by Rosie Walker
Helen raises her eyebrows, her mouth open in shock. She’s just told this girl that her supposed best friend is missing, and Abbie’s laughing. Laughing. Helen sinks to the floor, her back against the wall in the corridor. ‘Look, I’m not interested in your drunken antics of last night, Abbie. I want to know where my daughter is.’
‘I know, I know. I’m sorry. That’s not what I meant.’ She’s talking really slowly, mumbling the words and pausing between each. She almost sounds like she’s still drunk.
Helen makes a fist with her free hand, willing Abbie to talk quicker.
Abbie continues. ‘Something weird must have happened; I don’t remember anything after like nine o’clock and I don’t remember how I got home, and I just woke up like ten minutes ago.’
A cold dread creeps across Helen’s skin. ‘Why don’t you remember? Did you have a lot to drink?’ She tries to keep the resentment from her voice.
‘Not masses. Like, maybe five drinks. Maybe some shots.’
‘How much did Zoe have? And when did she leave?’
‘About the same. I don’t know when she left. I really don’t know anything.’ Her voice cracks with emotion and it sounds to Helen like she might be crying now.
‘Abbie, are you okay?’ Helen asks through gritted teeth.
‘I’ve never felt like this,’ she says, sniffing. ‘I can’t think. Mum wants to take me to hospital.’
Helen uncurls her fist. ‘Abbie, your mum’s a doctor, right?’
‘Mmhm.’
‘And what does she say? Why does she want to take you to hospital?’
Abbie sniffs. ‘She thinks this is more than a normal hangover, I guess.’
Helen leans her head against the wall in the corridor, feeling the bumps of the woodchip wallpaper pressing against the back of her skull. ‘Did you take anything? Pills, or something? Did Zoe?’
‘Nothing, no. We don’t do that stuff.’
‘Could someone have put something in your drink? In Zoe’s drink?
‘Oh fuck. Shit. Maybe. I don’t know. I mean, Mum says I’m probably okay, like no lasting damage, but Zo … maybe we were both roofied. I don’t know. I don’t remember anything.’
‘You must know more than this. There must be something you can tell me.’
Abbie is silent.
‘Who did it? Who was there?’ Helen’s barely holding the receiver to her ear. Alfie sticks his nose in her face, his wet nose touching her cheek. Helen presses her face against his fur. There’s sniffing from the end of the phone, but no answer to her question. ‘If you don’t remember leaving, that means you don’t remember what happened to Zoe?’
‘I’m sorry. I have no idea.’
‘Come on, Abbie. Give me something to go on. You were there.’
‘Max and Dane might know something; like I said, I only just woke up so I haven’t talked to them.’
‘Right.’
‘I’ll give you their numbers, maybe she’s with one of them. I really hope she is.’
‘Yes.’
‘She’s probably fine, it was a quiet night in the pub, nothing happened and surely she’s fine and just with Dane or whatever. I’ll text you his number.’
Helen says goodbye and hangs up the phone. She remains on the floor, staring at the coat rack on the opposite wall. Helen tries to imagine how she’d react herself if a friend’s mother phoned about her missing daughter. Even as a teenager, Helen would have been shocked and devastated. She would have told that friend’s mother absolutely everything about the night: who they spoke to, what time they arrived and left, everything she could think of.
And maybe it’s the effects of having a drink spiked, and maybe it’s just who Abbie is, but Helen had to drag information from Abbie. Behind Helen’s panic, the acid burning in her stomach and the clammy skin all over her body, something niggles about that call. Something lurks in the silences and hides behind the things not said. What is that girl concealing?
Zoe
Is it possible Abbie knows him, Zoe’s kidnapper? Is she involved? Her friend is impetuous, irresponsible, and sometimes a total bitch, but surely she’s not a bad person, not someone to give a moment of time to someone truly evil.
Abbie would have gone to the police as soon as she noticed Zoe was missing. The police are looking for her right now. They have to be.
But she’s still terrified. What if that’s true? What if Abbie does go to the police, they find the guy, arrest him, and he refuses to talk? He’s the only human being in the whole world who knows where she is. She might die in this caravan, tied to a fucking oven door.
Zoe’s mouth grows drier by the minute. She runs her tongue across her lips, which feel rough and puckered like the skin of an orange. She can’t stop coughing, her throat too dry to soothe itself.
This monster. Who is he? What will he do? Just thinking about it makes her heart race and her brain fizz, unable to function through the pure fear.
A frisson of something hums at the back of Zoe’s brain. She keeps remembering Abbie chatting at the jukebox as Zoe arrived in the pub with Dane, Abbie’s eyes flashing to the door, then turning back to the stranger. Then later, the way Abbie invented that weird game as an excuse to talk to him again. Forcing Zoe to follow her to the bar, to talk to the guy too. To flirt. As if Abbie was his procurer or something, providing Zoe to him like an offering.
It suddenly seems sinister, the mischievous glint in Abbie’s eyes as she sipped at her drink, her eyes flicking from Zoe to the stranger and back again.
No, Zoe must suppress that and focus on other things, fighting and escaping her captor before he can hurt her, rape her, or worse. There’s no evidence to suggest that Abbie is anything other than a stupid, brainless idiot who likes to cause drama.
This is ridiculous. If someone had asked her, just yesterday, which of her friends she’d suspect of aiding a kidnapper, well, none of them. But she’s only known Dane a couple of months, no matter how much she likes him. Can you know someone that well in such a short time? And Max is the one with the creepy obsession with murder and torture. He reads all those creepy websites, talks about serial killers. Max, not Abbie.
Her kidnapper tied her tighter this time, but she can still wiggle her fingers and the blood flow to her hands is okay, thank goodness.
Behind her back, she moves her wrists back and forth, working the ropes looser and the knots further apart. She just needs a little give in them to be able to shuffle her bum back and over her hands. She’s probably got hours to work at this; it’ll all be fine. She can do this, and she can be primed and ready when this monster returns for her once more.
She’s not sure how long she works at the rope, but the shadows have changed on the lino since she started. She finally manages to separate her hands enough to edge herself backwards over her knotted wrists. Her arms and back scream with pain as she pushes her shoulder blades apart, but soon she manages to shove herself over the worst of it, and then her hands are in front of her once more. Still tied, but visible now.
She looks around the caravan, desperate for something to help her. And there – under the sofa, something glints in the half-light. What is that? She crouches leaning to press her cheek to the floor, the lino cold against her skin. It couldn’t be … is that a knife?
Under the one-inch gap between the sofa and the floor, she can see the curve of a wooden handle, the glint of metal hinting at a folded blade. She strains towards it, her hands bound together.
The rope around her wrists catches on the lip of the sofa; she can’t stretch her hands far enough to touch it.
She just needs a couple more centimetres, but she just can’t reach. She stretches and pushes and wiggles her hands, pushes the rope against her flesh until her skin is raw.
Her fingertips touch the cold wood of the handle, but she can’t get a grip. She wriggles her fingers, but pushes the knife even further out of reach.
The knife remains inaccessible, taunting her with its promise.
&
nbsp; She crouches on her haunches, hooks her fingers under the sofa and tries to lift it, but it won’t budge: it’s built into the caravan, never meant to be moved.
She lies on the floor, staring at the weapon as the shadows get even longer, unable to untie herself further or get to it. The spark of hope that briefly rose in her chest fizzles into nothing.
For the first time, she thinks she might die. Her eyes fill with tears and she closes her lids. A tear slips from the corner of her eye and plops onto the floor. She tries to relax her muscles, trick her body that everything is okay, even when her brain knows it’s absolutely not.
Something moves.
She listens hard, her ear pressed to the floor. Her heart pounds in her chest.
Sounds reverberate up from the caravan’s floorboards, loud in Zoe’s ear. Shuffling, like fabric dragging across the floor. Heavy breathing, the wheezing sound of an asthmatic dragging breath into constricted airways.
She holds her breath to hear better, her lungs burning with the effort. Zoe forces herself to open her eyes, and squints through the murky light.
The sound is coming from inside the caravan.
Across the room, a door handle moves.
She pushes herself backwards, into the corner.
Her whole body shudders with fear. She isn’t alone.
Helen
Leave your message after the tone.
‘Dane, this is Zoe’s mum. Call me back urgently as soon as you get this. It is an emergency.’
She’s shoved her panic aside in favour of action, although soon she’s sure it’ll rocket around the corner and hit her full in the face with terror very soon.
Max picks up on the second ring. ‘Max, tell me what happened last night. Zoe is missing.’
‘Missing? I don’t understand. She was in the pub with us. Abbie said she went home.’
‘Just tell me what happened, please.’
He makes an unintelligible sound: half-sob, half-gasp, then seems to pull himself together. ‘Abbie was being … well, Abbie. She wanted to get Zoe to pick up a guy in the bar.’
‘What?’ Helen picks at the corner of a loose strip of wallpaper, gripping it between her fingers and pulling it slowly away from the wall.
He sighs. ‘Yeah …’
‘With Dane right there?’
‘Yeah. Abbie’s going through some stuff, I guess. I don’t really understand her.’
Helen shakes her head, utterly baffled. Why would Zoe talk to another guy when her boyfriend was there with her? Why would Abbie want her friend to do that?
‘Abbie decided that she was going to wind me up by flirting with “some guy” at the bar. Zoe went with her, I think to make sure she was OK and to try and get her to stop.’
‘But where were you? And where was Dane? None of this makes any sense.’ Helen runs her fingers through her hair and grabs a handful, tugging the strands taut and feeling the pull in her scalp.
‘Dane and I stayed at our table. He’s a pretty cool guy and seemed to know that Zoe wouldn’t do anything, that it was all Abbie’s usual bullshit.’
‘But I don’t understand. Zoe’s dad said that Dane was supposed to bring her home at the end of the night. Why didn’t he? Surely you two didn’t leave them in the pub?’
‘Me and Dane were both a bit annoyed by the guy; he kept looking over like he was showing off that he was the big man, talking to our girlfriends, buying them drinks. So, we went on ahead to another pub to catch up with some other friends. Zoe didn’t want to leave Abbie on her own; we thought it was safer if they stuck together. The girls were supposed to meet us soon after, but they never came. We had a couple of drinks at the new place and when they didn’t show up we went back to look for them. They were gone. The guy too.’
‘Both girls were gone? But I spoke to Abbie, she’s fine.’
Max is silent for a moment. ‘We went back into the pub, asked the bar staff if they’d seen them, and even went into the ladies’ toilets but they weren’t anywhere. Then we found Abbie in the car park, wasted. Stumbling around, trying to be sick. And she told us …’ His voice fades.
Helen closes her eyes. ‘She said Zoe went home?’
‘Yeah. Abbie was sure. Said she got in a taxi.’
‘What? Why didn’t you call me? Or Zoe’s Dad? Or the police?’
Max’s voice gets higher. ‘We’d had a few drinks, we were pissed. Abbie was out of control, stumbling around and off her head. Dane was worried, but I guess he just thought Zoe had taken off. Abbie was no help, she could barely talk, and she couldn’t answer any of our questions.’
Helen can’t speak.
‘I’m so sorry. I’ll get in touch if I think of anything else that might help.’ Max is quiet, and then whispers, ‘We thought she must have just got a taxi home or something.’
‘You stupid, stupid boys.’
Zoe
The door handle rattles, someone pushing at the door from the other side.
Still lying on the floor, her cheek pressed to the ground, Zoe slides backwards away from the door. Her breath comes in short bursts, so fast that she can’t get enough oxygen into her lungs.
Stars spangle the edges of her vision, as if she’s about to faint. She can’t see what’s coming towards her.
Not now, don’t faint now. She can’t lose consciousness at this moment, she needs to be alert.
A footstep.
She peers into the dusk, but the door doesn’t open. They’ve been in there all along, lurking on the other side of the wall listening to her cries, her struggles to escape. And they’ve been deadly silent the whole time. Zoe’s body shivers from head to toe.
She can hear breathing now. A raspy, dry breath: an asthmatic wheeze. It sounds like a narrowed windpipe: dusty and catching, air forced through a gap too narrow. Someone whose body is not used to walking; a straining, struggling breath.
To Zoe, it sounds like the breath of the dying.
The wheezing continues, like the bellows on a pair of bagpipes warming up to be played. In, out. In, out.
There’s a scratching noise, like nails on a chalk board or mice in an attic. Almost scrabbling.
She scrambles to a sitting position, shuffling as far away from the door as possible.
The scratching becomes a scraping, loud and purposeful. But the door remains closed. Zoe watches the handle as it rattles and twitches, moved by whatever is on the other side of the door.
The scraping gets louder, as if the person in the other room is digging at the floor, at the door, at the walls. The sound fills Zoe’s ears, and she curls into a ball, her hands over her head to protect her from whatever is about to emerge from the darkness.
She keeps her eyes open, peering into the darkness, never moving her gaze away from that door. No matter what is in that caravan with her, no matter how horrific, Zoe cannot get away. She’s trapped in there with it.
The scraping stops. The air is silent, crackling with expectation. Zoe’s heart thumps in her ears.
‘Please,’ a voice croaks, almost a whisper.
Zoe holds her breath, listening.
‘Help me. Get me out of here before he comes back.’
Helen
Helen has never felt fear this intense. No amount of rationalising can make this nightmare feel okay. She knows there’s something deeply wrong, like any mother would know.
She calls Tony again.
‘Hi, it’s me.’ Helen squeezes her eyes shut.
‘Helen! Hi! How are you? Any news?’ Tony’s use of her name tells her that his wife is in the room, listening. She imagines him turning to Melanie and raising his eyebrows.
Helen grimaces. ‘Have you heard anything from Zoe yet?’
Silence on the other end of the phone. He’s probably lowering his large frame into an armchair, frowning at Melanie. ‘Nothing. How about you?’
Helen’s breath shudders out of her lungs with a half-sob. She just shakes her head, even though Tony can’t see her.
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�Have you two been fighting or anything? Could she be in trouble at school?’
She puts her head in her hands, tugs at her hair. ‘Shut up, Tony. Just shut up. This is serious and all you can say is maybe we had an argument. Shut up and help, damnit.’
Shouting feels good, really good. Anger is such a relief; a break from the constant, seething nausea and anxiety churning in her guts.
‘The new boyfriend. She’s probably with him, right?’
Helen shakes her head. ‘I spoke to her friends; the ones she was with last night.’ Speaking slowly and clearly, she tells him about the guy who bought the girls drinks, the man Dane and Max left them with.
Tony’s quiet, his breathing ragged on the other end of the line.
‘How could they be so stupid?’ he asks quietly. ‘What were they thinking, just leaving her like that? Don’t they know the dangers of—’
But Helen doesn’t want to leave the anger just yet. ‘Tony, she was staying with you last night. She wasn’t supposed to be going out. You were responsible for her care.’
She’s on her feet now, pacing around the room, gesticulating with her free arm. Her face is hot, and she’s started to sweat. ‘You’re responsible for her care and—’ Helen does a quick calculation. ‘We haven’t heard from her in over sixteen hours.’
Tony is silent on the other end of the phone.
Helen’s voice gets higher and higher. ‘Get off the line. I need to call the police.’
‘Wait, Hels. Don’t get dramatic.’
‘Oh, fuck off. This is not the time for you to be patronising. She could be anywhere. She could be dead. This isn’t dramatic; this is realist.’
Tony pauses for a moment and she hears him gathering himself, imagines him straightening his spine and squaring his shoulders. ‘Right. Well, when you call the station, mention my name and let them know she’s my daughter. They might send some higher-ups, often do when it’s one of our own.’
‘I’m going to phone 999, because that’s for emergencies. I don’t want any of your “mates rates” bullshit for my Zoe.’
