Only You: an absolutely gripping psychological thriller

by S Williams

  ‘Space Invaders haven’t existed since the eighties,’ Mouse exclaimed, finally losing the ball and moving aside. ‘Like the music you love.’

  Bella staggered back in front of the table. It took her a couple of giggling seconds to pull back the ball-fire lever.

  ‘Yes, but like a fine wine my tunes have matured!’

  ‘Dad says can you keep the noise down, or he’s going to have to throw you out.’

  The two girls turned to find Jamie leaning against the games room door, staring at them. There was a waxy sheen of perspiration covering his face, and his eyes were slightly out of focus. Mouse wondered if he has been sampling a little of his own product.

  ‘And why would that be, Jim-jam?’ Bella said sweetly. ‘Because we’re underage, because we’re drunk, or because we’re mashed out on the drugs you gave us?’

  Jamie smiled queasily and looked over his shoulder. ‘Look, the pub will be closing in an hour, and we can have a lock-in, then you can make as much noise as you like, but until then just chill, all right?’

  Jamie turned and left, his shoulders hunched against the girls’ spluttering laughter.

  ‘Just chill? What the actual fuck was that?’

  ‘Maybe he’s gone all hard with his new scar and OG connections.’ Mouse said it as a joke, but inside she felt shame crawling through her.

  This is for you.

  ‘Maybe,’ Bella said, nudging the pinball machine so hard that the tilt sign snapped on, cutting all the power to the game. She watched as her ball rolled down the field and into the gaping hole at the base. ‘I’m bored of this,’ she said, turning away in disgust. ‘Let’s sit down and talk.’

  ‘Sure.’ Mouse didn’t mind. She was having difficulty keeping her thoughts going in one direction; sitting down sounded like a fantastic plan. Sitting down, or possibly lying down under the pool table. Possibly with Bella. The song on the jukebox finished, and there was a sonic pause before Cher’s ‘Turn back Time’ ramped up.

  ‘See!’ Bella said triumphantly as she collapsed into her chair. ‘Absolute fucking guff!’

  Mouse sat down opposite, carefully placing her snakebite on the little round table between them. She pointed at the jukebox. ‘Cher…’ she said, then pointed at what she was sitting on. ‘Chair!’

  Bella looked at her a moment, then burst out laughing.

  I know it’s just the drugs, Mouse thought, but I’m so happy in this moment. ‘It’s like old times,’ she said, before she could help herself.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Bella asked.

  ‘You and me, Bells,’ Mouse said quietly. ‘You and me, with no one else and just having fun.’

  ‘Yeah, well maybe we should make the old times the new times,’ said Bella, raising her glass of purple alcohol in salute.

  ‘Except you were always mean to me,’ Mouse said without thinking.

  ‘What?’ Bella looked at her incredulously. Realising what she had said, Mouse put her hand to her mouth, as if she could stuff the words back in.

  ‘You think I’ve been mean to you? When? When have I been mean to you?’

  Bella looked genuinely amazed.

  ‘I’m sorry. It’s just the drugs talking. Let’s–’

  ‘Let’s not,’ Bella interrupted. ‘Let’s stay on topic. All I’ve ever done is try to look out for you, Mouse! How can you think I’ve been mean?’

  ‘I didn’t mean it.’ Mouse felt her world slipping away; sand on a turning tide. ‘I love that we’re friends; that you’ve looked out for me all these years.’ Her face contorts for a second, a spasm of true confusion. ‘Although I’ve never understood why. You could be friends with whoever you wanted. And you picked me.’

  ‘So what do you mean with the mean?’ Bella said half smiling. Mouse stared at her helplessly.

  ‘You must know,’ she whispered. The song finished on the juke and the bubble of silence seemed to coalesce around them. ‘You must! Like on the bus!’

  ‘The bus? What fucking bus?’ Bella stared at her with Ecstasy eyes; all pupil and unblinking, like she’d stolen them from a seal.

  ‘When you made me hurt you.’ Mouse’s voice was soft. She could barely get the words out. It was as if all the air had been stolen from her lungs.

  The jukebox started with the next tune, ‘Falling’, and Julee Cruise began singing, her strange voice seeping out of the speakers like mist. Bella stayed staring at her friend a moment longer, then blinked and smiled.

  Mouse felt a flush of relief, a warm wave washing over her feet on an evening beach.

  ‘This song,’ Bella said. ‘You talk about me and my choices. Why do you love it so much?’

  Jamie kept a selection of discs on the juke especially for them, scattered amongst what Bella called the tits and fists that passed for chart fodder.

  ‘Because it reminds me of you,’ Mouse said simply. The whole show, for which it was the theme, did. From the rural setting to the fucked-up tragedy of it. From the beginning, with the dead girl wrapped in plastic, to the owls and the love and plain weirdness of it. ‘Because it reminds me of us.’

  Bella looked at Mouse with her seal-eyes, staring at her and in her and through her. Mouse felt like she was melting under her gaze. Then Bella reached across and gently stroked the back of her hand with her finger, so softly it was like being stroked by a shadow.

  ‘Poor Mouse,’ she said. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  And then Mouse got really scared, because it looked like Bella was going to cry. Bella who was always in control, always the captain of her own narrative.

  ‘Bella…’ Mouse began, unsure where the rest of the sentence was going, but wanting, needing, to start it. ‘Bella, I just want–’

  ‘I’ll leave him for you,’ cut in Bella.

  Mouse stopped speaking and stared at her. She opened her mouth, but could think of nothing to say. The room seemed to be breathing, like they were on the inside of giant lungs. Like they had flown through the lyrics of the song pouring out of the jukebox like honey.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘We’re nearly sixteen. Soon we can do what we want.’ Even through the drugs, Mouse could tell that Bella was serious. Even through the heave and swell of the snakebite she had drunk she could see the determination in her friend’s eyes. ‘No one can stop us.’

  ‘Why, is Trent trying to stop you doing what you want?’

  Mouse thought of Trent’s face as he looked at her, straddled over the pulp of Jamie’s face. Thought of the violence he wore like an overcoat.

  ‘Bella, is Trent ever violent to you?’

  Mouse thought of Bella’s arms. Of the cuts like ticks and tocks, marking out a timetable. Then she thought of Bella forcing her hand down on the bus. Making her cut her friend. Pressing her hand down against her will.

  ‘The rules of attraction,’ Bella said. ‘Broken things need breaking.’

  The words were hard but Bella’s expression was soft.

  Mouse held her breath. ‘Your eyes. They’re like the snow globe,’ she whispered.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The snow globe. Like when we carved our names on the tree.’

  ‘Of course they are.’ Bella smiled. ‘I told you, Mouse. The world is just for you and me.’

  And then the song changed, and the opening synth notes of Yazoo’s ‘Only You’ began.

  ‘See!’ Bella grinned. ‘They’re playing our song.’

  Bella staggered to her feet and put out her hand. After a moment, Mouse grabbed it and was hauled to her feet.

  ‘Careful! We’ll both go flying.’

  ‘Better hold on to me then.’ Bella wrapped her arms around Mouse and began to dance to the song. Mouse resisted for a moment, then let herself relax into the girl.

  If I didn’t, she’d fall over, Mouse thought, but she closed her eyes and rested her head against Bella’s. She could hear Jamie calling time in the saloon bar; the grumble of the Local Dead as they shuffled to their feet.

  ‘Let’s run away an
d get married, and then do a Thelma and Louise to this song off a tower block.’

  Bella’s voice was like tiny stones being dropped in a pond; possibilities rippling out from the weight of her words.

  ‘They die at the end; Thelma and Louise.’ Mouse kept her eyes closed, gently pressing her hands against Bella’s back. The music throbbed through her body like an electric current.

  ‘We all die in the end,’ Bella whispered back.

  An image of Trent flashed across the wall of Mouse’s closed eyes.

  Some of us die every day, she thought in a dark part of her brain.

  ‘Hey, Bella, your dad’s here to drive you home!’

  Mouse opened her eyes and looked at the door. Jamie was back, standing there, staring at them with his napkin eyes.

  ‘What?’ Bella slurred.

  Jamie shrugged, his eyes spinning. ‘My father phoned him and said to come and pick you up. I told you to keep the noise down.’

  Bella glared at him, then turned back to Mouse. With difficulty she focused on her, then shrugged and smiled.

  ‘Only you, Mouse: remember that. Only. You. Nobody else matters. Just me and you in the snow globe.’

  ‘What about Trent?’

  ‘Heathcliff?’ Bella smiled without any humour. ‘He’s lost on the moor. I’ll come back and get him when I’m a ghost.’

  Mouse looked at her, her gaze flicking from eye to eye, trying to understand.

  ‘He’s waiting outside,’ Jamie said. For a moment, Mouse thought he meant Trent, then realised he was talking about Bella’s dad.

  ‘All fucking right, I’m coming!’

  Bella stretched out a finger and stroked Mouse’s face, then turned around and walked past Jamie.

  Hardly weaving at all, Mouse thought, touching her cheek where Bella had touched her. The E was pedal to the metal now, making the music and the lights the best story ever told.

  I should go with her, she thought suddenly. I’m completely mangled.

  ‘Give me five minutes then we can have a pinball tournament if you like?’ Jamie said.

  Mouse turned to look at him. He was smiling hopefully at her. Then she thought of sitting in the car with Mr Moss, trying to have a conversation with him while drugged out of her mind. She nodded. ‘Sure. Why not? But you’ll need to order me a taxi home for later, cos I’m not staying here, no matter how high I am.’

  Jamie nodded and grinned.

  49

  The Craven Head

  ‘Fuck! Fuck, fuck, fucking fuck!’

  Jamie kicks at the wooden base of the bed, breathing hard.

  ‘How can she have that as her ringtone? How can she even have it?’

  Everything Athene did seemed to resonate with the past, punching it into the present.

  ‘Because I told you!’ Jamie shouts. ‘She’s the police and she’s here to fuck us!’

  ‘But even if she is the police – which I only have your word for – there’s no way she’d know about the mixtape: what it meant.’ Mary pauses, then looks at Jamie. ‘In fact, neither would you.’

  Jamie looks down, his face reddening.

  ‘Except it wasn’t only on the mixtape,’ Mary says slowly, unpeeling memories like clothes off a corpse. ‘It was also the song playing on the jukebox, wasn’t it? The night you–’

  ‘I don’t fucking know! But she’s clearly off her trolley! Maybe the care home fucked her up and she obsessed about her original past. Made up some wicked-witch fairy tale. Maybe she’s come back to seek revenge for her shit life. Or her dead sister.’

  ‘Have you any idea how mad you sound, Jamie?’ Mary looks at him pityingly. ‘Jesus, and you were dissing me! Martha was taken into care right after…’ Mary swallows, feeling a stone of pain constrict her throat. ‘The fire. Right after everything came out. She was given a new identity or whatever. Even if she found out who she was there’d be no reason to come back here! Everything that was here was gone! All that was left is us! Trent was in prison, her Dad was burnt to death in the fire, and her mother…’

  Mary pauses again, hearing Bella’s mother screaming on the step, screaming that she’d never be able to hold her daughter again. ‘Her mother was gone, too.’

  ‘Which is why she’s after us! We’re the only contact!’

  Before Mary can reply, the ring tune starts again, the sad electronic opening notes of the song filling up the room. Jamie stares at it like it’s going to explode.

  ‘I can’t cope with this anymore.’ Mary hauls herself to her feet. In three short strides she crosses over to the bedside table and grabs the phone. Swiping the screen she crams it to the side of her head, ramming it against her ear.

  ‘Hello?’ says a familiar voice. ‘Hello, who am I speaking to?’

  ‘What?’ Jamie asks, seeing the colour drain from Mary’s face. ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Hello? I was texted this number, saying to ring urgently. Is there a problem? Who am I speaking to, please?’

  Mary takes the phone away from her ear and looks at it. On the screen is a picture of the band: Yazoo. Below, rather than the name of the song, is: Bella’s final tape mix: track 5.

  Mary stares at it, not comprehending, then slowly puts the phone back up to her ear, a sense of déjà vu smothering her. She takes a deep breath.

  ‘Hello, Trent.’

  50

  Bella’s Last Day: Blea Fell House

  ‘What time will you be back? Will you be back in time for the bells?’

  Sheila looked at her daughter and saw a stranger looking back. Bella had plastered her face with white foundation and thick grey kohl eye make-up. On the back of her head sat a leather beret, with her DIY hair poking out. There was one of her French cigarettes burning in the ashtray, and a glass of gin held in her black nail-varnished hand.

  ‘I’m not coming back tonight; I’m going to stay over at Mouse’s.’

  ‘Right.’ Sheila couldn’t keep the disappointment from her voice, but she didn’t blame her daughter; the atmosphere in the house these last months had been toxic.

  Ever since the end of the summer when that boy had come back, she thought bitterly.

  ‘We’re going to go to the winter fair, then on to a disco at Jamie’s.’

  ‘So it’ll just be your father, me and Martha then.’

  At the mention of her name, the baby looked up from her pen by the stove. It was clear she was unsettled; she was mithering and looking around uncertainly. Sheila supposed she might be about to teethe.

  ‘Where’s Dad, anyway?’ asked Bella.

  ‘Where else? In his study.’

  There was a swing of lights on the wall as Trent’s car drove up the track and passed the house, ready to turn around by the derelict barn.

  Bella nodded, taking a final drag of her smoke before stubbing it out. She stood up, pulling on her duster coat.

  ‘Wish him a happy new year from me, won’t you?’

  ‘Don’t you want to do that yourself? Before you go?’

  Bella looked at the thick heavy door that led to her father’s study and shook her head. She drained her gin and placed the empty glass carefully on the table. ‘No. I don’t think I do. But tell him I’m sorry I’ve been so distant recently. Tell him I’m going to try and make next year really special.’

  Sheila looked up at the odd tone in Bella’s voice, but before she could say anything there was a loud knock at the porch door.

  ‘There’s my crew, I’m out of here.’

  Bella walked to her mother and gave her an awkward hug. ‘I’m sorry.’

  Her mother smiled. ‘That’s all right, love. Go and have a nice time with your friends. I’ll see you in the morning.’

  Bella shook her head, and glanced at her father’s door again, then down at Martha. ‘No, I’m not sorry for that: I’m just… sorry.’

  Then she shrugged and walked away, toward the door. Sheila watched as she opened it and slipped out into the night, the sound of her boyfriend’s greeting slipping in. As the do
or closed behind her it made a click, like someone had turned something off.

  Inexplicably, Sheila started to cry.

  51

  The Craven Head

  ‘Mouse? Mouse, is that you?’

  Mary can hear the sound of motion through the earpiece; ambient sounds that suggested Trent was driving. ‘Yes, it’s me.’

  Mary is amazed that she isn’t shocked that Trent was speaking to her; that he had been given Athene’s number. She isn’t even surprised that Athene had left the phone, with Bella’s death-song, the car-crash song, as its ringtone. She supposed she must be in shock, but there seemed an inevitability about it, like falling off a cliff.

  ‘What is it?’ laughs Trent down the line. ‘Are you a whizzy businesswoman or something, now? You need two phones?’

  Mary realises that he must think it was her who texted him; that he assumes that the phone belongs to her. Jamie is blundering around the room, pulling out drawers and opening cupboards searching for the police ID he said belonged to Athene.

  ‘Where are you, Trent? Are you on the road? You said you were going to come up?’

  So many questions, but not the ones she wants to ask.

  ‘Yes! I’m just coming off the motorway, actually. I should be with you in an hour or so.’

  ‘What?’ Mary snaps out of the daze the song had wrapped her in. ‘You’re nearly here?’

  ‘An hour, tops.’

  Mary grips the phone tighter. ‘Fine. I’m at the Craven Head with Jamie. I’ll see you when you arrive.’

  ‘With Jamie?’ Trent sounds surprised. ‘Wow; just like old times! Getting the gang back together and all that, eh? Tell him he should get his camera out; take a picture for the family album.’

  Trent hangs up. Mary looks at the dead slab of metal and glass in her hand, her brow furrowing.

  ‘How the fuck did Trent get Athene’s number?’ Jamie says. Mary looks up at him. Jamie is standing by the wardrobe, his hands clenched. In one of his fists is what looks like a pillowcase.