Never Alone

by Elizabeth Haynes

  I won’t be staying again. Not now.

  You can’t come back from something like this. I know because it’s happened before.

  Sarah

  Sarah wakes up and the room is bright, a diamond-hard white light illuminating the room. She blinks, squints. The curtains are open. She sits on the edge of the bed, listening to the silence of the house. Nothing. Even the wind has dropped to a low whistle.

  She stands and goes to the window, looks out. The field behind the house is uniformly white and the clouds are low, low enough that she can’t see the top of the hill.

  She pulls on her dressing gown and goes out into the corridor. Kitty’s door is wide open; the room is empty. She goes to the bathroom and turns on the shower, waiting for it to warm up before stepping under the spray.

  Afterwards she feels human again, better than she has for a long time. Having Kitty in the house has given her a good night’s sleep, the first she has had in ages. And the thought of having her here for a while, not having to rush back to uni, fills her with joy.

  Downstairs, dressed in jeans and a warm jumper, Sarah sets the kettle on to boil. There is a note beside it.

  Taken Tess out. Too much snow on the hill so I’m going to the village. I might pop in on the way back and see how Basil is. x

  She looks out of the kitchen window at the yard outside, at the vast expanse of snow, the wind blowing the tops of it like sand, swirling and dancing and drifting against the workshop.

  There is a light on in the cottage. Sarah stares for a moment, and then looks at the footprints in the snow.

  Her heart thumps madly.

  She pulls on her boots, pushes her arms into her coat, misses, swears, fiddles with it until she finds the armholes, rushes out into the yard. The snow is deep now, up to the tops of her boots, but she trudges around the edge of it where it isn’t so bad until she gets to the cottage door.

  She doesn’t knock.

  She tries the door, and it opens.

  ‘Hello?’ she says.

  The cottage is quiet. She goes inside, stands on the mat and stamps the snow off her boots.

  He appears from the kitchen, carrying a tea towel, wiping a mug. His normally wild curls are damp. He smells clean. ‘Hey, Sarah,’ Will says. ‘How’s it going?’

  ‘What the hell are you doing in here?’

  He smiles, as if nothing’s wrong. ‘Aren’t you coming in?’

  She walks further into the room, not taking off her boots. She doesn’t care about leaving a trail of snow and mud any more, and she’s not going to wrestle with taking them off and putting them back on again. ‘Will, you need to leave, please.’

  ‘Ah,’ he says. ‘You didn’t say anything about this place. You told me – or rather, the police told me – that I wasn’t to come into your house, or contact you, any more. Haven’t done either of those things.’

  Sarah feels physically sick, her stomach turning over. ‘How did you get in here?’ she asks.

  ‘Oh, in here? I borrowed your key. I didn’t think you’d mind.’

  ‘Well, I do mind.’

  ‘Do you want a cup of coffee? You’ve got a very nice coffee machine here. Nice beans.’

  Sarah has to shake her head to try and maintain a sense of reality. ‘Where’s Aiden?’

  ‘Oh!’ he says, brightly. ‘Aiden! Yes, I’d forgotten about Aiden. The man who fucks other people’s women for money?’

  His eyes are wide, the irises like shards of ice, pale blue. This is the first time she has heard him swear.

  Sarah doesn’t answer. She is freefalling.

  ‘He’s not here, is he, Sarah? He’s gone away.’ He makes a strange, flighty gesture with his hands, as though Aiden is a bird that has escaped from a cage.

  ‘You don’t know anything, Will. I want you to leave. I’ll call the police again, they’ll arrest you this time.’

  ‘I think they’ll struggle to get a patrol car up here, to be honest,’ he says cheerfully. ‘And if they did happen to have a 4x4 that wasn’t already busy doing other things, I’ll be long gone before they get here. And then you’ll just be wasting their time, won’t you?’

  Sarah says nothing.

  ‘I said, you’ll be wasting their time, won’t you? You’re good at that, Sarah. Wasting people’s time. Giving yourself one minute, backing off the next; teasing people. Aren’t you?’

  He is really close now. She closes her eyes slowly, a single tear squeezing out and rolling down her cheek. He is breathing against the side of her forehead, hard and fast. He touches her cheek with one finger. She flinches.

  ‘I’m not going to hurt you. I won’t hurt you. I don’t know what you think I’m going to do.’

  ‘Please just go,’ she whispers.

  He smiles. No tears, not any more. He’s together, relaxed, certain of himself.

  ‘I don’t know what you women all see in him, anyway,’ he says. ‘He’s an old man. I mean, I can see he’s good at it. That thing he does, with his hand on your fanny, watching your face, the way he makes you wait for it –’

  ‘Shut up! Shut up!’

  Now he throws back his head, laughing at her. ‘You’re not going to pretend you didn’t know I was there? What’s that all about, anyway, leaving your curtains open all the time? You love being watched. I can see you do. You loved it at Louis’s party, screwing me out there in the back garden where anyone could find us. You love it. You’re a complete slut; you might as well be selling it like he does.’

  He comes close now, pressing his body against hers from behind. He slides his arm around her waist and his hand snakes down across her stomach, between her legs. She grabs for his hand and tries to push it away. She can feel he is hard, pressing into her back, and now she’s afraid.

  ‘I’d like to watch you again. I liked seeing the expression on your face.’

  ‘Leave me alone!’

  Sarah pushes him back. She turns and makes a run for the door, but he’s quicker than she is, gets there first, blocks her in. He pushes her against the wall, knocking the breath out of her. She turns her head away as he gets close, as if he’s about to kiss her. She’s crying now, tears of shame, fear, panic, falling freely down her cheeks.

  ‘It’s okay,’ he says, ‘shh. It’s fine. I just want to tell you this. You don’t have to be lonely, now he’s gone. I can be with you, I can look after you. Don’t keep pushing me away.’

  ‘I want you to go,’ she says through gritted teeth.

  And he lets her go, quite suddenly, moves away. ‘All right,’ he says. ‘I have things I need to do, in any case. I just wanted to get this out in the open, you know? I’ve been keeping an eye on you, and now Kitty’s here I can watch out for her, too. Okay?’

  He reaches across her and opens the door.

  ‘You go back to the house. I’ll get my coat and go, okay? I’m not going to hang around.’

  Sarah looks at the open door, makes a run for it. She slips and slides across the yard back to the house. Behind her, she hears him laughing.

  Sarah shuts the front door behind her and takes several shuddering, panicky breaths. She stares at the door, half-expecting him to open it and walk in. She reaches up and tries to put the chain on, but it is fiddly and her fingers are numb, and somehow it won’t fit in its catch.

  She pulls her hand back and looks at it in surprise. It is shaking badly. ‘Kitty?’ she calls into the empty house. ‘Are you back? Kitty?’

  There is no answer.

  She leaves the door, because Kitty is out there somewhere with Tess. She walks to the kitchen, stands at the sink and looks out at the yard, gripping the edge of the worktop.

  The sun is shining weakly, but it looks as if the snow might be melting; it is already wet around the edges, nearest to the house, as if the warmth of the walls is penetrating into the freezing air. But then the sun goes behind a dark cloud, and the wind stirs up the soft crystals of snow, like a breath blowing spilt sugar from a table top. It’s strangely beautiful, hyp
notic, and for a moment Sarah watches, lost.

  Then she looks down at her hands and sees that they are still shaking. She fills the kettle and switches it on, trying to calm herself.

  I’m okay. It’s all right.

  Sarah rests her head in her hands, takes a deep breath in. Now she is away from him, it feels unreal. He’s not hurt anyone, she tells herself. He’s just a fucked-up kid who doesn’t know what to do with himself, and she’s become the victim of a game he’s playing.

  Calm down. It’s all right.

  Going into the living room, Sarah turns on the television and switches to the twenty-four-hour news channel while she cleans the grate, for something to do. The news has very little about the weather now; it’s all about Syria, political responses to immigration. Eventually the report wends its way round to the weather. She reaches behind her for the remote control and turns up the volume.

  ‘… possibility of further snowfalls this afternoon, worsening this evening as the wind picks up again, and it’s likely we could see some drifting on higher ground, particularly on the Moors and heading into Scotland. The wind in particular is strengthening all the time, with gusts of up to seventy or eighty miles an hour in exposed areas, which could be strong enough to bring some trees or power lines down. The Met Office has issued an amber warning for people living in the northeast of England and southern and central Scotland with regard to the wind, and you can keep an eye on the latest information on our website.’

  Sarah has never worried about the weather up here before. The house, crumbling though it is, is like a castle, thick-walled and safe; and with the oil tank filled up, the freezer full of food, they can ride out any storm. There isn’t much of a mobile signal here at the best of times, so the only real concern is if they lose the landline. And even then, a hundred metres out towards the lane and the mobile signal is usually good enough for an emergency connection.

  She tries the landline; there is a dialling tone, which is comforting. On an impulse, she dials Sophie’s phone again. The mobile goes straight to voicemail.

  ‘Hi, it’s me – it’s Sarah. Just wanted to speak to you. I know this must have been a bloody nightmare for you. I hope you’re somewhere safe, and you’re okay. Please, please give me a call back?’

  After that she tries George. Again, no answer; the phone rings and rings, and, when the voicemail kicks in, Sarah disconnects.

  Finally, she tries Aiden.

  The number you are calling has not responded. Please try again later.

  She goes back to the fireplace, lays the kindling and the logs and lights the fire. It blazes bright, and the feel of it, the smell of the logs and the soot in the chimney, is comforting. When it’s well alight, she leaves it and goes to sort through another load of Kitty’s laundry. There is less of a hurry about this now that it seems Kitty’s staying, but, even so, it needs doing.

  The phone rings while Sarah is in the utility room. She rushes back to get it.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Mrs Carpenter? It’s Kerry from Abbey Vets here.’

  ‘Hi. How’s Basil? Is he okay?’

  ‘I’m just calling with an update for you. He’s doing very well at the moment, although he’s still quite wobbly. The blood tests we ran yesterday show some liver function abnormality, which does confirm that he ingested some kind of poison. He’s responding well to treatment, though, so hopefully there should be no long-term damage. We’re not fully open today, there are just a few of us with the hospitalised animals, so I wanted to let you know in case you were concerned that we’d left him on his own.’

  ‘It’s a nightmare, isn’t it? Are you having to sleep there?’

  ‘We do have a small camp bed for emergencies, but I and the other nurse both live nearby, so we’re taking it in turns to check on them all.’

  ‘Thank you. Oh – my daughter Kitty might be calling; she’s just gone for a walk down to the village.’

  ‘Ah, right. Well, she might find the door locked, but if she rings the bell we’ll let her in.’

  ‘I’m sure she will. We’ve been so worried about him.’

  ‘I think if it weren’t for the snow Basil might have been able to come home later today, but given the weather forecast it might be safer to keep him here another night, if you’re in agreement.’

  ‘Yes. As long as he’s okay. I do really miss him. And my other dog, Tess, does too.’

  ‘Well, hopefully they’ll be reunited soon. And with a bit of luck he won’t go eating anything else he shouldn’t.’

  ‘Do you know what it was yet? Is there any way of telling?’

  ‘No, unfortunately. That’s the trouble with Labradors, though: they eat everything. No common sense where food’s concerned.’

  Kerry ends the call. The wind is picking up, Sarah thinks; she looks out of the window and sees that the sun has gone in. She thinks it might be snowing again, but when she looks out properly it’s just the wind drifting the snow around the yard. The clouds overhead are dark and low.

  The phone receiver is still in Sarah’s hand. She dials Kitty’s number. It goes straight to voicemail, without even a single ring.

  ‘Kitty, it’s Mum. Come home now, darling. Please. It’s going to start snowing again. Please come home as soon as you get this. If you need me to pick you up, I’ll come out in the Land Rover, just call me. Love you.’

  For a moment Sarah watches the flames, listening to the crackle as the damp logs spit. Then she hears something else – another noise, coming from the back of the house.

  Scratching, whining.

  Sarah rushes to the front door, opens it and calls out. Tess comes hurtling round the house, pushes past her and inside, barking and racing round in mad, panicked circles.

  ‘Tess? Where’s Kitty?’

  As if the dog can answer her. Tess barks at the door, teeth bared.

  ‘Kitty!’ Sarah yells, cupping her hands around her mouth. ‘Kitty!’

  She leaves the door open and pulls on her weatherproof jacket, runs back to the kitchen for her phone. Just as she reaches for it on the kitchen table, it buzzes with a text message.

  Sarah looks at the phone, and for a moment she can’t understand why the message isn’t being displayed. Then she realises it’s a picture.

  It takes a long time to load. In the end, Sarah goes outside, where she gets one bar of signal. When the image finally appears, she can’t quite tell what it is; it’s dark, and there is a white shape, which is blurred. She touches the image to enlarge it, and when it finally comes into focus she gasps in shock.

  It’s Kitty’s face. Her eyes are screwed shut, and her mouth is wide open, as if she is screaming.

  Sarah stares at her phone, trying to process what she’s seeing. The message has come from Kitty’s phone. Is it some kind of joke? Has Kitty sent her the message by mistake?

  She tries Kitty’s number, but of course the mobile signal isn’t good enough for a call, and it disconnects immediately. She picks up the landline, and dials Kitty from that. This time, it rings and rings, unanswered, until eventually the voicemail kicks in.

  Leave a message, it’s Kit Carpenter, bye!

  ‘Kitty, ring me as soon as you get this – it’s Mum. Ring me now. Please.’

  Sarah pulls up the picture again. Why is it so blurred? She sits awkwardly back on the sofa. She has the two phones in either hand, staring from one to the other. There is only one thing she can do – something she should have done earlier.

  ‘Emergency, which service do you require?’

  ‘Police, please,’ she says firmly. There is a short pause, then a different voice.

  ‘Yorkshire Police, what’s your emergency?’

  ‘I think my daughter is in trouble,’ Sarah says. Her voice is tight with panic.

  ‘Right,’ the operator says, ‘what sort of trouble?’

  ‘She went for a walk to the village earlier. She isn’t answering her phone. And I’ve just received a picture message from her phone. It’s a pic
ture of her face, it looks like she’s screaming.’

  ‘Can I take some details from you, and we’ll get someone to help. What’s your name?’

  Sarah’s voice trembles as she reports her name, her address, her date of birth, Kitty’s name, Kitty’s date of birth… It’s all taking too long, she thinks. It’s all just too slow.

  ‘Please,’ she says, feeling the tears starting now, at last, because she’s on her own again and she thinks she might just be going mad, might be losing touch with reality, ‘please help me… I think someone has got her…’

  ‘Why do you think that?’ says the voice. There is no curiosity there, no sense of wonder. The operator is reporting facts, typing them up fast.

  ‘I just know,’ Sarah says. She needs to choose her words carefully. ‘There’s someone who has been watching the house. I know this sounds strange. I reported it – I spoke to a detective. Amy Foster. She told me to ring, and give you a number, only I don’t know where it is now…’

  ‘I can look that up for you. Did you give your home address?’

  ‘Yes, yes.’

  ‘Here we go. You reported a harassment yesterday.’

  ‘Yes. He was here again. He was here this morning. I told him to leave. He did. Kitty was angry about it. She might have gone to find him; I don’t know. She said she was going to get some fresh air, see if her friends were home, but maybe she went to look for him?’

  ‘Can you just confirm who it is we’re talking about, Mrs Carpenter?’

  Sarah shudders over the name. Over the thought that he has somehow got hold of Kitty. That she is screaming.

  ‘Will,’ she says. ‘Will Brewer.’

  Sarah stands in the kitchen staring out over the yard, over the whiteness and Kitty’s tracks, which are fading as the snow blows and swirls over them. The sun has gone in; the clouds are heavy and getting darker.

  The year they first moved into Four Winds Farm, the snow was heavy, like this – heavier. The kids had been out there building a snowman with Jim. Then they’d built an igloo up on the field. There was so much snow they hardly knew what to do with it. Afterwards, they all piled back into the house and Sarah made them all hot chocolate and they warmed up in front of the fire.