Final Cut : A Novel (2020)

by Watson, S J

  He leaves the sentence hanging. I wonder what he’ll do. Burn down Bluff House with him inside? It wouldn’t surprise me. After all, he had poor Ellie driven to the middle of the moors and left to find her own way back, just to scare her into silence. He forced David to take an overdose to keep him quiet. I know what he’s capable of.

  ‘Who’s been helping you?’ I say. ‘Is everyone involved?’

  ‘Not everyone,’ he says with a callous shrug. ‘But enough. It’s amazing what people will do once you’ve got a film of them with a pretty little thing like Zoe.’

  ‘Zoe,’ I say. ‘Is she … ?’

  ‘What? Dead? No. She got away. No one’s seen hide nor hair of that one, for good or bad. I don’t think she’ll be coming back, though. She was clever.’

  I ignore his gibe. I think of the girls on the film from the stable. I think of the girls listed in Monica’s book, and Kat with the tattoo she clearly didn’t want and which is shared by me, and Monica, and who knows who else? He must’ve branded us all.

  ‘How many have there been? How many girls?’

  ‘A few.’

  He gestures with the poker. ‘Another rock.’

  I lift one more. Maybe he’s right and this is what I deserve. But is it really better if I die? Sadie’s gone already; it won’t bring her back. It’ll just mean he’s won.

  And if I go, if I jump, then he’s free to carry on. Who knows how many more girls will be destroyed before he stops, or is caught, or dies. I unzip my other pocket to slip the stone inside. There’s something already there, though. My phone. I fumble, but muscle memory kicks in and I find the button. I press Record. It’s a waterproof model, but still I’m worried it might not work. Even if it does it’ll be sound only, muffled by my jacket, but that’s all I need.

  ‘Why?’ I say.

  ‘Why what?’

  ‘Why did you do it? Why do you do it?’

  He says nothing.

  ‘Is it the sex?’

  Now, he laughs. ‘No. It’s not that.’

  ‘Money, then?’ I say. ‘The men paid you?’

  ‘Of course they did. But no.’

  ‘So why?’

  He gestures towards the village. ‘Look around. I own this place. Half of Malby, too. I have something on virtually every man here, you know that? Either them or their father, or their brother, or their friend. They’ve all got secrets. They’ve all got things they don’t want to come out. And like I say, it’s amazing what people will do for you when they’re scared.’

  ‘You said you loved me.’

  He laughs. A sneering, evil laugh. ‘I did? You were fifteen. A girl. You were nothing to me. None of you were.’

  Despite everything, it stings.

  ‘You said it.’

  ‘I said lots of things.’

  ‘But … why?’

  ‘It was the easiest way to get you to do what I wanted.’

  ‘All those men—’

  ‘Don’t give me that,’ he says. ‘You’re a slut. You loved it.’

  I stare at him. In that moment, my hate is as pure and white as burning magnesium, and I want to rush at him, to tear out his eyes, to rip out his tongue, but I do nothing. I hide it, like I always have, like I’ve learned to hide everything.

  ‘You got me hooked on drugs.’

  ‘You loved that, too.’

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘You made me. And you forced me to earn them.’

  ‘Nothing’s for free. And you had what they wanted. Supply and demand, that’s all it is.’

  ‘But Sadie? Why kill her?’

  Say it, I think. Say it. He’s quiet.

  ‘Was it for fun?’

  He sneers. ‘For fun? She wasn’t safe. She’d started to talk. She’d said something to David, I’m sure of it. Her mother, too. She had to be got rid of, don’t you see? And by getting you to do it I killed two birds with one stone. Shut both of you up.’

  ‘David. You pretended to be his friend.’

  ‘You know what they say about keeping your enemies close.’

  ‘He didn’t know?’

  ‘No. He had no idea. He thought it was someone else, way out in Malby. Even little Sadie wouldn’t tell him it was me. She knew what I’d do to her best friend if she did.’

  ‘Meaning me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What happened to him? His overdose?’

  ‘You know the answer to that. Stop wasting time.’

  ‘You thought by faking his confession to both murders you could make sure they were never pinned on you.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘You’re a monster,’ I say. ‘You’re sick.’

  ‘The world is sick, baby.’

  My mind is clear now. I can see it all. How the clip I’ve just recorded will fit into the film I still plan to make. His voice, over the footage of me, back when I was fifteen, walking towards the edge of the world. Not what the channel might’ve expected, but who cares? It’s the film I need to make, the one I needed to make all along.

  ‘Turn around, Daisy.’

  ‘No,’ I say, taking out my phone. ‘I think we’re done. I’m pretty sure I’ve got everything.’

  His eyes flare when he sees what I’m brandishing; he tries to snatch it, but I whip it out of reach. Suddenly, everything is still, just the sound of the sea beneath us; even the wind seems gentle, now.

  ‘Give me that.’

  ‘No,’ I say again.

  ‘You can’t run,’ he says. ‘There’s nowhere to go.’

  ‘I’m going nowhere, Bryan. I don’t need to. I recorded it all.’ I press the button on the homepage. ‘And now it’s uploaded to the server. Whatever happens here, it’s not me who’s finished.’

  I smile. His eyes are darting left and right. He knows it’s over. His crimes are public. I draw breath just as he lifts the poker and, as he brings it down, I step to the side, out of range. I’m near the edge, but this time I keep my balance. I don’t fall, I don’t go over.

  ‘Even if I die now,’ I say, ‘they’ll find the film. Your confession. Out there for everyone to hear.’

  His eyes burn but, as I watch, something inside them dies. He knows there’s no escape. He knows there’s only one way this can end now. He drops the poker and it clatters off the rocks. His head falls for a second, but then he looks up. His eyes lock with mine, and with a sudden surge he reaches out. I think he’s going to grab me, to try to push me over, and maybe he is.

  ‘Daisy?’ he says. ‘Baby …’

  I think of what he did to me, to Daisy, to Zoe, and who knows how many more. I summon all the strength I have and push. He stumbles, then falls with a curdled scream that might almost be laughter. I watch as he goes. His body plummets without grace, cartwheeling as it falls, and smashes into the deep, grey water. He goes under. Once, twice, three times. I breathe deep, gasping at the cold, clean air, and wait, my eyes fixed on the sea below.

  The waves swallow him one final time then close over his body. This time, he doesn’t come up.

  Tomorrow

  56

  I park the car and get out. It’s early morning, not long after dawn. The late-summer light is thin, but already I can tell it’s going to be a beautiful day. I check the address. Stone steps lead up to an imposing front door and I find the buzzer and press.

  Dr Olsen has retired, but she’s agreed to see me. I’ve told her the truth, that I’ve pieced it together; finally, I know what happened. After a few moments she buzzes me up.

  ‘Alex, darling,’ she says when she opens the door. She looks exactly the same as I remember her. She holds out her hands and takes both of mine. ‘It’s so lovely to see you!’

  She pulls me in and we embrace. ‘It’s Daisy, now,’ I say, and she apologises. I tell her it doesn’t matter. I’ve only recently got used to it myself.

  ‘Well, you must call me Laure,’ she says. ‘Come on in! There’s no way I’d have recognised you!’

  I smile. Her flat is smaller than I’d expected,
but comfortable. She makes me a cup of tea, then sits on the sofa while I set up my camera. I’m making a new film, now. It’s about what happened in Blackwood Bay. It’s about trauma, and abuse, and the effects they can have. It’s about shattered lives. It’s about me.

  I’ve told her there are still things from back then that I can’t remember, and there are still days when I find myself doing something with no recollection of how I came to be doing it.

  ‘You have a tendency to dissociate,’ she says. ‘You may have always had that, but it’s likely it was exacerbated by the terrible abuse you suffered. It’s not uncommon.’

  ‘You mean people pretend to be someone else?’

  ‘Not exactly. Dissociation can take several forms, and of course things rarely fall into a neat diagnostic pattern. For many people, it’s like no longer feeling they’re in their own body. Or they feel they’re under water and their limbs aren’t behaving. For you? Back then, I suspect that when you were being abused you would dissociate to avoid the pain. You’d imagine yourself having Sadie’s life, rather than your own, and it’s possible that when you dissociated during the traumatic abuse you would almost become her.’

  ‘Is that why I killed her? Because I was jealous?’

  Her voice is soft.

  ‘Daisy, dear. You were being abused, terribly. You were drinking and taking drugs, often against your will. You were told that if you didn’t comply, you’d be killed. And let’s not forget that you’ve told me Bryan said the plan was only to scare Sadie, so that she wouldn’t tell your friend—’

  ‘David?’

  ‘Yes, David. So she wouldn’t tell David any more than she already had. It’s likely that after Sadie’s death you experienced overwhelming guilt, probably self-hatred. It’s my feeling that it took you every ounce of strength you had left to go to David and tell him you needed to get away. After that, your mind fractured. Subconsciously, you tried to kill Daisy – the person who had murdered Sadie – while at the same time resurrecting Sadie and giving her back the life you knew had been taken. You ran to London having done this consciously, having decided to call yourself Sadie, but when the abuse continued in London you carried on dissociating and believing you were her, eventually finding it harder and harder to determine which of your memories were real, Daisy experiences, and which were fantasy, Sadie memories.’

  ‘And then I attacked that guy. Gee.’

  ‘Yes. And you had to run again. Why you chose Deal, I don’t think we’ll ever know. It’s possible you were just going to the coast, and possible, too, that you intended suicide. Anyway, you experienced something called a dissociative fugue, in which people usually lose their memory of who they are, and dissociative amnesia, which meant that your memories of life before your fugue didn’t return. And then, when you phoned Dev and he called you Sadie—’

  ‘I thought I was her.’

  ‘Yes. Your Sadie memories became real. Your Daisy ones were erased completely.’

  ‘And then I changed my name anyway. To Alex.’

  ‘Yes. Burying the truth even further.’

  I sigh and gaze out of the window over her shoulder. The guilt hasn’t gone away, the feeling that I could’ve done more to escape, that I should’ve fought harder, tried to save Sadie’s life, even if it cost me my own. Even though I know, really, that it was futile. Bryan would’ve killed us both.

  ‘Is this common?’

  ‘Yours is a particularly extreme example. But dissociation in order to avoid abuse is far from unheard of.’

  I nod. I’ve asked the question for the benefit of the camera more than anything. Dr Olsen has already given me the statistics for my film, and she’s approached a few of her former patients to ask whether they’d consider appearing. Already two have said yes, and a third looks likely.

  I’m pleased about this. I don’t know how much of my own story I’ll be able to use, in the end. Monica and I told Heidi Butler everything, or almost everything. Monica is awaiting trial, but the Crown Prosecution Service said just last week that, after a thorough investigation and review, they’ve decided not to press charges against me in the case of Sadie’s murder. The tape of Bryan’s confession was a big factor there, they explained, along with the fact that I was underage when it happened and subject to coercion and intimidation. Bryan has disappeared.

  I realise now that Kat must’ve known Sadie was dead; perhaps David told her. That’s what she was telling me, when I showed her the clip of Sadie outside the caravan, the film I thought was of Daisy. That’s the girl they killed.

  Yet I believed I was Sadie and the film was of Daisy. I must’ve made the same mistake every time I saw a photo of my friend, so stupidly convinced I knew who I was.

  Dr Olsen and I talk some more, then I switch off the camera and thank her.

  ‘You’ll stay?’ she says. ‘I’m making dinner. It’s not much, but you’d be very welcome.’

  I shake my head. I’m meeting Gavin later; he’s found a new restaurant he’s excited about showing me. It’s early days, but I think we’re falling in love.

  ‘That’d be great,’ I say. ‘But I can’t. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Never mind,’ she says. I pack up my equipment and she walks me to the door.

  ‘What happened to David?’ she says.

  ‘He recovered.’

  ‘Good. You still see him?’

  ‘No,’ I say.

  I’ve only been back to Blackwood Bay once, when Gavin and I went to pick up my mother and bring her down south. I saw David briefly; I thanked him and told him I’d never forget what he’d done for me. For us.

  ‘You mustn’t feel guilty,’ she says, taking my hands once more. ‘You know that? Without you, it’d still be going on.’

  I tell her I understand.

  There was one more place I went, on that trip to Blackwood Bay. Sadie’s grave, the place she’d lain for ten years, wrapped in a plastic sheet. They’d never even looked for her body, because some corrupt policeman – someone else Bryan had dirt on – said she’d been seen hitchhiking and then made the report that she’d been found down in London and didn’t want to be contacted.

  She’s in St Julian’s, now. At peace, I’d like to think.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said that morning. ‘For everything.’

  I realised in that moment that I was glad I’d gone back to make my film in Blackwood Bay. If I hadn’t, she’d still be out on the moor. I’d still be Alex. Bryan would have succeeded by now in breaking Ellie and moved on to whoever would have been next. Monica would still be in love with him, choosing to believe the girls were complicit.

  I sat for a while. The sun rose; the sea flashed in the distance. I wish I could bring her back, but I can’t. I was stupid to think I could.

  I had a bunch of flowers – pink peonies – and I left them there for her.

  ‘Goodbye, Sadie,’ I said, and then, I came back home.

  Acknowledgements

  Thank you to Clare Conville and all at C+W, to Frankie Gray, Larry Finlay, Alison Barrow, Sarah Day and all at Transworld, to Jennifer Barth, Mary Gaule and all at HCUS, to Iris Tupholme and all at HC Canada and to Michael Heyward, David Winter and all at Text. Thank you to all my international publishers and translators.

  Thank you to Maria A and Bill M, to Alice Keens-Soper, to Rebecca Kinnarney and to Sue C-J.

  Thank you to Richard, Amy and Antonia, to Gabriel Cole, Sam Lear and Reuben Cole, and to Helene. Thank you to Charles, and in particular to Andrew Dell.

  Finally, thank you to all my family and friends who’ve kept me (mostly) sane during the last few years.

  Author’s Note

  ‘Blackwood Bay’ is a fictional location. It shares some of its geography and topography with Robin Hood’s Bay in North Yorkshire, but any resemblance ends there, and the events contained herein are entirely fictional.

  S. J. Watson’s first novel, Before I Go to Sleep (2011), has sold more than six million copies worldwide. It won the Crime Writers’ Assoc
iation Award for Best Debut Novel and the Galaxy National Book Award for Crime Thriller of the Year. The film of the book, starring Nicole Kidman, Colin Firth and Mark Strong, was released in 2014. S. J. Watson’s second novel, Second Life, a psychological thriller, was published to acclaim in 2015. S. J. Watson was born in the Midlands and now lives in London.

  sjwatson-books.com

  textpublishing.com.au

  The Text Publishing Company

  Swann House, 22 William Street, Melbourne Victoria 3000, Australia

  Copyright © Lola Communications Ltd, 2020

  The moral right of S. J. Watson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright above, no part of this publication shall be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.

  Originally published in the United Kingdom by Doubleday, an imprint of Transworld Publishers, 2020

  Published by The Text Publishing Company, 2020

  Cover design by Richard Ogle/TW

  Cover photo © Nic Skerten/Trevillion Images

  Printed and bound in Australia by Griffin Press, part of Ovato, an accredited ISO/ NZS 14001:2004 Environmental Management System printer.

  ISBN: 9781925355192 (paperback)

  ISBN: 9781922253774 (ebook)

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the National Library of Australia.

  Table of Contents

  TEXT LOGO PAGE

  ABOUT THE BOOK

  TITLE PAGE

  CONTENTS

  DEDICATION

  EPIGRAPHY

  THEN

  1

  NOW

  2

  3

  4

  THEN

  5

  NOW

  6

  7

  THEN

  8