Mel Sherratt - Hush Hush

‘Did you only have the one?’ Grace asked.

‘Yes. I didn’t want any more. I remember my friend having several and I thought at the time it was greedy. How can you give attention to more than one thing at a time? They’re collectors’ items now, you know.’ She clicked on to Google. ‘That one has a sixty-quid price tag.’

‘Maybe Ken will be delivered tomorrow,’ Alex smirked, butting into the conversation.

‘I’m surprised you know she had a beau!’ Grace laughed.

‘I have two older sisters. They used to nick my Action Man and hide him all the time.’

‘You wuss! You let them girls walk all over you,’ Sam teased.

As everyone took a few moments out to join in with the toy-related banter, Grace ran a hand around the inside of the envelope again, but there was nothing else inside it.

‘Do you think it’s anyone from your Manchester crew, winding you up?’ Perry asked.

‘I bet it is,’ Grace said, but she felt strangely unnerved.

Would it be someone she knew? She wouldn’t put it past any jokers at the station where she used to work, although they would probably have done something like this during her first week here. But how would they know about this doll? Could it be a coincidence?

She opened a desk drawer, placed the doll back into the envelope and popped it out of sight for now. When she looked up, Nick was beckoning her into his office.

‘Can you go and see Kathleen Steele?’ he asked as she got to him.

‘Yes, sir. I’ll take Perry with me,’ Grace said.

‘No, go alone – try and get her at home. Pry gently, if you know what I mean.’

Grace knew exactly what he meant. Go against their DCI’s instructions. ‘I don’t think—’ she started.

Nick put up his hand. ‘It’ll be fine. I’ll square it if necessary.’

She woke to the sound of screams and sat up quickly in bed.

‘Mummy?’ Pulling the covers back, she tiptoed across the carpet. When she reached the door, she hesitated. What if Daddy was so cross that he hit her again?

‘Leave me alone!’

A bang. She jumped and almost ran back to hide under the covers, but there was another scream. She couldn’t leave her mummy in the hands of a monster.

She opened the door. Another bang and the sound of breaking glass. She padded across the tiny hallway. The living room door was ajar so she peeped around the corner of the frame. Mummy and Daddy were on the floor. Daddy was on top of Mummy, but Daddy had his hands around Mummy’s throat. Mummy was going red in the face.

‘Mummy!’ she screamed.

They both turned towards her, the room dropping into silence except for the sound of heavy breathing.

‘Get back to bed.’ Daddy pointed at her.

‘You’re hurting Mummy!’

‘If you don’t move by the time I count to three, it will be my hands around your neck.’

‘Go back to bed, darling,’ Mummy said. Her voice didn’t sound like Mummy. It was all croaky and had a shake in it.

She shook her head.

Daddy got to his feet slowly. She froze as he clenched his fist and came towards the door. Then he slammed it shut in her face.

She ran back to her room. Because she knew what would happen next. Her plan hadn’t worked. Grabbing her teddy bear, she crept into the wardrobe. She covered her ears with her hands to block out the sound of Mummy’s screams. On and on they went.

‘Don’t hurt my mummy,’ she sobbed.

She hated it inside the wardrobe. It was dark and things dangled over her and scared her. But it felt safer than being in bed.

And then it went quiet. She squeezed the teddy to her chest. She could hear Mummy crying too.

‘Don’t hurt her, George, please,’ she begged. ‘She’s only six.’

‘Get her in here.’

‘No, let her be.’

There were bangs, as if someone had fallen. She heard Mummy groan. And then the bedroom door opened.

‘I’ll break every bone in your body if you don’t come out from where you’re hiding.’

Daddy’s voice was so loud and scary. She held her breath, trying not to let him know where she was.

The wardrobe door was flung open. Daddy stood there. He had taken off his belt and wrapped it around his hand. She could see the buckle hanging down.

‘Please don’t hurt me, Daddy,’ she cried.

He reached inside the wardrobe, grabbed a handful of her hair and pulled her to her feet.

‘Come here, you little bitch.’

After dropping her team off at Steele’s Gym, Grace headed for the north of the city. It was an address she hoped she’d never have to revisit and just the thought of it was enough to make her want to drive to the M6, the city’s nearest motorway, and go anywhere instead.

Moreover, she wondered if maybe after her chat with the DCI she shouldn’t be going to this address alone, but ultimately this wasn’t Steele’s Gym, and that was the only place she’d been explicitly warned about.

Brown Edge was a small village built on one of the south-westerly spurs of the Pennine Chain and looked particularly colourful now that autumn was creeping up on them. After she had passed fields and farms to get to the address in Woodhouse Lane, she pulled in at the side of the road and took a deep breath. Hardman House had been her childhood home. It wasn’t a happy place. Even after this length of time away, there would still be ghosts of the past around, and in, every corner.

She got out of the car and walked up the driveway. Her footsteps were heavy, her heart beating as loud as a soldier’s on a quick-march. The house was a pre-war detached with a double frontage and large bay windows. Years ago, her mum had told her that George had inherited it from his parents and hadn’t spent any money on it so it had deteriorated, along with their marriage. The building itself was exactly as she remembered it, bar replacement windows and doors and a lick of paint here and there. The concrete on the driveway was old and breaking up, revealing pebble lakes that she walked around.

All at once, she remembered the places she used to hide: behind the bin store, the outhouse that led out to the garden, the attic with its winding staircase that George found hard to negotiate when he’d had a drink, the cupboard under the stairs – until he’d put a lock on it and used it to keep her in.

And the place where her nightmares had started.

She knocked briskly on the front door and took out her warrant card. A woman who appeared to be in her late fifties answered it. Her face was made-up as if it had been professionally done, her clothes immaculate. She pushed long tendrils of dark hair, flecks of grey apparent, behind her ears. She looked well, no clear signs of age interfering with her health. Her eyes reminded Grace of Jade, but her colouring was like Eddie and Leon’s.

She almost bounced forward a step on heels as Grace held up her warrant card.

‘Mrs Kathleen Steele? I’m DS Allendale and—’

‘I know who you are,’ the woman interrupted, smiling brightly. ‘Come on through.’

Trying not to show surprise at Kathleen’s over-friendly manner, Grace stepped inside the hallway, flinching as the door was closed behind her. It had always seemed dingy in her memories, but now it was light and airy. The wooden panels were still on the bottom half of the wall but the colour above them was a bright baby blue rather than the oppressive red she could remember.

She looked up to see the large opaque window above the stairs had been replaced with coloured glass, the image of a sunflower as bright as the sun coming through it. Yet even though the decor had most likely been changed several times since the night Grace and her mum had left, no one could erase the memories of those torturous years from within its walls.