The Hoax

by Paul Clayton

  Shannon tapped several times on the door but there was no response. No good staying here, she thought. She opened the door slowly and stepped out into the darkened corridor. There was no one in sight.

  The door opposite her was open, revealing the sitting room. She took a deep breath and went in. It was empty. The room looked surprisingly modern, with plain white walls and furniture Shannon recognised from browsing through the Ikea catalogue online. A newspaper lay on one of the sofas and a half-drunk coffee stood on the coffee table. Next to it was a phone.

  She leant forward and picked it up. When she tapped the screen, ‘Emergency calls only’ flashed onto it. In Shannon’s book, this was an emergency. She dialled 999 and waited.

  ***

  Henry found he was more comfortable if he leant on the railings, although they were a little high and exposed his face to the lashing rain blowing in from the sea. He’d long since ceased to worry about how wet he was, but the cold was making him shiver and damp was seeping through his clothes and into his bones.

  From this position, he’d seen two figures race across from the field and come into the tower. His heart thumped a little faster in hope, but now two more familiar figures in dark clothing had appeared from the cottage and entered the lighthouse. What was going on? The strange thing was that nobody had yet appeared up here on the gallery. A sinking feeling in his heart told Henry something was wrong. More trouble was not far away.

  ***

  Jonny climbed up to the first floor and stood on a small landing just through the hole in the ceiling of the room below. He waited for Frankie, who was a little slower in clambering up the staircase. The second set of stairs was much shorter. Again they stopped on a small landing where there was a door on the right.

  ‘Should we be looking in these rooms?’ asked Frankie.

  A distinct metallic clang rang out from below.

  Jonny put his finger to his lips and opened the door to the room. ‘Hide in here, Mum. Keep quiet and wait till you hear me yell. I’m going up to the top and I’ll distract whoever it is.’ He pulled the door closed before Frankie had time to say anything.

  The room was a mess. It was smaller than the one they’d started in downstairs, with a stack of cardboard boxes and some broken furniture in the centre of the floor. A large metal locker stood by one of the windows. Frankie opened the doors but found it crammed full of papers, boxes and cartons, affording no space to hide.

  Darting across the room, she hid behind the door in the fragile hope that anybody opening it to look into the room wouldn’t see her. Leaning against the wall, she tried her best to hold her breath and calm her breathing.

  As she stood there, her eyes flicked across the pile of rubbish in front of her and something caught her attention. One chest seemed to be full of old clothes that were spilling out onto the floor: a white shirt, two patterned blouses and what looked like a flash of red hair. Next to it was a coat. A large winter coat. A winter coat in green and yellow.

  Chapter Seventy-Seven

  Jonny sprinted up the steps of the last section two at a time. He shoved open the door and found himself on the outer gallery, blasted by the wind and rain. He turned to the left; holding onto the railings, he started to make his way around the tower. The slight figure ahead of him spun round.

  ‘Henry!’ yelled Jonny. Tears were streaming down Henry’s face. ‘There’s someone following me,’ Jonny said. ‘We need to deal with these guys. Is there anywhere up here to hide?’

  Henry, barely able to lift his hand because of the cold, pointed to the door of the lantern room.

  ‘Okay, hang on there, fella. Won’t be long now.’

  ‘Please make it stop, Jonny. Please.’

  Jonny rushed up to him and squeezed him as tightly as he could before stepping away and pushing through the door into the lantern room. He scuttled round to the other side of the two large glass lamps and squatted down, waiting.

  Frankie heard two sets of footsteps pass the door, clanging on the stairs as they raced to the top of the tower. She knew she couldn’t hide here. Jonny and the other person up there needed help. And the only person who could give that help was her.

  She opened the door and started to climb the stairs as fast as she could.

  ***

  Shannon assumed that this was the only lighthouse in the area. She’d rung 999 and told them that it was an emergency. They asked for her name and address. ‘You don’t need that!’ she yelled. ‘I’m at a lighthouse with my mum and brother, and something bad is going down.’

  They demanded her name a second time and she hung up. Maybe that was a mistake. What if they thought she was some sort of wanker doing hoax calls? All she knew was that they were going to need help.

  She ran round the front of the house and stopped at the corner. There, on top of the tower, she saw Jonny emerge onto the railed gallery running around the light. He made his way along the railings, bent down and hugged the tiny figure tied to the railing. Then he seemed to vanish. Was that Henry? Why had Jonny disappeared?

  As she puzzled over what was happening, two figures appeared on the gallery and she dodged back out of sight. Were these the people she’d overheard? They broke apart and moved off in opposite directions around the balcony.

  Grabbing the moment, Shannon raced across to the lighthouse, shoved open the door and went inside.

  Chapter Seventy-Eight

  Frankie was panting when she reached the door at the top of the stairs; speed was not her forte. Standing here behind the door was the last moment of safety granted to her. Whoever these people were, she had to deal with them. Fear coursed through her veins, making her heart pump harder and harder. There was no choice. Two of her boys were out there and in trouble; everything she’d fought for in bringing them up had led to this moment.

  As soon as she opened the door, the full force of the wind and rain hit her in the face. The sky had blackened; a crisp winter’s day had grown into a dark, tormented night. She stood still for a moment, figuring out which way to go.

  She took a small step to the left. Further along the railing she saw a figure dressed in black tightening a rope tied to the balcony. She took a step forward and yelled at the top of her voice. ‘Stop.’ Her voice was carried away by the wind. ‘Stop it!’

  The figure in black moved aside to reveal Henry, hands clasped, tied by rope to the railings. His clothes were sodden and his hair was dripping. He saw Frankie and his eyes filled with terror and hope. ‘Mum!’ he screamed.

  The black-clad figure held onto the rope and pulled it tighter, yanking Henry towards the edge of the balcony. Frankie shrieked at them both and lunged forward. Henry flattened himself against the railing. His assailant lashed out with the free end of the rope and Frankie pinned herself against the wall to give herself some stability.

  As she fell back, a second figure, dressed in the same dark clothes but taller, came round the gallery from the left and gripped her wrist, wrenching her arm behind her and making her yelp in pain. They placed a hand around her neck and squeezed tight. Frankie started to gag as she fought for breath. She was pushed backwards through the door and she fell into the lantern room.

  The taller of the two figures backed up to the door to prevent her escaping. Frankie could see eyes watching her. ‘Please, tell me what you’re doing with my son.’ There was no answer. ‘What do you want with my little boy?’

  The shorter figure stepped towards her. ‘I thought you would have known.’

  Frankie started in surprise. She knew that voice; she knew that voice well. Daring to say the name, she looked straight back at the figure. ‘Cora?’

  Frankie watched as Cora pulled off the balaclava. With cropped hair and wearing a tight-fitting black top, this was not the Cora that she knew. She looked athletic, boyish and in charge, yet there was no mistaking who she was.

  ‘Does it start to
make sense now?’

  ‘Cora?’ Frankie repeated the name as if struggling to work out what was going on. ‘And yet it’s not you.’

  ‘Cora’s downstairs, all packed up in a box. Red hair, baggy clothes, big coat, funny glasses.’ She laughed. ‘I remember looking at myself the first time I created her. I thought, nobody will believe this, will they? I look like a buffoon out of some circus. That’s why I added the silly shoes, almost as an extra dare for myself.’

  Frankie remembered how she’d smiled on seeing the yellow trainers. Cora took a step forward. ‘I always suspected you were stupid. I just didn’t know how dumb you really were.’

  Frankie saw the hate in her eyes. ‘So the wonderful Cora never existed? And I fell for it all hook, line and sinker?’

  ‘That’s right. Henry didn’t know me the night I met him by the park. The dangerous moment was when I persuaded him to let me return him home the next morning. I wondered if you’d see straight through me. But you didn’t, did you?’

  ‘No, I didn’t. You look different somehow. Your face. I thought you were a strange lady who was kind. Who’d returned my son as an act of kindness.’

  ‘Stop saying that fucking word. Kind? What does it mean?’ Her eyes blazed and she spat the words at Frankie. ‘We’re all supposed to be kind to each other. We’re forever being told that we have to be kind. At the end of the news – “Stay safe and be kind”. It’s meaningless. I don’t want to be kind to everyone, otherwise it has no worth. We spread kindness around like manure, and that’s all it is – shit. Shit that we dump on other people and we expect to get something in return. The one fact I’ve realised in life is that if you give shit, you get shit. That’s why Cora became your friend. She had to be kind to you because if she was kind, you’d grow to love her. Like you said you loved me. And that’s what I wanted you to do. And when people you love stop being kind to you, that’s when it hurts. After all this time, it was my turn to hurt you.’

  Crouched down behind the lamps, Jonny was a few feet away from the three of them. He tried to piece together what was going on. If he moved a few inches to either side, he’d see all of them and they’d be able to see him. No sign of Shannon yet, and it didn’t seem as though they had brought Henry inside. He moved slightly to his left so that he could keep an eye on the tall silent figure standing with their back to the door.

  ‘What do you want Henry for, Cora? Let him go,’ Frankie said.

  Cora seemed surprised by Frankie’s request. ‘Life is a long curve of learning enough so we know why we die. I’m saving Henry having to do all that. Better to die unknowing.’

  Frankie felt fear rip through her heart. This was the talk of madness. She was dealing with a woman beyond reason.

  ‘You haven’t said my name.’ Cora looked away, gazing out of the glass roof to the clouded sky. ‘You held so much of my life, and yet here you are still talking about Cora? It’s not right, is it?’

  ‘What do you want me to say? I’m here. I want to help, and I want my son. Please tell me what you want!’

  Cora fixed her with her stare, pushed her face into Frankie’s and whispered, ‘I want to know why you broke your promise. That’s all. I want to know why you deserted me. You were my friend, my best friend. Weren’t you, Lottie?’

  Chapter Seventy-Nine

  Lottie ran up the stairs. It had been a great day at school, some harmless flirting with Craig, and a double lesson of art, a subject which she enjoyed and excelled at. She’d had encouragement from several teachers about the upcoming exams. Not that she necessarily believed them, but it didn’t do any harm to be told you were doing well.

  Reaching the top landing, she hesitated for a moment outside the door of the attic bedroom she shared with Little Girl. From inside came the sound of sobbing. Something told her to tiptoe away down the stairs and wait until Little Girl came to find her. Yet the friendship they had, the love between the two of them that they held dear in this tiny world of their own bedroom, made her open the door.

  Little Girl sat on her bed under the window. Her head wasn’t buried in her hands; she wasn’t curled up in tears. She was staring at the door and sobbing.

  For a fleeting moment, Lottie wondered whether the sobs were for her benefit. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Then what are the tears for?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  Lottie put her school bag down by the side of her bed. ‘I’ll go then. They’ve got the telly on downstairs and I’m starving. See if I can nab a biscuit before dinner.’ She turned back to the door.

  ‘Don’t! Please don’t go. I don’t want to be on my own any more.’ Little Girl stood by the end of the bed, shaking and wracked with tears.

  Lottie moved towards her, raising her arms and encouraging Little Girl to step forward for a hug. ‘You’re not on your own. You’re with me.’

  ‘I’m not. You don’t sit with me all the time at school now, and you go off at break. You’ve been hanging around with Craig and sometimes you talk to other people.’

  ‘But that doesn’t mean you’re not my friend. My best friend. The friend I wake up with and who I see last thing every night when I go to sleep. The friend who is with me here.’

  Little Girl laughed.

  Lottie went on. ‘It’s just that sometimes at school there are other people. We have to get to know other people.’

  The sobbing stopped. ‘Do we? Why can’t we be together? You know me. Pick me as the friend you want forever.’

  Lottie gave Little Girl the hug she’d been holding out for. It helped her to say the words that Little Girl wanted to hear. ‘I do love you and you are my friend, and I will never leave you. I’ll be here. There may be moments when you look around and you can’t see me, but I’ll be here. I’ll look after you.’

  Little Girl stepped back, a lopsided smile on her face, and raised her hand to wipe the tears from below her eyes. ‘That’s kind of you. I don’t know what I’d do if you let me down.’

  It was a week later that Lottie found out she was pregnant.

  Chapter Eighty

  Little Girl stood opposite Frankie and laughed. ‘You didn’t mean it, did you? You didn’t love me at all. We spent all that time together and swore to look after each other, and then you disappeared because that bastard Craig gave you a baby and you thought it was your way out.’

  Frankie’s brain chased random thoughts as she tried to arrange the story in order. Her past life was catching up with her and pushing at her conscience. She couldn’t be the reason for everything that had happened, could she? ‘I didn’t have any choice. At the time it looked like the best way of building a life for myself. And it wasn’t easy.’

  ‘I know you lost the baby. I waited for you to come back. But no. You still preferred him.’

  ‘What happened hurt and he was there to help. And I was stupid and for a little while. I fell in love with him.’

  Little Girl let out a cry. ‘You loved me. You said you loved me. You were my friend. You loved me.’

  Frankie fumbled for words. ‘Sometimes you have to put yourself first. That’s what I did. For me and my kid. It was the only chance I was going to get, and I had to take it.’

  ‘And what’s with all the Frankie nonsense?’ Little Girl half turned away to look at the storm through the glass wall.

  Frankie cast a quick glance at the door, but the figure guarding it tensed and stepped forward towards her. She looked back at Little Girl again. ‘It didn’t work out, as I’m sure you guessed. My middle name is Frances. Charlotte Frances Baxter. Though why my parents gave me three names when they didn’t want me, I don’t know. Names you could call a boy, I suppose. Charlie, Frankie. I fucked everything up as Lottie. Becoming Frankie gave me another chance, a chance to do everything I wanted for my kids.’

  Little Girl stepped towards her and spat words in her face.
‘You promised. You agreed when we sat there in that miserable shit hole of a home and told me you’d be there for me. You said I could rely on you. Only I couldn’t. Do you know what happened to me after you left?’

  Frankie stood silent.

  ‘Do you?’ yelled Little Girl.

  ‘I came back, but you’d gone.’

  ‘You came back? You came back? Too fucking late!’ Little Girl screamed. The figure at the door and Jonny both prepared to intervene. ‘You weren’t there. I had my own form of hell to face. Taken abroad, seven months of hell, exploited and buried away. I risked my very survival to get free of all that. Then, having hidden away for years, one day I see you across a crowded street. You’ve got a little boy and I look at you as if to say, “I’ve found you again, please say hello.” But you can’t meet my eyes and you scurry away.’ Tears ran down her face. ‘I wanted to be friends, and you walked away again.’

  Frankie backed away against the two huge lamps in the centre of the room. The figure at the door shifted towards her. ‘I’d had three kids by then. Everything I did, I did for them. I fought to keep them together, to keep them away from one bastard man who wanted to hit me and another who wanted to run my life. Nobody was doing that. They’re my kids. Whatever happened, they were staying with me.’

  Little Girl wiped the tears from her cheek and laughed. ‘We make a bargain with fate. That’s how we get our lives. At any moment you could lose that bargain and nothing you have matters.’

  ‘That’s why I gave all my love to my kids. I didn’t have any to share with anyone else. Not for a long time.’

  Jonny heard his mother’s words and bit his lip to push back tears. He had to help. He’d repay that love, a love that somehow had brought her here.

  ‘I get that,’ said Little Girl. ‘I do. You always have to keep your kids close. Always have to keep your kids with you.’ She smiled at Frankie and gestured to her accomplice. ‘That’s what I’ve done, Lottie. My son. My beautiful son.’