Dear Amy

27

There was something vibrating against my head.

My chin was settled into my chest, and my back ached, especially my neck. The vibration was quick and low, the throb of an engine. Through my half-closed eyes I could see the strands of my hair, falling against my face. My head was muzzy with pain, and each time the little muscles in my face moved it hurt.

I remembered that I was in danger.

I shut my eyes quickly.

I was lying in a moving car, jammed in the gap between the front seats and the back. My shoulders were against the door, my head sunk into my bosom. My hands were tied behind me, and full of furious pins and needles. The car’s interior smelled musty, full of mould, and the seats were stained with it.

I started to wriggle my wrists carefully against my bonds, desperate not to signal that I was awake.

On my side was a wall of vinyl that was the driver’s seat, or rather the back of it. Warm air blew at me from the gap beneath it. I saw all I could without moving my head, or any part of my body. My limbs lay loose, as carelessly as they had when I’d been thrown there, but they were full of secret tension, and I was in terror lest someone should accidentally kick or touch me, and it would be discovered.

There is a state of mind where one ceases to question the whys and wherefores of life, a state where all that can be done is to exist, from minute to minute, with only the physical world and the promptings of millennia-old instincts as guides. This was my state, in which one second followed another and preceded the next, and I thought of and saw nothing but the wall of black vinyl, hearing the growl of the engine and the roaring wind buffet the door.

I fought to lay still and relax, and picked at the tight little nylon knots in my bonds, as I was carried forth into the centre of the labyrinth for the final time.

My neck was aching. I could not take it much longer, I would have to shift position. Whoever was driving would notice me, notice I was awake. As tortures go, it was an elegant device, scrupulously executed.

‘Still fucking snowing,’ said the driver. I froze, but there was something distracted but comfortable in his tone, as though he was someone that spoke to himself more often than others. He had a soft, low voice, which startled me. My hand might have twitched.

My cut shoulder itched abominably.

We were travelling at speed, and it was snowing. Dusk was settling, but there were no streetlights. I had to get out of the car. I had to escape. And when I thought of the word ‘escape’, a wild, fierce longing broke out in me; a bitter hurt. From prison to prison to prison, from cellar to refuge to office to hall of residence – from drugs to sex to marriage to work – an endless cycle of escapes, like a rat in a laboratory maze, or the flight of a magpie from grass to hedgerow to rusted railing.

A twenty-year fox hunt, pursued by hounds both real and imaginary.

Hounds…

… And the magpie.

It alighted in my head again. I could see it rise, its tail spined out against the English sky. Rain had been falling. It had hit my face in little splashes, cool and refreshing after… after what? The rain. The rain had always been there.

My skin remembered the rain, even if I did not.

Back in the car I felt the driver shift against the cheap upholstery.

Like an answered prayer, the knot I was gingerly picking at unravelled beneath the pincers of my nails. The twine slackened and fell off one wrist.

Long nails are always a good thing on a woman. Don’t let anyone tell you different.

Now, I have choices.

I could try to overpower the driver, whoever he is (oh don’t be stupid, you know who he is. He’s Bethan’s – your – abductor, the one who has Katie) or attract the attention of passers-by. But he’s driving at speed and is likely armed, and the dim dusky sky I can see through the opposite passenger window whenever I dare to raise my eyes, which is just showing a few peeping stars, does not inspire confidence. I am not sure we have passed another car the whole time I have been awake.

The third choice is to flee, which presents its own problems.

There is only one way out of a car: through the door. I concentrated my already condensed attention on the hard thrumming I was leaning up against. I would have to open the door and jump. At this angle I would be 90 per cent sure of landing headfirst, then my body would somersault over it – my neck would almost certainly break, if the car was moving at any kind of speed.

This horrific option, however, was the only one I could think of.

My hands lay under me, and very, very slowly I started to move them apart, to my sides.

Through the door at my back I felt the intense chill of the wind, pregnant with snow and the slush driven up by the wheels. A strand of my own hair tickled my cheek, exquisitely.

There was the musical tick-tock of the indicators, and the car engine idled down a few octaves. He was going to turn. I might have tensed imperceptibly, as a voice spoke softly into my ear, It must be now.

Now it would be.

No jerky movements.

My right hand was retreating up the length of my body.

The car was slowing, slowing to turn.

I had my instant – it was upon me. Act now or for ever hold your peace.

I threw myself over, belly down now, and seized the door handle. I had not even depressed it before there was a sudden panicked braking, a shout of, ‘Oh no you fucking don’t!’

His rage was paralysing, molten, and I was filled to the brim with a scrabbling animal terror, as though my senses remembered this too. Anything would be better than being in the car with him. Anything.

The handle clunked down, metal grinding against metal, and I pushed, though my instincts screamed against it.

I kicked wildly, my face full of the freezing wind gushing through the crack in the car door. The snow was deep and still flying away from me at a perilous speed, which was growing greater. The driver was speeding the car up.

I kicked free.

There was a long, flying moment, when everything was suspended, as though the turning world itself had hit some impossible impediment. There was neither sound nor sensation, just whiteness, and the flight of fate out of my hands.

Wheels rushed by, inches from my head. I waited for death or mutilation, as I crunched back into time, cushioned and jarred by the thick snow.

But when I raised my bruised head, one side of my face stinging with the force of a hundred needles, the car was just a black blur, swinging round in the snow, sending a white wave over its bonnet, which thudded on to the metal like a tiny avalanche, glittering in the headlights.

I got up, staggering slightly. The car, some hundred yards down the road, was growing closer, nearer through the darkness and the veil of snow.

There were trees, iced in white, near the road. A tiny stand of woodland, an oasis of Fenland, stretching out under the sunless sky. I ran into them, as though pursued by wolves.

It had stopped snowing, but that was no help.

I had run and run for miles it seemed, through black trees sticking up like spikes through the white carpet, and then scrambled down into the narrow crack of one of the ditches lining a small lane, aware that on the flat Fens I would be visible for miles, even in the dark, and that the snow would hold on to my footprints. I was soaked to the bone, burning hot, scalding the snow into water that dripped over my skin and sifted through my clothing.

I paused. There was something like ground glass in my lungs, cutting me with each breath I took. The lane next to the ditch had come to a crossroads, both literal and otherwise.

Above me, the pitch-blackness was giving way to the inky points of stars. The muffled moonlight enjoyed a slightly freer reign. I listened intently, but there was nothing but the wind howling across the Fens.

Unless he’d had a flashlight, he must have lost me, I told myself.

I crouched ankle-deep in the thin ditch water, my feet numb. Another country road, lined with untidy hedges, stretched out from left to right, where it was joined by a footpath, which meandered into a diagonal bent from the fields at my left. A tiny wooden bridge with side slats crossed the water in front of me.

I recognized this bridge from somewhere – but where?

Just before the bridge was a pole, casting a sharp shadow now as the moon gathered its strength, with signs affixed to its top, and thrusting my hot hands into my wet pockets, where they ached with cold, I approached it.

The moonlight waned as I reached its base, but reappeared in a few seconds to tell me that Cambridge was four miles to the left, and Comberton two miles to the right. There was also a little sign, indicating that this was some kind of scenic walk.

Miles and miles of snow stretched away before me, meeting the stormy sky in a straight line – black meets white, with mathematical precision.

I stared up at the sign. Weren’t suicides buried at crossroads? So the ghost couldn’t find its way back home?

Each time the wind ruffled me it sent freezing gusts through my sodden clothes. I could hardly feel my feet any more, now that I’d stopped running. I glanced anxiously back but there was nothing there.

There was a house to my left, over the bridge, a big house, surrounded by walls. I blinked and held my breath. A single light was visible in one of the upstairs windows. It looked huge, rambling, with Jacobean chimney turrets standing stark against the moonlit sky, and big wrought-iron gates.

A house – oh thank God, thank God, some civilization at last! There was doubtless some well-heeled, slightly dotty family living inside, or at least some discreetly wealthy stockbroker or entrepreneur using it as his country retreat, or it might be another one of those language or residential schools that Cambridge is teeming with, full of harried supervisors and confused foreign teenagers with identical backpacks.

Someone who had a phone, at any rate. Though something about the place, with its Escher-esque eaves and iron gates, made me feel uneasy.

Or, as I observed tartly to myself, I could lie at the foot of the crossroads and freeze to death. Suicide or not, I think my ghost would find the way back home. She’d been very tenacious so far.

My teeth chattered. The house and I regarded each other. I don’t know why, but the thought of going through those gates and approaching the faded white door on its porticoed plinth filled me with vague dread. Though perhaps it’s not strange that I’ve been feeling somewhat paranoid lately.

The lane was thickly blanketed with snow. It would take me hours to get back to Cambridge, or even to reach Comberton in this condition, even if I didn’t die of exposure first or my pursuer caught up with me.

And anything could happen to Katie in that time, wherever she was.

I pressed my freezing hands into my armpits and shook my head, as if to clear it of irrational fear. The cold night air pinched my shoulder and my feet trod across the soft, deep snow to the closed iron gates.

At least I was out of the wind.

Walls of dark brick loomed up over my head. The yellow light coming out of the windows could not reconcile me to them. I scratched at my prickling scalp and my teeth chattered.

My shoes squeaked, leaving a watery trail of prints as I mounted the sandstone steps to the door.

There was a dusty bronze doorbell, the casing starting to crack with age. Now I was up close to the place, I understood what had made me think twice – there was an aura of shiftless neglect everywhere – from the weeds creeping through what had once been a careful, sweeping drive, to the cracked window casements and their crumbling putty, their distress plainly visible in the bright white motion sensor light that had come on the minute I opened the gates. A brand-new padlock with sharp steel edges on a shiny chain had swung from the gates themselves, unfastened, as though it had been opened in a hurry.

Comfort and aesthetics might have been neglected by the inhabitants, but there was an obviously new CCTV camera set up on a wall mount, pointed at the gates, and I could see its twin mounted on the side of the house adjoining the rambling brick wall surrounding the estate. Red lights flashed on them in heartbeat time. Perhaps someone was watching me right now.

I pressed the bell.

A loud pure double chime rang out through the house beyond, electronically amplified in some way, as though the people who lived here were used to being too far away to hear an ordinary doorbell.

I strained to listen for signs of life, pressing my ear to the faded white surface of the door paint. My cheek stung against it – I had grazed it when I fell out of the car.

There was absolutely nothing.

Long moments went by.

I tried once more, pressing the button and letting the chimes ring out, again and again. This was an emergency after all. I didn’t have to be intimidated by these people and their big house.

Then once more, I pressed my ear to the wood, trying not to weep.

This time, there was a noise.

I’m not sure I would have heard it in the usual run of things – if it had been daylight, and there had been rustling trees and birdsong, passing cars and aeroplanes. It was very tiny – an irregular rat-tat-tat, like someone tapping on something metal. The sound was buried deep within the house, more of a vibration than a noise.

Perhaps it was the pipes.

My ear still pressed to the door, I rang the bell again.

Again no ambient sounds, no sign of movement in the house, but that tiny rapping started again immediately, and its rhythm had an urgent, no, desperate, quickening – RAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT…

A kind of horrible realization bloomed within me.

If I was right, there wasn’t a moment to lose.

I circled what I could of the house, looking for an open window or unlocked door – faint hope, but better than nothing. Most of the windows were resolutely curtained, and under their sills were old rotting wires, the remains of an alarm system. The new alarm system was centred in a blinking red box at the back of the building, undoubtedly complete with sensors and linked to the cameras, to protect the house in its dotage.

I tried to come up with some sort of plan. My thoughts were slow and fuzzy. Perhaps the alarm system was switched off. Perhaps the red blinking box was all there was, a way to deter thieves. I was going to have to walk to Comberton on my numb feet.

But that was impossible. I had to get in there. Now.

I trudged from window to window, all resolutely veiled with damask or heavy cotton. The big ones at the front and sides were leaded in diamond patterns – I could never have broken in through them, so I circled round to the side, my feet crunching through virgin snow on the narrow path. Then there was a smaller window, and then another, but all had net or cheap polyester hanging over them, and I could see no lights in them. They looked like servants’ quarters.

I stared up at the sheer brick walls. There were a few other windows above, on different floors, but they were also unlit and peculiarly forbidding. This part of the house outcropped a little from the rest, so it had presumably been an extension from its antiquated foundations. And there appeared to be no one in it.

At least not yet.

My fingers were curling up into two little blue crabs, and my neck and cut shoulder ached keenly with the cold. I needed to break the glass in one of the smaller windows at the back, but how…?

The padlock and chain, from the gates.

I was running to the gates when the security lights blazed awake with an audible click from somewhere up on the wall, bathing me in white light. Just a motion sensor, but I nearly screamed with terror. The chain and padlock threaded out through the bolt, their shiny steel newness at odds with the ancient, nicked wrought iron.

Beyond the gates, in the darkness, something moved.

I paused, illuminated, on the drive, blinded by the lights, trying to see any approaching cars. There was nothing. But that didn’t mean there was nothing out there.

I ran back to the window and lashed out with the chain; the thin glass shattered into a thousand pieces with a musical tinkle, as though it had been waiting for this very opportunity.

In the back of my mind, I tensed for the shriek of the alarm. It didn’t come – perhaps it was a silent alarm, or merely there for show.

Or it’s been disabled in some way, I thought. Maybe whoever lives here can’t risk strangers or the police turning up every time some kid tries to break in.

Which implies he probably has something on hand to take care of problems of that sort himself.

No time to worry about that now.

I gathered up the slack of my blue cardigan in my stiff fingers and pressed its sodden mass to the broken edges, snapping them off so I could crawl in. The pieces fell on to the floor of the room, with a glissando crash. It was all I could do not to cut myself in my terror.

There was a bed in the room, which was small and poky, and a chest of drawers with a cheap mirror mounted above them. A half-open suitcase lay on the bed, full of a mix of men’s clothes, and a shoebox lay on top of them, the lid slightly open.

Inside were papers, a passport, two driving licenses, one for Tim Henry who lived in Barton and one for Christopher Meeks who lived in the village, and there was also an ID card for Chris Henry, a driver for North Cambridgeshire Social Services, which had expired eighteen months ago. All of these cards showed images of the same man, with sandy greying hair. Clothes lay everywhere, a flurry of packing halted and waiting to be resumed.

I sat down on the bed, burying my hands in the starchy coverlet. It was icy cold, but at least it was dry.

I smoothed the melted snow out of my hair. When I touched my cheek, my finger came away black with blood. The mirror opposite showed a series of fine scratches across my face.

Looped across one corner of the mirror stand was a little tarnished silver cross on a thin chain.

For some reason, despite the danger, the need for haste, my eye was caught by this detail, and kept being drawn back to it, as though by some enchantment…

How had this man found me? Oh, I’d been so stupid. While I’d been arguing with the police over exposing Bethan Avery in the paper with the appeal, I had really been exposing myself.

None of it mattered, though. I needed to find the source of that tapping, to quieten that terrible suspicion in me. I needed to find a phone, and without a moment’s delay.

Outside the door there was a smooth wooden corridor, with flat rugs laid on it, and at its end a big tiled and plastered space opened out. I waited for a few moments, merely breathing, listening – I guessed the corridor led into the kitchen. Perhaps there was a phone in there, and maybe some kind of weapon. I glided cautiously on to the rug, my feet making only the faintest of whispers against the coarse material.

I heard nothing, nothing except the sound of a big house from a bygone age, gloomy and neglected and falling into dust. The tapping had fallen silent.

Through the dusty, cavernous kitchen I moved, where the only thing that had the patina of use was a tiny ancient microwave, crusted with food stains, then through doors to a winding series of staircases with marble steps and steel banisters, the moon reaching down to me through a glass skylight. No sign of a phone still. I fought down my sense of panic.

The double doors ahead of me were shut, but I knew I was heading to the front of the house, and to the room with the big leaded windows near the drive, where I had first heard the tapping.

This was where the light had come from that had drawn me from the path. It limned the shut doors in a thin line of gold.

I threw them open.

I don’t know what did it to me where so many other things had failed, but the blue damask curtains, the black and white tiled floor with its thick, heavy blue rug, that velvet sofa – that fucking velvet sofa – filled me with a terror and rage so intense that I wanted to set light to it.

I knew, with the lightning ring of truth, that I had been very, very unhappy on that velvet sofa.

I remembered this room.

More to the point, I remembered what happened the last time I was in it.