Simon Beckett - The Restless Dead

But that didn’t happen so much any more, she told Leo, not since her dad became ill. She didn’t know what was wrong with him, but he would shut himself away in his study for days. Even when he came out he hardly ever spoke, and Rowan’s mum had told her he needed to be left alone. So now she was left to entertain herself as she liked.

And, for an hour each day, so was Leo.

From then on the two of them met every afternoon. They didn’t always stay on the dunes. They would walk in the hot sun, often all the way into the Backwaters, which Rowan loved. She was familiar with every ditch and channel, knew which parts were safe even at high tide and which parts to avoid. They would talk, each of them telling the other things they’d never spoken of to anyone else. Rowan told him how she heard her mum crying and sometimes shouting at her dad, who was becoming ever more distant. In turn, Leo told her how he hated boarding school and the boys who went there. He even admitted he was frightened of his father.

One afternoon, he told her about dressing in his mother’s clothes.

His face burned after he’d said it, but Rowan didn’t seem to think there was anything wrong. She told him she did the same herself, and Leo felt a wave of unaccustomed happiness. For the first time in his young life he’d found someone he could talk to freely. Share his secret with.

Later, he couldn’t remember who came up with the idea, only how excited they both were about it. Plans were breathlessly made for the following afternoon, and then it was time to go. As he hurried away, Leo was so distracted he didn’t see Porter until he spoke.

The driver was standing between two dunes, a streamer of blue smoke curling from his cigarette. Leo quickly looked back to see the small figure of Rowan disappearing down the beach. Watching her go, Porter smirked and wagged a finger at Leo. What would your father say, he asked?

Leo’s heart was pounding. His first thought was that Porter had heard what he and Rowan had been planning. But the driver had been too far away, and once Leo realized that a new emotion took over. He found himself hating that smirking face, almost shaking at the thought of his cherished new friendship threatened by his father’s employee. He’d say he doesn’t pay you to smoke or meet girls, Leo said.

Porter’s pockmarked cheeks had darkened, but it wasn’t mentioned again.

The following afternoon, as they set off in the car, Leo waited until the house was out of sight and then asked to be let out. Porter was reluctant, but Leo had learned that secrets worked both ways. And when he revealed he’d seen the driver taking boxes away from the summerhouse in the grounds, Porter pulled over. He wasn’t smiling any more, and swore under his breath when Leo got out and said he could go.

But he still did as he was told.

In the quiet as the car engine died away, Leo hurried to the summerhouse. Hidden behind a thicket of trees and bushes, the small, single-storey structure was built from overlapping planks nailed to a rough timber frame. It was meant to resemble a Swiss chalet, and years ago it had been used for entertaining. But that was before Leo was born: now, weathered and warped, it was only used for storage.

A door stood in the middle of a small covered porch, on either side of which were cobwebbed windows. Leo looked around to make sure no one was watching. He’d sneaked in here many times before, but he had to be careful.

His parents would be furious if they found out.

He felt in the window box, where dead and desiccated weeds clung to the dust-like earth. The key was still there, so Leo fitted it into the lock and opened the door. It squealed on dry hinges as he pushed it open. The chalet was hot and airless. A dry, scratchy smell of sun-baked pine tickled his nose as he stepped inside. It was full of cardboard boxes and wooden packing cases. There were old suitcases and trunks as well, though not so many since Porter had taken some of them away. Leo had watched from the trees, unseen, while the driver had let himself in, emerging a few minutes later with the first of several boxes and small pieces of old furniture. He’d loaded them into the car boot before driving off, but even though Leo didn’t think his father knew, it never occurred to him to say anything.

He only cared that one particular suitcase hadn’t been touched.

When Rowan arrived she looked uncertain at finding herself in this new place, so close to the grand house. But Leo felt full of confidence. The anticipation he’d felt all day infected them both as they began exploring the suitcase’s contents. Leo thought the clothes might have belonged to his mother, but it must have been a long time ago. The short dresses and skirts were brightly coloured and much too small for her now.

Neither he nor Rowan minded the smell of mothballs as they began trying on the clothes. Costume jewellery and shoes first, strapped sandals with platform heels and gaudy necklaces. Then blouses and skirts. Small as the clothes were, they were still too big but that hardly mattered. Inside the chalet, with sunlight streaming through the old muslin curtains, it felt like they were in another, private world. Leo felt dizzy with a sense of homecoming, a feeling he would try, and fail, to recapture with alcohol when he was older. He had on a bright-blue dress, Rowan a matching orange top and skirt, giggling as she slid bangles over his hand. One of them was tortoiseshell, almost luminous as the sun shone through it, and afterwards Leo would remember the bone-like rattle they made as they slid down his wrist.

He still had his arm raised when the door was torn open. He saw Rowan’s face change as she looked behind him, and then he was wrenched around. He found himself staring into a face so contorted at first he didn’t recognize his father. Leo’s head snapped back and forward as he was shaken, then a blow to his cheek knocked him to the floor. Stunned, he saw a flash of orange as Rowan ran for the door, only to fall as his father reflexively lashed out. Leo was yanked up and shaken again, so hard he couldn’t see. His father was shouting at him, but he couldn’t tell what. And then, quite distinctly, he heard another voice say, ‘Oh, fuck!’

The next thing he knew, Porter was pulling his father away, pushing in between them. Leo fell back into the boxes, hearing only disconnected sounds. Then he was being half-carried, half-dragged towards the door. Rowan was on the floor, unmoving in her too-big orange clothes. She was very still. He couldn’t see her face, but there was a large, dark mark on the corner of a wooden packing crate next to where she lay. It looked sticky and wet.

That was his last sight of her. The door closed, hiding her from view, and after that things became muddled. Leo could remember being put into the car, and someone — either Porter or his father, he wasn’t sure — dragged off the dress and roughly bundled him into his own clothes. Sometime later he heard his mother’s voice, asking how he’d managed to have such a silly accident. And then he was in cool sheets, drifting away in a darkened room.

Next morning, without explanation, Leo was driven back to the Villiers’ main house. He slept for most of the journey, waking every now and then to see the back of Porter’s sunburned neck in front of him. Years later he would suspect he’d had a concussion, but at the time he welcomed the numb, fogged state that stopped him from thinking clearly. At one point he roused himself enough to ask about Rowan.

She went home, Porter answered without turning round.

No one ever mentioned the incident again. Leo’s recollection of it soon faded and became dreamlike, until he could barely remember the young girl he’d made friends with that summer. If he did happen to think about her, or that afternoon in the chalet, it brought such a stifling sense of panic that it was easier not to think about it at all.