by Emma Rowley
And I don’t know why I assumed he wasn’t local. Of course there’s no reason for him to mention personal ties to the area, or to Sophie’s school; he’s a professional. Though he’s had every chance....
He gave the students talks. I wonder if Sophie ever went to one of them?
It’s funny how your brain works. How something jogs your memory, a little nudge and some synapse sparks, a connection is made. It comes to me as I’m driving home: what Danny said, that was niggling at me.
He’d said sometimes Sophie’s dad would pick her up. I’d corrected him, pettily. “Sophie was a daddy’s girl. But he didn’t pick her up. I did, if she was late finishing. Mark was always at work.” And he’d shrugged.
I’d thought it meant that Danny had seen my car and assumed it was Mark’s. But I’m racking my brains now: had he ever even met him? Mark was always working late and it wasn’t like Danny was staying for dinner every night.
No, now I think of it, I don’t think they had met, even briefly; there’d have been grumblings from Mark, if they had. I’m sure of it. So why did Danny assume it was her dad and not me?
The answer’s inevitable, once I see it. He thought it was her dad because there was an older man in the driving seat. Someone he didn’t know.
I’ve got to speak to Danny.
CHAPTER 27
Sophie
We still went out, in the early days. The first time he woke me one evening, I think I must have been dozing, curled up on the mattress. I was still dressed, so it can’t have been that late. You wouldn’t think you’d get so tired, when you’ve nothing to do. But I’d get cold quickly, when I wasn’t moving around so much, so I’d crawl under the duvet even in the daytime.
“Come on,” he said. “Quick.” I didn’t ask what the rush was about. Even then, I knew he didn’t like me to ask so many questions.
I followed him through the door and down the stairs, off balance. I felt a spike of anticipation, even nerves, as he unlocked the second door, using the same set of keys. I didn’t know he kept that one locked, too.
The blueish light from his phone barely pierced the shadows. It had been so rushed when I came here, I’d hardly paid attention. But again I had a sense of space, something in the sound our footsteps made. He led me down more stairs, then made me put a blanket over my head as we went out to the car, the same as when I arrived.
So no one could see me, he said. I couldn’t even hear traffic.
His car was the same dark sedan. He told me to sit in the back seat.
I had a vivid flashback, to when he used to pick me up from school, before he said it was too risky. This time, he told me to lie down, so no one could see me.
I nearly fell asleep, lulled by the movement of the car, but after half an hour, or maybe it just seemed that long, he told me to sit up. I felt almost disappointed, stretching my stiff limbs. We were just driving through country lanes, the car lights picking out hedgerows and winding tarmac, nothing more.
“Can we stop somewhere, maybe?” I asked. “I want to walk around.” I was desperate suddenly to run again, feeling the pent-up energy of weeks inside.
“Don’t be silly,” he said. “Someone might see us, then what would we do?”
I didn’t think they would. But I didn’t want to complain too much.
And it worked. Afterward he took me out again. I think he was already getting sick of our place, the stuffiness, the silence, the air thick with dust and neglect no matter how much I cleaned.
It was always the same routine. We never went far, just round the quiet back lanes, never where the street lights got closer together. And where was there for us to go? Sometimes, I found myself just falling asleep again. I felt safer in the car, almost back in the world again.
But then one time, bright lights woke me up. I kept still and peeked out under my lowered eyelids, my head lolling back against the headrest. We were at a petrol station. I listened to the noises: he filled the car up, paying for the petrol with his card in the keypad machine. The thought occurred to me then: I could just step out, hammer the window, scream for attention. There would be people in the station, or somebody. I remember my whole body tensed, poised, and then—he got back in and switched on the ignition.
We drove off. Shock flooded my body, at the strength of my reaction—just how much I wanted to go. I was fine. This was what I’d wanted. Wasn’t it?
Still, I wonder: I don’t know if I was as close as I thought, not really. Because a couple of times after that, I tested the handle when his attention was on turning a corner, or going through a junction, just to see. The child lock was always on.
Anyway, there were only a handful more night drives, two or three, if that.
I knew it would be the last time as soon as it happened. I had been quiet, that evening, not the cheerful girl he liked me to be. I was lonely, left alone all day. I’d actually told him that. Maybe that’s why he did it—to punish me, a little. Or to test me, see how I’d react.
We pulled up by a house I hadn’t seen before, a little cottage in a terraced row, with a smart dark green door. We must have driven half an hour, maybe more. He parked up across the street from it, away from the orange puddle of the street lamp and then waited, the engine off.
It was cold, but I knew better than to ask why we were there. His actions, I’d realized, didn’t always seem entirely, well, reasonable. So I just sat on my hands to keep them warm, hunkering into my baggy sweatshirt. All the clothes he’d brought me were too-big castoffs. They’d last me, he said.
I turned my face to the window, breathed on it to make a cloud on the glass, drew a flower. Then I rubbed it off and peered into the darkness. There was movement in the cottage door opposite, a slow figure, carrying dark shapes—bin bags.
Something in the old man’s shoulders, his tired slump, told me. I pressed my hand to the window, got as close as I could. Steadily, not too fast, without a trace of panic, the car pulled away.
“Was that my grandpa?” I remember saying. “Was that him?”
He didn’t answer, just kept driving, as I tried to calm myself down.
He’d always ignored my questions, like he never even heard me. He prefers to tell me things—to teach me. It was one of the things I liked about him, at first. I thought he was so clever, so certain about what everyone should do, and what everyone was getting wrong. The banks, politicians, teachers, my parents. Me.
But this time I kept talking: “Why did you do that? That was him, I know it.” I was almost crying, my voice getting higher. “Is he OK? He looked so . . . so old.”
He turned in his seat to look at me, his face furious.
“Shut up,” he said. “I mean it.”
I stared at him, open-mouthed. He never spoke to me like that.
“You knew what this would mean.” Then his voice softened, as his eyes returned to the road. “We’ve both had to make sacrifices. But isn’t this enough, what we’ve got together?”
I didn’t know what to say. “It is,” I stuttered. “More than enough.” I just wanted him to go back to normal, like he’d been before. “Honestly, it was a shock, that’s all.”
He needed so much reassurance. I leant forward between the seats and put my hand over his, tense on his thigh, and felt it stiffen, then relax. “You’re more than enough. I promise.” After that, the trips outside stopped. Not forever, he said. Just until it was safe.
“Look what happened,” he said. “It only upsets us both.”
It’s you who took me there, I thought. But of course I didn’t say that.
CHAPTER 28
Kate
“Amberton Garage, how can I help?”
“Danny?”
“Who’s this?”
In a rush I say: “Danny, it’s Kate Harlow. Please don’t hang up.”
Silence, then: “Are you kidding me? What do you want?”
“Danny, I am so, so sorry you’ve got mixed up in all this—and I am trying to sort it out, really I a
m. But I need to know: that car that you saw picking Sophie up, when you thought it was her dad—”
“You’re asking me about cars now?” His voice skitters higher. “Do you know the police had me in again, about Sophie? Holly got really upset. You’ve got to stop this, it’s not fair, it’s—”
“Danny, I know. And I believe you now, I do: you didn’t get Sophie pregnant.” As I say it I realize it’s more than me trying to get him to stay on the line, I mean it. “And I know it sounds odd, but please. This thing about the car—I just, I need to know—why did you think that it was Sophie’s dad?”
I’m waiting for him hang up. But he says, more calmly: “I don’t know. Well, he was old. And when I asked her, she got embarrassed. Y’know, I teased her a little bit, about her dad still picking her up.”
“I get it—and what did he look like?”
“I dunno. Old. Like a . . . dad. Like he could be her dad.”
I roll my eyes—teenagers. “Anything else? Glasses? A beard? His hair color?”
“I don’t know. I don’t remember. I didn’t go and say hello.”
“And this car?”
“I don’t remember.”
I wince. Come on, Danny. “Maybe not the model, don’t worry about that. But you know all about cars. What about the color, can you picture that?”
“Well,” he says hesitantly. “Black, maybe, or navy. Dark. Yes, it was dark. Smart.”
I lean against the wall. So it definitely wasn’t Mark. Mark always goes for light colors, pale metallics—silver, beige, one year that horrible gold.
“Why?” Danny says now. “Do you think—this guy did something?” His voice is smaller now, fearful. He’s not that old, I think. He’s had a lot to deal with.
“I think he knows something. I’ve got to go now. And thank you, Danny. I mean it.”
So some guy, someone older, not her dad, picked her up. And someone was emailing her secretly. Are they one and the same? “I can’t wait.”
An older man. Too old for Sophie, so they had to be a secret. A secret that he’s managed to protect, until now. Until Holly told me about the pregnancy test, and I started asking questions.
I start walking, pacing up and down the kitchen, the nervous energy forcing me to move.
But what about Nancy? How does that play into this? Am I imagining it, seeing a link, when there’s nothing there but a resemblance between two girls, separated by decades, and a chance stray phrase? Then there’s this boyfriend of hers . . . Jay. The one they questioned, then he moved away.
He’d be old now too, to a teenager like Danny.
That’s ridiculous. The whole Nancy thing.
The only reason I’m even thinking about Nancy, the only reason I even know about her, is because of Lily, who barely seems to know what day it is nowadays.
“Nancy was the other one, then.... I get a bit confused these days, don’t I?”
I’m picturing her now: Lily pretending not to know about Nancy: “No dear. I hope I haven’t forgotten again.” Not seeming upset to have let that slip her memory, not at all.
I kick on my trainers and head out, swatting away the midges that are dancing under the trees. I’m thinking how to do this: I don’t want her to clam up, she’s been so touchy recently. Not herself. I can only try, I think, as I let myself in. “Lily?”
She’s in her usual chair. But she looks frailer than I remember, dark blue shadows under her eyes.
“Hello, dear.”
I pull up a chair, and ask her how she’s been; what’s been going on in her soaps. But she’s a beat behind my questions; she can’t remember what’s happened in the last episodes. The room’s a mess, too; saucers scattered around; old newspapers, the place too hot. I get up to open a window—it’s so stuffy.
Another bad day: I must chase the surgery. But maybe that means . . .
Feeling guilty, I kneel down next to her. “Lily, I’ve something to ask you. Something important—about Nancy, who you mentioned the other day?”
“Nancy?”
“Yes, Nancy.” I force myself to wait.
She looks blank, then: “She was a wild one. She got in trouble.”
“Yes, you said that last time: she was trouble. But what happened to her? Do you know?”
“They were going to send her away to school—after she got in trouble.”
Oh, I’m not going to get anywhere.
And then I realize: “She got in trouble.” That old euphemism, from when it wasn’t nice to talk about these things.
“Do you mean she was pregnant, Lily?”
“She was a one, Nancy. All that sneaking around, off in the deer park. That’s where the young people used to go in those days, you know—”
“So did you know her?” I can’t let her get off track. I think: how long has she been a housekeeper here? I didn’t think her roots here went that far back. “Did you know her, Lily? Is that why Sophie’s story reminded you of Nancy, the girl who used to live here?”
But she’s tuning me out, her eyes looking beyond me. I lean in and grasp her hand.
“And do you know what happened to her boyfriend, Lily? Do you know? His name was Jay.”
She turns her head to me and puts a soft hand over mine. “You mustn’t look so worried. What’s wrong?”
“I was asking you about Nancy, Lily, do you remember?” I try to keep the tension out of my voice.
“Nancy . . . no dear. I don’t think I know that name. Should I?”
“Yes, you do know it; did you know Nancy? What happened to her?”
But it’s too much, she’s getting upset now: “Why? Where is she? Where’s she gone?” She leans back in her chair. “Oh, I’m so tired.”
I squeeze her hand. “Don’t you worry about it, Lily. Everything’s going to be OK. You have a nice nap, I’ll come back later, when you’re more yourself.”
I stand up. Can it be possible?
In trouble.
If she meant what I think . . . pregnant. Nancy’s little sister didn’t breathe a word of this; neither did Vicky, her classmate—gossip like that would fly round a school. But only if people knew. If her little sister wasn’t told, say, or she didn’t confide in her friends, they could hush it up.
So that’s two of them.
Two girls who ran away. Two girls with secrets. Two girls who never came home.
CHAPTER 29
Sophie
There’s lots of stuff I don’t like to think about, these days. But you know what actually makes me pull a face when I remember? How I used to be.
I was so lonely in here, so starved of people, that I was so happy to see him whenever he turned up. Like some dog that still wags its tail when its master arrives to give it a kicking.
Even when he started to be different. He could be so short with me sometimes, like he never was on the outside. Sometimes he barely talked when he came round, only stopping to drop off the bags of food. He’s just busy, I told myself, I’ve got to understand that.
But when he did stay he wasn’t the same anymore. It felt like nothing about me was right.
“Why’s this place such a mess?” and “Can’t you brush your hair? You’d feel better if you did.”
“I know, you’re right, and I was meaning to.” I just felt tired, all the time, falling asleep in the day. What was I going to do, anyway? I knew I shouldn’t say that.
“I’m really sorry,” I’d tell him, dissolving into tears all too easily now. “I’ll try harder.” But he didn’t want to look at me, let alone touch me. Sometimes he said I was ungrateful.
I cried about that, too.
I suppose he was getting nervous, the longer I was in here. I was too.
This is my third summer. It’s hard to keep track of the date. We don’t do Christmas, or birthdays. I just got upset, so he stopped. I did ask for a calendar, a paper one, because now I didn’t have a phone, but that never came. I know I’ve been here two winters. The days have been so long. But he doesn’t like me
to be bored. Correction: he doesn’t like me to seem bored. Whether I’m about to cry with frustration at another day inside these walls, let’s be honest, he doesn’t care.
I’ve got the TV. It’s just a little one, with a DVD player, and he brought me films. That was a relief. The silence was getting to me. Now I have it on nearly all the time, I just turn it down when I’m going to sleep. For a while I thought I might get a mention on the news, but it must have been too late: he didn’t get it for me until a few weeks in. I don’t know what that means. But it’s nice to hear voices other than my own. I’ve got in the habit of chatting away to Teddy, telling him things about my family and my life at home, like he could understand. I suppose it’s better than talking to myself. And I don’t do it when he’s here, of course.
I read the stuff he gives me. The classics, “proper” books. Some of them I’ve liked though. Jane Eyre, I’ve read that again and again. She’s like a friend now, Jane. And I exercise, press-ups and sit-ups and the rest, things that I make up. Sometimes I’ll put on a music channel and dance around. I like feeling my muscles ache, the sweat cooling on me. It reminds me I’m still real. And it keeps me strong. I’ve never mentioned that to him. At first, I thought it sounded silly. Now I’m glad.
Some days I get a different itch, a funny urge just to fidget, to fiddle, to do something with my hands. I drew, at first. I asked him for paper, and pens, and pencils. And he gave me them: a beautiful sketchbook, to start with; expensive chalks and waxy crayons from a proper art shop. He got cross when he saw what I did with them though. No beautiful landscapes, no glowing portraits of him. I like making things up. So now I’m careful, keeping things out of sight.
I miss my mum. I miss everyone, of course, even the people I thought I didn’t like. I even miss school, can you believe it, all my teachers, like nice Mrs. Vale and even grumpy old Mr. Kethrick. But mostly, I miss Mum.