The Girl Who Stole the Apple

‘Shall we have our picnic?’ Beth’s display of items included the rolls and other goodies which the two of them had assembled from the supplies provided by Mrs Sidebottom.

Maggie croaked a feeble ‘yes,’ and slumped down against the other side of the archway. She downed several gulps of water and then began to eat her own packed lunch, forcing herself to do so methodically and slowly. ‘If you want to lose weight,’ she had been told, ‘you need to eat less food and if you want to eat less food you need to eat more slowly. That way your stomach will have time to tell you it is full before you stuff it to bursting.’ Maggie had nodd

ed sagely at the skinny health worker, but she rarely followed her advice. Today, however, she had another reason to eat slowly. She was trying to think.

‘I expect the lake is very cold,’ the girl said. She had already finished eating and was packing all her things away with great care. The last item was a little square box, painted various shades of pink and white with a ballerina on the lid. She took a little bracelet out of it and put it on her wrist. It was pretty. It reminded Maggie of a bracelet which she had been given as a child but had managed to lose. Maggie watched her in fascination and something akin to motherly love swelled up inside her.

‘The lake is always very cold.’ Maggie had skinny-dipped in it more than once, but said, ‘It is very dangerous for swimming.’ Maggie felt even more like a mother as she said this. Serious and protective.

‘So what shall we do?’

‘Why don’t we hunt for treasure?’

The girl frowned and then Maggie did too. Perhaps Beth was too old for treasure hunts. When did little girls become too big for such things? She really didn’t know. After all, she wasn’t a real mother.

Beth stood up and walked towards Maggie until she was up close. ‘Mother,’ she said in the sort of hushed voice that girls use when they are telling secrets, ‘do you know something?’

Beth paused. Later Maggie would think of it as a pregnant pause, bulging with meaning, the moment when anything and everything became possible. But at the time it was just a pause. ‘Mum hid some treasure here.’

* * *

Arthur knew the place where he was going to die. Most days, he couldn’t remember what he had eaten for breakfast — or even if he had had breakfast at all. He couldn’t currently remember the name of the town where he lived. But the odd thing was he knew the place they had brought him to. In fact the whole area felt familiar. As he had looked around and smelled the air, memories had come bubbling up to the surface. He had come on holiday here with his parents, more than once. They had brought the caravan — lime green and beige with its comforting smell of damp bedding and bacon. A man with a bushy beard had let them stay in a field at the back of his house. There had been an outside tap and a long green hose so they could always get water and the woman used to sell them eggs laid by her brown hens. He had brought Peggy and Maggie here too. They had stayed in a cottage. Peggy wasn’t the camping type, but she had loved the cottage and she seemed happier here than she had ever been at home.

They used to walk too. Peggy had been less keen than him, but she never said ‘no,’ even when Maggie came along just when they had all but given up on the idea that they would ever have a baby. That next summer, they had walked to the top of the peak which overlooked the quarry, Maggie on his back in a baby carrier. There they had promised to be the happiest family ever — tempting fate. It was six months before the cancer diagnosis. The doctors had done their best, but the treatment wasn’t so effective in those days and Peggy had passed silently away one afternoon, leaving a giant hole which had never been filled.

So as he walked on up through the grass slopes, heading for the quarry where so many memories still resided, he thought it was fitting that his life’s journey would end in this place. Soon he and Peggy would be together again.

He knew he was about to die. He had seen Bridget shoot the blonde woman. He knew what she was capable of. ‘No loose ends,’ she had said to the little man with the musical name. It hadn’t sounded good.

At the top Arthur stopped and turned round. Bridget and the man were close behind, walking in single file. They caught up with him and they too paused, staring down the hill into the quarry.

‘Come on, Arthur,’ the woman said. ‘Nearly there.’

* * *

Beth led the way with her pink rucksack. ‘Explorers must carry everything they need,’ she said. ‘Because you never know.’

The quarry comprised three levels, and the place where they had eaten their picnic was in the middle. They walked west at first. To their right were the remains of various buildings, home now to grass, weeds and a few gorse bushes, and beyond these a sheer, heavily mined cliff face. To the left there was nothing. Some thirty metres below was a large hollow, three-quarters filled by a lake of still water off which the afternoon sun reflected, slashing into Maggie’s eyes when she was stupid enough to look into it. Mostly she concentrated her gaze on Beth, monitoring her progress like a mother duck giving a duckling the lead for the first time. Beth walked with swinging arms and head held high. She seemed too sensible for her years. ‘Don’t go near the edge, Mother,’ she had instructed Maggie, as if she were the adult. ‘It’s dangerous.’

Eventually they came to a steep incline and now Beth began to scramble upwards. The path she took had once been a stairway, cut into the turf and rock, but this was hardly discernible now and as Maggie followed she found her feet slipping and twisting on the uneven surface. At the top, Beth stopped and waited for Maggie to catch up.

She was standing in front of a terrace of four miners’ cottages.

‘Do you want to look for it yourself, or shall I show you?’

Maggie was panting again, taking in huge gulps of air. ‘You show me,’ she managed to say.

The girl walked along the front of the terrace until she reached the fourth door.

‘I think this is the right one.’ She stood at the entrance. Maggie looked inside. She could see a number of tiles scattered over what had once been a floor. She didn’t think there was a risk of anything falling on their heads, but she couldn’t be sure. ‘Be very careful, Beth. Watch where you are putting your feet.’

The girl took this advice seriously, making her way one step at a time across the room to the far side. ‘In here,’ she said, pointing to an old stove. She grabbed the handle and pulled without success. ‘It’s stuck,’ she said.

Maggie bent down and grabbed it herself. She tugged hard. Nothing happened. As a schoolgirl, the only sport she had been any good at was the shot-put. She had once been strong, the first person to be called on when something immovable needed shifting. But the toned muscles had long since gone. She grunted and tried again. Nothing. She felt frustration rising within her. She had to get inside the damned thing. She had to know what Ellie had died for. She sucked in a deep breath and twisted again, pressing down with her weight — she had enough of that, after all. For a second or two there was not even a hint of movement and then — bang! — the handle slammed down. She pulled and this time the door opened. It wasn’t a treasure box like Beth had in her bag, but a dirty little newspaper package. She ripped open the paper. Inside there was another layer, of bubble wrap. She opened that too. Inside that — Maggie had a ridiculous flashback to games of pass the parcel at birthday parties — was a small white paper package. And inside that, finally, a memory stick.

‘Is that it?’ There was obvious disappointment in Beth’s voice. What had she been expecting? Pieces of eight? A ruby ring? A crown fit for a princess? Probably.

‘I’m afraid so.’ Maggie went outside and walked to the end of the terrace, where she shrugged off her rucksack and knelt down in the shade. She got out a thin rectangular case, unzipped it and took a small tablet from it. Beth followed her, but turned away, apparently bored with treasure hunting.