I slip away from the group outside and head into the lounge, where I find the laptop resting against the sofa. I open it and begin to search through as much as I can. Mum’s disappearance has made several news sites so far. There’s disbelief in the comments and some anger about the police. Some say that the media coverage has caused Mum to commit suicide. In a fit of anger, I begin to reply back to these comments. Vile language spews from my fingertips. I wish them death. I wish them pain. And then, I delete them all.
What happened to Hugh that made him the man he was? No one seems to know his background. I pull my phone out of my jeans pocket and think for a moment. After scrolling through my contacts, I find Josie’s number. I keep thinking of the time she spent with Hugh, sleeping next to him, making him food. We’re the two people outside of his parents who know him the best. I tap the call icon. She answers with a curt hello and I let her know who it is.
‘Oh,’ she says, exhaling sharply, ‘I thought it was going to be one of those cold calls, you know. How are you holding up? Any news about Emma and Ginny?’
‘No.’
‘That’s . . . that’s a shame. I just can’t believe this is happening to your family again. I’m so sorry.’ There’s a hurried, anxious tone to her voice. From what little memory I have of her from when I was a child, I remembered her laughing a lot and making bad jokes. But she hasn’t been like that since Hugh died.
‘I wanted to talk to you about Hugh.’
‘Oh, OK.’ Again, anxious – like the awkward conversation in her kitchen – acting as though she would rather do anything other than talk about Hugh.
I take a moment; words are still difficult to find when I’m stressed. ‘I . . . I want to say something.’
‘OK, honey,’ her voice cracks.
‘He was as evil as anyone can be. But he wasn’t always a monster to me. He talked to me, taught me to read and write, gave me gifts and sometimes I miss him. I know that sounds sick, but I do, and it’s OK if you miss him too.’
I can hear her crying on the end of the phone. But for me the tears won’t come. I’m empty.
‘We shouldn’t feel guilty for that. Should we? That’s what Dr Anderton says, anyway. He was the abuser. The predator.’
‘Yes,’ she whispers.
‘But we know him better than anyone, don’t we? We’ve spent the most time with him.’
‘Yes.’
‘We need to figure out what he was planning before he died, because Amy is following through with it.’
‘OK,’ she says, voice still croaking slightly.
‘We can do that together, can’t we? Because his darkness has rubbed off on us both.’
Breathy now. ‘Yes.’
I let out a long, slow sigh. Hugh’s face comes into my mind, the way it looked before he begged me to kill him. There was some humanity left inside him. Whether he felt guilt is something I often think about. At times I think he did, other days I think not. On those days, the memory of his blood on the concrete floor brings me nothing but comfort.
‘He was extremely thorough with his business,’ she says. ‘He researched and investigated as much as he could, not because he wanted to go by the book, but because he wanted to figure out where he could break the rules and get away with it. What’s in it for me if I do it this way? That was the question he often asked himself. What will I get in return?’
‘Maybe that was how he saw his relationship with Amy. By being with her, he knew he had someone willing to give him an alibi at a moment’s notice. A woman with access to young children who knew how to put them at ease.’
The words hang heavy between us.
‘Yes,’ she says. ‘I’m sorry, I haven’t quite come to terms with it yet.’
I say nothing because I can’t relate. I’ve had no major relationships to compare to her marriage. I suppose it would be like finding out Mum was secretly a monster.
‘If he wanted to make improvements to the way he kidnapped me, what would he do?’ I ask, half to myself and half to Josie. ‘How would a different bunker help him achieve that?’
‘Hugh would want convenience,’ she says.
‘Right.’ I remember the throwaway comment Hugh made one day in the bunker: Sometimes I wish there was somewhere in between there and here. Halfway. It sparks another conversation between me and Hugh that I’d forgotten about. One that’s important. ‘Thanks, Jo, that’s so helpful.’
‘It is?’ she says.
I say goodbye and hang up. I need to speak to Dad.
Chapter Thirty-Four
AMY
It isn’t exactly what Hugh imagined it would be. I unroll the plans along the church floor next to the first row of pews. The stretch of thin paper reveals several diagrams drawn by him, along with a page of notes.
The cage had been fitted before I started squatting here. There was supposed to be a toilet and a sink, and a security camera so he could monitor the place at all times on his phone. I managed to set up battery powered nanny cams, but they aren’t ideal. He was also going to make the chapel more comfortable and put a lock on the door to the crypt. I’ve fitted the lock, but the door is old and crumbling. It wouldn’t be much use for keeping people out. His plans are deviously clever. I felt privileged to be brought into his secret world. The morality of it never bothered me. The powerful rule the weak. That’s the way of the world. Hugh was the most powerful man I ever knew, and he loved me. That was what I cared about.
He bought the chapel from the owner of the estate with cash. Literal cash. In a briefcase, off the record. He even let the estate owner keep the deeds as long as he could do whatever he wanted with it.
There was a risk involved. This place is more known, and more visible, than the bunker. But as long as he kept it in its run-down state, he figured that no one would pay much interest. The chapel would soon be another abandoned renovation project lost to the recession.
I make my way out into the woods at sunrise. There was a downpour overnight, and the rain hasn’t quite finished. I stand on the stone steps outside the church, naked, letting the rain wash me clean. At my feet there are green vines snaking up from the forest floor. Since it was left unused, nature has begun to take hold. Soon nature’s roots will push the bricks out of their way and the walls will begin to crumble. Power often changes hands, but it always wins over the weak.
I wonder whether the rich family who used to own this building allowed any of the locals to attend their services. This place would have been a sanctuary long ago. But someone failed to take care of it and the woods grew wilder and more unkempt, until it stopped being a sanctuary and someone turned it into a prison.
In this holy place, I can’t help but wonder about souls and whether mine exists. I didn’t stop believing in God until I was in my late teens. Mum wasn’t devout, but she talked about God sometimes. He’s watching, she’d say. You have to be good. He loves you. When I mentioned this to my aunty, she said that it was the drugs.
The rain is beginning to make me cold. Back inside the building, I wrap myself in an old towel until I’m dry, and then dress. I have dry cereal to offer the captive. It isn’t much, but it’ll do. I hope Emma is being sensible.
Nerves prickle at the base of my belly. I don’t like the fact that Emma has been in my house, seen the attic and the photographs. The attic was the place I went when I’d been bad. Sometimes Aunty Kim would come up and talk to me, but most of the time I was alone. No, I wasn’t scared, the room was comforting for me. I liked being constrained, knowing that this . . . these few feet . . . were the limit to my movements. I liked being told that I couldn’t leave. Why, I don’t know, but I did. Which means Emma’s presumptions about who I am and why I do what I do are all wrong. I’m not damaged. This is who I was destined to be.
The problem is, who I am is unique. So unique that I think I’ll always be alone.
Perhaps things would be different if I’d kept you, Lily. I would have raised a child infinitely better than Aiden. If I’d h
ad a child, I wouldn’t have to be alone. That child would have been unshaped clay for me to mould. A part of me.
I put the cereal on a tray and begin my walk down to the crypt. At the door, I place the tray on the step and unlock the padlock. The door is stiff and makes a scraping sound that sets my teeth on edge. Below I can see the battery lanterns I set up. It keeps the room illuminated with a low glow.
Emma is awake and sitting up on the mattress, with her legs crossed as though she’s about to meditate or begin her yoga class. There’s a faint sheen of sweat along her forehead. Lily lies next to her. I thought I would feel more about Emma sharing the cell with Lily, but I don’t. Now that Emma is here, Lily is just a doll again.
‘Let me go.’ Emma’s eyes burn bright. Hatred shimmers through them like water on colourful marbles.
‘I brought you breakfast.’ Slowly, I bend down, lean back on my haunches, and slide the bowl through. Emma eyes the cereal with distaste, but she still lifts it and begins picking through the cornflakes. I sit down on the cold stones and cross my legs.
‘Are you trying to keep me weak?’ she asks, lifting a cornflake.
I shrug. ‘Supplies are low, that’s all.’
Emma is quiet for a moment, her hard glare fixed on me. Then she says, ‘I should’ve killed you.’
‘Murdered,’ I correct. ‘I was defenceless. If you’d killed me, it would have been murder, wouldn’t it? We weren’t on a battlefield. I hadn’t broken into your house or attacked you. If you’d killed me in that house with that knife, it would have been cold-blooded murder.’
She sighs sadly, ‘I don’t care anymore.’ She sets the bowl down on the mattress and gestures to the cage with one hand. ‘So this is it? This is what your life has been leading up to. This is the grand plan that Hugh started and you’re finishing. What a sad little life you lead. I wouldn’t be you.’
‘What if it let you out of the cage?’
She turns away. ‘Is all of this about the camping trip? I already said I was sorry about that.’
‘No.’
‘Is it about Hugh? Did you love him?’
‘Yes, I loved him. And he was the only person in the world who loved me.’
‘I don’t believe you. I think you’re incapable of love.’ She stares me down. Judgemental. Hateful.
‘And I suppose you know everything there is to know about love.’ My voice sounds as hard as her eyes, letting her know she’s got to me. I think I hate her as much as she hates me.
‘I know more than you. I’m a mother.’
I taste her words, chew them up in disgust. How dare she? I begin to stand, to get away from her.
‘Wait,’ Emma calls out. ‘Tell me where Gina is. Wherever she is, please let her go. I know that you hate me. Keep me here. Torture me. Kill me. I don’t care. Just tell me my daughter is safe.’
I sit down and cup my chin in my hands, watching her, wild-eyed and desperate. That’s the love, I think. The famous motherly love that I never got to experience. The one that so many women love to shove in the faces of the childless. So different from any other kinds of love. Fatherly love. Sisterly love. Romantic love. Platonic love.
‘Amy, listen to me. You’re not Hugh. You’re better than him. You have more humanity in you, I know you do. And I know that you don’t want Gina to suffer. Please, Amy.’
I watch her, begging me, and I can’t help but blurt out the words I’ve been holding in all these years. ‘I had a child once.’
She falters from her begging, mouth opening and closing, not knowing how to respond. ‘You did?’
‘Rob’s child.’ There it is, the secret I’ve kept hidden all this time. Like acid it had burned away at me, as I watched Emma live the life I’d always wanted.
Emma’s head tilts from one side to the other. ‘No, that’s not –’
‘It is. It’s true.’
Her hands grip hold of the mattress. ‘This is another delusion, isn’t it?’
‘No,’ I say simply. ‘I was pregnant with his child, but he didn’t want me to keep it. He loved you. He wanted you, not me.’
She’s just as flabbergasted as before, her jaw working. A glaze covers her eyes, dulling the intensity of them. I think for a moment that she’s about to cry.
‘What? What happened?’ she asks.
‘We went to the clinic together.’ I pull in a deep breath. ‘I bled for days. Couldn’t tell anyone though. Not my aunt or uncle. I had to pretend I had period pain, when it was nothing short of agony. My uncle was so disgusted with me that he made me sleep in the attic for three days. It was during those three days that Lily died.’
Emma’s head turns to the doll on the mattress. She whispers my daughter’s name under her breath. ‘Lily.’
‘That’s right,’ I say. ‘I named her because I wanted to keep her, but I was so in love with him. Have you ever been so disappointed in someone that one event brings everything you thought you knew shattering down?’
‘Yes,’ she says.
I nod. ‘Yes, you do. You experienced that with Jake, didn’t you? Well, I had that moment with your boyfriend. Sorry. I thought he’d leave you for me, but instead he begged me not to keep the baby because of how much he loved you. I was the one with the baby, but he wanted you.’
Her eyes close for a moment. Then she opens them again. When she speaks, her voice wobbles with emotion. ‘I’m sorry you had to go through that. I’m sorry you lost Lily and were alone at the time.’
‘I’m sure you are.’ And yet I don’t care how sorry she is. Whether she means it or not is inconsequential.
‘You don’t get it though, Amy. We didn’t do anything wrong. He did.’
I shrug. ‘Everything I do to you has the added bonus of hurting him.’
She’s silent for a moment, letting it all sink in. I consider leaving the cellar, but she begins to talk again.
‘Tell me how it happened,’ she says. ‘You and Rob, I mean.’
‘Well,’ I start. ‘I loved him from afar, but you knew that. I wanted him to be with me and I wanted more for him. You were away with your parents. A family visit or a weekend away, something like that. I went to the pub with the group as usual. Rob and I got very drunk and we had sex.’
Her face clouds. It has a grey tinge to it. ‘Where?’
‘The woods.’
She screws her eyes up tight.
‘And then in his car the next night.’
She turns her face away from me.
‘After I went through all of that . . . After losing Lily, you ended up pregnant with Aiden. But Rob didn’t march you to the clinic, did he?’
‘You went through a horrible thing and Rob was cruel to you,’ she says. ‘But none of this excuses the evil things you’ve done to my family.’
‘No,’ I reply. ‘I suppose I just like doing this kind of thing.’
Emma closes her eyes sadly. There are tears running down her cheeks. ‘I thought you were like this because of Hugh. Because he groomed you.’
I consider the shadow cast by him. Almost as powerful as the man himself. Would I have done any of this if I hadn’t met Hugh? Rob had been an infatuation, but Hugh understood me. ‘I think I would have killed you eventually,’ I say honestly. ‘The truth is, we can’t both live, can we?’
‘No,’ Emma says.
‘The hatred has grown bigger than both of us. It’s real now. Living.’
She nods her head up and down, tears still wet on her skin. ‘But I think I could forgive you, if you let me find my daughter.’
I just shrug. ‘I don’t think you would. I think you’d still try to kill me.’ I pause, pull at the dry skin on my lip, and then say, ‘Unless we both die.’
Chapter Thirty-Five
EMMA
The part that surprises me about all this, is that I believe her. Rob was my first love, Aiden’s father, and a person I’ve adored for many years, but he was flawed then and I’m sure he still is now. While I was writing silly, childish love letter
s to him from France, he was screwing a girl in the woods. It’s been twenty years and I have other things to worry about, but it still stings.
The thought of him pressuring Amy to have the abortion makes my stomach churn. God knows he didn’t react well when I showed him that fateful plastic stick with two blue lines. He’d acted like his life was going to end until I talked him around. But after that he’d supported me. I pick at the dry cereal and wash it down with some water. Even though I believe her, the things she said don’t marry up with the Rob I thought I knew. We all make mistakes when we’re young. We’re half-formed, often selfish and usually stupid, but it was still a terrible thing to do. It hits me then that the idea of the teenage boyfriend I thought I knew, and the reality of that person, are two completely different things. If I get out of here, I’m not sure I’ll be able to look at him in the same way, but perhaps that’s OK.
I redirect my thoughts to what matters: getting out of this place.
While I’m chewing on the cereal, it dawns on me that Amy must shop somewhere to buy these supplies. That means she has interactions with other people. Her face will be all over the television and the newspapers by now. Surely someone will recognise her and arrest her.
But what would happen to Gina if Amy was arrested? My thoughts keep drifting back to that lock of hair inside the envelope. I was so sure that was Gina’s hair, which means Amy must know where Gina is. Could Gina be up there, wherever the stairs go? No, surely I would have heard her voice. If Gina isn’t here, then she must be with someone else? But who?
There’s a possibility that even if the police find Amy, she might never tell them where I am, leaving me to starve to death inside this cage. The thought makes my skin itch. It creates the illusion that the bars are moving, coming closer to me.
Aiden and Rob will be searching for me. Josie will be helping them, and she might have found something about Hugh’s plans. Aiden and I had discussed the idea of a second bunker. Perhaps he might remember something important if Josie doesn’t uncover a clue in Hugh’s finances. They’ll have the help of DCI Stevenson, who I know is a good detective. Even more than just being a good detective, I know he cares. Maybe even Khatri is helping in some way. There’s hope, there has to be.
Stolen Girl Page 19