Never Alone (25 page)

Try not to show him you’re scared.

‘Take your time,’ he says, when she takes a big gulp of tea. It’s hot and burns her mouth a little, and makes her cough. Why does she feel so dazed?

‘I wish Kitty would call me,’ she says.

‘Where did she go?’

‘She went for a walk,’ she says. Perhaps he doesn’t know, after all? Perhaps Kitty went to a friend’s house, and they have taken a picture as a joke, sending it to her by mistake?

All of this, she knows, cannot be true. But, for now, she can continue the pretence.

She looks through to the living room, at the landline phone which is lying discarded on the sofa. ‘I should try to phone her again.’ She gets unsteadily to her feet but he’s there first.

‘I’ll get it; you just sit down. You’re still a bit wobbly, aren’t you?’

She feels a little better, actually, but it can’t hurt to have him imagining she’s still unstable. He brings her the phone. As he hands it to her she notices that there is what looks like dried blood around his fingernails. His knuckles are swollen, scratched. The sight of this makes her heart pound heavily in her chest:
Kitty’s blood? Is she hurt?

He is watching her, studying her face.

There are no missed calls.

Sarah presses the green button to make a call, but there is no dialling tone. There is nothing, just the sound of her hair rustling against her ear, the wind outside.

The landline is dead.

‘Well,’ he says, ‘that’s that. We’re stranded, aren’t we? You and me together?’

The wind finds the tiny gaps in the window frames, whines like an animal in pain. Tess has disappeared, probably hiding under one of the beds. She can tolerate any weather, but strange noises have always unnerved her.

‘We could walk down to the village,’ Sarah says slowly. ‘I’m sure all the phone lines can’t be down.’

Will laughs.

‘Go out again? What for?’

To find Kitty,
Sarah thinks.

‘No,’ he says. ‘No point going anywhere, is there? We’ve got other things to do, here. We need to talk.’

Even with dry clothes on, Sarah is shivering.

‘Come through here, come on.’

He takes her through to the living room, holding her hand as if she’s five or ninety-five, leads her to the sofa and wraps around her shoulders the blanket that Basil sometimes sleeps on. Then he busies himself with the fire, stoking it and adding some more logs. Sarah looks at his back and thinks it would be easy to do something right now, push him or hit him with something, and she gets as far as looking around for something suitably heavy, but then he interrupts her.

‘I can tell you’re worried,’ he says. ‘I know you’re not happy with me being here, are you? Well, it’s a bit tough, that, because I’m here now, and I’m not going away just yet.’

He stands and turns his back to the fire, stretching his arms over his head. His fingertips brush the low ceiling. Then he moves the magazines and the empty mug and the coaster from the coffee table and sits facing her, his knees touching hers.

‘Now, how shall I put this?’ he says, fixing her with his piercing blue eyes. ‘There’s going to be an easy way and a hard way, and I’m really hoping we can do this the easy way, get it all over with and then I can leave you in peace.’

He takes hold of her hand, strokes the back of it. Sarah flinches at the touch, but he’s holding her too tightly for her to pull away.

‘See, I know all you want is for Kitty to come home safe and well, to your lovely, cosy little family home. I know you want me to go away and not come back. All of that can happen, you know, even with the snow and the wind. I can make it happen. But if that’s what you want, you have to do something for me. Are you listening, Sarah?’

Sarah nods. Tears are falling now and she can hardly see him.

‘So, let’s do this the easy way, shall we?’ He pats her hand comfortingly, as if that’ll help. ‘All you need to do is tell me where Sophie is.’

She stares at him, horrified.

‘I don’t know where Sophie is,’ she whispers.

Will looks at her for a long moment, as if trying to assess whether she’s telling the truth.

‘See, that’s a shame,’ he says. ‘A real pity. I thought you were going to do the right thing, Sarah.’

‘No, you don’t understand, I really don’t know where she is. She didn’t tell me anything. She didn’t tell me she was seeing Aiden, she didn’t really even tell me about you, I hardly saw her –’

With no warning he hits her across the side of her head with the back of his hand, sending her sprawling on to the arm of the chair. She clutches her face with both hands, gasping with shock. Her cheek is tingling with it, her ear ringing. He has caught her earring stud somehow and it’s come out, and her ear is bleeding.

‘Ow!’ he says, shaking his hand. ‘Bloody hurt, that did.’

Tess has turned up out of nowhere and is barking furiously, baring her teeth.

‘Come on, Tess,’ he says in a consoling voice. ‘It’s okay, girl. Come with me.’

He goes into the kitchen, taking Tess with him. Sarah gets to her feet, is about to run for the door, but he returns with a wet tea towel wrapped around his hand, shutting Tess in the kitchen. He pushes Sarah back on to the sofa. She can feel a slow trickle of blood running down the side of her neck. She rubs at it, wipes her fingers on her jogging bottoms.

‘Where do you think you’re going, eh? Sit down.’

But now Sarah has found a gutload of courage from somewhere. He’s hit her and that feels like the last straw. She stands up again immediately. ‘This is ridiculous! What do you think you’re doing?’

He looks startled, takes a single step back. Tess is barking like a mad thing in the kitchen.

‘I’ve told you I don’t know where she is. You’re not going to accomplish anything by threatening me. Now where’s my daughter? Where is she?’

She sees something in his eyes, a flicker of a little boy being told off, but then it’s gone. It takes a second for him to remember who he is, why he’s here, but then it’s back with force. He screws up his eyes, draws back his lips in a snarl, hunches his shoulders and with both hands shoves Sarah hard, back on to the sofa, and then he’s on top of her, his knees digging into her thighs, his hands around her throat.

She claws at his fingers, tries to pull his wrists off her, but his elbows are locked, all his weight pushing down on to her throat. She cannot breathe. She looks up at him desperately, then tries to reach his face, to dig her fingers into his eyes, anything to make him stop, but she can’t reach.

Then there is a flurry of black and white fur, snarling teeth and barking and the pressure stops. Tess must have managed to push open the kitchen door.
Clever girl
, Sarah thinks. She heaves a deep breath in, and again, coughing and falling off the sofa on to her hands and knees. She can hear barking and Will shouting, then a yelp of pain from the dog.

‘Tess,’ she gasps.

The kitchen door is shut again, properly this time. Then Sarah sees Will’s boots appear on the carpet in front of her and before she can move he has taken hold of her by the hair, dragging her upright. The pain in her scalp is intense, sudden, and her legs fight to gain purchase on the carpet to ease the pressure. He pulls her by the hair and by the sleeve of her jumper up the narrow staircase, Sarah’s socked feet slipping and stumbling.

‘Let me go! Let go!’

Her voice is hoarse; she can barely hear herself against Will’s grunting as he drags her up the stairs. The wind is rattling the tiles on the roof and howling through the house,
but when they reach the top of the stairs she manages a scream, manages to wrench herself free from his grip, using the last bit of strength she has to push him away.

She doesn’t see his closed fist until it meets with the side of her head and her legs crumple beneath her, and everything goes black and silent.

When she opens her eyes it is gloomy. She is stretched out like a starfish in bed, in a room that is semi-dark, lit by the glow of some artificial light. Over her head she can see a lampshade that she doesn’t recognise. When she tries to lift her head from the pillow something tightens around her neck, and her head throbs. It takes a second to realise that she is tied by the wrists and ankles to the bed.

She lifts her head again carefully, to see that she is in the spare bedroom, upstairs. Will Brewer is sitting on the ottoman under the window, the curtains drawn, the bedside light next to her lit. He is leaning back, one knee jiggling an anxious rhythm. He is staring at her, chewing on one fingernail. There is something almost childlike about the way he holds his hand steady with the other hand.

‘Why have you tied me up?’ she asks, as calmly as she can.

‘You were going to run for it.’

‘Well, I won’t. Where can I go, anyway?’

He drops his hands to his lap, pressing his fingers to his knees as if to stop everything shaking. He takes a deep breath.

‘Please, Will. You can untie me now.’

He shakes his head. ‘I need to go out for a bit.’

‘Why? Go where?’

‘Things I need to do.’

‘Where’s Kitty? Where is she?’

He doesn’t say anything for a moment and she thinks that he might, possibly, be about to see sense and tell her everything; that he might realise how crazy this all is, how he
could get out of it even now if he could only see how stupid it was. And then she remembers the dried blood crusted around the edges of his fingernails, remembers being thrown back into the sofa by the force of him hitting her, his hands around her throat, and she realises he can’t go back. He can only go forward. It can only get worse.

‘You’re asking the wrong question,’ he says. ‘Why aren’t you worried about Sophie? Don’t you care about her? Or do you know where she is, and you’re just pissing me about?’

‘I told you, I don’t know where she is. Will, please just untie this – whatever it is – around my neck. It’s too tight.’

‘It’s to stop you moving,’ he says cheerfully. ‘So you can’t strain to pull your hands free. I saw it on a TV programme.’

‘Don’t leave me here like this,’ she says, beginning to feel panic rising. If the noose around her neck tightens, how can she loosen it again?

With a sigh he climbs on to the bed, straddles her. The sight of him above her triggers a memory of his fingers closing around her throat downstairs and she gasps, shrinks away from him. He looks down at her with something that might be confidence, as if he’s suddenly realised that she is completely under his control. His eyes wander from her face down to her chest. He touches her temple with a finger, catches the tear she hadn’t realised she had shed, traces a wet line down her jaw to her throat. He moves two fingers under the ligature, whatever it is, as if he’s checking a dog’s collar for a snug fit. He eases it looser, just a little. Sarah swallows with relief.

He continues down her neckline, fingering the zip of her fleece, then moving across her chest, finding the bump of her nipple and stroking it until, undesired, unbidden, it reacts.

Will smiles at this, at his power.

‘Please,’ she says.

‘Please what?’ he asks. ‘You want me to…? Oh, Sarah. Maybe later. When we’ve got more time.’

He climbs off her, and, with the weight of him pressing her down gone, the ligature around her throat loosens a little more. She doesn’t move, in case he sees. It’s lying on her throat. She lifts her head a little bit. Will is at the door.

‘I won’t be long. A few minutes.’

And then he disappears.

‘Don’t leave me!’ Sarah calls out, because she thinks this is what he needs to hear. He is going anyway.

Downstairs, she hears Tess’s barks and yelps grow suddenly louder as the kitchen door opens, and then quieten again as Will speaks to her soothingly. Please God don’t let him hurt her…

A few minutes pass before she hears the front door slam. From outside, a single bark. He’s taken Tess.

She waits for a few more moments, in case he has just pretended to go, in case he’s still in the house, but she can hear nothing, not even the wind. The house echoes in silence, waiting for her to move.

She tugs at each binding, but it feels as if struggling just tightens the knot. Still, she thinks there may be one thing she can do: tipping her head back into the pillow, she feels the ligature ride up to her chin. It’s tight across the back of her head, but at least it’s not around her throat.

By wiggling, pushing her head back, gradually the knot slips up the top of her head and then, quite suddenly, it’s off. Lying across her face is what could be a black stocking. She blows, shakes her head to get it off her face. Is that what he’s tied her up with? If that’s it, there should be some stretch in there.

At least now she can lift her head properly, turn her head to the side to see what she’s up against. A pair of tights, she thinks, tied around each wrist in a double knot at the back of her hand, and then tied around the iron bedstead. They are tight, but now her neck is free she can stretch one arm tighter
to loosen the other, and if she pulls hard she can almost reach round to the knot…

On the third attempt her fingers touch the knot. But that’s as far as she gets – a touch. Rest for a minute. Think. How can she get out of this?

Unbidden, Sophie’s face comes into her mind. Sophie, sitting opposite her in the Black Swan.
He likes to stir things up, he likes to make trouble… he gets off on it.

Sophie knew what he was capable of, she thinks. She wasn’t running away from George. She was running away from Will.

A few minutes…

The thought of Will coming back gives Sarah a surge of strength and she pulls and wriggles and twists until the ligature on her right wrist slips suddenly over the knuckle of her thumb. A moment later, an almighty tug, and it’s free. The blood surges into her fingers and she sobs with relief. Her hand, in front of her face, looks white and purplish, the fingers swollen. But they are free.

After a few moments she tries to reach across to the knot on the left side, but it is too far, too high. Instead she tries to squeeze a finger under the ligature at her wrist, to stretch the fabric. It feels tighter than the other side, or maybe her hand is more swollen. The fingers on her right hand have pins and needles. She cannot feel her left hand any more.