Only You: an absolutely gripping psychological thriller

by S Williams

  ‘What happened to the photographs?’ she asks him.

  Jamie looks momentarily confused, then, Mary notices, suddenly secretive; like he’s been caught out. ‘What photographs?’

  ‘The ones you took of me and Bella. By the pond.’

  ‘What? From when we were young? What the hell are you asking about that for? We need to find the girl! Find out what the fuck her game is.’

  Jamie looks about as angry as Mary has ever seen him. As if he is not in control.

  ‘She must have come back here and grabbed her stuff, then left the phone on purpose. She’s messing with our minds, Mouse!’

  Mary ignores him. ‘I remember; you gave me the photos, but not the negatives. That camera of yours; it was pretty snazzy I think. It wasn’t like a camera with a cartridge. It was the sort of set up where you can develop it yourself. I never really thought about it before.’

  Jamie says nothing; just stares at her like she is going mad.

  ‘You know, Jamie, there was something about that time when Trent attacked you that I never really understood.’

  Mary’s mind is in auto-shuffle. The disruption Athene, or Martha, or whoever she is, is raking up the past like autumn leaves ready for a fire, scattering her memories and then settling them down in new patterns, making her think about things she hasn’t thought about in years.

  ‘He did more than attack me, Mouse, he nearly killed me!’

  Mary nods. ‘I know; I was there.’ This is for you. That was what Trent had said. ‘I always thought you might have had a thing going.’

  Jamie looks like he’s trying to say something. His mouth is moving but there is no sound, like someone has forgotten to draw the speech bubble.

  ‘I never understood what he did before he really hurt you. He made a camera action with his hands. Do you remember, Jamie?’

  Jamie says nothing; just looks down at the pillowcase in his hands. Mary sees that it actually is an empty laundry bag.

  ‘Did you take any other pictures, Jamie? Pictures of Trent, maybe? Is that why he hit you?’

  The silence between them is a solid presence.

  This is for you. What Trent had said before he ripped open Jamie’s face.

  Mary hears the sound of a long-gone pinball machine in her head. ‘Or maybe pictures of me?’ she says, cocking her head. ‘Different pictures of me, Jamie?’

  The silence between them is a weight, as if they had reached the limit of something. As if a dam that had built up for years and years is about to break.

  ‘This was full,’ says Jamie finally, holding up the empty laundry bag.

  Mary creases her brow, trying to slot what he was saying into the conversation they were having. She can’t. ‘What?’

  ‘When I came in before it was full; there were knickers and stuff on the top, and I just thought it was full of old laundry. You see it all the time.’

  Mary blinks, and in the microsecond her eye is shut she has an image of Jamie pawing through a thousand laundry bags full of underwear. She shudders. ‘There are so many things wrong with that sentence, Jamie.’

  Jamie shrugs. ‘Whatever. The thing is it was full and now it’s empty.’

  ‘So what? She cleared out and took her laundry with her.’

  ‘Except she’s only been here one night.’

  Mary stares at him, realising what he’s saying. ‘Okay. So what was it full of, then?’

  Jamie looks down at the laundry bag, then slowly around the room. ‘I don’t know; I never checked.’

  ‘You surprise me.’

  ‘But the edges were all hard and angular now I think about it. Odd shapes sticking out, like a Christmas sack.’

  ‘What? You’re telling me it was full of presents?’

  ‘No. Old cassette tapes, maybe. Or videos.’

  Mary blinks slowly, thinking of all the knowledge that Athene/Martha seems to have. Mentioning Heathcliff, and the bells left on her door. Even the owl.

  Everything linking back to Bella.

  And suddenly it all makes sense.

  ‘Not videos,’ Mary says, nodding again. ‘Books.’

  ‘Books?’

  ‘Diaries.’

  On the bedside table Mary sees the brochure Athene had shown her. The fake holiday let with the picture of Blea Fell on it. She remembers the final section.

  The section that listed her café.

  And the police.

  And the hospital.

  ‘Jesus fucking Christ. It was all there. She was showing it to me right at the beginning. Like the plot of a novel on the very first page!’

  52

  The Craven Head: 2010

  ‘I’m leaving, Jamie; I don’t even know what I was thinking when I married you!’

  Louise’s voice was harsh with emotion.

  ‘It’s not the affairs or the drinking, it’s the pictures, Jamie. It’s the photographs.’

  Jamie stared straight ahead, not looking at his wife. He sat in the cold bedroom with no lights on and counted under his breath, as if the act of numeracy would have some magical effect and make everything all right.

  ‘Nothing to say?’

  Louise glared at him from the door, just beyond the threshold, as if even being in the same room could contaminate her. Make her in some way infected. Her face was dry and papery, all the moisture either cried or sweated out. ‘Not going to try and explain, like you normally do?’

  Jamie didn’t look at her, just stayed staring at the wall, counting the cracks in the paint.

  One, two, three…

  ‘Good,’ said Louise after a pause. ‘Because it wouldn’t do any good.’

  She looked at him, fear and disgust and the destruction of a thousand little histories crossing her features. Her lips were chapped and flaky from all the worry-biting.

  ‘You know, Jamie, when I first met you I knew there’d be affairs.’ She laughed bitterly, half at him and half at herself.

  One, two, three…

  ‘I wasn’t stupid. New guests in and out. Everybody pissed at the end of a night. I had my eyes open. Fuck knows, my expectations weren’t high.’

  Jamie stayed staring at the wall. He could feel little pockets of himself expanding and contracting; tiny islands of emotion in a sea of dead.

  He shut himself down a little more.

  Four, five, six…

  ‘But it was the photos, Jamie. It was the pictures.’

  Louise bit her lip, seeing in her mind the images she had found on Jamie’s laptop.

  She wished she couldn’t, but every time she closed her eyes they returned, staggering out of the back of her mind with all the pain and hurt and nausea they had created the first time she’d seen them.

  Seven, eight, nine…

  ‘And the sites you go on, Jamie,’ said Louise softly, as if even talking about it out loud could make them invade the space. ‘All the dark stuff you’ve been viewing; it’s sick.’

  Ten, eleven.

  ‘Some of those people, Jamie. Some of those girls.’

  Jamie licked his lips, but stayed looking at the wall.

  ‘It looked real, Jamie.’

  Jamie shook his head. ‘Actors,’ he whispered. ‘Not real. Just…’ he searched the wall for a word that would work. A word that would mean that everything could be all right. Or if not all right, something that was not jailable.

  He couldn’t find one.

  ‘Entertainment,’ he finished.

  Louise blinked, trying to fit the word with the images she had seen.

  ‘Goodbye, Jamie,’ she said finally, and turned away.

  Jamie didn’t look at her; didn’t stand up and run after her and beg her to stay. He just listened to the sound of her leaving, watching the wall for messages from the past.

  One, two, three, four.

  53

  Bella’s Last Day: Trent’s Car

  Five minutes after she got in the car with Trent and Mouse, Bella thought she was going to throw up. What she had done to Marth
a was gnawing like ants at her stomach. She wondered if her sister would ever understand; could ever forgive her. Bella wished she could stay to explain, but there was no way that could happen. This night was going to be her last night, one way or another, then everything would be different. Everything would be changed.

  Bella took a swig of her gin from the half bottle nestling between her legs. Next to her on the front bench seat of the Viva, Trent was gang-boying; driving with one hand loosely at the top of the plastic steering wheel, the other wrapped around a bottle of Red Stripe. Bella concentrated on breathing through her nose, and looking at the world blur outside the window.

  ‘Careful, Trent! The roads are still icy.’ Mouse: shouting from the back seat.

  She was right; the roads were suicide-slick with black frozen water covered with booby-trap fresh snow. Trent just laughed and yardied his beer, chugging it down and tossing the empty bottle into the back footwell. Bella watched as he reached into his jacket and pulled out a doobie. Within seconds the sweet, chemical, smell of factory-skunk filled the car. Bella cracked the window down a notch, the half-grin on Trent’s face increasing her nausea. She supposed it might be a bit of a thrill for him, knowing that he had slept with both the girls in the car. Then she hated herself for thinking that way. Trent was her Heathcliff, wild and dangerous, but also emotionally vulnerable and loyal.

  Like Mouse.

  Bella knew she had driven him away; driven them both away. It was very probable she had driven them both to each other. Fuck knows that she didn’t control them anymore. The picture she had seen, pinned to their tree like a wanted poster, of Mouse, had ripped up her childhood Mouse and replaced her with something else, more complicated and separate. A Mouse who was unknown and an unseen and untrusted.

  Like Trent again: they were two of a kind.

  In fact, that’s what she had written on the back of the photo when she had taken it up to her room.

  Don’t trust her.

  Then she had written it on the back of all the photos she had of Mouse, right back to the first.

  Don’t trust her.

  Like going back in time, changing her own past, painting it in darker shades.

  All unfair, of course, just action and reaction to what was happening to her. Really it should have read:

  Don’t trust me.

  I’m not who you think I am.

  I’m not in control.

  It didn’t even matter who had put it there; not anymore.

  Tonight she was going to take back control.

  Tonight she was going to kill what they had all become.

  Bella took another swig of gin and stared out of the window. She barely flinched as Trent draped his free arm over her, heavy across her shoulders. The weight didn’t feel like intimacy to her; it felt like the weight of earth on top of a coffin.

  She was so tired, sitting in this metal tear with Trent and Mouse, so lonely, that she could stop right now. It would be easy. Reach over and pull the wheel, spinning the car off the road. She can even feel the tingle in her hands, as if wire was in them, pulling them like a puppet.

  She took another slug of gin and glanced at Trent.

  But that wasn’t enough. Just killing them all wouldn’t solve anything.

  It wouldn’t take back her rape.

  It wouldn’t rewind her pregnancy.

  It wouldn’t bring back trust.

  All she would be was the paper the map was drawn on, not real in herself.

  And she couldn’t live with that.

  Couldn’t die with it, either.

  Bella turned round and looked at Mouse, stretched out on the rear seat, her back against one door and her booted feet propped up against the window of the other. Like Bella, she was drinking from a half bottle of gin.

  ‘Hey, Mouse, did you do the tape for me?’

  Mouse was staring at the roof of the car, at the stained plastic lining where they had all written their names in black Sharpie one night when pissed.

  Bella and Mouse and Trent 4ever

  Like they would never grow old and never die. Like they would be friends until the end of time and drive off into the sunset together.

  Bella smiled coldly. At least one of those was right.

  Mouse nodded and reached into her coat, removing a cassette. ‘Sure. Are you going to put it on now?’

  She tossed it, and Bella caught it one-handed, the sound like a slap.

  ‘No, it’s for on the way home, after the disco.’

  Mouse made a face, and Bella could see that underneath the make-up she was pale and ill looking. Like she had cancer, or was throw-up worried.

  Which Bella imagined she was.

  Not for much longer, she mouthed, smiling. Mouse frowned.

  For a mad moment, Bella wondered if she should tell Mouse about the baby? Or maybe even Trent? She actually turned and looked at him; studied his face. She could see the man struggling to escape the boy in his features, but like a boat in a storm she thought it would fail. That the damage to the boy was too much to escape from.

  Shame.

  And anyway she knew the baby wasn’t the reason she was going to do what she was going to do, it was just the punctuation. It was just the full stop.

  As they drove down out of the hills the bright glitter of the frosted moor slowly turned into the sad neon of the street lights of the small town. First a lonely house, then the quarry, and finally the bridge across the coal-black river.

  Trent pulled down a side street parallel to the square and found somewhere to park. Even from inside the car, Bella could hear the screaming of the fair. The kids and the rides, and the music pumping from the speakers. Lights and shadows kaleidoscoping the brick wall of the library opposite. Now they had arrived, Bella felt calm. Somewhere in her ship, a window had opened for the last time, letting her see the beauty. She grinned to herself and pulled on the metal handle, opening the car door.

  The cold and the fizz of the fair slid down the alley to her from the square, slipping down her throat and up her nostrils and punching at her pores. They could all feel it, she could tell. Mouse and Trent and all the other kids in the street, necking snakebite and smoking joints; popping pills and sniffing powders. Laughing and slip-sliding their way to the lights. Everybody wrapped up in coats and hats and scarves and snoods.

  Feeling the bite of the night, Bella reached back in and grabbed her Parka.

  ‘This is going to be some night.’

  Trent swaggered around the car, not bothering to lock it. Bella thought he was loving the moment, playing it like a movie. Arriving at the fair with two girls, arms around both like they’re supporting him, but really he was just showing off their leads and their collars.

  Unkind, unkind.

  They began to walk towards the fair, then Mouse suddenly stopped. Bella looked at her.

  ‘What?’ asked Trent, eyebrows raised. ‘What is it?’

  And then he saw Jamie, ahead, in a scrappy duffle coat with his camera slung around his neck. Trent grinned.

  ‘Well, if it isn’t Jimmy! How’s it going at the Daily Planet, Jimmy?’ Trent’s voice is light. Jamie, already in the shadow of the library wall, seemed to shrink back further, as if trying to press himself into the Victorian brickwork. Trent and Jamie hadn’t met since Trent got back. Not since Trent nearly ripped his face off. Not since they both got expelled.

  But it wasn’t Trent that Bella noticed; it was Mouse. She moved in an almost exact reflection of Jamie; stepping back and pressing herself against Bella. Like she was petrified.

  Jamie flicked one of his porn-glances at the girls then focused on Trent. He smiled sickly and subconsciously rubbed the scar above his eye.

  ‘Just the local rag,’ he said lamely, stroking the strap of the camera. ‘I’m hoping to sell them some shots of the fair.’ He shrugged, his gaze sliding away and slipping between the three of them. ‘You know, ringing in the new year and all that.’

  Trent nodded. ‘Yeah, I get it. Taking pic
tures of people having fun. I understand. You’ve always had an eye for it, haven’t you, mate?’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ Jamie muttered, his eyes snaking to Mouse.

  Trent smiled and looked at the scar on Jamie’s face, bone white against the raw meat of the surrounding skin. Jamie licked his lips.

  ‘Sure you do. In fact maybe you can take one of the three of us, yeah?’ Trent’s grin widened and he took his arms off Bella and Mouse, spreading them above the girls’ shoulders. Jamie looked like he was going to be sick. ‘Maybe you can click one off now. Get ahead of the curve.’

  Trent winked at Jamie.

  ‘For fuck’s sake, Trent,’ Mouse said.

  Bella felt the bile back in her throat; the tightening in her womb. She knew Trent was only posturing; trying to get a rise out of Jamie, but it felt too violent. Too full of poison. She staggered a little, falling back against the car.

  ‘Hey, Bells! Are you okay?’ Mouse said, holding her up, a look of concern on her face.

  Bella nodded, the moment of dizziness passing. There was a sudden flash as Jamie took a picture. ‘That’s right!’ said Trent, oblivious. ‘Make sure you send me a copy, yeah. Maybe pin it to my locker.’

  He paused. ‘Oh, hang on, I don’t have a locker, do I? Cos I got fucking expelled.’

  Jamie’s features spasmed. Bella looked at him quizzically. Pathetic, lonely, lost Jamie. Looked at him and realised it must have been him who had taken the picture; taken the picture and then pinned it to the tree in her ghost forest for her to find. The picture of Mouse and Trent.

  Before she could say anything, Trent laughed dismissively and dropped his arms back over Bella and Mouse’s shoulders, dragging them away and towards the fair.

  ‘See you at the disco, Jimmy! Remember to save some drugs for me!’

  Bella looked over her shoulder at the boy as they slipped and staggered away, and was surprised to see the level of hurt in Jamie’s eyes. The hurt and something else. Something like a worm coming to the surface before a thunderstorm.

  The hate.

  Jamie’s stare disappeared with the rest of him as they turned the corner, and the full visceral force of the fair hit them. Bella stared at it, wide-eyed.