Ghostbird Read online

  But some mornings her eyes deceived her. She imagined a tiny cardigan left on the edge of her bed. She would hear a peal of laughter, and through it, a door slamming and Teilo’s voice. ‘We’re going for a walk.’

  The crumpled note dropped from her hand onto the floor.

  I think of her every moment, I always shall. The absence was as keen as if it was attached to her and she had no desire to remove it.

  From time to time she would pause outside Cadi’s room, push open the door, watch her sleeping and breathing, and try to place her, the cuckoo child.

  Thirty-four

  Early morning: the first soft light.

  Cats made their way home; a pale sun rose over the hill. The church clock chimed six.

  Lili walked out across the damp grass, down the brick path to the cherry tree. She shook a branch and caught the cold dew in her hand. Reaching higher, she flicked another branch. More drops scattered onto her head. She ran her fingers through her hair, shaking it, winding it back into a knot.

  Mornings suited Lili. She liked their honesty. What you saw was what you got.

  She sat down. The grass lay daisy-dotted and thick as carpet. Mr Furry appeared from the shivery undergrowth and jumped onto her lap.

  ‘I could have been kinder to Owen.’ She stroked the cat’s thick coat. ‘What do you think, lovely boy? Have I made things worse?’

  A leaf fluttered down, bouncing off the arm of the chair. She shifted the cat, leaned down to pick up the leaf. Summer green it had no business falling.

  Here in her mother’s garden, Lili’s recalled both her parents. She tried to imagine dying from a broken heart, as she believed her mother had done. How comforting to experience a love for life.

  Is it what I want? She didn’t think so. Love required you to lose yourself. Look at Violet.

  ‘If Owen hasn’t gone, I may have to conjure a spell, puss bach, and banish him.’

  The cat nudged her hand.

  It wasn’t about bitterness or grudges. ‘We don’t need him, that’s all.’

  Violet, she knew, was full of bitterness. There were times when she didn’t give a damn if her sister-in-law lay awake at night mourning her lost child.

  ‘She needs to take care of the living.’ Mr Furry’s purr deepened and Lili chose to believe it was in agreement. ‘She ought to be grateful for the child she has, and pull herself together.’

  The unkind part of Lili wanted to punish Violet for her selfishness. Loyalty was like elastic, it had a breaking point. Lili could almost wish Violet would follow up her threat, and go away.

  ‘No,’ she whispered. ‘It’s Owen who has to go.’

  The cat’s purr became a rumble. Looking up, Lili saw Violet’s shadow behind a window, heard the faint sound of music from a radio. Nothing felt right and all at once the air in the garden became charged, the hairs on her arm stood on end and tiny sparks flickered in the air.

  Mr Furry leapt from her lap into the other chair. She watched as he puddled the cushion into submission. The smell of lake water filled the air, strong enough to make Lili think it might be creeping along the lane to lap at the garden walls.

  You’re sick in the head if you want to keep going there…

  Lili knew better. Her connection to the lake was every bit as powerful as Cadi’s. Water didn’t worry either of them and it hadn’t bothered Teilo either. It wasn’t the lake that was the problem.

  If Teilo had only listened to me, none of this would have happened. She didn’t want to feel this way. I want a wand that works and for Owen Penry not to have come back.

  The warning sensation followed her into the house. To counter her unease she looked for distraction.

  A pile of folded clothes: two frocks of Cadi’s and a skirt, an old pair of jeans and some underwear. Lili liked to iron and she wasn’t keen on muddle. She switched on the radio. The iron swished and smoothed, back and forth.

  Hanging the clothes over one arm, tucking the underwear under the other, Lili walked round to Violet’s cottage. She would put the clothes away. A small kindness might ease her conscience. Being a bitch isn’t really what I do, whatever Violet thinks.

  In Cadi’s room, she hung the frocks on hangers on the door, laid the underwear on the bed. Cadi could put it away later. She sat on the bed, smoothing the plain white bedspread, remembering the room. Teilo repainted it for Dora, pale yellow and creamy white – meadowsweet and broom colours for a flower-faced child.

  It was ridiculously tidy. No mess or muddle, no discarded clothes, no magazines or make-up lying around. The bookcase was neat, the shoes in front of it neater still. Even Cadi’s desk was tidy: a pile of schoolbooks and a pot containing pens and feathers, a couple of folders, a thesaurus and a dictionary.

  On her dressing table, a scattering of picture postcards tucked into the mirror, draped over it, a collection of necklaces and a loop of fairy lights. A bundle of hair ribbons in a basket and a hairbrush. A few posters: a smiling Amy Winehouse and her impossible hair, British Birds and a blown up black and white picture of Anne Frank.

  An enclosed space, arranged for a solitary girl.

  Lili recalled herself at fourteen. She may have been equally solitary; she’d had a great many more posters, and a lot more friends. Apart from Cerys, Cadi didn’t seem to have anyone.

  When it was mine this room welcomed people. Mam used to make me invite my friends, and I did. Her hand lingered on the bedspread.

  Cadi had created a nest – little cuckoo. Blinking away a tear, Lili patted the bed and left.

  And the little ghost sighed…

  Waking in a narrow bed, in a room over the village shop, Owen Penry watched thin clouds stretching across the skylight window. Drops of rain bounced off the glass. Clasping his hands behind his head, he conjured his perfect woman. Wild hair and a naked body, pale as moonlight.

  He thought, at times, all a man has to look back on is his foolishness.

  Thirty-five

  The sound of scratching woke her.

  Cadi heard it again; a rasping sound, as if something was trying to get into the room. Pushing back the duvet she sat on the edge of the bed. Across the room, the rocking horse cast a blank eye her way. Sliding the curtain aside she looked out into the darkness, her palm pressed to the windowpane.

  The ghost tries to speak.

  She feels as if her throat is full of twigs. She can see her sister peering into the gloom, her hand on the window.

  I’m here…

  Does her sister hear her?

  Her talons skitter on the tree branch.

  I’m here…

  The twigs in her throat make it hard to breathe.

  Maddau…

  A door slams and the curtain shivers as Cadi turns away. As her sister disappears from view, the ghost wails her fury and feels her wings strengthening.

  ‘Cadi, for goodness sake, close the window. How many times do I have to tell you?’

  It was Violet. The alarm in her voice broke the spell, the scratching stopped and Cadi felt the solid wood of the window frame as she leaned against it.

  ‘It’s her,’ she whispered.

  Her mother was pulling her away from the sill. ‘What is? What are you talking about?’ Using her free hand, Violet closed the window.

  ‘No,’ Cadi said. ‘Look, it’s a word.’ On the other side of the window she watched as letters formed out of the snaking mist.

  ‘It’s just fog, Cadi.’ Violet tugged at the curtains.

  It began to rain.

  Cadi snatched at her mother’s hand. ‘That word.’ She tried to push the curtain open again. ‘She said, “maddau” and now she’s trying to write it. Look.’

  ‘Cadi, stop this. Get into bed.’

  The mist began losing its definition.

  Violet’s grip on the curtain prevailed and she pulled it hard across the window. ‘I won’t tell you again, you have to close your window at night in case it rains.’

  ‘It wasn’t even open that far.’
>
  Violet didn’t seem to have heard her. ‘I suppose Lili’s been telling you fresh air’s good for you.’

  Cadi wondered what her mother would say if she told her her dead child was writing messages in mist. ‘Did you really not see anything?’

  ‘There’s nothing out there. You must have been dreaming, or sleep-walking.’

  If I tell her it was Dora, she’ll freak. Cadi slumped onto her bed.

  ‘You spend too much time listening to Lili’s nonsense. Rain soaked curtains go mouldy.’ Violet tried to tuck the duvet around Cadi.

  ‘You don’t know anything about it.’ Cadi pushed her mother’s hand away. ‘And you don’t listen.’ The words sounded lame, and not at all what she wanted to say.

  ‘I don’t want to, not if you keep listening to Lili’s rubbish and it gives you nightmares.’

  ‘Lili’s stories never give me nightmares.’

  ‘I’ve heard enough, Cadi.’ Violet smoothed the edge of the duvet. ‘It’s the middle of the night. Go to sleep.’

  The door clicked shut.

  I’m going round in circles. Cadi wasn’t keeping secrets – she was trying to unravel one. And whichever way she looked at it, the key might just lie under Violet’s bed.

  She tried to tell Lili about the mist, and asked her what “maddau” meant.

  ‘What?’ Lili watered the herbs on her windowsill.

  ‘Do you know what it means?’

  ‘Of course I do, it means “forgive.” Why?’

  Cadi said she’d heard it somewhere.

  ‘Forgive and forget.’ Lili smiled. ‘I’ve forgotten more Welsh than I learned.’

  Pleased that Lili had been distracted, Cadi opened the laptop and pretended to concentrate on her school project. ‘It’s about Skomer Island and the puffins.’

  ‘There’s a website, I expect. Google it.’

  ‘Thanks, I will.’

  Lili nodded. ‘There we are then; fill your boots, cariad. I’ll see you at lunchtime. I’ll bring us a pizza.’

  Thirty-six

  Violet’s room was more closed off than Cadi remembered.

  Opening the door, she vowed to make up for what she was about to do. Still she hesitated. What sort of a person was she?

  Across the window, heavy curtains held the light at bay. The carelessly made bed took up most of the space. Beside it, a white painted table and an ornate lamp, the fringe on the parchment shade torn.

  As she reached under the bed her fingers caught against the smooth wood of the box. It slid across the carpet, as if on castors. Dull brass hinges and a plain catch. Her heart lurched. She knew what she would find. Her hands shook.

  Open it.

  A heap of oyster-coloured silk lay in folds at the top of the box. Cadi pulled it out. The album weighed more than she expected: a brown leather cover embossed and flecked with gilt. Holding it to her nose she inhaled the faint breath of ghosts.

  It was so quiet she could hear the dust motes in the air.

  Opening the album, it wasn’t the photographs that struck her at first. Here and there, ornate corner pieces, brittle as the wings of dead insects, surrounded blank spaces where snapshots used to be.

  Turning the pages, Cadi found picture after picture and a space here, a secret there. She imagined a camera.

  Click. A family group beneath the cherry tree. Cadi ran her finger around the deckle-edge of the paper, lacy as the trim on a fine handkerchief. Underneath were the words, Tŷ Aderyn 1952. A precise hand. Names and dates paused below missing pictures. Of those remaining, several were grainy, some pale and washed out as if they had lain too long in the sun. In others the people seemed to seek her attention: a smile here, a turn of the head there.

  Click. Once upon a time a young girl flew in the air on a swing, her long hair streaming behind her. Lili. Where did she go once the swinging ended? Indoors perhaps for her tea, called by her mother? My grandmother.

  Click. Here stood Gwenllian at the door of the big cottage, caught out and laughing at the camera, her hair unravelling from its knot and her hands on her floury apron. That’s the apron Lili wears. Lili, holding on to the best of what was old and precious.

  Click. A woman in a black felt hat and a fur coat seated between two tall men. On the back of the picture, Cadi recognised Lili’s handwriting. Morwenna. And paper-clipped to it, a sepia shot, cracked where it must once have been folded of a solemn girl, holding a basket of flowers. This too was Morwenna, aged about nine or ten, Cadi guessed. My great-grandmother.

  Click. Lili as a teenager in her school uniform, awkward and unsmiling, her head at its familiar angle.

  Click. A boy in a tree. Teilo?

  And here were some of Cadi herself: on a swing, under the cherry tree with a book in her lap, one with Lili, her arms loose around her aunt’s waist. The swing went rotten when she was about nine and Lili took it down.

  Mam must have taken these pictures. I wonder what happened to the camera. She turned the pages faster now, searching.

  Where were the pictures of Dora? What if Lili was wrong?

  There were some, I think she put them away…

  Laying the album to one side, Cadi reached deeper into the box. In the bottom lay another piece of cloth, folded around a papier-mâché box decorated with a pattern too faded to make out.

  What am I doing? Cadi’s heart hammered under her ribs, and the sick feeling returned. The box felt as heavy as her guilt. She listened to the quiet house for a reason to stop.

  Silence.

  She lifted the lid revealing four more photographs, each one an image of a little girl.

  Click. A drift of falling snow: a shawl-wrapped bundle in Violet’s arms. Next a smiling baby, about a year old. And here a toddler with a cloud of blonde curls, white shoes with buttoned straps, striding past a towering bank of delphiniums.

  Look, Mam, I learned to walk…

  Click. In pencil, on the back of the final picture: the word Garden. No name or date, only Garden.

  She turned it over. Three adults and a small girl with a tangle of blonde hair sat grouped on a rug under the cherry tree. Cadi recognised her mother and Lili, who held the toddler reaching for the man seated between the two women.

  My father. Cadi knew this. Exactly where his face ought to have been, a neat hole had been cut.

  Snip. The cut was precise, a perfect circle through which she could see the whorls on the pad of her finger.

  She must have used nail scissors. The sharp ones in the bathroom with blades curved like a bird’s beak.

  Staring, unable to move, any shame Cadi had felt earlier drained away. And Violet’s silence now had a shape: a huge, hunched shadow. Cadi felt it taunting her from the small, blank cut-out space. She fingered the smooth surface, frowning at her smiling, lost sister. Her eyes darted from Dora, to Lili, back to Violet and finally, came to rest on the obliterated face of her father.

  Thirty-seven

  ‘Hello.’

  Lili looked up. Pomona stood in front of the small reception desk. Taller than Lili recalled, she filled the space.

  ‘Sorry about the gear.’ She indicated her shirt and jeans. ‘I took your mother’s advice and started building a compost bin instead. Ran out of nails, and then I remembered, I need to register with the doctor and you’re only open two days a week. I’m not too late, am I?’

  ‘No, no problem.’ Lili stared at her.

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘There’s only one doctor and I’m afraid he’s on a call. I can register you though.’ She clicked something on the computer. ‘Are you settling in?’

  Pomona laughed and said it depended on how you looked at it. ‘I hadn’t realised how many boxes I could fit into one house.’

  Lili nodded and took Pomona’s details. ‘Do you need to see the doctor?’

  ‘God, no. I’m so healthy, I squeak.’

  Lili typed and clicked on the screen again. ‘There, all sorted. And you know where we are if you do need to make an appointment.’r />
  ‘What I need is a drink.’ Pomona leaned her hands on the counter. ‘I don’t suppose you fancy one?’

  Lili blinked, so startled she thought she might not have heard correctly. The pub was open, but other than a few farmers and tourists no one from the village drank during the day. Not in public.

  ‘No, you’re alright.’

  ‘Oh, come on, I’m parched. And you’re the only person I know.’

  You don’t know me. Lili hesitated. ‘I’m not really a pub person.’

  ‘We can sit outside. It’s a lovely day. Please say you will.’

  Not wanting to think about how many eyes might be watching, Lili walked with Pomona to the pub and into the tiny garden. She tried not to imagine the landlord’s face when the rich woman from Cardiff, dressed like a farmhand came into the public bar and asked for two halves of lager.

  It was a pretty space – secluded – and Lili managed to relax for a moment. It’s only a drink and Pomona’s right, she doesn’t know anyone and where do I get off being churlish?

  ‘This is so kind of you, Lili.’ Pomona raised her glass in salute. ‘I hope you don’t feel pressured.’

  Lili laughed, deciding to enjoy herself. ‘Makes a nice change.’ She tilted her glass. ‘Iechyd da.’

  ‘Cheers.’

  They looked at one another in the uncertain August air.

  ‘What brings you to the village?’

  ‘Escape?’

  Lili raised an eyebrow. ‘From Cardiff?’

  ‘Yes. I shared a house with my partner – Vanessa – until she died in a crash. Well, a hit and run. Four years ago.’ Pomona took a deep breath and Lili did too. ‘The guy was drunk.’

  A crash … he was drunk … old cars have old brakes…

  ‘Lili, are you alright?’

  ‘Sorry, I can’t do this.’ As Lili got to her feet, her bag slid to the ground. She scrabbled for it. ‘I have to go. I’m sorry.’

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Whatever this is, I don’t want it.’

  ‘It’s a drink, Lili, outside a pub.’ Pomona stood up too. ‘Look, I’m sorry if I’ve upset you, telling you about Vanessa. I’m fine. It’s passing, you know.’