The Pact_A gripping psychological thriller with heart-stopping suspense

by S. E. Lynes

  ‘Do you think she’ll be in the waiting room later?’

  ‘She might be. But that thing’s going to need its own gurney.’

  We giggled. Which we should not have done, but that made it funnier obviously.

  Later, on the pretext of needing the loo, I did actually pootle up to the waiting room to see if I could spot someone who looked like they’d swallowed a Space Hopper, but I couldn’t, obviously, and a little after lunchtime, I drove home.

  You were up and about but still in your onesie and still very pale. I poured you a can of Sprite and stirred it to get the gas out. You sipped that and ate some salt and vinegar crisps, and together we watched a film on Netflix, snuggled under the duvet on the sofa. And like mothers everywhere whose children are safe at home, I can honestly say that in that moment, I felt a deep peace I had not known for a long time.

  Twenty-Three

  Rosie

  Ollie has sent me a friend request on Facebook. When is this? This is last year… is it? I think it is, but I can’t remember how long after we start commenting on Instagram this happens. Anyway, I’m like, OMG, I can’t believe it. His Instagram name is @makeurOllie, but his Facebook name is just his normal name: Ollie Thomas, like two first names together. I press accept and scream into my pillow so you won’t hear. That’s it. We are now Facebook friends as well as Instagram buddies. Later, when I’m cleaning my teeth, he DMs me. The phone is propped up on the sink; I nearly knock it off, LOL!

  Gr8 to c u over here on FB. Do you have Snapchat yet?

  I spit the toothpaste foam and rinse my mouth. I go out into the hall to check on you. You’re on the sofa lying down. There’s half a bottle of red wine on the coffee table and you’re watching House of Cards on Netflix. Your eyes are closing; you won’t be getting up any time soon. You always say I have to leave my phone in the kitchen overnight, but you’re always so knackered you forget. I kiss you on the top of your head.

  Night, Mum.

  Night, love. Sleep tight. Love you.

  Love you more.

  Wrong. Love you more.

  I run back into my room and jump into bed. My phone lights up the space under the covers like a magic underwater cave or something – you know, like when a diver shines a torch into it? I can see my bare legs, my toes. I swipe the screen and read Ollie’s message again

  Gr8 to c u…

  My stomach is full of butterflies, like before an exam. We’ve only liked and commented over on Instagram but that was in front of everyone. It was public. This is more. This is private. This is just us. I want to tell him everything! I want to tell him my fears because I have this deep, deep feeling he’ll understand. I want to tell him I’ve never had a boyfriend before. I want to tell him I’ve never even kissed a boy apart from Paul Briggs, but that was in Year 3. He won’t laugh. He won’t take the piss out of me, I just know he won’t, because he’s cool but, like, kind cool not cruel cool. He’s the cool where you’re nice to people even if they’re not hot or trendy or whatever. Anyway, you don’t know about Instagram, and let’s not even go there with Snapchat. You won’t let me have it, obvs, and I can’t get it in secret without you finding out. It’s not as easy to hide as Instagram, but I can’t tell him I have to keep things secret from my mum because it’s so lame. My friends all have Snapchat, obvs. They’ve all had a boyfriend or at least kissed someone, like, say, at a party or something. Two girls in my year, OK, they’re not my friends but I know them, they’ve gone all the way. Loads of girls have done other stuff, like blow jobs. This one girl, Louisa Simms, she gave Josh McCann one behind Sally Franklin’s cabin when she had a party… that I wasn’t allowed to go to, obvs.

  I just want to kiss someone to see what it’s like.

  I want to kiss Ollie.

  Gr8 to c u…

  I reply: Cool. No Snapchat cos CBA. Also, my mum’s a FB friend so… I add a gritted-teeth emoji.

  CBA… can’t be arsed. Do you know that one? We shorten it to ceebs when we talk. That’s my favourite abbreviation. Ollie replies on FB literally seconds later.

  DW… I’ve come off Snapchat anyway. Too busy. Better 2 PM you on Insta instead if u worried about ur mum? He’s put a gritted-teeth emoji and a monkey-covering-eyes emoji – hilarious!

  DW. Don’t worry. Phew.

  I reply: Cool. Thumbs-up emoji. Monkey-covering-eyes emoji.

  Oh my God, this is basically a conversation!

  Over on Instagram we have a full-on private-message conversation. Our messages are just banter, chit-chatting about what we’ve seen on Netflix, about college, drama stuff, whatever, but they’re ours, just his and mine, and I’m proper gassed. I flick over to his Facebook while I’m PMing him and scroll through. There are the same pictures on his Facebook as on his Insta: him on holiday in Spain; one where he’s put: In Mauritius. The sea is green, he has these sky-blue shorts on and his hair is wet and pushed back, and oh my God, the abs! Like a chest of drawers or a tortoise’s shell. Literally. He is ripped. There are two pictures I haven’t seen where he’s cropped off his head, but it looks arty, and he’s holding a bottle of San Miguel, which looks cool. He is so tanned in a way I could never be because you make me wear, like, factor three thousand million when it’s not even that hot, and a hat and a shirt when it’s boiling – so embarrassing.

  I take a screenshot from his Instagram. When we finish messaging, I look at it for a bit there in my duvet cave of light. I look at his tanned skin. How would it feel to put my hand on his stomach, or have his hand on mine?

  Rosie?

  Shit, you’re right outside my door.

  Rosie, baby, have you got a light on?

  Oh yeah, soz, was just reading something.

  Lights off now, OK? School in the morning, baby girl.

  OK. Night.

  Night.

  I delete his picture. Delete it from my deleted album.

  GTG, I message him. That means got to go BTW.

  Sweet dreams.

  I turn off my phone, listen for you out in the hallway. I hear you cleaning your teeth, switch the phone back on and check I defo deleted the picture. I did, phew. But I didn’t delete it from my head.

  Twenty-Four

  Bridget

  Bridget touches the teaspoon to the red sauce, blows on it to cool it a little before putting it to her tongue. Bloody hell, that is good, though she says so herself. The trouble is the old bittersweet Proustian thing. Puttanesca sauce always takes her to Sicily, to that place she and Helen found in San Vito Lo Capo. Hardly a discovery though, was it, right on the seafront, overlooking the vast white sands, sands pinked by that astonishing mass of coral running across where the sea reached onto the beach. Their second night in the town. After that, they ate at that restaurant every night for two weeks.

  ‘Bridge, you have to learn how they do this.’ Helen, enraptured as ever by good food, a little tanned, a little flushed and bright-eyed too from a crisp bottle of Bianco d’Alcamo.

  In execrable Italian, heavy on the hand gestures, Bridget had asked the waiter for the recipe. But Sicilians being as they are, she ended up being invited into the restaurant kitchen the following afternoon, where she was introduced to the chef, Gianluca, who promptly gave her a starched white apron and stood at her shoulder while he supervised her first foray into Italian cuisine.

  ‘Si, ecco. Poi, metti gli alici. Brava.’

  She stirs the thickening tomato sauce. She knows how to make this for no better reason than wanting to make it for Helen. She knows how to cook because of wanting to cook for Helen. For no better reason, then, than love.

  Does Helen return to Sicily sometimes, Bridget wonders, to that restaurant on the seafront? Has she been there with anyone else? Bridget takes another mouthful and closes her eyes, searches for the moment one more time. The rush of traffic outside momentarily transforms into the crash of the waves… No. No it doesn’t. Fuck. She opens her eyes. Get a grip, woman. It doesn’t work like that. You can’t force memory; you can’t make it h
appen. It has to take you by surprise.

  The kitchen door flies open, clatters against the side of the fridge.

  ‘Mum! I’ve got another audition!’

  Rosie. This flat, this life. This is Bridget’s life now.

  ‘Oh soz, Auntie Bridge. Thought you were Mum.’ She sits quickly, the way young people sit, digs in her bomber-jacket pocket and throws her phone on the table. ‘Oh my God, guess what?’

  ‘Erm, you’ve got another audition?’

  ‘LOL! Yeah.’

  ‘Brilliant. You’ll be buying us a mock-Tudor mansion next. And just so you know, if you’re choosing a motorbike, I’d like the Ducati Monster.’

  ‘It’s only an ad.’

  ‘All good experience though. Pass me a beer, will you?’

  Rosie jumps up – young people jump everywhere – grabs a bottle from the fridge, opens it and passes it over. ‘I’m so stoked.’ She is grinning. She is grinning her head off.

  ‘Sure you’re on top of your mocks?’

  An eye roll. ‘You sound like Mum.’

  ‘Haven’t you got your French oral tomorrow?’

  ‘Oui.’

  ‘Smart-arse. Make yourself useful and set la table.’

  Rosie lays out the cutlery and the plates, chatters away. Emily is coming over the following night to discuss the casting apparently. It’s all arranged.

  Bridget wonders what Toni will say. She seems to be taking it well so far. Maybe she’s beginning to come to terms with the fact that sometimes there are things that Rosie has to do by herself.

  And that has to be a good thing, doesn’t it? Moving forward, moving on?

  Twenty-Five

  Toni

  I’d just finished assembling dinner when the buzzer went. You were in your room. I couldn’t hear any music and you didn’t dash out, so I assumed you were busy studying. It was about six o’clock, and Emily wasn’t due until seven, so when I went to the door I was expecting one of those guys who sell the terrible cleaning products for extortionate amounts. You always laugh at me when I come back to the kitchen with some lurid neon cloth or a packet of anti-static wipes for the computer screen, or some other piece of crap that has cost me the best part of a tenner.

  ‘You may as well put those straight in the bin, Mum,’ you say, or, ‘You know that’ll fall apart after you’ve used it three times, don’t you?’

  ‘I know, but he’s just trying to get back on his feet, you know?’ I’m always a bit teary after I’ve spoken to these men. It’s their furrowed brows. Like someone’s etched their lives there with a chisel.

  You roll your eyes at me and say something like: ‘He should sell better stuff then, shouldn’t he?’

  Typical teenager, you, with your black-and-white opinions, your moral outrage, your judgement. Too young to know that life doesn’t always give us clear colours like that, that everything and everyone has been chipped at and damaged and complicated beyond imagining. No matter how happy a person’s face, you never know what battles they’re fighting behind the scenes… I’m sure I’ve seen that on your Facebook somewhere, one of your bumper-sticker philosophies. But I suppose I should have been pleased you were just a normal teenager, as black-and-white and morally outraged as all the rest.

  You won’t be like that any more, will you, baby girl? You’ve experienced first-hand how life can unravel, haven’t you, my love? How it can change us, irreversibly, forever.

  Anyway, it wasn’t one of those men at the door – it was Emily. I couldn’t help but smile when I saw her. She was so herself, if you know what I mean. She was wearing walking shoes, jeans that came up over her belly like Humpty Dumpty’s trousers and, even though it was warm out, a woollen sweater with a Fair Isle design running across the breast and shoulders, and over that, a navy-blue raincoat. She blinked at me through those lenses that make her eyes look as big as a bush baby’s.

  ‘Toni!’ she said. ‘How the devil are you?’

  As she stepped into the hall, I was already fighting the urge to giggle. ‘I’m well, Emily, thank you.’

  ‘I’m sorry I’m so early. I was banking on traffic on the A316, but it was completely clear.’ She raised her eyebrows at me. ‘Obviously, if I’d been running late, there would have been a traffic jam from here to Timbuktu, but… anyway, I just thought… I can go away and come back if you’d prefer?’ She gestured towards the street. ‘I’ve parked out at the front there, but I won’t get a fine, will I? Not at this time? I can easily go to a café and wait, Antonia, it’s no trouble.’

  So funny. So herself. Although not quite. I remember thinking that she was less sure, somehow, although I couldn’t put my finger on why I would think that. She had the big voice, yet she was small; she was full of bravado, yet full of doubt.

  ‘Don’t be daft, Emily,’ I said. ‘And call me Toni, please. Everyone else does. Rosie’s here. She’ll be delighted to see you.’

  I shouted down the hall to you. No answer. I knocked on your door and opened it a crack.

  You weren’t at your desk at all; you were on your bed, staring at your phone. I know now why that was, of course.

  As soon as you saw me, you pulled the headphones out of your ears and pushed the phone against your chest. ‘What?’

  ‘Have you been listening to music when you should be working?’ I said.

  You rolled your eyes and shrugged at Emily over my shoulder as if to say: See what I have to put up with? ‘Music helps me concentrate.’

  ‘Concentrate on what?’ I asked. ‘YouTube? Facebook?’

  ‘No-o.’ Ah, the two-syllable no, beloved of all parents of teenagers. ‘I had to research something for history. I was doing that.’

  ‘Come on through to the kitchen, Emily,’ I said, just to get away from you and your lip-curling, your dripping disdain, your constantly rotating eyeballs.

  ‘Mu-um.’ The two-syllable mum, up there with the two-syllable no in the irritation top ten. ‘Emily and me can talk in my room.’ You met me with your clear, intransigent eyes, but I was having none of it. I know our flat isn’t large, but to chat to a fully grown woman in your bedroom? I’m sorry, but that’s just inappropriate.

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ I said.

  ‘But it’s my room,’ you said. ‘It’s my only space.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure the kitchen will be fine,’ said Emily. Her usual bluster had vanished. She was bouncing the tips of her fingers together and looking from left to right as if to try and figure out where to put herself. I suspected she was embarrassed, and quite right. No one wants to get caught up in other people’s bickering, do they? I know every daytime show has people airing their grievances for all the world to see, but I’m still very much of the old school. The way I was brought up, what happens in the family stays in the family.

  We had just sat down in the kitchen when I heard the front door open and close. Your auntie Bridge. She had no acting work that week, so she’d picked up a couple of shifts in the Italian café as well as her website jobs.

  ‘Hey up, Squirt,’ she said, ruffling your hair as she came into the kitchen.

  ‘You remember Emily, Bridge?’ I said.

  ‘Agent to the stars,’ your auntie Bridget said. ‘What’s she got, the lead in the new Scorsese?’

  Emily chuckled. ‘Almost.’

  ‘I’m starving,’ Bridget continued, wandering over to the stove and peeking into the pan where I’d prepared the broccoli. Before I had a chance to speak, she dropped the lid back onto the pan and said, ‘Emily, are you staying for dinner? Not sure what it is, but it smells good.’

  Emily looked from Bridget to me to you. And back to Bridget. ‘I…’ she began. ‘I’m sorry, forgive me, but do you live here too?’

  ‘I do, yes.’ Bridget smiled. ‘Unless Toni’s moved my stuff out again. She’s always doing that, but I just move it back in.’

  I laughed. She’s such a nut, isn’t she, your auntie?

  ‘Well I never,’ Emily said, eyebrows almost hitting her hairline. ‘I
didn’t realise that. How funny, I mean. I met you at the theatre, of course, and Rosie’s shown me pictures of you and her at your concerts. The Promise, isn’t it, your group? Concerts? Or do you call them gigs? It’s gigs, isn’t it, for pop?’

  ‘Rock,’ Bridget said, but she was smiling, as amused as we always were by Emily’s way of putting things. ‘You should come along sometime.’

  ‘I’m sure Emily has better things to do than hang out here with us,’ I said. ‘Don’t you, Emily?’

  ‘No, stay,’ you said. ‘Mum always makes enough for about ten people anyway.’

  Honestly, you and your auntie do gang up on me sometimes. I was hoping to save half for the next night so I didn’t have to cook again. As for poor Emily, her eyes were as round as a rabbit’s. And the headlights were flashing off her spectacles.

  ‘I…’

  ‘Emily, don’t let these two bully you,’ I said. ‘But if you’d like to stay for dinner, you’re very welcome. It’s nothing fancy – just cottage pie.’

  She stayed, as you know, and I realised immediately that we’d done the right thing, asking her to eat with us like that. That’s typical of your auntie Bridge, isn’t it? Whatever the circumstances, she always does the most open, the most generous thing. It never occurred to me to ask Emily to stay, just as it had never occurred to me to think about what her home life might be like, whether she was married, or had kids. Whether she had ever wanted those things. But I thought about it then, and when I asked her about it over dinner, she said that no, she wasn’t married, and no, she didn’t have children.

  ‘But I’m a busy bee,’ she added with hasty joviality, and I had an inkling that, despite all her bluster, she might be a little lonely.

  ‘Good to stay busy,’ I said. ‘Stops you from thinking too much. It does me anyway.’

  You glared at me, but I didn’t think I’d said anything wrong.

  ‘Oh, I’m like the proverbial whirling dervish,’ Emily went on, ‘zipping round all the youth theatres in the borough and beyond. And I have a keen interest in film, too, so if I’m not watching a play locally, you’ll find me in the cinema with my popcorn.’