A Wayward Game (27 page)

I slip my phone
back into my pocket. And then, since there’s nothing else to do, I
get out of the car and make my way across the road to the cottage.
I arranged to meet Lurker at seven, and it’s still only half-past
six. We agreed, Frieda and I, that it would be better if we got
here early. I stand outside the front door, and peer into a cracked
window. Inside, all I can see are bare scorched stones and charred
pieces of timber. God, what a place. People must have lived and
laboured here once. Perhaps they were happy, and loved the place.
Now it’s a home only for rats and bats and spiders. I wonder why
Lurker chose this precise place. All I can think of is that he must
live nearby, and knows it. Or perhaps – and the thought sends
another thrill of fear rippling through me – the lonelier the place
the better, from his point of view.

I turn and look
out over the estuary. The evening sky’s still light, but the summer
is advanced now, and the sun’s beginning to sink. It won’t be dark
until about half-past eight, but the shadows must fall early, and
fast, here. I wonder if Sallow took Diane’s body somewhere like
this – somewhere silent, and lonely, where nobody would think to
look.

I glance down
at my watch. Quarter to seven. Elsewhere, in London and up in the
village and all across the country, people will be arriving home
from work, eating their dinner, watching TV. They’ll go out to pubs
and bars, get drunk, and make love. Later, they’ll fall asleep and
dream their quiet, modest dreams. It seems strange to think that I
once was one of those people; I wonder if I ever will be again.
Once, I thought their lives were boring. Now, they seem like
Paradise.

The silence
intensifies, broken only by the distant cry of gulls. I touch my
mobile phone in my pocket, and think of Frieda, standing just a few
feet away. It doesn’t help much; I’ve never felt quite so alone as
I do now. We’re only a few miles from London, and yet we might as
well be at the other end of the Earth. A crow takes off from a
nearby branch, cawing and beating its wings. Shadows lengthen. Ten
to seven.

Something stirs
in the cottage at my back. A rat, no doubt, or a bird. Too small,
too delicate, to be human. Or is it? Might not a person make a
sound like that, if they were trying not to be heard? I freeze, and
listen hard. For a moment I hear nothing but the whine of my own
blood. And then I hear something again: something that sounds like
a very soft, very hesitant footfall on stone. I turn around and
look. The opening where the front door once stood looks like an
entrance into the darkness. I take a small step towards it, feeling
my heart thundering beneath my ribs.

“Hello?” I
murmur. My voice is tremulous and weak. There is no reply, and I
move a little closer to the doorway. I can see nothing inside but
shadows, but suddenly I am quite sure that somebody is in there,
hiding, biding his time . . .

“Lurker?” I
say. “Is that you? You can come out, you know. I’m alone here.”

I take another
step, and cautiously peer through the doorway, and as I do so I
both hear and sense something moving to my left, in the shadows . .
.

And in that
same moment I feel an explosion inside my head, a thousand stars
bursting and blazing in glorious unity, before the flames go out
and all the world grows dark.

Impressions
come back slowly and painfully, one at a time. There’s pain, of
course, gripping my brain and harrowing my nerves: deep, throbbing
pain that is both unbearable and inescapable. I feel the sensation
of movement, or rather of being moved – of being dragged,
specifically, over a damp and slightly uneven surface. Something
bangs against the back of my head, and I moan. There is darkness,
followed by dull grey light as I open my eyes and peer up at an
overcast sky. For a moment I don’t know where I might be, or how I
came to be here.

Then I
remember.

I raise my head
as far as I can, disregarding the bolt of pain that shoots through
my brain as I do so. I’m lying on my back, I find, and I’m not in
the cottage anymore, but on slimy, wet grass. I can smell the
estuary nearby, and hear seagulls screaming. And someone is holding
my ankles and pulling me across the grass, towards the water. I
squint up at that person, and see James Sallow, sweating and
struggling, bending over as he tugs at my legs. And suddenly, with
a sick rush of fear, I know exactly what he intends to do.

“Frieda!” I
scream, but my voice sounds thick, low. I try to reach for the
phone in my pocket, and immediately get another surprise: I can’t
move my hands. I raise my head and look down at them, and see that
they are roughly bound at the wrists. Sallow pays no attention to
me. He is intent on his task, intent on putting an end to the
trouble I began when I started to pull at the fabric of Diane’s
disappearance.

“Frieda!” I
scream again, a little louder, and pull furiously at the rope
binding my wrists. It is tied tightly and firmly, though, and I
find that I can barely move my arms at all. I kick out at Sallow
wildly, and succeed in freeing one leg and slamming my boot into
his jaw. He grunts, but does not let go or stop. He’s stronger than
he looks, I realise; and besides, the pain in my head is so severe
that when I try to lift it I almost black out again. And, for a
moment, I almost surrender. I flop back onto the grass and look up
at the sky and think of how liberating it must be to truly give up,
give in, stop breathing. I think of my body spinning down to the
riverbed and lying there, for years perhaps, drifting idly in the
wake of passing vessels. Flesh dissolving, bone cracking, the body
slowly dispersing into its constituent atoms. No more love or hate,
no more grief or desire. Just silence, and darkness. I close my
eyes, and wait.

And then, quite
suddenly, I hear a scrabbling, urgent sound. The ground beneath my
head seems to jolt, and I moan as another pulse of pain throbs in
my skull. I hear something that sounds almost like the bellow of a
wild beast – a roar of pure rage – and Sallow grunts again. His
grip on my legs weakens, and then fails altogether. I open my eyes,
and see Frieda clawing at Sallow, spitting at him, looking more
like an animal than a woman. She wrestles with him, trying to push
him down onto the ground. He strikes the side of her head, and she
falls, making an “Oof!” sound as she hits the grass.

For a moment
she lies quite still, and Sallow leans over her, perhaps thinking
her unconscious or dead. Then, all at once, she reaches up and
wraps her strong arms around his neck, pulling him down into a
bizarre parody of a lover’s embrace. He loses his balance and
falls, and she rolls over on top of him, so that he’s pinned down
by her. He may be strong, but she is stronger still, and made wild
by love and hate alike, and I see at once that she is going to win
this fight. She begins to strike at him wildly, beating at his face
and chest with her fists, letting out screams of anger and hate
that echo eerily across the water.

For the moment,
I see, both of them have forgotten about me. I struggle to sit up,
and begin to tug at the rope binding my wrists. It loosens, but
does not come undone. I should, I think with an incongruous flash
of humour, be used to dealing with knots, after all the practice
I’ve had, but evidently I’m not quite as expert as I imagined. I
try to stand up, but my legs give way beneath me and I collapse
again. I get onto my knees instead, and begin to crawl, as best I
can given my tied hands, towards them, thinking that if I can only
use the spray that Frieda gave me, I might be able to disarm Sallow
for long enough for us to get away. My progress, though, is slow
and leaden; my body seems weak, unable to respond quickly to my
brain’s commands.

Sallow is
writhing beneath Frieda, hitting out at her. I watch as he grabs
her hair, pulls her head lower, and ploughs his fist into her face.
A fine spray of blood erupts from her nose, but she doesn’t stop;
she continues to pummel at him, screaming all the time. Then she
grabs something that is lying on the grass nearby, and raises it
above her head. It’s an old piece of wood, I see, of the kind that
might once have formed an oar, or part of a fishing vessel; one of
those old and forgotten things that might have been lying around in
a place like this for years, decades even. But it’s sturdy still,
despite its age, and studded with jagged iron nails.

“No, Frieda!” I
scream, in the split-second in which it is raised above her
head.

Frieda doesn’t
hesitate, or even look at me. She brings it down on Sallow’s head,
and there’s a sick, heavy thud – like the sound of a ripe melon
falling onto a stone floor – as it shatters his skull. His leg
jerks back and forth, absurdly, as Frieda raises the piece of wood
again.

“God, Frieda,
stop
,” I cry, and find, to my surprise, that there are tears
in my eyes.

But Frieda
doesn’t stop, and there’s a sense, I realise, in which she
cannot
stop. Years of pain and waiting have led her at last
to this place, to this moment, and there is no other way in which
this story can end. The piece of wood whistles through the air as
she brings it down again, with all her might. There’s another
sickening thud, and then another as she strikes him again. Then she
lifts her head and screams, a hopeless, terrible wail that seems to
come from Hell itself, and encompasses all the misery and despair
in the world. For a moment that scream echoes across the water,
across the flat and desolate land; and then there’s silence, a
silence broken only by the plash of waves on the shore, and the
distant squawk of a seagull.

The strength
that drove Frieda before seems to leave her, all at once. The piece
of wood slips from her hands, and falls onto the grass with a dull
thump. Her entire body slumps. She almost falls off Sallow’s
battered body, and then heaves herself up onto her feet and stands
looking down at him.

Eventually,
after what seems like hours, I reach Sallow’s side. My hands are
almost free now, and I can move them a little more. I try to
remember all the First Aid I’ve ever learned – checking for
breathing, feeling for a pulse, the recovery position – but I can
detect no sign of life. If Sallow is still clinging to his
existence, it’s only by the slenderest of threads. I look up, and
see that Frieda has not moved. She is standing on the grass,
looking out over the estuary. Blood streams from her nose and is
spattered over the rest of her face, giving her the appearance of a
woman from a nightmare. But her expression is serene, and utterly
lacking in emotion.

“Frieda,” I
gasp, and she looks down at me.

“Katherine.”
She gives me the faintest, smallest smile. “I think perhaps we’d
better call the police.”

The next few
hours pass in a blur. I’m aware of lying on the muddy grass and
staring up into the darkening sky. I’m aware of the distant sound
of sirens approaching along the lane. I see a paramedic leaning
over me, and am bundled into an ambulance on a gurney. I see
streetlights flashing by as we drive to hospital, and watch as they
are replaced by a thin strip of overhead lighting as the gurney is
wheeled down a long white corridor. I’m aware, above all, of pain.
But these impressions are disparate and confused, and never come
together to form a whole, or provide a complete narrative.

I find,
somewhat to my surprise, that narrowly escaping death can be a
calming experience. As I lie in the hospital bed, hovering
somewhere between sleep and wakefulness, I feel a rush of serenity
and wellbeing such as I haven’t experienced since childhood. I
close my eyes, and for a moment I might be ten years old again,
lying in my narrow bed in my parents’ house, listening to the rain
beating at the window and the wind screaming down the chimney and
knowing that I am safe. I go back to a more innocent time, before
Diane or Neil or Sallow, before domination and submission and loss
and death all came into my life. I close my eyes and slip into the
welcoming darkness, and am aware of nothing else for hours.

When I open my
eyes again, the light is grey, as it is at dawn or dusk. The
sterile hospital ward gradually comes into focus, with its
whitewashed walls and rows of beds. It is quiet and empty; there
are no doctors or nurses nearby and, as far as I can tell, no other
patients. Then I see that there is someone there, after all: a
woman who is standing at the window with her back to me, looking
out. I assume that she’s a nurse. Then she turns her head and looks
at me, and I see that it is Diane.

She looks
different, older: as she might have looked now, perhaps, had she
lived. A few faint lines mark her pale face, and she looks a little
heavier, with a slightly rounded stomach. She smiles at me – a sad,
but serene, smile.

“Diane,” I
whisper.

She doesn’t
reply, but continues to look at me. Her expression speaks not
simply of suffering, but of transcendence, and I feel that she is
finally at peace. And then I feel peace too, and simply close my
eyes and drift off to sleep again.

I don’t believe
in ghosts in a literal sense, of course. But perhaps our thoughts
of those we love can gain such power that they are almost projected
out into the world, where they can sometimes be seen and
experienced as if they were real. It is what might, I suppose, be
termed a spiritual experience.

Or so I think
at the time. Later on, I will learn that this experience probably
owed its existence to the drugs that the doctors had pumped into my
system to dull the pain. Confused perceptions and even
hallucinations are apparently amongst the side effects of such
medication. But still, I treasure the memory of that experience. It
reminds me that there is perhaps more to this world than can be
seen with the eyes alone.