Final Cut(72)

‘Right,’ she says cheerily. ‘So we’re all happy?’

There’s murmured assent, a giggled profanity. ‘Happy, Ellie?’

Ellie nods vaguely. She’s inhaling deeply on the joint.

‘And you’re looking forward to the party?’

Grace answers.

‘Party? What party?’

‘I told you. There’s a party tonight, Grace. You said you wanted to go. Remember?’

Grace nods, once. ‘Kat?’ says Monica. ‘You’re going, too? And Ellie?’

The smiles drops from Ellie’s face, but she says nothing. I wonder whether it was filmed before she disappeared. Before she was taken.

‘Richey will be there to look after you. Don’t worry.’

Ellie looks over to Kat. Is Richey her boyfriend, the one in the café? The younger girl’s eyes flash briefly on the camera that Kat must have cradled in her hand and it’s as if she’s looking straight at me, but then she raises her gaze. Her eyes are wide and desperate, and she seems both unspeakably young and far, far too wise for her years.

‘Now,’ says Monica. ‘There’s something else. That woman? Alex? She’s asking questions.’ She surveys the girls. ‘And we must all be very careful about what we tell her. Mustn’t we?’

A murmur, but no one replies.

‘Or else there’ll be no more of this. Understand?’

She looks round, but if there’s any more I don’t hear it. Kat must’ve realised she was about to be spotted, that she’d lose her chance to send it to me.

The screen goes black as the film ends and silence rushes in.

I hear voices, interrupted occasionally by music. A radio. With my ear pressed against the wall, I can just about hear her moving around, too, right at the very threshold of perception. She climbs the stairs right next to me and a minute or two later there’s the rumble of pipes as the boiler fires.

I return to the window and wait. I walked up to the bandstand last night, as if I expected Kat would still be there, but it was empty. Just a broken bottle under the bench, a littering of spent cigarettes carpeting the floor. A girl, out in the far corner of the park, barely visible in the gloom. But no Kat, and nor have I seen her today.

Not that it matters, really. I didn’t know what I was going to say to her. To thank her for the film, I suppose. To ask her when it was taken and what happened at the party, and why Ellie didn’t want to go with the other girls. As if I couldn’t guess.

I know what happens at these parties. Young girls stand around, terrified but trying not to look it, hoping they seem keen enough to not get a beating. Men choosing which they prefer, a nod and a grunt and then it’s fifteen minutes upstairs.

But does Monica know that’s what’s going on? In the film she hadn’t seemed cruel. When she’d insisted that Richey was there to protect the girls, she sounded like she believed it was true.

A creak from next door. She’s on the stairs again, and at first I’m hopeful she’s leaving. But then I hear the TV go on and a little later the noise of cooking.

It’s after lunch when I hear her key in the lock. She appears at the window, carrying a jute bag, dressed in a weatherproof jacket despite the weak sun. I sit back out of sight and watch as she locks the door behind her before setting off, glancing at my door as she goes. I wait five minutes, counting each of them off on my phone’s digital display, then leave Hope Cottage. It’s now or never.

Monica’s front door is locked; the handle doesn’t give. When I peer through the frosted glass I see a light in her kitchen at the end of the corridor, but there’s no noise, no flickering light from the television, no radio. I step back. I have to get inside. I have to find out what’s going on.

All that separates her yard from mine is a wooden fence. There are some rickety garden chairs beneath the table in the far corner and I unfold one and stand on it. It’s high enough for me to get over the fence, and I drop down on the other side into the mirror image of the yard I’ve just left. The same ceramic pots are lined up against it, an almost identical table sits in the opposite corner. She’s arranged two gnomes with cracked faces on a low stone wall on the other side, while a third has toppled over and lies beneath them, its head smashed.

The patio door is locked but shifts a little when I try it. I find a rock at the back of the yard, where it’s weighing down a tarpaulin, then use it to hammer upwards on the bottom of the handle. I’ve no idea why; it’s some instinctive knowledge I don’t remember learning, but must have. After a few seconds the door lifts and I find I can slide it open. I’m inside.

The kitchen is untidy: pots and pans moulder in the sink, a days’ worth of unwashed plates are stacked next to the kettle, plus three or four mugs, one of which is filled with dirty cutlery. A stale smell pervades, cigarette smoke and fried food, a bin that needs emptying. I’m not sure why I’m here, what exactly I’m looking for. It’s as if I thought getting inside would tell me instantly what I need to know, but I’m going to have to search. In the living room there’s a crumpled blanket on the sofa, the ashtray that still hasn’t been emptied since the other day, or else it has and has since been refilled with dead cigarettes. Two wineglasses, both empty other than the dregs of red. I suddenly see Monica as unutterably sad; I picture her lying under the blanket, staring at the television, smoking, drinking wine, pickling herself in her misery. Why are you living like this? I think. What is it that’s eating you up? A failed love affair, and now you channel your love into the girls and fester in your disappointment? Is it this place? Then get out. And if it’s guilt, then tell someone. Get it off your chest.