by Darren Young
For once, she didn’t watch the beach through the window.
She didn’t need to. Not today.
But it was now dark. She could see the white flakes of snow against the dark backdrop, and her reflection in the window, and she could remember eating at least once, maybe twice. Hadn’t she said they were coming at midday?
She was suddenly aware of someone close and looked to her left to find Mary hovering in the way she sometimes did. Hunched over, not sure whether to speak or run.
‘What do you want, Mary?’ she asked her.
Mary shrugged. Her hands were covered in tiny cuts where she had tried to grip the windows in an attempt to climb out of them, despite the fact they were locked and hadn’t been opened for years. Almost every day she reopened the wounds on her palms and fingers, and the dried blood would remain on them until a nurse washed it off before she went to bed.
‘Sit down if you want to?’ Sandra said, and to her surprise Mary did, like a naughty schoolgirl, eyes darting all over the place – anywhere but at the person opposite her.
Sandra looked at her. She didn’t look at anyone as a rule, she hated eye-contact – had from the moment Jessica went missing and everyone started looking at her in the same accusing way; but there was no danger of that with Mary.
‘My daughter is coming today,’ she said, and Mary’s eyes opened a little wider than they normally did, although Sandra had no idea if she had understood her or not. ‘You don’t know her, Mary. I don’t either. I haven’t seen her since she was this tall.’
Sandra held her hand at knee height. Mary seemed to shrug, but it might have just been a nervous twitch because she did that a lot too.
‘I knew she was alive, though.’
Bloody Mary looked at her.
‘I knew she hadn’t drowned. Todd thought she had, but what did he know? He was reading the bloody paper when they took her. What do you say?’
Mary snorted and Sandra smiled.
‘Exactly. But I knew she’d been taken. A mother knows, Mary. They said I was mad, can you believe that? That’s why they put me in here.’
Mary looked uncomfortable and as though she was gearing up for another escape attempt.
‘But I never gave up. Not in here.’ Sandra put her finger on her chest where her heart was. ‘That’s why I stopped arguing. That’s why I stayed here, Mary. So I was in a place she could find me if she came back.’
Sandra looked outside again. It had been dark for a while now, she wasn’t sure how long. Had the evening meal been served? She couldn’t remember eating it if it had.
The nurse came over. Sandra looked around and, other than her and Mary, the room was empty, although she hadn’t noticed a single person leave.
‘Time for bed, ladies,’ the nurse said, and Mary got to her feet obediently, like a well-trained Labrador, and shuffled off towards the corridor. ‘And wash those hands. I don’t want blood all over the bedclothes again.’
The nurse looked at Sandra.
‘It’s bedtime?’
The nurse nodded impatiently.
‘I have to wait for my visitors.’
The nurse sucked her cheeks in, anticipating a difficult situation. ‘I think it’s a little late for visitors now, Sandra.’
‘They’ve probably been held up, with this weather and everything.’
‘I don’t think they’re coming now,’ the nurse said.
Sandra’s grip on the side of her armchair tightened. ‘You don’t understand. Someone important is coming today.’
The nurse raised her eyebrows and looked towards the door for back-up.
‘They told me not to say anything,’ Sandra continued, talking in little more than a whisper. ‘But it’s my … daughter.’
She waited for the nurse to display her amazement at this. But she only smiled. ‘Come on, now, Sandra. It’s after ten o’clock.’
‘The reporter is bringing her. She promised she would.’
A member of staff from the reception opened the main doors and looked inside, exchanging a glance with the nurse.
‘We’ll talk tomorrow,’ the nurse said, anxious to avoid a scene, ‘but it’s late and we need to get you to your room.’
‘I’ll go when I’m ready,’ Sandra hissed, and pulled her hand away as the nurse tried to take it.
‘Sandra! Please.’
‘Leave me.’
The nurse looked at her and walked away. Sandra sat in her seat, determined not to move, but knowing full well that the nurse was right. No one was coming now.
The door opened, and the nurse returned with the receptionist and the manager. Sandra saw their reflection in the window. She didn’t turn around.
‘Takes three of you, does it?’
‘Sandra, we can find out what happened in the morning.’
‘I have to be here. What happens if they arrive and I’m not here?’
‘Sandra!’ the manager said loudly, losing patience.
‘Just piss off!’
The three women exchanged glances and the receptionist took a small white box with a red cross on it from behind her back and handed it to the nurse. Sandra caught sight of it and her nostrils flared.
‘Just let us help you,’ the nurse said softly.
Sandra was suddenly aware that they were either side of her, and she felt an arm on hers, applying downward pressure; she tried to lift it but the receptionist held her in her seat.
‘Stop!’ She struggled, but they were too strong. ‘Leave me … ’
The nurse bent down and rummaged in the small white box. She stood upright, a syringe in her hand.
‘You don’t get it!’
‘I know,’ the nurse said softly.
‘I need to be here when Jessica arrives.’
Sandra felt the briefest of pricks, sharp, in her arm and then the sensation of a soothing liquid coursing through her veins. ‘No!’ The room became blurry; the nurse’s face became even blurrier still. ‘You don’t underst … ’
Her head was heavy; beginning to fall to the side. She could just make out the out-of-focus image of a person, moving towards her. She heard the rumble of wheels. Felt them lift her up and lay her down, and then someone was pushing her, rolling her across the carpet.
She tried to speak but couldn’t, and she gave up and let it all go black.
What was the point?
No one had cared twenty years ago.
Why would they care now?
75 | Laura
The top half of Laura’s body shot upright in bed.
Sweat ran down her forehead. She reached around in the dark, panicking. Her eyes adjusted and she saw she was in her own room and the previous night began to come back to her. She’d gone up early, exhausted, and couldn’t even remember getting into her pyjamas or putting her head on to the pillow.
‘Shit!’
She was wide awake now. The image of Sandra being wheeled away made her feel like throwing up. She had forgotten to call High Cliffs; it had gone to the back of her mind when she’d seen her parents and she was so tired, it had stayed there.
The clock said five past one; there was nothing she could do until morning, so she lay there and then tried to go back to sleep but her brain was whirring with emotion and anger at her stupidity. She thought about Sandra, about how she’d have sat waiting by the window, about how she’d have wondered what was going on.
After an hour, she needed to go to the toilet. Her mother had supplied an endless flow of soup, tea and hot chocolate since she’d pulled up on the drive. She tiptoed out of the room, past the spare room – she couldn’t even recall Danni going to bed – and into the bathroom.
When she got back to her bed she slowly climbed under the covers and tried to get back to sleep but it was too late: she could hear it, the low whining sound from below. The sound of four padded feet, the expectant tap-tap-tap of a tail against a door. She pulled her duvet over her head to drown it out, but it only seemed to get louder.
She s
tepped back out of bed, pulled her polo-neck jumper over her pyjama top and quietly crept downstairs so as not to wake anyone. When she opened the utility room door, Mimark was impatiently scratching the back door, and she tapped his backside and told him to shush. She kept a pair of old fur-lined boots in the cupboard for exactly this purpose, and, as she began to put them on, the dog excitedly headbutted her shins and wagged his tail.
‘OK, OK,’ she whispered. ‘Give me a chance.’
She unlocked the door and turned the handle and the spaniel stepped cautiously through the opening and into the fresh snow in the garden, so deep in places that, when he stood still, his legs sank right in and he had to jump like a kangaroo to move around, which he managed to do, until he reached the garage. He relieved himself against the wall and then stopped and sniffed at the door, nudging his head against it and whimpering.
‘What is it?’ Laura called from the doorway.
Mimark didn’t like anything coming into his garden and he had probably caught the scent of a cat or a squirrel, but she flipped the utility room’s light switch so that enough light was cast on the garden to see what he was doing. She called him back but he ignored her. Sighing, she walked down towards the garage, trudging through the fresh snow that came up to the tops of her boots. There was nothing to suggest anything had been there, certainly no footprints in the fresh, undisturbed snow, and when she got there the dog had already forgotten it and was circling, ready to pee against the garage wall again, putting his head into the snow and eating mouthfuls before spitting them out.
Laura checked the door for her own peace of mind.
It was shut fast.
‘Hello?’ she said quietly, and felt foolish. She knew that if it was an animal they were hardly going to answer her. She grabbed Mimark by his collar. ‘C’mon, pest,’ she said, and led him back to the back door, stepping in her own footprints so no more snow fell into her boots. Inside, the dog climbed back into his basket, circled and lay down with a yawn. She locked the door, switched off the light and went back to bed.
But she was still awake two hours later.
It felt as if she’d been lying there for ever, and the image of Sandra was too heavy on her mind to let her rest. She got back up and went downstairs again, letting Mimark into the kitchen to stop him scratching the door, and started to warm some milk on the hob.
As she drank it, she stroked Mimark’s ear as he sat beside her, and looked out of the kitchen window. The grey, snow-laden clouds had moved on; hundreds of flickering stars had replaced them, and a three-quarter moon lit the blanket of white on the ground. It was a sight that you rarely saw: no clouds, the clearest of skies, and snow, which only fell like this every two or three years. She went through to the utility room and opened up the back door to look properly. Mimark slid past her legs to have another wee.
‘Beautiful, isn’t it?’ she said.
Mimark was at the garage door again, scratching and sniffing the ground around it. She called him in but he ignored her.
Laura cursed under her breath and pulled on her boots again. She didn’t have her jumper on this time, and when she stepped out into the garden the chill of the clear night air took her breath away. The temperature had fallen another few degrees and the cold cut right through her pyjama top as she retraced her previous footsteps.
‘Come on,’ she said as she pulled Mimark’s collar and yanked him towards her.
The dog pulled his head away, unimpressed by her intervention, and began sniffing the garage door, whimpering softly. Laura hesitated and looked back towards the house. ‘Enough now,’ she scolded, the icy chill hurting the exposed skin at her neck, and grabbed his collar again. As she leaned down to do so, she saw the footprint nearest the door.
It wasn’t one of hers.
It was too big. It was in exactly the spot where she had stood, but a larger foot had made it; she could see that the edge was an inch wider than her original print.
She bent down to look properly, but when she got too close her body blocked the light from the moon and she had to find the right angle, almost on her hands and knees, to look at it with enough light to make out the tread.
It was a man’s shoe.
She stepped back towards the house. Mimark had moved around in the snow so much that he’d erased most of the other prints but, as she checked each one that was still left, she found another that wasn’t made just by her boot. And then another.
Laura stood still, her heart thumping in her chest. She slowly stepped back towards the garage, put her hand on the door handle and carefully pushed it down.
It opened. The door moved away from her, just a few inches and she held the handle tightly to stop it opening any more.
It had been locked when she tried it before. Hadn’t it?
Her mind felt as if it was playing tricks on her.
Were they fresh prints, or had they been there before and she just hadn’t noticed?
Laura’s fingers trembled on the handle.
Then she pushed the door fully open and went inside.
76 | Laura
‘Is anyone there?’
Laura stood just inside the entrance to the garage. Mimark trotted in too; she could hear his breathing and his paws on the concrete floor but it was pitch black in there beyond the doorway and she fumbled around with her hand for a light.
It struck her that she didn’t know where the light was; she didn’t know where anything was because she never went in the garage – never really had need to. Her eyes began to adjust; just corners and generic shapes were visible in the darkness at first, but she got a sense of where things were, and found the light switch half hidden by a large tool cupboard.
The strip-lights, two of them, one on each side of the large space, buzzed and came on. The light from them was dim at first, until the two lights warmed and began to get brighter and let her see properly.
It had originally been two garages, separated by a brick wall that the previous owners had put up, only for Robert to tear down when they’d bought the place in order to build head-high storage cupboards on one side. Typically, he had done the job with precision, with enough room for her mother’s estate car to be able to fit neatly on one side, with the row of cupboards full of medical journals and Christmas decorations above it, while her father’s own larger car was parked up against the nearside wall, reversed in to the width of a wing-mirror away so that there was enough space for them both to open their driver’s doors and get in and out.
‘Hello?’
Mimark let out a low growl and then sniffed the air and went back outside. Laura looked around, scanning the corners of the garage. To make herself feel better, she opened the tool cupboard positioned against the back wall and picked the largest item she could find – a heavy wrench – and closed the door.
She stepped forward.
‘If anyone’s here, the police are on their way.’
She listened. The only sound was from Mimark outside. She looked all around the garage again, trying to detect any slightest movement, but there was none. She felt foolish; her father had probably left something in the car and made the prints ages ago.
But something didn’t feel right. Something was bothering her – her gut instinct was telling her to stay alert – so she walked over to her mother’s car and looked inside, on the front and back seats, but it was completely empty. She stepped over to her father’s car and looked through the driver’s window, but it was also empty, the only movement the tiny red blinking light of the alarm.
Laura moved to the back window. This was harder to see through because it was tinted glass, and she had to put her face right up against it to see inside, but the back seat was empty too and she breathed out, gasping for oxygen as she realised she’d been holding her breath.
There was a noise behind her.
She spun around, the wrench rising to head height, ready to strike.
Mimark stood in the door, his tail wagging. Fresh snow all over his snou
t.
She let out a nervous giggle and breathed out, then put the wrench back in the cupboard. Water dripped from the dog’s soggy coat as he walked past her and sniffed around. He lined up his body and lifted his hind leg, ready to pee up against the back wheel of her father’s car, and she jumped towards him. ‘Mimark, no!’
The dog looked up, stopped before he had done anything and then came back to her indignantly, and trotted back outside. She shook her head, took one last look around and turned off the light. The room was black again.
Something still wasn’t right.
She put the light back on. The strip-lights buzzed and brightened much more quickly this time.
The garage looked the same. Her eyes darted around, and she thought that her eye had been caught by something but she wasn’t sure what it was.
Her heart began to pound.
She looked into the corners. Her eyes scanned every inch, not seeing anything but her instincts were pushing her to continue looking. She went to her mother’s car, stood behind it and bent down to look underneath.
Nothing.
She looked over to her father’s car. Nothing looked any different. She went on to her haunches to look underneath. Nothing.
She went back to the door and shook her head, putting her hand on the light switch to plunge the garage back into darkness when, in the corner of her eye, she saw it. The back indicator light of her father’s car.
There seemed to be a crack in it. It was barely noticeable: a jagged line across the orange plastic. Laura walked towards it.
The car was only a few inches from the wall, and there were some training weights and a gym bag on the floor, which she had to stand on and lean over to see properly.
It was definitely cracked. It was clear now and she followed it with her finger, tracing the line of it until she could no longer see it and had to rely on touch. The crack became a hole. She could feel the sharp edge of the plastic and, when she put her finger inside, she could feel the exposed bulb.
