by S. E. Lynes
The Pact
A gripping psychological thriller with heart-stopping suspense
S.E. Lynes
The wolf thought to himself, ‘That tender young thing would be a delicious morsel, and would taste better than the old one; I must manage somehow to get both of them.’ Then he walked by Little Red Riding Hood a little while, and said, ‘Little Red Riding Hood, just look at the pretty flowers that are growing all round you; and I don’t think you are listening to the song of the birds; you are posting along just as if you were going to school, and it is so delightful out here in the wood.’
Little Red Riding Hood glanced round her, and when she saw the sunbeams darting here and there through the trees, and lovely flowers everywhere, she thought to herself, ‘If I were to take a fresh nosegay to my grandmother she would be very pleased, and it is so early in the day that I shall reach her in plenty of time’; and so she ran about in the wood, looking for flowers. And as she picked one she saw a still prettier one a little farther off, and so she went farther and farther into the wood.
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Mother
S.E. Lynes’ Email Sign Up
Also by S.E. Lynes
A Letter from S.E. Lynes
Acknowledgements
Prologue
It’s tough work, out on the Ham Lands in the thick, dead night. It’s dark. It’s cold too, and their hands freeze against the handles of their brand-new spades. They bought these spades this morning, from the vast DIY warehouse on the outskirts of town. But none of this was their plan. It was never their plan.
Despite the cover of the trees, rain sticks the thin shirts to their backs, runs into their eyes and off the rounded points of their noses. Neither of them could have done this alone. Nor could they have trusted anyone else to do it. And so they are bound together. It could not be otherwise. This is the dark business of siblings, the wrestling of skeletons into the closet, the locking of the door. This is a blood bond severable only by death.
Through the rush of wind in the leaves she calls out, ‘Are you all right?’
No answer, only the thump of blade on sod, a grunt as the turf is sliced and lifted away.
Anxious, she switches on the torch to check. Catches a wide eye, a grimace.
‘Switch it off!’
‘Sorry.’
The darkness returns, blacker still. Lips pressed tight, she digs on. The rain has softened the ground, but still the work is hard – harder than she could possibly have imagined. Everything hurts: her arms, her back, her neck, her legs. But dawn will catch them red-handed if they don’t hurry. And so she must work, keeping her mind on the rush of the wind in the leaves, the blunt cut of blade on soil. They have been here for hours.
A while later, though how much later she cannot tell, the rain abates. The wind drops and a vanilla moon filters through the treetops. Not a single car on the road. It is calm, silent – almost beautiful. The hole they have made is deeper now.
‘Grab the feet.’
‘OK.’ She takes the stiff, bare ankles in her filthy hands. Her cold, muddy fingers slide against the marbled flesh. The touch, the way the skin feels against her hands, makes her shiver.
‘On three.’
Her arms pull at their sockets. A burning pain in her back when she straightens up; she leans forward to ease it.
‘One.’
The body swings like a hammock towards the grave, since that is what it is, this hole they have made.
‘Two.’
She focuses on her hands. She must stop them from slipping. Pain sears her neck and shoulders; hot needles prick the base of her spine.
‘Three.’
The larger weight hits the ground before the other, smaller weights: the torso followed by the collapsed jumble of limbs. Eyes closed, one arm flung across the belly, a snapshot, frozen in grotesque and helpless laughter. Not a dead body, not a person at all – a photograph, a memory, a bad memory best forgotten.
She closes her eyes. The scent of the soil is fresh and damp. She can smell her own sweat too, drying now to an icy film on the raised bumps of her skin.
‘Keep going.’
She startles, opens her eyes. Those are her shoes, wet and muddy at the edge; this is her then, staring down into the shallow abyss. This is her. This, now, is part of who she is. She grabs the spade and shovels the broken earth.
One
Rosie
Mum? Mummy? Are you… are you…
Rosie, love… Rosie?
Someone calling me… but I can’t ans— can’t open my… I feel… I feel… I’m at the bottom of… you’re… you’re… you’re somewhere. Mummy? Mum?
You’re up above.
I’m below. I can’t see anything. Water. Is it? Thick. Soup. I want to swim. I want to swim to you, but I can’t get… can’t get up off… I can’t get up off the seabed.
Sea. Bed. A bed with covers and a soft white pillow. There’s a chemical smell. A seabed… a bed for the sea… Abed is a boy from drama. C is for caution. A cautionary tale. A mermaid’s tail. Flick, swish. The water is thick and dark. It’s full of weeds. Why was the sand wet? Because the sea weed. Smoke weed. We’d better not… we’d better not… we’d better not do that…
Hold on, Mummy. I’m coming up.
Wait for me, Mummy. Wait for me.
Two
Toni
I remember the day you were born. You were perfect. A miracle. Knotted hands clasped together, face old and angry, skin deep red and purple, scrunch-eyed fury.
‘And you?’ you seemed to say. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’
Your daddy and I were lost, like that, in an instant. We bent over you like lovesick idiots, brushed your ti
ny cheeks with our knuckles, cried without knowing why.
‘It’s such an everyday thing,’ your daddy said, his voice high and choked. ‘But it feels like we’re the first people ever to do it, you know? I know lots of people do it. I know that in my head, so I do. But it feels like we’re the first.’
‘She’s so beautiful.’ I couldn’t think of anything more original to say. I didn’t have a more original thought in my head. In all your bloodied, fist-clenched rage, you were beautiful. You are beautiful.
You are my beautiful little girl.
‘Congratulations, Mrs Flint,’ the midwife said. ‘And does this little bundle have a name?’
I looked at your lovely daddy, my Stan, and we shared a secret smile. There was one name we’d agreed upon. And there you were, soft russet flames rising from your furious little head, waiting for us to give this name to you. Still smiling, I turned back to the midwife.
‘She’s called Róisín,’ I said, bursting with a pride that was fierce, new, unstoppable. ‘It means rose in Irish.’
And that’s what we called you, on your birth certificate. In life, we call you Rosie. Our sweet little Irish rose.
The midwife laid you on my chest. You were still hot, hot with our shared blood. We were still attached, you and me. Me, overcome with love beneath your sweet, warm weight, and you, still furious, spitting with indignation, hacking like a cat. I knew we would have to cut the cord soon, I knew they would have to separate us.
I didn’t want them to.
Three
Rosie
Smell… it’s… don’t think it’s coming from outside. I think… I think it’s up my nose… like… like a Vicks inhaler. Or is it the sea? Scratch on my arm. Ouch. Can’t feel tape on my mouth. But I can’t move it. I…
Ó Maidrín rua, rua, rua, rua…
Someone is singing. Daddy?
Ó Maidrín rua, rua, rua, rua, rua…
Oh red, red, red, red, red fox… Daddy? Is that you? You call me red fox, don’t you, Daddy? I’m your little red fox.
An maidrín rua tá dána.
An maidrín rua ‘na luí sa luachair,
Is barr a dhá chluas in airde.
‘Little Red Fox’! My song!
The little red fox,
The little red fox so bold.
The little red fox lying among the rushes,
And the tops of his two ears sticking up!
Dad? Daddy? Keep singing, Daddy, don’t go… don’t go, Daddy…
D-dum, d-dum. My heart. My pulse. D-dum, d-dum. Mum? Mummy? Auntie Bridge? Emily? Can anyone… can anyone hear?
A piece of paper in my hands…
You are invited to Stella Prince’s 16th Birthday Party.
Neon letters. Old-school font. Where am I? When is this? You’re there. You’re on the sofa watching the news. I’m standing up. I can see the top of your head, your parting white and straight. This is in our flat. I recognise our floorboards, our patterned rug. In my hands, the invitation to Stella Prince’s party. Stella Prince has got 2,000 followers on Instagram and she lives in a massive house in Strawberry Hill.
Mum, oh my God, look at this…
That’s my voice! I’m speaking. I’m saying, Stella’s having a marquee and waiters and a DJ and everything. Can I go? Please, Mum, can I?
I’m stoked because no way would I be friends with Stella Prince normally, because I’m in the year below. But I know her from theatre group. Not gonna lie, I’m well gassed to get the invite, because this is a whole year before I get the main part in Little Red and the Wolf.
I give the invitation to you. You read it fast, muttering the words, and then you say, For her sixteenth? What’s she going to do for her eighteenth, hire a yacht? When I was a kid it was a meal at Pizzaland if you were lucky. Round here’s Crazyland more like.
Yeah, Mum, good one.
So can I go? I chew my cheek. I like the feeling of my teeth cutting through the soft, knobbly bits of flesh. I suppose I must swallow them down. I guess I’m eating myself, if I think about it like that. Gross. Mum? Can I? Can I go? Please, Mum?
You’re looking up at me with that face now. Like I’m driving you nuts but you’re trying to keep it together. When you speak, you do your soft voice, your let’s-be-reasonable voice. That’s enough to drive me batshit, Mummy. It makes me want to scream, because I know you’ve already decided I can’t go, and no matter what I say, you’ve already won.
Sure enough, you say, You’re too young, Rosie. There’ll be drugs, and don’t tell me there won’t be – these posh kids always have drugs because they have the money, don’t they? And next thing we’ll be calling an ambulance.
But, Mum, I’m nearly fifteen!
You’re nearly fifteen – exactly. Which means you’re currently fourteen. You’re not a grown-up, you’re still a child, and while you’re under my roof you’ll live by my rules—
But even Ellie Atkins is going! And her mum literally doesn’t let her do anything!
You didn’t let me go, obvs. Everyone else went. I had to see all the photos on Facebook, see them all laughing with their arms round each other, the banter in the comments. I’m never allowed to go to parties. I had to wait till, like, a week after my fifteenth birthday before you even let Auntie Bridge take me to a gig. Not even a gig with my friends, no. I had to go with my auntie, for God’s sake. I mean I know Auntie Bridge is a legend and everything, but she’s still my auntie.
Come on, Toni.
That’s Auntie Bridge’s voice.
What about Frozen? she is saying. We can have a singalong? Pitch Perfect?
Where am I now? When is this? I’m… I’m in the living room in our flat again. Except I’m sitting next to you and I’m in my panda onesie and you’ve got wet hair and you’re in your dressing gown. We’re all cosy. We’re about to watch a movie. We have a good TV because you don’t go out at night. Auntie Bridge is kneeling on the floor in front of the telly, scrolling through the choices.
What about Bridesmaids? I say. Naomi said it’s hilarious.
It’s a 15, you say – so this must be before my birthday. Knowing you, it’s probably the week before. You didn’t let me watch a 15 until the actual day of my birth, probably after 10.13 a.m. because that’s the exact time I was born. I practically needed a birth certificate. So savage.
Auntie Bridge is looking at the TV screen, but I know what she’s thinking; she’s thinking: Who waits till their kids are the actual exact age of the film certificate? But she doesn’t say anything and neither do I because hello? Pointless.
So can I take her to see Honey Lips next month, then, Tones? Auntie Bridge’s scrolling through the films, acting casual. She calls you Tones, which is even more of a cringe than Toni *barfs into sleeve*. Shepherd’s Bush Empire has seating, she is saying. And I’ll only give her a little bit of coke, just a line or two.
You laugh a bit, but then you say, I don’t know, Bridge. These things get so crowded. What if she needs to go to the loo?
Auntie Bridge nods slowly, like someone trying to get a gun off a crazy person. They are crowded, yes. But it’s you that’s scared of crowds, yeah? And I’ll hold her hand if I have to take her to the loo. She winks at me. I’m not wiping your arse though, all right?
I laugh; you sort of laugh, maybe because Auntie Bridge said arse.
You hate crowds. And you hate gigs. You always complain that you can never see anything, or it’s too hot, or it’s all just tuneless noise. Naomi’s mum is the same age as you and she goes to gigs, like, all the time. And clubs, although that’s a bit dodgy to be honest.
OK, so you let me go to the Honey Lips gig, but you hardly ever let me do anything. Can’t you see? Can’t you see, Mummy, you were so worried about drugs and boys and dark nights, it’s like those things made all this noise in your head and it was so loud you couldn’t hear what I was actually saying? It’s like that time you found tobacco in my room. Oh my God, I haven’t even tried weed or anything and everyone else has tried it
and some of the guys at theatre have taken MDMA and one of them has tried ket, but you went as mental as if you’d found skunk or something. I can see you, pulling it out of the drawer of my desk and holding it up like evidence.
What the hell is this? You’re shaking the yellow pouch, your eyes so round I can see the whites. You look like a bush baby on speed or something. What the hell do you think you’re playing at?
I’m minding it for a friend. I’m trying not to laugh; you look so stupid with your nose in the Golden Virginia. I didn’t even buy it; Naomi’s brother got it for us from Waitrose near Twickenham station when he bought us some Kopparberg Summer Fruits for a party. Oops, I didn’t tell you I was going to that party. I told you I was staying at Naomi’s.
Soz.
If I smell pot in this, young lady, you say, you’ll be grounded for a year.
You can ground me forever if you want. And I won’t even care because I’m practically a prisoner in this flat anyway.