Never Alone (26 page)

And then she manages to get a finger under one of the layers, and pulls it away, allowing her hand to turn. She pulls and twists and wriggles and then both her hands are free. She cries with the sudden stab of pain in her shoulders, holding both her hands to her chest, rubbing them together.

She doesn’t have long.

By bending her knees and edging her bottom down the bed, she manages to pull herself into a sitting position. Her socked feet are tied, with the ligature around the socks. It
looks as if it should be easy to work her feet free of the socks, giving her a few millimetres of space to pull herself free. Her legs are pulled so wide apart that she cannot reach either of them without considerable effort, but by pulling and twisting she eventually manages to get both hands to her right ankle.

A few minutes later, she is free. It feels as though the whole process has taken more like an hour. She sits cross-legged on the bed for a minute, massaging her feet, which are freezing. Every joint aches, as does her head. She fingers her ear carefully, wondering if he tore something when he hit her. It feels bruised, puffy, crusted with dried blood.

When she can feel her feet enough to stand, she goes to the window and moves the curtain aside just enough to see that, outside, the daylight is fading. She wonders why he bothered to close the curtains, to turn on the light; maybe to disorientate her. It has stopped snowing, but outside is all white.

She walks carefully to the door, listening for sounds in the house, avoiding the floorboards she knows creak. The house is silent. Quickly she runs across the hallway to her own bedroom, to the upstairs phone. She clutches the receiver, goes to dial 999, but the line is dead. There is no tone, no response, nothing.

I have to get out.

First thing: proper clothes. Jeans, waterproof trousers over the top, a T-shirt, a different sweater – all done quickly with shaking, numb fingers. Clothes she’s chosen herself – there is something powerful about it. It shows intent.

She slips down the stairs, keeping to the edge, just in case he is back – but the house is still quiet. Downstairs in the kitchen she glances through the window. The world outside is white, and quiet, the clouds overhead darkening. She can see the cottage, the footprints clearly leading away from the house, past the cottage. Two sets – Will’s, and Tess’s. She goes
to the front door to retrieve her boots. They are still wet from the snow but they are the best ones she has; she tucks her jeans inside and slips the waterproof top layer over the top of them.

She stands up, feeling better now she is prepared. Another glance out of the kitchen window.

She sees the shape of a man rounding the cottage, white ski trousers. Will is coming back.

She runs for the back of the house, the utility room, pulling an old Barbour jacket of Jim’s off the peg and pulling it on as she yanks at the door. It doesn’t give. It’s locked, of course. Where’s the key? Where’s the fucking key?

She pulls at the drawers, looks fruitlessly at the hooks upon which the spare keys the house has accumulated over the years are hung. From the front of the house, she hears the front door open and bang shut. She freezes. There is no time, no time to find the key. How can she get out?

Then she has an idea. She unhooks another set of keys. She hears rustling as Will takes off his jacket and his ski trousers, thinking that if only she doesn’t move, if only she can keep quiet… he doesn’t know she is here.

‘Sarah?’ he calls.

That’s good
, she thinks:
he is in the kitchen.

‘Sarah, it’s only me. I’m back.’

Wherever he has been, he has left Tess behind. Sarah hopes her dog is safe, hopes that he has not hurt her in some way.

She listens as he heads up the stairs, listens to the creaking. As soon as she hears the second creak she moves, fast, trying not to make a sound. Hoping he will be too distracted to listen out for sounds downstairs.

He is upstairs now, heading down the corridor. Did she leave the door open? She cannot remember. In any case, she has just seconds left. She dashes for the front door, opening it and closing it quickly behind her, knowing he will hear
and come running. She fumbles with the key in the deadlock, knowing it’s stiff, knowing her fingers are still a little numb, and just as the lock shoots home the handle turns, the door rattles and he is right there behind the door.

‘Sarah! Sarah! Open the fucking door! Open the door NOW! Sarah!’

She turns and runs through the snow, jumping through his fresh footprints, not looking back.

It won’t take him long to get out. Maybe two minutes, before he finds a window that opens wide enough for him to get through. Maybe she has less than two minutes.

She moves as quickly as she can, back behind the cottage and out of sight of the house.

Whichever way she goes, he will see her footprints. Nevertheless, she has to try.

The wind has dropped completely and the sky has cleared; the sound of her shuffling through the fresh snow is amplified by the emptiness of the landscape, as are her gasping, heaving breaths.

She has just reached the gate when she hears something behind her. She stops dead, heart thumping. A wrenching, creaking sound, metal scraping. She wonders what it is and then realises it must be the patio chairs outside the conservatory, scraping against the concrete. He must have got the conservatory door open.

She has no time to get away. Keeping as close to the side of the cottage as she can, she inches her way round it, glancing around the corner.

There he is.

She shrinks back out of sight, not sure if he saw her or not.

‘Sarah! Don’t be an idiot! You’ll freeze to death!’

And then she thinks: the cottage. The cottage has a separate landline; perhaps it is still working. Maybe it’s not
down because of the snow; maybe Will cut the wire or something. And, even if the phone’s not working, then there is a knife block in the kitchen; she can find herself a weapon…

She holds her breath, listening. Whichever way he goes, she will hear his shuffling footsteps through the snow.

‘Sarah! Do you want to see Kitty again? Do you?’

Just for a moment she screws her eyes tight shut. This can’t be happening, she thinks. I’m dreaming, I must be dreaming this.

She can hear him, shuffling. The sound comes from all around her. When she looks around the corner again, he is gone. He must be behind the cottage now, coming up behind her. Quickly, quietly, keeping close to the wall which has been sheltered from the worst of the snow, Sarah makes her way to the cottage door. It opens smoothly – he didn’t lock it. Thank God he didn’t lock it.

She closes the door behind her as quietly as possible and runs for the kitchen. The phone should be in here, but it’s just the cradle; the handset is missing. She wants to cry with frustration, her eyes flitting around the room, checking every surface for the phone.

The bedroom. The door is closed; it must be in there.

She runs across the open-plan living room and as she does so catches a glimpse of Will through the patio doors. He has seen her. Quick, then, quick, and she pushes open the door of the bedroom.

Inside is hell.

The floor, the walls, the bed, everything is dark red. The smell of it hits her and she brings her hand up to her mouth to stop the scream.

Kitty. Is it Kitty?

Something terrible has happened here. She takes a step further into the room and that’s when she sees it – a leg, just
the foot and some of the shin visible in the space between the bed and the window.

It’s not moving.

Aiden?

Behind her, she hears the cottage door open and close.

She does not look round. He’s breathing, hard.

When he speaks, his voice is low, gravelly…
oh, God
– amused.

‘Want to see what’s left of him?’

She moves so quickly he doesn’t have time to react: she spins and pushes out as hard as she can, catches him off balance. Will staggers backwards. It gives her a second to run, and in another moment she is out of the door and racing as fast as she can across the yard towards the barn, the car. There is no point heading for the gate any more. It’s a long way to the village; he’d catch up with her too quickly. At least in the barn there are places to hide. She ducks down behind the Land Rover, looking back the way she has come. Her tracks are deep and obvious, not only across the pristine snow of the yard but snowy prints all the way across the concrete of the barn, to where she is crouched. She might as well hold up a flag.

He has reached the end of the cottage, and for some reason – probably the confusing tracks leading to the gate – he carries on without glancing to his right. He is moving quickly, almost jumping through the snow.

He’s going.

The snow is deep, but she could risk it in the car. At least she could lock herself in… except the car keys are in the house. Jim used to keep a spare set in his toolbox, back when they had the previous car, the VW Golf that ended up costing him his life.

And then he reaches the gate, looks down the hill towards the village, then back to the house. She ducks down behind
the car again but he was looking straight towards her. He must have seen the tracks.

When she looks up again he is halfway across the yard, yomping through her footprints. He does not call out.

Whimpering, she turns to find Jim’s bright red tool chest, starts tugging at sticking metal drawers, sending spanner sets scattering over the floor. The spanners are tiny, hundreds of them, wrenches, screwdrivers, all of them too small to use as a weapon. She grabs at the bottom drawer, the deeper one, and inside are plastic cases containing Christ knows what. At the back, a small plastic bag with car keys in, several of them, a lifetime’s collection. And a wrench, huge and heavy and rusted.

‘Sarah.’

She spins with the wrench in her hand and hits, connects with something solid, screaming with rage and fright as she does so.

Will falls heavily against the car and slumps to the floor. He does not put out his hands to break his fall.

There is a metallic clatter as the wrench falls from her hand to the concrete.

She stares at the figure sprawled at her feet. He is lying on his right side, his head and left arm behind the front tyre of the Land Rover, his legs crossed neatly at the ankle. He is so bundled up in the ski jacket that she can’t tell if he’s breathing. The hood is still up. Her hand is over her mouth, as if to stop herself screaming. Behind her hand she is gasping and making a keening sound.

Enough,
she tells herself.
Pull yourself together
. She breathes through the panic, letting it begin to settle.
Think
.

She steps over his legs, tugs at the shoulder of his jacket so that he flips over on to his back, away from the car. His eyes are slightly open; blood has trickled from under the black woollen hat across his cheek, his temple and his
forehead. Even without getting closer she can see a mist of breath coming from his mouth. He’s alive, then. The hood, and his hat, must have protected him from the full force of the wrench.

She turns back to the toolbox, to the plastic bag full of spare keys. Even a quick look tells her the Land Rover key is not among them.

One last glance at Will. Then she turns on her heels and runs as best she can through the snow to the house.

It takes her a few minutes to get the keys. Her hands are shaking so much as she rummages through the wooden bowl full of house keys, workshop keys, door keys and spare keys that she drops the fob when she finds it. It skitters under the kitchen table and she has to get down on one knee to retrieve it. Tess’s half-chewed rawhide bone is under there too.

She runs back through her own footprints to the barn, pressing the key fob and seeing the welcoming flash of the indicator bulbs, bright against the snow. It’s dark now, and the wind has begun to stir again. A few flakes of snow drift in the sharp yellow glow of the security light; it’s impossible to tell if it’s new snow, or flakes lifted on the breeze.

She will need to pull him clear of the car in order to back out without running him over.

But Will isn’t there.

She stares at the patch of concrete where he’d been lying just a few minutes ago. There is nothing, no trace of him, not even any blood on the floor. Immediately she spins around, looking into the dark corners of the barn, the yard, around the cottage. No sign of him.

Sarah pulls open the car door, climbs in and presses the button to lock the doors behind her.

The silence of the car envelops her. She can see her breath, clouding into the space.

There is no sound, not even something as specific as a smell, but suddenly she is certain that Will is in the car with her.

It’s like an electric shock; all of her senses alert, adrenaline flooding her. She holds her breath. There is nothing, no sound. She shuts her eyes tight –
please God, no
– and when she opens them again she twists in the seat and looks behind her.

The back seat is empty, the footwells clear.

He’s not there.

Now she feels comforted by the familiarity of this space, cold as it is; and the car starts first time, as she knew it would. Safe. Reliable. Radio 4 comes on; it’s
PM
and suddenly she is in love with the voice of Eddie Mair.

And then there is a sudden bang next to her, and Will at the passenger window, thumping on the glass with his bare hand, leaving a bloody smear on the glass.

She screams, slams her foot down on the accelerator. The car lurches backwards and Will slips, falling into the snow.

She has never tested this car on deep snow but it feels like a good time to try.

The car backs out of the barn and crunches into the snow. She tries not to think of it backing up, stuffing into the exhaust. She glances out of the window. The snow reaches the bottom of the door. She spins the wheel and the car jerks ahead, spraying snow in wide white arcs around the yard. She cannot see him any more and she doesn’t want to waste any time looking. The tyres skid and then grip and then she is at the bottom of the drive, turning into the lane.