Читать книгу Two Little Girls - Kate Medina - Страница 14

Carolynn turned the taps on full force in the downstairs cloakroom, though Roger would know that the rush of water was to mask another sound, the guttural sound of her retching. Her stomach heaved and she vomited again, a stream of hot bile the colour of buttercups running over her fingers. Sitting back on her haunches, she sucked in a breath, locking on to the feeling of the cold floor tiles against her legs, holding that sense of chill calm in her mind as her stomach heaved again, heaved and settled.

Pushing herself to her feet, she reached for the hand towel, catching her reflection in the bathroom mirror as she did so. Lollipop. A pasty, wan, lollipop. She and her friends used to laugh at women like her, women they called lollipops because their heads were so ludicrously oversized on their emaciated bodies, rail-thin models who posted pictures of themselves on Instagram clutching plates of pizza in an attempt to convince people that they really did eat. Just as she now kept the fridge filled and cooked meal after meal to convince Roger that she was eating, to keep him off her back, though the reality was every mouthful tasted like cardboard and she ended up tossing most of the food into the caravan park’s bins so Roger wouldn’t catch her out.

She swiped a hand across the mirror, leaving a streak of bile across the glass, fuzzing her own grotesque image from view.

Back in the sitting room, the silence jarring, Carolynn realized that the television was now off. Roger watched her gaze track to the blank screen.

‘I switched it off,’ he said, matter-of-factly. ‘We don’t need to see any more.’

‘What are we going to do, Roger?’

‘Do?’ His eyes registered surprise.

‘I need to understand what the police are thinking.’

‘You were acquitted, Carolynn.’

She nodded, concentrating hard on the brown vines twisting through the wallpaper like strings of DNA, not meeting his searching gaze. She hated this room, had always felt claustrophobic in it, and now she felt as if the vines were coiling around her, squeezing her throat with each rasping breath she managed.

‘That detective inspector—’ Even now, nine months since the collapse of her trial, since they had fled down here to anonymity, she couldn’t bear to say his name. The man who had hounded her, who was convinced of her guilt, still, no doubt. She had caught his eye as she’d left the Old Bailey a free woman, had recognized the cynicism and anger in his look. He would never stop hunting her.

And now. Now he had another reason. A second dead child. High-octane fuel to his fire.

‘That detective inspector said on the news that he would like to speak with me … with, uh, with us.’

‘He has to find us first, and he won’t be able to do that. Nobody knows where we are. We left no trace. They won’t find us. They won’t expect us to be living here in Bracklesham Bay, so close to where Zoe was murdered. It was a clever choice.’

Carolynn nodded distractedly. The location, a sprawling seaside town crammed with tourists and seasonal workers in summer, shuttered and battened down, locals retreating inside to their hearths and their television sets in winter, provided perfect anonymity. Roger had read about the beautiful, kilometres-long white-sand beaches that stretched from Bracklesham Bay to East and West Wittering in The Sunday Times a few years ago, and they had spent a long weekend here every September since, a last hurrah before Zoe went back to school.

‘My photograph was on the news. It will be in every paper. I can’t face it again. I can’t face that whole process, being treated like a side of meat.’

My body, the searches – they said that they wanted to make sure I didn’t have any hidden drugs, but really they just wanted to dehumanize me, remove every shred of my dignity.

‘I could never go through that again, Roger.’ Her voice shook. ‘I couldn’t—’

Complete strangers screaming at me in the street, calling me a child murderer, dragging at my clothes and hair, spitting in my face.

‘You won’t have to, because they won’t find us,’ he said firmly. ‘You don’t look like you used to. Your hair is different, your face, your body. There’s nothing left of your body.’ He emitted a brief, heartless laugh. ‘Remember that book we used to read to … to Zoe?’

Carolynn flinched at the sound of Zoe’s name on his lips.

‘Stick Man. Do you remember it, my Stick Lady love?’ His fingers and thumb pinched the skin of her upper arm. His grip left two white indents, which she knew would turn black. Was she bruising more easily these days? ‘You are virtually unrecognizable now, Carolynn.’

She tried to suppress the involuntary shudder as his arms slid around her waist and he stepped forward, closing the gap between them, pressing himself against her. She wanted to shove him away, dismiss him, but she couldn’t. She needed his support, his complicity. They were in this together.

‘And this little girl’s death is totally different,’ he murmured, his breath misting hot and damp against her ear, making her want to shudder all over again. ‘You were nowhere near West Wittering beach this afternoon, were you?’

She had been the one to find Zoe dead in the sand dunes of West Wittering beach two years ago. She had left footprints all over the crime scene, her DNA had been all over her daughter’s body – Well, it would have been, wouldn’t it? I’m her mother – her fingerprints on that disgusting doll with the moving eyes and the black marks around its neck. Roger was right. This was different.

‘You have an alibi. You were here, at home.’

Carolynn gave an uncertain nod.

‘Weren’t you?’ he pressed. ‘Apart from that quick trip to the supermarket?’

‘Yes,’ she lied. ‘But I was alone.’

‘It was dull, rainy. You had the lights on in the kitchen when I got back. Someone would have seen you through the window. Someone from the caravan park.’

‘Yes,’ she murmured listlessly.

She had been out running again, on the beach, down to East Wittering and further, to the west, pounding along the sand, the rain peppering her face, the beach deserted. Only a kite-surfer zipping backwards and forwards two hundred metres offshore, too far away to attest to the identity of anyone on the beach. Her breath caught in her throat. Oh God.

‘What?’ Roger asked.

‘Nothing.’

His eyes remained fixed on her face, weighing, judging.

‘Really, Roger, it was nothing.’

She pressed her hands against his chest and levered him away from her, trying to keep the relief she felt at the widening space between them from telegraphing itself to her face.

‘Take some of your pills and go to bed early. Stay away from the windows, away from television. An early night will do you good. And tomorrow …’ He paused. ‘Tomorrow everything will look better.’

She nodded dully. The last thing she needed was to sleep, to dream. She wanted to think. The news of the little girl’s death had brought back something about the day she had found Zoe’s body, something that was hovering at the edge of her memory, just out reach.

Roger left the sitting room and she heard him jogging up the stairs, returning a moment later, two small white pills nestled in the palm of his hand. Flunitrazepam. He had bought the pills, liquid, every possible method of sedating her, off the Internet from Malaysia, had had them delivered to a PO Box in Chichester, which he had opened under their new false identity.

She looked at the pills and shook her head. ‘I might go for a run.’

‘Are you serious, Carolynn. Now? With that police and media circus out there? You’re upset and you need to calm down.’

They stood, facing off against each other across the sitting room. Carolynn chewed at the skin around her thumbnail.

‘Stop that, Carolynn. You’ll make your hands look ugly.’

Dropping her hand, she nodded dully. He was right about the nail-biting, about the pills, about staying inside. He was always right these days. He hadn’t used to be, when they first got married, but now she could see that he was. Always. When had the tables turned? Since she had been accused of Zoe’s murder, since the trial? Or earlier than that? Since becoming a mother had leeched her energy and her happiness?

But she longed to experience the feeling of endorphins coursing through her body, the euphoria, however temporary that came with utter physical exhaustion. Sometimes when she returned from her runs along the beach, something had shifted inside her and she found some small measure of peace. Often though, only her body was changed, the miles she’d run registering themselves in physical exhaustion, but everything else, her mind, the thoughts that haunted her waking hours, unchanged. Still, running was like a drug to her now, her only hope of respite, however temporary.

‘Here.’ He held out his hand. ‘Take your pills.’

Obediently, Carolynn extended her right hand for the pills, her left for the water. He watched as she popped first one and then the other into her mouth. His eyes tracked the movement of her hand as she raised the glass to her lips and took a sip. Tilting forward, he planted a soft kiss on her cheek, grimacing, she could sense without even seeing his expression, as the downy white lanugo hair on her face tickled his lips.

‘I can’t go back,’ she said again, when he had stepped away, aware of the thread of desperation in her voice. ‘I can’t go through all that again. I can’t.’

‘You won’t need to, but you have to listen to me, do what I tell you.’

She nodded. No matter how hard she looked into his eyes, searched for something there, all she ever saw was emptiness. It was the same emptiness she saw in her own.

‘That means no friends, for starters. And no more visits to Dr Flynn.’

She started to speak, to object, but his fingers moved to cover her mouth, cutting her off.

‘We can’t risk getting close to people, Carolynn. You know that. Not now. Not with this second little girl dead, so close to where you found— where Zoe was found. It’s too much of a risk. They’ll find us and then they’ll find out … they’ll find out the truth this time and we just can’t take that chance.’

The truth.

He left the sitting room and she spat the pills into her palm and slipped them into her pocket.