by Danuta Reah
‘It’s nothing …’ It was obviously something, and Tim had a feeling she wanted to tell someone. Well, he wasn’t a journalist – even if it was only freelance – for nothing. He hoped it wasn’t going to be some tale of personal angst involving the marks on her face.
‘It doesn’t look like nothing to me, Sarah. Come and have a cup of coffee and tell me about it.’ He smiled warmly, trying to catch her eye, knowing that a lot of the students thought he was attractive, and when she went a bit pink, he thought, Yes and looked at her with reassurance and concern.
He took her back to his room – it was nearer, quieter, but with enough people around not to cause any problems – and bought her a Coke from the machine. He was expecting a sad tale about a violent boyfriend, or a violent father, but in fact it was more useful than he could have dreamed. He listened with quiet sympathy as she told her story about the man she’d seen watching Debbie round the college one day last week. ‘He was following her, I’m sure. I kept seeing him. I waited to tell Debbie, but …’ Tim’s heart was beating faster. This was it! How to use it, how to keep it safe …
‘Which man? Start again at the beginning and tell me the whole story.’ He listened as Sarah told him about the man in the blue overalls she had seen watching Debbie as she walked round the college.
‘I was worried. I waited to tell her, but …’
‘What did he look like, this man?’ Tim kept his voice gently concerned, but not alarmed. He listened as she described what she could remember. She’d thought he was a caretaker. One she didn’t know. But he wasn’t working, he was only pretending to work. Big – solid, not tall – glasses, thick glasses. Nothing more. She hadn’t been able to see him very well – he’d kept his distance.
Now Tim had to do his stuff well. He tried to keep the chuckle out of his voice, then he let it become more obvious, then he laughed out loud, watching the girl flush with confusion. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘You were quite right to be worried, but it’s nothing. We’ve got a quality-assurance audit going on, that’s all, and they follow you round watching everything you do. One of the auditors, he thinks he’s on a building site, wears these stupid clothes – I had him after me a couple of days ago. Debbie’ll laugh herself silly when I tell her …’ Right. The girl’s flush had deepened into one of mortification. He gave her a tolerant, understanding look. ‘You don’t want me to say anything,’ he said, gently. ‘Look, it was an understandable mistake’ – again that not-quite-suppressed laughter – ‘but if you don’t want me to tell anyone, I won’t.’
By the time she went, she was expressing gratitude that she had met Tim before she met Debbie. She also let slip that she’d waited for Debbie outside college that evening, but that Debbie had left with ‘that security man’. Gotcha! Tim had the cards now. He needed to think how to play them.
Sarah set off home. She had time tonight to get back, have something to eat and sit down for a while before she went out to work. She worked her finances out in her head. If she could give her dad forty pounds this week, he would be able to get the things for Christmas Day. That would leave her with enough money to buy a present for Lee, something for her dad, and something for Nick. That would give her a reason to phone him. She bit at her lip. They’d had a row at Adam’s party – more than a row. He’d been late meeting her, and Adam had seen her when she was waiting in a corner by the door. She frowned, remembering. Adam had been drunk, and he’d given her a kiss – a kind of birthday thing. It hadn’t meant anything. Only … Nick had arrived then. He’d been angry. He hadn’t meant to hit her, she was certain, but he’d just been so angry. She should have thought. He hadn’t given her a chance to explain, but if she phoned him about his Christmas present, maybe he’d listen. She was working lunchtime on the twenty-fourth, but she could buy him something on her way home, and still have time to do the turkey – if she got it the day before it should be thawed by then – and the potatoes.
The bus station was busy with the throng of Christmas shoppers. There was no one at her stop when she got there, which meant a bus must have just left. She checked her watch. Fifteen minutes to the next one.
Her mind whirled off on to everything they needed and she decided she’d better write a list. Perhaps she ought to do the shopping herself. She chewed her finger anxiously. Her dad would take the car, but he didn’t like being told what to get, and then there wouldn’t be everything on the day, and then there’d be a row … If she took a bit more time off college she could do a lot during the week. She could go in the morning, get into work for twelve and then take everything home after. That would do. And her dad wouldn’t mind getting the beer. She shifted uneasily. Someone was standing behind her in the queue. There was a sour, unwashed smell. She moved forward a bit to get away from it.
Her bus pulled into the stop and she got on, still thinking. She was vaguely aware of the bulk of the man behind her as he pushed on to the bus. She kept her eyes fixed on her hands as he moved away from the conductor, praying he wouldn’t sit near her, but he disappeared up the stairs.
Night time. A time to wait and watch. He turns off the overhead light, and presses a switch beside the track. The lights sparkle all over his landscape, streetlights, station lights, signal lights. It’s so beautiful. He runs the train towards the edge of his layout, the place where the lines end abruptly, before the freight yards start. He hasn’t included the freight yards. But his mind lingers around them, lingers in the place that isn’t there.
The freight train speeds through Moreham station, the announcement of its coming only a thrumming of the tracks and a singing in the wire fence. Its weight and its power hold the travellers still, its rhythms pounding them as they wait, watching as it fades into the distance.
The stepfather is gone, now. The mother’s face is turned away, and the child crouches in a corner, making himself small, making himself not there. ‘Sharper than a serpent’s tooth …’ She does not look at the child. ‘Spare the rod …’ But the mother doesn’t twist, pull, hurt. There is another dark place, cold, hard, damp. ‘Until you learn … Out of my sight …’ The beast lurks in the shadows, waiting to take the child away, swallow it up. The child knows the beast is there. He closes his eyes and lets the darkness take him. The stepfather comes through the door as the child lies there, waiting. The night light flickers by the bed. The stepfather pinches it out. Shiny tracks on the child’s face, clear in the moonlight. The mother’s face is blank and turned away. She smiles, smiles at the stepfather, frozen in the picture. ‘Mam …?’ A voice in the darkness. The beast reaches out and draws the child in. He doesn’t know that voice. There are no voices in the darkness, not now, not any more.
9
Friday had been enough for Neave. After seeing Debbie in the pub he’d gone along to the personnel department and told them that he needed to take a week’s leave as a matter of urgency. As a non-teaching member of staff, he could take his annual leave when he chose. This last-minute decision wouldn’t be popular, but he wasn’t worried. He knew he’d be leaving soon. The events of the week had decided him. He’d take up Morton’s offer of a partnership in Newcastle. He’d hand his notice in as soon as he got back. That decision which had been nagging at the back of his mind for days, made itself easily, and the way he felt told him it was the right decision. He could get on with the business in hand. He knew that the college was in wind-down mode for Christmas, and all the arrangements for the last week were in place and sorted. He put a note for the head caretaker in the internal mail, and left. Nine o’clock Saturday morning he was driving north.
His original idea had been to get to the sea by the quickest route, spend a few days on the coast, but the low mud cliffs of Hornsea and Withersea, the flat Humberside landscape, were not what he wanted. He headed north and further north, and finally stopped on the rocky coast of Northumberland. He spent Saturday and Sunday there, driving up the coast a way, walking along the cliffs to the ruins of Dunstanburgh Castle, walking along the beach on the
rocky shoreline of Budle Bay, watching the grey waves of the North Sea wash on the sands, and listening to the cries of the sea birds as they wheeled in the air high above him. He stayed in a hotel close to the sea, and at night, he could hear the sounds of the waves breaking endlessly on the shore, the gentle monotony carrying him into sleep. He didn’t dream.
After two days, he felt restless, in need of something more remote, wilder, and he headed north again, crossing the border and arriving eventually at the high cliffs of St Abbs Head. He found a room at a rambling guesthouse at Coldingham Sands. ‘We don’t usually get visitors at this time of year,’ his landlady said with a friendly smile, but she left him to his own devices, just serving up substantial breakfasts that he didn’t want. The resident dog, a black labrador with voracious jaws, became an invisible companion in the dining room, mopping up the food he would otherwise have left.
He walked along cliff paths above sheer, dizzying drops to the sea below. One afternoon, he parked the car on a lane near a farm and walked down a field that went from flat to steep, and from steep to precipitous as the path approached the cliff edge. Where they met, the path hung at an angle above a two-hundred-foot drop where the waves foamed and sucked at the cliff foot. He stood there for a while, watching the rise and fall of the sea. He knew that there was one solution that was here in front of him, one way out of the whole pointless mess. He was tired with it all, exhausted. He stood there for a long time, watching the sea.
The path continued, narrow and treacherous, leading down to a rocky promontory where the ruins of a castle stood. He thought for a bit about the reasons for building a castle at the sea edge, here where the landscape formed a fortress far more impenetrable than anything people could create. From where he stood he could see along the coastline, rocky and bleak. As he looked, he realized he could see heads in the water bobbing among the waves. Seals. He stayed and watched them for an hour, then because the light was starting to go, he headed back along the path. It was time to leave.
He got back to Moreham on Monday, two days before Christmas. The college was closed for Christmas week, but his mind slotted back into the grooves of work, and he realized he’d missed something important. The implications of that Thursday night weren’t just those personal ones that he’d – let’s be honest here – run away from. Getting distracted by Debbie meant that he hadn’t paid attention to the incident that triggered the whole bloody mess – an intruder on the long staircase. A possible intruder on the long staircase. He was trying to work out what could have happened to frighten Debbie – and he hadn’t even bothered to ask her about it – not properly. Try thinking with your brain next time, Neave.
The college may have been closed, but he had access to it, and the caretakers were in every day anyway. He could go and have a look. He parked in the empty car park and let himself in through the main entrance of the Broome building. Les Walker and Dave were moving filing cabinets out of the lift. There was someone working with them that he didn’t recognize. He stopped to talk to Dave and pick up any important news. ‘Good holiday?’ Dave asked.
Neave shrugged. ‘It wasn’t really a holiday.’ He didn’t feel like elaborating. ‘New staff?’
‘Yeah, he started last week. Replacement for Steve Benson. Temp from the agency.’ Neave was annoyed. The turnover among unskilled staff was high, and there were always unfamiliar faces working in the college. In theory, he should be informed before anyone was set on. In practice, it rarely happened with temporary or casual staff. It was just another headache. They discussed details of the running of the college over the Christmas period, then Neave headed up the stairs for the IT suite. It was locked up, and when he opened the door, the empty silence made him uneasy. The room smelt unfamiliar, unused. The light from the windows was dim in the winter afternoon, and he had to turn on the lights.
He crossed the room to the old fire door and opened it. He tried to remember what Debbie had said. ‘The door blew shut.’
There was no draught, though it was windy outside. OK. He moved one of the heavy boxes that were stored on the landing so that it would prevent the door from closing completely, then he went down the stairs to the door at the bottom. It was locked on a Yale lock, and the bolts were pulled across. He drew the bolts, which moved easily and silently, and opened the outside door. A swirl of air eddied round him, and the door two landings up slammed against the box holding it open.
It had been dark. When he’d opened the door in response to Debbie’s frantic calls it had been like opening the door into a black pit. No wonder she’d been frightened. The light hadn’t been working. He remembered that. It must have been working when Debbie brought her students on to the stairs – she wouldn’t have taken them down to the bottom in the dark. He knew the switch was faulty, that if someone turned the light off at the bottom, it wouldn’t work from the top switch, but it wasn’t working at all now. The repair job was probably on someone’s schedule, low priority. He looked up at the light. The fitting looked strange. By going back up the stairs a short way, he could reach the bulb. He took it out of the light, slipped it into his pocket, and shone his torch on the fitting. It had been damaged, the wires pulled loose. It was useless, and probably dangerous. And that wasn’t accidental damage.
So there had been someone there, someone who’d made sure the light wasn’t working, someone who’d opened the bottom door and caused the draught that made the upper door slam shut. Someone who’d terrified the level-headed Deborah. Who? And what was that person doing on the long staircase? He picked up the phone and dialled Berryman’s number. He was tied up until after Christmas. They arranged to meet on the twenty-seventh. ‘I’ll tell you,’ Berryman said. ‘Two kids under three and the in-laws coming, I’d change places with you tomorrow.’
Neave could hear Berryman’s pause as he realized what he’d said, and quickly finalized the details. ‘Friday, then, the Broomegate, eightish.’
Christmas meant celebration. Debbie tried. She went to parties and came home early. She went clubbing with friends and left halfway through the evening. Fiona, her close friend from university days, was exasperated and concerned. ‘What is it? Post-term stress disorder? Come on, Debbie, it’s Christmas!’ Debbie couldn’t understand why she had lost all her capacity for enjoying herself. It couldn’t all be to do with Rob. It had been a bad term – hard work and insecurity, the incident at the station, Tim Godber’s article, that strange sense of menace she still hadn’t managed to throw off, and, OK, Rob. Pull yourself together, woman.
She tried again. That evening, she went clubbing with Fiona and Brian, another university friend. She felt leaden and tired. After a couple of hours, she was ready to go, and told the group, now expanded to eight, that she was going for a taxi.
Brian came out of the club to wait with her. Debbie almost protested, but when she was outside in the dark, with jostling groups of young men shoving each other along the pavement, shouts and screams in the distance and the sound of breaking glass, she was glad of the company. Brian put his hands in his pockets and hunched himself against the cold, watching out for a taxi. ‘What’s wrong, Debbie?’ he said after a minute.
Debbie shook her head. It was too complicated to explain. Brian didn’t push it, and they waited in silence until a taxi came. Debbie gave him a quick kiss and jumped in, elbowing her way past two queue-jumpers. ‘Have a good Christmas,’ she said.
‘I doubt it,’ he said, with a mournful look, and waved goodbye.
Debbie paid the taxi fare – five pounds she could ill afford – and let herself into the house. It felt cold. Buttercup was behind the settee again, and seemed anxious and nervous when Debbie coaxed her out, twining round the chair legs, her eyes wide and alert. Debbie picked her up. There was a strange silence in the house, as though some loud noise had just stopped, leaving that ear-ringing sense of emptiness. Debbie frowned. It was odd. There was something not right. She went into the kitchen and opened the fridge door to get Buttercup some milk. That was w
hen she realized what the strange silence was. The fridge was switched off. The sound of the motor was pretty constant, as it was an old fridge and not very efficient. She couldn’t understand it. How had she managed to do that? She pressed the switch and the fridge hummed into life, rattling the bottles standing on it. It must have been off all evening. She checked the stuff in the freezing compartment, but it still seemed frozen solid – odd, as she’d been out for at least three hours. Thank God for cold weather. She went to the phone to check on her last caller. Gina sometimes phoned just before she went to bed, but whoever had called left no number recorded.
Christmas Eve found Debbie at Goldthorpe, rushing around the market for last-minute things Gina had forgotten. ‘We don’t need to go the whole hog,’ Debbie protested when she realized that Gina planned a full traditional Christmas. ‘There’s just the two of us.’
‘All the more reason to make it special.’ Gina was making bread sauce and the kitchen was filled with the smell of cloves and onion. ‘Anyway, you might have brought someone with you, so I had to be ready.’ Debbie recognized a flanking manoeuvre and ignored it. ‘And Jean and David are coming on Boxing Day so they’ll want cold turkey.’
‘So we cook it on Christmas Day so they can have it cold on Boxing Day. Mum …’ Gina hurried back to the kitchen to take mince pies out of the oven. ‘Mum!’ Debbie said in exasperation as she saw the racks of pies her mother had made.
‘You can carp, miss,’ said Gina. ‘Half of Goldthorpe will be round for mince pies and Christmas cake next week. Now. It’s eight o’clock. Let’s have a glass of sherry.’
Debbie and her mother sat in the cosy front room lit by the tree lights and talked. Debbie remembered Christmases when she was a child, the sheer magic and excitement of it, the spicy fragrance of the kitchen, the lights on the tree, the mysterious pile of presents waiting to be opened on the day, her father, as excited as she was, helping her with the letter to Santa, and the empty stocking at her feet as she went to bed that was always knobbly and full when she woke up in the morning. Thinking about it, Debbie felt relaxed and happy for the first time in what seemed like an age.
