Afraid

by Mandasue Heller

  It was an hour since she’d got out of the bath and she felt no better than when she’d gone in. If anything, she felt worse and, as much as she often these days dreaded the sound of his car pulling up outside, she wished desperately that Tom would come home early today, because she was getting seriously scared about these pains.

  Slumped over the table with her hands covering her ears to shut out the sound of Bernie’s barking, she didn’t hear the shuffle of feet outside. But when a loud bang came at the door a few seconds later, she almost fell off her chair with shock.

  Her mouth bone-dry with terror when another bang shook the floor, she pulled herself up to her feet and gasped with fear when she saw the flashing lights of a police vehicle outside. Immediately sure that Chloe must have grassed her up, she ran towards the larder to try and hide in the cellar. But the back door flew open before she’d taken two steps and she fell to her knees as the kitchen became a blur of uniforms and shouting policemen. Then, curling into a ball when another pain ripped through her belly, she gritted her teeth.

  ‘What’s your name, love?’ a policeman asked, kneeling beside her.

  ‘Skye,’ she sobbed. ‘But please don’t arrest me, I didn’t do it, I swear I didn’t.’

  ‘Okay, calm down,’ the officer said as one of his colleagues dragged Bernie past with a wire loop around his neck and the rest of the cops spread out to search the house. ‘Is anybody else here with you?’

  Skye shook her head as the tears streamed down her cheeks. She cried, ‘He’s at work. But it’s not his fault – he didn’t know.’

  ‘Didn’t know what, love?’

  ‘That my mum stabbed my dad then blamed me,’ sobbed Skye. ‘I didn’t do it, though,’ she insisted again, giving the officer an imploring look. ‘Honest, I didn’t.’

  ‘All right, take it easy,’ he said, concerned when he saw a pool of blood spreading out on the floor around her thighs. ‘Let’s just get you looked at, then you can tell us all about it. Okay?’

  Skye nodded. Then she screamed when another wave of pain swept over her.

  30

  Jeff was packing his things into a holdall when a knock came at the door later that evening. He’d tried, he really had, but he just couldn’t take it any more. The B and B was so depressing that it was starting to make him feel ill, and Andrea was doing his head in, pretending that she was still ill when he knew for a fact that she was completely stable because he’d been making sure that she took her tablets.

  He knew exactly why she was doing it. She knew his feelings had changed, and she couldn’t bear it that she was losing him. It was sad, and he wished with all his heart that he could feel differently. But there was no use denying it. He just didn’t love her any more, and the longer they stayed together, the longer it would take for Andrea to accept it and let him go.

  That was why he had decided to leave. He had no idea where he was going to go from here, but a park bench would be preferable to spending one more night in a bed with a woman he no longer loved. And once he was gone, she would get all the help and support she needed from her case workers to get back on her feet.

  It still hurt, though, and his expression must have reflected his pain when he opened the door to find PCs Jones and Dean in the corridor, because they both gave him a concerned look.

  ‘Is this a bad time?’ Jones asked, flicking a glance over Jeff’s shoulder at the closed bathroom door, from behind which they could hear the sound of Andrea crying.

  ‘You could say that,’ Jeff said quietly. ‘I’ve just told her I’m leaving, and she’s not taking it too well.’

  ‘Sorry to hear that, mate,’ Jones murmured, giving him a sympathetic look.

  Jeff gave a resigned shrug. ‘It’s not easy, but she’ll be better off without me in the long run. Anyway, what’s up?’ he asked then.

  ‘I know this is a bad time,’ Dean said apologetically. ‘But we’ve got some news that you’re both going to want to hear.’

  31

  Skye had been drifting in and out of consciousness for two days before she came round properly, and she felt sick when she began to surface. But the nausea was instantly replaced by fear when she peeled her eyes open and gazed groggily around the unfamiliar room. Sure that she was in prison, a tiny squeak of terror escaped her dry lips.

  ‘It’s all right, sweetheart – I’m here.’

  Her heart lurched at the sound of the voice and, when she turned her head in the direction it had come from and saw Jeff sitting in a chair by the window, her eyes flooded with tears.

  ‘Daddy?’

  ‘Hello, baby,’ Jeff whispered, his own eyes glistening as he got up and came to sit on the bed beside her and hold her hand. ‘Sshhh,’ he crooned, stroking her hair as she clung to him. ‘It’s all over now. You’re safe.’

  ‘Where am I?’ she asked. ‘Is this prison?’

  ‘No, you’re in hospital,’ Jeff told her, holding her close. Then, softly, because he knew it would be a shock, he said, ‘I’m so sorry, love, but you lost the baby.’

  ‘What?’ Skye pulled herself free and gazed up at him in confusion.

  ‘You lost a lot of blood and went into shock, that’s why you’re here,’ Jeff explained. ‘And it was already dead, so there was nothing they could do. I’m so sorry, love.’

  ‘But – but Tom said I wasn’t pregnant,’ Skye gasped, gazing down at her stomach in disbelief. ‘I couldn’t have been.’

  Jeff’s eyes glinted with anger at the mention of that name. But he gritted his teeth and kept his voice even as he said, ‘There is no Tom, love.’

  ‘Yes, there is,’ Skye insisted, crying again as the pain of realising that she had just lost the baby she hadn’t known she was carrying settled over her. ‘He loves me, and he would have loved our baby, so he should be here, not you. You’re just trying to keep him away because he kept me safe when you and Mum wanted me dead.’

  ‘Don’t say that,’ Jeff murmured, shocked that she would think such a thing. ‘We’d never wish you dead. We love you, and it nearly destroyed us when we thought we’d lost you.’

  ‘Liar!’ Skye cried, wrenching her hand free. ‘Tom told me everything. You blamed me for stabbing you when you knew it was Mum, and then told everyone I’d been murdered so you could bury me and forget about me.’

  ‘Sweetheart, that’s just not true,’ Jeff insisted, feeling helpless now because he didn’t know where this was coming from. ‘I don’t know what you’ve been told, but I swear we never blamed you. Is that why you ran away?’ he asked then. ‘Because you thought you were going to get into trouble?’

  ‘You said it on the news,’ Skye reminded him. ‘You said I’d tried to kill you both, and you wished I’d never been born. Don’t lie!’ she screeched when Jeff shook his head. ‘Tom told me. And how would he know it was you unless he’d seen you?’

  ‘His name isn’t Tom, it’s Jamie,’ Jeff told her. ‘And he’s a murderer.’

  ‘You’re lying.’ Skye glared at him through her tears.

  ‘No, he’s not, love.’

  Skye jerked her head round at the sound of the voice, and shrank back against her pillow when she saw PC Jones standing in the doorway.

  Val Dunn stepped into the room behind Jones and, guessing from the look in Skye’s eyes that she had seen the uniform and assumed the worst, said, ‘Don’t be scared – we just need to talk to you.’

  ‘What’s she doing here?’ Skye asked Jeff, her voice little more than a whisper as her fear intensified.

  ‘We’re here to help,’ Jones told her.

  ‘No, you’re not,’ Skye whimpered. ‘You’re going to arrest me, aren’t you?’ Then, swallowing loudly when something else occurred to her, she said, ‘Did I really lose the baby, or have you taken it away and given it to her ’cos you think I’m bad?’

  Val placed her hand on Jeff’s shoulder when he opened his mouth to explain, and gave a surreptitious shake of her head. They were aware from some of the things that Skye had said to t
he first officer she’d spoken with at the house before losing consciousness and being rushed to hospital that Jamie Thornton – or Tom, as Skye had known him – had done a pretty thorough job of grooming her during the time he’d held her. It was going to take time and careful handling to change her romantic view of him and make her accept that she had been his victim and not his consensual lover. They had held a meeting to discuss how best to handle the situation when Skye came round, and it had been agreed that they wouldn’t tell her about the explicit sex videos that Thornton had uploaded onto his website, featuring not only her but also Chloe Lester – whose remarkable likeness to Skye had caused both the police and Jeff to think that she was actually Skye when her body had been found. They had also decided not to tell her just yet about Hayley having passed away, because they thought that it would upset her too much. But they needed her to understand that Jamie Thornton was not who he had claimed to be, in order to persuade her to tell them the truth of what she had endured at his hands.

  ‘Why don’t you go and see if Andrea’s finished speaking with the doctor while we explain things to Skye?’ Val suggested.

  Jeff was reluctant to let this woman talk to Skye when he still blamed her for Skye having gone missing in the first place, but he had to admit that he wasn’t doing too good a job of it himself so far. So, conceding defeat, he stood up and backed towards the door, telling Skye, ‘I’ll be right outside if you need me.’

  Val sat down when he’d left the room, and shuffled the chair a little closer to the bed as Jones took a seat on the other side.

  ‘We know you don’t want to hear this,’ she started gently, ‘but the man you knew as Tom was not a good man, and whatever he told you about your parents was a lie. He just wanted to make you think that he was the only one you could trust so he could control you. It’s called grooming.’

  ‘No.’ Skye shook her head. ‘He loves me. We’re going to get married. Look.’ She held up her hand, and frowned when she saw that her finger was bare. ‘Where’s my ring?’

  ‘It’s been taken for evidence,’ Jones told her.

  ‘But it’s mine,’ Skye protested. ‘Tom bought it for me.’

  ‘No, my love, he didn’t,’ Val informed her. ‘It belonged to the lady who owned the house, and he stole it from her after he murdered her. And then he moved into her house so that he could lure young girls like yourself there.’

  ‘You don’t even know him,’ Skye muttered defensively. ‘He’s not like that – he wouldn’t hurt anyone.’

  ‘The old lady’s body was found in a freezer in the shed,’ Jones told her. ‘And he’s already confessed to killing her,’ he added, trying to conceal his disgust at the memory of the almost gloating way in which Jamie Thornton had spoken about his crimes when they had collared him after removing Skye from the house. It seemed as if he had decided that, if he was going down for a long one, he might as well do it in a blaze of notoriety and admit to being a serial killer. Yet, strangely, despite having admitted to killing three people, Thornton had adamantly refused to accept that there had been anything inappropriate about his relationships with the girls – despite his first victim having been just thirteen years old, and the fact that he had drugged them all in order to render them helpless as he videoed himself abusing them. In his mind, they had all wanted it as much as he had.

  A shadowy memory of Bernie trying desperately to get into the shed the first time she let him out had just flitted through Skye’s mind. But she quickly shook it away, convinced that they were making it all up.

  ‘He also murdered two young girls,’ Jones went on. ‘Their names were Sarah and Chloe, and they were both a little younger than you.’

  ‘Chloe?’ Skye repeated numbly.

  ‘Did you know her?’ Val asked, guessing from her reaction that she had.

  Skye nodded, and croaked, ‘She stayed with us for a few weeks, but then Tom took her home.’

  ‘He didn’t,’ said Jones. ‘He murdered her and dumped her body by the canal. She was wearing a necklace when she was found,’ he went on gently. ‘And it has since been identified as a necklace that was given to you.’

  ‘My angel?’ Skye peered up at him with agony in her eyes. ‘Hayley gave it to me for my birthday.’

  Conscious of their decision to avoid the subject of Hayley, Jones said, ‘You look tired, so I think we’ll leave it at that for today. We’ll talk to you again when you’re feeling a little stronger.’

  ‘Are you going to send me to prison?’ Skye asked.

  ‘Of course not,’ Val assured her. ‘You’ve done nothing wrong, and you are not in trouble. The police just need to know what happened while you were staying at that house, so they can put their case together properly.’

  ‘Are you going to take me away again?’

  Val saw the dread in Skye’s eyes and shook her head. ‘No, you’ll be allowed to go home when you leave here,’ she promised. ‘But I’ll still be involved, because you’ve been through a traumatic experience and I’ll need to monitor your progress and make sure you’re settling back into normal life.’

  Skye stared at her after she said this, and chewed on her lip. Then, her voice tiny, she asked, ‘Did I really lose the baby, or have you given it to someone who can look after it better than me?’

  ‘I’m really sorry, but you did lose it,’ Val told her gently, omitting to add what all the adults who were involved in this case were thinking: that it was a blessing the baby hadn’t survived. Skye might believe that she would have wanted it now, but her feelings would undoubtedly have changed once she’d faced up to the reality of the situation, and she might well have subconsciously transferred the blame for its father’s actions onto its head at some point – which would have been terrible both for her and the baby.

  Skye’s face crumpled as the realisation that she hadn’t just lost her baby but had actually killed it settled over her. Her dad had said that it was already dead when it was born, and that must have been because she’d been punching it. And it didn’t matter that she hadn’t known it was in there, or that she’d had no control over her actions. She had killed her baby, and she would never forgive herself for that.

  ‘I want Tom,’ she sobbed as fresh tears began to cascade down her cheeks.

  Val asked Jones to go and fetch Skye’s parents. Then, gazing down at Skye when he’d gone, she said, ‘I know this is hard for you to understand right now, my love, but you have got to try and forget about Tom. We’ll all do our very best to help you to get through this, so you never need to feel as though you’re on your own. And if there’s ever anything you feel uncomfortable discussing with your parents, I hope you know that you can always talk to me.’

  Skye rolled onto her side without answering and sobbed into her pillow. She was the guilty one, not Tom, and she wished they would stop saying terrible things about him, because they didn’t know him like she did. He was the only one who had ever really loved her, and she didn’t believe that he had hurt those people. They were just trying to make her hate him so that she would have no one to protect her when they locked her up.

  Jeff and Andrea had been sitting in silence in the corridor while Jones and the social worker spoke with Skye. They hadn’t talked much since hearing that Skye had been found, and had been taking it in turns to sit beside her bed over the last two days while they waited for her to come round. And, now that she was back with them, they were both deep in thought about the future.

  After hearing about the horrors that her child had suffered at the hands of that depraved man, Andrea had realised that she had to stop thinking about herself and Jeff, and concentrate on Skye. In the weeks since they had buried that poor child who they had mistakenly thought was Skye, she had gone through agony: not only grieving for her daughter, but also for the loss of her marriage. She had been well for weeks, but had pretended not to be in order to keep Jeff from leaving. But it hadn’t worked, and he had been on the verge of walking out when the news had come that Skye had been f
ound. He hadn’t left yet, but Andrea had realised that there was no point hanging onto him if his heart was no longer in it. It wouldn’t be easy, because he was the only man she had ever truly loved – and she still did. But he was a good man and he deserved to be happy and, if that meant being away from her, then she was ready to let him go.

  Determined that Skye should stay with her, she had already spoken to the housing officer about the urgency of them finding her somewhere to live; and she’d also spoken to her case worker about getting help to buy beds and furniture. Jeff would probably say that she wasn’t ready to look after Skye on her own just yet, but she would do everything in her power to prove that she was.

  Beside her, Jeff was also thinking about Skye. He hadn’t really understood what Jones and Dean had meant when they had tried to warn him that Skye might be in denial about the man who had effectively abducted her, but he totally got it now. The evil bastard had fed her a pack of lies, and it broke Jeff’s heart to think that Skye believed that he and Andrea hated her so much that they would try to pin the stabbing on her. But what really killed him was the thought of the physical abuse that his innocent child had endured at the hands of that beast, and the guilt that he hadn’t been able to save her was already eating away at him. And, worse, it appeared that the grooming had started way before the stabbing, when, hidden behind the innocuous screen-name QTPye, this monster had gained his daughter’s trust and got her to confide her inner thoughts by posing as a girl of the same age who understood how she felt.

  This had all come to light after the police’s IT experts had hacked into Skye’s chat-room account and read the intimate conversations that she’d unwittingly had with the man. Jeff was ashamed to think that it had been going on right under his nose, and that he had never once realised how unhappy Skye was. More than that, he was ashamed to have been the cause of that misery. He’d thought she was unaffected by his and Andrea’s fighting, but he couldn’t have been more wrong. Skye had obviously been deeply hurt by the rift in her family, but with her parents too preoccupied with each other to notice her, and her only real-life friend often too ill to talk to, what choice had she had but to turn to a stranger for comfort?