Читать книгу Lies Between Us: a tense psychological thriller with a twist you won’t see coming - Ronnie Turner - Страница 13

John gazes at the photographs spread across the wall. Left to right, past to present, they follow Bonnie’s life. From the day she was born, bundled up in a pink blanket in Jules’s arms, to last week, when she lost her first tooth; in the picture she holds it proudly up to the camera, excitement written across her face. After the picture was taken she’d run to his study and deposited the tooth safely in the tin she kept under his desk. Throughout the day, she’d crept back to check her trophy was still there. He’d tried to tell her the fairy only came at night when she was asleep but curiosity consistently won out. The next day, she’d skipped around the house with her pound coin clutched tightly in her fist, showing them, then, moments later, showing them again.

He sits at his desk now and wonders why his daughter has been taken from them. Is it retribution for some wrongdoing? Is it a past mistake come back to haunt him? Is he being made to repent? Useless thoughts buzz around his head. Peering underneath his desk, he looks at the debris of a life Bonnie built one morning when she came down from her bedroom. A pile of blankets folded neatly where his feet are supposed to go (since she’d made the move into his study, he’d sat slightly sideways or with the laptop perched on his knee), Barbie dolls scattered across it, stuffed bears and boxes of puzzles stacked tidily to the side. Along with the tin she kept for ‘special treasures’ are a notebook, pencil case, the Nintendo DS she only played with when she was bored, and a small child’s toy designed to look like a laptop. When he wrote longhand, she copied him, pencil finding its way to her mouth, eyes thoughtfully rolled up to the ceiling. When he typed out his novels on the laptop, she settled her pink one on her lap and typed out hers. The most recent being about a mole having a tea party with his friends.

John looks at her ‘cosy corner’, as he and Jules call it, leaning forward and snatching the tin from its perch. It was a sample tin they’d got when painting her room over two years ago. She’d insisted on keeping it, despite the dried paint running down the edges. He pops the lid off and fishes out its contents: three pebbles with heart-shaped marks on them, two neatly folded notes he’d given her that simply read ‘I love you’, and the necklace he and Jules presented to her on her fifth birthday. He runs his finger over the small pendant, which reads ‘Protagonist’. She had been overjoyed when she unwrapped it. But unlike him at her age, she’d done so with care, folding, easing off the strips of tape, pulling out the black box with velvet trimming and slowly peering inside, as if each moment was one to savour.

He rips a sheet of paper from his notebook and carefully writes ‘I love you’ in his neatest handwriting, popping it in the tin for when she returns.

‘We’re going to find her. We’re going to find her.’ He repeats the mantra over and over, as he had to Jules last night before they eventually slipped away from visions of her torture to the murky nightmares of it instead. He repeats it until his mouth grows dry and his voice begins to catch in his throat.

A blanket, pencils, a sheaf of paper… Bonnie’s was a world you’d never want to leave. Simple and easy. They’d spent hours in his study together. Sometimes they wrote to music, usually just to silence. When she was bursting with energy, he abandoned his laptop screen to dance round the room with her. When she was exhausted and fell asleep curled up under his desk, he gently pulled her onto his lap, a tiny pool of dribble marking his shirt. If she was upset, he read a suitable chapter from his novel and gradually her tears dried. And if that didn’t work, he folded her in his arms and span them round on his chair until they were both laughing.

John turns and smiles at Jules as she walks into the room, carrying two plates of sandwiches. Her red cheeks are marred by tracks of pale skin marching down her face, eyes swollen and rimmed with black shadows. She puts the plates on the desk and sits on his lap, head resting in the exact same place Bonnie’s had. He wraps his arms around her waist and kisses her. The hours will pass with them still in this position, the lethargy of shock and fear at this new tide of events making them feel as if they have been dunked in clay and left to slowly dry in the sun.

John swivels the chair round so they can look at the photos. Bonnie’s Wall, he calls it. His eyes are drawn to a photo off to the side. Bonnie is being cradled in Don’s arms, thumb stuck between her lips, face flushed from their day at the zoo. Don, wearing a Donald Duck cap, smiles tenderly down at her, eyes glued to her small face. The picture was taken two years ago, after John’s novel had won an award for crime and thriller novel of the year. And now he wishes he’d never taken it, never put it on the wall, because it brings his thoughts full circle to his and Jules’s failure, to the day Bonnie dropped out of their lives. She had been missing four days before they received that photo through the letterbox.

He and Jules were arguing in the kitchen at the time. He’d just received a text from his uncle about visiting in a few weeks. Jules was adamant he shouldn’t come, shouting that he was a creep. John was stuck in the middle – wedged would be a better word – between his wife and his uncle, two halves of his family. He could faintly remember hearing Bonnie giggle in the other room over something Don said.

‘Daddy, Mummy, Uncle Duck’s on the telly! He’s on the telly!’ She squealed in excitement.

And then Don’s voice. ‘Guys, I’m famous. I’m famous—’ He was cut off when Bonnie laughed – John assumed because Don tickled her. ‘Quack! Quuuaaack!’ Don, again, his usual sunny self, a sudden contrast to his and Jules’s bleak dispute. ‘Quaaaack!’ They’d been watching a Donald Duck cartoon before he and Jules left for the kitchen. John couldn’t remember when Bonnie had decided to call Don after her favourite character, his brain foggy with thoughts of what came next.

Don wandered into the kitchen, smile drooping as he took in their expressions. ‘Oh, guys, come on! Bon’s waddling round like a duck in there, you know! It’s hilarious!’ He patted John on the back and made his way to the bathroom. John barely even noticed him, frustrated as he was with Jules. When they returned to the lounge, moments later, with a plate of biscuits, the television was playing for an empty room. John called up the stairs and Jules rushed out to the garden. They screamed and cried her name but the voice they so hoped to hear didn’t call back.

‘What are you doing? She’s in the lounge!’ Don walked up to them, expression puzzled, hands spread in a question.

‘She’s gone! She’s gone!’ Jules cupped her face, eyes shooting back and forth across the room as if Bonnie was about to reappear suddenly and shout, ‘Here I am! I’m good at hide and seek, aren’t I, Mummy?’

Don wrapped a comforting arm around Jules. ‘John, I’ll take the car and have a scout round; you go on foot in case I miss her. Jules, go and ask the neighbours if they’ve seen her. She’s only been gone a few minutes, she can’t be far away!’

They jumped into action as if it was something they’d rehearsed. John rushed out of the door and down the street, making laps around their house, inching further away each time, scanning the area for her. For some reason, it was her shoes he kept hoping he’d see. Her sparkly red Dorothy shoes. They were getting too small for her but she insisted on wearing them, polishing them with a cloth twice a day, proud of the way they shone. Those shoes were lodged in his mind. Sometimes he thought he saw them, but when he looked back they weren’t there. He spotted Don twice on his frantic laps but not Bonnie, never Bonnie.

They assumed at first that she had run away, but ‘Bonnie wouldn’t do that!’ they told themselves and then repeated it to the police, to be met with looks of nonchalance and boredom. With nothing else to go on, they began to think she’d just wanted a walk and got lost. The police trawled the streets and neighbourhood. They checked the little village shop, the play area, rechecked where John had already looked. But it was all for nothing. She hadn’t run away or got lost. She’d been taken.

John doesn’t know how. It is one of the questions that bombard him; even when he is asleep it finds a way to dig its fingers into his subconscious and prey on his ever-befuddled mind. How was she taken? They were only in the kitchen for a few moments. Don was only in the bathroom for a few moments. Did this person lure her outside and kidnap her? Did he walk into the house they were supposed to be safe in and simply take her hand and walk right back out again? No, he couldn’t have – Bonnie knew not to go with strangers. She knew the world was a scary place. She knew, she knew, she knew. But then, he asks himself, would he have heard her talk, shout? Don wouldn’t have from inside the bathroom. All this person had to do was hold his hand over her mouth and leave. As simple as that.

And now they are sitting here, while their little girl is suffering God knows what. Over and over. Again and again.

Jules places his hand on her bump. He feels a slow, firm kick against his palm and smiles sadly. How are they supposed to care for a second baby when they’ve spoiled things so badly with their first? This is their fault. His fault. Their only job since the day she was born has been to protect her. And now they have failed, it seems they will surely fail with the next one as well. How can they not? How is this one going to fare any better in their care?

His eyes slowly begin to flutter closed, exhaustion creeping up on him. They sleep like this for hours. And he dreams that when he leaves their newborn in its crib to fetch a nappy, it has gone when he returns. And in its place is a photograph of both his children together, side by side, broken and bruised, tears and blood forming a pool at their feet.