheless been … she glanced at the ceiling, trying to conjure just the right word … he’d been sinister. She said it again, pleased by the word’s aptness. He’d been sinister and she’d been frightened. No, she couldn’t have said why, precisely, she just was.

Did she think what happened later might have shaded her first impression? Made something ordinary seem more dangerous than it really was?

No, she was sure. There’d definitely been something scary about him.

The younger policeman scribbled in his notebook. Laurel exhaled. She didn’t dare look sideways at her parents for fear she’d lose her nerve.

And when he reached the house? What happened next?

He crept around the corner, much more carefully than an ordinary visitor would—sneakily—and then my mother came out with the baby.

Was she carrying him?

Yes.

Was she carrying anything else?

Yes.

What was it?

Laurel bit the inside of her cheek, remembering the flash of silver. She was carrying the birthday knife.

You recognised the knife?

We use it for special occasions. It has a red ribbon tied around the handle.

Still no change in the policeman’s demeanour, though he waited a beat before continuing. And then what happened?

Laurel was ready. Then the man attacked them.

A small niggling doubt surfaced, like a shimmer of sunlight obscuring the detail in a photograph, as Laurel described the man lurching towards the baby. She hesitated a moment, gazing at her knees as she struggled to see the action in her mind. And then she went on. The man had reached for Gerry, she remembered that, and she was sure he’d had both hands out in front, making to snatch her brother from their mother’s arms. That’s when she’d swung Gerry to safety. And then the man had grabbed at the knife, he’d tried to take it for himself and there’d been a struggle …

And then?

The young policeman’s pen scratched against his paper as he wrote down everything she’d said so far. The sound was loud and Laurel was hot, the room had grown warmer, surely. She wondered why Daddy didn’t open a window.

And then?

Laurel swallowed. Her mouth was dry. And then my mother brought the knife down.

The room was silent but for the racing pen. Laurel saw it all so clearly in her mind: the man, the awful man with his dark face and great big hands, grabbing at Ma, trying to hurt her, planning to harm the baby next—

And did the man fall down straight away?

The pen had stopped its scratching. The young policeman by the window was looking at her over the top of his notebook.

Did the man fall immediately to the ground?

Laurel nodded haltingly. I think so.

You think so?

don’t remember anything else. That’s when I fainted, I suppose. I woke up in the tree house.

When was that?

Just now. And then I came in here.

The older policeman drew a slow breath, not quite silently, and then he let it out. Is there anything else you can think of that we ought to know? Anything you saw or heard? He scratched his bald pate. His eyes were a very light blue, almost grey. Take your time, the smallest thing could be important.

Was there something she’d forgotten? Had she seen or heard anything else? Laurel thought carefully before answering. She didn’t think so. No, she was sure that was everything.

Nothing at all?

She said, no. Daddy’s hands were in his pockets and he glared from beneath his brows.

The two policemen exchanged a glance, the older one dipped his head slightly and the younger flicked his notebook shut. The interview was over.

 

Afterwards, Laurel sat on the window ledge in her bedroom, chewing her thumbnail and watching the three men outside by the gate. They didn’t talk much, but occasionally the older policeman said something and Daddy answered, pointing at various objects on the darkening horizon. The conversation might have been about farming methods, or the warmth of the sea-son, or the historical uses of Suffolk land, but Laurel doubted it was any of those topics they were discussing.

A van lumbered up the driveway and the younger policeman met it at the top, striding across the long grass and gesturing back towards the house. Laurel watched as a man emerged from the driver’s seat, as a stretcher was pulled from the rear, as the sheet (not so white, she could see that now; stained with red that was almost black) fluttered on its way back through the garden. They loaded the stretcher and then the van drove away. The policemen left and Daddy came inside. The front door closed, she heard it through the floor. Boots were kicked off— one, two—and then a soft socked path was paced to her mother in the sitting room.

Laurel drew the curtains and turned her back on the window. The policemen were gone. She had told the truth; she’d described exactly what was in her mind, everything that happened. Why then did she feel this way? Strange and uncertain.

She lay down on her bed, curled up tightly with her hands, prayerlike, between her knees. She closed her eyes but opened them again so she’d stop seeing the silver flash, the white sheet, her mother’s face when the man said her name—

Laurel stiffened. The man had said Ma’s name.

She hadn’t told the policeman that. He’d asked if there was anything she’d forgotten, anything else at all she’d seen or heard, and she’d said no, there was nothing. But there was, there had been—

The door opened and Laurel sat up quickly, half expecting the older officer back to take her to task. It was her father though, come to tell her he was off to fetch the others from next door. The baby had been put to bed and her mother was resting. He hesitated at the door, tapping his hand against the jamb. When he finally spoke again his voice was hoarse.

That was a shock this afternoon, a terrible shock.

Laurel bit her lip. Deep inside her, a sob she hadn’t acknowledged threatened to break.

Your mother’s a brave woman.

Laurel nodded.

She’s a survivor, and so are you. You did well with those policemen.

She mumbled, fresh tears stinging, Thank you, Daddy.

The police say it’s probably that man from the papers, the one that’s been causing trouble by the stream. The description matches, and there’s no one else who’d come bothering your mother.

It was as she’d thought. When she’d first seen the man, hadn’t she wondered if it might not be the menace from the papers? Laurel felt suddenly lighter.

Now listen, Lol. Her father drove his hands into his pockets, jiggling them about a moment before continuing. Your mother and I, we’ve had a word and we reckon it’s a good idea not to tell the younger ones all that went on. There’s no need, and it’s far too much for them to understand. Give me the choice, I’d rather you’d been a hundred miles away yourself, but you weren’t and that’s as it is.

I’m sorry.

Nothing to be sorry for. Not your fault. You’ve helped out the police, your mother too, and it’s over. A bad man came to the house but everything’s all right now. Everything’s going to be all right.

It wasn’t a question, not exactly, but it sounded like it and so Laurel answered, Yes, Daddy. Everything’s going to be all right.

He smiled a one-sided smile. You’re a good girl, Laurel. I’m going to fetch your sisters now. We’ll keep what happened to ourselves, eh? There’s my girl.

 

And they had. It became the great unspoken event in their family’s history. The sisters weren’t to be told and Gerry was certainly too young to remember, though they’d been wrong about that as things turned out.

The others realised, of course, that something unusual had oc- curred—they’d been bundled unceremoniously from the birthday party and deposited in front of their neighbour’s brand-new Decca television set; their parents were oddly sombre for weeks; and a pair of policemen started paying regular visits that involved closed doors and low serious voices—but everything made sense when Daddy told them about the poor homeless man who’d died in the meadow on Gerry’s birthday. It was sad but, as he said, these things happened sometimes.

Laurel, meanwhile, took to nail-biting in earnest. The police investigation was concluded in a matter of weeks: the man’s age and appearance matched descriptions of the picnic stalker, the police said it wasn’t unusual in these cases for violence to escalate over time, and Laurel’s eyewitness report made it clear her mother had acted in selfdefence. A burglary gone wrong; a lucky escape; nothing to be gained from splashing the details across the newspapers. Happily it was a time when discretion was the norm and a gentleman’s agreement could shift a head-line to page three. The curtain dropped, the story ended.

And yet. While her family’s lives had returned to regular programming, Laurel’s remained in a fuzz of static. The sense that she was separate from the others deepened and she became unaccountably restless. The event itself played over in her mind, and the role she’d taken in the police investigation, the things she’d told them—worse, the thing she hadn’t—made the panic so bad sometimes, she could hardly breathe. No matter where she went at Greenacres—inside the house, or out in the garden—she felt trapped by what she’d seen and done. The memories were everywhere; they were inescapable; made worse for the event that caused them being utterly inexplicable.

When she auditioned for the Central School and won a place, Laurel ignored her parents’ pleas to stay at home, to put it off a year and finish her A levels, to think of her sisters, the baby brother who loved her most of all. She packed instead, as little as she could, and she left them all behind. Her life’s direction changed, just as surely as a weather vane spun circles in an unexpected storm.

 

Laurel drained the last of her wine and watched a pair of rooks fly low over Daddy’s meadow. Someone had turned the giant dimmer switch and the world was casting towards darkness. All actresses have favourite words, and ‘gloaming’ was one of Laurel’s. It was a pleasure to articulate, the sense of falling gloom and helpless encompassment inherent within the word’s sound, and yet it was so close to ‘glowing’ that some of the latter’s shine rubbed off on it.

It was the time of day she associated especially with child-hood, with her life before she left for London: her father’s return to the house after a day spent working on the farm, her mother towelling Gerry by the stove, her sisters laughing upstairs as Iris cycled through her repertoire of impersonations (an irony, really, that Iris had grown up to become that most imitable of all childhood’s figures, the headmistress); the transition point when the lights came on inside, and the house smelled of soap, and the big oak table was laid for dinner. Even now, Laurel sensed, quite unconsciously, the natural turn of the day. It was the closest she ever came to feeling homesick in her own place.

Something moved in the meadow out there, the path that Daddy used to walk each day, and Laurel tensed; but it was just a car, a white car—she could see it more clearly now—winding up the driveway. She stood, shaking out the last drips from her glass. It had turned cool and Laurel wrapped her arms around herself, walking slowly to the gate. The driver flickered the headlights with an energy that could only belong to Daphne and Laurel raised a hand to wave.

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