They took her out of London at first, to somewhere near the sea. Nina knew this because she could hear it at nights, sucking and whooshing as if everything was perfectly normal. Nina wasn’t sure how she knew it was the sea but she did. She thought she might have been there before on a holiday with her mum when she was tiny, or maybe a trip with one of the schools she had been to. Or maybe she’d heard the noise in a dream or read it in a novel. Whatever way it had made itself known to her, she was grateful for it now. The noise felt like a friend and she would listen to it above all the other noises that were happening around her.
There were other girls. They weren’t always the same ones, girls seemed to come and go the way they did in dreams. Some weeks they would be around for a few days and Nina would almost feel able to smile at them, and sometimes she saw them once and never again. A few of them did not speak English but an exchange of looks meant that Nina understood the shape of their sorrow, and that they were as unhappy to be there as she was.
There was a fish, a goldfish, in a small tank in the room Nina and the other girls were allowed to wait in. Nina watched it whenever she could. It swam more to her side, the side that she was sitting on, when she was there. She was sure it did. The trouble was, she thought, she had no way of telling if it swam to the other side of the tank when she wasn’t there. Maybe it just liked her side more, and wasn’t looking for company at all. The girls had allocated seats where they had to sit. Nina thought about sitting on the other side of the room so that she could observe the behaviour of the fish, see if it came towards her. She thought about it every day, every minute, until it became her dearest wish and her obsession.
It was a Friday when she managed it. Nina knew it was a Friday because it had been busier, and the men had been rowdier, more excitable. One of them, Paul, was a regular. He had come every Friday for four weeks, and he called Nina his Girl Friday. Paul was one of the worst, because he seemed to think he was Nina’s boyfriend in some way and that he was entitled to some kind of boyfriend/girlfriend thing which made Nina’s skin crawl more than anything else.
‘Have you missed me?’ he said. And, ‘I bet you’ve been looking forward to this.’
Nina didn’t even pretend to smile or join in. It made no difference. No difference at all. The relationship he thought he was having was in the man’s head.
He’d been in early on the Friday of the fish, which meant that Nina was able to go and sit in the waiting room afterwards before the other girls came in. She was sore and desperate, but to be alone in the waiting room at last was a small relief. Her world had shrunk so much that this was important. This was something she wanted to do for herself, not because she had been told to. Friday for me too, she said in her head like a mantra.
If I can do this, maybe I can run, Nina thought as she crossed the room to sit on the chair on the other side of the tank. Maybe I can wait until the door is opened for some reason and I can run. She sat down in the other chair, the forbidden chair, the chair that had not been allocated to her, and she waited for the fish to swim towards her. It would prove that the fish liked a friendly face, the same as everyone else, she thought. And if fish could make choices, so could she.
Nina was never sure afterwards whether the fish did swim towards her. She thought it did, she hoped it did, but there were a lot of variables for her to take into account. There was the noise, for a start. It seemed that it was not OK, it was far from OK, to sit in a different seat. She hadn’t realised that they were watching, but as soon as the two of them burst in, the woman with the clanking bracelets and the man with the thick neck like a toad and the accent like Poirot, Nina noticed the blinking eye of the camera attached to the light in the middle of the ceiling.
Of course, Nina thought as they dragged her off the chair, of course they have to keep an eye on the room, on their property. Call yourself an A star student? she taunted herself. A child might have guessed that, or a fish.
‘We gave you a chair to sit in,’ the man kept saying, as if it was an extraordinarily generous thing for him to have done. ‘We gave you a chair, but you couldn’t do what we asked, could you?’
I wanted to see the fish, Nina thought. I wanted to see the damn fish from the other side. She didn’t say anything. There was every chance that mentioning the fish would be enough for them to empty it down the toilet, or worse.
Nina understood how Bilbo must have felt when people made him do things he didn’t want to do for reasons he didn’t understand. If I ever get out of here, she thought, I’m going to play that song he likes on repeat if he wants me to, and pick out all the green sweets before I give him the packet.
‘Now sit in the fucking chair we told you to sit in,’ the woman said, her bracelets clanking again on her skinny arm. She pulled Nina by her hair across the room and shoved her down. Nina kept her face impassive. She had been practising it ever since she got here, the trick of letting no emotion at all show on her face. Sometimes she was worried that it would stay with her, and that even after she got out of this place she would never again be able to show any emotion. Other times she thought that there would be no after this place, that the chances of getting away in one piece were too slim for her to hope for. Today, the Friday of the fish incident, there seemed to be no hope. Nina sat in her chair counting the places on her body that hurt. Her head, where she had been dragged across the room by her hair. Her wrists, her shin where she had been kicked, and, from earlier, places inside her that she didn’t want to know the name of.
Think of something else, Nina told herself, think of something else and stay with it. She wasn’t sure of the date, but it must be roughly the time of the mock exams she would be taking if she was still at college. The thought of all her friends sitting together in the exam hall, thinking that she had just left and run off, was a sad one. They’re probably all thinking, typical children’s home kid, no loyalty, no staying power. They might occasionally wonder why she hadn’t even been in touch on Instagram, but that was all. They wouldn’t be looking for her, they wouldn’t have reported her missing like they would have if she was one of them.
Nina began to quote a speech from Hamlet, for comfort. She kept her voice low and concentrated on retrieving the words and saying them in order. She hadn’t even noticed that one of the other girls had come in and was sitting on the far side of the room until the girl quietly said, ‘That sounds like a poem.’
‘Oh,’ said Nina, ‘I didn’t realise you were there.’
‘I knew it was poetry,’ the girl said, as if she had scored a great victory. ‘I’m sensitive like that.’
It was the longest exchange Nina had had with anyone for days. So many days that she wasn’t sure how many.
‘I’m Romana,’ the girl said, ‘only that’s not my real name. It’s just my working name, you know.’
‘Oh,’ Nina said, ‘I’m Nina. I don’t know what name they’ve given me today, it keeps changing.’
‘Have you got a plan?’ Romana said. ‘You’ll find you need a plan, to get you through this. We’ve all got plans here.’
Nina laughed. Her laughter felt creaky and unused.
‘I’m not creative enough,’ Nina said. ‘I can’t think of a single plan that doesn’t end with me dead on the floor.’
‘Hey, sssh,’ Romana said, ‘hang on.’
She stayed silent for a moment.
‘Right,’ Romana said, ‘the first thing is, keep an eye on that camera.’
She nodded her head a little towards the camera attached to the central light that Nina had already noticed.
‘Only talk when it’s facing away from you, it turns all the time, sometimes faster than others, so you need to keep an eye out. Otherwise, we don’t think the sound works too well so it might be OK if you look away while you speak or,’ Romana waited for a few seconds while the camera rotated again, ‘just cover your mouth with your hand as though you’re coughing.’
‘I didn’t know,’ Nina said, ‘no one has spoken to me s
ince I’ve been here.’
‘Can’t take the chance,’ Romana said. ‘There’s rumours that sometimes they put a plant in, a stooge, someone who will tell them what’s going on.’
‘I’m not that,’ Nina said.
‘I could tell that when I heard the commotion in here just now, it sounded like they dragged you across the room,’ Romana said. ‘Are you OK?’
Nina shrugged. She was about as not OK as she had ever been, and the fact that Romana cared enough to ask made her want to cry. She kept quiet in case her voice gave her away. The girl seemed nice, but Nina was wary of showing weakness to anyone. A shrug would have to do.
‘Stupid question, sorry,’ Romana said. ‘Right, I’ll tell you my escape plan so you know I’m on the level. Only you can’t use it, right? It’s definitely mine, copyright me. I’m going to stop eating, stop drinking too if I can. I’m not ready to do it yet, but I’m gearing up to it. When I get going, I reckon I’ll get ill really quickly, I’ve always picked up any bugs going. I’ll get ill, I’m sure I will and they’ll have to call a doctor, or take me to A and E. See?’
Romana smiled as if her plan was perfect and she was just waiting for Nina to acknowledge it. Nina wasn’t sure what to say. There were so many things wrong with Romana’s plan that it seemed cruel to point them out. Everyone needed some hope. Wasn’t that exactly what had been the worst thing since she was here, she thought, the absolute, glaring lack of hope? And the lack of knowledge, the utter confusion. Maybe Romana could help her with that.
‘Sounds like you have a plan,’ Nina said. ‘I wish I had one. I don’t even know where we are. Do you?’
‘I’m not sure of the name of the town,’ Romana said, ‘but one of the others thought it might be Hastings. Dunno though, she’s a bit flaky. Coast, anyway. You can hear the seagulls.’
‘Why here?’ Nina said. ‘Why here, why me?’
She concentrated on breathing so that she wouldn’t cry.
‘Ah,’ said Romana. ‘Are you a children’s home kid or a runaway? That’s mostly what we are. They pick us carefully.’
‘What?’ Nina said. ‘What do you mean?’
She felt stupid, as if she was in the bottom set at school trying to understand a simple maths process. She just couldn’t get it, her brain wasn’t working.
Romana waited again while the camera did its spin.
‘No one looks for us,’ Romana said, ‘they can do what they like. No one expects us to do anything so they don’t care if we disappear. I’m a runaway. I bet my mum didn’t even notice I was gone. I’m sure she wouldn’t have reported me. So I was doing a bit of begging and this and that, trying to get by, when they found me.’
Nina understood the logic immediately. Expendable girls, that’s what they were.
‘Hastings,’ she said. ‘I think I’ve been here before.’
‘You’ll probably be here again,’ Romana said, ‘who knows? We’ll probably move tomorrow. It’s what they do, rent some house short term, Airbnb or something like that, then they advertise us, take pictures and all that, put them on the internet. Set up the cameras if they can. Wait for the punters to arrive, it never takes long. The police can’t find us because we keep on moving, going to new places.’
Nina’s heart sank. It was worse than she had imagined. She wanted to ask Romana more questions, but the man who looked like a toad came in with two other men. They were old, and Nina could smell the alcohol on them. She looked at the floor and out of the corner of her eye she could see that Romana did, too.
‘Shy girls,’ said one of the men. ‘Oh, I like shy girls.’
‘My girls are terribly shy,’ toad man said, ‘but you’ll find that they are very obliging. That’s the special one I told you about there.’ He pointed to Romana. ‘You’ll find her most surprising.’
‘Obliging,’ the smaller of the two men said. He had a slight lisp that made him sound menacing. ‘I like obliging, I like the sound of that. Come here, girls.’
Romana went straight to him. She giggled and the noise was hideous to Nina. Can they not tell, she thought, that laugh sounds false and scared? Would that not stop any normal person in their tracks?
‘Oh I like you, I think you’ve got something to show me,’ he said, putting his hand on Romana’s flat chest. ‘Come with me.’
The taller one looked Nina up and down as though she was a horse he had been offered in a market.
‘She’s a spirited one,’ toad man said, ‘needs a bit of training, you know how they get.’
‘Indeed I do,’ said the taller one, ‘indeed I do.’
He placed his thumb and forefinger round Nina’s skinny arm and dug them in so hard Nina was sure she could feel the bones crunch.
‘Come along, my dear,’ he said.
‘No,’ Nina said.
She had no idea that she was going to say that until she said it but the conversation with Romana, another human being who wasn’t trying to hurt her, had given her courage. She stamped her foot.
‘I will not,’ she said.
Let him kill me, she thought, let him just go ahead and do it. Nothing could be as bad as whatever will happen if I don’t make a stand. Nina closed her eyes and waited for the blows.
‘So basically,’ toad man said, ‘I’m going to find you someone else.’
Nina heard the door shut and opened her eyes to find that both men had left the room. She stood still, unable to believe that they had left her alone. She was still standing there when toad man came back.
‘Sit down,’ he said. ‘What do you think I am, some kind of purple demon?’
No, worse, Nina thought. She stayed silent.
‘Look,’ he said, ‘Fee, I’m sorry about Fee. She’s mad, you know. Try it if you want.’
Nina looked at him. She had no idea what he was talking about.
‘My girls,’ he said, ‘I like them to be happy. Sit in the other chair if you want. It’s fine.’
Nina stayed standing.
Chapter Seventeen
Daphne
Wednesday, 27 February
Daphne’s thoughts were whirling. The feeling reminded her of being little and tipping her head back, staring up at the top of a high building. She needed to hold on to something to ground her. She wished for one moment that it could be Grace who steadied her, but settled instead for sitting heavily in one of Meg’s grey armchairs, gripping the arms to keep her from flying away. So many memories flooding in from wherever it was memories go to lie in wait. All that stuff about poison, and different methods. Daphne shuddered. She remembered a conversation she had had shortly before she left university, shortly before she had walked away from her dreams of a life of study and peace. She had been talking to Margaret, the friendly girl who lived on her corridor. It was the only time, Daphne realised, that she had tried to tell anyone what was going on. For years she had imagined that everyone knew, that she had been an object of gossip, but now, looking back, Daphne wasn’t so sure.
‘Andrew,’ she had said to Margaret, trying to find the right words, ‘Andrew, he’s kind of scary.’
‘Gosh,’ said Margaret, ‘I’d be scared to go out with someone like that, too. He’s so, so cool, isn’t he?’
‘That’s not what I meant,’ Daphne said, ‘and honestly, he’s not really that cool underneath.’
‘It must be hard though, for you, trying to fit in with his world,’ Margaret said. ‘Honestly, I feel sorry for you, I do. You being, you know, coloured and him being so, well, you know, popular and everything.’
Daphne remembered the hated word, ‘coloured’, that everyone had used in the 1960s for anyone who wasn’t white. How she had never objected to it for fear of being thought stroppy or worse, ‘having a chip on her shoulder’. She had known what would happen if she had said anything about it. The person who had used it would immediately tell her that they didn’t mean any harm by it, that she was too sensitive. Daphne had been at a party once where she had stood and listened to one of Andrew’
s friends hold forth on the fact that he didn’t see colour, and that he didn’t see why coloured people banged on about it so much. It was less than ten minutes before he asked her where she came from.
She remembered the sinking feeling she had felt at Margaret’s words. The time it had taken her to build up to saying anything. The guarded excitement at the thought that someone might understand at last, that someone might be able to help her. The horrible, lurching realisation that no one was listening, that she could shout and shout but no one would hear. It would be like shouting down a well or into an extinct volcano. Shouting to hear the sound of her own voice, nothing more.
She didn’t try to explain to anyone again. There had been a couple of times in the years since university when the conversation had got close, especially when Daphne was in Australia. Or if she had drunk a glass or two of wine, never more than that, with friends. And the friends then talked about an uncle, or a stepfather, or a stranger in the park. Women give each other their stories when they are safe, Daphne realised, only she was never safe. Not even when she got rich. When the small investment in a start-up online company her father made for her before he disappeared made her rich, not even then was she safe. She would never be safe. Nina deserved better than that. She always remembered what Andrew had said when she left.
‘If you ever,’ he said, his face so close to hers that their noses touched, ‘ever tell anyone, then I will find you. I will hunt you down like a dog. Do you hear me?’
Daphne heard him. She heard him so clearly that his words rang through the years, through the career she had half-heartedly managed to have, through the friendships she had kept at arm’s length. Through the time in Australia, even. Through the loneliness of keeping herself to herself, through the children she had never had, through the money she had never been able to enjoy.
A Beginner’s Guide to Murder Page 15
