Lies Between Us

by Ronnie Turner

  Chapter 19

  Miller

  Thursday 16 July, 1987

  Do you know, late at night I can hear her talking to me. That oh-so-soft, melodic tone of voice. She isn’t aware of the spell she puts people under. I spend as much time as I can with her; if she lingers at her desk in class, I linger too, pretending I am scribbling something on my paper, deep in thought; when she walks to the shops from the old cottage she has rented just outside the village, I walk ten steps behind her, matching her pace, marvelling at the way her body sways; if she runs a hand across a chest of drawers she wants to buy but cannot afford, I caress the piece of wood with my fingers, feeling her beneath them.

  Lately she has glanced at me and something strange has been in her eyes, something I haven’t seen before. Confusion, is it? It only ever appears when I am in the classroom, my eyes trained on her chest. Sometimes, when she takes a breath, I take one too, and for a moment I feel as if we are one, joined. I am her and she is me.

  That is how I feel now. I feel close to her. Closer than I have felt before. Just a piece of fabric keeps us apart.

  It is the middle of the night and she is tucked up under a duvet reading, the light of her torch illuminating the inside of the tent. It is a school project. She is trying to imbue a sense of adventure and excitement for nature in her pupils and thinks by doing this they will follow her lead. But they will not.

  We are in a field behind her home, a crumbling, mouldy cottage filled to the brim with furniture she scrounged for free. I can see her silhouette but she can’t see mine. I blend with the darkness. A cacophony of nocturnal life makes the air buzz and pulse: the scuffling in the hedges, the flapping of wings in the trees, the scuttling of insects and rabbits. I wonder if she is scared in there, in her small tent, with only a weak partition to keep the nocturnal world from pouring in. She told us she had never camped before, and I wonder if the darkness scares her as it would a child, if the noise unsettles her. I feel a thrill chase through my bones at the thought of her shuffling a little deeper under her duvet.

  I hear the rustle of a page turning in her book. Sarah, I want to whisper, Sarah, are you afraid? Persuaded by an undeniable pull, my legs carry me closer to the tent. Only a few steps, but if I wanted to, I could touch it. I could touch something she is touching. I could touch her. Before I can stop myself, her name slips from between my teeth and my mouth waters with the sound of it. ‘Sarah…’

  A gasp breaks through the still air. I smile, seeing her silhouette pull the duvet over her head. She has dropped the torch and book on the floor. Her head reappears and it is as if she is a terrified rabbit peering out of its hole, weary of the hungry fox. And it occurs to me then that I am the fox. I draw in a deep breath to still my shaking hands; I am not shaking for the same reason she is, though.

  She reaches out of the cocoon and takes up her book, shining the light onto its pages, thinking her imagination is playing tricks on her. I say her name again and this time a terrified noise works its way up her throat and into the air. She dives under the duvet again, and I think I can hear crying. She is hiding. The rabbit is hiding. I can still see you, though, Sarah. I can still hear you. Fear emanates from the tent like heat from the sun, a strong, impenetrable force.

  Guided by that irresistible pull, I reach out and run my fingers across the tent. The fabric is soft, ingrained with the smell of damp and the honeyed scent of the woman shivering inside. My body ripples with pleasure, it burns through my veins like adrenalin, it makes my bones buzz with excitement. A new, fascinating, beautiful emotion she is feeling and it is all because of me.

  I sigh, loud enough for her to hear, quiet enough so she isn’t sure. Her hand whips out of the duvet and snaps off the torch. She thinks if she turns off the light, I will forget she is there. But would a fox forget the rabbit if it tunnelled into its burrow? No. I can smell you, Sarah, I want to say. I can hear you.

  An hour later she turns the torch on again, head peeping out from under the duvet. I force my hand into the fabric of the tent. The impression makes the poles fold inward. When she looks round and sees, she screams. Oh, Blue-Eyes, it is the most wonderful scream.

  ‘Leave me alone!’

  We look at each other, her and I. I feel close to her. So close. When morning comes, she unzips the tent and runs as fast as her legs will carry her. The rabbit is fleeing the fox. But the fox is close behind.

  Friday 17 July, 1987

  She rubs her stomach, eyes swivelling around the room, fear lingering in her system like a bad smell. Sarah’s hair, normally neat and moulded into place, is dishevelled. And black bags hang under her eyes; from afar, it looks like she has covered the skin in black make-up. She hasn’t told anyone about what happened to her. Instead she keeps it secret, locked within, thinking if she hides it away she will forget. But she won’t. I can see it by the way she stumbles around, a once-graceful creature turned into a clumsy one. If a pupil asks her a question, it takes her a moment to find him in the small room, as if she is hearing his voice from a distance. When we look at her, her gaze only meets ours for a few seconds before it is scanning the room again for signs of a person who does not belong there – as if a hand might suddenly make an impression in the wall.

  The pupils notice. They look at her as if she has lost her mind, and I want to scream at them, hurt them. How dare they think so. How dare they think she is anything but perfect.

  Sarah touches her stomach, gently, tenderly, and I wonder if I have made her ill. If pain cripples her body. I don’t want to make her ill but something about the emotion pervading her face is intoxicating.

  I rest my chin in my hand. I’m still sitting there as she walks out of the door, the first to leave in a line of pupils, casting her eyes round the room one last time, then checking before she goes into the hall.

  Sunday 19 July, 1987

  The lights inside her cottage illuminate my path. The gravel crunches underfoot and adds a new note to the nocturnal cacophony that is beginning to play. I pluck a rose from the flower patch by her front door, twirling it in my fingers, avoiding the sharp thorns. A car sits next to hers. In the dull light, I think I can just make out the colour blue. I run through the possibilities in my mind. Her mother? Father? Brother? Friend? I haven’t seen that colour car before.

  The curtains are flung back letting the darkness stare in; whoever is with her makes her feel safe. Since that night she has shut them tightly, even before the last light has fallen. Her mother, I think to myself. It must be her mother.

  I crouch by the window – one hand on the sill, other hand clutching the rose – and peer into the lounge. She is splayed back on the sofa, a soppy smile upturning the corners of her lips, hands squeezing the arms of the sofa. A man is on top of her, kissing her lips, saying something I can’t make out. She laughs, wrapping her arms around his neck, legs around his waist.

  I stare, both fascinated and repulsed. Not by her. By him. His touch. She requires more care, more tenderness. She is special, beyond her class of women. Beyond all others.

  He runs his mouth down her neck, leaving a line of kisses in its wake. Her lips part and she tips her head back, the ghost of a smile lingering on her face. I can’t take my eyes away. I am addicted to the sight of her. I have never seen so much emotion displayed on her face. Even when she was frightened in the tent, the emotion was nothing compared to this.

  The man runs his hand down her skin into the waistband of her trousers. When she arches her back, his hand changes direction. Instead of digging further down, it rises, pushing up the fabric of her shirt as it goes, revealing a swell of stomach.

  I stare, unblinking. Suddenly the sense of time abandons me and I am unsure of how long I have been standing here. The noise has evaporated, leaving the air parched of life, devoid of everything but the emotions that swirl and scatter in my chest. She touches her stomach, and I feel a wave of sickness pass over me. My feet stumble. Beads of sweat appear under my clothes, making my skin prickle with heat
. And yet, despite that, despite the warm air, my body feels cold. It feels as if my bones have been dunked in water and left to ice over in the freezer. Small gasps leap from my mouth until I am panting.

  And yet, even as this happens, my eyes are trained on her stomach. The man and Sarah fight their way out of their clothing, taken by a fervour of emotion, careful of the space between them where a new life grows.

  As I turn and walk away, I look down into my shaking hand. In it, the rose is crumpled, dying.

  Monday 20 July, 1987

  I wait for the steam to escape through the open window and rise into the darkness. Then I know she will have lowered herself into the bathtub and closed her eyes. I can still remember the first time I climbed the pipe and peered into the bathroom, when she was still just lovely Sarah, not a combination of herself and the man. When she was special and untainted by the life of another. A life that is going to end before it begins.

  She rubs her hands across her bump, a tender smile I want to beat from her lips slowly materialising. She leans her head back and sighs. I know soon she will be asleep, unable to avoid the call of pleasant dreams.

  I pull a matchbox from my pocket, fiddling with the red strip on the side, thinking of the way she was before. Such a waste. Such a shame. She was so beautiful, so honest and perfect. Why did she have to be lured away from her old life – away from me?

  I don’t blame the man, I blame her. I saw by the look on her face last night that she wants this pregnancy. Well, her wish has been granted. Now she is corrupt. Once a perfect person, a special one, a good one, now just a skin full of bones like everyone else in the world, the life, the genes of that man diluting the purity in her body like a disease.

  I swipe the match across the strip and hold it up to the eave of the thatch roof. It splutters and dies. I light another and repeat. This one takes and a long ribbon of smoke streaks through the air. When it begins to burn, I take a long look at her, remembering who she was before, then I climb back down, stand in front of the window and wait.

  The left side of the roof is blazing before she wakes up. Her face is blackened and she is coughing. She flings open the window and sucks in breath after breath. She doesn’t have the energy to scream, even as a section of the roof caves in.

  I shuffle to my right, moving just enough to catch her eye. When she looks at me, I think she knows. I think she realises it was me that night outside the tent. Our eyes meet and I smile.

  Hello, my darling.

  Chapter 20

  John

  Monday 7 December, 2015

  The red shoes are the first thing he sees. He wasn’t supposed to come into town but after the third photo, he felt he had to escape the house. He needed to be somewhere he could tap into other lives and escape his own.

  But now he sees the shoes.

  The high street buzzes with noise, the flurry of bodies blurring into one huge form, elbows and bags whipping out and jabbing him in the chest and back. A siren rings through the air and all eyes turn in a collective gaze. All except John’s.

  He stares at the little girl’s shoes through the tangle of legs and feet. His heart thrums in his chest and his legs begin to shake. He stumbles forward, forcing a path through the crowd, ignoring the cries of anger and frustration, even the pangs of pain. Through a gap in the bodies, he can just make out the back of the girl’s head. Brown hair. Wavy brown hair.

  ‘Bonnie! Bonnie!’

  People turn and look at him, eyebrows raised.

  ‘BONNIE!’ He shouts her name over and over again until his lungs are burning. He pushes people out of his way and runs to the girl’s side. He grips her arm, unaware of the woman next to her beginning to scream. The girl swivels on her heel and stares up at him with big amber eyes. Amber. John looks at her, his heart breaking all over again. The woman shoves him away. He stumbles and falls to the ground muttering apologies through a veil of tears.

  He doesn’t know how long he sits in the middle of the crowd and he doesn’t care. It is only when he feels a pair of hands helping him to his feet that he realises it has been a few seconds.

  ‘John? John? It’s me.’ He tries to match the face to someone familiar but he can’t; his mind is swarming with thoughts of Bonnie. ‘John. It’s OK. Come on. Come with me.’

  The woman takes his hand and guides him through the crowd, her hands gentle and kind, like the hands of a mother on her child. They break through the hordes of people. John recognises her. Alice. DCI Alice Munroe.

  She pats his back and leads him into the Dog and Duck Inn. The heavy darkness and smell of beer and sausages wallop him as soon as he steps through the door. Middle-aged men prop up the bar, their calloused hands nursing half-pints, their greasy hair and dirty fingers blending in well with the grime. The barman looks to be the cleanest person there. He smiles, revealing rotten teeth that ooze the smell of infection. Not the cleanest person on the inside then.

  The middle-aged men turn on their stools, buttocks sagging over the wood, to get a good look at them. Alice waves and leads John to a booth at the back, its seats plastered in red fabric, the dark-wood table as scuffed as the floor. Light from a nearby window pours onto hundreds of tiny marks and stains scattered across it.

  John slumps in the seat, burying his face in his hands. But it is not because he is ashamed; it is because he is blocking out this world in favour of another, one in which he ran up to that girl in the street and looked into the face of his daughter. The face of a girl with green eyes. His Bonnie. He savours every last vestige of that image before it begins to slip out of his frazzled mind.

  ‘John?’

  He looks at Alice and leans back, daring her to tell him what a fool he is. But she doesn’t. ‘I saw you. I watched it all happen. I can see why you thought that was her.’

  He takes a shaky breath. ‘I terrified her. That poor girl. The mum… she… she thought I was going to hurt her. I… I thought… it was her… she had red shoes on.’ He runs a hand across his face, distraught. ‘Bonnie… she had red shoes on when she went missing.’

  ‘I know.’ She leans forward and holds his hand, her fingers warm and comforting. He looks at her and notices she isn’t wearing her customary blue three-piece. Instead, a woollen sweater and dark-blue jeans hug her petite form. Her hair is down, framing her face. The hard, professional version of herself has vanished, the softer side he suspected was underneath laid bare for all to see.

  ‘Where’s Jules?’

  ‘At home. With Don. She needed some space to think – she still hadn’t come out of the bathroom by the time I left.’

  ‘I can see why. I won’t ask how you’re holding up because it always seems like a stupid thing to ask someone. John, we will find her.’

  ‘This is my fault.’ He tucks his trembling hands under his legs, hot tears running down his cheeks. ‘This person is obsessed with me.’

  ‘Yes, he or she is. But it isn’t your fault, John.’ She wraps an arm around his shoulder, and he absent-mindedly wonders if police protocol allows her to be so unprofessional. ‘How’s Mrs Graham been since this morning?’

  ‘Not good. She’s broken up. Dad said she couldn’t stop shaking when she found it.’ John can still hear his mother’s voice on the phone, screaming through a veil of tears about an envelope on her doormat and a picture of Bonnie inside. He has never heard his mother so terrified. She has always been the strong one.

  The third picture is a shot of Bonnie’s leg. Of a bloodied, swollen gash streaked across her skin. It is four inches long and clumped with blood, the skin raw and inflamed. In the corner of the photo, next to Bonnie’s foot, sits a long nail, its point rimmed with gore. Something in him tells John this person intended to catch the nail in the picture.

  On the back of the photo is a typed message once again signed off with his daughter’s signature:

  When you were young, you fell off your bike – Molly picked you up, rubbed you down and sent you on your way. I would have done more. I would h
ave looked after you, cradled you in my arms and kissed away your pain.

  He remembers where and when it happened, even the way he felt as his mother wrapped her arms around him. He’d felt safe, better, the pain dulled by the strength of her love. But what was a sweet memory is tainted now because all he can see is a person standing on the periphery of his life, peering in. Watching him. A person who types out messages with a disturbingly loving voice.

  Don wondered if it was a woman. An ex-girlfriend with a grudge. But he knows as well as John that it couldn’t possibly be.

  ‘Who do you think is doing this? A man or a woman? You heard what Don said this morning.’

  Alice takes a moment to ponder his question. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘I keep trying to remember someone – anyone – when I was growing up who could be doing this but no one would.’ He sighs. ‘Don and Mum and Dad can’t remember anyone either.’

  ‘I know. I questioned them all again this morning.’

  ‘When you say we’re going to find Bonnie, is that your professional opinion or a hope?’

  ‘It’s both, John. It’s a hope because, on a personal level, I want more than anything to find your daughter. You’re not like some of the creeps I’ve seen over the years. You haven’t killed your daughter and buried her body in the back garden. You’re a good chap and she should be playing dress-up and enjoying her childhood, not suffering at the hands of a psycho. Bonnie is my priority. It’s a professional opinion because the creeps who are clever always slip up in the end. They get cocky, arrogant. I’ve seen it a lot over the years, John. I’ve been doing this job a long time.’