Guard herself from the words the envelope held within.
She’d ignored it for as long as possible. Hidden it from Dom. Tried to forget about it. She should’ve ripped it up and binned it. Why hadn’t she? Sleep had been impossible, her thoughts, her imagination, keeping her awake hour after hour. She knew this had to be done.
Taking the envelope once again, she stared at the postmark. At the logo. It was definitely from the solicitor.
It’d happened thirty years ago. Lizzie had only been eight years old, but some memories never faded. Some intensified with age. There was much she didn’t remember – but those gaps had often been filled in for her by the people in the children’s home. Carers, teachers, the other kids – they’d all had something to say about it.
A sour taste filled Lizzie’s mouth as saliva flooded it.
She had to face this.
Tearing open the envelope before she could change her mind again, she pulled the crisp, white, headed paper from it.
Dear Mrs Brenfield,
As per your request, I write to inform you that Mr William Cawley is to be released from HMP Baymead, Devon, on the 9th July 2019.
Lizzie’s vision blurred, her grip loosened. Before she could read on, the paper fell to the ground.
Creepy Cawley had been released from his thirty-year sentence three days ago.
He was a free man.
Bovey Police Station, outskirts of Mapledon
Friday 21st July – 36 hours after the incident
Shock covered her face with a white mask. She didn’t remember how she’d come to be there, standing alongside her mother, whose long, thin arm formed a tight band around her shoulders. Protective, yet angry at the same time.
‘I’d told her. Told them. Warned them.’ Her mother’s voice was clipped, spoken in such a way as to make her seem out of breath. Maybe she was in shock, too.
‘I’m sure you did what you could,’ police officer Vern said. ‘As a parent myself, I know how difficult it is to keep your eyes on your children all the time. You have to give them some freedom, and as you say, it’s a small village – you don’t expect something like this to happen.’
‘No. No, you don’t,’ she agreed, her head shaking from side to side.
‘I’m sorry to have to keep you, I know you’d like to get your daughter back home, but I do need to speak with her. Try to get a fuller picture – a timeframe of events. It’s crucial we don’t waste any more time … You understand, don’t you?’
Her mother looked down at her as the officer spoke. A tingling feeling spread through her, reaching her fingertips, making them feel as though they were on fire. There was something in the tone of the policeman’s voice – a hidden meaning she couldn’t grasp. But by the look on her mother’s face, she knew it was bad. It was all bad. And now she’d have to tell them what had happened. What she’d caused to happen.
It was all her fault. She’d get the blame for it all.
Friday 12th July
The sign, greying with age and rusted at the edges, came into view and Anna’s hands gripped the steering wheel tighter, her knuckles blanching.
MAPLEDON.
Even before she turned off the main road she could feel her world shrinking. The village had been all-consuming when she’d lived there – everyone had known everyone else, everyone attended the same events, frequented the same – and only – pub; all her friends’ parents lived in each other’s pockets, socialising together, some even working together. There were no secrets in Mapledon. No chances to mess up without someone knowing. No opportunities to play outside the rules.
She didn’t suppose it’d got any better in her absence.
As she took the right turn at the old tollhouse, the road narrowed. Anna tugged the steering wheel, pulling the car over abruptly. The light was fading more quickly now, the sun dipping behind the dark granite rock of Haytor on nearby Dartmoor. It was still warm, or maybe it was Anna’s anxiety heating her blood. She wound the window down, breathing in slowly and deeply. It even smelled the same. That couldn’t be possible, she knew – but it transported her back to her childhood. Back to the memories Mapledon held; the ghosts she’d left behind. With a deep sigh, Anna shook off the feeling and tried to gain control. She should get to her mother’s house before dark – before the ghosts came.
Shifting the gear into first, she set off again, heeding the twenty-mile-an-hour speed limit through the village. That was something new, at least. Second right, next left … She swallowed hard as she reached the turning to her mother’s road. Slowly, she drove in. Her heart banged. There it was. The 1960s magnolia-coloured, end terraced house she’d grown up in. She hadn’t visited the house since she’d left twenty years ago. She hadn’t even stepped foot in the village since she escaped its clutches. All contact with her mother had been through telephone calls and in person with her mother’s biannual trips to Anna’s house in Bristol.
Her mother had never argued when Anna had politely declined each of her invitations over the years. Never questioned why. She guessed Muriel knew without having to ask. Anna’s strained relationship with her mum had begun the day her father had walked out on them for another woman. Anna had always considered herself a daddy’s girl, so she was devastated when he left. She’d blamed everyone over the years: her mother, him, and even herself. But the full weight of her anger and bitterness had often been aimed at her mother – after all, she was the only one present and Anna believed Muriel had been the one to drive the poor man into someone else’s arms in the first place.
But he’d left Anna, too. For that she’d blamed him. He’d moved to the other end of the UK – Scotland, the farthest he could get – and had broken off all contact: not a phone call, not a letter. He’d abandoned his only daughter because of something her mother had done. That was unforgivable.
Anna pulled the key from the ignition and, with a dragging sensation in her stomach, got out of the car.
‘Bloody hell.’ Anna sucked in a lungful of air. Why hadn’t her mother removed the thing from the front door? It set a chill in motion, starting deep inside her belly and radiating outwards. And something else too – just outside her grasp. She imagined the attention Muriel would’ve got from the neighbours – she’d have revelled in that, no doubt. Approaching the front step, Anna couldn’t peel her eyes away from the gruesome head pinned like a horror-film prop on the door. Her mother would’ve left it there so that Anna could get the full effect.
She had to admit, seeing it for herself did add the extra fright factor. If she hadn’t seen it with her own eyes, she may well have dismissed Muriel’s hysteria out of hand. Rather than pass the macabre doll’s head, Anna retreated and made her way to the back door instead. Nothing about the house seemed to have changed – the gravel in the small square of garden to the side of the shed remained, the shed itself was clearly the original – the stained-red wood now flaky, splintered and