by B A Paris
There’s only one way to find out. I stretch up, push the trap door open with one hand, release the ladder that’s there and pull it down. I go up the first couple of rungs, testing it for my weight, then carry on up and into the loft. The roof is too low for me to stand upright so I stay hunched over, looking for the light switch. I flick it on and a dull gleam fills the attic.
I look around. Nothing seems out of place and there aren’t any signs of someone having lived up here, no mattress, no personal belongings, no remnants of food lying around. I walk over to the carefully labelled boxes stacked against the far wall and, using my mobile to throw a little more light over them, I check that none have been displaced. Everything seems in order; they don’t look as if they’ve been disturbed in all the years they’ve been up here. I turn to the wall on the right where a couple of chairs, an old writing desk and a chest of drawers are propped. I go over and take a closer look. They’re covered in a thick layer of dust, reminding me of the cottage in St Mary’s. In the writing desk I find a couple of old pens, and in one of the drawers, some old coins. But the others are empty.
I cross the attic to the left-hand wall. There’s a large wooden chest, about five feet by three, with a pile of blankets neatly stacked on top. Nothing out of place there either. I take a last look around, glad that my fears about Layla hiding up here are unfounded. I’m just about to go back to the trapdoor when I find myself taking another look at the wooden chest. Nothing out of place – yet there’s something about it that doesn’t seem quite right. It’s the dust, I realise. Or rather, the lack of it. I reach out and run my finger along the edge of the lid; it comes away clean.
I bring my hand down hard on the top blanket, expecting dust to fly everywhere but there is very little. Which means they were protected by something until very recently. My heart quickens. Had they been in the chest and were taken out to make room for something else?
Something else. Unease prickles my spine and I find myself taking a step back, away from the chest. My heartbeat slows to a dull thud, a response to the horror that is spreading through my body. I try to close off my mind, to not go where it wants to take me, but everything – the countdown, Layla’s last message telling me that I should have chosen her, the little Russian doll placed directly under the trapdoor as a kind of clue – all seem to point to one thing. It isn’t possible, I mutter to myself, it isn’t possible, Layla wouldn’t harm Ellen. But hadn’t she told me to get rid of Ellen, hadn’t she given me ten days? Had she ended up doing what I couldn’t?
I can barely breathe. I need to call the police, now, before it’s too late. But it is too late. If Layla has done what I think she’s done, it’s already too late. Unless she hasn’t – I can hardly bear to think the word – killed Ellen, only hidden her.
I drop to my knees in front of the chest. I don’t want to open it but I know that I have to. Please God, please God, don’t let Ellen be dead, please don’t let her be dead.
My hands are shaking as I move the blankets from the top of the chest and lay them on the floor. My breath judders in my throat, stopping air from reaching my lungs. I grip the edge of the lid, steadying myself. Then, dragging my courage from where it’s residing in the pit of my stomach, I throw the lid open and look inside.
My mind spins in disbelief, draining the blood from my face.
FIFTY-FIVE
Finn
I stare down at the dissected corpses of hundreds of Russian dolls, wondering if I’m hallucinating. I reach out and touch one. The feel of the painted wood against my hand tells me they’re real. But my mind won’t accept it. I was so sure that I’d find Ellen trussed up inside the chest, dead even, that I begin digging underneath the dolls, scooping them to one side of the chest, then to the other, believing that I’m going to find her. And then, when I finally accept that she isn’t there, I let out a howl of pure rage at being fooled by Layla yet again. I can’t believe that I’m no nearer to finding Ellen, or that I’m still part of Layla’s macabre game, that now I’m going to have to figure out why she’s left a chest full of Russian dolls for me to discover, and try to work out the message behind it.
A message. On my knees, I begin rifling through the wooden carcasses, hoping to find something, a doll still intact with a piece of paper hidden inside, maybe. But they’ve all been pulled apart and it suddenly dawns on me that I haven’t come across a single one of the tiniest dolls. What I have in front of me are their left-behind, unwanted relatives. Which means that unless Layla brought them all to the house with her earlier this evening, took them up to the attic and hid them in the chest – which is possible but not likely, because there are so many of them – the little Russian dolls that Ellen and I found outside the house, or received through the post, all originated here, in the attic.
Shock rocks me back onto the floor. I sit, my elbows on my knees, staring at the chest, while the truth ricochets through my brain – that Ellen is somehow involved in all this. Layla couldn’t have got the dolls into the attic without help from someone. She’s never been to the house so she wouldn’t have known the attic existed, or that the dolls could be hidden there. Only Ellen could have told her.
During all those weeks when Layla had been in contact with me, it had never occurred to me that she might also have been in contact with Ellen, sending her emails just as she’d been sending me emails. Manipulating Ellen just as she’d been manipulating me. When she’d been urging me to tell Ellen she was back, had she been urging Ellen to tell me the same thing? Had she been playing us off against each other? Had she arranged to meet Ellen somewhere, just as she had arranged to meet me? Is that where Ellen had gone those times she’d left a note on the table for me, the notes saying she had gone shopping? She never normally left notes, she always came and told me if she was going out, yet those two times she hadn’t. Was it because she didn’t want me to know she was going out in case I asked to go with her? Maybe she had only asked me to join her for lunch to give her notes a more genuine flavour, counting on the fact that I probably wouldn’t see the notes until it was too late, or not at all. And if I had, and had phoned her, she would have told me that she was already on her way home. Not only that, when she’d come back that time, I’d thought she was upset with me. But maybe the reason she was upset was because she’d gone to meet Layla and Layla hadn’t turned up, like she used to do with me.
I leave the attic, desperate to disprove every theory I’ve just come up with. But the absence of signs of a struggle in the bedroom or anywhere else in the house again suggests that Ellen left of her own accord, that Layla didn’t force her to leave. I check her office and find that not only is her computer switched off, it’s also unplugged. It’s useless to me anyway; even if I get it up and running again, I don’t know her email password. There must have been something incriminating on it – emails between her and Layla, perhaps – for her to have turned it off so completely. Or perhaps it’s a statement of intent, as in ‘I’m never going to use my computer again because I’m never coming back.’
What had happened here, just a few hours ago? Had Layla asked Ellen to choose between me and her, just as she had asked me to choose between Ellen and her, and had Ellen chosen Layla? I couldn’t blame her, not after what I’d done, not after I’d chosen Layla over her.
My mind ploughs on relentlessly, finding new theories to torment myself with. Maybe Ellen was part of it all along, maybe she’s always known Layla’s whereabouts. Maybe my whole relationship with her was a farce, payback for the hurt I caused Layla, even though Layla had hurt me first. Is that really what this is all about? Revenge? It’s hard to believe.
A wave of exhaustion hits me. I check my mobile and see that it’s midday. I try and work out how long I’ve been awake but my mind is so fuddled it takes me a while. I didn’t sleep all night, so nearly thirty hours. Suddenly, more than anything I want to sleep, because when I wake up I might find it’s all been some terrible nightmare. But first, Tony.
I psyche myself
up so that I’m not disappointed if I can’t get through to him, now that I’ve decided to tell him everything. But he answers almost at once.
‘I need your help, Tony.’
‘Fire away,’ he says. ‘But first, take a deep breath.’ And I realise how agitated I must sound. It’s nothing to how I sound when I begin speaking, though. Even to my ears the whole, unabridged story – the Russian dolls, the emails, my trips to St Mary’s and Ellen’s subsequent disappearance – sounds mad. I sound mad. When I eventually get to the end of my monologue, because Tony didn’t interrupt me once, there’s only silence, confirming what I thought, that I sound completely unhinged.
‘I’m coming down,’ he says, putting me out of my misery.
It’s as if a huge weight has been lifted from my shoulders. ‘Thanks, Tony, I really appreciate it.’
‘But I need you to do something for me.’
‘Of course.’
‘I want to check a few things this end first so I’ll be a few hours. Make yourself something to eat and get yourself to bed. You sound as if you’re at death’s door. Leave the key under the mat and I’ll let myself in.’
‘Thanks, Tony,’ I say again.
‘See you later.’
I feel as if I could never eat again so I go for a long, hot shower instead. After, I feel so hungry that I get through half a loaf of bread, making slice after slice of toast. Then I go upstairs to the bedroom, push the pile of Russian dolls off the bed and climb in. I’m asleep before my head has even touched the pillow.
When I next open my eyes, I think I’ve only slept for a few hours because it’s still light outside. Just as I’m wondering if Tony has arrived, I hear his voice coming from downstairs. I pull on some clothes and find Ruby and Harry sitting in the kitchen with him.
‘When did you get here?’ I ask, giving them both a hug, realising they’ve cut their holiday short.
‘A couple of hours ago. Tony let us in.’ Harry sees me trying to work it out. ‘I chartered a plane,’ he explains.
‘Even so,’ I say. ‘What time is it?’
‘Around seven, I guess.’ I look at him in bewilderment. ‘In the morning,’ he adds.
I can’t believe I slept the rest of yesterday afternoon and the night away. I look at the three of them, genuinely touched that they’ve rushed to be with me. ‘Thanks for coming, all of you.’
‘You might not be so grateful when you hear what we’ve got to say,’ Ruby says. My heart plummets and catching the look on my face, she hastens to reassure me. ‘No, nothing like that. All I mean is that the three of us have been discussing everything and seem to have come to the same conclusion.’
‘Give the man a chance to have a cup of coffee first,’ Harry protests.
I pull out a chair and sit down. ‘It’s OK, I’d rather know.’
Tony clears his throat. ‘Despite our best efforts, we haven’t found a single trace of Layla anywhere in Cheltenham. We’ve looked at the guest records from every single boarding house and hotel, we’ve shown both her old photo and a digital reconstruction of what she might look like now around in cafés and restaurants and have come up with nothing.’ He pauses. ‘And then there’s the chest full of wooden dolls you found in the attic – I went up to take a look, by the way.’
‘Yes, of course,’ I say, wondering what he’s getting at.
‘Logically, they can’t have got there without Ellen knowing about them,’ Ruby says. ‘I mean, how would Layla have got them past both of you?’
‘You think Ellen was helping Layla,’ I say dully. ‘Don’t worry, I’ve already thought of it.’ They exchange uneasy glances. ‘What?’ I ask.
‘We actually think it might be a bit simpler than that.’ This time it’s Harry.
‘What do you mean?’ I ask, wondering what they’re so reluctant to tell me.
‘That maybe Layla was never back. That maybe, there was only Ellen.’
FIFTY-SIX
Finn
I look around the table at them, thinking they’re having a joke. When I see that they’re deadly serious, I realise that Tony didn’t understand anything I told him. Irritated that I’m going to have to explain it all again, I cut to the best piece of evidence I have.
‘If you remember,’ I say, ‘Ellen saw Layla in Cheltenham.’
‘But you never actually saw her,’ Tony points out.
‘No, but Thomas did, outside the cottage at St Mary’s.’
‘Maybe it was Ellen he saw.’
I shake my head stubbornly. ‘Thomas wouldn’t have made that mistake.’
‘Ellen could just have pretended to see Layla in Cheltenham,’ Ruby says, almost apologetically.
I open my mouth, ready to protest, then close it again quickly. Ruby is right, it’s possible that Ellen only pretended to see Layla.
‘So how did the Russian doll get onto the car that day?’ I ask. ‘I dropped Ellen off at the hairdresser and she had only just finished having her hair done when I went back to pick her up.’
‘She could have nipped back after you left, pretended to the hairdresser that she’d forgotten to pay for the parking.’
I search my mind for something else. ‘Seriously, you expect me to believe that the emails I received, every single one of them, even the ones that told me to get rid of Ellen, came from Ellen herself?’
‘It’s possible,’ Harry says.
‘Don’t forget that she got a Russian doll in the post. She’d hardly have sent it to herself.’
‘Why not?’ Harry counters. ‘Surely it would be the sensible thing to do, to make it seem as if she was being targeted by Layla too.’
‘You’re mad,’ I tell them. ‘You’ve lost your minds. Of course Ellen isn’t behind this. And if what you say is true, how would she have got into the cottage? Only Layla and I had keys.’
‘Maybe Ellen found yours and had a copy made.’
‘Not possible – they were in a safe in the bank.’
‘Then maybe Layla had a copy made and sent them to Ellen before she disappeared.’
‘She would have asked me first.’ I look around the table at them. ‘Look, Ellen isn’t that kind of person. She’s not devious, or cruel. And she would have to be a bloody brilliant actress to pull it off.’ They still don’t seem convinced and because I trust their judgment, doubt begins to worm its way in. It would, after all, explain so much. It would explain how the dolls were left outside the house with such ease, without anybody seeing. The first doll that appeared, Ellen only needed to pretend that she found it on the wall for me to believe it, the second she could have put on the wall once I’d left to go to the village that morning. Ruby has already worked out how she could have got the third doll onto the car in Cheltenham. I continue onto the fourth, the one left in The Jackdaw. She could easily have slipped it on the plate before leaving for the toilet. The dolls that came in the post – she only had to walk down to the postbox in the village while I was in my office, a matter of ten minutes at the most. I wouldn’t have noticed that she was gone – hadn’t she reproached me for not noticing that she’d gone into Cheltenham those couple of times? And on the two Sundays, when there wasn’t any post, she had simply left dolls on the wall again, the first once I’d left to go to the village for bread, the second as we’d left together. She only had to lag behind me slightly and stretch out her arm. I wouldn’t have noticed a thing.
I continue rifling through my mind. What about the Russian doll I’d found on Pharos Hill, how had that one got there? Ellen had been at home when I’d left that morning. But I’d gone to the cottage in St Mary’s first, so she would have had time to get to Pharos Hill before I finally worked out that that was where I was meant to be. Had she been laughing when I’d hurried off for my secret meeting with Layla, knowing that I’d automatically assume she was referring to St Mary’s when she said that I had the address?
The odds that Ellen could be behind these nightmarish few weeks are stacking up against her. A wave of fury hits.
‘I’m going to check her computer,’ I say roughly. ‘See if the emails came from her.’
‘Do you know her email password?’ Ruby asks.
‘No, but I’m going to have a damn good try working it out.’ I get to my feet. ‘But if she’s as devious as she appears to have been, I doubt we’ll find anything.’
They follow me into Ellen’s study. I plug in her computer, sit down at her desk, start it up and log on using the Rudolph Hill address.
‘I can’t mess up the password or I’ll be locked out,’ I say, realising. ‘Any ideas?’
‘I don’t think she’d choose something abstract, I think it’s more likely to be something connected with everything,’ Ruby says.
‘Pharos Hill, maybe?’ Harry suggests. ‘Where you had the ceremony?’
‘Yes, but Pharos Hill what? A date?’
‘Try Pharos Hill and the date of the ceremony.’
‘OK.’ I type in PharosHill140413. It doesn’t work.
‘How about Pharos Hill and Ellen’s date of birth? Or Layla’s?’
‘We’re sticking with Pharos Hill, then.’
‘It’s probably our best bet,’ Harry says.
I type PharosHill in again. ‘Which date of birth?’
‘Layla’s,’ Ruby says. ‘It was her memorial.’