Chapters (56)

‘Believe me.’ It is the hairdresser, Hope Ainsley, who had earlier cowered in the Counting House doorway. Abe and Reuben move aside so she can enter the room. ‘My Tom and his Bernadette did not leave the island to marry. They left because Bernadette couldn’t stay in this place after what that man had done to her.’

Hope raises a trembling finger to single out the headmaster. The man’s breath comes in great heaves now, his wife blanching at his side. The hairdresser looks to the stage, to the Eldest Girls, her eyes red, and she croaks out a sorry. ‘I was too scared,’ she says, ‘to know what to do.’

‘Believe me.’

Another voice. A middle-aged woman steps forward from the gallery to say how she could never understand, though she always had suspicions, why her sister took her nieces away from the island. ‘I have sons,’ she says. ‘Was I just lucky?’

‘Believe me.’

Another voice, a young woman’s, words steeped in regret, recounting how a former classmate had tried to confess what had happened to her in the headmaster’s office one morning. ‘It never happened to me, so I thought she must be making it up.’

And more voices.

‘Believe me…’

Eastertide: Friday the 13th – April 2018

EASTERTIDE: FRIDAY THE 13TH – APRIL 2018

This is the sound of a community waking slowly from a dream, not willing to call it a dream anymore. This is a piece of pure knowledge gifted from a deep well. This is a story in reverse – an island pushing away its capricious giants.

The velvet drapes are thrown open, casting a headmaster and a doctor in a fresh new light. The landlord hands over his licence, shamefaced, with muttered excuses for his allegiances – ‘You said they were willing, Jake. You said it was always mutual.’ Wives back away into the corners of the room. Three girls are lifted gently from a stage into the desperate arms of their mothers.

They ride the wave of these accusations and revelations; it carries them from the room. The collective act of confessing, of listening, has buoyed them – for now. Soon they will come crashing back to the shore – they must. The body of a boy lies silent and alone at the edge of the woods, and justice on his behalf has yet to be served.

The coycrock girl returns a stolen brooch to the palm of her enemy and is told that she must keep it.

‘It’s supposed to ward off witches but thank goodness it does not work!’

The radio is not accepted back either.

‘Hang onto it,’ says the Customs Officer.

‘But what will I ever use it for?’ she asks him.

‘Who knows?’ he replies. ‘Whatever fate throws at you next.’

So, the girl heads towards daylight, a trial still to face, her pockets full.