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CHAPTER
THIRTY-ONE

I woke at dawn to the sound of buckshot on tin. Rain, as it turned out, hammering the roof of the van where it protruded from the cover of the trees; a thunderous, dissonant roar made musical by the rhythmic drip-drip-drip from the leafy canopy above my head.

The heat of the night had been stifling, the air heavy and still and sticky to the touch. It had sapped in turn my strength and my resolve, so much so that the first stubborn root had put an end to the digging of Sammy’s grave. I’d returned to my seat exhausted, my shirt soaked through. I’d told myself that I’d sit it out, wait for the cool air to roll in on the cusp of daylight. In truth, though, I’d simply dreaded going home, preferring just to be alone with my self-loathing.

Now I couldn’t even bring myself to pitch Sammy into the undergrowth. I just sat there, trying to ignore the itch of ingrained dirt and dried sweat. Right arm tattooed with blood and soot. Left arm spotless to the elbow, infused with rose oil and chamomile. On the one hand, fiery death; on the other, aromatherapy. That a part of me wanted to laugh made me altogether rather queasy.

I needed a shower, and I needed my bed and so, as the morning light crept warily into the forest, I retreated with my spirit in tatters. I just hoped a good sleep would sort me out.

* * *

Nothing separates mind from body quite like waking up in a hurry. Your brain, hyperaware and strung out on urgency, races to make sense of time and place as it drags you to your feet. Your feet, however, are still half-asleep and can’t quite decipher the garbled, panicked instructions being thrown at them. More often than not, you walk into a wall.

And so it was that I tripped over the pile of laundry beside my bed; yesterday’s smoky clothes, this morning’s damp bath towel, the heavy duvet thrashed aside to escape the heat.

It was not the hammering at the door that had woken me, but rather my sudden realization that it was actually happening. In my dream, it had been going on for some time; short bouts of increasing volume, punctuated by the distant, muffled sound of Rachel’s voice. To my dismay, I’d been locked in a chest and unable to answer.

Now, though, free of such confinement, I rattled from table to wall to door, limbs left to their own devices while my head struggled with the where and when. I hadn’t until now fully registered Erica’s words to me—
you told her to swing by tomorrow...I’ll get rid of her for you
—and I’d failed both to listen to Rachel’s messages and to furnish the spare room with a clock. I had no way of knowing how long she’d been standing out in the rain.

It got worse when I finally made it onto the landing. Bedroom and bathroom doors wide-open. Erica’s bed empty and neatly made.

I launched myself down the stairs. All momentum and no balance, and with both arms stuck fast in the balled-up sleeves of my dressing gown, I collided painfully with the coat stand in the hall. My efforts to disentangle myself brought it crashing down on top of me, leaving a strong impression of handcrafted quality on my scrotum. Quite reasonably, I yelped.

That no one came running played tricks with my unease as I scrambled, naked, to my feet. Evidently, Erica and Rachel were not in the kitchen swapping illuminating home truths but, given Erica’s statement of intent, the alternative was potentially far worse.

I tugged the robe free and punched out the sleeves; gingerly tied the belt as I limped to the door. And of course, there was no one there.

Nor, however, was there any question that someone had been. As quickly as hope struck me that my dream may have been just that, the truth announced itself quite undeniably in the shape of a Mazda MX-5.

The rain came down like a blanket, heavy and smothering, sucking in heat and forcing it into the ground. It pounded the driveway and the roof of the van, crackling and bouncing and flicking up flakes of gravel. I was soaked within seconds as I circled the little roadster, a thousand tiny shards of stone biting painfully at the soles of my feet.

Beacon-red and parked not fifteen feet from the door, the Mazda was conspicuous both in the unquestionable reality of its existence and in its failure to ignite in me the slightest flame of recognition. In itself, it offered no clue to its origin; its trunk was locked, its snug cockpit immaculately clean and bereft of foreign objects. I whirled around frantically, searching for some telltale movement or flash of color. There wasn’t a soul in sight.

Clueless and leaden with dread, I stumbled back inside the house.

The kitchen was spotless but for the two splintered floorboards and a neat pile of freshly ironed clothes on the table. The answering machine was still flashing; I stabbed at it with a nervously clumsy finger, hitting everything but the playback button. I counted to ten and tried again.

“Hi, and congratulations! Courtesy of Top Flight Holidays, you’ve been specially selected—”

Fuck off.

“Hey, you! Just to let you know I’ll be over in the morning, about ten. Ha ha. I’ve got such a surprise for you. It’s so cute, you’ll love it! I can’t wait! Oh, and make sure it’s sunny. Um...call me back if you’re not there or something. But actually, don’t not be there because I’m making a picnic, and I don’t think I can eat it all by myself. Bye!”

My stomach flipped. Ten twenty-five; what’s that in relation to
about ten
?

“End of messages.”

I snatched up the handset, fighting the urge to throw it across the kitchen. I dialed Rachel’s number, waited for what felt like a generation to be connected.

“The number you are calling is not available. Please try ag—”

I sucked in air through clenched, bared teeth. Dialed her home number.

“The person you are calling is not availab—”

“Fuck!” I wrapped both hands around the phone, strangling and shaking and stabbing it down hard against the counter, imploring it against all reason to ring before I broke it into a thousand pieces. When it almost immediately did so, I was startled enough that it jumped from my grasp and skittered across the counter. I chased it, my furious hands succeeding only in batting it farther away until finally it clattered against the side of the fridge. I caught it more by luck than design. I needed to get a hold of myself.

“I’m here,” I barked. “Where are you?”

A brief silence on the other end, and then, simply, “Oh.” A female voice, shrouded in road roar. “Hi. It’s, um... Are you okay?”

“Who is this?”

“I’m sorry. It’s Ali Green. Look, if I’ve caught you at a bad time...”

Oh, Christ. I closed my eyes and forced a deep breath; it shuddered through my body, grating against every knot of tension. “No.” I sighed. “Perfect timing. I’m having such a shitty day, you can’t ruin it this time.”

Her laugh sounded genuine enough. “Well,” she said, “That wasn’t my intention. I was hoping I might catch you, though.”

“You don’t say.” I shrugged off my wet robe, grabbed the first pair of trousers from the pile.

“I’m on my way over. There are a few things we need to discuss. And,” she added, “before you get upset, it’s not all about you this time.”

I moved to the window, scanned the fields and the tree line beyond. Nothing out there moved. I said, “I don’t understand.”

“No,” she replied, “neither do I, and there’s a strong chance the sky might fall down, but I’ve been over and over this in my head, and it’s hugely irritating, but we might actually need each other’s help. I’m about twenty minutes away. Okay?”

There was something about the barn. Too still, perhaps, or its shadows too dark. It stared back at me, doors flung open like outstretched arms, beckoning. “Actually, I was just about to go out,” I said.

The humor fell out of her voice then. “You’ll wait,” she said. It was neither a guess nor a request.

She wasn’t going to take no for an answer; it went without saying that a prolonged effort to put her off would serve only to raise suspicion and accelerate her arrival. I was already quite sure that this advance warning of hers was designed purely to double-bluff my fight-or-flight response; that she knew I’d be having this conversation with myself, and would expect me to expect that she expected me to run, in which case the thing to do would be to stay put, and so I’d naturally be inclined to do the opposite, but since I knew that she knew that, I’d have no choice but to stay. Whatever, there was no way on Earth I was going to risk her walking into a room with Erica and Rachel, so running was out of the question.

“Oh, yes, of course I will,” I assured her, with a poor attempt at a misunderstood chuckle. “I’ll be here. I just need to fix a leak out back, that’s all, so if I’m not done by the time you get here, you can just make yourself at home, okay?” Did that sound cooperative or was I just making things worse?

“I’ve got a better idea.” I was afraid of that. “How about I stop for a coffee and make it an hour?”

T-shirts. All T-shirts, nothing with sleeves. It’s pissing down, for Christ’s sake. “Better,” I said. I knew she’d be here in ten minutes, drinking her coffee from a foam cup, in her car, at the end of my drive, but that was no problem as long as she stayed there. “Can you tell me what this is all ab...” Garage doors. Wide-open. Oh, sweet Jesus. My heart leaped into my mouth, gagging me. My temples throbbed, and my face burned.

Green hesitated for a moment, cleared her throat. “Are you...alone?” she asked.

Strange question. “Yes,” I said.

“And you’re sure you’re okay?”

“Fine,” I croaked, fighting my own churning head for control of my composure. “Sorry, I’m...getting dressed. Strangled myself.”

“Right.” She sounded unconvinced. “In that case, I’ll get off the phone before you do yourself an injury. But to answer your question, we urgently need to discuss Erica Shaw.”

And right on cue, Erica strolled out of the woods.

I pulled the drawers out two at a time, scooping out knives and corks and wooden spoons, letters and bills and bottles of aspirin. I clawed through cupboards, tipping over glasses and stacks of plates and littering the floor with dusters and boot polish and Oxy-Action Vanish. I looked in the freezer, the oven and the washing machine, the dryer and the breadbin and the dustbin. Not one of them contained a gun.

I took the stairs three at a time, tore open Erica’s wardrobe. It was full of clothes still, but nothing else. I wrenched out her drawers onto the floor; bras and knickers and tights and socks. I threw aside her pillows and sheets and lifted up the mattress. I tipped the whole bed over and found nothing but dust underneath.

I popped the loft hatch and hauled myself up through the hole. Whatever the duplicitous bitch had said she’d hidden up here, there was no sign of it; the roofspace was empty but for the water tank, and the water tank held only water.

Desperate now, I bolted back to the kitchen and tipped out the contents of the knife block; grabbed for a carving knife as Erica flashed past the window. And as the rain grew louder and the hallway echoed with her footsteps, I slipped behind the door and held my breath.

CHAPTER
THIRTY-TWO

Erica met the breakfast table and doubled over, arms flailing, gasping as I ground her face into the oak.

“Where is she?” I snarled, forcing my feet between hers, my hand wound tightly into her dripping hair.

She bucked against me, kicked at my legs, screamed, “What the fuck—”

I jerked her head up and punched it back down onto the table, pressed my body into hers and the knife against her throat. “Tell me what you’ve done with her,” I said, “or I’ll take your fucking head off.”

“Who?” she screeched, eyes wide, fists clenched, every muscle rigid and trembling. “What the fuck are you talking about? What have I done?”

“Rachel.” I tightened my grip on the knife. “What have you done with Rachel?”

“What do you mean? I haven’t even met her!”

“Where is she?” I roared.

She flinched; her face flushed and her eyes filled with tears. “I don’t know what you mean.”

I leaned in close enough to smell the damp forest in her hair; close enough to sink my teeth into her glistening neck. “You’ve got five seconds,” I said. “What were you doing in the woods?”

She uncurled her left hand and pointed to the floor behind her; a small wicker basket lying in the midst of a broad smear of blood and skin. “Picking blackberries,” she rasped.

“Blackberries...” I could see them now; hundreds of them, scattered and squashed to every edge and corner of the room. “You were picking blackberries,” I muttered, my brain whimpering under the sudden weight of rational thought.

“I was going to make a crumble.” I felt her relax beneath me as she sensed my deflation. Her hips slumped, and her arms fell to the table and she blew out a weary sigh. “You’re hurting me,” she said. “Get off.”

I stood unthinkingly. The knife slipped from my fingers without instruction, clattering and dancing in front of her face. Her expression changed in an instant; her eyes darkened, her lips curled into a teasing smile. She stretched across the table with a luxurious moan, arched her back and pointed her toes and pushed herself hard up against me. “Fucking hell,” she purred. “You know how to get a girl going, don’t you?”

I backed away, incredulous, my sudden ineloquence adding to the swirling confusion in my head.

She rolled onto her back, kicking aside chairs and propping herself up on her elbows. “Forget about Rachel, I’m sure she’ll turn up.” Her stare sparked with undisguised menace. “When she does,” she said, “we can deal with her together.” She trailed her fingers over the soaked cotton clinging to her breasts; laughed through pursed lips as she began unfastening buttons. “In the meantime...”

I hauled her by her arm back out into the rain. She stumbled and skated alongside me, working to pry open my fingers. “You know you’ll never get me through the door,” she cackled.

“Oh, yes, I will,” I assured her. “I’ll break your arms if I have to.”

“Hey!” She punched me hard in the ribs. I tightened my grip, dug my fingernails hard into her flesh. She just fought harder.

“Make it easy,” I warned her.

“Oh, come on.” She laughed. “Asking me to stay in my room would have been easy.”

“If you’re locked in, I don’t have to trust you.”

“Fucking—” She dug her heels in, skidded and spun and toppled over, forcing me to drag her like a sack. She bucked and thrashed, clawed at my hand, bit and hissed and spat. “Let me fucking go,” she snarled.

I should have listened. From inside the dark ruins of my mind, my priorities had appeared simple and mutually detached, but the fog of panic had rendered me shortsighted. Unable to see beyond the threat posed by an uncontained Erica, I’d unwittingly relegated finding Rachel to a mere notion in waiting. Any clear-thinking soul would have spotted the yawning chasm in my logic, but it never entered my head that the border between these two distinct objectives might somehow blur when exposed to daylight. When the inevitable finally happened, therefore, I very nearly jumped out of my skin.

Rachel stood in the center of the garage beside the open cupboard door, arms folded tightly, thoughtfully tapping her thumbnail against her front teeth. She said nothing, just watched curiously as I dropped Erica flat on her back and gurgled in stunned horror.

I floundered and stuttered, rain pounding my head, wide, unblinking eyes darting between Rachel and Erica and the exposed stairwell. I could think of a number of words, but articulate none.

It was Erica who spoke first, as she pulled herself up by my trouser leg and stumbled to her feet. “Is that her?” she panted.

“Erica,” I said, “go to your room.”

“Oh, right—” she laughed “—
now
you get a clue.”

“I mean it.”

“No way,” she said, huddling close beside me and slipping her arm around my waist. “I’m not going anywhere. I want to hear you try and talk your way out of this.”

I peeled her off me and pushed her away. “Leave us,” I snapped.

She came back like a giggling boomerang. “Hey, be nice,” she teased. “You don’t have to act all macho in front of her. And anyway, you said we were going to talk to her together.”

“No,” I spat, “I did not.” I spun her around and pushed her again, harder this time, enough to send her tripping.

She threw me a poisonous glance over her shoulder, looked Rachel up and down with sneering contempt. “Sort it out,” she said. “
I
mean it.” And then she was gone, storming across the driveway, back toward the house.

I watched her until she ducked inside and slammed the door behind her. When she was out of sight, I just stared at the door, my relief at being alone with Rachel immediately overpowered by the undivided weight of her scrutiny. When I finally turned to face her, her expression was blank and impenetrable.

“I tried knocking,” she said flatly. “I was getting wet. I thought I might find you in here.”

“I...” closed my eyes. Covered my face. Rubbed my temples and willed myself to wake up sprawled across my bed, listening to the sound of fists on wood and wondering what the hell the time was. “I was asleep.”

“Uh-huh. Rough night, was it?”

“You could say that.”

“Want to tell me about it?”

“No.” I stepped beneath the shelter of the garage door, swept the rain and sweat from my face. “You don’t want to know.”

“I don’t want to know, or you don’t want to tell me?”

That I had a breakdown trying to bury a corpse? “You don’t want to know.”

Something in her agreed; she simply nodded and said, “Your niece seems charming.”

“She’s...”

“Not
actually
your niece. No, I guessed that much. Who is she?”

“It’s kind of complicated.”

She arched her eyebrows and issued a humorless laugh, her gaze falling to the basement stairs. “You don’t say,” she muttered.

I didn’t want to know if she’d been down there, but as hard as I tried to conjure some diversionary question or innocuous remark, my mouth was only willing to form two words: “Did you...?”

She answered with a nod; stood for an age in silent thought while my own brain raced through a thousand explanations, every one of them a hopeless blur. When she finally looked up into my eyes, her expression was one of wounded confusion. “You know,” she said softly, “if it’s a sex thing, we can talk about it. I can at least try and understand. I mean, it’s not like you haven’t had to put up with any of
my
weird shit...” She grimaced and bit her lip, snapped her eyes shut and mouthed the word
sorry
; shook her head clear and let out a deep sigh. “I won’t share you,” she said, “and I won’t be lied to.”

And there it was; a simple choice. A tailor-made lie, and a challenge not to use it. I could give her the unadulterated truth, watch her run to her car and vanish from my life. I could stand right here and wait for the search team to arrive; sit in shackles in the back of a patrol car while they rifled through the minutiae of my existence. I could watch Erica from the dock as she detailed my misdeeds. Live out the rest of my days in a cramped concrete cell, my only consolation the knowledge that for Rachel at least, the pain would be short-lived. Or I could accept her explanation, make all manner of declarations and promises; send Erica far, far away and wear my badge of deviance with pride. I could talk through my issues and watch in cleverly disguised self-loathing as day by day, month by month, Rachel struggled to adapt, to accept me, to convince me that a collar and leash made her feel anything but defiled. I could slowly but surely peel away her self-respect until all that remained was a broken, blackened heart.

In the end, it wasn’t a choice at all. “That’s not what it is,” I said.

Her flinch told me she’d already explored the implications. She knew as well as I did that the alternative could only be worse.

“It’s...” What? What could I possibly say? All I wanted was to fold her into my arms and tell her everything was going to be all right, as though such a prophecy might ever prove self-fulfilling beyond the realms of women’s fiction. “I’ve got problems.”

“I know,” she said. “We both have, and we can fix them, but you need to help me understand.”

“I don’t know how.”

“By talking to me. By telling me what this is all about. I came here expecting a nice romantic day out, albeit in the pissing rain, but no, I’ve found you dragging some poor girl around, about to throw her in a...a
dungeon
under your garage. For Christ’s sake, do you realize how that looks? I mean, I’m sure there’s a perfectly reasonable, sane explanation for it, but you really do need to tell me what it is because from where I’m standing it just looks really, really scary. Just...just please tell me it’s not as bad as it looks.”

“It’s not as bad as...” God help me. We both knew it was. “Sometimes she’s harder to control than I can manage.”

“So...what?” She shrugged. “It’s a discipline thing? She acts up and you throw her in the slammer, is that it?”

A lump rose in my throat and cracked my voice. “You have to understand,” I pleaded, “this isn’t who I am. Maybe it’s a part of who I was, but that person...I don’t even know who that person is anymore. It’s all in the past. It’s history.”

“History? What, it was a phase you were going through? I mean, an ex-wife or...or getting caught shoplifting when you were twelve,
that’s
history. This is a pretty fundamental problem, don’t you think? It’s not just something you grow out of. And I’ll tell you what, it didn’t look like history two minutes ago, either. It looked pretty fucking right-here-right-now.”

“You saw her,” I said. “You saw what she’s like. You heard what she said. She’s dangerous.”

“Dangerous how?”

“She threatened you, Rachel. She wants you out of my life and the worst thing is, she doesn’t even have any claim to me. She was a...an impulse, a stupid spur-of-the-moment mistake, and she’s taken over my fucking life. She’s obsessed. I didn’t invite her here, she just moved in. I’m sleeping in the spare room because she’s stolen my bed.”

“Fuck—” She threw her arms in the air, stuttered and shook her head, pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said, “I must have a really tiny brain or a shocking lack of life experience or something, because this is all going right over my head. Some stalker moves into your house without you noticing, and instead of doing what any sane person would do—you know, throwing her out, calling the police, changing the locks—you let her sleep in your bed and lock her in a cage when she’s bad?”

Admittedly, it was a stretch, but for better or worse I stuck with it. “That’s about the long and the short of it.” I nodded. “I told you I had issues. What more do you want me to say? I’m losing my mind. I’m falling apart. I can’t even think straight since I met you. I’m not eating properly. I spend hours just staring at the walls. I wake up and you’re in my head. I think about you, and I get tied up in knots. I’m feeling all these things I’ve never felt before, and I don’t understand a single one of them.”

She strode toward me then, took me by both hands and tilted her face up close to mine and said, “I know. That’s what happens, sweetie. That’s what people do. You think I haven’t been through all of that? It’s every minute of every day, and it’s weird and it’s scary but you know what? I hold on to every single second of it because God knows it won’t last forever and whatever the hell else is going on right now, it’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me. These things you’re feeling...they’re not the problem. Whatever’s gone wrong, whatever you need help with, we can work through it and put it all behind us, but I need you to tell me the truth.”

“No,” I snapped. “No, you don’t. You need me to tell you what you want to hear, and I’m trying, Rachel, I really am, but you already know the truth, don’t you? The truth is I hurt people. It’s what I do. It’s
all
I do. It’s all I’ve ever done. I’m not...
normal
. Whatever it is you’ve got in your head that you don’t want to admit to yourself because it’s too damn grim to think it could ever happen to you,
that’s
the truth.”

She was silent for a moment, studying in turn my trembling hands and my burning face. Finally, she said, “Are you going to hurt
me
?”

I cracked. My chest shuddered, and my eyes spilled over and the pressure exploded from me in a great heaving sob. “No,” I croaked. “Of course not.”

Her lip quivered, and her shoulders heaved, and she threw her hand to stifle a gasp as her own eyes filled with tears. “She needs help,” she whispered.

“I know.”

“She needs getting out of here. Today. Right now.”

“I want that.”

“Oh, God, what have you done to her?” Her legs were shaking, her breathing sharp and heavy. She backed away from me and almost buckled; stared at me sorrowfully, the sparkle falling from her eyes as the truth fully settled over her.

“I can’t do this on my own,” I said.

“I know,” she replied, although she clearly didn’t know, not yet, because she flinched and screwed her eyes shut and steeled her jaw and took a deep, long, shuddering breath and thought so hard I could almost hear it, and my heart didn’t beat again until finally she nodded and opened her eyes and said, advisedly this time, “I know. You don’t have to. We’ll take care of it. She’s okay. I’ll...help you take care of her and then you can tell me all about it, just tell me everything I need to know, and we can figure out what comes next.” And then she reached for my hand and pulled me close to her, folded her arms around me and said, “Everything’s going to be all right.” And for a few brief seconds, I almost believed it was true.