by J. M. Hewitt
‘I’ve got an interview, thought you might want to sit in.’
She stood up, bundled the files together and locked them in the cabinet behind her. ‘What’s it about?’ she asked as they left the office and walked down the corridor.
‘A mother’s here with her daughter. Mum is Mrs Prout,’ he glanced at his notebook, ‘Victoria Prout. Daughter is Kelly Prout.’ He twisted his lips as he glanced sideways on at Carrie. ‘The daughter says she’s been sexually assaulted.’
Carrie glared at him. ‘Why do I get the impression you don’t believe her?’
Paul shook his head. ‘It’s not so much the girl, as her mother.’
Carrie took a deep breath to steady herself. ‘Let’s do this,’ she said.
The girl was a mess. Paul sat across the table from her, trying not to stare but finding it hard not to. He could tell by the styling and the clothes and the make-up this wasn’t the way she usually presented herself.
He dragged his gaze away from the girl’s tear-stained and mascara-soaked face and looked down at his notepad.
‘Can you tell us what happened, Kelly?’ he asked, as gently as he could manage.
The girl stared down at her lap, her chest heaving as the occasional sob erupted from her.
‘I’ll tell you what happened.’ The mother leaned across the table, raised a finger.
Carrie found herself mesmerised by the perfectly manicured red nail that pointed at her.
‘She was dragged into a house, off the street, pulled upstairs and assaulted!’ With each syllable of the last word Victoria Prout thumped the table.
She sat up straight, resisted the urge to look at Paul. Dragged off the street?
‘All right, we’re going to take some details from you, Kelly,’ Paul said pointedly at the young girl. He flicked a look at Victoria. ‘Is that okay with you, if we talk to your daughter, if we take a statement from her?’
Victoria Prout barked out a laugh. ‘Why the hell would we be here if she wasn’t going to give a statement?’ She threw a disbelieving look at Carrie, hoping to get her onside against him, no doubt. Carrie bristled.
‘Mrs Prout, do you want to get a coffee, maybe, and we’ll chat to Kelly.’ Carrie made to stand.
Victoria Prout glared. ‘I’m not leaving my girl.’
‘Okay, but we will need Kelly to tell us what happened. Sometimes it can be easier for the person giving the statement if their loved ones are not in the room.’ Carrie nodded at Kelly with a smile. ‘Right, Kelly?’
Kelly shrugged. Victoria folded her arms. Paul sighed and tried to cover it with a cough.
‘All right, I’m going to record this, Kelly, okay?’
The girl didn’t acknowledge him.
Paul flicked on the tape.
‘I don’t want to do this!’ Kelly shrieked suddenly, pushed against the table as she stood up. A crash as her chair toppled to the floor.
‘Kelly!’ At Mrs Prout’s yell, Kelly froze.
Paul watched, disturbed, as Kelly crumpled momentarily before rising up to her full height.
‘I won’t say it again,’ she hissed. ‘I won’t go through it again.’ She swiped at her face, mascara smudging across her cheeks. ‘You can’t make me, I know my rights.’ She moved over to stand by the door, pressed her back against it. ‘I can’t even remember where it was, I’ll never be able to find the house again, anyway.’
With that, she fumbled behind her: against the shouts of her mother and Paul’s pleas she found the door knob, opened it, slipped through and was gone. The only sound her heels smacking against the floor as she fled down the hall.
Carrie caught up with Kelly outside. The girl fumbled around in her bag, casting hasty glances behind her. Carrie approached quietly and as casually as she could muster. Inside the reception she saw Paul, talking with Mrs Prout. She stared hard at Paul, hoping he would keep the mother inside. He nodded, once, and she smiled. Their working relationship was among the best she’d had. The best relationships – work or personal – were always great when no words were needed.
‘Kelly,’ she said now as she reached the girl.
The girl jumped, shoved the packet of cigarettes back in her handbag. Carrie’s eyes widened.
‘How old are you, Kelly?’ she asked.
The girl raised her chin defiantly. ‘Twelve in a few weeks.’
Carrie let the cigarettes go. Underage smoking wasn’t the point here. An alleged abduction was far more important. But before she could think how to phrase her question, Kelly spoke again.
‘I don’t remember the house, the road, the man. I don’t remember anything.’
Something shifted inside Carrie. For a moment she felt lightheaded. Her body and mind separated; suddenly she was eight years old again. Seeing a bench a few yards away she stumbled over to it and sat down. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Kelly drifting over to her. Carrie’s own childish voice echoed in her mind.
I don’t remember. I can’t remember. It’s all a blank.
The faces of those tasked with interviewing her. Their pinched faces, their eyes thin as they glared at her. Their barely concealed frustration at her inability to tell them what had happened.
‘You okay?’ the young girl asked gruffly.
‘Yeah, sorry.’ Carrie cleared her throat, embarrassed.
‘It was in Eccles, the house,’ Kelly blurted suddenly.
Carrie looked up at her, trying to ignore the headache which sent zig-zagging lights across her vision.
‘Probably near Milton Street, I remember walking past the sign for Milton Street when we left.’
Carrie squeezed the sides of her face, trying to keep up, trying to focus. ‘When “we” left?’ she asked. ‘You were with friends?’
Kelly’s mouth closed, the shutters came down over her eyes. ‘I don’t remember anything else,’ she said firmly. Kelly’s hard stare went to the door of the police station. ‘There’s my mum,’ she said.
‘Wait,’ called Carrie, but Kelly had gone.
7
Melanie heard the front door close and she walked over to the window. Her mum and dad were making their way across the icy pavement to Alice’s car. Alice steered her father to the passenger side and helped him in the car. Melanie’s breath caught in her throat as she stared at her dad. He seemed a hundred years old and it hurt.
You did this.
The voice in her head that she’d been denying was suddenly impossible to ignore. It was true, she knew it. Melanie had turned her father into this shrivelled, sad husk of a man. A man so unhappy that her mum was now taking him to see the doctor.
That day, the day of the visit to the house of horrors, Melanie had spoken to him nastily, in a way she never had before. She had sneered at him, jeered at him, told him he was doing women’s work, mocked him for washing up by hand and not using the dishwasher. Perhaps what had happened in the house was her punishment for speaking to her dad in that way. Perhaps she deserved the fear she had felt, the horror that stayed with her, sitting in the pit of her belly every single day. Since Harry had found out, he’d barely spoken to her, nor to her mum. Despite what Alice said, that she wasn’t in trouble, Melanie knew her dad was angry with her. She had let him down.
She covered her mouth with her hand and ducked behind the curtain as he glanced up from the car. From behind the drapes she watched his pale face, his dark eyes, his sad, sad mouth.
You did this.
Unable to watch anymore, Melanie ran to her bed and threw herself down. Putting her face in her pillow she cried as if her heart would break.
For the rest of the week Alice watched Harry like a hawk, not going to work, not even calling them, but chickening out and sending an email to the partners instead. The surveillance of her husband was more exhausting than spending a full day at the office.
Doctor Patel had been brisk but kind, his tone and manner suggesting that he saw this a hundred times a week. Clinical depression, he had announced, very common. It should have b
een comforting to know they were not alone. But Alice took no solace in that fact.
The doctor explained it away as a chemical imbalance, but Alice was never convinced by that. What if she, Alice, were to suffer from this ‘chemical imbalance’? She would have to push it to one side and get on with things, she wouldn’t have time to waste with appointments, time off work and medication. But even as she checked herself with the reminder that this wasn’t how depression worked, she still felt a needle of annoyance.
The doctor had prescribed Fluoxetine, and Alice had made Harry take the first pill as soon as they got home. Now, it was a waiting game.
When Alice woke on the sixth day the house was silent. Eerily quiet, like a house of the dead. She glanced at the clock and her heart rate sped up. Ten a.m.! Throwing back the quilt, she ran downstairs to find the kitchen empty.
Where was everyone? She peered outside, noting that she didn’t have to draw the curtains. They were already open. As she looked out into the street, she saw the rows of cars and instantly she was calmed. It was Saturday. She wasn’t late for work. And then she remembered; she hadn’t been there all week anyway.
Harry had probably taken Melanie out for breakfast. She hoped so, hoped that Melanie wasn’t out with those girls she’d been hanging around with lately. They were trouble, a fact proven by last week’s events. She shivered, thinking again of what could have happened. The long discussion with Harry about not calling the police for fear it would be Melanie who got into trouble, and not the guy who had grabbed her friend.
But what of that man? What if he hadn’t just been a disgruntled home owner? What if he really was a… a paedophile?
She shuddered. Knotting the belt of her dressing gown around her she moved into the kitchen. The coffee was on, freshly brewed, a clean mug waiting beside it.
Harry.
It was something he’d always done in the early days on a weekend when Melanie was tiny. Saturday lie-ins were a luxury after being up before dawn five days in a row. Harry would get up when Melanie woke, and it was too early for Alice to have coffee in bed. Instead Harry would set up the machine in the kitchen, leave a mug on the side for Alice and take Melanie out. The aroma of the freshly ground beans would rouse Alice eventually and she would make her way downstairs, grateful that she could dive straight in to her morning caffeine fix.
Now, as she poured, it seemed unfamiliar, so long it had been since he’d done this tiny thing for her. Like the once-nightly conversations they’d had about their retirement plan, it was yet another activity that had fallen by the wayside. And as Alice sipped the strong, black brew she resolved there and then to try and get things back to how they’d once been.
Maybe, she thought, they could have a holiday. The three of them, somewhere hot while it was still cold here. And for the first time in a long time Alice felt hopeful.
8
Melanie left the house on her own for the first time since the terrifying trip to Eccles.
She took a tram this time, and she didn’t tell Tanisha or Kelly where she was going. She didn’t tell either of her parents. Alice was too busy, having stayed at home all week; her work stuff spread out over the dining room table, huffing and puffing and occasionally swearing over how far behind she’d got. Her mum had still been in bed when Melanie left the house. Her dad had also gone out and for that Melanie was relieved. Hopefully it meant he was feeling happier.
And now here she was, on the corner of the road where the house was which had scared her more than anything ever had before.
The third house down, wedged between two better-looking homes. For a while, as she loitered, Melanie looked at the houses on either side. Who lived here? Did they know what went on in their neighbour’s home? Did they care? Or, another awful thought – did they join in?
It was something she hadn’t considered before, and Melanie pulled her phone out of her pocket and stabbed at Kelly’s number.
‘Melanie?’ Kelly answered, and her voice was nothing like it usually was. She sounded fearful, just the way she had when they left the house that Melanie now stood in front of.
‘Kelly, how many men were in that house?’ Melanie demanded.
‘What?’ Kelly’s voice was a whine. ‘Why?’
‘I just want to know.’ Across the road, on a little green area, three children played without a chaperone. Melanie felt suddenly furious. These kids were tiny; what if they were lured into the house of horrors? ‘What did he do to you?’ Her voice faded to a whisper before she found her strength again in her tone. You tell me now, Kelly Prout, or I’ll—’
‘You’ll what?’ Kelly’s tone was back to normal, sneering and hard as nails.
‘I’ll tell the police everything.’ Melanie felt the heat of rage in her face. ‘I’ll tell them you lied, that you were not snatched off the street, that you broke into the—’
‘All right, shut up,’ Kelly hissed. ‘I don’t know how many men were in there, it was too dark, I didn’t see any-fucking-thing.’
Melanie swallowed as the curtains in the front window swished. She turned her back on the house, as though that man, that creature, was watching, lip-reading.
‘What did he do to you, before I came up the stairs?’ she whispered.
Silence.
Melanie looked at her phone. Kelly had hung up.
The curtain moved again. Melanie closed her eyes and rubbed her balled fists hard against them.
A naked leg.
The filthy material of a shirt.
A terrifying face.
She backed away. Before she reached the corner, she was running hard for home.
Alice had just showered and dressed and was on her second coffee when the doorbell rang. Thinking Harry and Melanie hadn’t taken their keys she hurried to open it, eager to try out her vacation proposal on Harry.
When she opened the door, she didn’t even recognise the woman on her step.
‘Alice, Melanie’s mum, right?’
The voice however, she identified that in an instant. Victoria Prout, Kelly’s mother. The two women had never met; Harry was the one who had stood all those years at the school gates, and he’d regaled Alice with funny descriptions and impersonations of the other mothers. She recalled his ‘Prout pout’ as he’d called it, and stifled a smile.
‘Hi, yes, I’m Melanie’s mum.’ Alice shook Victoria’s hand. ‘Victoria, isn’t it? Is everything okay?’
‘Not really.’ Victoria narrowed her eyes.
Like mother, like daughter, thought Alice now, as she stepped backend gestured for Victoria to come in. Hard, brittle and mean.
‘Kelly’s in a right state with this abduction stuff. What did the police say to you?’
Alice’s heart began to pound as she closed the door. Abduction? ‘I haven’t heard from the police, I assumed… I mean, I don’t think I’ll hear from them now.’ Alice swallowed; it sounded loud in the room. ‘What did they say to you?’
‘The police are shit,’ replied Victoria loudly. ‘Kelly refuses to say where this happened and they don’t seem to think it’s important to find out. What did they say to you when you reported it? Did they not even take a statement?’
Alice ignored the last part of Victoria’s question. ‘Maybe it didn’t happen quite the way Kelly thought,’ she said, cautiously.
Victoria tilted her head to once side. Hand on hip, she glared at Alice. ‘Are you saying my Kelly is a liar?’
At Victoria’s tone Alice straightened her spine. ‘Oh, God no,’ she laughed, trying to lighten the atmosphere. ‘It’s just when I spoke to Melanie she didn’t know what had happened, and Kelly didn’t tell her.’ When Victoria said nothing, just continued staring Alice shrugged. ‘So, I’m not so sure how I could help, you or the police.’
Victoria shook her head very slowly and then, she broke out into a laugh. It wasn’t humorous, it was like her smile; blunted, cold.
‘You didn’t report it, did you?’ she asked, disbelief heavy in her tone. ‘Does it not
keep you up at night, thinking what could have happened to them in there?’
No! What keeps me up at night is worrying about my husband and his breakdown, and the work I’m missing trying to get him better, and the way I keep fucking up in my job.
‘It doesn’t matter, like I said, the police are shit.’ Victoria’s eyes grew smaller and smaller as she chose her next words. ‘Some of the other parents are going to the house.’ A tiny smile before she carried on. ‘Are you in?’
‘I thought you didn’t know what house it was.’ It was all Alice could think of to say.
‘We don’t, yet.’ That cold smirk again. ‘But we will. Kelly will give up any information to get her iPhone back.’
Oh Jesus. Alice rested against the windowsill and passed a hand across her eyes. ‘Victoria,’ she said. ‘I… my husband has been ill, I can’t have him—’
‘But Melanie was there, this man dragged her into his house, don’t you care?’
‘Jesus, Victoria, nobody was dragged into that fucking house, they broke in. Or, more to the point, your daughter masterminded the whole bloody thing. We’re lucky the police are not busting down our doors to give a warning to our kids!’
Underneath her full make-up Victoria paled. Alice groaned inwardly, regretting her outburst. That wasn’t the way you dealt with people like Victoria Prout.
‘You don’t know what you’re talking about, is that what your precious daughter told you to save her own skin?’ Victoria moved to the door and wrenched it open. ‘I can tell you have more important things on your mind than your kid’s own welfare. If you change your mind, you know where to find me.’
An hour later, the shrill ring of her phone startled Alice. She bolted upright, snatched it up and answered the call, noting even as she did so it was from a number she didn’t recognise.
‘Hello?’
‘Alice, its Victoria Prout.’
Alice closed her eyes. How did Victoria get her number? She exhaled a breath of fury. Harry. How many times had she asked him not to give her number out to the parents at the school gate? ‘Victoria, hello.’