She heaved herself into a sitting position, relishing the pain as part of the massive task of slaying the monster. Her palms were stinging. She fought the urge to cry without being able to articulate what had made her miserable. It was what had always made her miserable. At the time, she thought she was alone with her pain, but over thirty years later she would see, without words being exchanged, that Gina had also suffered. What might have unified the sisters, drove a wedge between them. They stopped inviting friends to stay if the friends had not already stopped wanting to come. Eleanor had always thought Gina was okay; she had her horses.
She wiped her forehead with the handkerchief and frantically cast around as she tried to recapture the heady feeling of one of her imaginative games. But she could not. This game was real.
The beach was enclosed by a chalky outcrop at one end and a pile of rocks at the other, that few people ever climbed. When the policeman asked her to recall details of that day, Eleanor had assured him the beach was empty. A rusting boat, slouching dark and sulky against the sky, interrupted a stretch of pebbles that dropped in terraces to a thin slip of wet sand at the shoreline. She told him that it was a cloudless day full of colours – yellow, blue and red – and didn’t mention seeing anyone. But by then she had said they had been playing hide and seek in the lane, so it would have made no sense to mention the beach. Eleanor would say she’d gone to the Tide Mills after Alice had been missing for about an hour. She told the police she had decided to look everywhere since Alice wasn’t in the usual places.
This meant of course that Eleanor couldn’t tell the policeman that the beach was the last place she had seen Alice alive, nor could she tell him that Alice had not been alone.
Doctor Ramsay took Alice along the sand where it was wet but the ground was firm. The seawater frothed up close to their feet. She wanted to suggest they go higher up where the sand was dry and there was no chance of getting wet. But he knew what he was doing. Glancing back she noticed that the sea was already where they had been walking, and the lapping water had washed away their footprints.
He told her that soon the tide would come in and the old ship they had passed, with its hull stuck deep in the shingle, would vanish because water would pour in through the portholes and engulf it. He said they were getting out just in time. Alice hoped that Eleanor hadn’t chosen to hide inside and this made her enquire:
‘What about Eleanor?’ She was worried. It was wonderful to be free of playing daft games, but even Doctor Ramsay had said the Tide Mills was dangerous and so although Eleanor could swim in pyjamas she might not be safe.
‘Oh, she’ll be fine. It’s you I’m concerned about.’ He let go of her hand for a moment to stroke the back of her neck. His fingers were warm and they tickled up and down the way the nice post office lady’s did. Her Dad would have been rougher. Once again, Alice unconsciously compared her parents with the Ramsays and was frustrated with her Mum and Dad for falling far short of them.
They reached the steep mountain of rocks at the far end of the beach and Alice was dismayed at the prospect of climbing them. Jagged boulders with sharp corners and few places to hold on to piled high against the sky. Doctor Ramsay would expect her to be as nimble as his daughter. Her mouth was parched and the hot sun pressed down on her head, burning the back of her neck where his hand had been.
‘This is where I carry you. Let yourself go limp.’
Doctor Ramsay came towards her and, putting his hands underneath her armpits and clasping her tightly, he hoisted Alice up easily into the air like a rag doll. She hung over his shoulder, her head dangling downwards, her arms swinging, nervous of touching him. She could only think of her skirt riding up and blush at the awkwardness of being so close to him as his hand gripped her thigh.
‘Hold on to me, it’ll be easier then,’ he gasped.
Alice dared to place her arms around his neck and then to clasp his hips with her knees. She began to relax as it became clear that he wouldn’t drop her on to the rocks and let her get hurt. He jumped quickly and easily back and forth as he found a way up that wasn’t obvious from the beach. When they got near to the top she dared to lift her head and look around.
In the distance, on the bushy hillside that led to the Tide Mills, just where there was a chalky ridge that dropped to the beach, she was sure she saw a figure. It was hard to focus and the person melted into the background when she tried to make it out.
‘Don’t move, we’ll lose balance,’ Doctor Ramsay gasped.
She held him tighter. If the movement on the hill had been Eleanor watching, then this was Alice’s moment of triumph.
Once they were on the other side of the rocks, he lowered Alice down with great care, making sure that her skirt was straight and that her hair was spread out around her shoulders.
‘Not far now. But we must make sure no one sees us, so be ready to hide if I tell you and keep very, very quiet.’ Alice was overjoyed. This game, although similar to most of Eleanor’s as it involved spies and hiding, was much more fun.
They made their way along a track beside the flint wall that marked the northern boundary of the Tide Mills village and was parallel to the railway line. Most of the wall had crumbled away and was only about a foot high, but in stretches it was still the original six feet, topped with rounded terracotta bricks. With the tall brambles on the other side of the track, at these points they were in a cool damp tunnel. They had to walk in single file because the foliage had encroached up on the path to the wall. Doctor Ramsay went in front and every now and then he would pause to hitch branches up, so that they didn’t flick in Alice’s face or lash her knees the way they had when she had been out with Eleanor. Her Mum was right. He was kind and thoughtful.
If the wall had been lower, they would have seen the tramp before he saw them. As it was, ducking around a tangle of branches they almost fell over him.
He was worse than in Eleanor’s descriptions of him, which at the time Alice had assumed she’d invented. He was exactly like one of Eleanor’s monsters. He was taller than Doctor Ramsay, with clothes so filthy and ragged that Alice couldn’t make out where they began or ended or what colour they had ever been. His head and face were covered in matted hair: long grey straggling strands fuzzed around his shoulders and were draped over a bald patch on his head, not like hair at all. He was blocking their path, with his flies undone, peeing against the wall. Alice had only ever seen a man doing this once before when she had accidentally gone into the toilet when her Dad was there. But he had had his back to her and they had never talked about it. The tramp was practically facing them and Alice stared at the arc of bright yellow liquid splashing against the flints and running in a rapid stream over the ground towards their feet.
‘What the Hell do you think you’re doing?’ Doctor Ramsay’s voice was no longer kind. Alice shrank back as the two men confronted each other. The tramp didn’t move until he had finished, his eyes on Alice throughout. Alice had expected him to be frightened but he started to laugh, his cracked lips curling back over blackened stumps.