Between the Lies

by Cathy MacPhail

  He hadn’t deserted me. Dad still loved me. I knew he did. He’d been angry when he stormed out of the house, but he’d thought about it, and now he wanted to talk. And I so needed to talk to him. I sent him a text back. I wanted to write I love you Dad. Things are going to be better. I have so much I need to talk about… I think I know what’s wrong with me.

  But all that didn’t sound like me at all. He’d think he sent the text to the wrong number.

  So I merely typed in ok and left it at that.

  It was after four o’clock now. No time to go home and change into a dry jacket. It would take me almost half an hour to make my way along the shore, through Coronation Park, past the fire station, and be at the roundabout by five. He might suggest going out for dinner, and I loved it when we did that. Langbank was only a ten-minute drive from the roundabout, and there was a lovely restaurant there where we could sit looking out over the river to Dumbarton Rock and all the lights across the water.

  I was going to be honest with him, because I was so scared. I needed to ask if he thought I had been the one doing this all along. Had he been afraid of that too? I was soaked through but now I didn’t even mind the rain. I could think of nothing but meeting Dad. The dark day seemed to match my mood. An eerie mist hovered over the town, drifting ghostlike between the bare branches of trees. As I walked, I went over what I would say to Dad. I would tell him everything Jude had said, and if he thought I needed help, then I would do whatever he thought was best.

  There was building work going on all round the shipyard. I knew Dad was sometimes there for the union talking to the workers. Right now, though, it was the weekend and no one was on site. Debris and bricks lay where part of the old building had been demolished. Dumpsters and forklift trucks sat as if they had been abandoned. Corrugated-iron buildings were rising on the other side of the shipyard, cut off by steel fencing and warning signs. Danger. Keep Out.

  I stood sheltering as best I could, waiting, watching the cars as they drove round the roundabout heading into Greenock or up to Glasgow. I was right across from the loft apartments, a big red-brick building that used to be the Ropeworks, Dad had told me. The lights were on, I could see inside. People making meals, getting dressed for their Saturday night out, people with no worries. Not like me. Dad was late.

  I stepped back further to see if I could get a view of Newark Castle, but it was blocked completely by the building work. Traffic was light. The whole area was deserted. I was alone.

  My phone pinged and my heart jumped at the sound.

  Hurry up, Dad, I thought.

  In the few minutes I waited, it grew darker.

  There was a movement behind one of the corrugated iron buildings. Just for a second. I was sure I had seen something: a shadow, a figure. My imagination, I told myself. It was this mist coming in from the river. It was the looming darkness. I wouldn’t look. I’d turn away. Because there was nothing there. It was all in my head. I was breathing faster, felt my lips go dry. Hurry up, Dad.

  Anyway, even if there really was something there, it would just be boys playing around, or vandals. Or perhaps security. Or a tourist.

  Or nothing at all.

  Hurry up, Dad.

  Another movement caught at the side of my vision, and I couldn’t help it. Couldn’t stop myself. I looked.

  A face peeking round a steel pillar, a white face, with a red slash of a smile.

  The clown.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  Was it real? Was it only in my imagination? I began to shake.

  The face was gone again, yet it seemed something was still there. It was too dark to see. Why couldn’t I run? Dad would be here soon. I’d tell him. I’d show him. If it was real, he would see it too. But what if it was gone by then, disappeared again? What if it wasn’t there at all? Something inside me needed desperately to find out what was real and what wasn’t.

  I blinked and there was the black figure moving against the darkness, with that face floating in the air, peering round at me. Daring me to come. Gone again in an instant. I had to see, I had to know. Without even realising what I was doing, I moved towards it.

  The steel from the fencing bit into my fingers as I pulled it aside to step through. My mind was in a whirl, the pulse in my neck racing. How could I prove it was real? Was there a way? And I remembered my phone. I could take a photograph. I took the phone out of my pocket and held it tight. This time I would definitely take a photo, surely then I could prove to everyone, to myself especially, that this was real. That I hadn’t made it up. And if the photograph was nothing but steel and mist, then I would know that I really was mad.

  The building was just a shell, but it had a roof and steel beams running across the high ceiling. Huge steel pillars were still being inserted. I moved further inside, out of the rain at least.

  “Where are you?” I yelled, hoping for an answer.

  But there was nothing. I stepped over pipes and rubble. Watching for that face to suddenly appear. Where could it have hidden? But there was nowhere for anyone to hide here, and Jude’s words shouted inside my head: “There’s only you. You, Abbie, you are UNKNOWN.”

  Couldn’t be real, could it? I had to get out of here. It was suddenly too dark. The sound of a movement behind me made me jump. The soft pad of a footstep close behind. And was that the breeze, or was it someone’s icy breath against my hair? I swung round sharply.

  I wasn’t prepared. Though I should have been. Because as I turned, there it was, too close, far too close, that smile like a streak of blood. It had to be real. I wanted to scream. It was there. The clown, the white face, too close against my own.

  Wisps of mist seemed to have followed it inside the building like something out of a nightmare world. I took a step back and felt my foot slip. Who are you? I wanted to ask. Couldn’t say a word. I was losing my balance, had nothing to grip on to. I heard someone scream. I think it was me. I was going down, down, tumbling, nothing to hold on to. Nothing to stop me.

  And then I hit the ground and blacked out.

  THIRTY-NINE

  How long have I been unconscious? I don’t know. When I come to, I feel groggy, my head aches. I don’t know where I am… How did I get here? And where exactly is… here? It is pitch black now. I can see no sky. I ache in every bone. Drip, drip, dripping all around me. I have that feeling, as if you’ve been dreaming, you’re in the middle of a terrible nightmare and then you realise it wasn’t a nightmare at all. It has actually happened. I remember the mist. I was running after something, someone… Then I remember the face, that white face with the terrifying smile. The clown. I begin to breathe faster. Is the clown in here, in the darkness with me? I am so afraid to turn my head in case that face is there.

  Please don’t let that face be behind me.

  Try to think. Try to think. The fall. I had tumbled back because I saw that face in the shadows, too close to my own. If I can just think straight, it will all come back to me. Think, Abbie. My mind is muddled. The memory will not come.

  I had been waiting for someone… But I can’t remember who. And then I was running.

  I let out a scream as I felt an ice-cold drip hit my face. Another drip. I scream again. I shout for help.

  And I wait.

  No one comes. I’d had a phone. Where is it? I fumble in my pockets but there is no phone. Had I held it in my hands? Had I dropped it? Had the clown taken it?

  And then another memory bursts to the surface like a shark leaping from the water.

  There was no clown. There never had been a clown. There is only me. And if there was no clown, there was no UNKNOWN. It all comes back. It had all been me, sending the texts, imagining the figure in the garden. After all, who else had seen it? Only me.

  UNKNOWN and the clown, one and the same.

  Me.

  Faces flit in front of me, accusing faces. Robbie and Tracey and Andrea and Josh Creen and Belinda and Frances and Jude and her mother and father and William Creen. I had wronged all of them.r />
  But the memories are all jumbled up.

  Everyone is right about me. There is something evil in me, something bad, something wrong. That’s why I have no friends.

  And then another horrific thought. Am I dead? Am I dead and waiting here in this dark place?

  Do you feel pain when you’re dead? Every part of my body aches. My back, my knees, and my ankle throbs. I’m sure it’s broken. If I feel pain, I can’t be dead, can I? And this can’t really be hell? I’m not bad enough to go to hell, surely. I haven’t killed anyone…

  You’ve hurt people, Abbie. I can almost hear the voice of my conscience whispering in my ear.

  I want to slam my hands against the walls, just to get that voice to shut up. Because it is right. I have hurt people. And here is my punishment. Trapped in a dark place, alone. Afraid. What if no one comes back for me?

  What if it comes back?

  What if…

  I start screaming, and this time I can’t stop. No one knows I am here. And my screaming alerts no one. I begin to panic.

  Calm down, Abbie. Breathe in, slowly. If I panic now, let my fear take over, I’ll go mad. If I am not mad already. I have to do something to calm myself down. What can I do?

  And it comes to me.

  I will go back over everything, right from the very start, and it will calm me and stop me panicking. And maybe help me understand how I have come to this.

  How did it all begin?

  FORTY

  That was how it began… or seemed to begin. For me and Jude it began weeks before on the day I found her in the girls’ toilets sobbing her heart out. I’d never had much time for her, or the bunch of friends she hung about with, and she had no time for me either. But it seemed weird not to ask her what was wrong. I hadn’t expected her to pour out her heart. Telling me how she’d been dumped by Tracey and Belinda and Andrea, drummed out of the gang. She had no friends now.

  And I had laughed. I can still see her looking up at me when I did that. “You think that’s funny?”

  “You’re crying over them? A bunch of losers. Andrea Glass – who needs friends like that?”

  “But they were my very best friends.”

  “Clearly not, when they could dump you just like that.” That only made her cry harder. I was saying all the wrong things. Why hadn’t I gone into the toilets on the other floor? I hadn’t realised that small decision would change my life. “Look, all I’m saying is, I would never let anybody get to me like that. And for a boring loser like Andrea? Grow a backbone, Jude, I’d never let anyone break me. Who cares if nobody talks to you? Nobody talks to me and it doesn’t bother me.”

  “You don’t understand. Hardly anybody likes you anyway.”

  “Thanks for that,” I said. “No. I don’t understand. No matter what they did. I’m a very strong person and I would never let anybody get to me like that. Certainly not losers like that lot. Nobody would ever break me.”

  I managed to make that my parting shot, and I thought it was over, until I got a call from Jude just a couple of days later, thanking me for making her feel better. That was a first, me making anyone feel better. And then, next day, there was another call and then another and then…

  I should never have listened to Jude. I don’t normally listen to anyone, but at that time she seemed to be in the same place as me. She was bitter about being dumped, fed up with her mum and dad. I suppose I was bitter too. We had left Glasgow to move here, and now Dad never seemed to be home, I had no friends at school. I can look back now and see I didn’t deserve friends. I was arrogant and aloof and Jude’s plan seemed like a good hoax. A great joke, a bit of fun that would harm no one.

  “Could we get away with it?” I started asking her, and I suppose that was when I realised I was not only thinking about it, I had decided to do it.

  “Who would ever know?” was her answer. She was the one who’d go missing, she said, because she knew the town better, knew places to hide. I would be the one who’d stay at home, be the heroine. What a great joke. But the joke was always on me. From the very beginning Jude must have had a plan to trick me, and I had fallen for it.

  Jude had known what she was doing. But why? If she’d appeared during the candlelit vigil, fame and fortune awaited us both. She would be the prodigal child, and I would be a heroine.

  But that hadn’t been the plan, not the real plan. The real plan was to hurt me. That was the only answer. But why? What had I ever done to deserve all this?

  I remembered the day Jude had come home. Hadn’t I thought it was like a scene from a movie? Her return captured on tv cameras and recorded by all the neighbours, dramatic, full of emotion, played over and over on the news, on YouTube. Exactly as we had planned it. Only this time I was the villain.

  “The only person I’ve ever been afraid of… is YOU!”

  She had appeared at exactly the right time, just as the cameras were on her doorstep.

  Very convenient.

  Too convenient.

  All part of her plan, stumbling into view, falling into her mother’s arms. Hollywood couldn’t have staged it better. All fake. All deliberate.

  But why?

  ***

  I’ve been screaming so loud my throat hurts and still no one hears me. I’m afraid to scream now. What if no one ever comes?

  If only I could climb out, but there’s nothing to hold onto, nothing to grip. How long will I be down here? I begin to shake.

  I’m trying not to panic.

  But what if nobody ever finds me?

  Can’t think like that or I’ll go mad.

  No, I will be saved. Hold onto that thought.

  Someone will find me.

  Someone has to.

  FORTY-ONE

  I think I’ve been asleep… or maybe I fainted. My ankle hurts so much. I’m very thirsty. If only it wasn’t so dark.

  Stop thinking like this, Abbie. Where were you? Go back, go back… Calm down… Going back over everything will take your mind off where you are, at least for a while.

  ***

  So if that part is true, and Jude deliberately came back in full view of the camera, if that was done deliberately as some kind of punishment for me, then maybe my punishment continued after she came home. If that really happened, maybe the rest is real too. I did get those texts. I did see a clown. There was an UNKNOWN. And it isn’t me.

  If it is all real, then Jude is the prime suspect. But how did she get my aunt’s key? If someone had wanted the key, it wouldn’t have been very hard. I leave my rucksack in the changing rooms, and in my locker sometimes. And I never lock my locker door, hardly anyone does. Perhaps Jude took it, had a copy made. Must have, only solution.

  But wait a minute… UNKNOWN. Jude hadn’t been there in school when I got the text in the cafe. How could she have known I was writing?

  And I had hardly seen Jude since. So maybe UNKNOWN had nothing to do with Jude, maybe Jude’s part had ended with her return. UNKNOWN was payback for all the terrible hurt I’d caused. Someone afterwards who wanted to make me suffer, make me realise what I had done.

  What was it Robbie had said? “You need a taste of your own medicine.” Was this Robbie’s way of telling me that he is UNKNOWN? He could be. He’s the I.T. expert, he’s smart, and I could imagine him dressing up as the clown to scare me.

  But to be so cruel?

  Or Josh Creen? Despite what he said at the disco, he hates me, and I know he’s been watching me.

  ***

  I drift off into a nightmare sleep. Images flash across my mind: Robbie, with a cruel smile on his face, whispering, “You need a taste of your own medicine.”

  Josh Creen taking off a clown’s mask and saying, “You’ll get what’s coming to you.”

  And then Sara Flynn, smiling and pushing a camera into my face. “Have you seen the television, Abbie? The answer’s there.”

  Whispers, so many whispers, if I could just make out what they were saying. Texts flicking past. I can’t quite read the
m.

  ***

  My dad’s text slaps in front of me, like a paper blown against a window.

  And it is all nagging at my brain. Something here in this nightmare I just can’t quite grasp… What is it? The answer, Sara Flynn says. The answer was on tv. What was on tv?

  I jump awake. Am I just clutching at straws? Is the answer really in my dream?

  I so need to go to the toilet. I get to my feet and I can hardly stand. Can’t put any weight on my ankle. My legs are shaking. I’ll go in the corner but the corner is so dark.

  My dad will be worried about me. My dad! I remember again the text he sent me, as clear as it was in the dream. I was supposed to meet him. That’s why I came to the shipyard. When he’d come and seen I wasn’t waiting, he would have known something was wrong. He’ll have people searching all round here.

  My dad! Anytime now he’ll come, help will arrive. Just thinking that makes my breathing come easier.

  It was a cruel plan Jude and I came up with, it hurt too many people. At least I’ve learned that. But is being sorry enough?

  I fall asleep again. Didn’t mean to, and when I wake up it’s not so dark. I can see some light, what time is it, what day is it? Is it Sunday? Why hasn’t Dad come with help?

  Because it wasn’t Dad texting you, Abbie.

  And the realisation makes me cry.

  Of course it wasn’t Dad. UNKNOWN is clever. UNKNOWN could figure out how to grab Dad’s phone and send a message. He’s always leaving it on his car seat, on tables, in his jacket. That text got me here to this lonely place, and then… A brief glimpse of the clown did the rest.

  Another nagging feeling.

  Something I should have noticed but I can’t grasp it.

  Then it hits me. Whoever wrote that message knew I’d fallen out with my dad. And the only person I told was Jude. And something else Jude said: “You shouldn’t send a text saying, this isn’t over…” But I hadn’t mentioned that text, hadn’t shown it to anyone. The only way she could have known about it was if she’d sent it.