I nod, but I’m not done. “Did they ever argue? Bert and Mary? Did she ever seem as if she was frightened of him?”
Fern takes a sip of her coffee and leans back in her chair. “You know what, I think therewassomething. Yeah. Mary was telling Bert he couldn’t have them in the house.”
“Couldn’t have what?”
Fern screws her face up in concentration. “God, I tell you—motherhood softens your brain, don’t let anyone ever tell you any different. I honestly don’t remember. Or maybe they just never told me, and I overheard. It was nearly ten years ago after all. Idoremember Mary saying to Bert, ‘I won’t have those things in the house.’ She sounded angry, like properlymad.And Mary never got mad. Not with Bert.”
“You don’t know what ‘they’ were?”
“I don’t, hon, and even if I did it might have nothing to do with Alice or the basement or any of it. It just stands out to me because, like I said, Mary never got mad at Bert. She’s a sweetheart, really.”
“Oh,” I say, visibly deflated. I stub the cigarette out in the ashtray. Fern puts her hand on my arm, leaning toward me so close I can see the freckles on her skin under her pale, creamy makeup.
“Listen, Stevie told her teacher once that I had a pet anaconda that I kept in the bath. Kids say weird things, don’t they? Their brains are all glitter and explosions. Maybe Tamsin is just repeating something she heard or saw on the television?”
I’m struck by an idea then, straightening up in my chair.
“Could I talk to her?”
“To Stevie?”
“Yes! She’s at Bert’s a lot, isn’t she? Maybe she’ll know something we don’t.”
Fern’s whole expression changes. Her eyes flatten, narrowing a little. Her mouth is drawn in a sharp, tight line.
“Absolutely not. It’s out of the question. She’s seven years old for fuck’s sake. Don’t drag her into this.”
I realize I’ve gone too far, even as Fern snatches up the coffee cups and stalks away to the kitchen. Alice is tainted and even if I can knock the supports out from under her delusions, the town will remember. That’s how superstitions thrive, after all.
“Fern, I’m sorry. Of course. I wasn’t thinking.”
I push my chair back and grab my bag, suddenly keen to be out in the cleansing sunshine, hotter than fire. Another thud from upstairs rattles the windows and Stevie cackles a big, full laugh.
Fern studies me, unsmiling, seeming to be bracing herself against a fall. Then her eyes soften a little and she releases a long, shuddering breath.
“No, I’m sorry. I overreacted. I just don’t want her swept up in all this, you know?”
I nod, stepping forward to shake her hand. Ignoring me, Fern grips me in a tight, clammy hug, pressing me to her close enough to whisper into my ear.
“Mina, I meant what I said. I really am interested in how you are. If you ever want to talk about it, you know where I am.”
The mind can turn on you, can’t it? That’s what Paul told me. I try not to think about poor Terry bleeding out in his beloved Ford Escort, try not to think about those white, groping fingers hanging from the chimney in the dark of the fireplace. It’s just fear, making my brain play tricks on me. It’s not real. None of it is real.
TWENTY-SIX
That afternoon, the news report confirms something I had already begun to suspect. The young boy found drowned in the quarry is Simon Pascoe, local to the town of Banathel. When his picture flashes up on the screen, I recognize him immediately as the squat, muscular boy with the buzz cut and furry upper lip who held Vicky up on his shoulders.“Where’s your broomstick to, Alice?”he yelled, in a voice hard and coarse as winter soil. Alice made a gulping sound as his image appeared behind the newsreader and left the room at a run. Sam and I had exchanged a brief, horrified look. We both know this means the stories about Alice will get worse.
By eight o’clock that evening, there is no one gathering outside the Webber house, no assembling mob with pitchforks and torches, and I let myself relax a little. The hot air clings like static,a feeling of a current moving over the skin. Alice is subdued, lying on the floor with her ankles crossed, watching a gameshow. Lisa isn’t due back from her parents’ until nine and Paul is working another night shift on the killing floor. Sam and I are in the kitchen, playing cards. He is heavy-eyed, his voice scratchy. There is a three-day growth of beard raking his jaw and throat. As I lose yet another hand, he looks at me suspiciously.
“Come on, Mina. You’re not even trying.”
I sigh, leaning back in my chair with my arms folded over my chest.
“Can I ask you about something?”
“Sure.” He nods, shuffling the cards.
“What does Tamsin say on the video, about Bert’s basement?”