Ellie pretends not to know what is going on here. It’s best that way for now. She raises an eyebrow. ‘Pretty cool, huh?’
‘Pretty cool?’ Mary repeats, dumbfounded. ‘Ellie, that was more than pretty cool. If you can learn to control this, if you can figure out how you did it, just imagine . . . they will never be able to hurt you again.’
The words run through her mind like a silk scarf through her fingers. Never be able to hurt you again . . . Mary doesn’t have a clue how right she is.
‘Do you want to try again?’ Mary asks. ‘Or are you too tired? Is it tiring? How does it feel?’
Ellie shakes her head, tries to look young and vulnerable. That’s what Mary expects, after all. ‘No, I’m not tired, I feel fine. Maybe a bit funny. I’m not sure whether that’s just because I’m nervous and scared. My tummy feels a bit sick.’
‘Can I get you anything?’ Mary asks immediately.
‘No thank you, I’m fine. What else did you have in mind?’
‘Well, if you’re sure . . .’
‘I am,’ Ellie says, acting eager to please. Don’t overdo it, Ellie. ‘I’m fine, Mary, I promise.’
‘Okay then.’ Mary grabs her hand and pulls her excitedly over to the tree, the one Ellie was sitting under on the night of Ms Gilbert’s death. She’s avoided this tree ever since; when she’s around it, all she can hear is the screaming.
Mary must have noticed that her face has paled. ‘You sure you’re okay, El?’ She reaches out a hand and strokes her face. ‘You don’t look very well.’
Ellie shakes her head in irritation. ‘I said I’m fine, didn’t I?’ She nods towards the tree. ‘What do you want me to do over there?’
Mary points towards a twig dangling from a piece of string on the lowest branch of the tree. ‘I set that one up earlier too,’ she explains. ‘I just wondered if maybe you can make it spin or something. There’s no wind, so we’ll know it’s you if it moves.’
Ellie nods, and Mary claps her hands and goes to stand by the trunk of the tree. ‘Okay, go!’
Ellie stares at the twig, widens her eyes a bit and tries to look as though she’s concentrating hard. The twig remains motionless.
‘This is no good,’ she sighs. ‘I don’t know why it happens. I don’t know how to control it.’
‘When it happened over there,’ Mary gestures towards the can at the foot of the wall, ‘you looked so angry you might explode. So maybe that’s it. Maybe you just have to get really furious. It was when I mentioned your parents . . .’
She stops talking, obviously uncertain as to whether mention Ellie’s parents for fear of upsetting her. But that’s exactly what Ellie needs; for these things to happen, she has to get really, truly mad. Just picturing the faces of children who have upset her isn’t enough. It has to be anger.
‘I hate you,’ she mutters at the stick. She tries again, picturing everyone who has called her names, laughed at her. ‘I hate you, I wish you were all dead, I wish you could feel pain, real pain, I wish you knew what it feels like to be laughed at and hated and ignored . . .’
Mary gasps. At first Ellie thinks she is gasping at the words that have come from the mouth of sweet, strange little Ellie Atkinson. And then she looks at the twig and sees that it is spinning, spinning uncontrollably. She lets her legs go weak and falls to the floor, her knee grinding against the jagged stones and her arm bending behind her back. Mary dashes over to her and kneels by her side.
‘Are you okay, Ellie? Are you all right?’
‘They will never be able to hurt me again,’ she mutters. ‘That’s what you said, isn’t it, Mary? Never be able to hurt me again.’
And then everything goes black.
84
Imogen
I knock on the door, glancing furtively from side to side as I do. I’m sure that from deep inside the house I hear voices, and the car is on the drive. They must be in.
I shouldn’t be here, I know that. But I can’t think of any other way to stop Ellie before she hurts someone else. After my disastrous meeting with Dr Benson, I feel more alone than ever. I didn’t realise just how much I’d got my hopes up that he might be able to help me. The irony doesn’t escape me that Hannah Gilbert came to me once, just like this, pleading for my help, and I turned her away. Now I’m about to do the same to Sarah.
When no one comes to the door, I knock again, a little louder this time. I pray that Ellie won’t be the one to answer; that I won’t have to face her. The thought of seeing those cold, dark eyes terrifies me.
Just as I’m about to bang again, harder this time, the door opens half an inch. ‘What do you want?’ Sarah Jefferson stands behind the door, using it as a shield against me.
‘I’m not here to cause a scene,’ I promise. ‘I just want to talk to you, in private, please.’
‘Now is not a good time.’ She goes to close the door and I block it with my foot. ‘Please, Sarah, just for a few minutes. I won’t stay long, I promise, and if you ask me to leave, I’ll go straight away.’
From behind the door, she sighs. ‘All right,’ she says. ‘Just a couple of minutes though; it really isn’t a good time. Let me take the chain off.’
I remove my foot and the door closes and opens again. Sarah looks exhausted. I wonder whether things are getting worse.
‘You look terrible,’ I comment as she ushers me in.
‘Thanks.’ She gives a humourless laugh. ‘I could say the same about you.’
She directs me through to the empty kitchen.
‘Where’s Ellie?’ I ask quietly.
‘She’s in the garden with Mary,’ Sarah says, inclining her head towards the back window. ‘What’s this about? I thought you were told to stay away from Ellie.’
‘I was, and I will,’ I promise. ‘It’s just . . . I want to talk to you about what you said, in the coffee shop.’
Sarah shakes her head. ‘You need to forget about that,’ she says quickly. ‘I wasn’t thinking straight. I was angry and scared; I was just being stupid.’
‘You seemed pretty convinced at the time,’ I remind her. ‘You didn’t seem confused.’
Sarah looks pained. ‘Look, please, just don’t tell anyone about what I said; just forget it. I can’t afford for . . .’ She stops as though she might have said too much.
‘For what?’ I ask. ‘What can’t you afford?’
Sarah looks through the kitchen door out into the hallway, as though she is expecting someone to appear at any moment. Then she glances behind her at the two girls in the garden. ‘I just can’t afford for anyone to think there have been problems. That I might’ve done or said anything against Ellie.’
‘You’re still scared of her?’
Sarah shakes her head. ‘No, it’s not that. It’s just that . . . Ellie is fine as long as . . . well, as long as she’s fine. As long as we don’t upset her, as long as we don’t make her angry. And the situation has changed somewhat . . .’
‘You heard what happened to me?’ I venture, feeling rotten for using my baby like this.
Sarah nods. ‘Yes, I did, and I’m very sorry. But you can’t think that Ellie . . .?’
‘It’s like you said,’ I say. ‘Everything is fine as long as we don’t make her angry. You must’ve heard what she said to me as we parted that day?’
She shakes her head. ‘No, I didn’t hear anything. By the time Ellie opened the door, you’d already stopped talking. What did she say?’
I swallow. Even though the words have been running through my head for over a week now, they are still difficult to say out loud. But if I want to convince Sarah Jefferson that Ellie is dangerous, she needs to know the truth. All of it. ‘She told me that I didn’t deserve my baby. That it would be better off dead.’
Sarah gasps. ‘But how did she know? Did you tell her? You can’t honestly think . . .’
I say nothing.
‘That’s crazy!’ Sarah says. ‘How would she be able to . . .?’
‘How could she do any
of the things that she has been accused of doing? You know there’s something different about her, Sarah. That’s why you came to me that day.’
‘No,’ Sarah says. ‘I mean yes, I did think she had something to do with what happened to Billy. And there have been other things . . . But not like you’re talking about. There’s no way she could have . . .’ Her words trail off, as though she can’t even say it. Killed your baby.
‘But what if she did?’ I glance away, look through the window at the two girls playing with tin cans outside. ‘I know it sounds crazy, Sarah, but there’s this man, Dr Benson . . . I went to see him . . . he specialises in this sort of thing. In psychokinesis.’ I choose not to tell Sarah the warning Benson gave me at the end of our conversation, or that he is no longer a doctor.
Sarah gasps. ‘You’re crazy,’
‘And was Hannah Gilbert crazy too? Because she thought exactly the same. She came to see me before she died, and I told her much the same as you’ve told me. I never saw her again. She was murdered.’
Sarah takes a couple of steps backwards, a horrified look on her face. ‘You’re not suggesting . . .?’
‘Ellie called me on the night of Hannah’s death,’ I say. ‘She was talking about hearing screaming, in her mind. What if it wasn’t in her mind? What if she heard screaming because there was screaming? Hannah Gilbert’s screaming.’
Sarah walks towards the kitchen door and opens it wider. ‘You need to leave.’
I don’t move. ‘That’s what I did too,’ I say. ‘I got mad at Hannah, told her to go. Told her she was crazy. I—’ My words are interrupted by the sound of a baby’s cry from the next room. My eyes widen. ‘What was that? You have a baby here already?’
Sarah walks quickly through into the hallway. ‘It’s just a visitation; she hasn’t moved in yet. That’s what I mean when I say things have changed. Mark and I, we’ve wanted a baby since the beginning. It’s why we got into fostering, and now I can’t have anything, anything I’ve said or done, taken the wrong way.’
‘But that—’
‘You really have to leave,’ Sarah says, pushing my arm. ‘If Ellie hears you, she’ll get upset, and I’ve got to see to Lily.’
‘But this changes everything,’ I say. ‘Can’t you see? It’s not just you in danger any more; you have a baby in the house.’
‘None of this is any of your concern,’ Sarah says firmly. ‘You don’t think I’m going to let anything happen to Lily, do you? And do you really think that Ellie, that girl you spent so long defending, would hurt a defenceless six-month-old baby?’
An feeling of intense dread washes over me. What am I supposed to do now? If I was able to walk away before, if I was able to let Sarah Jefferson control the situation by herself, I certainly can’t now. Not now there’s an innocent baby involved. I’m going to have to stop Ellie myself.
85
Imogen
‘You know you sound like a fucking idiot, right?’ Pammy takes a big lick around her ice cream and grimaces. ‘Brain freeze. Don’t worry, you should be fine; you need to have a brain to get that.’
I groan. ‘Please, Pam, don’t. You are literally the only person I can talk to about this. I feel like the woman in one of those shitty horror films we used to watch in your bedroom, desperately trying to convince her friends she isn’t crazy before the evil spirit tears them apart limb from limb.’
Pammy shudders. ‘Okay, well I don’t want my limbs torn off, so thanks for that imagery.’
‘Can you please just assume what I’ve told you is right? Just for the sake of one conversation? Then you can go back to looking at me as though I’ve grown a second head.’
Pammy points her cone at me. ‘You’re mixing your metaphors. You just threatened me with loss of limbs; now you’re growing new ones. Make your mind up.’
I scowl. ‘This isn’t funny. This isn’t even close to funny.’
When I called Pammy to ask her to talk, I was fairly sure she wasn’t expecting what I’ve just told her. I started at the beginning, my very first day here, when Naomi Harper fell into the road for no apparent reason; my first sighting of Ellie Atkinson, looking scared and confused. Was Ellie aware then of the power she wielded? Or was that an accident, the start of something she couldn’t control? According to the school and Sarah Jefferson, there had been incidents before then. How far back does Ellie’s reign of terror spread? Her dead parents? Further?
Pammy said nothing, except to order an ice cream from the van that pulled up alongside the park we’d wandered to. She listened silently right up until I’d finished with the loss of my baby, at which point she delivered her cutting verdict. That I was a fucking idiot.
‘I’m not laughing, seriously, Im. You sound like you’re losing the plot. Meeting with bloody parapsychologists, talking about an eleven-year-old girl with psychic powers going around killing her teachers and wreaking bloody revenge on her peers. You’re worrying me. You’re worrying me because I think you’re serious and that you actually believe you lost your baby because you fell out with some kid. I think you need therapy, hon; you’re suffering, and I would be an awful friend if I just went along with this to humour you.’
I sigh, staring out over the park, watching a mother tapping on her phone with one hand whilst impatiently pushing a toddler in a swing with the other. It was a bad idea to come here – it had never been the plan to head to a place where children gathered; we just kind of gravitated here, the way we had when we were fifteen.
‘You could be right. It makes perfect sense that you are. I felt exactly the same when I first started working with her. I was furious that people were treating her with fear and suspicion; I thought Hannah Gilbert was a mad bitch who had an unfair grudge against someone too young to have earned it. I defended Ellie, but the whole time I knew something was off, something didn’t feel right. Then—’
‘Then something bad happened to you and you’re too full of grief to see straight,’ Pammy says, but her voice isn’t unkind. ‘You needed someone to blame, so rather than accepting that what happened was an awful but totally natural event, you’ve taken your anger and frustration and directed it towards a vulnerable messed-up child. You need help, Imogen. And I say that to you as a friend because I’ve known you since you were a vulnerable messed-up child yourself.’
‘And if I’m right? Like I know I am?’
‘Like you were with that boy back in your old job? Because you were so convinced you were right then and it cost you your job. What if the same happens here? Can you put yourself through that a second time?’
‘That’s not fair,’ I argue. ‘That was a totally different situation.’
‘Was it? Can you honestly sit there and tell me that what happened with that little boy, and how involved you’ve got with this girl, they’re not part of the same thing? It’s all about you trying to save the lost child you were twenty years ago, and if you can’t see that, I’m not sure how you ever got that psychology degree.’
‘Maybe it was, before,’ I admit. ‘But can’t you see that it’s not about me saving anyone any more? I’m not trying to save Ellie; I’m trying to figure out a way to stop her.’
‘Save her, stop her.’ Pammy shrugs. ‘It’s all the same. It’s all about you trying to prove you aren’t invisible nobody Imogen Tandy any more. Otherwise why wouldn’t you just walk away from all this? Ask to be transferred to a different school, forget you ever heard of the Jeffersons and Ellie Atkinson. Let the police find out what happened to Hannah Gilbert and concentrate on saving your marriage.’
‘You make it sound so simple,’ I murmur.
‘That’s because it is simple, Immy. You can’t always save the world. Sometimes you just have to settle for saving yourself.’
86
Ellie
The car journey home is spent in silence. Mary hasn’t said a word, and Ellie isn’t sure whether Sarah and Mark are upset with her or scared that if they say something they might provoke an angry outburst from thei
r daughter. It has finally happened – they are bringing the baby home, and for good this time.
They have been home for about an hour now, and the baby starts to scream as soon as they carry the car seat into the house, as though somehow she knows that these are unfamiliar surroundings. That this is not where she is supposed to be. Ellie knows exactly how she feels. Sarah and Mark are downstairs, trying everything they can to soothe the screaming child, and Mary and Ellie are upstairs in Mary’s room. Mary is restless, stalking up and down, and Ellie feels as though her head might burst if the screaming doesn’t stop. She closes her eyes, tries to calm the anxiety that is building inside her. The last time she felt this tightly wound someone died. She has to do something; she has to learn to control this before she kills someone else.
87
Imogen
The bench is cold and uncomfortable, and every time the wind whips up around me, I feel as though I am being stabbed with tiny pins of ice, but even that is better than being at home. It’s my second week off work following the miscarriage; I wanted to go back in after the first few days – it was torture sitting around the house not knowing what to say to my husband of five years – but HR gently suggested that I take at least two weeks to come to terms with what had happened and make sure I was fully recovered.
I look out over the dark river, and the sense of being lifted from my life and transported back twenty years is upon me. This exact bench, precariously perched on the riverbank, placed here at a time when the banks were wider and it was set back from the dark, still water, was where I would escape to whenever my real life became too much to bear. I found it aged nine. My mother never asked where I disappeared to for hours after school; I wasn’t sure she even noticed what time it was when I slipped quietly into the cold, silent house and straight up to my room. Now, despite how desperate my childhood was, the river feels safe and familiar. And with everything that is going on in my life, I need to feel safe.
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