The Lost Child

‘Yeah, wouldn’t that be nice.’ Brodie scoffed. ‘Let’s send Brodie for a break, I know let’s send her to the exact place where Mandy went missing, that’ll help!’ She spat the words out as if they tasted of angostura bitters.

The words smacked into Elaine like a brick dropped onto concrete. She didn’t know where to begin with all that hurt and anger. ‘I’m so sorry Brodie, I’m not really very good at this.’ She wondered if she looked as feeble as she sounded, sitting there clutching her dressing gown up around her neck like a timid rabbit caught in the trap of Brodie’s unhappiness.

Brodie stood up and sniffed, dragging her sleeve across her nose as she spoke. ‘S’all right, not your problem is it? Anyway, ta for breakfast.’ She turned and made for the door.

‘Whoa there, where are you off to? You don’t need to leave – I’m sorry, I’m a just a bit useless at this. Don’t go.’ Elaine had no idea what in the hell was drawing her to this abrasive, unhappy teenager, but she couldn’t just let her walk away.

The girl paused at the door, her hand resting on the latch ready to secure her escape. Elaine watched patiently as Brodie’s black clad shoulders sagged, the tension of the previous few minutes ebbing out of them like a soft sigh. Eventually she turned.

‘I’m sorry Elaine, you’re a really nice lady, and you cook mean scrambled eggs and I know I can be a right bitch sometimes.’ Brodie mumbled it in a typical adolescent approximation of an apology.

Elaine pulled her dressing gown around her, tightening it where it had fallen open during her bid to get Brodie to stay. ‘Don’t worry about it, no need to be sorry. I can’t imagine anyone being ecstatic about what you’ve just told me, and you’re not a bitch. You are allowed to be upset about this, you know.’

‘You sound like my social worker.’ Brodie accompanied her words with a smirk that reassured Elaine that the ice was beginning to thaw.

‘Well, she sounds like a sensible woman then.’ Elaine said with a smile of relief. Wrangling recalcitrant teenagers was not exactly her area of expertise. She had always been rather compliant herself, not that she’d been given a choice. Jean hadn’t entertained anything less than full compliance from anyone.

Brodie shoved her hands into the pockets of her hoodie and scuffed the toe of her trainer against the floor. ‘Let’s not go there, or you really will think I’m a bitch,’ she said, her mouth twisting into cheeky smile.

Elaine laughed. ‘OK, I’ll promise not to talk like a social worker if you wash up while I get dressed. Then I’m going to go into town to find a supermarket so I can buy some decent food, why don’t you ask Miriam if you can come with me?’

Brodie’s eyes seems to light up at this prospect, as if she scented the whiff of freedom on the air. ‘Cool, I can go to the cashpoint.’

She said it with such glee that Elaine couldn’t help finding the contradictions in the girl both funny and beguiling.

Chapter Three

Miriam squeezed her bulk between the chair and the stove to reach the squealing kettle. Steam lingered above her head. Wraith-like, it reached down with misty fingers and curled the ends of Brodie’s hair like a trickster might, much to the girl’s frustration. Miriam impatiently flapped it away with her tea towel and filled the giant teapot.

‘Well, someone’s in a good mood this morning,’ she said, giving Brodie a knowing look.

Brodie picked up her phone, ‘Tony gave me some money, I got credit for my phone yesterday so I’m back in touch with civilisation.’ She was unaware of the hidden judgement in her words.

Miriam bristled, ‘You can use the phone here if you want to.’

‘I know, it’s not that. I can get on to the internet now, and I can log on to the school’s website and get my results when they come out.’

Miriam’s mouth formed a round O of understanding. ‘Well, that’s important. I don’t suppose they will post them here. Anyway,’ she said, cramming herself onto a chair with a sigh that told of aching joints and weariness, ‘I wanted to talk to you about Miss Ellis.’

Brodie looked up from the screen that had not been showing the school’s website at all, but her Facebook feed. ‘What about her?’

Miriam didn’t meet her gaze and instead delayed her response by sloshing milk into mugs. ‘Well, it’s just that I don’t want her to think you’re taking advantage by hanging around too much, that’s all. She is a guest you know, and it’s my job to make sure she has a good stay.’

Brodie felt her face flush, ‘I’m not bothering her, she asked me to go yesterday, and she wants me to go round there today too. She’s going to show me how to draw. She’s an artist.’ She was bridling at the inference that she wasn’t wanted.

Miriam poured the tea, ‘An artist? Well, that’s nice. As long as you’re sure she’s happy to have you around. Will you take this in to Esther and tell her I’ll be there with her breakfast in a minute?’

Brodie scraped her chair backwards along the hard floor and stood slowly, hoping that both the noise and the gesture would demonstrate her reluctance. It was lost on Miriam who just passed her the sippy cup that Esther drank from. Brodie took it, her lip curling with distaste as she ventured into the sitting room.

Esther sat as she always did in her chintz-covered chair, plucking and pinching at the arm cap as if something upon it profoundly offended her. Brodie found this incessant habit both repellent and irritating. The gesture suggested a contained malevolence, tempered only by the impotence of Esther’s condition. As Brodie approached, the old lady’s eyes flicked away from the cottage door, which she watched almost constantly. She appraised the black clad cuckoo with a withering look.

Brodie skirted the chair with extreme caution and placed the tea on a side table. She whipped her hand away with whistle stop speed lest the old woman should reach out and grab her with her one functional, claw-like hand. It was hard work for her to suppress the shudder that threatened to reveal her fear of the woman.

‘Miriam says she’ll be in with your breakfast in a minute.’ It was statement for which she received a curt nod before Esther resumed her vigil of the door.

Brodie struggled to imagine who would want to willingly visit the old lady. She had a fleeting mental image of the grim reaper, complete with scythe, popping in for tea. ‘We can live in hope’ she muttered cruelly under her breath.

Once free of Miriam’s fussy ministrations she escaped into the garden. Breathing in the prospect of her few hours of freedom like a condemned man might relish his last meal, she walked towards the holiday let and tried to push away the niggling worries that begged her to contemplate her burgeoning attraction to Elaine. Perhaps she was looking for a mother figure? It wasn’t weird, she told herself, it really wasn’t. She just really liked her and she needed a friend, especially now. Elaine seemed like the first adult she had met who had time for her, who wasn’t more concerned with something – or someone – else. Even the social worker was always looking at her watch and willing Brodie’s time away

She thought Elaine was pretty. She had merry eyes and dimples when she smiled. It made Brodie want to copy her and smile back, and that didn’t happen very often. If she were honest, the vast majority of people irritated the hell out of her, but she was drawn to Elaine and she had no real idea why.

*

Elaine lay on the grass, propped up on her elbows, watching the fascinating, prickly girl who sat cross-legged and diligent, quietly struggling to capture the essence of a tree with pencil and paper.

‘Relax, just let your mind guide your hand’ Elaine said, as the girl scowled and scrubbed at the paper yet again with her dwindling eraser.

Brodie rolled her eyes, ‘It’s easy for you to say, you can do it.’ She pointed at the delicate drawing of a beech tree that Elaine had completed with a few strokes of her pencil.

Elaine laughed, ‘Yes, but I couldn’t draw like that when I was fifteen. I had to go to college and learn. You’ll get there.’

‘Where did you go to college?’ Brodie asked, as if it was something she had been giving some thought to for herself.

‘Bristol, where I live.’

Brodie flung the sketchpad aside, frustrated with her feeble efforts. ‘How come you didn’t move away? I’d have gone to London.’

‘I wanted to,’ Elaine was picking at a blade of rye grass and stripping it with her nails, ‘but my mum didn’t really want me to be away from home. I think the thought of me in a big city on my own frightened her. She was a bit clingy.’ It was a massive understatement and Elaine knew it, but this girl didn’t need to be burdened with that kind of information.

‘Huh, I reckon if I wanted to go to London my mum would have my suitcase packed and by the door before I’d finished the sentence. She can’t wait to be rid of me.’ Brodie’s voice was loaded with dull resignation.

‘Mothers eh? Bloody hard work. Anyway, tell me about you, what do you like? Tell me about your friends.’ Elaine was eager to change the subject. It was bad enough that Jean’s continued presence in the boot of the car was weighing on her conscience, without having to go into territory fraught with mother issues.

Brodie shrugged, ‘There’s a few people I hang out with at school I suppose. But no one likes coming round to our house, Mum freaks them out.’

This was going to be hard work. ‘What about boys, do you have a boyfriend?’ Elaine imagined a sullen, silent goth loping around in Brodie’s abrasive wake.

It was Brodie’s turn to tear at the grass; she did it fiercely, grasping a great handful and brushing it from her hands into an untidy, wilting pile. ‘Nah, all the boys I meet are complete twats. If I ever find one with a brain I might think about it. Have you got a boyfriend?’

Elaine’s hand drifted to her throat unconsciously, once her fingers found that her muslin scarf was still in place she spoke. ‘No, I tend to meet that kind too. But I must admit, I do quite fancy my builder.’ Her cheeks were flushing red with the admission while her brain demanded to know why on earth she had felt the need to confess such thing to a fifteen-year-old girl.

‘Really? Cool. Is he good looking?’ Brodie was intrigued, the sniff of romance making her all ears.

Elaine blushed again, ‘Well, I wouldn’t say he’s Brad Pitt, but yeah, he’s nice in a craggy, rugged sort of way. And he’s funny, which always helps, makes him less of a twat.’ she said with a wry smile, the word didn’t roll as easily from her own tongue.

‘So are you going to go out with him?’ Brodie asked eagerly.

The hand fluttered to the throat again. ‘I don’t know, maybe. I think he’s just being nice because I’m paying him a truckload of money to do up the house. So maybe I’m just being daft.’

Brodie shook her head. ‘Nah, he likes you. Blokes don’t mess about when they’re older. Tony says they haven’t got time to muck about. You should go out with him, see what happens.’

Elaine laughed, amused at the receipt of dating advice from a teenager. Perhaps she should take it. After all, normal relationships weren’t exactly her forte and maybe she needed the practice, the last time she had tangled with Dan it had ended miserably because Jean and life had got in the way. She looked at Brodie; it felt like they were heading into uncomfortable territory again. ‘Hey, why don’t we go and explore the estate? I fancy having a look around the folly, I can see it from my bedroom window and it looks like it might be interesting.’

‘Are we allowed? Miriam told me not to go wandering about on my own.’

Elaine got to her feet, brushing slivers of grass from her clothes. ‘Yeah, why not? The bumf I got about the cottage says that guests are welcome to explore the estate. As long as we stay away from the house we should be fine.’

Brodie shrugged, seemingly indifferent. ‘Might as well.’

*

The folly turned out not to be a folly at all, but the ruined shell of an old chapel. Undone as much by the scrambling ravages of wild ivy and brambles as it had been by the desolation of time. Like all such places it had a melancholy, eerie feel. A set of characteristics compounded by Brodie’s insistence that there would be bats roosting in the crumbling tower. The thought of that wasn’t the only thing that made Elaine shiver and wrap her arms about her body. For someone who claimed not to believe in things that went bump in the night she was experiencing a sense of profound fear as she contemplated the structure’s wounded state. With mounting apprehension she watched Brodie gleefully scramble through the green clad arches and jump between the slippery, moss encrusted stones. She had visions of broken ankles and skull fractures.

‘Come away Brodie, it’s dangerous,’ she called, unable to propel herself to move closer. The aversion she felt for the place was far out of proportion to any real risk that might exist.

‘Don’t be a knob, it’s fine. Anything that’s going to fall down has fallen down by now. Come on in, it’s really creepy in here.’ Brodie’s voice mutated to an echo as she moved deeper into the ruin.

Elaine’s discomfort was growing. ‘Brodie, please come out of there. I really don’t think it’s safe.’

Her fear was compounded by the bloodcurdling interjection of a screeching bird, which swooped out of the nearby trees in a fury of feather and claw. Elaine’s heart nearly burst out of her chest with the rush of adrenaline that accompanied the creature’s sudden appearance. She flung herself to the ground as the feathered fiend passed, her own voice emitting a squeal of anguish sharp enough to match the bird’s terrified screech.

Brodie hurtled out of the chapel, ‘Oh my God, are you all right?’ She bolted towards where the trembling, tearful (and ashamed) Elaine knelt. ‘What was that, what happened?’ she demanded, her hands fluttering and hesitant in the face of Elaine’s distress.

Elaine let out a tremulous laugh, ‘Bloody bird shot out of the bushes and damned near made me crap myself!’ she said as her body released a final visceral shudder.

‘Bloody hell,’ Brodie’s eyes cast about for the offending avian, which was now long gone. Her gaze settled on a figure in the trees, its countenance made grotesque by shadows cast by the overhanging branches.

Fettered by the sun she squinted, peering deeper into the glade ‘Oi! You!’ she called, as if demanding that the shaded figure make itself known. Instead it turned and loped off into the trees, leaving nothing in its wake but swaying boughs and rustling leaves to betray that it had ever been there.

‘What is it?’ Elaine followed Brodie’s gaze.

‘Nothing, some weirdo spying on us I reckon.’ she said, grasping Elaine’s arm protectively. ‘Freak!’ she yelled, as if hoping that whoever lurked in the woods would hear her, and would be afraid.

‘Come on’ Elaine said, gathering herself, ‘Let’s go and drink hot chocolate and eat cake, we’ll go to that cafe on the village green. This place gives me the creeps.’ She was determined to shake off the uneasy feeling the place had induced. ‘I hear sugar is good for shock’.

As they walked away, even knowing the chapel was at her back, ripples of tension coursed up Elaine’s spine. She didn’t relax until they had left the grounds of Hallow’s Court and were well on their way to the village.

*

It was clear from the whispered conversations and evasive looks that everyone in the village knew who Brodie was. Elaine was acutely aware that Brodie was being stoic and defiant as she ate her cake under the curious stares of the cafe regulars.

The previous evening, Elaine had spent some time Googling Brodie’s missing sister, and she had to acknowledge that such an event could not have left the village unscathed. Even so, it appeared to her that the locals were being niggardly in their scrutiny of Brodie. Perhaps they felt her presence had prodded at old wounds. Regardless of that, Elaine felt an intrinsic defensiveness on Brodie’s behalf. ‘Do you want to go?’ she asked, as yet another person gave them a pointed look and bent to whisper into the ear of a companion.

Brodie looked around, ‘Nope. I’m fine. If you’re worried about what people will think, don’t. I’m used to it.’ With that she turned to the room and stood up. ‘Yes, I’m that girl. Brodie Miller, sister of Mandy Miller. Sorry if that offends you and all, but, well, tough.’

Her words caused an initial flush of embarrassment, swiftly followed by a susurration of indignation as the shame of being caught out impacted the room. Two people even walked out, causing the proprietor to shake her head and roll her eyes.

When she came over to the table to clear it she had the grace to say, ‘Sorry ladies, welcome to village life. Put it this way, you’re the most exciting thing that’s happened around here in a long time.’ She nodded at Brodie. ‘Oh and your cake is on the house. I can’t apologise for the customers, but I can let you know that we aren’t all suffering from small minds.’

Elaine protested, more than willing to pay for what they’d had, but the woman waved her away, insistent that they accept her gesture.

It was a shame that her bonhomie didn’t redeem the rest of the village populace. Their stares and whispers continued as Elaine and Brodie made their way along the green and onto the road that led towards the cottages. Elaine had to confess to a sneaking admiration for Brodie’s ability to speak out and stand up for herself; it wasn’t something she would have had the confidence to do at the age of fifteen. Even now she would have been more likely to just quietly slip away nursing her mortification. The thought of her inadequacy shamed her.

Despite her bravado, the experience in the cafe seemed to leave Brodie subdued. A state of affairs that ruffled Elaine’s sensibilities and brought out her propensity to mend things.

‘How about we shake the country dirt off tomorrow and go into town?’ she suggested, hoping that the offer of a change of scene would brighten the girl’s morose mood. The black clothes and the bleak countenance were starting to become unnerving.

Brodie gave a sullen shrug, ‘S’pose.’ She paused to kick at a stone that was wedged in the sun-baked earth.

Elaine paused too, and watched as the girl used the sole of her trainer to work the stone loose and liberate it from the mud. Brodie worried at it, like a dentist determined to pull a recalcitrant tooth. ‘You can’t let people get to you like this. What they think doesn’t matter.’ Elaine said, aware of the ineptitude of her wisdom. Who was she trying to kid? She had grown up on a diet of ‘What will people think Elaine?’ and would no doubt spend the rest of her years trying to take the advice she had just given to Brodie.

Brodie paused in her labours and regarded the stubborn stone, then she turned to Elaine. ‘But you do, you worry,’ she said, pointing to the printed muslin scarf that adorned Elaine’s throat.

Instantly Elaine’s hand moved to touch the fabric, the scar beneath radiating a fire that flushed her cheeks and made her grit her jaw. ‘That’s different.’

Brodie tilted her head to one side and stared at the scarf as if looking straight through it to what lay beneath. ‘How? How is it different? It isn’t only the things people can see that make them judge you.’

Elaine felt herself bristle, her indignation fed by long-held defences. ‘I just don’t enjoy people staring at me, that’s all.’

‘Neither do I. But they do anyway.’ Brodie parted her hands to illustrate the uniform of black, which she routinely wore. ‘I used to think that if I dressed like this – boring, black and baggy – that people wouldn’t see me. I’d just blend in, be invisible. But it doesn’t work like that. It makes them notice you. I’m a hoodie, I scare people. If you want to hide something, you have to put it in plain sight. If you’re not bothered by it, other people won’t be either.’

Elaine had to stifle an indignant laugh, ‘When did you get to be so wise, kiddo?’

Brodie shrugged again. ‘When I realised that all these shenanigans are a bit fucking pointless.’

Elaine raised her eyebrows, ‘Nice language,’ she said censoriously.

‘Well, sorry but it’s true.’ Brodie raised a hand and pointed a grubby finger at Elaine’s neck. ‘You wear that scarf thinking that people won’t notice your scar, but the fact that you keep touching the bloody thing every two seconds gives it away. We’re all wondering what’s underneath.’

‘Do I?’ Elaine asked. Her hand reached up again as if it had received a curtain call.

‘All the bloody time! Look at you.’

Suddenly self-conscious, Elaine rammed her hands into her pockets. The urge to check the scarf was immense.

This girl was right. Elaine knew it, she had always known it, but didn’t know how else to be. ‘So why do you keep dressing like that if you know why you’re doing it and it doesn’t work?’ she said in a desperate attempt to flip the attention elsewhere.

Brodie mirrored her by putting her own hands in her baggy pockets. ‘Because my mum’s on benefits and we can’t afford new ones.’ she said bluntly.

‘Right, then we’ll go into town tomorrow and I’ll buy you a whole new wardrobe.’ Elaine slapped the gauntlet down, challenging the girl to beat her and assuming that age would trump gumption. It didn’t work.

Brodie rolled her eyes. ‘Nice one, lovely. That’ll work. Perhaps we can buy a few new scarves while we’re at it.’

Elaine folded her arms, ‘Oh, I see, like that is it?’ She leaned her weight on one hip and regarded Brodie with a mixture of amusement, affront and a tiny bit of admiration.

Brodie’s thin face broke into a sly smirk. ‘Yep. It is,’ she said. Her tongue was literally in her cheek. ‘Anyway, I like being scary. What’s your excuse?’

Elaine sighed, her indignation deflating like a tired balloon. ‘I’m a creature of habit, warts and all. Come on, Miriam will be wondering where you are and I’ve got things to do.’

They walked on, Brodie skipping ahead and kicking at loose stones. She danced around like a drunken football fan, reeling and rolling as she played in the dirt. Elaine envied her the freedom and her youth. Sometimes Elaine felt that she had been born old, like Benjamin Button, except she didn’t get to do the getting younger thing.

At Miriam’s gate they paused and Brodie turned to Elaine, ‘Are you really going to buy me something tomorrow?’ she asked with a sly smile, ‘Only there’s a really nice hoodie in the Animal shop. They do scarves too.’ she added, her tone turning hopeful.

Elaine laughed and slowly shook her head from side to side, a look of wry amusement on her face. ‘We’ll see, you cheeky little mare’.

Brodie beamed at her, and like lightning planted a feathery kiss on her cheek before vaulting over the gate and disappearing into the cottage.

Elaine stared after her for a moment. The infinitesimal weight of the kiss tingled on her cheek like the sting of a tiny, invisible tattoo. She reached up and touched the place where it sat and realised that she was smiling.

*

Alone in the cottage, all thoughts of the tasks Elaine had in mind disintegrated. Burned by unimportance, they fluttered away like ashes on the wind and she was left wondering what to do with herself. Brodie’s observations had made her brave and she took the decision to go upstairs and establish what all the fuss was about.

In front of a black pocked mirror in the bathroom she unwound the scarf and looked, for the first time in a long time, at the ragged scar that punctuated her skin like a Rubicon of angry lava. It ran from the left side of her neck along her collarbone and terminated at the top of her left breast. It was her brand, the mark that divided her from the concept of normal and set her apart from others. Jean had hated it and had forced the habit of keeping it covered. When she’d been a child it had been polo neck sweaters and stiff lace collars and she’d had the constant sense that she was being slowly suffocated. Her face twisted with anguish at the memory and she reached once more for her scarf. Concluding that she was better off with the devil she knew, she carefully wound the fabric around her neck and patted it into place. The motion dislodged a few grains of Jean, which had collected in the folds of fabric. They fell, seeding the room with smouldering discontent.