Where the Missing Go(81)

So it wasn’t a mistake: Sophie getting pregnant. A baby.

‘But you couldn’t run away with her, this time, you’d have been discovered. You hid her, instead.’

‘No one would have understood. But we were in love.’

‘But you know now, don’t you?’ I have to make him realise. ‘This is the end – it’s over.’

He shakes his head slowly. ‘Not yet. I can fix this. I’ve done it before.’ He points the knife at the bottle in my hand. ‘Because you’re going to take those pills.’

‘I’m not.’ He won’t be able to cover this up, not again, even if I don’t get through this – his skin under my nails, scratches on his face, whatever it takes, I will leave traces that they will find, if something happens to me, leading them to Sophie. ‘You’re not going to cover this up. I won’t do it.’

‘Oh, but you will do it.’ His certainty shakes me. ‘You’ll see.’

He takes a step back, the knife still in his hand, and now he’s beckoning through the smaller door, through to the next room. ‘You can come out now.’

At first I hear nothing. Then the rustling, just faint. The footsteps are slow, tired-sounding.

She walks in.





45


Her hair’s grown. Of course it has. And she’s so pale, under the grime. She’s no shoes on, just greying socks, a big T-shirt under her jumper and old tracksuit bottoms. She is taller, too.

My eyes fill with tears. Sophie. She’s alive. She really is. Wild joy fills me – and then fear. ‘Sophie—’ I take a step towards her, my hands reaching out.

‘Don’t move another inch.’ He points the knife right at me and I freeze.

Above the masking tape, her eyes are full of fear, like a cornered animal. The tape’s round her wrists too: her hands twisted awkwardly in front of her; back to back.

‘So that’s why you’re going to take the pills,’ he says. ‘Or I’ll hurt her.’ He says it so calmly, so matter-of-fact.

I understand now. ‘You don’t need to do this. You can go away. You don’t need to. I won’t tell anyone. Just let us go and—’

He gestures impatiently. ‘Stop it, Kate.’ He sighs, like I’m an annoyance. ‘Of course you’ll tell someone. Look what you’ve done so far.’

‘I was just trying to find out what happened,’ I say now, keeping my voice steady.

‘We wanted to be together. Didn’t we, Sophie?’ She nods. He’s broken her, I think, my poor girl. ‘But you wouldn’t let her go. And yet you couldn’t find her either, could you? Right by you, and you never realised.

‘You’ve failed her, until now. You told me that. But now here’s your chance: your chance to save her. To make it right, like you wanted.’

To save her … and I stop. Then what? A half-life with him, hidden away. Or worse?

Make it right. I wasn’t perfect. But this wasn’t my fault.

I stare at him; the hatred radiating off me. It wasn’t my fault. Sophie didn’t leave me, not forever; she just made a mistake. She wanted to come home. I’m not a bad mother.

It was him. He did this to me – to us. To my daughter. He ripped our lives apart.

‘So that’s why,’ he says, ‘you’re going to do what you’re supposed to do now. Take the pills.’

‘You wouldn’t.’ My mouth is so dry with fear my tongue sticks to the roof. ‘You don’t want to hurt her. Nancy was an accident.’ No. I can’t be this close, only to lose now. He takes a step towards Sophie and lifts his hand. ‘You wouldn’t hurt …’

‘No, I don’t want to. I never want to. But she’s been a bad girl, haven’t you? A disappointment. And I didn’t even know, until your mother told me, the full extent of all your little tricks, to get away from me.’ Her eyes are shiny, wet with tears, above the ugly silver tape covering her mouth.

‘So that’s why,’ he says to me. ‘That’s why you’re going to do it. And then we can start again. Things will have to be quite different, I think.

‘Now.’ He steps close to her, puts the knife just against her cheekbone, near her eye, and presses almost delicately. A small red bead swells up under the point and then rolls down, like a tear.

‘Stop,’ I say. ‘It’s OK, Sophie.’ No more playing for time. At least this way she’s got a chance. I unscrew the cap, my hands fumbling with the safety lock. I can make myself vomit, I think. Or I’ll spit them out; I will keep them in my cheek—

‘I’m going to watch you do it. Let me see your hands.’ He’s always been clever.

‘How do I know though?’ I say, lifting my head. ‘How do I know you’re not going to hurt her?’

‘You don’t. But Sophie’s going to be a good girl. She knows what happens if she’s not. Don’t you?’ he says to her.

She nods quickly.

I look at her at last: ‘Just survive, sweetie. Do what you have to do to survive, that’s all I ask.’

I do it as slowly as I can. Maybe I could pull through this, I’m calculating, I did last time. But I can see: there must be what, fifty pills in here? Far more than before. That would do it, no doubt about it. And I’ll be here, won’t I, quietly falling asleep in a dirty corner of an empty building, where no one will find me.