Lock Me In

by Kate Simants

  71.

  Christine

  Sana Plain, Bosnia, 1995

  Look, Ellie.

  On my lap there is a child. Sleeping now, though she fought it at first, just like you used to. My hand is over her ear to muffle the rattle of the jeep’s window, and I’m taking up the broken suspension with my feet for her, softening the jars and the bumps. She is older than you were, than you will ever be. She has seen things that would make you turn your eyes from the world forever. Her hair is warm and sleek like a cat under my palm, and she twitches, her dreams strafed with what she thinks is real.

  Our wheels whip the dust into a billowing wake behind us, but the air is pleasant, warm even, just before dawn. There are so many fruit trees here, Ellie, you can eat figs and pears and plums straight from the branch. We have to go just a little further now, heading north and then east over the border. I have contacts from working here, before, and they have helped. They are paid to move people and things and to do it without detection, without asking questions, without expecting any answers. Didn’t I tell you we would have adventures? The snipers are behind us, but there is still the border. After that, there will be the rest of our lives. Start where we left off. Friends again.

  Her eyes fly suddenly open. She looks up at me with these strange irises of hers, two different colours, like a wolf. I look away, I can’t help it. A sob escapes from me like a pea from its shell. I miss you more than you can ever know.

  I came here looking for another you, and I found her. Not in the rows and rows of babies, two to a cot, their bottles propped into their mouths. I found her down by a well, throwing in stones.

  We threw stones, do you remember? Trips to the woods, following the path down to the river. The little mud beach we had to ourselves, hot chocolate from a Thermos then the stones, bigger and bigger ones, you hopping from foot to foot as I collected them in my hat so we could throw them all back in. Sunshine. Your voice.

  Sleeping again, she slips from the vinyl-covered seat and I pull her gently back. I hold my fingers just away from her face, tracing the contours of her cheeks without touching, without waking. I’ve seen so many like her, a whole generation of children whose world has changed from bright and green and whole into a grainy monochrome, smouldering and hacked into federations and republics and safe-zones and sieges. Fearless children, their faces carved from rock. They come out at night in the fog to collect firewood. They can tell the direction of RPG fire as well and as instinctively as you knew the sound of the ice-cream van.

  But even if it ends tomorrow, it will be years, generations, until this place can heal. War does not leave when the soldiers leave. The people, the children, are the echo chamber. All the death here has left the air slack. It climbs out of the earth and the buildings to greet you. More than just quiet: it is something stretched and released, like a womb just vacated.

  I touch the tip of my little finger against the drying streak of a tear on her face. They said she saw her brother die; that she’d already survived her town being shelled. She doesn’t speak, but I know she will. She’ll forget whatever scraps of her language she knew, and soon she will speak just like you. I have freed her from a world that was not made for children. I am changing her course, and she is young enough. I can clean it out, redact it. She doesn’t need to remember any of this. This is the little girl whose name I will scratch out, who will slip into the oblivion you left and fill it up, zip you up around her like a winter coat, ready-made, ready-warmed. I will trim out the cancer of her past and replace it, and she will love me, Ellie.

  Shh, now, my darling. Shh baby.

  She’s mine now, and I’m taking her away.

  I listen to her breath, and I hardly notice the other sounds, although they are much louder, more menacing. Checkpoint. Tanks outside, adjusting their barrels, an electronic sound, coming in long syllables. The punctuation from a distant firefight.

  Dear god, let me keep her, and I will never hurt her. If I can keep her, I will never let her out of my sight. I will keep her safe from everything; I will give everything I have to keep her safe. I will feed her my own flesh before I let her feel hunger again. I will strip myself bare; I will give her my own skin if it will keep her from being cold. I will never raise my voice, not ever.

  Please. Dear god. Let me take this child.

  You said you hated me. It started with nothing – really nothing, a tantrum about toast – and I failed to control it, to put it right. Nothing I can say will change it, Ellie, and I don’t even recognize myself in what I did. Turning the key in your bedroom as you screamed and screamed with tears and snot glossing your scarlet face, I remembered what I had read, about showing the child the consequences of their behaviour. I don’t even know which book now. Or if the advice had been meant for three year olds. I remember telling myself as I locked you in that I was doing it for you.

  ‘I hate you, Mummy. I hate you. You don’t love me.’

  You thought I’d left you in that room. You heard the mortice clunk and you thought I had left the house and abandoned you all alone, and that was the last thought you had. Your screams no longer in rage, but in sheer terror that you would never see me again.

  I was right there, my back against the door, waiting for it to stop. My heart thudding so hard I could feel the pressure of it on my windpipe. I sat outside that door for hours, and you screamed until you … until you stopped. I don’t know why. Maybe your little heart failed.

  No one ever died from crying. I read that somewhere, too.

  I stayed outside the door after you had gone silent. I will never know if I could have saved you. But I stayed outside, so you could rest, not wanting to wake you with the click of the latch, the squeal of the hinge, even though you were already beyond hearing. But I ever-so-gently unlocked the door so you could come out when you woke. Knowing you would wake again before midnight, as you always, always did and that you would run down the dark hall with Bunny tucked into the front of your nightdress. Knowing you would crawl into bed with me and lift my arm over you and say friends again now, Mummy, and I would say it too. I even murmured it to myself as I padded down the hall to my own bed that night. Friends again, baby girl.

  I didn’t know, Ellie.

  Hours later when I woke up, the first thought was of you, as it had been for the last thousand days. It was midnight, and you were not there.

  You were in your room. The door was still closed. Unlocked, but it didn’t matter anymore. You were still and cold, your little fists tight. Your eyes open, your mouth open. Your tongue bloodless and dry, resting on your teeth as I lifted you in my arms, as I saw what I had done.

  I hate you Mummy.

  I sat with you for the whole day. I washed you. I held you and I didn’t let go. I saw my future unroll like a carpet. Police, a trial, prison, because it was my fault. After prison, if there even was an after: a life of absolute emptiness, and no chance of redemption.

  And so when all the light was gone I took you to our woods, beside the Thames. You were wrapped in the blanket I made for you while you were still a part of me, and I dug into the earth. I sang to you and I laid you down, Ellie. I placed flowers around your little body, and it was so cold. But I left you there. What else could I do? I planted a cherry tree where you rested, so that you could live.

  The nights after you were gone, I ran you your bath, I couldn’t break the routine. I would crouch beside the tub, trailing my fingers in the water, my heart a formless mulch in my chest. Conjuring you in my mind, naked and smooth, your hair lengthened by the water, your little belly pressing out under your ribs. Bubbles sliding down your perfect shoulders. One two three, out you get, heavy and inert in a towel, your head on my shoulder, your yawn stretching out now in my memory, fossilized by your absence.

  On my lap, there is a child. She is nothing like you, Ellie, but she will learn, just as she will learn English. She is young enough. The world is changed by her being in it, the air parts when she moves through it, and vibrates whe
n she makes a sound, quivers around her. She is alive.

  She is mine, and she will love me. Just like you did.

  Shh, baby. Shh, Ellie, my baby girl.

  72.

  Mae

  The call went straight to voicemail, again, but he left a message anyway. This time, after what he’d just found out, his tone was a little softer.

  ‘Ellie. We’ve got developments here. Things you really, really need to see. Ring me back.’

  He cut the call and pocketed it, turning back to the spread of photographs, letters, documents on the passenger seat, sent over by Samira Anand, who had found the originals. Rain drummed on the roof of the car. A shape across the carpark caught his eye, running towards him, something shocking pink held overhead. Kit. He leaned back and across to open the back passenger-side door, didn’t want her sitting on the paperwork. She jumped in and slammed the door behind her, balling up what he could now see was a poncho. She sat panting, water clumping her hair into thick ropes.

  ‘Well, today’s going to go down as the most spectacularly mental day of my entire life,’ she said, rubbing rain out of her eyes, ‘I’ll tell you that for absolutely fuck all.’

  ‘Yeah? Snap.’

  Kit hooked her forearms around the headrest in front of her and looked down at the passenger seat. ‘What’s all this?’ she said, wiping her hands on her sides and taking the stack Mae handed her.

  ‘Letters from Bosnia. This woman Rana Filipovic, the one who sent Cox packing when he went over there.’

  He watched her face as she scanned them, watching it change as she took in what the letters said.

  The first, written to Cox shortly after his book was published, was apologetic, professional. I made a mistake, Rana had written.

  ‘“I was told to keep quiet about what happened”,’ Kit read, “‘but I should not have been intimidated.” Intimidated by who?’

  Mae raised his eyebrows. ‘Keep reading.’ He passed her one particular letter that he’d marked with a paperclip. It was from three years ago, long after Cox and the Powers had apparently lost contact. ‘This one.’

  ‘“She promised me that once it was safe for the child to return, she would bring her back. There must be a way to find them. The birth mother tracked her down, and she calls me every month. She is desperate to see her.”’ Kit met his eyes. ‘But why did this Filipovic woman keep it a secret for all that time? I mean, how come she lied to Cox, when he was so close to putting it all together?’

  ‘Looks like she took a bribe. To the refugee centre. Christine turned up – fake name, obviously – made a big donation.’

  ‘Christine bought Ellie?’

  ‘Not exactly. According to this, Christine said she would keep her safe until the war ended, and keep in touch in case the mother got back in touch.’ From under a stack of papers he pulled out a brown envelope. ‘Pictures. Couriered from Cox’s office. Have a look.’

  Kit pressed rainwater from her fringe and peered at the images. Her eyes widened, and Mae shifted in his seat to look at them again. Ellie as a baby. Ellie as a toddler, and from her clothes and the look of the house in the background, it was obvious this wasn’t Britain. Ellie at maybe two, a baby boy swaddled on her lap, her eyes on him, her face beaming.

  Then Ellie, a little older, three or so. A hospital bed, the window behind her glassless, sealed up with cardboard and tape. Her little body bandaged from the shoulder down, her eyes drilling through to the back of your own head as you looked at them. Blank.

  ‘Jesus. So all this time—?’

  ‘All this time, Ellie’s been fed a whole crock of bullshit. She remembered being in Bosnia, but Christine must have convinced her it was … something else. Not her own memories. It kept her terrified, so she believed she couldn’t manage on her own.’ It hung there for a minute like a spectre.

  ‘But what about the fugues?’

  Mae shrugged. ‘Christine’s word against … well, it’s just Christine’s word. Ellie always says she never remembered them. Cox says he doesn’t think they ever happened.’

  And if Cox was right, there could really only be one explanation for the injuries Ellie sustained during the episodes. He held his breath for a moment as he thought that through to its conclusion: because as it stood, and because it had been so comprehensively engineered that way, right now Christine was all Ellie had.

  Kit put the sheets she was holding down on her lap. ‘Where does Matt come in then, in all of this?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe he got too close to blowing the whole thing open.’

  ‘Meaning, on balance, we’re not expecting to find him alive and well, are we?’

  ‘He’s already been bumped to high-risk. We’ve got a press call booked for later on.’

  Kit slumped back against the upholstery and blew out her cheeks. ‘Does she know? Ellie, I mean?’

  Mae nodded towards his phone. ‘Can’t get hold of her.’

  ‘So what now?’

  He gathered the sheets and slipped them into a plastic folder. ‘We put everything we’ve got into picking up Christine,’ he said, gesturing for the photos. ‘There’s a team at the flat now. See how they’re getting on, shall we?’

  He cleared the seat and Kit climbed through to the front, strapped herself in. Mae flipped the visor down and slid a Roots Manuva CD from the pocket.

  Kit slapped her thighs. ‘So. You want my news?’

  ‘Go on then.’

  ‘Rabbi Samuel Shevah, Brighton Central synagogue.’

  Mae killed the engine and the music. ‘The Jodie portrait thing. You found the artist?’

  She nodded once, slowly, eyes locked on his. ‘Lucy Arden goes to Brighton Central, has done for years.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘The rabbi’s wife is Lucy’s best friend. Their daughter is an amateur artist. Does portraits for friends.’

  He frowned. ‘She has to be a professional though? Got some kind of age-progression software and done the painting from that. Surely.’

  ‘Nope. She’s like, seventeen, doing her A levels. And she only ever does them from life.’

  Mae felt his face slip, like the muscles had come loose from their moorings. But Kit was beaming like it was Christmas morning.

  ‘I had to get a bit shitty with him, but he told me in the end. Strong moral compass.’ She started to laugh, but her eyes went oddly bright, and he realized she was about to cry.

  ‘His wife and daughter went to Europe with Lucy Arden last year. Jodie was there.’

  ‘Sorry, what?’

  ‘She sat for it, Sarge. Summer just gone. She’s alive.’

  And just for a moment, Mae laughed too, but only until his phone rang. After that, the atmosphere took something of a nosedive.

  73.

  Ellie

  All the way back to Sarajevo from the school, I had tried to think of one true thing. Any one real moment that wasn’t tarnished with what Christine had done. But there was nothing. Every memory, everything the woman I thought was my mother had ever told me. All of it lies.

  ‘She meant to love you,’ Rana had said, gripping my shoulders before she hugged me and sent me off through the departures gate. ‘I do believe that. She wanted to take you and love you. Whatever happened after that, and whatever you decide about her, remember that. I am not a bad judge of character.’

  She may have been right. She may not.

  From the air, England was beautiful. I leaned my cheek against the thick plastic of the window and looked down, waiting for the landmarks of the city I had thought was my home. We dipped landwards and I felt myself pushed back into my seat. I didn’t want to go back; I didn’t want to see her: Mum, Christine – I didn’t even know what I should call her now. I didn’t want anything to do with that love of hers, the love I’d thought I could rely on, through anything. It was worthless.

  The plane landed, the magic of its suspension suddenly broken like a cut rope, and we taxied along in the rain. When it stopped, the terminal building
was still a hundred metres away, and there were groans when a voice on the intercom told us we were being held for a short while. I rubbed at my ears, trying to release the pressure from the descent, until something caught my eye.

  A police car. Coming closer, slowing: stopping right underneath the wing. Someone else noticed, and within a few minutes everyone was craning over to see what was happening. Then on the other side of the plane a staircase was driven over and attached. There was some confusion, whispering between the uniformed staff towards the nose: passengers standing, craning to see what was happening, until one of them broke away from the huddle, went to the door. There was a clunk, and the pressurized door opened.

  And in walked Ben Mae, his eyes raking over the waiting faces of the passengers, until he found mine.

  ‘I’m going to need your passport,’ he told me, glancing back at me in the rear-view mirror. We had driven straight off the runway through a gate held open by someone official. ‘I thought it would be better for you not to have to go through customs with everyone else, but I had to promise I’d deal with the little issue of documentation.’

  I handed it over suspiciously. ‘What issue?’

  We were out of the Heathrow complex now. Mae slowed into a lay-by where someone was running a caff out of the side of a van. He turned the car off, and angled himself around to face me.

  ‘It’s a false document. You didn’t know,’ he added quickly, responding to my shocked intake of breath, ‘so no one’s going to give you any grief about it. But there’s going to be a whole load of ironing out for everyone to do. I just spoke to Rana Filipovic myself – she told me everything so – I’m up to speed. We’ll get her over here at some point.’

  I folded my arms and watched him.

  ‘Ellie, I’ve got some really bad news.’

  They’d found Matt lodged under a pontoon past Putney Bridge, he said. To start with they assumed he’d just fallen in.

  But he hadn’t just fallen in.

  ‘The water in his lungs wasn’t river water,’ Mae said. ‘I don’t know if you want the details, or …’