by Tania Carver
Shit, thought Phil. That was probably the worst thing that could have happened. He had to think quickly, find a way to turn the situation round, make it work for him.
‘He’ll think you did this to him, Sophie,’ he said, hoping his words worked, ‘whether you tell me or not. If that picture goes out and we get a tip and go after him, he’ll think it’s because you gave him up.’ He sat back. ‘D’you want that?’
No response.
‘So tell me.’
Nothing.
He leaned back in to her, his voice low and confiding, like a priest about to take a confession. ‘Look, we’re going to get him. One way or the other. So you may as well tell me all about it.’
He waited. Eventually she looked up, those mad eyes catching his once more. And that same twisted smile returned. ‘I’ll tell you. Everything.’
Phil tried not to breathe a sigh of relief. ‘Good.’
‘But it’s a long story. You have to listen to it. You have to understand. I can’t tell you if you don’t understand.’
Phil breathed deeply. And again. He wanted to leap across the table, grab her by the throat, scream at her to give him up, tell him where he was and what he was doing. Slap her, punch her, whatever it took. But he didn’t. Instead he just said, ‘I’m listening, Sophie. I’ll understand.’
He looked at the grainy photo and hoped that, whatever he was doing, wherever he was, they would still be in time to stop him.
Marina opened her front door.
She walked into the cottage, her head down as she removed the key from the lock. She was tired, aching and wanted a bath. She needed to relax, along with a bit of privacy, give herself time to think about what to do next.
She stopped moving.
The cottage was wrecked. Furniture tipped over, books pulled off the walls, ornaments and crockery smashed on the floor. The polite, tasteful, carefully ordered life she had built up with her partner was gone. The breath went out of her as she surveyed the damage, her hand going automatically to her mouth. Then she saw the centrepiece of the display. And her whole body began to shake.
Tony was lying in the middle of the room, on his back, his body twisted. At first she didn’t recognise him because his face was covered in blood. She identified him by his clothes. She crossed to him, knelt down beside him. Blood was pooling around his head. There were injuries to his forehead and the side of his head. She touched them. His skull was soft, yielding, like an empty, cracked eggshell, only held together by an inner membrane.
She pulled her hand away quickly, feeling revulsion at the touch, and let out a whimper.
Behind her, the front door slammed.
She turned quickly, jumping as she did so. A figure in an old overcoat was blocking her exit. In one of the intruder’s hands was a hammer, blood still dripping from it. In the other, a hypodermic needle.
Marina knew instinctively who it was.
She tried to get to her feet but couldn’t do it fast enough; her maternal instinct to protect the baby meant no sudden movements. Then her assailant was on her. She opened her mouth to scream, but they were too quick for her. They dropped the hammer, clamped a meaty hand over her mouth. It was rough and callused, yet slick and wet with Tony’s blood. It was held firmly on her mouth. No sound would pass.
She struggled, tried to grab on to her attacker, punch, kick. No good. They were bigger, stronger than her. She was held firm, pulled right into the overcoat. She breathed through her mouth. The overcoat stank.
She was twisted round, but the intruder still held her tight. Marina saw the needle coming towards her, tried to fight even harder. She barely felt it break the skin as it entered her neck.
She didn’t feel her eyes close or her body go limp.
She was unaware that her attacker held her until she was completely unconscious, then, careful not to put too much pressure on her stomach, dragged her out of the house.
71
‘ You know what they used to say about those villages, the ones that are miles away from anywhere?’ said Sophie.
‘I’ve heard lots of stories about them,’ said Phil. ‘Which ones do you mean?’
She gave her twisted smile once more, the overhead light glinting off her mad eyes. ‘That you never knew whose baby is whose.’ She laughed, then her face became more serious. ‘Do you know what I mean?’
‘Ah,’ said Phil. ‘Those ones.’ Growing up in the area, he had heard all the stories about the isolated coastal and rural communities. And knew from experience that most of them were true, at least at one time.
‘If a baby died in a family, then one would go missing from another family to replace it.’
‘That kind of thing, yeah.’
She nodded. ‘And nobody would ever say anything.’
‘No,’ said Phil. ‘Because then they would have to admit where the first baby came from.’
Sophie laughed. ‘You’ve heard them as well.’
‘But those villages aren’t that isolated now, are they?’ said Phil.
Sophie stopped laughing. She looked almost regretful.
‘Main roads and all that.’ But they were still bleak, he thought. Windswept and inhospitable.
Sophie sighed.
‘So where are we talking about?’ said Phil, probing for her home town. He mentally scanned a map of the Essex coast. ‘Was it coastal? Jaywick? Walton? Not Frinton?’
She didn’t respond.
‘What about on a river? Bradfield? Wrabness?’
A flicker of something behind her eyes. He hoped there was someone watching on a monitor to catch it.
‘So come on,’ he said, trying to hurry her up. ‘You’re telling me a story. About your family. I’m here, I’m listening.’
Sophie put her head back, her eyes upwards, as if receiving a signal or instructions from some unseen source. ‘There were four of us…’ she began. ‘Me, my brother, my father…’ She paused, her eyes changing, an unreadable expression on her face. ‘And my mother…’
She stopped talking again, lost in her reverie.
‘What about your mother?’ Phil prompted her.
Sophie’s head snapped forward, her eyes on Phil once more. ‘She died.’
‘She died.’
‘Or… disappeared. I don’t know which. Something like that.’
‘So then it was just the three of you.’
She screwed up her eyes, her forehead, as though she was thinking hard. ‘I remember… other kids. Or at least I think I remember other kids. I don’t know.’ She shook her head as if to dislodge the memory. Like it was an awkward shape that didn’t fit in properly. ‘Anyway, there were the three of us left. Me, my brother and my dad.’
‘And this was when you were Gail?’
She looked confused for a moment, then smiled. ‘I was never Gail. Not till I came here, to Colchester. I was always Sophie. Or Sophia.’
‘Sophia.’
‘My mother loved film stars.’
‘Sophia Loren,’ said Phil.
Sophie nodded. ‘Right.’
‘And your brother?’
‘Heston. After-’
‘Charlton Heston.’
Another nod. Then her face darkened. ‘Yeah…’
‘Go on then, Sophie,’ said Phil, trying to get her back on track. ‘You were telling me about your mother. She died? Or disappeared?’
‘Yeah…’
Phil waited. Nothing. She needed another prompt. ‘And then what happened?’
‘It was just the three of us. And that’s how it always was from then on.’
‘And were you… happy?’
Another darkening of her eyes as more memories swam through her mind. ‘My father…’ Her forehead creased up. ‘My father… he had… needs…’
Oh God, thought Phil, here we go. He had been expecting this. The damage that came first, that led to the madness. He dropped his voice still further, asked a question he knew the answer to. ‘What kind of needs?’
‘Man’s needs.’
She nodded. ‘Yes.’ Her voice seemed to have shrunk, regressed. Smaller, more childlike. ‘I had to take care of them.’
‘And how old were you then? When he started?’
She shrugged. ‘When Mother died. Disappeared. From then on.’
‘Remember how old you were?’
She shook her head. ‘Little,’ she said, in a voice matching the word.
Phil swallowed hard, kept going. ‘Just you? Not your brother?’
Another furrowing of her eyebrows, another darkening of memory. ‘No. Just me.’
She fell silent. Phil waited, wondering whether to interject, hurry her along. Then she began speaking again.
‘He did try, though.’
‘Who? Your father?’
‘No… my brother. He tried. Tried to stop my father. From… doing stuff to me.’
‘And did he succeed?’
She looked at him as if she couldn’t believe he had actually asked that question. ‘Course not. He was just a kid. Our father smacked him about if he did that, played up. Really smacked him about.’
‘He hurt him?’
She nodded.
‘Bad?’
She sighed. ‘He was always on at him. Heston wasn’t good enough. Heston was useless. Worthless, no good. Heston couldn’t even do what Sophia did for him, he was that useless. Then he would beat him. Hit him. Whip him. Anything he could.’
‘And did he ever hurt you? I mean apart from…’
She shook her head. ‘No. Never. I could do no wrong. Not like Heston. He could do no right.’ She fell silent again. Then gave a small, unexpected laugh. ‘You know what? What was funny? Heston got really jealous.’
‘Because… you were getting the attention?’
Sophie nodded. ‘He hated what our father was doing to me. He was always shouting, what’s wrong with me? Why won’t he do it to me? Because he was jealous that our father was doing it to me instead of him. Because that was love. What my father was doing to me was showing love, he said. And Heston hated not having that.’
Phil was silent. He couldn’t think of anything to say in response.
‘So,’ he said eventually, ‘how long did this go on for?’
Sophie shrugged. ‘Dunno. Well, yeah. I do.’ Her hands on the table began to tremble. ‘I…’ Her head went down, her hair flopping forward, making her features unreadable.
Phil waited. Sophie had reached the stage, he thought, that often happened in interviews like this. No matter what they had done or what had been done to them, they wanted to unburden themselves. Speak it out into the open. Remove the weight from themselves. Not caring about transference, that the person listening would then be carrying that weight.
But not this time. All Phil could think about was what she had done to Clayton.
She continued talking. ‘He…’
Phil’s voice dropped even further, barely above a whisper. ‘He made you pregnant.’
She nodded, head still down. Her hair swayed backwards and forwards as she did so.
‘And…’ Phil’s voice careful, compassionate. ‘And did you… have the baby?’
She shook her head. ‘I… it died. In me. I wasn’t… wasn’t strong enough, he said…’
Phil felt rage and confusion rising within him. Sophie had done some awful things, he thought, but they didn’t happen in a vacuum. Someone had formed her, made her capable of doing them. And that man was a monster. Phil stamped on his emotions. He couldn’t allow himself to feel sympathy for her, no matter what had been done to her. In fact, he could-n’t feel anything for her while he was questioning her. So he kept his professional mask in place.
‘You lost the baby.’
She nodded.
‘And then what?’
‘I’d had enough. I got some pills. Tried to take them…’ Her shoulders began to shake; her breathing became erratic as her words were intermingled with sobbing. ‘Heston found me. Put his fingers down my throat. Stopped me. Saved me, I suppose. Then we talked.’ She looked up, her face streaked with tears, her eyes red-rimmed. ‘And I knew I had to get away. ’Cause I mean, what’s the worst that could happen to me? Nothing. It had already happened. So I… I felt strong after that. Like, like I was reborn. I told Heston, I told him I had to get away. And he said he’d help me.’
‘Why didn’t he go with you?’
‘Because… because someone had to stay behind. Look after our father.’ She spoke the words with a simple clarity.
‘Okay,’ said Phil. ‘So you ran away. And Heston stayed.’ Sophie nodded. ‘What happened to him? When your father found out you’d gone?’
A bitter laugh. ‘He went mad. Really mad. He wanted to get at me but he couldn’t. He tried to find out where I’d gone, but Heston couldn’t tell him, ’cause he didn’t know. Didn’t stop him trying, though. Beat the shit out of him.’ She gave a childlike giggle, as if the memory was too horrific to contemplate and the only response was to laugh. ‘Nearly killed him, he did.’ She sighed. ‘But Heston recovered.’
‘And he’s still there now?’
‘Heston?’
Phil nodded. ‘Yes.’
‘Sort of…’
‘What d’you mean?’
She looked over his shoulder, not answering. Phil decided to let that one go for now, continue questioning her.
‘And you came to Colchester. And you started-’
‘You know about me.’ The words clipped, snapped. ‘You know what happened to me from then on.’
‘What about your brother? What happened to him?’
She put her head back, thinking again. ‘Things changed. The village changed. Like you said, we weren’t so cut off. People from town started to move in. New houses got built. New estates. Luxury executive homes.’The words curled out of her mouth like soil-covered worms.
‘I bet your father hated that,’ said Phil.
Another bitter laugh. ‘Yeah. People talking to him, wanting to be friendly… He hated it. He hated attention. And he couldn’t find anyone to… provide for his man’s needs.’
‘So what did he do?’
‘Made Heston do it.’ The words as matter-of-fact as possible. ‘But not like he was. ’Cause he wasn’t queer, my dad.’ Another laugh. ‘Oh no. Whatever he was, he wasn’t queer.’
Phil felt a sense of dread building with each word he heard. He had a feeling he knew where this confession was going. ‘So…’ He was almost frightened to ask the next question. ‘What did he do?’
‘Dressed him up.’
Phil nodded. That was what he had been expecting. He looked at Sophie’s face, sensed there was something more. ‘What else?’
‘Did what he wanted, made him…’
‘Into you?’
Sophie’s eyes were downcast. She nodded. Phil felt a small sense of victory amongst the unease about what she was saying. That look, that movement meant there was still something in her, some basic shared humanity underneath all the damage, the madness. He had to work on that, bring it out.
‘So Heston took your place.’
Another nod. ‘But our father wasn’t happy.’
‘Because he wasn’t queer.’
She nodded again. ‘He went along with it at the time. But afterwards…’ She shivered, as if recounting it from personal experience.
‘Afterwards, what? What happened afterwards, Sophie?’
‘He hated himself,’ she said, bitterness dripping from her words. ‘He hated himself and he hated Heston. For what they were both doing. He used to beat him. Whip him again.’
Phil suppressed a shudder. ‘And Heston took all this?’
Another nod. ‘He was scared. He didn’t have any option.’ She looked round then, as if coming out of a trance, seeing the room for the first time. ‘I want a drink. I want to stop. I want a drink.’
‘Not long now, Sophie. Let’s keep going. Just a little while longer.’
No. I want a drink. I want
to stop.’
Phil couldn’t stop, he had to go on. He wanted to go on. He was making a breakthrough, just about to reach her. He couldn’t stop now. She had to keep going. Had to…
He looked at her. All vestiges of her earlier self were now long gone. No sexuality, no allure. Just a damaged woman with a damaged mind. She had clammed up and wouldn’t start again until she was ready. He sighed, checked his watch. Leaned over to the tape.
‘Interview suspended at…’
72
Hester’s husband had returned. She had felt his presence but hadn’t heard his voice. She had tried talking to him but got nothing in return. So she had given up. And then, just as suddenly as he had appeared, he had gone again, leaving her alone. With the baby.
She felt anxious, uncomfortable. Unable to concentrate on anything. Her heart was pounding, her mind spooling through all the possibilities of what might happen. They could storm into her home, take the baby away from her. She looked down at it, sleeping again after her husband’s departure. She was still trying to feel something for it, something positive and nurturing, but it wasn’t happening. Maybe they should take the baby. Leave her in peace. In peace with her husband.
She closed her eyes, tried to call him. Nothing. No response. She called again, louder this time. Nothing. The baby stirred as she did so. She ignored it, waited, listening.
Still nothing.
A shudder ran through her. Maybe he had gone, her husband. Maybe he wasn’t coming back; maybe he had left her.
Her head was spinning, her mind reeling.
No. He couldn’t do that. Couldn’t leave her alone once more. Like it used to be. Like the old days. She tried not to think about those days, it just made her sad. Made her cry, if she thought about them too much. But she couldn’t help it.
She tried to block them out, but those times, years ago, when she was alone and afraid, scared and crying all the time, came into her mind. Before her husband turned up to love her, before they became one. There was an unpleasant emotion rising inside her, one that was mixed with loneliness and fear from the old days, one that she had dragged with her all her life. Her most hated feeling: fear of being alone. Of being unloved.
And now her husband was unreachable. And they were closing in on her.