The Secrets of the Lake Read online

  LIZ TRENOW

  The Secrets of the Lake

  Contents

  PART ONE: SPRING 2019

  1

  2

  PART TWO: DECEMBER 1949

  3

  4

  5

  6

  THE UGLY DRAGON by Molly Goddard – Chapter 1: Jimmy meets the dragon

  7

  8

  THE UGLY DRAGON by Molly Goddard – Chapter 2: The importance of forgiving yourself

  9

  10

  THE UGLY DRAGON by Molly Goddard – Chapter 3: Not everything is always as it seems

  11

  12

  THE UGLY DRAGON by Molly Goddard – Chapter 4: The dragon hates the taste of human beings

  13

  14

  15

  16

  THE UGLY DRAGON by Molly Goddard – Chapter 5: About friendship

  17

  18

  19

  THE UGLY DRAGON by Molly Goddard – Chapter 6: About evil

  20

  21

  22

  23

  PART THREE: SPRING 2019

  24

  25

  26

  THE UGLY DRAGON by Molly Goddard – Chapter 7: Jimmy takes a ride

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  In memory of my mother and father, who built the house on the lake.

  How doth the little crocodile

  Improve his shining tail,

  And pour the waters of the Nile

  On every golden scale!

  How cheerfully he seems to grin

  How neatly spreads his claws,

  And welcomes little fishes in

  With gently smiling jaws!

  from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

  by Lewis Carroll

  PART ONE:

  SPRING 2019

  1

  That night she dreams of Jimmy: his almond eyes and chubby red cheeks, his lips curled into a smile as though permanently amused by life; a little boy scarcely touched by the cares of the world, who lived each day as it came, blithely unaware of his difference. A boy who loved ball games, the twinkling lights at Christmas, lemonade, biscuits, steak-and-kidney pudding and mashed potato with gravy. Who fell in love with anyone who showed even the smallest gesture of kindness; who wouldn’t shake hands but preferred to hug people instead, even people he barely knew.

  He’s pestering her with endless questions, speaking with surprising fluency. Why does the sun come up in the same place each day? Why do they call those stars a ‘plough’? What are we going to do today, Molly? What’s for supper? She shouts at him to leave her in peace for just a few seconds, for pity’s sake.

  She feels his hot body in bed beside her, finds herself irritated by his snoring. She takes him back to his own room, only to find him returned again, entwined around her. And then . . . and then . . . she sees him floating, far off on the other side of the lake. His eyes are open, his lips are smiling. Yet even from here she can tell he is dead.

  She wakes with that familiar knot in her stomach. She knows it well, its weight, its position, its shape and even its colour as she imagines it: a deep charcoal-grey. But perhaps, now she’s so old, it’s actually turning into a physical tumour that has taken up permanent residence, that will grow and spread throughout her body. A cancer that will kill her in the end. Maybe that would be a blessing, she thinks. The last thing she wants is to linger on, being a nuisance to everyone.

  Then she remembers why the knot has reappeared. The police are coming. Whatever can they want from her, after all these years? She recalls the hours of questioning, sitting on the sofa in her shorts with the woolly upholstery prickling her legs as the rain battered the vicarage windows, Pa pacing outside the door, the overwhelming feelings of guilt, the ‘if only’ loop going round and round in her head. The endless, futile prayers and that crushing sense of emptiness and helplessness.

  All she can tell them now is what she told them then. She had, and still has, absolutely no idea what happened, or why. She toys with the idea of pretending she has dementia and can’t remember anything. Except, of course, she can recall everything. Every moment, every sight, sound, smell, and all the players in the tragedy of that terrible summer: Kit, beautiful Kit, whose memory even now sends darts of electricity through her body; Jimmy’s sweet innocence; her father’s inconsolable sorrow and terrifying descent into madness.

  She does not want to remember, does not want to go back. When journalists come to interview her they always ask: ‘When did you first start writing children’s stories?’ or ‘What was the title of your first book?’ She always lies. All these years, all those dozens of stories later, after all the books that have made her famous and turned her into a household name, giving her the chance to meet children of all nationalities and cultures on book tours around the world, she has never even taken it out of its cardboard box. It is still stored in the darkest, furthest part of a deep bottom drawer: her very first book, the stories she wrote for Jimmy, the book that started it all. The Ugly Dragon.

  But it seems she will now be forced to remember.

  Yesterday – was it only yesterday? – she’d settled herself in her favourite chair, placed so that she can see anyone coming up the path to her front door from the lodge where the wardens live. She spends most of her daytime hours here these days, reading or dozing in the warmth of the sun, which, if it’s shining, will reach her by ten in the morning and won’t leave until mid-afternoon.

  She’d just made her morning cuppa when she saw one of the wardens – Gillian, the nicer one – emerging from the office and starting up the wheelchair-friendly path towards the bungalows, looking more preoccupied than usual, stern even.

  Dear God, Molly thought, hoping it wasn’t bad news. Let it be a false alarm or, at worst, a minor alarm. The only other resident she knows personally is her right-hand neighbour, Fred, who used to enjoy a game of whist but cannot even remember his own name these days, poor old boy. But Gillian took the route leading to Molly’s door. She knocked and let herself in.

  ‘Cooee, Mrs Goddard. How are you feeling this morning?’ She pulled up a stool without waiting to be invited. ‘May I join you?’

  ‘Of course.’ Any company was welcome these days.

  ‘I need to tell you that the police telephoned me this morning. Nothing to be concerned about, I’m sure. Just routine enquiries, they called it.’ Gillian leaned forward and took Molly’s hand, warm and comforting. ‘But you’re not to worry, my dear.’

  Hah! That phrase so perfectly calculated to cause instant panic. That’s what they said when Jimmy went missing. Like the old joke: ‘Start worrying, details to follow’. Only it wasn’t a joke. Not funny at all. And they never got the details.

  ‘They simply want a word with you,’ Gillian went on. ‘Something to do with a lake, they said. But I told them they’d have to wait until your daughter was here. I’ve given her a ring and she’ll be over tomorrow morning. The police will come back then.’

  A lake. The word shimmers in Molly’s mind, like sunlight glittering on the surface when the water is disturbed by a gust of wind. A lake known as the Mere, its corners dark and hidden, surrounded by overgrown willows and dense billows of bramble bushes. The humps of the islands fringed with sedge and bulrush. When the weather was calm, the sky, clouds and trees were reflected in perfect reverse, creating a double image that she remembers as clearly as though it were yesterday and still believes to be one of the most beautiful sights in the world.

  Even now, her eyes are dazzled by the brilliant yellow of the marsh marigolds and her nose giddied by the sweet, medicinal scent of water mint. She can feel
the smooth squelch of the grey-blue mud clinging between her toes, with its earthy, metallic odour. The air is filled with the sounds of small lives: the gentle cluck of a mother duck shepherding her flotilla of tiny ducklings, the sharp tick-tick of an alarmed coot, the distant call of cattle on the water meadows beyond. In the sky there is the squeal of swifts swooping low over the surface and, from time to time, the harsh, bossy squawks of geese as they circle before coming in to land, their webbed feet outstretched, like squadrons of small feathered aircraft.

  Above all the noises of nature, if she listens carefully, she can hear the regular, unmistakeable thud of oars in rowlocks followed by the swish of the water as they pull forward. She leans over the side of the boat, trailing her fingers in the cool water. In the shallows are glimpses of a secret underwater world: grey shoals of minnows, tiny striped snails, worms, dragonfly nymphs and other murky creatures. In deeper water the lake grows black and mysterious, concealing all kinds of unknown terrors.

  The memories are calling her, luring her back, but she resists them with all her might. At times they press into her head so ferociously that she is overwhelmed. Most of the time she manages to keep them at bay, but now, this very morning, the police are coming to ask her about a lake. She takes a deep breath, then another, trying to calm her thrumming nerves.

  Bella arrives, flustered as usual. From where she lives on the other side of Colchester, the traffic is often unpredictable. The journey leaves her edgy and impatient, and she usually spends the first half-hour rushing about, clearing or cleaning, making the bed, taking an inventory of the fridge and the kitchen store-cupboard, wiping the worktops – busy, busy, busy – when all Molly wants is for her to sit down with a cup of tea to chat about life’s joys and woes, about her troubled, troublesome clients and Lewis’s latest sporting triumphs. She depends on her daughter to reconnect with the world outside.

  Today is different. Bella takes off her coat, puts on the kettle, kisses her mother on the cheek and immediately draws up a chair. ‘Whatever mischief have you been up to now, Mum?’ she says, without preamble. ‘What’s all this about the police wanting to question you?’

  Molly shakes her head. There’s no point in trying to explain, when she doesn’t even know what the police want to ask her. And she has already decided not to tell them much, so why alert Bella to the fact that she knows more?

  ‘No idea, love. How would you like to make some tea?’

  Half an hour later a car, garishly decorated in chequered dayglo yellow and blue, enters the gates and stops outside the lodge. Two people climb out, a girl who looks barely out of her teens, the man older, bearded. He hoicks up his trousers and the woman smooths her rather too-tight skirt as they glance around before approaching the warden’s door and ringing the bell.

  Soon enough they’re following Gillian up to the bungalow, being invited inside and introduced to everyone. The room feels suddenly very small. At least they are not PC Stubby and his mate, Weasel Face, Molly thinks. How could she forget them, with their sorry-sad expressions and the persistent grilling that made her feel as though it was all somehow her fault, when she could barely think straight for worry and lack of sleep?

  Neither of these present-day coppers wears Dixon of Dock Green helmets and she can see no sign of truncheons or handcuffs, although they are garlanded with technology: phones, cameras, walkie-talkies. She supposes they’re assuming that an eighty-four-year-old will go quietly, and is briefly diverted trying to picture the scene, should she choose to resist arrest. Imagine the scandal! What a treat it would be for all the other residents watching from their windows: an old woman being manhandled down the pathway by a burly copper.

  Bella offers tea or coffee, the warden excuses herself and leaves. ‘Let me know if you need anything,’ she says. Finally they are all settled.

  The beard does most of the talking. He’s tall and awkward and rather poker-faced, while the girl smiles a lot. Whatever could a pretty young thing like her want with chasing criminals? Both perch themselves uncomfortably on the hard kitchen chairs that Bella has pulled up for them, and there’s a smattering of introductory small talk.

  ‘Apologies for inconveniencing you like this, Mrs Goddard. I hope you are feeling up to a little chat? Can you hear us all right?’

  She feels like shouting, For heaven’s sake, stop patronising me. Just because I’m old doesn’t mean I’m an idiot. But she remembers, in time, that she has determined to present herself as a sweet and slightly dotty old lady.

  ‘It’s all right, my dears. I can hear you both perfectly well, thank you,’ she says with as much grace as she can muster. ‘But perhaps you can tell me to what we owe this unexpected pleasure.’

  The man clears his throat, pulls a small notebook and pencil from his pocket. How charmingly low-tech, Molly thinks to herself, just like the bobbies who questioned her back then.

  ‘Mrs Goddard.’

  ‘That is my name, yes. Molly Goddard. Not “Mrs”.’

  Bella darts a look that says: Don’t be difficult, Mum. It’ll only cause trouble.

  ‘Msss Goddard.’ He holds on to the ‘s’ for too long, so that it sounds like an angry fly.

  ‘If you insist, Constable.’ She has been single for so long – after that disastrous short-lived marriage – that she can barely remember a time when she was Mrs, but neither has she ever accepted being a Ms, or a Miss, and it irritates her when officials always insist. Her young readers know her as Molly Goddard. Dear Molly, they write in their wobbly, unformed hand as though they know her personally, and she considers it a great compliment.

  He clears his throat again. ‘We understand that for a short period from December 1949 to September 1950, your father, John Goddard, was the vicar of Wormley, in Suffolk?’

  ‘That is correct. We lived in the vicarage, with my brother and a housekeeper. My mother had died the year before.’

  ‘And we understand that in the late summer of 1950 your brother James—’

  ‘Jimmy,’ she interrupts.

  ‘Your brother Jimmy disappeared.’

  The lump in Molly’s stomach moves higher, pressing on her lungs and making it difficult to breathe. ‘Yes,’ she whispers. ‘Everyone gave up looking, and we never got any explanation.’

  Bella puts a hand on her shoulder. ‘Are you all right, Mum?’

  ‘If this is too distressing, we can stop,’ the policewoman says. ‘We can come back another time, if you like?’

  ‘No, let’s carry on. I want to know why you are here, after all these years. Has anything happened? Have you found something?’

  The girl takes up the story. ‘Well, Ms Goddard, you might have read in the papers about the local water-company project to build a pipeline from the River Stour to reservoirs in Essex?’

  Molly shakes her head. She never reads the newspapers these days. They’re too full of politicians preening themselves.

  The girl goes on: ‘Unfortunately, an unpredicted consequence has been that local water levels have dropped, in particular at Wormley Mere. It has lost at least three-quarters of its water, and there are fears it might actually dry out completely before the work is finished.’

  Molly finds this impossible to imagine. They always said the lake was bottomless.

  ‘The residents are up in arms, of course, particularly the wildlife lot and the anglers who lease the lake these days. There’s talk of lawsuits. The company is confident of correcting the problem.’ She pauses, glancing sideways at her colleague before carrying on. ‘Meanwhile, their contractors have reported some unusual findings.’

  The lump has slipped even higher. It is now where Molly’s heart should be, knocking at the inside of her ribs.

  ‘These findings,’ Bella asks gently. Her social-work training comes in handy for managing delicate conversations. ‘What are they, exactly?’

  The girl looks at the man again. He nods and she carries on. ‘Well, erm, they appear to have found some bones.’ She pauses for a second, and adds mo
re quietly, ‘Human bones.’

  Bella’s hand slips into hers, squeezing it gently. Molly tries to breathe, slowly, in-out, in-out, like they teach you for childbirth.

  The beard takes over. ‘They’ve been sent to the lab for DNA testing. Are you aware of what this might mean, Ms Goddard?’

  She tries to speak but nothing comes out. Her throat has closed.

  ‘It might help you find out . . .?’ Bella says.

  ‘That’s right,’ he says, gently. ‘So, if you are willing, we’d like to take a sample from you, too, Ms Goddard, so that we can prove, one way or another . . .’

  A sample? Molly’s mind rebels. She hates needles.

  ‘And what does that involve, exactly?’ Bella asks.

  He reaches into his bag and pulls out an envelope, which he opens to show two small plastic tubes containing long sticks with cotton buds on the end. ‘It’s very simple and quick. We just have to rub the inside of the cheek to get a few cells. It takes a couple of seconds, and doesn’t hurt at all.’

  Bella turns to her. ‘Mum?’

  ‘I don’t mind,’ Molly says. Not if it helps find out what happened to Jimmy, she thinks. Not knowing feels like a hollow ache that, in all these years, has never lessened. Perhaps to know might ease the pain, at last. She opens her mouth obediently.

  When the procedure is over, he puts the cotton buds back into their tubes, seals the envelope, writes on it in biro and places it back in his bag.

  ‘Well done, Mum,’ Bella says. ‘Will that be all, Officer?’

  ‘There’s just one more thing.’ He reaches for his shoulder bag and takes out a slim sheaf of what look like colour photographs.

  ‘No, I don’t think it’s a good idea . . .’ Bella says, quickly.

  ‘No, not to worry, Miss,’ he says. ‘This is something else.’

  ‘Let me see them first, please.’

  He flips through the prints until he reaches the one he wants, and shows it first to Bella. After a quick glance she passes it to her mother. At first Molly can’t make it out; it looks like a tangled mess of mud and old branches, but then she sees, amid the browns and greys, a glimpse of something red. She manages to stifle a gasp.