Lock Me In

by Kate Simants

  Mae took a breath before he answered me. There was a look on his face that I couldn’t interpret. ‘West London NHS Trust had him on rolling freelance contracts,’ he said, watching for my reaction.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Until the end of last week.’

  I blinked. Thinking, no. He’d have said.

  ‘Did he not tell you he’d lost his job, Ellie?’

  I said nothing.

  ‘I have to ask, do you have any problems in your relationship, would you say?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Because that would seem like a rather big omission, if you know what I mean.’

  ‘We’re fine.’ It came out hard and loud, and he blinked at me. I felt Siggy spark at the base of my skull, goading, satisfied.

  Were we fine?

  Mae nodded solemnly, appraising me for a moment, then went to the table.

  ‘So there’s this.’ He handed it to me.

  I took it. A list, printed out. Things you’d take if you were going away. I held it with both hands, the burn of tears starting up in the corners of my eyes.

  A bloom of hope spread across me. Did this mean he’d just taken a trip? But if it did—

  Toothbrush, toothpaste, razor

  then he’d left. He’d left me.

  There was a blue-biro tick next to every item. I scanned it again, a storm started spinning in my head.

  ‘Anyone could have written this,’ I said eventually. ‘Where’s the pen? Huh? Are we looking for the pen, for fingerprints?’

  Mae spread his hands. ‘Ellie—’

  ‘No. He wouldn’t have just disappeared.’ Not without telling me. He loved me. He loved me. I brushed the hair out of my face and handed the list back to him, defiant. ‘This doesn’t mean anything.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘Because we’re happy, that’s why.’

  We were. There was no way Matt had been planning to go away. A few weeks ago we’d been talking about a trip, a long weekend. Mum was so worried, wouldn’t say why in front of Matt even though she knew he and I had talked about it all, but she went on and on about the locks on the hotel doors. Matt hadn’t flinched. When she got emotional, demanding to know how he planned on dealing with Siggy, asking did he really understand what he was getting himself into, he put his arm around me. I love your daughter, Christine. Nothing is going to change that.

  ‘What if he didn’t write it?’ I went into the kitchen and turned on the tap to fill the kettle. ‘I mean, it doesn’t prove anything, does it?’

  Neither of us spoke for a moment, and I realized the water pump was rumbling, but nothing was coming out. The tap spat droplets and air. His water tank was empty.

  I turned and checked the fridge: a Coke would do just as well. I opened the door, and looked inside. Dark.

  Mae was standing next to me. ‘It’s been switched off.’

  Meticulously cleaned and emptied, too. Mae paused for a while, then gently shut the door, leaving my hand to drop down to my side.

  ‘Sometimes I go away in the winter,’ he said, in a slow, quiet voice. ‘Take my little girl snowboarding. I turn the water off in my flat and run all the taps until there’s no water left in them. In case it freezes in the pipes, and the pipes burst.’

  I opened the breadbin. ‘He wasn’t going away.’ The breadbin was empty.

  ‘And I use up everything in my fridge,’ he said, as if I hadn’t spoken, ‘and give it a good clean.’

  I pushed past him, cursing the lack of space, the fact that there is nowhere to go on a stupid tiny boat, nowhere to escape to. ‘I’ve said he wasn’t going away.’ I dropped onto the sofa and drew my hands over my face. I wanted my mum.

  ‘Ellie.’

  When I opened my eyes, he was looking at my neck. I pulled my chin down fast, but it was too late.

  Slowly, he asked, ‘What happened there, then?’

  He wouldn’t have asked about the scar. He meant the bruises. ‘It’s nothing.’

  ‘No. It’s not.’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

  ‘No?’ Mae came round and sat next to me, the other end of the sofa. ‘Doesn’t look like nothing.’

  I let all my breath out at once. ‘Well, it is.’

  Leaning forward, he said, ‘Was it Matt? Did he hurt you, Ellie?’

  ‘No! God, no! He would never. He’s not like that. No.’

  Mae looked away, placed his hands on his knees. ‘Someone reports someone missing, we need to look at everything that might be suspicious. And to be honest,’ he said, indicating my neck with a nod, ‘mystery bruising might look a bit suspicious.’

  I stared down at my feet. ‘It’s not mystery bruising.’

  ‘OK.’ He waited.

  ‘I was … sleepwalking. Mum tried to steer me back to bed. I was agitated. She had to be … forceful.’

  ‘And this was, when? Last night?’

  I nodded, my heart hammering. Mae inclined his head to get another look.

  ‘Looks like she fought pretty hard.’

  ‘I was just confused,’ I mumbled.

  ‘Confused. OK.’ There was a pause. ‘See. Ellie, I get confused all the time. Sometimes I can’t remember if I’ve left the oven on. Or I lose my car, or, you know, I annoy someone and I get confused about what I might have said to upset them. But I can’t remember a time when confusion has ever ended up in me being held by the throat.’

  ‘I’m telling you it wasn’t him.’

  Mae stayed where he was for a moment. Then he got to his feet, steadied himself against the motion of the boat under his feet, and turned to me.

  ‘So for now, we’re classing this as a low-risk case—’

  ‘Low risk. What does that mean?’

  ‘It means that we wait and see what happens. This is still very early days. To be honest it’s only because I saw your name on the information that it’s me dealing with this and not just a bobby making a couple of calls. But look, you have to realize that everything we have here is pointing to Matt having just gone away somewhere.’ He tucked everything into his bag. ‘It’s a dynamic thing, though. If anything changes—’

  ‘But what does it mean you will do?’ I interrupted. ‘You have to do something.’

  He pressed his lips between his teeth for a moment, measuring his words. ‘Look. Men are weak. Sometimes they are really shitty. I’m sure he’s been great to you, and break-ups can be awful but—’

  ‘No. It’s not a break-up. He is the most honest, the most grounded person you’ll ever meet. He is a good man, and I can rely on him. I can. You’re making a mistake.’

  He watched me for a second, like he was trying to find something in my face. ‘I’m sorry. I’ve got a hundred other jobs stacking up and this is just,’ he gestured around the boat, to me. The whole thing. ‘It’s just not a police matter,’ he finished at last. ‘I’ve already done more than I am supposed to.’

  ‘Fine. Then go.’ I turned away. He would not see me cry.

  On the deck, he crouched and turned back to me. ‘This isn’t about you, you know. Men are shits. He didn’t deserve you.’

  I watched him swing himself down onto the pontoon, and I thought about how much Matt had given me. How bottomless his patience was, how hard he’d tried to help me believe in myself.

  Mae was right. Matt didn’t deserve me. He really, truly did not.

  17.

  Mae

  Mae had just swung his leg back over the crossbar when he heard the blip-blip greeting of the siren. Kit, in a squad car, a heavy shade of pissed-off darkening her face.

  ‘You planning to answer your phone any time soon?’ The window was wound all the way down and her shirt sleeve was rolled all the way up. The pointed toe of the 1950’s pinup girl tattooed on her bicep peeked out just above her elbow.

  He dug his phone out, failed to wake it, showed her the screen. ‘Dead. Sorry.’

  ‘No deader than you are.’

  He unsnapped the fastener under
his chin and took the helmet off, leaning an elbow on the roof of the car. ‘How do you mean?’

  Kit turned to speak into the radio clipped onto her lapel. ‘Got him,’ she told it, then, ‘I’ll deal with it, Ma’am.’ To him, she said, ‘Get in.’

  ‘That’ll be, “get in, Sarge”,’ he corrected, then gestured to the bike, opened his mouth to argue that he couldn’t, but she cut him off.

  ‘Get in the car, Sarge, right now. You forgot to collect your daughter, and she’s gone missing.’

  18.

  Ellie

  I sat still for a long time on Matt’s sofa, listening to the boats bump and creak. Thinking about the list. I’d looked for all the things on it, ticked them off one by one. Every single one of them was gone.

  My phone rang: it was the hospital.

  I didn’t even say my name when I answered. ‘Have you found him?’

  There was a pause. ‘Sorry, Ellie, found who?’ the caller said, and I placed her voice. It was Helen, who managed the volunteer schedule at the children’s ward where I worked. ‘I was calling about the session you were going to do with the kids this morning.’

  ‘Oh god, I’m sorry, I—’

  ‘Look, I’m afraid to tell you that we can’t have you volunteering here anymore.’

  ‘What? Why?’

  ‘We need reliability. We can’t have the children disappointed.’

  ‘You told me you were crying out for volunteers! That’s why Matt got my forms rushed through, so I could—’

  ‘Nothing was rushed,’ she said. ‘Look I’d love to keep you but the children have to come first, and if you can’t keep your promises to them—’

  ‘I’m sorry, I just—’

  ‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘I’m sorry too, but that’s where we are.’ She said goodbye coolly and hung up.

  I stood there in the kitchen, blinking, not believing it. Matt was going to be so disappointed. He’d suggested the volunteering in the first place, had set up my interview, helped me with the application. I’d loved it, too. I’d even started to believe maybe it could lead to an actual job, one day. And now I’d lost it. I slumped down onto the arm of the sofa.

  Something caught my eye. A big metal bulldog clip hanging on a hook next to the sink, and between its teeth a wedge of scraps of paper. I reached over and took the clip down. Just receipts, mostly: a few postcards. But right at the back, with a fold of card across the top to protect it from being marked by the pressure of the clip, was something else. A faded, square-shaped photo, the old-fashioned instant kind that came straight out of the camera, ready-developed to be waved around and blown upon impatiently until the image slowly appears and definition emerges like a fog lifting. The colours were vague, less saturated, as if they were trying to fade back to a sleepy sepia.

  A little girl. Less than a year old, probably, hair already thick and black. Even with the colours muted by age, the eyes clearly distinct: one eye sky-blue, one green with a narrow slice of brown in the iris. Her cheeks rounded with health and happiness.

  Me.

  As a child. The only picture in existence. What was it doing here?

  I rubbed my thumb across the top of it, the two rust-stained puncture holes where a staple must once have been. We’d had a burglary when I was two and a half, a few days before we were due to move house. Everything we owned was in boxes by the door of the one-bed flat we’d been renting. Might as well have gift-wrapped it, Mum always said afterwards. All of my baby stuff, a whole load of Mum’s old things, but worst of all, all the photos of me as a little kid.

  Maybe because I didn’t have any family, the absence of the pictures felt like a huge hole as I grew up. I used to make up pretend photo albums, drawing pictures of my dead grandparents, my dead dad. In my pictures, he was just like me, dark and broad-shouldered, each of us with one green and one blue eye, standing either side of petite, yellow-haired Mum. I pinned those pictures everywhere, but what I wanted more than anything was a photo. But they were all gone.

  All but this one.

  I’d found it inside a book. I was ten, and we had just moved flats again. I remember the swell of excitement when it fell onto the floor and I realized what it was. I’d never seen this one before. I ran into her room, beaming with pride at the discovery of such a coveted treasure. I had expected tears of joy.

  None came. Just a request not to snoop in her things, and a dark, brittle silence for the rest of the afternoon. Confused, I apologized, and she put her arms around me and said the same.

  ‘It was a dark time with your dad,’ she’d say, by way of explanation. ‘I’ve got my memories of you, baby, and they’re good enough.’

  The next day I found it folded into four, in the bathroom bin. So I saved it a second time. But this time, I kept my secret to myself.

  In the picture I was smiling. I looked into the eyes of my infant self and tried to see Siggy. Was she there, in my head, when I was that small? Lurking, waiting for my eyes to close and for the dummy to drop out of my pink little mouth so she could show me all her horrible things?

  But more importantly, why did Matt have it? I’d dug it out and shown it to him, maybe a month ago, after we’d gone through an old album of his. I hadn’t given it to him, though. I’d tucked it back into the book where I kept it. He knew how precious it was to me. So why had he taken it?

  I tucked the photo into my pocket and looked around. I had come to look for a clue, and all I had was a photo and a printed-out list. Outside, a solid darkness was starting to fall. I noticed Mr Jupp’s light on, and realized he’d be locking up soon.

  He snorted and hurriedly took his feet from the desk as I opened the office door. A thread of dribble hung sleepily from the corner of his mouth, which he noticed only when it hit his wrist.

  ‘You, is it?’ he said accusingly. ‘Police gone, have they?’

  ‘For now,’ I said, forcing a smile. His eyes swept down to my chest and up again, like a kid reaching for a sweet they knew they weren’t allowed. ‘But I’m still a bit worried, to be honest.’

  Not waiting to be asked, I brought over the only other chair, a faded green, moulded plastic thing, and perched on its edge, leaning towards him with as much warmth as I could muster. ‘I know he liked the chats he had with you,’ I lied. ‘I was just hoping he might have said something about a trip somewhere. Anything about being away from the boat?’

  He blew his cheeks out. ‘Love, listen. Sometimes us blokes have got to blow off a bit of steam.’

  ‘He hasn’t fallen out with anyone here or anything?’ I said, knowing Matt would have told me if that was the case. ‘Or got behind on his rent or anything?’

  He leaned back importantly. ‘That’s confidential.’

  ‘Please, Mr Jupp.’ Genuine desperation cracked my voice. ‘I don’t know who else to ask.’

  He let out a big sigh. ‘Look, leave your number, sweetheart,’ he said, handing me an opened, empty envelope. ‘Anything occurs to me, or he misses the payment, I’ll be sure to let you know. Now if you don’t mind, my missus is waiting for me, so I’m going home for my tea.’

  I wrote my name and number on the envelope, with PLEASE CALL IF YOU HEAR ANYTHING underlined beneath. ‘Anything at all,’ I told him, handing it over and getting up to leave.

  ‘Oh, while you’re here, get rid of that lot, will you?’ he said, indicating the moorers’ postboxes on the wall, a grid of open-fronted pigeonholes. ‘He got a parcel the other day and I had nowhere to stick it.’

  I pulled out the stack from Matt’s box and flipped through it. Bills, circulars. Everything machine-franked.

  ‘Can I have the parcel?’

  ‘Fuck knows where it is right now,’ he said. ‘I’ll drop it over if I find it.’

  I thanked him, shoved the post into one of Matt’s huge coat pockets, and went back down to the boat. I shook the hoody off and used the chemical toilet. On the inside of the bathroom door was a full-length mirror. I stood in front of it, remembering.

>   Once, months ago, when Mum was on a night shift and I didn’t have to be home until almost dawn, Matt and I spent hours in front of this mirror. He took my clothes off slowly like he was peeling an exotic fruit. I stood there now, in the dark, the reflection of my body lit just by the moon. Matt had made me look. The fine hairs on my arms bristled with the memory of his fingertips, stroking down my naked sides, kissing each one of the constellation of tiny puckered scars across my shoulder and down my back, from the accident when I was small.

  I let my eyes flutter shut, recalled the way Matt raked the backs of his nails softly up my sides, then reached around to hold my breasts, tucking his hands underneath them. How he brushed his thumbs across my nipples, not letting me look away. The light had been just like this, an identical blueish monochrome. He had placed my hands high on the mirror so I was bent forwards, and took me like that. Slowly. Telling me to look myself in the eye, saying it again and again because I wouldn’t, until his insistence took hold and he wasn’t laughing, he meant it. He really meant it. When I eventually looked, he slid his hand around and pressed his fingers against me, making me gasp.

  ‘Look at who you are,’ he whispered as I came, shuddering hard against his hand. His breath hot and low and liquid against my neck. ‘You are beautiful.’

  I blinked the memory away, avoiding my eye in the mirror, and went along to his bedroom at the far end. I lifted the duvet and got into his bed, wriggling down with the covers over my head. I’d been in this bed dozens of times, but never to sleep. Closed my eyes and inhaled deeply.

  Damp and woodsmoke and sex.

  I slipped my good hand inside my jeans. I held the sense of him, built him up from the smell of his skin, his hair. I started to move, small circles, conjuring his mouth on my mouth. His fingertips on my breasts. I imagined the feel of his chest under my hands, my fingers moving along his shoulders, sliding across to his throat. Glimmers of his face, darts of memory, coming faster.

  But then

  the skin on his neck, glistening gathering and twisting, pink then white against the pressure of my fingers,