Two For Joy
Book Two in the Isabel Fielding series
By
Sarah A. Denzil
Also By Sarah A. Denzil
SAVING APRIL
THE BROKEN ONES
SILENT CHILD
ONE FOR SORROW
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TWO FOR JOY
Sarah A. Denzil
EBOOK EDITION
Copyright © 2018 Sarah A. Denzil
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this work, in whole or in part, in any form.
This is a work of fiction. All characters, events, organizations and products depicted herein are either a product of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously.
Ebook cover design by Sarah Dalton
Paperback cover design by MaeIDesign
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Two For Joy
Also By Sarah A. Denzil
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
CHAPTER FORTY
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
EPILOGUE
PROLOGUE
This bathroom is unfamiliar, but I stumble my way to the sink to wash my hands. There they are: two pale lumps in the dark. Two trembling, alien-like things that don’t seem to belong to me, and yet they do. Perhaps the reason they appear odd to me is because these two pale things are all covered in red. More red than I’ve ever seen before. It smears when I run the tap, but I need the water to wash it all away.
There it goes, down the plug hole. Water chasing the blood away. Getting rid of the guilt.
You don’t know this, but I dream of the blood. I dream of causing pain, of taking lives. It makes me feel powerful. But I could never tell you. Never admit it.
I’m ashamed of who I am.
And yet I don’t want to stop.
So here I am, washing away the blood. Washing away the evidence.
CHAPTER ONE
ISABEL
Do you think about me? Dream about me? I dream about you almost every night. But in my dreams, you are a beautiful bird. Why won’t you let me make you beautiful, Leah? You come to me as a ghost, pale and shimmering, stalking me as a shadow would. But the absence of you hurts me. Why would you want to hurt me?
After a decade of being forced into the company of others, I found myself alone for the first time, and it frightened me. That night on the moors, when you let me go, I was cold and injured, and you left me there like an unwanted dog. My cruel owner, taunting me all those months with promises of friendship, only to leave me like that.
But as usual, you underestimated me, Leah. You thought I would fade away into the darkness, slipping out of your life like any good inconvenience would. If I were a bug, would you step on me and grind me into the dirt? Would you think twice about extinguishing me from your life?
Don’t you see that I wanted to make you beautiful? You’re mediocre. You’re dull and dirty, like the stream I washed myself in on the moors that night. I want to take you from that mediocrity and transform you into the magnificent bird you have the potential be. You’re my canvas, Leah, empty and waiting for genius. When I find you, I’ll turn you into a work of art.
Don’t you understand that I will find you? It doesn’t matter what it takes. Do you think I care about my freedom? About my life? I can’t live in this world anyway, because the world has already rejected who I am. I don’t have anything to live for except you.
Leah.
CHAPTER TWO
E for Elizabeth. L for Lizzie. B for Beth. I have three choices, and I hate them all. My name is Elizabeth James, which is boring enough for me to escape notice, and different enough from Leah Smith that Isabel won’t think to search for it. The officers who arranged my move into the witness protection programme decided to give me a name with enough variations that I could choose one I like. Lizzie isn’t a million miles away from Leah, but all my formal paperwork is under Elizabeth.
So here I am, in a grey little town on the Scottish border, with a new name and a new life.
But it isn’t going to last.
The first suggestion for Tom’s new name was Anthony, which could be shortened to Tony if he wanted. Anthony James is a pleasant name, and Tony isn’t too far from Tom, but he hated it. We went through Owen, Samuel, Harry, and finally settled on Scott. Scott and Elizabeth James.
Our new house is mid-terrace, with old-fashioned furniture and unattractive wallpaper. Everything was arranged before we arrived, with beds made up, and milk and bread in the kitchen, but we were told not to get too comfortable. There’s a chance we won’t stay here. This is the first house we’ve been moved to, but the third new place since we left Hutton. First, we stopped in a hotel in Lancashire. Then we were taken to another hotel in Gateshead. And now we are in a rented house on a drab street with dusty curtains and radiators that clang at night.
Neither of us has a purpose while we live here. We’re in limbo. My trips out of the house are to fetch our shopping, but we’re given little to live on each week. Food is almost all I buy, except for two new shirts from a charity shop for Tom. We squeeze in a cheap self-defence class once a week, but lately these have been making me so anxious that I think we’ll have to stop.
What you need to know about the witness protection programme is that it is not allowed to be an incentive for anyone. Not many people make it into the programme after being a victim of a crime; most are an informer, grassing up their mates in organised crime. Which means that the biggest rule of the programme is that no one gets more than what they had before.
The problem is, we had nothing before.
My scars itch.
There’s rain in the air, and my hair is frizzy from the extra moisture. The handles of the plastic shopping bags cut into my palms as I walk along the street. I should have taken up Tom’s offer of help, but for the first time since we moved here, he’s reading a textbook instead of browsing the internet on the new laptop his foster family bought for him.
That’s the other rule—we leave everything behind. We don’t create a Facebook account with any photos on it, or our names, we don’t have Instagram accounts or Twitter, or anything else that would leave even the smallest of digital footprints. We are ghosts, living on the outskirts of society, while life happens all around us. We can’t join in; at least, not yet. It isn’t safe. They haven’t found her yet
.
Tom used to think that she died on the moors somewhere, fallen deep into a ravine that the police are unable to search, but I know better than that, and lately even he jumps when there’s a knock on the door or someone leans over to say hello on the street. Isabel is the cockroach you can’t kill, that scuttles into the gaps in the bricks and camps up, watching you carefully and getting ready to jump out when you least expect it. I connected with her in Crowmont Hospital. I made her feel something, and I don’t think Isabel will ever forgive me for that. She will never give up. She’d rather die than give up. She will come for me.
My palms begin to sweat as my thoughts drift back to Isabel, as they always seem to do, and I become more aware of the birds above me on the telephone wires, flapping their wings and occasionally squawking. What are they? Ravens? I try to remember what Isabel would say about the omen of a raven, but I can’t remember.
And then I abruptly come to my house. Not mine, but at least the place where I lay my head at night. The door opens directly into the living room where I see Tom standing in the centre, staring at the window. There’s a small smear of blood and a smudged outline that I didn’t notice as I was searching for my keys.
“What happened?” I ask, letting the bags drop to the carpet.
“It was a magpie,” Tom says. “Can you believe it?”
I turn to face the smudge on the glass and realise that I can make out the basic shape of a bird in flight. The realisation hits me as hard as a fist to the abdomen, followed by a cold sense of dread spreading from my ears down my neck.
“Are you sure?” I step over to the glass and peer out. Why didn’t I see the magpie on the ground outside the house?
“It’s not there anymore,” Tom says. “It flew away.”
The smear of blood is bigger than a pound coin, but not by much. I would certainly expect a bird to be too injured to fly away after such an injury. But I didn’t see anything on the pavement outside.
“Are you sure?” I ask.
Tom’s jaw tenses as he snaps, “Why would I lie?”
He has a point. What would Tom gain from lying to me? What would he even do with a dead magpie?
“Do you think it’s her?” he asks.
I shake my head. “It’s a coincidence. As clever as Isabel is, I don’t think she could train a bird to fly into our window. It’s just a horrible coincidence, Tom.” I place a hand on his shoulder, which is much broader than it used to be, and tell myself that I’m right. Surely, it was beyond the realm of possibility. Even in Crowmont Hospital, when Isabel tamed Pepsi, her friendly magpie, she couldn’t train a bird to fly into our window. I take a deep breath and try not to think about my nightmares, then I reach down and pick up the shopping. “Are you hungry?”
“I should clean the window,” Tom replies, speaking more to himself than to me.
“While you do that, I’ll make us sandwiches.”
“Fine.”
Tom stalks from the room with his head bent low. My secret son. He’s filled out since the night on the moors, and he appears older, despite only a few months having passed. He’s taller now, with some of the weight shifted and redistributed into muscle. There was a point a few weeks ago when we were a team, closer than ever, protective of each other, but since then we’ve drifted away again. And now here he is, sullen and spotty as he ever was before. I’m not sure whether it’s a good or a bad thing that he considers me his annoying older sister again.
I just wish I’ll be able to tell him the truth one day.
It doesn’t take long to fill our kitchen with the food. A few tins of soup, beans, a loaf of bread, biscuits, and pasta, and the cupboards are brimming. Though Tom and I keep to ourselves, I know that a family with three children live a few doors up, and I can’t imagine living in such a tiny space with all those other bodies. There was a time I lived in a squat with my ex-boyfriend, and even now, when I think of the dirty mugs and the smell that emanated from lazy bodies lying around the floor, I want to gag.
Sounds carry easily in the house, and the squeaking of the cloth against the window tells me that Tom is washing away the blood as he promised. I cringe at the thought of the bird pressing against the glass, peering in with its beady eyes, pecking at the window. But none of that happened; it flew in, fell, and flew away. I cleaned the windows yesterday out of boredom. I obviously cleaned them too well.
Tom walks into the kitchen as I’m buttering bread and throws the dirty cloth into the peddle bin. I can’t help but notice that his forehead is damp with sweat. Fear? Or simply exertion from his task?
When he turns back to go into the living room, I notice a feather poking out of the back pocket of his jeans. The sight of it makes me pause in the middle of my task, my hand hovering above the opened packet of sliced ham. Why would he keep such a memento? Tom is as afraid of birds as I am, after everything Isabel put us through. At least I thought he was.
A sharp ring jolts me from my thoughts, sending an electric shock of adrenaline through my veins. I rattle the plate as I reach for the kitchen counter to steady myself, my pulse racing. When will I get over the way surprises make me feel? When will I be normal again? I imagine Seb’s silent presence at my side, hand inches from mine, never touching, just there as solid as a brick wall but as soft and comforting as a blanket. After my heart recovers, I take another deep breath in through my nose and out through my mouth and retrieve my mobile phone from my pocket.
“Hello?”
“Elizabeth. It’s Adam.”
One of the officers who helped us move away from Hutton following Isabel’s attack.
“Do we need to pack our things?”
A long sigh. Does he seem tense? His voice is clipped, and he’s sighing heavily. Something is wrong. “I’m sorry, but yes.”
“Is it Isabel?”
“Honestly, we’re not sure, but we need to get you out to be safe. The police in Newcastleton have found a body. A young woman, dark hair like yours, and the corpse has been mutilated.”
My fingers grip the rounded edge of the kitchen counter until my knuckles are white as milk. “Are you collecting us?”
“Yes,” he said. “Tomorrow morning at 6am.”
“We’ll be ready.”
“Okay. See you then.”
I disconnect the call and slump against the kitchen counter. He gave me no word about where we’re going, but then he wouldn’t do that over the phone. As terrifying as Isabel is, I can’t imagine her bugging my mobile phone, but there was a time when I couldn’t imagine Isabel cutting the flesh of a dead six-year-old or stuffing a bird into the mouth of a decapitated head. My meagre breakfast attempts to rise, but I ignore it. There’s no time for that. I have to get Tom ready.
As soon as he sees my face, he knows I’m afraid.
“We’re leaving again tomorrow morning. The officer is collecting us at 6am.”
“Why?”
“They found a dead body here in Newcastleton. Mutilated.”
Tom snatches the TV remote from the arm of the sofa and programmes the channel to BBC news. They’re interviewing a politician about an expenses scandal, but underneath I see the headlines scrolling across the screen.
Woman found dead in Newcastleton. Strangled and mutilated.
“Strangled,” Tom repeats. “I wonder when she died.”
I wonder when she died as well. Was it last night? The night before? I try to pry my eyes away from the screen, but I can’t stop staring at it. Woman. That’s all she is right now. Woman strangled. The strangled woman, mutilated.
That can’t happen to me.
CHAPTER THREE
We hit the motorway and keep going, with trucks swooshing through the rain around us. Tom is restless in the back seat, fiddling with his phone, occasionally exhaling through his nose and shaking his head. He’s reading the news reports, I can tell.
Adam glances nervously at me from the driver’s seat. “I’m hoping this will be your last place,” he says. “There’s no indica
tion that Isabel actually found you. The murdered woman could be an unhappy coincidence. She wasn’t found on your back doorstep, after all. But, still, too close for comfort.”
I nod, not feeling reassured by his sterile words.
“They’ve released the name,” Tom says from the back seat. “Alison Finlay.”
Hearing her name does little except make me feel numb. There it is—the name, Alison Finlay. Was she murdered because of me? Did Isabel kill her because she couldn’t kill me? Did Isabel kill her because I couldn’t kill Isabel when I had the chance? All those months ago on the moors when I had her. I had her, and I let her go. I could have killed her in the abandoned farmhouse. I could have tied her up, even. I could have done something. But I was too scared to touch her. I just wanted to get Tom out of there to safety. Sometimes I hate myself for those actions.
“It’s called Clifton-on-Sea. On the southeast coast near Margate. I think you’ll like it there. It’s very different from the places you’ve already been. It’s quiet, and there’s a small beach. We’ve got a detached house for you to live in. A little bungalow with a sea view. There’s a nearby care home, Elizabe—”
“Lizzie,” I cut in.
“Right, Lizzie. There’s a care home with a position for a receptionist. Say the word and it’s yours.”
Two For Joy (Isabel Fielding Book 2) Page 1
