Johnny knew that Kelly sometimes felt as though everyone around her – her family especially – was quick to find fault, and it was an indulgent pleasure to treat her the way he did, never criticising anything about her: not her dress sense, her choice in music, or the amount she ate.
‘You wouldn’t run here alone, would you, Kelly?’ he asked.
‘I haven’t thought about it,’ she said. The sky was getting dark, and she visibly shivered. ‘I can look after myself.’
‘I know you can, that’s not my point.’
‘I don’t like doing these runs on my own.’
‘Good,’ he said.
They paused at the top of the hill and jogged on the spot to keep warm.
‘So, which of the idiots at Wasdale Hall knocked off the earl, then?’ Johnny asked, changing the subject back to her job. He could tell from her face that her old school pal had touched a nerve and she needed distraction.
‘There’s always assisted suicide. He could have paid someone to do it,’ she said.
‘Why would he have done that?’
‘Why would a ninety-five-year-old go all the way to Switzerland when he could get a loyal servant to do it in his study? Let’s go, it’s nearly dark,’ she said.
They ran back the way they’d come, and by the time they reached the car, it was fully dark. They wiped off with towels, and pulled on jumpers.
‘Are you still determined to work tonight?’ Johnny asked.
‘Yes, but I can do it in front of the fire with a glass of wine.’
‘Can I borrow your shower?’ He had begun leaving clothes and toiletries at Kelly’s a few weeks ago. It wasn’t something they’d made a fuss about. She left stuff at his place too.
She smiled. She had a big shower.
Chapter 26
Two hours later, as Kelly dozed on Johnny’s chest in front of some banal reality TV programme, her mobile rang: it was her brother-in-law.
‘Matt,’ she said quietly.
‘Kelly, I’m sorry. I don’t know who else to call,’ he said. Kelly thought this an ironic statement, given that it was she who was held to be the source of her sister’s breakdown. She gritted her teeth. He always said the same thing. Poor bloke, it wasn’t his fault. Must be pretty bad if he was calling this late on a Saturday.
‘Matt, Nikki has made it clear she doesn’t want me involved,’ she said as she swung her legs off the sofa and took a swig of wine. Johnny carried on watching TV, but she knew he was keeping one ear on the conversation, which could at any point go royally tits-up.
‘I know, Kelly, but that’s bullshit. It’s pride. She hasn’t got the balls to say she needs somebody, not even me.’ Kelly was tempted to say that her sister needed no one, and even if she did, Kelly wasn’t the person to ask. Past insults flared up in her mind, and she was close to giving in to her damaged pride.
‘What do you want me to do?’ she asked. She looked at Johnny and mouthed, Sorry.
‘She won’t get out of bed again. It was the same last week.’
‘What did the doc say?’
‘He’s upped her drugs,’ Matt said forlornly.
That’ll help, thought Kelly: a patient presents with mental health issues, so the doctor prescribes drugs; the drugs don’t work, so he prescribes stronger ones. If only therapy came in a pill, there’d be no depression in the UK. Everybody loved pills: magic pills to help evade the real problem. What Nikki needed was trauma therapy, but they’d applied, and the waiting list was up to a year.
‘Last time I spoke to her, she told me she didn’t need to talk to anyone, and to mind my own business. There’s only so many times I can offer to help, Matt, before I get sick and tired of being told to fuck off.’
‘I know. I live it every day,’ he said.
Kelly rubbed her eyes. Her tank was empty. She looked at Johnny again and put her hand over the phone.
‘Will you come?’ she asked him quietly. He nodded.
‘I can be there in about an hour, Matt.’
‘Thank you.’
She heard a mixture of relief and torment in his voice, and couldn’t imagine how he was holding everything together. At least the girls were probably in bed by now; it was gone ten o’clock. She hung up.
Johnny allowed her to vent.
‘She blames me, she fucking hates me, and yet I’m the one they all fucking call.’
‘She’s suffering from post-traumatic stress,’ he reminded her gently. ‘She went through a terrifying ordeal.’
‘She wasn’t harmed, Johnny. I know she was scared, but she was taken to get at me.’
‘I know, but just because you’re not scared of the bogeyman doesn’t mean that other people aren’t.’ His tone was strong, and Kelly prickled.
‘You don’t know my sister.’
‘I know PTSD.’
‘Don’t take her side.’
‘I’m not. All I’m saying is that it affects everyone differently, and I don’t think she’s faking it.’
‘I didn’t say she was faking it, just that she needs to snap out of it.’
‘You can’t snap out of PTSD.’
* * *
They arrived, and Kelly parked outside the terrace. Matt opened the door and looked at Johnny.
‘Matt, this is Johnny. I asked him to come. He’s got experience of this sort of thing.’ She looked at Johnny and smiled breezily. He ignored the jibe and held out his hand, which Matt took.
‘I’m sorry, Kelly, I couldn’t call Wendy again.’ He moved back and they entered the house.
The place was a mess, as usual. Piles of clothes littered every surface, dirty crockery and cutlery lay forgotten on tables and sofas, an old bike blocked the hallway. Kelly tripped over a doll and bent to pick it up; it belonged to Donna – the middle girl. Kelly had bought it for her. The place smelled unloved and neglected. It was also very dark. She went to a window and opened it, allowing fresh air to rush in; the atmosphere was instantly clearer. She also found a switch and flooded the place with light. Matt shaded his eyes. He looked like shit.
‘I didn’t know who else to call,’ he said again, and Kelly softened.
‘It’s all right, Matt. I’m glad you called me. How did it get so bad?’ She’d only been there less than a week ago. She was dismayed, and angry. She willed herself to calm down. ‘Look, it’ll take us half an hour to get things straight.’
Matt began to say something, but Kelly interrupted him.
‘Matt, there’s no point in standing on ceremony. That’s why I’m here, right? Not to talk to my sister.’
Matt bent his head. ‘She’s not seeing anyone.’
‘No one at all?’ Johnny asked.
‘Just the doctor.’
‘I’ll go and talk to her,’ Johnny said. Kelly and Matt stared at him, their mouths open. Finally Matt spoke.
‘She doesn’t know you.’
‘Well introduce me, then.’
Kelly watched them as they headed for the stairs. When Matt came back, she expected Johnny to be with him, having been kicked out by Nikki. He wasn’t. Matt shrugged.
Kelly looked around. She went into the kitchen and shook her head. It might take them longer than half an hour. She cleared the sink and ran some hot water, to which she added bleach and soap. It was therapeutic in a way, and took her mind off her cases. She rolled up her sleeves, found black bin liners and went around tipping anything into a bag that wasn’t pinned down or semi-clean. It didn’t leave much. She worked silently, and soon the pile of dishes seemed to be getting smaller. She glanced up from time to time at the ceiling above her head, and wondered what the hell Johnny was saying to her sister. He was taking a long time. She heard nothing.
When she next looked at her watch, it was almost midnight.
She checked in the fridge for wine. It was disgusting. She ran some more hot water and began emptying it so she could clean it, discarding anything mouldy or out of date.
‘Aunt Kelly? What’s wrong with my mum?’
/>
Kelly jumped and spun around to face Charlie, standing in the kitchen doorway.
‘You should be in bed.’
‘Bullshit, I’m fifteen, not three,’ the girl said. She had a point.
‘Your mum’s … a bit poorly,’ Kelly said lamely, and instantly regretted it.
‘Who’s in her room? Is it another doctor?’
‘Kind of, he’s a specialist.’
‘In what?’
‘Post-traumatic stress disorder.’
‘Is she an alcoholic?’
‘Why do you ask that?’
‘I found a vodka bottle in the washing basket, and she stinks of it and talks shit.’
‘She needs time, Charlie. The … accident left her really tired and unwell, and she needs to rest,’ Kelly said.
‘Was it when she went missing?’ Charlie asked.
‘Yes, that’s it. But she’ll get through it, I promise.’ Kelly closed her eyes and silently kicked herself for promising anything when she had no idea what the coming months would bring. Promises couldn’t always be kept.
Johnny startled them both when he walked into the kitchen.
‘Sorry, Charlie. This is Johnny, he’s my really good friend, and he went to chat with your mum.’
‘Friend with benefits?’ Charlie asked, smirking.
‘Charlie!’ Kelly was indignant, but Johnny laughed.
It was only later, once they’d cajoled Charlie back to bed, and Matt had passed out on the sofa, that Johnny opened up about his conversation with Nikki. It was only then that he also explained that before he’d left the army, he’d trained as a counsellor, gaining a degree in psychology.
His speciality was PTSD.
Chapter 27
Sophie drifted from sleep to waking, and back again. Parts of her body felt numb. She’d gone beyond hunger and the thirst was crucifying. She dreamt of all types of drinks: Coke, Fanta, juice, and plain old water. Anything. She’d drink anything. She’d lost count of the days and nights and only counted the number of times he visited her. She’d compiled a list of characteristics in her head, not because she thought she might get out of here alive, but because it gave her mind something to do other than panic; it kept her sane.
The strength was slowly draining from her body and the last time she’d taken her own pulse, it was down to fifty-seven beats per minute. Hannah had taught her how to do it. She didn’t know when, but at some point – when it was dark – she’d heard a noise and strained her head towards it. It was a voice other than his. The sound had been a whimper, and Sophie was sure that it came from a female. She’d read about hellholes just like this in Belgium, or was it Germany? Where girls like her were chained up and abused for months, if not years, before succumbing to the lack of sustenance.
Why?
Psychos. She studied them.
She’d chosen psychology because it fascinated her. She wanted to become a criminal psychologist specialising in body language. She knew weirdos at university; they shuffled around the corridors in their goth gear, never looking you in the eye, off to their next screening of The Evil Dead or Zombie Dawn. Or there were the ones who dressed smartly, but asked freaky questions in lectures about the world’s most prolific killers. Fetishes, fantasies, mystery voices and imaginary spectres: they were all the same, purely the product of a screwed-up mind, fucked in childhood, playing out the roles they’d been taught.
But he was different. He looked … normal.
She’d once had a screen saver on her phone that read: Normal is not something to aspire to, it’s something to escape from. She’d thought herself intelligent and witty. But now she didn’t feel either of those things; she felt a fool. Hiding in plain sight was a concept she’d studied time and time again, but now she’d seen it first-hand. He was clean, articulate, ordered and, dare she say, handsome. It made her feel sick. She would have thrown up had she anything in her tummy, but it was empty. This was a quandary. He was diminishing her physical attributes, making her weak, ill and animalistic, yet he kept himself in fairly good shape. He mumbled to himself, and talked of the mountains, current affairs and pop songs. Her great fear was that despite listening intently to his voice, she couldn’t pinpoint one thing that made him psychotic apart from what he did to her.
It didn’t necessarily hurt, and he washed her and brushed her hair afterwards, but perhaps that was the point: his fetish was pedestrian; he craved power not to maim, but to direct. He had created a world where he controlled everything, and as long as he kept her, he was in charge of the show. She’d thought that she recognised him, perhaps from the campsite, but she couldn’t place him.
Staying alive had become a pastime intertwined with concentration and order. When she’d heard the woman whining – and she was convinced now that it wasn’t Hannah – she’d also heard him angry. The woman was playing a different game to hers: she was resisting, reasoning, appealing, and ultimately fucking up his script. She wouldn’t last.
She’d seen his anger, and it had appeared suddenly and sadistically when she too had tried to reason, to ask him why. It was as if she’d spoken a foreign language. He’d looked at her as if she were mad, as if he could do whatever he wanted. Which he could. But it didn’t seem to occur to him that he was doing anything wrong. He wanted something, he took it, and that was all.
‘You don’t have to do this. If you let us go, I won’t tell, I promise.’ She’d tried bargaining. ‘You’ll get caught eventually. Lots of people know we were coming up here.’ Or: ‘Think if you had a sister, how would you feel?’ But none of it worked; her pathetic mumblings were only rewarded with violence. That was when he ticked the psychopath box: lack of empathy, culpability or any sense of right and wrong. She remembered all the long, hot, airless lectures that she’d sat in, daydreaming about being on a beach in Ibiza, or in a beer garden by the Lancaster Canal, and wished that she’d paid more attention, because she had a prime specimen right here before her. Her lecturers would never believe her.
Now she heard another noise, and sat upright, though the dizziness forced her to lie back down straight away. It was a banging and scraping noise, and she tried to figure out where it came from and what had made it. There was another female voice, but again it wasn’t Hannah’s.
A short cry pierced the space between the walls and then stopped. Sophie held her breath. There was another thud and a slammed door. She strained her ears, longing to hear Hannah’s voice, but nothing else came. She slumped against the bed and thought about asking him for some food, or a sugary drink: she’d been well behaved and hadn’t caused a fuss.
She thought about the night on Loadpot Hill again, as she did a thousand times a day. It was totally her fault that they were in this mess. It had been her stupid idea to go trekking in the middle of the night. It was she who had forgotten to grab Hannah’s bag when she was injured, only to remember much later that their only phone was in that bag and could have raised an alarm. It was her idea to go with him to get Hannah’s head looked at. It was she who had convinced Hannah that he was simply a concerned individual out on the fells, just a walker who couldn’t possibly cause them harm.
She’d told Hannah they’d be fine. They’d let their guard down: Hannah because she was injured, and Sophie because she was too fucking trusting – the person who studied psychos. They’d been duped because they were cold and high in spirits from their dawn vigil. They’d never imagined it would lead to this.
The place fell silent once more and Sophie let her imagination choose her daydream. This time, she was a fish. She swam around a reef, mesmerised by all the colours; they were bright, vibrant and real. The water above her was perfect azure and she was warm. And she had a full tummy.
She closed her eyes.
Her body ached, but the vision took her away from the physical pain and into a parallel world where she felt safe. She curled her knees up to her chest and lay in a tight ball on the bed. She pulled Hannah’s sweater tightly around her and wondered if she’d g
et water today. It could be day or night, she had no idea. And she no longer cared.
She was back on the reef, and she floated into a deep sleep, jerking from time to time as her world disappeared and reappeared. In her semi-conscious fluid state, she sensed movement around her in the deep water, and the colours began to darken. She spun around, gasping for air, coming face to face with a giant shadow that blackened the whole reef. She fell deeper into her slumber, and gradually the inky black enveloped more and more of her, until finally there was nothing left.
Chapter 28
The Peak’s Bay Hotel was a vision of luxury and style, tended immaculately and standing pristine in the Ullswater sunshine. The fact that Freya Hamilton had worked there, and Abi Clarence had been hired, even though she’d never started, pushed it up their priority list of lines of enquiry. Kelly parked the Audi and Rob looked around, impressed. It was all pillars and whitewash, like something from a colonial era, buffered by decades of history from the outside world.
‘Christ, you need some money to stay here, guv.’
‘Sure do. I can barely afford to bring my mother for dinner – it’s a surprise, she doesn’t know yet.’
‘Nice, I need to get myself promoted.’
Kelly smiled. They slammed the doors of the car and walked together into the foyer. It was airy and spacious, framed by a huge glass lantern. Sunlight spilled in, illuminating the few couples lounging on the sofas reading the papers, or taking coffee and afternoon tea.
Rob had called ahead and arranged to meet the day manager, Harold. He was in his mid fifties and looked every inch the loyal and spruce front-of-house man. His suit was cut and pressed beautifully, and his shirt gave the impression that ten ladies of the establishment had starched it for hours, causing aching backs and damp brows. He wore a gold signet ring and flashed white teeth when he smiled. He was short, but made up for it with copious hand gestures as he ushered them into an empty conference room where they could talk discreetly.
‘I believe you were after some old employment records, yes?’ He spoke as if he were arranging a piece of musical theatre, complete with tetchy thespian queens eager for the starring role. His hands flapped and he didn’t sit down.
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