by S. J. Watson
I grab hold of the tie, but my hands are numb. I might as well be watching one of the clips for my film. I dig my nails into my palms, as hard as I can, so hard it hurts.
Suddenly, an idea comes. I take out my cigarettes from my jacket pocket and remove the lighter from the packet. I flick the wheel once, twice, until the flame leaps in the darkness. I hold it under the tie, willing it to catch, and when it does the cheap fabric burns quickly and with the peculiar smell of burning rubber. I pull on the door as it chars and blackens, and then, with a final flare, it burns through and the door crashes open. I’m free, I think, then realize I’ve only broken into the main room of the van and there’s still a door between me and outside.
It’s locked, of course. I weigh the curtain pole in my hand and scan the room. The front window is cracked, a point of weakness, perhaps. I hammer on it with the pole first, then with my booted foot. It doesn’t give, but the crack splinters some more with each impact. I take off my boot and use it to batter the plastic until, finally, with a sound like a ruler shattering, it fractures. I pull at the shards until there’s a gap wide enough for me to wriggle through.
I crash to the ground but then drag myself to my feet. David’s windows shine silver in the light. Is she in there, watching me? I should have done this weeks ago, I know that now. I should’ve barged my way in, pushed open the door, snapped the chain and had it out with David. I should have sat him down and made him tell me everything he knew, demanded to know where Daisy was. If I hadn’t been so determined to be Alex, maybe I would have. Perhaps that’s been the problem all along. Knowing who I am. A febrile excitement dances over my body, light as a moth.
I know it’ll be locked, but still I try the front door first. Sure enough, it’s solid; it barely rattles in the frame. I could smash the stained-glass window, I suppose, and reach in, but I’m not certain that would do any good either. There must be another way.
I stand back to look at the house. Was that movement, at the window above? A thin blur, a flash of something? I look again. It’s definite this time, movement in the room beyond the window. I stare, half expecting her face to appear, but she’s retreated. All is still. Yet I feel Daisy up there, looking down at me. Her eyes are on me. What does she think? What an idiot, what a fool I am. She’s lured me here.
My heart clenches tight. I wish she would show herself. For a moment I want to shout out to her. Daisy, I’d say. What happened? What did I do to you? Why do you hate me? But I don’t. Her eyes burn into my flesh. I don’t want to let her know I’m scared, or how guilty I feel. I don’t want to feel the bite of her temper, her sarcasm, so I tip my head down and circle the house. The back door shifts but doesn’t give, and I check for other ways in. Behind the trailer there’s a sash window with frosted glass—a bathroom, I suppose, or a downstairs toilet—that appears rotten. I get my weight underneath it and try to force it open but, again, it won’t budge. The wood is more solid than it seems; it’s the paint that’s peeling, nothing more. I find a heavyish rock in the garden and tap the upper sash. The glass fissures with a sharp crack but doesn’t break. It sits stubborn in the frame, but I try again. This time, it shatters and after that it’s simple. I slide my hand gingerly through the gap, find the catch, and release it. The lower sash slides with a little difficulty and I heave myself up onto the ledge. Then, with a bit of inelegant wriggling, I’m inside.
It takes my eyes a moment to adjust to the dark, but already the stink tells me enough. I’m in an airless room; there’s the smell of damp, as if old washing has been hung out to dry, plus a faint, steady drip from a cistern somewhere beneath me. A toilet. I lower myself down to the floor and instinctively reach for the light switch in the corner of the room. It doesn’t work. There’s just an empty click, the room stays dark and, looking up, I can make out the empty, bulbless socket above my head. Shit, I whisper, and as if in response I hear a scurrying patter somewhere in the walls. Mice, I think. Or rats. I let my eyes close and try to grasp at a lungful of air. I try to tell myself I could turn around, go back. No one is making me do this.
But they are, I think, grabbing for the door handle in the dark. I have no choice. I never did. I see it now. Every road led here.
I use the torch on my phone, filming as I go. The lavatory door opens directly onto a hallway and my light hits on a banister, a staircase in heavy, dark wood, a table by the front door on which there’s a phone. Against the opposite wall a grandfather clock sits silent and still. Dust is everywhere; motes swim in the beam. To my left a door leads down into a kitchen, and to the right another to a living room in which I see a huge sofa, mismatched chairs, and an old, boxy television. The room is enervating, and I close the door before continuing.
The next door along opens onto a large dining room—a table with five or six chairs and a sideboard against the far wall upon which there’s a pile of plates, also abandoned to the dust. The rest of the rooms downstairs are similarly desolate. A pile of fetid clothes in the laundry and unwashed plates in the kitchen betray evidence of life, but little else. A sadness hangs everywhere; it’s clear it’s a place designed for entertaining but in which only one person now cooks, and only for himself. As I turn back to go upstairs there’s a soft creak from directly above me. It’s nothing, I tell myself, just the house settling or the wind, but still I’m shaking as I begin to climb. Already I’m digging my nails into my palms, as if in preparation for what I know will come.
The sound comes again, louder now, even more like a movement within rather than the house itself.
“Daisy?” I say, but there’s no reply, and the silence that rushes in after my voice is heavier somehow, more constrictive. “Daisy?” I say again when I’m halfway up. “Are you up here?”
There’s no answer, but as soon as my eyeline reaches the top step I can see that something’s happened here. The doors on this floor are flung open and, inside, the light from my phone illuminates piles of clothes, papers, and books—an utter mess. I jog the rest of the way and go into the ransacked master bedroom. The drawers are upended, their contents tossed on the floor and bed. Clothes, papers, jewelry, which surely can’t be David’s. The place is chaos; the contrast to the calm decrepitude downstairs is startling.
Someone has been here—Daisy, perhaps—scouring the place, turning it upside down. But looking for what?
Outside, the wind picks up. There’s a howl; it sounds like laughter and I drop my camera to my side. There’s something here, there must be. What have I missed?
I go over to the window and realize. I’ve been here before. I know the view: the sea, the moon hanging low over the water, ships in the distance, the rigs beyond them. The picture is the same, the thin line of the horizon cutting across the center like a wire pulled tight. Imagination maps onto fact. There’s no join. When I look farther down, I see the spot in which she stood, preparing to jump.
I hear a footstep, a creak on the stairs, followed by another. As if someone is creeping down.
“Daisy!” I say again. “Wait! Come back!”
There’s no sign of her out there, but I can see where she’s been; the whole house shudders with the disturbance. It’s as if she’s a ghost, running through the ether, detectable only by the vapor trail she leaves behind. I almost stumble as I race down the stairs, my torch flashes wildly, my leaden heart leaps.
But where is she?
I edge forward. I keep the light low. I’m aware she could be anywhere. She can see me; I’m lit like a beacon.
I say her name once more. At the bottom of the stairs, next to the kitchen, a door hangs ajar. I hadn’t noticed it before, a cupboard under the stairs filled with the sharp tang of vinegar.
“Daisy?”
I push in. Coats, shoes, a couple of folding chairs. Boxes stacked in the depths. She can’t be in here, and yet . . .
I take a step. The floor gives a little, groaning as it does, and when I look down I see the floorboard is loose. She’s clever; she’s led me here, too. I kneel and l
ift it from one end, knowing somehow what I’ll find even as I do.
I’m right. There’s a metal strongbox, shoved deep under the floorboards. I lift it out in a cloud of dust and musty air. It’s locked, but I have the key I found in David’s wallet and, when I try it, I find it fits. Inside, there’s a satchel, damp and covered with mold, and I open it cautiously. It’s old; the clasps are rusted. Inside there’s a plastic bag, wrapped round something rectangular, boxy but irregular. Even as I unwrap it I know exactly what it is. Its weight is familiar, its solidity. I’ve held it before. I’ve used it, shot with it; it’s the thing that started me on the path that led here. My first camcorder.
I open the case. There’s a tape in there, but when I try to switch on the machine it’s dead. The battery is empty, I suppose, or perhaps age and the damp conditions have wrecked it completely.
There’s something else in the satchel, too. Two postcards. I pull them out, my head swimming. The first is a montage of images—a bright red London bus, Tower Bridge, the Houses of Parliament, St. Paul’s Cathedral—all arranged around the single word LONDON, as if it were necessary. I flip it over, breath held, but there’s nothing on the other side but David’s address—Bluff House, Blackwood Bay—and a single stamp.
The second postcard is a picture of the Millennium Wheel. On the other side of this, in the same handwriting as the first, there’s a message.
I’m coming back, it says.
I stare at it for a while. The handwriting matches the card sent to Dan. My heart slows. I’m curiously calm. Now that the uncertainty has fallen away, I’m almost relieved. I know what I have to do. I put the camcorder in my bag and stand.
Something is wrong, though. A light on the kitchen ceiling gutters, an orange glow, as if a candle has been lit.
“Daisy?” I say, but the only response is my own echoing, tremulous voice. “Daisy?” I say once more, and go into the kitchen. The trailer is framed in the window, and the source of the light is obvious. It’s ablaze, the flames smacking off the melting windows, smoke rolling from the skylight.
Doubt falls away. She thought I was in there. She’s trying to kill me.
47
The following day, Gavin says he’ll meet me at Liz’s café. When I arrive he’s outside, shivering in the cold. The place is empty, the lights off, the door shuttered. A sign in the window says she’s closed for the holidays.
“Is that usual?” I say as I arrive.
“No idea.”
He makes no move to embrace me and none to kiss me, even in greeting.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” he says. It’s clear he’s lying.
“Gavin?”
He gazes down at his feet and shuffles awkwardly. There’s less than a yard between us but it feels as wide as a canyon. I don’t know what to say, but when he returns my gaze he looks hurt. He pauses, chewing his lip.
“I’ve been thinking. And . . .”
“What?”
“You promised.”
“What?”
“No more lies.”
I have to concentrate: I can’t afford to give anything away. Not until I know what he means.
“I thought I meant something to you.”
“You do,” I say, and in this moment, right when it might be too late, I realize I mean it.
“Sadie,” he says. “Stop lying to me. I know who you are.”
The ground shifts and the world tilts by an inch or two. An abyss opens in front of me, a black hole. No, I think. I can’t get sucked in, I won’t. I draw breath. I can’t let him see what’s happening, but there’s no way I can stop myself.
“Sadie?”
The word echoes. I wish he’d stop saying it. Anyone might hear.
“Are you okay?”
I don’t answer at first, but then I hear myself say I’m sorry. The breath catches in my throat but, even as the words emerge, I’m not sure I mean them. It’s none of his business, so why am I apologizing? He has no right to be angry.
Nevertheless, I say it again. “I’m sorry.”
He holds my face tenderly in his hands. I fight the urge to recoil, to tell him to get the fuck away.
“You couldn’t tell me?”
I say nothing. I want to ask him how he knows, but I suppose it’s obvious. He saw me at my mother’s grave. Heard me insisting that Sadie was alive and that we couldn’t go to the police, that she couldn’t be buried there on the moors.
“You put two and two together?”
“And this, too.” He reaches for my arm and I let him. He pushes back my sleeve. “I noticed it that first night we were together. There are always signs. Of abuse?”
I try to pull away, but he holds me still. He’s gentle, but he’s tracing my scars. His fingers leave a trail, like tiny insects under my skin, burrowing.
“I wanted to talk to you before, after we went to your mother’s grave, but with Ellie going missing . . . And I understand why you tried to hide it, but it’s nothing to be ashamed of. They’re nothing to be ashamed of.”
No, I think. No. All that happened later, after I ran.
“Stop it.”
“A lot of survivors self-harm. It’s quite—”
“It’s not self-harm. I had an accident. Boiling soup.”
He stares at me. He doesn’t believe me.
“You talk in your sleep, too. You know that, don’t you?”
I think of my ex. He’d found it funny. You don’t stop, he told me once. Muttering under your breath. It’s like you’re having a right old row.
“You kept saying her name. Daisy.”
I nod. Mute. It seems the truth does always come out, in the end. The lost really are always desperate to be found.
“You won’t tell anyone, will you?”
He says he won’t, but I’m not sure I believe him. Perhaps I’m too late and he already has.
“You could’ve been honest with me,” he says.
I lean in, close. I want to believe him. I want him to reach out, to hold me. I want to believe someone can love me without wanting something from me. But I’m not sure I can.
He stares straight at me, his head tilted. He has a sad half-smile of compassion pasted across the lower half of his face, though it doesn’t reach his eyes. “You can trust me.”
I don’t know what to tell him. I don’t know how to give him enough, without giving him everything. That’s the problem; I never have. “I like you,” he says. “A lot.”
He seems suddenly like a schoolboy. I know what I’m supposed to say, here. The words even form, but they choke themselves off in my throat and I say nothing. He shakes his head sadly.
“You don’t feel the same.”
“It’s not that,” I say.
“What, then?”
I hesitate. I feel like I’m wading out to sea; the water is black, the ocean floor precarious. At any moment it might disappear and leave me floundering.
“I just feel so . . .”
What? I think. Lost? Empty? Eventually, I find the word. I’d forced it into a box, locked it away, but of course it’s still there. It has to be. I wasn’t there for her when she needed me. I ran instead, and then she disappeared, too. There’s no getting away from that.
“Guilty.”
“It’s not your fault.”
“What?”
“That Daisy took her own life. You did everything you could. Those men . . . they were hurting you; you were right to run away. You had to. No one would blame you.”
But they do. Someone blames me. She blames me.
“You don’t understand. I didn’t run away because of that.”
He lowers his voice. “You don’t have to lie to me.”
“What?”
He looks down. “I know . . . I know it happened to Zoe, too.”
I’m silent. He’s right, I think.
“I tried to be there for her.”
I don’t know what to say, and so I just say, “I’m sorry.”
“No wonder she ran. If that’s even what happened to her.” He raises his eyes. They glisten. “What if she really is dead? Like Daisy. What if—?”
“Daisy isn’t dead.”
“What?”
I stare at him. The moment stretches until it’s about to snap and only then do I speak.
“She sent the postcard. She drove up that first night before you came along. In David’s car, I think. She’s been behind everything.”
He’s staring at me. He believes I’m fragile, but he’s starting to wonder now, wonder how deeply the fracture of abuse has cut.
“You’re serious?”
I can see him struggling. Light begins to bleed from the sky.
“She’s over there,” I say. “At David’s house. I’m sure of it.”
I tell him about being locked in the trailer and he swallows thickly. “We should go to the police,” he says.
I put my hand on his. “I can’t,” I say. “Not yet.” I dig the camcorder out of my bag. “I just need you to help me. I can’t explain. But will you? Please?”
He takes it from me and weighs it in his hand.
“Can you get it working? Or transfer stuff from the tape?”
“Then we’ll go to the police?”
“Yes,” I say, because I know I’ve run out of options. “I promise.”
48
I press Record.
I’ve balanced the camera on the dresser and am sitting on the edge of the bed. The soft glow from the bedside lamp throws my face into partial shadow. My features are indistinct; I could be anyone.
“This is a message for my friend,” I begin. I stare down the lens, picturing Daisy there rather than the blank face of the camera. I take a deep breath. “My best friend.”
I pause. I haven’t planned what I’m going to say. I picture Monica watching it, Beverly in the pub. Gavin and the rest. I wonder what they’ll think.
“I know you sent me the card.”
Liz, I think. She might watch it, too. Sophie, Kat, Ellie. Anyone. I have to be careful; I can’t let them know Daisy is back. I don’t want to expose her, to let her down again. I feel like I’m on a ledge, fifteen stories up; one wrong move and I’ll go over. I mustn’t look down; if I do, I’ll stumble and fall, or be compelled to jump.