Hold My Hand (24 page)

“Ow! Ow!
Stop it!
”

She realises she is panting. Lets go, watches Lily wrap her arms around her head.

“I – told – you…”

“You bitch. You
bitch!
”

“Get up those stairs. Go on! I've had enough!
Enough
! You've had your chance! You can have a few hours in the dark, now. Teach you some manners!”

Lily scrambles to her feet, darts in the direction of the door. Felicity is quick. Slams it shut as she pulls it open. Lily leans – huddles – against it. Her face is rebellious, enraged, defiant. “I'm not staying here!” she says. “I'm not bloody staying here.”

“Well, where on earth do you think you're going to go?”

“Anywhere,” says Lily. “I don't care. Anywhere.”

“Well,” she says, and feels unaccountably triumphant, “there's nowhere for you
to
go. We're stuck with each other, whether you like it or not.”

Lily bursts into tears.

“I want my mum! I want my
mum!
”

“Oh, shut up,” says Felicity Blakemore, spitefully. Picks her up and shakes her. “Stop that!”

“I'll tell her! I'll tell her what you done and she'll
get
you!”

“Oh, grow up, Lily,” says Felicity. “Don't you see? Haven't you noticed? Not once. She's not been here to see you, not once. All the other children – oh yes. First chance their parents had. But yours? Don't you understand yet?”

There are words falling out of my body and I can't stop them, she thinks. They're not for her. They're for Patrick. I should stop, but I can't. I can't. These things I feel – I shouldn't be letting them… but I hate her. I hate her. Cuckoo in the nest, forced on me. She's brought nothing but misfortune since she came here. She is a curse on my house.

She shakes the girl again, sees her head snap back and forth like a rag doll's, feels a sick satisfaction as she does it.

“Your mother doesn't want you,” she says, and relishes the words. “If she wanted you she'd have come for you.”

Chapter Thirty-seven

Steve's having a slow day. He's got a honey-trap set up for the evening in the Pitcher and Piano in Holborn, an account executive at British Telecom whose wife suspects him of being chained to more than his desk, but this afternoon has been a long slog of phoning round with client updates.

It's already getting dark, he notices, as he ticks Darren Keating (builders' supplies; suspects (rightly) partner of embezzlement) off the list. Winter seems to last forever these days. Obviously, early January, we haven't even seen the worst of it yet, but I'm sure you used to see some signs that it was going to be over by March when I was a kid. Nowadays – so much for global warming – we seem to live under leaden, darkening skies from September through to May.

He dials the next number on the list. Waits, clicketty-clicking the top of his biro, while it rings.

“Hello?” A background of loud, whiny machinery.

“Mr Fletcher?”

“Yes.”

“Steve Holden. Trident investigations.”

“Oh, right. Hold on.”

The background noise fades, cuts off. “Hi,” says Kieran Fletcher. “Any news?”

“Nothing particularly cheering, I'm afraid. Your wife seems to have done a pretty good job of covering her tracks. It would help, of course, if she had a credit card or a loyalty card or something, but, well…”

She's obviously been living on short commons, he doesn't add. And like many people living on the edge, she's part of the cash society. More people should realise how traceable they are through the things they buy. The number of adulterers he's come across who've paid their hotel bill in cash and not been able to resist picking up the nectar points…

“If you could have registered her as a missing person,” he says.

“Tried it,” says Kieran. “Couldn't. Police called her mobile and she answered, so she doesn't count.”

There's something you're not telling me, thinks Steve Holden. “Well, all I can suggest is that you put access proceedings under way.”

A snort of irritation from the other end of the line. “Fat bloody lot of use that is if I don't have an address, is it?”

Fair point.

“Can't you trace her through the mobile? I thought they had some sort of satellite tracking thing…”

“Well, yes. And if I had a contact at her provider it might be possible, but I'm afraid they also have a thing called confidentiality.”

“You can't even find out where she's being billed to?”

“Not on a pay-as-you go, Mr Fletcher.”

“Shit,” says Kieran.

“I'm sorry.”

Silence.

“If she got a new number we might be able to source where the SIM card was sold, but otherwise…”

“So basically there's nothing you can do?”

“I can keep trying, if you like.”

"Of course I like," says Kieran. "And don't worry. Money's not an issue."

Mmm, thinks Steve. Okay. So her short commons doesn't translate into a general shortage at his end, then. "If there was a bank account," he suggests, "that your daughter's Child Support goes into? She will have to have given
them
her new details."

A silence. Kieran Fletcher changes the subject with an audible clunk. “How about Yasmin, then? She's got to be going to school. She's six years old. It would be against the law.”

“Absolutely.”

“Well, how about that, then?”

“School records are confidential as well, I'm afraid. Not that that's a problem, on the whole. Education Trusts are pretty dim when it comes to security. But the fact is, I've not been able to find a single child by that name registered anywhere other than at her old school, who don't seem to have noticed she's gone. Like I said, she's done a good job. I don't know how much of it was planned out, but it's been effective. She's not registered for National Insurance anywhere, she's not joined a library or signed up with a doctor. She's not got an obvious internet service provider. She's not reregistered with the DVLA. She's not ordered anything for delivery, as far as I know. She's not collecting her Family Allowance and she's not signed on, as far as I can see. Would she be going under any other name, other than Fletcher or Barton, that you can think of?”

“No. I don't suppose she's got the imagination to make one up.”

You'd be surprised. You don't have to have an imagination. Just a phone book and a pin. It's harder if you're trying to do anything official, of course, but you can call yourself Hurdy-Gurdy Schlobroff if you want and no-one can stop you.

“Well, there's a limit,” he says, “to how much more I can do with the information I've got. I wouldn't want to waste your money.”

“Just keep trying,” says Kieran. “I don't care what it costs.”

“If you're sure…”

“Absolutely. They can't just disappear.”

Actually, thousands of people do just that every year. But what's the point of telling you? A fee's a fee, after all.

“Well,” he says, “If you think of anything that might help me get a lead, let me know.”

“I will,” says Fletcher.

He hangs up. Scribbles a couple of notes and makes himself a mug of Nescaff. Adds three sugars.

The phone rings. He picks it up, listens.

“I've thought,” says Kieran Fletcher. “And I remembered something. Her mum and dad had her before they were married. I'd forgotten because it's not something that exactly got talked about much. But I guess she might be called Sweeny.”

Chapter Thirty-eight

She wishes, now, that Carol had never come. The feelings she's been having about the house – the sense that it is watching her, the threat of its isolated position, the odd things out of place and out of time – are more concrete now that someone else has had them too. I don't feel safe here, and I can't pretend, any more, that it's a hangover from the unsafety of London. It's odd. This house is odd. I see, now, why Frances Tyler got so spooked. Only, she had the option to walk away. I don't. This place is perfect for me, for us. The job's a breeze, most of the time; so much so I could probably sign up for some form of education and still do it. We've got all the space in the world, miles and miles to run, and breathe. I love this village, this new place where no-one knows me, where they accept my back-story at face value, where I can be anyone I want to be, not the frightened drudge he turned me into.

But… she's got me looking over my shoulder, now. She's got me double-checking the door locks. She's got me seeing things.

Bridget has collected all the metal objects in the house and is polishing them at the kitchen table, newspaper spread out all around her and the radio on. But she's had to move from one end of the table to the other already, because, where she was sitting at first, she couldn't keep an eye on the door. I'm definitely past my youth, she thinks. Today I turned the radio straight onto Radio Two, didn't even do a quick waveband skim in search of something more challenging. They'll never get me on to Radio Four, but I like this station. They've had six soul tracks, back to back – real soul, from the 1960s – and I've been able to sing most of the lyrics to each of them. Which would I rather? Marvin Gaye or Snoop Dogg? Do I need to even ask?

The phone rings and she is surprised, even though she's brought it down with her. Most of the time there's no reception down on the ground floor, but today a single bar shows in the display beside the 0207 number that's dialling in. I miss my mum, she thinks, suddenly, randomly. Picks it up.

“Hello?”

“You've still got a choice,” he says.

She closes her eyes. When will he stop?

“You can tell me where you are, or I can find you.”

Breathe.

“You think you're so fucking clever, don't you, Bridget?”

Don't react. Don't speak to him. Speaking to him will encourage him. Don't.

“Please,” she says, “leave me alone.” Intends to have it come out strong, decisive but hears, instead, the pleading tones she had meant to leave behind with her old life

His voice rises when he hears her, turns to a shout. She can see him, at his trader's desk, screaming into the handset, oblivious to the stares of his colleagues, face purpled with rage, tendons like hawsers in his neck. “You won't get away with this, Bridget! I'm coming for you! I'm fucking
coming
!”

She goes cold. Puts her thumb on the disconnect-switch and hangs up. Presses the tit on the top and powers it down. Sits looking at the phone as though it were a favourite pet that has suddenly turned round and bitten her. Considers throwing it, wholesale, into the garbage. I will get a new one, I will change my number and he can
fuck off.
Forever. He can –

Don't want to lose my numbers, though. Got to be sensible.

Ok, then. The SIM. I'll ditch the SIM. That'll do it. That's all I need to do.

She stands up, walks across the kitchen and pulls open a drawer. Finds the rolling pin. Opens the back of the phone and gets the old card out. I'll do it now, she thinks. That way I won't have an excuse. That way I'll have to go in to Wadebridge tomorrow and get a new one, because the phone won't work at all. I'll do it now.

She lays the chip on the rolling board: white-veined marble, hard and cold. Lifts an arm and brings the rolling pin down with all her strength. Does it over and over, pretends it's Kieran's head.
I hate you. I hate you. I hatehatehate you.
The card bounces, dents, bends, cracks. She keeps going until it is in pieces, pulverised, dead. There. You will never find me. Never find me. Never.

A laugh. Out in the hall. Bridget freezes. This damn house.

She listens. Nothing.

Another laugh.

Okay. Okay, that's enough. I've had enough of this damn house, playing tricks with me. I'll go and look, but I will not be afraid. See? I've got a rolling pin. If you want to fuck with me you can try all you like, but you're not going to make me afraid.

She goes to the door, throws it open and strides out into the dining room, club raised.