Rachel Bennett - Little Girls Tell Tales

‘I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘The only building that might’ve expanded into it would be the Wildlife Park.’ I pointed south, in the vague direction of the park. ‘But I’m not sure if anyone would be allowed to expand outwards into the curraghs. This is all protected land.’

‘Protected by who?’ Cora asked. ‘We’re not going to get arrested for going off-piste like this, are we?’

Dallin laughed. ‘National Heritage have got better things to do than prosecute ramblers. If anyone complains, we’ll say we got lost. Happens all the time, apparently.’

Cora set the pace, moving steadily between the trees, keeping to the scant dry patches of land, but never letting herself get drawn off the arrow-straight path she’d mapped. We followed her. I fell into a rhythm, glad we weren’t walking too fast. I worried now about exhausting myself before the day was half done. How had I not noticed my stamina was so low?

But, even with my internal concerns, it felt good to be out of the house. The curraghs were peaceful that morning. The early birds had flitted off to find breakfast, and the only noise came from the trees quietly whispering as they brushed together.

It was so peaceful in fact that I completely forgot I was supposed to be checking the ground for signs of the missing skeleton. It was Cora who reminded me. She cast her gaze back and forth with each step, searching the mud on either side, delaying each step forward until she was totally sure there was nothing there to find. I felt a pang of guilt. Neither me nor Dallin were paying as much attention as her. Perhaps subconsciously I agreed with Dallin – we were too close to the edge of the curraghs, and therefore there was no real point in looking out for anything.

After fifteen or twenty minutes, the trees thinned out further and the ground became a lot boggier. I spotted where a drainage ditch at the side of the field had burst into the curraghs. The water had an oily, polluted sheen to it.

‘I knew things were going too smoothly,’ Cora said. She stepped gingerly onto a tussock of grass, testing to make sure it wouldn’t spill her into the bog. ‘I think we can get across like this.’

‘I thought you’d figured it all out from your maps,’ Dallin said. ‘How come a patch of bog can sneak up on you?’

‘Maps and photos are all well and good,’ Cora said, ‘but no plan survives boots on the ground.’ She hopped to the next tussock. The movement sent ripples through the muddy water. ‘There’ll always be surprises. Not that I’m happy about it, of course. I don’t like guesswork. Don’t like not being sure. In an ideal world, a superior plan will always beat any surprise the world might throw at you. But, what can you do? I don’t—’

The next clump of grass was too small to bear her weight, and tipped her off balance. Cora made an ungainly leap for the safety of solid ground. She fell only a little short. One foot went down into the mud, almost to the top of her welly, but she was able to grab a branch and haul herself free. Her booted foot plopped free with a sucking noise and a belch of bad air. Still hanging onto the tree, Cora kicked some of the mud off her boots, flapping her free hand in a vain attempt to disperse the silage smell. She glanced at her GPS.

‘It’s okay,’ she said. ‘We’re still on track.’

‘Balls to this,’ Dallin said. ‘I’m going around.’

‘Quitter.’ Cora grinned.

It took me considerably longer to get across, but with Cora calling encouragement, I made it, via a more circuitous route. I got a high-five and a smile from Cora, which made the whole endeavour worthwhile.

‘Great. We’re still on course,’ Cora said. ‘Well, two thirds of us are, anyway.’ She tilted her head. Some distance away, Dallin was trying with little success to find a dry path. It was possible to track his progress by the steady stream of swearing coming from amongst the trees.

‘I’m glad we’re not relying on him for directions,’ Cora said. ‘He’s more … out of his element than I expected.’

‘It’s a long time since he’s been home,’ I said, then corrected myself. ‘Since he’s been here . And, I know he lived with all this on his doorstep, but he never … he never felt comfortable out here, in the curraghs. He stuck to the main paths. Never went off exploring like this.’

‘He’s missing out.’ Cora consulted her GPS, and pulled her hat down more securely over her ears. ‘This place is something else. What about you?’

‘Oh. I lived with our dad. When our parents split up.’ I shrugged. ‘Well, you know what it’s like, when things go bad between people. Me and Dallin were caught in the middle. He ended up living with Mum; I lived with Dad.’

‘That must’ve been difficult.’

‘You get used to things.’ It hadn’t seemed too strange at the time. Lots of kids at school had unconventional home-lives. ‘But it meant me and Dallin were never really close. We went to different schools, had different friends, only saw each other at weekends and holidays. What about you?’ I asked then. ‘Were you and Simone close?’

‘No.’ Cora laughed at my obvious surprise. ‘Not all the time. We could fight like two cats in a bin liner when the mood took us.’

‘So why—?’ I bit my tongue.

Cora smiled sadly, like this wasn’t the first time the question had come up. ‘A lot of the time, I wasn’t as good a sister as I could’ve been,’ she said. ‘It took me a while to realise that. And longer before I knew I had to make up for it. Searching for Simone now is pretty much the only thing I can do for her.’

I peered through the trees. We could still hear Dallin but couldn’t see him. ‘Should we wait for Dallin?’ I asked.

‘He’ll catch up,’ Cora said. ‘C’mon. We don’t want to lose time.’

Dallin did indeed catch up. But he remained sullen and uncommunicative. I couldn’t help notice his trainers and the cuffs of his jeans were covered with mud.

There was an odd mood to the search party as the morning wore on. We couldn’t forget why we were there. But the very fact gave us a purpose.

‘It’s weird,’ Cora admitted. ‘I’ve been planning this for so long. We’ve been planning this.’ She glanced back at Dallin, who was still bringing up the rear. There was a look on her face that I hoped I’d misinterpreted. ‘It’s hard to believe we’re finally here. This feels like … I don’t want to jinx it. But you feel it, right? This feels like something. Like this could be the real thing.’

I didn’t know what to tell her. ‘You’ve been searching for about three years, right?’

‘I ought to say I’ve been looking since Simone disappeared, but that’s not really true. I’ve always been asking questions. Three years ago I started properly searching.’

‘Why then?’

‘My mother got ill. Pneumonia. For a while we thought – we thought we were going to lose her.’ Cora brushed her fingers against a tree as she passed, letting her touch rest a moment on the bark. ‘She was delirious for a bit, in hospital. She kept thinking I was Simone. It made me realise … none of us ever got closure. When Simone vanished, she ripped a big hole in our family. I hadn’t properly understood what it’d done to us. So that’s why I started looking.’

I raised my eyes briefly to the tangled tree branches above us. ‘And it led you here.’

‘Eventually. There’s been a hell of a lot of false starts.’ Cora pushed aside a springy branch that attempted to bop her face. ‘There were a few times when it felt like we were getting close. Last year I was convinced I’d traced her to a remote part of Scotland. I trekked all the way up there and spent a very long weekend in the weirdest bed and breakfast ever. Ask me about it after a couple of drinks sometime.’