The Things You Didn't See(37)
‘Cass?’
Still no answer, and Holly found herself shuddering. When she was a child, she’d believed this place was haunted, and she certainly felt that something unpleasant had happened here and the house was not at peace. Just leave. You don’t need to be here. You’re overstepping your role and you aren’t Cassandra’s friend. Just go. But she’d left before, run from this house to the sound of screaming, and it had haunted her. She was an adult now: she wouldn’t run away. She owed it to Cass to stay, she owed it to Maya.
Holly walked carefully but with purpose along the hallway until she reached the back of the house. Here, the ceilings were plain plasterboard, the floor uncarpeted, the rooms narrow and dark. These must be the old servants’ quarters where, in the past, maids and a butler would have moved up and around the house without disturbing the more distinguished residents using the grand main staircase and large rooms at the front. It was at the base of this rear staircase that she, Jon and Hilary had worked on Maya. There was a splatter of blood on the floorboards, possibly urine, given how close she had been to death.
Holly thought of a gun’s power, the damage it can do to flesh, muscle and bone. Even a small gun, something as toy-like as an air rifle, could have a devastating effect. Her father, an American and an ex-military man, had no problem with guns and kept several in his house in California, but Holly detested them. They filled her with a sickening feeling of dread. Even the thought of firearms was enough to make her heart beat fast like that of a rabbit caught in the sights, causing a helter-skelter of panic as she re-experienced the fight or flight she had first felt that terrible Halloween when she was eight.
When she visited California, her dad was forever trying to cajole her into joining him on one of his hunting trips into the mountains. He’d complain that even Jamie had lost his boyish enthusiasm for the sport, and Holly wouldn’t even give it a try. He had no idea that they both had very good reason.
Hearing movement upstairs, she felt her way up the steep, unlit staircase to the first floor. The hallway landing was oddly shaped, so that the three bedrooms seemed to have mock corridors and secret corners before their doorway was reached. There was little light, just one tall window above the stairwell, with speckled rectangular panes of glass set in a leaded arch. Holly gazed out onto the distant fields of pig huts and white plastic wind tunnels that from this distance made it look as though snow had fallen. The sickly sweet stench of pig shit was pervasive – it had been in her nostrils since her arrival, but seeing the huts intensified her sense of the smell, one she’d been accustomed to when she was a girl. Now it made her want to retch.
Beyond the fields was a wooded area, circular and very dense, where Jamie had led her and Carl that night, seeking ghosts. And beyond that, the perimeter fence of the disused airbase, within which she had once lived, an innocent. It seemed so long ago now. This was the land that the Port Authority wanted to turn into a lorry park. The banners outside the farm and the school had shouted HANDS OFF OUR COUNTRYSIDE!, yet no one loved it enough to buy one of the old military houses. They would all be razed to the ground, and she couldn’t say she was wholly sorry. Better that than another group of children should wander too far from home and get mixed up in danger they didn’t understand.
‘Holly, is that you?’
She stepped back from the window. ‘Yes, Cass. I’m just coming.’
She pushed open the door to the study and there was Cass, barefoot and dishevelled, adrift in an alarming sea of scattered papers. On the desk beside her was an assortment of randomly sized family photos, the largest ones of Maya and Hector on their wedding day. There was no question that Maya had been lovely to look at, as lovely as her daughter, and also older than Hector by a few years. Her dress was elegant, her tiara looked like real pearls.
There was a smaller picture of Cassandra with Daniel, on a beach somewhere exotic-looking. A golden couple, he was as dark as she was fair, and their matching perfect smiles said that everything was good in their world. Then came a baby photo. Holly picked it up to look more closely at the image of Cassandra cradling the pink-swaddled bundle. ‘That’s Victoria,’ she said sadly.
In the photo, Cass looked exhausted, her eyes sunken into her skin, which had lost its glow, and Holly wondered why Maya would have chosen to have this picture framed. Finally, above all of these framed snaps and nailed to the wall, was an A3-sized publicity shot of Daniel. He looked perfect: his skin almost glittered with health and his hair was lusty. He stood flexing a bronzed muscular arm as he held a glass of green juice as if it were the elixir of life itself. A slogan ran across the bottom of the picture:
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‘Mum is so proud of Daniel,’ Cass whispered, as if they were in church, looking up at the graven image. Then she looked around, as if bewildered by the disarray she was seeing for the first time.
Everything in this room was open – the curtains pulled back violently, torn from their hooks at the side, and every drawer in the desk ransacked, papers scattered everywhere. Even a box of pens had been upended.
‘What is it we’re searching for?’ Holly asked, kneeling beside Cass and picking up random papers.
Cass looked around helplessly. ‘Anything.’
‘You’ll need to be more specific.’