The Black Sheep

by Sophie McKenzie

  My sister slithers into the seat beside me and puts her arms around me. It’s the most tactile she’s been with me in years. I lean against her.

  ‘Tell me,’ she urges. ‘Let me help you.’

  I shake my head. The texts were clear and I daren’t go against them . . . except Lucy already knows about the kill list; she already thinks Uncle Perry is behind the PAAUL murders. It won’t make any difference if I tell her Ruby has been kidnapped. And I don’t think I can cope without confiding in someone.

  ‘Talk to me,’ Lucy insists. ‘You’ve always been there for me, helping me. Let me look after you for once.’

  I sit up, wiping my eyes, then beckon Lucy close. If I talk quietly then hopefully whoever is watching me won’t be able to hear what I’m saying.

  ‘It’s Ruby,’ I whisper, fresh tears rising as I say her name. ‘She’s been taken. From there.’ I glance at the door to the ladies. ‘Uncle Perry will get PAAUL to kill her if I talk to the police.’

  Lucy’s eyes widen with horror.

  ‘No,’ she gasps. ‘No, he wouldn’t.’

  A fresh wave of misery washes over me. ‘One of the texts they sent said . . . oh, Lucy, it said that Harry’s dead too.’

  ‘No.’ Lucy slumps back in her seat, her pale face now ashen.

  A few moments pass. I sit, swamped with desolation, my head in my hands.

  Lucy shakes my arm gently and I look up at her. There are tears in her soft brown eyes.

  ‘What . . . what did the texts say about Ruby? How can you . . . how can we get her back? Do you have any idea where she is?’

  I shake my head. ‘This is all I have.’ I show her the video on my phone. Lucy watches, appalled.

  ‘You have to tell the police now, don’t you?’ she asks.

  ‘Didn’t you hear what I said? I can’t.’ My voice cracks. ‘Someone’s watching me. Someone from PAAUL. They’re making sure I do what they’ve ordered. They knew when I called the police and retracted my earlier statement. They know everything.’

  ‘Oh, Francesca.’ Lucy shrinks back as she looks anxiously around the ice cream parlour. I gaze down at the video of Ruby sedated. A memory flickers in my head, just out of reach. I frown, straining to place it, but it’s gone.

  ‘Well . . . well, if you’ve done what Uncle Perry . . . what PAAUL asked, then Ruby will be all right.’ Lucy’s terrified voice brings me back to the booth.

  ‘Maybe, but the texts said I’d get her back tomorrow and I don’t think I can bear it . . . not knowing if she’s all right until then.’ My chest heaves with a dry, agonising sob.

  ‘Sweet Lord.’ Lucy crosses herself then pulls me into a hug. ‘It’s going to be okay, Francesca,’ she whispers, fierce and hot in my ear. ‘We’re not going to let anything bad happen to Ruby. She’s going to be all right, you have to believe it.’

  LUCY

  All my life Francesca has been there, watching over me, helping me. And now I want to help her. The truth is I owe Francesca a lot . . . in a strange kind of way she’s responsible for my faith, certainly for the direction my life has taken.

  I want to help her get Ruby back. And I want to protect her from knowing about you. I’m not sure if I can do both those things, but I plan to try.

  I owe her that much.

  Back when I was fifteen and secretly pregnant it was Francesca who guessed something was wrong. Though even she didn’t work it out until a couple of weeks after I found out myself. The truth was that for most of those first two weeks I put the knowledge I was carrying a baby in a room in my head and shut the door on it. This seems crazy to me now, but I have to remember I was only fifteen and a few months at the time – and had led a particularly sheltered life by twenty-first-century standards.

  I did make a few efforts to see if I could somehow lose the baby through natural means, though it was hard to find reliable data on the subject. I had got my first mobile phone for my birthday but of course back then all it did was make calls and texts. I had access to the internet on our home computer, but I didn’t dare do a search for fear of it being stored on the PC’s history.

  So, in the end, I had to make do with our public library. Not a great source of information, sending me firstly to a health food store in search of parsley tea and angelica – neither of which worked – and then to our liquor cabinet for a bottle of gin.

  The gin terrified me. Apart from the vodka-laced orange juice you gave me, I’d only ever had tiny amounts of alcohol before. A few sips of cider at the parties of my school friends and half a glass of champagne at Mum’s fiftieth. By my age Francesca had been going to raves and pubs for a couple of years and I could still remember the trouble she’d get into when she stumbled home late at night, having ignored all attempts to contact her earlier.

  I ran a scalding hot bath and took a huge mug of gin into the bathroom. I forced myself to drink over half of it before I vomited into the toilet and took myself, sobbing, off to bed.

  It had now been over a fortnight since I’d found out I was pregnant. I had no idea how to measure a gestation period but I knew I’d conceived in the middle of December. Which meant right now I must be around four months pregnant. I also had no idea about abortion law – how the twenty-eight-week limit imposed by the 1967 Act had been reduced to twenty-four weeks in 1990. Again, it seems crazy to me that I didn’t take any of these factors into consideration but the truth is that officially terminating my pregnancy never occurred to me. Not just because I’d been brought up to believe abortion was a terrible sin, but also because taking steps to get rid of the baby would have meant acknowledging the poor creature was inside me in the first place.

  The weather in the middle of April was beautiful: sunny and warm. Francesca was still at home before going back to uni. That Saturday, she announced she was going to a nightclub and wouldn’t be home until dawn. Mummy ordered her not to go which led, as usual, to a big row and me creeping off to my room.

  Of course, Francesca arrived home very much the worse for wear the following morning and Mummy shouted at her that she was setting a bad example for me, with a face like Jesus when he’s angry with the money lenders.

  I felt some of her resentment myself. It seemed . . . still does seem . . . terribly unfair that Francesca should have lived such an immoral existence for so many years, while I had transgressed just once and was being punished so profoundly for it.

  After the row, Mummy and I went to mass. I’d been dreading going to St Cecilia’s that morning – I’d managed to get out of it the previous two Sundays, certain that my pregnancy shame must be written all over my face, but now I had run out of excuses. Mummy was so busy chatting with her friends that she didn’t notice how quiet and unhappy I was.

  The service – one of Father Gabriel’s more barnstorming performances – left me feeling worse than ever, the mental door that I’d shut on my pregnancy not only now open but banging loudly against the walls.

  ‘Mortification is of the body, where we repress the indulgence of our sinful sensual desires, and it is of the soul, where we feel our deepest, darkest shame.’

  As Father Gabriel spoke of sacrifice and damnation in deep, reverberating tones I rubbed my fingers hard against the rough edge of the pew. I had always liked the feel of the coarse wood but now when a splinter came away in my hand I didn’t hesitate to press it deep into the centre of my palm, enjoying the elevated, almost spiritual, sense of suffering it caused. Of course I could only tolerate the pain so long and as soon as I stopped my head filled up instead with a deep and horrible awareness of my shame again. My anguished thoughts had little form to them, mostly just dark waves of self-loathing: I’d been an idiot, careless, stupid . . . God was punishing me for my fornication . . . I had to have the baby, to redeem my sins . . . I couldn’t have the baby, it would shame me and mortify my family, publicising my transgressions and providing a constant reminder of an incident I was desperate to leave behind.

  I almost talked to Father Gabriel. I wish now that
I had, but that evening Francesca drifted into my room, rested and freshly showered.

  ‘Dad’s just got home from his conference and he’s taken Mum to dinner and I said I’d do your tea,’ she said in a tone of smug self-sacrifice, slumping into the small chair where I read my bible every morning. ‘D’you fancy takeout . . . pizza?’

  ‘Sure.’ I gave Francesca the same fixed smile I’d been using all day on everyone from Mummy and Father Gabriel to the church mission committee ladies.

  ‘What’s up?’ she asked, seeing through my mask immediately.

  ‘Nothing,’ I said. I kept on saying it, but within five minutes Francesca announced she wasn’t leaving the room until I told her what was wrong and within ten she got the truth out of me.

  ‘I’m pregnant,’ I finally admitted.

  Francesca stared at me, genuine shock in her eyes. ‘I didn’t think . . .’ She frowned. ‘I guess I assumed you hadn’t even . . .’

  I looked away. My virginity seemed a long-ago prize, like the sports day trophy I’d won aged thirteen for a running race. That victory had come easily, my legs being longer than any of my classmates’. I was happy and popular at the time and didn’t think twice about how I looked until, a few months later, I grew – as I saw it – freakishly tall and felt awkward and clumsy in my lanky ways. My friends withdrew and I learned to look back on the popularity I’d basked in on sports day with nostalgia and envy, just as now, my virginity seemed to belong to an unfathomable Eden to which I longed to return and from which I knew, in my heart, I would always be barred.

  ‘How . . . Luce, sweetie, how did it happen?’ Francesca, her abrasive, self-satisfied patina now completely gone, slid her arm around my shoulders.

  I wriggled away, not wanting her pity. ‘The usual way.’ I shrugged.

  ‘Lucy, for God’s sake, talk to me.’

  I stood at my bedroom window and cast my eyes down to the garden. From here I could see the edge of the trees that led to the summer house where you hurt me so badly in my soul as well as my body. I didn’t see what happened then like I do now. Back then I saw your brutality as a seduction for which I was to blame. I blanked out the pain and the fear of it, reframing the experience as a dash of danger without ugliness. Exactly what the silky, slippery word ‘seduction’ suggests. To me, at the time, it was a choice I made; a sin on both sides. Now I see that you were the bigger sinner, that I was a child. That though I must take some responsibility for putting myself in a compromising situation, I was in no way to blame for the violence that followed.

  ‘It was a man I met in a bar,’ I lied.

  ‘What were you doing in a bar?’ Francesca looked appalled. Which really was very hypocritical of her, considering how she behaved when she was my age.

  I shrugged again. ‘I just went in for a drink of water. I was on my way home from school and I was thirsty but as I was drinking I noticed this man. He kept staring at me and I felt really uncomfortable.’ I bit my lip, amazed at how easily lies were tripping off my tongue.

  Francesca leaned forward, her face wreathed in concern. ‘What happened next?’

  I gulped, wondering if I could sustain my story to the end. ‘So he came over and started chatting and he was really nice and he asked where I went to school and what my name was and I wanted to impress him so I lied and said I was almost eighteen and made a show of putting my mobile on silent. And then he bought me a couple of cocktails which he said were non-alcoholic but I think that was a lie.’

  ‘I bet it was.’ Francesca clenched her fists. ‘What a fucking creep.’

  ‘So I got a bit woozy,’ I said, remembering how it had felt when you gave me the vodka. ‘And he saw me yawn and he asked if I wanted to go up to his hotel room to lie down.’

  ‘Lucy, you didn’t . . .’ Francesca’s mouth gaped. ‘How could you be so naïve?’

  I gritted my teeth, irritated that I was failing to come over well even in my own invented story. ‘I felt a bit sick by then,’ I stressed, warming to my tale. ‘And he was really nice.’

  ‘How old was he?’ Francesca asked.

  I shrugged, wandering over to the bed. ‘Daddy’s age, maybe a bit younger.’

  Francesca curled her lip. ‘What a bastard.’

  ‘So we got up to his hotel room and he opened a bottle of something and I didn’t really want it but I didn’t want to be rude so—’

  ‘Jesus fucking Christ.’

  ‘Anyway the next thing I was letting him kiss me and then . . . then it happened and afterwards I . . . I was really sore . . . er, down there and I realised Mummy had been ringing for two hours wondering where I was.’ I paused, imagining what would have happened next.

  ‘Where was this bastard at that point?’

  ‘In the shower,’ I said quickly. ‘So I got my clothes and left and I had a terrible headache and I was still sore but I carried on walking home and called Mummy and said I’d been at a school concert rehearsal and wasn’t feeling well. And when I got in I had a bath and went to bed and in the morning I still felt sore but the headache was gone so I just went to school like a normal day.’

  There was much truth in my story, I realised as I finished, though of course it barely scratched the surface of what had really happened.

  Francesca was reaching for her phone. ‘We need to call the police. The man’s a fucking paedophile rapist.’ She fixed me with a stern gaze. ‘Where was this bar? What was his name? Which hotel was it?’

  I shook my head. ‘I don’t know,’ I said, anxious to put a lid on any attempt to investigate my lies. ‘I was in such a state I don’t remember. Seriously, Francesca, I wouldn’t recognise him if I saw him again.’

  ‘Oh, Lucy.’ Francesca put down her phone. To my surprise tears bubbled up in her eyes. She gazed at my belly. ‘Okay, well, even if you don’t remember much we should still tell the police and we’ll have to tell Mum too so that—’

  ‘No.’ I sat up straight. ‘No, there’s no point going to the police. I agreed to go up to the man’s room. I know I’m underage, but . . . but he didn’t know that. And it’s all so hazy . . . plus I don’t still have . . .’ I’d been going to say ‘the bruises’ but I stopped, guessing this wouldn’t help my case.

  ‘What about Mum and Dad?’ Francesca asked, reaching for my hand.

  ‘No,’ I said, letting her squeeze my fingers. Not squeezing back. ‘No, I don’t want them to know. Not about the man.’ I put my hand on my stomach. ‘And definitely not about this.’

  Francesca fell silent. Outside the wind rattled the blossom-heavy branches in the back garden. The lawn was strewn with fallen petals: another metaphor for my fallen state. I closed my eyes.

  ‘Okay, I get that you don’t want Mum and Dad to know,’ Francesca began, her voice hesitant. ‘But what exactly do you want?’

  I hung my head, eyes still shut.

  ‘When did all this happen?’ she asked.

  ‘December,’ I said without thinking. ‘Before Christmas.’

  ‘What!’ Francesca sprang up from her chair and stormed over. She lifted my top before I could stop her and stared at the tiny swell of my belly under my T-shirt. She looked up at me. ‘Lucy, you’ve got to be . . . four months at least . . . Jesus fuck!’

  I looked away, pulling down my top.

  ‘You can’t wait any longer.’ Francesca’s voice was tense. ‘If you want to get rid of it you have to act now.’

  Nausea rose inside me. I should never have told her.

  ‘Please, Lucy. It will decide for you if you don’t do something.’ She walked over and knelt in front of me, her tone becoming more gentle. ‘It’s very simple. Do you want this baby?’

  I pressed my lips together.

  ‘It’s up to you, but a baby would change your whole life,’ Francesca went on. ‘And most of those changes will be really hard.’

  For everyone else, I thought, as well as for me.

  ‘So do you want it?’ Francesca asked again. ‘Bearing in mind right now it isn’t even
a baby, just a collection of cells. And the father is a rapist paedophile bastard who deserves to be shot?’

  A long moment passed, then I gave a tiny shake of the head.

  Francesca stood up. ‘I’ll sort it all out,’ she said. ‘You don’t need to worry about a thing.’

  To be fair, she was as good as her word. She kept my secret and she organised the termination – as the pro-choicers like to call it – at a local private hospital. I went through the next few days in a daze, in limbo, just waiting for it to be over. Since confiding in Francesca I had felt strangely numb about both being pregnant and the planned abortion. I knew somewhere inside me that it was profoundly wrong, against all the values we’d been brought up with, but Francesca’s words rang loudly in my ears:

  A baby would change your whole life . . . And most of those changes will be really hard.

  The morning of the abortion I felt jittery. Francesca had picked a day when everyone else at home would be away so, as she put it, I could ‘get over the procedure’ privately. She didn’t have a car at the time, so took me to the hospital in a taxi. She sat with me while the nurse fussed around, checking me over and asking questions. It was an easier interview than with the doctor who’d sanctioned the abortion in the first place. With her I had been forced to go over the story I’d given Francesca and deal with a similar reaction: I should make a statement to the police, I should tell my parents. Plus: I should see a counsellor.

  I refused to do any of these things, maintaining that there was no point as my memory was so hazy. At last the doctor backed off, though I sensed her disapproval.

  Or maybe the disapproval was mine and I just projected it onto her.

  At last it was time for the anaesthetic.

  ‘I’ll be here when you come round,’ Francesca promised. And the last thing I remember before I went under was her kissing my forehead. When I came round I felt very groggy. She was holding my hand, telling me it was all over.

  I didn’t open my eyes.

  An hour later I woke again. This time it hurt. I registered the dull ache of it and then it hit me.