“You knew I was coming,” she says. “That’s why you’re here at the caravan park, to get away from me. You’ve already called the police, haven’t you?” She laughs. “I should’ve known.”
“If you go now,” I say, “you can get away without them finding you. You’re a clever girl; you’ll find a way to get out of the town without alerting suspicion. You could get abroad, even. You could live out the rest of your days in the sunshine, away from the rain and the short summers.” As I continue talking, my voice turns pleading. Then I remember how she taunted me about my belief in hope. She’s smiling now, as though I’ve proven her right again.
“You just don’t get it.” She retrieves a bag from the ground and starts walking as I help Tom move on his stiff legs. “You’ve never understood. What’s out there for me?” The knife pokes me a little harder, searching for a place to stab.
But it isn’t the knife that fills me with cold dread. It’s those words. What’s out there for me? It never occurred to me that I wanted Isabel to want to live. I want her to want to escape, because if she has the desire to escape and live away from me and Tom, we have a chance to survive the night. But Isabel doesn’t want to live or escape; she wants to go down in a blaze of glory.
This is a suicide mission.
I’ve always been the suicide mission. When Isabel escaped from Crowmont Hospital, I assumed it was all in order for her to go away and live a normal life somewhere. But what kind of normal life can a person with her desires have?
“You’re giving up,” I say.
The knife pokes in again, not hard enough to make me cry out this time.
“I wouldn’t call it that.”
“You never struck me as a quitter.”
Another cold glare. Another poke of the knife. “Don’t pretend to understand me. Half a dozen psychologists, therapists, and psychiatrists couldn’t.” She pushes me on in the dark, and my feet touch sand.
“I’m sure you’re not the only killer they’ve worked with. You’re not that special.”
“Shut up, Leah.”
“Why? Am I upsetting you?”
But she isn’t listening, she’s checking the beach. There could be dog walkers, couples on a romantic stroll, or joggers, but the unpredictable rainy weather seems to have cleared the beach for the night.
“This way,” she says.
I wrap an arm around Tom, guiding him through the dark, trying to smile at him to tell him everything is going to be all right. But he’ll know I don’t mean it. His eyes are those same little magpie eyes I saw back in the bungalow, cold and unemotional. What could he possibly be thinking right now?
But now isn’t the time for that. I turn my attention back to Isabel, not knowing whether talking to her is helping or not. Still, I have to try. Isabel may have teased me about the glimmer of hope I always cling to, but it’s better than despair.
“Why do you think you have nothing to live for? Surely, you don’t care enough about this world to want to die. You weren’t built to care, were you?”
“You’ve already answered your own question,” she replies. “And I don’t like repeating myself. In there.”
I feel as though my body is crumpling up from the inside, folding inward. Isabel has led us to a craggy cove surrounded by cliffs. I know this spot. There’s a cave built into the cliff that’s only accessible during the low tide. Come high tide, the sea floods into the cave, making it easy to drown. The place is extremely dangerous and covered in warning signs, which Isabel is about to ignore. It’s also isolated, far enough away from civilisation that our screams won’t be heard.
As we make our way into the cave, there’s a shuck-shuck sound coming from above. I crane my neck back to see the police helicopter beginning a sweep along the beach. Isabel spots the chopper at the same time and pushes Tom into the cave first, following up with me. As she pushes me, I fumble in my pocket for my phone, hoping I might be able to navigate through the settings to get to DCI Murphy’s number. My phone is on silent, as it usually is, and no doubt I have a number of missed calls by now. The police must have found our caravan empty and discovered that Isabel is staying here, probably under a fake name.
The pitch-black of the cave is interrupted when Isabel lights a match and lifts it to reveal her pale face in the darkness. She takes a candle from her bag, ignites it with the match and half-buries it in the sand.
“It appears that you’re quite popular.” She raises the knife and gestures for me to take Tom to the back of the cave.
“So, you did plan this after all.”
“I did,” she admits. “It just happened a little quicker than I anticipated. I should have known you’d suspect I was here as soon as the internet went nutty over your identity.”
“And there were the birds, too,” I remind her.
The corner of her lip twitches up as though she’s amused. “Oh, yes. The magpie.”
“You’re nothing if not predictable,” I say, helping Tom down to the ground.
“Unlike other people here. Oh, you can remove his gag now if you want.”
I carefully peel the gag away from Tom’s mouth, and he gulps in a big breath of sea air. “Fuck you, Isabel,” he spits.
Isabel ignores him and continues staring at me. “Poor kid. Knowing you is a hazard, isn’t it, Leah? First, your mother. Then the greasy blogger from that terrible website. Tom, of course, and…” She lifts her knife and smiles at it knowingly.
“And?”
She shrugs. “I suppose you’ll have to wait and see on that one.”
“What have you done?” I demand.
“Like I said, you’ll have to wait and see.”
“Is it Seb?”
“If I told you, I’d be spoiling the surprise, wouldn’t I?” she says.
“I hate you.” The realisation hits me like a punch to the stomach. This woman, this young woman, has made my life a living hell. “You should’ve died.”
“What, you mean when you pushed me off a cliff? I did scratch my arm on a rock on the way down,” she says. “I had quite a large scab. And a migraine that lasted days. But you know what? I’m the kind of bird you can’t kill.”
“You’re no bird,” I reply. “You’re a cockroach. A plain, uninteresting, run-of-the-mill cockroach that refuses to be squashed. The fact that you keep coming back isn’t because you’re special, it’s because you’re relentless.” That isn’t strictly true, but I’m hoping to get some sort of rise out of her. If I can distract her long enough to be able to dive at her, knock her off-guard, take the knife somehow…
Inside my pocket, I’ve tried going through the steps I believe will take me to calling DCI Murphy. Now I can only hope he’s on the other end of the line, listening to this conversation.
“I know this place,” I say in a clear voice. “The locals call this cave ‘Dead man’s Den’. And what’s the cove called?”
Isabel shrugs.
“Reverend’s Cove.” If they heard that by some miracle through my pocket, then maybe the police will find us. “You have to be careful, Isabel. The tide will make its way in here at some point. Have you checked the tidal table?”
She shrugs again. “You know, I don’t care.” Though her knife remains aloft, she manoeuvres her body in order to see out of the cave. “It’s not a bird’s death, drowning. But it has a noble quality about it. Perhaps my body will be lost to the sea.”
“You’ve gone through all of this just to give up? Breaking out of Crowmont? Chasing me? Why?” I ask.
“Because she knows she can’t keep getting away with it,” Tom replies. “She can’t even control herself enough to get out of the country for a while and wait until people have forgotten about her.”
“This isn’t a film, little boy. I couldn’t leave the country even if I wanted to,” Isabel says, her voice cold and cutting. She’s pissed off now, which might work in our favour. “I can’t buy a house or even rent a flat. I can’t get a job. Everyone knows my face. I change as much a
s I can, move differently, dress differently, but still I see the side glances of people when they suddenly think, Where do I know her from? And then I have to move, quick as a swallow in flight, to another town, another city, in a stolen car or on a bus, forever wondering when they’ll catch up with me. Tell me, is that any kind of life?”
“Do you expect us to feel sorry for you?” Tom’s voice is almost a growl. Sometimes I forget how much he has grown up since the last time we were with Isabel like this. “A washed-up, failed serial killer. Poor you, not being able to get a job or a house. Poor, poor you.”
“I don’t care about you.” When Isabel says this, I believe her. “I don’t care what you think. I won’t go back to that prison, and it’s clear I can’t live outside of it. That leaves me with one other option.” She sits down on a rock and rests the knife on her knee. “Perhaps I made a mistake by coming after you so soon after escaping from Crowmont. That was Daddy, getting me wound up, reminding me of everything I could be. His little killer. He was keen to go after you because of the way you turned up at our house. I think he felt the way I feel right now, the selfish bastard. He could have warned me he wanted to end it all. So I decided to go along with his plan because it was you, and you were always going to be my reward for escaping.” She stands up and takes a few steps towards me. I instinctively position myself between her and Tom. “You are such a blank canvas. I can’t wait to finish what I started.”
“Let Tom go,” I insist. “You don’t want him. He won’t go to the police, I promise.”
Isabel cocks her head. “Always the mother.”
Every muscle in my body tenses. I forgot what I told her that night on the moors.
“He doesn’t know, does he? Tell me, Leah, who was the father?”
Bile rises in my throat. I cough, almost vomiting onto the cave floor.
“What is she talking about?” Tom’s voice is as cold and hard as Isabel’s. I can’t look at him.
“Leah, tell your son who his father is.”
Finally, I lift my head to meet Isabel’s gaze. “I’m going to kill you.”
“Leah, just fucking tell me what’s going on.” Tom hits his bound hands against his knees.
Tears spring into my eyes as I take his hands in mine and hold them tight. “This isn’t how I wanted you to find out. We were both going to sit down when the time was right and talk it all through.”
“Just tell me.”
I can barely look at his face, which is stone-like and impassive. “I gave birth to you, Tom. I was very, very young, and I was afraid. Mum agreed to raise you as her own, and I promised to always be your big sister.”
“What the fuck.” He pulls his hands away from mine, and tears begin to roll down my cheeks. “Who is my father? Who is it?”
“Whatever happens, I’m still… I’m still Leah, okay? And you’re still the kind, sweet boy you were when we were growing up.”
“No, I’m not.” His voice is low, menacing. It sends ripples of panic through my body, like electric shocks. “Just tell me.”
“I don’t want to,” I whisper.
“Did someone… God, you could only have been…” I watch desperately as Tom begins to piece everything together. “Someone raped you.”
“Yes.”
“A boy at your school?”
I shake my head.
“A man? Someone I knew. Someone in our family?”
A nod is all I can muster.
His face is pale when he says, “It was Dad? He raped you, didn’t he? I’m a child of incest, aren’t I?”
Another nod. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, Tom.” An uncontrollable, racking sob shudders through me. When I reach for his hand, he shuffles away from me, his gaze fixed on the floor of the cave. “It doesn’t change anything.” But even I know that’s a lie.
“What a twist in the tale,” Isabel says with a mocking laugh.
“At least I won’t be dying a virgin, like you.” Beyond the agony I’m feeling, I still have enough rage to turn to her and see a little flicker of emotion travel across her face. What was that? Anger? Sadness? I smile at her, hoping it’s just as much of a twisted smile as the one she just gave me. Yes, I think, I can be a monster, too. Let’s see which monster wins, shall we?
Isabel grabs hold of my hair, pushes the knife under my chin, and drags me away from Tom.
It has begun.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
“I want to show you something,” Isabel says. She pushes me onto the rock and cuts a tiny slice of skin beneath my chin. Then she takes a step back and shoves her left hand under my nose. “See it?”
On her wedding finger is a slim gold band.
“I see it.”
“Do you know where I found it?” She taps the ring with the blade of her knife.
“Of course I do.”
“She pulled it off the corpse of my grandmother,” Tom says in a voice that almost sounds bored.
“Ten points to Tom!” Isabel crows. “Well done.”
“I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want you to be upset,” I say quietly.
He just shakes his head.
“It seems as though you’ve failed at being a mother,” Isabel points out with glee. “Just like you failed at being a nurse. And a daughter. Anything else you’ve failed at? Driving test? GCSEs?” She pulls back my hair, forcing my head back roughly, and draws the knife along my jawline. As the knife cuts into my skin, I scream at the top of my lungs, but she warns me, “That won’t help you now.”
It’s been months since my ordeal in the abandoned farmhouse, and yet the face I see before me is the same face that has haunted my dreams. The same smile, the same wide, open eyes, the same expression of pure joy. Isabel amidst blood and knives is like a child opening her Christmas presents.
“I… pity… you.” The blood dribbles down my neck to my collarbone.
“I know,” she says simply. “That’s always been a huge problem for you, hasn’t it? If you hadn’t pitied me to begin with, none of this would’ve happened.”
The knife travels down and begins to cut through my top. My heart is beating hard against my ribs, my head is in agony, but still I find enough strength to try to push her away. That knife moves as fast as a greyhound on a track, slashing at my palm.
“Bad Leah,” she chides, tutting like a schoolteacher. Backing away slowly, Isabel bends down and pulls a length of rope from her bag.
This does have me panicking, because as soon as I’m tied up, there’ll be nothing I can do. While Isabel is low to the ground, I take a chance. I dive straight for her, knocking her onto her backside.
“Tom, run!” I yell.
The force may have toppled her over, but she still hasn’t released the knife from her grasp, and as I lie on top of her, Isabel drives the knife beneath my ribs, pushing it deep into my flesh. This isn’t a minor wound; it’s a real stab, a blow meant to kill.
But I don’t care. I wrap my bloodied hands around her neck, squeezing hard, watching her eyes widen in surprise. She opens her mouth to speak, but only a spit bubble makes it out. Then the knife is out of my side, and her hands are pushing me back. She manages to raise the knife for another stab, this time in my upper arm, slicing down to the bone. The pain from the wound causes me to lose my grip on her throat, and she kicks me away from her with both feet.
“There’s my killer,” she says. “I knew you had it in you.”
“Tom?” I whip my head from left to right, trying to find him. In the chaos of the fight, I didn’t even notice Tom escaping the cave. Good. At least now he can get help.
Isabel sits panting on the ground in front of me, bloody marks on her neck from where I tried to strangle her. A throbbing pain is radiating from my ribs, and when I look down, I see blood gushing from a deep wound. I immediately press my fingers against the wound to stem the bleeding.
“I know you’re a killer, Leah. Have I been in your dreams since we last spoke? Do you still wake up and not know where y
ou’ve been or what you’ve done? Have you ever dreamt of blood and guts?”
I want her to stop talking. Her voice is making me remember, and God, I do not want to remember.
“I didn’t kill her, Leah. Cross my heart and hope to die. I didn’t kill her. Not Alison. It wasn’t me. I carved up Chloe and dumped her in the stream, but the first one wasn’t me.”
“You’re lying.”
“I’m not,” she says. “What do I have to gain by lying?”
“You’re trying to make me think I did it, because…”
“Because what? Why would you think you did it?” For once, she appears genuinely interested.
“Because I do dream about it. The violence. I dream about it, and I sometimes think I want…”
The blood on my hands. It was the night Alison was murdered.
“You want what?” she prompts.
“To hurt someone.”
“Me?”
“Yes.”
She smiles. “You already have hurt me. You’ve hit me, pushed me off a cliff, strangled me. You’re a little killer, Leah. Just like me.”
“Shut. Up.”
“Yes, you’re quite right. We don’t have time for this anymore, do we? Now, be a good girl and turn around.”
“I can’t move.”
For the first time, Isabel stares down at the wound under my ribs with utter dismay. “Now, why did you go and make me do that?” She moves across to me and places a hand over mine, the blood coating her fingers, thick, dark blood. “It ruins everything.” She sighs, almost tenderly. “Now I can’t torture you.”
Despite everything, I start to laugh deliriously. My head is light, and the pain is beginning to ebb away. It’s strange—the blood seems to have spread below me, too, onto the ground. But when I manage to move my head far enough to see the ground, I realise that it’s water.
“The tide’s beginning to come in,” I say.
Isabel nods. “So it is.” She manoeuvres herself to sit beside me. Then she rests her head against my shoulder. “You know that I care very little about you, or Tom, or the world in general, don’t you?”
Two For Joy (Isabel Fielding Book 2) Page 18