Final Cut(94)

I lash out and, though I manage to free myself, my foot goes over on the slime and I go down, face first into the water. The black depths rush in; I can’t breathe. Gavin grabs hold once more and tries to lift me out.

‘Daisy!’ says Monica. ‘Wait!’

The name clamps round me like a vice. The urge to escape vanishes; I stop fighting. I’m limp, with shock, perhaps. Gavin holds me and I hear his voice, incredulous.

‘Daisy?’

Time stops. I don’t know how long for, but it’s Monica who breaks the silence.

‘It’s true,’ she says. ‘Now come on.’ Gavin hesitates, his mouth clearly full of questions, but she grabs my other arm. ‘Help her.’

They heave me up on to the narrow ledge and out of the freezing water, then crouch over me. I cough, and warm seawater floods from my nose, mixed with mucus. Gavin is holding my head; Monica, too. She has me by the throat and it feels like she wants to squeeze and squeeze and never let go.

‘Daisy,’ she says, leaning close. ‘You need to come with us, now.’

I shake my head. I feel my body shutting down. I can’t go back there, back to Blackwood Bay. Not now. Not after what I did to Sadie.

‘Daisy. Come on! It’s not safe here. Trust me.’

She’s talking about Bryan, I suppose. He’ll be landing his boat back at the slipway and heading this way. But why is she helping me?

I can’t summon the will to ask. Nothing matters any more, not now I know what I did. I don’t care what happens to me.

After a second she turns to Gavin. ‘Help me get her upstairs,’ she says. ‘Then go and get someone from the village.’

He stands just beyond her, watching us both. He seems undecided, he can’t work out what’s going on, whether he should leave me here with Monica.

‘I’m trying to help her!’ says Monica, and finally, he moves. Together they lift me, and the three of us climb the passageway back to David’s cellar. The exit is hidden in the darkest corner, a rotting door behind boxes of papers. A single light bulb hangs overhead, garlanded with cobwebs.

She turns to Gavin. ‘For God’s sake, go and get help.’

I stammer through chattering teeth, but Monica silences me. ‘You have to trust me. I’m trying to put this right.’ She looks back at Gavin. ‘Go! Now!’

He makes his decision. He leaves, taking the steps two at a time, and Monica and I slump against the dusty wall, too exhausted to speak. I shiver; my soaking clothes cling to my skin, my limbs are raw. I could die here, go to sleep and never wake up. It’s what I deserve. But somewhere else, underneath all that, I know I mustn’t. I have work to do; I can’t let Bryan get away with it.

‘Monica?’

At first she shows no sign of having heard me, but then she breaks her silence.

‘You were right about it all. I’m an idiot, I couldn’t let myself see what was happening. He told me nothing was going on. The girls went to the parties because they enjoyed it. They seduced the men, took photos. Then he blackmailed them. The girls were in on it. That’s what he said.’ Her face falls and her hands come up to cover her shame, but she can’t hold back her tears. ‘I loved him,’ she says, between sobs. ‘Always have. I believed what he said. But he was just using me.’

She goes on, in a whisper now. ‘He worked out you were back. Said there was a weird way you held your cigarette, just like Daisy. Said we’d have to deal with the situation. He forced me to make that film of Bluff House and tell you to come alone. But then … then he said the only way we could keep you quiet was to kill you. That’s when I knew. That’s when I knew Sadie’s death hadn’t been an accident. That he’d killed her, too.’

I look at her and the shame I share with her skewers me. ‘No. I did that.’ It comes out as a sob. I want to sink further to the floor, let it swallow me completely.

‘Daisy, love. He made you. You had no choice.’

I try to believe her. I fail, but there’s something about hearing my real name again. It shocks me out of my torpor. I’m beginning to feel again. Sorrow, for Sadie, for all the girls. For Monica.

‘You’re still in love with him.’

She shakes her head, but I can see it in her eyes. ‘How stupid am I? I thought he was the one who’d rescued me.’

‘Rescued you?’

‘My father.’

It’s little more than a croak, but I know what she means. Abuse goes in cycles, Dr Olsen taught me that. But maybe this is her chance to break the chain.

And isn’t that what I have to do, too? Slowly, I feel myself cranking up, stuttering into start-up like my ancient laptop.

‘How did you know where to find me?’ I ask.

‘We worked it out, me and Gavin. If you jumped but were alive, there must’ve been a way back in. He’s been reading about the smugglers and he worked it out.’

And then she asks, ‘When you came to see me yesterday … you really believed you were Sadie?’

‘Yes,’ I say. It was my truth, at least, if no one else’s. ‘But you knew she was dead.’

I think about my episode, the fugue state. I must have made up most of the memories that came back afterwards, my own fictions, my own beliefs about Sadie’s life. And the most important fact – that she was dead and I was the one who killed her – I erased completely.