Final Cut : A Novel (2020)

by Watson, S J

  I slump down in my seat. I’m glad Gavin is here; I don’t feel so alone.

  After only a minute or two, he reappears at the door, followed by the woman with the baby. He turns and says something to her, and she smiles sadly then waves him off.

  ‘What happened?’ I say when he gets into the car. My voice is barely a whisper. ‘Who was that?’

  ‘They’ve lived here for seven or eight years.’

  A weight settles on my chest. I have to force the question out.

  ‘So, what happened to Sadie’s mother? Did she leave a forwarding address?’

  ‘No,’ he says. ‘We’re too late. She died.’

  ‘You sure you’re all right?’

  It’s the third or fourth time he’s asked. We’re halfway back to Blackwood Bay, sitting in a café in a tiny village. He wanted to buy me breakfast and I couldn’t think of a decent enough excuse to refuse, but all I could face ordering from the brooding teenager behind the counter was toast. I pick up my knife as Gavin slides my food nearer. The scrape is loud, like a tomb being sealed.

  ‘I’m fine,’ I say, trying my hardest to sound it, to pull myself together. ‘Honestly.’

  ‘You look a bit pale.’

  He’s frowning; he looks concerned. It’s nice that he cares.

  I watch as he cracks the shell of his boiled egg and peels it from the top, placing it carefully on his plate. The sound seems too loud: the way the crisp shell breaks reminds me of a skull shattering and as he cuts through the hard, rubbery albumen I think of a scalpel slicing through flesh.

  The room begins to shrink and I put down my toast, close my eyes. I can’t just sit here. Things are gathering momentum, I can feel it. I’m worried about Ellie. Kat. I can’t stay here another minute. ‘Can we go?’

  ‘What? Now? But—’

  ‘Can we just fucking go?’

  He puts down his spoon and stares at me. I wonder what’s flashing through his mind, what to say, how to react. I now know he has a temper. He could tell me to get lost, that there’s no need to be angry. He could demand to know why, tell me there’s no way this is about my film, that much is obvious. I see him weigh it up, then decide.

  ‘Let’s eat,’ he says softly. ‘I bought you food. Eat it. Then we can go.’ He pauses. ‘I wish you’d tell me why, though. Really, I mean.’

  ‘I’m worried,’ I say. ‘About the girls.’

  Still, the irritation in my voice is unmissable. He glances down at my plate, the food untouched, then up. For a second I see him, furious, standing over me, his belt in his hand, eyes incandescent, spittle flying. Do as you’re told, he’s saying, you little bitch, and all I can do is cower, and hope, and tell myself this doesn’t mean I’m weak, doesn’t mean he’ll own me for ever, this is temporary, just until I can get away, but still he hits me, over and over and over.

  But none of that happens and I remember he’s one of the good guys. He’s never hurt me.

  ‘Come on, then,’ he says gently. ‘I wasn’t that hungry anyway.’

  We drive in silence. I sit forward, gripping the wheel to stop my hands from shaking. I feel no better than I did in the café. The car’s stifling; my defences are crumbling away. I wish I had my camera to hide behind. I spot the turning that leads down to the church and know I have to stop. Somehow, I know that’s where I’ll find my mother.

  ‘I’m turning off,’ I say.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The cemetery. The light’s perfect.’

  It sounds unconvincing and I know it.

  ‘The cemetery? But—’

  ‘I want to film it.’

  ‘Now?’

  Shut up, I think. Shut up.

  ‘I want to film Sadie’s mother’s grave.’

  ‘I thought you wanted to get back.’

  ‘I do … I just … I can’t explain. Gavin? Please?’

  Again, he complies. We turn off the main road and into the tree-lined lane. The road is little more than a track, overhung with black, leafless branches, stark against the sky. It dips and curves, the road narrows and I have to slow almost to a crawl to navigate the bends, but then, finally, it opens out. We’re right down at sea level and, ahead of us, silhouetted against the greying sky, is a tiny, dark church. Everything seems off slightly, like the world’s tipped, the angles all wrong. A weight presses in on me, as if I’m being buried alive.

  She can’t be here. She can’t. She’s alive. I switch off the engine.

  ‘Can you wait here?’

  ‘I’d rather come with you. You seem—’

  I get my camera from the back seat and hand it to him.

  ‘Film me, then?’

  He agrees, and together we walk down towards the church. The door is closed, the place shuttered. The distant wind is quiet and desperate and Gavin’s footsteps echo behind as we circle the perimeter. There’s a bench on the far side and the sea is just over a low stone wall. Before it, the headstones lie, shattered like broken teeth.

  ‘Wait here.’

  ‘Why—?’

  ‘Please,’ I hiss. ‘Just give me a minute?’

  He does as I’ve asked. He wipes the damp bench clear but then declines to sit. He watches me instead – still filming, as far as I can tell – as I enter the overgrown, mossy graveyard. I lean in close to read the inscriptions on the stones and eventually find the one I’m looking for.

  Rebecca Davies, it says. 23 November 1968–4 August 2012.

  That’s it. I don’t know what I expected, but that’s it. It’s small; it seems insignificant. There’s no quote, nothing from the Bible – not that she’d have wanted that anyway – not even a Sadly Missed, or Never Forgotten. Just the facts, unvarnished, unadorned. Her name, the year in which she was born, the year she died. Two thousand and twelve. Just over a year and a half after her daughter disappeared. Nineteen months after Daisy died. Dimly, I wonder what happened to the boyfriend, then realise I couldn’t care less.

  I step closer. There’s a sound from underfoot, a soft, sickening crunch like stepping on a snail, and I imagine the sharp shell piercing its pulpy body, the crush of death from something that until that moment had meant protection and refuge. My legs shake as I crouch down. I reach forward; the stone is freezing, a layer of frost clinging to it. I trace the lettering with numbed fingers. Rebecca Davies.

  I sit on the hard ground and draw my legs up tight beneath me. Through my jeans I can feel every bump, every rough stone, but I ignore the pain. I deserve it, and plenty more besides. For what I did to her.

  I close my eyes. I’m aware that Gavin’s over there, not twenty feet away in the shadow of the church, my camera in his hand. But I don’t care. I let my head fall; I rock forward.

  ‘What happened?’ I whisper, but the only reply is the stone’s resonant silence. I begin to cry.

  I could’ve helped. I should’ve. I could’ve asked what was wrong, why she’d changed, why she was behaving the way she did, why she let the bastard she’d met drive us apart. But I didn’t. I gave up. I turned my back on her. I went out, to clubs and parties. I started drinking, getting wasted, getting laid. Fuck you, I thought. Two can play at that game, two can screw up their lives.

  The tears come harder now. It’s all coming back. I think back to the day I ran. I walked until my feet bled, then hitched. First one lift, then another, and another. They blend into one. I made it to Sheffield, then London. There’s a blank after that, a long, vast emptiness, with only snatched images and jump cuts from one scene to another. Alice, Dev. Gee. Needles, burning smoke. Nodding off in the back of strangers’ cars. Giving everything away because I wasn’t worth anything. Opening myself, first for money, then for drugs, then because it was just what I did. I was barely there; I didn’t know who I was most of the time. I thought I was running away from hell but in fact I was running into it, towards holes in my memory and not even being sure I still wanted to live. And then something happened that took me to Deal, and I woke up on the beach, soaked and alone, and my mind gav
e up, reset itself.

  I open my eyes. Although small, the gravestone looms in front of me, and now there’s no escaping the truth. She lived only nineteen more months. It wasn’t just my life I destroyed when I went. I took with me any hope she might’ve once had.

  ‘Mum,’ I whisper. ‘It’s me. Sadie. I’m sorry.’

  Nothing. Just the wind and my thudding heart. Guilt slams into me, its finger reaching into my mouth, my gut. But there’s no way I could’ve stayed. I have to remember that. I have to cling to that, no matter what else tries to throw me into the raging water.

  And what was I expecting? A reply, ghostly and ethereal? Forgiveness?

  It’s too late for all that. I had my chance, and I blew it.

  ‘I’ll figure out what’s going on,’ I say. ‘I’ll put it right.’

  28

  We reach the car. Gavin hands me the camera, wordlessly. Its solidity is reassuring and I hold it in my lap for a moment before pressing Play. The grainy scene resolves; I hear the crunch of a boot. A figure ahead, a woman staring at the gravestones. She steps forward, then bends down.

  I know it’s me, but it doesn’t feel real. There’s a disconnection. My body shudders as I touch the stone, then there’s a jerky, vertiginous plummet before the image stabilises. When it does, we’re seeing the same scene but from a lower angle; the camera’s resting on the bench. Then Gavin appears, walking towards me. He crouches beside me, but I make no movement; there’s no sign I’ve even noticed. He holds out his hand to help me up, then together we walk back towards the camera, me in front, him following mutely behind.

  I press Stop and put the device on the dashboard in front of me.

  ‘It’s what you wanted,’ says Gavin. ‘Isn’t it?’

  I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what he saw, how much he heard. I’ve stopped crying but, even so, my eyes must be ringed with red.

  ‘Are you okay?’

  I’m leaving her again. Out here in the cold, in the dark, loamy earth. Just like I left Geraldine. And Alice. And Aidan, though that was more a gradual drift.

  And Daisy. I left her, too. I turn to Gavin.

  ‘I’m fine.’ I start the engine. ‘Let’s go.’

  I park at the top of the village. The silence fans out like thick, black smoke.

  ‘I’m here for you,’ he says after a while. ‘If you want to talk about it.’

  He means it. He wants to help me. It’s not about me being in his debt. It’s not about him wanting to rescue me again, like that first night. It’s not like it was on the streets, people who wanted to help but only to make themselves feel good. Dare to deny them the opportunity, dare to tell them you’re fine, you don’t need anything right now, and they’re not pleased for you. Suddenly, you can go to hell. They’ve done their bit and you’re an ungrateful bitch throwing it back in their face.

  ‘Where had you been?’ I say. ‘That time you found me on the road. The night we met?’

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘You told me you’d been with Bryan.’

  He hesitates, just for a second. ‘I had.’

  ‘He says not. Why would he do that?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  I realise I want to believe him. ‘I know you want to help,’ I say softly. ‘But tell me the truth.’

  ‘I hadn’t been with him,’ he says cautiously. ‘Not exactly. I’d seen him. In the pub. I was on my own.’ He glances up. ‘But it amounts to the same thing. I knew he couldn’t have been driving the car that didn’t stop.’

  I say nothing.

  ‘You believe me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What can I do? To help?’

  ‘Did she tell you how Sadie’s mum died?’

  He seems confused for a moment then realises I mean the woman with the baby.

  ‘No.’

  He’s quiet for a minute, but I can tell he wants to say something else.

  ‘Is Sadie the real reason you came here?’

  I consider telling the truth. But how can I?

  ‘Partly, perhaps. I couldn’t stop thinking about her. I wish we’d stayed in touch.’

  ‘So how old would she be now?’

  ‘Dunno. Twenties?’

  ‘Why did you pretend your film wasn’t about what happened to the girls? You could’ve told me, you know. I only want—’

  ‘To help,’ I say. ‘I know. Thing is, it wasn’t, originally. But my producer suggested it. He’d read about Daisy. And Zoe.’

  ‘And it was too juicy a story not to come up and take a look?’

  Juicy. The word stings. I’ve heard it before, back when I made Black Winter. It took a long time to win some of the girls over, to convince them I wasn’t just a voyeur trying to use their misery to make something of my own. ‘We just make a juicy story for you,’ one of them said. Several, in fact.

  I look at Gavin. ‘You make me sound like I don’t care.’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He’s quiet for a long time. I remember after the awards, going back to find the women I’d filmed. They weren’t pleased to see me, though neither were they particularly upset. To them, I’d moved on, that’s all, like everyone does, if they don’t die first. As I handed over the envelope of cash – three thousand pounds – I told them it was theirs. It always had been, really.

  Gavin clears his throat awkwardly. ‘Zoe didn’t run away.’

  He sounds so certain it might almost be a confession.

  ‘I just know,’ he continues. ‘I can’t explain. I think you’re right, though. Daisy and Zoe are both dead. Sadie is the only one who got away.’ The air in the car is still. I can’t breathe. My teeth are chattering, but I open the window.

  ‘What is it with you and Zoe?’

  He shrugs. ‘Nothing. I just … I suppose I thought I could find her. When I arrived, I mean. I thought … I don’t know. Maybe I thought the people here might accept me if I showed them that I cared.’

  ‘And? How’s that going?’

  He ignores my question. ‘We should go to the police—’

  ‘No.’

  Once again, he ignores me. ‘I mean, Sadie’s the one who’d know what was going on.’

  But she doesn’t, I think. She doesn’t.

  ‘We should find her. You can tell them you were in touch with her.’

  ‘No!’

  He looks at me. Into me. Through me.

  ‘No,’ I say, more gently this time, but more emphatically, too. ‘Sadie made me promise. And as for the grave, it’s nothing. It can’t be.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘You don’t understand, Gavin.’

  I’ve hit a nerve. He knows he’ll always be on the outside, trying to understand. I’m soaked by another wave of guilt.

  ‘I thought you were worried about the girls. Ellie and Kat?’

  ‘I am,’ I tell him. I imagine myself buried back there on the moor. I’m alone, naked. It’s like I’m there, I can feel it, the soft earth, warm despite the weather, it’s surrounding me, engulfing me, swallowing me whole. But then it’s as if a cord running through my middle has been pulled tight. Surrounded by so much death, all I want is to live. The atmosphere in the car thickens. I realise, almost from a distance, how easy it would be to reach out, to put my hand on his leg, his thigh, to lean in close to him. He’d open his mouth, surprised. There’d be the smell of liquorice, not unpleasant. We’d kiss, and it would go on for a while, becoming more urgent as it does.

  Something stops me, but only for a moment. I put my hand on his. Why not? Why shouldn’t I take what I want? You only live once, after all. I kiss him. He resists at first; I think he’s going to say, No, stop, and the shame begins to swell and bubble. But then he gives in. His lips are rougher than I expected; his mouth tastes of coffee. His kiss is hesitant and he keeps his hands to himself, and for that I’m glad.

  ‘Let’s go,’ I say, murmuring into his chest, but he shakes his head.

  ‘Do you m
ind if we don’t—?’

  ‘Don’t—?’

  The familiar sting of rejection. I almost want to laugh.

  ‘I’m sorry. I just …’

  I wait for him to finish, but he seems unable to. He opens the car door and steps out.

  ‘Gavin?’ I say. ‘Don’t tell anyone, will you? About today.’

  He looks hurt. I realise he thinks I’m referring to our kiss.

  ‘About the graveyard, I mean. About me knowing Sadie.’

  He smiles, then nods gently.

  ‘I won’t.’

  I thank him, then get out of my car and walk down to Hope Cottage.

  29

  Once there, I can’t settle. I need to do something. I’ll shoot some more footage for the film, I decide. The village at night, maybe. From up top, the park for example. It’s nearly dark, so I set off. But as soon as I get to the bandstand and try to film I realise the memory card in my camera is spent and I’ve forgotten to bring another. I have to go back.

  I feel eyes following me as I walk down Slate Road, pricking my skin. I scan left and right, and each time think I see a flash of movement, as if a figure is hiding in the darkness, anticipating my every move but slipping back into the shadows in the instant before I see them. I’m relieved as I duck through the alleyway that brings me to the courtyard, but still I feel under scrutiny. I fancy I see the curtains in Monica’s place move slightly, just a shudder, but when I look again everything is still.

  I turn my key, but the door is open. I must have forgotten to lock it earlier in my haste, left it on the latch. I need to be more careful.

  Rain to Stormy. My bag is in the bedroom upstairs, but a second before I switch on the light I realise something’s wrong. The door is ajar, the light from the landing shining in, illuminating a patch of the carpet and the edge of the bed, leaving the rest of the room in darkness. I hear the soft sigh of an exhaled breath and see a flicker at the edge of the shadow. The bed creaks as someone stands and steps towards me.

  I see his feet first, his ugly black shoes, blue jeans, a black jacket. I freeze. His face is still in the shadows cast by the door, but whoever he is I can tell he’s staring at me, his hollow eyes burning.