Local Girl Missing (24 page)

I ‘died’ on Saturday night.

It all began with a huge bust-up with Leon. I couldn’t take lying to him any longer so I finished it. I’ll always be haunted by his face, the crumple of his chin as he tried not to cry.

Frankie raced into the toilets after me and demanded to know what was going on. I locked myself in the cubicle and threw up. I couldn’t face her or Leon, so when she went to get me some water I fled from The Basement as fast as I could, not stopping until I reached the entrance to the old pier, and then only because my side hurt with a stitch.

I leaned against the lamppost trying to catch my breath. I was trembling all over. A blister on my heel throbbed so much that I had to remove my trainer. I shoved it in the pocket of my tracksuit top and hobbled onto the pier.

‘Sophie?’

Relief flooded through me when I saw Frankie standing behind me and not Alistair. It could so easily
have been him. It made me realise how stupid I’d been to leave the club, how I’d put myself in danger.

‘What are you doing here?’

I didn’t want to talk to her. How could I even begin to find the words to explain all that’s happened?

‘Why are you going home? It’s only eleven thirty. It’s a Saturday night, for goodness’ sake! We never leave the club this early.’ She sounded out of breath. She must have had to sprint to catch up with me. I noticed she was wearing her long black platform boots, not easy to run in. They were the same boots she was wearing the night we met up again, when the summer had stretched out in front of us full of possibility. How had it all gone so horribly wrong?

My face was wet with tears. ‘It’s a long story.’

‘You’re pregnant, aren’t you? I heard you throwing up in the ladies’ loos. Something’s going on, Soph, and I’m not leaving until you tell me what’s wrong. I saw you having a huge bust-up with Leon. What happened? Did you tell him about the baby?’ She walked towards me. ‘Sophie!’ She pulled my arm so that I was facing her. ‘Are you listening to me?’

‘Of course I didn’t tell him about the baby!’ I cried. ‘What’s one more lie? Anyway, why do you care?’

She frowned, hurt flashing in her eyes. ‘Because I’m your best friend. We tell each other everything. But you never told me this. Why couldn’t you tell me you were pregnant?’

‘Because …’ Tears were coming thick and fast now. I could hardly breathe, they were threatening to choke
me. I took a deep breath. I had to tell her the truth. ‘Because I thought it might be Alistair’s. But it can’t be. I know that now.’

Her expression darkened. ‘Alistair’s? What are you talking about?’

‘Your dad!’ I cried. ‘Who do you think I’m talking about?’

Her voice was low, dangerous, as she said, ‘You were fucking my dad?’

I stared at her, shock drying my tears. ‘I wasn’t “fucking” your dad. He
raped
me!’

All the colour drained from her face and I felt terrible. She staggered backwards as though I’d hit her. ‘How could you? How could you lie like that? You’re having an affair with my dad and now you’re lying about it. You’re such a little slut, Sophie Collier. You’ve taken Leon and now you’ve taken him.’

‘Alistair raped me, Frankie. We didn’t have sex. He forced himself on me, he –’

‘Shut up!’ She didn’t shout but her voice was cold and there was a hardness to her that I’d never seen before. ‘I don’t want to hear your lies.’ She stared at me, her eyes wild, just like her father’s, her mouth downturned and trembling.

‘Frankie … please.’ A sob escaped my lips. I hated doing this to her. ‘I wouldn’t lie about something like this …’

She closed her eyes as though inwardly meditating, and started pulling at her hair. I watched her in alarm,
wondering what she was going to do next, how she was going to react. Then she opened her eyes and walked towards me. ‘This pier,’ she said, coming closer to me, ‘it’s surely cursed, don’t you think? Jason died here …’

I frowned. ‘What’s Jason got to do with this?’

‘Oh, Sophie. You really are rather stupid, aren’t you? And you like to think you’re so intelligent. While you were passed out I shoved him into the sea. He was so off his face he didn’t stand a chance. We’d had an argument, he turned me down. Nobody turns me down.’

‘You killed Jason?’ It was as though the breath had been knocked out of me. I remember passing out and Frankie shaking me awake, tears running down her face, telling me there had been an accident and Jason had fallen in. Never did I once suspect that she’d pushed him.

She started pacing, clearly agitated, as though trying to work out what to do. She was shaking her head, still pulling at her hair and talking quickly. ‘I shouldn’t have told you that … I shouldn’t have said that. I’m just angry, what you said about my dad … and I didn’t mean to kill Jason. It was a knee-jerk reaction. He turned me down, I was angry. We rowed and I pushed him. It was an accident …’

‘Oh, Frankie!’ I cried.

She wiped her tears with her sleeve. ‘Why do you have to ruin everything?’ she wailed. ‘I loved Jason. I loved Leon. I loved my dad and you’ve taken them all!’

I stared at her, stunned. ‘Is that really what you think?’

‘Why you?’ she sobbed. ‘What’s so special about you? What about me? Why does nobody love me?’

It made me realise, for all her beauty and show of confidence, how insecure she was. She looked so vulnerable, so lost. Part of me wanted to tell her to stop being so immature, but the other part of me wanted to hug her. I rushed towards her and she stopped pacing.

‘Jason didn’t love me. Not in that way. He was gay. And Leon … I never knew how you felt about Leon.’

Her face was pinched, mascara smudged around her eyes. We’d had fights but nothing quite like this. ‘I didn’t want to tell you,’ she said. ‘I do have some pride.’

‘And Alistair … Frankie, you have to understand, he’s become a stalker. He won’t leave me alone …’ And then I told her everything: the kiss in the bedroom, how he followed me, harassed me and then raped me in his car. I was so relieved that I was finally getting it off my chest that I didn’t stop to think how I was affecting her. After I finished she looked like I’d physically punched her.

‘My dad would never do those things,’ she cried. ‘Why are you lying?’

‘I’m not lying. I’d never lie about something like this. You know I wouldn’t. I’m sorry, Frankie.’ I went towards her but she pushed me away so that I stumbled backwards.

‘You’re a filthy liar,’ she yelled. ‘Get away from me, Sophie. I hate you! I hate you!’

‘Frankie, please listen …’

But she was in a state, rage on her face, tears spilling down her cheeks, refusing to listen. She shoved me again, harder this time, and then I noticed that she had her fingers closed around something; it could have been a rock, a stone, a piece of wood, I couldn’t tell because, before I knew what was happening, she’d brought it down on my head, throwing me off balance so that I went toppling backwards, crashing through the barrier and into the sea.

As I fell I felt my trainer slip from the pocket of my top and fall with a thud onto the wooden planks of the pier.

I don’t know what saved me. It could have been pure luck that when Frankie hit me it didn’t knock me out, that the current that night wasn’t too strong, that I managed to cling onto one of the metal legs of the pier. Or maybe it was Frankie’s arrogance. She’d done it once, with Jason, so she thought it would be just as easy to dispose of me. But I wasn’t drunk like Jason had been and I was a strong swimmer, so I hid silently behind one of the metal legs and watched as Frankie first checked the sea below, then paced up and down as if unsure what to do next. I was tempted to swim towards her, to tell her I was OK, but then she turned and ran. And suddenly I knew. She wasn’t running for help. She was going to leave me here to drown, just like she did with Jason. How could I have got someone so wrong? I thought we were best friends, she had been like a sister to me.

From my position behind the leg of the pier I watched her rush back along the promenade towards The Basement as though nothing had happened, metaphorically wiping her hands. A job well done. I knew she’d slip back into the club and pretend she’d been there all along. What a good little actress she turned out to be.

Had the plan already begun to form in my mind? I’m not sure. But what cemented it for me was Daniel. As I swam back to the shore and clambered over the rocks, the water weighing my clothes down and making every step difficult, I saw Daniel walking home, a lone figure in black. He just happened, thank goodness, to look to his left and notice me, wet and bedraggled, picking my way over the rocks, the sharp edges cutting into my shoeless foot. He thought I’d fallen in and came rushing over, and I remember thinking, I wish I had drowned, then Alistair wouldn’t be able to bother me any more.

I was shivering and crying, the sorry story spilling out of me as Daniel led me to the cove so that we were out of sight. He wanted to kill Alistair when I told him what he’d done. He stared at me open-mouthed when he learned that Frankie had pushed me, and that she’d done it before with Jason. He kept repeating over and over again how shocked he was that Frankie would do such a thing. He tried to persuade me to go to the police right there and then, but I was scared. It would only ever be her word against mine.

‘You have to report Alistair. He raped you, for fuck’s
sake, Sophie! And Frankie hit you and left you for dead …’ He looked grey with shock. ‘I can’t believe this is happening.’

‘They might never believe me,’ I cried. ‘And Frankie and Alistair will stick up for each other. Their word against mine.’

I was shaking so much I was worried I was going into shock. ‘Here,’ he said, shrugging off his coat and draping it around my shoulders. ‘Put this on. Don’t worry … We’ll figure this out. I just wish you’d told me before.’

‘What would you have been able to do?’ I wailed. ‘There was no way out, Dan. I felt like I was going mad.’

I touched my stomach, thinking of the baby that was already growing inside me. I was at least five weeks’ pregnant – enough for it to show up on a pregnancy test anyhow, so surely the baby had to be Leon’s? But until I had proof Alistair would always believe my baby was his.

‘Let them think I’m dead,’ I told Daniel desperately. ‘Let Frankie believe she’s killed me. It would mean I had an escape after all.’ I could protect my baby.

Daniel didn’t agree at first. He wanted to go to the police. He managed to get me home without anyone seeing us – although we thought we saw Jez at one point while we were at the entrance to the pier. He was on the other side of the road, but by the way he was staggering in a zigzag along the pavement, he was too wasted to realise who we were.

When my mum got back from work we told her
everything. She cried, she raged, she wanted to kill both the Howes. She tried to convince me to call the police but I refused to be put through the interrogation just to see Alistair get away with it. Everything would be dragged up in public, even what happened with Jason. And Frankie and Alistair would stick together. Like father like daughter. They would pin Jason on me too, say it was my fault, that I had been the one who had shoved him into the sea. I would go to prison.

I had no choice. Eventually Mum saw that too.

It was all so surprisingly easy. Mum stitched up the gash to my head. Daniel found a space on a ferry to Dublin in the early hours of the next morning. It was perfect because I didn’t need a passport, so I’d leave no trace. The wages I had been saving were in a tin in my wardrobe, so I had enough cash. Then I would travel down the coast to stay with my aunt on her farm in a remote part of County Kerry.

When my mum and brother finally alerted the police to the fact that I’d never come home from the club, I was already in Ireland. I was already safe. I was already away from Alistair.

I’ve been ‘dead’ now for four years.

I had my baby in April 1998, a little girl called Mia, and I love her more than anything in the world – I never knew I could love so completely, so unconditionally. She has my blonde hair and Leon’s startling eyes. As soon as
she was born and I saw those bright blue eyes I knew she was Leon’s daughter, she was the image of him.

Leon is my only regret. I wish he’d been able to meet his daughter, that I’d been able to save him from the pain of thinking that I’m dead, that I didn’t love him. Because I loved him so much. And I hope one day he will realise just how much.

Some people might think I’m a coward, that I didn’t stay and fight. But I was scared and I didn’t want to continue to live in fear. I saw a way out and I took it. We ran before when we escaped my dad. I’ve spent most of my life running away.

If I’m truly honest with myself there’s another reason why I stay away. It’s not just about Alistair, it’s about Frankie too. She was my best friend and I loved her like a sister. I can hardly think of a childhood memory where she’s not in it. And I know I shouldn’t make excuses for her, she left me for dead, but I believe she loved me too, in her own, warped way. She’s unstable, she’s made that obvious, and that terrifies me, but if I did go to the police – if they even believed me – then what? It would be prison for Frankie and I don’t know if I could put her through that. I hate what she’s done, that she’s kept me away from Leon. But we were friends for a long time, nothing is ever black and white.

My aunt Sarah has been amazing; I help on her farm and have made a life for myself. Nobody has ever questioned who I am. Who I was. I’m just Sarah O’Donnell’s niece. Eventually my mum moved away from Oldcliffe and came to live here too. We live a nice life, three
women together. Our main aim is bringing up Mia. It’s a quiet existence on Aunt Sarah’s smallholding, and although it’s not the life I envisioned for myself, I wouldn’t change it. I do a bit of writing, I’m still an avid reader and I surround myself with books. But most importantly, Mia’s safe. And so am I.

Today I had the fright of my life. The safe existence I’ve carved out for myself was so very nearly threatened.