After the Eclipse

by Fran Dorricott

  “Cordy…?”

  Ady rolled his eyes. “For God’s sake. Considering you’re supposed to be clever. Yes, Cordy. Idiot figured it out. Everybody thought it was him – I’d have been happy to let them. But he tried to blackmail me into giving him an alibi and he got crazy. So I had to get rid of him. It was easier back then.”

  My ears were ringing.

  “You killed them... Just like you killed Olive. You destroyed her. You destroyed us. You took away my childhood. My mother. My family.”

  I clenched my shaking hands and fought the tears. Come on, Marion…

  “Olive could have lived to a hundred if she hadn’t got ideas from those books of hers. If she hadn’t thought that outside was better. It isn’t.”

  Olive was dead, then. All these years, and I’d been searching for a ghost.

  She’d been here the whole time. This close to us, the whole time. Was she still here when Mum died? When I was living only streets away? A howling furnace of anger threatened to engulf me. It would be so easy to give in…

  But, Bella.

  “Where is my sister?” I demanded.

  Ady shook his head. “You think I’ll tell you? Just like that? Why should I? You need to leave. Get out—”

  “I won’t leave without Bella.”

  “You will.”

  Ady was on me before I knew what was happening. I saw the flash of the knife before I felt it against my throat. The metal was cold, the point so sharp that when it caught my skin I sucked in an involuntary gasp.

  Bella screamed.

  “Don’t hurt her! Don’t hurt her!”

  “You think you’re so clever,” Ady hissed, his face pressed right against mine. “But you don’t know anything. It was fate; it was my duty. While you spent your life getting wasted and defiling yourself with your women and God only knows what else, I was waiting for a sign. And this was right. Nowhere else have I ever seen a more perfect alignment of nature and time. The eclipse, the darkness, it was all meant to be. The Fates even gave me Grace – the perfect misdirection so I could act quickly. It was so pure.”

  I tried to pull away but Ady held me firmly. The metal bit into the soft skin of my throat.

  “I loved her,” he said again, punctuating each word with another glob of spittle. “Everything I did was right.”

  I bucked my arm up underneath his elbow. He was surprised and the knife jumped away. I took advantage and brought my head forward in a swift motion and felt it connect with his nose. There was a satisfying crunch and then I gagged as black spots flooded my vision. I heard Ady screaming, anger and pain all rolled into one. I stumbled to my feet. Ady was on his knees, hands cupping his nose and the knife forgotten on the floor.

  I threw myself at it just as Ady started to get up. Bella jumped up, her hands going to her face in alarm. I looked at her, made sure our eyes locked, and I mouthed one word.

  Run.

  52

  11 December 2003

  EXHAUSTION MADE HER THOUGHTS sluggish, but she watched the baby’s sleeping face in the wicker basket he’d brought her. A Moses basket, she thought it was called. Wasn’t sure. Wasn’t sure about anything much.

  She was sure about one thing, though. And that was the timing. It had to be soon. While he was still enamoured. While they still had a chance. The moment she had seen her daughter’s face, Olive had understood that all her planning had been useless.

  She’d taken for granted her ability to leave the child. But this little girl was as much a part of Olive as she was of him, and her face looked so much like Olive’s own – at least as far as she remembered it – that the plans were wrong, now. She couldn’t leave her behind when she went.

  That made things simpler, Olive thought. But also more dangerous. Tonight he would come, as usual, and bring the supplies. He’d said he would bring her more nappies – neither of them had anticipated how many a new baby could get through.

  She knew that the bag of nappies would be big. He’d buy them in bulk so it was less risky, so he could make fewer trips. Getting them through the door – that was the hard part. Olive knew she had to wait until the right moment, and then she could probably make it out.

  But probably wasn’t good enough.

  She knew she had to try and conserve her strength. But already the baby was a poor sleeper. Colicky. That’s what the book had said – the one he’d bought her. What to Expect… Olive would bet that whoever wrote that book had had no idea where it would end up. Or what to expect. Not really.

  Olive finished her orange juice and counted inside her head. It had been two days since he’d been here last. That meant tonight, definitely. He wouldn’t go any longer. He hadn’t gone more than two days at a time since the baby had been born. But she didn’t want to think about him.

  She focused instead on her daughter’s face. Her daughter. Just the thought made her squirm – but in a good way. She felt her daughter’s heavy warmth even when she wasn’t carrying her, felt it like an absence. She could smell that baby scent on her, of milk and talcum powder and love.

  Olive reached out and pulled her sketchpad towards her, seeing a mirror of her daughter’s sleeping face. She used a shading motion with white pastel to catch the shininess of her baby nose, of her moist little mouth as she pursed it.

  Tonight was the night. Olive wasn’t sure about anything except that. Her daughter couldn’t spend her life in this room. Not like Olive had. She wouldn’t let her. Staring at the same walls every day, never smelling the outside, never feeling rain or seeing real sunshine. Olive glanced down at the pallor of her skin, the faint bruises on her knees and arms. She bruised so easily these days.

  Her hair was long. Really long. She’d asked for scissors to cut it, but Sandman hadn’t allowed it. Too dangerous. Now it was ratty and reached below her waist. She hated it. No child of hers would endure the things that she had had to bear. She had spent nine months thinking of the beast inside of her – not realising that she would love her so much.

  Olive finished the sketch with a flourish, and then scrambled for a dark pen to sign it. The baby’s name she’d chosen even before she knew she was having a girl. If she’d been a boy she would have been called Arthur, after the boy who nobody believed could pull a sword from a stone. Instead she was Matilda, like the Roald Dahl girl. The little girl who nobody loved.

  Except somebody did love her. Miss Honey, for starters. Matilda was the little girl who could make magic happen. And Olive marvelled now at how true this was. Her little hands had had the power to overthrow months of planning.

  Olive eyed the letter she had written earlier in the day. Her writing was terrible, but she had hardly been able to see through the fog of tiredness and tears. She grabbed it, folded it in half. And again. There was a loose brick beneath the bed, pried away from the rest only to reveal a metal lining. That was a year ago, that particular failure, but its presence still stung.

  The letter was a precaution. Against failure? Olive didn’t know. She knew that by writing it she had explained herself. To God, if to nobody else.

  But what if nobody ever found it? What if he did? For a moment she stood, indecisive. Then, in a swift movement she stuck it to the back of her sketch instead. Better to be found and destroyed than left mouldering in this prison for ever.

  Task complete, she leaned over and scooped the baby into her arms. She stirred but didn’t wake, settling against her mother’s chest. It was the most natural thing in the world.

  As she held her, rocking gently, Olive considered bravery. How she had spent so many years feeling like she wasn’t brave enough. But it wasn’t a lack of bravery, she realised now. It was the same way she had felt when she had lost Mickey – it was a lack of hope. Alone, the risk hadn’t been worth taking. But with somebody else…

  That’s when it became about bravery. The decision to leave. To not let him have her. Olive knew now that the risk of staying was bigger. More certain. She couldn’t risk him hurting his daughter as he had h
urt her. He hadn’t meant to. Or at least, that’s what he told himself.

  But Olive wouldn’t risk it again.

  Back on the bed, Olive felt under the pillow, gripping the paintbrush for security. She’d sharpened it to a point, intending to simply stab him and run. He’d save the baby instead of hurting her, she was sure of it.

  Now… She fingered the edge, catching her skin on its wooden tip. Would it be enough? Olive didn’t know. But she knew she needed to try. Anything was better than this. She hoped her family would be proud of her. She hoped she would get to see her sister again once she was outside.

  She was ready.

  Then, she heard it. His feet on the stairs. The thumping of her heart almost drowned out the turn of the second lock. She jumped to her feet, hovering by the door.

  It was now or never.

  53

  THE TASTE OF IRON was the first thing I noticed. Followed by the extreme nausea and the smell. God, the smell. It was like metal. It took valuable seconds to realise it was blood. My blood? My vision was blurry, and I tried to move. My right arm was bleeding. I hadn’t noticed that he’d cut me but now the pain was like a razor against my skin.

  I looked around, completely dazed. Then it came back to me. The room, Ady, Bella. Olive… I rolled onto my side on the cold concrete floor and vomited. This made the pounding in my head worse, but at least the smell of copper wasn’t around my face any more. I dragged in two deep breaths, coughing, and then I felt a pressure against my back.

  Startled, I tried to scrabble away. But my arm was throbbing and my whole body felt battered. I didn’t make it very far before Ady’s face swam over mine. He grabbed my shoulders and hauled me upright as I screamed. The pain shot through my arm.

  “I don’t know what you’re hoping to achieve,” Ady started, “by letting the girl escape.”

  “She’ll be long gone by now,” I said.

  “Not likely.” Ady brushed me off as though I’d just asked him whether he thought the rain would last overnight. He shrugged. “There’s no way out of the gates even if she makes it out of the building. She’ll be back when she gets cold and wet. But honestly, after this charade I’m not sure I want her. I was so sure she was right for me.”

  I wanted to try and reach for my phone, but then I remembered the lack of signal. Marion, I need you…

  But I didn’t have time to wait. There was Ady – and there was me. That was it. I had to get myself out of this.

  “If you loved Olive so much,” I said, hoping I could buy myself some time, “why did she get hurt? Was it like Darren?”

  Ady’s eyes flashed black, the monster inside him coiling, ready to strike.

  “He freaked when the police asked him about the ring. He figured out it was Olive’s. I should have hidden it better but I liked to look at it, kept it at home and he saw it. He knew I gave it to both of them.” Ady laughed. “The police assumed he’d sold it to Bella, didn’t they? Idiot thought he could just come clean and tell you everything and it would all go away. He thought he wouldn’t get into trouble if he told you.”

  I noticed that Ady was holding the knife in his hand again, the same knife as before. Only now it had blood on it. In his other hand he held a roll of duct tape. I felt a shiver of fear rush through me but I refused to baulk.

  He ripped a piece of tape off, and I was embarrassed by the sob that escaped my throat.

  “I just want to know what you did,” I cried. “Please. If you’re going to kill me anyway, please tell me what happened. Why Olive? Why her?”

  “I already told you,” Ady said. He grabbed the tape and cut it with one smooth slice of the knife. “She needed somebody to care for her. A proper family. Mother, father, child. That’s why we created one.”

  Olive had a child. I tried to process this.

  “But then why…”

  “Why did she die?”

  Again the words hit me hard, as Ady knew they would. Hearing it spoken aloud like that, it was the worst pain in the world. I prayed that Bella had found the open window. I hoped she could get out of the estate, maybe through the bars of the gate. She was a skinny kid. She might fit. She…

  “She tried to take my family away.” Ady said it so simply, without any guilt. Sadness, perhaps. No guilt. “My daughter was all I had in the world… Olive was happy here, you know. For a long time.”

  “Happy?” I let out a bark of laughter that turned into pain. “She was a prisoner. You took everything away from her.”

  “I suppose she just got the sickness,” Ady continued, ignoring me. He cut off more tape. “All adults get it eventually. You already had it, didn’t you, when Olive came to me? It’s a sickness that just inhabits people. I’ve seen it so many times. A loss of innocence. It’s just infects everything. I thought in here she would be all right. In the end I suppose nobody avoids it.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked. I realised that the salty taste in my mouth was tears, and I swallowed hard. “What sickness?”

  “She grew up,” Ady said. He peeled the tape back and forth between his hands, the knife balanced carefully between his thumb and forefinger. The tape made a crackling noise as he passed it from palm to palm, the stickiness slowly wearing away. I supposed he thought he was being caring, doing that before sticking it on my face. I felt the nausea rise again.

  “You made her grow up.”

  Ady narrowed his eyes. “She loved me,” he said. “I waited until she was ready, until she was old enough. Until she could decide. And I would do the same thing with this one – do it all exactly the same.”

  He said this proudly, his eyes sparkling with the memory of it. I couldn’t hold in the wail that shook through me. Images of Olive’s sweet face marred by Ady’s words.

  “You’re the sickness. You raped my sister and you’d do the same thing again.”

  “NO!”

  My head rang as Ady slapped me. My teeth chattered together at the impact and stars shot across my vision.

  “It wasn’t like that. I didn’t make love to her just because I wanted to. It was more than that. It was passion, it had meaning. It was all part of something bigger. The plan we had – for the future. Now I’ve had enough of your questions.” He grabbed the tape and pressed it against my mouth. The bloody iron taste intensified and I had to fight to breathe through my nose, which was clogged and sore. “I don’t have to explain myself to you,” he said. “Ever. Olive was a beautiful young woman. When she died, I mourned her. But I couldn’t just let her leave, not after everything we’d been through. I didn’t mean to kill her, just slow her down, but the stairs and she was holding the b—”

  I didn’t need to hear the rest. The pieces clicked into place.

  I lost it. I didn’t care about my arm, the pain in my leg now dulled to an intense ache. I hurled myself off the floor with more strength than I thought possible, adrenaline fizzing inside me and pushing me further, faster, harder.

  I threw myself at him, my whole weight directed right at his chest. I caught him off balance, and together we went to the floor.

  With my good arm I ripped the tape off my face as Ady struggled beneath me. He threw me off with little effort, but he was winded. I could see that in his face. The knife. Where was it? I glanced around wildly, my heart in my throat.

  Under the bed. I dove for it, my right arm useless as I grappled for it. Ady launched after me, grabbing hold of my leg. He started to pull. I had a firm hold on the blade and it cut into my fingers. I kicked once. Hard. Caught Ady in the upper thigh, close enough to his crotch that he doubled and scuttled backwards. When I came upright I had the blade in my left hand. I was ready to do it. Ready to swing.

  I caught sight of Olive’s pictures, and I felt a familiar thrum inside my chest. A familiar call. Find me. I lowered the blade. If I hurt him he might never tell me where she was. What he had done with her body.

  Then I caught sight of her, a figure darting from one side of the door to the other. Bella. For a second I though
t she’d made it unseen. Then his head swivelled, his nostrils flaring. He was already moving.

  “No!” I shouted. “Bella, run! Go outside and scream!”

  Bella tried to run back towards the stairs but Ady was faster. He grabbed her foot and started to pull. I darted after him. He had hold of Bella’s ankle, and I heard a thud as she hit the floor. He yanked harder, pulling her back into the room. I clawed at his back, wrestled the knife against his skin. It pierced clothing, but I misjudged and didn’t get skin. He didn’t stop.

  “Please!” Bella cried. “You’re hurting me!”

  She tried to kick him off, but Ady aimed a blow to her face. I felt the slap rather than heard it, and I pulled my arm back hard. I swung the knife again. Ady howled but only increased his grip on Bella.

  In that split second I realised that I had to do it. I threw myself at the fire extinguisher, right there by the door. Holding it in my good hand, I hefted it high. Ady was holding Bella down, his arm across her throat. Her eyes were wet with tears.

  “Last chance,” I said quickly. “Let her go.”

  But Ady stared right into my face, and I saw him press down harder.

  “You won’t do it,” he said. “If you do – Olive will be gone for ever. You’ll never find her.”

  I closed my eyes. Heard Bella’s raspy breathing, my own heartbeat in my ears. I’m sorry, Olive, I thought. And then I swung the fire extinguisher at his head.

  Ady crumpled with a sickening thud. Bella was frozen, trapped under his weight. I leapt forward, pushing and pulling his body with my good arm until she managed to wriggle out. I took a moment, ignoring the spreading pool of scarlet on the floor.

  His lips were moving. Bubbles at his mouth. He was trying to speak. I shoved Bella behind me.