by Alex Marwood
‘I …’ Kirsty turns away from the statues, finds them too painful to look at. Switches off the lights as though doing so will make the image leave her mind. ‘We’re never going to get away from this, are we?’ she asks miserably. Hears a gasp that sounds like outrage from halfway down the hall.
‘This?’ cries Amber. ‘This? What do you mean, “this”?’
She steps out and sees anger and despair in her old conspirator’s eyes.
‘How come they ever let you out, Jade?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You’re in denial. That’s what they always said to me. If I kept on denying it, if I didn’t face up to my crime, they’d never let me out.’
‘Well, yes,’ protests Kirsty. ‘Of course! God, I don’t pretend for a minute that—’
Amber storms up the remainder of the hall, stamps back to her red velvet seat. ‘Oh yes you do. Every day you pretend. Same as I do. Go on, then. Tell me who you don’t pretend to? Tell me one person, apart from whatever trainee’s been assigned to supervise your licence compliance this month? Go on.’
Kirsty can’t answer. Amber has coloured up; spits the words out like they’ve been building for years.
‘Your husband – what’s he called, Jim? Ever shared it in your pillow talk? When you’re strolling hand-in-hand on the beach at Saundersfoot? When he takes you out to dinner on your anniversary? How about then? Over the candles and the bruschetta? The oh-go-on-let’s-have-a-glass-of-champagne? Well? Have you?’
‘Don’t, Bel. Please.’
‘“By the way, darling, did I ever tell you about the time I killed a little kid?”’
‘Shut up!’
‘You think … you think ’cause you’ve made something of yourself that it’ll all go away? You think ’cause you’ve got a husband and kids and you go to Christmas services and drink mulled wine and no one knows about you, that that means it never happened? You can’t wipe out history, Jade!’
‘No!’ she protests. ‘No, I never … but, Bel! I’m not her! I’m not that girl any more! I’m not, and nor are you!’
‘Bollocks,’ says Amber. ‘You’ll be her for the rest of your life. That filthy little shit who killed a kid is right inside you. Better get used to it.’
Kirsty stands in the doorway and takes a deep, shaky breath. She’s so angry, she thinks. I’m not sure I know how to cope with this. I find it hard to remember the child I was. What we did – it’s like a dream to me. A horrible, ugly, remembered nightmare.
Amber lies down and throws an arm over her eyes. Kirsty checks her watch. Gone four o’clock. They’ll need to get moving soon, storm or no storm. They can’t rely on the weather to keep the cleaners away. She walks over, sits down and lays a hand on Amber’s arm, a futile gesture of womanly comfort.
‘I think about it every single day,’ says Amber. ‘You know? All of it. How it happened. All the stupid … oh, God. I remember her face every single day. That stupid fucking anorak, the way she looked. The mud in her eyes. Jesus.’
Kirsty has a flashback: Chloe’s face vanishing beneath a double-handful of earth and leaves hoisted from the edge of the hole. She remembers an earthworm, surprised by sudden exposure to the evening light, squirming away, digging itself a speedy haven down beside where the child’s ear was hidden. She’s not forgotten. Has never forgotten. Sometimes, she has fantasies of violating the terms of her licence, of seeking out the Francis family, of trying to make amends. But how do you make amends? What possible payback could there be?
‘We were kids,’ she says.
‘It’s not an excuse,’ says Amber. ‘Adulthood is just more layers on top. Don’t you wish that there was some sort of time machine? Some way to turn the clock back? Just … if we’d left her, at the bench. That’s all. If we’d gone, “No, she’s not our responsibility, let’s just leave her.” D’you remember?’
‘Yeah,’ says Kirsty, and smiles ironically. ‘I said we couldn’t leave her, ’cause someone might come along and kill her.’
On the edge of her field of vision, Kirsty thinks she sees a statue move. She sits upright and gasps; peers into the gloom, expecting the comfort of hallucination. She’s exhausted; she’s starting to see things. It’s fine.
But no, it moves again. A slight, male figure steps out from among the murderous autocrats. At first she thinks he’s a ghost; still clings to the hope that he’s simply stepping out of her imagination. But when he comes into the light and she recognises the weird little man from the nightclub, she knows that he is real. And that he has heard every word they’ve said.
Chapter Forty-four
He’s not hanging around. He makes a dash for the door. Catches his sleeve on Josef Stalin as he goes, bringing him crashing to the floor. Amber opens her eyes and sits up.
‘Shit!’ shouts Kirsty. ‘Shit, no! No!’
She doesn’t think. Leaps to her feet and runs after him. Lunges at the back of his anorak and feels it slip, nylon-smooth, through her fingers as he throws himself out into the howling night. Amber still sits on the bench, stunned, uncomprehending.
‘Shit!’ Kirsty screams again, as the door bangs to.
‘Who was that?’ Amber sounds like she’s emerging from a dream. She’s not taken in the gravity of the situation. She’s sleepwalking.
‘It doesn’t matter!’ The door resists her attempts to reopen it, the wood is swollen and it sticks; and he’s closed it with the force of flight. She struggles, heaves against it. ‘I don’t know! I don’t know who he is! Bel, he heard us!’
The door gives and she bursts out into the rain. She doesn’t wait for Amber to take her words on board; just hurls herself after him. My kids, she thinks. Oh God, my kids. I don’t care about me any more. I don’t. But oh, God, they’re so young. They won’t know what to do, their whole world crashing down around them. I’d do anything, God. Anything. I’d fucking die for them, God. I’d fucking kill …
She sees the hem of his coat fly past the corner of the gift shop and takes off in pursuit. Horizontal rain and salt spray: it’s going to be hell out there on the walkway, beyond the shelter of the buildings. But she goes anyway, her trainers sliding on oil-slick rainwater.
She rounds the corner and sees him twenty feet away, hunched against the rain as he runs. Eight paces away, just eight paces. But he pulls ahead as she approaches, and her feet won’t give her traction on the boardwalk. ‘Wait!’ she screams. ‘Stop! Please!’
He glances over his shoulder and Kirsty sees him fizz with fear and triumph. He hates me. I don’t know who he is, but he’s hated me since long before tonight, I can see it in his eyes. I remember him, in that shitty club. He’s the man I thought was chasing me. I’d forgotten him, because what happened with Vic Cantrell had changed my mind, but I remember now. And he hated me then, he told me so. How long has he been following me? How long?
Over the sound of the wind, she hears the door bang open behind her. Amber must be following. Into the storm.
She steps up her pace and tries to catch up.
As she emerges, Amber skids on the greasy boards and feels her damaged ankle go out from under her. Lands on her back, slides across the square and fetches up against a bench, the wind taken from her. She squints against the driving rain, wipes the salt spray from her eyes with her sleeve and looks around. There’s no one in sight. She is confused, panicked; it took her several seconds to register what Kirsty had seen immediately, and now she doesn’t know what to do. After her fugitive night, her instinct is to run away, as far and as fast as she can. But there’s only one way off this structure, and it’s the way she knows Kirsty and the man have gone. She has no option but to follow. He’s going to be running; he’s not going to stop and chat, not with what he’s found out. Not now he knows they know. Maybe they can get to Kirsty’s car before he raises the alarm. She has to try. Has to keep hoping.
She pushes herself upright and looks down the walkway beside the chip shop. She can see nothing. Everything more than thirty feet awa
y is a blur of wind and water.
She gets to her feet, brushes the wet off her legs. Tries, experimentally, putting her weight on her ankle, hisses with pain. She’s never going to keep up. But she must follow. Limp after them.
And what then? she thinks. Even if we do get away, it’s all over. Even if this man doesn’t know who Kirsty Lindsay is, he knows we’ve seen each other and my licence is breached, and so is hers. I could deny and deny, I suppose, but where’s the use? Maybe we can catch him up, persuade him he’s mistaken. Maybe. Or maybe we can appeal to his good nature; convince him that Kirsty’s kids’ lives are worth more than his finder’s fee from the Mail on Sunday. It’s a slim chance, but it’s the only chance we’ve got.
No chance at all. Amber knows her life is essentially done with; has known it since Vic was arrested, has wondered why instinct still drove her to fool herself that she had a chance. There’s nothing, now: no freedom, no safety, no peace. The whole country has seen her adult face; shouting from their TV screens, snarling over their morning cuppa. She belongs to them now: the bogey-woman made flesh; public property once more. She knows she’ll never walk in anonymity again.
Nonetheless, she sets off after them. Maybe there’s a chance for Kirsty still. A chance for her children.
Martin is a buzzing mass of joy. He can hear her voice drifting over the sound of the sea, hear her desperation as she begs him to stop. This is the best thing that has ever happened to me. Tomorrow I’ll be visible. Tomorrow they’ll all know who I am. The man who uncovered the truth.
Excitement makes his body fleet. Normally, running, even a quarter of a mile of it, renders him weak and self-hating. Tonight, with the stirring sea-surge and the thrill of his discovery to spur him on, he covers the ground like a young gazelle; jumps the builders’ detritus by the side of the railway stop without breaking his stride, races on towards fame and freedom.
He feels wild with power. His two worst enemies. Life drops a gift like this in your lap once and once only. Kirsty Lindsay: I knew there was something about you. I knew you were hiding something. But this? I never would have imagined it. There you’ve been, hiding in plain sight, probably been keeping up with her all this time, laughing in the face of the world. But you’re going to get yours now. Oh my God, you’re going to get yours.
He hears her bleat again over the wind. ‘Wait! Oh, please! Please wait!’
He hears a scuffle, a clank, behind him, and hazards a glance over his shoulder. She’s reached the building site, has hit something and fallen. Martin stops for a moment to watch her flounder. Throws his head back and laughs.
They’re halfway down the pier now, and Kirsty continues to run, pushing herself through pain, feeling the tightening in her chest, the panic pounding blood through her jugular. Stop. Please stop. We can talk. We can work something out.
But bit by bit, she’s gaining ground. She’s never been a runner, but desperation lends her speed. I have to stop him. Have to. He reaches the building works at the station, skims over the top of them as though his shoes have wings. Her knee hurts where she banged it. She knows she’s not going to be able to keep up the pace, that she’s pushed beyond her capacity; but he’s only six paces ahead now. If she could just slow him down. Make him stumble.
She reaches the pile of builders’ rubbish, tries to vault it as he has. But her foot catches on something – some metal thing, half hidden in the dark – and suddenly she is falling, hands out to catch herself. Lands on a pile of timber, her hand slipping down the side and landing on something with rough metal edges. She feels a stab of pain, then her hand closes, instinctively, over it. It’s heavy and curved: two short lengths of tube, set at right-angles to each other, with bolts protruding from their ends. She knows, without seeing, exactly what it is: a coupler, the heavy metal joint that links the struts of scaffolding, makes the structure strong. She knows all about scaffolding. She and Jim spent eight hard months with it cladding the house when they first moved in and discovered that they’d bought a home with subsidence.
The thought of Jim makes her jerk her head up, makes her stare down the walkway, expecting to see Rat Man’s retreating back a hundred, two hundred yards ahead. To her surprise, he’s still there, standing just the other side of the works, his arms folded pugnaciously, laughing. ‘Jade!’ he shouts. ‘Jade Walker!’
She feels a surge of rage. The memory – ingrained, festering – of being that girl. Of being singled out in the schoolyard over ancient slights by long-gone siblings; of adults chasing her off wherever she settled; of barred doors and hungry nights; of the father with the brutal hands; of the vicars-teachers-case-workers who turned their faces to the wall. It all slow-burns inside her, ready always to ignite. Being Kirsty is her control, her safety; the one thing that stands between her and the savagery of her past.
‘No!’ she shouts, buffeted by the wind, struggling to her feet. She is barely aware that she still has the coupler in her hand, that she’s gripping it tight enough to bruise, her fingers full-stretched to hold its bulk. ‘No! I’m not! I’m Kirsty Lindsay! Kirsty Lindsay! I’m not her! I’m not!’
‘Jade!’ he repeats, and points at her; the priming gesture of the schoolyard bully.
‘Don’t say that!’ she shrieks. Her legs carry her towards him through the tempest. She no longer harbours hopes of reasoning with him; no longer thinks of anything other than the gloat on his face, the triumphalistic bray of his laugh. ‘Stop it! I don’t know her! I’m Kirsty. I’m not her. I’m not her!’
‘Yeah,’ shouts Martin Bagshawe, flushed with victory, mouth wide with hilarity. He’s never felt so alive, so electrified by his own power. ‘But you will be tomorrow, won’t you?’
She swings her arm at the gaping mouth, to shut him up.
Chapter Forty-five
The rain begins to weaken as quickly as it picked up. Shuffle-jogging up the boardwalk, Amber almost trips over them before she sees them. And then they’re there, beyond the heap of scaffolding poles, in the shelter of a pile of boards. She sees Kirsty’s back first, hunched over as though she’s crying. She thinks initially that he has got away: that she’s given up in despair and resigned herself to mourning. And then she sees the legs, the white sneakers, the toes pointing up at the racing clouds above.
‘Oh God,’ she says, and stops, dead. Kirsty doesn’t notice her at first; she’s bent over him, staring at his face. Sick and weak, Amber gets into eyeshot and sees that the man on the floor is Martin Bagshawe.
She gasps. Kirsty hears, whirls round, white-faced. ‘I didn’t mean to,’ she says. ‘I didn’t …’
Amber covers the last few steps, and stands behind her. ‘Oh Jesus. What’s he doing here?’
Martin is snoring. Though she recognised him from a distance, she sees now that the whole of the left side of his face – the side that was away from her as she approached – is stove in like it’s hollow, broken teeth scattered in the pooling blood beneath his ear.
‘You know him?’ asks Kirsty.
She shrugs the question off. Immaterial. ‘Jesus,’ she says. ‘What did you hit him with?’
‘I don’t … I …’ Kirsty looks down at her right hand. Sees the coupler still gripped in her palm and flings it away as though it has turned red-hot in her hand. It clatters across the boards, comes to a rest in the gutter. ‘I didn’t … Oh God,’ she says. ‘He’s OK, right?’
‘No,’ says Amber. ‘He’s not OK.’
She drops to her knees beside Martin and feels for his pulse. It’s slow, but it’s there.
‘I didn’t mean to,’ begins Kirsty. ‘I didn’t realise I … Oh God, what are we going to do?’
Martin draws a blubbery, wet sigh through his mangled mouth. He’s not breathing through his nose, because his nose is smashed sideways like plywood. She must have hit him with the full force of her arm.
‘What are we going to do?’ she asks again.
‘I don’t know. I don’t know.’ Amber’s trying to think, trying to brush away t
he memories of how her mind worked all those years ago. We’ve not got any woods to bury him in, that’s for sure.
‘Where’s your phone?’ asks Kirsty.
She looks up, startled. ‘Why, Jade?’
‘Kirsty,’ she protests. ‘I’m Kirsty. We need to call an ambulance. He …’
‘And then what?’
‘I can’t just … We can’t just …’
She is wringing her hands like a little kid, hair plastered down over her forehead, middle-class-mum jeans-and-jersey uniform clinging to her body.
The decision goes snap in Amber’s head like the gears of a machine meshing into place.
‘You’re not thinking straight, Kirsty,’ she tells her. Imbues her voice with all the authority she can muster. ‘You need to leave.’
Kirsty reels as though she’s been slapped. ‘What?’
‘Go on. Go.’
Kirsty is dazed. Looks at Amber with empty eyes.
‘I can’t. I can’t. Look what I’ve done. Look! Look at him!’
Amber is surprised by how calm she feels, now her decision is made. ‘It’s not too late,’ she says. ‘If you go now, nobody need ever know. If I say it was me, they won’t even bother to ask.’
Kirsty’s mouth is open. She looks from Amber to Martin Bagshawe, his snores wetter and thicker and slower as the blood spreads across the weathered gloss paint. The first glimmers of sullen dawn are creeping through the clouds. The early shift will be up, soon, making their way to town with their mops and buckets and casks of bleach. ‘I—’
‘Don’t,’ says Amber. ‘Just go.’
They face each other in the silver light. Beneath their feet, the suck-and-drag of a turning tide, above their heads, the shriek of seagulls getting up to seek out the remnants of the night. Go, thinks Amber. Just go. If you wait much longer, I won’t be able to go through with this.
Kirsty looks like she’s going to cry. Takes three long breaths and wraps her arms around her body, as though her ribcage hurts. And then she turns on her heel and runs away along the boardwalk.