Rosie stood and slipped her feet into her slippers. She walked over to where Bill was sitting and stood directly in his line of vision. Slowly, his head rose and their eyes met.
“The door,” she said nervously. “Pardon?”
“The door, Bill. There’s somebody there.”
For a moment they both froze. Then Bill edged forward in
his chair, preparing himself to stand.
The knock came again, just as they reached the front door. Such was the volume it was almost as if the visitor was banging directly on their foreheads. Bill gripped his wife’s hand a little bit tighter. He turned the key in the door and pulled down the handle.
The cold air escaped the darkness and rushed into the warmth of the house. Bill felt his cheeks immediately prickle. He was relieved to see Kevin at the bottom of the two snow- covered stone steps. Kevin had a worried look on his face.
“Oh, it’s you,” Bill said.
Rosie pulled herself onto her tiptoes and gripped Bill’s shoulder.
“Kevin,” she said.
“Well, you’d better come in and get warm,” Bill said. “Thanks, Bill,” said Kevin. He made his way up the steps and kicked the snow from his boots before closing the door behind him.
“Sorry it’s so late. I only just heard,” Kevin said, removing his coat and hanging it on the hat stand in the hall. He pulled off his woollen hat and gloves and placed them over the radiator.
Bill shook his head slowly. He watched as Kevin removed his spectacles and blew warm air onto the glass. He couldn’t have asked for a better son-in-law than Kevin. He was honest and loyal, and above all, he cared. That was made evident by the very fact he was here. Bill felt Rosie clutch his forearm, and he reached over and patted her hand.
Kevin put his glasses back on. He squinted a few times as if testing the lenses out. Then he ran his outstretched hand over his skull, from front to back, removing any drops of water from his bald scalp. Then he smiled.
“I heard when I switched on the television this evening,”
Kevin said.
Bill nodded. He felt a tear fall down his cheek and he wiped it with his hand. Then he sniffed, trying to hide the fact that he had released it. “We got a call late last night.”
“Let’s not stand in the hall,” said Rosie.
“Oh, yes. Sorry,” said Bill, pulling open the lounge door. “Tea?” asked Rosie.
“That would be lovely,” smiled Kevin. “I’ll help.”
They made their way into the warmth of the lounge. Bill was instantly attracted to the television, and he lowered himself into his chair without taking his eyes off it.
Kevin put his arm around Rosie’s shoulders and the two of them continued slowly through into the kitchen.
CHAPTER_THIRTY-TWO
Historically, isn’t sleep where I get a break?
I knew that it was going to take some time for me to get to sleep. I lie facing out of the bed toward the wall, my eyes wide open, staring straight ahead. My body is taut and rigid, and I feel like I would snap like an over-dry twig if I were to move. The room is pitch-black due to my expert drapery skills, but I already miss the arcs of orange which used to make their way in through the gaps at the top and spread themselves thinly like marmalade part way across the ceiling.
I know Lisa is behind me, but even if I was facing the opposite way I wouldn’t be able to see her. There is simply no light. She rests her hand on my side, and I listen to her breathing, waiting for her to fall asleep. For a while all she seems to do is sniff and adjust her position and make light moaning sounds. I wait patiently until she begins to properly settle. Finally, her movements slow and a light purring begins, as she nuzzles her face into the space between my shoulder blades. She is asleep. And I am alone in the blackness. Awake, wide awake.
I continue to stare at nothing in particular until I begin to make out charcoal-grey shapes across the room. The chair. The wardrobe. The door. I begin to think about my escape again. In the time since we came up to bed, I feel like life has taken another jump forward. Although I have been serious about leaving from the beginning, my conversation with Lisa has simply cemented my plan. She is obviously happy with our lives, which makes my escape seem more necessary somehow. I feel that I owe it to her to get out of here as soon as I can. I cannot prolong this for her. The sooner I leave, the sooner she’ll get upset – but then come to terms with it. Sleeping alongside her, night after night, knowing that I am keeping a secret of this magnitude will not do either of us any good. Thoughts begin to fly around my head, and suddenly my disappearance seems to be gathering pace at an ever-quickening rate.
Lisa jolts forward, pushing me toward the edge of the bed. I am used to her twitching and jolting just before she falls asleep, but it is unusual for her to do it whilst she is sleeping. The jolt shakes me and I hear her whisper “Sorry” before instantly returning to sleep.
Aside from the fact that leaving as soon as I can is the kindest thing to do, I also realise that there is self-interest in this behaviour. I know that I can expect to get no sleep whatsoever until I set in place my travel plans for the date of my departure. And I need to do it soon. Very soon.
I close my eyes and make a deal with myself that tomorrow
I will book the flight.
CHAPTER_THIRTY-THREE
Rosie scooped the third spoonful of loose tea into the teapot and poured in the boiling water. Kevin noticed her hands were shaking slightly. It could have been the weight of the kettle, but he doubted it.
He stood with his back to the sink, the kitchen blinds still open behind him. The darkness outside seemed to pour into the little kitchen, swallowing the light. He felt exposed, so he turned and pulled the cord. The blind dropped, a rapid domino effect as each strip of wood fell and hit the next. He turned the wooden rod to keep the darkness on the outside, and then switched on the lights which shone beneath the cupboards. The more light, the better.
Rosie stirred the tea in the pot. Kevin noticed her forehead, thick horizontal lines concertinaed, not unlike the blind. She reached up to the cupboard and removed three china cups. Kevin had drunk from these more times than he could remember. Rosie lifted the sugar bowl onto the tray and took spoons and a tea strainer from the drawer.
“Shall we sit down for a moment?” asked Kevin. He didn’t want to rush her into doing anything she didn’t want to do, but he was worried that the tension could cause her to collapse right there in front of him at any moment.
“I think that would be a good idea,” Rosie said. She placed her hand on the back of a chair to steady herself.
Kevin helped her to sit down and lifted the tray onto the table.
“I’m so sorry,” he said, smiling sympathetically. Although he had never met Victoria, he felt like he had. By the time he had met the Marsden family, Victoria was effectively already a ghost, walking the corridors of the bungalow. At every corner there was a photograph, a trinket, a reminder. Her coat even remained on the hook by the front door.
Kevin had met Samantha at work when they were in their early twenties. He had always been shy around girls, and it had taken him nearly a year to pluck up the courage to say anything more than “Good morning” or “Good night”.
It was fortunate for Kevin that Samantha was exactly the same. She was a shy, bookish girl – the type who would blush if a swear word was uttered in her presence. A girl who came into the office each day without fail and quietly got on with her work. Of course, Kevin did speak many more words to her through the letters he dictated for her to type. But they didn’t count. Until, a few months after he qualified as a surveyor, he finally left an extra message at the end of one of his letters.
After that first picnic in the park, they began to date regularly and neither ever even contemplated dating anyone else. Kevin found it somewhat strange that Samantha’s father would appear several times on each date, but at the time he didn’t question it. They would be sitting in the park and Kevin would see Bill in th
e distance, strolling by, affecting a casual look, while all the time watching his daughter like an owl eyeing his prey. They would be at the cinema, queuing to see a film, when Bill would appear; and immediately afterwards he would be there again, standing across the road, watching Samantha’s every step as she crossed, making sure she was safe.
And of course at the end of each date Bill would meet his daughter to drive her home. This made a goodnight kiss quite awkward, but Kevin and Samantha soon adapted, and stole fifteen minutes together somewhere secluded nearby before he arrived. Kevin would always wave, and over time Bill began to acknowledge his existence with a nod of his head or a touch of the peak of his cap.
It had taken more than six months of dating for Samantha to open up and divulge her family history to Kevin. To explain why her father was like he was. Many years later, she would confirm that Kevin’s patience in those early years was one of the main things that really attracted her to him. She told Kevin all about her sister, Victoria, and the night that she walked outside and became one with the darkness.
And over the next twenty years, Kevin tried to understand how the family felt. He was present when the sporadic reports appeared in the newspapers, injecting long-lost hope into the family again. Victoria had been seen on a bus in Turkey. She was working for an estate agent in Ireland. A women from Worcester had spent an evening chatting to her in a bar in Berlin. Kevin was with Bill and Rosie and Samantha when they were told to ‘expect the worst’. When yet another set of skeletal remains had been found somewhere across the country. Beneath an excavated car park. In overgrown woodland.
And of course one by one the reports turned out to be false. A simple mistake. And another set of bones belonged to another poor lost soul, and the family struggled on in their state of continued suspension.
There were times, years after he and Samantha got married, that Kevin plucked up the courage to suggest that it may do Bill and Rosie some good to get away for a while. To have a holiday somewhere, anywhere away from the bungalow. But his suggestions fell on deaf ears. After all, one of them needed to be at home at all times in the event – the more and more unlikely event – that Victoria returned.
Rosie began to lift the teapot, her hand still shaking. She was glad that Kevin had insisted that she sit down; she was convinced that she could have fainted. All of a sudden she had felt hot, especially around her neck, and Kevin had got her seated just in time. She still didn’t feel right, but she felt far better than a few moments before.
Kevin reached over and took the teapot from her. She watched him as he removed the lid and stirred the tea inside. She noticed that he was beginning to look older. Grey hairs had all but replaced the dark brown around his ears. She and Bill were so lucky to have Kevin. She thought back to when they had first met, the day that Samantha brought him home. It was funny that she could recall the day to perfection. The smells, the colour, what she had worn. She had liked him instantly: he was so polite, so kind, so gentlemanly. He reminded her of Bill. A throwback to that era of quiet, understated chivalry. And over the years she had grown to love him in the way that she would have loved a son. In many ways he was as good as a son to them. Nothing was ever too much trouble for Kevin, and the way he had treated Samantha throughout her life, and toward the end…well, none of them could have asked for more. And now, with the absence of any grandchildren, he was all they had left.
Kevin poured the tea. “Thank you,” said Rosie. “It’s fine,” he smiled.
He had such kind eyes. A deep pool with the warmth of melted chocolate. Rosie added sugar and milk to her tea.
“I think it’s Victoria,” she whispered. She nodded firmly to confirm the words she had just spoken.
“Do you?”
“I do. I think it’s time.”
“What have the police said?”
“Oh, the usual,” Rosie said, her eyes drifting toward the kitchen blind as she recalled the numerous times this had happened before.
“What does Bill think?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “He’s hardly spoken.” “Right,” said Kevin.
“He’s been in front of that television since the police rang. I think he knows…”
“Knows?”
“Knows that Victoria is there.” She paused and looked up from her cup. “Beneath the ground. She’ll be cold.”
Rosie took a drink from her tea. For a moment, the kitchen – the entire bungalow – was quiet. And then the silence was punctured by a matter-of-fact male voice.
“You’d better come through,” it said.
CHAPTER_THIRTY-FOUR
It’s a long, long, long way down.
When I finally do get off to sleep, my brain will not stop fizzing, spinning and thrashing around, like a severed electric cable. I find myself woken time and again by the same nightmare.
In it, I am standing alone on dry, dusty, red ground. It is unbearably hot and the sun is beating down on me. I have no water and I feel an incredible thirst. My mouth and throat feel so dry that it is nearly impossible for me to swallow. When I try, there is nothing lubricating my throat and it physically hurts.
I look around for water – for help – but there is nobody around. All I can see in all directions is red sand and the refraction of the heated air that teases me with water that is simply not there. There is no shade. My skin is red and stings from the relentless sun. My clothes are dirty and stained. I look like I have been here for some time. Eventually, I fall to my knees, my body no longer able to take the heat of the sun. No longer able to survive without water.
As I lie down on the hard sand, I can feel each individual grain biting into my skin, like a million tiny wasp stings piercing my arms, my legs, my face. I close my eyes, wishing for the end to come quickly, wishing for the moment that consciousness finally submits.
And then I hear something different to the light wind that I seem to have heard for an eternity here. I lift my head slightly from the sand, the pain almost as bad as when I lay down, and look in the direction of the noise.
And there, in the distance, I see something black approaching me. Its shape shifts and bends in the heat and it is difficult to make out what it is. The shape is wide and solid looking. My first thought is that it is a buffalo or an ox or something similar. I continue to stare, blinking away the sunlight that shines directly into my face. I stare in silence as the shape gets closer. And then I hear the sound again, muffled and faint. A call.
I swallow and feel the skin peel at the back of my throat. In the distance, I can see the outline of what looks like an adult. A human adult. Alongside the adult there appear to be two children. I cannot see any of their faces, but I can see that they are slowly moving toward me, their shapes formed by what looks like a combination of black smoke and oil.
I rub my eyes, transferring sand to my face, which scratches and hurts. Then I hear the sound again, a shout from the people walking toward me. I wonder where they have travelled from and how they came to be here, just like me.
My eyes have become accustomed to the heat rising from the sand and I can see the people far more clearly now. They are standing still, two to three hundred metres away from me. One of the children is waving to me, and although exhausted, I manage to lift my hand to return the signal. The smaller child is holding a bottle. The adult is female; I can see that now. She uses her fingers to pull her tangled hair away from her face.
Then I hear the shout again, and the words are picked up by the wind and blown toward me.
The call is simple. One word. My name. “Rich.”
The people know me! And the woman begins beckoning me with her hand. Waving for me to come over to them. For the first time since this nightmare began, I suddenly feel hope. Like I may be saved.
I have no choice: I must get to them. Get to the bottle. Get water. It takes all my energy to pull myself to my knees, and then, when I feel ready, to my feet. I manage to stumble a few steps before collapsing again onto the hot sand. I don’t
think to put my hands out to stop my fall, my cognition damaged due to the conditions I find myself in. My face hits the ground before the rest of my body, and pain rips through my mouth as my teeth bite into my tongue. Blood fills my mouth, and for a moment I am thankful that I can swallow again. Even though I am effectively swallowing myself.
I look up and see the woman, still crying out for me. I dig my fingers into the sand and am surprised to find that it is solid an inch beneath the surface. With the strength I have left, I begin to drag myself forwards, using my knees to propel the lower half of my body. The sand rips into my skin, scratching and cutting through layer after layer. I manage to move myself forwards, little by little, foot by foot, metre by metre.
“Rich.”
“Rich.”
As I move closer, I lose my fingernails to the sand. I’m now limited to the use of my palms to pull myself forward, and I realise that I am never going to reach the people by crawling. I’ll likely die before I get there. I stop for a moment and roll onto my back. Blood gathers in my throat and I have to turn onto my front to avoid choking.
I must stand. I must reach them.
I look over and see the label on the bottle of water the child is holding. Bold, fat letters. I imagine I can see cold condensation racing down the outside of the bottle and then dripping, wasted, darkening the ground.
I can see the woman’s face now. She is smiling.
She is shouting. She is calling to me. She is crying.
I muster the last of the strength that I have and pull myself to my knees. Blood drips from wherever my skin is exposed. My shirt, my shorts are torn. I stumble to my feet and steady myself. Ahead, I see them; Lisa, Hannah and Oscar. They are all beckoning to me. Willing me to make those final twenty or thirty metres toward them. Gingerly, I take a step forwards and plant my foot into the sand. It stings. Then I pull my other leg forward to meet it and stand for a moment.
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