Final Cut(82)

‘You couldn’t tell me?’

I say nothing. I want to ask him how he knows, but I suppose it’s obvious. He saw me at my mother’s grave. Heard me insisting that Sadie was alive and that we couldn’t go to the police, that she couldn’t be buried there on the moors.

‘You put two and two together?’

‘And this, too.’ He reaches for my arm and I let him. He pushes back my sleeve. ‘I noticed it that first night we were together. There are always signs. Of abuse?’

I try to pull away, but he holds me still. He’s gentle, but he’s tracing my scars. His fingers leave a trail, like tiny insects under my skin, burrowing.

‘I wanted to talk to you before, after we went to your mother’s grave, but with Ellie going missing … And I understand why you tried to hide it, but it’s nothing to be ashamed of. They’re nothing to be ashamed of.’

No, I think. No. All that happened later, after I ran.

‘Stop it.’

‘A lot of survivors self-harm. It’s quite—’

‘It’s not self-harm. I had an accident. Boiling soup.’

He stares at me. He doesn’t believe me.

‘You talk in your sleep, too. You know that, don’t you?’

I think of my ex. He’d found it funny. You don’t stop, he told me once. Muttering under your breath. It’s like you’re having a right old row.

‘You kept saying her name. Daisy.’

I nod. Mute. It seems the truth does always come out, in the end. The lost really are always desperate to be found.

‘You won’t tell anyone, will you?’

He says he won’t, but I’m not sure I believe him. Perhaps I’m too late and he already has.

‘You could’ve been honest with me,’ he says.

I lean in, close. I want to believe him. I want him to reach out, to hold me. I want to believe someone can love me without wanting something from me. But I’m not sure I can.

He stares straight at me, his head tilted. He has a sad half-smile of compassion pasted across the lower half of his face, though it doesn’t reach his eyes. ‘You can trust me.’

I don’t know what to tell him. I don’t know how to give him enough, without giving him everything. That’s the problem; I never have. ‘I like you,’ he says. ‘A lot.’

He seems suddenly like a schoolboy. I know what I’m supposed to say, here. The words even form, but they choke themselves off in my throat and I say nothing. He shakes his head sadly.

‘You don’t feel the same.’

‘It’s not that,’ I say.

‘What, then?’

I hesitate. I feel like I’m wading out to sea; the water is black, the ocean floor precarious. At any moment it might disappear and leave me floundering.

‘I just feel so …’

What? I think. Lost? Empty? Eventually, I find the word. I’d forced it into a box, locked it away, but of course it’s still there. It has to be. I wasn’t there for her when she needed me. I ran instead, and then she disappeared, too. There’s no getting away from that.

‘Guilty.’

‘It’s not your fault.’

‘What?’

‘That Daisy took her own life. You did everything you could. Those men … they were hurting you; you were right to run away. You had to. No one would blame you.’

But they do. Someone blames me. She blames me.

‘You don’t understand. I didn’t run away because of that.’

He lowers his voice. ‘You don’t have to lie to me.’

‘What?’

He looks down. ‘I know … I know it happened to Zoe, too.’

I’m silent. He’s right, I think.

‘I tried to be there for her.’

I don’t know what to say, and so I just say, ‘I’m sorry.’

‘No wonder she ran. If that’s even what happened to her.’ He raises his eyes. They glisten. ‘What if she really is dead? Like Daisy. What if—?’

‘Daisy isn’t dead.’

‘What?’

I stare at him. The moment stretches until it’s about to snap and only then do I speak.

‘She sent the postcard. She drove up that first night before you came along. In David’s car, I think. She’s been behind everything.’

He’s staring at me. He believes I’m fragile, but he’s starting to wonder now, wonder how deeply the fracture of abuse has cut.

‘You’re serious?’

I can see him struggling. Light begins to bleed from the sky.

‘She’s over there,’ I say. ‘At David’s house. I’m sure of it.’

I tell him about being locked in the caravan and he swallows thickly. ‘We should go to the police,’ he says.

I put my hand on his. ‘I can’t,’ I say. ‘Not yet.’ I dig the camcorder out of my bag. ‘I just need you to help me. I can’t explain. But will you? Please?’

He takes it from me and weighs it in his hand.

‘Can you get it working? Or transfer stuff from the tape?’

‘Then we’ll go to the police?’

‘Yes,’ I say, because I know I’ve run out of options. ‘I promise.’