Another shout. This time from inside the house. A flurry of activity, an army of firemen moving around the side of the house. The smash of glass as they broke through a window. A black face appearing in the space where the window had been.
‘In here!’
A stretcher was lifted towards the window; two men sliding a body onto it. The body was too big to be a child’s. Dee turned back to the shed. The water was still pumping out. Flames not as high now. Nothing left to burn. She ran towards it, thinking she might be able to get in. She had to do something, and if the firemen weren’t going to find Trevor, she would do it herself.
A hand on her arm dragged her back. A man – not Fireman Sam or Frasier, younger and harder-looking – shouted at her not to move any closer. She tried to pull her arm free, but he was much stronger than she was.
‘We’re going in now,’ he said. ‘But you need to wait here. Okay?’
He didn’t give her a choice. Stayed with her, keeping his hand on her arm, his fingers digging into her flesh, hurting her.
Two firemen kicked down what was left of the shed door. Not difficult, as most if it had already burned away. Dee could see now that the fire was almost out. Still the firemen kept the hose trained on it, water pumping out, dousing what was left.
Her mouth and nose and throat were full of the stink of charred wood and roasted metal and something else too. Something bitter and sour and very, very wrong.
Light flooded through the entrance to the shed. Dee didn’t understand where it was coming from at first. Until she realised it was sunshine. The back of the shed was gone, burned or broken, or never there in the first place perhaps. She was able to see right through to the fields beyond.
Trevor was safe. She knew it! He had managed to break through the back of the shed and get out.
‘He’s okay.’
She turned to the man beside her, smiling. He didn’t smile back, and she couldn’t understand why, because it was okay. Trevor was alive.
‘He’s okay.’ She said it again before she realised he wasn’t looking at her. He was looking at the shed behind her.
She turned back to the shed, saw the other fireman standing in the broken-down doorway. Frasier. She remembered his name now. Frasier Crane. A psychiatrist in Seattle. All the facts about Frasier and his life tumbling through her head because it was easier and better to think about that instead of what she was looking at.
Frasier the fireman, looking across the neatly mowed lawn to Dee. She didn’t want to meet his gaze, but she knew he was waiting. So she lifted her head and asked the question, even though she knew he was too far away to hear her.
‘Is he okay?’
Frasier the fireman shook his head.
No.
Fifty-Seven
Ella
Ten years earlier
Ella took a sip of her beer and checked the time. Eleven thirty. She took her phone out of her pocket and sent a text to her mother.
Working late. Will get a taxi x
Mum hated that she was working in a pub. But there was no way Ella was giving up this job. She’d meant it when she told Katie she felt suffocated at home. She guessed it was worse for Katie because her father was so protective, he wouldn’t even let her get a job.
Which was so wrong. Katie was seventeen, and Gus wouldn’t be able to keep her locked up forever. Especially the way she looked these days. Ella remembered the first time she’d seen her. Here in the pub. Katie had been having dinner with Gus. Ella had guessed who she was right away. Although if she was being honest, she’d been a bit surprised.
Her parents had been friendly with Gus and his wife, Marianne. The couple had been for dinner at Ella’s house a few times and she had vivid memories of Katie’s mother. Vivid because Marianne wasn’t the sort of woman you forgot in a hurry. Tall and slender, with huge dark eyes, olive skin and long, luxurious black hair. Ella had expected Katie to look like her mum. But she couldn’t have been less like her if she’d tried.
After her initial surprise, Ella’s next reaction was pity. She liked to think she would never let herself get that fat, but the truth was, she didn’t know what she’d do if she had the sort of body that put weight on easily. She tried to imagine what it would be like to have been overweight your entire life. But it was too difficult. Or maybe she just didn’t want to imagine it, because that made her feel even worse for Katie.
But now she didn’t have to feel bad for Katie at all. Now, Ella admired her, because Katie had clearly put a huge amount of effort into changing her appearance. And that effort had really paid off.
She heard the whoosh of the bar door being pushed open and she smiled. It was good that they were having this chat tonight. She’d wanted to find a way to talk to Katie, explain why she hated Shane so much. She was sure that if she told her what Shane was really like, Katie wouldn’t want anything to do with him.
But when she turned around, it wasn’t Katie she saw.
He was standing in the doorway, watching her, his pupils dilated so it looked like he had two black holes where his eyes should be.
‘Hey.’ He smiled like it was the most natural thing in the world for him to be here after closing time, when no one else was around. A surge of rage consumed her, overriding any fear she’d felt. He wasn’t meant to be here, and if he took a single step towards her, she would kill him.
‘Get out,’ she said, her voice trembling with the effort of not screaming. Not wanting to give him the pleasure of knowing he could get inside her head and make her so scared she was literally jumping at the sight of her own shadow.
He looked surprised for a moment, then that stupid grin was back.
‘Ah,’ he said, walking towards her. ‘That’s the game, is it?’
She pushed herself off the bar stool so she was standing facing him.
‘Don’t come any closer.’
‘Or what?’
‘Or I’ll kill you.’
He hesitated. ‘I don’t get it, Ella. You said this was what you wanted.’
‘Bullshit.’
For a moment, she thought it would be okay. Then he took another step forward. She could smell him, his scent filling up the room, making it difficult to breathe. Sweat and cigarette smoke underlaid with something sour that made her retch as he drew closer.
She was still holding the beer bottle. As he reached for her, she smashed it on the corner of the bar. Beer splashed onto her hand and her T-shirt, shards of glass skittering across the mahogany surface of the bar. She swung around, pointing the jagged edge of the broken bottle at his throat.
‘Jesus,’ he said, putting his hands up. ‘Be careful, would you?’
‘Get away from me.’
‘No. You can’t mess me around like that, Ella. Sending me all those messages, telling me how much you want me, and then this? It’s not right.’
She hadn’t sent him any messages. He was deluded. But before she could tell him that, he pushed his hand into her chest, shoving her hard. She stumbled back, fell. Pain exploded through her shoulder. She screamed, but the sound was blocked off as he threw himself onto her, crushing the air from her body.
She tried to get up, but he was too fast. His hands held her arms over her head, pinning her wrists to the ground, while his other hand stroked her face. The sensation of his finger was like a snail’s trail across her skin.
‘Ella.’
His breath all over her face. The smell of him stuck at the back of her throat. He leaned in closer, pressed his lips against hers. She swung her head sideways, but he grabbed her chin, forced her face back to his and kissed her a second time, using his tongue to force her mouth open, pushing it deeper.
She retched and screamed and struggled against him, but he was stronger than she was. He slammed her wrists against the ground and she felt the bottle drop from her hand, heard it roll away from her.
He lifted his head and she breathed in gulps of clean air, trying to get rid of the taste of him. He was moving his b
ody against her and she could feel his erection pressing against the inside of her thigh. The light disappeared as his head came back down again.
‘No.’
Her voice was cut off by his tongue, shoving deeper inside her mouth until she was gagging. No. She wasn’t going to let him do this. She opened her mouth wider, and he pushed into her and against her. And then she bit down, hard, her teeth clamping into his tongue.
Liquid gushed down her throat, choking her. Shane rolled off her, his hand clamped over his mouth, screaming. She saw the blood seeping through his fingers as she scrabbled away from him, eyes scanning the floor for the broken bottle.
She saw it resting against the leg of a chair, just out of reach. She threw herself forward, felt the glass with her fingertips but wasn’t able to get a grip on it because Shane was on top of her again, hands grabbing her hair, pulling her head back.
She jerked against him, but he held tight, pulled harder. White dots danced in front of her, the pain too much to bear a second longer. With one final surge of energy, she lunged for the bottle again, rage and pain screaming out of her until her throat was raw.
Her fingers closed round it. Behind her, someone shouted, but she couldn’t hear over the churning of the blood pumping inside her head and her own screams. The weight of his body disappeared. Still holding the bottle, she pushed herself off the ground, lunging out and up towards the figure standing over her, aiming for his neck, shoving the bottle into him as hard as she could. Blood erupted out of him, all over her face and arms and body.
His hands flew up to stop the flow of blood, but there was too much of it and he was cut too deeply. He staggered back and away from her.
It was only when the light caught his face, right before he fell to the ground, that she realised what she’d done. He landed in a heap, his hands still clutching the gaping hole she’d made in his neck.
‘Gus?’ A woman’s voice.
Ella swung around, saw Roxanne standing in the doorway.
‘Oh love,’ Roxanne said. ‘What have you done?’
She wasn’t looking at Ella. She was looking past her, at Gus, the blood pooling from his neck.
‘Katie.’ The word heaved out of him in a whisper. He reached out, as if he was looking for her, and then his hand fell back and hit the ground with a soft thud.
Fifty-Eight
Katie
Six months earlier
It’s nothing like I thought it would be. I’m still me, that’s the problem. I’ve done everything I can, but it’s not good enough. I’ll never be her. It was a stupid idea. Because how can I be her when she’s still her?
Australia hasn’t worked out for me. I don’t like the people. They’re too loud, too in-your-face, wanting to know all about you and inviting you to their houses for ‘barbies’ all the time. Sydney is overcrowded and hot. I’ve been to the beach a few times, but that’s as bad. Full of loud-mouthed Aussies drinking lager and cracking bad jokes.
Home is a cramped apartment near the city centre. A forty-five-minute walk from the beach. I can’t help comparing it to the pictures Ella has sent me. I don’t know Eastbourne, but it looks beautiful. Peaceful and unspoilt and sort of perfect, really.
She’s found a house right on the beach. I imagine what it would be like to be able to open your door every morning and step outside to that view. I don’t have to imagine very hard, because she never tires of telling me how great her life is. She sends me a lot of emails, and they’re always bursting with news and regular updates on Jake. I know when she stopped breastfeeding him, when his first tooth came, when he started to walk and sleep through the night and eat solids and go in the sea for the first time and everything else about his life, because she cannot help herself.
She always asks me how I’m doing and what I’m up to, even though she must know there’s never anything to tell. How can there be? All I do is work and sit in this apartment, thinking what my life would be like if it was me who’d got pregnant instead of her.
She thinks I don’t know it’s Tom’s baby. I’d always suspected it, of course. Then I saw the photos and I knew.
When we email, we use our new names. So I’m Ella and she’s Katie. Apart from our names, nothing else has changed, though.
I keep thinking back to that afternoon in her Bristol flat. When she was fat with pregnancy and half-mad with paranoia. The power of it all buzzing inside me, bringing everything into sharp focus so it was as if I was seeing the world properly for the first time.
I knew, even before I suggested it, that she’d say yes. And when she did, I thought my life – my real life, the one I’d been waiting to live for so long – was about to begin.
But it didn’t last. How could it when she’s there, living her perfect life by the sea, and I’m here, three storeys up in a poky little box of a flat with paper-thin walls and no air conditioning?
Shane emails or FaceTimes me almost every day. I’m still Katie to him. I don’t want to tell him I’m someone else now. If I do that, he could try to look for Ella before I’m ready. Without me, he has no hope of finding her.
He wants me to move back to England so we can be ‘a proper couple’. It’s funny, really. Just when he’s realised how much he needs me, I start to lose interest. All that endless crap about how much he’s suffered, it gets boring after a while. But I reply to his emails and I usually take his calls because I loved him once and that’s got to mean something, hasn’t it?
It’s warm in the apartment this evening. I’ve opened the windows to try to cool the place. The air outside is every bit as hot and the noise from the street below is deafening. I check the time. It’s almost ten o’clock, but you wouldn’t think it. The street I live on is lined with bars with tables and chairs outside. When I moved here, I liked the idea of that. Imagined myself spending evenings down there, sitting at a table with my friends drinking glasses of grassy Sauvignon Blanc and sharing gossipy stories. Not stuck up here on my own listening to other people having the time of their lives.
A woman keeps laughing every few seconds, a screechy sound that slices through me like nails dragging down a blackboard. I’m closing the window, thinking I’d rather be too warm than listen to that sound a second longer, when my laptop pings with the sound of an incoming email.
I open the laptop and see the message on my screen: Email from [email protected].
I click on it right away, hungry for news of my other life. She’s attached a photo. I wait for it to load, resentment seething inside me as I anticipate another snapshot view of her perfect home with her perfect child. When the photo finally loads, I’m confused for a second, because I’m in it. I’m kneeling on a beach building a stone tower with a boy who’s kneeling opposite me holding a stone in his hand and smiling at the camera – a big, gappy grin that tugs at my insides.
Almost immediately, I come to my senses. The woman in the photo isn’t me. It’s her. She’s bending over to pick up a stone and her hair has fallen across her face so you can’t see it clearly. It’s the first photo she’s sent me with her in it. All the others have been just of Jake or the beach. That’s what caused my confusion. I haven’t seen her in over two years. Somehow, during that time, I forgot how alike we’ve become.
I stare at the woman in the photo, and all I think is this:
It should be me.
Fifty-Nine
Dee
Three months later
Autumn. Dee’s favourite season. She loved the changing colours, the cooler temperature, the way the weather could change in the blink of an eye from fooling you it was still summer to a sudden downpour that left you drenched. She loved the shortening days and the shades of grey at dusk, when the world was somewhere between day and night and everything seemed to slow down and the ocean grew so still it was easy to believe the tide had stopped turning and the world would stay like this forever.
She’d spent most of the afternoon on the deck, drinking tea and watching the shifting colours of the sea and sk
y as the day gradually turned into night. The sun had set over an hour ago and it was getting cold, but she stayed outside anyway, not wanting to leave in case she missed them.
Of course, there was always a chance they’d changed their plans, but she didn’t think so. She was so familiar with the patterns of their life, she would know, surely, if they were doing something different. Tonight was Friday. Pizza and movie night. They provided the pizza and Dee brought dessert. It was something they’d done every Friday for the last two months.
Until tonight.
It was already seven o’clock, and she was starting to feel stupid. She’d clearly misinterpreted the situation. Thinking something was happening when they’d obviously made other plans and not bothered to tell her.
‘Idiot,’ she muttered, picking up her mug to go inside. No pizza or movie tonight, then. Instead, she’d have to do with a bottle of wine and whatever she could find in the freezer.
She stepped into the sitting room and was closing the door when she heard a noise behind her. She froze. Memories of the attack three months ago flooding back.
‘Surprise!’
A burst of noise and voices, shocking her so badly that the empty mug fell from her hand, smashing onto the parquet floor.
‘What the…?’
She swung around, angry now, not scared. Four faces beaming at her from various points of the sitting room.
‘What the hell are you all doing in my house?’
‘It’s your birthday,’ Louise said, stepping out from behind the sofa to give Dee a hug.
‘You were ages,’ Daisy said.
‘Sorry.’ Dee bent to hug her niece, holding her until Daisy wriggled away. ‘I would have come in earlier if I’d known you were all here.’
‘Then it wouldn’t have been a surprise,’ Ed said. He was grinning like this was the best idea in the world, even though he must know – mustn’t he? – how much Dee hated surprises. He kept grinning as he moved across the room and gave her a quick kiss on each cheek.
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