Afraid (35 page)

‘Don’t say that,’ Skye cried, her chest heaving.

‘Why not? It’s true,’ said Tom. ‘But then, you’re too stupid to accept the truth, aren’t you?’ he went on nastily. ‘You just want to lie around like a beached whale, taking, taking, taking. You make me sick – do you know that? I mean, look at you.’ He drew his head back and sneered at her. ‘Fat, ugly,
and
stupid. Who would ever put up with you, apart from me? Your mum and dad already hate you, so how do you think they’d react if you turned up looking like that?’

‘Stop it,’ Skye sobbed, rocking to and fro on her chair as he ranted. ‘You’re scaring me.’

‘You deserve it,’ spat Tom. ‘After everything I’ve done for you, I can’t believe you can betray me like this.’

‘I haven’t done anything,’ Skye protested.

‘You didn’t need to,’ Tom hissed. ‘Your reaction to that picture said it all. I thought you’d be happy, but now I know you don’t really care about me, I can’t even bear to look at you.’

‘Where are you going?’ Skye asked when he snatched his keys off the ledge and stalked towards the door.

‘Don’t question me,’ he barked over his shoulder. Then, hesitating before opening the door, he turned and glared at her, saying, ‘You’ve had it too easy for too long, that’s your trouble. I’ve gone easy on you lately, but it’s time I started putting my foot down, seeing that’s the only time I ever get any respect round here. Things are going to change from now on, so you’d better get ready.’

‘What do you mean?’ Skye asked, unnerved by the intensity in his eyes as he spoke.

Tom walked out without answering, and she jumped when he slammed the door so hard that it rattled the shelves and caused the clock in which she kept her secret key to fall over. Tears still rolling down her cheeks, she couldn’t even muster up the energy to stroke Bernie when he came over and rested his head on her thigh after Tom’s car had screeched away from the house. Everything just felt too painful right now.

Sobbing again when the all too familiar taste of bile flooded her mouth, she got up and ran to the bathroom. She’d been sick for weeks, and anything and everything set her off. The smell of Tom’s cigarettes, food, drink – everything. Tom said she must have picked up a stomach bug, and had been buying all sorts of foul-tasting medicines for her to take. None of them worked, and some even made her feel worse, because they gave her stomach cramps as well as the relentless nausea.

Secretly terrified that she might be seriously ill, she longed to be a child being looked after by her mum and dad again. She knew they didn’t love her or they would never have betrayed her like they had; but she had created a romanticised scenario in her mind of them welcoming her home with open arms and telling the police that they had got it wrong and she shouldn’t go to prison.

It was just a dream, though. A stupid, ridiculous dream that was never going to come true – especially not now they had decided to declare her dead.

Skye didn’t understand how any parent could do something like that to their own child, but she supposed Tom had been dead right when he’d said that they hated her and wanted that chapter of their life to be over with so they could move on without her.

When she stopped vomiting at last, she traipsed wearily back down to the kitchen and slumped down onto the chair before reaching for the photograph. She wished Tom hadn’t cut it out, because she would have liked to have been able to read the story that went with it. But it would probably be a pack of lies from her mum and dad; pretending to be sad, when really they were glad.

Skye stared long and hard at the faces of the people who were standing by the grave alongside her parents, but the photo was very grainy and she couldn’t really see them clearly enough to gauge if she recognised them or not. The one she was really looking for definitely wasn’t there, though. She’d have known Hayley even if her back had been turned, and it saddened her all over again to think that her one-time best friend hadn’t even bothered to put on an act and go to her mock funeral.

As another wave of self-pity washed over her, Skye angrily scrunched the picture up in her hand. She might as well have died for real, for all they cared. But they could all go to hell. If ever she had doubted Tom when he had said that they had never loved her, this was all the confirmation she needed that they were glad to be shot of her. And they hadn’t even done it nicely; they’d had to go and claim that she’d been murdered so that people would take pity on them and overlook what bad parents they had been. They disgusted her, and she was never going to think about them again.

And this time she meant it.

After his row with Skye, Tom drove further out into the countryside. He’d done a drive-around a few days earlier and had spotted several derelict barns that looked interesting. It was dark enough this evening so that he could take a closer look without fear of being spotted by any suspicious farmers or passers-by.

The barn he’d been particularly keen to check out was set much further back from the road than the others, and the pathway which led to it had more or less merged into the untended field it occupied. It was pretty much obscured from view by the high, unkempt hedgerow which separated it from the road, which made it perfect for people who didn’t want to be seen coming and going in the middle of the night. But, best of all, the farmhouse to which it belonged was no longer occupied.

He drove slowly up to the farmhouse now and got out to take a look through the windows. It was much larger than his house, and he might actually have considered moving into it if it hadn’t been in such a bad state of disrepair. Huge chunks of the roof seemed to be missing, which meant there would probably be a serious damp problem to contend with; and the windows and doors were so badly bowed it would be impossible to keep the place warm when winter hit. So, no, the house was out of the question. But the barn was definitely usable.

Skye was fast asleep on the couch when Tom arrived back home later that night. He gazed down at her for a while, taking in the powdery white streaks of dried tears on her flushed cheeks, and the protective way she was cradling her belly in sleep even though she didn’t even seem to have realised yet that she was pregnant.

That thing that was growing inside her was a major drawback to Tom’s plans, and he resented the sight of her slowly swelling stomach. He needed it to be gone before he started his next venture, but he was quickly running out of time and nothing seemed to be shifting the damn thing.

He had taken down his website after having had second thoughts about the last video he’d uploaded of Chloe. His customers enjoyed watching the girls being abused while they were unconscious, because children were at their most helpless when they were tied up and knocked out. But he supposed that some might feel funny about watching a child being abused after death. The lead-up to it was okay, because it was undoubtedly a turn-on to see a child begging for its life. But showing the actual act had been a step too far, so he had taken it down before anyone could think about reporting him.

Since then, he had gone back to trying to connect with girls on WhisperBox, but he still hadn’t found a suitable replacement for Skye. And that was disappointing, because there was a great market out there just waiting to be tapped. All he’d needed was a venue where the men could meet the girls in private, without it being connected to Tom in any traceable way. And now he’d found the perfect barn, he was eager to get started. But Skye’s growing stomach would be a major turn-off for his clients, and it pissed Tom off to think of all the money he could potentially lose because of her.

As he stared down at her now, the anger churned his stomach. And before he could stop himself, he fisted his hand and rammed it into her belly.

Skye screamed as the pain woke her immediately. She pulled her knees up to cover her stomach as tears spurted from her eyes.

‘It’s okay,’ Tom said, squatting beside her and stroking her terrified face. ‘You were having a bad dream, but I’m here now – you’re safe.’

Skye gaped confusedly up at him through her tears. She didn’t know what was going on. It didn’t feel like she’d been dreaming, but if Tom said she had then she must have been. But if it had been a dream, why did it hurt so much?

‘Are you okay?’ Tom asked as he watched the doubts flit through her eyes.

‘My stomach hurts,’ she sobbed.

‘That’s because you were hitting yourself when I came in,’ Tom told her. ‘I was just about to stop you when you woke up screaming. You must have been having a nightmare. I’ll go and get you a drink to calm you down.’

Confused, Skye cradled her aching stomach when Tom went into the kitchen. When he came back a couple of minutes later and handed a cup to her before sitting next to her, she raised it to her lips. But then she gagged when she caught the scent of the wine.

‘I don’t think I can drink it,’ she moaned, her mouth flooding with saliva. ‘The smell’s making me feel sick.’

‘I’ve put something in it to settle your stomach and help you relax,’ Tom told her, guiding the cup back up to her lips. ‘You’ve let yourself go lately,’ he went on as she drank some. ‘But I’m going to help you get back on your feet, ’cos we can’t have you going to your wedding looking like this, can we? No one likes fat brides.’

‘Do you really think I’m fat?’ Skye asked, mortified. ‘I knew I’d put a bit of weight on, ’cos some of my clothes are getting tight. But I didn’t think I was that bad.’

‘Well, you are,’ Tom said bluntly. ‘And I’ll probably go off you if you get any bigger, so you need to stop being so greedy. Drink up.’

Skye forced herself to take another sip. Then, frowning, she said, ‘You don’t think I could be pregnant, do you? Only I think I might have missed a period. Or maybe even two,’ she added uncertainly. ‘And with all the sickness …’

‘Don’t be daft,’ Tom scoffed, jabbing his finger hard into her belly. ‘That’s fat, not a baby. Anyway, I can’t have them, so if you are it can’t be mine.’

‘I haven’t slept with anyone else,’ Skye blurted out.

‘You’d better not have,’ said Tom, gazing down at her with suspicion in his eyes. ‘Because I’d kill you if you ever betrayed me like that.’

‘I haven’t!’ Skye insisted. ‘I haven’t even seen anyone.’

‘Then you’re just fat, like I said in the first place,’ said Tom. ‘And you need to stop being so greedy.’

‘But I hardly eat anything,’ Skye murmured. ‘Everything makes me sick.’

‘You must be doing it in your sleep,’ Tom told her, a look of concern in his eyes now. ‘If you’re doing that,
and
punching yourself as well, I’ll have to keep an eye on you.’

‘What do you mean?’ Skye asked, unnerved by his serious tone.

‘It could be a symptom of mental illness,’ Tom explained grimly. ‘Like your mum.’

His words sent a chill through Skye, and she gripped the cup a little tighter.

‘If you do it again we’ll have to think about taking you to a doctor, because it’s definitely not normal,’ Tom went on. ‘But don’t worry about it for now. Just finish your drink and let’s go to bed. It’s been a long day, and I think we could both do with a rest.’

28

The next few weeks were harrowing for Skye as, morning after morning, she woke with fresh marks on her stomach. Tom was being supportive, but she just couldn’t understand why she was trying to hurt herself in her sleep and the thought that she might have the same illness as her mum terrified her. And on top of the worry of that, she was still being sick and she felt bloated all the time.

Sure that Tom was going off her, because she kept catching him giving her funny looks, she took all the different medicines he bought for her and prayed that one of them would eventually work and she could go back to normal.

Unable to clear the gloomy thoughts from her head when she was alone in the house, Skye started working her way through the books from the living-room shelf unit. They all seemed to be historical romances, which she thought was an odd choice for Tom’s soldier cousin to have made, given that he must be – she assumed – fairly young. But the tales of downtrodden scullery maids being hauled through the fires of servitude by their evil masters before finding true love quickly caught her imagination. She found herself yearning to run carefree through a cornfield before falling into the arms of a real-life Prince Charming who would whisk her away from her troubles and devote his life to making her happy.

But it was just a dream and, no matter how much Skye lost herself in the fantasy while she was reading, reality was always lurking in the background, waiting to slam her back down to Earth as soon as she put down the book.

The pains started five weeks after Tom had told her about her parents ‘burying’ her. Terrified that the punches she’d been raining on herself during the night had seriously damaged her stomach, Skye took four paracetamol and then ran a bath, hoping that a relaxing soak in the warm water would soothe the awful pain.

Not five minutes after she had climbed in and started reading her latest book, she heard Bernie barking in the kitchen below. Immediately nervous, because he never barked as loudly or as insistently as that, she climbed quickly back out and pulled on her dressing gown. She hadn’t heard anybody knocking at the door but she crept into her bedroom and peeped out of the window all the same. Nobody seemed to be out there, so she tiptoed down the landing to check out back. Again, she saw nothing, so she went downstairs to see if Bernie had hurt himself.

The dog was standing at the back door, still barking, the fur on the back of his neck standing on end.

‘What’s the matter, boy?’ Skye asked, cradling her aching stomach with her hand as she walked over to him. ‘Has something spooked you?’

He stopped barking when she stroked him, and wagged his tail. But he was still edgy, and she noticed that he kept cocking an ear as if listening to something she couldn’t hear. Guessing that an animal must have come too close to the house for his liking, she made herself a hot drink after giving him a cuddle, and carried it back up to the bath.

* * *

Outside, as Skye re-immersed herself in her latest romance, the man who had crept into the garden via the untended field beyond ran up the path with a pair of bolt cutters in his hand. After cutting through the thick chain that was securing the gates, he pulled them quickly open and waved to the man behind the wheel of the van that was parked a little way down the road.