Yasmin looks up. Her face is shining. How odd, thinks Bridget. A second ago she was as pale as the grave and now…
“I love you, Mummy,” says Yasmin.
Lily smiles. Turns toward the pond. Glances back over her shoulder. The two of them are on their feet, now, hobbling back toward the house, hand-in hand. “We'll get you warmed up,” Bridget is saying, “and I'll find you a vest and we can go up to the field. You've never been tobogganing, have you?”
Yasmin looks up at her and shakes her head. “No.”
“You'll love that. Love it. My Dad used to take me, in Dulwich Park, when I was your age. There's a couple of tea trays in the scullery. We'll take them out after. You'll love it.”
Chapter Fifty-six
“Does Mummy know you're in here?”
She hasn't heard him coming. He's tiptoed up the attic stairs and the sound of his furtive movements hasn't broken through the pall of sleep. She is so drugged with cold and boredom and helplessness that she sleeps almost all day, after her wakeful nights in the dormitory.
Lily's unpacked each of the trunks and spread their contents over the attic so that the room is tented against draughts and the heat of the electric fire is concentrated into the small space around the chaise longue. Sprawled in its heat in her cream chiffon ballgown, surrounded by her favourite objects, she looks like a fairy in an abandoned jewel box. She stares at him, takes a moment to register the truth of his presence. And then she pulls her dress over herself, tries to cover up.
“What are you doing?” he asks.
“Nothing,” she says. “I was asleep.”
“Little thief,” he says. “Mummy said she'd had to lock you up, but I bet she didn't know you'd be getting in here and stealing as well.”
“I ain't stealing,” says Lily. “I was cold, that's all. It's freezing in there.”
“What's that you're wearing?”
He's got his swagger on. She knows the swagger. He always uses it when he's feeling powerful, when he's going to show his power to the world.
“Nothing.”
“Doesn't look like nothing to me.”
He steps forward, into the pool of warmth. “Let's have a look.”
“No,” she says. Pulls it closer around her.
“Little thief,” he says. “Thought you'd dress up, did you? Thought you'd put on granny's dress and turn into a princess?”
Oh, God. Please keep him away from me. I can't bear it.
“I can't wear my own clothes. I've been wearing them for weeks. They're filthy.”
“I should have thought,” says Hugh, “you'd be used to that.”
“Your mother,” she tries appealing to his sense, “has – something's wrong, Hugh. You must be able to see. She's locked me in here. It's not right.”
He's standing over her now. He's fourteen and heavyset and she'll never be a match for him.
“Have to stop you stealing somehow,” he says.
“Please, Hugh.”
“Well we'll just –” he takes one more step forward, kneels over her, “get you out of those for a start.”
Oh, God.
And she's curled into a ball, muscles tight, hands latched over her head. This can't be. It can't be happening. I'm nine years old. You can't be doing this to me. Please, please, don't do this, please…
He's got his big hands on me. He's got them in, between my arms and my knees, and I can't stop him, he's too strong. He's uncurling me like a woodlouse, pulling me open. I'll kick. Kick him. Kick at his face, get him away from me…
“Ouch,” says Hugh. “You little –”
And now he's right on top, pinning her down. Knees on her hips, hands wrenching at her arms. Don't. God. Help me. What did I do? What did I do? He's – oh, god, he's revolting. He's disgusting. I have to – I can't – please, help me. He's got his knees between my thighs, now, and he's pulling the dress up. He can't. He can't do this. He –
She gets a hand free. Slaps at his face. He slaps her back. Grabs her round the waist and hoists her, drops her on the floor. Lily tries to crawl, tries to get away, feels his hand grip the back of the dress, haul her back toward him. They can do anything, these people, anything, to people like us. I don't stand a – God, get him off me!
“Come on, come on, come on,” he says urgently, thickly. “Dirty little –”
Her hand, scrabbling beneath the couch, trying to get purchase, falls on something hard. Grips it. She doesn't know what it is, just that it fits her hand, that it's heavy, that it comes with her as he pulls her backwards. And now she's on her back again, and his face – his face is purple and his pupils are like pinpricks, and he's miles away, somewhere deep inside himself, and he's not thinking at all, not seeing a human being, just intent on –
Lily strikes out. Feels the crack as her weapon connects. Sees as she draws it back, that it's a paperweight, chipped and scratched, made of glass. Hears a strange noise come from his mouth, a sort of wail, an animal, incoherent sound, a babble. His hands loose their grip, clutch at his head. And he slumps. Forward, onto her, pinning her to the floor.
Chapter Fifty-seven
A lovely day. A lovely, lovely day. We're right back on track, Yasmin and me. We like each other again, understand each other. She trusts me, now: knows I'm on her side, knows we can have fun together. Be fun together.
Bridget stands in the doorway to Yasmin's room, listens to the sound of her breathing. My child: my beautiful child. Days like this, days when they're together and she's learning, and Yasmin's learning, and she can feel the knowledge pass between them, when they wear themselves out with the cold and the joy of it – these are the days when she know it's going to be all right, when she knows that somehow, despite everything, despite their precipitous situation, despite the past, despite the unknown future, they will be okay. They'll be okay because they have each other, and each other is all they need.
Ten o'clock, and she's already on the verge of sleep. There's steam coming from the bathroom door, carrying with it the fragrance of lavender. She thinks maybe she'll call Carol later, once she's clean and cheerful: let her know that things are all right again. It's been ten days since they last spoke and she can't stay out of phone's reach forever. She'll leave a message, anyway, at least, cancelling last night's cry of despair. Poor Carol. Not fair to put this burden on her, when she's finally getting her own life back.
Bridget pulls the bedroom door almost to, leaving a crack of light to dissipate the darkness within, and walks up the corridor, undoing the belt of her dressing gown as she goes. The flat is toasty. She's whacked the heating up on the assumption that Tom Gordhavo will never notice the cost among that of keeping the pipes in the rest of the house from freezing.
Instead of her usual quick-change, she drops the robe onto the bathroom floor and looks at herself in the mirror as she pins her hair up. It's a long time since I did this, she thinks, not since soon after Yasmin was born, when the shock of the change in my body and Kieran's disgust drove me to scuttle past reflecting surfaces as though they would steal my soul. It's not as bad as I remember. Maybe I've got used to it; maybe it's got better again over the years. My stomach's nothing to write home about, but my breasts are okay – round and soft and welcoming, as breasts should be – and the work here has taken some weight off me, the lifting and carrying and polishing have given me more muscle tone than I had before. My skin's better, too. Away from the pollutants of London air, the relentless burden of worry, it's clearer, less lined, softer; the dark circles under my eyes have begun to recede. She smiles at herself, sees the corners of her mouth dimple.
The bath is almost too hot to bear. Bridget lowers herself in inch by inch, falls back against the back of the tub, and sighs. Inhales deeply and splashes hot oily water over her arms and hands.
The lights go out.
Oh, God damn it. I thought Mark said he'd sorted that out. Damn it. Just when I'd got comfortable.
She heaves a heavy sigh and sits up, feels the suck of t
he water as she levers herself out of the bath. To her eyes, unadjusted after the dazzle, the room is pitch black. She feels her way over the lino, toe by toe, until she finds her dressing gown, discarded in the corner by the sink. After the heat of the bath, the air is cold on her skin, and she knows it's going to be a lot colder down in the main house.
“Damn it,” she says again. Feels the sough of towelling on her goose-pimples, ties the belt tight around her. Goes to the kitchen and finds the candle.
The stairs no longer feel alien. Her bare feet know, now, the uneven treads, and the shadows around her no longer hold unknown dangers. She just wants to get back into the bath. Wants to get warm and comfortable again. Is irritated, not timid.
Cold moonlight bathes the ground floor where she has left the curtains unopened. She puts her head into the fuse cupboard and sees that nothing has tripped.
“Oh, God damn it,” she says again. It's the outside power lines. They're off the grid for the foreseeable.
“Bums, bums, bums,” she says. Isn't even really aware that she's speaking out loud. Right, well. I'll have to go out to that damn shed and get some wood in for the morning. I'll do it in the morning. Just go to bed now. Damn it, why didn't I accept that camping stove? It's going to take forever to get the woodburner up and running in the main kitchen, and we won't be able to have anything hot to eat 'til I do. Hopefully there's enough hot water left, anyway, that I can get a decent hot water bottle out of it. And if the worst comes to the worst, we can just spend the next few days holed up in the living room with a fire.
She goes through to the drawing room to get the spare stock of candles. Big, fat church candles, part-burned and beautiful, left behind by the Aykroyds. It took a lot of elbow grease to get the dribbled wax off the dining room table, but she'll be glad of them now.
Bridget marches smartly, looks neither left nor right. She's less familiar with these rooms by night and the shadows are deeper, longer. She feels the familiar prickle of the hairs on her arms. Curses herself for a superstitious housewife. There's no-one here, Bridget. You know there's no-one here.
The candles are where she thought they would be, in the window seat where Yasmin hid all those weeks ago. She lowers her single light into the cavernous space, checks for spiders. Takes three – all she can carry in a single armful – of the candles and starts to make her way back toward the dining room.
As she passes the front door, something catches her eye. Outside. A small splash of light.
Bridget stops. Funny.
The light moves. Skitters over the snow in the front garden, flits up and plays over the windows. She can see it hit the back wall of the dining room from where she stands in the hall.
Torchlight. It's torchlight.
There's someone out there.
The front door is unlocked. So is the back. She's got complacent. She's stopped worrying.
And she knows who it is. Who would be creeping around her house in the snow. In the dark.
Kieran's here.
Chapter Fifty-eight
I must stay calm. I must stay calm. Got to lock the door, first. Lock him out. Stop him coming in.
She blows out her candle. He's probably already seen its shadow, crossing the windows, but she can't let him know where she is now.
He's here. How did he find me? I don't…
Bridget stoops, lays down her burden, silently, silently, on the flagstones. There is sweat – cold – on her forehead. She bites her lip.
What do I do?
Oh, God, Carol. He's done something to Carol. That's why she's not answering her phone: he's got it, somehow, and that means he's... oh Carol. My friend. Please be okay. Wherever you are. Please don't let him have...
Every nerve tells her to back away from him, not to go closer. She can see the light approaching. He's coming. He's coming to the door.
Don't.
She has to force herself to breathe. Feels it stagger in, in, and release slowly, slowly, as though he will hear her from the other side of the door. Bridget drops to her knees. Crawls forward. Reaches out with unjointed fingers and grasps the bolt. Turns it, slides it slowly, slowly, into the hasp.
The crunch of boots on stone. He's in the porch. Stamping the snow from his insteps.
She reaches up, cowers below the window as she takes the key in her fist. It's in the lock already, where it sits permanently, to prevent it being lost. He'll hear me. He'll hear. He must know I'm here. Must know.
He clears his throat. He's not in a hurry. He's got all night.
Bridget turns the key. Scrape and clunk of ancient metalwork.
He goes quiet. He heard me.
The door handle begins to turn. She can hear him breathing.
He must be able to hear me, too.
She presses herself against the panel, tries to hide herself in the dark. I can't move away. If I try to run, he'll see me through the window. He'll know I'm here. He'll know I know.
Oh, God, help me.
The door moves against her back. Slightly, slightly. And the locks catch, hold, give no more.
Oh, God, help me.
“Faaa,” he mutters. It's him. It's him. She hears him step back into the porch, shuffle around on the stones. Lifts her hand up again, frozen in space, takes the key, lightly, lightly, between her fingers. Eases it, bit by bit, from the lock.
The glass above her shatters. A single tiny pane, big enough for a hand, an arm.
She runs for it. Hears him swear again as he realises she's been within hand's grasp, hears the door resound in its frame as though a body has been hurled against it.
And now she's going full pelt. Through the dining room. Past the windows, too high to see out of, past the table, the great cupboard, past the office door into the kitchen, where appliances hunch silent, brooding, without their power.
Oh, God, help me.
She can hear him, now, wading through the snow, in her wake, slowed by the weight, but coming. Please, please, please…
She snatches the scullery key from the hook inside the kitchen, runs to the door, turns the lock, throws the bolts. Oh, God. None of it will keep him out for long. He'll find a way. He'll find his way in and he'll find his way up the stairs and…
Yasmin. Oh, darling. I am so afraid.
She's screaming inside as she runs up the stairs. Lets it burst from her lungs when she reaches the top. Flounders up the corridor, throws open her daughter's bedroom door. “Darling! Darling! Oh, God, quickly!”
She feels her way toward the bed, trips on a discarded shoe and nearly turns turtle. Come on, come on, come on. Yasmin shouts out in the dark. “Who's there? Who is it?”
It pulls her up, forces her calm. I can't give her my panic. I can't feed on hers.
“Shhh,” she says. “It's me.”
“What is it?”
“Darling,” she says, “We've got to…”
“He's here,” says Yasmin.
She considers, momentarily, a lie. Then: “Yes,” she replies. “We've got to… quickly. Come on. Hold my hand. We'll…”
He'll find us. Wherever we go he'll find us.
I'll call the police. We'll barricade ourselves in somewhere, and wait it out. My bag. In the bedroom.
Yasmin is silent as they jog along the corridor. She can feel him breathe. Feel him think. He'll be working his way round the house. Finding the chink, finding the weak spots. It's all so old. The window frames are only held together by their paint, some of them. He'll find one. Oh, God, did I check the other door? At the other end of the house? After the Bensons left?
Cold washes through her. She feels weak. Not sure if her knees will support her.
Now they're inside the bedroom, and she's hauling at the chest-of-drawers, dragging it across the carpet. “Find the phone,” she says. “Dial 999.” The chest is heavy; old teak, weighed down by clothes and precious things. If I wasn't so afraid, she thinks, I wouldn't be able to move this. I'm like one of those people who lift cars off their children. Adre
nalin. It makes you strong.
You get adrenalin from anger, too. He'll be as strong.
Don't. Don't. Just push.
She heaves it across the door. Pushes it, as hard as she can, up against the panels.
“It's just beeps,” says Yasmin, her face lit ghostly green by the caller display.
She sits against the chest, holds out a hand in the dark. “Give it here.”
There are no bars. No bars. This damn signal. She stares at the phone, despairingly, throws it across the room. Oh, Carol, what's happened to you? He's done something, I know he has. You would have found a way to get a message to me otherwise, I know you would...
“Call them on the landline, Mummy,” says Yasmin, calmly.
“The electricity's out,” she says. “The phone won't work.”
“What are we going to do?”
Bridget puts her head in her hands. “I don't know, baby. I don't know.”
Chapter Fifty-nine
He's got the scent of the chase now. So near to getting her, and so far. He brushed the tips of her hair with his fingertips as she slipped away from him, and now his blood is hot. He prowls round the house, snuffs the air like a hunting wolf.
There are signs of them all over. Her car in the driveway, a six-inch crust of snow on roof and windscreen, a Barbie, half-naked, on the back seat. Through a window, in a room full of washing machines where sheets hang from a ceiling rack like Spanish moss, his wife's old suede coat and Yasmin's anorak, a pair of tiny, unfamiliar boots lined up inside the door. Two pairs of woollen gloves, carelessly discarded on a worktop. He feels a surge of possession run through him, proximity heightening the senses. She is mine. She is mine. Soon she will be.
He tries the door. No give. It's okay. I'll find a way. There will be a way she hasn't thought of.
The snow on this side of the house is battered, scuffed half-way across the lawn. A scruffy little snowman, two feet high, with twigs for arms and black-coal eyes stares, sightlessly at him. He can see them now, oblivious, wavelets of powdered white frothing about their feet. They are laughing. Careless. Thoughtless.
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