by Sam Baker
‘We should go to bed,’ he says. ‘It’s been a while. I’ve missed you so very much.’
Helen swallows. She doesn’t know what to say. Except, she does. With Art there is only ever one answer.
‘Of course,’ she says.
He knows where her room is. Just as he knew there was a bathroom on this floor when he sent her for a towel. She tries not to wonder how long he’s been in the house. How long he’s been watching. Did he get in when she put out the rubbish? Or before? A long time before, waiting silently for the right moment? She pushes the thought away. When he flicks on the light in her bedroom, pulls back the blankets and looks at the bottom sheet she wonders what he thinks he knows.
‘Undress then.’
She kicks off her trainers. Remembering at the last minute to put them together neatly.
Art smiles, watching as she pulls her T-shirt over her head and folds it before putting it on the chair. She hesitates and his smile freezes, then she reaches behind to undo her bra. ‘You always did have a good body,’ he says, and she makes herself remain still as he reaches for her breasts.
‘You like that, don’t you?’
His eyes are fixed on hers in an unbroken stare. It always was one of the most unnerving things about him.
‘You like everything I do … Touch yourself.’
His fingers tighten when she doesn’t immediately obey. The slight smile sliding from his lips, his gaze hardening.
‘I-I need to use the loo,’ says Helen.
‘I need to use the loo …’
She hates the mockery with which he repeats her words, she always has.
He examines her, as if looking at a curious object, his grip just this side of properly hurting as he leans in close for a better look. She refuses to shiver. Her bladder will not empty itself. It will not.
‘When did you last have a bath?’
‘This morning.’
‘Helen …’
‘Yesterday. I had one yesterday.’
‘Morning or night?’
‘Morning.’ It’s the right answer. Sighing, Art releases her. ‘Wash well when you’re done. All over. And clean your teeth.’
In the bathroom the shakes set in, where Art can’t see them and decide he’d like to amuse himself by deepening her fear. After she’s peed, she catches sight of herself half-naked in the mirror. There is such fear in her eyes. A look that wasn’t there this morning.
It has been there as long as Art has.
‘Don’t,’ she tells herself. ‘Either wash and get back in there or think of something else.’ But what? That’s the problem. What else?
She flushes the loo again, very loudly this time. Holding the handle to drain the cistern.
See, I have been doing something.
Running the tap, she splashes water on her face and looks up to see tears. On holiday with Art, a belated honeymoon at a hotel in Turkey he chose from a boutique website – Just us, babes, help us get over it, what more could we want? – an argument on the first night left her with bruises impossible to hide beneath bikini bottoms. A middle-aged woman climbing out of the pool behind her came up to Helen later, when she was waiting for Art in the bar, and told her to get out now because it would only get worse. She was trying to be kind, Helen knew that now. At the time, two days into a two-week holiday, two months married, one month miscarried, it felt like cruelty.
Being with Art wasn’t something she knew how to get out of.
‘Don’t get yourself killed,’ the woman had whispered, squeezing Helen’s arm, her expression a mixture of exasperation and despair.
Don’t get yourself killed.
What was it Art said? You didn’t check to see if I was alive.
Only, the body wasn’t him, was it? And then his next question. ‘How did the fire start?’ When she’d replied that she didn’t know, he’d said, ‘You don’t remember anything at all?’
Was that why she was still alive? She didn’t remember anything at all …
Helen has pushed open the bathroom window without realising.
The roof of the outhouse slides away towards the ground. Flushing the loo one final time, she turns on both taps to the basin, grabs a filthy T-shirt from the laundry pile and drags it over her head before clambering on to the cistern and squeezing through the window, pulling it to behind her.
Bare feet slide on filthy tiles, slip over the edge and she tumbles down, almost managing to land upright, until she buckles at the last minute, feeling rose-thorns rip her arm.
Up above, there’s a crash as the bathroom door is booted in. Art slams open the window and peers down as she scrambles into the hedge out of sight. He hates getting his nails dirty. He’ll regard kicking in the door as getting his nails dirty. She waits for as long as she dares, and then crawls along the side of the outhouse, down past the stables and ducks inside a square of rotting and overgrown boxwood topiary just as Art appears round the side of the house.
Far from looking angry, he’s smiling. As if her presumption in trying to escape amuses him. Helen feels nausea rise. Pushing back into her shelter, she watches him hesitate as he looks around the ruined garden and his gaze seems to settle on her. It’s lighter outside than in the darkened house but sunset has been and dusk is soon.
There’s a rustle and Art swings round in time to see Ghost jump from the pantry window. Art loathes cats. He steps towards Ghost, who stares him out. Art takes another step and the cat eyes him contemptuously. When Helen sees Art dip for a rock, she crawls from her hiding place, her pale T-shirt catching his eye in the twilight.
‘Helen …’
She hesitates.
‘Don’t make me come after you.’
Turning, she sees him begin to move towards her.
Suddenly the cat streaks across wet grass as if he’s spotted prey and passes just in front of Art, who trips. A howl of fury bursts from Ghost, who hisses and then yowls again, his anger echoing in waves off rotting walls. Still down, Art kicks out and misses.
Breaking cover, Helen runs. Through the lychgate, which slams behind her as she heads up the path towards the Dales. In the distance she can hear Art calling her name. Seconds later, the gate slams again and she knows he’s behind her.
36
The front door stands open and the black cat Helen has adopted, although it was probably the other way round, lies across the step. It glares balefully, which seems to be its job, and looks not remotely surprised when both of the newcomers step over him.
‘Helen …’ Tom’s shout is loud enough to fill the house. He looks in the kitchen, tries the door to the downstairs drawing room, which is locked, and races upstairs towards the small sitting room. Gil follows. He’d have been more careful; called from the front door, taken longer to search downstairs, kept calling Helen’s name as he went upstairs. He finds Tom standing in the doorway of Helen’s bedroom, an unreadable expression on his face.
In his hands are a T-shirt and a bra. A slightly muddy pair of women’s plimsolls sit neatly on top of a discarded magazine.
‘There’s a tap running.’
Tom keeps looking at the T-shirt and bra.
In the bathroom there are two taps running into the basin, the hot tank has run entirely cold. Turning them both off, Gil instinctively mops up splashes with the bath mat. He looks at the wide-open window, the scattered pile of filthy clothes, and the unexpectedly clean track down the middle of otherwise filthy roof tiles.
‘She got away.’
Tom glances up from the clothes he’s clutching as Gil comes back into the room.
‘She escaped through the bathroom window. You can see how she got to the ground. It has to be Huntingdon. It was never Ridley. It was always Huntingdon.’
Tom opens his mouth as if to ask what the hell he’s on about and then says, ‘I’ll call the police.’
Gil shakes his head. ‘They’ll tell you to wait here until they arrive. Do you want to wait here until they arrive?’
‘They’
ll have a helicopter.’
‘Which will take hours to get airborne.’ He sees that Tom is about to object and cuts him off. ‘The paperwork, not the actual take-off. Call them when we know what’s happening. Of course, you’ll have to work out what to say first …’ Together they go downstairs. It’s Tom who discovers blood on the roses. He looks for more and is relieved when he doesn’t find it.
‘Gil, we need the police.’
‘And you’ll say what? Someone back from the dead is trying to kill someone the French police want to eliminate from their enquiries?’
Tom looks at Gil. ‘But you said the body wasn’t his?’
‘It isn’t. And Helen didn’t start the fire. It seems the Paris fire brigade now suspect it began in an empty flat below.’ Gil can almost see the thought behind Tom’s eyes. ‘Spit it out. We haven’t got time to waste.’
‘You’re right. We need to go. I should have gone after her once before.’ His face sets. ‘Hang on. I’ll be back in a sec.’ When he returns, he’s clutching a hatchet taken from the outhouse.
‘We’d better find her before Huntingdon does.’
‘We will,’ Gil says. ‘I know the Dales like the back of my hand, and I know where she’s going.’ He hesitates. ‘Although I doubt she does. Not yet.’ Without waiting to see if Tom will follow, he heads for the lychgate and hears it shut as Tom comes through behind him.
The sun was setting as they drove up to Wildfell, dusk is drawing in as they go through the gate and the Dales are in darkness by the time the ground under their feet gives way to gorse, bracken and the wild grass that grows faster than the few feet using the path up from Wildfell can keep trodden.
The previous days’ rain has emptied the sky and the afternoon sun burned off what remained of the clouds. Above them, stars spread in a huge bowl, only fading at the edges where the light of distant cities intrudes. The Dales flow before them like a wild sea and in the distance like a floundering ship stands the Scar, sharp in the darkness. As always, when he looks at it, Gil feels himself drawn by its mass.
‘She’ll go there,’ he says.
‘How do you know?’
‘I just do.’
‘We should shout as we go.’
Gil shakes his head. ‘No. We should listen. Shouting will warn him we’re coming and if he’s got her already he’ll keep her quiet until we pass.’
‘You’re a journalist?’
‘Most of my life.’
‘What else did you do?’
‘Short-term commission.’ Gil saw Tom’s blankness. ‘Three years in the army. Not for me, I discovered … We should speed up.’
‘You’re sure that’s where she’ll go?’
‘I think so.’
‘You said—’
‘That’s where she’ll go.’ He lets Tom push ahead; he can hardly lose his way since there’s no way to lose; all he has to do is keep heading for the Scar looming in the distance. The young man – well, probably not that young, younger – walks with his head down and his body bent slightly forward. When he slows, Gil thinks he’s heard something.
‘Last night …’ Tom says. He hesitates and Gil knows that’s somewhere neither of them really wants to go. ‘Helen said something I didn’t get about a boy. But there’s no sign of a boy at the house. And her sister didn’t mention anything.’
‘He’s Iraqi,’ Gil says.
‘She adopted him?’
Gil shakes his head, almost invisible in the looming darkness. ‘He’s dead.’
Tom stops, and Gil jerks his head to say they should keep going. He wants to hate this younger man with his vague good looks, hesitation and quiet intensity. Gil doesn’t doubt that in some way, Tom has a claim on Helen’s affections; although you aren’t meant to think like that these days. The way Tom stared at the bra and T-shirt, his shock was almost physical. The way he dashed outside to grab the hatchet now hanging loosely from his hand. Even though Gil can see that going after psychopaths in the dark is the last thing Tom is cut out to do.
‘She took his photograph. In Iraq,’ Gil says, not so much for something to say as to help keep thoughts of Tom and Helen at bay. ‘You probably saw it in the papers, just didn’t make the connection. He died right before she got together with Art. The shock of it was probably why she got together with Art. She more or less said as much.’
Tom stares at him, confusion evident on his face.
‘How much did she tell you?’ Gil asks.
‘Enough,’ Tom shrugs.
‘Syria?’
‘I’m not sure she got as far as Syria. We … She crashed out, she was tired.’
‘It was bad,’ Gil says shortly. ‘It’s been bad for a long time.’
‘Why did she tell you all this?’
‘She needed someone to talk to. I was there …’ And she was buying my silence with confidences and secrets, Gil doesn’t add.
‘If he was hurting her, why did she stay?’
‘Ask her.’ Gil catches himself. ‘Actually, don’t. I think she’s had enough of that question. She’ll talk about it if she wants.’ He hesitates, then says it anyway. ‘I thought I saw the child once. Staring from the back of her car. I had a grandmother who saw things. That said, I’m not sure I believe in things like that.’
‘You’re saying he’s a ghost?’ Though Gil can barely make out Tom’s face in the gloom, he knows he’s looking at him as if he’s mad.
Gil sighs heavily. ‘He haunts her, if that’s what you mean. It’s not the same. As for me, I was probably just seeing things.’
‘We need to speed up,’ Tom says.
Nodding, Gil increases his pace.
The Scar looks closer than it is, so obvious and visible in the night-dark sea of gorse and grass. A couple of miles? Surely not that far … Tonight it feels centuries distant and sharper than he remembers. The moon is halfway to being a sliver but it lights the Scar’s edges with a tallow glow and muted light from a distant urban sprawl beyond makes it stand out against the sky. She will go there. Gil knows she will go there. She will go there, and her tormenter will go there, and he and Tom will follow after and should any come out of this alive they won’t believe the Scar was calling.
He’s beginning to sound like his grandmother.
Keep up, Gil tells himself. That’s all he’s ever been trying to do. Gorse drags at his suit trousers and thorns scratch his wrists and he barely lets himself notice. When this is done – however this is done, he thinks darkly – if he is still alive, he will call Liza and he will ask her out for dinner and if she offers he will sleep with her, because he likes Liza and he wants to sleep with her, and he will make his peace with his daughters, if that is possible, and with their mother and her no-longer-new partner. Her husband, however much he hates that word. He will not let, he cannot bear to let, what has happened to Helen happen to them. He should never have let the gap grow to the point where he couldn’t be certain they’d tell him if it did.
‘You’re out there,’ Gil whispers.
Even he doesn’t know if he means Helen, her attacker, or the Scar. They stop to listen in case they can hear Helen calling for help or her attacker blundering through the gorse. Although Art doesn’t seem the type to blunder. He seems the silent stalker type. Gil has come across more than a few of those in his life. Mostly standing in the dock, being glared at by the hollow-eyed family of their victim. It’s the ones who never go to court, whose violence and cruelty are hidden that are the most dangerous.
Helen called Art the master of the unseen bruise. She said it with a shiver. Gil hadn’t been sure whether or not to believe her. He believes her now.
37
‘Helen. Stop NOW.’
Helen does. She stops dead on the path from the lychgate, heart pounding behind her ribs, wrists burning from where they’ve been torn by thorns. The pain feels familiar, not welcome but expected. She stops and turns and he’s not even running after her now. He’s slowed to a steady walk. When he sees her looking, he stops
altogether.
‘Come here.’
Years of obeying lift one foot from the ground. What is the worst he can do? Short of killing her, there isn’t much he hasn’t tried already. Why not let him do that? A sense of relief courses through her at the thought. As if she always knew this was how it would end. That what the woman said to her in Turkey was bound to prove true.
‘Faster. You pathetic little fool.’
He shouldn’t have spoken. All the he-shouldn’t-have-spokens collide.
Would you like to go out for dinner? Why don’t you stay? Let’s move in together. I think we should marry.
For a second she would have gone to him; habit, obedience and a crushed spirit delivering her to his cold, waiting anger. He shouldn’t have spoken because his voice unexpectedly wakes her, she hesitates mid-step. For a moment she’d forgotten how much she hates it. He sees her begin to turn, and there’s just enough moonlight to reveal his fury. Art will never forgive her this. No amount of cajoling, of obeying, of curling up into a ball, will be enough.
This time when she runs, she runs.
Behind her he stumbles and curses viciously. Then she hears the sound of him running and runs faster. Too late, she realises she should have headed for the village or thrown herself on the mercy of the first car to sweep along the road and catch her in its headlights. This path leads up to the Dales, which stretch like an ocean until she expects to feel water splash around her knees. The gorse drags against her ankles and she struggles to run faster, feeling thorns whip as air scalds her throat and her heart hammers. She can’t run this hard for much longer; and she can’t afford to slow down or risk turning to see how far he is behind.
There’s nowhere safe out here. No forests to hide in or trees to climb. There are ditches and dips, old drystone walls and new ones, but nothing that will provide enough shelter for her to hide without the man who follows knowing where she’s hidden. So she runs, and keeps running, until her throat is as tight as if it’s been gripped, and her breath is raw. Her ribs hurt, and there’s a stitch in her side as brutal as the after-effects of any punch.