You’re crazy, Becca wanted to say. Proper batshit crazy. Instead, she shrugged. ‘They kind of deserved it.’
‘Exactly!’ Tasha said. ‘They don’t get to dump me.’ She turned and stared out over the dark water. ‘They don’t even get to dare think that way. They should have been grateful to me. They belonged to me.’
Although the weather had been warmer, now that it was the dead of night and they were riverside, the breeze was cold as it lifted Becca’s hair and she shivered. She was ready to go home now. She was just about done here.
‘You going to throw that in or what?’ she asked, nodding at the laptop. Tasha looked down at it for a long second and then spun it like a Frisbee, out to the middle of the river. There was a flash of silver and then a splash. They both stared after it.
‘Well, that’s that, then,’ Becca said.
‘That’s that.’
Becca had taken a small step back from the bank, her heart racing, willing her feet to stick like glue to the earth beneath. This was Natasha. There was no way of knowing where she would take this next.
‘Don’t worry,’ Tasha said, still looking out over the water. ‘I’m not going to push you in.’ She looked over her shoulder. ‘I admit I thought about it. I mean, it wouldn’t even be suspicious. You committing suicide where I’d nearly died. It would have so much pathos, wouldn’t it? Like you actually wanted to be me.’
‘Everyone wants to be you, Tasha.’ For a moment Becca thought she might have overplayed it. She was never that directly complimentary. Tasha just kept talking, though.
‘And all that stuff on Facebook and me dating Aiden would be enough to push you over the edge.’ She giggled. ‘Literally.’
‘How come you changed your mind?’ Becca said.
‘I don’t know. Affection for you, I guess. You’ve been so clever to figure it all out. It would be a waste of a brain to drown you. I think we can have some fun. For a while, at least.’
Becca wondered how long Tasha would allow her to play before she changed her mind. A week? A month? Becca would always be looking over her shoulder, waiting for the axe to fall.
‘Best friends forever,’ she said softly.
Natasha turned around and, unexpectedly, pulled Becca into a tight hug. ‘Best friends forever,’ she agreed, her warm breath in Becca’s ear.
Her father’s old Dictaphone in Becca’s pocket suddenly beeped loudly and the girls jumped apart, startled. Becca’s heart raced as Tasha’s eyes widened and then darkened with rage.
‘What?’ Becca said, trying to sound casual. Normal. Relaxed. She took a step backwards and almost fell over a clump of earth. Shit, shit, shit, she thought. The tape had ended. Shit shit shit.
‘What was that?’ Tasha said through suddenly thinned lips. ‘Were you recording this? Recording me?’ Her voice turned into a snarl, and as her shoulders hunched and she coiled to strike, Becca saw her like an animal, a predator of the night, a wolf or a fox, all teeth and hunger.
‘No . . .’ Becca started, lamely, knowing how pathetic and scared she sounded. ‘No, it must just have been my phone running out of battery.’ It hadn’t been her phone and Tasha knew it.
‘Give it to me!’ Tasha shrieked, lunging forward and grabbing at Becca’s pockets.
‘Stop it, Tasha!’
Becca tried to push her backwards, but Tasha was all sinewy strength, clawing and hissing at her.
‘You fucking bitch, Becca,’ Tasha spat into her face as they struggled. ‘You fucking nobody bitch! I was going to make you special! Give me that tape!’
‘Fuck off, Tasha!’ Becca said, finally finding her own rage. ‘Just fuck off!’ She grabbed the other girl’s arms and shoved. Tasha held on. The world spun as both girls lost their footing.
Oh shit, Becca thought as her eyes met Tasha’s and saw her shock and fear reflected there. Oh shit, oh shit. We’re going in.
Sixty-Four
Sirens wailed in the night. They were getting closer, but they didn’t sound close enough for Jamie’s liking. His legs burned as he ran, his breath ragged from his chest. He could hear Caitlin behind him, swearing as she stumbled, tripping over in the dark, the torch she carried a crazy jagged spotlight that couldn’t cover enough ground to make it worthwhile.
The clearing where Natasha said the girls had tied her up. It came to him in a flash, barely ten minutes before, as Caitlin was sending officers to check the school and the graveyard where Hannah was buried. Julie Crisp, Becca’s mum, had called them back in near hysterics. While searching the house for clues to where her daughter might be, she’d found an Airbook, not her husband’s, with a mark on it where a sticker had been peeled off. It had been on his desk with a note from Becca:
If I don’t come back, I love you, and give this to the police. There’s a film on it they need to see. I don’t have the password.
Abruptly it became clear to Jamie: they’d have met in the woods. They must have. His house was on the wrong side of the river, but there was a narrow bridge maybe five or ten minutes up from where he’d found Natasha. They could cross there, he’d told Bennett. They could probably make it before her men in their cars.
She was at the door before he’d finished the sentence, and now here they were, any wine buzz vanished, running and stumbling as fast as they could. Biscuit had raced past them both and he didn’t waste any breath calling the dog back.
‘Where’s the bridge?’ Caitlin panted, catching him up.
‘That way – to your right.’
They both turned, and then Jamie grabbed her arm.
‘Stop! Wait!’
‘What?’ she snapped.
‘Listen!’
Biscuit was barking. Back the other way. A sharp, high bark. A bark that demanded attention.
One more frenzied bark, a shriek, and then just a loud splash.
‘That way!’
Not waiting to see if Caitlin was with him, Jamie turned and ran through the dark in the direction of his dog.
Sixty-Five
They were screaming at each other when they hit the cold water, and the muddy taste filled Becca’s nose and lungs. She couldn’t breathe, but still they wrestled as the currents pulled them down into that cold, dark, alien world. The night sky taunted her, moonlight dancing on the surface as she finally broke free, her arms bruised and aching. She struggled upwards, desperate for air, and then hands grabbed her again. Tasha was not giving up. Tasha, Becca realised, suddenly terrified that she was going to die here, would never give up. She twisted in the water to face her one-time best friend.
Natasha looked like a banshee, hair wild around her head in the water, eyes still filled with rage as her pale hands, almost ghostlike, clung to Becca’s coat. She was screaming something, bubbles of air escaping her lips with the words, their meaning muted and muffled by the water that was squeezing the life out of them both.
Becca kicked out, struggling, but as her lungs burned with lack of air, her blow had no impact. Weeds grasped at her feet as the water dragged them, and she pulled her heavy legs up and away as she desperately wriggled out of her jacket. She didn’t care about the tape. It would be ruined now anyway. Tasha gripped the fabric, twisting and tugging it, making Becca squirm harder to free herself. Why was Tasha still fighting her? Why couldn’t they both just get out? How crazy was she? One arm free, Becca turned away and tore her other arm out, kicking upwards with the last of her energy now the weight of the coat was gone. She glanced back towards Tasha, sure she’d be reaching for her, determined to drown her and then make her escape. Tasha wasn’t human. She was a monster.
Tasha was trying to follow her, her arms outstretched, grasping. She too kicked upwards, with more strength than Becca had left, and for a moment she was coming up fast, but then suddenly she stopped, halted by something that pulled her slightly downwards. Becca saw the surprise register as Tasha le
t go of the coat and looked down. Becca saw it then, too.
Tendrils from the depths, dancing in the currents. Dark weeds, octopus-like, wrapping around Tasha’s legs. As she struggled, desperate to pull free, their hold was only growing tighter.
Help me.
It was the last Becca saw of Tasha. That sudden panic. The shock. The fear. The mouthed words from lips that looked dark against the eerie white of her face.
Help me.
And then she was breaking the surface and sucking in a long lungful of sweet, beautiful, terrible air. Becca coughed and spluttered and took sharp, raw breaths. Oh, it tasted so good. She sobbed, tears she had no energy for coming anyway. She tried to swim but her limbs wouldn’t work, tired and numbing in the cold. Her Converse were heavy, pulling her feet down, wanting to sink her. The bank looked a long way off.
I can’t help you, Tash, she thought as her head dipped below the surface again, into that dark and deathly silence. I don’t think I can help myself.
And then there was fur, and scratching claws, and a hot mouth at her neck. Teeth sank into her hoodie and dragged. She heard the pants and grunts as a dog scrabbled and paddled, dragging her to the bank, and with the last ounce of her will to live she forced her feet to kick.
Sixty-Six
I watch them up there on the surface. So far away. A different world from this quiet endless darkness. I watch and rage. Paws paddling. Becca’s feet wearily kicking towards shore. I want to scream at the unfairness of it all. Stars blur the edge of my vision and, eventually, I release the last of the air from my lungs and let the cold, filthy water in.
The river sighs, satisfied. It’s been waiting for me. The river and the darkness from my dreams. Maybe I never really coughed all of it back out. I can’t believe I’m here again. One minute, we were on the bank. The next, I’m dying in the water. Dying. Like Hannah. All over in an instant. I can’t believe it. I won’t. Someone will save me. Someone will come.
And then I hear it. The voice from my dreams. The one I never remember. The one that terrifies me.
You thought you could leave me here, the voice says to me.
It’s my voice. Of course it is.
The part of us that died. I’ve had to wait alone in the cold and dark. All this time.
My hands struggle again to touch the surface that I can no longer see, Let me go. My thoughts sound like I’m begging. I hate that. I was never meant to die here. We were never meant to die here. I am not meant to die here.
She’s holding my ankles, this dead crazy me. I kick at her, I rage against her, I hate her. I can stop this. I can make it end. She has to release me. I need to live, to put all of this behind me. Even if I have to go to jail, I can survive. I’m young and it won’t be for long. I don’t lose, I tell myself over and over. I never lose. I think of the chessboard at home. The pieces waiting patiently for me. Let me go, I plead again, squeezing my eyes shut.
When I open them, the other me, the dead me, hair wild and eyes filled with glee, still has her pale hand clawed tightly around my foot. Even in the cold of the river her fingers are bony ice. Cold glass. She will never let go. I can’t see her lower body. It’s lost in the endless quicksand void beyond. She smiles. I hear her in my head, just like in my dreams. A whisper. Dead. Vicious.
I don’t lose, she says. You don’t get to dump me and move on. You’re staying with me. This is the endgame, Tasha.
I want to cry and wail and scream against it all. I’m the one who plans, I’m the one who wins. My vision is darkening. I can’t see properly. But I can still see her. The me who isn’t me, who can’t be me.
I want to play with you.
I let out a moan, my last word, my last sound, one of horror, sucked away by the water.
Be my best friend, she whispers with such cold longing as she pulls me into the terrible blackness. Be my best friend forever.
Acknowledgements
Big thanks go to the whole team at Gollancz, but especially Sophie Calder and Jen McMenemy, not just for work on this book but for their hard work pimping Gollancz authors throughout the year while remaining so smiley. Of course, big thanks to my editor, Gillian Redfearn and my agent Veronique Baxter. And a final special thanks to Gillian’s brother who helped out with the technicalities of theatre lighting rigs!
Also by Sarah Pinborough from Gollancz:
A Matter of Blood
The Shadow of the Soul
The Chosen Seed
Poison
Charm
Beauty
The Death House
As Sarah Silverwood:
The Double-Edged Sword
The Traitor’s Gate
The London Stone
Copyright
A Gollancz eBook
Copyright © Sarah Pinborough 2016
All rights reserved.
The right of Sarah Pinborough to be identified as the author
of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in Great Britain in 2016 by
Gollancz
The Orion Publishing Group Ltd
Carmelite House
50 Victoria Embankment
London, EC4Y 0DZ
An Hachette UK Company
This eBook first published in 2016 by Gollancz.
A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978 0 575 09740 7
All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
www.sarahpinborough.com
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www.gollancz.co.uk
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