Never Go There

by Rebecca Tinnelly

  Emma was on the wrong side of the table; maybe Maggie could run to the door, into the street before Emma could catch her up. She could flag down the police car, run back to the station.

  Another shot of pain ran up her leg.

  Maggie had to keep her talking, had to give herself time to think up a plan. Her head was foggy, stomach cramping against the sweetness of the biscuits, too many too fast.

  ‘I tried to do the best for you, invest your money so it would grow. I didn’t know the pub would fail.’

  Emma looked down at her hands, scraping away the dried blood, licking her finger and wiping the scab clean. ‘You put the pub before me, Maggie. You used my money to help yourself, not me.’

  She turned her scabbed hand over on the table, palm up, her other hand bringing the knife down. The blade cut into her palm, thick, black blood rising up on her skin.

  Maggie gasped, cramp shooting up through her thigh, into her buttock. She tried to flex her ankle under the table to clear the pain, but couldn’t. She couldn’t do anything but stare at Emma’s hand, blood dribbling down her wrist.

  ‘You didn’t even ask me, just used your power as trustee to take it all, spend it on that fucking shit-hole pub, ruined my chances of paying for university, or for a deposit on a flat outside of that fucking village.’ Emma cut herself again with the tip of the knife, pressing it in and flicking it upwards, a spray of blood scattering her jumper, a few drops landing on her chin. She didn’t flinch.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Maggie’s legs had stopped hurting, her left buttock tingling lightly. She could run, she should run, but she couldn’t take her eyes off the knife.

  ‘Defensive wounds,’ Emma said, cutting one more time across the bulge of her thumb joint. ‘The police have to think you attacked me.’

  Maggie jolted, looked up at the girl with the knife in her hand but couldn’t see a murderer, a desperate killer. Maggie could only see the Emma she knew, the girl who, as a four-year-old, had wrapped her arms around Maggie’s shoulders and said, ‘There, there, there,’ as Maggie cried at the wake following Tom’s funeral.

  ‘You don’t have to do this, Emma. You can let me go.’ Maggie reached for her across the table, begging Emma to drop the knife and touch her. ‘I won’t tell anyone.’

  Emma shook her head, her eyes filling with tears, the tears giving Maggie hope.

  ‘I’ll go, I’ll go now and no one needs to know.’ Maggie’s head felt dizzy, eyes spotting with black, dancing shapes. ‘Please, sweetheart. Please.’

  Emma put the knife on the table, out of Maggie’s reach. She balled her injured hand into a fist, a drop of blood squeezing out and landing on the blade.

  ‘I don’t want you to get into trouble. I’ll leave, I won’t tell anyone.’

  Emma looked up at the clock on the wall, then sighed, shook her head, blinked. ‘I never wanted to do this.’ Another tear sprung from her right eye and she rubbed it away, smearing blood across her face. ‘Not to you.’

  ‘The police haven’t turned up yet, it’s not too late.’ Maggie leant further forward, managed to tap the edge of the knife. It spun round, slid across the table and fell.

  She braced herself to run, waiting for Emma to dart for the knife, waiting for the lapse in her attention to escape.

  Emma didn’t stir.

  The knife lay, untouched, on the floor by her feet.

  And Maggie couldn’t move her legs.

  ‘I didn’t want to do this.’ Emma turned her eyes to her godmother. ‘But you made me.’

  Maggie put her hands on the table and pushed against it, but she couldn’t stand.

  ‘What have you done?’ She tried again, failed again, her throat and chest tight.

  She dropped her arms to her sides, tried to massage life back into them but she couldn’t feel a thing. ‘What have you done?’

  ‘It’s too late.’ Emma sat motionless. ‘I couldn’t let you drag me back. I couldn’t let you ruin everything.’

  The clouds split, the low sun sending shards of light into the room and into Maggie’s face, her vision dancing with bright, flashing pricks of light. She couldn’t lift her arms.

  ‘What—’ She tried again but stopped. She could feel her fingers, a light tingling in the tips, but couldn’t move them. She rolled her shoulders in their sockets, tried to shake her arms to life but failed.

  ‘It was in your tea, Maggie. Hemlock; I picked it from Nuala’s garden and dried it, it was my fallback, my just-in-case. I left all my apple seeds at the pub.’ Emma frowned, looked sympathetic. ‘You’re losing feeling in your limbs. Eventually, you’ll become paralysed and go into respiratory failure, then cardiac arrest. It’ll look just like a heart attack. Routine toxicology tests don’t detect hemlock, they won’t pick it up at autopsy unless they look for it specifically. And why would they?’ Emma smiled, small, meek, shrugging her shoulders to the words. ‘I was hoping it would happen on your way back to the station.’ Her face buckled and her bottom lip trembled, her voice breaking as she said, ‘I didn’t want to watch.’

  Jackdaws were cawing outside. Maggie’s head began to throb in earnest, electric pulses of pain travelling along the back of her neck and down her spine. She tried to speak but her voice was lost, her throat tight, her lips silently mouthing her question.

  ‘You’re asking me why?’ Emma leant over, grabbed the sleeve of her coat and hauled her dead arm onto the table, clasping Maggie’s hand in her own. ‘Because I had to. Because you would have told someone, you would have ruined everything and I had to get out, Maggie, I couldn’t bear living in that place any longer.’ She kissed Maggie’s hand, rested her forehead on the thumb.

  ‘At first I thought it was temporary, that I’d stay with you until I was old enough and then move on. But you didn’t want me to. You trapped me, you chained me to the pub, kept me there with your self-pity and your dependence and I couldn’t leave you.’

  The cawing continued, the jackdaws casting shadows through the window.

  Maggie mustered her strength and pulled her arm away, hearing the tap as Emma’s bent head hit the table top. She pulled too hard, her strength erratic and uncontrollable, and fell sideways.

  She heard the scrape of the chair sliding along the wood, but didn’t feel it move.

  She heard the smack of her cheekbone against the floor but didn’t feel it crack.

  ‘I’m going to wait for you to go into cardiac arrest. Then I’ll call the police.’ Emma sniffed and Maggie heard her stand up, pick up the knife from the floor. She heard the rustle of her clothes as she bent down, her vision filling with the dark cloth of her jeans, her white-socked feet, a drop of blood on the toe.

  Maggie was aware of something being placed in her hand.

  The knife.

  ‘I’m going to tell them you attacked me. That you tried to strangle me but I broke free, that I ran to the kitchen and you followed, you grabbed a knife, tried to stab me but then you fell, clutching your chest.’

  Maggie could still breathe. She could still move her eyes, her tongue wasn’t yet lifeless in her mouth. There was still time.

  ‘I just couldn’t let you ruin everything, not again.’

  Maggie closed her eyes and arched her neck. She clenched her teeth and let bubbles of spit slide from her mouth. She could move her back a little, so she writhed on the floor as much as she could, a gurgle escaping her lips.

  Emma would call the police. They would come and Maggie could tell them what she’d done, they could save her.

  She concentrated on trying to move her limbs, not on the sound of Emma picking up the phone and screaming into it. She couldn’t move her legs but she could slide her arms along the floor.

  She dropped the knife and tried to push it away, but she couldn’t focus her eyes.

  She could hear Emma, crying and shouting, begging for help on the phone.

  She heard the click of the receiver.

  And now Emma’s hands were on her, pulling their faces close as Emma
knelt beside her. Emma’s hands wound their way around Maggie’s neck, hugging her tightly, the side of their faces pressed together.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered, ‘so sorry.’ Her voice in her ear. ‘Please understand.’

  Emma’s tears turned into cries of grief, the sound genuine, tormented with loss. She hugged Maggie tighter, as though saying goodbye, the tears stopping her from saying any more.

  A siren called in the distance.

  Emma struggled to her feet and stumbled to the other side of the room, slid to the floor against the window, back to the glass, arms wrapped around her shins. She was still crying, still screaming, her bloody hands clawing her knees.

  Maggie stopped struggling, lay still. She let her hands fall open, her feet fall away from each other. Her head dropped to the side, mouth open, eyes closed.

  Noise, so much noise.

  Jackdaws cawing to the wind.

  Emma screaming, sobbing, screaming.

  The siren, drawing closer.

  Feet pounding the wooden boards, vibrations running along the floor and rocking Maggie’s skull.

  Her eyes opened to a slit.

  A blur of dark uniform neared Emma. Her cries increased, sobs turning to wails. The uniform tried to lift her, but she couldn’t stand.

  Maggie longed to raise her up from the floor, hold her, tell her it would all be OK; they could go home and it could all be forgotten.

  A stab of pain at the thought of home. The place Emma had tried to escape, the place that had imprisoned her. Home, for Emma, had meant the village she was trapped in, the pub she was chained to. It meant Maggie.

  ‘I understand,’ Emma had said to her once, when Maggie was drunk and talking about Lee.

  Maggie had held on to Emma because everyone else had left; Maggie had pushed them all away. She held on to Emma because she loved her, because she couldn’t bear to be without her.

  ‘The village has everything you need, there’s no better place, no better people.’ How many times had Maggie told her that lie? She had trapped her in the place that had caused her nightmares, when she should have been the one to set her free.

  More sirens and more feet, their pace like thunder travelling through the floor.

  Hands grasped her shoulders.

  The pain spread to her jaw.

  She wanted Emma to come to her, but she was still huddled on the floor, head buried in her knees, tears torrential.

  ‘Madam, can you hear me?’ Two hands, shaking her to life. ‘Can you tell me your name?’

  All she needed was to utter hemlock. One word to save her life. She parted her lips to speak but stopped.

  She couldn’t do it.

  Terror gripped her chest and though she couldn’t move her body she could still move her head, just. Her eyes opened in a final moment of life-preserving panic and she saw Emma, finally standing, her face tear-streaked.

  Their eyes met, and her panic wilted.

  She pictured the life Emma would have if Maggie resisted, if she uttered that simple word that would save her own life. Prison, courtrooms and chains. She pictured an alternate life, a life if she just let go, a life of Tiffany lamps and Duchy Originals. She thought of the letter she had left at home for the police, about Arthur and all he had done, relieved that at least he wouldn’t be getting away with it any longer.

  She wanted to smile at her but couldn’t, the poison now nearing its end.

  Her chest lurched and the muscles went into spasm, forcing her body to arch. Her head jerked back and she lost Emma’s gaze.

  Foreign hands were holding Maggie’s shoulders, unfamiliar voices calling to her. Life, once more, begging her to reconsider.

  She tried to see Emma, but she had lost control of her body, she couldn’t turn her face.

  She thought of Emma’s future, without Maggie but happy, maybe marriage, children, choice.

  ‘I understand.’

  Maggie couldn’t close her eyelids, couldn’t shut her eyes. The room went black, fell silent.

  She thought of her son, whom she’d failed but had never stopped loving, thought maybe now she could see him, watch over him, from somewhere above. She pictured Tom, her husband, whose death she had never recovered from, his eyes clear at last, their colour bright, beautiful.

  Her eyes finally closed.

  She let Emma go.

  6 months later

  7th June, 2018

  The sea outside her window was blue. Not the grey glitter of the Bristol Channel but a deep, dark blue, almost navy. By tonight she would be seeing it from a different angle again, not from the porthole of a ferry cabin, but from the opposite side of the Irish Sea. And from there, who knows? She was finally running away, a clean break.

  The oval mirror in front of her, hanging over the desk, had been covered with a pillowcase from the bed. So, too, had she covered the one in the small en-suite bathroom, though with a towel, not a pillowcase. Anything to save her from her own image, her own face, every feature she shared with her father.

  Every feature she shared with her half-brother, too.

  With James Lunglow.

  Another lie, another secret kept from her by Lois, by her father, by—

  She closed her eyes, rubbed the bridge of her nose, took a deep breath, forced composure.

  She couldn’t think of Maggie now, of the life fading from her eyes, face paling, the paramedic’s muscles tense as he prepared to give CPR, as he tried and failed to save Maggie’s life.

  She needed to keep steady. She didn’t want to make a mistake at this late stage.

  The floor rumbled beneath her feet. The chair she was sitting on tilted, ever so slightly, to the side. A tannoy rang out and the voice of the captain came through, as if the walls, the very ceiling, were speaking to her. They would be leaving very soon.

  The sea was calm.

  The crossing should be smooth.

  The captain wished her a pleasant journey.

  It was now or never; by the end of the day she’d be in another country, using another passport in another name. She was going to disappear.

  The house had been sold, as much money taken out in cash and added to the pre-paid card as she could without raising suspicion. It was more than enough and the accountant hadn’t yet carried out his annual review, wouldn’t do so for another month yet. She had a little more time before anyone got too suspicious, started asking where she was, where she’d gone to.

  She would set up another account, in her new name, once she found a place she liked, a place she could settle down in. A place that didn’t remind her of her father, of Maggie, lying dead on the floor, of her half-brother and all the things he had done to her, all the unspeakable things she had done with him in that barn when she was fourteen years old.

  If she’d known, if someone had just told her, she wouldn’t be in this position now. Wouldn’t have to run, hide, squirrel money away onto a plastic card she was petrified of losing, so petrified she kept it on her at all times, inside her bra next to her skin, the plastic smelling sour from constant contact.

  She had got away with it. She had the money, she had her revenge, she had freedom.

  But those with a conscience would never be free. Emma would never be free. No mirror ever let her forget what she had done, the sight of every old woman, every head of grey hair, every scar no matter where on the body it was, screamed her sins, her mistakes.

  Every penny she spent was blood money, every dream she endured was a terror, every dog on the street a reminder of the cast-iron doorstop, blood streaked on the etched-on fur, a reminder of the bloody flesh, hair, skull of the woman she had beaten to death, the woman who had been raped by Emma’s father, her own father.

  The baby Lois bore had been Arthur’s son.

  The man Emma had first fucked had been her half-brother.

  Good God, she would never forget it.

  Her own brother.

  And not just the things she had done with him, her first carnal pleasures r
evealed as incestuous violations, but the things he had said to her, the things she had come to believe. ‘You’re such an idiot,’ said with a sweetness that confounded her, made her question and re-examine herself. ‘Stupid whore,’ spat with a venom that made her think it true. No fourteen-year-old girl was a whore, she knew that now, she only wished she could make her younger self recognise the truth, too.

  If Emma had known who he really was, then none of this would have happened. Maggie would be alive, and so would Elaine. Emma’s conscience would be clear. Why hadn’t someone just told her the truth?

  But it wasn’t Lois’s fault, Emma knew that. Nor was it Maggie’s or Nuala’s, it wasn’t even entirely James’s. To a certain, lesser degree, Emma could argue it wasn’t her fault, either. The original sin lay with Arthur, his crimes tainting his victims, creating his twisted son.

  The worst part was, he had got away with it scot free.

  The tannoy called out again, a blast of the horn announcing their departure. They were leaving, the land creeping away, unseen from where Emma was holed in the bowels of the ship. Her porthole only looked seaward, to the future, her eyes trained on the horizon, waiting for the land that would become her new home and not the coast she was running away from, or the man who still lived there.

  Her hands were shaking. They were always shaking.

  She knew, though, if the time ever came, if she ever saw him again, the tremble in her hands would subside. She knew her fingers, her hands, would be steady. She would be strong enough to make him pay.

  She had got away with her crimes, in the eyes of the law.

  But, goddamn it, so had he.

  She wouldn’t let him get away with it forever. One day, she’d return. One day, her eyes would be fixed back on him.

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  Acknowledgements

  Many people have helped me transform from the nervous woman with seemingly impossible aspirations into the writer I am today.