The Pact_A gripping psychological thriller with heart-stopping suspense

by S. E. Lynes

  Rosie my dear, fancy seeing you here! I was just on the way to your place with the notes. Your mum mentioned your printer was on the blinkeroo. Do you want a lift, or is the Pope Catholic?

  Her car is half a metre away. She has her hazards on like you do, Mummy, when you need to pull in. I run, fast, open the car door, can’t believe I’m getting in Emily’s car, can’t believe I’m safe. I am safe I am safe I am safe.

  Thank you! I say. I am full-on crying now. That man – that man was…

  Her smile fades. Oh my dear, whatever’s the matter?

  Behind us another car beeps, wanting us to get going. Emily turns around and holds up her hand. She calls out:

  Just a tick. She turns to me. Is that man bothering you, dear?

  I nod. Please. Let’s go.

  The man has reached the car. He is right there. He has stopped talking to me; he is pretending to stroll. He passes the car as if nothing has happened. I look at Emily and she reads my eyes; she hears me without me having to say. She raises her eyebrows and looks from me to the man. She gives him a stern look. I’ve see this look before – she calls it her Paddington Bear stare – but he doesn’t see her; he is facing ahead. Emily drives slowly, until we’re level with the man. Someone beeps; she waves them past, she doesn’t care. Go, Emily!

  Excuse me, she says to the man. My young friend here says she’d rather not talk to you. Do you hear? I say! You should know better than to talk to young girls who do not wish to talk to you. Now go and bother someone else. Goodbye!

  She guns the engine. The car behind beeps her again, in an angry way. The man doesn’t look at us, but I can tell he’s heard. His face is red. He is looking at his feet. We drive away. I don’t turn around, because I never want to see him again.

  I am crying but laughing at the same time. Emily is laughing. We repeat the whole conversation and laugh at ourselves.

  You were brilliant, Emily, I say.

  If I see him again, I will jolly well poke him in the eye! She chuckles. I love Emily’s chuckle; I just love it. I am safe.

  Forty-Four

  The first time he hit me, it was because I hadn’t filled out his benefit form for him. The second time it was because he found out I’d been out with a boy. I was a bit older by then, but still not old enough to get away. The third time? Oh, who can remember? I couldn’t possibly keep a tally. All I remember, really, is the feeling. The fear. The way the mattress sank when he got into my bed. How I tried to keep my eyes on the gap in the curtains, tried not to hear the foxes, not to think of screaming babies being murdered in their cribs. His hand on my shoulder.

  ‘Wake up.’

  He should have gone to a hospital. He should have had medication. He wasn’t well. He wasn’t well at all. And I had no one to tell. I was too afraid.

  So I waited. When the time came, I laid the foundations. I prepared. By then of course he relied on me for everything. Funny thing, power. It seems so solid, so immovable. But I found another power. One that shifted, viscous as oil, one that filled and moulded itself to whatever shape it had. I became fluid. I filled the space. And I used his power against him.

  I wanted freedom. That’s all I ever wanted. Not this. Never this.

  Forty-Five

  Toni

  When I saw those messages on your phone, baby girl, my heart broke.

  ‘The little shit!’ I said and burst into tears. ‘I’ll kill her.’

  I can’t think about myself saying that now, and yet it was only today. All parents say it, all the time: I’ll kill her, I’ll kill him… it’s just a phrase – everyone says it. We don’t mean it. No one means it, my love.

  ‘Just… keep your hair on,’ your auntie Bridge said.

  ‘Keep my hair on? Are you serious? Come on, Bridge, you can’t possibly be on her side, not this time.’

  ‘I’m not on anyone’s side, Tones. Stop saying that. I’m trying to help. And you’re right, she’s lied to you, but that’s what teenagers do.’

  ‘Let me guess, it’s in the manual, is it?’ My God, I was so horrible to your auntie Bridge, Rosie. That’s families, I know, but still. ‘Any more flippant remarks up your sleeve,’ I went on, my voice trembling, ‘to calm your lunatic sister down? Any more platitudes? Why not make a few jokes while you’re at it?’

  ‘Tones, don’t. I’m not… you’re not…’

  ‘Not what?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  For a moment, neither of us spoke. It was horrible, just horrible. We never fight, not like this. And I know your auntie Bridge is a tall, strong, impressive woman; I know she’s tough, but she’s not hard, Rosie. There’s a difference. Underneath all the leather and the tats and the spiky hair, she’s soft – softer than anyone I’ve ever known.

  Bridget picked up the phone, face like thunder. ‘Looks like they’ve been messaging on Instagram.’

  ‘She doesn’t have Instagram.’

  ‘She doesn’t have the app, you mean.’

  Well, you can imagine, baby girl. I didn’t know what the hell she was talking about. ‘The what?’

  Your auntie Bridge laid the phone on the table. ‘The larger iPhones have much more storage. A phone like this has less megabytes—’

  ‘Oh God,’ I interrupted. ‘Don’t talk techy to me, Bridge, you know I hate that stuff.’

  ‘I know. I’ll keep it simple.’

  ‘And besides, how is this helping to find Rosie? We need to call the police!’

  She laid her hands on my shoulders. It was the closest we’d been all morning. I saw her kindness, there in her eyes, and it made me so ashamed I couldn’t look at her. I didn’t squirm out of her grip. I wanted her hands on my shoulders, just for a moment. It helped.

  ‘Listen to me,’ she said, and oh God, I could hear how hard she was fighting to stay calm, and it reminded me of your dad and of what a madwoman I can be, and I made myself stop, breathe, calm down. ‘We do not need to call the police,’ she went on, almost whispering. ‘Rosie is not missing. You’ve got to stop saying that. She’s gone to meet a boyfriend in a café in broad daylight. She hasn’t told you because that’s a secret she’s keeping. She hasn’t told you because, I suspect, she thinks you might stop her. So she’s not missing, all right?’

  I felt my eyes fill. I nodded. ‘All right.’

  ‘So,’ Bridget continued, ‘data is just stuff you have on your phone. It’s like… it’s like food in the cupboard. You have a big cupboard, you can get loads of food in it, loads of tins of beans and tomatoes and stuff. A small cupboard, you can only get so much in, yeah? Only so many tins of beans. So these smaller phones have smaller storage space, OK? Smaller memories, if you like. Apps are things like Facebook and Instagram and Snapchat, that’s all. They’re your tins. And the problem with these smaller-capacity phones is, if you have too many apps, they use too much storage and then your phone clogs up and doesn’t work or doesn’t work as well.’

  ‘I see.’ I did, Rosie. I got it, for once. You would have been proud of me.

  ‘Good.’ Bridget smiled at me. She looked relieved. ‘Rosie isn’t necessarily trying to deceive you by not having Instagram or Snapchat, or whatever she has, as an app. She might even be on Twitter, who knows? But whatever accounts she’s got, she’s accessing them through a web browser, and that could be because her phone hasn’t got enough storage, do you get that?’

  I nodded. ‘The browser? That’s like the Google?’

  ‘Well,’ Bridget began – I think she was going to correct me, but she thought better of it. ‘To all intents and purposes, yes. It just means that her accounts aren’t stored on her phone. They’re on the internet, do you see? So we need to access her Instagram account through the browser if we want to see what she’s been up to on there.’ Your auntie Bridge got a strange look on her face then, like she was explaining something to herself and only understanding it in that moment, or as if the fact of snooping around on you, as she saw it, was making her feel ill. At least that’s what I thought at the t
ime. Now I think she too was starting to feel like something was wrong.

  I swallowed hard. I could see her discomfort, but I knew I had to push her further. ‘And will you help me find her Instagram account?’

  ‘It should be straightforward enough. If I’m right, we’ll go into her browser and whatever she’s looked at recently will come up. My guess is she’ll be logged in, so we’ll have no more to do than touch the icon. The question is, do you want to do that?’

  I glossed over the gobbledegook of the first half and tried to think about the last bit, the bit I’d understood. ‘I…’

  ‘Do you want to have a cup of coffee and think about it?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Let’s just do it. If it’s all innocent, I’ll leave it. I promise. I’ll wait until she comes back and I’ll tell her I checked her phone. I’ll say I looked at her messages on Facebook, that’s all, and see if she comes clean about this boy and the Instagram.’ I looked up and met your auntie Bridget’s eye. ‘How does that sound?’

  ‘OK. Let’s see what we’ve got.’

  Auntie Bridge swiped the screen and inputted your password again. She laid your phone on the table in front of her and let me press a square with a compass in it and the word Safari at the bottom. More neat squares lined up on the screen, squares hidden beneath the squares, a grid beneath a grid. A net. It occurred to me that a net is used to catch things, but I didn’t say that out loud. Apple, I read there. Bing, Google, Yahoo – that was only the first row. Amazon, Glass Animals, Instagram.

  ‘Instagram,’ I said.

  Bridget sighed. It was her who pushed the Instagram icon. ‘Have you ever been on this?’

  ‘No. Why would I?’

  ‘We’re on it. The band’s on it, I mean. It’s really just photos.’ Bridget talked me through the screen display. The camera icon, the circular photo badges, the photos themselves and below, the home icon, the search… Jeez Louise, Rosie, it’s a whole other world, isn’t it?

  She held up the phone. ‘That plus sign is what you press if you want to add a photo, the heart is to like someone else’s photo and this circle here is her profile pic.’

  ‘So if I press that…’ I pressed something, can’t remember what now.

  ‘That’s Rosie’s page, yes. And that’s her Insta handle, the name she uses on there – see there, Theatrerose01 – and voilà: her photos…’

  We fell silent. There were nine photos on the screen. Bridget coughed. I knew she was about as comfortable as if she was sitting on a spike, but I had to find out what you’d been up to. There was a picture of you with a puppy.

  ‘That’s Naomi’s new dog, Benj,’ I said. ‘I saw that on her Facebook.’

  Another photo of the puppy on some grass, a picture of a hot chocolate with marshmallows on top, a picture of you pulling a silly face, wearing your raincoat, an altered picture of you and Naomi with huge cartoonish eyes, cartoon twinkles.

  ‘What the hell is that?’ I said.

  ‘That’s a filter. You put them on a photo and they add silly features, like doggy ears or whatever. I don’t think Rosie has them, I think they’re a Snapchat thing or a newer iPhone thing, but this could be a picture that someone else, probably Naomi, sent her.’

  ‘How do you know all this?’

  Bridget shrugged. She knew all this because you had told her all this. And that hurt. You’d shown her all your silly pictures; your YouTube videos and things called memes – a whole other concept your auntie Bridge had to explain.

  ‘Why does she show you this stuff and not me?’

  I imagined the two of you crying with laughter, in your world of in-jokes and terminology. It was unbearable.

  Your auntie Bridget shrugged.

  ‘Like I said, Tones, it’s a different dynamic, that’s all.’ She pressed something on the screen and together, in silence, we scrolled through. There was nothing sinister at all. But my instincts were not at peace. There was something else – I felt it.

  ‘This boy, this Ollie, didn’t he say they’d message on the Instagram thing?’ I asked. ‘How do you get to the messages there?’

  ‘You want to look at her messages from her boyfriend? Have you lost your mind?’

  I snatched the phone from her. ‘It’s this one, isn’t it?’ I pushed my thumb to the screen. ‘MakeurOllie. That’s his… what did you say it was? A handle?’

  ‘Can’t you just ask her about this when she gets back?’

  I barely heard. I was looking at your messages to this boy. I could feel my eyes twitching, my mouth tightening, my forehead creasing. It wasn’t fear or disgust, not then. It was confusion.

  I handed the phone to Auntie Bridge.

  May 26 2018 09.50

  MakeurOllie

  * * *

  See you in an hour, Sexy Lady.

  Theatrerose01

  * * *

  Can’t wait to meet you.

  MakeurOllie

  * * *

  In the flesh. Winking-with-tongue-out-face emoji.

  Once again I snatched the phone from her hands. My mouth dropped open. I tried to close it but couldn’t.

  ‘The twenty-sixth,’ I said. ‘That’s today. Can’t wait to meet you. So she’s never met him? Is that what that means? Sexy Lady, how weird is that? Don’t you think that’s weird, Bridge? I mean, it doesn’t sound like a kid, does it? I mean, they don’t say stuff like that any more, do they?’

  ‘Toni?’ Bridget said, as if through glass. ‘We already know it’s a first date.’

  ‘Sexy Lady,’ I whispered; couldn’t bear to say it any louder. ‘I mean, that’s straight out of the seventies, isn’t it?’

  ‘Not necessarily.’ Bridget caught the phone as it dropped. I pushed my face into my hands and swore. I was vaguely aware of your auntie Bridget getting up, the scrape of her chair, the weight of her arm around my shoulders. I collapsed forward, forehead on the tabletop, and groaned.

  ‘Toni,’ Bridget said. ‘Tones. You’re overreacting. They do this. Girls do this all the time. Some of them are on Tinder, you name it.’

  ‘What the hell is Tinder?’

  ‘It’s a dating app. There’s girls out there meeting up with men they don’t know all the time. And as for meeting lads or… or whoever in secret, you used to do it, I used to do it. It’s no more than shinning down the drainpipe in the fifties to get whisked off on the back of a Teddy boy’s motorbike, no more than telling your folks you’re staying at your friend’s house when you’re shacking up with some bloke. We sneaked around all the time, didn’t we? For different reasons, with different methods, but the outcome is all the same. This Ollie guy is obviously someone she’s met through drama or something. We could check with the Cherry Orchard, see if he’s in the youth theatre. He might be a helper or a stagehand or anything. I’m not saying it’s good that’s she’s deceived you – it’s not – but a lot of girls keep their boyfriends secret. She doesn’t know what she’s doing. Toni my love, listen to me. She’s not thinking about the dangers we think about, is she? She’s not seeing the sharks in the water. Lots of girls do this – most girls do. Tones?’

  I straightened up and faced your auntie Bridge.

  ‘Rosie is not most girls,’ I said quietly. ‘She’s my baby. She’s mine, Bridge, and she’s only fifteen and she’s in a relationship with someone I don’t know or even know about. He could be Levi fucking Bellfield for all we know!’

  Bridget’s eyes were the big sad eyes of a wounded bear. ‘But he won’t be. Look at his Facebook profile. Men like that don’t have washboard stomachs, Tones. I know you’re shocked because only yesterday she was dancing on the picnic table with her Barbies, but I promise you this is no more than a grounding offence. Stop her pocket money, shout at her, but don’t… don’t get like this. You’re tearing yourself up over nothing, darling. Over nothing.’

  ‘Nothing? You call that nothing, Bridge? Seriously? My daughter, your niece, is arranging to meet a boy we don’t even know, in secret, when she’s been told
a million times about stranger danger, and you’re saying it’s nothing? She is out there right now with this… this pervert, and you’re saying it’s nothing?’

  ‘But it’s broad daylight, Tones, and he isn’t a stranger to her.’ She opened her mouth to say more, but I was already making for the hallway, heading for the bedrooms. I grabbed my keys, my jacket, my phone and went back to the kitchen. Your auntie Bridget was looking at me like she, not I, was the one in pain.

  ‘Tones,’ she said. ‘Where are you going, sis?’

  Going? I was gone, I tell you. I was out of there. I opened the back door so hard it banged against the outside wall.

  ‘You didn’t believe me when I said she was lying,’ I said, nearly crying. ‘So I don’t expect you to believe me this time. You see nothing, but I see something. It’s cry wolf, isn’t it, for you? I understand that, I really do—’

  ‘Toni, stop it. Tones. Toni!’

  ‘No, you stop it, Bridge. You don’t know. You’re not her mother. You’re not a mother at all.’

  She closed her eyes and sighed. I could see how much I’d hurt her. I wanted to say sorry, but I didn’t. When she opened her eyes again, her brow was low, her lips white. She took a step towards me – put herself between me and the backyard.

  ‘I know you’re panicking,’ she said softly, ‘and I know why. You know I know why. But she’s not you, Tones. She’s… not you.’ She was shaking. We never mention Uncle Eric, Rosie. We never refer to him, not even obliquely like this; we never have, not since…

  ‘She’s not you, my love,’ Bridget was saying. ‘Yes, she’s gone behind your back, but that’s what teenagers do, it’s—’

  ‘Do not. Do not tell me it’s in the manual, or I swear to God I’ll…’

  She raised her hands: surrender. ‘OK, OK, I get it. But, Tones, they all do it! Especially when their parents are too…’