The Sound

by Sarah Alderson

  A twig snaps to my right.

  I haul myself to standing in that same second and then I am running, ignoring the shooting pain in my arm and the sting of branches slashing at my face. All I can hear now is a roaring in my ears.

  And behind me, coming closer, his breath, his footsteps and the heat of him rising like a mist. My feet hit something soft. I’m on the beach. The trees have given way to sand dunes. The ocean sounds wild and close. If I can only make it there . . . because where else is there to run to? And then suddenly my foot hits something sharp, a rock buried in the sand, and I’m flying, falling fast, and I land hard, my ankle twisting, and I let out a yell that I try to smother with my other hand. I roll onto my back, kicking at invisible hands. I try to draw my legs up to my body, to curl into a ball, but my ankle explodes in pain and I can’t move it. And I whimper, not because of the pain but because fear floods my tongue and it’s as foul as earth and it’s fear which is closing up my throat as surely as his hands sliding around my neck and squeezing.

  I want my mum. And I sob her name out loud into the darkness, and over the sound of the ocean roaring I hear his breathing, loud and heavy and excited, coming close.

  But the thought of my mum is enough to push back the fear and let the rage in. And I’ve never felt such rage before. It almost cancels out the fear, roaring inside me now as deep as the ocean.

  I start scrabbling desperately for something – anything – to use as a weapon.

  My hand sinks into the dune, trying to find the object I tripped on, and my fingers close around a rock, heavy with jagged, sharp edges. I draw it into my lap and sit there clutching it as the tears stream down my cheeks.

  My breathing is coming in little gasps now. I’m struggling to force air down into my lungs – they’re on fire from the inside, smoke-filled and layered with ash. My fingers are starting to tingle. My lips are going numb.

  And then he appears, a dark shape against the sky, and the rock slides out of my hand and falls with a muted thud to the sand. I open my mouth to scream but I can’t because my throat has squeezed shut and there’s no air left in my lungs.

  And the last thing I see, before the darkness drowns me completely, is him.

  41

  Another crunch makes my eyes fly open. Mr Thorne steps towards me. The moon sends a dull, unfocused strand of light through the branches and he’s momentarily dipped in phosphorescence, lit up like a ghost. Darkness brushes at the edges of him and then he fades. My breathing is shallow. My heart no longer races. I can’t even tip my head back to look at him as he looms over me. I’m still and broken and sinking down, down into the ground, and then beneath the ground.

  I’m glad. I’m glad that I’m going to die this way and not at his hands. I think of Jesse. I think of my mum, but the thoughts of them flit away like leaves on a breeze. I cannot even snatch for them.

  He kneels down in front of me, foul breath in my face, reminding me of how sweet air usually tastes, and his hand reaches around my throat, his fingers strong as vices. My neck tips forwards as if I’m trying to help him. He doesn’t seem to wonder about that. He just starts to squeeze. Lights burst electric behind my eyelids, dazzling eruptions of stars blossoming, blooming then dying.

  And then I’m falling headlong into velvety darkness.

  I hear a thump, a smack, a sigh and someone yells. It isn’t me. I can’t hold onto thoughts but Jesse’s voice buzzes loudly in my head, snapping me back into consciousness. I try to open my eyes, to see. Is it Jesse? Is he here?

  And then there are hands on my body – lifting me, softer hands, a softer voice calling my name, shouting my name, forcing something between my lips, the sweet tang of something against my tongue. More shouting above me and around me, indistinct and growing louder, sounds becoming words, words becoming sentences. ‘We found her! We need to move her!’

  I become aware of the sky, of the earth, of my feet buried in leaves, of my cheek pressed against something warm. I am bumped and rocked and something is attached to my face and I can breathe again. I can breathe!

  Air flows into my lungs and I’m hungry for it, desperate for it, clawing at the mask over my mouth, wanting more.

  A hand pushes me down. Another hand – familiar as my own – strokes my face, brushing back my hair. And lips lay kisses across my brow, almost fervently.

  And Jesse is saying my name over and over.

  ‘Ren, Ren, Ren. You’re safe now. I found you.’

  Epilogue

  HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!! How was ur day, bitchface?

  Great. Awesome. Amazing. I cannot stop grinning as I pound out a litany of words that don’t even come close to describing the level of magical awesomeness I’m currently feeling on this, my eighteenth birthday. If I’m a helium balloon I’m currently spinning my way around the Milky Way, trailing stardust and electrical storms in my wake. Or something equally spectacular to behold.

  What did Jesse get you?

  My eyes fly to the bedside table on which sits a pile of new books (including How to Play Guitar, which sort of seems redundant given I have Jesse to teach me), and a bicycle repair kit (ahahahahaha). I am also wearing part of his present to me but I’m not about to describe to Megan the exact feel of silk against my skin so I just say, Books.

  Sexy, she fires back.

  I think of what else Jesse gave me – none of which I’m going to describe to Megan – and the grin almost tears my face in half.

  What’s happening? Any more serial killers try to kill you? Megan asks.

  Not this week.

  How’s the neck?

  My hand flies automatically to the bruises, now almost faded away, that ring my throat. Jesse has done his best to kiss them away. My ankle too is much better. I can actually put weight on it again.

  How’s Boston? Megan asks. I know she’s upset I’m not back in London, even after the judge said I could leave if I promised to return for both trials, which will be sometime next year (by which point I hope that Tyler Reed has made lots of friends in prison and that Mr Thorne is stuck in solitary confinement in a very dark hole in the ground).

  I love it, I write, banishing all thoughts of Tyler Reed and Mr Thorne.

  Love it? Or love him? Megan writes back. A row of lasciviously winking emoticons follows.

  Both, I answer, grinning like a person with just two brain cells, both of which are located in the region of quiver.

  I have been in Boston for four weeks. After the night where I became known (in some massive conspiracy by all English-speaking media outlets on the planet) as the English Nanny that Got Away and Mr Thorne became known as the Nantucket Nanny Serial Killer, everything unsurprisingly changed in my life. Not least Jeremy unfriending me on Facebook.

  Mike and Carrie felt so bad that one of their friends had tried to kill me (though Mike claimed Mr Thorne was never a friend of his, only of Carrie’s) that they immediately tried to make it up to me. They offered me a job nannying for them in Boston after the summer (with a supremely large raise) and Mike sweetened the deal by throwing in an internship at the Boston Globe on their arts section. It was almost worth getting strangled over.

  Where’ve you been? Megan asks. It’s late.

  I pull off my press pass that’s dangling round my neck as I type, Just back from a gig.

  Jesse’s band?

  Yeah. He’s so good. I’m just finishing writing a piece about them. It’s going to be in the arts section tomorrow! I’ll send you a link.

  Wow. That’s so cool. She pauses. You are so not ever coming back, are you?

  Um. We’ll see. My A level results weren’t of the famine, pestilence and death variety but suddenly the thought of going to university in England holds about as much appeal as being chased through dark woods by a crazed killer. I’ve deferred my place for a year, but who knows whether I’ll take it. Jesse is starting college in the fall in Boston so there’s always that option. But I don’t tell Megan that.

  Even though Megan is irreplaceable,
I’ve become good friends with Paige, Tara and Niki over the last month, and have also been adopted by Jesse’s family who can’t thank me enough for saving Jesse from a lifetime behind bars. His dad is busy rebuilding the business with the insurance money from the fire, and Hannah is back home in Nantucket (Jesse and I are overseeing her musical education long-distance).

  I heard on the grapevine (well, actually via a television interview Sophie gave Oprah) that Jeremy, Matt and Eliza have had to go into hiding and that their trust funds have been wiped out paying for their dad’s court costs. Apparently Mr Reed refuses point-blank to defend him though, which I’m grateful for, given his track record for helping murderers get off scot-free. He’s got his work cut out for him anyway, trying to mount a defence for Tyler and Parker in the face of the insurmountable evidence we piled at the police’s door.

  I admit that I felt a momentary pang of regret when I found out about the triplets becoming destitute, not for Jeremy or Eliza, but for Matt, who actually turned out to be a nice guy. But then I discovered that he’d signed a six-figure publishing deal to tell his story, so I stopped feeling bad (my mum made me turn down the offers I got, claiming that it was unethical to benefit financially from what had happened and frightfully common to sell one’s story to the papers – sometimes I hate being English).

  Did I tell you I saw Will? Megan asks, interrupting my rueful reverie. He was asking about you. I told him you were dating the hottest guy on the planet who is also in a band and who also happened to SAVE YOUR LIFE. He had nothing to say after that. Mwahahahahaha.

  And I spoke to your mum at the checkout yesterday and she held up the queue for like half an hour just so she could tell me how much she loved Jesse. You know, if it’s possible, your mum loves him even more than you do.

  I smile. My mum just left a week ago, after three weeks of staying by my side, first in the hospital and then at the Tripps’ house, staring at me as if I was about to take my last breath at any moment. I understood why. I don’t think she will ever get over the wake-up call she received from the BBC at two a.m. asking her to comment on her daughter’s almost death at the hands of the Nantucket Nanny Killer.

  My mum loves Jesse because I almost died three times that night – in the fire, at the hands of Mr Thorne and from an asthma attack – and Jesse saved me each time.

  He saw the fishing line in the back of the jeep as I drove away in Mr Thorne’s car. And then, when Carrie called him to ask where I was, Jesse put two and two together. The same instinct that flared for me, fired in him too. He joined the dots and made the connection on even less than I had to go on. He knew Mr Thorne wasn’t a fisherman, had never fished Nantucket Sound before, had never bought tackle at Miller’s or anywhere else for that matter. Jesse knows all the boats on the water and all their owners. It didn’t add up.

  He made the policeman drive after us, even though the paramedic was still waving the paperwork in his face. He was the one who made the policeman pull over, who found my inhaler on the side of the road beside an empty car. He was the one who ran through the woods, calling my name, out-sprinting the policeman. The one who fought Mr Thorne, laying him out with a punch to the head and a kick to the ribs (which he wishes now had been harder). The one who pressed the inhaler to my lips, who carried me back, who held my hand, who saved me.

  Yeah, my mum loves him (but not as much as I do) and I’ve promised I’ll bring him back with me for Christmas.

  The door opens and Jesse appears. He’s freshly showered. My room is in the basement of the Tripps’ townhouse in a posh part of Boston. I have my own entrance, a bathroom and a bedroom the size of a football pitch. Best thing is that Jesse (who is now officially a HERO according to the newspapers, and my mum . . . and Carrie) is free to come and go as he pleases.

  He pleases a lot.

  He walks over to the bed where I am lying, wearing only a towel slung loosely around his waist, his hair tousled and wet and pushed back out of his eyes, and his expression is fully intent and purposeful. Inside me a meteor shower begins. The lust parade that started the night of near death has since tripled in intensity and is yet to tail off. In fact, it seems to have no end. The floats just get wilder, bigger, crazier and more flamboyant with every passing day.

  Jesse sits down beside me. He brushes my hair aside and leans in to kiss away the bruises on my neck. I shiver, my eyes darting to his chest. That Abercrombie chest which I can feast my eyes on now unashamedly.

  The laptop pings. Another message. I turn my head reluctantly from the view beside me.

  Did you shag THE ONE yet? Megan demands. (Jesse got his own title too.)

  For the first time in my life, I insert a smiling emoticon.

  Then I close my laptop and turn back to Jesse.

  Thanks to:

  Olivia Weed, you are brilliant and beautiful and have a golden future ahead of you. Thank you so much for sharing so freely your experiences, and for the cardigan insult. That was so awesome I had to include it. And words cannot express my thanks to you for teaching me the word skanktron.

  Julia Weed, just as gorgeous as your older sister, thanks for letting me test this book on you.

  Michael Natenzon – I’m still reeling from my fact-finding mission and the fantastic (and fantastically graphic) stories you shared. Thanks for your patience in explaining bases to me, the rules of drinking games, and the delicate lines between being a player and being a slut.

  Lauren Tracey – for your friendship, wit, editing eye and conspiracy theories. I love you!

  Jenny Homer – for the English versions of skanktron and hooking up.

  Nic Jones (www.navigatornic.co.uk) – on whom Ren is partly based – for your courage in following your dream to become a music journalist and for sharing the journey and, not least, for collaborating with me on the Spotify soundtracks.

  Jess Dalzell – for the inside scoop on Nantucket, especially its beaches.

  My parents for letting me nanny in Nantucket when I was just seventeen. I promise this is all fiction (well, most of it).

  The wonderful Aussie bloggers Braiden (Book Probe Reviews) and Brodie whose names I borrowed. See, I didn’t kill you off! But there’s still time. I might write a sequel. Maybe the Tripp siblings could grow up and become an intrepid crime-fighting duo.

  Alula, my gorgeous little girl, who told me when I was writing this that life is just about being happy. Wise words, my darling. Writing makes me so happy. But not as happy as you do.

  John, who thankfully read a very early draft of this and corrected my guitar knowledge (or lack of). I wouldn’t be able to write such hot lead boys if I didn’t have you to base them on.

  Rachel Glitz, for making sure I said ass instead of arse and mom instead of mum, and for her detailed breakdown of the US legal system.

  Amanda, my fabulous agent, for selling this before it was even finished and my publishers for buying it before it was even finished. I appreciate your faith.

  Venetia, my wonderful UK editor, thank you so much for everything (Pan Macmillan are very lucky), and thanks too to Tracy and Paul at Simon & Schuster in the UK.