by Kate Simants
‘My child?’ he says, catching his breath. ‘You think I’m that fucking careless, mate? Take a risk like that, with a slag like this one? Christ, no!’
‘James, please. Don’t,’ Paige says.
‘Oh, this is priceless!’ He throws his head back. ‘Did you tell him it was mine?’
‘Just stop it!’ Tears on Paige’s cheeks, bright in the moonlight.
Luke swallows. ‘So… so whose is it?’
Yardley’s still grinning hatefully. ‘Go on, Paige! You tell him. Go on.’
She puts her hands to her face. ‘Don’t. Please.’
‘She’s been fucking your brother,’ Yardley says, and he’s not laughing any more. ‘The baby’s his.’
Luke turns slowly to Paige. It’s not true. He can’t bear it to be true. But she won’t look at him, and so he knows.
But also – deep down, he already did. He’s known for ages.
Before he gets to say it, Paige runs. Barrels past him, head down, back into the building, feet clanging on the ladder. It takes him a few seconds to process it. But then, all the doubt is gone. There is a moment of perfect, unshakeable clarity, and he finds he understands exactly what has to happen next.
He goes after her.
‘Paige!’ he shouts. At the bottom he turns, follows the black shape of her running to the staircase. He sprints, catches up with her, and grabs her arm.
‘Luke, please!’
He grips her hard. He can hardly see it through the dark but just behind her is the hole where the steps are missing. The drop, if you fell, would be about ten metres.
‘Luke, please,’ she shouts, ‘I’m sorry!’ But she’s not looking at him. She’s searching behind him, for Yardley. Luke turns, sees him coming down from the roof.
When he looks back to Paige, her eyes are already on him.
And there is a connection, like a clear pathway of electricity, and everything, every screaming, twisting thread of it in his mind goes quiet.
He sees her. Really sees her. And he knows that she sees him, too.
He smiles, and she stops struggling. She’s right on the edge of the step, so close, like the last few inches at the limit of the earth.
‘Luke.’
Out loud, all he says is, ‘I loved you, Paige. I always did.’
She’s leaning back, pulling away from him. She opens her mouth to say something else.
And then he lets her go. She cries out, and then there’s nothing.
Luke closes his eyes.
Then Yardley’s down the ladder, and pounding across the floor to the top of the broken steps.
‘Shit,’ he says. ‘What happened? Where is she?’
Luke is frozen to the spot. Seconds pass. He can’t speak.
Yardley’s hands go to his head. ‘No. Oh shit, no.’ He grabs the rails to go down, but Luke is in his way and he can’t get past. ‘Move, Luke!’ he shouts.
Luke uproots himself and slowly, carefully passes the gap on shaking legs, keeping Yardley behind him. The knackered stair hangs down like a broken arm.
He finds her directly underneath, on the floor. On her side, one arm splayed behind her, the other flung right up above her head. Legs bent. Her head twisted into her armpit. Luke kneels, puts his hand to her throat, and then Yardley’s there next to him. He reaches out to touch her, and Luke elbows him hard.
‘Get back. Don’t touch her.’
The older man rocks back on his heels. ‘What have you done, Luke? Is she alive?’
Luke takes his hand from her neck. Slowly, he bends lower, putting his head, his ear, against her ribs.
He stays like that for a long time.
Then he looks up at Yardley. Makes the slowest, smallest shake of his head.
Yardley walks away, his hands in his hair, just saying, ‘Shit.’ Over and over again.
Luke moves Paige so her neck is straighter, and her arms are comfortable. He doesn’t look at her face.
Yardley crouches several metres away. He looks up at Luke.
‘Well, you’re in the shit now, aren’t you, Lukey?’
Luke’s eyes go wide. ‘She fell.’ His voice trembles.
‘Did she?’ Yardley shakes his head. ‘I don’t know. We all know how you feel about her, don’t we? Then all I heard was you shouting. And now she’s…’ he gestures towards her. ‘It’s not looking good for you, my man.’
‘It was an accident. Please, Mr Yardley. James. Please.’ He lets his voice break. ‘My mum. Rob’s going to prison already. If you say it was me, if I go away for this, she’ll—’ he breaks off.
‘She’ll what?’ Yardley waits, arms folded, his mouth working like there’s something disgusting on his tongue.
‘She’ll have nothing left.’ He drops his gaze. ‘It wasn’t my fault. She fell. Please.’
Yardley stands then. He jerks his chin at Paige. ‘You want me to help you, Luke, you’re going to have to do something for me, too.’
‘Yeah, OK. Anything you say.’
Yardley gives him a long look. Eventually he says, ‘I’ll keep your secret for you. But I’m going to need you to get me that phone.’
Luke draws in a breath, all the way to the bottom of his lungs.
And he nods, just once.
43
Now
Wren stands glaring at the camera on James Yardley’s intercom box.
‘Let me in, you perverted fuck.’
There is a long pause. She hits the button again. ‘I said—’
‘Please,’ comes a woman’s voice, a harsh whisper, almost inaudible. ‘I – I can’t.’
Who is it – the wife or the housekeeper?
Wren leans closer. ‘You can let me in now or I can go straight to the police.’
Another pause. Then, through the crackle, ‘I think that’s exactly what you should do.’
Not the housekeeper. Too old. Too… bitter.
‘Lucilla.’
‘Yes.’
Eyes closed, Wren rests her forehead against the wrought-iron bars of the gate. ‘Why should I go to the police, Lucilla?’
‘Because,’ she starts, still whispering, ‘because of that poor girl.’
‘You need to let me in.’
‘I can’t. They’re here.’
‘Who’s they?’
But Lucilla doesn’t answer the question. ‘I tried to put it right, as soon as I found out what he’d done. But there’s no proof – there’s never been any proof. He tells everyone I’m insane, traumatised,’ she says, her voice sharpening, ‘so no one will believe me. He’s evil. You need to get that phone to the police, right now—’
Wren’s eyes fly open. ‘How do you know I’ve got it?’
‘Because they’re right here arguing about it!’
The last scrap of doubt Wren had about the source of those messages to Paige dissolves.
‘Please,’ Lucilla is saying. ‘Just go and—’
Through the little box, the sound of a voice approaching in the background, male, saying her name—
But Lucilla raises her voice ‘—they’ll take it! They’ll get it from you—’
‘Who is that?’ comes James’s voice, roaring.
There is the indistinct sound of a scuffle. And then silence.
‘Lucilla?’ Wren presses the button again. But the connection is gone.
Then there is a whirring and a clunk as the gates open, and Wren strides in. On the drive, two cars. James’s and one other, which gives her pause for half a second because she’s seen it before. She knows that ostentatious white 4x4.
The front door flies open. James stands there, arms folded, a loose smile on his lips. Wren speeds up. By the time she is on his steps, she is running, and he is stepping backwards.
No sign of Lucilla. But she hasn’t come for Lucilla.
Wren slams into him, drives him back into his hallway. She pins him against the wall, hands on his shoulders, sending a low table crashing sideways.
‘What did you do to her?’ sh
e spits.
‘Wait – wait—’
‘You put those clothes there. You sent the police around once you knew I’d got the phone out for you. You’re setting him up and it wasn’t him. So I’ll ask you again. What did you do to Paige, you filthy bastard? Where is she?’
He gapes, eyes wide, saying nothing.
Wren transfers a hand to his throat. ‘Where. Is. She?’
His eyes start to bulge and she doesn’t care. After what she’s seen on that phone, the things he’d got Paige to do, the pictures he’d told her to send to him: he can fucking choke, for all she cares.
‘Wren.’ A woman’s voice. Coming towards her with a gentle expression: not James’s wife, but Alice Polzeath.
‘Wren,’ she says again, and touches her fingertips lightly to the hand across James’s neck. ‘I don’t think we quite need this, do we?’
Wren shoves him hard against the wall and lets go, then stands back as he coughs, rubbing his neck.
‘Jesus Christ,’ he splutters. ‘Just give me the damned phone and get the hell out of my house.’ He puts out a hand to take it from her. He actually puts out his hand.
‘You think I came here to give it to you?’ Wren laughs. ‘I don’t fucking think so. You came to my house to steal it from me. My partner’s in hospital right now because of you.’
He frowns, affronted by the idea. ‘I was nowhere near your house. I’ve been with a patient.’
‘Didn’t want to get your hands dirty? So you sent someone else to do it.’
‘Let’s just be grown-ups here, shall we?’ Alice says.
‘The hell have you got to do with it?’ Wren hisses, wheeling around to face her. ‘Why are you even here?’ She is trying to fit the pieces together but nothing will stick, it all keeps slipping, the questions clambering on top of each other.
But the answer, when it comes, nearly takes her breath away. Because if Alice Polzeath is here in James Yardley’s house, and if she knows about the phone, then that means she knows what he’s done. And that means there has to be a reason she kept it quiet.
Wren sees the beautiful carpets, the carved wood of the staircase. She sees the whole house, the drive, the electric gates. The immaculate cars, not just his but hers, too.
The answer is money. The answer is always money.
‘You needed him. You let him do whatever he wanted, so he’d scratch your back in return.’
‘It’s funny,’ Alice tells her, righting the overturned table, ‘because when you came to see me, I suspected something was a little bit… off, shall we say. And then a couple of days later, it all started to make sense. Didn’t it, James?’
Wren folds her arms. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘I got a call from Melanie Pickford-Hayes. Used to work for me. Liked Paige, I thought at the time. Anyway, you went to see her, didn’t you?’ She cocks her head, the picture of innocence.
‘It’s my job.’
Alice glances at James. ‘Is it? You didn’t take Robert though, so it can’t have been approved, could it?’
‘Get to the point.’ A knot of dread forms, but Wren doesn’t let it show.
‘Melanie called me after you paid her a visit. She wanted to see Paige’s letters. The ones she’d got from her mother. I asked why,’ Alice says, feigning confusion, ‘but she wouldn’t say. We’re not exactly close. All she said was that she wanted to compare something.’
‘Right. And?’ Wren says, as dismissively as she can. The knot hardens and metastasises as Melanie flashes into her mind. The way she’d looked at the note Wren had written.
‘I said no, obviously, but I remembered how Paige and Mel would sit and read those letters together. I went to look for them, and I found that they weren’t there. Which was funny, because only that morning, I’d shown them to someone for the first time in goodness knows how long,’ Alice says, letting her eyes linger on Wren’s. ‘Robert Ashworth. And you.’
Wren puts a hand to the doorframe.
‘You didn’t have to say much, Wren,’ James says. He goes to a mahogany coat stand, retrieves his jacket, and from the inside pocket pulls a thick, loose fold of A4 sheets and leafs through them. There are printouts, records, but also photocopies. The handwritten letters to Paige, in familiar handwriting.
Familiar, because it is her own.
‘I started with the letters,’ James says, ‘and worked back from there. You really went to town, didn’t you? Starting again, making a nice little life for yourself after Paige was taken into care.’ He flicks through the sheets as if examining a shopping list. ‘If I didn’t know better, I’d say you wanted shot of Paige. Maybe she was holding you back.’ He shrugs. ‘No wonder you’re feeling ambivalent about the new baby.’
Wren stands against the doorframe, stock still.
‘Weston-super-Mare, you lived before. In a particularly nice neighbourhood. Couldn’t exactly go down in the world after starting there.’ He glances up, poison in his eyes. ‘But you left, changed things up a bit. Got yourself a different name, wormed your way into a respectable profession.’
‘This isn’t about me.’ It comes out as a whisper.
‘Oh, I think it is. You want to tell me why you did all of that? So you could go and stalk her? Find ways to get close to her even after everything you did, see if you couldn’t damage her a little bit more?’ He is hitting his stride now. ‘I wouldn’t be too hard on yourself. Classic psychological paradox. You didn’t get enough love in your own childhood, so you sought it from your daughter who was ill-equipped to give it.’ He waves a hand dismissively. ‘And so the child suffers the same fate. Explains how Paige was always so keen to please.’
She doesn’t move. She can’t.
‘And you did hurt her, didn’t you, Wren? I mean, neglect, abuse,’ he weighs them both in his hands, ‘same thing, really. Says here that she was on her own three days straight at one point, aged three, when you were out on a drugs binge?’ He looks up, his confidence returning, the swagger coming back. He tuts. ‘Don’t think we’re in much of a position to point fingers, are we?’
The blood is hammering in her ears, and she tries to speak.
‘What was that?’
Wren fumbles again, trying to articulate any one of the excuses that she draws around herself every night like so many threadbare blankets. I was young. I was a drug addict. I needed help, and no one helped me. But the words tangle themselves in her throat because they are, have always been, so utterly inadequate. Because nothing excused it, what she’d done to Paige. How she’d let her down. How she’d been led by her weakness, allowing her addiction to pull her around like a chained animal while her daughter, her precious child born into need and addiction herself, followed her, believing with the single-mindedness of extreme youth that Mummy loved her, would put her first, and would protect her. That if Mummy said she would change, then she would change.
But she hadn’t changed.
Not in time to save her. And now Paige is dead. Stripped of everything, right down to her innocence, right down to the clothes on her back.
‘She had nothing,’ Wren manages to say past the choke in her throat. ‘She was vulnerable. You knew that. You knew what it was like, being in care.’
James gives a slight shake of his head, incredulity giving way to sneering amusement.
‘I wasn’t in care, for goodness’ sake! People like me don’t end up in care, Wren! Surely you didn’t believe that.’
He comes over, places a hand on her shoulder. She can’t even move away.
‘Not nice when people start digging things up, is it? But it’s all over now. You can go and have your baby, and no one needs to know about who you really are. How you shouldn’t really be allowed to be near children at all.’ He leans in close, so his face is almost touching hers. Close enough to smell the nicotine, to see the flecks of yellow in his drinker’s eyes.
‘And we certainly don’t need Suzy knowing about this, do we? Not with all she’s got to lose.’
/> Maybe it is Suzy’s name in his mouth that breaks the spell. Whatever it is, it’s powerful enough to shake her out of it, to make her meet his gaze. She blinks, and finds her voice.
‘You know what they say, though,’ she says softly.
He frowns, confused. ‘What?’
‘You can take the girl out of Weston.’
And then, after a pull-back as short and swift as a pinball spring, she drives her forehead into the bridge of his nose. He screams as he goes down, holding his face, instantly bloodied, in both hands. As he drops, Wren grabs the bundle of papers in his hand, and she spits in his eyes.
The gate is still wide open when she strides straight across James’s tree-lined driveway, big enough for a coach to turn. But as she approaches the yawning gates, she is stopped by the buzz of her phone.
‘Where the hell are you?’ comes Suzy’s mother’s urgent voice. ‘They’ve brought it forward. The baby’s heart rate is slowing.’
‘Shit,’ Wren says, running now, her car in view. She can hear James’s indignant howl, Alice Polzeath fussing angrily. ‘Is Suzy all right?’
‘She’d be a hell of a lot better with you here. They’re going to be prepping her in a few minutes, Wren. She needs you.’
‘I’m coming.’
Wren runs.
But just before she gets to her car, she pauses. Feeling eyes on her, she spins around to the house and locates Lucilla at an upstairs window, one hand on the glass, raised in farewell.
A look of determination on her face. And something else, which could be hope.
Wren raises her own empty hand.
Then, she looks at the papers in the other. Her past, an endless humiliation, used only as a threat, or a ransom.
There will be more where this came from. There already is: that text from Roche, sitting unanswered on her phone, demanding a new layer of lies, more sleight of hand, another misdirection. She can bury it this time, she can pack it all away again and hope it never resurfaces, but she’ll never outrun it. Not for good, and not forever.
So she brings her arm up, and she opens her hand, and she lets the papers fly.
She isn’t going to hide any more.
44
Now