‘What does my discussion with Sarah Jefferson have to do with me falling in the canal?’
Hannah takes a sip of her wine, preparing what she is about to say next. After a pause pregnant with tension she replies, ‘Are you sure you fell?’
I was expecting this, but still I redden with shock at the other woman’s bluntness.
‘It was stupid of me to walk on my own in the dark. I don’t know the area well and I didn’t realise how close the canal is to the path. It’s overrun with grass and weeds . . .’
‘Do you know how many people have accidentally fallen in that canal in the past eight years? One. Some kid who was trying to jump across it for a dare. And you’re trying to convince yourself that you fell in, completely sober, the same day as having an argument with Ellie Atkinson’s foster mother?’
‘Are you suggesting Sarah Jefferson pushed me into the canal? What, she just snuck up behind me without me seeing or hearing a thing and shoved me in because I wouldn’t declare her foster daughter insane?’
‘Not Sarah, no.’ Hannah’s muddy brown eyes are locked onto mine, her voice steady.
‘What?’ I scoff. ‘Ellie, then? Can she turn herself invisible now, on top of reading minds?’
I say nothing of the voice I swear I heard before I fell. I realised afterwards, while I was recuperating in hospital, and later here at home, that it was a ridiculous manifestation, my mind playing on my fear of the dark, unfamiliar route.
‘I know you’re fond of Ellie,’ Hannah says, ignoring my mocking words. ‘But even you have got to see that bad things happen to the people who cross her. I thought that once you’d experienced it first-hand, you’d realise . . .’
‘Realise what? That she’s possessed? The devil? You know how ridiculous this sounds, don’t you? Ellie is an eleven-year-old girl! What you people are doing to her, what you’re making her out to be – it’s inhumane!’ I can feel weeks of anger and frustration building up within me, rearing up and bucking like a beast. ‘Ellie needs saving all right, but not from myself – from all of you! I’ve never seen anything like it in my life.’
Hannah stands up, places her glass on the table too forcefully, her cheeks so flushed with anger or humiliation that I wonder if she will lash out. Let her try and I’ll smash her face in.
‘I can see this is doing neither of us any good,’ she says, clearly struggling to keep her tone measured. ‘I hoped we would be able to have a civilised conversation. That after what you’ve been through, you’d be able to open your mind enough to consider the possibility that you might be wrong about that girl. But no,’ her voice is rising now as she loses her own fight with her emotions, ‘you are clearly too blind, too ignorant and arrogant to see that there might be things going on in this town that are beyond what can be understood and what can be proven. Things that can only be felt and believed if you are willing to feel and believe them. I expected more of you, Mrs Reid, I confess. I was sadly mistaken.’
She strides across the room as she speaks, and is at the front door when my phone begins to ring from the dresser. I ignore it and stalk after her.
‘Sadly mistaken?’ I scream. ‘Damn right you’re sadly mistaken if you thought I was going to join your little witch hunt against a girl who has already been to hell and back! You people sicken me, and I will do everything I can to make sure Ellie is kept safe from you!’
Hannah Gilbert stops in the middle of the driveway and turns back to face me, her heels crunching on the gravel. She walks back up the drive until her face is inches from my own. I refuse to move away, don’t even flinch. My heart is pounding as she speaks through clenched teeth.
‘I pity you, Mrs Reid. I pity you and your small mind. I came here to warn you that no one is safe from what that girl is capable of, but I can see that my concern is falling on ignorant, deaf ears. Let me tell you this: you need to be very careful. You need to watch your back, and above all, do not upset Ellie Atkinson. Because when you do – and that’s when, not if – your ignorance and your refusal to consider anything outside of your perfectly ordinary world will come back to haunt you. You had better hope you live to regret not listening to me.’
And before I can formulate any kind of response, Hannah Gilbert stalks off into the night.
44
Ellie
Ellie can see that Mary is fidgety and restless. She moves from the floor to the bed, the bed to the chair and back to the floor again, picking up a photo of her and her parents and moving it from one end of her desk to the other with no real purpose. Mary’s room is tidy and ordered, everything has its place, and the photo frame looks strange in its new position.
‘What’s wrong with you?’ Ellie asks eventually, noticing how Mary cringes at the sudden noise that breaks the silence. ‘You’re acting crazy.’
Mary makes a squeaky noise in her throat, as though she can’t believe that Ellie is calling her crazy. ‘Nothing,’ she croaks. ‘Everything’s fine.’
Ellie has heard that before; her mum used the same pinched tone whenever her dad said something useless. I’m fine. It’s fine. Leave it, Martin. Her dad knew better than to push the issue then, and Ellie knows better now. When they have sat in a thick, foggy silence for a little while longer, Mary will start speaking herself, like the words are drip-drip-dripping into a clogged-up sink and eventually, if no one unblocks it, they will spill out over the top. And sure enough, the words come.
‘I heard Mum talking about that social services woman,’ and like water, the words won’t stop spilling, and they can’t be put back in the sink. ‘The one who came to the house – Imogen. She had an accident.’
Ellie sits up poker straight on the bed. So this is why Mary has been so itchy tonight. ‘What kind of accident? When?’
Mary turns to face her now, like it is difficult to do and she has been building herself up to it. Her eyes bore into Ellie’s as though there are lasers attached to them and her words don’t sound like Mary at all now but like Ms Gilbert and Sarah when she thinks no one else is listening. ‘Have you been having the dreams again, Ellie? Have you dreamt about Imogen?’
‘No.’ The word is out before Ellie can contemplate whether it is a lie. If she is going to be honest, she doesn’t remember her dreams; she wakes in a cold sweat, her chest rasping from the effort of fighting to breathe against smoke and fumes, but sometimes there is more. Sometimes the faces of people she knows now break through the flames, people who have upset and mistreated her, people she would gladly see suffer in her dreams. But in real life? She wasn’t even able to kill the moth, instead sobbing as she opened the window and watched it fly feebly to freedom.
45
She can’t see any flames, but that doesn’t mean she is safe. Thick plumes of smoke claw at her throat and sting her eyes as though trying to claim her, possess her. She tries to cry out to her mother for help, but the sound catches in her throat. The air is searing hot and every inch of her feels as though she is the fire herself.
Where is everyone? Have they all escaped, Mum, Dad, Riley and Plum? Did her parents even try to look for her? Or did they think only of themselves and the baby they love so much?
She can see nothing now. Not her bed with its turquoise, pink and lilac bedspread, or the desk her dad sanded down and painted white. It is all concealed by the smoke, hidden as cleverly as though someone has taken a grey marker and coloured it in. Stumbling forward, she reaches out a hand to steady herself and catches fabric in between her fingers. The window! She has made it to the window! Tearing open the curtains, she looks out upon the back garden in all its darkness. Everything looks so normal, pitch black and still as a drawing. How can that be? How can everything be so ordinary when inside the house everything is ending?
Ellie bangs the window, knowing even as she does that it is no good. There is no one in the back garden, no crowds of watching people or firefighters come to save them. It is as though she is the last person left in the world.
The smoke is taking over now, fi
lling her lungs with every breath she tries to take. If only she could plug her mouth; soon she will be so full of burning air that there will be no room inside for breath. She is a clever girl; at eleven years old she knows what happens when there is no room left for air. She pulls at the curtain, holds it in front of her mouth and nose to stop the smoke from getting in, and bangs again on the window.
She doesn’t know what time it is; she woke in the night to go to the toilet and wondered why the room was so warm, saw the wispy tendrils of smoke curling under the door. Her first thought was to open the door, to see where the smoke was coming from, but the thought of opening it and seeing hellish orange flames terrified her so much that she stumbled backwards, tripping, falling against her bed. Now it is too late; the smoke has overtaken the doorway and the window is her only hope.
Her hands, slick with sweat, slide over the handle of the window as she attempts to yank it upwards. As she fights to keep her grip and try again, she realises with dread that it is locked. Her mum keeps all the windows locked, terrified that her children will somehow climb out and fall to their deaths. Now it will be the thing that kills her. At the thought of her mum, Ellie lets out a sob, and then a scream. Why aren’t they coming? Why have they abandoned her now?
One foot on the bookshelf, she launches herself upwards toward the small window at the top. These are the ones Mum opens when she wants to let some air into their rooms. Not big enough for a child to fit through, they are rarely locked, and tonight is no exception. Ellie nearly breaks down in tears as the window opens and she pushes herself higher to greedily gulp at the fresh air it allows in, but it is as though her lungs are smaller now; the bad air has taken over and they have less space for good air. Her throat burns and her scream comes out as a croak as her fingers slip against the plastic of the window edge, threatening to let her fall back into the smoke-filled room.
In the distance she hears the wail of sirens. They are coming! Her mum and dad must have escaped the house and raised the alarm, and the fire brigade are coming to save her. She doesn’t let herself wonder why her parents didn’t just open her door to get her on the way down, or why she hasn’t heard them scream or shout her name. It will all be okay when she is back in her mum’s arms; everything will be explained at the hospital while they check to see that she is okay and replace the bad air with good again.
The sirens are right outside the house now and the world seems to have come back to life. Lights are pinging on in the houses around them, people opening their curtains to see what is going on. Within seconds of the siren stopping, there is a crash at the front door, muffled voices on the stairs. She wants to run to her bedroom door and throw it open, but she is terrified to leave her only source of good air.
The fingers holding her up against the windowsill tremble, threatening to betray her, but still she clings on. This thin gap is her only connection to the real world, keeping her from the nightmare one that has taken over her house. When the man in the black jacket and yellow trousers with a mask over his face bursts into her bedroom, he has to prise her screaming away from her lifeline, but at last she falls against his chest and squeezes her eyes tightly shut against the hell beyond her bedroom door.
46
Hannah shivers and pulls her sleeves down over hands that feel like ice. Why didn’t she wear her bloody gloves? She was in such a hurry to get out of the house, away from her husband and all his sodding questions. Luckily she remembered to put a coat on in her haste. No worries: she’ll be inside soon and there is an oil heater in the flat – and other ways to keep warm.
She gives another shiver, but this one is from anticipation rather than the wind that bites at her even through the jacket she is wearing. This, this thing they have – Hannah hates the word ‘affair’, it’s so damning – has only been going on a couple of months, and every time they meet it is still so exhilarating that things like crawling into an abandoned building in the dead of the night – something she would never even have considered doing with her husband – don’t bother her in the slightest. In fact it is wildly exciting. She feels a flash of guilt that had she been a bit more open to adventure with Sam, this might not be happening, but she ignores it, determined not to let her husband ruin this for her.
She pushes aside the black bin liner that has been taped across the broken window – the tape has worked loose in the wind and is flapping against the grimy once-white plastic still – and peers into the dark room beyond. The first time she did this, jamming her foot against the broken drainpipe and hoisting herself up onto the sill, she was petrified that it was going to give way and she’d end up with a broken leg, or worse, be discovered wedged in the window, one leg in, one leg out like a grotesque ballerina. Now she is well practised, and even with the sill slick with rain and grime she manages to pull herself up and over with little fuss. One time she slipped halfway in and smacked her knee against the frame – she winces now at the memory of the sharp pain followed by the dull throb that plagued her for days. On the other side of the window is a dust-filled pouffe – another of her trial-and-error ideas after having to jump to the ground the first time – and relief courses through her when her foot connects with it. One more push and she swings her other leg through and climbs down.
If there’s one thing Hannah has never got used to about these night-time meetings, it is the absolute darkness that greets her inside the abandoned flat. If Evan gets there before her, he usually turns on the battery-operated tea lights dotted around to light their way, but for nights when she arrives first, she has learned to bring the brightest torch she owns. Tonight is one of those nights, and she flips on the torch and swings it around looking for the tea lights. Flicking them on one at a time, she remembers fondly how she teased him about his sensible approach to the flame-proof lighting, but when he turned them on and they flickered like real flames, she had to admit they were quite romantic. Now, though, much to her annoyance, only three of the ten actually work.
‘Fuck’s sake,’ she mutters, all her sentimentality gone. Well, Evan will have his torch anyway, and as long as the lights upstairs work, it makes little difference to her whether down here is lit.
When Evan first showed her the abandoned block of flats, Hannah was impressed and a little surprised at his daring. She had hardly expected something this out-of-the-ordinary from the shy, awkward maths teacher. His eyes lit up when he told her about how it had been condemned, and every single tenant evicted overnight, most having nowhere to go, making transportation and storage of their belongings impossible. So now here it is, like the Mary Celeste, a macabre snapshot of the lives lived in this small slum-like building.
Hannah crosses to the door of the flat she’s entered, cursing as her foot connects with a mug that has been left on the floor next to the sofa. It rolls across the laminate floor, its rattle cutting through the silence.
A thump from the hallway makes Hannah jump.
‘Evan?’ Hannah stands in the doorway of the flat, reluctant to step out into the cold empty stairwell alone, and looks upwards. ‘Hello?’
Another soft thud echoes through the stairwell, the sound of a door closing quietly. So he is up there. Hannah frowns. Evan has never struck her as the game-playing type, but then she never had him down as an explorer of abandoned buildings either. ‘Idiot,’ she mutters, but she gives a quick smile and heads for the staircase.
Most of the doors to the other flats are still locked, although the odd one or two has been kicked open by local youths for parties and, judging by the paraphernalia littered all over the floor, drugs. That’s why she and Evan use one of the flats on the top floor – it’s too much of a trek for any of the other people who utilise the empty block. One time they were in the flat when they heard a group of kids climb through the same window they had climbed through an hour previously. They were frozen in fear – if they were discovered, it was more than their dignity at stake. Ms Gilbert and Mr Hawker hiding in a derelict block of flats? Hannah shuddered at the th
ought of the urban legend that would have been created within the close-knit community. They would both lose their jobs, and probably their marriages. They had to wait it out for two hours while the kids – plenty of whose voices she recognised – got louder and cockier, at one point exploring the flat right underneath theirs. Hannah thought Evan was considering throwing himself from the window rather than be found.
Stepping into the stairwell feels like walking through a wall of ice. How is it possible for it to be colder inside than out? The darkness is less dense in here, the moonlight casting dusty light in streaks onto the wall. As she climbs the stairs, darkness closes in on her between each level.
Her breath catches in her throat as she hears the sound of footsteps on the stairs directly above.
‘Stop messing around, Evan,’ she calls up into the stillness above. ‘I’m about two seconds from turning around and going back home.’ She hopes she sounds like she means it, even if she doesn’t. She hears what might be a giggle, or a snort, or maybe even a cough, and for the first time since climbing in through the broken window, she falters. What if it isn’t Evan upstairs? What if this behaviour is so unlike him because it isn’t him? The tea lights weren’t lit, after all, and now that she really thinks about it, something else is missing. Evan’s smell. In these musty, stale corridors, whenever he is here, his scent pervades every inch of the flat, laying out his path like a trail of breadcrumbs. Tonight, she can’t smell him at all.
‘Evan?’ Her voice is more of a loud whisper than a shout. Met with silence, she feels for the banister to make her way back down, and as she turns, a clear voice echoes off the walls above her.
‘Hannah.’
She freezes. The absolute swine! She grins and carries on back upstairs to where he is waiting, smirking at how scared she was just seconds before. What was she thinking? No one else knows she’s here tonight – and if the flats have been taken over by squatters, they’re much more likely to have set up residence on one of the lower floors; what kind of squatters enjoy climbing flights of stairs?
The Foster Child Page 14
