Lies Between Us

by Ronnie Turner

  She doesn’t know how I feel about her. I keep a lock on those emotions until I am away; I cannot risk her seeing something on my face, or catching my staring eyes as she floats about the classroom. She has only just moved here; the rumours will find her soon enough. The people of this town will fill her ears with poison and trick her into thinking I am an odd little boy. I can just hear you asking now, ‘But are they rumours?’ Yes and no. Yes, the things I say and do people find strange. But no, she need not be worried about the rumours. I won’t bother her. She is the best thing I have ever seen. She is rich and raw, her personality innocent and sweet. A special kind of person. She is so good. Pure. Like you, Blue-Eyes, only not as good.

  I close her diary and pat it gently into my satchel. Later, when I curl up on my bed and pour over its contents, I feel as if she is with me, her honeyed breath a fragrance that relaxes me, her skin cool, soft, a balm against the sunburn. If I concentrate hard enough, I can hear her whisper my name over and over and over into my ear. And when she smiles, I reach out and run my fingers across her lips, mesmerised by the emotion that bleeds into her face.

  Thursday 18 June, 1987

  My hand glides across the page, in a way you’d least expect from a person like me. It is almost artistic, creative. I twirl the pencil between my fingers, catching the sketch, striking a line through the middle. The face I have drawn is split in two. A creation undone.

  I once saw a rat splayed out in the road. Its back was broken, raggedy fur clumped with blood, teeth poking through an open mouth. Its eyes were two large, unblinking black pools. I remember looking at it and being surprised by how calm it seemed. It didn’t struggle, didn’t whine. It just lay there, the look in its eyes something between shock and surprise, a combination of the two, and I thought how ignorant it must have been to step into the road.

  Children and their parents clustered around me, disgustedly shrieking. Some were sympathetic, others repulsed. The children pinched their noses and shouted ‘Ewww!’ and the adults tutted and said, ‘Someone should put that thing out of its misery.’ A few shared looks, subtle shakes of the head, and that was it. They stood there, looking at me expectantly, then they pointed and said, ‘Well, go on, then.’

  But I didn’t.

  Eventually, the adults disbanded, tutting and muttering about me into their hands. The children soon followed, all but one. A girl – short, blonde – who sat beside me on the hot tarmac and watched for a few minutes longer, sympathetic to the rat. Her mother called her away and I was left alone. They watched from afar. But still I didn’t kill it. Rats didn’t bother me. It was fascination. It wasn’t the passage into death, it was the passage from life. I’ve come to realise that even as the final seconds are filched from your grasp, emotions play across the face like scenes in a movie. So much emotion. And it occurred to me that the rat lived more in its last seconds than it had its whole life.

  The people standing by didn’t see that, though. They only saw a boy fascinated with death. But they were wrong. It isn’t death that fascinates me. It is life.

  Mother creeps into my room when I am at school. She takes my drawings to sit and look at. She expects the rat. She expects bodies and blood and gore from her oddity of a son. Snapped fingers and gushing wounds, a dark creation from a dark mind. Instead, I show her something which disturbs her even more. I show her our community.

  The last bunch Mother stole included one of Maggie’s husband, Joel. He was asleep in a deckchair on a sunny day. Above him, I’d drawn a smaller image, with puffs of smoke made to look like a dream rising from his head. The image was of him stuffing his wife’s mouth with dirty socks and carrots. Neither of them notice me when I look through their window in the evenings. She reprimands him for not picking up his dirty socks and for not eating his carrots. ‘I went to all the trouble of cooking you that dinner,’ she says, pointing her finger at him like she would a naughty child. He bites his lip and frowns at the plate, cringing if she adds ‘Mr’ on the end, for that means he won’t be allowed any of the apple crumble she made him buy on the way home.

  I imagine Mother cupping her mouth and staring at the drawing with wide eyes. Maggie’s treatment of Joel is something she likes to keep secret. But I flushed it out into the open.

  The second was of Mrs Berry across the road. In the picture she was looking at her children with disdain. A shocking contrast to the adoring façade she conjures.

  I was in a shop with Mother and Father, waiting in the queue, three weeks ago. In front of us were two women paying for their things. The first a humpbacked old lady with bumpy knuckles and deep wrinkles and the second an overweight, greasy-haired woman. The elderly lady was paying for a basketful of squeaky toys for her dogs. The younger woman was buying a packet of sweets for the child that bawled and cried in the pushchair at her side. The woman, flushed with anger, knelt down and snapped her hand round the child’s, eyes blazing. ‘If you don’t shut up, you won’t get any sweets!’ The girl stopped and hugged her teddy bear close. When the mother let go of her hand, it was white, drained of blood. Crescent-shaped marks were cut into her skin. The girl nodded and the mother carried on paying, proud. Proud of her authority over her child. Proud of her control.

  The third picture depicted this scene. And I imagine Mother being shocked because I saw something she missed.

  I wipe away the line with as much care as I can muster, swiping the detritus of rubber off the paper. This one is of Sarah. She stands in front of the village hall, arms open, eyes wide. Behind her, the sun sets; the light sweeps around her, making her look as if she is an angel. Her hair has turned bronze in the sun and in her eyes dances a confidence that makes others seek out her guidance. She is an angel, a goddess among mortals. Something special in the plain. Light in the dark. Good against evil. And by her side, I stand proudly.

  If you look closely, you can just see our hands clenched together through the folds of her dress.

  Chapter 14

  John

  Saturday 5 December, 2015

  Her fingers are snapped like breadsticks, jutting out at odd angles, shards of bone punching through bloodied scraps of skin. He can’t see her face in the photograph, but when he closes his eyes he can conjure her expression. A combination of shock, agony and fear splashed on her face like the blood spattered across the back of her hand. He can hear her crying in his ears, a high-pitch wail that resonates through his mind and body. It makes his fingers twitch and his heart thump in his chest, as if someone is playing the drums.

  Dum de dum de dum.

  He absent-mindedly wonders if her heart was beating this fast when her little bones were snapped. Clever, though. Ruining the left hand of a right-handed girl. Oddly enough, it isn’t the sight of her little fingers, but the words on the back of the photograph that make his body feel as if it is being pumped full of ice-cold water.

  The first time you took her to Disneyland, Don had to take her round the park because you and Jules had a sickness bug.

  We three had a wonderful time.

  John studies the last six words and wonders if anybody is as safe as they believe. How is anyone to know if they are being watched when they take out the bins on a Sunday morning in their pyjamas, bleary-eyed and yawning; if they are being watched doing the weekly shop, guiltily adding ice cream to the trolley; if they are being watched when they scream at the TV in the evenings, cross with ‘those blasted politicians’. John finds himself shuffling backwards, feet carrying him away from the picture in Alice’s hands.

  They’d been watched for years and hadn’t been aware of it. He feels as if the rug has been pulled from beneath his feet. The private life he built with his wife and daughter was all just a mirage; their reality is a life watched and studied like germs under a microscope.

  John’s legs begin to shake. Inch by inch, he slips down to the floor, the strength leaching from his limbs. In the corner, where the floor and wall meet, a spider sits in the centre of its web, and John can’t help but thin
k he is the fly and Bonnie’s kidnapper the spider: he is the one in the middle, helpless and afraid, haunted by something that has turned life into a misery.

  Jules comes to his side and sinks down beside him. He wraps his arm around her shoulder, muffling the sobs.

  Once, when they were watching a movie with Bonnie, he’d covered her eyes to prevent her seeing a violent scene, but he didn’t want her to feel left out so he asked her to cover his own eyes. He wishes she could do it again now. He doesn’t want to see or hear or feel any of this. It is his fault. He must have aggravated someone in the past. He must have been rude or unkind. He must have hurt someone. He must have. And now they want revenge.

  ‘I’ll be honest; I’m not hopeful we’ll find any DNA.’ Alice tucks the bagged photo into her pocket. It was found under a sheaf of letters on Don’s doormat. As it doesn’t have a postal stamp, they assume it was dropped off by hand but the CCTV covering his house offers up no suspects. Whoever has Bonnie is bringing others into the mix. Alice has told them it is to galvanise John; to make him see that he or she knows who those closest to him are. To see that even the smallest corners of his life are being studied.

  A clever system, she said.

  A clever mind.

  Yes, John thinks. Clever. What sort of person makes a child sign their cruel messages? John cringes. Bonnie is the victim but he is the target. He is the one this person wants to hurt. Bonnie is a piece of weaponry in the kidnapper’s arsenal. That much is clear.

  Don rubs his eyes, cheeks sore from dried tears. The tissue he holds in his hand is soaked through. ‘Is… is there anything I can do?’ Don had turned up on their doorstep that morning, shaking, words tumbling out of his mouth about fingers and bones and Disneyland.

  They’d taken that trip as a family, to celebrate Bonnie’s first birthday, but Don had tagged along too after a bad breakup. John and Jules had come down with a bug, the rest of their holiday taken up with vomiting, and Don had taken Bonnie round the park, keeping her in his room at night so she didn’t catch the virus. The holiday had been one of the worst he and Jules ever had. But for Don and Bonnie it was the best. They watched the parades, met the characters – had a great time. Just a shame they weren’t on their own. Unbeknownst to them, someone had been tagging along.

  Don eventually let them guide him into the lounge. There he explained that at no point had he seen anyone watching them. He would have told them straight away. He would never have left the hotel room. They patted him on the back and told him not to worry, none of it was his fault.

  ‘No, there isn’t anything you can do, I’m afraid,’ says Munroe. ‘Stay vigilant.’ She slips her woollen coat on and leaves.

  Amy passes round fresh tissues and makes them tea. They sit together on the sofa, hands twitching, toes tapping the floor, images of Bonnie’s broken fingers filling their minds. The atmosphere is tense, as if at any moment someone will jump out at them. The miasma puts them on edge and makes their hearts flip. Amy tries to soothe them, to mollify the fear that creases their brows and makes them fidget in their seats, but nothing abates it. Their life together, once something as familiar as the backs of their hands, has morphed into something strange and horrifying. As unfamiliar as the future that now awaits them.

  Later, when Jules is asleep, curled up in John’s arms, his mind refuses to slow down. He can’t stop himself thinking through how this will end. Will the police find this person, save Bonnie? Or will they be constantly chasing someone who evades their grasp?

  The kidnapper is trying to hurt him, John knows that; what he doesn’t know is how far he or she will take it. Will more and more photographs pour in from all directions, depicting their daughter’s torture until her eventual death? What will be the outcome? John can’t see a happy ending on the horizon. This is bound to end in only one way and even to think about it makes his body involuntarily flinch. He can’t bear it. All he wants to do is scoop Bonnie up and hold her until the darkness of their lives is washed away by the arrival of a new day.

  He looks at Jules, eyes flickering in her sleep, hands clenching and unclenching, wondering if she is dreaming. Has it occurred to her how this will end? He knows it has occurred to Alice; he saw it in her eyes, when the professional veneer cracked to reveal the human behind.

  Jules turns, groaning, her hands spreading across the expanse of her bump. John brushes his hand across her wet face, visualising Bonnie’s red Dorothy shoes. He was surprised how much she enjoyed The Wizard of Oz the first time she watched it. The red shoes were her most prized possession and whenever she got excited, she clicked her heels together. He can just imagine her sitting somewhere in the dark, in the outfit she wore the day she went missing, dirty, frayed. Her green shirt, pink skirt and orange tights covered in layers of grime. But most of all he can imagine, with a clarity that makes his chest ache, those red shoes splattered with blood, creating a pattern of bright and dark speckles.

  Jules’s eyes flutter open. A groan slips from her lips. John jumps as she throws back the duvet and sits bolt upright. She sucks in a breath. ‘John! John! Oh my God! Oh God! Oh no! John!’

  Blood soaks into the sheet and expands between her legs. He dials 999 as Jules begins to cry into her hands.

  Chapter 15

  Maisie

  Monday 18 January, 2016

  ‘And they lived happily ever after…’ Maisie scoops up the tape recorder and presses the pause button, then gently begins to rub Tim’s wrist with her fingers, soothing and relaxing the spastic muscles. Heidi watches her, lost in thought. They’d listened to Jack and the Beanstalk all the way through, smiling when the wrong word was mumbled or one missed out.

  ‘I’ve got to go soon. My mother-in-law is moving in today. She takes care of my daughter while I’m here. She and her husband will be coming to see him soon. They’re still in shock. I suppose, in a way, it must be worse for them. He’s their baby.’ She frowns, burrowing her face into her hands. ‘You know, most of the time I just want to curl up and cry.’

  ‘Most people do. I’ve cared for a lot of people here – and their families. You’re doing well, Heidi. You’re coping really well.’

  She smiles softly. ‘Thanks, Maisie. I’ll let her know you played it for him today.’ She gestures to the tape recorder.

  ‘How is she?’

  ‘OK. She cries herself to sleep at night but during the day she’s mostly just quiet. Detached.’

  ‘Have they found anything out about the person who attacked him?’

  ‘No.’ She sighs. ‘No, and I don’t think they will.’

  ‘There is still hope, you know.’

  ‘I know. I know. I feel like I’m in emotional limbo.’ She drags a tissue from her bag and blows her nose. ‘Some days are worse than others. Especially today. I miss him. It still feels like he’s here. There’s still that presence, you know? I miss him hugging me, making me laugh. I miss our conversations. We were always talking. About the day, weather, work, silly stuff. It made us stronger.’

  ‘I’d miss that too, I think.’

  Heidi motions to her face and tuts. ‘He’d be making me laugh round about now. Poking fun at himself. “Well, at least you don’t have to hear me eat dinner – enjoy it while it lasts, sweetheart.”’

  ‘Eat?’

  Heidi nods. ‘I’ve never heard anyone eat so loud. It used to really bug me. I actually miss it now. You poor thing, listening to me bang on. Go check on your other patients.’

  ‘No, no. I like hearing about him. I only have one other patient and another nurse is covering her care today.’

  ‘Is that Lailah?’

  ‘Yes. That’s her. ICU nurses usually only care for two patients at a time. She and I share the care of Tim and a lady down the hall.’

  ‘She’s nice. Jolly. She talks to Tim.’

  ‘She’s one of the few who do.’ Maisie shouldn’t have said that. She shouldn’t have, but she can’t deny her relationship with Heidi is something akin to a friendship now. They
sit together for hours talking and it has cemented something in the way they are with one another. The small, knowing smile on the rare occasions they share a joke. The swift wave of the hand when they greet each other. Maisie just wishes she could ask the question she has been wanting to ask from the moment they met. But how can she?

  ‘I’d better get going.’ Heidi heaves herself up and adjusts her shirt. When she spots Maisie looking, she gestures to her bump. ‘Big, aren’t I?’

  ‘Not for long now.’

  ‘Not long at all.’ She pulls a scan photo from her bag and passes it to Maisie. ‘I’m secretly hoping he’ll recover in time for the birth. I know it’s not likely and I know he wouldn’t be the same straight away. I’ve done so much research – it all says he’ll need time to get back to his old self, if he ever does. Some people wake up missing some of their memories but I can’t help hoping.

  ‘That… that’s right.’ Maisie takes the ultrasound photo and nods. She runs her finger across the baby’s nose, transfixed. When she gives it back, her legs are trembling. Heidi shakes her head. ‘Can I leave it here? I want it to be with him.’ She takes Tim’s hand and kisses it.

  ‘Of course.’

  Maisie only notices her leave because a wave of calm passes over her. She realises now that whatever is affecting Heidi is beginning to affect her too. It is a weight that hangs over them constantly. It snaps at their heels and pokes at their clothes like fingers trying to pinch their skin. There is no escape from it. Maisie straightens Tim’s sheet and checks his temperature. Stable. Good. She leans over his bedframe and looks into his eyes.