‘Why are we in here?’ said Ivy. She was standing in sweatshirt and socks too now, like Laura, both of them looking like elves to Martine, their pink flesh like leggings and the thick socks like bootees. ‘What do you want? What are you going to do with us? Why did you pretend we were your sisters? Why are you keeping us here?’
‘I’m not keeping you here,’ Kate said, looking at the wall above their heads. ‘And I didn’t pretend anything.’ Then she brought her gaze down to their faces. ‘You should be careful how you speak to me,’ she said. ‘Don’t you ever wonder why it’s always me who comes in?’ She was bundling up their discarded clothes in her arms. ‘You should be grateful.’ Then, walking backwards, feeling behind her, she made her way to the door.
‘Why?’ Laura said.
‘Because I think you’re dead enough. But you’re not dead enough for my sister. And she’s almost ready to choose.’
Ivy moved quicker than Martine dreamed she could. She stood in front of them, with her arms spread wide. ‘She doesn’t need to choose,’ she said. ‘She can have me.’
But the door was already open and, in a moment, Kate had locked it behind her again. ‘Gail!’ she shouted. ‘Let me out.’ The key was rattling in the lock before the words had left her mouth.
The silence she left behind her lasted a good long while. Laura broke it.
‘That’s not the deal, Ivy,’ she said. ‘All for one and one for all.’
‘She means “thank you”,’ Martine said. ‘Me too.’
‘And what got you stripping off and flinging your clobber like we’re all on a hen night?’ Laura said.
‘You started it,’ Ivy said. ‘But we need to be careful. She picked up on the new mood in here. We need to try to be the same, while we prepare.’
‘And thank God she did,’ said Martine, ‘because it rattled her. She let things slip.’
‘Did she?’ Laura said.
Martine nodded. ‘I’ve nearly got it.’ She put her fingertips against her forehead and balanced her head on them. She could feel the sharp poke of her untrimmed nails on her skin and it made her feel as if she was forcing her brain to work, pinching it awake. ‘She denied she wanted us in here. She denied that she was keeping us here.’
‘Right,’ said Laura. ‘She’s just Igor. Gail’s the boss. Getting ready to choose.’
‘And she said she wasn’t pretending we were her sisters. We know she didn’t prepare for us staying. As if she didn’t think beyond getting us here and handing us over for inspection.’
‘Try, Martine!’ said Laura. Martine ignored the flare of anger at the heel-turn and managed not to say: make your mind up.
‘Sisters,’ she said. ‘She pretended we were her sisters. It’s right on the tip of my— Got it!’ She had been at the gym, on the rowing machine, entranced by the voice describing something so bizarre and so invisible, the opposite of a normal person standing out like a hippo: it was a normal-looking person so far departed from reality it made Martine feel sick. It made her scared to remember the times in her life that she’d seen a random middle-aged Black man on a city street and wondered about him.
‘Capgras syndrome!’ she said. ‘It was Oliver Sacks. I think it’s a … I don’t know what it is. An illness? It’s a delusion. Where someone thinks strangers they’ve never met are people they know. Thinks the people they know have been taken away. This is it! Gail keeps telling Kate not to speak to her, not to feed her, doesn’t she? She doesn’t believe Kate’s her sister any more. She wants a new one. She’s going to choose a new one!’
‘Choose one to kill?’ said Laura. ‘Or choose one to keep?’
‘And kill the other two?’ Ivy said. ‘And I pushed myself forward! I had no idea. I thought I was protecting you.’
‘Shoosh,’ said Martine. ‘Of course you did. None of us knew.’
‘But how can Kate go along with it, instead of just getting a bloody doctor?’ Laura said. ‘Why’s she pandering?’
Ivy found herself answering. ‘When you live a small life, turned in, you can get a long way down a road without ever knowing.’
Martine heard the break in her voice. ‘Don’t upset yourself,’ she said.
‘And put your feet back up,’ Laura added.
‘I couldn’t see beyond a cat!’ Ivy wailed.
‘Ssshh,’ said Laura, making Martine’s flesh crawl at the memory of Gail. Sliding about in her bare feet, whispering and shushing.
‘Sorry,’ Laura said. She’d noticed Martine shuddering.
‘A cat!’ Ivy said again, with a deep sob in her voice.
‘Don’t,’ Martine said. ‘You are nothing like her. She’s not just dependent, Ivy. She’s parasitic. She’s fused. She’s like a twin from a horror film. She’s a … perversion.’
‘You don’t know what it’s like,’ Ivy said again. ‘Mother. The things I did because of Mother. I killed a mouse. I let it die in agony.’
‘Would you have killed a cat?’ said Martine.
‘No.’
‘A child?’
‘No!’
‘And look what you’re willing to do for Laura and me. Sacrificing yourself.’
But Ivy wouldn’t be consoled. ‘I thought I was but I got it wrong. What if I’ve made it worse?’
She’d have to try something else, thought Martine. ‘I tell you what,’ she said, sticking her nose up and pretending to sniff the air. ‘A bit of adrenaline hasn’t helped us smell any better.’
Laura wrinkled her nose, held open the neck of her sweatshirt and poked her face in. ‘It’s a complete waste of these clean clothes.’
‘No!’ Ivy said. She said bolt upright, the sobbing gone. ‘We have got to stop caring about being dirty. It doesn’t matter.’ Laura winked at Martine. It had worked. Ivy was back on the warpath. ‘How long were those miners underground in wherever it was?’ she said. ‘And astronauts. It doesn’t matter.’
‘Agreed,’ said Martine. ‘We exercise and we concentrate on feeling strong and capable. We need to stop giving a toss about anything else.’
‘You do for sure,’ Laura said. Her face was solemn. ‘Because when we get out and you see your hair you’re going to scream and run straight back in again.’
Martine’s mouth dropped open and she was silent for a long beat. Then the laughter bubbled up from her belly and burst out of her. The other two joined in and before long all three of them were gasping.
Upstairs, in the ladies’ withdrawing room, Kate stood in the deep shadow at the side of the window and watched her sister’s chest rise and fall.
‘I told you,’ she said. ‘Something’s changed. Listen to them. They’re laughing.’
Gail said nothing.
‘You need to … I mean, it’s up to you, of course. But if I could … I’d say, if you’re ready—’
‘Ssssshhhh,’ Gail breathed, her lips hardly moving. She was propped on the chaise longue with her net curtain draped over the headrest and covering her to her waist. ‘Let me rest. Please, ssshhh. Leave me be.’
EIGHTEEN
I came awake with my limbs flailing and found myself upright in bed, heart hammering and hair sticking to my scalp. I had been back in my parents’ house, locked in my room, and my room was a train carriage, rocking, slack and sway-bellied, as if the couplings were loose or the rails were the wrong gauge. Shaking, I reached out and put my bedside lamp on, half-expecting to hear the furtive scuffle of someone creeping around my flat, trying to find me. There was only silence, the soft sound of the wind in my draughty windows and the tick of my heating. He wouldn’t, would he? And anyway, how could he find me? I’d ditched my car, my phone and my laptop. I hadn’t used my cards.
A woman couldn’t just disappear. Adim and the girls would kick up a stink. And anyway, he wouldn’t.
I tried to forget the way he’d looked at me and spoken to me, scorn turning his voice sour and his face ugly. ‘Try me,’ he’d said. ‘Check out your Brownies and Guides ideas about life, Tash. Go on. You need to l
earn that the world isn’t the pink sherbet place you think it is.’
‘You’ve got a week,’ I’d said.
He pushed his lips out and shook his head very slowly from side to side, staring up at me through his brows. I didn’t like looking at him when he did that. I stood up and backed off, putting distance between us. I didn’t know whether it would be an open-handed slap or a blow from his fist. Maybe it would be both hands round my neck and those small eyes looking coldly into mine until my vision faded.
‘Don’t test me, Dad,’ I said. ‘I’ve got nothing to lose. Yet. I’ve done nothing wrong. You’re not safe till I’ve taken over and bleached the books. Then I’ll have to keep my mouth shut or face jailtime along with you. But right now, you’ve got nothing on me. So get a clue. And quick.’
He was rising to his feet. He looked stupid with meanness, small-brained and frightening. He looked like someone who couldn’t be reasoned with or even bargained with. He was just a sack of dull meat, angry and bewildered by this new feeling of not getting his way. When I scrabbled my way out the door and slammed it behind me, I expected to hear him fling himself against it, like a rabid animal. I expected to hear him pawing and scratching.
‘All right, Tash?’ said the manager I passed on the stairs. ‘You’ve been a stranger.’
I ignored him, scurrying past fast enough to feel my feet slip on the metal edging of the steps.
‘OK there, Tash?’ said the girl on reception. I had spent one Christmas works night out in the women’s bogs with that girl and a bottle of tequila, moaning about boyfriends and cracking each other up about maybe just marrying each other because how bad could it be.
On watery legs, I clambered out of bed and felt my sweaty feet slide on the carpet tiles my bedroom floor had been covered with, the cheapest available, flat from wear but still with the odd stiff fibre that could stick to my skin and make me instantly itchy. I dragged my feet to clean them once I got on to the laminate in the hallway, feeling the sprung edges from its cack-handed installation dig into my insteps, not caring. I poured myself a glass of tap in the kitchen then took it to the back window to look out into the night.
Nothing was moving. Not so much as a cat or a fox disturbed the glitter of the garden walls and the grass beyond as the temperature fell and the dew formed. On the long stretch behind the fairytale cottage, there were footprints on the grass. I could see them in the harsh moon shadow, as if they had been added by an artist to finish off the scene. I looked upwards to the blue-black velvet of the sky and the shimmering disc of moon, one night off full, maybe two, outshining the stars so they only winked instead of dazzling. I was almost glad I’d had the nightmare now. So few clear nights had a moon as bright as this one that let you see colours. Or was it my imagination, I wondered as I turned my gaze down again, that the grass had a green cast and that the walls were pearly grey.
I leaned my head against the windowpane, letting my breath cloud it and clear, cloud it and clear. Then I held it.
There was someone down there. Someone was moving in the shadow of the stable wall at the far end of that long blank garden. I pulled back, but I knew it was too late. If he was looking, he’d have seen me. So, instead of running for my phone, or even for my keys and down to my car, I stood still and kept watching.
I didn’t understand what I was seeing, as the figure broke away from the shadow and moved out on to the grass again. Only that it was too simple a shape to be a real person. It fluttered at the edges as it moved and it had no head or arms. It was just a long column of soft grey, flitting up the garden towards the back of the house.
I don’t believe in ghosts, but I came closer in those few moments than I ever had before. Another minute showed me it was a person after all, a woman, wearing something long and shapeless that skimmed the ground and a veil that covered her to her waist, hiding face and neck, hands and arms. And, if I had any lingering doubts, I could see the set of new prints in the grass from flesh and blood feet, and the dull glint of some app or other flashing on and off on the phone she held in her hand.
At the house, the figure turned away to open the door in the offshoot then slipped inside. I could see through the veil then, in the harsh light cast by a bare overhead bulb. Underneath, the woman had long hair hanging down her back and her veil was actually a net curtain, still with the doubled hem for the curtain rod weighing it down on one side.
Was that the same woman who dotted about in her slippers and was forever tidying her cellar, up and down with bags and boxes every day? She seemed taller. Or maybe everyone would looked taller dressed as a grey ghost on a moonlit night. It was none of my business and I had more to worry about than what my neighbours got up to. Except if I went round and introduced myself to the woman – women? – and said I had seen a prowler, that was more folk to agree with the police that I had disappeared. If I disappeared. He wouldn’t, would he?
I made a huge, grinding effort to stop the thought from replaying. I could drive myself over the edge and end up like that mad bat in her net curtain if I kept going at the same thing like a hamster on a wheel. So. Never mind if he would. Could he?
I picked up my laptop and climbed back into bed, clicking the light on and looking out at the streetlamp glow beyond my window, wondering if I needed to draw the curtains, wondering if anyone else would be up in Hephaw at this time of night, and if seeing the top of my headboard and half my wardrobe mirror would matter even if they were. Then I tucked the blankets in round my knees and typed missing girls.
Six hundred and eighty-one million results. China, Canada, eight hundred and forty-one in Africa, one in London on Valentine’s Day. Missing women, I typed. Eight hundred and ninety-seven million hits. I let my head drop back with a soft knock against my headboard and looked up at the dark Artex paint beyond the glow of my bedside lamp.
Think, I told myself. You already know more than you ever wanted to about trafficked girls, bonded servants, and modern slavery. What you need to know is how big a deal it would be if you went missing.
It came to me as if someone had whispered in my ear. If I wanted to know how likely it was that a woman like me would go missing from where I was, and how big a fuss would get made if I did, I knew exactly what to search for.
Missing woman, Hephaw, 2018 gave me nothing. I cast my mind back over the year and tried again. Missing woman, Fraserburgh, 2018.
‘Bingo,’ I whispered to myself. ‘Got one.’
The Press and Journal had written about the case regularly while it was fresh and then kept reporting on the search for a while afterwards. I clicked on the first story.
‘Aberdeenshire police are seeking information about fifty-four-year-old Ivy Stone who has been missing from her Fraserburgh home for three weeks. Miss Stone, who works at home as a bookkeeper, lives alone. Her postal carrier raised the alarm after becoming concerned about delivered mail, visible through her letterbox. William McKay, who has been employed on the same mail route for seven years, spoke to our reporter. “Ivy’s not the sort to disappear and leave a mess,” he said. “She stops her post whenever she goes a wee trip anywhere. You could set your clock by her. She picks up her parcels, she tips at Christmas, and she hands back anything that’s not got her name on it. I knew there was something wrong when I could hear her letters hitting the day before’s envelopes instead of hitting her carpet.”
‘The CID sergeant in charge of Miss Stone’s case, however, had this to say: “Her phone’s gone and her laptop’s gone. She didn’t clean out her fridge but that’s not against the law. She’s a low priority according to Police Scotland’s metrics. She’s in good health and there are no signs that she left home anything but voluntarily. We urge Miss Stone to get in touch and reassure us of her well-being, but we are not pursuing the case as suspicious.”’
I read the story over again, thinking. I was dead right to make my routines common knowledge then. But no one had paid any real attention to Ivy in any case, had they? The story ran, shorter and shor
ter, further and further from the front page. There was just one more snippet, so brief I nearly missed it. Two weeks later, the same reporter had interviewed a committee member from the Nine Lives League. ‘We didn’t get her name and address, but she was here at our meeting a week or two before they say she went missing, even though she wasn’t a member. She was only here to meet a friend. And I reckon she knew she was leaving town because she wouldn’t give us her details.’
‘God Almighty,’ I muttered. ‘Stray cats?’ It probably wasn’t fair but this Ivy in her fifties wasn’t really the Fraserburgh equivalent of me, was she? Surely I would leave a bigger hole than that if I suddenly vanished.
I cleared the search and cleared out my history too, a habit I’d worked hard to get up and running in the last year.
Lockerbie, I typed, missing woman, 2018.
There were two this time, one poor cow who’d run out on her husband and kids when she couldn’t take another day of depression and the shit of waiting three weeks for an appointment to speak to a knackered practice nurse to get on the waiting list to see a knackered psychiatrist with a twitchy prescription finger. She’d run away to Skye and spent the family’s entire capital – not much – in a B&B before the cash ran out and she used her debit card. She was back home now, even more stressed from lack of money but bumped up the waiting list for a therapy appointment probably.
The other one was more promising. Martine MacAllister was thirty, a freelance grant-writer who lived alone and disappeared from home, with her phone and laptop, leaving clients in the lurch. She had set up automatic adverts to run in email newsletters, some of them to the same clients she was letting down, which pissed them off, understandably.
The Dumfries Standard had managed to get a spin on the story off the back of that. Martine’s car had pinged an ANPR on the M8 near Livingston, but the reporter took pains to point out that plate recognition doesn’t show drivers’ faces. And he managed to tie that to the emails:
‘—supposed to be genuine contact, but when they’re still landing in your inbox after the person’s hooked it and isn’t answering the complaints they’re getting, it shows how false our online relationships really are. How faceless our society has become.’
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