by Julia Crouch
‘If that happens, you know that’ll be the end, right?’ Sean stepped back towards her and took her hand. ‘And you’ll never forget those photos.’
Bella closed her eyes and frowned. He was right. The image of Stephen and Lara was as clear as if it were lasered on the inside of her eyelids.
‘Bella,’ Sean said, as they balanced on a big rock in the middle of the river. ‘Think about that little kid.’ He nodded at Jack, who had reached the other side and was sitting on a boulder, hugging his dirty knees, Dog beside him. He looked very small, dwarfed both by the animal and by the big trees that rose behind him.
‘Are you ready to let his world fall apart?’ Sean said.
Bella looked down and shook her head.
‘It’s our duty to him – to everyone – to give it our best shot.’
Our duty, Bella thought, looking up at Sean. And, she realised with enormous relief, whatever happened, she at least would not be alone.
‘Come on!’ Jack called breathily from his boulder.
‘Coming!’ Bella said, jumping to the next rock.
‘Also,’ Sean said, catching her arm as he joined her. ‘There’s one thing you haven’t considered.’
Bella looked up at him. A dragonfly silently passed between them, a flash of iridescent blue and green.
‘Who took those photographs? And how did they know to send them to you?’
Bella bit her lip. How could she be so dumb? With the shock of the images, she hadn’t given a further thought to who Your Friend might be. She had stupidly read them as more of the paparazzi pictures she saw of Stephen and his ilk in every magazine she picked up, as something that just happened. She ran through who it could possibly be. She hoped, for Stephen Molloy’s sake, it hadn’t been Olly …
‘Come on,’ Jack yelled.
Then it hit her. ‘The stalker!’ she said. ‘Stephen Molloy had a stalker—’
‘Yes, back in LA, Betty said. A real nut job.’
‘You don’t think?’
‘Jesus.’
‘Perhaps Gina’s “quirky old feeling” was right,’ Bella said.
‘Eh?’
‘Come on.’
They jumped across the remaining stones to the other side.
‘At last,’ Jack said. ‘Let’s go, Dog.’
‘Hurry,’ Bella said.
They took off and were halfway up the hill, scrabbling up a scree slope, when a loud gunshot echoed through the valley, stopping them in their tracks. Dog wheeled around, barking at where the shot came from, somewhere behind them.
‘Quiet!’ Sean hissed at Dog.
The forest fell silent. The only sound was Jack wheezing as he tried to catch his breath.
‘What—?’ Bella turned to Sean.
‘Shhh.’ He held up his hand and listened, peering into the darkening forest behind them.
Far away, on the other side of the river, they heard an unmistakable high-pitched cackle, followed by a whoop.
‘Jesus,’ Bella said. Of course Olly and his crew had followed them. She might as well have been unravelling a ball of string to show them the way.
‘Those boys have spent almost every weekend since they were able to crawl out hunting with their marvellous uncle daddies,’ Sean said. ‘It was easy for them to follow our trail up the track – no cars ever go up there any more. Then, well, a new path through the maize, trampled undergrowth. We’ve hardly been covering our tracks.’
‘What do we do?’
‘We go on. We don’t want them to catch us up, and if we double back, they’re bound to spot us, with Jacko and Dog. Our advantage is that we’re nearly at the top of the hill. Come on.’ He ran ahead and scooped Jack up, swinging him on to his shoulders.
With Dog in front of them, they made quick progress up the path. Sean stooped to pick up a stick, which every now and then he threw into the trees for the animal to retrieve.
‘Giving them a few detours on the way up,’ Sean said. ‘Slow them down.’
‘Brilliant.’
‘Common sense for a country boy.’
Bella would have smiled, but she was having difficulty keeping up with him. His legs were a good foot longer than hers. She knew this because they had compared them one lazy afternoon at the pond.
They tore past a tumbledown house, half smothered in moss. It looked like a face with its eyes gouged out.
‘These hills used to be full of people,’ Sean said.
‘They seem quite busy today too.’
‘Come on, Sean!’ Jack said in between gasps for breath, and he tapped him with his heels as if he were his horse.
Finally they were at the top of the hill, bursting out of the trees into a sun-dappled clearing, breathless with the effort of the climb.
‘Bear,’ Jack said. His lower lip began to tremble.
‘Is this where you saw the bear, Jacky?’ Bella looked up at him.
Jack nodded and she noticed his eyes, now two little slits in his puffy, distended face.
‘We have to keep Jack away from Dog,’ Bella said.
‘But I like Dog,’ Jack wailed.
‘Bear’s the last of our worries. Let’s move on,’ Sean said to Bella. They forged on, past a tangle of bushes purpled with powdery berries. Then they plunged back into the woods on the other side and started careering down the hill, along a muddy path, sending orange salamanders slipping for cover.
‘There it is!’ Sean pointed to a spot of red roof through the leaves. ‘Mr Molloy’s shag pad.’
‘Don’t,’ Bella said. Suddenly, the adventure of what they were doing leached from her and she thought she was going to vomit. She stopped for a second.
‘Do we want to take them by surprise?’ he said.
‘I’d rather not.’ She grimaced at the thought. ‘I’d rather they had a bit of warning.’
‘Snakes!’ Jack said, as they reached the edge of the lawn. Coughing, he struggled to get down from Sean’s shoulders. Dog steamed on ahead and sat on the porch, waiting for them.
The house looked silent and empty in the dusk. If it weren’t for the old Volvo and Stephen’s dented Wrangler standing outside, they would have thought nobody was in.
‘You’d better stay out here with Jack,’ Bella said. ‘I don’t want him to see anything too disturbing.’
Sean pointed to the forest behind them. ‘Seeing them doing what they plan to do to me when they get here would be better?’
Bella bit her lip. ‘Olly wouldn’t do anything to you in front of Jack.’
‘You have no idea how comforting that is to me.’
‘OK,’ Bella said, thinking quickly. ‘I’ll knock on the door and show my face first. Then we’ll take it from there. Mum won’t let Olly do anything.’
She went up to the door and looked for a bell. Of course there wasn’t one. There was no way of announcing oneself as a visitor – why would there be when the only feasible way on to the property was so firmly barred? So she knocked gently on the door, half hoping there would be no reply and they could all go home and forget completely about coming up here.
‘They’d better come quickly or we’re completely screwed,’ Sean said, staring up at the forest, where, not too far away, Olly, Aaron, Brandon and Kyle were audibly following their trail. Bella’s boy looked like he was beginning to lose the nerve he had so bravely recovered for her.
Then Jack, whose airways had narrowed to a hair’s breadth, turned purple.
Forty-Six
‘WHAT’S THE PLAN?’ LARA MUTTERED. STEPHEN LAY BY HER SIDE, his arms and legs woven around her. She was still shackled to the bed, in need of a pee and a glass of water. The smell of their bodies surrounded them, but so scented had she been by Stephen, she couldn’t work out which was her odour and which his. ‘Do you have a plan?’
‘I’m going down to the village this evening,’ he said, propping himself up on one elbow and stroking her back, ‘and I’m going to tell Bella and Olly that I’m their dad. I think they’ll be rather pleased, do
n’t you?’
Lara lay completely still, unable to comment. She couldn’t imagine what their reaction would be, but rather pleased wasn’t the first that came to mind.
‘Don’t worry. I’ve prepared the ground for them. They’ll be relieved, really. Then I’ll bring them up here, and we can all have tea together. Perhaps you could bake a cake.’
‘I need to pee,’ Lara said.
‘Of course you do.’ He jumped up and unshackled her ankles and wrists. Supporting her – her broken leg was useless – he led her to the bathroom, where he stood over her as she sat on the pan.
‘Let me wipe you,’ he said, reaching for the toilet roll. But as he did so, there was a loud rapping on the side door. Lara caught her breath and looked up at him. He narrowed his eyes.
‘Very enterprising,’ he said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘OK, you’d better stay here.’ He carried her back to the bedroom and quickly chained her up again. The knocking continued, growing ever more insistent.
At last, Lara saw a glimmer of hope. Someone had come up here to rescue her.
‘Mum? Lara?’
Her heart lurched into her mouth as she realised who stood out there in the wood in the middle of nowhere, waiting at his door.
Her daughter.
‘That’s my girl,’ Stephen said.
Forty-Seven
‘IF THEY’RE IN, THEY’RE GOING TO HEAR THAT,’ SEAN SAID.
‘Mum!’ Bella yelled again, at her wits’ end. ‘Lara!’ She pressed her ear to the door then she stood back. ‘Someone’s coming,’ she said, hugging her little brother, trying to calm his desperate attempts at breath. ‘Hold on Jacky.’
‘Bella. What a lovely surprise,’ Stephen said as he opened the door, his welcoming smile incongruous, accessorised as it was by a shotgun.
‘Jack’s having an attack,’ Bella said, looking up at him. ‘We don’t know what to do.’
Dog crouched, bared his teeth and snarled at Stephen Molloy.
‘GET BACK,’ Stephen roared at Dog, holding his hand out, ready to hit him. Such was the authority in his voice that Dog reared away on his hind legs and sloped off to the vegetable patch, whimpering.
‘It’s that beast’s fault,’ Stephen said, slinging his gun over his shoulder and picking Jack up. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ He shot a look at Bella. ‘You know he’s allergic.’
‘I didn’t think—’ Bella said, tears springing to her eyes.
‘Come in. I’ll see if I can find something.’ Stephen bundled Jack into the house and Bella and Sean followed.
In the kitchen, he lifted Jack on to the counter and supported him as he rummaged in what Bella realised was her mother’s bag. ‘Thank God,’ he said, finding Jack’s Ventolin and popping off the lid. ‘We can rely on our Lara to be prepared.’
He held the inhaler to Jack’s mouth and with five blasts his breathing began to return to normal.
‘Thank you, thank you,’ Bella said over and over again.
‘Are his tablets in there?’ Stephen pointed to Lara’s bag.
Bella found the blister pack of antihistamines. She handed them to Stephen, who, with one arm still around Jack, took a glass from the draining board, filled it with water and fed two pills to the gasping little boy.
Finally, when the emergency was over, Stephen carried Jack through to the living room and laid him on the sofa, motioning to Sean and Bella to sit either side of him.
‘Wow,’ he said, raising his eyebrows.
‘Thank you,’ Bella said, stroking her little brother’s head as he curled up in her lap.
‘Let’s start again,’ Stephen said, after a moment. ‘Welcome, Bella, Jack and Sean, to my home.’
He stood and looked at them, smiling, expectant.
‘Where’s Mum?’ Bella said at last.
‘Oh. She’s fast asleep at the moment. But, Bella, I think your mother and I owe you an explanation.’
Bella stared at her feet, cowed by Stephen’s presence, embarrassed by the whole situation.
‘You all look completely worn out. Can I get you a drink? Or something to eat …’
Bella ran her tongue over her parched upper lip and tasted salt. She hadn’t realised how sweaty and grimy she was. Her legs stung where brambles had ripped them.
‘Lemonade please, Stephen,’ Jack said, sitting up, his face returned to its normal colour, save for the dirt and the sunburn.
‘Good boy.’ Stephen ruffled his hair.
‘Just water’ll do me fine,’ Sean said.
‘Me too, please,’ Bella added.
As they sat awkwardly waiting for Stephen to fix their drinks – he was going to great pains with ice and lemon and straws – a loud thump came from upstairs.
‘What’s that?’ Bella asked Stephen.
‘What?’ he said, smiling broadly as he carried a tray with three tinkling glasses on it over to the sofa.
‘That noise. Listen. There it is again.’
Stephen put his head to one side. Again the noise came, a distinct banging – something lifting and dropping, lifting and dropping. Bella saw a tiny flicker in Stephen’s jaw.
Jack drained his lemonade, slurping on the straw.
‘It’s that damn porcupine again,’ Stephen said. ‘Remember, Bella, from the other night? It gets up on the roof now – don’t ask me how – then it thumps and rubs itself against the house. First time I heard it,’ he said with a laugh, ‘I thought I had a madman stamping about upstairs.’
‘I thought porcupines were nocturnal,’ Sean said.
‘Not this one.’ Stephen turned, smiling, but not with his eyes.
Bella and Sean each took a sip from their glasses. The fan turning overhead and the thumping from upstairs were the only sounds in the room.
‘So,’ Stephen said eventually. ‘Tell me how and why you come to be up here.’
‘I’d rather talk to you privately,’ Bella said. ‘Not in front of J.A.C.K.’
Jack, knowing full well how to spell his own name, looked up and beamed.
‘Sure,’ Stephen said. ‘We’ll go into my study. Sean, are you OK to stay here? There’s a load of DVDs on those shelves. You might as well start getting young Jack here acquainted with my oeuvre. The back door’s on the latch, too, in case he wants to get out to the snakes. But keep him away from that mutt, yes?’
Bella was worried about the door being unlocked, but Sean managed to appear entirely neutral as he got up and led the little boy over to choose a DVD from the many hundreds that lined the floor-to-ceiling shelves. Perhaps, now that Stephen was so close, he felt he had nothing to fear from Olly.
‘Well then?’ Stephen said, as he sat in his office chair and turned to face the egg-shaped seat he had put Bella in. The thumping was much closer to them in here. It seemed to come from right above Bella’s head.
She told him about the photographs. When she had finished – she couldn’t bear to relate the detail about his hand on her mother’s breast – he put his elbows on his knees and his hands together.
‘You know what this means?’ he said.
‘It means you and Mum are having an affair,’ Bella said.
‘Affair? I’d hardly call it that. I think “affair” implies a bit of a sideshow, don’t you?’
‘What do you mean?’
Stephen held up his hand and silenced her.
‘The point is, Bella, who do you think might be taking these photographs?’
‘Yes, we—’
‘Did you wonder, perhaps, why I came to the door with a gun? Yes? Well,’ he went on, gesturing to the green of the forest that could just be picked out behind the gauze of the insect screens, ‘out there is a demented woman who is hell-bent on getting at Lara because she believes I belong to her and not to your mother.’
‘I don’t want to hear this,’ Bella said, curling up and clapping her hands over her ears.
‘Don’t you? Then why did you come up here?’
‘I wa
nt to talk to Mum.’
‘Oh, and you will, Bella,’ Stephen said. He leaned forward and put his hands on her knees and stared at her, forcing her gaze up to meet his. ‘My Bella.’
‘What?’ She tried to break away from him, but he had a firm grip on her legs.
‘You are so like your mother, you know? When I first fell in love with her she was only three years older than you are now.’
‘She was nineteen? But she was married to my dad then.’
Stephen leaned back, slapped his knee and laughed.
‘What’s so funny?’ Bella said.
He continued laughing until tears formed in the corners of his eyes.
‘What is it?’ Bella demanded, closing in right up against his face.
‘My,’ Stephen said. ‘You’re a fiery girl, aren’t you? I like that. No, my darling, what is so amusing is that your mother wasn’t married to your dad when she was nineteen. She never married your dad.’
‘She did. I saw the pictures. They’ve got this scrapbook.’
‘You still don’t get it, do you?’ He took her chin between his thumb and forefinger, pinching her hard.
‘Your mother hasn’t married your father – yet – because your father is …’ He jumped up, opened his arms wide and presented himself like a Royal Shakespeare Company lead taking a bow. ‘Me!’
If he had plunged her into an icy pool, Bella wouldn’t have felt such a physical shock. She fought to get the air back into her lungs, shaking her head, her hands over her ears.
‘S’true,’ he said, beaming at her, his arms still out.
‘I don’t believe you.’ She continued to shake her head so violently her skull clicked.
‘But look,’ he said, handing her a piece of paper from a tray on his desk. Then he sat down and observed her as she read, resting his chin in his hands.
Bella studied the report. Then slowly she looked up at him as she let the paper flutter to the floor, undisguised horror scrawled over her face.
‘It’s going to take a while for you to get used to it, then?’ he said, smiling. ‘Of course. But, my love, my girl, it’s true. It is a fact. And the sooner you come to realise it, the better for everyone concerned.’