Bring Me Back (B.A. Paris)(67)

‘No.’ Someone moans – me, not Ellen. ‘Please God, no, don’t let it be that, don’t let it be that.’

I reach the end of the single-track road, driving faster now because the road is better. As I get nearer to Stornoway, I hear the sound of what seems like a hundred messages arriving on my mobile, and realising that the phone signal has kicked in, I pull quickly to a stop so that I can call for help. There are missed calls from Harry, Ruby and Tony, text messages asking me to call them but I ignore them and turn to check on Ellen. And my heart lurches, because her face is death-white and she is still, too still. Throwing my phone onto the passenger seat, I lean into the back of the car and take hold of her hand, feeling clumsily with my fingers for a pulse. I can’t find one and I force myself to calm down, to stop my fingers from shaking, and try again. Still nothing. Letting go of her wrist, I wrench my door open and as I get out, the wind slams me back against the car. Opening the back door, I bend over Ellen, shielding her from the rain, and this time, search her neck for a pulse, praying that I’ll find something, just a flicker, to tell me that she’s still alive. But the towel under her head tells me otherwise; it is no longer stained with her blood, but soaked with it. Another moan escapes me. My phone starts ringing and I reach into the passenger seat and answer it in a daze, my eyes never leaving Ellen’s face.

‘Finn, thank God! Listen, Finn,’ Harry says, his voice urgent. ‘You need to look at your emails. I’ve sent you something, something I found on Ellen’s computer. You need to read it, do you hear me? You need to read it before you see Ellen. Finn! Finn, are you there?’

I hang up. He’s too late. I need to phone for an ambulance. But it’s too late, far too late. I sink back onto the road. Ellen is dead. The words beat in my brain. Ellen is dead, Ellen is dead, Ellen, not Layla. Not Layla. Please God, not Layla. I need it to be Ellen. If I’ve killed Ellen, I can take it.

I know, though. Even before I look at the email Harry sent me, before I even look at the attached file, I know. I read it anyway.

I’m still here. Ellen didn’t overpower me, not completely. I was stronger than she thought, stronger than I thought. She hasn’t gone away though. She’s still around, lurking in the shadows, I can feel her. But for now she is quiet and while she is quiet, my mind is clearer. So I’m going to use the time I have left to write to Finn, in case things don’t work out as I hope.

So, Finn, this is for you. When I disappeared that night, I didn’t think about what I was doing or where I was going, all I wanted was to get as far away from you as possible. I thought you were going to kill me, you see. I know now that you weren’t, I know that you walked away so that you wouldn’t hurt me. But I didn’t know that at the time. I only understood once I’d read your letter.

The man that you saw coming out of the toilet block wasn’t the driver of the car parked outside; he must have been one of the lorry drivers. The driver of the car was a woman and as I ran down the slip road onto the motorway, she nearly ran me down. When she screeched to a stop beside me, I opened the passenger door and climbed in. She looked terrified, but then a lorry came down the slip road behind us and she had no choice but to drive off.

She wanted to drop me at the next service station but I was too afraid that you would come looking for me so I made her drive on until we reached another one a couple of minutes later.

As I stood on the forecourt, my one fear was that you’d arrive at any moment. I didn’t know how I was going to get to England. I didn’t have my passport on me, all I had were the keys to the cottage in St Mary’s, because I was wearing the jeans I’d been wearing the day we left. Even my little Russian doll was missing and I realised I must have dropped it when you were shaking me. It distressed me more than the lack of a passport, because it was the only thing I had to remind me of Ellen.

I decided to worry about the lack of a passport later and try and get to a port. All I could think of was getting to Lewis and this surprised me, considering how desperate I’d been to leave. But I suppose home is home and there wasn’t anywhere else I could really go. Around the back of the petrol station, at the far end, I saw a couple of camper vans and a caravan parked there. The camper vans were impenetrable but when I tried the door of the caravan, it swung open, so I got in and groped my way to the back.

I must have drifted into sleep because I was woken by voices, a man and a woman talking together as they approached the van. The next thing I knew, we were moving off.

Nobody came to check inside the caravan at the port, but I suppose twelve years ago, there’d been no reason to. And it was the middle of the night. The motion of the boat soon rocked me to sleep. I only woke when we were docking, and the knowledge that I’d managed to get to England relatively easily made me confident I could get the rest of the way to Lewis.

When we eventually came to a stop a couple of hours later, the couple went straight into their house, leaving the caravan on their driveway. I looked around for some money. I knew I could probably hitch-hike all the way to Ullapool but once there, I would need to take the ferry across to Stornoway. I found a few crumpled notes in the pocket of a pair of trousers and in a black handbag, a purse containing sixty pounds and a few coins. In the end, I took the whole bag, and because I was cold, a man’s anorak which I wore over mine, and a woollen hat to cover my hair.

It was early morning and I remember wondering where you were, if you were back in St Mary’s, glad to be rid of me, or if you were still in France. I could hear some light traffic in the distance so I headed towards it, hoping I’d be able to hitch a lift. I immediately thought of Ellen and how horrified she’d be if she knew that I was about to do something so potentially dangerous, and a sob caught in my throat. I could hardly believe that I was about to return to the man who had so brutally murdered her and dumped her body in a peat bog. Because that’s where Ellen is, Finn, in a peat bog. You have never known her, only my version of her.