The Final Child

by Fran Dorricott

  He visited Jillian again, just to be sure. He found out where she lived, where she worked. He stood on pavements – right there in the middle of the street – and waited for her to notice him, to look up from her goddamn phone and see him.

  But she never did.

  For the first time, it became a chore to go home to Peter. Peter didn’t understand. And then, today, things had changed.

  He felt it the second his brother came out of the kitchen with a bottle of beer in his delicate hands. Alex could barely speak. So many emotions rushed up and crushed his voice. But Peter noticed. As he always did. He could read Alex like a book.

  Alex had thought of that day by the lake, when for once Peter hadn’t been stronger than him, and it had fuelled him with belief. With a need to make things right.

  It started with an argument; Peter was being stubborn, as usual. He said there was no point dragging up the past. Alex disagreed. He wanted to do something about all of this, to make Jillian remember him. Why couldn’t Peter understand that?

  It ended with Alex panting by the kitchen door, his bloody hands gripping the broken beer bottle and Peter – beautiful, broken Peter – bleeding on the grass outside.

  Alex shook his head and started to fill Peter’s grave. He knew none of the children were buried out here, but it was right for Peter to be near the water. He wouldn’t have wanted to be buried anywhere else.

  As Alex dug, a song trilled in his ear. Old words, a rhythm he’d long forgotten, rising back to the surface. They were built on anger, on sadness, on wishes.

  Make it right.

  To do it he would need to go back to the beginning. Then maybe Jilly would understand what she’d done to him. Maybe she would see that now, even after everything, he still needed her. He needed them to start all over again.

  FORTY TWO

  Erin

  FOR A MOMENT NEITHER of us moved in that dim hallway. I noticed something on the outskirts of my vision, a dark shape against a darker wall. Relief flooded my veins – and then Alex darted forwards.

  “I wouldn’t,” I said. I stood my ground. I gestured to one of the jerry cans – it was almost empty, but not quite. I nudged it with my foot and the sound of the liquid sloshing inside drew Alex’s attention.

  “Jilly…” His voice was all warning but I caught the plaintive note, right there at the end. “What about our trip?”

  “There will be no fucking trip. Let me go or I’ll burn your home to the ground.” I used the word home intentionally. He flinched – but less than I expected, as though he had already reconciled with the idea of leaving this place behind.

  “I’ll give you one last chance,” I said as calmly as I could. “You let me tie you up. You give me the car keys. You wait for the police. And I leave.”

  “Or what?” It was a genuine question, like he was weighing up his options. Choosing whether to take the risk. I wondered if that was how he had survived all these years. Always choosing between obedience and death.

  “If you don’t let me go you’ll lose me anyway. And the house. You’ll have nothing.”

  Alex stared at me and for a second in those blue eyes I saw a glimmer of the boy he once was.

  “Jilly, please,” he said. “Don’t leave me again.”

  “No.”

  He snarled, then, and the little boy was devoured by the animal.

  “You won’t start a fire,” Alex sneered. “You can’t convince yourself that it doesn’t scare you.”

  “I’m not the girl you remember.”

  “Jilly. Come on. Come away with me. Be my sister again.”

  “You stopped being my brother the minute you hurt somebody,” I said. “Why won’t you admit this isn’t all my fault. You could have come with me, Alex. Why didn’t you run?”

  “I couldn’t!” Alex wailed. “I had to go back. I thought you were dead!”

  I let this wash over me. I had believed for years that I hadn’t been good enough, that I had failed. But he was the one who made sure I had to make it on my own. Pain lanced through me, but underneath it a hot current of anger.

  “You could have left later. Once you knew I’d made it.” I was calm now, strangely detached. “There must have been times you could have got away. Why didn’t you just come back to me then? Admit it: you liked it.”

  Alex’s eyes shone. Barely suppressed memories flitted across his expression.

  “Yes,” he said. Finally. An admission.

  This time I was the one who lunged first. But he dodged easily, then spun and careened into me. He slammed my head back against the wall as the jerry can tipped, petrol dripping from its open top. I fought back, dug my nails into the side of his face.

  He was heavier, faster. I scrabbled for something, crawling into the room where he had tied me up. The rope. The rope was on the floor, somewhere. If I could just… But Alex, blind with anger now, grabbed me by the back of the head, his fist curling in my long hair as he smashed my face down on the floor.

  I saw stars. I let out a long screech, determined not to let Harriet down. I was worried she might try to intervene – it would ruin our plan. But she didn’t. I waited until Alex and I had rolled towards the far side of the room, my hands scrambling, searching for the tell-tale lump of my car keys in his pocket and then—

  “Now!” I screamed. “Now! Now!”

  Alex was on top of me. One fist still in my hair, he pushed the other against my neck. The force was almost more than I could bear. I couldn’t breathe. My nose was bleeding, too. Tears and bloody snot ran down my face.

  I wriggled as hard as I could, but Alex was strong. His bones dug into my soft flesh and I screamed again. He twisted the hand in my hair to slap it over my mouth. His breathing was hard, fast, and I could smell the animal sweat on him and I bucked harder, my hips wrenching against him.

  I couldn’t see into the hall. Couldn’t hear Harriet. What if it didn’t work? What if nothing happened? I’d told her to run, but what if the lighter didn’t work? If she couldn’t start the fire? Would she try to help me?

  And then it happened. There was a creeping realisation as we both noticed the smell, the sound of crackling fire. Alex was less prepared for it and for a second his grip loosened. I bucked once more, hard, using my entire weight and years of anger and self-loathing to throw him off. His head hit the wall and he dropped, stunned.

  I scrambled to my feet. The jerry can was right there. I grabbed it, tossing what was left of the petrol towards my brother. I didn’t stop to see if my aim was true; I was out of the door in seconds flat. I slammed it behind me – and slid the bolt home.

  In the hallway Harriet was already running. I caught sight of her as she turned back to check on me, her face glowing with the light from the flames that already licked at the mattress we had dragged out of the room. The flames spread, devouring the faded curtains we had torn from the entrance hall as they went up like a funeral pyre.

  Her eyes were wide and I could see her clutching at one of her arms as she gestured to the petrol path she had laid, which soon the flames would reach, like a treasure hunt of pain leading out of the house.

  We ran.

  I tried not to think of the petrol that had splashed as Harriet had poured it, the puddles of it I had run through to get here… Alex hadn’t even noticed that the trap was already laid.

  The halls felt like a labyrinth. It wasn’t long before I could taste the smoke, acrid and hot and turning the dust to soot as it devoured the bones of this old house. The air was filling with dark smoke and soon it was hard to see where we were going. I relied on my memory. My blessed fucking memory.

  The flames were as fast as we were. Faster, maybe. I was surprised at the speed with which they took over, made this house theirs, latching onto the petrol that Harriet had poured at other points through the house. They devoured the offerings we had left in their path, curtains and paintings pulled off walls while Alex had been outside packing for our new life together.

  We did not bel
ong here any more.

  The hallway to the conservatory felt endless. My brain kept looping We didn’t have to do this. We could have just locked him up and waited. But those locks wouldn’t have held him. We had to make sure we were far, far away before he got out.

  I stumbled. Harriet reached for me, her steady, capable hands wrapping around my arm and yanking me upright. But I was slower than she was, body still freshly smarting from my fight with Alex, my weak ankle hurting. And there would be furniture in the way of the conservatory door. I shouldn’t have tried to slow him down.

  “Go!” I yelled. “Get it out of the way!”

  Harriet gave me a last look as I limped after her, before racing ahead to do what I asked.

  A sound made me pause. I spun – and Alex was there again. He was bloody now, knuckles bleeding, his face sooty and streaked with sweat, one of his shoulders hanging loose in its socket as though he’d used it to ram the bolted door down. He rounded the corner like a wraith silhouetted against the fug of smoke that crept along the passage.

  “You said you wouldn’t leave me, Jilly. You promised.”

  I inched backwards, testing my right leg. I had twisted it again when I stumbled, and now it shuddered under my weight. Fuck. I held my hands up.

  “Alex, just let me leave—”

  “I won’t lose you again. You went once before and I had Peter, but now I have nothing. You won’t leave me.”

  His growl echoed in my bones. Then I realised that it wasn’t just Alex; the whole building was growling. Groaning. Aching as the fire damaged its core. The wooden panelling on these walls was burning, smoking, and with a great, creaking crash something gave on the floor above.

  Alex and I looked up together, but I wasn’t going to hang around long enough to find out if the ceiling would hold.

  I ran – as fast as my leg could carry me – down the corridor and out into the conservatory, just as a screeching sound of falling timber and plaster made my ears ring.

  “Jilly!” Alex’s scream was raw. My belly lurched at the sound and I spun.

  It had happened. Rotten floorboards and fire, and what looked like a statue, an armless, headless woman, falling right through the ceiling. I stood, half-paralysed, unable to decipher the plaster dust from the smoke, the rubble and fire from my brother’s outstretched arm.

  The whole building might come down if the fire got hot enough. I felt a shudder. I should go to him. Help him. I didn’t want him to die—

  But even as I thought it, I was moving. Out towards Harriet and fresh air and freedom. Alex wasn’t my brother any more, and I couldn’t risk my life to save his.

  * * *

  Harriet wasn’t in the conservatory, but the door was open. I prayed she had made it out. And then I was on the lawn. The air was cool and I sucked it into my aching lungs.

  Somewhere, Harriet coughed.

  Seconds after I stumbled into the garden the house shook as something else collapsed. I heard a tinkling of glass somewhere. Perhaps there had been other cans of petrol stored somewhere else, ready for more long drives in a dead woman’s old car.

  Harriet was stunned. She sat on the grass, cradling her arm, which had a long, slicing cut down the middle, still bleeding. She gazed up at the house in shock.

  “We need to go,” I said. “Your car—”

  I fumbled in my pockets, but the keys were gone. Tears made my vision blur.

  Just then another thundering sound made the ground shudder. I could see the fire now. The flames licked through windows that had cracked in the heat; it had already spread beyond the first floor. I helped Harriet to stand and she said nothing as we moved, but gripped my hand tightly in hers.

  “Alex has a car,” Harriet said. “Right? Maybe he left the keys inside.”

  We reached the side of the house. The old rusted Land Rover emerged like a spectre through the trees. Time was like water; I let the ticking seconds soothe me as I held Harriet’s hand. The driver’s door was still open. The keys were still on the seat, Alex’s bags on the grass.

  I turned to look back.

  Flames. Red, gold, glorious. I felt them on my skin like a kiss from the sun and I inhaled deeply, the smells of ash and smoke and something sweeter, too. How much petrol had there been in that house?

  Behind us the wind whipped up and the trees rustled and the crackling, burning sound was replaced by screaming my brain knew but failed to recognise. The fire was soothing the pain – so unlike the tiny, broken flames from Alex’s candles. It was an inferno. And now Alex was in there; he was burning.

  I fought the urge to crumple to the ground, to weep out a maelstrom of grief and anger – and, buried deeper, the relief that he was gone. That it was over.

  “Look, Erin.”

  I felt Harriet’s hand, gently, on my shoulder. She turned me to face the driveway that led to the front of the house. The fire was hot at our backs, and the drive sprawled ahead and there, in the distance, were the gates. The screaming wasn’t Alex.

  I saw blue and white and bright, stark yellow jackets and the sound grew.

  “Police.”

  FORTY THREE

  24 JANUARY 2017

  Harriet

  I’D BEEN AWAKE FOR hours. My eyes were gritty, my head heavy. But it was a peaceful kind of tiredness, my body aching from a long night at my desk – a satisfying kind of tiredness.

  Erin stirred in the bed behind me. She’d stayed in the spare room with me, sleeping on the lumpy futon instead of a proper bed because I couldn’t drag myself away. She was wrapped, sleepily, in some of the blankets I’d made. She always liked to nestle herself in, like a cat. And she peeped out now.

  Outside there was a faint shimmer of white where snow had fallen in the night and was now melting, slick and silver-grey on the building across the way. Erin shivered.

  “Morning,” she said.

  “I finished it.”

  There was a moment of silence. Digesting. Waking up a little more. I might have waited to tell her, but I couldn’t. I’d wanted to say something since the second I finished the first draft – three hours ago – but I couldn’t bring myself to wake her.

  “The whole thing?” She scooted upright in bed, her expression caught between excitement and dread. She’d only read parts until now. And I’d edited since then, written a lot more, turned it into something with a solid shape.

  Ignoring my old tutor, I’d allowed even more of myself to leak onto the page. I wrote about my relationship with my brother, about how he had always encouraged me to explore my feelings. I wanted to show his kindness, his love, as I wanted to do for all of the children out there who had died because they wanted to protect their sibling. I’d spent more time thinking about Jem and Mikey than I ever had, and allowed myself to reflect on how that had affected me growing up. I didn’t want it to seem selfish, and I was worried what Erin might think.

  “It’s ready,” I said.

  Erin looked haunted for a moment, perhaps reliving – as I had – that day at the house. And every uncertain day since. But every day was one step away from what had happened, a step towards the future.

  I’d since told her all about my family. My aunt and uncle, and my cousins – as much as I knew of them. She’d met my brother and his fiancée when they flew in for Christmas, and had been warm and welcoming despite the feelings I’m sure it all stirred up.

  Erin smiled, then, and the spell was broken, her face lighting with a tired sort of happiness, pride at her own bravery. And, I thought, she looked proud of me, too.

  “How does it end?” she asked.

  I climbed off the chair at my desk and onto the bed, burrowing into her nest of blankets and inhaling her warm, sleepy smell.

  “With you. And me.”

  “What about…” She swallowed, wrapping herself into my arms, pressing her golden head to my chest. “What about him? What about Alex?”

  “Real life only,” I reminded her gently. “That was the agreement, same as the piece we did
for the press. I’d love to say he’s gone for good, but you know I can’t.”

  Erin trembled a little. I knew, from the dreams that still plagued her at night, that she had seen him at the end, as the fire devoured it all. That she sometimes regretted what she had done – or not done – in that house.

  It was worse because we didn’t know what had happened to him. The wreckage had been pilfered, and Jenny’s body recovered from the well; hair and blood and fibres had been pulled from the back of Dana Wood’s old Land Rover and the shed, and fingerprints had been found in two pairs of latex gloves Alex had left in there. They had him on camera, hood up, outside our hotel room that night. But after all the interviews, the questions, the statements… Alex still hadn’t been found.

  Alex wasn’t dead. We both knew it. It would be too simple. Too neat. If he had died, his body would have been found and we could have laid those demons to rest. There would have been closure – but the Wood family had never, ever done closure.

  Alex knew how to hide. He knew to shave his skin to reduce trace evidence, to wear gloves and clothes that wouldn’t shed; he had spent his whole adult life learning how to be invisible. And he could do it again.

  I told the police what I could recall from the little floral book I’d found in Dana’s room, reciting what I knew of the locations of the missing children. But I’d lost the book in the house and I couldn’t remember it all. Godfrey had been angry about the house, about the fire, all that potential evidence burned to dust, but when she saw Erin I could tell from her face that she understood. We had done what we needed to in order to survive. And without the text we sent to Wendy it would have been even longer before they knew what had happened, before we would have known that we were safe.

  The police slowly began to decipher the information I could recall, using other notes they’d found in the journal Alex had left at the house on Elgin Road, along with what was left in the house after the fire. Dana had been meticulous with some things, writing about the trips she had taken with her children before Chris died. And many of these matched up with locations I remembered from the list I had seen. Parks, reservoirs and picnic spots. And one by one, the children’s final resting places were announced.