The Pull of the Moon (21 page)

The silence mocked me.

‘Danny.’

The stupid sod. He was obviously determined to carry his little joke through to the end. A treacherous voice in my head whispered that it was all my own fault. If I had made it up with Danny, I
wouldn’t be standing in the dark right now. I decided to appeal to Simon instead.

‘Simon,’ I called.

‘Katy – where are you?’ His reply came from further away than I had expected and I couldn’t determine the exact direction.

‘I’m here.’ Even as I said it, I knew how useless a response it was.

‘My torch has come back on again but it’s really faint. Can you see me?’

I cast around desperately. Surely I ought to be able to see his light, however dim. He couldn’t be more than half a dozen yards away.

‘I can’t see you.’ I felt around with my hands -encountered nothing – took a couple of steps forward, then recoiled as something brushed against my face. ‘I
can’t see you,’ I repeated, a note of hysteria rising in my voice despite my attempts to suppress it. ‘I’ve lost the path.’

‘Don’t worry. Stay put and I’ll get Danny to bring the big torch.’

‘No,’ I shouted. ‘Simon, wait.’

He didn’t answer. Guessing that Danny had gone on ahead, Simon presumably intended to carry on along the track until he found him. He was going to leave me completely on my own.

Just then I caught sight of the small torch beam moving between the trees. Trudie – the architect of this whole disastrous undertaking – was somewhere not far ahead. I stumbled
towards the light and fell heavily, my knees crashing on to something hard – probably a fallen log. It hurt so much I thought my kneecaps must be shattered, but tentative experiment
demonstrated that I could still move them. I felt the knees of my jeans and found they were cold but dry, so I evidently wasn’t bleeding to death either. I scrambled to my feet and peered
into the darkness again, trying to pick up the light of her torch where I thought I had seen it last. My fear was subjugated by anger. I remembered the mischief in her eyes – how she had
flirted with us one after another – but it was me who had succumbed. And now she was going to let Danny know what had happened at the very first opportunity.

I glimpsed the flicker of a torch ahead of me again and began to follow it: a will-o’-the-wisp treacherously leading me deeper into the wood. I soon lost sight of it, but not before I had
regained the path. At least that was something – all I had to do was stay on it until I reached the playground. Even without the confusing brightness of the torches there was barely enough
light for me to pick my way forward and the shifting shadows of the branches made everything uncertain: creating an illusion of movement, so that the ground itself appeared to be undulating to and
fro. The wind had risen and the trees responded with louder moans, but these and every other noise were instantly obliterated by Trudie's scream. She only had time to cry out once, but the sound
seemed to echo around the wood for an eternity.

TWENTY

Pam’s shrieks of laughter echo all over the pool. They bounce down from the ceiling, reverberate from the plate glass windows, chase unsuspecting patrons into the
changing rooms. I despise this squealing over nothing, long for the restoration of tranquillity. Until Pam’s return, we ‘Early Bird Swimmers’, as the poster advertising the
session describes us, plodded up and down in relative peace and quiet – but now she is back, ripping up our eardrums until I long to shout, ‘Be quiet. Shut up, for goodness sake, and
give us all a break.’ Marjorie joins in with this dawn chorus of merriment. Squawking along in disharmony, loving every minute. I try not to wish Pam ill, but I cannot help thinking that
another bit of knee surgery would be such a reprieve for the rest of us.

Almost a week has gone by since I was last in the changing room with them: quite long enough for Marjorie to have forgotten all about the episode in Menlove Avenue. This morning it is Pam who
wants to corner me, with a story about her granddaughter. She doesn’t know what the schools are coming to -looks to me for confirmation of the parlous state into which the education system
has descended. It appears that the grandchild’s teacher has entirely failed to appreciate her brilliance – is positively holding the child back. Pam appeals to me for agreement –
I must recall meeting little Jolene, back in the Christmas holidays when she was staying up here and Pam brought her swimming. I must have noticed how bright she is.

I do remember Jolene – a suet pudding of a child, with whom I had a brief conversation about her Babar the Elephant sweat shirt. Jolene had not been aware that Babar was a character in a
book. I make non-committal remarks, until rescued by Marjorie’s intervention: naturally she too has a story about the general incompetence of the teaching profession. I realize that a theory
has evolved between Pam and Marjorie that I chose to retire early because of the falling standards they equate to modern-day schooling. This is untrue. My own standards never wavered. Do your best
to get through the day and try to stay sane.

I’m just about to escape the pair of them, when Marjorie changes tack completely – abandons the education system in favour of the very last thing I want to hear about. It transpires
that, in my absence, she and Pam have been talking about the mysterious sighting of a vehicle identical to mine, apparently parked where I could not possibly have been. This conundrum has injected
some interest into their otherwise dull lives, and they have worked it up between them until it has acquired the status of a Matter for Mutual Concern. Marjorie asks whether I have considered the
possibility that someone is impersonating me.

It’s so preposterous that I burst out laughing. Marjorie looks a bit huffed by this, and explains that what she really means is that someone has made up false number plates and is using
them on a car similar to my own. Not, she says, to specifically impersonate me, but for ‘criminal purposes’. Pam chips in with confirmation that she has read about such things in the
Sunday newspapers.

This time I am ready for them. Numbers are often allocated to car dealerships in batches, I say. This means that cars of the same make and colour sometimes have registrations which are only one
digit apart. Surely that must be the solution here. I bought my car locally, so it is highly likely that there is another one driving round the city with virtually the same registration. Pam seems
quite taken with this idea, but I can see that Marjorie isn’t convinced. Apart from anything else, my solution relies on Marjorie having made a mistake – albeit a small one. Nor does
she want to be robbed of a juicy morsel of excitement by the production of a simple rationale.

On the walk home I start to imagine all sorts of scenarios. Marjorie, who is very active in her Neighbourhood Watch, might work herself up to reporting this mysterious occurrence at her local
police station – ‘just in case’, as she would say. Not that they would take any notice. I can almost hear the stalwart desk sergeant thanking her for coming in, while politely
shifting into anti-nutter mode. But somehow I can’t quite convince myself and the memory of our conversation stays with me all day.

At badminton that evening I play a blinder and kid myself I’m over the jitters. When the session is over I stick around as usual to help put things away and lock up the hall.

‘Fancy a drink?’ asks Carolyn, our club secretary.

‘No, thanks. I’m going to have an early night.’ I give her a cheery wave from across the car park. Liar, says my conscience. You know you’re not going home.

I don’t usually come here twice in close succession – let alone three times in the space of barely a week. I’m uneasily aware that it is getting out of hand. It was the letter.
That was what started it all. Meddlesome old women, Mrs Ivanisovic and Marjorie both. What would I do if Marjorie’s car was to come round the bend now? Suppose she parked right in front of
me. I imagine her getting out of the car, approaching to see exactly who is sitting here in the dark, and me panicking – gunning the car into life and pulling out – not meaning to hit
her of course.

Time to put the brakes on.

I have always tried to avoid making my presence too overt. I generally favour the summer months, usually leaving it late, waiting for dusk. The street lamps don’t give too much
illumination at that time of the year, because the trees cast dappled patterns across the road, half hiding the car in a jigsaw of shadows. Of course winter evenings are also pretty safe because
drawn curtains hide me from them, just as they do them from me.

I don’t have to see inside the house to know when they are there. There is always the telltale car parked on the drive or lights in the windows. Occasionally I see one of them coming in or
going out, but that hasn’t happened for a long time. I tell myself that I don’t need to come. That there isn’t any point really. I can’t achieve anything by it – but I
am drawn back here all the same. I know the house hasn’t changed hands because I check the phone book periodically. Once you have tracked someone down, it isn’t so very difficult to
keep tabs on them.

But coming here is a two-edged sword. On the one hand it reassures me a little to know where they are – to be so close. Yet equally it focuses that sense of an ever-present danger –
the knowledge that a phone call or a knock on the door is all it would take. Up until a few days ago I didn’t think anyone had ever noticed me sitting here. If anyone does walk by I’m
just a woman waiting in a car. I don’t always park in the same place – or come here all that often. I don’t look like a stalker – no ski mask or night vision goggles –
just an ordinary woman who has grown old waiting. And so long as no one knows about my visits, what possible harm can it do?

Maybe secrets can make stalkers of us all. They say that knowledge is power but secrets are more powerful still – drawing us, holding us in their grip of steel. You can never quite break
free despite the passage of the years, because secrets have a life of their own and a way of working themselves to centre stage. The danger is always there, that one way or another a secret is
going to find a way out.

TWENTY-ONE

After the scream there were a lot of other noises. A sound of crashing like someone running or falling over. Then voices shouting – I heard Simon calling our names:
‘Trudie’ and ‘Katy’ in that order. I found that I couldn’t answer him. I had sunk down to a crouching position. Afraid to move. Afraid to breathe. For a moment there
was silence again – then I heard Danny’s voice. ‘Si, Si, where are you? Katy . . .’ He began yelling out my name repeatedly. ‘Katy . . . Katy . . .’

‘I’m here.’ When I stood up I saw there was a blob of light coming towards me, winking in and out of sight between the trees. I shouted again and the torch swung in a wide arc,
spotlighting trees, clumps of weeds, finally me.

‘I’m coming.’ I careered towards the figure behind the light, not caring how much I scratched and bruised myself in the process. As I reached Danny and fell against him, Simon
loomed breathless out of the darkness. ‘My torch has packed up again. Where’s Trudie?’

‘I don’t know.’ Danny’s voice was taut. ‘Did you scream, Katy? Was it you who screamed?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘It wasn’t me.’

‘It must have been Trudie,’ said Simon. ‘Where the hell is she?’ He raised his voice and shouted again: ‘Trudie – Trudie.’

A gust of wind shivered through the canopy above us.

‘Shit,’ hissed Danny. ‘What’s happened to her?’

‘She was heading for the playground,’ I reminded them.

‘That can’t be very far from here,’ said Simon. ‘Why can’t she hear us? Trudie –
Trudie
.’

‘She may be playing some stupid game,’ said Danny – but he didn’t sound at all convinced.

‘We’d better try the playground,’ said Simon.

‘Link arms,’ suggested Danny. ‘Make sure we don’t get separated again.’

We did as he suggested; me in the centre, Danny on my left lighting the way with his torch and Simon on my right – just like Dorothy setting off to see the wonderful Wizard of Oz, flanked
by the Tin Man and the Scarecrow.

It took barely a minute to reach the place we called the playground. For some reason we all stopped dead as soon as the improvised see-saw appeared in the light of Danny’s torch. Danny
played the beam away from us across the clearing, picking out the familiar shapes of sawn-off tree stumps and the rope swing.

Then his torch fell across Trudie’s skirt. That was the thing we saw first – her skirt billowing on to the ground as if she was poised half-way between standing and sitting. When
Danny ran the beam upwards we saw the rest of her. She had her back towards us and her hands hung limply at her sides. From the shoulders downwards her body sagged unnaturally within her clothing.
Her head lolled forward, where it was entangled in the cat’s cradle of string and wire and old washing lines which had been suspended between the two trees, where the kids had tried to make
their scramble net. Each of us made a sound of some kind – not proper words – no language was capable of articulating the moment.

Danny was swiftest off the mark. ‘Quickly,’ he said. ‘Katy – you hold the torch.’ He thrust it into my hand and ran across the clearing with Simon at his side. I
followed them, with the light wavering in my hand as they began to investigate the tangle from which Trudie was suspended.

‘I think she’s dead,’ Simon said.

‘No!’ The way Trudie was hanging there left little room for doubt, but it was nevertheless unbelievable.

‘She can’t be,’ said Danny. ‘Try to hold her up. Let’s get her out of this.’ He set about the string and wire, managing to dislodge a couple of strands.
Trudie’s body slumped towards him, the sudden transfer of weight breaking something else with an audible snap, so that the only thing left suspending her was her scarf, twisted around a
single piece of wire. Simon disengaged it and Danny lowered Trudie gently to the ground, stepping back on to something as he did so. He automatically bent to pick the object up and found it was the
small torch. It was still switched on, but the casing and bulb were broken.