He told them how Gracie’s Ma refused to stand up to him. How he attacked her, violently, whenever he visited. Like he was compelled to strike her, push her down and crumple her, as if it was some sort of ritual. A game.
Billy had observed his attacks on Gracie’s Ma had grown more frenzied, and told the police. He told them every last detail he could grasp.
He felt exhausted.
His Ma had sat with him as he explained what had been going on over the last nine years. Mrs Harper looked uncomfortable, and sad.
The ruddy-cheeked policeman told him he needed his rest because Gracie would need him to talk to and be with when she was back tomorrow.
That thought comforted Billy. He’d thought back to earlier, when he’d rushed over to let her know he’d nearly saved enough so that they could make their escape later in the week. He had decided that very day that it’s no good hanging around, waiting for just the right amount of money to feel safe and secure. As long as Gracie was here, she was in danger. He would have to save her because it didn’t look like anyone else was going to.
At that stage, he had no idea that the blow on the back of Gracie’s Ma’s head would have such devastating consequences. For now, he just knew that he needed to accelerate his plans and protect Gracie for good.
Billy sat in the car, the world rumbling by in rushes of oranges and russets, musing on that thought, blinking back the tears. If only. If only.
He’d gone to bed that night with strengthened resolve and an optimism in his heart. The policeman assured him that Gracie would be alright, that she would be back in the morning. There was nothing to fear.
He had the rumblings of an old nightmare stir him in the night – a sense memory of the days as a little child when he would wake up in sweats, fearing the father he had barely met would never come home from the War.
That night there was a moment when the nightmare gripped him, but he shook it off, safe in the thought that in the morning, everything would be alright.
Only it wasn’t.
The morning came and went. No Gracie. The afternoon came and went. No Gracie. The twilight fell over the powdery landscape, cascades of snow softly whitening the land. No Gracie. Night drew in and the moon shone down, magically.
Silent shadows rippled across the Close. Everyone watched and waited. No Gracie.
The next few days passed in a slumber of haziness. No one slept. No one ate. Billy’s Da visited Gracie’s Ma, along with the other neighbours in the Close. But he had a particularly tender way of looking at her that softened his eyes, a look that was private.
Billy went to see her, once. He saw the helpless form, nestled into the crispness of the hospital sheets. She looked pale and thin. She wasn’t wearing make-up – so her lips were faint lines and her eyes were sunken deep, as if they were missing an outline to prop them up. Billy realised he had probably never seen her without her make-up on before.
Part of him felt such disgust for her, he could hardly look at her. It was her fault that Gracie was gone. She should have stopped him. She could have, she should have.
But another part of him was consumed with pity for her. After all, she had been subjected to years and years of beatings and who knew what else. Billy didn’t know what to think. He was so, so very tired.
And still no Gracie.
After the fifth day, the ruddy-cheeked policeman came back again, this time wearing a sorrowful expression that seemed to rearrange his face.
He spent some time murmuring to Billy’s Ma and Da in the hallway. Glancing up at Billy with an acknowledging nod. Billy nodded back.
Then he left.
Outside, crystals of snow clung like lacework to the tops of the trees and sparkled in the moonlit sky. The stars above seemed to twinkle with them. A communion of light.
Wondering what on earth was going on, Billy drew closer to his parents. They looked at each other, and told him to come into the living room and sit down.
And then they told him.
Branches
The pristine ground was soft, fresh snow having settled in the night. A silver sun hung low in the sky. Powdered whiteness bleached the horizon. Seas of snow shimmered into the distance.
Silhouetted against the brightness, a powerful beak was tearing into something. The arc of a wing rose up, each armour-clad feather catching the light like metal.
Steel eyes squinted, hungrily. Branches overhead cast shadows, eviscerating the landscape. A low, guttural kraaa pierced the air and echoed into nothingness.
Something glinted on the ground, discarded in the snow.
A gold crucifix, stripped of its chain. Half buried.
And a raven was attacking the earth, ripping violently, deeply.
A trace of something lingered on the breeze.
Redness began to stain the snow.
Roses
White petals folding in
A calmness resting
Quietly
Stillness in sorrow
Buried gently, softly,
The sweet, sweet calm of a new day
The chill of a wing’s breath swooped past.
Epilogue
She stirred from her sleep, and realised she must have dozed off while sitting on her chair. Looking down through bleary eyes, she saw two ancient rose petals nestling in the creases of her hands. Sepia in colour, brittle in texture. She lifted them up and breathed in the musky scent of rose.
Her rose. Her Little White Pet. Her daughter.
She realised the little box was open. Inside, the crucifix glinted. She pulled it out and traced her finger around its engraved edge. A fleeting memory of something flickered in her.
She had grown even more frail these last few days. That husk of a body, its skeletal frame was tiny. She felt weary.
A pot of purple chrysanthemums smiled prettily into the room. But even the sight of the sun dappling onto them, casting lacy shadows onto the far wall, failed to lift her spirits. She felt profoundly uneasy.
Then the diary hove into focus, on the bed next to her. It had been placed page side down, open at a spot near the end.
Drawing it up, she peered down at the childish scrawl and read.
Her eyes alighted on a particular passage:
… But then at other times I wish I was just a little girl again. Things were simpler and nicer then. Happiness was blowing bubbles, reading together with Ma, seeing spring flowers on a sunny day.
The flicker of memory began to take shape in her mind, like a migraine crowding in her head. The pain was excruciating.
She saw a little girl with golden curls and an angel smile.
Piercing pain.
Saw a tall, handsome man with beautiful green eyes and a cruel mouth.
Throbbing, throbbing.
Saw an apron-fronted woman with tears in her eyes and blood on her hands.
Agonising! Stop it!
She realised the apron-fronted woman was her, and the rest began to fall into place. Her Gracie, what happened that day. The beginning, the middle and the end.
The little girl would forever be a little girl. Life stolen from her. Snatched. Clawed away.
She suddenly remembered the epitaph Gracie had written in her diary, and turned to it with a clarity of purpose. The sad, sad words held more meaning than the young girl could possibly have imagined.
Her small body had been found five days after she had gone missing. Buried in a shallow grave of soft snow. There had been a tree in a clearing, and a blood-stained mound. It was clear some feral creature had attacked her.
Death itself had been strangulation, they thought. No one knew why. But everyone knew who.
And a clear memory pierced into her consciousness. Joe. Her brother. What he had done, the man he had become.
It didn’t take the police long to track him down. And with a second killing under his belt, one of those a child, the judge had no qualms about sentencing him to death by hanging.
th was too good for that man. How could he have done what he’d done to her Little White Pet? Her rose.
Then another memory clawed into her, tearing at her heart.
Somewhere deep inside, she knew that this was all her fault.
The diary had revealed Gracie’s joyful plans for escape. How dear, sweet Billy had come to the rescue, gallantly. Gracie’s Ma reflected briefly on the promise he had made to Gracie, recorded in her diary that time, to look after her Ma no matter what – and felt grateful that he had kept his promise. Just this week he had visited her in this godforsaken place again. He was a good boy. He kept his promise. She suspected the purple chrysanthemums may have been a gift from him. But she couldn’t remember.
The diary showed how he had come up with a clever scheme to whisk Gracie away into her new life. Just another few weeks and perhaps she would have been safe. But it was a mother’s job to protect her daughter, to take her to that safe place she deserved – and this she had failed to do. She had stood by and let him permeate his cruelty into their lives. She remembered she had tried to escape him, once. But he had searched her out and held her his mental prisoner for years. But it wasn’t good enough. She should have fought back.
She paused, wondering whether that’s what Gracie had done, that January night when he took her for the last time. Fought back. She recalled that the one thing that would trigger blind rage in Joe was defiance. He couldn’t countenance anyone standing up to him. Perhaps Gracie had been so focused on her escape plans that she felt she could try to stop him, or try to run away.
Nobody would ever know. Her darling Little White Pet. The absence of presence.
A veil of shame descended over her, submerging her being. Sadness seeped into every pore of her body. She reached for the locket, opened it, and stroked the lock of blondeness, still luminescent with life.
Her eyes gradually dulled and she found herself looking at the metal thing she was holding in her other hand. The thing the curl had been contained in. What was it called now?
So much going on, she couldn’t keep up.
She read the inscription: ‘Forever yours, PH’.
She wondered who PH was, and what it meant.
Heavy-lidded with tiredness, she found herself sinking deep into her chair. Bones brittle and heart slow. Barely breathing.
Her left hand let the locket drop to the floor.
Her right hand clasped, tight, the silken keepsake.
She closed her eyes.
The End
Acknowledgements
It’s hard to know where to start. The inspiration for the book began many years ago when I was leading the BBC News coverage of a high-profile case. The police officers I worked with were extraordinary human beings – Chris Stevenson, Andy Hebb, Gary Goose. The people running BBC News at the time who trusted me with the work and gave me the opportunity – Richard Sambrook, Mark Damazer, Roger Mosey, Peter Horrocks, Frances Weil. And the utterly brilliant Kristin Hadland and Fiona Bruce.
My learning journey in the field of psychology continued as I trained and qualified as an Executive Coach on the BBC’s in-house training programme, which is accredited by the Association for Coaching and the International Coach Federation under the amazing Liz Macann.
Seas of Snow was written over several years in my holidays. The wealth of talent, support and expertise at Unbound has been a delight to discover and work with. From my initial meeting with Dan Kieran to Mathew Clayton who was there on filming day (shout out also to Mark Bowsher from Rabbit Island Productions) to the wonderful (and ridiculously ingenious) Jimmy Leach; and Georgia Odd, DeAndra Lupu, Isobel Frankish, Paul Fulton and the peerless John Mitchinson. Very, very special thanks also to Mark Ecob for the stunning cover artwork and Scott Pack for being the most brilliantly incisive, sensitive and supportive editor I could have hoped for.
Beyond that there have been a number of unsung heroes I would like to thank – for being there in so many wonderful ways and helping me when it counted. Alf Bowles, Caroline Cowie, Ruth Francis, Rebecca Sutherland, Rebecca Hoyle, Anjula Singh, Cathy Drysdale, Rikki Kraftchenko, John Ray, Michael Wilson, Amanda Thirsk, Martin Harriman, Helen Bunker, Maggie Philbin, Debbie Forster, David Cleevely, Olivia Lockyer, Andrea and Kevin Stanford, Helen Jacks, Leigh Pottinger, Kamal Ahmed, Bronwen Roscoe, Sherry Coutu, Annika Small, Georgia Hewson, Gi Fernando, Josie Macrae, Bethany Koby, Rowena Goldman, Eddie Morgan, Priya Lakhani, Matthew Jukes, Fernando Peire and Ajaz Ahmed.
And finally, my family who have stunned me with their support and belief. Thank you so much Caroline Bansal, Paul Gage, Andy Gage and Carole Gage.
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This edition first published in 2017
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