Only You: an absolutely gripping psychological thriller

by S Williams

  What Martha seemed to think of it consisted of sucking on the head of the toy owl.

  ‘And then later her name got changed to Athene, which became the name of a type of owl, which became a toy for you to eat. From Greek Goddess to Martha’s rusk; how cool is that!’

  Martha stuck out her chubby little arms and Bella picked her up.

  ‘Yes, Thing, I think Athene is probably a much better name, all in all.’

  She held Martha tight, breathing in her special baby smell.

  ‘I don’t think I’m going to see you again, little sister, so I want you to know that I love you, okay? I want you to know that I’m sorry.’

  The tears Mouse had never seen Bella cry leaked out, acid through the white foundation. She gently lifted Martha’s shirt, exposing the skin on her chest and stomach.

  ‘No romper suit? What a fucking surprise.’

  If Martha was shocked by the swearing she didn’t show it; she just blew happy bubbles of saliva in her sister’s face. Bella could see little scratches on her skin, but nothing bad. Martha could have done them herself. She winked at Martha and turned her round. There were more marks on her back, plus what looked like a couple of old burns. Some bruising.

  ‘You didn’t do these yourself, did you, Mar-ma?’ she said, studying her skin. ‘But I don’t think it’s quite enough.’

  She took a long pull of her cigarette, making the tip glow orange. She pulled her sister tight.

  ‘I’m sorry but I can’t seem to find another way,’ she whispered, watching from a distance inside her head as she turned the cigarette round in her hand.

  The scream Martha made seemed to rip the stone house in two.

  46

  The Craven Head

  ‘I’m not sure about this,’ Mary says.

  ‘I don’t care. She lied to us, Mouse; we need to find out what she wants.’

  Jamie pulls the set of master keys from his pocket, unlocks the door, and walks into Athene’s room. He strides in, not knocking; Mouse had told Jamie about Athene going to the police station in Skipton, to see about any news on the house scam.

  Jamie smiles grimly. He bet she had. All the way to her cosy little mates at CID or whatever, planning to fuck him up all over again.

  ‘But this is breaking and entering; or invasion of privacy.’

  Mary wished she hadn’t followed him up here. It made her feel dirty; as if she was doing something with Jamie that no one else knew about, and she really, really didn’t want to feel like she was in some sort of secret with Jamie.

  ‘Bollocks. She started it. That girl is a snake in the grass, Mouse. She’s not been fucking scammed; she’s been scamming you; messing with us.’

  Jamie pauses in the middle of the room and turns to stare at her. Mary thinks he looks unhinged. He has alcohol stains down the front of his shirt, which is hanging untucked from his trousers, and his hair is fear-greased to his scalp.

  ‘Why are you so worried?’ she asks. ‘It’s not as if you have anything to hide.’

  Jamie gives a half shrug. ‘Business hasn’t been fantastic lately. I may have been…’ he pauses, as if trying to work out where he is, ‘…diversifying.’

  Mary stares at him, her mind ticking. She thinks back to their youth, back to school and the drinking she and Trent and Bella used to do in the pub. Then she remembers the shifty teenagers she’d seen this morning, when she was waiting outside, looking for Athene. She shakes her head.

  ‘You’ve not been dealing again, Jamie? Don’t tell me you’ve been–’

  ‘Oh fuck off from your high horse! It’s not like you didn’t get the odd thing from me.’

  She looks at him astonished.

  ‘Yes, when I was fifteen, for God’s sake! When we were kids! I–’ Mary stops, hearing the ghost-bells of a pinball machine; becomes acutely aware she is alone in a bedroom with him.

  She takes a step back.

  Jamie’s eyes are wild, not noticing her discomfort. ‘Whatever,’ he mutters, walking over to the bed.

  ‘What are you doing, Jamie?’ Mary takes another step back.

  ‘It’s under the mattress,’ he says, still unaware of the change in Mary’s voice.

  ‘What is?’

  ‘The proof,’ he snaps, getting down on his knees, and shoving his hand between the mattress and the baseboard.

  Mary looks at him, incredulous. ‘That’s where you found it? Before?’

  Jamie nods, his arm disappearing into the bed like he’s using it as a giant puppet. ‘Yeah; it’s a shit hiding place. Almost everybody does it. Idiots. Probably in a film or something.’

  Mary realises that the man didn’t just come in and look round Athene’s room, but did a systematic search, including under the mattress. And saying everybody does it meant that it wasn’t the first time.

  How many drugs are you dealing? she wonders, looking at him, crushed to the floor.

  Mary watches as his expression turns from dark triumph, to confusion, to fear as he pushes further into the bed.

  ‘Where the fuck is it?’ he shouts.

  What else do you do in their bedrooms? The skin on the back of Mary’s neck crawls as she watches him.

  Suddenly Jamie stands up, bringing the mattress up with him. He tips it on its side, then sends it, along with the duvet and the sheet, spinning off the other side of the baseboard. He stares at the bare-wooden bed support, bewilderment and disbelief marching across his features.

  ‘It’s gone,’ he says dully.

  ‘I think you’ve really lost it, Jamie,’ Mary says, the muscles in her legs tense, her voice full of quiet wonder.

  ‘Her ID. It’s gone.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Her police ID.’ Jamie looks at her, all anger gone, replaced with a kind of hunted fear. ‘That means she must know. She must know that I’d been in her room.’

  Before Mary can say anything, the silence is broken by a burble of synthetic sound coming from the head of the bed. She turns and sees Athene’s mobile phone, on the table next to a can of polish.

  ‘Fuck.’ Jamie points to the polish. ‘I must have left it in here when I snuck in before.’

  But Mary isn’t listening to him; she is collapsing to the bare-threaded carpet, all thoughts of creepy-Jamie forgotten. The burble has resolved itself into the opening notes of a song. Like Mary’s Falling, or a million other people, Athene must have a music track as her ring tune.

  ‘What the hell’s going on?’ whispers Mary, tears springing from her eyes. She doesn’t feel the rough carpet under her knees. Doesn’t see the look of shock on Jamie’s face. All she sees is the phone on the table, grinding out its song.

  ‘How can she have this?’ Mary looks at Jamie, and it’s like she’s looking through him, to the younger Jamie. ‘How can she have this on her phone?’

  ‘Coincidence,’ says Jamie, but she can see he doesn’t believe it. Of course it isn’t coincidence. How could it be, given who they were and the fact that Athene is a police officer, with access to the original case? Mary stays staring at Jamie a beat longer, then turns her head slowly back to the phone, playing the song she watched Bella die to. The last track on her playlist, making up the soundtrack of the car journey that ended in Bella lying cold and unmoving, crushed half out of the shattered windscreen.

  Yazoo’s ‘Only You’.

  Only you.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Bella,’ Mouse whispers.

  And then the tune stops, and the phone goes dead.

  47

  Bella’s Last Day: Only You

  Bella isn’t moving. The snow is falling gently and all the sound has been turned down to zero except Bella’s music still coming from the upturned car. Mouse looks at the still body of Bella for a heartbeat, then crawls towards her.

  Only you, only you.

  Mouse keeps her eyes on Bella, and doesn’t understand why she is veering to the right as she crawls. She keeps putting herself on track, but then slides off-beam. And all the time the snow falls
and the sound stays hidden. It is only when she looks away from Bella and down at herself that she realises her leg is broken. More than broken. Mouse stares at the glistening piece of bone protruding from her jeans, unsure at first what it is. When her brain finally works it out, it is as if a switch has been flicked. Pain floods into her like a dam has burst, sending great gobs of searing agony. It is so staggering that it takes her sight away for a moment, replacing it with a black blanket of crushing hurt. Her arms collapse from under her, sending her face-first into the ice and snow. As she hits, her mouth fills with icy shards, clearing away the blackness.

  ‘Trent!’ She tries to scream the word, but all that comes out is a croak, a pain deep in her chest where something is broken. She swallows and tries again.

  ‘TRENT!’ She raises her head slightly, twisting it round so she is facing the wreck of the car. She thinks she can see a silhouette, crouching over Bella’s body. She blinks, clearing away the tears, and sees Trent. His army jacket is ripped, probably when he had been thrown out of the car, and the T-shirt underneath sodden with blood. Trent doesn’t register that he’s heard her; keeps leaning down and hugging Bella, then straightening and running his hands through his hair, shiny with melted snow and hot blood.

  ‘I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry.’

  His voice sounds like the wind, reaching Mouse across the ice-packed ground in a whisper.

  ‘Trent! Is she…?’

  ‘BELLA! BELLS!’ Trent screams, and grabs Bella’s exposed shoulders and shakes her.

  Even through the pain in her leg and spear of hurt in her chest, Mouse can see there is no resistance; that it looks like Trent is shaking a doll. Mouse makes a tight, wet, moan deep inside her and tries to crawl towards them. As soon as she moves she screams. Now that she was becoming aware of herself, she can actually feel the bone sticking out; snagging on her jeans as she moves, causing it to rip something deep in her leg. A muscle, maybe.

  Her scream startles Trent, and he turns and looks at her. For a moment his eyes are blank, like he had forgotten about her. As he stares he puts his hands back up to his hair. Then something clicks behind his eyes, and he looks imploringly at her.

  ‘Mouse! What do I do, Mouse?’ he pleads. ‘I don’t think she’s breathing, and half the fucking car is on her! What do I do?’

  ‘Mouth to mouth,’ Mouse whispers. She isn’t sure if the words are loud enough to reach Trent, but then he suddenly leans down and places his mouth over Bella’s.

  ‘I can’t tell!’ he says after a few moments of breathing into her. ‘My lips are so cold, I can’t tell if it’s working!’

  Trent is crying. He keeps leaning forward as if to shake the still girl, then leaning back, afraid to touch her. As if he doesn’t want to know. As if not touching her might make it not real. But Mouse can tell. In the moonlight, amplified by the snow and the ice and the skewed headlights of the car that bizarrely are still working, Mouse can tell.

  ‘There’s no mist,’ she whispers. The pain in her leg is like a bell. Every time she moves it sends peals of hurt through her. But she can’t help moving; she is crying so hard, although all the tears seem to be frozen inside her. All she can do is shake.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Out of her mouth. There’s no breath. You’d see it. She’s not breathing, Trent.’

  ‘Ohmygod. Ohmygod.’ Trent springs up and takes a step back, as if maybe he thinks giving her space might help. Mouse can hear a high pitched wailing at the back of her head, like part of her brain is ripping away, but then realises it must be an ambulance. She can see blood dripping off Trent’s fingers, slow and thick and steaming in the freezing air.

  Not Bella’s blood, she thinks, looking at his sodden T-shirt. She tries to crawl again, but the pain takes her breath away.

  ‘Imsosorry imsosorry.’

  Trent is squatting next to Bella, his hands back in his hair.

  ‘Not your fault,’ whispers Mouse. ‘She pulled the wheel. I saw her.’

  Trent turns slowly to look at her. Through the pain Mouse can’t see any colour in his eyes.

  ‘She crashed the car, I saw her. She tried to kill us, Trent.’

  ‘Not true,’ he says, shaking his head. Little drops of blood and sweat and ice fall from him, glittering in the light. ‘Don’t say that.’ The words cut across the distance between them.

  Trent stands up and strides towards her. As he gets nearer, his features come into focus, and for a second the pain in Mouse’s leg switches off.

  Trent looks demonic. ‘Don’t say that. It’s not true! She–’

  ‘But I saw her, Trent. She told us we were going straight to hell, and then she spun the wheel.’

  The sound of the ambulance is nearer, Mouse thinks, but it was hard to tell. Sound in the valley had a way of bouncing off the hills and folding in on itself. Blood is dripping off Trent and spattering around her. He is standing above her, his fists clenched and his whole body shaking.

  Shock, thinks Mouse. We’re both in shock.

  ‘DON’T SAY THAT! NOT TO ANYONE! IT WAS ME! MY FAULT!’

  Mouse stares up at him. Her vision is fading in and out and she knows she was going to lose consciousness soon.

  ‘I crashed us. I blanked out when she told me… when she said about…’ Trent is weeping, looking back toward Bella, who is covered in snow.

  ‘I think you’re really hurt, Trent.’ Mouse can’t believe how much blood is on his shirt. Trent ignores her.

  ‘She said she wanted to die! But then… Bella was trying to save us. I was pissed and jacked and it was my fault! That’s what you saw, okay? She was trying to get us back onto the road.’

  Trent collapses down onto his knees.

  ‘I was so fucked, Mouse! I think I zoned out. The car just started sliding and Bella tried to get us back straight and now she’s dead. Now she’s dead and she’ll never know!’

  ‘Know what? Know what, Trent? Why did she want to die? Is it because of us?’

  Is it because of me? Because I betrayed her?

  Mouse is fading fast. Trent was just a dim planet spinning round the sun of her pain, everything shutting down.

  ‘Know what, Trent?’ she whispers to the shadow of him. ‘What doesn’t she know?’

  ‘How much I love her,’ he says helplessly.

  Mouse nods. She can hear the ambulance skidding to a halt, sirens winding down to silence.

  How much we both do, she thinks, as she fades to black.

  48

  Bella’s Last Summer: Only You

  ‘How come you only listen to songs from like a million years ago?’

  Bella laughed and slammed her hips against the pinball machine, the force nudging the ball away from a hole and onto her flipper. Punching the button, she sent the silver sphere up through the playfield, causing the lights and the sounds of the machine to go into overdrive.

  ‘Modern music’s rubbish!’ she said happily, then swore as the ball ricocheted off a rail and sped down the middle of the field, disappearing from sight with a sad succession of bleeps and pings.

  ‘Bollocks!’

  Bella and Mouse were in the games room at the back of the Craven Head, drinking blackcurrant snakebite and playing the machines. They had taken half an E each – scored from Jamie a couple of hours earlier. The MDMA was making Mouse feel both shivery and hot, and she had a repeating note in her head like she was on hold to heaven. She couldn’t believe how happy the lights on the game were making her.

  ‘My go!’ she said, using her body to move Bella aside, and pulling back on the spring lever that would send the ball shooting into play. Bella shifted over, but kept her body brushed up to Mouse’s. Mouse suspected it was because of the drugs, and the fact that they were supremely wasted on cider, but she didn’t mind; she’d take what she could get.

  Trent was due back tomorrow, and Bella seemed to be on a mission to keep tomorrow as far away from today as possible. Hence the drinking and the pill.

  ‘Not going
to sleep tonight,’ she’d said, glassy-eyed, and with a chemical smile plastered on her face. ‘Then I won’t wake up and it will still be today!’

  ‘Why don’t you finish with him,’ Mouse said, sucking down her snakebite through a straw.

  ‘Why, do you want a go?’ Bella replied, raising an eyebrow. Her face was beautifully framed by her shaggy long hair. In Mouse’s state her skin seemed to be glowing.

  Mouse flushed and looked away.

  ‘Of course not. It’s just that you never seem happy when you’re with him, that’s all. And then after what he did to…’

  Both the girls glanced through the door into the saloon bar to see if Jamie was in earshot, but all Mouse could see were tourists and the Local Dead. That’s what her and Bella called them; the old farmers and retirees who came to the pub every night.

  ‘Did he ever tell you what it was about?’ Mouse flipped both flippers, causing the ball to judder between them, then slide onto the extended arm. She paused for a moment, then flipped it up the ramp, locking it away for a multi-ball.

  ‘I can’t believe you’re asking me now, just before he comes back!’ Bella sounded amazed, but Mouse knew better. It wasn’t only that they had barely talked about the incident that got Jamie expelled, and Trent sent to reform school, it was that they had never spoken about it. Not once. There had been talk around the school. It was well reported what Trent had said; about doing it for Mouse. There was talk also about Trent and Jamie’s lockers being searched. Everyone assumed that drugs must have been found. Hence the expelling. In fact there were burned ashes in Trent’s locker, and everybody wondered if he’d been smoking crack.

  But it hadn’t felt like drugs to Mouse, as she’d watched Jamie being ripped apart. It had felt more personal.

  Mouse blinked and slammed her flat hand against the button, ramping a second ball.

  ‘Wow, you should take drugs every time you play pinball,’ Bella said admiringly. ‘I can’t wait to see what you’re going to do to the Space Invaders!’