by Wendy Clarke
A terrible thought came to me then. It was possible that Mark hadn’t started worrying yet. After all, it wasn’t unusual for me to take off for a couple of days when Mark’s attention became smothering or when I needed space and time away from his constant questioning. He’d promise, when I returned, that things would be different. That he’d back off a bit and let me live my life. They were promises he could never keep though, and, after a few days, it would start all over again. Where had I been? What had I been doing? Who had I seen?
A metallic sound brought me back to the present. A scraping over by the door. It was followed by a shaft of sunlight that sliced through the dark, causing my eyes to close. I scrambled to my feet. Blindly stumbling forward.
‘Who are you? What do you want?’
But there was no answering voice. Forcing my eyes to open, all I could see was a dark shape against the bright background. The sound of something being pushed across the floor.
‘Wait!’
I tried to run towards the light, but it was as if my legs didn’t belong to me. As quickly as it arrived, the strip of light started to narrow again until, with a clang, it was gone.
‘Don’t leave me. Please…’
I pounded on the door, but no one came. And then I heard the thrum of a car engine. Listened, with tears streaming down my face, as it got fainter and fainter. After the few seconds of light, the velvet darkness was heavy. Choking.
Panic made my breathing more rapid, intensified my fight or flight response, but there was nowhere to go. Nowhere to escape the black. I’d made it to the door, and it was then my foot made contact with something. Bending down, I touched it. It was a plastic tray with some food on it. I shoved it away, not caring that I was hungry, then slid to the floor, my back against the panelled metal wall.
I needed to think. I needed a plan.
Thirty-Two
Alice
‘Eloise?’ I press my fingertips to my temples. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes, I’m certain. At the police station, as well as showing me the clothes, they showed me photographs they’d taken of a tattoo on the woman’s wrist. It was the Chinese symbol for friendship. At first, I thought it was Joanna’s as she has one just like it, but when I looked closer, I realised it wasn’t hers. My wife’s was smaller; she’d had it done first, but Eloise had got hers done at a different tattoo parlour.’
I’m not sure I can take any more. ‘God, that’s awful. Poor woman.’
I think of Eloise. Her friendliness the day I went to see her even though I could have been anyone. Her concern for Joanna. I can’t believe she’s gone.
‘Yes, it’s a tragedy.’ He lowers his eyes momentarily. ‘Look, I need to go.’
‘You can’t. Not yet.’ I grab his sleeve. ‘I have to know what’s happening here.’
‘Eloise was…’ He looks away as though trying to think of the correct word. ‘Thin-skinned.’
‘Thin-skinned? What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Oversensitive. Took things to heart.’ He wrinkles his nose in distaste as he says it. ‘She was a car crash waiting to happen. Knew it as soon as she moved in.’
I’m shocked at the harsh way he’s said this. The lack of empathy. I remember what the police told me. A blow to the head. Possible foul play. Even if she was sensitive, she was vulnerable living all alone in this place. She’d been hurt. She must have been scared.
Mark drops his jacket onto the back of the settee, his tall frame casting a shadow across my body. ‘It’s not her we should be worrying about.’
A woman’s dead and he’s telling me not to worry? Fresh uncertainty nudges in, and I fight to keep my voice steady. ‘Do they know what happened? They said she had a head injury.’
Mark shifts his weight, his shadow moving off me. ‘They’re not sure yet, but the most likely explanation is she slipped and hit her head on the dock wall as she fell into the water.’
‘What did the police say when you told them who it was?’
His tone is defensive. ‘I didn’t.’
I look at him aghast. ‘You said nothing?’
Mark leans in close and takes my face between his hands. ‘Think about it, Alice. They’d be over this place like a rash and we can’t afford for that to happen, not with Joanna in danger.’
I think of Eloise with her shiny black hair. Her thin frame. Her strange haunting beauty. ‘But what about Eloise? Won’t there be someone who’ll miss her? Friends? Family?’
‘I doubt it. She never mentioned family and, as far as I know, Joanna was her only friend.’
‘But don’t you think it’s odd, Mark? First Joanna goes missing and now this. Both women who lived in Tobacco Wharf. Women who were friends, who spent time together.’
As I speak, an unsettling thought enters my head. I’m now the only woman living here.
Mark straightens up, his tall body framed by the huge arched window that throws cubes of sunlight across the wooden floor. Their grill-like pattern isn’t comforting. His shoulders are rigid. ‘You’ve heard of the word coincidence?’
His tone implies it’s not a question he expects to be answered, and reddening under the intensity of his gaze, I search for something else to say that will dispel my fears. ‘How well did you know her? Eloise, I mean.’
My tone is light. Frivolous. As though we’re discussing the weather rather than a woman who has lost her life.
He shrugs. ‘Not well. She was Joanna’s friend, not mine. She said that from the day she met her, they had an instant connection. In fact, they were like this.’ He crosses the first two fingers of his right hand. ‘That’s why they got those stupid tattoos. You’d think they were teenagers the way they acted together. Eloise would often be here when I came home from work, the two of them drinking wine, laughing. They’d stop as soon as they heard my key in the door, of course, and Eloise would always leave soon after, as though I’d spoiled the party. Then, one day, she just stopped coming.’
‘Did Joanna ever say why?’
‘No. Knowing my wife, she probably got bored of her, and to be honest, I didn’t care. If truth be told, I found the friendship odd. Too intense. They even swapped keys in case one of them was out when the other called round. It was so they could wait until they got back. I was never comfortable with that, but I suppose it was useful for when Eloise was away, and Joanna fed the dog.’
I look at Mark in horror. ‘Oh my God. The dog… Pixie. She’ll be in the apartment alone. We’ll have to go and get her. She’ll be starving.’
‘Jesus, I forgot the dog.’ Panic is written across his face. ‘Look, Alice. I don’t have time for this. I’ve got to get the rest of the money. If I give you the key, could you go down and get her, do you think?’
I stare at him. ‘How can I do that, Mark? Look at me!’
Mark looks at my foot. ‘I’m sorry that was stupid of me. It’s just that I can’t think straight. Joanna…’ He looks desperate. Anguished.
‘It’s all right. I’ll see if I can walk. Help me up.’
Mark slides his arm around me, taking my weight. With difficulty, I stand.
‘How does that feel?’
‘Let me try on my own.’
I put my foot to the floor, testing it. If I don’t put too much weight on it, I can walk, just about. Enough for me to get to Eloise’s apartment anyway. ‘It hurts but I’ll manage. You go.’
His voice is filled with relief. ‘Thank you.’
There’s a large bunch of keys hanging from a hook on the wall. Mark grabs it and works one of the keys off the ring. He hands it to me. ‘Here you are. I can’t thank you enough, Alice. I’ll help you to the lift, then I must hurry.’
I look at him in horror. ‘I can’t. I told you, especially after what happened in the car park.’
‘Even if I ride down with you?’
‘Look, just go. You’re wasting time. I’ll be fine.’
Mark looks at his watch. ‘Okay but take it slowly.’ He holds out his arm for me
to take. ‘I’ll help you to the stairs. God, I hope that poor dog’s okay.’
Opening the apartment door, he helps me through, and we walk slowly down the long corridor, Mark’s arm around me. At the door to the stairs, I stop. ‘I’ll be all right from here. I’ll go down on my bottom if I have to.’
I give a half-hearted laugh, but Mark’s face remains serious. ‘Are you sure you’ll manage? We don’t want any more accidents.’
‘I’ll be fine.’
‘Then I’ll go. I’ll find the rest of the money, give them what they want and then we can get back to normal.’ He looks helpless, standing there, in his work suit. Like a lost boy.
‘All right.’
But what is normal? It’s a long time since anything has felt even remotely that way.
‘Try not to worry.’ Mark holds open the door and waits until I’m through before letting it swing closed behind me.
I stand alone at the top of the stairs, looking over the banister at the winding flights below. Wondering if I’ll make it all the way down.
But more than that, I’m wondering what I’m going to find when I open Eloise’s door.
Thirty-Three
Joanna
Another day had passed. Well, I thought it was another day. The only way I could judge was by the opening and closing of the door. The slide of the tray across the floor. It made me think of Nathan and the food I used to bring him, knowing that without me his life could slide back out of control.
I remembered how his eyes would light up in his pale face whenever he opened the door to me, grateful for my help. Thankful that he didn’t have to ask his father for anything. Not that he would have received any help. Mark well and truly washed his hands of him a long time ago. Happy to take on his wife’s money after she died but not her son. Poor kid. What would he do without me? He’d be worrying. Wondering why I’d stopped coming to the empty apartment where he’d made his camp. His loss maybe rekindling his addiction.
From his sleeping bag on the floor of the squat, possibly the only squat with a circular bath and a jacuzzi, he might well have been considering telling Mark everything. About our meetings. How I’d kept him off the streets. I hoped he would, as with two of them looking, there’d be more chance of me being found.
There was something about Nathan that reminded me of Jez. He was about the same age Jez was back in the days when we were together. The way he held his body was the same too – limbs permanently tensed as though waiting for a chance to escape. I hadn’t known then it was me Jez wanted to escape from. When he did, he’d left me with a heart torn in two. Left me for Alice.
Ever since the day we’d met in the classroom of St Joseph’s, she’d been by my side. The friend I’d always craved. I know the other girls were wary of me, thought me stuck up, but Alice was different… my soulmate. She’d laugh at my jokes and help put the arguments with my parents into perspective. We’d joke that we were sisters, although the lives we’d been born into couldn’t have been more different. Wear our hair in the same way. Buy the same tops. And when she came to stay at my house in the holidays, she helped to make life bearable.
I wasn’t to know that she would change. How once we’d gone to university, she’d start to put herself first. Lie to me about why she couldn’t go out with me in the evenings, saying she was studying in the library. When I’d found out it was because she was seeing Jez, I’d felt as if the rug had been pulled out from under my feet. It had taken me a long time to trust her again.
I forced my mind back to the present. The past was the past and what I needed now was to find a way out of this place. Something told me I wasn’t being kept far from home. It could have been the dank smell of the river that came in when the door opened or the cry of the seagulls. More likely, it was the absence of cars and the sound of human life.
Each time the door opened, I’d try to catch a glimpse of my captor, but I never could. The sudden light entering my widened pupils forced them to contract. My eyelids to snap shut. Last night, when the door slid open, I’d pleaded with them to let me go, but my words fell on deaf ears. Why wouldn’t they speak? I didn’t care what they said. I just wanted to hear a human voice. Anyone’s… even theirs.
Something to make me know I was still alive. That I wasn’t going mad in that darkness.
Thirty-Four
Alice
After what seems an age, I reach the floor below. Half hopping, I make my way down the corridor to Eloise’s apartment. As I reach the door, I listen. Desperate to hear Pixie’s high-pitched barks.
There’s nothing.
Thrusting the key in the lock, I go inside. ‘Pixie?’
The bright, homely apartment is silent. There’s no sign of the little dog. I hobble inside, past the red settees with their colourful throws and cushions that I’d seen through the door the day I’d met Eloise, and start to search. The living area first and then the kitchen where I find a blue rubber mat with a faint ring showing where her water bowl would have been. It’s not there and there’s no sign of a food bowl either, though there’s an empty dog food can on the counter. Picking it up, I inspect it. What clings to the sides is dried and crusty.
‘Where are you, Pixie?’
Through Eloise’s apartment window the sky is leaden grey, rain dulling the outlines of the buildings on the opposite side of the river. From where I’m standing, I can see the ugly metal frame of a harbour crane, its chain swinging in the wind, the cab almost level with the window. At least from the living area of Joanna’s apartment, I have a clear view of the river. I haven’t seen the wooden gallows Mark told me about on my first morning at Black Water Dock, but I don’t need to: the arm of the crane, with its heavy chain, is reminder enough.
I look around the living area, picking up cushions and putting them down again, lifting coloured throws and moving magazines, hoping to find something that will give a clue as to what happened. A note maybe or the signs of a struggle. There’s nothing. No clues and no dog.
It feels wrong to go into Eloise’s bedroom, but I have to be sure Pixie isn’t hiding in there. Pushing down the handle, I find it’s locked, but at least it means the dog isn’t in there. The door to the second bedroom isn’t locked though and opens to a bright and colourful space. The bare bricks have been painted sunshine yellow, and instead of the wooden boards I step onto each morning, the floor is covered in a carpet the colour of the ocean. Everything is clean and tidy, and I shut the door again.
Knowing it’s pointless to worry about a dog that isn’t there, I’m about to leave the apartment when something in the kitchen catches my eye. Something I didn’t see before. I stop still, my blood running cold. There’s a photograph stuck to the shiny silver fridge with a magnet. I’m too far away to see it properly, but close enough for my instincts to know something isn’t right. For my stomach to tighten.
Afraid of what I’ll find but needing to be sure, I walk around to the other side of the kitchen island. I lift my hand to the photograph, then drop it again. It’s as I feared – it’s not a picture of Eloise or even of Pixie. It’s the one of me and Joanna outside the art room, our arms looped around each other’s shoulders. The one from Mark’s apartment. How did it get here? I hadn’t even noticed it was missing.
Why is it here? It’s not as if I even know Eloise. I only met her once.
There’s a sound behind me and I spin round, but it’s only the rain battering at the window. Apart from me, the room is empty.
A feeling of unease insinuates itself under my skin. I want to be out of here. Out of the dead woman’s apartment. Pulling the photograph from the magnet that holds it, I stuff it in my pocket and hurry back out into the corridor, closing the door behind me. Then, using the rough brick wall to steady myself, I limp along the corridor and shoulder open the door to the stairwell. Once I’m through, I look up, seeing the stairs wind away from me.
My heart sinks.
Reaching for the bannister and putting as little weight as I can on my ba
d foot, I manage to hop onto the first step. I manage the second too. But however careful I am, the pressure on my ankle as it bears my weight, sends white-hot shooting pains up my leg. It takes just four more steps for me to realise I’m never going to make it back up two flights. Sweat beads my forehead, and I wipe it with my arm. What am I going to do? I curse myself for not having thought this through.
Through the glass panel of the door, I can see the lift. I don’t have any choice. Lowering myself onto my bottom, I bump back down the stairs then retrace my steps, every footfall sending a sharp pain through my ankle.
But the discomfort is nothing compared with the fear of what I know I’ll have to endure in a minute.
Thirty-Five
Joanna
My hair felt lank and greasy and the sweet, musky smell that followed me everywhere was coming from my own body. As the hours stretched ever onwards in the darkness, my despair and isolation made my body sluggish. My brain slow. With nothing to do but wait, I couldn’t stop my mind from wandering to the past.
I wished now that I had never given in to Mark. Gone against my parents’ wishes. My heart gave a lurch. Could they have found out about our secret marriage? If they had, my father would have been humiliated. I remembered all the competitors he’d brought down. The cocky salesmen who had been dismissed under a cloud of accusations that had never rung true. If I was right and they knew, is it possible they could have had something to do with this? Planned it all along to teach us a lesson?
I pressed my hands to my face. How could I be even thinking like this? My mum and dad might have been self-centred and uncaring, but they weren’t monsters. I’d read too many books. Seen too many movies where the villains were right under your nose.