‘Meaning Stanley knows what happened to Jamie. He’s the one who did it,’ Pip said.
‘But why is Jamie involved in all of this?’ Connor asked. ‘This is crazy.’
‘We don’t know that, and right now it’s not important.’ Pip stood, and the fizzing nervous energy dripped down into her legs too. ‘What’s important is finding Jamie, and Stanley Forbes is how we do that.’
‘What’s the plan?’ Ravi said, standing too, the bones in his knees cracking.
‘Should we call the police?’ Connor also stood up.
‘I don’t trust them,’ Pip said. And she never would again, not after all of this, not after Max. They didn’t get to be the only ones who decided right or wrong. ‘We need to get into Stanley’s house,’ she said. ‘If he took Jamie, or . . .’ she glanced at Connor, ‘or hurt him, the clues to where Jamie is will be in that house. We need to get Stanley out so we can get in. Tonight.’
‘How?’ Connor asked.
And the idea was already there, like it had only been waiting for Pip to find her way. ‘We are going to be Layla Mead,’ she said. ‘I have another sim card I can put in my phone, so Stanley won’t recognize my number. We text him, as Layla, telling him to meet us at the farmhouse later tonight. Just like she must have messaged him last week, but instead it was Jamie he saw there. I’m sure Stanley wants the chance to meet the real Layla, to find out who knows his identity and what she wants. He’ll come. I know he will.’
‘You’re gonna need your own Andie Bell burner phone one of these days,’ Ravi said. ‘OK, lure him out to the farmhouse and then we all break in while he’s gone, look for anything that leads us to Jamie.’
Connor was nodding along.
‘No,’ Pip said, stalling them, drawing their attention back to her. ‘Not all of us. One person needs to run lead on the distraction at the farmhouse, keep Stanley out long enough to give the others a chance to look. Let them know when he’s on the way back.’ She met Ravi’s eyes. ‘That will be me.’
‘Pip, b—’ he began.
‘Yes,’ she cut across him. ‘I will be lookout at the farmhouse, and you two will be the ones to go to Stanley’s house. He’s two doors down from Ant on Acres End, right?’ She turned the question to Connor.
‘Yeah, I know where he lives.’
‘Pip,’ Ravi said again.
‘My mum will be home soon.’ She closed her fingers around Ravi’s arm. ‘So you need to go. I’ll tell my parents I’m going to yours for the evening. Let’s all meet halfway down Wyvil at nine, give us time to send the message and get ready.’
‘OK.’ Connor blinked pointedly at her, then stepped out of the room.
‘Don’t tell your mum,’ Pip called after him. ‘Not yet. We keep this a closed circle, just the three of us.’
‘Got it.’ He took another step. ‘Come on Ravi.’
‘Er, just give me two seconds.’ Ravi nodded his chin up at Connor, signalling for him to carry on down the hall.
‘What?’ Pip looked up at Ravi as he stepped in close, his breath in her hair.
‘What are you doing?’ he said, gently, flicking his gaze between her eyes. ‘Why are you volunteering for lookout duty? I’ll do it. You should be the one who goes into Stanley’s house.’
‘No, I shouldn’t,’ she said and her cheeks felt warm, standing this close to him. ‘Connor needs to be there, it’s his brother. But so do you. Your second chance, remember?’ She brushed away a strand of hair caught in his eyelashes, and Ravi held her hand, pressing it against his face. ‘I want it to be you. You find him, Ravi. You find Jamie, OK?’
He smiled at her, interlocking his fingers with hers for a long moment, outside of time. ‘Are you sure? You’ll be on your own –’
‘I’ll be fine,’ she said. ‘I’m just the lookout.’
‘OK.’ He dropped their hands and pressed his forehead against hers. ‘We’re going to find him,’ he whispered. ‘It’s going to be OK.’
And Pip, for a moment, dared to believe him
It’s Layla.
Meet me at the farmhouse at 11
: )
Read 10:18
I’ll be there.
Thirty-Nine
Backlit by the moon, the abandoned farmhouse glowed silver around its ragged edges, the light piercing through its cracks and crevices and the holes upstairs where the windows once were.
Pip stood about sixty feet back from the house, hidden inside a small huddle of trees on the other side of the road. She watched the old building, trying not to flinch when the wind hissed through the leaves, her mind creating words out of the voiceless sounds.
Her phone lit up, vibrating in her hand. Ravi’s number on the screen.
‘Yeah?’ she said quietly as she picked up.
‘We’re parked down the street,’ Ravi said, in a hushed tone. ‘Stanley just walked out the front door. He’s getting in his car.’ Pip listened as Ravi moved his mouth away from the phone, whispering unheard things to Connor beside him. ‘OK, he’s just driven past. He’s on his way to you.’
‘Got it,’ she said, her fingers tensing around the phone. ‘You two get inside as fast as you can.’
‘On our way,’ Ravi replied, over the sound of a car door quietly closing.
Pip listened to his and Connor’s feet on the pavement, up the front path, her heart beating in time with their hurried steps.
‘No, there’s no spare key under the mat,’ Ravi said, to both her and Connor. ‘Let’s go round the back, before anyone sees us.’
Ravi’s breath crackled down the line as he and Connor circled the small house, two miles away from her but under the very same moon.
A rattling sound.
‘Back door’s locked,’ Pip heard Connor say, faintly.
‘Yeah but the lock’s right there by the handle,’ said Ravi. ‘If I break the window, I can reach in and unlock it.’
‘Do it quietly,’ said Pip.
Rustles and grunts down the phone as Ravi removed his jacket and wrapped it around his fist. She heard a thump, and then another, followed by the pitter-patter of broken glass.
‘Don’t cut yourself,’ Connor said.
Pip listened to Ravi’s heavy breath as he strained.
A click.
A creaking sound.
‘OK, we’re in,’ he whispered.
She heard one of them crunching against the fallen glass as they stepped inside – and that’s when two yellow eyes blinked open into the night at her end. Headlights, growing as they sped along Old Farm Road towards her.
‘He’s here.’ Pip lowered her voice below the wind as a black car turned up Sycamore Road, wheels churning against the gravel until the car ground to a halt off the side of the road. Pip had left hers further up Old Farm Road, so Stanley wouldn’t see it.
‘Stay low,’ Ravi told her.
The car door swung open and Stanley Forbes stepped out, his white shirt clawing the darkness away. His brown hair fell unkempt into his face, hiding it in shadows as he shut the door and turned towards the glowing farmhouse.
‘OK he’s in,’ Pip said, as Stanley entered through the gaping front entrance, stepping into the darkness beyond.
‘We’re in the kitchen,’ Ravi said. ‘It’s dark.’
Pip held the phone closer to her mouth. ‘Ravi, don’t let Connor hear this, but if you find anything of Jamie’s, his phone, his clothes, don’t touch them yet. Those are evidence, if this doesn’t go the way we want it to.’
‘Got it,’ he said, and then he sniffed loudly or gasped and Pip couldn’t tell which.
‘Ravi?’ she said. ‘Ravi, what’s wrong?’
‘Fuck,’ Connor hissed.
‘Someone’s here,’ Ravi said, his breath quickening. ‘We can hear a voice. There’s someone here.’
‘What?’ Pip said, fear rising up her throat, pulling it closed.
And then, through the phone and through Ravi’s panicked breaths, Pip heard Connor shout.
‘Jamie. It’s Jamie!’<
br />
‘Connor, wait don’t run,’ Ravi shouted after him, the phone lowering away from his voice.
Just rustling.
And running.
‘Ravi?’ Pip hissed.
A muffled voice.
A loud thump.
‘Jamie! Jamie, it’s me, it’s Connor! I’m here!’
The phone crackled and Ravi’s breath returned.
‘What’s going on?’ Pip said.
‘He’s here, Pip,’ Ravi said, his voice shaking as Connor shouted in the background. ‘Jamie’s here. He’s OK. He’s alive.’
‘He’s alive?’ she said, the words not quite clicking in her head.
And beneath Connor’s shouts, now breaking up into frantic sobs, she could hear the faint edges of a muffled voice. Jamie’s voice.
‘Oh my god, he’s alive,’ she said, the words cracking in half in her throat as she stepped back against a tree. ‘He’s alive,’ she said, just to hear it again. Tears stung at her eyes, so she closed them. And she thought those words, harder than she’d ever thought anything in her life: Thank you, thank you, thank you.
‘Pip?’
‘Is he OK?’ she asked, wiping her eyes on her jacket.
‘We can’t get to him,’ Ravi said, ‘he’s locked in a room, the downstairs toilet I think. It’s locked and there’s a chain padlocked outside too. But he sounds OK.’
‘I thought you were dead,’ Connor was crying. ‘We’re here, we’re going to get you out!’
Jamie’s voice rose, but Pip couldn’t make out the words.
‘What’s Jamie saying?’ she said, angling to watch the farmhouse again.
‘He’s saying . . .’ Ravi paused, listening. ‘He’s saying that we need to leave. We need to leave because he’s made a deal.’
‘What?’
‘I’m not going anywhere without you!’ Connor shouted.
But something in the darkness pulled Pip’s attention away from the phone. Stanley was re-emerging from the shadows, walking back down the corridor towards the outside.
‘He’s leaving,’ Pip hissed. ‘Stanley’s leaving.’
‘Fuck,’ Ravi said. ‘Text him as Layla, tell him to wait.’
But Stanley had already crossed the rotted threshold, his eyes turning back to his car.
‘It’s too late,’ Pip said, blood rushing through her ears as she made the decision. ‘I’ll distract him. You get Jamie out now, get him somewhere safe.’
‘No, Pip –’
But the phone was in her hand by her side now, her thumb on the red button as she ran out from behind the trees and across the road, scattering gravel around her feet. On to grass and Stanley finally looked up, catching her movement in the moonlight.
He stopped.
Pip slowed, walking up to him just outside the gaping front door.
Stanley’s eyes were narrowed, trying to cut through the darkness.
‘Hello?’ he said, blindly.
And when she was near enough for him to see, his face crumpled, lines crawling eye to eye.
‘No,’ he said, his voice breathy and raw. ‘No no no. Pip, it’s you?’ He stepped back. ‘You’re Layla?’
Forty
Pip shook her head.
‘I’m not Layla,’ she said, the words dented by the fast beating of her heart. ‘I sent that text to you tonight, but I’m not her. I don’t know who she is.’
Stanley’s face reshaped in the shadows, but all Pip could really see were the whites of his eyes and the white of his shirt.
‘D-do, do you . . .’ he stuttered, voice almost failing him. ‘Do you know . . . ?’
‘Who you are?’ Pip said gently. ‘Yeah, I know.’
His breath shuddered, his head dropping to his chest. ‘Oh,’ he said, eyes unable to meet hers.
‘Can we go inside and talk?’ Pip nodded to the entrance. How long would Ravi and Connor need to break open the chain and the door and get Jamie out? At least ten minutes, she thought.
‘OK,’ Stanley said in barely more than a whisper.
Pip went first, watching over her shoulder as Stanley followed her down the dark corridor, his eyes down and defeated. In the living room at the end, Pip crossed through the wrappers and beer bottles over to the wooden sideboard. The top drawer was open and the large torch Robin and his friends used was propped up against the edge. Pip reached for it, glancing up at the dark room filled with nightmare silhouettes, Stanley lost among them. She flicked the torch on, and everything grew edges and colour.
Stanley screwed his eyes against the light.
‘What do you want?’ he said, fiddling his hands nervously. ‘I can pay you, once a month. I don’t earn a lot, the town paper is mostly voluntary, but I have another job at the petrol station. I can make it work.’
‘Pay me?’ Pip said.
‘T-to not tell anyone,’ he said. ‘To keep my secret.’
‘Stanley, I’m not here to blackmail you. I won’t tell anyone who you are, I promise.’
Confusion crossed his eyes. ‘But then . . . what do you want?’
‘I just wanted to save Jamie Reynolds.’ She held up her hands. ‘That’s all I’m here for.’
‘He’s OK,’ Stanley sniffed. ‘I kept telling you he’s OK.’
‘Did you hurt him?’
The sheen over Stanley’s brown eyes hardened into something like anger.
‘Did I hurt him?’ he said, voice louder now. ‘Of course I didn’t hurt him. He tried to kill me.’
‘What?’ Pip’s breath stalled. ‘What happened?’
‘What happened is that this woman, Layla Mead, started talking to me through the Kilton Mail’s Facebook page,’ Stanley said, standing against the far wall. ‘We eventually exchanged numbers and started texting. For weeks. I liked her . . . at least I thought I liked her. And so last Friday, she messaged me late, asking me to meet her, here.’ He paused to glance around at the old, peeling walls. ‘I arrived but she wasn’t here. I waited for ten minutes, outside the door. And then someone turned up: Jamie Reynolds. And he looked strange, panting like he’d just been running. He came up to me, and the first thing he said was “Child Brunswick”.’ Stanley broke into a small, crackling cough. ‘And obviously I was in shock, I’ve been living here over eight years, and no one has ever known, except . . .’
‘Except Howie Bowers?’ Pip offered.
‘Yeah, except him,’ Stanley sniffed. ‘I thought he was my friend, that I could trust him. Same thing I thought about Layla. So, anyway, I start to panic and then the next thing I know, Jamie lunges at me with a knife. I managed to get out of the way and eventually knock the knife out of his hands. And then we were fighting, out by those trees beside the house, and I’m saying “Please, please don’t kill me.” And as we’re fighting, I push Jamie off into one of the trees and he hits his head, falls to the ground. I think he lost consciousness for a few seconds and after that he seemed a little dazed, concussed maybe.
‘And then . . . I just didn’t know what to do. I knew if I called the police and told them someone had just tried to kill me because they knew my identity, that was it. I’d have to go. A new town, a new name, a new life. And I didn’t want to go. This is my home. I like my life here. I have friends now. I’d never had friends before, ever. And living here, being Stanley Forbes, it’s the first time I’ve been almost happy. I couldn’t start over again somewhere new as a new person, it would kill me. I’ve already done that once before, when I was twenty-one and told the girl I loved who I was. She called the police on me and they moved me here, gave me this name. I couldn’t go through that, starting everything again. And I just needed time to think about what to do. I was never going to hurt him.’
He looked up at Pip, his eyes shining with tears, straining like he was willing her to believe him. ‘I helped Jamie up and led him to my car. He seemed tired, dazed still. So, I said I was taking him to the hospital. I took his phone off him and turned it off, in case he tried to call anyone. Then I drove him back to my hou
se, helped him inside. And I took him into the downstairs toilet, it’s the only room with a lock on the outside. I . . . I didn’t want him to get out, I was scared he might try to kill me again.’
Pip nodded and Stanley continued.
‘I just needed time to think about what I could do to fix the situation. Jamie was saying sorry through the door and asking me to let him out, that he just wanted to go home, but I needed to think. I panicked that someone might trace where he was from his phone so I smashed it with a hammer. After a few hours, I put a chain across the door handle and the pipe outside the wall, so I could open the door a little without Jamie being able to get out. I passed him through a sleeping bag and some cushions, some food, and a cup so he could fill up water from the sink. Told him I needed to think and shut him in again. I didn’t sleep at all that night, thinking. I still thought Jamie was Layla, that he’d spoken to me for weeks as her so he could lure me into a trap and kill me. I couldn’t let him go in case he tried to kill me again, or told everyone who I was. And I couldn’t call the police. It was impossible.
‘The next day, I had to go to work at the petrol station; if I don’t turn up or I call in sick, my parole officer asks questions. I couldn’t raise suspicions. I got home that evening and I still had no idea what to do. I made dinner and opened the door to pass it through to Jamie, and that’s when we started talking. He said he had no idea what Child Brunswick even meant. He’d only done what he did because a girl called Layla Mead told him to. The same Layla I’d been speaking to. He fell for her hard. She gave him all the same lines as me: that she had a controlling father who didn’t let her out much, and she had an inoperable brain tumour.’ He sniffed. ‘Jamie said it went further with him, though. She told him there was a clinical trial her dad wouldn’t let her do and she had no way of paying for it and would die if she didn’t. Jamie was desperate to save her, thought he loved her, so he gave her twelve hundred pounds for the trial, said he had to borrow most of it. Layla instructed him to leave the cash by a gravestone in the churchyard and to leave, that she would collect it when she could get away from her dad. And she made him do other things too: break into someone’s house and steal a watch that had belonged to her dead mother, because her dad had given it to the charity shop and someone else had bought it. Told Jamie to go beat someone up on his birthday night because this guy was trying to make sure she wouldn’t get on to the clinical trial that would save her life. Jamie fell for it all.’
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