While You Sleep

by Stephanie Merritt

  ‘I promise I won’t.’

  His eyes flickered up to meet hers briefly. ‘I heard Mam,’ he whispered. ‘I never told Iain, he’d’ve said I was mental, but we were down there on the beach and I heard her voice like she was standing right beside me. She said, Don’t you go in there, Robert Logan, like when she was really cross and she wasnae messing about. And it freaked me out so much I couldnae move, so Iain went on his own, and that was when—’ he broke off, his face white.

  She knew better than to press him on the details; what Iain did next was the part he had successfully kept to himself for over a year.

  ‘Was Iain filming when he went in, like you planned? Do you think he caught what he saw on his phone?’

  A mute shrug, his gaze fixed on the table.

  ‘I wonder what happened to his phone,’ she said idly.

  ‘They never found it. He must have had it with him,’ Robbie said. But in the split-second before he spoke, she saw it: the way his eyes flicked in the direction of the cellar door. She felt a tingle of excitement.

  ‘Well, I guess we’ll never know,’ she said. He rubbed a knuckle into the corner of his eye.

  ‘It should’ve been me,’ he repeated quietly. ‘And then naebody would’ve cared.’

  ‘Oh, Robbie, that’s not true. What about your dad and your sister, for a start?’

  He huffed out a small, bitter laugh. ‘Ma sister would be glad if I was dead. She could leave the island then.’ He reached up, absently touching a finger to the mark on his cheek.

  ‘Did Annag do that to your face?’ Zoe asked.

  ‘Fell off ma bike.’ He spoke in a tone so expressionless, it seemed to acknowledge the evident untruth of the statement. He had not even bothered to keep his lies consistent.

  ‘This afternoon you said it was the climbing frame.’

  ‘I cannae remember. I’m always banging maself. I’m clumsy like that.’

  Annag had told her the same thing, she recalled. Her dislike for the girl hardened further. Surely Edward must have observed the child’s injuries; she made a mental note to speak to him about it. ‘Doesn’t your dad notice all these bruises when he comes home?’

  ‘He sleeps most of the time when he’s home, or goes to the pub. He hates being there without Mam.’

  She saw then how much effort it was costing him not to cry. Instinctively, she shunted her chair closer and put an arm around his shoulders. She felt him tense, before his muscles slackened and he leaned his head against her. His clothes smelled of stale cigarettes; she was shocked by the sudden pang of tenderness she felt for this unhappy child, who she guessed had not been cuddled by anyone since his mother died. The soft, snuffling sounds he was making into her sweater told her he was crying. They remained there in silence for a while, the house unusually quiet and motionless around them. Zoe found herself almost laughing at the irony; she had half-imagined she would spend the night with a younger lover, and instead had ended up mothering an unhappy boy. On reflection, she did not regret the turn the evening had taken, though the thought of Edward brought her back to the gravity of her present predicament. She had assaulted and injured a child she barely knew and had no means of getting him back to his family or letting anyone know where he was.

  ‘Listen, Robbie. We’ve got ourselves a situation here. Your sister might not notice you sneak out at night but she’s sure as shit going to notice if you’re not there in the morning, right?’ She drew back to look at him; when he raised his head from her shoulder she saw that he had been drifting off to sleep and her heart clenched again. ‘You can’t possibly ride home on that thing after a whack on the head, and I’d drive you –’ she saw the flash of fear across his face – ‘but I can’t right now because I’ve had too much to drink. And I can’t even make a call because the phone’s not working.’

  At that he shot her a guilty look from under his lashes. ‘I know. That was me.’

  ‘You cut the phone?’

  ‘Aye. With ma da’s bolt-cutters. I thought you’d be scared if you couldnae call anyone so you’d have to drive into town.’

  She sighed. ‘Well, nice job, Robbie, because we’re screwed now. Unless you have a phone with a signal?’

  He shook his head. ‘There’s no signal anywhere along this part of the coast.’

  ‘Great. Well, all we can do is sit tight for now.’ She hesitated. ‘Mr Sinclair might be on his way out – he was going to come for dinner. He could take you home. Although it’s getting pretty late.’

  ‘He won’t come.’ He sounded certain.

  ‘How do you know?’ She let her arm slip from around his shoulders and looked at him with growing suspicion; he hunched into himself and winced as he shifted in his chair. The moment of intimacy was broken.

  ‘I knifed his tyre.’

  ‘Jesus.’ She passed a hand across her forehead. ‘Any particular reason?’

  ‘I heard the two of you talking in the playground. When you invited him for dinner. I thought, if he couldnae come out, it would be easier to scare you alone. I’m sorry,’ he added, into the neck of his hoodie. ‘Can’t I stay here with you for tonight?’ When he looked up, his eyes were pleading.

  Zoe sighed. ‘Doesn’t look like we have a choice. As long as you don’t put any dead animals around the place.’ She pointed a stern finger in his face, but he spotted the twinkle in her voice and responded with a tentative smile. ‘And no more of that singing either.’

  The boy’s smile faltered. ‘What?’

  ‘All the music and the singing, and the prank phone calls. That’s got to stop too.’ But she saw the seriousness of his expression and her chest tightened.

  ‘I never did any singing,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘Or the phone. That wasnae me, I swear it. I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  She watched him; the fear in his eyes appeared genuine, though it might have been no more than a fear of being caught out.

  ‘Never mind. I’ll take you into town first thing in the morning – we should get a doctor to look at you. But you’d better back me up, dude. You tell them everything you’ve been doing out here, all the pranks, and why I acted in self-defence, OK? Now – you want some toast?’

  Robbie nodded, wincing as he adjusted his ice-pack. Horace let out a reproachful noise as she stood and crossed to the fridge.

  ‘One other thing,’ she said, turning to Robbie as she crouched to empty a pack of the dog’s food into a bowl on the floor. ‘How did you know about the hand?’

  The boy frowned, his eyelids drooping with fatigue. ‘What hand?’

  ‘In that picture of yours. You drew me in the water and a hand pulling my ankle. How could you have seen that, from up on the cliff?’

  He only looked further confused. ‘I didnae see anything. It’s just part of the story.’

  ‘What – the McBride story?’

  ‘Aye. Her son. The wee boy. Because they never found him, folk say he’s under the water waiting to pull you down to live with him. It’s what they tell kids to stop them swimming there. People at school said it was him that got Iain. I drew him getting you as well.’ His face closed up briefly, before he looked back at her, curious. ‘Was there a hand, then?’

  ‘No, of course not, don’t be silly. Strong currents, that’s all.’ She heard herself give a high, false laugh. ‘I wondered where you’d got the idea, that’s all.’ She turned her back while she cut a few slices of bread, but she could feel his eyes on her, sceptical, and knew that he could tell she was lying, the same way she was certain he had not told her the whole truth.

  ‘It’ll happen to me in the end, I know it will,’ he said, suddenly, as if to himself, while she slipped the bread into the toaster. She turned slowly to face him.

  ‘What will?’

  ‘Same as happened to Iain. They’ll get me too. One day I’ll disappear, and naebody will know why.’ He did not sound especially fearful, only resigned. Zoe felt a cold tremor along her arms.

  ‘Who, Robbie? Doe
s someone want to hurt you? Is it the same people you think will do something bad to me?’ She shook him by the shoulder and felt him flinch away from her. He folded his arms on the table and hid his face; she couldn’t tell if he was crying this time or falling asleep. With a deep breath, she smoothed a hand over his velvety close-cropped hair, relieved to see that the wound was only superficial once she had cleaned it up. But she was worried that the blow might have given him a mild concussion, though he seemed lucid enough; she could not really remember how hard she had swung the piece of wood.

  There was nothing to be achieved by pushing him further now. It was nearly midnight. Instead she led him upstairs, helped him off with his damp sweatshirt and tucked him into a bed in one of the spare rooms on the second-floor landing. His eyes closed almost as soon as he lay down, and his pinched, wary face softened in sleep; watching him, she felt another stab of maternal pity and guilt. It was heartbreaking to think that a child should have so little kindness in his life. She bent and planted the ghost of a kiss on his forehead before she left the room, the way she always did with Caleb when he was sleeping, but even as she straightened, she was conscious of the wrongness of it, in every sense. What was she doing here, so far from home, kissing this unknown child goodnight, when she should be with Caleb? Her mother was right; she had been selfish. She switched off the light and left the bedroom door ajar. When Mick returned, she would tell him of her decision: she needed to go home.

  The kitchen was still warm from the range; she found Horace curled in front of it on his blanket, dozing gently with his muzzle on his paws, twitching occasionally in his dreams. She plucked a cold slice of toast from the toaster and bit off a corner, chewing it dutifully, though it had turned rubbery and she no longer felt hungry; the wine and coffee churned in her stomach. She was too wired now, too uneasy for sleep; the loss of the phone line troubled her more than she wanted to admit, though she could not deny the relief she had felt on learning that Robbie had been behind the snapped padlock and the dead gull, rather than Dougie Reid. At the thought of the lock, her eyes strayed to the cellar door, and she recalled the way Robbie had glanced towards it when she had asked him about Iain’s phone. Was it possible, she wondered?

  The key turned easily and the door opened on to a flight of steps descending into musty darkness. She reached inside to flick the light switch, but nothing happened. She almost lost her nerve at that and considered retreating, but her curiosity over what Robbie had been doing down there overcame her fear and she returned with the storm lantern, holding it carefully ahead of her to illuminate the rough stone steps as she moved down, one hand on the wall to steady herself.

  She had not taken in the cellar properly on her previous visit with Mick to look at the generator; she had registered only that it gave her an unpleasant feeling. Now, as she shone the lamp around the walls, she realised that this dank room must be the oldest part of the house; much older than the structure that had been built over it. Two of the walls appeared to have been hewn directly out of the rock of the cliffs, and shored up with worn and ancient-looking stone pillars. As the wavering light slid over the walls, she noticed unusual marks carved into the stone, and recalled Charles’s story about Tamhas McBride building on the foundations of an old chapel, itself erected to sanctify a pagan site. She shivered, largely because the cellar was so cold; the air held a chill, mineral taint that seemed to seep into her skin, and a faint smell of decay. Probably more of Robbie’s rotting burgers, she thought, almost smiling at his childish attempts to frighten her. She would have to clean all that out in the morning.

  Because the house was so newly rebuilt, the space was relatively empty; there was only the detritus of building work, stacked in corners. She saw immediately what had caused the crash that had alerted her to Robbie’s presence; he had knocked over a tall metal shelf unit that had held half-empty paint pots, a tray of tools and off-cuts of electrical cables. The paint did not appear to have spilled; most likely it was all dried out. She stepped over the fallen shelves, deciding she would not attempt to right it until the morning. There was the silent generator in the centre of the floor, cans of fuel ranged along the wall on the other side. The only other item of interest was a large Victorian dresser with a mirror on top, pushed into the corner opposite the set of steps that led up to the coal hatch. Zoe wondered why it had been left here; perhaps it had miraculously survived the decades of neglect in the house and Mick intended to sell it, but had not yet had the chance to transport it. But the many drawers were all pulled out haphazardly, and the body of the dresser had been inched away from the wall – recently, to judge by the scrape marks in the dust. A frisson of fear and excitement sparked through her, as it had when she discovered Ailsa’s book. Robbie had clearly been searching for something down here, before he had given himself away.

  She brought the lamp closer and looked into all the drawers, to see nothing but a couple of old screws and a dead spider. Next, she set the light down beside her and proceeded to take out all the drawers, one by one, to check if anything could have fallen down the back. When she was satisfied that the dresser was completely empty, she sat back on her heels and saw how it had been worked away from the wall; she crouched and dragged it – even empty it was a considerable weight – far enough that she could squeeze into the corner. It took her a moment to realise that the flagstones beneath her feet bore blurred inscriptions in curling, archaic letters, too badly worn to read now, but clear enough to see the shapes of Celtic crosses and dates. She recoiled, realising that these were tombstones, meaning that the cellar must have been built over the crypt of the old chapel. Perhaps that would account for the smell that seemed to be growing stronger. She took a deep breath and reprimanded herself; if there were bodies here, they were centuries old and long since crumbled to dust. The thought was not altogether reassuring. She peered in with the light but could see nothing on the floor behind or under the dresser, and was brushing off her jeans when, looking closer, she noticed that the stone flag in the corner was uneven. She crouched to press it and found that it rocked easily under her hand, though it was fitted too tightly for her to prise up with her fingers. Among the fallen tools she found a thin scraper, the kind used to remove old paint and wallpaper; its blade fitted neatly into the crack between the stones, and though it bent alarmingly, she managed to lift the loose flag. Beneath it, she could see a cavity, and inside this was a child’s woollen glove. She lifted it out, unsurprised to find a hard, oblong object inside; she shook the glove and a scratched mobile phone in an orange plastic case covered in Star Wars stickers fell into her hand.

  She remained crouching, motionless, for what felt like several minutes, while her hands shook uncontrollably. There was no doubt in her mind that this was Iain Finlay’s phone, the one the police had tried unsuccessfully to find, and that Robbie had hidden it down here, perhaps thinking this was the last place anyone would look once the initial search was over. There were even grains of sand stuck inside the edge of the casing. He must have found a number of hiding places for it over the past year; Edward said the police had traced the signal to different locations each time it was switched on. But why had Robbie kept it? She could only think that it must contain evidence of some kind; she would confront him when he woke. No; at once she realised what a mistake it would be to let him know she had found it. He plainly did not want any adults to see what was saved there, or he would have handed it in long before.

  At this thought her gut twisted, remembering what he had said about the mysterious ‘they’ he feared would do something bad to her, and make him disappear. Whoever ‘they’ were, the answer was on this phone, she was certain. She heard her blood thudding in her ears as she pressed the power button, but the screen remained dark; the battery was long dead. She turned the phone over in her hands. It was an old model and her own charger would not fit; she would need to buy or borrow one without arousing suspicion. She knew that she ought to hand it over to the police as soon as possible, and she fu
lly intended to do so, once she had seen for herself what the boy was so afraid of. She would show Edward, too; she needed to talk to him about Robbie and the mark on his face. She slipped the phone into the pocket of her cardigan and picked up the lamp.

  The cellar had grown unbearably cold, or perhaps it was simply that she had not moved for a while, and the smell was worse; there must be a problem with the drains, or else mice had got in here and died, if they hadn’t been planted by Robbie. She stood, hearing her knees crack, and was distracted by a slight movement in the glass of the dresser. Glancing up, she froze as she looked in the mirror to see a figure in a hood standing at the foot of the stairs that led back to the kitchen.

  She surprised herself by not crying out; her voice had stopped in her throat. Her heart skittered, a bitter cold enfolded her whole body and her limbs stiffened, but she could not tear her eyes from it. With shaking fingers she scrabbled at the neck of her shirt for Kaye’s pendant; as she drew it out, she thought she heard the figure laugh softly. She could see them clearly in the mirror; what she had taken for a shepherd’s waterproofed cloak looked more like an old-fashioned lady’s hooded cape. The figure’s hands were folded inside its sleeves and its face could not be seen in the shadows. Don’t turn around, she told herself, in her head, but she knew without seeing. Once more, she sensed that the figure had heard her, and was laughing at her naiveté.

  I was on your side, Zoe thought, her eyes fixed on the mirror. She did not think she said the words aloud. You loved your son; I understand that. I only wanted to defend you.

  She thought then that the figure smiled under its hood, but it was not a reassuring smile. Time to go, it said, softly, in Gaelic, the words echoing through her mind; time to go. It seemed to take a step towards her, one hand outstretched; panic rushed up through her chest to her throat, she backed away towards the coal hatch steps, thinking she might still outrun it if it moved towards her, but she had forgotten the fallen shelf unit; her foot caught it behind her and she could not stop herself falling. She put a hand out; as she looked up, she glimpsed a gleam of pale skin and hard, dark eyes that fixed on her, unmoving, as if they had been painted. In the next instant, the lamp crashed to the floor and she heard the sound of breaking glass as everything turned to black.