Dear Amy

17

I drove home. My phone rang. I switched it off. I remember almost nothing about the journey – the next thing I recall is being sat at my own kitchen table, with the desk lamp on, wiping the tracks of tears from my face with a furious energy that burned the skin beneath my fingers.

I’m a crazy person.

And so we’re back here again.

I don’t know who I am. I’ve never known, it seems, but the world is full of opinions on the subject. I had a breakdown. Well, one and a half, if we’re heading towards full disclosure. A few people know about it, because it is good to have friends, good to confide, is it not?

But telling people things about yourself is always, always a mistake – like a drug, in a way – the euphoria of communication and trust is always followed up by the regret of paranoia and suspicion. You describe yourself shrieking and being dragged backwards into rooms with gurneys and hypodermic needles – horrible, horrible needles – and there is a part of the other person that will always see you that way.

Things, once known, can never be unknown.

No matter how hard you try, I add to myself, perhaps nonsensically.

I considered the possibility of opening a bottle of wine, but dismissed it.

I leaned back in the chair, stretching out my shoulders. I was shaking with shock, and for a long moment I actually considered going out and buying a pack of cigarettes, before recalling, We had this discussion, Margot, remember? You quit. A big part of being a non-smoker is not smoking.

Yeah, I told myself, I remember. I don’t smoke.

I tried to calm down and think about Lily, painful as it was, and then I realized that while her words smarted and burned me, I wasn’t actually angry with her. Not angry like I had been at that, yes, let’s say it again Margot, bitch Arabella.

I may not have liked what Lily had to say, but she wasn’t trying to hurt me. Which only made it worse, in a way.

I didn’t know what to do. I would apologize to her in the morning, I decided, but before that, I would briefly entertain the notion that there might be something in what she said.

I thought about the letters. I thought about Martin Forrester and that ghastly police psychologist. The letters are real, I told myself. Other people think the letters are real. You are not imagining the letters.

But was I imagining my pursuit?

I made myself think back, to the man in the dark Megane, and the man in the car park who I’d encountered that night, and I had a clean sharp memory, of Mr Megane pulling away from the kerb the instant I did, even though he hadn’t answered a phone, or collected anybody, and once again its strangeness was compelling – his upright posture, his cap and dark glasses.

No, I did not imagine that. I did not imagine Mr Car Park either, but now that I am sat here in my own house, I realize that the man in the car park was a different type of threat. He wasn’t wearing an obvious disguise.

That does not, however, mean he wasn’t following me.

Oh no, there was something here, all right.

I didn’t want wine any more, and certainly not cigarettes. I wanted good black coffee, and lots of it. I stood up, filled the kettle, and the rushing tap was shockingly loud in my silent kitchen. My brain was whirring. I was being shown something, something important, and Lily and my self-doubt were suddenly beside the point.

Bethan Avery was out there, and she was as real as her letters. This, being true, meant something else. It meant that whoever had seized Bethan was somebody who could exact nearly twenty years of silence from a fourteen-year-old girl, a silence so absolute and heavy that it was sacred even now.

The pale net curtain stirred over the kitchen window, motivated by some draught in the house. I frowned. There should be no windows open in here. I peered into the garden. Absolute darkness. It did not mean the garden was empty.

As I did so, I suddenly understood what was happening.

We had broadcast an appeal to Bethan Avery, Martin Forrester and I, but she was not the only person that had seen it. Whoever had taken Bethan had seen it, too.

She had warned me, after all, in her letters that there was a gang. That this might happen.

Bethan’s kidnapper thought I knew Bethan. And not through anything as impersonal as letters, but that I knew her now, that I’d spoken to her, that I knew where she might be…

That was what this shadowy following wanted – the man parked outside the school who’d followed me home, the smiling man in the concrete car park – they wanted me to lead them to Bethan.

The woman herself had eluded them, but it would be easy enough to trace me from my column in the Examiner. All that remained was for them to find Bethan through me and renew her twenty-year silence…

And perhaps they could find Bethan through me.

My growing suspicions refused to be silenced, crowding into my thoughts, driving all else out, till it seemed there was nothing left but a kind of screaming behind my skull.

You could have met Bethan Avery in that hostel years ago. You could. And she’s reached out to you now.

Because she knows you.

I covered my mouth with my hands in a sudden thrill of dread.

I had to tell someone! I had to tell them everything, all about Angelique, the hostel, the drugs, that old life I had tried to bury and forget for ever. Furthermore, I had to make them believe me while I did it. This was fast becoming a matter of life or death.

Martin Forrester.

I realized that I wanted to talk to Martin Forrester right now more than anyone else in the world.

I glanced at the kitchen clock. Would he mind me phoning this late? I doubted it, not with what I had to tell him. I could ask him whether we should go to the police. I could talk to another human soul about this, and hear him speak back to me.

I stood up. My shoulders ached and my back was stiff. I must have been sat there for hours.

I walked over to the phone, and picked it up.

Something was wrong. It took me a second or so to realize what it was, as I hunted for the Post-It note containing Martin’s number. The phone was utterly silent – there was no dialling tone. It was dead.

I followed the cord to see if it was plugged in – maybe I’d pulled the plastic out of its socket – but it was connected, all right. I wiggled the plug in the socket, to see if this made any difference. Still nothing. I replaced the handset, then went into the hall to try the phone there. It, too, was dead. I suppose I’d known all along that it would be.

I stood in the darkened hall, trying to shake off my sick, frightened feeling. The mobile. Where the hell was my mobile? Oh yes, I remembered now. I had switched it off and thrown it contemptuously on to the back seat of the car when Lily had tried to call me on the drive home. Not that my mobile would do me much good here – there was hardly any signal out at this end of the village.

I listened intently, but there was nothing but the faint creak of the house settling about me, the tiniest rustle of dead leaves in the cold still autumn outside. Perhaps the phone was nothing, some glitch with the cable company – or perhaps, whoever they were, they were waiting for me outside, waiting for me to realize the line was dead, and to panic and run out into their grasp.

Why on Earth had I come back to the house?

You know, maybe Lily has a point. Maybe I am insane.

I lifted the phone again, but it was still dead.

That draught, that draught in the kitchen when I’d filled the kettle – where had that been coming from?

‘What now?’ I whispered.

I had to get out of here. I had to get my mobile.

I retreated back into the kitchen, the dizzying vertigo of unreality making me feel as light as air, horribly conscious of how the window framed me by the lamplight, displaying me to anyone who might be watching from the night-shrouded garden. There was a steak knife lying in the sink, slightly greasy from the cooking I’d been doing yesterday. My knuckles whitened around the black plastic grip.

‘Calm down,’ I whispered to myself, but the knife shook anyway.

Now I was back in the kitchen the idea of leaving it appalled me. The rest of the house was silent and unlit – the only sound was the hum of the refrigerator, constantly startling me.

I moved to switch the kitchen fluorescents on, to chase the darkness infesting the house back outdoors and into the night, but found I didn’t dare. My hand covered the switch. It was sweating on to the cold white plastic, leaving salty smears.

There was a sudden sound, a momentarily unidentifiable change. I leapt away from the wall and raised the knife – I didn’t think about it, some part of my reptile brain must have done it for me – then realized it was only the fridge motor winding down.

I remembered to breathe again. It was like the first breath I ever took; air flooded my parched lungs. I sighed in relative relief.

Then the table lamp flickered uncertainly.

Surely the bulb couldn’t be going now. Not now, for God’s sake… Gripping the knife, I resolved to hit the switch for the fluorescents. I would not be left in total darkness. I would not…

The table lamp winked out, and the room vanished.

I think I screamed, if you could call it that. It was a dry, choking noise, a high-pitched cawing, like a crow’s. I’d thrown myself back against the kitchen wall, and now the chilly plaster ground against my shoulders.

My hand snaked out frantically for the light switch, but it had disappeared in the darkness. My fingers slid over the paint, making whispering noises as they brushed against it. Then one finger caught on the tip of the fixture. I jabbed hard at the flat switch, which clicked several times, uselessly.

I slid down the wall a few inches, sagging with terror and despair.

I don’t like the dark at the best of times. A little of the streetlight and the vicarious lights of other houses, shuttered in warmth and safety, lightly limned the larger objects in the kitchen, or it may have been my eyes adjusting to the dark.

You must get out of here. Get out. Get out…

The front door was nearer to me than the back. Besides, my car was out front, with my discarded phone lying in it. I would be safe in my car. Or I could go to a neighbour’s house. The nearest was over the garden wall, but the wall was too high to climb in a hurry and the odds were good that if I screamed, no one would hear me.

I would go out the front way.

I tried to stand up properly, but this was impossible. My body absolutely refused – it was as though I’d been nailed to the wall. The same instinct that had had me jump and brandish the knife before now welded me still, locking my joints.

The wall behind me shook, or it might have been me, desperately wanting to move and not daring to. My ears sensitized to the silence to the point where I could hear the tiny, minuscule tick of the kitchen clock and the roar of the occasional traffic on the main road, several streets away. My shoulders were cold and damp, and cramped sporadically.

I tried to swallow, but my throat was simply too dry.

They had cut the phone and the electricity prior to coming into the house to get me. It was obvious, apparent, so why couldn’t I move?

I held the steak knife before me with crabbed white hands.

There was a sound; my head whipped round in its direction. It was coming from the back of the house – someone was trying the handle of the back door.

This broke the spell. I stood up, the now violently juddering knife held ahead of me, and sidled towards the hall doorway, glancing each way. A faint glow suffused the frosted glass of the front door, enough to silhouette my jackets and coats, hung neatly on their pegs, the spaces where Eddy’s would have been louder than bombs right now. My work jacket, containing my car keys, was in the middle of them, and my hand drifted soundlessly into the pockets, searching for them. Behind me, the living-room door was a rectangle of opaque blackness, and through it came the creak of a window being tried – wood squealing against wood – carrying towards me through the blackness clearly and precisely, like notes of music.

My hand closed over the keys.

The sound of the window being raised stopped abruptly, only to be followed by deceitful silence.

I blinked at my front door. One hand let go of the knife to unfasten the latch.

A shadow might have flickered over the front of the door.

I wanted to weep. I was trapped.

What do they want? I screamed at myself, in the roaring quiet.

Suddenly I made my mind up. To linger in the house was impossible. I must brave the door, shadow or no. If I was quick enough, I might surprise him – he would not be able to see me from outside, through the frosted glass.

I gripped my knife and my courage, and wrenched it open.

There was nothing out there but my lawn and my fence, and my red Audi parked on my street-lit driveway.

I practically fell through the door, jerking it back behind me. The glass shattered as the door was flung against the inner wall, swinging wide. Instantly I knew I was not alone. Something cut down through the air, a line of cold fire, down my shoulder, over my collarbone, heading for my heart, my pounding heart… it was a knife, glittering in the icy air, wielded by a man who had appeared from nowhere, a man who must have been waiting for me, a short stocky man with a black coat and furious eyes staring out of a woollen balaclava.

I thrust my own knife forward into his unprotected middle, shrieking as his flesh resisted for a second, rubbery and tough as the steak I usually used the knife upon. I jerked back in horror.

The air left him in a low animal grunt. He doubled over, his weapon clattering uselessly away. I kicked at him, feeling hot liquid running down my breast.

‘Help!’ I screamed, but it was such a thin, strangled, pathetic noise that no one could have heard it. My vocal chords were knotted with fear. The blood on the knife I held was black and gleamed sickly in the orange light.

‘You fucking bitch…’

It was the man from the school gates, Mr Megane – or at least I thought so; he was wearing the same leather jacket. He seemed about to rush me when he noticed what I was holding.

‘Stay there,’ I croaked, backing away from him towards the haven of my car.

He eyed me speculatively from my own doorstep, doubtless calculating the best way to disarm me.

Blood sopped heavily into my shirt, from my cut shoulder.

‘Just stay away.’

Holding the knife at arm’s length, my right hand dipped into my pocket, alighting on a crumpled piece of paper and a sea of keys. I would have to take my eyes off the man in order to find the right one for the car. I very badly didn’t want to do that.

The man on my doorstep took a hesitant step towards me. His posture was a study in objective cunning, his exposed lips curling as he concentrated – I might have been a wild animal he was hunting.

‘You’ve cut me, you fucking bitch,’ he said. He had a broad accent that sounded oddly familiar, though I couldn’t place it. I expect I had other things on my mind.

‘Get away from me!’

He took another step closer, as though testing my resolve.

‘Get away!’ I howled, and then the fat black plastic surface of my car key was in my hand. I squeezed it hard, and my car barked out a little beep and flashed its lights as it unlocked.

He chose this moment to rush me.

Had I tried to retreat, undoubtedly he would have overpowered me. But I couldn’t. The car was behind me. So I lunged at him with the knife, as he came forward. A flash of terror distorted his visible features and he stopped in his tracks, sizing me up again.

I jammed a hand into the door handle and wrenched the car open.

‘There’s no need to get so het up,’ said the man.

‘Get away from me. Right now.’

‘We can discuss this like calm, reasonable people.’

The voice. There was something familiar about his voice.

‘Get the fuck away from me,’ I breathed. ‘I’ll kill you.’

And it seemed he believed me. He backed off a pace, his eyes swivelling towards the left, betraying his intention to circle around the car, to the other side, the minute I got in. I could see him minutely, in my perfect state of panic, despite the darkness. His lips gleamed lightly with saliva, which he licked over them with his pale tongue.

I ducked into the car, slamming the door shut and the lock down just in time. My shoulder was still hot but my breast was cold, chilled with some cooling liquid, as I revved up the car. The man had vanished.

I stared around wildly, but he had gone. I had no time to worry about it. I had to get out of here. The car squealed backwards, and I caught one last fleeting glimpse of my redundant front door, swaying restlessly back and forth over the entrance to my dark and empty house, and then roared forward into the night.

My hands were nerveless jelly around the wheel, and the bloodied knife lay next to me on the passenger seat. It was not dripping in gore, just lightly laced with it, blood beading minutely on the stainless steel. Blood…

My shirtfront was a huge crimson stain, gently spreading. I had to go to a hospital. But I was so tired… so very tired and faint. Not frightened at all now, just tired. The hot liquid was gelid now, settling on my skin.

The bleeding was stopping. I was too exhausted to be relieved.

The uneven road shook me slightly… I was so tired. I couldn’t go on. I would faint over the wheel… a horn blared at me out of nowhere, and suddenly a man in another car was making an obscene gesture and screaming at me. I had to get off the road. My eyes kept rolling shut. At least the bleeding was stopping. Stopping… I had to stop. The engine thrummed gently in my ears, like a lullaby, and the road rocked me like a baby. I had to stop…

When I woke up, I was in pitch blackness and absolute silence.