Sleep Tight

by Rachel Abbott

  ‘He’s going to try to find her, and I don’t think he will ever give up until he does. Have you ever looked obsession in the face, Chief Inspector? Strip away the mask of normality, and it’s a hideous, contorted serpent that lurks beneath the skin, writhing with frustration until the object of its desire is under its control.’

  35

  Robert couldn’t remember the last time he had slept, but exhaustion had finally overtaken him, and he had drifted off for about thirty minutes. It was a restless sleep full of dreams and images from the past, which faded to dust the minute he opened his eyes. There had been something there, though; something he remembered that had seemed odd.

  An image flashed into his mind. He’d gone back out to the car to get his suitcase on Friday evening and he’d heard a voice say, ‘Robert.’ For one moment when he turned and saw the shape of a woman backlit by a dying sun, he had imagined it was Olivia. But of course it wasn’t. It was Edith Preston – possibly the last person he had wanted to see on this earth. She must have been watching through her window for his return. He had been too distraught to really listen to what she’d had to say, but suddenly it came back to him.

  ‘I was getting a little concerned about Olivia because I haven’t seen her or the children for days, and then when your car appeared in the early hours of Thursday morning, I was convinced something was wrong. But you’d gone again by the time I woke up. Is everything okay, Robert?’ she had asked. At the time, he had been too busy trying to get rid of her to respond, or even to think about what she was saying, but he remembered it now.

  He lay on his side and curled his legs up to his chest. She would have told the police this, he was certain. One more piece of evidence stacked up against him.

  Where are you, Olivia? What are you playing at?

  Robert straightened his legs and pulled a creased envelope from the back pocket of his jeans. He wanted to read what Mrs Stokes had said, just in case it gave him any clues to Olivia’s thinking. Maybe she had let something slip when she’d said she was taking the children out of school. He didn’t hold out much hope, though.

  He shuffled up the bed a little so that his head was resting on the greasy padded headboard, put his thumb under the flap of the envelope to rip it open and withdrew four pages.

  The first page was a letter from Nadine Stokes asking them to reconsider their decision regarding the children’s schooling. She pointed out that their education was about more than learning – it included social development too, and in her view that meant mixing with other children.

  Blah, blah, blah, thought Robert. She was probably right, but it didn’t help him at all. She went on to talk about each of the children and their development. He couldn’t really be bothered reading this. They all knew Freddie was still a bit of a baby – but, as Olivia said, he’s only four and one of the youngest in his class – and Billy could be a bit of a show-off. He was sure Mrs Stokes was right and both would benefit from being with other children, but it was the least of his concerns right now.

  He was about to screw the letter up and chuck it when he saw the first line of her report on Jasmine.

  Of late, we have started to feel that Jasmine is losing a little of her concentration. For a child who has always been so painstaking in her work, recently there has been a decline. One example that springs to mind is in regard to her work on the Second World War. When she returned from the Easter break she seemed delighted to be able to stand up in class and tell us all she had learned about evacuees. She said the island the family visits on holiday was fully evacuated during the war. Even the adults were forced to leave.

  Her teacher gently pointed out that children were evacuated to Anglesey not from it, and the island was overrun with evacuees from Manchester and Liverpool arriving on the island, not leaving it. Unfortunately, Jasmine became very upset. Her teacher said she went red, buried her head in her folded arms and started to cry. This behaviour is so unlike Jasmine, and we were quite worried. Not so much because her facts were inaccurate, but because she seemed so concerned about her mistake. We were keeping a careful eye on her to see if anything else was upsetting her, but there was nothing specific other than a slight reticence to speak of anything that happens in the home. Try as we might, we weren’t able to draw her out about her holiday again.

  Robert wasn’t in the habit of analysing his children, but even he could see this was totally out of character for Jasmine. She was such a pernickety child. He put the letter down on the bed, and lifted his hands to rest them behind his head. What could she have been thinking?

  Jasmine would not have got this wrong. He pulled his iPad towards him and switched it on. Think, Robert, think.

  ‘Come on, come on,’ he said out loud. Why did it have to take so long to boot up? And no Wi-Fi in this shitty hotel, of course. He would have to rely on 3G. Even bloody slower. Finally he managed to get Google up and running.

  ‘Island evacuated during Second World War,’ he typed.

  The search results were displayed. The top result was Crete. Robert dismissed that. There was no way they had gone to Crete on holiday when they were supposed to be in Anglesey. They didn’t have passports and anyway the boys would have talked about the flight.

  Next down was ‘Occupation of the Channel Islands’ – a bit closer to home. Guernsey evacuated all children. But that couldn’t be right. Jasmine had said adults too. He read on: ‘The authorities in Alderney, having no direct communication with the UK, recommended that all islanders evacuate, and nearly all did so.’

  Alderney. A tiny island in the Channel Islands, a speck in the sea between France and England. But why did it ring a bell?

  Robert put the iPad down on the bed and closed his eyes, trying to catch a glimpse of an early evening a few weeks ago. There was something about Jasmine – some strange reaction one day when they were watching the television that he couldn’t quite remember.

  What was it?

  Something Billy had said, he was fairly certain. They had been watching a wildlife programme on television. Robert had been reading the paper when Billy had suddenly said, ‘Look, Jaz – it’s our island.’ Robert had looked up at the screen, but it clearly wasn’t ‘their’ island at all. The sand was too white.

  Robert shot upright. That’s what was wrong. When he had looked at the beach in Anglesey, the sand was too dark. Nothing like the image that Olivia had shown him through the camera on her laptop at all.

  He raised his knees and leaned forwards, wrapping his arms round his legs and resting his chin. What had that programme been about, and what was wrong with Jaz’s reaction?

  He closed his eyes. Jaz had been sitting on the sofa at right angles to him, and Olivia was to his left. As he had looked up at the screen when Billy mentioned ‘our island’, he had intercepted a glance between Jasmine and her mother. Jasmine’s eyes had been wide open and her lips slightly apart. But Olivia had nudged him and he’d looked away from Jaz and towards his wife. He remembered she had whispered to him.

  ‘Isn’t he cute? He thinks every island with a beach is Anglesey. Perhaps we need to take him somewhere else soon, so he knows there are other beaches and other islands.’ They had shared a fond smile, and the memory was forgotten. Until now.

  What the hell was the programme about? Shit, why hadn’t he been paying more attention? Still, it was only a few weeks ago.

  He grabbed the iPad again and logged on to the BBC website. He was sure it was the BBC; they would have put the television on after the news. And it was definitely a weekday, because every weekend recently he had been working on laying the new terrace until it went dark.

  He scoured the programmes.

  ‘Got you,’ he said, a grin spreading from ear to ear. He had found the right programme – now all he had to do was look back through the listings. Robert could feel his heart thumping in his chest. His fingers prodded hard at the screen in a futile attempt to speed it up.

  ‘That was it – hedgehogs!’ How could he have fo
rgotten? Freddie had wanted them to build a hedgehog home in the garden; he vaguely remembered listening to him wittering on about it to Olivia.

  But these were no ordinary hedgehogs. These were white hedgehogs and, according to the programme summary, there was only one place in the UK to find these in the wild. Alderney.

  Robert pushed the iPad to one side and lay back with his hands behind his head. A huge weight had been lifted from his shoulders and he felt a rush of elation. He knew where she was.

  Sleep tight tonight, my darling. Because tomorrow, I’m coming to get you.

  36

  When Sophie told me about Robert – who he was, and how he had always been there when we were at university – it was as if a light had been switched on in my head. Everything began to make sense and some terrible thoughts invaded my mind, ideas I couldn’t allow to fester because I knew I wouldn’t be able to hide my feelings.

  I had honestly believed that the first time I’d met him was the day he came to view my flat. And he was so kind to me when my life turned upside down. But all that time he had known me – known who I was, what my life had been like with Danush. Why had I not listened to Sophie when she said there was a man stalking me? I thought she was exaggerating, and I never noticed him. I only had eyes for Dan.

  Sophie was so much more observant than me. She watched people. It was her passion, and one she planned to turn to good use in her career. I would never have picked Robert out of the crowd at a party or in a club, but Sophie would home in on anybody whose eyes were only focused in one direction. I should have listened.

  It’s only now that I believe her – only now that I can look back on those days and realise the evidence that was in front of me, if only I had seen it. How could I forget the night that I walked home alone from the pub – a walk I had done many times since Dan and I had moved into our flat together? As I passed the park, a swing was gently swaying even though it was a still, cold night, and I was certain that I was being followed. I could feel hot eyes boring into the back of my neck; I had started to run, desperate to be home.

  I was sure that my stalker was behind me, gaining on me with every second – and when a dark figure stepped out from behind a tree to catch me, I thought my heart would stop.

  It was Dan. He had arrived home and found the flat empty, so he was on his way to meet me. When he saw how terrified I was, he wanted to go and check each of the drives along the road in case my pursuer was hiding. But I was too frightened and just wanted to get home. He hadn’t seen anybody on the shadowed street behind me, and in the end we’d decided it was all my imagination. I never walked home alone again at night after that, though.

  Could that have been Robert? Or maybe it was just some random pervert lurking in the bushes of the park. I would never know.

  Was it a coincidence that Robert came to look at my flat the very day it went on the market? I can’t believe that now. It was all part of his plan to get close to me.

  I have lain next to this man for years. He knows every inch of my body, and yet all the time he has been hiding who he really is.

  As Sophie told me everything she remembered and my memories came flooding back, the reality sank in. I felt a tightness in my gut and hoped to God I wasn’t going to be sick – because I couldn’t stop thinking of my beautiful baby boys. How could I wish that I had never met Robert, because then they wouldn’t have been born?

  I had to get away from him. Our whole life together had been a lie, and all I could think of were his threats. If I was going to have any chance at all of escape, I was going to have to plan carefully, and it wasn’t going to be easy without money or freedom.

  But we’ve done it. We’re here, and we’re safe. Thank goodness.

  It’s been a terrifying year and a half. There hasn’t been a moment when I haven’t been afraid. I never thought I could act, but for my children’s sake, I had to learn. It was bad enough dealing with Robert on a day-to-day basis, eating meals together, sharing a bottle of wine – all the time behaving as if this man were my saviour – but the nights…

  I don’t know how I kept it together as he held me, touched me, and expected a response. Thank God I had insisted that I preferred the lights to be out when we made love – a stance I had taken since discovering the camera hidden in the bedroom. I explained it to Robert on the pretext of finding it more romantic, but the thought of him replaying our performance and perhaps analysing my expressions made me nauseous. I had no doubt that, if he had been able to, he would have studied my face and found something missing.

  As it was, I was barely able to prevent myself from crying. Tears would frequently leak from my eyes, and if Robert felt them on my face, I had to pretend they were tears of pleasure. The feel of his naked body repulsed me; under my fingers, I imagined his skin as the flesh of a snake and I couldn’t drive the image from my mind.

  But Robert had to trust me and believe his little experiment with the children had taught me a lesson, because I was sure that if he caught the merest glimpse of what I was really thinking, he would take my children for the second time, and this time I might never see them again.

  37

  The only thing Robert could do was to trust his instincts. He had done his research, and from all that he had read it seemed the island Olivia had chosen was a peaceful, crime-free world that no doubt suited her perfectly.

  He had to acknowledge that her flight had been far from an impulsive decision; she must have been planning it for some time. Sophie had been pretending to be Olivia at the guest house since the previous October, and somehow Olivia must have found a source of funds, because she couldn’t have done all this without money. Perhaps he didn’t know her as well as he thought. He had never considered her to be devious, but he had clearly underestimated her.

  One thing was certain, though. She knew nothing of the person that Robert really was. She had only seen the bits of him that he wanted her to see. Perhaps now it was time she saw the rest.

  She was his wife, and his whole life. Without her, there would be no point in living. And he’d told her exactly what he would do if she ever thought of leaving him, but still she’d done it. She had defied him, cheated, lied.

  She had to be punished.

  He could feel the blood rushing to his face, and his hands gripped the steering wheel tightly as he drove down the M6, heading towards the M40. Some idiot in a beat-up old BMW cut in front of him, and he took his aggression out on his horn, opening the window and gesticulating wildly at the driver. He wanted to put his foot down and coast past the smug bastard, but he couldn’t. The last thing he needed was to be pulled over by the police for speeding.

  The decision to drive to Poole and take a ferry to Guernsey had been difficult. It would have been so much better if he could have flown from Manchester to get to Olivia as quickly as possible, but the flight was more expensive and he was certain that the police would have alerted the airports to be on the lookout for him. After what he had done to Sophie, he was sure they would be trying to find him.

  The muscles in his stomach clenched as he relived the pleasure of thrusting the knife into Sophie’s leg. He would have dearly loved to kill the bitch for what she had done, but his goal was Olivia and if he became the subject of a full-scale manhunt it would put his plan at risk. They would be searching for him, but not with the same level of urgency that they would hunt down a murderer. At least, that was what he hoped.

  Travelling by ferry seemed to be less dangerous to Robert. He was confident his passport wouldn’t be scanned and would only be used to verify his name on the ticket. He’d checked and, as the Channel Islands are part of the UK, he only needed photo ID so he might just make it to Olivia without any warning flags being raised.

  Each time he thought of what she had done, his jaw clenched at the injustice of it all. When her parents had been found dead, he’d been the one to take care of her, as he had done every day of his life since then. How dare she throw that all back in his face?

/>   Of course he’d had to make sure Sophie was out of Olivia’s life from the start. She was dangerous. He knew she had written when Olivia’s parents died, because he had seen the British Forces stamp. He had destroyed that letter and all the ones that came later. Olivia was devastated that she hadn’t heard from her friend, and she wrote to Sophie every week for months. In the early days of her grief Olivia rarely left the house, though, and she had asked Robert to post her letters. He smiled at the memory of her trust, and relived the pleasure of holding her while she sobbed at the lack of a response from her friend, claiming that the only person in her life she could trust was him.

  Which was exactly the way he liked it.

  So how had Olivia and Sophie revived their friendship? How had he missed it?

  Sophie was a stroppy bitch, and he had hated her with a passion at university. Who did she think she was? She had seen him watching Olivia, but there was no law against looking at a beautiful girl, was there? And what was it she had called him? Creepy Guy. That was it. She had made it so difficult for him. If she was around he’d always had to back off, but he had just been biding his time, waiting until Olivia needed him, was ready for him.

  There was one particular night at the university theatre when Robert had decided that Sophie was going to have to pay for her interference. She had caught him trying to take a photo of Olivia as they got ready for a stupid charity pantomime. Sophie had stormed up to him and grabbed the front of his shirt in both her hands, pulling his face close to hers.

  ‘Fuck off, Creepy Guy. Take that camera out of here before I ram it up your pervy little arse. Leave my friend alone.’

  Olivia had shouted out to Sophie. ‘What’s up, Soph? You need to get ready, honey – you’re on in a few minutes.’

  Robert had nearly killed her then. He could practically feel Sophie’s neck in his hands; see her face turning mottled red as he choked the life out of her. But it wasn’t the right time. Olivia would have turned to Dan for comfort, and that was more than Robert could bear.