The Dare, page 23
I wait for a full five minutes after he’s gone before reaching for the call button at the side of my bed. I don’t think the nurse believes me at first. I can’t say I blame her. It sounds preposterous. Like some horrific fantasy I’ve just made up. But eventually, I get through to her and she rushes off to phone the police.
I close my eyes against the bright lights of the ward and Catherine’s body slides down the wall once more.
If I let myself relax, properly relax, so that my limbs are light and tingly, so that I have the sensation my body is floating on air and that I am at one with the universe, my mind slows, and the enormity of what I’ve done loses its power to haunt me. For however many minutes I remain in this state, I am free.
Free from the past. Free from her.
But the mind has a habit of breaking through, of striving for the clarity of conscious thought. Something will bring me back – the slam of a heavy door; the clanking of a guard’s keys; my cellmate’s fart – and my focus will return. A crescendo of shame and disgust.
I made a mistake. A colossal mistake. I underestimated Catherine Dawson. As soon as she got to work that day and found out that I’d had to fly to Aberdeen, she knew there was a good chance Lizzie would be on her own in the house. I should have realized that would happen. I should have made Lizzie come with me.
When I phoned the surgery again from the airport, to let them know I’d be staying in Scotland overnight and that they’d better get cover, one of the girls on reception let slip that it was going to be a hectic couple of days now that two members of staff were off at the same time.
‘Oh yeah?’ I said. ‘Who’s the other one, then?’
As soon as she said the name Catherine, I knew. My heart pounded against my ribcage. My brain raced. That’s when I started running back to where I’d parked the car, all thoughts of the flight I’d just booked and my father’s body abandoned in the rush to drive back home. Back home to Lizzie.
The rest, as they say, is history.
I underestimated Lizzie, too. She’s stronger than I thought.
56
Wednesday, 25 December 2019
I’m sitting on the floor in the middle of my parents’ living room, surrounded by brightly coloured wrapping paper. Toby gurgles contentedly as Dad dangles a piece of red ribbon in front of him as if he’s a kitten that will swat at it. He’s wedged between Dad’s legs, the lights of the Christmas tree dancing in his eyes. Not quite the little girl I was expecting – so much for my gut instincts – but my love for him is fierce, has been from the moment I first set eyes on him. I wouldn’t swap him for the world.
Dad lifts Toby’s right arm and makes him wave at me. Dad is wearing one of those ludicrous Christmas jumpers with a reindeer’s head on the front. Mum bought it for him as a joke. She always buys us funny things along with our proper gifts. I got a pair of novelty elf slippers with curled toes and bells on the end.
Not that we laughed as much as we normally would. Not that we laughed much at all. We’re just going through the motions, really, because what else can we do? And besides, this is Toby’s first ever Christmas and, although he’s only four weeks old and won’t remember a single thing about it, we will. Because in a way, it’s our first Christmas, too. Our first Christmas as an altered family, but a family nonetheless.
I will forgive them. In time. I think a part of me already has. They are my parents, after all, and I love them. None of this would even have happened if they hadn’t yearned for a baby. If Mum hadn’t taken matters into her own hands and slept with Mick Dawson as a means to an end. If Dad hadn’t loved her so very much and understood her desperate need for a child of her own. If he hadn’t been selfless enough to swallow his pride and become my father. My real father. Because let’s face it, never mind the biology, that’s what he is. That’s what he’s always been.
Whatever misguided motives they had for not telling me the truth, I have to accept that they thought they were doing it for the right reasons.
Unlike Ross.
Ross. My toes clench in their stupid elf slippers. I promised myself I wouldn’t think of him today, but how can I not? The mind has a knack for making you think of things you’d rather not. Another letter from HMP Wormwood Scrubs arrived last week. He said all the same stuff he said in the last one, but this time he’s included a long confession, written out like a story, so that I understand exactly how it happened. Why it happened. I haven’t read it yet. I will, though. Eventually.
Will knowing the details make any difference to the way I feel about him? Somehow, I doubt it. Because the man I fell in love with doesn’t exist. He’s a figment of my imagination, and his and Catherine’s devious little plan. He’s a projection of my own romantic longings.
When they led him away at the end of the trial, I felt sorry for him, naturally. Prison must be a dreadful experience. But seeing him in that court room was like looking at a stranger.
I never knew Ross Murray at all.
I like to think about the sort of man he could have been, if he’d never gone to live with his Aunt Jessie in Riley Road. If he’d never met Catherine Dawson and been taken over by her. Because I caught a glimpse of that man. He was always there, somewhere. And that man loved me. I have to believe that.
I do believe that.
I screw my eyes tight shut and force myself not to think of his hands on Catherine’s neck. If only he’d been strong enough to walk away. To carry me into the car and let her go. Maybe, in time, I might have forgiven him. Not enough to stay with him – never that – but enough to let him see his son from time to time, to have some kind of presence in his life. And I’d have spoken up for him if she’d done what he thought she might do, if she’d tried to level some kind of sexual allegation at him.
A fresh spasm of horror ripples through me when I think of Catherine’s blood-engorged face, her dead, staring eyes. My therapist recommends doing something physical whenever my mind insists on returning to that moment, on replaying it over and over. So I clamber to my feet and start tidying up some of the wrapping paper still strewn about the floor. Folding the pieces that can be recycled and setting them aside in a neat little pile. My world might have changed beyond all recognition, but life goes on. It has to. And sometimes it’s little tasks like these that keep me sane, that quieten the noise in my head.
Dad watches me, a mixture of sadness and pride in his eyes. He’s told me he doesn’t mind if I want to contact Mick Dawson in the future, if I need to talk to him and tell him that I know. But I don’t want to. I know I can’t speak for my future self, but I’m pretty sure that I won’t change my mind. It’s one of the reasons I didn’t go to Catherine’s funeral. Because I didn’t want to see him, and I don’t expect he and Sheena would have wanted me there anyway. Both their daughters are dead and I was with them both when they died. I still can’t get my head round it, so most of the time I don’t even try.
Mum and Dad want me to move back in with them permanently, but I’ve said no. It would be so easy to let them carry on looking after us, to stay in this little cocoon of love, but after everything that’s happened and what’s brought me to this point, I know it’s time for me to live on my own, to be independent at last.
If Ross hadn’t insisted on transferring the deeds of the house in Charlton into my name, I wouldn’t have been in a position to turn them down. But now that the paperwork is finally completed, I’m going to put the house on the market and buy a place of my own here in Dovercourt. I’ll be near enough to Mum and Dad that they can be part of our lives and watch Toby grow up, but we won’t be in each other’s pockets all the time. I’ll make sure of that.
Dad didn’t want me to have anything to do with the house at first, but then he came round to the idea. ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘Why the hell should he get away with not providing for his child? He owes you and Toby this for what he’s done. As long as he doesn’t think he has any kind of hold over you when he comes out. Because if he comes anywhere near you or Toby, I’ll … I’ll …’
Once upon a time, I suppose he might have said something like, ‘I’ll kill him with my own bare hands,’ but in the circumstances he couldn’t quite bring himself to finish the sentence.
It’s going to be tough, walking back into that house, but it’s got to be done if I’m ever going to move forward. I need to collect the rest of my things and get it ready for the estate agents to take their photos. Dad’s already bought the paint to cover up the stains in the hallway.
When things have settled down, I’m going to apply to the local university, too. See if I can do a part-time English degree. And in the meantime, Toby and I will camp out in my old bedroom. It’ll give me time to get used to being a mum.
What will I tell him as soon as he’s old enough to understand? Because I will tell him. Some of it, at least. I’ll tell him that once upon a time I had two sisters – Alice and Catherine – but that now they’re both dead. That once upon a time I loved his father so much, I wanted to be his wife, but he turned out to be a liar and a murderer. And that’s the brutal truth.
I swallow hard. Because here’s the thing: I am also a liar. I’m almost certainly a murderer, too. Will I tell him that? Somehow, I don’t think so. We all have things in our past we’re ashamed about. Things we’d rather others didn’t know.
Mum calls to us from the kitchen. She wants me to put Toby in his baby chair and she wants Dad to carve the turkey. The table is already laid. I helped her do it earlier while Toby was sleeping. There are four Christmas crackers waiting to be pulled. One for each of us in this strange little group we call a family.
‘Here you go, Pumpkin,’ Dad says, handing Toby over like the precious Christmas gift he is.
I take him in my arms and kiss his downy little head as he snuffles into my neck. When I think of how close I came to losing him … how close Mum came to losing me.
My darling Toby. My little boy. We’re a team now, the two of us. So much stronger than we look.
Three Months Later
I’ve been expecting it to look the same, but it doesn’t. This ugly concrete-and-steel footbridge is new and it takes me a while to process the change, to reconcile it with the image I’ve had in my head all these years. The image that comes back to me in dreams. Just one of many images that continue to haunt me.
It was Dad who suggested we come here. For closure, he said, although I’m not sure such a thing exists. He hasn’t accompanied me on to the footbridge. He’s waiting at the bottom of the steps, Toby strapped to his body in the baby carrier. This time last year, Toby was the size of an apple pip. I didn’t even know I was pregnant. Now he weighs six kilos and can push himself up on his arms when he’s lying on his tummy.
I can imagine how secure he feels, snuggled against Dad’s broad, warm chest, and I wonder if that’s how Dad carried me once. The little girl who wasn’t his, but whom he loved just as much as if she were. Still does.
I stop and lace my fingers through the steel mesh that’s here to stop people launching themselves off, or daredevil children from climbing down. I can’t toss the flowers I’ve brought with me on to the track, as I’d planned, but maybe that’s just as well. I dread to think how much worse I’d feel if I were leaning over the edge, my sight unencumbered by this metal latticework.
My forehead presses into the cold steel and I peer down. This is as close as I can get to the actual spot where it happened. My breath comes fast and shallow.
Somewhere above my head, a crow screeches and I’m tumbling back in time, wrestling with Alice on the track. It wasn’t the stuff of nightmares, that fight. It really happened, and now it’s happening all over again. My world has contracted to this one point in time and space. We’re swiping at each other with our hands, slapping the air and what bits of each other’s flesh we can find. We keel over in slow motion, arms flailing, legs buckling, mouths open in shocked concentration.
It seems to last for ever, this dance of ours, as if regaining our balance is simply a matter of time and finding the right steps. Needles of light glint sharp and silver off the tracks. Her face is so close to mine I can see the raised blue vein throbbing at her temple. The raw pinkness at the back of her throat.
Now more memories emerge from the darkness. Is that what these are? Memories? I can’t be imagining them, they’re too real. Too familiar. Like phantoms long repressed.
I used to wonder about all those missing pieces of my life, the things that happened to me before seizures. I used to think, if only the memories would return, somehow the picture would be complete and I’d be whole again. But what if the thing I can’t remember is just too awful to contemplate? Aren’t I better off not knowing?
My fingers clench tighter and I lean against the steel cage, willing my mind to return to the here and now. This can’t be what happened. Please God, tell me it can’t! I might have hated her in that moment, but I wouldn’t have hurt her. I couldn’t have!
Her eyes are frantic, her voice beseeching, just like the nightmares that have plagued me all my life. My grip tightens and the steel mesh digs into my fingertips as the scene plays out in my mind. I lash out at her, striking the tops of her arms, her face. She tries to grab me, but I’m too wild, too strong. I can’t hear her voice, only a buzzing noise getting louder and louder till it feels like it’s coming from inside my body, but I know she’s still screaming at me. I can see the black gaping hole of her mouth. The fear in her eyes. The fear.
My stomach contracts in a violent retch and I spit the saliva that’s flooded into my mouth on to the concrete between my feet, hoping Dad’s too preoccupied with Toby to notice what’s happening. I glance down at him, relieved to see his back is turned and he’s swaying gently from side to side. He’s probably singing to him, but I can’t hear him from all the way up here. All I can hear is a strange whooshing noise that isn’t, as I first thought, the wind whistling through the trees, but the sound of my own blood magnified in my ears.
I sink to my knees, hot tears coursing down my cheeks, my nose all stuffy and blocked, as I finally realize what my subconscious has been trying to tell me all these years. I didn’t push Alice. We weren’t fighting at all. We’d been arguing, yes. A childish spat that spiralled out of control.
Maybe it was the stress of the quarrel, but I must have stumbled on to the tracks in those surreal few minutes before a seizure, that briefest of periods when mind and body separate, when consciousness tilts and fades. Whatever we’d been screaming at each other up to that point is irrelevant. It always has been. It was fear in her eyes when we were struggling. But she wasn’t frightened of me like I’ve always suspected; she was frightened for me.
I wasn’t fighting her on the track. I was having my seizure on the track. Alice was trying to save me. She always looked out for me, made sure I was safe. Somehow or other, she found the strength to push me on to the ballast. And that’s where I finally came to.
But it was too late for Alice.
All my life I’ve wanted a sister. Was that why the two of us became such instant friends? Was there an invisible thread between us, binding us together from the start? Was that why our friendship seemed so natural, so right? All the laughter we shared. All the fun. If only I hadn’t seen that flicker of a smile on her lips. If only she hadn’t hinted at having a secret, we might never have started arguing in the first place. But once again, I let my stupid jealousy get the better of me and started yelling at her. Saying horrible, mean things.
Now, of course, I know exactly what she was smiling about. Catherine had broken her thirteen-year silence and told Alice what she knew. Told her we were sisters. There was me thinking that Alice was being all mysterious about Dave Farley and working myself up into a jealous fury, when all the time she’d been trying to find the right way of telling me we were related.
Alice was excited. Happy. All she wanted to do was share the news.
Alice, my best friend.
Alice, my sister.
Acknowledgements
Thank you, Amanda Preston, for being the kindest, smartest agent in town. None of this would have happened without you. Thanks also to Hannah Schofield and Alison Bonomi at LBA Books, for everything you do on my behalf, and to all the hard-working folk at ILA who sell my foreign rights.
My heartfelt gratitude goes to my UK publishing team: Sarah Adams, Alison Barrow, Imogen Nelson, Kate Samano, Sarah Day, Julia Teece, Richard Ogle (the man who always comes up with the perfect cover), and everyone else at Transworld. I feel truly blessed to be published by such a talented and creative group of people.
I am equally indebted to my US publishers. It is a privilege to work with Anne Speyer, Kathleen Quinlan, Allyson Lord, Jesse Shuman, Kim Hovey and everyone else at Ballantine, New York. I truly appreciate your enthusiasm for my books.
As always, though, my biggest thank-you goes to my husband, Rashid – my best friend and ally, and occasional stuntman for acting out various manoeuvres with me, so that I know how to describe them.
THIS IS JUST THE BEGINNING
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I close my eyes against the bright lights of the ward and Catherine’s body slides down the wall once more.
If I let myself relax, properly relax, so that my limbs are light and tingly, so that I have the sensation my body is floating on air and that I am at one with the universe, my mind slows, and the enormity of what I’ve done loses its power to haunt me. For however many minutes I remain in this state, I am free.
Free from the past. Free from her.
But the mind has a habit of breaking through, of striving for the clarity of conscious thought. Something will bring me back – the slam of a heavy door; the clanking of a guard’s keys; my cellmate’s fart – and my focus will return. A crescendo of shame and disgust.
I made a mistake. A colossal mistake. I underestimated Catherine Dawson. As soon as she got to work that day and found out that I’d had to fly to Aberdeen, she knew there was a good chance Lizzie would be on her own in the house. I should have realized that would happen. I should have made Lizzie come with me.
When I phoned the surgery again from the airport, to let them know I’d be staying in Scotland overnight and that they’d better get cover, one of the girls on reception let slip that it was going to be a hectic couple of days now that two members of staff were off at the same time.
‘Oh yeah?’ I said. ‘Who’s the other one, then?’
As soon as she said the name Catherine, I knew. My heart pounded against my ribcage. My brain raced. That’s when I started running back to where I’d parked the car, all thoughts of the flight I’d just booked and my father’s body abandoned in the rush to drive back home. Back home to Lizzie.
The rest, as they say, is history.
I underestimated Lizzie, too. She’s stronger than I thought.
56
Wednesday, 25 December 2019
I’m sitting on the floor in the middle of my parents’ living room, surrounded by brightly coloured wrapping paper. Toby gurgles contentedly as Dad dangles a piece of red ribbon in front of him as if he’s a kitten that will swat at it. He’s wedged between Dad’s legs, the lights of the Christmas tree dancing in his eyes. Not quite the little girl I was expecting – so much for my gut instincts – but my love for him is fierce, has been from the moment I first set eyes on him. I wouldn’t swap him for the world.
Dad lifts Toby’s right arm and makes him wave at me. Dad is wearing one of those ludicrous Christmas jumpers with a reindeer’s head on the front. Mum bought it for him as a joke. She always buys us funny things along with our proper gifts. I got a pair of novelty elf slippers with curled toes and bells on the end.
Not that we laughed as much as we normally would. Not that we laughed much at all. We’re just going through the motions, really, because what else can we do? And besides, this is Toby’s first ever Christmas and, although he’s only four weeks old and won’t remember a single thing about it, we will. Because in a way, it’s our first Christmas, too. Our first Christmas as an altered family, but a family nonetheless.
I will forgive them. In time. I think a part of me already has. They are my parents, after all, and I love them. None of this would even have happened if they hadn’t yearned for a baby. If Mum hadn’t taken matters into her own hands and slept with Mick Dawson as a means to an end. If Dad hadn’t loved her so very much and understood her desperate need for a child of her own. If he hadn’t been selfless enough to swallow his pride and become my father. My real father. Because let’s face it, never mind the biology, that’s what he is. That’s what he’s always been.
Whatever misguided motives they had for not telling me the truth, I have to accept that they thought they were doing it for the right reasons.
Unlike Ross.
Ross. My toes clench in their stupid elf slippers. I promised myself I wouldn’t think of him today, but how can I not? The mind has a knack for making you think of things you’d rather not. Another letter from HMP Wormwood Scrubs arrived last week. He said all the same stuff he said in the last one, but this time he’s included a long confession, written out like a story, so that I understand exactly how it happened. Why it happened. I haven’t read it yet. I will, though. Eventually.
Will knowing the details make any difference to the way I feel about him? Somehow, I doubt it. Because the man I fell in love with doesn’t exist. He’s a figment of my imagination, and his and Catherine’s devious little plan. He’s a projection of my own romantic longings.
When they led him away at the end of the trial, I felt sorry for him, naturally. Prison must be a dreadful experience. But seeing him in that court room was like looking at a stranger.
I never knew Ross Murray at all.
I like to think about the sort of man he could have been, if he’d never gone to live with his Aunt Jessie in Riley Road. If he’d never met Catherine Dawson and been taken over by her. Because I caught a glimpse of that man. He was always there, somewhere. And that man loved me. I have to believe that.
I do believe that.
I screw my eyes tight shut and force myself not to think of his hands on Catherine’s neck. If only he’d been strong enough to walk away. To carry me into the car and let her go. Maybe, in time, I might have forgiven him. Not enough to stay with him – never that – but enough to let him see his son from time to time, to have some kind of presence in his life. And I’d have spoken up for him if she’d done what he thought she might do, if she’d tried to level some kind of sexual allegation at him.
A fresh spasm of horror ripples through me when I think of Catherine’s blood-engorged face, her dead, staring eyes. My therapist recommends doing something physical whenever my mind insists on returning to that moment, on replaying it over and over. So I clamber to my feet and start tidying up some of the wrapping paper still strewn about the floor. Folding the pieces that can be recycled and setting them aside in a neat little pile. My world might have changed beyond all recognition, but life goes on. It has to. And sometimes it’s little tasks like these that keep me sane, that quieten the noise in my head.
Dad watches me, a mixture of sadness and pride in his eyes. He’s told me he doesn’t mind if I want to contact Mick Dawson in the future, if I need to talk to him and tell him that I know. But I don’t want to. I know I can’t speak for my future self, but I’m pretty sure that I won’t change my mind. It’s one of the reasons I didn’t go to Catherine’s funeral. Because I didn’t want to see him, and I don’t expect he and Sheena would have wanted me there anyway. Both their daughters are dead and I was with them both when they died. I still can’t get my head round it, so most of the time I don’t even try.
Mum and Dad want me to move back in with them permanently, but I’ve said no. It would be so easy to let them carry on looking after us, to stay in this little cocoon of love, but after everything that’s happened and what’s brought me to this point, I know it’s time for me to live on my own, to be independent at last.
If Ross hadn’t insisted on transferring the deeds of the house in Charlton into my name, I wouldn’t have been in a position to turn them down. But now that the paperwork is finally completed, I’m going to put the house on the market and buy a place of my own here in Dovercourt. I’ll be near enough to Mum and Dad that they can be part of our lives and watch Toby grow up, but we won’t be in each other’s pockets all the time. I’ll make sure of that.
Dad didn’t want me to have anything to do with the house at first, but then he came round to the idea. ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘Why the hell should he get away with not providing for his child? He owes you and Toby this for what he’s done. As long as he doesn’t think he has any kind of hold over you when he comes out. Because if he comes anywhere near you or Toby, I’ll … I’ll …’
Once upon a time, I suppose he might have said something like, ‘I’ll kill him with my own bare hands,’ but in the circumstances he couldn’t quite bring himself to finish the sentence.
It’s going to be tough, walking back into that house, but it’s got to be done if I’m ever going to move forward. I need to collect the rest of my things and get it ready for the estate agents to take their photos. Dad’s already bought the paint to cover up the stains in the hallway.
When things have settled down, I’m going to apply to the local university, too. See if I can do a part-time English degree. And in the meantime, Toby and I will camp out in my old bedroom. It’ll give me time to get used to being a mum.
What will I tell him as soon as he’s old enough to understand? Because I will tell him. Some of it, at least. I’ll tell him that once upon a time I had two sisters – Alice and Catherine – but that now they’re both dead. That once upon a time I loved his father so much, I wanted to be his wife, but he turned out to be a liar and a murderer. And that’s the brutal truth.
I swallow hard. Because here’s the thing: I am also a liar. I’m almost certainly a murderer, too. Will I tell him that? Somehow, I don’t think so. We all have things in our past we’re ashamed about. Things we’d rather others didn’t know.
Mum calls to us from the kitchen. She wants me to put Toby in his baby chair and she wants Dad to carve the turkey. The table is already laid. I helped her do it earlier while Toby was sleeping. There are four Christmas crackers waiting to be pulled. One for each of us in this strange little group we call a family.
‘Here you go, Pumpkin,’ Dad says, handing Toby over like the precious Christmas gift he is.
I take him in my arms and kiss his downy little head as he snuffles into my neck. When I think of how close I came to losing him … how close Mum came to losing me.
My darling Toby. My little boy. We’re a team now, the two of us. So much stronger than we look.
Three Months Later
I’ve been expecting it to look the same, but it doesn’t. This ugly concrete-and-steel footbridge is new and it takes me a while to process the change, to reconcile it with the image I’ve had in my head all these years. The image that comes back to me in dreams. Just one of many images that continue to haunt me.
It was Dad who suggested we come here. For closure, he said, although I’m not sure such a thing exists. He hasn’t accompanied me on to the footbridge. He’s waiting at the bottom of the steps, Toby strapped to his body in the baby carrier. This time last year, Toby was the size of an apple pip. I didn’t even know I was pregnant. Now he weighs six kilos and can push himself up on his arms when he’s lying on his tummy.
I can imagine how secure he feels, snuggled against Dad’s broad, warm chest, and I wonder if that’s how Dad carried me once. The little girl who wasn’t his, but whom he loved just as much as if she were. Still does.
I stop and lace my fingers through the steel mesh that’s here to stop people launching themselves off, or daredevil children from climbing down. I can’t toss the flowers I’ve brought with me on to the track, as I’d planned, but maybe that’s just as well. I dread to think how much worse I’d feel if I were leaning over the edge, my sight unencumbered by this metal latticework.
My forehead presses into the cold steel and I peer down. This is as close as I can get to the actual spot where it happened. My breath comes fast and shallow.
Somewhere above my head, a crow screeches and I’m tumbling back in time, wrestling with Alice on the track. It wasn’t the stuff of nightmares, that fight. It really happened, and now it’s happening all over again. My world has contracted to this one point in time and space. We’re swiping at each other with our hands, slapping the air and what bits of each other’s flesh we can find. We keel over in slow motion, arms flailing, legs buckling, mouths open in shocked concentration.
It seems to last for ever, this dance of ours, as if regaining our balance is simply a matter of time and finding the right steps. Needles of light glint sharp and silver off the tracks. Her face is so close to mine I can see the raised blue vein throbbing at her temple. The raw pinkness at the back of her throat.
Now more memories emerge from the darkness. Is that what these are? Memories? I can’t be imagining them, they’re too real. Too familiar. Like phantoms long repressed.
I used to wonder about all those missing pieces of my life, the things that happened to me before seizures. I used to think, if only the memories would return, somehow the picture would be complete and I’d be whole again. But what if the thing I can’t remember is just too awful to contemplate? Aren’t I better off not knowing?
My fingers clench tighter and I lean against the steel cage, willing my mind to return to the here and now. This can’t be what happened. Please God, tell me it can’t! I might have hated her in that moment, but I wouldn’t have hurt her. I couldn’t have!
Her eyes are frantic, her voice beseeching, just like the nightmares that have plagued me all my life. My grip tightens and the steel mesh digs into my fingertips as the scene plays out in my mind. I lash out at her, striking the tops of her arms, her face. She tries to grab me, but I’m too wild, too strong. I can’t hear her voice, only a buzzing noise getting louder and louder till it feels like it’s coming from inside my body, but I know she’s still screaming at me. I can see the black gaping hole of her mouth. The fear in her eyes. The fear.
My stomach contracts in a violent retch and I spit the saliva that’s flooded into my mouth on to the concrete between my feet, hoping Dad’s too preoccupied with Toby to notice what’s happening. I glance down at him, relieved to see his back is turned and he’s swaying gently from side to side. He’s probably singing to him, but I can’t hear him from all the way up here. All I can hear is a strange whooshing noise that isn’t, as I first thought, the wind whistling through the trees, but the sound of my own blood magnified in my ears.
I sink to my knees, hot tears coursing down my cheeks, my nose all stuffy and blocked, as I finally realize what my subconscious has been trying to tell me all these years. I didn’t push Alice. We weren’t fighting at all. We’d been arguing, yes. A childish spat that spiralled out of control.
Maybe it was the stress of the quarrel, but I must have stumbled on to the tracks in those surreal few minutes before a seizure, that briefest of periods when mind and body separate, when consciousness tilts and fades. Whatever we’d been screaming at each other up to that point is irrelevant. It always has been. It was fear in her eyes when we were struggling. But she wasn’t frightened of me like I’ve always suspected; she was frightened for me.
I wasn’t fighting her on the track. I was having my seizure on the track. Alice was trying to save me. She always looked out for me, made sure I was safe. Somehow or other, she found the strength to push me on to the ballast. And that’s where I finally came to.
But it was too late for Alice.
All my life I’ve wanted a sister. Was that why the two of us became such instant friends? Was there an invisible thread between us, binding us together from the start? Was that why our friendship seemed so natural, so right? All the laughter we shared. All the fun. If only I hadn’t seen that flicker of a smile on her lips. If only she hadn’t hinted at having a secret, we might never have started arguing in the first place. But once again, I let my stupid jealousy get the better of me and started yelling at her. Saying horrible, mean things.
Now, of course, I know exactly what she was smiling about. Catherine had broken her thirteen-year silence and told Alice what she knew. Told her we were sisters. There was me thinking that Alice was being all mysterious about Dave Farley and working myself up into a jealous fury, when all the time she’d been trying to find the right way of telling me we were related.
Alice was excited. Happy. All she wanted to do was share the news.
Alice, my best friend.
Alice, my sister.
Acknowledgements
Thank you, Amanda Preston, for being the kindest, smartest agent in town. None of this would have happened without you. Thanks also to Hannah Schofield and Alison Bonomi at LBA Books, for everything you do on my behalf, and to all the hard-working folk at ILA who sell my foreign rights.
My heartfelt gratitude goes to my UK publishing team: Sarah Adams, Alison Barrow, Imogen Nelson, Kate Samano, Sarah Day, Julia Teece, Richard Ogle (the man who always comes up with the perfect cover), and everyone else at Transworld. I feel truly blessed to be published by such a talented and creative group of people.
I am equally indebted to my US publishers. It is a privilege to work with Anne Speyer, Kathleen Quinlan, Allyson Lord, Jesse Shuman, Kim Hovey and everyone else at Ballantine, New York. I truly appreciate your enthusiasm for my books.
As always, though, my biggest thank-you goes to my husband, Rashid – my best friend and ally, and occasional stuntman for acting out various manoeuvres with me, so that I know how to describe them.
THIS IS JUST THE BEGINNING
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