The Crow Trap (16 page)

“No, really, I prefer to go by myself.”

She wandered around the living room, picking up the scraps of food, piling plates and cutlery, then she went upstairs and washed out a few things in the bathroom sink. It wasn’t much of a drying day but she took them outside and pegged them on the line, thinking that from there she might see him walking back down over the hill to the cottage. She wouldn’t have gone out to look specially. There was no sign of him or of Grace.

Inside again she started to prepare a casserole for the evening meal, using the ingredients Godfrey had brought. She put Annie Lennox in her cassette player and played it very loud, so when he got back he’d know she wasn’t bothered about him one way or the other. She told herself it wouldn’t be long before he did come back, apologetic, flushed, out of breath. She thought he must look really stupid out on the hill in the clothes he’d put on for the office this morning.

But he seemed to be away for hours and it came as a shock when at last she heard the engine of his car. She rushed out into the yard but it had driven off at great speed. She had to walk up the track and close the gate behind him. He had driven on towards the ford without bothering to stop and shut it.

Later she tried to phone him at his office, but his secretary, who must have recognized her voice, said that he wasn’t taking any calls.

At first she was surprised when Grace was late back from the hill.

She’d thought they’d come to an understanding, had even thought they might get on better for the remainder of the project. Then she thought Grace was making a point, letting Anne know that her cooperation couldn’t be taken for granted. She tried to tell Rachael that there was probably nothing to worry about, but Rachael insisted on going out there herself, screaming and making a scene.

Later, when it got very dark and still Grace hadn’t returned, Anne wondered if Godfrey had followed her and frightened her off. Usually she wouldn’t have said that was in character at all in every situation he was understated, undramatic but today he had behaved very oddly.

Rushing away without talking to her then refusing to take her calls, that wasn’t like him. Anne thought it probably wouldn’t have taken a lot to scare Grace off. You could tell she was pretty near the edge already. Anne could imagine her walking to the nearest road and hitching a lift back to where she’d come from. Wherever that was.

In the end she couldn’t stand Rachael’s melodramatics any longer. She’d put on a brave face but she was panicking about Godfrey. About losing him. She hadn’t realized how much a part he’d been of her plans for the future. She went to bed and although she hadn’t expected to, she went to sleep very quickly. She didn’t hear the arrival of the mountain rescue team and the first she knew of Grace’s death was the sound of Rachael snivelling at the bottom of the stairs, early the next morning.

Grace

Chapter Nineteen.

The day after her arrival at Baikie’s Grace woke suddenly. The room was filled with light and she knew she had overslept, thought with a sudden panic that she might be in trouble. She looked around the room, not sure for a moment where she was. There were bunk beds, crammed into the big room so as many students as possible could be accommodated on field trips. They had been stripped of sheets but each had a grey blanket folded at the foot. The pillows were covered with striped cases. There was a musty, institutional smell. For an instant she was reminded of another place where she had stayed and she was confused.

Then Rachael shouted up the stairs that coffee had been made if Grace wanted some.

“And what do you fancy for breakfast?” So she jumped back to the present. She saw that one other bed in the room had been made up, and remembered Anne, picking her up from the station and driving through Langholme. She remembered the track from the road into the forest, then out onto the open hill, the feeling that emerging from the trees was like arriving in a different world. A child’s fantasy, beyond the wardrobe door, a place anyway she’d dreamt of since she was little.

“Ibast?” Rachael’s voice was more impatient.

“Please. I’m nearly ready.”

She opened the curtains. Beyond the garden which was still in shadow, the hill was bathed in sunlight, so last year’s bracken shone like copper. She pulled on her clothes and went down to the kitchen.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I can’t have set the alarm clock.”

She was aware of Rachael looking at her, concerned, sympathetic. She had seen that look before too.

“No problem,” Rachael said. “As long as we meet the deadline we can set our own timetable, but I thought I’d wake you. We’re sure to lose days later with the weather.” She smiled. Grace tried to respond, to be friendly too, but she felt awkward. It was more difficult with just the two of them. She wasn’t used to deceit. The kitchen was so small that they had to stand very close together and she felt exposed. Last night Anne had done most of the talking. Grace had pretended to listen but mostly she’d been able to concentrate on her own thoughts. Now she drank coffee, ate toast and as soon as possible she prepared to go outside.

“Where are you going?” Rachael asked.

“I’m sorry?”

“I need to know where you’re going. Health and Safety rules. I explained before.”

“Yes. Yes, of course.”

Rachael was still in the kitchen, standing because there was no room to sit, with a piece of toast in her hand. Grace put her map on the formica bench.

“I thought I’d start close to the cottage. I’ll just walk the Skirl today, get a feel for it, look out for spraints, see what the bank’s like. I should be back by two.”

“Good.”

Grace saw that she had reassured Rachael, who had previously been watching her rather oddly. She should take more care. It occurred to her suddenly that Rachael looked very like an otter herself, with her chunky front teeth, the brown hair which would turn grey when she was still young, the downy lip.

“Will you take sandwiches?” Rachael asked. “There’s cheese and the bread’s still OK.”

“No.” Then, seeing that more explanation was required, “I’ll get something when I get back.” In fact she’d never been much interested in food which seemed rather strange in view of her father’s profession.

From the kitchen door she walked round the house, past the tractor shed and into the front garden. There was a lawn, on which apparently students played croquet in the summer, but it hadn’t yet been cut. This was surrounded by bushes and shrubs. The boundary of the garden was marked by a dry stone wall. There was no gate onto the open hillside but a stile, in the form of a large boulder, on each side of the wall and an upright wooden stake beside it. There was a path, presumably flattened by students and sheep, which led through the bracken to the burn. The Skirl was as wide in some places as a river, and seemed to Grace a good place for otter. She imagined she could smell them.

She crossed the burn by a series of deep flat rocks. The water was very clear. The strong sunlight reflected from the surface dazzled her and she almost lost her footing. On the other side the bank had been cut away and a muddy beach had formed. She scrambled up the bank and began walking towards the old lead mine.

She walked along the bank slowly, looking for pulling-up places and spraints, the droppings which were distinctive because they smelled so strongly of fish. At university it had been a comprehensive study of the contents of otter spraints which had won her a First. That and her dedication. She’d never been distracted much by a social life or men.

In her interview for this job Peter Kemp had said: “There won’t be much to do, you know, out there on the hills. Not in the evening. You won’t be bored?” “Oh no,” she’d said quite truthfully, not telling him of course that she had her own reasons for wanting to be part of the project.

She followed the burn from the Black Law farm land towards the estate and the old lead mine. There it was channelled into stone culverts.

She presumed that once it had been used as part of the mining process.

Perhaps to wash the ore or power a wheel. The boundary between Holme Park and the farm wasn’t marked on the map, but she had added it in pencil, and she knew she must have got it right because past the mine where the burn opened out again, she came to a dead weasel which had been thrown into the water. Its gingery coat was perfect but it was quite stiff. Nearby she found the tunnel trap which had killed it. A spring-mounted trap had been placed in an old piece of piping in a gully and covered with stones. She couldn’t find signs of any other corpses, but near to the trap there lingered the smell of rotting flesh. This must be Holme Park land because only a keeper would have gone to this much trouble. She considered blocking the entrance to the trap, but thought that would be foolish. She didn’t want to draw attention to herself at this stage.

The discovery of the weasel upset her, though she couldn’t quite work out why. Perhaps it was because there was no outward indication of injury. She tried to put it from her mind and continued walking but almost immediately thought she heard footsteps, splashing water, at some distance behind her. She turned round but the hill was empty.

There was nowhere to hide except the old mine workings and who would want to skulk there? So she knew she had been imagining things again.

She walked on and she began to count, though not now the traces of otter left on the bank. Now she counted the foster parents who’d cared for her, though she knew the number already. She listed them. Recently it had become an obsession to list their names. She knew it was unhealthy, this preoccupation with the past, and perhaps if she hadn’t found the weasel, the sunshine and the smell of the peat would have kept the old memories away.

But perhaps not. Rachael’s story of the discovery of Bella’s body, white in the torchlight, had jumbled the past and the present in her mind. That was what had started the confusion. It was as if a child had shaken a jigsaw puzzle in its box. The picture was fractured.

Grace’s mother had committed suicide by hanging.

There had been six foster families. In the social services department this was something of a record for a child like her. At the beginning everyone was sure she would be adopted. She was pretty enough, white, only four years old. She had been well brought up and already spoke politely. She didn’t have tantrums. Occasionally she wet the bed but that was only to be expected after coming in from the garden to find her mother hanging by her dressing gown cord from a light fitting. It had been sunny that morning too. The psychologist said she was very bright.

The first couple were Aunt Sally and Uncle Joe. She could hardly remember them because she was there for such a short time. It must have been emergency placement but she knew their names because they were in a scrapbook kept for her by her social worker. There were no photos.

She crossed the burn back to southern bank, this time wading, feeling the pressure of the water against the supple rubber of her expensive Wellingtons. Although it was stupid she wanted to avoid the mine buildings and the tunnel trap. Out loud she said: Aunt Sally and Uncle Joe,” and had a brief recollection of a flowery dress, a whiff of cigarette smoke, being held on a lap against her will.

She remembered the second couple better. The plan was that they would adopt her. Recently she had returned to this memory over an dover again. It was like poking a sore tooth with her tongue.

Chapter Twenty.

She had been in this house for a long time, months certainly, perhaps a year. She had started school. School was a modern brick building, with large windows and grey carpet tiles on the floor. Because of the carpet they had to be very careful wiping their feet before going in.

Each morning Lesley walked with her to the white wooden gates which had been pushed open to let the teachers’ cars through. Lesley would go with her into the cloakroom and hang up her coat. There she would try to kiss her goodbye. In the classroom there were two boxes one for reading books and another for packed lunches. Grace’s packed lunch box was made of pink plastic and had a picture of Barbie on the side. Each day she returned a reading book. She had already moved on to the ones with orange stickers on the spines; most of the children in the class were still reading the blues.

If it rained Dave gave them a lift to school in the car and then she wore Wellingtons pink to match the lunch box which had to be changed in the cloakroom. Lesley and Dave were her foster parents’ names but she already called them mum and dad. She wanted to be the same as the other children in her class. She could be on the books with the green stickers but had slowed down so she wasn’t too different.

They lived in a new house on a new estate. This too was made of brick with large windows. There was a garage which held Grace’s tricycle and her doll’s pram, a small patch of lawn and a rockery at the front, and a garden at the back. In the summer, Lesley said, there would be a swing. The road was still being built, and there were muddy puddles everywhere. Lesley hated the mud and so did Grace. They were both tidy individuals and so appeared perfectly matched.

That was what the social worker said when Dave and Lesley told her that they didn’t want Grace to live with them any more.

“But I thought you were perfectly suited.”

Grace knew that was what she said because she was listening at the door. It was slightly open, but nobody noticed her. She must have heard Lesley explaining apologetically that they didn’t think the placement was working out, but later she didn’t remember that bit. She just heard the social worker say, “She’s such a sweet little thing.