Between the Lies

by Cathy MacPhail

  I keep coming back to Jude. She has to be UNKNOWN.

  I’m so cold. Can’t stop shivering.

  I know now that Dad won’t come. I wonder what he thinks. That I’ve run away after the fight? I told him I hated him.

  I don’t want that to be the last thing I ever say to him.

  ***

  FORTY-TWO

  I can hear the rain dripping on the corrugated‑iron roof high above me. At least it isn’t coming in here. I seem to be in some sort of shaft. It’s damp and disgusting, but the rain isn’t coming in. If it’s Sunday (is it still Sunday?), no one will be coming to work. Won’t there be security patrols? I try shouting again, but my voice is hoarse and my throat hurts too much. The last time I ate was Saturday breakfast and I hardly had anything then. Don’t want to think about that, it was the last time I saw Dad.

  My head is full of thoughts and fears. The only thing that stops me panicking is trying to work out everything that’s happened. Trying to make it clear in my head. So go back, Abbie. What happened next?

  Why would Jude want to do this to me? It’s as if she wanted to see me humiliated, broken. In despair. And I am. What day did I almost walk into the river? Seems a long time ago now. I wanted to die; I wanted it to be over.

  What was the last message UNKNOWN sent? It’s almost over. As if whoever it is was sure they’d pushed me to the edge.

  Who knew I had such a fear of clowns? Everyone in my class. But Jude hadn’t been there that day. Does that mean Jude isn’t UNKNOWN?

  There has to be a clue in something that was said, or done. I’m trying to remember. It’s there and then it’s gone.

  Frances says she was deliberately tripped up. Her fall was not an accident. And who is the prime suspect? Me. But what had I ever done to Frances?

  I find I’m crying. I can’t stop crying. The least likely suspect is always the one who is guilty. And Frances is my least likely suspect. Don’t let it be Frances. Please don’t let it be Frances. Because hers was the only kindness I found, I so want that to be real.

  FORTY-THREE

  It’s light and I can hear voices. Men’s voices. Someone’s singing. Am I dreaming? I open my eyes. Everything’s grey, but I can still hear a voice. Someone’s definitely singing. Tuneless, blinking awful singing, but the sweetest sound to my ears. I try to scream. Where’s my voice? What if they go away, and don’t come back? Why can’t I make a sound? I push myself to my feet, and try to yell. My throat feels as if it’s closing up, I can’t breathe. I know I’m panicking, but I am so afraid whoever is here is going to leave and I’ll be alone again. Engines are starting up, drowning out any sound I might make. Already the singing is fading, the voices are going. NO. No. No. I can’t let them go away now.

  The sound came from deep in my soul. A scream so loud I imagined it bouncing off the grey roof, and I screamed again, and I screamed again.

  Feet pounded on the ground above me. Someone shouted, “Whit’s that?”

  “Over here!”

  And then a face. A man in a yellow helmet looked down at me, so far, yet so near.

  Then I couldn’t make a sound. I only held up my hand to reach out to him.

  I couldn’t stop crying, or shaking.

  “Don’t worry, we’ll get you out. Abbie, isn’t it?”

  How did he know my name? But I didn’t ask; I just wanted him to get me out.

  Another face appeared, another man in a yellow helmet. “We’re getting a ladder!” he shouted down to me. “How did you get down there?” I don’t think he expected an answer because his face disappeared again.

  The first man stayed. “Don’t panic.”

  Was I panicking? My teeth were chattering, everything was shaking. I tried to get to my feet, but my legs melted under me and I ended up back on the ground.

  “Stay where you are, I’m coming to get you.”

  Next thing a steel ladder slid down. The man reached the ground and held out his hand to stop me from climbing but I didn’t know if I could climb anyway. I was suddenly aware that I’d been doing the toilet down there, but the man didn’t seem to notice. He took my arm gently.

  “One step at a time, I’ll be right behind you.”

  I could feel his hand guiding me, protecting me as I climbed. I stood on one foot, hauled with my arms. I was getting out of there. The thought made me shake even more and I lost my footing.

  “Careful, careful,” he said.

  And I was out! I felt like kissing them all, these big men with their yellow helmets and bright yellow jackets.

  “You’re lucky we heard you. We were ready to slap a steel pillar into that shaft.”

  The thought made me shake even more.

  “Your dad’s on his way,” one of them said, as I was wrapped in a blanket.

  “You know my dad?” My voice sounded grizzled, as if it was being forced through gravel.

  “He’s our union man,” another man said. “He’s been worried sick about you.”

  “You’ve been front-page news in the Tele,” the first man said, the one who’d come down for me, but his voice didn’t sound as kindly now.

  I just wanted my dad.

  I was given a cup of hot sweet tea in a big mug and I’ve never tasted anything so good in my life.

  And then my dad was there; he came rushing at me. And he folded me up in his arms and I just wanted to stay there forever. “I’m sorry, Dad.”

  “What on earth happened, Abbie, how did you get in here?”

  I started to tell him, about the texts, about the clown, but he put his hand over my mouth as if he didn’t want me to say more in front of these men. “Time for that later,” he whispered. Then he lifted me and carried me and I saw an ambulance waiting at the shipyard entrance. “I don’t want to go to hospital, Dad,” I murmured. “I just want to go home.”

  “They need to check you over.”

  So I trusted him. I must have slept, because when I opened my eyes I was in a hospital room. “I think we should keep her overnight,” a doctor was saying to my dad. “She’ll be fine, her foot isn’t broken, but it’s a bad sprain and she’s dehydrated.”

  I began to shake again. “No, no, I just want to go home.”

  “Can I stay with her?” Dad asked, and the doctor said yes, and that made it a bit better. They let me have a shower, and that made me feel better too. I slipped into bed, with Dad on a chair by my side. I wanted to talk, to explain to him about the text, but as soon as I closed my eyes I was deep in sleep. Safe because Dad was close beside me.

  In my dreams I’m not safe. I’m still in that dark place, trapped forever. It’s my rescue that has been the dream.

  I jumped awake and saw my dad, stretched out on a chair, head lolling back, snoring softly, and then I cried. I love him so much and I was so glad to be back with him by my side.

  I dozed again and I heard the door open. I opened my eyes expecting to see a nurse come to check on me. But it isn’t a nurse. It’s the clown grinning at me round the door. And the room is suddenly in darkness. It isn’t over, Abbie.

  I scream, “Leave me alone! Leave me alone!”

  Dad leaped from his chair and grabbed me in the nick of time before I could fall out of the bed. “You’re having a nightmare, Abbie.”

  A nurse stood at the open door. She wasn’t smiling.

  “You’ve been through a terrible ordeal, Abbie,” Dad comforted me. “It would give anyone nightmares.”

  The nurse left, still unsmiling.

  “What’s wrong with her?” Then it hit me that no one had smiled. And I knew why. “They think I did it on purpose, don’t they? They think all this was some kind of hoax, another Abbie hoax.”

  “Go back to sleep, Abbie, we’ll talk about it in the morning.”

  “But it wasn’t, Dad. Honest. It wasn’t.”

  After that, how was I supposed to sleep? They thought I did it all so I could be famous again. No one would believe I saw the clown. I hardly believed it myself by then. I had n
o proof. Where had my phone gone? Lost forever probably. Once again I would be known as Attention-Seeking-Abbie.

  Yet in those intermittent moments between sleep and wakefulness, something came together. All the messages I had received, my dad’s text, Sara Flynn, the television, and all at once the things that had been nagging at me in the dark were clear. I was sure I’d worked it out. I was sure I knew now who UNKNOWN really was.

  Trouble is, I would never be able to prove it.

  FORTY-FOUR

  A policewoman came in next morning to talk to me. She wanted to know why I was there, at the shipyard. I hesitated so long before answering, it sounded like I was making up a lie.

  “We know you’ve been reporting texts you say you’ve been getting,” she said, stressing ‘you say’. Which made it harder for me to speak.

  Dad squeezed my arm. “Just tell the truth, Abbie.”

  So I did. I told her about the text I received from Dad. When I said that, her eyes moved to him.

  “I never sent any text,” he said.

  “I thought he might be taking us out for dinner.”

  “We do that now and again.” He was trying to back me up.

  “And then what?”

  “And then I…” I couldn’t mention the clown. It all sounded too crazy.

  “How did you end up in the shaft?”

  “I thought I saw… somebody, and I went after them, and I stumbled and fell and…”

  “You followed a total stranger, in the dark.”

  “I thought it might have been… the one sending me the texts.”

  “Can you identify this… person you were running after?”

  She didn’t believe me. I could hear it in her tone. Yeah, I thought, I can identify them. A clown with a scarlet slash for a smile. I didn’t dare tell her that. So I shook my head. “No.”

  She put her notebook away and stood up. She motioned my dad to follow her. I heard them whispering outside the door. My dad’s voice got louder.

  “Have you never heard of online bullying? That’s all she’s been getting since this began. And nobody’s listened. If my girl says she got a text from me then somehow someone sent her a text from my phone. It wouldn’t be so hard – I often leave it lying about. If she says she saw someone and followed them, then I will believe her. That’s what she needs right now. Someone to believe her.”

  Next minute, he was back in the room. His face was red. “I let you down, Abbie. Things have been happening to you and I didn’t listen.”

  I should have been the one apologising to him. I wanted to tell him that, but all I could say was, “Can I go home, Dad?”

  ***

  Turned out home wasn’t the safe place I thought it would be.

  Sara Flynn and her tv crew were waiting on the road. Neighbours were out too. None of them were applauding.

  “Why are they here, Dad?”

  “Because you were missing for THREE days. You’ve been rescued. Everyone’s interested.” He put his arm around me as we got out of the car. “Stay close and don’t say a word.”

  Sara came running up to me. I moved closer to Dad and he shoved the camera away from my face. “Let her get inside, for goodness sake.”

  “We just want to know what happened, Abbie. How did you get yourself trapped? Some people are saying it was deliberate.”

  “Get out of here!” I could feel the anger in my dad’s voice. And there was anger in me too. Deliberate. That’s what they’d all been thinking.

  Sara called out, “Will there be any charges brought against Abbie?”

  As soon as we were inside I turned to Dad. “What does she mean? Charges? Not more charges please.”

  He brushed it aside. “There won’t be. Don’t worry about that.”

  But I was worried. If they believed I did this deliberately, created a missing girl story for a second time, surely the Procurator Fiscal would charge me, or have me committed?

  “What have they been saying, Dad, about me? I want to know.”

  He rubbed a hand across his brow. For a moment I thought he wasn’t going to answer me. “Not very nice things, Abbie. No one took it seriously when you didn’t come home. But they didn’t know the argument we’d had.”

  “I really did get a text, Dad. It said you were going to pick me up at the roundabout. If I had my phone, I could show you. I must have lost it when I fell.”

  “I believe you,” he said simply.

  “I don’t blame people not believing me. But someone is doing this to me. Someone who really hates me.”

  Dad sat me on the sofa and took a seat on the coffee table across from me, holding my hands. “I want you to forget about the past, Abbie. I want this to be a new beginning for us. You’re back and you’re safe and that’s all I care about. I’m going to get you into a new school. Another new beginning. I just want this to be over, Abbie. For both of us.”

  I knew he didn’t want me to go on about someone being after me, someone hating me.

  I wanted a new beginning too. I had no phone, so there could be no more texts. But I couldn’t leave it like this. Now I thought I knew who UNKNOWN was, I couldn’t just let it go.

  FORTY-FIVE

  I was so glad I didn’t have my phone that night. I’d seen an item on the news about my return, and it was clear there was no sympathy or worry about me. I was about to be expelled, reason enough for going, and I was under suspicion for what happened to Frances. I cried when I saw what they said about me. If I’d had my phone to read them, I knew the posts and messages would be flying, and I’d feel even worse.

  So there I was, home, and nothing had really changed. If anything, things had got worse for me. But at least me and Dad were ok. He believed me, or loved me enough to pretend to.

  He switched the tv off when he came into the room and saw what I was watching on the news.

  “Enough. Forget about all that.”

  “Did everyone make it hard for you when I was gone? Did you find it difficult getting anyone to look for me?”

  He answered me with a tight smile. “We’re going to put this behind us, Abbie. Move on.”

  The tears welled up in my eyes. I was never one for crying, yet I cry at the slightest thing now. “What if they charge me for what happened to Frances?”

  “We’ll fight it,” he said simply.

  “I didn’t do it. I would never do anything like that.”

  He reached out to me and clasped my hand. “I know you wouldn’t, Abbie. You might punch someone in the face, but you would never be so devious as to put something across the stairs to trip them.”

  “Unfortunately, you’re the only one who thinks that.”

  We sat in comfortable silence for a while, then his phone pinged and I jumped. Texts do that to me.

  He held the phone so I could read the message.

  “My pal, Benny,” he explained. One of his union friends. “I was supposed to drop him off some papers. Totally forgot.”

  “Go then,” I told him. “I’ll be fine.”

  “You sure? I’ll be back in an hour. I promise.”

  “I’ll watch some tv.”

  “Not the news, ok?” He smiled. “Tell you what… I’ll bring in pizza, what do you say?”

  “Sounds good to me.”

  I heard his car drive off, and I knew he didn’t want to leave me, but in a way I was glad of the time alone, safe in my own house, to think things through. I had no proof of what I suspected, and no way of getting any proof either. UNKNOWN had been too clever. The text pretending to be my dad must have come from someone who knew we’d had a fight, someone who lured me to the shipyard. Someone who had been watching my dad and knew how he left his phone lying about. Someone who could grab it quickly, send a text, then delete it.

  I thought of Dad. A text from Benny. But was it Benny really? Was he being lured somewhere, or… was the text to get him to leave the house, to leave me here alone?

  You’re being paranoid, Abbie, I told myself.

>   Almost on cue the doorbell rang. I hoped it was Dad come back because he’d forgotten something or he’d changed his mind. I hobbled to the door. It must be Dad, it has to be him.

  I pulled the door open.

  It wasn’t Dad.

  FORTY-SIX

  I hobbled into school on my crutches. My stomach was heaving. Could I face what was going to happen today? The school was strangely silent. Lessons had begun. I headed for the auditorium. Our first lesson on Friday was always in there. Our whole year group. All gathered together, all hating me.

  I pushed open the door and was in full view of them. The teacher hadn’t arrived. This teacher was never on time. I knew that. They were all chatting, talking, mostly about me. I’d heard about the tweets, messages discussing me. No one believed I’d really been missing.

  Big Belinda noticed me first. I saw her nudging Andrea, who turned to look at me and opened her mouth dramatically in shock. Tracey only sniggered. Robbie stood up. Then they were all looking and I could read their minds and their minds were filled with scorn, hate and ridicule.

  I shouted and my voice rang round the auditorium. “Aye, it’s me. I’m here. For the last time. D’ye know how I’m here? I’m being expelled. Are you all happy now? You’re getting rid of me.”

  There was actually a round of applause when I said that.

  “Well, I am not going on my own. Because I know who this UNKNOWN is, and now I can prove it. And then everybody will know I was the one telling the truth. Me!” My voice rose higher, more like a scream than a shout. Robbie ran down the steps and grabbed me by the shoulder. I shook him away.

  “You’re making a complete fool of yourself. Come on.” He tried to pull me away but I yanked myself free of him.

  “You all wait and see. Somebody is going to be sorry. Thought you had me, didn’t you? Well, I got you!”