by C. L. Taylor
A photo of a toned bloke standing by a swimming pool flashes up and Liz raises an eyebrow at me. “Lush or not?”
“Well, yes, but—”
She swipes to the right. “How about this one?”
“Yes, but—”
“And this one?”
“Okay, okay.” I hold up a hand. “I get it. You think the younger blokes are fitter and maybe they are but you’re forty-three, Liz—what are you going to talk to an eighteen-year-old about?”
She smirks. “Who said anything about talking? Claire, I was with Lloyd for twenty-two years. I think I deserve a bit of fun.”
“You do, but I still think Twilight guy is too young.”
“For you, maybe.” She laughs at the expression on my face and reaches for the remote. “Right. On with the film.”
Liz weaves her way across the street and up the path to her house. She pauses to wave at me as she reaches her front door, then drops her key on the ground and swears loudly. It takes her four attempts to fit it into the lock. I glance at my watch as she closes the door behind her: 9:15 p.m. She fell asleep during the last fifteen minutes of the film, her wine glass still in her hand, her phone flashing on her lap each time she received a new Tinder notification. It took me forever to wake her up. Saying her name had no effect so I gently agitated her shoulder which made her murmur, “Leave me alone, I’m too tired to have sex.” My laughter woke her up.
I put our wine glasses in the dishwasher and the empty bottles in the recycling bin. Despite the amount of wine I’ve drunk I feel strangely clear-headed as I wipe down the kitchen surfaces and tidy up. When I’ve finished I go back into the living room. I haven’t heard from Mark for several hours and I need to check he’s okay.
My mobile’s not where I thought I left it on the side table by the sofa so I get on my hands and knees and look underneath, just in case I knocked it under when I was getting up and down to fetch more wine.
I scramble back onto my feet. There’s nothing under the sofa apart from a thick layer of dust and hair on the carpet and several of Kira’s bobby pins. And it’s not in my pocket either. Under one of the cushions, then?
The floorboards creak above me as Jake walks from his room to the bathroom. My fingernails fill with crumbs as I search down the side of the sofa but there’s still no sign of my phone. That means it’s either down the side of the armchair or it’s in my handbag in the kitchen. I head for the armchair and yank at the cushion.
A phone flips onto the base of the armchair. It’s an iPhone, but it’s not mine. It’s a newer model. I press the circular button at the base of the phone and the screen flashes to life revealing a preview of a new message. Even though the phone is locked I can still read every word of the short text:
I can keep a secret if you can.
Chapter 35
Where am I?
WHERE AM I?
It is dark. Pitch black. I can’t see anything.
“Jake!” I scream his name. “Mark!”
No one comes.
I shout again. “Someone please help!”
The sound reverberates around me.
“Hello?” The word catches in my throat. “Can anyone hear me?”
My hands shake as I lift them from my lap and tentatively extend my arms. I grope around in the darkness, swiping at the air. There’s nothing, nothing, and then the fingers of my left hand graze something cold and solid and I snatch my hands back to my chest. As I do something sharp pricks at my stomach. It’s in my lap! I swipe at it and jump away. My back smashes against a wall and my heels skitter on the ground.
There is a clattering sound, like metal hitting tile, and I freeze.
I want to shout for help but I can’t. I can’t speak. I can barely breathe.
My bottom feels cold and wet, as though liquid has soaked through the seat of my jeans and onto my skin. The air is thick with the scent of urine and iron.
I need to calm down. If I don’t I’ll pass out.
I concentrate on my breathing, sucking in air and filling my lungs before I blow it back out again.
In. Out. In. Out.
Slowly, slowly, my breathing quietens and my fingernails, gripping the wall I’m pressed into, cease their incessant tapping.
“Hello?” The word echoes off the walls. I am in a room, an empty room. I touch my fingertips to the ground beneath my feet. The walls and floors are tiled.
Okay. Okay. I’m in a room. I’m on my own. There has to be a door or a window, a way out.
As my heartbeat slows, the darkness surrounding me seems to fade and objects emerge from the gloom. There are two sinks to my right, two stalls to my left and a metallic urine trough on the other side of the room. Beside it is a door, with a sliver of light at the bottom.
I haul myself up and step toward it. As I do my heel catches something on the floor. It skids away from me, spinning across the tiles toward the sinks. It makes a low clunking sound as it hits the wall and then lies still. I inch my way forward and peer under the sinks.
A knife.
I don’t scream. I don’t drop to my knees. And I don’t run toward the door beyond the sinks.
I stand up.
I know where I am now. I know what’s happening.
I’m dreaming. I’m asleep on the sofa at home and I’m looking for Billy. As soon as I find him the dream will end and I’ll wake up. I step toward the nearest stall, one hand outstretched and push at the door, hard. The lock clatters against the wall as it swings open.
Empty.
Of course. Billy’s never in the first place I look for him. I always have to search. I take three steps to my right and push at the second door.
Empty.
“Mum?”
I spin around, but the pale-skinned person staring back at me from the mirror above the sink has my eyes, not Billy’s. I put a hand to my forehead and stroke the hair out of my face. Four smudged and bloodied fingerprints appear on my skin. A guilt dream. A nightmare in which I discover that I was responsible for Billy’s disappearance.
I crouch down and reach for the knife under the sink. It’s one of my kitchen knives. The handle is smeared in blood. I don’t touch it. Instead I open my handbag, slung across my body, and pull out a tissue. I wrap it around the knife, tuck it carefully into my bag and then wash my hands. Blood swirls around the basin before disappearing down the drain.
Billy is not here. I have to keep looking.
The second I step out of the door and into the light two figures rush toward me. A man and a woman; their faces are taut with worry. The woman has a phone pressed to her ear.
“Oh my God.” The man reaches me first and draws to a halt. “What happened?”
The woman puffs toward us, still talking into her phone, her breath coming in short sharp bursts. “I can see her . . . she’s right in front of me . . . she’s on her feet . . . she doesn’t appear to be hurt . . .”
“Are you okay?” the man asks.
His fingers graze my arm and I snatch it away from him, smacking my hand against the door frame.
A sharp pain shoots up my wrist and I hug it to my chest. I try to speak but the words feel jumbled in my mouth as my legs give way beneath me.
“What did she say?” the woman asks, her phone hanging loosely in her hand, as the man grabs me around the shoulders and slowly lowers me to the floor.
“Something about how you can’t feel pain in a nightmare and oh God, I’m awake.”
“What did you ring an ambulance for?”
“Because that guy sounded so worried about her.”
“Why didn’t you wait until we got to her? As if the NHS hasn’t got enough problems without their ambulance crews being called out for no reason. She looks fine and she’s not injured.”
“Malcolm, just because she’s standing up again doesn’t mean she’s not hurt. She’s only just stopped shaking.”
“She’s probably a prostitute. Why else would she be hanging round the men’s bathroom at ten o
’clock at night?”
As they continue to argue in hushed tones, but not so quiet that I can’t hear them, I look around. The walls are pale and grubby and there are gray stairs, the edges painted yellow that stretch above and below the small square of concrete where the three of us are standing. A black metal handrail runs the length of the stairs and, on the wall, is a blue sign that says, Have you paid and displayed your ticket?
I’m in a car park.
“Where is this place?” I touch the woman on the arm.
“Oh!” She leaps away from me and clutches at her husband’s arm. He takes a step toward me, instinctively tucking her behind him, protecting her. From me.
“Bristol. You’re in a multistory car park in the center.”
“Who sounded worried?”
“Sorry?” The man smiles sympathetically but there’s a different emotion in his eyes now. He thinks I’m on drugs, or drunk.
“You said someone was worried. Were you talking about me?”
“There was a man,” the woman says. “He ran past our car shouting that a woman had collapsed in the men’s toilets.”
“Was he young?” My heart contracts with hope. “Could he have been fifteen?”
“I don’t know.” She glances up at her husband.
“He was wearing dark clothes, maybe a hoodie, but I didn’t see his face.”
“I need to ring my family,” I say. “I need to tell them where I am.”
As I unzip my handbag I see something wrapped in my tissue and the ground seems to drop from beneath me. The knife is real. I didn’t dream that either.
“She’s gone very pale,” the woman says. “I think she’s going to pass out.”
“Do you want to sit down on the step?” The husband reaches out a tentative hand. “My wife’s rung an ambulance. It should be here soon.”
“Let me take your bag,” says the woman but I snatch it away before she can touch it. The sudden movement makes my legs give way. I grab at the handrail but I’m falling too quickly and I land heavily, smacking the base of my spine against the sharp line of the top step.
“Don’t move,” the man says as he crouches beside me. “You might have injured yourself.”
“It’s okay.” I ease myself up into a sitting position and rub at my lower back. It spasms with pain.
“Listen . . . um . . .” The man pauses. “Sorry, what’s your name? I’m Malcolm and this is Mandy.”
He looks at me expectantly, waiting for me to say my name.
I try to pull myself up but my legs are too wobbly to hold my weight. “I just need to get home. I think I might have a car here, somewhere.” I glance back toward the door that leads to the car park but I have no idea where my car is, or even if it’s here at all. I could have walked, taken a taxi or got a lift with someone. It’s a blank.
“You need to wait for the ambulance,” the woman says from behind us. “You might have hit your head when you fell over in the toilet. Concussion can be very serious. My cousin Sarah fell down the stairs a few years ago and—”
“Mandy!” Malcolm shakes his head. “Not now.”
“But she might—”
“You still haven’t told us your name.” He looks back at me.
I clutch my bag to my chest. The knife may be wrapped in swathes of tissue paper and hidden beneath a fold of leather but I feel as though it’s a flashing beacon. If the police turn up with the ambulance they’re going to start asking questions I can’t answer. Whose blood is on the knife? Who was stabbed? Where did the knife come from?
“My name is Kate,” I say. “Kate Sawyer.”
“Great.” The man smiles. “I shouldn’t imagine the ambulance is going to be much longer, Kate. We’re happy to wait with you until it gets here.”
“No. No ambulance. Please, I just need to get home. Thank you for all your help.” I force myself onto my feet and, clinging on to the handrail, descend one step at a time.
“Wait!” Malcolm calls. “At least let us give you a lift. Mandy can cancel the ambulance.”
“I’ll get a taxi.”
“Let us walk you to the rank. I’m sure your family are very worried about you. Please, just let us do that.”
I’m too tired to say no again.
Chapter 36
“You’re back!” Jake rushes into the kitchen as I stumble in through the front door. “Oh my God. You look awful! You’re limping. Why are you limping?”
His eyes are bloodshot as though he’s been crying, there’s a sheen of sweat on his forehead and his hair is dirty, slicked back with grease or hair product—I can’t tell which. He’s wearing a tatty sweater, pulled over his hands. It feels as though I haven’t seen him for years and I’m shocked anew by how broken he looks.
“Mum?” he says again and his strong, handsome face seems to collapse in on itself. “Say something, Mum.”
“I had another blackout.” It’s all I can manage before I collapse into his arms.
He pulls me into him and I press my face to his chest, comforted by the familiar but musky scent of his skin through his T-shirt.
“Oh my God, another one?” he says. “What happened? Tell me everything you can remember.”
“And then they walked me to a taxi rank and I came home,” I finish. “And let myself in.”
I’m on the sofa and there is a cup of tea on the table beside me. Steam no longer rises from the surface of the mug. I haven’t had more than two or three sips since we sat down.
“That’s it?” Jake asks. “That’s all you can remember? Coming around in the toilets?”
“Jake, I . . .”
I want to tell him how terrified I was. How I thought I’d woken up in a coffin or been locked in a box. But I can’t tell him how disorientating, how truly, truly frightening it is not to know where you are or even who you are, because I don’t want to scare him. I don’t want him to worry about me. He’s falling apart as it is. “Yes,” I say. “That’s all I can remember.”
My handbag is tucked between me and the arm of the sofa. I haven’t told Jake about the knife. How can I when I don’t know what it means? It looks like one of mine, one of the knives we use for steak, but there must be hundreds or thousands of people who own one. I bought it from B&M in the Broadwalk shopping center, not somewhere fancy.
There are only two possibilities: either someone used the knife on me or I used it on them. But I’m not bleeding. There was blood on my fingertips but I’m not hurt. I surreptitiously checked myself for injuries while I was sitting in the back of the cab.
Someone else’s blood then.
“Mum?” Jake says. “Aren’t you going to answer that?”
“Sorry?”
“Your phone.” He points at my bag. “It’s ringing.”
I tilt the bag toward me, hiding the contents from Jake who’s sitting in the armchair across the room, as I unzip it and carefully take out my phone.
It’s Mark.
“Hello, darling.” His voice sounds muddied, as though he’s tired or been drinking. “I just wanted to check that you’re okay and say goodnight before I turn in. I was thinking about you all the way from Bristol to Gloucester.”
“You’re there then?”
“Yes, of course.” He laughs. “Where did you think I was?”
“Nowhere. I . . . it’s good to hear your voice.”
“And it’s good to hear yours.” He laughs again. He’s definitely drunk. He always used to get a bit soppy after a night out. Soppy and loving. “It’s been a while since I rang you to say goodnight, hasn’t it? Remember when we were dating and I’d go on a night out with the boys and you’d go on a night out with the girls? I’d always give you a ring before I went to sleep. Well, it was more like passing out and we’d . . .”
He continues to talk, laughing at his one-sided reminiscences, his voice a low murmur in my ear as Jake reaches into the pocket of his tracksuit and pulls out his phone. He taps at the screen with his thumb.
I interrupt
Mark, still in full flow. “I’d better let you go. You’ve got a big day tomorrow.”
“Yeah.” He sighs. “I have. Okay. Sleep well, Claire. I love you.”
“I . . .” I pause. It’s been so long since I told Mark I love him that the words feel alien in my mouth. “I love you too.”
“Bye then. Bye!”
The line goes dead and Jake looks up from his phone. “Was that Dad?”
“Yeah.”
“You didn’t tell him what happened.”
“No.” I shake my head. “I didn’t want to worry him and . . .” I pause as an image flashes across my mind. The last thing I saw before I blacked out.
“Mum?” Jake says. “What’s the matter?”
The room swims and the air grows thick and hot.
“Mum?” Jake tucks his phone back into his pocket as he moves to stand up. “You’re not having another blackout, are you? Should I ring someone?”
“No.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Tell me the secret you’re keeping from me.”
Jake shifts in his seat. “Secret? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Yes, you do.”
“No, I—”
“Give me your phone then.”
“What?” He blanches. “No. It’s . . . personal.”
I sit forward, my mind suddenly clear. “I read one of your messages. It said, ‘I can keep a secret if you can.’ Who sent it to you?”
“Uh . . .” His hand moves to his pocket, as though he’s checking that the phone is still there. “No one.”
“I read it. Tell me who sent it to you, Jake. Was it Billy? Do you know where he is?”
“Billy?” His eyes widen in surprise. “God . . . no . . . no, of course it wasn’t. How could Billy—”
“Then who? Who sent it? Tell me or I’ll ring the police.” It’s an idle threat but Jake doesn’t know that. I can’t ring the police, not until I’ve checked whether the knife is one of mine.
Jake looks across at the photograph of Billy on the mantelpiece. “It’s from a girl.”