by Helen Fields
‘They’re painted. Badly. He just painted windows onto the walls. Why would he do that? There won’t be any light. I don’t understand.’ She looked at Elspeth, who shrugged uselessly.
Crude squares with the outlines of waving curtains at each side attempted to give the illusion of a blue sky and green fields beyond their glass. The cruel cartoon was badly rendered. The paint had run, as if the windows themselves were crying at the sickness of the world they hid.
There was a scruffy, grubby sofa, with stuffing appearing from the seams of its cushions, and a mismatched armchair, the sort with no legs, just one huge cubic base and a soft back. On the far wall, a bookcase had been painted with coloured tomes, no titles, filling the mock shelves. Worse even than that, on the other wall, he had painted a picture of a picture. Meggy closed her eyes for a moment then did another take.
A brown frame surrounded a childlike attempt at setting three sunflowers in a blue vase. It was hideous. There was no other furniture. No coffee table. That would be too easy to hit him with, she decided. There were no loose cushions or throws that could be dumped over a head or pushed in a mouth. She walked to the sofa and gave it a push. The weight made it immovable. Likewise the chair. Swallowing her disappointment, Meggy determined not to give up so easily.
The next room was another bedroom with a single bed. Meggy could see it was bolted to the wall and didn’t bother attempting to pull it. The mattress was bare save for a pile of bedding on the end. No chest of drawers, just another illustrated window, and a magazine on the floor. Meggy picked it up to get a better look. The cover of Cars, Guys, Gadgets showed a shiny red sports car of an unknown make. She flicked through the pages, but there was no hidden letter, no clue as to their destiny. Nothing like the clues she’d have found if she’d been inside a children’s TV drama. She threw it back on the floor.
‘Is this his bedroom when he comes here?’ she asked.
Elspeth shook her head miserably.
‘Oh,’ Meggy said, remembering the double bed in the room where she’d found Elspeth. She stopped asking questions about Fergus. ‘Is there a kitchen?’
This time Elspeth unplugged the lamp, picked it up and held out her hand. They walked together in the dark. Meggy hadn’t held anyone’s hand for years, not even her own mother’s and especially not her step-mother’s. It was strange how you could go from being uncomfortable at a stranger’s touch, to accepting, then grateful for it within the space of just minutes.
‘Kitchen,’ Elspeth announced. ‘Plastic cutlery only. Paper plates. Not even any bin bags. Three plastic bowls for heating up food. A microwave bolted into the cabinet – I’ve already tried and failed to get it out. No oven. No kettle.’
‘What do you eat?’
‘He usually makes food downstairs and brings it up. Sometimes it’s takeaway or stuff like beans or scrambled egg. We eat in the lounge.’
‘What else do you do? I mean, there’s no TV or anything.’
‘He tells me about his day,’ Elspeth said, clutching the towel harder around herself.
‘There’s one more room,’ Meggy realised. ‘What’s in there?’
‘That’s your room. He made the bed up for you a couple of days ago. Do you want to see it?’
‘Not really,’ Meggy said. ‘But I guess I’ll have to.’
They shifted rooms again. Here was another single bed. A poor excuse for a pillow, one sheet on the mattress, another to sleep under, then two blankets on top.
‘It doesn’t get too cold at night. You’ll be all right,’ Elspeth said. ‘Look in the wardrobe.’
Again, no doors on the huge wardrobe, but metal plates on the wall ensuring it couldn’t be pulled over. There was a pile of soft toys, another of board games, and finally girls’ clothes, some obviously too small or too big, but all pink. Every shade of it. Even a pink hat, scarf and mittens set ready for winter.
‘Winter’s, like, three months off. I can’t still be here then. What can he do with us for that long? Shit.’ She kicked the wardrobe. ‘Shit, shit, shit!’
‘We can play a game if you like.’ Elspeth’s smile was a wobbling crack in her face.
‘Why would we play a game?’ Meggy shouted. ‘He’s going to come back. Sooner or later he’ll come back, and we have to be ready for him. I’m not staying here. This isn’t where I live. Those aren’t my clothes. And those stupid dresses on the wall in your room are just as freaky.’ She kicked the wardrobe door one more time. ‘Why aren’t you fighting him? I’m a kid, and I know you have to fight. You can’t just let people hurt you, or they just keep on doing it.’
‘I know,’ Elspeth whispered. ‘I know I should fight, but he scares me. It’s easier if I don’t react and he doesn’t get mad at me. Sometimes I think maybe he’ll let me go if I do everything he wants. Perhaps he’ll get bored, or I’ll make him better. He’s sick. Really ill.’ She checked the doorway for signs of imminent entry before leaning close into Meggy’s ear. ‘He told me he’s dying. If he dies, we can escape. We just have to be patient.’
Meggy slapped her. The sound was a footstep too far on a frozen pond.
‘If he dies and we’re not found quickly enough, we die, too,’ Meggy hissed, ripping the plug from the socket and walking away, not caring if she collided with the wall or anything else, leaving Elspeth trailing after her in the dark.
Meggy stopped after a few steps. She didn’t know where she was going. She wasn’t prepared to stay in her ‘own’ bedroom. She wouldn’t do as she was told. Why make it easy for him? Elspeth’s bedroom still smelled of the accident she’d had earlier in the evening, and the sight of that double bed … Meggy couldn’t bear to go in there. Twelve years old or not, she knew enough about life to know what Fergus – or Fuckface, as she was now thinking of him – was doing to Elspeth in that bed.
The thought made her sick. She swung round and grabbed Elspeth with both arms, pushing her face into the woman’s shoulder.
‘I’m sorry I hit you,’ Meggy said. ‘Please don’t hate me. I don’t know what to do now.’
Elspeth closed her arms slowly around Meggy’s back, alternately patting and rubbing, holding her until the girl pulled away again.
‘It’s okay, you didn’t hurt me,’ she said. ‘I know how this must look. I tried to fight at first. I did all the things you’ve just done. Hunted for weapons, ways to escape, anything he hadn’t thought of. Furniture to bar the door, a blocked-up window to call for help. I found the weird pink dresses he wants me to wear. He left me several of them in my room, but they’re all exactly the same. It’s freaky.
‘There’s nothing that’ll help us, Meggy. He’s our only contact to the outside world. If you want him to bring food, you have to be nice. If you want the lights on, you have to pretend that you’ve had a wonderful day and that you missed him. When he gets angry, there’s this look on his face, like there’s another version of him inside that’s trying to burst out.’
‘Does he hurt you?’ Meggy asked quietly.
‘Sometimes. Not all the time. Less if I’m careful.’
‘Will he hurt me?’
‘I think that depends how he finds you. It’s like role play. Did you do that at school?’
Meggy nodded.
‘I think it’s the same. He likes it when I call him my husband. Puts him in a good mood, or a better mood, for a while.’
‘I’m not calling him dad.’ Meggy gave the carpet a stamp. ‘No bloody way.’
‘Listen to me. I know he looks like a reed in a storm, but he’s strong. He carried me up here. I play his game because that keeps me safer until I can figure something else out. I think you should do the same. I know I’m an adult, and I know I should have better answers for you than these, but I just don’t. Because he’s not right, Meggy. He’s not. I can’t even explain it to you. I promise I’ll try to protect you, but you have to help me. You can’t wind him up and get into a fight with him.’
‘If he touches me, I’ll kill him.’
�
��I understand that,’ Elspeth said. ‘Maybe we’ll get an idea for a plan really soon.’
‘We have to keep trying,’ Meggy said. ‘You can’t just give in. I’ll be good if we can work out a way to escape.’
‘Deal,’ Elspeth said, opening her arms.
Meggy stepped into them, and they held each other as they cried, while beyond the door, at the bottom of the staircase, Fergus Ariss lay close to death.
Chapter Thirteen
Since regaining consciousness, Fergus had managed to crawl to his bedroom, but getting himself into bed had proved too much. The upper half of his body was flopped face down on the bed, knees remaining stubbornly on the floor. Neither arms nor legs were broken, in spite of the felled tree noises as he’d tumbled down step after excruciating step. His head was a different matter. The first four blows were memorable, but after that he’d lost count. There were broken fingers on his right hand, and the seat of his trousers was bloody. He could feel the cold damp starting to stiffen in the seat of his underwear. The origins of that didn’t bear thinking about.
With no clear idea of how long he’d been unconscious, he had only the darkness to guide him. He’d been intending to fix some food for the woman and girl upstairs while they got acquainted. All they had in the flat was bread and snacks. Fergus tried to raise his head from the duvet and the cotton lifted up with his face. It took all his strength to use two unbroken fingers to peel himself free of the material. The world turned red.
He gazed at the rose-blossoming wall, fascinated by the swirling mural, shades of dark cherry and poppy coming together then apart as he moved his eyes. Holding up his swelling hands, he watched as the patterns covered his sore flesh and aching bones. At last he could taste it. If red had a flavour, it should have been strawberry sweet and syrupy. This was a savoury dish, one left in the pan too long. Somehow still hot, but he could taste the saucepan, as if the metal had permeated the food. It stuck to his tongue, immune to his attempts to swallow it away. A waterfall tumbled through his ears, the crashing of an unstoppable liquid force. He had become a river of blood. It fell from his eyes and ears, trickled from his mouth, leaked from his lower opening. The sickness within his body had been released into the world. That was all right. He was ready to go now.
All he wanted was to leave in comfort, wrapped in the bed cover that had once belonged to his mother, her final embrace from beyond the grave. Breathing was difficult. Invisible hands squeezed his chest, and there was a tentacle around his throat. Grasping the bed cover, he put every ounce of everything he could muster into climbing up, pulling with his arms, pushing with the one leg that was still mobile – he couldn’t feel the left any more, if it was even still there. Parts of him were becoming detached. His stomach was free-falling, leaving him floating in a pool of pain that had little effect. Pain was the engine light flashing in your car, nothing more. Once you conquered it, climbed inside it, you could see it for what it was. His body was sending him a message, and he got it.
The futility of trying to clamber onto the bed fully realised, he opted to bring the mountain to him instead. Little by little as he pulled, the bed cover shifted from the bed to the floor. He didn’t look at the mess he was making on it, didn’t want to see those bloody flowers taking root on the precious fabric.
As the last material slid to the ground with a hushed thud, Fergus’ legs gave way entirely. Falling into the soft padding, he breathed as deeply as his lungs would allow, smelling soap and hand cream, freshly baked biscuits and mowed grass. All of home, of what it meant to him, in one sensory hit.
Pushing himself away from the bed, he managed to force his body to roll, still holding the cover. It went with him, cocooning around his torso so that only his face was still visible. He rolled another 180 degrees, leaving him facing a wall on which hundreds of images were displayed.
A woman with a baby on her lap. Pushing him in a pram. In the hospital minutes after he was born. Standing at the bottom of a slide, arms outstretched and ready to catch him. Looking admiringly the day he’d started school, his hair brushed and shining, smart new shoes that she’d saved up for all summer. Splashing in the freezing cold waves at the beach, oblivious to the cold as she played. In her best clothes at a family dinner.
There were other images not on the wall. Ones he tried to push away. What was the point in recalling pain? The day he’d realised he’d lost her. When he was told that his mother and brother were dead. Sometimes he forgot what she looked like and would have to reinvent her image in his mind.
Now, both legs were numb and he could smell urine from within the cover. Not that his mother would be cross under these circumstances. How could he control himself if he couldn’t even feel his lower limbs? The cover would be burned, presumably, when his body was found.
How long had the woman and the girl been upstairs? Not long, he thought. How many days? Was it weeks already? Time was dancing inside his head, and it wouldn’t stay still.
He coughed, spat up a mouthful of blood, and two more teeth landed on the carpet. Whether they were casualties of his illness or the blows from the staircase didn’t matter any more. His stomach clenched tight, leaving him gasping for breath. Still some pain, then. Just enough to guide him home. Without pain, how could you ever let go of life? The pressure in his neck was building, and he could feel his eyes bulging. The photos on the wall were too hard to see now. He let himself roll onto his back. Who needed photographs when he could join his mother in person.
He felt her kiss on his brow, her breath on his cheek. His heart slowed so that its beat was no more than an occasional speed bump. His pulse, that slave ship drum beat to the endless misery of his life, had lost its potency. His eyes slipped shut, and behind them there was light and warmth. His jaw fell open, relaxing, as his head fell to the side. There was a hand outstretched for him to take. His mother was there, at the bottom of the slide of his life.
Fergus Ariss waited to see if this time, at last, he would stay dead.
Chapter Fourteen
The house in Prestonfield Road where Angela Fernycroft had lived so happily then died so brutally had soaked sadness into its bricks and mortar. The crime scene had long since been cleared of the paraphernalia of investigation and the detritus of death, but Angela’s family had declined to move back in. The house would have to sit unoccupied for a couple of years before public memory was erased. It wasn’t going to sell until then. Angela’s husband, Cal, had agreed to meet Connie there and let her in.
‘Anything,’ he’d told her on the phone. ‘If it’ll help, you know …’
‘Catch him,’ were the words he hadn’t been able to say.
She introduced herself and the two of them sat at opposite sides of the kitchen table. Cal Fernycroft wept a while before he could speak. Connie said nothing. When he’d been crying for some minutes, she slid her hand across the table, palm up, to see if he was ready to reach out and be comforted. At first he just looked at the hand, then he took it gently and began to cry harder.
Connie studied the kitchen. Someone had been growing pots of herbs on the windowsill. Connie guessed that was Angela’s handiwork and felt a rush of affection for her. People who liked growing things cared for their environment. Tending a plant required commitment and love. Connie was no good at it.
Next to the back door, a photo of the family was mounted on the wall. In it, each parent had a child on their back, and the four of them were grinning into the camera as if they’d all just been told the funniest joke.
‘Last year,’ Cal Fernycroft croaked. ‘On holiday in Wales. We’d just raced along the beach. I don’t think I’ve ever laughed so hard.’
Connie relaxed her hand and pulled it gently away. Cal was done crying.
‘Do you have photo albums? I’d like to get to know Angela better and sometimes that helps.’
‘They’re in the roof,’ he said.
‘Are you able to get them? If it’s a problem then just say.’
‘No, no, I c
an do that,’ he said. ‘It’s just that I haven’t been upstairs …’
‘I’ll have the police fetch them. You don’t even have to stay while I’m looking around. I can get the key back to you later.’
He frowned. ‘No. That’s not … I should be able to be in my own house. I need to feel close to her again. Before, I could feel her in the house. If I came in unexpectedly from work, I could tell just by walking through the door that she was here. I didn’t think about it until she was gone, that she was on my mind every second. Like a magnet that guided me home. Could you help me?’
Connie nodded. He wasn’t talking about retrieving the photos.
‘Do you want me to go first?’
‘Please,’ he said.
They walked from the kitchen to the bottom of the staircase. Cal gripped the bannisters. Connie let him take each step in his own time. The weight he was dragging kept threatening to pull him to the bottom again, but he forced his feet upwards. It took three minutes to cover the fourteen steps. Cal was panting by the time he reached the top.
‘Your choice, postpone this or get that door open and face it.’
He shuddered.
‘Do it,’ he said.
Connie slid her hand around the doorknob. It turned easily and that felt wrong. For some reason she’d expected the door to be harder to open. Cal stepped into the room with his eyes closed.
‘I don’t want to see it,’ he said, then opened his eyes anyway.
Connie took his hand as he surveyed the damage to his life. It was a negative, a stripping away of what had been. The mattress and bedding had been taken for testing, as had the curtains. The carpets, blood-spattered, had been removed too. No items of clothing were in sight. Those that had been left out when Angela had died, also taken to the forensics lab. The book Angela had been in the middle of reading at her death, gone. She would never find out how it ended.
Cal gave a wavering smile. ‘It’s like when we moved in. Before the children. No curtains, just a couple of bits of furniture. We saved up for everything over time. We …’ His first attempt at the sentence was drowned with tears. ‘We wanted a boy and a girl, and that’s what we got. This house, the kids, a park just down the road. It all worked out, and I don’t know …’ He fell to his knees. ‘I don’t know how she could be taken and not me. I can’t understand what we did to deserve this. I want her back.’ He looked up at Connie, his hands outstretched. ‘Please, you have to bring her back.’