The Friendship Pact

by Alison James

  The sense of isolation is overwhelming; far worse than she’d anticipated. I can’t do this, she says frequently, to the empty room. It’s not going to work. Even something as simple as ordering a takeout coffee seems fraught. She gives her name on the order as ‘Lucy’, then, blushing and flustered, switches it to ‘Jo’, earning a quizzical look from the barista.

  Even submitting the final draft of her thesis to her tutor is bittersweet. She’s proud of her achievement and pleased with the end result, but it’s Lucy Wheedon who will be an MSc in Social Anthropology. Not Joanne Chandler.

  I can’t do this…

  But then she considers the alternative, and resolves instead to think of ways to make her life as Joanne a little more bearable. Having decided that staying in Brighton is not an option for her, Lucy needs to look for accommodation elsewhere. No longer having a car is a huge obstacle and makes it difficult to spread her search wide. She’d like to find somewhere in London, but without employment, it’s simply too expensive. And even if she picks a distant suburb there will always be a risk of seeing Marcus, or someone he knows. As soon as she has an address, she can start applying for jobs, so accommodation is the first priority.

  She narrows the search to either Lewes or Eastbourne but quickly realises the flaw in her plan. To apply for rental properties, she’ll need references and a credit history. So the next practicality she tackles is to open a bank account as Joanne Chandler, which proves easy enough using her passport and the utility bill. Lucy tells the clerk that she has just moved to the area from London, which prompts a request for her previous address. She writes down the first flat she lived in when she moved to London as a new graduate, crossing her fingers that they won’t actually check, and asks to collect her new card in person from the branch rather than have it mailed to a flat she’ll only be using for another three days.

  ‘It’s a big block of flats, and all the mail gets dumped in the communal hall,’ she tells the bank clerk, impressed with her own ability to think on her feet. ‘So really it’s a security issue.’

  Lucy also falls into the habit of leaving the television on in the flat, simply to fill the unbearable emptiness with voices. She’s keeping the new phone switched off unless she needs it; out of habit rather than as a precaution. When she switches it on during her penultimate evening in the depressing studio, there’s a text from Jane.

  Haven’t heard from you in ages… dropped round at the house to check but no one in. Is everything okay? J xx

  The temptation to reply is strong. But it would undermine everything she has had to sacrifice to get to this point. Instead she deletes the text and reluctantly blocks Jane’s number. This only serves to emphasise her sense of isolation, and she convinces herself that if she could only make contact with Adele, that would provide some sort of human lifeline. They wouldn’t need to meet up, but they could at least talk. She sends Denny a message asking for Adele’s number. An hour later there’s no reply, so she switches the phone off and starts getting ready for bed. As she’s brushing her teeth, the intercom handset near the front door makes a squawking noise. Having never used it before, she assumes this is some sort of an electrical malfunction and ignores it. It chirrups again.

  Lucy has removed her contact lenses so has to squint at the flickering image on the video screen. The system is cheap and of poor quality, like everything else in the flat, leaving the image of the visitor cropped from the neck down. She can only make out that there’s a familiar figure standing there; a tall man.

  The sound is distorted too, but down the handset she can just about make out: ‘Hello, darling.’

  Denny? Why is he here now? Her hand hesitates over the door release button.

  ‘Let me up.’

  She presses ‘Enter’, and it’s only as she hears feet thundering up the stairs that it strikes her that this man is not wearing trainers, but shoes. Proper shoes with rigid soles. And the long coat that struck her as familiar is identical to the cashmere overcoat she bought her husband for their fifth-wedding anniversary.

  Marcus.

  She doesn’t have time to work out how he could possibly have found her, because he is already banging his fist on the door of the flat. Even though she’s at risk of disturbing the whole building, she stands frozen at the centre of the room, her heart hammering in her chest.

  ‘Open up!’ he barks.

  Lucy doesn’t move. And then there’s a splintering sound as his shoulder is hurled against the door, breaking loose the flimsy lock. Slamming the door back against the wall, he strolls into the room with a fixed smile on his face.

  ‘Not up to much, is it, this place?’ He looks around at the drab furnishings and Lucy’s suitcase, open on the floor and still half unpacked. ‘Was it really worth giving up a lovely detached house near the river in Barnes for this dump?’ It’s a rhetorical question, because before she can open her mouth he extends a hand to her. ‘Come on, Lucinda, you need to come with me.’

  Lucy pulls her dressing gown around her tightly, shaking her head. ‘No. I’m not coming with you. And if you try to make me, I’m going to call the police. I’m not coming back, Marcus.’

  He sighs, and his expression softens. ‘Darling, it’s your father.’

  She feels the blood drain from her face and her legs start to shake. ‘He’s not…?’

  ‘He’s had a second stroke. A much bigger one this time. He’s in a bad way, Lucinda, so if you ever want to see him again, we’d better go.’

  How could I have walked away from my own father, knowing this could happen at any moment? A wave of shock and guilt washes over Lucy. With tears welling up, she heads into the bedroom alcove and gets dressed in the clothes she’s just removed, putting her laptop into her bag with shaking hands. When she emerges, Marcus is shoving items of clothing into her suitcase. ‘And if you’re wondering how the hell I found you, can I just point out that you’re not as clever as you think. A second phone. Pretty obvious, wasn’t it?’ He looks around the room, then takes her bag from her, pulling out the offending phone handset. ‘You won’t be needing this any more anyway.’ He tosses it onto the far corner of the countertop in the tiny kitchenette. To reach it, she will have to squeeze past him.

  Lucy wants to argue that she does need the phone, but that will delay them, and all she can think of is that they need to get to her father before it’s too late. Before he’s gone for ever. So she lets the cheap phone go, little knowing how dearly this decision will cost her.

  Marcus shoulders her case and prods open the broken door with his foot. ‘Come on; no time to waste. We need to go.’

  They drive in silence along the darkened motorway, headlights coming and going and Lucy’s head crowded with so many fragments of thought that she feels as though she’s hallucinating. But uppermost in them is fear of losing her father, interspersed with flashbacks of the final drive to the hospital to see her mother for the very last time. She closes her eyes and tips her head back, making the tears run down her jawline and drip onto her neck. Marcus turns to look at her every few minutes but remains silent.

  When they reach the intersection with the M25, instead of taking the westbound slip road and heading for the Redgate turning, Marcus carries straight on into central London.

  ‘I thought we were going to see Dad,’ Lucy says, feeling an acid wash of fear rise up her from her stomach.

  ‘We are,’ Marcus says calmly. ‘He needed specialist care at a hyper-acute stroke unit, so he’s been transferred to Charing Cross Hospital.’

  They weave through south-west London and are suddenly on the familiar, tree-lined streets of Barnes, a couple of miles from the hospital. Marcus turns the car into their own driveway.

  ‘Why aren’t we going straight to Hammersmith?’ she demands.

  Marcus gets out of the car, takes her suitcase from the boot and then leans in through the open door to speak to her. Now that the car’s interior light is on, she notices how gaunt he looks. He has lost more weight, even in the
week since she last saw him.

  ‘It’s midnight: we’re not going to be allowed onto the HASU now. You can head over there first thing.’

  ‘No,’ says Lucy stubbornly. Fuelled by a combustible mixture of anger and alarm, she jumps out of the car and stands under the porch light to check that she has some cash in her wallet. ‘If he’s really that critical, then I’m not going to risk leaving it until tomorrow. I’ll get a cab over there and plead with the staff to let me see him.’

  Whip-fast, Marcus lunges at her, yanking her bag from her with one hand and grabbing her upper arm with the other. She stumbles, and he takes advantage of her temporary loss of balance to drag her through the front door, slamming it behind them. Before she can even draw breath, he has double-locked the mortice and pocketed the key. Her heart rate quickening, she darts to the French doors in the kitchen, but they’re locked and the keys are nowhere in sight. She tries the windows, but they’re locked too and the metal security screens are drawn shut.

  The same is true in the drawing room, and the dining room. Burglaries are common in the detached houses in their street – set back from the pavement and untouched by street lighting – so when they bought the place they had lockable security grilles fitted on every ground-floor window.

  Marcus stands in the hallway, still in his cashmere coat and holding her bag, watching her dart from room to room like a caged animal. Eventually he intercepts her and holds her arms down hard by her sides. His fingers dig into her flesh, making her gasp with pain.

  ‘You’re hurting me!’

  ‘Can you blame me, after what you’ve put me through?’ he snarls. He shakes her hard, then releases his hands abruptly, as though dropping a piece of refuse, causing her to stagger backwards as though she’s drunk. She regains her balance and goes to grab the landline in the kitchen, but there’s nothing connected to the phone jack in the wall.

  Returning to the hall, she pounces on her bag and snatches it from him, rummaging desperately for her new mobile before remembering with a sinking feeling that it’s still in the flat in Brighton, lying on the counter of the kitchenette where Marcus flung it. He watches her, his arms folded across his chest.

  ‘You may as well stop trying, Lucinda. You’re never going to get out.’

  She drops her bag as a terrible thought occurs to her. ‘Is my father even ill? Is he really at the Charing Cross?’

  Marcus gives a bleak smile. ‘As far as I know, he’s tucked up safely in his bungalow.’ He pulls out his own mobile and offers it to her. ‘You can phone and check if you like?’

  Lucy stares at him aghast, a nagging, nameless fear curdling her insides.

  Marcus shrugs off his coat and tosses it over the newel post. ‘I’ve got two valve repairs and an angioplasty on my list tomorrow; I’d better get my head down.’ He starts up the stairs. ‘And you may as well do the same, darling.’

  She stands motionless in the hall, looking down at her forearms. Purple patches of bruising are starting to appear where Marcus’s gripped her.

  He keeps walking, not looking back at her.

  ‘Suit yourself. Either way, you’re staying here this time.’

  Eighteen

  March 1997

  The doorbell rings again. And, once again, Lucy pretends not to be in.

  But she does creep to the window of her room and look out. And, sure enough, there is Adele Watts, with her bike.

  The two of them are no longer classmates. Lucy was so traumatised by Joanne’s death that her parents removed her from Redgate High before the September term even started and she’s now a Year 8 pupil at St Theresa’s, a private convent school in nearby Brockington. The breaking up of Lucy’s friendship with Adele was almost certainly a big part of the Gibsons’ motivation for moving her to a new school. But Adele seemed reluctant to accept the status quo. On several occasions over the past few months, she has cycled up to Haverleigh Park and rung the doorbell of the Gibsons’ house. Lucy always pretends not to be in. Adele then hangs around for a while before giving up and cycling off.

  Lucy watches her former friend now from behind the curtain. She executes a series of slow, mournful wheelies on the driveway, then stops and balances on the seat of her bike. Pulling a carton of cigarettes from her jeans pocket, she lights one, smoking it as she looks up in the direction of Lucy’s bedroom window.

  Has she seen me? Lucy wonders, her heart thumping with a sort of excitement. Part of her wants to run downstairs and go outside to join Adele. But she doesn’t. She stays watching from behind the edge of the curtain. Eventually Adele stubs out the butt with the toe of her trainer, gives one last look up at the window before shaking her head and pedalling away. And as she does so, Lucy knows with utter certainty and a twinge of regret, that this is the last time.

  Adele won’t come back again.

  Nineteen

  Lucy wakes up on the sofa, where she eventually succumbed to sleep in the small hours after her adrenaline levels subsided.

  The sealed house is airless, leaving her with a pounding in her temples and her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth. The first thought as her addled brain clears is that when Marcus opens the door to leave for work – as he must, because he has an operating list – she will be able to attract the attention of passers-by or a neighbour. But a quick glance through the barred drawing-room window tells her that his car is already gone, and sure enough when she checks it, the front door is double-locked. She bangs on it helplessly until her fists are swollen and sore, but nothing happens.

  Then she remembers her old laptop. She can raise the alarm by emailing one of her friends. But when she boots it up and tries to open her web browser, she sees an exclamation mark over the Wi-Fi icon on the toolbar. No connection. Hurrying up to Marcus’s study, she looks for the Wi-Fi router, usually plugged in behind the desk. He’s removed it, along with the phone handsets. She tries joining her neighbours’ networks, but unsurprisingly they’re all password-protected.

  As she goes into the kitchen to make tea, Lucy’s thoughts turn from her confinement to the spectacular failure of Denny’s scheme. The fact that it has fallen through so rapidly after she paid thousands to get away leaves a bitter taste. Marcus claims to have tracked her second phone, but she had it switched off almost all the time, so how was that possible? The only period she can remember having it on for any length of time was the previous day when she tried to get hold of Adele. But for Marcus to have turned this house into a fortress and then driven to Brighton, all in the space of a few hours? It was possible, but was it likely?

  She realises with a dragging heaviness that, however Marcus tracked her down, it makes little difference now. What matters is that she’s a prisoner in her own home. Nobody knows, or even thinks there’s anything wrong, with the possible exception of Jane Standish. Will Jane come looking for her if she gets no reply to her text and can no longer make contact? At this moment in time, it seems like her best hope. Probably her only hope.

  Lucy carries her mug of tea upstairs and searches both the study and the bedroom for the landline handsets, even though she’s pretty sure that Marcus will have taken them with him. The bottle of temazepam is still there on his nightstand, almost empty now, but there’s no sign of the phones in any of the drawers or cupboards. Her eye is caught by the roof of the kitchen extension, some six feet below the sill of the bedroom window. If she could get the window open, then she could climb through it and drop down onto the extension roof. Of course, the window is locked. The drop from the first-storey windows at the front of the house is nearly twenty feet, but she could manage this jump onto the flat roof.

  Running downstairs, she pulls a hammer from the toolbox in the understairs cupboard and starts smashing at the window. But it doesn’t break. Its surface crazes with lines and gives way slightly under the hammer head, but somehow remains intact. Of course, she remembers, with a sinking sensation, after an attempted break-in a couple of years earlier, Marcus had arranged for the windows at the rear o
f the house to be covered on both sides with a special protective film. ‘Used in the Pentagon to prevent the windows blowing out in a terrorist attack,’ he had told her proudly at the time. So now she’s a princess in an unbreakable glass tower. Sinking on to the bed, she closes her eyes and gives in to tears.

  Spending time with neither online connection nor contact with the outside world challenges her sanity. Lucy feels more isolated during that day even than she did in Brighton, a feeling compounded by heart-pounding desperation so extreme that it borders on panic. To try and calm herself, she digs out her old yoga mat from the back of the wardrobe and tries to remember the routines she learned when she was doing classes. Focus on the breathing, she instructs herself. Get out of your thinking mind. But although the incoming panic attack recedes a little, she still feels breathless with anxiety. Deciding that food will help she goes into the kitchen and makes toast, switching on Radio 4 for company. But the toast sticks in her throat and she ends up throwing most of it in the bin. She decides she can’t wait until she is allowed to leave. She has to find a way out.

  On the top floor, in Lydia’s room, she manages to force open a window that wasn’t locked properly. It’s too small to climb through and the drop from the second storey is too high to contemplate anyway. But as she breathes in the welcome gust of fresh air, she spots a patch of red and realises with a swell of hope that it’s the postman’s van.

  Getting her face as close as she can to the window, she screams at the top of her voice. ‘Help! Over here!’

  Footsteps crunch on the gravel. The postman is bringing mail to the house. Hurling herself down four flights of stairs, she positions herself next to the letter box, grabbing it when the sprung hinge is pushed open. Three official-looking letters tumble onto the mat.

  ‘Help!’ Lucy wiggles the tips of her fingers through the letter box. ‘I’m locked in!’