Final Cut(42)

I pull into the car park and sit for a moment. It’s afternoon; soon, it’ll be getting dark. I pick up my camera and watch the footage I’ve just recorded. It’s sweet. It’ll work really well in the edit, showing the girls in a positive light and a community spirit. But how to get Monica to agree to me using it? I could be honest, I suppose, tell her I followed her. Or perhaps I should deny all knowledge, tell her it was submitted by someone anonymously. Either way, there’s no reason she shouldn’t let me use it, not once she’s seen it.

A shadow falls across the screen. Almost before I’ve reacted, the door right next to me is open and a figure is standing there, wearing a waterproof jacket, hood up, and though I want to react, to lash out, something stops me.

‘Move!’ comes a familiar voice. It’s a woman. ‘Get in the passenger seat.’

I find my voice.

‘No. What the—?’

She takes down her hood, just for a second, and I see who it is.

‘Move over,’ she says, more softly, though no more kindly. ‘We haven’t got long.’





24


Liz drives erratically, as if she’s being pursued. Her hand shakes when she takes it off the steering wheel to change gear; the car whines as she releases the clutch. Is she as scared as I am?

‘What is it?’ I say, my voice weak and tremulous. ‘Where are we going?’

She remains silent. She’s agitated, at her limit. I wonder whether she’s acting against her will, if she’s been forced to pick me up, if she’s delivering me somewhere.

Or to someone. My flesh sings, sweat runs down my back despite the cold, and I panic. I reach for the door handle, but my hands are numb, they won’t close around it, and what am I going to do anyway? Hurl myself on to the roadside? Hope for a soft landing in the heather?

I think of the dead sheep. Burst and bleeding.

‘Liz?’ I can’t keep the fear from my voice.

The car swerves. Not much, but the road is narrow, hardly more than a car’s width, and with a ditch on each side. What does she mean to do? Will someone be waiting for me? Again, the dead sheep appears in front of me.

‘Just … shut up. Okay?’

She glances in the rear-view mirror. There are headlights behind us, a car in the distance, and she speeds up. She barely slows for the crossroads and goes straight over. There’s nothing this way for miles, nothing but the empty, desolate moor.

We cross a low stone bridge and, once more, my hand goes to the door handle. My knuckles are white.

‘Don’t—’ The threat, if that’s what it is, hangs in the air.

She pulls off the main road and on to an even narrower track, then into what serves as a lay-by. She cuts the engine.

‘Come on.’

The undulating moor is ghostly in the afternoon light, but there’s no one else in sight. She strides out and, instinctively, I take my phone from my jeans pocket. It’s already filming, though I don’t remember starting it. I’m safe, for the moment.

She reaches a stone wall on the moor and follows it, then scrambles over a stile and heads off, climbing towards a distant tree. I can see it only dimly, in silhouette. It’s a yew, I think. When Liz reaches it, she turns and beckons.

I’m torn, but my instinct to find out, to document, wins out and I jog towards her. There’s a bunch of flowers under the gnarled tree, in plastic wrapping, secured with an elastic band. They’re white, bedraggled. Dead. The edge of each petal is turning to brown, as if stained with nicotine.

‘What the fuck is this?’

‘A grave.’ Her face shifts; it softens in the half-light, the shadow of the tree. ‘The girl’s,’ she whispers. ‘The one who disappeared.’

‘Daisy?’

She seems to recoil at the name, and I flinch, too. My spine tenses and contracts, as if I’m trying to shrink myself to nothing.

‘No,’ she says. ‘Sadie.’

‘But she ran away. They found her.’

‘No,’ she says, and I shiver. Wind blasts up the hill, driving out thought.

‘What happened to her, then?’

She hesitates, and when her answer comes it’s a lament.

‘She’s here.’

The ground tilts, even though it can’t be true. This must be what they mean, someone walking over your grave. She shakes her head sadly, her eyes cast down.

She can’t be, I want to say, but I can’t risk giving myself away.

She’s brought me here to tell me something, and now she seems unable to do so.

‘What are you saying, Liz?’

She begins to speak, but the words escape as a sigh, a breeze of defeat, and her whole body seems to deflate with them, as if she’s crumpling, collapsing in on herself.

‘I didn’t know. I swear.’

‘Didn’t know what?’

She ignores my question. She’s whispering now.

‘He said he never meant to hurt her.’

‘Who? Who said? Hurt who?’

She gazes back towards the car. Anywhere but at me. ‘My father,’ she whispers.

Her father? I force myself back, into the past. I don’t remember him any more than I remember her. How old would he have been back then? Forties? Fifties? I can imagine him, though, understand what she’s saying. God knows I’ve seen plenty of people like that in my life, with their pudgy jelly-mould skin, their rotten popcorn breath, their slobbering eagerness as they unthreaded their belts and unzipped their trousers.