Memory Scents by Gayle Eileen Curtis

him time to plan what he was going to do next.
     
     
    *
     
     
    NORFOLK 1987
     
     
                  “I’ll meet you in the garden of that old derelict house, where we went the other day? I can’t talk to you at yours, I can’t risk anyone hearing.” Nadine pushed her mouth closer to the receiver as she said the last sentence. “Yes, I’m fine. Honestly. I’ll see you tomorrow. We can get in the house through the back door; some old tramp that was living there wrenched it open. Ok? I’ll see you in the morning.”
                  Nadine hung up the phone in her parent’s bedroom and peered round the door to see if anyone was lurking before she ventured out.
                  She crept across the hallway quietly so she could get to her room without anyone noticing. She checked again before closing her bedroom door behind her; the only person she hadn’t wanted to hear that conversation had been her father.
                  Unfortunately for Nadine, that one and only person had been eavesdropping on her phone call, standing in the shadows of the study. He had crept outside the door and heard every word. He’d been watching her like a hawk since he’d caught her in his shed. He hadn’t been sure of what she’d seen at first, she wasn’t giving much away. But he’d felt a definite change in her attitude towards him. She’d sulked in her bedroom more than normal and had been distant and vague, distracted. Grace had put it down to hormones or that she was coming down with something.
                  Nadine might have been hormonal on account of her age but she definitely wasn’t coming down with anything. She was so shell shocked by what she’d seen in her father’s shed. She’d looked in almost every box in there. At first she hadn’t realised what they were, but then she came across some items she recognised as belonging to one of her friends. That and the blood stains had given the game away.
                  If she’d run into the house as she’d first intended after making the discovery, she’d probably have survived. But Tim had caught her on her way out of the shed door. Both startled at the sight of each other. The look on his face had made him appear unrecognisable to her and it had frightened her to the core. He didn’t have to say anything, that one look in the dusky light of the evening was enough to scare her into silence in case she had discovered his secret.
                  Grace assumed Tim had scolded her badly for going in his shed and encroaching on his privacy.
                  Nadine had kept it to herself for quite a few days. There had been a several occasions when she’d approached Grace to tell her but nothing would come out of her mouth and Tim was usually hovering nearby.
                  She had to talk to someone about it, which was why she’d organised to meet up with her friend.
                  It had been a race between good and evil. In those few days that she was trying to work things out in her head, Tim was plotting how he could get rid of her.
                Unfortunately, he won the race, Nadine had spent too long mulling it over. It was all too huge for her to cope with and she’d had no idea what to do with the information she’d discovered. Apart from knowing that she had to report him, her father.
               She’d arrived at the tumble down house early, mainly due to nerves. She wandered round the garden, scuffing up old bits of pottery while she waited for her friend. She didn’t see or hear Tim coming up behind her.
                  She managed a few muffled screams through his large fingers that were clamped around her mouth, as he dragged her across the rough waste land. As he pushed her into the cess pit and took his hand off her mouth she screamed out ‘No!’
              Tim made himself scarce,