The Sixth Window

by Rachel Abbott

  I feel so bad about lying to them. I don’t want them to send me back to the children’s home, but I can’t give this up. I’ve not been paid yet because the magazine has to accept the pictures first and it can be a lengthy process, but I don’t care about that.

  What I do care about, though, is that somehow I seem to have ruined everything, and my throat has been aching with the effort of not crying all evening. I don’t know how I stopped myself from bursting into tears at the table. Shirley knew there was something the matter. She asked me once, but when I wouldn’t answer she just patted my hand.

  It’s not just the whole bit about being a model that I love. It’s him! He’s been texting me the sweetest messages all week, and today felt like pure magic – at least to start with. I was more confident and I seemed to be getting the poses right most of the time.

  And then something incredible happened. I can feel my cheeks getting hot as I think about it.

  For the last session I had to wear a dress, and I couldn’t zip it up. I had to call him into the room to do it for me. But before he pulled the zip up, he kissed my back. Just gently, but it made me shiver. Then he zipped me up, and we carried on with the photos as if nothing had happened. But I was such a mess!

  Then it was time to get changed, and I could hear my voice shaking as I asked him if he’d undo my dress. He pulled down the zip, but he didn’t move away. I felt his arms slide inside and around my waist, his fingers stroking my skin.

  He whispered in my ear, ‘You know I want you, don’t you?’

  I felt as if the air had left my body.

  He said no more, and after a moment he left me to get dressed. But this time when I was ready to leave he held me away from him.

  ‘I can’t hug you again,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t be able to stop myself from kissing you.’

  It felt like the end of the world. In a life that’s seen very few hugs, his have come to mean everything to me, and my eyes filled with hot tears.

  ‘Please,’ I said. ‘I want a hug. I don’t mind if you kiss me.’

  He shook his head. ‘I can’t, darling. I’m so sorry. Perhaps it’s better if you don’t come again. If I can’t have you, it’s going to be too difficult for me.’

  ‘You can have me,’ I whispered.

  But he shook his head. ‘Come on. Let’s get you home.’

  He didn’t touch me again. I’ve sent him a few texts, but he hasn’t answered. I think I’ve lost him and it’s killing me.

  I pull a notepad from my bedside table. The first page is covered with doodles, all of his name. I grab my pen and start to draw each letter using an elaborate combination of shapes. It’s the W I like the best. I can create something symmetrical and sexy from that.

  I hope he’ll change his mind and let me see him again. He can do what he likes. Lots of girls I know have had sex, or so they say. And if that’s what it takes to keep him, that’s what I’m going to do.

  35

  After a restless night when Scarlett had lain rigid in bed, not wanting to toss and turn for fear of disturbing her mum, they had quietly got dressed for the police interview, both lost in their own thoughts, and made their way to the address they had been given.

  Scarlett wasn’t sure what she was going to say. She had to tell them about the text, though. If it had come from some other woman and not Alison, she might have been married, maybe with a jealous husband. Should she tell the police who she had suspected and why? She still didn’t know.

  A policeman came into the reception and introduced himself as Detective Sergeant Keith Sims.

  ‘Thank you both for coming. Shall we get Scarlett’s interview done first? We don’t want you sitting here worrying about it, do we?’ he said briskly but not unkindly. ‘Come on through, both of you.’

  Scarlett stood up. ‘Actually,’ she said, hating herself for the tremor in her voice, ‘can I be interviewed on my own, please?’ She glanced nervously at her mum, who was frowning slightly. ‘Mum, I want to talk about when Dad left that morning, and I know it’s going to upset you. It’s easier if you’re not there. Is that okay?’

  ‘I won’t interrupt you, sweetheart, I promise. Wouldn’t you feel more comfortable if I was with you?’

  Scarlett closed her eyes. This was so hard. ‘No. Please, Mum. I’m fifteen and I don’t need a babysitter.’

  DS Sims stepped forward. ‘Mrs Gray, I’ll ask a female colleague to come down to sit in on the interview. Is that all right with you?’

  Still looking slightly mystified, her mum agreed and sat back down again. DS Sims showed Scarlett into an interview room.

  ‘Wait here, Scarlett. I’ll be back in a moment.’

  Scarlett sat down and started to bite her fingernails, a habit she had grown out of years ago. She didn’t have long to wait. The policeman was back within a couple of minutes.

  ‘Someone’s on their way down. Would you like anything to drink – some water, perhaps?’

  Scarlett shook her head, and the sergeant allowed her to collect her thoughts while he shuffled some papers around on the desk. The door opened, and Scarlett looked up to see a woman a few years younger than her mum walk in, her shiny dark hair bouncing on her shoulders. She gave Scarlett a wide, friendly smile.

  ‘DI Robinson,’ DS Sims said, a note of surprise in his voice. ‘I just asked for a female officer. You didn’t have to come down.’

  ‘No, I didn’t. Quite right. But I was free so I thought I’d keep you company. Hi, Scarlett. I’m Becky. Keith here will be asking you the questions, but you must say if you’re not clear or you’re worried about answering. Is that okay?’

  Scarlett nodded, but as the policewoman called Becky sat down she blurted it out: ‘I think my dad was having an affair.’

  *

  The two police officers had given Scarlett time to dry her eyes and make herself look more respectable before they took her back to the reception area. She had told them everything she knew, which wasn’t much.

  She kept her head down as she walked with the detective, who had insisted that Scarlett should call her Becky.

  ‘Scarlett?’ her mum said, concern clear in her voice.

  ‘She’s okay, Mrs Gray. It just got a bit emotional in there. Understandable, really.’

  Becky introduced herself. ‘Are you ready now, Mrs Gray? I’m sorry we have to put you both through this again, but your husband was one of ours, and we’re not going to give up on him, although I know it may have seemed like that.’

  ‘But if you’ve found the driver, why do we need to go over everything again?’

  ‘We’ve found the person who stole the car, yes, but we need to make sure he was driving it when the incident happened. It’s best if we go over everything to make sure we haven’t missed something important. Would you like to come with me, please?’

  Scarlett looked at their backs as they walked down the corridor and wondered if she had done the right thing. What if they told her mum what she’d said? It would break her heart. Becky had said that their interview was confidential, and she just had to hope they’d stick to their promise and keep it to themselves.

  36

  Much to Scarlett’s dismay, after they left the police headquarters her mum insisted that they go into town for some lunch. She felt sure there was going to be an inquisition about what she had told the officers, and it was so difficult saying nothing. Her mum tried to talk to her, to reassure her that the police were only doing their job, but Scarlett spent the hour on the edge of her seat, expecting a direct question. But it never came, and finally the meal was over.

  Scarlett returned alone to the apartment, and breathed a sigh of relief as she sat down on the sofa and went over in her mind everything that had happened.

  The whole morning had been terrible, but at least she had now told the police everything, and Becky seemed to think the information Scarlett had given them might open a useful line of enquiry. They were going to follow it up with those closest to Sergeant Gray, as Keith
Sims had kept referring to her dad.

  They had also said that it was good of her to come all the way into town, and Scarlett realised they thought she and her mum were either living in their own house or maybe they knew about Ed. The police clearly didn’t know they had moved out, so she had said nothing. However, over lunch it became clear that her mum hadn’t been able to avoid the subject and had been asked a direct question.

  ‘What did you tell them?’ Scarlett had asked, hoping and praying nothing had been said about any so-called inappropriate behaviour, as her mum kept calling it, on Ed’s part.

  ‘I said that in retrospect we had moved in together too soon, and although I’d thought I was ready, that was clearly not the case. We were taking some time to work out our next steps.’

  At least that hadn’t got them investigating Ed, and Scarlett was glad of that.

  As she sat on the sofa in the apartment she picked up a cushion, hugging it to her. She felt guilty about telling tales, something that as a child she had always been told not to do, unless the alternative was lying, which was equally forbidden. The trouble was that unless the text message was directly related to her dad’s death, the only person who would be hurt if all this came out was her mum, and she really didn’t want that.

  Scarlett was so deep in thought that it was minutes before she registered the sound – faint to start with, but growing in volume.

  She leaped up from the sofa and crept across the room to put the side of her head flat against the wall. It was the girl again, but this time she wasn’t laughing. She seemed to be gasping for air.

  It didn’t make sense. Martin had told her the apartment next door was empty. Was he lying? Or maybe it had been ghosts all along.

  *

  Scarlett didn’t move from her spot for ten minutes. Maybe longer, she wasn’t sure. She had put a glass to the wall again, her hand shaking as she pressed her ear against the base of the tumbler. How could these sounds be coming from an empty apartment? Perhaps it wasn’t their apartment that was haunted. Perhaps it was the one on the other side of the wall.

  Gradually the sounds subsided, and finally there was silence. Scarlett thought about knocking on the wall and shouting to see if anyone would answer. But if nobody responded she would know there really wasn’t anybody there – that no human was making the noises.

  After hearing nothing for an hour Scarlett decided to ignore what Martin had said. She didn’t want to believe the next-door apartment was empty. He had to be lying, and this time she was determined not to be put off. If there was nobody in when she rang the bell of the apartment, she would put a note under the door.

  Grabbing a notebook from her bag, she tore out a page, picked up a biro and her keys from the worktop and left the flat, walking quickly along the dingy corridor before she could change her mind. She took the lift to the lobby, ran down the outside staircase and up the other side to the south wing, punching the code into the keypad.

  It was only as she reached the door of the apartment adjoining theirs that she began to wonder what she was doing, and what she was going to say if there really was someone living there.

  Her hand hovered over the bell push.

  ‘Oh, stuff it,’ she muttered under her breath, and pressed the button firmly.

  Through the door she heard it ring, but irrational as the thought seemed, the ding-dong of the chime sounded as if it was bouncing off emptiness.

  She rang the bell again, and once more felt certain that the sound was disappearing into a vacuum. She put her ear to the door, but there was nothing.

  Scarlett rested the piece of paper against the wall and started to write a note. She had only written a couple of words when she heard the now familiar huffing and puffing of an overweight man stomping along the corridor, still out of sight around the bend.

  ‘Shit,’ she muttered. She needed to hide, but where? Then Scarlett noticed the other door, back towards the turn in the corridor, and thought she would just have time to make it. As in their wing, it was labelled FIRE EXIT.

  Scarlett raced towards the door, yanked it open and dodged behind it, pulling it closed just in time as, through the small square window, she saw Martin’s red face appear around the corner.

  He stopped dead, his head whipping from side to side, his hands resting on ample hips in his customary pose before pulling out a hanky to wipe his brow.

  Martin shook his head and glanced at the door to the apartment he claimed was empty, then crossed the corridor to the single door on the opposite side. He gave two sharp knocks, not bothering with the bell, and within seconds the door opened. Whoever answered was standing well back, beyond Scarlett’s line of sight, but it had to be the person who had reported her prowling around.

  She couldn’t hear what was said, but Martin shrugged his shoulders several times. Suddenly he swung round. Scarlett ducked down below the window, hoping he hadn’t spotted her. Maybe the person spying from across the corridor had seen her come in here.

  She was certain that with Martin’s bulk he had no chance of catching her, so she ran lightly down the stairs as far as the exit to the street. A bar across the door indicated that it should be pressed to get out, but there was a warning notice.

  THIS DOOR IS ALARMED

  PLEASE ONLY EXIT IN AN EMERGENCY

  ‘Hey,’ a voice shouted, and Scarlett recognised it as Martin’s. ‘Are you down there?’ His voice echoed off the bare walls.

  She stayed quiet, crouching beneath the bottom set of stairs.

  After a few minutes Scarlett couldn’t hear any sounds from above and guessed that Martin had decided not to exert himself by coming down the stairs to look for her. She couldn’t hear his wheezy breathing either, but there was a chance he would be waiting for her in the corridor, knowing she had to come out some time.

  She could see from her hiding place that next to the door was a keypad which she guessed would allow the door to be opened without setting off the alarm. She crept forward and entered the code she used to get into the main entrance.

  As she half expected, the screen flashed ‘Error’. She was going to have to go back the way she had come.

  She had no idea how long Martin would hang about to see if she would reappear, but she waited a few moments and then crept back up the stairs, listening carefully for his breathing. There was nothing.

  When she reached the second floor she peered through the small window. The corridor appeared to be empty as far as she could tell from her narrow field of view. The door to the apartment opposite was closed.

  Slowly she opened the door and stepped out.

  ‘Hello.’

  Scarlett felt her heart leap in her chest. The voice came from her left, from the side of the wall that she couldn’t see from the window. She spun towards it.

  A man was standing there, leaning against the wall, checking her out. He was tall with a couple of days’ growth of dark beard which almost disguised a slightly pointed chin, and his black expressionless eyes pinned Scarlett to the spot. He pushed himself off the wall and walked slowly towards her. It was the man she had seen that first morning coming out of this wing, and every instinct told her to run.

  37

  Becky looked up from her desk to see Tom walking towards her, a frown on his face.

  ‘What’s up?’ she asked as he drew closer.

  He appeared surprised at her question. ‘Nothing’s up. Why do you ask?’

  ‘No reason. Just thought you looked a bit bothered by something, that’s all.’ She pointed to the chair by the side of her desk, and Tom sat down. ‘Do you want a catch-up on anything?’

  ‘I think we need to go back and talk to Jennifer Bale’s parents again. And Archie. Maybe this time with them all in one room. The trouble is, I feel more like a counsellor than a policeman, as if getting them all together is part of their family therapy.’

  ‘What are you going to say to them?’

  ‘Tell them where we’re up to, and I suppose at some point – when A
rchie’s not around – we’re going to have to tell them about the evidence of sexual activity, although I’m not relishing the thought of that conversation.’

  Becky couldn’t help but agree and for a moment wished she could duck out of the meeting. But that wouldn’t be fair on Tom.

  ‘It seems clear that Jennifer met this boy or man at the River View Pool,’ Tom said. ‘But somehow those kids seem unlikely suspects to me. They could be brilliant actors, of course, but they’re skinny kids who like to get their kicks from acting daft in the water and dive-bombing each other. The only possible sighting – and that could be pure coincidence – is of a male standing by the school playing fields who seemed to scare the life out of her. And none of those boys look anything like a man.’

  ‘Yeah, but the man may have nothing to do with it. Jennifer might just have rushed off to go to the loo.’

  Tom leaned back and put his hands behind his head, looking up at the ceiling as if for inspiration.

  ‘We’ve put out an appeal for anyone who was around the playing fields that day. It might have been some harmless guy who decided to stop to watch the girls.’

  Becky pulled a face. ‘Well, it’s not entirely harmless to hang about watching a load of fifteen-year-old girls running around in their knickers. Do you think anyone’s going to admit to that?’

  Tom shrugged. ‘It’s what athletes wear though – and probably less revealing than a swimming costume, if you want to be picky.’ Tom’s head suddenly shot up. ‘That’s a thought. We’ve assumed all along that Jennifer met the boyfriend when she was swimming – in the water – but maybe she didn’t. Maybe he was watching from the gallery or the café at the pool.’

  ‘When would he have spoken to her, though?’

  Tom didn’t answer, his face showing that he was thinking, his eyes unfocused.