Cut to the Bone

by Roz Watkins

  ‘Become what, Dad?’

  I knew very well what these children become if they’re brought up in a toxic environment.

  ‘Nothing. Your sister was well brought up. She’s fine now. All this is ancient history.’

  ‘You clicker-trained my sister?’

  ‘In a way. But isn’t that what we try to do with all children?

  Reward good behaviour? Callous and unemotional children force you to be better at it, like the more challenging dogs do.’

  Bex swallowed. ‘I thought I was the problem. You kept her and sent me away.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Bex. That wasn’t it at all. I sent you away for your own good.’

  ‘For my own good?’ Bex scrambled to her feet, puffing with the effort. ‘What did you think she might do?’

  ‘She’s fine now. She’s had no problems for years. This is twenty years ago we’re talking about.’

  Bex stared at her father. The air felt heavy. ‘Are you sure, Dad?’ she said. ‘Are you absolutely sure?’

  He fiddled with a Royal Crown Derby paperweight on the table beside him. ‘She was just a little rebellious, Bex. And a thrill-seeker. Don’t start thinking all sorts of terrible things about your sister.’

  ‘I googled it, Dad. I know what it means. Callous and unemotional traits. I googled it and the first article was called, “When Your Child Is a Psychopath”. A psychopath, Dad? You know what else it said? “The condition has long been considered untreatable. Experts can spot it in a child as young as three or four.” That’s what I found out.’ She turned to me. ‘That’s right isn’t it?’

  I gave her a non-committal look.

  ‘It’s not what you think,’ Tony said.

  ‘Fucking hell,’ Bex said. ‘Aunt Janet told me about the bad people in Gritton, the Pale Child, the boy who died. Was that all Kirsty’s doing? Was that why I had to live with Janet? Was Kirsty dangerous?’

  ‘You’ve got it all wrong.’ Tony stood and walked stiffly from the room.

  I took a gulp of coffee and looked around. I felt unaccountably tired. A photograph in a gold frame lay face-down on the table by my sofa. I propped it back up. A young woman who looked like Violet. But paler than Violet. She was beautiful in an otherworldly way. Her eyes were brilliant blue, her hair very blonde. My hand shook as I put down my empty coffee mug.

  Bex had leaned back in her chair, eyes closed. A grandfather clock ticked.

  My phone buzzed. A text from Jai: Strange result – the boy buried in the woods is Violet’s father, as suspected. But he’s also related to Bex Smith. Her full brother. Not the twin who died age 3. Looks like she had another brother we didn’t know about. Estimated age at death: 13–14.

  I stared at the phone. Another brother? Another brother who Bex didn’t know existed? Who dressed in old-fashioned girls’ clothes. Who raped Bex – his own sister – and fathered Violet. My head spun with it.

  Tony was in the doorway. He saw I’d been looking at the photograph, and said, ‘Don’t you think she’s lovely? Like Bex and Violet. She was beautiful then and she’s still beautiful now.’

  I was feeling woozy. ‘Who is she?’

  My head fell back before he had time to answer.

  51

  I opened my eyes. My head was pounding as if it had been beaten. I blinked and tried to focus.

  I was in a modern-looking living room, dimly lit by a lamp on a small table. There were no windows. I was lying on a fabric sofa, its weave soft under my skin. The air smelled of vanilla. A faint noise that sounded like drilling drifted down from above.

  I dragged myself into a sitting position. There was a kitchen area at the end of the room. Sleek, modern units. What had happened? My mind was in a mush. I’d been with Bex and Tony.

  What had Jai’s text said? I held my head in my hands and let my thoughts crystallise. Bex had had a second brother. Not her twin who died. Another brother.

  I couldn’t fit it together in my head. My brain wasn’t functioning.

  The sound of breathing to my left.

  I spun round. There was another sofa. A person slumped on it. ‘What …’ I peered into the gloom. ‘Bex?’

  She came into focus. Wild hair, bright eyes.

  ‘Bex! What the hell … Where are we?’

  She looked as groggy as I felt. ‘I don’t know.’

  I shook my head. Everything was too confusing. ‘What’s going on?’ I stood, teetering and nearly falling, and then wobbled my way to the far side of the room, where there was a door that looked like an external one. I pulled at the handle, but nothing moved. It wasn’t a normal door. It was solid metal. The kind of thing you see in prisons. A thread of panic started forming in my stomach.

  I walked back to the sofa and sank down. If only everything didn’t hurt so much. I clutched my head. ‘He drugged us. Why did he do that?’

  ‘I don’t know and I’m so tired,’ Bex said.

  I turned and looked into her eyes. I could see her more clearly now I’d adjusted to the gloomy light. Was she part of this, whatever this was?

  A sound from behind me. I turned. There were two doors. Internal doors. One of them opened. Someone was there. A woman in a long nightshirt. A finely chiselled face. Blonde hair with streaks of grey. The woman from the photo in Tony’s front room, but older.

  She turned to look behind her. Said a few words in a language I didn’t understand. It sounded Eastern European.

  The door creaked open wider, revealing the room behind. A bedroom. It was dark but I could see the outline of someone sitting on a single bed. A young woman. Slim and pale with light blonde hair, wearing an old-fashioned nightdress, like the one the Pale Child wore. She must have sensed me watching her. She looked up, straight at me, and then shrank away, curling her legs in front of her and gripping them to her chest.

  The older woman walked slowly towards us, pulling the door shut behind her. She was an odd mixture of young and old – her face smooth and unlined, her gait stiff. She came over and sat next to Bex. Bex froze as if scared, but I felt as if I was in the presence of someone wise, like a healer or a Zen master.

  The woman reached her hand towards Bex’s face. Bex shrank away.

  ‘Rebecca?’ the woman said. ‘My baby Rebecca?’

  Bex was completely still, staring at her. Nobody seemed to be breathing.

  The woman whispered words I didn’t understand, staring at Bex, her eyes impossibly wide.

  Finally Bex softened. Burst into tears. ‘Mum?’

  The woman reached and pulled Bex to her and they sobbed. I couldn’t stop staring. How could this woman be Bex’s mother? Bex’s mother went back to Ukraine thirty years ago.

  ‘Nina?’ I said.

  The woman nodded. ‘I am Nina. I was Nina.’

  Eventually Bex pulled away. ‘What’s happening?’ she said. ‘Where are we?’

  Nina blinked back tears. ‘He wants to keep us safe.’

  My brain didn’t want to accept this, even though things had started slotting into place when I’d seen the photograph of the woman in Tony’s living room. The woman with the pale hair.

  Bex stood and took a few strides away, then came back. ‘No. No. You’re not saying he … You’re not saying you’ve been … here? Oh my God!’

  ‘He didn’t want me to take you to Ukraine,’ Nina said. ‘He didn’t think you’d have a good life. You or your brother and sister.’

  Bex was breathing heavily. ‘My sister, yes, Kirsty – you wanted to take her too?’

  There was a long silence. ‘No. Not Kirsty. She would be better here. Your other brother and sister weren’t yet born.’

  Maybe it was the drugs Tony had given me. Nothing made any sense. ‘The young woman in the room behind?’ I whispered. ‘Is she …’

  ‘Sofia,’ Nina said. ‘She’s scared of you. Thinks you’re the TV people. She’s only ever seen other people on the TV.’

  Bex spoke so quietly I could barely hear. ‘I thought you left me.’

  ‘I neve
r left you,’ Nina said. ‘I would never have left you. He put me in here. Me and my unborn babies. He thought he was protecting us.’

  ‘I can’t …’ Bex put her head in her hands.

  ‘There was a boy too,’ Nina said. ‘Sofia’s brother.’

  I blinked a couple of times. Tried to clear my head. I didn’t want to believe it, even though the solution to the mystery of the Pale Child was starting to click into place in my mind.

  ‘Is that his daughter?’ I whispered. ‘Has he kept his daughter in this room for her whole life?’

  And there had been a boy. I remembered the text from Jai. The bones in the wood. Bex’s brother. Bex’s rapist. Violet’s father. The Pale Child.

  ‘Tony likes us to wear white clothes,’ Nina said, ‘because Tim was wearing dark clothes when he was run over. White clothes keep you safe. He gives us vitamins. And makes sure we look after our teeth. He has medicine for the pigs that he gives us if we need it.’

  ‘Oh my God, Nina,’ I said. ‘You’ve been here over thirty years.’ I sank back on the sofa, head pounding.

  Bex looked up. ‘I should have realised. Ever since Tim died, he’s been obsessed with protecting everyone. He’s been doing it for years. Protecting piglets from their mothers, protecting the children in the village, protecting me from my sister. It’s what he does.’

  52

  ‘We’ve got to find a way out of here,’ I said. ‘How can we get out?’ I was feeling better. Whatever he’d drugged me with was wearing off.

  ‘We can’t,’ Nina said.

  ‘He has to come some time. I’m going to kill him.’ I jumped up and walked over to the kitchen area. Pulled open drawers. ‘There are knives here. He’s left knives. Between all of us we can overpower him easily.’

  ‘We have knives now because he knows we can’t escape,’ Nina said. ‘He’s made it so we can’t escape. Because we managed to get Ivan out. Twice. The first time, Kirsty found him and brought him back.’

  Despite everything I knew about Kirsty, this made me cold to the core. ‘Kirsty knows about this?’

  Nina nodded. ‘Tony told me she found out when Ivan escaped the first time. He wanted to upset me that my own daughter would know, but not save me. Because he was angry I made Ivan escape through the old lead mining passages under the barn. We would have all escaped but Sofia was too scared of the dark tunnels.’ She sighed. ‘It was when Ivan and Sofia were nine and Kirsty was fifteen. She is my daughter, but Kirsty is not right. She is the reason I wanted to take you away.’

  And that must have been when Daniel’s brother, Charlie, saw the Pale Child. Ivan. In a white dress to keep him safe. And then Charlie fell into the reservoir spillway. How convenient.

  ‘After that, Tony closed the tunnels, but Ivan managed to escape a second time. He pushed past his father, and Tony couldn’t catch him. But he never came back and I worry what happened because he didn’t save us.’ Nina wrinkled her brow. ‘I pray he escaped but could not find his way back to us. I pray he is alive.’

  I couldn’t tell Nina and Bex that he was dead. That his bones were buried in the woods. That he’d raped Bex, his own sister, and fathered her child. Fathered Violet.

  ‘How can we get out?’ I said. ‘There must be a way.’

  ‘There isn’t,’ Nina said. ‘He has codes and the locks work with his fingerprints. And he microchips us.’ She lifted her T-shirt and pointed to a scar on her upper arm.

  Bex slammed her hand against her own arm. Lifted her T-shirt. A patch of blood. ‘Oh my God. He’s done me.’

  I touched my own upper arms but there was nothing.

  ‘Maybe he’s not planning to keep you,’ Bex said.

  The implications of that churned in my mind. He wasn’t planning to keep me. He’d kill me, and make it look like an accident, or suicide. I’d be dead and he’d keep Bex in here with her mother and her sister. Bex who’d told her clients she’d be away for a while.

  I turned to Nina. ‘What happens if you try to get out? With that thing in your arm?’

  She sighed. ‘He has a method for … He says it is for humanely … putting us down.’

  This felt like a dream. A nightmare. I could barely take it in. Humanely putting you down?

  ‘We’re below the pig barn here,’ Nina said. ‘He has a system to feed carbon monoxide into this area.’

  ‘Carbon monoxide?’

  ‘It’s a good way to go, he says.’

  I looked at her face. ‘My God.’

  ‘If any of the microchips go through the doorway, out of this underground place, it closes the vents and activates the carbon monoxide.’

  ‘Fucking hell.’

  ‘Or he can activate it from the barn above. With a code. He told us so we don’t try to escape.’

  I shook my head. ‘Christ, Nina.’

  ‘I should have realised,’ Bex said. ‘All those years he didn’t want me in Gritton. He couldn’t risk me finding out. But he was also protecting me. He knew if I stayed, he’d end up putting me in here.’ She looked at Nina. ‘I’m so sorry. I hated you for leaving me, and all the time you were in here. If only I hadn’t been so stupid and blind.’

  ‘But did nobody report you missing, Nina?’ I said.

  ‘I had no close relatives at home, and my cousins and friends thought I was happy here. Everyone here thought I’d gone back to Ukraine. And called me a bad mother.’

  I shook my head in disbelief. ‘You need to tell us everything you know. We have to work out what’s going on in his fucked-up head and find a way to make him let us out of here.’

  Nina shrugged. ‘He thinks it’s okay to keep us in here. Like the pigs in the crates. The crates stop them hurting their babies by accident. Same with us, he thinks. He stopped me hurting my babies by taking them to Ukraine. In his brain that was how it worked. Sometimes too much freedom is a bad thing.’

  I could hear my own breathing. ‘He thinks keeping his family in here is like keeping pigs in crates?’

  She nodded. ‘We have TV. All the books. Good food. Medicine. Nobody gets shouted at for coming from another place. No children are run over by a car.’

  ‘But …’ I didn’t know what to say.

  ‘He must know it’s wrong,’ Bex said. ‘But he can’t help himself.’

  Nina turned to Bex. ‘I never thought it was you. Never you. Always Kirsty with the blue on her hands.’

  ‘What blue hands?’

  ‘When Tim died. On the road.’

  Bex clenched her face as if trying not to cry. ‘I thought you blamed me and that’s why you left and Dad sent me to Aunt Janet’s.’

  Nina shook her head. ‘There was blue on Kirsty. Kirsty was bad. I wanted to take you home. Away from here. Away from Kirsty.’

  ‘Kirsty put the blue paint on my hands?’ Bex said. ‘So I’d get blamed for letting Tim out on to the road?’

  A noise from the direction of the external door.

  I jumped to my feet, grabbed the smallest kitchen knife and shoved it into my pocket.

  The whoosh of a door pushing open.

  A man walked in, his face unclear in the dim light from the lamp. Tony Nightingale.

  My gut twisted.

  ‘Tony,’ I said. ‘I know why you’re doing this. You’re keeping your family safe from harm. We’ll take that into account. But it’s over now. People are looking for me. They’ll come here and find me.’

  There was no response. He looked through me as if I hadn’t spoken.

  ‘If you let us go now, everything will be so much better for you. Everyone will understand then that you meant no harm.’

  ‘Dad!’ Bex stood too. ‘She’s right. You need to let us go. You can’t get away with this. It can’t go on any longer.’

  He seemed to see us for the first time. ‘Bex, you know I can’t let you go.’ He sounded sad and confused. ‘I knew if you came back to Gritton, I’d have to keep you. You’ll stay with the others, but first I need to work out what to do with her.’

 
‘Don’t be crazy, Dad. You can’t keep me. People will look for me!’

  ‘I have your phone. And if people do look for you, Bex, I’ll tell them you’ve gone away for a while.’

  ‘Ugh, this is ridiculous,’ Bex said. ‘You know you won’t get away with it, right?’

  A flash of doubt crossed Tony’s face. He knew he was in too deep now. He knew he wasn’t going to get away with this. But that wasn’t a good thing. The statistics on family annihilations were pressing themselves into my mind. It was almost always men who killed themselves and their children. Men who couldn’t see a way forward. If Tony realised there was no way back from this, would he take us all with him?

  He pointed at me. ‘I don’t think I can keep her. But obviously I can’t let her go.’

  ‘Dad, she’s a detective. Someone will come for her. You can’t hurt her. You’re not that person. Let us go and we won’t tell anyone about the others. I promise. If you let us go now, you can still keep them. Otherwise it’s all going to be over, and what will happen to your family then? They won’t cope.’

  He shook his head. ‘You know I can’t do that, Bex. And I’m afraid I don’t believe you.’

  A crash from behind me. I spun round. It had come from the room I hadn’t seen inside. The other bedroom, I assumed. The door banged open and a teenager shot out. With a shaved head, but dressed like the others in a long, white garment.

  53

  The teenager saw me and ran to me. Grabbed my arm. Screamed, ‘Help! Help me! You’ve got to get me out of here!’

  ‘Oh my God,’ I said.

  Tony watched with cold eyes. ‘Don’t be silly, child. You’re safe here.’

  ‘Violet,’ I said gently, as she clutched my arm and sobbed. I felt a glimmer of joy that Violet was alive. The bloody Scottish sheep wasn’t black after all. But I realised I was crying too, because how could we get her out? Tony was going to kill me and keep her and the rest of her family in this luxury prison under the pig barn.