by Knight, Ali
Darren coasted around on his bike, pausing to ask a man packing up a van if he knew Berenice or where the cakemaker’s railway arch was. The guy shrugged and shook his head. Darren came round past a tapas restaurant where, on this hot night, diners were spilling out on to the pavement, and took a side alley. He asked an old man leaning against a wall enjoying a cigarette if he knew Berenice. He got a shake of the head in response.
Darren began walking around grimier and quieter alleys, reading signs and painted hoardings, checking the storage sheds under the railway arches, looking for Berenice’s name or that of her business. He didn’t find it. There was no logic to how the market was laid out and he lost his sense of direction a few times as he travelled down cobbled streets and across bumpy concrete expanses.
He began to panic. He couldn’t find her and that meant he had to think about going home. He coasted into a narrow side road by a row of railway arches that had been adopted as workshops and storage units and stopped. He could see a white Ford Transit van parked by a high brick wall on the other side of the road. He cycled up to the window of the van and looked in. Bingo. A couple of farmers’ market magazines lay on the passenger seat, along with a Tupperware container. He knew it was Berenice’s van: he’d seen it on the security monitors at Roehampton.
He stood back and shouted her name. He tried again and a man appeared from behind a blue door set in an arch and directed him further down the street towards a railway arch filled in with bricks with a red metal door set into it. There was no name. Darren knocked. Nothing happened. He knocked again. He stood back and looked around.
A moment later Berenice came round a corner, a bag of shopping in her hand.
She stopped in confusion when she saw him, looking around nervously. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I wanted to come and see you.’
She didn’t move. ‘I know who you are, Darren. Everyone at the hospital knows.’
‘I just want to talk. Please.’
‘Aren’t the police looking for you?’
‘Probably.’
She gave him a look that suggested pity. ‘They’ll be sympathetic, but not if you run and make trouble.’
‘Trouble’s already come.’
There was silence. He looked around. ‘Is this your arch?’
She nodded, but seemed reluctant to move.
‘I’m starving. You got any food in that bag?’
She relented and walked towards the red door. She unlocked it and put the keys back in her pocket.
‘You don’t have your name on the door.’
‘I don’t want to draw attention to myself. There are often break-ins.’ She stepped inside, turned on the light. He was in a commercial kitchen, with brick walls and no windows, a cooker and fridge and sink along the right-hand wall and low lights hanging from the high curved ceiling. The middle of the room was dominated by an island topped with stainless steel. Beyond, the back wall of the lock-up was lined with shelves and two wooden trestle tables were propped up against it.
Berenice closed the door and put the shopping bag on the island.
Darren took his backpack off and did the same. ‘It’s nice in here. How did you end up with this?’
She looked around. ‘I won it in a card game. Don’t look so surprised. I’ve come from nothing and fought for what little I’ve got now. This was one of my few pieces of luck.’ She turned away from him towards the shelves, pulled a knife block back with her and put it on the island. She pulled a loaf of bread from the bag and began to slice it. A train rumbled loudly overhead.
He began to walk around the space, examining it. The shelves along the back wall were cluttered: at waist and shoulder height there were Tupperware boxes in myriad shapes and sizes, a blender, laminated certificates for a cookery course completed and a hygiene certificate from the council, storage jars with flour and dried fruit and other ingredients Darren couldn’t identify. He ran his hand along the top of one of the trestle tables and noticed that in the corner leaned a skateboard.
Berenice saw Darren staring at it. ‘If I tried to ride that I’d probably end up in A and E. I use it to move my trestle tables to my pitch. They weigh a ton. This way, the wheels do all the work.’
They looked at each other as silence stole up around them. When Berenice spoke again her voice was quiet. ‘You need to go home, Darren. Your mum needs you. You need to sort this out.’
‘I did it to try and find my sister. My mum’s ill with cancer.’
‘I know,’ Berenice replied. ‘Did Olivia ever tell you anything, anything at all?’
He shrugged, realising she was the first person he had talked to about his demented plan. She seemed ill at ease and Darren wondered if she was scared of him. The thought horrified him. ‘No, not really. I think she has issues with her sister’s death, and with Molly’s mum’s boyfriend.’ He tailed off. It sounded pathetic, what he was saying; what he had discovered was so shallow and slight as to be meaningless.
He saw her relax and a thought came to him. ‘Why do you work at Roehampton? It’s not a very nice place and the pay’s bad. This space you have here is so much more – dynamic somehow.’
She became defensive. ‘It’s not that bad. I get Thursdays and Fridays off to come here. Not everyone has endless choices. I’ll make you a sandwich and then you need to go.’
He felt ashamed for seeming to criticise her. After what he had done! He backed into the corner as if retreating from his own ill-considered comment. He cast around for something to hold on to, something to do to delay all the problems he had to face for just a little while longer. He put his foot on the skateboard. It was old and well used, with chips on its edges and grime in the textured surface.
He had been a good boarder when he was younger. Riding pavements and riding waves, free and uncomplicated. Oh how he wished he could push himself off and coast away from his troubles. But it was a fantasy and he was so very tired. He put his toe on the end of the board so that the other end poked skywards and caught it in his hand. He felt the rough grain of the riding surface under his palm and the comforting weight of it. It was a childish toy. The things he had done belonged to a grown-up world and he had to face the consequences. He had to face them as a man.
He turned and put the skateboard back next to the trestle table, its wheels facing him. Between the wheels was a graffiti tag. Most skateboards had them, a riot of colour and action. This one was different, a white squiggle on a black background. The curve of a C under the embrace of an E. He froze. He knew that tag, as individual as a signature. It had been drawn on the end of a surfboard that now lay in a Streatham attic, and had been engraved in an act of love on the back of his neck. Now somehow – somehow – it had ended up on the bottom of this skateboard.
Darren spun round but he was too slow to avoid the punch to the side of his head. He fell to the floor and rolled under the kitchen island, shock and confusion coursing through him. Berenice came round the island and jabbed down at him with a knife, scraping it along the floor as he scrabbled himself upright away from her. He danced back, reaching behind him for anything on the shelves he could throw at her.
She was panting with exertion, her eyes wild, her face set with determination. Darren thought he must have hit his head on the floor, as a thousand images burst across his retina simultaneously: Chloe’s words in his car at the beach in Devon, White vans are great for transporting bodies in; Orin standing by his window in his office, You know how hard it is to bury a dead body by yourself? A heart carved into a scoop of mashed potato on a tray that came back to the kitchens every day, a simple message system. He had mistakenly thought the heart had been for him, but it had been for her. There had been someone else acting with Olivia, and Darren was looking right at her.
She held the knife like a dagger, tracking him round the island.
He hurled the blender at Berenice’s head, catching her on the shoulder. It clattered away across the room. ‘You killed Molly,’ he gasped. ‘Yo
u two did it together. You did all of it together, it’s just that only one of you is locked up.’
Berenice scowled. ‘You know nothing, little boy. You couldn’t stay away, you couldn’t leave it alone. You don’t know what you’re dealing with and now you leave me no choice. Stupid boy!’
‘Where is Carly?’ he screamed and she raced round the island for him, the knife slashing down. Darren danced backwards but the knife caught him in the front of the thigh, a searing pain exploding up his leg. He kicked out at her desperately and she backed away round the island again, waiting for her chance to attack.
He was panting heavily, feeling his trousers, wet where the blood must be soaking through them, but he couldn’t take his eyes off her for a second. His rucksack was on the island. He risked a glance over at it and blessed his absent-mindedness: he’d never closed the zip.
He needed to keep her talking. ‘How did the police never find you? How could you be so well hidden?’ It could only have a chance of success if the whole thing was carefully planned, a long time in advance. ‘Why did you do it?’
‘You’re so naïve.’ She began to move slowly round the island so he had to reluctantly move away from his bag. ‘A man.’ She spat the words out. ‘Who’s responsible for all the evil in the world? All the violence and the suffering? All because of what hangs between your legs.’
He got angry then, thinking of Molly rotting in a hole in the ground. ‘You’re as deluded as Olivia. Where’s my sister?’
‘It’s so simple to you; someone is lost so they must be found. Sometimes people can’t be found, and sometimes they don’t want to be found.’
Darren lunged for the rucksack, using the bag to uppercut Berenice in the face. He slammed backwards into the shelving, rooting desperately in the bag for what he needed.
She jumped forward and the knife slashed down near his face. He feinted and grabbed at the shelf to use as leverage and, in a panic, saw that the shelf was coming away from the wall, items scattering to the floor. Panic became shock as the entire unit swung outwards from the wall, revealing behind it a door. The back wall of the lock-up, Darren realised, was false; the cake kitchen took up only a small part of the space. A trapdoor flew open in Darren’s mind; something horrible lurked behind it.
Berenice faltered and at that moment Darren dropped the bag and lunged at her with the paint-stripper gun. A jet of blue flame hit her face. She howled and recoiled, tripping over the skateboard. Darren was on top of her in a moment, the gun burning her eyes, her knife flailing madly. She caught him in the side, a pain so agonising he couldn’t breathe. He pressed the gun in closer and she had to drop the knife and scrabble to push the burning jet away from her blistering skin. Her shrieks reverberated round the damp arch.
‘Where is my sister?’ he yelled, a smell of burning flesh in his nostrils. She was bucking hard underneath him, her face straining to escape the fierce heat. He pinned her arms with his knees and dropped the gun, grabbing her neck and slamming her head down on the concrete. She stopped moving immediately.
He pulled the keys out of her pocket, stood up and staggered against the island, pain and faintness overwhelming him.
He stood in front of the concealed door. There was no handle and it opened inwards. He tried two of the keys before he found the one that fitted the lock. Bleeding heavily and feeling fainter by the second, he opened the door.
74
A thick black curtain hung across the doorway. Darren pulled it hesitantly aside.
Behind the curtain a light was on, and he saw a large living room, the walls made of brick and covered with paintings. It was like a loft, only without any windows. It was comfortably furnished, with sofas, a table and chairs, a TV on a stand and a computer. There were rugs on the floor and a boxing ring set up in the middle of the room. Next to the boxing ring was a running machine and a pull-up bar.
Movement caught his eye from behind one of the sofas. A woman’s head was peering over it, staring at him. Darren felt the faintness rush back at him and he thought he was going to collapse. There were bunk beds in the far corner and another woman was under one of the beds, her dark eyes blinking at him.
‘Darren?’
That voice. He turned to his right and his heart exploded. Carly was standing there, in the kitchen of the concealed room. She was perfectly still, her eyes discs of shock in her face.
‘Darren?’ She said it again, as if not believing he could be real.
He couldn’t breathe or move. He had so much to say that a lifetime wouldn’t be enough. A woozy panic rushed through him; he felt that, now he had finally found her, he would die before he fully absorbed the fact. Trying to shake it off, he took a step towards her, but before he could say anything she screamed a warning. He turned. A hard smack hit him across the head. As he fell to the floor he saw Berenice standing over him, one of her eyes a running mess of scorched and disfigured tissue.
The room erupted into action. Carly sprang towards Berenice and jumped on her, pulling her to the ground and punching her. Darren couldn’t move; his limbs were jelly. Blood from his head poured into his eye. Now Berenice was down and not moving and Carly was kneeling over him.
He felt someone pulling his ankle. ‘He’s my brother, leave him alone!’ Carly cried.
A woman with long blonde hair was trying to drag him across the floor. ‘It’s not safe and you know it, Carly.’
Two other women were standing by the blonde-haired one, and he realised one of them looked like Rajinder, although her hair was in a different style. The other woman had brown hair.
The brown-haired woman was whimpering. ‘Is she dead?’ She was looking down at Berenice.
‘Run!’ Darren shouted.
‘Darren, get up, now.’ Carly had her hands under his armpits, pulling him upright. The woman with blonde hair was still hanging on to his ankle.
He was woozy and wanted desperately to sleep, but managed to say, ‘Run, Carly, run!’
‘Stay here, Carly. I mean it!’ Darren realised that the woman with blonde hair must be Isla. She looked so different from how he remembered her as a child, but her voice, so like Orin’s, was familiar.
‘It’s over, it’s finally over,’ Darren tried to shout, but the sound died in his throat. Everyone was moving so slowly. He didn’t understand it; they were prisoners in this hellhole, suspended for a decade in a horror he couldn’t begin to contemplate, and no one was moving.
He heard a noise behind him and saw Rajinder hammering at something on the table. A piece of computer disk flew up in the air.
‘He is innocent!’ Carly was pulling on his arms. He was being stretched between the two women.
‘We are so close!’ Isla shouted.
‘It’s over,’ Carly said.
‘Run, Carly, run!’ Darren finally managed to shout.
Carly was galvanised into action. She pushed Isla away from him, grabbed him under the armpits again and got him to his feet. She was surprisingly strong. Leaning on each other, they came out of that room and they led each other back into the world.
The brown-haired woman came close behind them, gulping in air and crying. Isla had followed too, he realised. She was standing inches from him, staring intently.
‘It’s over, Isla, you’re safe,’ he struggled to say.
Isla said something he couldn’t hear and backed away to a wall. ‘No we’re not.’
‘Your dad—’ A wave of pain erupted in him.
She shook her head. She said ‘no’ again, louder, then turned and ran away, disappearing round the corner.
‘Wait!’ Darren tried to follow her but he had no energy left and he stumbled and fell. Something was badly wrong inside him – every sinew in his body was straining but he was floating away, unable to stay grounded.
Carly was kneeling by him on the floor, cradling his head in her lap, pawing him to stop him falling into unconsciousness, saying his name over and over, trying it out, seeing how it fit.
He felt much we
aker and only had the strength to whisper. ‘I looked so long, so long I looked for you.’
Carly gazed up at the sky and she howled from the depths of her soul, a pain profound and raw and triumphant. Darren felt an acute agony in his heart, such an intense moment of joy he thought it might overwhelm his body and kill him. Tomorrow she would see the sun, and all the tomorrows after that. She had emerged, kicking and screaming back into the world, a rebirth, a miracle. As he floated away he knew one thing: love was strong, stronger than life.
75
When the police arrived at Melanie’s door for the second time that night, they told her that Darren was in a critical condition in hospital with multiple stab wounds and was under police guard. The young officer looked grey with fright and twitching to get going. She sat far from Andy in the car, staring dully out of the window at the London night. She had suffered the worst that life could throw at a mother, people said, it would never be as bad as that again, they said. But they were wrong, as she had always known they were.
Melanie had read on the internet that cancer drugs could make you hallucinate and that emotional stress could enhance the hallucinogenic effect. Which was why while she stood looking at one half-dead child wrapped in bandages and on a drip in a hospital bed with a face battered black and blue, a vision who looked like her own younger self was coming across the room towards her, floating and shimmering in a chaos of police and people in white coats. The vision looked like Carly, but the room was so noisy and crowded and Andy was gasping in her ear and she heard a sound that only her most fantastical dreams had allowed her to dare imagine.
This vision shouted ‘Mum!’
A moment later Carly was in her arms; she could feel the warmth of her, smell the shampoo in her hair, hear her daughter crying into her neck.
Melanie sank down on to the bed, her legs unable to support her. She grabbed Carly’s face between her palms, drinking in how her teenage features had changed into an adult’s: her cheekbones were more prominent, her eyebrows thinner, her face sadder and more set. But she was vital and alive and right here.