by Julia Crouch
‘Look. Your Sean has a car, doesn’t he? Can’t you go up there, say you were seeing if you could help? Found the tree had been moved. Find out what’s going on?’
‘But …’ Bella couldn’t start to tell her about Sean. There were clearly some things going on in Trout Island Gina didn’t know about. Like, for example, how her brother was a sadistic lunatic.
‘I’d go, but I’ve got the children. And I’m not supposed to know. If it is all innocent, me going up would be a disaster. I’ll mind Jack. Please Bella. I’m coming to you because your mom said you’re the sensible one. Couldn’t you go and check on her?’ Gina asked. ‘It’s just I’ve got this quirky old feeling …’
‘Here you are, Gina,’ Jack said as he carried her water through. He tried his careful best, but he still managed to spill over half the glass before he got it to her.
‘Can I – can I speak to Sean please?’ Bella said, twirling the old-fashioned, curly Pinter phone wire round her finger.
‘Is this the English girl?’ his mother said.
‘Please, I’ve got to talk to him …’
The mother hung up.
She stood at Sean’s house waiting for someone to answer her knock. Eventually, she heard leather heels click along echoing wood and the door opened, letting out a cool wave of beeswax-scented air.
‘Yes?’ A short, dumpy woman in a grey checked dress filled the doorway.
‘Mrs McLoughlin. I need to talk to Sean.’
‘Don’t you think you’ve left that rather too late?’ his mother said. A serious-looking woman with short, grey hair and half-moon reading glasses at the end of her nose, she was, Bella remembered Sean saying, an accountant who worked from home. Which meant she was never away from her sentry post.
Bella grabbed the woman’s hand.
‘Please,’ she said. ‘It’s urgent.’
‘I cannot let you see him.’ Her voice sounded clipped and hoarse. ‘You’ve been too cruel to him. In one week, you, young woman, have turned my son—’
‘Mom, it’s cool,’ Sean appeared, towering behind his mother in the gloom of the hall. ‘Let me speak with her.’
His mother looked round and up at him, then back at Bella.
‘If you—’ she started at Bella.
‘Thank you Mom,’ Sean said. ‘I can deal with this.’ He held the front door open, making an archway with his arm. As his mother walked underneath, she glanced up at him, shaking her head. Sean slipped out on to the porch, closing the door behind him.
The two of them stood and stared at each other. Bella closed her eyes, the tears running down her face. Stepping forward, he wrapped his arms around her.
‘I’ve missed you so much,’ he whispered into her hair. ‘When you didn’t answer my calls I thought you didn’t want to see me any more, that you thought me weak.’
‘I was just so ashamed,’ she said.
‘So was I,’ he laughed, his voice cracking.
‘And I didn’t want to give Olly any more reasons for harming you.’
‘We can’t let him win, Bella.’
‘What did you do?’ Bella asked. ‘When you got back that day?’
‘Ran for my bed. Hid under the sheets. Luckily Mom had gone to the city for a couple of days, so I had time to sort myself out. She doesn’t know. No one knows. She just thinks you’ve broken my heart. Just!’
‘You didn’t go to hospital? I thought—’
‘What would I have said?’
‘How are you now?’
‘Sore, still. Managing with Advil. But I’ll soon be mended.’
‘Thank God.’
It was only after she had buried her face in his chest and held him tight that she remembered what she had to do.
‘Sean, you’ve got to help me,’ she said, looking up at him.
‘What’s he done now?’ Sean said, his jaw tightening.
‘It’s got nothing to do with Olly, Sean.’ Bella held out the directions Gina had helped her to piece together using her knowledge of the area and Google Earth. ‘It’s about Mum and Stephen Molloy.’
Dog calmly wandered into Main Street and sat down on the heat-wobbled tarmac, right in the way of the car as they sped towards him.
‘Crazy damn mutt,’ Sean said, slamming on the brakes.
Dog stayed where he was, in the middle of the road, looking at them.
‘He wants to come with us,’ Bella said, getting out and opening the back door. Dog trotted round, jumped into the back seat, and positioned himself facing forward like an impatient VIP waiting for the chauffeur to pull his finger out.
‘Strength in numbers,’ Bella said.
A hundred yards down the road they had to stop again, this time because of the temporary traffic lights. While they were waiting, Gladys ran across in front of them, holding a frightened, crying Jack.
‘Jack?’ Bella said, poking her head out of the window.
‘Bella!’ Jack held his hands out to her.
‘Is that you, Bella? Oh, thank Gawd,’ Gladys said, perfectly adopting her mother’s idiom. She was pale, and her breath came in rasps. She was having some difficulty carrying Jack, who despite being several years her junior was almost the same size as her.
‘What is it?’ Bella sprang out and took Jack from the girl.
‘Ethel fell out of the tree house and her arm’s all bent backwards and the bone’s poking out and she’s screaming blue murder. Mommy sent me over to the theatre to take Jack back to his daddy, ’cause we have to go to the Emergency Room, but there’s no one there.’
‘There’s a costume fitting for the principals in town,’ Sean said, getting out of the car. ‘That’s why I’ve got the afternoon off.’
‘I’ll take him. You get back to your mommy,’ Bella said.
‘Thanks, honey,’ the little girl said, then she darted towards her house.
‘So what do I do now?’ Bella turned to Sean, Jack on her hip.
‘He’d better come along.’
‘But we haven’t got the car seat. Mum’ll go mad.’
‘I somehow think that’s going to be the least of her worries when she sees us up there,’ Sean said, opening the back door so Bella could put Jack inside.
‘Doggy!’ Jack said, his face instantly brightening as he saw his travelling companion. Dog turned and gave Jack’s cheek a cursory lick of welcome, then resumed his position facing forward.
The lights changed and Sean hit the ignition. Just as he was about to pull out, they noticed the turquoise convertible cruising slowly along Main Street towards them, having ignored the red at the other end of the roadworks.
‘Oh shit,’ he said. Bella reached over and took his hand.
In the front seats of the turquoise car were Kyle and Aaron. If she weren’t so terrified, their resemblance to Laurel and Hardy would have made Bella laugh. As the boys drove slowly up to them, Aaron, who was at the wheel, lazily levelled an imaginary gun at Sean, took aim, and fired. He slowed right down as he passed.
‘What will Olly say, Kyle?’ Aaron said in a grotesque, feminine voice.
‘I don’t like to imagine,’ Kyle lisped back.
‘I guess we’ll just have to tell him what his naughty little sister is up to again …’
‘He won’t like it.’
‘He certainly won’t like it.’
With two loud revs of the engine, the car sped away. Sean put his forehead to the steering wheel. After a moment he breathed in deeply, looked at Bella and smiled.
‘No more running away. The worst part about all that for me was that I didn’t put up a fight. I’ll never let that happen again.’
Bella leaned over and kissed him. Then he put his foot down and they set off, up Main Street, towards Stephen’s house in the middle of the forest, on the other side of the mountain.
‘And what’s the problem, anyway?’ Bella said. ‘They have no idea where we’re going.’
It was only when they were too far out of Trout Island to do anything about it, whe
n they had reached the house with the pond that Lara had admired so, that the thought struck Bella.
Despite her shock and awe at the photographs of her mother and Stephen, she had remembered to log out of Facebook. It was habit for her; if she didn’t, Olly got in there and wrote something salacious or idiotic in her name. Frape, they called it.
But had she closed the page with Stephen’s house zoomed in on, on Google Earth? Gina had shown her in minute detail how to find the address he had said was impossible to see on Google. If, as she feared, she had left the page open, then, far from not knowing, Olly would have a very clear idea indeed of where they were headed.
Forty-Three
THE FIRST THING LARA KNEW WHEN SHE CAME ROUND WAS THAT SHE couldn’t feel her arms. Then she realised it was because they were twisted behind her back and tied together with something metal and restricting. She felt her leg, though. The pain throbbed from dull to sharp like someone turning the volume up and down on a badly tuned radio. With some difficulty she forced her eyes open.
Stephen’s face hovered over hers. He smiled down at her like a benign uncle.
‘Ah, you’re back,’ he said, stroking her hair. ‘I was beginning to get a bit worried.’
She noticed the cut on his cheek was now held in place by SteriStrips.
‘I’ll get all the villain parts now,’ he said, touching the cut. ‘Scarface Two.’
Lara struggled to get up, but even if her head didn’t hurt too much to lift off the pillow, she realised she was tied to the bed with webbing straps.
‘Please let me go,’ she croaked.
‘Oh, not this again.’ Stephen sighed. ‘Do you know, Lara, how many women would – quite literally, probably – kill to be in your position? To be here, with me? You should be grateful. I’ve rescued you from that stale sham of a marriage.’
‘I can’t feel my arms,’ Lara said. ‘Please. Untie me.’
‘Oh, I don’t think I can do that, my love. Not after your little bolt this afternoon. Don’t trust you, you see. Sorry.’ He bent to touch her shoulder, running his hand down to her arms underneath her. ‘Oh, I see,’ he said. ‘You’re lying on your hands. That must be uncomfortable, in fact.’
He knelt on her belly to hold her down and undid the webbing. Pushing down at the same time as rolling her over, he turned her on to her front. The sudden movement of her leg made her yelp.
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Poor little leg.’
He waited for her to stop gasping. Then he straddled her and undid her hands, lifting her arms so they lay out at right angles to her body.
‘Is that better?’
‘Yes,’ Lara said, her voice muffled by the pillow. The blood returning to her fingers actually caused agonising pins and needles, but he was right, it was better than lying on them.
‘So,’ Stephen said, reaching over her to the far corner of the bed. ‘It’s a good job I’ve got these. You’ll be a lot more comfortable, I think.’
Lara’s heart sank as she heard the rattle of chains. She felt the snap of more metal as he closed handcuffs round first her left, then her right wrist, stretching her out. He quickly jumped up and did the same to her ankles so she was pinioned, face down, to the mattress.
‘Now Lara,’ he said, lifting himself off her and running his hands up her legs and over her buttocks. ‘I’m going to claim your undiscovered territories.’
Afterwards he lay motionless at last, still inside her, sweat on sweat, blood and tears and seed mingled. Lara had a moment to wonder where she had gone in all this. Then, mercifully, her mind shut down, taking her away from the horror that was Stephen Molloy, into a kind of oblivion.
Forty-Four
HOWEVER MUCH BELLA TRIED TO WISH THE FALLEN TREE INTO existence, Gina’s husband had been right. The only obstacle on the road was the car-mangled body of a fawn.
Sean crunched the Nissan up the dirt track to Stephen Molloy’s gate and cut the engine. Bella got out of the car and he followed.
Enrobed in the dust cloud they had created, they surveyed the obstacles in front of them. A locked, ten-foot-high gate with barbed wire on the top. A fence of exactly the same proportions and fortifications. Artificial lines drawn in the forest, stopping them dead. Apart from a keypad, which Bella pressed to no avail, she saw nothing else at the gate – no buzzer, no camera – to tell anyone inside the house they were there.
The katydids in the trees above them made their noise, drilling into Bella’s skull.
‘I mean, I don’t see why we’ve come all the way up here,’ she said finally.
‘Don’t you think you’ve got a right to know?’ Sean said.
She looked at him. His eyes were burning.
‘If I’d had a chance to stop my dad fucking around before my mom found out …’
‘It’s not my business, though.’
‘It’s every bit your business.’
‘Is it?’ She marvelled at the fire of him. She leaned against him and he put his arm around her. ‘What are we going to do, then? How are we going to get in? It’s like Fort Knox.’
‘Local boy knowledge.’ Sean held up his finger. ‘We can get in from the back, cross-country. My uncle owns the land on the other side. The car will only take us some of the way. The rest we’ll have to do on foot.’
‘We’ve got Jack, though,’ Bella said, turning back to look at her little brother, who, from what she could see through the dusty car window, seemed to be alternating between sneezing and talking to Dog.
‘We’ll take turns carrying him if he gets tired.’
They got back in the car and Sean drove along the track, beyond where the tall fence around Stephen’s land turned up away from the lane and into the forest. The road came to an abrupt end five miles later at an overgrown field of maize, high up on a plateau above dense, dark, forested hills. The early-evening insects fogged the air with their buzzing and biting. Bella slapped a couple of stings on her arms – more no see’ums.
‘No one comes up here any more,’ Sean said, cutting the engine. ‘But I spent whole summers here when I was a kid, back when my uncle was well enough to farm the land. Their house used to be over there.’ He pointed in the direction of a red barn that tilted at a forty-five-degree angle to the ground. ‘But it was too exposed. Got hit by lightning. Kind of exploded.’
What a strange world this is, Bella thought, as she stood on that hot, wind-whipped hill, where the red soil bled colour from the setting sun and dazzled against the green of the bolted maize. Houses could explode, brothers could go psycho, mothers could defect with movie stars and she could find the love of her life.
‘Where do we go now?’ she said.
‘South. Down through the forest, where it’s so wild even Molloy wouldn’t be able to put up a fence, up the other side and down again.’
It sounded like a challenge, with a small boy and a dog. But Bella comforted herself with her newly acquired knowledge that nothing was impossible.
‘He says we have to hurry up,’ Jack wheezed. Bella turned to see her little brother, his freckled face all allergy-distended, with his hand on Dog.
‘Jack, are you all right?’ Bella said. She had always assumed that her mother going on about Jack’s allergies and asthma was just babying. But, looking at him now, she realised he needed his inhaler and tablets. She supposed they were back in Trout Island, with Gina.
‘I’m fine,’ he said, as he let Dog go on ahead of them, through the maize field and down into the indigo heart of the forest below. Bella hoped being out in the open air would help.
‘Come on, slow coaches!’ Jack said as he skipped off after Dog.
Sean shut the car doors, took Bella’s hand and led her forward, across the field.
Before the trees swallowed them up, Bella glanced back. Sean’s car, on the brow of the plateau, couldn’t have advertised its presence any more strongly. If those boys wanted to find them, they had a good starting point.
Forty-Five
THEY HAD ONLY JUST
ENTERED THE FOREST WHEN THE PATH PETERED out and they were left to stumble through the undergrowth. Dog forged on ahead, with Jack running after him.
‘Is Dog going in the right direction?’ Bella asked Sean.
‘It’s crazy, but yes he is.’
‘Be careful of poison ivy,’ Sean said, as they slid down the hill. They could hear the rush of the river at the trough of the valley below them as it tumbled over stones that had rolled down from the slopes above. ‘They say it doesn’t grow this far north, but I have first-hand knowledge that it’s all over these woods.’
‘I wouldn’t know poison ivy if it hit me in the face,’ Bella said.
‘You’d get the idea pretty quickly. Look.’ He bent to point out a harmless-looking green-leaved vine trailing its way up a tree. ‘Leaves of three, let it be. If you touch that, in a day or two you’ll come up with big old blisters that’ll last for weeks and travel all over your body.’
‘Ugh.’ The forest looked so benign on the surface – like an English oak wood. But with poison ivy and snakes underfoot, bears, coyotes and mountain lions lurking behind trees, and her mother getting up to god knew what with Stephen Molloy somewhere out there, it was not as friendly as it seemed.
They waded down through shoals of crumbled leaf mould until they reached a river. Using reddish-brown rocks scattered through the water, they began to cross. Bella couldn’t get that photograph of Lara and Stephen Molloy out of her mind. Could she really stop her mother doing whatever she was doing? She obviously wanted to be out there with him. Bella wondered how long they had been carrying on like that together. She remembered Stephen saying they knew each other when they were younger. Was the ‘chance meeting’ here in Trout Island a fake?
She stopped, halfway across the river.
‘I think we should go back,’ she shouted across the noise of water on rock to Sean.
‘What?’ he said, turning to face her.
‘I don’t want to go there. I don’t want to find out. I want to forget I ever saw those photos. I want Dad to sort it out.’