Lucilla

by David A. Riley

Table of Contents, parts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11

part 9

Pupils streamed from the building, bags and satchels swinging through the air, but their appearance was far less chaotic than the arrival of their parental cars had been. Victoria and Miranda moved nearer the gates so Daisy and Wendy would see them when they emerged.

The first to arrive was Wendy, running and weaving between larger, older children.

“Mummy! Mummy! Mummy!” She grasped a wrinkled sheet of paper in one hand, which Miranda saw was a watercolour painting with the obligatory one-inch strip of blue at the top for the sky, a yellow sun radiating splashes of light, and a stick-figure in the middle which she did not need to guess was meant to be her mother.

Victoria held it in both hands, admiring what her daughter had painted while Wendy gaspingly told her all about it. And for one moment, Miranda felt a twinge of envy. At thirty, though, she wasn’t too old to have a Wendy of her own one day, she told herself. All she had to do was to stop regarding every man she met as a selfish, sarcastic brute like her father.

That was all, she thought, knowing just how tough that would be. Not helped by the bad experiences she’d had when she’d tried to ignore her doubts. Perhaps she just couldn’t see what bastards some men could be till it was too late. Or fail to see those who weren’t when she met them.

Victoria showed her the picture, her pride in what her daughter had daubed across the thick sheet of coarse paper brimming over. “Well done, Wendy, well done.”

Miranda glanced at her watch. By now ten minutes had passed and most of the other groups of parents and their offspring had begun to disappear. Even the traffic snarl up had almost unravelled itself.

She saw Victoria glance apprehensively at the school.

“You don’t suppose she’s been kept back for some reason?” Miranda said.

Victoria shook her head. “She has her mobile. She’d have rung by now if she had.”

Just then they saw her, heading their way, hands folded across her chest, head down.

“She was impossible this morning,” Victoria confided as they watched Daisy thread as close to the wall as she could between groups of children still hanging around, waiting. “I virtually had to order her into the car. I swear she wanted me to bring it even closer to the door if I could. The little madam.”

“Is she often like that?”

“Never. It was as if she was frightened of going outside.” She shook her head. “I suppose they all get phases.”

Miranda watched as Daisy drew nearer. The girl looked up from staring at her feet, her eyes scanning the length of the road, obviously searching for sight of her mother’s car. As soon as she saw them standing there, Miranda was sure a look of dismay flooded her face. The girl ran towards them, scattering other pupils out of her way.

“Where is it?” she all but shouted at her mother, clinging to her, her words bursting from her mouth in near hysteria.

“We walked,” Victoria said, plainly astonished at the reaction. “It’ll do us good to use our legs for once.”

“No!” the girl shouted. “I can’t. We mustn’t.”

“It’s too late for that.” Victoria’s voice was surprisingly calm, though there was an edge to it. “I’m not walking all that way to drive back and pick you up just because you don’t want to walk. Now stop being silly.”

Miranda saw a look of irritation on her sister’s face.

“Do you want to hold my hand?” Miranda asked the girl.

Daisy looked up at her. There was confusion in her eyes, and Miranda wondered whether the girl even understood her own fears. She glanced around the street. Miranda noticed that she looked upwards too, as if she were worried about the branches of the trees along the kerb. Miranda held out her hand. Daisy sidled forwards, keeping close to the school wall, then reached up and grasped it.

Obviously mimicking her older sister, with a huge grin Wendy took hold of her mother’s hand, and together they started off home, though Miranda winced at the tightness of Daisy’s grip on her fingers. She looked down at her now and then, each time seeing Daisy’s eyes staring back at hers, their intensity startling.

So much like Lucilla’s, Miranda thought, her stomach clenching with apprehension. Was her grasp on reality so loose that she was starting to imagine impossible things like this? Lucilla is dead, she told herself. She had to accept that, however much she had somehow begun to love the girl in her final days.

In her imagination, she could see Lucilla’s butchered remains on the mortuary slab, photographed, examined, and catalogued, every detail of the damage inflicted on them written up for the police and their investigation. With all that had happened Miranda knew she could not afford to break down now. Whoever killed Lucilla is still out there, she told herself.

Whatever it was, Miranda thought, pursing her brows when she tried to remember what she saw of the attacker. And the sounds. The horrible, terrible ripping sounds. The bangs and crashes.

Miranda looked down at Daisy’s eyes in her solemn, frightened, pallid face. They were just the child’s eyes, she rebuked herself. Nothing more. Not Lucilla’s — Daisy’s.

But why had Daisy started to fear the outdoors?

Why did she come to her room last night and say, “Miranda... I need your help, Miranda”?

Why did her face remind her so much of Lucilla’s, though the two were so dissimilar?

* * *

Miranda was relieved when they arrived back home. The girls were bundled indoors, where Daisy seemed to recover from her “bout of nerves,” as Victoria called it, running upstairs to the room she was sharing with Wendy.

“I don’t know what’s come over the girl,” Victoria said. “It’ll pass. These things always do, so I’ve heard,” she added with a rueful smile. “She’s entering that age when they start to act peculiar now and then.”

Miranda smiled and said nothing. There was nothing she could say that her sister would either want to hear or choose to believe. Not that she wanted to believe any of it, either. Far too much had happened over the past few days that didn’t make sense. What she needed was peace and normality now. Loads of normality, she thought, longingly, as humdrum, as commonplace, as boring as possible, please help me God.

Though there was little that was more humdrum, commonplace or boring than Bill, who arrived home at six, looking tired as usual. Victoria told him about their visit from the police as they sat in the kitchen, drinking coffee, though it was obvious he didn’t relish listening to any of it, none of which fitted his narrow world of work and watching TV.

It was a world that Miranda envied now, one that had been very much her own, she realised, a short while ago; an insight that shocked her a little. Had she been so much like Bill? she wondered, before she remembered that her work had been out in the real world dealing with real problems, with women who had suffered at the hands and fists of abusive partners. When she returned home at night, the escape into wine and watching TV was at least excusable. What was Bill’s? Escape from the boredom of his accountancy office?

Miranda turned away from them. She had no right to criticise Bill, she knew. Not now. Not after the way she had made such a mess of things.

If she had done what Mary Milligan had told her, Lucilla would have been sent on to another Shelter and might still be alive. Mary might still be alive as well. And she, Miranda, would have a job. And a flat. And a life of her own.

* * *

“Perhaps I should move out,” she said after tea when she and Victoria were clearing away the dishes and Bill and the girls were in the living room, watching a DVD.

Victoria looked at her in astonishment. “Don’t be ridiculous. Have we made you unwelcome?”

“Not at all,” Miranda said.

“Then why?”

“I don’t know. I’m not sure. Except,” she said, “I feel as if I’m involving you all in something you would be better off without.”

“What nonsense,” Victoria said. “We’re family. I’m sure you’d stand by us if we had problems you could help us with. It’s little enough we’re doing anyway, offering you a bed.”

“You’re offering me more than that. I don’t feel I deserve it after what’s happened. You’re giving me a place in your family, which means more to me than anything else. I just hope,” she added, unable to hide the worry from her voice, “I don’t let you down.”

Scoffing at the very idea, Victoria took her sister in her arms. “I’ll let you know soon enough if you let us down. That’s what older sisters are for. But I don’t think you will.”

Miranda hoped she was right, but her doubts would not let go.

At first Miranda tried to resist the temptation to have more alcohol that night but, after the girls had gone to bed, Victoria opened a bottle of wine. ‘

Just one glass, Miranda thought. Her shoulders felt tense and the sight of her sister and brother-in-law enjoying the wine was too much for her. Though it always had been, she knew, as she took her first sip and felt some of the stiffness melt away.

Before long, Bill began to doze, chin pressed against his chest, one hand still firmly gripping his empty glass.

Victoria glanced at him. “No staying power,” she said, refilling hers and Miranda’s glasses. “Then again, we Walters girls have always had good heads for drink. Remember when I used to take you to the pub with the gang?”

The “gang” was Victoria’s closest friends from sixth form college, then in their final year, while Miranda was in her last year at school, though already she looked as old as the others if she applied enough makeup. Miranda had tagged along with them, Victoria surreptitiously adding the odd stiff drink to her Cokes. And though their mother had always abhorred their coming home the worse for drink, they were perhaps the only times either of them got anything approaching appreciation from their father.

Like father, like daughters, Miranda thought. Why fight it?

Not that she felt like fighting it now. The more they drank, the more she knew she wanted to, if only because it helped blunt the sharpness of whatever she felt over what had happened. Dulled the senses. Becalmed her conscience. Made everything that much easier to ignore. Or forget.

They avoided the news on TV. Too much time was still being spent on the horrors that happened at Miranda’s flat, even though most of it was only on the regional news.

“Thank Christ no reporters have found out that you’re here,” Victoria said, though Miranda knew it was only a matter of time.

“What’ll we do if they do find out?” Miranda asked. “We can’t subject the girls to that, especially when their friends at school hear about it.”

So far, the only reference to Miranda had been that a girl’s body had been found murdered in “a flat belonging to a social worker” who was not suspected of being involved in what happened. The only reference so far, Miranda thought to herself, though she knew she wasn’t beyond suspicion despite the lack of evidence to show she had been physically involved in the slaying.

“It’s not been long since it happened,” Miranda went on. “Give them time and even the Evening Chronicle will come knocking at your door.”

“Much good that will do them,” Victoria said with the conviction four large glasses of wine had already instilled her with.

“I’m serious,” Miranda rebuked her. “It’ll take more than just telling them to bugger off.”

“That’s a start, why knock it?”

The sisters laughed, though Miranda’s humour felt forced, knowing the true test of sisterly support would come when this happened. That would perhaps be a good time to drive away to avoid all of this, taking some of the heat from Victoria and her family. She still had enough credit on her cards to afford to hide away for several months.

Miranda glanced towards the glass-panelled door into the hallway. Through the dappled panes she could see the stairs, up which, hopefully, Daisy would be asleep by now. She was worried about the girl, especially after the way she had begun to behave. How much worse would she be if she heard about the murder at her aunt’s flat? Miranda would either become a figure of shame in Daisy’s eyes or be transmogrified into some mysterious celebrity. Whatever happened, Miranda knew she would never be looked at by Daisy as the same safe, dependable, comfortable aunt she had been in the past, and she regretted this — something else she would lose because of her decision to take Lucilla to her flat. Were the few days of happiness she enjoyed with that girl worth all of this, she wondered, regretting it more than anything else she had ever done in her life?

“Was there a noise upstairs?” Victoria asked.

Miranda heard it, too, perhaps one of the girls groaning in her sleep. She put down her glass. “I’ll check,” she said before Victoria could move. “It’ll only take a second, and I need the loo anyway,” she added as an excuse.

She shut the living room door behind her, before hurrying upstairs. The air felt cold — unnaturally cold — despite the central heating. Miranda’s pulse raced as she neared the landing. Not again, she thought, feeling the desperation of her plea. Please, God, not again.

Proceed to part 10...

Copyright © 2022 by David A. Riley