The Pact_A gripping psychological thriller with heart-stopping suspense

by S. E. Lynes

  Oh, that’s shoddy. Auntie Bridge is shaking her head. You don’t throw your mates over for a lad, no way. Come on, Squirt – let me buy you a hot chocolate.

  I just kind of nod and go into the café again, even though I don’t want another hot chocolate. I want to go to Naomi’s now and tell her about my epic fail, but I can’t because I’ve just said she’s seeing a boy. So it’s a Saturday morning and the sun is shining and I’m having coffee with my mum and my auntie because I’ve been stood up by a hot guy who I thought actually gave a shit. But he didn’t. I am so stupid. I am an idiot. When I get home I will delete him, unfriend, unfollow.

  In the café, my phone reconnects to the Wi-Fi automatically, and two seconds later, a message flashes at the top of my screen. I have just enough time to read it before it disappears. It says, You missed a call from OT.

  Ollie.

  A red number 1 comes up on my voicemail. It’s him; I know it is. I feel myself go bright red.

  Hot chocolate, Squirt?

  Er, yes. Yes please.

  Are you all right, baby girl? That’s you, saying that. You’ve got that face on, like I’m ill or something. You look a bit hot and bothered. Are you upset about Naomi?

  What? No. No, I’m fine. I just… I need the loo actually. Won’t be a sec.

  I try not to run. Inside the cubicle, I lock the door and sit on the loo. My breath is coming fast. There is Wi-Fi in here too. I bring up voicemail. It’s him it’s him it’s him. My whole body is hot and filled with butterflies except they feel more like bees TBH. I clamp the phone to my ear:

  I just tried to call you. I can hear dogs woofing in the background. I’ve gone to the wrong café. I’ve been waiting here for twenty minutes. I just this second checked with the waitress and she said I’m not in Thyme for Coffee; I’m in the High Street Café up the road. It’s barely ten doors down. Christ, it’s like a pound in here. I’m just waiting to pay then I’ll come down. The waitress is taking ages. I hope you’re still there.

  My insides feel like they’re melting and fizzing all at once. Ollie didn’t stand me up. He didn’t stand me up at all. He was in the wrong café. Aw, he sounds so sweet, like he’s really worried. He’s sounds, like, proper upset. About me! And now… now… Oh my God, he’s coming here. But you’re here and Auntie Bridge is here and then you’ll know that I was never meeting Naomi and I may as well lock myself in my room and throw away the key and get my meals delivered and pee in a bucket in the corner because that’s how much of a prison I’ll be in.

  This is a disaster.

  No time to text! I call him. He picks up after one ring.

  Hello, Sexy Lady, he says, like he’s talking and smiling at the same time. Look, I’m on my way. I’m just paying. So, so sorry.

  I’m so relieved, I’m laughing. It’s OK, but you can’t come—

  I’m paying right this moment, he interrupts me. Are you still there?

  Yes. But no. I mean, yes I am, but no you can’t come. Literally. My mum’s here. And my auntie. I told them I was meeting my friend Naomi. They don’t know about you, like, at all. My mum will go mad if she knows I’ve got a… if she knows I’m meeting a boy. I don’t want to be, like, you know, savage and everything, but if she sees you she’ll never let me meet you again.

  There is silence.

  Ollie?

  You’re right; I can’t come, can I? This is all my fault. I should have known when you didn’t appear…

  I can practically feel him running his hands through his lovely quiffy hair. He sounds so disappointed. He sounds gutted.

  I am happier than I can ever remember being in my whole. Entire. Life.

  Don’t worry about it, I say. I could meet you next week instead?

  All right! Oh, he sounds so pleased! Thank you for the second chance. I knew you were special. Next week, same time?

  Yes. Same time. But here, in this café, OK? And then I can go to the High Street Café and we’ll do the whole thing in reverse.

  He laughs. At my lame joke!

  Till next week then?

  Yeah, see you next Saturday.

  OMG. I love him I love him I love him.

  Thirty-Eight

  Bridget

  Bridget slides her key as quietly as she can into the back-door lock. It’s late. Friday night, almost 1.30 a.m. Saturday morning then. A last glance across the backyard to the car park, to the black hulk of her van above the hedge. It’s always silent when she gets home from a gig, and she’s always done in. But she can never go to bed straight away. Too wired.

  She eases the door open and lifts her guitar and amp inside. The kitchen is dark but for the night light her sister always leaves on for her. Bridget creeps across to the cupboard and pulls out the Glenmorangie – half a bottle left. She pours a small measure and steals back out onto the patio. She sits at the little metal garden table and rolls a special ciggie, lights it and gives a sigh like a smoke signal in the still of the night. She takes a swig of whisky, another drag, and feels the rush, the draining down of all that adrenalin.

  The last plane has long gone over. No foxes screeching, no sirens, none of the muggy background noise that hums through the suburb’s daylight hours. This is as near to silence as they ever get around here, and that’s OK. By now, Rosie and Toni will have been asleep for hours. Early to bed, early to rise, that’s her former scallywag little sister these days. So much easier to keep an eye on – a piece of piss, frankly, compared to the nightmare she was in her late teens, early twenties. God, she was tough! Never kept up with the social worker, never went to school, and then the drugs, Christ, the drugs, the alcohol, the boys who should have known better down at Yates’s Wine Lodge, and later at Destiny’s nightclub slash knocking shop. The times Bridget had to drive her clapped-out rust-bucket Renault 5 all the way to Watford to carry a plastered Toni out of the club, throw her into the back seat and take her home – hold her forehead while she puked, put her into the recovery position. Plastic bowl, glass of water, paracetamol. Even now, when she’s had too much red, Toni still apologises for those times.

  ‘You could have finished uni if it weren’t for me,’ she says. ‘I ruined your life.’

  What can Bridget say to that? Over the years she’s given every reply she can think of.

  It wasn’t your fault. None of it was.

  None of us really knew what we were doing, sis.

  I could’ve finished uni if Uncle Eric had kept his cock in his trousers, you mean.

  My life’s fine. Don’t worry about it.

  It had to be me. Who else was it going to be?

  Perhaps she should have said, ‘Yes, you did. You were a fucking nightmare.’

  But that’s no truer than any of the others. And her sister is so strict with Rosie, sometimes Bridget throws it back at her. She can’t help herself.

  ‘Because of course you were tucked up in bed at nine every night at her age, weren’t you, Tones?’

  Toni tells her to shut up. ‘It’s different, Bridge. She has me and you. She doesn’t have a mum who’s off with her new boyfriend. She has a family who actually keep an eye on her, who actually give a shit. I want something better for her than I had, that’s all. She won’t be giving blow jobs for drug money, not on my watch.’

  ‘I was only teasing.’ Bridget is quick to know when she’s gone too far. ‘I want something better for her too.’

  And they’ve done it. They’ve made something better for the kid despite everything. They’ve done brilliantly under the circs. They’re not rich, they’re not setting any career highs or living an Instagram life, but they are safe – they love each other. They’re not totally unhappy.

  ‘Bridge?’ Toni. At the back door.

  ‘Christ, you gave me a shock! I thought you were asleep.’

  ‘Are you smoking weed?’

  ‘It’s flavoured tobacco. Herbal.’

  Toni huffs and puffs in mock disapproval and comes out onto the patio. She has her nightie on, and her towelling rob
e, the sheepskin slippers that Bridget bought her for Christmas because she always has cold feet.

  ‘Herbal, my arse.’ Toni takes the joint from Bridget’s fingers.

  ‘Don’t let your daughter see you doing that.’

  ‘Have you got whisky too?’

  ‘Yep. There’s all sorts I get up to in the dead of night when you’re in bed.’ Bridget gets up, goes inside and brings another glass and the Glenmorangie from the kitchen.

  Tones eyes the bottle with suspicion. ‘Just a nip.’

  ‘That’s all you’re getting, you cheeky sod. This is good stuff.’

  Toni smiles and passes back the joint. ‘You OK? Looked like you were miles away.’

  ‘Yeah. Good gig actually. Good crowd.’ Bridget tops up her own glass, glad of her sister’s company. She’d have been falling into melancholy by now out here on her own. Fallin’ into maudlin, as Helen says. Ah, Helen.

  ‘Where was it?’

  ‘The Crown. You know, Marble Hill, near the park, that little roundabout? Do you need a blanket? I can run and get you one.’

  ‘No, it’s OK. I’m warm. Do you mean where we took Rosie for her birthday lunch that time?’

  ‘The very one. How far we’ve come from a bag of cheese and onion and a can of crap cola down the Hounslow Sports and Social, eh? Bag of dry roasted if you’re lucky, sit quietly and we might let you chalk the cue. How’s you anyway? Any curtain rings round willies to report?’

  Toni sighs. ‘Rosie’s meeting Naomi for coffee again tomorrow.’

  ‘That’s OK, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes. No. Yes. Just can’t understand why she would go when Naomi blew her out only last week.’

  ‘She’s fifteen, Tones. I think kids are just flakier these days, that’s all. If you can text someone, you can blow them out whenever you like, can’t you? Nothing personal, it’s just not like when we were kids, is it? Carrier pigeon would never have made it in time. And you can’t stop her going for coffee with a mate.’

  ‘I know.’ Toni sips her whisky and gasps. ‘Jeez, that’s strong! How do you drink it?’

  ‘Practice.’

  Toni cradles the glass in her hands. The two of them stay a moment in silence, listening to nothing, looking at nothing.

  ‘It’s just…’ Toni says then.

  ‘What? Go on, you know you’re going to say it, so you may as well.’

  ‘You know last week she said she was going into Twickenham and then we bumped into her in Hampton Hill? Well, it’s just she could have texted to say she was changing cafés, couldn’t she? I don’t know. There’s something funny about it, don’t you think?’

  ‘No, I don’t. She’s a teenager. They’re shit-for-brains. It’s in the book.’

  ‘But why wouldn’t she text?’ Tones ploughs on. It’s better to let her. ‘Why, when they have these expensive phones, can’t they send a simple text? It’s almost as if she wanted to go somewhere in secret. Do you think she’s keeping secrets?’

  ‘I should hope so. She’s fifteen. Look at you, smoking joints like you’re Chrissie Hynde or someone in your own back garden. You’re not going to tell her that, are you?’

  Toni tips back her head and exhales heavily, a plume of smoke rising into the dark blue night. She is amused – Bridget can tell by the set of her mouth, but she’s not letting on. ‘That’s completely different. I’m a grown-up.’

  They drink in silence. One more toke each and the joint is dead. Bridget throws it onto the patio and crushes it under her boot.

  ‘I’ll pick that up, don’t worry,’ she says, and then, ‘Listen, it’s only a coffee. And it’s in broad daylight. So what if she is meeting a boy? So what if she’s not telling you? Is that really the end of the world? Don’t you remember all that, how exciting it was?’

  ‘It wasn’t really, not for me.’

  ‘No, I get that. But later, when you met Stan? You were like a kid then.’

  Toni smiles, at last. ‘I was.’

  ‘You didn’t even tell me.’

  ‘Only for a week. And I was busy.’

  ‘Busy. That’s what you’re calling it, is it?’

  On cue, in the darkness, the foxes are off, screeching their sex life like insensitive, rampant neighbours. Those poor females, Bridget thinks. But at least the sound is rural, somehow. And now the planes have stopped, they could be in the countryside. If the stars weren’t hidden by the orange glow of street lighting, if the 33 bus hadn’t just shuddered on by, if they couldn’t see the looming mass of suburban houses blacker than the black sky, yes, they could be in the countryside. Almost.

  ‘Do you think foxes have orgasms?’ she asks.

  Toni laughs. ‘More than us, I bet.’

  ‘Everyone has more than us, Tones. If I don’t count the ones I have on my own.’

  Toni laughs. ‘Thanks for that.’

  ‘You’re welcome.’

  The screeching stops. Another bus out on the main road. Feeling her muscles stiffen, Bridget shifts in her seat. ‘We’ve come a long way, the three of us.’

  ‘We have. Rosie with her two mums.’

  ‘You’re her mum, Tones.’

  ‘You’re ours. You look after us both.’

  ‘Don’t think it’s as clear-cut as that.’ Bridget stands and stretches. When she rolls her arms, her back gives a crack. ‘We look after each other,’ she says. ‘And you, my love, need to go to bed.’

  Thirty-Nine

  Toni

  I can’t get hold of Bridget or Emily and now my phone’s on red. I should save any scrap of battery for incoming calls, I suppose. Brilliant – just brilliant. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so lonely, and God knows I’ve felt so much loneliness there was a time when I wondered if I’d feel anything else. Where is Bridge? I suppose she might well have crashed out – it’s been an exhausting – not to mention traumatic – twelve hours. But what if something has happened? What if someone has come after her? No. I mustn’t think like that. I’ve no idea where Emily is either. What has happened to them both?

  That’s a point. What if something bad has happened to Emily and Bridget?

  Oh, Rosie. Sometimes I wonder whether once you start with trouble, it is so very difficult to stop. Sometimes I think it started with our dad leaving us. If Dad hadn’t left Mum – let’s face it, if he hadn’t laid into her every time he’d had a skinful – we wouldn’t have had to move in with Grandad and Granny. If Uncle Eric hadn’t lived there… My mum, your granny Casement, didn’t believe in luck. You make your own luck, she used to say, and I agree, to a point. But sometimes life can throw you into a hole, and no matter how many times you try to crawl out, the ground slips, you lose your footing, you’re dragged back in. Your dad, my Stan, he was the one who pulled me out of that hole for good, Rosie. He pulled me out and held me until the hole filled and the ground was safe again.

  But of course, through no fault of yours or mine or his, we lost him. Another hole blown beneath us, the two of us tumbling down. I became overprotective – I see that, of course I do. I saw it even before this, but I couldn’t help it. Perhaps when something really bad happens, the reason you can’t stay out of the hole is because you keep throwing yourself back in without knowing it.

  Thinking about it, I’m guessing that the Saturday before last, when your auntie Bridge and I bumped into you on Hampton high street, you were supposed to be meeting him, weren’t you? And I’m thinking that you wouldn’t have done that in secret if I hadn’t been so protective, do you see where I’m going? I threw us back in the hole, Rosie. Me. If I’d been normal, you could have been normal too. If your dad had been here, he would have helped me to be normal, but he couldn’t help, could he, because… because he isn’t here. He isn’t here any more.

  Oh God, I’m tying myself up. I can’t stop thinking about how shocked you were to see us; how shocked I was to see you there, not where you’d said you’d be. What did you do – text him to warn him away? Or did you spot us through the café window and he sneake
d out through the back? I remember you looked very hot and bothered and you went to the loo. Did you text him from there? Did you talk to him? Was he in there with you?

  No, of course he wasn’t, what am I saying?

  If only I’d seen him that day. I would have known. I would have realised. I wouldn’t have recognised him from your hundreds of Facebook friends, would I? Of course not. But if I’d seen him, I would have known immediately. I could have saved you. As it was, we saved you that time but only enough to put you in danger once again. Your auntie Bridge said there’s no way we could have known. She said there’s no way any parent can keep tabs on everything their kids are up to. All we can do is tell you to stick to the path and trust that you won’t stray into the wood. And at the end of the day, it’s about trust, isn’t it? I thought you trusted me, but I suppose now I realise that trust is like respect: if you want someone to trust you, you have to trust them in return. I didn’t trust you to stick to the path. You saw that. And to shake me off, you strayed into the wood.

  Thank God I trusted my instincts that following Saturday though. My God, can it really only be this morning? That’s enough to make my head explode. I think I got suspicious because I couldn’t understand why you would agree to meet Naomi again after she’d stood you up only the previous week.

  ‘Oh, Mum, you don’t get teenagers,’ you said. ‘We’re not like adults. We don’t get all stressy about things like that. Stop putting your old-person stuff onto my social life.’

  I stood corrected but something didn’t square up. I can’t put my finger on what it was, but I got the feeling you were lying to me.

  ‘When did you say you were meeting her?’

  You shrugged and looked at your trainers. ‘Same.’

  ‘Same what? Place? Do you mean Caffè Nero or that Thyme place?

  ‘Time? Eleven thirty.’

  ‘Don’t be smart with me, young lady.’