Lock Me In

by Kate Simants

  EP: No.

  CC: You’re on your own? If you can try to slow your breathing now, try to make your face relax a little. Can you do that?

  EP: I can’t see my mum.

  [pause: 24 sec]

  EP: I can’t see anyone else.

  CC: Can you tell me why you’re whispering?

  [pause: 27 sec]

  CC: Ellie?

  [pause: 23 sec]

  CC: Siggy?

  EP: [whispers] Because if I scream, he’ll find me.

  30.

  Ellie

  It was gone three by the time we got back to civilization. Mum had to get back to relieve her colleague, so I took the bus home alone. The afternoon had only got colder, and I was soaked from the trip to the woods, cold hardening in my feet as I sat shivering on the top deck.

  I got off the bus and crossed the dual carriageway. I didn’t see the girl until she was nearly on top of me.

  ‘Ellie! Oh my god!’

  It took me a moment to place her, because she was wearing spray-on jeans and a bobble hat, instead of the pyjamas or hospital gowns I’d always seen her in.

  ‘Natalya.’ She had been on the kids’ ward, one of the oldest there. ‘How are you doing?’ I shoved my hands quickly into my pockets to hide the bandage.

  ‘Waaaay better,’ she said, rolling her big eyes. She was beautiful in an unselfconscious way, with a bouncy Barbie figure that must have had all the boys slouching after her like wolves. She was what, fifteen? She’d always reminded me of Jodie, the energy that shone out of her. ‘How are you? Still help out in the hospital?’

  ‘Yeah, kind of.’ I made a vague gesture and tried to leave, but she grabbed my sleeve.

  ‘Listen, I’m so glad I saw you.’ She pushed her hair back from her face and I caught a glimpse of the reason she’d been on the ward. A boiler had burst in the flat above her family’s. Her face had avoided the torrent of boiling water, but her body would tell the story of it for the rest of her life.

  ‘All right,’ she said, self-consciously smoothing her hair back over her scars, ‘you don’t need to stare.’

  ‘I’m … sorry,’ I said, horrified that I’d been caught. ‘I thought it would be … nothing. Sorry.’ It was the first time I’d seen her injuries unbandaged, and I was struck by their vivid colour, their smoothness: nothing like the colourless alien landscape of my own burns, but then, I suppose, mine were more than a decade older.

  She straightened her shoulders, a little indignant. ‘Look, you know Matt, right?’

  I nodded uncertainly.

  ‘Cool!’ she said, brightening. ‘So look. He said he’d show me the lab some time, and I lost his number.’

  ‘He gave you his number?’

  ‘Sure! He’s awesome. I met him in the cafeteria one time, and he came up to the ward once or twice, after you started coming.’

  ‘You do mean Matt. Matthew Corsham. Tall guy?’

  ‘Oh god I know. Really cute! So, do you have it? His number? Or his address, actually? He said he’d show me the boat. He lives in a boat, right?’ Then, ‘Are you OK?’

  I walked away, fast. I broke into a run. She shouted after me, telling me to stop, then shifting into insults.

  ‘Jesus! Fucking nutcase!’

  I ran until I couldn’t hear her anymore.

  He said he’d show her the boat?

  My heart was thudding fiercely by the time I got to the door, fumbling with the new lock. I slammed it behind me, hard, and closed my eyes, trying to get my breath back. I was furious.

  Natalya had already been on the ward for a month by the time I started volunteering. Our chats were never exactly heart-to-hearts but I knew I’d mentioned her to Matt. I searched my memory. Had he ever told me he’d spoken to her? No, I was sure of it. Not a peep.

  So what else did he keep from me?

  My eyes lighted on the radiator shelf, where Mum had put his pile of post, and I remembered that it had been bills. There was a phone bill.

  I needed that bill.

  I checked the pockets of the big hoody in case I’d imagined taking it out, but it wasn’t there. Would Mum have tidied them? I checked the living room, but the table was clear, nothing on or under the sofa or the cushions. The bins? Not the bins. Not magneted to the fridge, not in my room. I searched Mum’s room, feeling a twinge of unease as I did it. But still I found nothing.

  I exhausted everywhere I could think of and ended up back where I had started, confused. Maybe she’d already spoken to the police about the car, and given them the post in person? Surely not. She would have told me. I pressed my palms against my temples – think, think – and when I opened my eyes, I was looking at Mum’s coat, her blue duffle. I pulled it off the hook, felt in the pockets. There was loose change, an eyeliner, bus tickets. In the inside pocket, sealed with a zip, was the post.

  I spread it out on the floor and found the phone bill. Having nothing sharp handy, I tore a hole and slit the envelope open with my finger. Quickly, before I bottled it. I slid the sheets out and read. In an instant, the anger disappeared.

  I saw him shake his head at me, despairing, that I could be moved to tears by a phone bill. But I saw him – his quiet care, his reliability – here on this sheet of paper. A £15 contract, every call made consciously so he wouldn’t spend money he didn’t have. The lengths of calls varied, but the costs were always billed the same: £0.00.

  Except – except that one, on the eleventh of November – £6.88. An international call, a prefix I didn’t recognize. I pulled out my mobile and punched the number in, checked it, pressed green. A recorded voice told me I had insufficient credit. I grabbed the list stared at it again, willing something to leap out at me. But nothing did. I’d just have to do it the hard way.

  Starting from the top, I rang the numbers. Those I recognized I skipped, and those I called I hung up on when I realized what they were. He’d called the same few numbers: his work, the Chinese place we used sometimes, the number of the camera shop he’d been to-ing and fro-ing with about a repair of his Rolleiflex. Nothing of interest, nothing revealing.

  Until – there.

  I straightened, muttered the number under my breath: it was beyond familiar. He’d made a twenty-minute call to it, the same day, the same afternoon as the international call. Seven days ago. Then again, two days later, eleven minutes. I had to be sure. I tapped the number into my keypad and pressed the phone to my ear. As the tone sounded, a siren in my head, I flipped back over the bill. In the course of the month, he’d rung that same number fourteen times.

  The same number that Matt shouldn’t have known at all.

  The call connected.

  ‘You’ve reached the mobile of Dr Charles Cox,’ the recorded voice said. ‘Please leave a message.’

  31.

  Mae

  He’d dispatched Kit to check out what was left of Matthew Corsham’s car, and taken the lull to get started on the backlog. He checked in with his counterpart at Thames Valley, who was stressed to his eyeballs dealing with the press over a family on the run from social services, But half an hour in, Mae’s stomach remembered lunch. He unfolded himself from the chair and jogged down to ground level, against the tide. The canteen was out of pretty much everything, but he settled for a tuna sandwich washed down with tea. As he pushed his tray away, his phone rumbled gently on the tabletop: a text from Nadia about a Parent’s Evening, which in turn reminding him to call Bear’s teacher.

  The office answered on the first ring, and put him through to the staffroom.

  ‘I’m calling about Dominica Kwon Mae,’ he said, his daughter’s proper name sounding more alien than ever in his mouth.

  There was a long, low sigh. ‘Ah yes. I did wonder when I might hear from you.’

  She’d have to try harder than that if she wanted to wind him up. He explained that he had only just been made aware of the problem his daughter was experiencing at school.

  ‘Let me just stop you there,’ the woman said. ‘We’re n
ot discussing a one-way street, here, in case you’re under that impression. Dominica has been very – ah – vocal in her descriptions of the year six boys in question.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’ He stood up, swept the crumbs into the sandwich box, and drained the last of his tea.

  ‘More than one of the children has been repeatedly called a …’ she paused, dropped her voice to a whisper, ‘a dickhead.’

  Stifling a chuckle, he balanced the tray on his free hand and took it over to the rack. ‘OK. Well, is he?’

  ‘Is who, what?’

  Out to the corridor. ‘Is the boy in question a dickhead? Because what I’m hearing here is an adult defending a bunch of kids who’ve singled out a girl, a much younger girl, and focusing on the fact that she’s fighting back. To be honest, Mrs—’

  ‘Collins,’ came the tight reply.

  ‘Mrs Collins, it sounds to me like Dominica is reacting like this because the adults that her mother and I have entrusted to care for her are letting her down. Big time.’

  There was a pause that suggested she was unused to being spoken to firmly. ‘Well,’ she said at last, ‘I’m sorry you feel that way, but I can promise you we do our best to create a reliable environment. Especially for our students whose home life is …’ she paused, as if choosing her words, ‘a little rocky.’

  He gave up on the diplomatic bullshit after that and demanded a parlay with the head, for which he was perfunctorily booked in. Just before he hung up, Collins delivered her parting shot.

  ‘I assume you do know, Mr Kwon Mae, that Dominica has expressed a preference for the surname Marston here, the same as her mother. I understand it’s not her official name at this stage but it might avoid confusion to use that.’

  Mae ended the call with maximum efficiency by throwing the phone at the floor. It bounced once then, naturally, skidded under a water fountain.

  A run, he thought after he’d retrieved it, heading to his locker in the basement without a second thought. The only solution. Still enough time to get a few K in, if he rushed the shower. He pulled on his trainers, laced them up hard. Needed to get out of there before he fucking burst.

  Marston. Fuck’s sake.

  He snapped his headphones on, found some early Dre on the iPod and ratcheted it up until the base shook straight through to his spine. He filled his water bottle, then dressed: vest, hoodie, tracky bottoms.

  And out.

  A grey drizzle dusted his face as he stepped outside the building. He headed right, out of the squat, cramped grids of suburbia and towards the North Circular, dropped his gait and picked up the pace.

  He ran past the fifteen-minute cut-off he’d set, knowing that any further would mean a late return. But he kept going, twenty minutes, twenty-five, ignoring the rain that got harder as he went. No real plan in his head, just lefting and righting, the same as how he’d learned the city when he’d arrived from Sussex, weaving a nice mess to untangle on the homeward leg. But he couldn’t shake it, the feeling that Bear was lost somehow, that he hadn’t fought hard enough and now she was hardly his anymore.

  Somewhere past Willesden Junction, his phone rang. He silenced the music and dropped to a jog. It was Ellie Power.

  ‘I’ve found something,’ she said. ‘I’ve got his phone bill. Matt was talking to Dr Cox.’

  Mae stopped jogging. ‘Your Dr Cox.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Did you know they were in contact?’

  ‘No. But it’s the date. The last time they spoke. I looked it up and I remember something: I heard Matt arguing with someone, on the phone. He said it was someone from back in Scotland, but I’ve looked, and there’s no other personal numbers from that day. I think it must have been him. Cox.’

  Mae ran his hand over the stubble on his head. Then he remembered Kit’s discovery. ‘We found his car. It was up on some derelict land in Feltham, abandoned it, looks like. Do you know of any reason he might have taken it there, assuming it was Matt who drove it?’

  There was no answer. He took the phone from his ear for a moment to check the call was still connected. ‘Ellie, did you hear what—?’

  ‘Yeah, I heard you.’ Her voice was low and weak: she sounded terrified.

  ‘Is there any reason you can think of that—?’

  ‘No. He’s never said anything about Feltham.’ She was breathing hard now. ‘But you’re going to follow this up, right? About him speaking to Cox?’

  ‘Ellie, what were you doing with his bill in the first—?’

  ‘You said you wanted to help me. So help me.’

  He kissed his teeth thinking, bloody hell.

  They agreed that she would send over a copy of the bill to his phone. Mae brought up the maps app and set the GPS to find his quickest route to the nick.

  His footsteps echoed wetly as he entered the empty shower area. He chose one and turned the squeaky tap, bracing himself for the few seconds of icy cold before the hot came through. He turned his face to the water, opening his mouth, filling, spitting.

  Cox. Everything Mae remembered about him – the man whose very credentials he had suspected right from the beginning – came crashing back as the water sluiced away the sweat.

  The fact that he had been seeing Lucy Arden, Jodie’s mother. That he had admitted, days into the investigation, that he had been screwing Jodie, too.

  Bollock naked and dripping, Mae dried his hands on a towel and checked the inbox on his phone. The photo of the bill was waiting for him: Ellie had highlighted the number every time it appeared. A quick google just to make sure Ellie wasn’t mistaken led him to Cox’s surprisingly basic website. It told Mae he still had the clinic space he’d had back then, the first floor of a smart Victorian redbrick just off Highbury Fields. There was a landline number, but Mae went straight for the mobile that matched Matt’s bill. The call was answered on the third ring.

  ‘Dr Charles Cox,’ he said, a subtle lilt of laughter just trailing from his voice. Mae was, he guessed, supposed to infer that he had just finished delivering a hilarious anecdote to a saunaful of dressing-gowned admirers.

  The lilt disappeared completely once Mae introduced himself, of course. He had that way with people.

  32.

  Ellie

  The moment Mae hung up, I ran outside. Across the road, down the alley, out towards the estate. I saw, with my heart clanging in my chest, that he was right: Matt’s car was gone.

  I walked back along the pavement on autopilot, trying to piece it together. The way he’d spoken about it, it couldn’t have been Mum who had called it in to the police. So had the car been stolen, then? Or had Matt just come back for it? As I turned into our street I stepped off the kerb without checking the road. A silver van slammed on its brakes and missed me by about a foot. I jerked back, put my hands up to apologize, but the driver, unseen behind tinted windows, accelerated away from me.

  An hour later, Mum came back. I told her about the car. Calmly, she took off her coat, hung it up, went into the kitchen and unlocked the cupboard for the kettle. I asked her the question about the car directly, and I got a direct answer.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I didn’t call the police.’

  ‘What? Why?’

  She didn’t answer.

  ‘So, what … I need to know what happened, Mum! This is just—’ I stopped, scrunched my eyes shut for a second. ‘It’s driving me nuts. I nearly got run over earlier, I’m not thinking straight.’

  She put the kettle on the worktop, unfilled. Looked at me.

  ‘What?’ I asked her. She looked different than she had before. Beleaguered.

  Her eyes stayed on me for a long time before she said, ‘We both know what happened.’

  ‘What? I thought you said—’

  ‘I’ve been thinking about it all. What you said earlier, about Siggy getting stronger.’ She leaned against the worktop and I saw for the first time how depleted she looked. Exhaustion pulled at the swells of skin under her eyes, and the slight distention behind the bruisi
ng on her jaw drew the shape of her face into something I couldn’t look at. Something old. ‘I’m worried you’re right.’

  ‘But you’ve been saying all along that—’

  ‘I haven’t been completely truthful, baby.’

  I went cold. ‘What do you mean?’

  She looked up at the ceiling, sighed, and left the room. She came back carrying a bag, and pulled something out. Fabric, caked in mud. But not so caked that I couldn’t immediately recognize it as mine.

  ‘Your raincoat. I found it at the moorings.’

  I shook my head, unable to speak.

  ‘You were there. That night.’

  She held my raincoat out, but I couldn’t take it. Couldn’t even look at it.

  ‘I just really wanted to think that there was another explanation.’ Mum set the coat on the worktop gently, like an unexploded bomb. She took my hands. ‘It was me. I got rid of the car. I needed to buy us some time. But we’ve got to face facts.’

  ‘Mum, don’t. Please.’ I felt for the back of a wooden chair and sat down.

  ‘Here’s what’s happened,’ she said, staying on her feet. ‘We thought Siggy had stopped, but she hasn’t. I thought, when you were little, that if we focused on being gentle and kind and letting you express whatever part of yourself you wanted to express, that Siggy would go away. It’s my fault, love. I wanted so badly for it to be OK that I was blind to it, even after Jodie, and everything. Convinced myself, even though none of the therapy and the regressions and the exercises and all of that stuff that didn’t work, I convinced you that as long as we were careful, maybe we could be all right. We did try, didn’t we?’

  I thought of all the sacrifices she’d made, the job she’d given up so she could take better care of me, how we’d had to move so many times. Then after Jodie, how even though the case was closed, we knew it would only take one witness, one new piece of evidence. So we hid. We kept our heads down, and resigned ourselves to a life of just the two of us. No friends, no partners. No exceptions. Because when we let people in, bad things happened.