by Anni Taylor
I eyed the metamorphosed Bernice from my side vision. The scoffing look hadn’t left her face. My mind was still processing seeing her change from a man to a woman. Sluggishly, I tried to concentrate on what Sass was saying.
“But, I needed to know for sure,” Sass continued. “When I got home, I went straight to see Phoebe’s nan. I told her I’d left a scarf behind in Phoebe’s room. And I went up there and grabbed the boat. It was just like I thought. Straight lines. Which means this boat came from another nightlight. I already knew from Phoebe that the nightlights were limited edition and how much they cost. You’re just not going to find broken bits of them everywhere. So, I raced home and looked up the toy shop where Phoebe bought it. And I called them. I pretended to be the police needing urgent information about the sales of the nightlight. It wasn’t difficult for me to do. I mean, the nightlight had already been splashed on the news everywhere. The store owner looked up the sales records for me. He had a record of one being sold in December last year. To someone on this street. He even remembered the woman who bought it. She was blonde, Bernice. Like you.”
I gasped, my mind racing, unable to put any pieces together. Had Bernice bought one of the nightlights? Why did Sass find it so important that someone on this street had bought one of them?
“What are you trying to say?” Bernice’s voice was cold but also oddly curious.
Sass locked eyes with Bernice. “You bought the exact same nightlight that Tommy had, and you brought it here. To this abandoned house. Pretty strange, wouldn’t you say? What did you do with Tommy? That’s what I’m trying to say.”
Bernice made a low sound under her breath. “You found a piece of a nightlight here, and suddenly I’m the one who took Tommy?”
“Did you?” Sass raised her eyebrows, waiting.
“I wouldn’t hurt Tommy,” Bernice said.
“How do we know that?” Sass demanded, taking a bold step into the room.
“I loved Tommy, too,” Bernice said quietly. “When Phoebe’s nan would mind Tommy—all those times that Phoebe was too strung out to take care of him—I used to take him for walks and play with him.”
“I didn’t know that.” I hated the thought of Bernice anywhere near Tommy.
“Your grandmother didn’t tell you,” said Bernice, “because she knew you wouldn’t want Tommy with me.”
“My grandmother was right,” I told her.
God, was it possible that it wasn’t me who hurt Tommy? Back at Greensthorne, I’d been prepared to accept that it was me. But standing here in this house again brought back my dreams of it. The sense that the terrible day at number 29 was somehow connected to Tommy solidified again in my mind. The injured moth and the woman’s terrified eyes and the pearl-handled knives. Whoever had carried out those things was responsible for whatever had happened to Tommy. I was sure of it. They’d tried to hurt me when I was sixteen, and now they’d hurt me again, in the worst way possible.
“You can’t fool us. We knew you,” said Saskia. “We knew you. You like cutting things. You stabbed knives in our names. You cut up the rats. And you cut up the stairs and murdered that woman. But she wasn’t supposed to be here in the house that day—was she? So, was it Luke or Phoebe you wanted to kill that day?”
My heart jumped as Sass walked forward. “I think it was Phoebe you wanted dead. You wanted Luke, and he didn’t want you. So, you tried to hurt his girlfriend. It didn’t work. But you kept the hate inside you. You took her son, Bernice. Didn’t you?”
I held a breath so long my lungs began hurting. I shot Bernice a hard stare.
She shook her head in response, the muscles in her face drawing tight.
Releasing her grip on me, she rushed at Sass, shoving her hard against the wall. “Leave me alone. Both of you.” The knife clattered along the floor.
She ran out.
Sass grabbed the knife and charged out after her.
“No, Sass! Let her go!” I followed, but my movements were syrupy, as they always were after I’d taken the sleeping pills.
“Sass!” I called.
Bernice bounded down the stairs, Sass on her heels. Sass wouldn’t listen to me, wouldn’t stop.
I screamed at the groaning sound of the stairs shifting. Beneath Sass, the stairs tipped.
Sass fell, crying out sharply as she rolled over and over down the stairs to the floor.
Not thinking clearly, I rushed after her, the stairs swaying precariously.
The stairs held.
Sass hugged her leg. “Hell. I think I broke it.”
Bernice, with her hand on the front-door handle, stood in the darkness, staring at Saskia’s crumpled figure. I expected her to keep running, slamming the door behind her. But she didn’t.
She took swift but uncertain steps back to the bottom of the stairs. “Let me see.”
“Get away from me.” Sass’s face creased in pain.
I rushed to Sass. “God, are you okay?” I swivelled my head back to Bernice. “Don’t touch her.”
But Bernice silently knelt and felt Sass’s leg with both hands. “It’s not broken. I’d make a guess it’s badly sprained. Maybe a hairline fracture or two.”
“Take your hands off me,” Sass ordered her.
Bernice did as she was asked. “You’d be crazy to try to walk on it. You should stay put and call an ambulance. I know I was only a yachties’ safety officer for a short while, but I did learn a few things. There were quite a few broken bones in the races, even a snapped neck once.”
“I’ll manage,” said Sass icily. She squeezed her eyes shut, alternately panting and gasping.
“All right then, I’ll leave you to it.” Bernice raised her face to me. “I didn’t hurt your son, Phoebe.”
“Was it you who bought the nightlight?” I tried to keep my words even, but I failed, my voice dissolving into a coarse whisper.
“No,” she answered.
“Then why did you have a piece of it?”
“I found it. Just like all of the stuff that I have here. I collect the things that people throw away.”
“Then where did you find it?”
“In the trash. At Kitty’s house on this street.”
I flinched at the name. Luke had a Kitty. “Kitty? There’s no Kitty on this street. You’re lying.”
Sass grasped my arm. “God. That was the name the toy store guy gave me. No last name. Just that. Kitty. I just assumed it was Bernice, giving herself a fake name. She likes cats.” She levelled her gaze at Bernice. “Are you Kitty?”
“No, I’m not Kitty,” she answered.
“Which house does Kitty live in?” I asked Bernice in a rigid voice.
“Oh, you know the house,” she told me. “Luke goes there often. I see him go in there when I’m walking the streets at night, looking for things. I’ll give you a hint. Kitty used to be a collector, like I am now. Except she didn’t collect things. She collected strays. The lost and lonely cats and kittens. She’d take them home with her.”
I swallowed, exchanging glances with Sass.
Sass’s eyes widened. “Pria. But her name isn’t—”
Bernice nodded, sucking her mouth in. “Yes, her other name is Kitty. Do you remember when she was briefly Luke’s girlfriend, back when she was sixteen? Luke had a pet name for her. Kitty. Because of the cats. No one knew that. But I overheard him calling her that a few times.”
I sat back, the air pinched from my lungs.
Bernice watched our reactions for a moment, and then she continued. “Another thing that people don’t know is that each cat seemed to disappoint Pria. I’d see her taking them in her school bag and dumping them back on the docks. She tell the cats that they didn’t love her enough and that she didn’t want them anymore. And sometimes, if they really disappointed her, she’d dump them straight in the water. I rescued some of the poor things myself.”
“Oh hell, that’s what she was doing with the poor cats?” Sass gaped at Bernice. “She used to tell us she’d found h
omes for them.”
“Yep,” Bernice said.
I couldn’t breathe. “Is she the woman Luke’s been seeing? Pria?”
“Of course it’s Pria,” Bernice told me. “He’s been going there for months. Even last year. I thought it was strange, even though they were friends. It looks like Luke’s been keeping big secrets.”
“How could he? And Pria . . .”
“Bitch,” Sass mouthed silently.
My mind couldn’t fit the two of them together. Luke and Pria. Luke and Kitty. It didn’t make sense.
But then I remembered the scent of the perfume on Luke’s neck.
It was Pria’s perfume.
It had been Pria Luke had been to see that night.
How did Luke manage to persuade his way into her bed? And how could she keep pretending to be my friend while all the while she was—
No, don’t let yourself think about what they did together. It doesn’t matter.
He could have her. She could have him.
Closing my eyes for a moment, I breathed deeply. “Bernice, are you certain that you found the boat at Pria’s house?”
“In her garbage bin,” she answered. “Alongside a bunch of flowers that Luke gave her.”
I recalled the dead flowers upstairs. “How do I know I can believe you?”
“Why would I lie? The nightlight meant nothing to me. I didn’t even know about it. You never asked me into your house.”
“But why did you keep a broken piece of a toy?” I pressed. “Why do you collect all this . . . useless stuff?” I gazed up the tilted stairs at the upper storey.
“It’s not useless to me.” She crossed her arms defensively. “Things have stories attached to them. They’ve got memories. I don’t have much of a life, myself. So I collect pieces of other people’s.”
If she was lying, she was doing a good job of it.
Saskia stared at her openly. “I’m not buying it. Maybe Luke and Pria have been total dirtbags. But you didn’t find the boat at her house. I’ve got you figured out. Everything points to you.”
“You can think what you like,” Bernice said, her words slow and wound tight on each other.
“I don’t have to just think it,” said Sass. “You admitted to writing our names on the wall and then skewering the names with the knives. Why did you hate us so much?” The whites of Sass’s eyes shone in the dark light.
Bernice’s chest visibly sank, her bottom lip trembling. “You really want to know? I didn’t hate any of you. I just hated the pain I was carrying. I think I just wanted to offload some of it. Something happened to me, that year. When I was thirteen.”
“Are you going to tell us more lies?” Saskia said.
“It’s not a lie,” Bernice told her. “But I wish it was.”
Sass eyed her dubiously, trying to stretch out her leg and then redoubling, wincing.
“It was here that it happened,” Bernice said. “In this house. I came here looking for you guys. None of you ever told me where you were hanging out. I was just lucky if I chanced across some of you and you let me tag along. So, I just waited in the house, having a cigarette. Mr Basko came by, looking for Luke. He told me he’d tell my mother he’d seen me smoking. I begged him not to. He said I’d have to show him I could be a good girl. And then he—” She stopped abruptly, taking a slow, shuddering breath. “And then he pushed himself on top of me. On the lounge. I pleaded with him to get off me, and he just kept saying I had to be quiet. I have to be quiet. Be a good girl. I went numb. He raped me. At the time, I didn’t even understand what was happening.”
I gasped out loud, my memories of Bernice from that year disconnecting from the version she was telling me now.
“Luke’s dad did that to you?” Sass held a hand over her mouth. “Oh God. I caught him staring at me sometimes, or at Phoebe or Kate, but I never thought—” She shook her head. “Why didn’t you go to the police?”
Bernice raised her shoulders in a silent sigh. “It’s hard to explain. I didn’t tell anyone at first. I felt so numb that I just wanted to disappear. Days went by in a blur. And it got harder and harder to say anything. But one day Mum demanded to know what was wrong with me, and I told her. She marched me up to the Basko house. She told the Baskos what I told her. Mr Basko acted as though I was a silly girl making things up. Luke’s mother said that I was making it up to cover up the fact that I’d been caught smoking. But she knew. I could tell that she knew. My mother asked me if I wanted to go to the police. Right in front of the man who raped me. I was too scared to speak. My mother just didn’t stop to think. She should have taken me straight down to the police station. But she didn’t.”
“All these years.” I shook my head, studying her face intently. “Why didn’t you tell us? If not the police, why not us?”
“I thought you’d all hate me or you wouldn’t believe me. It was Luke’s father, not some random stranger. I wanted to fit in. So I kept it to myself.” She stared hard down at the cracked floorboards.
An uncomfortable quiet followed. What she’d just said might’ve been true. We might have shunned her if she’d told us. Luke had been one of us, and she’d been on the outside of our group.
It was Sass who spoke first. “Is that why you did what you did to the stairs? Because of the pain inside?”
Moving around us, Bernice sat heavily on the edge of the staircase, her face shuttered in darkness. “For the last time. No. I didn’t cut up the stairs. I didn’t stab the rats. I did fix the stairs and put them back into place though, a few months ago. It wasn’t easy, but I managed. I just wanted somewhere to come and smoke some pot and be alone. I can’t do that anywhere else. And . . . I’ve run out of room to put things in my mother’s house.”
Bernice looked fragile as she leaned forward, brushing her hair back with both hands and licking her lips uneasily.
Sass and I exchanged guilty glances. We’d seen the cramped conditions at the Wick house for ourselves.
“Don’t blame me for things I didn’t do,” said Bernice. “I’ve been through enough.”
Saskia shivered. “Maybe it was the old man who used to live here, the man who owns the house. Maybe he was a weirdo who cut the stairs as a warning to intruders. Maybe the stairs just chose to fall at that moment.”
“Both ladders at once?” Bernice shook her head. “How could the safety lock on both ladders collapse at once? I put the ladders back up. They’re not faulty.” She exhaled, staring at us fixedly. “It had to have been one of you.”
Sass shook her head, shrinking back from Bernice’s stare. “Don’t look at me like that. All I remember is being in the living room drinking when the stairs fell. I was pretty smashed.”
“Hang on.” Bernice glanced at the store mannequin that was sitting in the armchair. “Phoebe, weren’t you videotaping at the time? I remember you sticking your camera on the lap of that dummy.”
I tried to think back. Was Bernice trying to pull a trick on us? Was she trying to make us think she hadn’t done it because she was prepared to have video evidence of the day shown?
“Like Sass, I was smashed,” I told her. “I think that’s partly why we all made such a bad decision that day, in not going to the police. We were young, drunk, and not thinking clearly. But I know I couldn’t have been videotaping at the time it happened though. I was upstairs, with Luke.”
Bernice sighed. “Yeah, true. But maybe there’s something on the tape from that day that gives some sort of clue. I tried to talk to you about that, in the days after it happened. But you refused to listen to me.”
“The tape’s long gone,” I said. “Luke’s mother did the big clean-up in here. I asked her about the camera afterwards. She said she destroyed the tape that was inside it, just in case. And then she stored the camera away in a cupboard. The police were all over this house in the days after that lady died. I couldn’t come back for the camera. And I didn’t want to. This house just makes me feel sick every time I look at it.”
; She knew the tape got destroyed, I thought darkly. A memory pushed in. I was filming that day. I’d been (drunkenly) pressing everyone to tell me where they thought they were going to be by the time they were twenty. Twenty had seemed so far away. It’d only been a year away for Bernice, but over three years for the rest of us. The tape had run out. I remembered giving the camera to the dummy for safekeeping before I’d gone out to the kitchen for yet another drink. But I didn’t remember turning the camera off. A chill ran along my back. Whenever a tape would get full, then the on-board flash memory of the camera would take over. The camera probably didn’t have anything telling on it, but it might have something.
Sass was staring at me with a wary expression. “Phoebe?”
I turned to Bernice. “Have you seen the camera here?”
Bernice shrugged. “Yeah. I found it in the linen cupboard. I took it upstairs with the rest of my stuff. There’s no tape in it. I was hoping maybe you came back and took it.”
“Is the camera okay?” I asked her, my eyes locked on hers.
She gave a confused nod. “As good as a thirteen-year-old camera could be, I guess.”
“Have you used it?” I tried not to let hope rise in my chest.
Bernice looked at me oddly, glancing at Sass for answers but being met with a shake of Sass’s head. “Nope. What have I got to take video of? Why?”
I blew out a tense stream of air. “I can’t recharge the camera anyway. I threw the charger away.”
“You want batteries?” asked Bernice. “There’s sure to be batteries in some of the things upstairs. Maybe some with some charge left. What type of battery?”
“I never used batteries for it. I don’t even know what type it took.”
Bernice heaved herself to her feet. “Want to go check?”