by Beth Moran
My arms instinctively rose to shield my eyes from the light, now pointed at my face. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Hunting you,’ she snarled, and in an instant her expression transformed from cool superiority to raw, rampant hatred. ‘I did promise, after all.’
‘What?’ Call me slow and stupid, but until a few months ago, Lucy had been my close colleague and my friend. She’d seen me in my underwear, tweezered my stray hairs, and last summer we’d sat on a Cornwall cliff-top, chatting and laughing and sharing stories until the sun rose. She’d encouraged me when I felt overwhelmed and out of my depth. Celebrated when our followers multiplied. Protected me from the worst of the trolls, while offering reassurance that I was not completely unlovable.
‘So. Where were we?’ She mused, one finger pressed against her lips as if pondering. ‘Ah yes! We were coming up with a suitable way for you to pay for what you’ve done.’
I stood there, dumbstruck, and tried to process what the hell was happening.
‘We could continue the funeral pyre theme – people seem to like a good blaze around here. How about setting this little wood-filled shack alight, and then I’ll stand at a safe distance and listen to you scream?’
She paused, forehead creasing. ‘Oh, except someone might spot the flames and come to investigate. Hmmm… What else? Oh – I could impale you with that fork over there. Pin you to the wall while I remind you of the names of every business you’ve closed, every last waiter who ended up out of work, every life you’ve trashed. I have a list here, ready on my phone. That might be fun. Or – how about I tie you up and drag you to the river, watch the bubbles rise to the surface as you drown? A fitting tribute to your so-called friend, don’t you think? Your boyfriend will appreciate the gesture.’
‘You’re insane,’ I croaked.
‘Probably,’ Lucy shrugged, before her voice hardened again. ‘But you drove me to it.’
‘The police will know it was you. Everyone heard how much you hate me.’
‘Hundreds of people hate you! Not to mention the Alami family, who after their little attempt at intimidation last year, provided the perfect cover. And so what if the police do figure it out? My life is over, anyway.’
‘You have an amazing life!’ I tried to jumpstart my brain again, to keep her talking until maybe someone got worried and came looking for me, or I could think up some other way to get out of this. ‘You’ve got a glamorous career, money, fame, a fabulous social life. Marcus. Why would you risk all that?’
‘Why would I give a crap about that, compared to what you did to my family!’ She shrieked. My panic jolted up another level. She genuinely was insane.
‘Well? Don’t you have anything at all to say about it?’
‘I… I’m sorry. Whatever happened to your family…’
‘Don’t pretend you can’t even remember!’ Tears and spittle flew as she shook her head, enraged. ‘We were just another column to you, another cheap laugh. After your review my dad had to sell the restaurant! We lost our house. Had to move into a two bedroom flat! A two bedroom flat! I was fifteen years old! Can you imagine what that felt like? You ruined my life!’
‘Lucy, I get that it must have been hard, but moving house is not worth going to prison for murder for.’
‘What would you know about it?’ she screeched.
‘I shared a bunk bed with my grandma until I was twenty-six. That’s why I couldn’t turn down being Nora Sharp. I needed a job. A chance to get away. A life! But you have that now – you stole my life. My job, my reputation. My boyfriend. Please don’t throw that all away on some fleeting revenge. I’m not worth it.’
‘You didn’t want them any more! Don’t pretend that by scaring you off, I wasn’t doing you a favour. And I don’t have those things. Miles fired me. Marcus got bored. Turns out no one liked the new Nora. Now I have nothing. And you’ve ended up, yet again, with everything. So there’s no point trying to ruin your life, you’ll just get yourself a new one. I’m ending it.’
‘Lucy, please…’
‘Stop talking!’ She sized up the nearest farm implements to her, before taking hold of the huge garden fork.
‘No, wait…’
‘Shut up!’ Lucy dropped her phone, and in the dim light cast from where it lay on the floor, I saw her shove a pallet out of her path, clamber over the lawnmower and launch herself across the short distance still between us.
Along with freaking out and bracing myself for the prongs, I somehow found the presence of mind to dodge to one side and grab something to block her follow-up thrust.
I’d seized a soggy, rotten cardboard box. I might as well have plucked a fistful of cobwebs from the shelf. The fork instantly tore through the sagging card, and Lucy flicked it away.
I took an automatic few steps back, before my back smacked against another shelving unit, causing the glass contents to rattle dangerously. A couple of bottles toppled off and smashed, tiny shards catching in the glow of the phone.
Glancing either side, I realised how stupid I’d been. I could just about make out a huge, menacing-looking metal contraption on my right. On my left were the pallets, stacked haphazardly about waist high, two deep and at least five long. Scrambling across them would be slow and clumsy, and I’d be an easy target for my attacker.
For a millisecond, I wondered about using one of the pallets as a shield, at least until I could reconsider my escape route, but before I could reach down to haul one off the pile, Lucy, grunting with effort, held her weapon aloft and jabbed it straight towards my head.
Adrenaline powering my reflexes, I twisted to one side, and as the fork thrust past, I somehow managed to grab the wooden handle. Holding on for dear life, we wrestled and thrashed for control. In the confined space it was inevitable that the more we fought to get the larger portion of the handle, the closer to each other we got. Within what must have been seconds, but felt like hours, we were right up against each other. Lucy’s breath was hot against my neck, and I inhaled the reek of her sweat and fury. She wasn’t the only one sweating – my hands were starting to slip precariously down the handle, until they hit against the prongs.
I took a moment to focus on my breathing, sucking in as much air as my heaving lungs could manage before releasing it in a scream that bounced off the bottles and echoed through the darkness. No one would hear me – unless they happened to be walking around this side of the farm. But it was loud enough to rattle Lucy, and she momentarily relaxed her grip enough for me to wrest the fork out of her hands.
Unfortunately, I’d not quite believed in my own strength, so hadn’t braced my stance for the sudden decrease in tension when Lucy let go. I stumbled back, scraping my shoulder blades against something sharp, and jabbing the back of my knee into a metal spike.
I automatically bent double to clutch my leg, the fork clattering to the ground. If I was some kick-ass heroine from a film I’d have ignored the agonising pain now shooting up my leg like flames. But I wasn’t, I was a clueless, frightened wimp, and I was too exhausted and too traumatised to think any more.
Ignoring the fork, Lucy simply threw herself at me, and we both toppled over, smacking onto the floor side by side with groans and grunts. Hands clawed for my neck, my eyes, ripping out a chunk of my hair. Her feet scrabbled for purchase, those stupid sandals scraping down my shins.
And then a powerful beam of light suddenly appeared from the direction of the door.
A cry of horror, in a voice that instantly made me feel safe.
Lucy jerked, momentarily startled by the intruder.
Darkness.
Shattering pain.
Nothing.
36
I woke up in a hospital bed.
My first thought was, ‘Ow!’
I must have said it out loud, because Becky jerked awake from where she’d clearly been snoozing in the chair beside me. Taking a moment to orientate herself, she spotted that I was also awake, and quickly shuffled the chair up close enough to
take hold of my hand.
‘Eleanor. How are you feeling?’
I tried to answer, not that I knew what to say, but my throat was hoarse and dry, so instead what came out was an ugly croak.
‘Here.’ She offered me a sip of water from a paper straw, smoothing my hair back from my face after I plopped back onto the pillow, finding that lifting my head up an inch for three seconds was about as much as I could manage.
‘Okay?’ She peered at me, her expression a mixture of concern, compassion and relief.
I nodded. Clearly I was not okay, but I thought she probably knew more about that than I did.
‘What happened?’ I rasped.
‘It was Lucy. Do you remember? You were in the old cider store.’
‘How?’ I flicked my eyes around the room, hoping she’d understand my question.
‘How did you get here?’ Becky gave the barest of smiles. ‘Daniel heard you scream. After you left, there was a whole big kerfuffle with Nora. She was ranting on about the retreat. Daniel told her to leave, and eventually while the band got going, he and Alice called a taxi to drive her to her hotel. It was pretty clear that she’d lost it, though.
‘And then I remembered about the knife in the arbour, so I called Brenda and left a message, and tried to find Daniel to tell him, but he was putting Hope to bed, so that took me a while, and people kept wanting to stop and talk to me, ask if I was okay, if you were okay. I ended up yelling at DJ Vapes to leave me alone so I could try to find out. So,’ she paused to take a deep breath, ‘I eventually found Daniel, once Hope was in bed and Billie and Rob were babysitting. Once I’d managed to get him alone and explain, and then we’d found Luke and a couple of other guys to help search for you, Brenda had called back and said she was on her way. But we couldn’t find you anywhere. You weren’t answering your phone. The band were winding down, so we asked more people to help, but a lot of them assumed you’d simply gone off on your own. To be honest, we did too. If we’d seriously thought… maybe we would have looked faster.’
She stopped, wiped a stream of tears from both eyes, blew her nose and wiped her eyes again. ‘I’m so sorry, Eleanor. This is totally my fault.’
‘Er, excuse me?’ I said, trying to heave myself up into a sitting position, and ending up sliding several inches further down the bed. ‘You didn’t do this. You didn’t even make her do this. The two Noras are completely to blame.’
‘Yes, but…’
‘Yes, but I’m going to get really angry if you even hint at being in any way responsible for that woman’s crazed campaign of revenge. And that will make my head hurt even more, which will be your fault. Now, please carry on.’
‘Okay.’ She rubbed her face, gave her head a brisk shake and carried on. ‘We’d all spread out, looking for you. Other people were busy tidying up and sorting everything out. Daniel had stayed by the farmhouse, in case you came back – and because he wanted to be near Hope. Then he heard you scream, and got there just as Nora was about to… well. Do something horrible. She was startled and you fell backwards. Your head smashed into the concrete floor.’
‘So that explains the thumping headache.’
‘You’ve also hurt your knee, and are covered in bruises and cuts. Oh…’ Her eyes filled with tears again, as she gently stroked my hair. ‘That monster pulled out a chunk of your hair.’
‘What happened to her?’
‘She’s been arrested. Daniel restrained her while he waited for the police.’
‘It was all her?’
‘Looks like it. The Bee Murderer is vanquished. The queens and their boys can rest in peace, and so can you.’
Not likely. Becky was ushered out soon after that, but the last thing I felt was peaceful.
I hadn’t asked her where Daniel was, why he wasn’t here. I had a fairly good idea every time I remembered the look of revulsion on his face.
I tried to start thinking up a plan, but my thoughts were a jumbled mess, and before I could process more than a few disjointed phrases about ‘sort business,’ ‘new place to live,’ ‘pack,’ ‘car,’ I had forgotten what I was trying to think about.
Later that afternoon a nurse came to give me a thorough inspection, and straight after they’d brought me a plate of flavourless mush and a tub of ice cream, my phone – thoughtfully left on the scruffy bedside table – rang.
I snatched it up, my anxious, hopeful heart plummeting back into disappointment when I saw it was my parents. Not that I was sorry to hear from them – their brusque, matter-of-fact manner was as comforting as a cosy blanket and a mug of cocoa.
‘Your friend said you’ve been in an accident, but you’re okay.’
‘Yes,’ I whispered, my throat contracting with unshed tears.
‘Nothing broken, no permanent damage, just plenty of rest and as much time as it takes.’
‘I think so.’
‘Sounds like you’d better come home. We’ve made up Goosander, and don’t worry about getting here, we’ll book a taxi.’
‘Thanks, Mum.’
‘Grandma’s paying, you can thank her. Try to get some sleep.’
She hung up before I could say goodbye.
I slept about as well as is to be expected when in a strange bed, an elderly woman wheezing on one side of me, another groaning and muttering all night on the other, the weight of my guilt and shame pressing down on my skull, the pain of my heartache sharper than my injuries. By the time the doctor did his rounds the following morning, I was ready to lie through my teeth while performing a tap-dance if it meant I could be discharged.
Alice had popped in for a few minutes the evening before. Ziva had stayed a while longer, chattering about nothing, answering my questions about the rest of Damson Day with brief, bland answers before directing the conversation back to something else. In the end, I couldn’t help asking her where Daniel was.
She stilled, face a careful blank, hands clasped in front of her in a pose I imagined she had adopted when delivering bad news to thousands of patients over the years. ‘He’s taking care of Hope. She’s spent a lot of time being passed between babysitters in the past couple of days, and after everything it’s only natural he’d want to keep her close.’
‘He’s not called. Or messaged.’ I tried not to choke on the words. ‘He hates me.’
‘Of course he doesn’t! It’s been a hectic day. Can you imagine how busy he is trying to get the farm straight?’
‘I can’t imagine being so busy he can’t take ten seconds to send a text.’ To the woman he had said ‘I love you’ to only a day earlier.
My heart was so heavy it pulled my gaze down to the sheet, unable to look Ziva in the eye.
‘He’s probably giving you time to rest…’
‘Right.’
Ziva was quiet for a moment.
‘I’m so very sorry.’
I shook my head, feebly. ‘I was going to tell him.’
‘You’ll get a chance to explain. For now, you need to concentrate on resting up and getting better. Daniel will be ready to talk in time.’
It was late afternoon by the time I left, clutching a bag of prescriptions as I hobbled to Becky’s car on my injured leg, which was refusing to bend more than about two millimetres. She’d brought me a clean pair of yoga pants and a hoodie, but there was still blood encrusted in my hair, and I both looked, smelled and felt like I’d been sleeping under a bush. We’d agreed that she would take me back to the farm to help me pack what I could fit in the boot of a car – fortunately I’d not added much to the items I’d brought from London. A taxi would then collect me. I’d sort out what to do with the hunk-of-junk car later on.
Arriving at Damson Farm in about the same state as the first time, I saw Luke’s van and another couple of cars parked near the orchard entrance, and as Becky helped me limp inside, the sound of voices drifted over the gate.
‘Does he know?’ I asked, my voice close to a whisper.
‘I told him you were on your way,’ Becky said.<
br />
So, he was deliberately avoiding me.
I nodded, ignoring the tear that dribbled out as I levered my stiff leg over the doorstep. Ignoring that there was no strong, caring man here to help me.
It was a long, laborious ordeal to get up to my bedroom. My head throbbed in time with every broken heartbeat, and the wound in my knee felt as though it had been shredded open all over again. Still the tears streamed constantly, like a faulty tap. I mutely started opening drawers while Becky beavered beside me, packing several bags by the time I’d weakly stuffed three tops into a holdall.
Noticing my pathetic progress, she stopped and handed me a towel that had been draped over the chair. ‘I’ll sort this, you go and have a shower. Even better, run a bath.’
I glanced towards the window. ‘I think I’m best just getting out of here as soon as possible.’
‘Eleanor, do you really want your parents to see you like this?’ She gently turned me towards the mirror, and I watched my face crumpling.
Hair looking like a bad wig, face and arms flecked with dark red scrapes and purple bruises, an ugly crimson slash across my chin, haggard eyes ringed with black. I was almost relieved that Daniel hadn’t seen me. Becky was right. Never mind my parents, no respectable taxi driver would allow me in their cab looking like this.
Once in the shower, it was almost impossible to drag myself back out again. The sensation of the near-scalding spray, how the sound muffled both the world outside and within my ravaged head, the frail hope that if I let the water wash over me for long enough, I would feel clean.
Eventually I had to come out, or else risk passing out into the shower tray. I gingerly got dried and dressed, every wincing movement a vivid recollection of the last time I had stood in this bathroom battered and bruised. A lifetime ago. Back then, I had been mourning the loss of Charlie. Now, the grief at having to leave her family engulfed me.
And yet.
Beneath the shroud of bleak despair, I still had a tiny spark of hope.
Maybe Daniel was busy.
