Final Cut(71)

My head falls. I try to think back to the day I filmed it, but I can’t. The memory is there, but hidden, or it’s like looking through gauze; the film is scratched and burnt, too many frames are missing for it to make sense. I get only sensations. Walking up there. Getting ready. Sharing my makeup, even though surely she has some of her own, taking the camcorder out of my bag.

The camcorder. Why don’t I remember it? It must’ve been my first. It must’ve been where all this started, this need to record and preserve. But where did I get it?

It meant a lot to me. That much I know. But did I steal it, get the bus into town and slip it into my bag, walk out of the shop, praying I hadn’t been seen and that there were no security cameras?

No. I don’t think so. That was never my style. Lipsticks from the chemist’s, perhaps. Cans of cheap cider, maybe. But not a camcorder. Not something worth hundreds.

So where, then? Where did it come from?

Maybe it was a gift? Yes. Not wrapped up with a bow, it was in a plastic carrier bag, but a gift, still. I remember not knowing what it was. I remember it being a surprise. I remember being told I’d earned it.

But from whom? And how? The voice was a man’s. It belonged to someone I loved but was also scared of. I knew even as I took it out of its box that the camcorder came with conditions. I’ve rubbed your back, now it’s time for you to rub mine.

I shiver. I feel a hand on me, on my shoulder; it’s pushing me, gently. Go on, it says. Go on. Like we agreed, like you promised. You can’t back out now. It pushes harder; I almost stand. I open my eyes, but I’m alone.

Can it have been my mother’s boyfriend? When I remember him I see only his face, crumpled with dislike. There’s no way he’d have given me a camera.

David, then? Maybe. I can’t stop feeling that he’d be all right now if I’d never come, if I’d never started shoving my nose into other people’s business. And I can’t stop feeling guilty. I can’t stop thinking I loved him once.

I need to remember him. He’s the key.





41


I ring St Mary’s and tell them I’m a friend of David’s. As I wait to be connected I think of the telescope on his roof, the scratched mark on the caravan wall in Daisy’s bedroom, the photo in Zoe’s. I need him to wake up. I need to see him, to make him tell me how we’re all linked, what’s happening. Who took Ellie and why, who killed Daisy. I’ve hit a wall; as much as I try to remember, I can’t get through it. But when I speak to the ward nurse she tells me there’s been no change in his condition. She doesn’t sound optimistic.

I put down the phone as a wave of guilt swells through me. I breathe through it and try to focus. I have work to do, a film to make. It’s nearly Christmas and they want the taster by the end of the year. And for me, I have to find out what’s happening to the girls and try to stop it. Someone is getting them into drugs, abusing them. Someone is taking them out and leaving them on the moors to teach them a lesson. I have to work it out. I mustn’t unravel.

I press Play. Two kids – twin boys, it looks like – whizz past on a bike. An open pizza box lies on a table with five or six hands grabbing at it. A farm, pigs snuffling at the trough. A bunch of kids flying a kite somewhere further along the cliff, near the lighthouse. A black screen, a flash of light, a blurred shape as the camera struggles to focus but which resolves itself into a person. Into Ellie.

I lean in. She’s laughing, exuberant; her head is thrown back with joy. Next to her there’s another girl I don’t recognise, and slightly behind her two older boys. As the camera is steadied I realise they’re sitting on camping chairs arranged in a loose circle, the ground underfoot is muddy, and behind them a horse peers over a half-door.

The stables. This is good, I think. It’ll go with the footage I shot there. Monica’s voice cuts in.

‘Any more for any more?’

Ellie looks up; the others, too. The screen is blocked momentarily by the back of someone’s legs as they walk into shot and I realise the person with the camera is sitting on a chair opposite Ellie and trying to film without being noticed.

‘Ellie?’

Monica hands her something, though I can’t see what.

‘Anyone else?’

A couple of the others mumble something.

‘Grace?’

The girl next to Ellie holds out her hand and receives her gift, too. Monica walks into shot and turns to face whoever’s holding the camera.

‘Kat?’

A voice from behind the camera. ‘I’m okay, thanks.’

So it’s her filming. The girl called Grace laughs as the screen goes dark and the sound becomes muffled. Kat’s covering the lens, I suppose; maybe she’s shoved the phone between her knees, or rammed it under her arm. ‘Oh, come on!’

‘I said no.’

‘Leave her,’ says Monica, and a second later the camera lens is unblocked. Ellie is in the corner of the screen now, and I see she’s holding a cigarette. I zoom in. It’s a joint, of course. Monica holds a lighter in front of her face, but as Ellie leans forward to light it she almost topples off the chair. She giggles as she rights herself, stoned already, perhaps drunk, too. At her feet there are empty bottles, wine and vodka, plus a carton of orange and a discarded stack of plastic cups. The camera wobbles as Monica turns to sit herself on one of the empty chairs.