The Wild Girls

by Phoebe Morgan

  The engine starts, and Nate checks the road behind us as we pull out from the side of the verge, even though it is empty. Not a single other vehicle has passed us, this entire time.

  ‘Do you know where we are?’ I ask him, hesitantly. ‘My GPS hasn’t been working, I – I just want to get a sense of how far we might be from the airport.’

  He doesn’t answer straight away, and for a moment I think he hasn’t heard me. There is a frown on his face, as if he’s concentrating on the road, and his hands on the steering wheel are growing white at the knuckles.

  ‘What happened to the girls?’ he says eventually, ignoring my question, and I tense up, my fingers digging into each other. I hadn’t realised my fists were clenched.

  ‘I told you, they’re both dead,’ I say rigidly, unwilling to go into details with him. The word sounds strange in my mouth: dead. I still can’t believe it, cannot bear that they are gone.

  ‘Please, Nate, can you just take us to the nearest town? Felicity isn’t at the lodge, we’ve searched. Please.’

  He looks sideways at me, sliding his eyes towards mine.

  ‘I know you don’t trust me, Grace,’ he says then, the words surprising me, and I say nothing, simply look straight ahead as the car turns a corner and we begin to head south, back in the direction of the river. My mind is turning over his words, and suddenly I realise – I need to play along with this. To get what I want, I have to be clever.

  I have to give this man what he wants.

  ‘What do you mean?’ I say, licking my lips; they are dry and cracked.

  He is still facing forward, looking at the road ahead. I want to open the window, feel the air on my skin – the car feels as though it is sealed, locking us both inside. We pass more empty, flat space; a cluster of goats, scraggly and thin; a group of tin huts, the sides sagging in defeat. Nathaniel is oblivious, focused only on the track. The car bumps, and my seatbelt tightens automatically around me. The roads here are potholed, poor.

  ‘I could tell,’ he says, ‘that night at the pub two years ago. With Felicity. You looked as though you’d seen a ghost.’

  I can hardly believe what he is saying.

  ‘How did you – how did you expect me to react?’ I say eventually, finding the words, but he just shakes his head, makes a little tutting noise.

  ‘Grace,’ he says, ‘I liked you, don’t you see that?’

  You raped me, I want to scream, but I cannot – for now, Nathaniel is my only hope of getting to safety, the only option I can see other than sit and starve to death on the roadside whilst the bodies of my friends rot, forgotten, back at the lodge.

  I don’t respond, and a flash of agitation passes across his face.

  ‘When you reacted like that, Grace, I was confused, really confused,’ he says, swinging the car abruptly to the left as the road ahead bends. I look at the time on the dashboard, the red illuminated figures ticking slowly onwards. We must be nearly there. I didn’t run far, but I am disoriented; this morning feels so long ago, and I can’t work out where the lodge must be in relation to where we are now. Inwardly, I am furious with myself for being so stupid, for putting myself in this position, for blindly running from the lodge without a map or a working phone. But that won’t help me now.

  ‘I wanted to see you, so badly, after the night at your parents’,’ he continues, and this time he glances over at me, a quick, sideways glance, and he takes one hand off the steering wheel. I stare at it, hovering in the air between us, above the gear stick, and the muscles in my legs contract. I can’t bear the thought of him touching me, even though a part of me is already steeling myself for it; a part of me knows that I may have to bear it if that is the way out of this dreadful situation. But I don’t want to accept that, not yet. Not while I still have a chance.

  ‘Why did you want to see me, Nate?’ I say at last. I use his abbreviated name in an effort to appear friendly, to show him that he doesn’t scare me, even though my heart is thudding so fast inside my chest that I almost feel sure he must be able to hear it.

  The air conditioning is cold on my legs, and I wrap my arms around my torso, feeling the pressure of my palms against my body, trying to reassure myself. If I can just get through this car ride, if I can just make it out of the car, if I can get him to ring for help… surely once he sees what has happened, once he knows I’m telling the truth, he will help me, no matter what?

  Despite how I feel about him, he is the only person I have right now. A rapist doesn’t mean a killer, I tell myself, trying to stay calm, it doesn’t mean he did this to them. He could be telling the truth about Felicity – besides, how well do I really know her now anyway? After these years apart. How well do any of us really know anyone?

  The harsh bark of his laughter makes me jump. His hand moves back to the steering wheel, grips it tight. His hands are large, strong. Unwittingly, an image of them wrapped around my neck comes to me and I have to turn away, craning myself towards the passenger-seat window until the thought subsides.

  ‘I told you, Grace,’ he says, and a hint of exasperation is beginning to creep into his voice; the sound of it makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I must keep him calm, keep him comfortable. I cannot anger him. I know that now.

  ‘I wanted to see you because I liked you, for fuck’s sake!’ Without warning, he bangs his hands on the wheel as he swears, momentarily causing the car to jerk over to one side, and I let out an involuntary yelp of fear. Sweat is pooling at the base of my spine, and already I am regretting the decision to get into the car, to trust him as my only option. My eyes slide to the locking system, but he sees me looking and the corners of his mouth turn up very slightly. He knows what I am thinking. He isn’t going to let me out.

  ‘I liked you so much, Grace. That afternoon we had together…’ he trails off, and I try to keep the look of disbelief off my face. How can he really think that what happened between us was consensual, enjoyable even?

  Although I don’t want to, I force myself to go back, to unspool the last few years to that boiling summer afternoon. The feel of his breath on mine, hot and raw like an animal, the pressure around my skull that intensified every time he thrust himself into me. The way my body burned afterwards in the shower, the temperature of the water turned up as high as it could possibly go. The way I scrubbed and scoured at my skin afterwards, desperate to feel clean again. The way none of it worked.

  He is shaking his head, muttering to himself. I worry that he isn’t concentrating on the road, but we have yet to pass a single other car. I try to think what I would do if we did – how could I alert them? Would there be a way to get their attention? The thought of it makes my heart rate speed up again; we’re going too fast for me to flag anyone down.

  ‘Slow down a bit, Nate,’ I say, keeping my voice neutral, calm. Perhaps if I can get him to decelerate, I might stand more of a chance if we do pass someone. I think about rolling the window down, screaming at the top of my lungs, or leaning over and pressing the horn, grabbing the wheel, anything someone might pick up on, remember. But he ignores my suggestion, and instead puts his foot down harder on the accelerator. The car jolts and we speed up; my stomach rolls over with fear.

  ‘I tried to call you,’ he says suddenly, ‘after that day. I wanted to see you. I rang you, I wrote to you. Christ, I even asked your father. But you just cut me out of your life, of everything, like I didn’t matter, like that day had never happened.’

  He is talking as though I am an ex-girlfriend, a person that meant something to him rather than a young woman he forced into sex at her parents’ house. I look at him in profile – his straight, roman nose, the dark curling lashes, the smooth skin. Can it really be that his memory of that terrible afternoon is so different from mine? Does he actually believe the words he is saying? Delusional. The word comes to me – the same word Felicity flung in my face that night at The Upper Vault. I remember the pain in her eyes, the spittle from her mouth as it landed on my cheek. She couldn’t
bear to hear what I was saying, couldn’t stand to hear Nathaniel defiled. We believe what we want to believe, my mother used to say. We all alter our own versions of events, we spin our own histories, smoothing things over and playing things up, exaggerating and minimising as we see fit. We are flawed, we humans. If it were to be Nate’s word against mine in a court of law, which of us would be believed?

  ‘What do you remember about that day?’ I ask, as if I’m asking him if he wants a cup of tea; my tone is light, conversational, even though it is costing me everything to keep up the charade.

  He smiles; it splits his face open wide, and this time he does put a hand out, so quickly that I cannot even shift away. It lands on my right leg, his palm over my kneecap, his long fingers gripping the flesh of my lower thigh, the join in my bones. There is nothing I can do. I stay very still, like a fly waiting to be hit, the shadow of him falling across me. Helpless.

  ‘I remember how you looked,’ he says, ‘that short little dress. Red. Your lipstick, the way your hair fell. You were gorgeous.’ To my horror, he gives my knee a squeeze – short, sharp, almost painful.

  ‘You still are,’ he continues, ‘the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. Far more beautiful than the others, those so-called friends of yours.’

  ‘What about Felicity?’ I squeak out, my voice coming out tiny and frightened, but he doesn’t seem to notice; he scoffs, shakes his head.

  ‘Felicity!’ he says. ‘She’s got nothing on you, Grace. Never did have. You must know that, you must be able to see the way the three of them kept you down? Criticised you, demeaned you, deliberately tried to outshine you. It was obvious to me that night. The way you all were together. I hated it. I hated seeing you like that.’

  ‘But,’ I say, and my mind is racing now, trying to make sense of what he is saying, ‘you and Felicity – you…’

  ‘Grace,’ he says, ‘surely you can see – I only ever wanted Felicity to get closer to you. I knew you wouldn’t let me into your life any other way – you wouldn’t accept my calls, you wouldn’t see me after our afternoon together, it was hell for me. I thought the only way you might realise who I was, who I really was, would be if you got to know me naturally – through someone you trusted. I thought if Felicity trusted me, you would too.’ He laughs bitterly. ‘After I thought you might have lied to her, told her your version of things in the bar that night, I tried getting closer to Alice and Hannah. I wasn’t going to give up on you – I just needed a way to get you to trust me, and I thought if one of them did, you would as well. It would be my way back to you.’ He grits his teeth, his jawline tight, as though he’s angry with himself. ‘But it didn’t work. It only made things worse. It drove a wedge between us.’

  Us. There is no us! I want to tell him; I want to rip his hand off my leg and shout it in his face, to tear my fingernails down his handsome, symmetrical features, the features that have let him get away with anything and everything for his entire life, and I want to destroy him, the same way he has destroyed me. I think about what it has done to me, that one afternoon – the way I went into myself, accepted a smaller life, a safer life, let my friends carry on without me, moving forwards and upwards whilst I stayed on the ground, buried in shame and sadness and fear. He did that to me.

  And now I am alone with him in a locked car.

  ‘I spoke to Felicity’s father,’ Nathaniel says, suddenly. ‘To Michael. He was the one who told me what to do, who told me that what happened between us was a sign of love. That the only way I’d feel better about it was if we were together, you and I. If everything came full circle.’

  I stare at him, shock coursing through me.

  ‘You spoke to Michael Denbigh about me?’

  He nods animatedly. ‘Yes, yes. He was the one who – he reassured me. You see, you got to me, Grace. The way you ignored me, it made me feel like I had done something wrong, something bad to you that day. You made me doubt myself. But Michael listened to me, he told me I hadn’t done anything wrong, that I just needed to bring you round to my way of thinking. I needed to find you, make you see that we should be together. That way everyone would know I’d done nothing wrong. It was all his idea.’ He glances over at me, assessing my reaction. ‘Michael knew I wasn’t right for his little girl. Besides, he wanted her to himself. It’s such a shame about his passing.’

  The words send a chill down my spine. Nausea swirls in my stomach. I picture Michael’s face, his poison infiltrating Nathaniel, convincing him of such a twisted version of events. Evil, spreading its tendrils from one man to the other.

  ‘Michael died?’ I say woodenly, and Nate nods, frowning into the distance as we drive.

  ‘Only recently,’ he says, ‘poor Flick. She took it badly.’

  I stare through the windscreen, the landscape blurring by – we are going fast, too fast now, and fleetingly I wonder if this is all part of his plan, whether he is going to run us off the road, deliberately crash the car with both of us inside.

  And then I see them – the gates to the lodge. Relief surges up inside me at the sight of them, and I quickly point, shifting in my seat so that the hand on my leg slides off.

  ‘Here!’ I say. ‘This is it, the lodge complex. This is where the girls are. Please, Nate, you have to help me.’

  He does slow down, and for a few seconds I think it will be OK, that he’s going to let me out, he’s going to see their bodies and realise the situation – a situation that is much more serious than what happened between the two of us. It’s only as we slow that I realise – he has taken us directly to the gates. In my panic, I didn’t give him any directions.

  How did he know where to come?

  He couldn’t, I realise, unless he’d been here before.

  We are slowed, but not stopping, and as the gates grow closer I see that Nate is accelerating again, rather than pulling over to the right.

  ‘Nate!’ I say. ‘Please, that’s the lodge, that’s where Alice and Hannah are. We have to call the police, we have to get someone to come out here. I thought you wanted to look for Felicity.’

  He has a strange expression on his face; colder than before, as though a mask has slipped down over his features.

  ‘I don’t think so, Grace,’ he says, and when he looks at me, I feel the blood in my veins turn to ice. He sees the expression on my face and chuckles, the coldness disappearing again, replaced by his handsome smile. White teeth gleam at me; his blue eyes flash.

  ‘It’s admirable, your loyalty,’ he tells me, and now we’re speeding up again, and the gates to the lodges are growing smaller and smaller, vanishing as they recede into the distance.

  ‘My loyalty?’ I say weakly, and he nods, as though satisfied that I am engaging with him properly at last.

  ‘Yes,’ he says, ‘your loyalty to your friends. Can’t you see, Grace, that the way they treated you wasn’t good enough? That to them you were a laughing stock – meek little Grace, pushover Grace, everyone’s least favourite member of the group? It was clear to me immediately. You deserve better, Grace, you deserve to be looked after. You need someone that really cares about you – someone like me.’

  There is a silence; the words hang between us in the air, like tiny daggers waiting to strike me. I wait for the pain of what he is saying to slice into me, but strangely, that moment never comes.

  It’s not true, I think. What he’s saying isn’t true. Yes, there were moments where I felt inferior. Yes, sometimes Alice had a sharp tongue. But they loved me. We loved each other. Nate’s view of reality is not the same as mine.

  ‘Felicity used to talk about you so disparagingly, Grace,’ Nate says. ‘She had so little respect for you. I couldn’t stand it. You’re worth ten of each of them. I just want you to know that – I wanted to open your eyes.’

  We’re miles from the lodge now, and I can see a main road up ahead – the track we’ve been on is widening out. Colours blur past me – the tired browning fields, the red flashes of succulent flowers, the green clumps of g
um trees.

  ‘Where are we going?’ I ask him, but he just grins at me. He seems more relaxed, now that we’re past the lodge, now that he’s shown me he isn’t going back there. We pull up to a junction, and to my relief there are signs, pointing to various towns and sights that I have never heard of.

  As we slow to a set of traffic lights, Nate turns to me and smiles. ‘We’re going to the airport,’ he says. ‘This is our chance, Grace, don’t you see? With everyone else out of the way, you and I can do what we should have done two years ago. We can make a life together. Just the two of us, somewhere else. You’ll see.’

  Horror fills me as I stare at him; his face is deadly serious.

  ‘The airport?’ I repeat back to him, stupidly, trying to buy time so that I can think; it is so hard to, but I know that I must, that the only way of escaping is to think logically, calmly, to outwit him at his own game. I slide my left hand into my pocket, feel it tighten around the shard of glass, but his eyes shift towards me and I freeze, not wanting to alert him to the fact that I have a potential weapon.

  ‘Yes,’ he says, ‘and the best part is, Grace, that we can go anywhere. Anywhere at all. You and me together, the way I’ve always wanted it to be, the way it should have been ever since I first saw you that afternoon.’ He can’t keep the excitement from his voice, and the sound of it sickens me.

  I look out of the window, turning away from him so that he cannot see the despair on my face, the tears that are threatening to spill from my eyes. I dig my fingernails into the palms of my hands, forming crevices in my skin, harder and harder until the pain forces me to pay attention to it. I must find a way to keep strong, to stay ahead of him. He has already ruined a part of my life, and I cannot let him ruin any more.

  I have to find a way out of this, for the sake of my friends. Dead or alive.

  We pull away from the junction, and to my relief I see we’re now out on a busier highway. Cars are flowing to and from the direction of the airport, and the sight of them is so refreshingly normal after the last few days of isolation in the lodges that I can feel my brain clearing a little, the fog of panic lifting slightly. Perhaps if we’re around other people at the airport, I will be able to get somebody’s attention – surely, I will be able to slip away and ask somebody for help. Ask to use someone’s phone. It is only here in the car that I cannot get away from him – once he unlocks the doors I will stand more of a chance.