The Foster Child

by Jenny Blackhurst

  The top floor is as silent and still as the grave. Flat 17 stands as though waiting for her, the door half an inch ajar, the way it has been since the first time Evan showed her around. He’d had to break in, he told her, although the thought of her lover shoulder-barging the door open is as amusing as the idea of an army of Spandex-clad squatters using the stairs for warm-up routines.

  ‘Okay, you can come out now.’ Hannah steels herself for Evan to leap out and surprise her. It would be so embarrassing for him to see her jumping at shadows. She stands for a second in front of the flat door, takes a deep breath and shoves it open.

  ‘Ha!’ she shouts into the empty hallway beyond. ‘Oh for fuck’s sake, Evan,’ she mutters, thoroughly fed up of the game now. She only has a few hours before Sam begins to question where she’s been, and Evan knows that. Why waste precious time playing hide-and-seek? She is sure Emma will cover for her if Sam ever asks, though she would prefer not to have to test that theory.

  She starts at the sound of voices in the front room beyond. No, not voices, music. The wind-up radio Evan brought here when the electricity was finally cut off on their second visit. Until then it had been like meeting at a hotel, albeit the grubby hostel variety; there had been lights at least, but no TV, though they hadn’t been there to watch Netflix. The music produced by the small radio is low and tinny, but it is better than silence. She walks towards the front room, but when she enters it is empty, only the radio singing its slow ballad. She crosses the room and switches it off. Turning to leave the flat, she resists the urge to look back. She’s going home – Evan can just get his rocks off without her tonight. She is about to close the front door of the flat behind her when she hears the music start up again.

  47

  Imogen

  I wipe the corners of my mouth and push my hair from out of my eyes. Shoving my hands under the cold tap, I splash water onto my face then bury it in the warm towel hanging on the heated towel rail. I lean back against the bathroom wall to take a minute before I rejoin Dan in the front room. The fire is blazing – Dan is really getting the hang of country life – and the heat nearly takes my breath away.

  ‘You okay?’ Dan asks as I fold myself onto the sofa next to him and try to look normal.

  ‘Yeah, it’s just pretty hot in here. I got used to having to wear a few more layers in our old place.’

  ‘I know.’ He grins proudly. ‘Our heating bill will be minuscule this year. I could get used to this kind of life though, couldn’t you?’

  ‘I’ll have to, won’t I?’ I reply absently. ‘My job’s here now. We’ll have to get someone to value this place.’

  Maybe that’s what is wrong with me, I think as I watch Dan pick up the TV remote and start to flick. Maybe I’m just stressed at the thought of house sales and permanent moves. Having seen how well Dan has taken to life in the country, I am coming to accept that this isn’t a trial run any more; he loves it here and wants to stay. Maybe it’s the stress of a pregnancy I can’t tell my husband about. Maybe that’s why I’m hearing voices and falling in canals.

  A ringing from deep within the house makes us both jump. Dan frowns.

  ‘Is that ours? Bit late for cold callers, isn’t it? Have you given work the number?’

  ‘I can’t even remember the number,’ I reply, getting up from the sofa. ‘I don’t know where the bloody phone is. Where is that coming from?’

  ‘It sounds like it’s in the hallway.’

  I throw open the door to the hallway and with a sinking heart remember that the phone socket is in the cupboard under the stairs.

  There is a cupboard under the stairs in my house. It has a light, the bulb so weak and encrusted with dust that the most it will emit is a faint glow, two threadbare cushions that I found in a skip outside next-door-but-one’s house, four books and a thick crocheted blanket that my mother gave me. But the absolute best thing in my hideaway is the photograph.

  They sit on an ageing wooden bench, its once bright blue paint weather-worn and chipping away. His arm is slung so casually around her shoulder that I can hardly believe it is the same woman who flinches at her daughter’s touch. Dressed for the summer, they are both wearing shorts, she in a salmon-pink vest top, he in a white polo shirt, and holding towering ice creams with Flakes sticking out like miniature flagpoles. Every time I look at it, I can almost feel the sunshine on my back, smell the sea air, taste that ice cream. The breeze has whipped up my mother’s hair slightly at the back, but either she hasn’t noticed or she doesn’t care because she is smiling – no, she is positively beaming – and it is this that makes the photograph my most treasured possession. Even at my young age I feel sad that my favourite thing in the world isn’t even mine, I found the photograph amongst a stack in a box in my mother’s wardrobe and couldn’t stop my fingers from slipping it into the waistband of my trousers.

  ‘Hello?’

  The line is silent. I curse bloody automatic call centres and their multi-dial computers. My hand is still shaking from the memory of the days when I used to hide under the stairs as a young girl, and crouching in here once more is making my legs feel weak. As I’m about to hang up, I hear a soft voice whimper, ‘Imogen?’

  My heart thuds. ‘Yes? Hello? Who is this?’ But for no reason I can explain, I know it’s Ellie Atkinson. ‘Ellie?’

  ‘There’s a girl. She’s running. She’s afraid, so afraid.’ Her voice is raspy, coming in short bursts, a staccato gunfire of words.

  ‘Who’s running, Ellie? Is this someone you can see? Where are you?’

  I don’t ask how she got my number, or why she’s phoning me rather than the police; those are questions for after. The urgency in her voice frightens me.

  ‘There’s a man in a mask and he’s chasing her. I can see the stairs but she doesn’t think she’ll make it. She’s going to die. She’s going to die!’

  ‘Who, Ellie? Who thinks she’s going to die? Where are you?’ I don’t know what to do. I can’t hang up, but because it’s a landline I can’t rush out to find Ellie either. I have to calm the girl down, get her to safety before I can put the phone down long enough to go and find where she is.

  ‘I’m outside. She’s not here, she’s somewhere else. Somewhere dark. I can’t see my face. I’m frightened.’

  Somewhere else? ‘How can you see her, Ellie? Where are you?’

  ‘I don’t know. It’s a house. I can see her in my head.’

  Her voice is calmer now, a monotone, as though she is in some kind of trance. I feel my pounding heart begin to slow. Is she having a dream? Has she woken from a nightmare?

  ‘Is there anyone else there with you, Ellie? Someone close by who can help you?’

  ‘I have to go home,’ Ellie intones, and I can hear the confusion in her voice. ‘I have to get back, get away from here.’

  ‘Okay, good,’ I encourage. ‘Where are you now? Are you near home?’

  ‘There’s a tree. I’m in the back garden, I think. Of Sarah’s house. It’s okay, they will come and get me. They’re inside.’

  ‘Can you still see the girl? The man in the mask?’

  ‘No.’ She pauses as though she is looking around her. ‘I think they’re gone. I must have got away this time.’

  ‘This time? Have you seen her before?’

  ‘I think so. I think so.’

  I hear a voice in the background, hear someone calling out Ellie’s name. A girl’s voice – Mary? Relief floods though me. If Mary’s there, she’ll get her to safety.

  ‘I have to go,’ Ellie whispers. ‘Don’t tell them I saw the girl. They’ll think I’m mad. They already think I’m crazy.’

  ‘You’re not crazy, Ellie. You need to tell Sarah what you saw. I’ll help you. They can get you some help.’

  There is a pause, and I think for a second that Ellie has dropped the phone, or hung up even. Then she speaks again. ‘I don’t need help. I have you.’ And the line is dead.

  48

  Hannah hears the quiet thump o
f feet behind her, too light to be those of a grown man. Spinning round, she catches a glimpse of someone running down the hallway. Fucking kids! She dashes to the door, hoping to spot whoever it is descending the stairs, but the landing outside is deserted. Screw this, she isn’t staying here to be made a fool of; it might teach Evan not to play stupid games in the future.

  As she stands at the top of the stairs, she hears a low hiss from one of the doorways behind her. Before she can turn, a shoulder hits her square in the middle of her back, sending her crashing down the first flight of stairs. Her head slams against the last step, sending pain shooting through her skull. She is lying on the cold landing, a dull pounding of blood in her ears, but she cannot force herself to her feet. Move, she tells herself urgently. Fucking move. Whoever is upstairs doesn’t just want to scare her; they want to hurt her.

  She uses the stairs to push herself unsteadily to her feet; grasps the handrail, her hands slick with sweat. It’s fine, there’s no one behind her now – no one who wants to risk being seen anyway – and she stumbles down the next few steps towards the second landing, where more flats lie dormant, waiting. A sudden thought makes her stomach roll – what if there is more than one of them? What if there’s someone waiting on this level too?

  She sways, steadies herself against the wall and takes a few more steps. The darkness is complete here; all the doors to the flats on this floor are closed and no sliver of moonlight seeps through to light her way. She doesn’t even hear her pursuer behind her this time; just feels hands on her shoulders, shoving her forward. Her foot catches on the edge of the stair, she pitches forwards and she is powerless to stop the weight of her upper body propelling her downwards. Her arm flails sideways, grasping for the rail that she knows is there, but even when her hand connects with the smooth surface, she is falling too fast to grab on. She hits each stair as she tumbles, her shoulder, her shin, her face. She feels her nose explode as it connects with the edge of a step, her arm splinter as it twists at an unnatural angle beneath her.

  For a second she thinks she has stopped falling, that her feet have grounded her and she is standing again. She is in pain and she needs help, but she is alive! There is a moment when she is frozen in time, the single moment she’s certain everything will be okay, before her back explodes with a pain like she didn’t know it was possible to feel. She doesn’t look down; she doesn’t see the copper pipe protruding from her chest, thick rust-coloured blood dripping from the end and pooling at her feet, which are suspended an inch from the floor. Blood gathers inside her mouth and trickles down her chin; her eyes glaze over and her limbs go slack.

  It takes less than three minutes for Hannah Gilbert’s body to go into shock, another two hundred seconds for her heart to stop pumping her blood out onto the floor, a total of six minutes and twenty seconds for thirty-seven years of life to be extinguished entirely.

  49

  Imogen

  I have my coat on before I even return to the sitting room. Dan looks up as I enter, frowning when he sees what I’m wearing.

  ‘Where are you going?’ he asks, standing up. ‘Who was on the phone?’

  I relay the phone call as quickly as I can, pulling on my boots as I talk.

  ‘So you’re going over there?’

  ‘Of course I’m going over there,’ I reply. Is he being deliberately stupid? Didn’t he hear what I just said? ‘How can I not?’

  ‘Let me see, some eleven-year old Carrie White calls you late at night to say she can see a man chasing a girl in her head and you feel the need to rush over to her house?’ Dan grabs my arm. ‘Repeat after me – “not my circus, not my monkeys”.’

  I pull away in annoyance. ‘She sounded scared, Dan, and she was outside. What if I leave her and something happens? What if she doesn’t go back into the house and wanders off somewhere, goes missing? How is that going to look at work? How am I going to live with myself then?’

  ‘Fine,’ Dan replies, striding over to the sitting room door. ‘But I’m coming with you. And how did she even get this number? Did you give it to her?’

  ‘I have no idea,’ I admit. ‘It didn’t come from me. I’d say she could have got it online or from the phone book, but I’ve never told her where we live.’ Even as I say it, Hannah Gilbert’s words came back to me, making me shiver. That girl knows things. She knows things she shouldn’t know . . .

  ‘Come on.’ I pull out my keys before he can argue or try to convince me that I shouldn’t be going. ‘If you insist on coming, you can drive.’

  50

  Ellie

  When Ellie opens her eyes, her entire body is frozen in fear. She can’t feel her legs or arms; if she couldn’t see the outline of them in the inky darkness, she’d think they were gone completely. She squeezes her eyes closed against the sudden images that flood her mind, but she can’t shut them out completely; neither can she close her ears against the screams that echo through them. Her screams? Or someone else’s?

  Where is she? Her back is against something rough and she is shivering from the cold. She flexes her fingers and they grasp at wet grass, slide into soggy mud. She is outside, and when she eases her eyes open for a second time the images are gone, replaced by a row of lights from the windows of houses beyond. Her vision adjusts to the darkness and she realises that she is in the back garden of her foster parents’ home. Only she has no idea how she got here. She is wearing a pair of tracksuit bottoms and a vest top covered by a badly fitting hoody – what she was wearing when she fell asleep on top of her covers earlier that evening. Her mobile phone is in her pocket. The daylight was only just retreating when she last looked out of the window of her bedroom – that must have been hours ago, but the time between then and now is a black pit in her mind. Was she speaking to someone? She can almost remember hearing the sound of her own voice.

  She needs to get up, go back inside where it is warm and safe, but her frozen legs can’t find the strength to lift her up, and in all honesty she lacks the motivation to save herself. She thinks about staying here and letting herself slip away into nothing. Maybe no one will find her until it’s too late, until her body has sunk into the mud and her spirit has already left it behind. Just as she thinks that this is exactly what she wants, to not exist any more, to take the easy way out and lie here until it is over, she hears the soft click of the back door closing.

  ‘Ellie?’ Mary’s voice cuts through the silence, but Ellie doesn’t answer. She’s hardly hidden, it won’t be long until Mary finds her, but maybe she’ll have enough time for her heart to give up. Maybe Mary will go back inside when she doesn’t answer.

  ‘Ellie, what are you doing out here?’ Her foster sister’s voice is coming closer now, her panic clear. She kneels down next to Ellie and places a warm hand on her arm. Ellie turns her head to look at her. ‘What’s going on?’ Mary says. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Ellie whispers, her throat burning with the effort of speech. ‘I don’t know, Mary.’ A sob escapes. ‘I don’t know why I came out here. I don’t remember. I’m scared.’

  Mary puts her arms around her and pulls her close. ‘Can you come with me? I need you to come inside before you catch pneumonia.’

  ‘I just want to stay here. My mum and dad are going to come for me. They told me to wait for them here; if I go anywhere, they might not be able to find me.’

  Even in the darkness, Ellie sees Mary’s confusion. She doesn’t understand, and Ellie doesn’t blame her. How can she understand when she has her parents here, when she has her whole life right where it’s supposed to be?

  ‘Look, you have to come inside. Your mum and dad . . .’ Mary hesitates, ‘they’ll still know where you are. They can see you all the time now, remember? And if you stay out here, I’ll have to get Mum and she’ll probably take you to the hospital. You don’t want that, do you, Ellie? To go to the hospital?’

  Ellie shakes her head. She spent enough time in the hospital after the fire that she never wants to go back
to another one as long as she lives.

  ‘You don’t have to tell your mum,’ she whispers. ‘You could just go back to bed and forget you saw me. Leave me here, Mary, I’m not afraid. You don’t have to feel guilty – I want this.’

  Mary stands up, and for a second Ellie’s heart soars. She understands! She closes her eyes and is sinking back against the tree when she hears Mary say, ‘I’m going to get Mum.’

  ‘No!’ Her eyes shoot open and Mary turns back to face her.

  ‘Then you are going to get up and come with me. I’m going to take you to my room and get you changed and warm and you’re going to sleep in my bed with me. And if I hear one objection, then I’ll call for Mum and she’ll take you straight to the hospital.’

  Ellie sighs and gives a nod. She’s tired, scared and defeated, but in some way her heart is warmer for the care Mary has shown her. She puts out a small hand and it is taken by one not much larger than hers, but it feels strong, and when Mary pulls her to her feet, her legs hold her up and together they make their way back to the house.

  51

  Imogen

  We drive through the winding country lanes in a tense silence, the few metres in front of the headlights all we can see. I can tell that Dan’s annoyed at being dragged from our nice warm house so late in the evening because of what he muttered was ‘probably some kid prank-calling you’, but he won’t hold a grudge – he’ll thaw before we get home – and he wouldn’t have dreamt of letting me go alone.