Life Ruins Read online

  Maybe she got away. Maybe she was hiding.

  The bushes.

  He shone his torch at the undergrowth, around the lane, nothing, nothing.

  And then he heard a sound. It was faint, almost like a breath, like someone trying to moan, only they couldn’t manage even that.

  He turned, and his torch shone straight at the pile of bramble-covered rubble and junk by the gatepost.

  The shimmer of cloth.

  The gleam of flesh – an arm, he could see her arm.

  She was lying there, not moving, just that strange breath, so faint he could barely hear it.

  ‘It’s OK,’ he said as he eased himself down next to her. The light of his torch played across her. ‘There’s help on its way. Here.’ He pulled off his jacket to put over her, crouching awkwardly, barely noticing the jab of pain from his back. ‘Here.’

  I didn’t help you before but I’m here now.

  His torch moved up her body. He could see dark stains on her arms. Her face – he couldn’t interpret what he was seeing. It made no sense. She was smiling, grinning, like she was going to jump up and shout ‘Boo!’ only . . . it wasn’t a smile, it was like a skeleton face, but skeletons didn’t have eyes that stared, unblinking, fixed, and something hanging down in front . . . and the blood.

  She made that noise again and he saw bubbles around the exposed teeth.

  Then he realised what he was seeing. He closed his eyes and sat on the ground beside her. He took her hand and said, ‘There’s help coming. I’m here till they come. I won’t leave you. They’ll be here any minute.’

  And she kept making that sound, like Charlie trying to breathe, trapped in the tunnel as the water kept rising.

  It can’t have been long, but it felt like an hour before he heard the sound of the police siren on the road.

  Chapter 16

  When Kay woke up, it was still dark. The cold seeped through the glass from the frozen silence of the moors. Her hand moved automatically to Matt’s side of the bed, and she felt the bleak emptiness of the smooth sheet beside her.

  She sat up and checked the time. It was just after five thirty – she never seemed to sleep much later these days. If she went down and refuelled the stove, the house would start to warm up while she made tea.

  Milo raised a sleepy head and looked at her before flopping down again. While Matt was alive, he slept in his basket downstairs. That didn’t last. After Matt’s death, Milo had fretted and pined so she’d put a basket in her room. It wasn’t long before he moved onto the bed, and now the arrangement was routine.

  Shivering in the cold, she pushed back the quilt and stood up, pulling on her warm dressing gown. She could remember Matt saying happily, ‘We won’t need central heating. That stove’s enough to warm the entire cottage.’ He’d enjoyed the whole process – storing the wood, setting the fire, tending to it. Kay didn’t. She liked heat that came to life at the touch of a switch. But she’d never told him that – at the time, it seemed unimportant, like the isolation and the hard east-coast weather that battered the cottage for much of the year.

  And each winter morning when she woke up, the chill was just another thing that reminded her Matt wasn’t there anymore. She didn’t feel like getting up, going downstairs, starting the day. What was there for her to do? All her adult life, her house had been filled with the demands of difficult, damaged children, but now . . . just silence.

  Putting on her slippers, she made her way down the narrow staircase past the electric heater on the landing, which she plugged in to take the chill off the upstairs.

  ‘I know, I know.’ She spoke to Matt, who used to chide her when she did something dangerous. Someone will trip on the flex, Kay. But she was always careful.

  The stove downstairs was out. She raked through the embers and stacked in fresh kindling. Once she was sure the stove was burning, she went through to the kitchen.

  It was tiny. She would have found it frustratingly cramped in the days when they had a fluctuating family of foster-kids to feed, but it was about the right size for one person. She closed her eyes, remembering the kitchen they’d had in Leeds, the space, the huge battered table where the family – because her foster-kids were her family – could assemble for meals. Kay had been strict about that. I don’t care if you don’t eat it, but for tea, we all sit down together.

  Rain rattled against the window as she looked out across the grey winter fields. Without Matt, her new life . . . their new life . . .

  She heard the clatter and scratch of Milo’s claws on the staircase and felt her spirits lift, just a bit. It was impossible to feel depressed with Milo around.

  Tea. What she needed was a cup of tea. She put the kettle on and turned on the radio to catch the local news.

  She let the tea brew while she opened the back door for Milo to go out. He pottered round the small garden, oblivious to the rain, checking out the smells that had accumulated during the night, searching hopefully for any discarded thing that might be edible, looking back at her to see if he could entice her out for an early walk. She leaned in the doorway ignoring the freezing weather, watching him.

  Eventually, he came back in and she fed him, then poured herself a cup of tea. She listened to the radio against the percussion of Milo’s dish thumping against skirting as he licked it to a bright shine.

  The radio was chattering on about traffic problems, weather updates, tide times, interspersed with irritating jingles. Why did they think she needed silly tunes to keep her entertained?

  In the summer, she’d taken a tray outside and had breakfast in the early morning sun on the small terrace that looked out across the fields. In her memory, Matt had been with her.

  Memory. It couldn’t be trusted. It created idylls.

  They’d never had breakfast together here. In fact, for most of their lives they’d rarely managed to sit down together in the morning. They were too busy, and breakfast was a clamour of children, teenage girls to winkle out of the bathroom, teenage boys to winkle off their mattresses, a quick cup of tea and a slice of toast, or nothing at all as they raced to get the children to their different schools and themselves off on their different commutes. Breakfasts in the sunshine could only have happened during the retirement Matt never had.

  Tears made her eyes blur and she shook her head to clear them.

  The radio burbled on. She was only half listening, watching the moon set over the fields. In the distance, the sea glittered, cold and still.

  This was why they had bought the cottage. The sea.

  ‘Radio Humberside for you . . . News and weathe-e-e-r . . .’

  She was reaching out to change station when she caught what the newscaster was saying:

  ‘A young woman was assaulted on the road to Flamborough early this morning. She was taken to Scarborough Hospital where her condition is said to be critical. Police describe this as a horrific attack. Our reporter Clare Hammick is on the scene. Clare . . .’

  Kay’s attention focused sharply as the woman, with carefully maintained gravity, spoke of an assault victim found on the road out in the countryside, miles from anywhere. ‘Police are asking for anyone who was in the area last night to come forward,’ she concluded.

  The news report switched to an upbeat account of some local team’s success. There was no more information about the victim, nothing apart from the fact she was female, and ‘young’.

  Kay immediately thought of Becca, then told herself she was being daft.

  Why would it be Becca? What possible reason would Becca have for being out along the road to the coast? Would she have accepted an invitation – a drink, a drive, a party? Becca was impulsive but she was streetwise – she had to be to have survived.

  On the other hand, when had Becca ever needed a reason for risky behaviour?

  She picked up the phone.

  Chapter 17

  Becca woke up with apprehension clutching at her stomach. The image of Paige sliding into the car had preyed on her mind th
rough the night, creeping into her dreams so she kept waking up with a jolt to find that the night was still only half gone. At least it was morning now, but that brought little comfort.

  She hadn’t done anything, or nothing useful.

  After she found her car, she’d run back to the arcade – Liam might be a scumbag but he knew Paige, he might help – but there was no one there, just the arcade lights flashing and the sound of the games machines, like an invisible party deep in the shadows.

  In the end, against all her better instincts, she’d called the police and told them what had happened. It was exactly the way she expected – a load of questions and almost no help: Who was she? How did she know Paige? Had Paige got into the car voluntarily? How old was Paige? Where did she live?

  As she talked to them, it had begun to rain in earnest. Her shoes – not really designed for walking – filled with water and the cheap leather soon shredded her feet. By the time she got back to her flat, she was soaked to the skin, frozen to her bones and beyond either fear or anger.

  She wanted to crawl into a hole and pull the entrance in behind her.

  As the memories from last night flooded back, she felt the familiar dark mood start to overwhelm her. Get moving – keep ahead of it. That was the only thing that worked. She swung her legs out of bed and pulled on her dressing gown. It was freezing. She switched on the fire, but nothing happened. The meter was empty, and so was her purse. Last night she’d used up the rest of her money feeding the meter in an attempt to dry herself out and get warm.

  How much did she have left in the bank? Hardly anything. Once she’d paid to get her car fixed, there’d be nothing.

  Wrapping her quilt round her shoulders, she sat on the bed, shivering. Useless fucking quilt. Useless fucking flat. Useless fucking place. She stopped fighting and let the greyness engulf her.

  Useless fucking life.

  She was making a mess of everything. She’d made a mess of her friendship with Ashley, she’d made a mess of college and now she was making a mess of work. But most of all, there was Paige. Paige needed help and Becca hadn’t given it. Instead, Paige had run out on her, and then . . .

  Useless. She’d been useless.

  And – dragging, practical detail – she needed to do something about her car. It was there on the street with broken windows and a slashed tyre.

  She hated Brid, just hated it. She was going to leave. She was going to keep moving until she left it all – all of it – behind. She’d sell the car to the first person who offered her a bit of cash and then she was going.

  Somewhere.

  Anywhere.

  She was trying to summon up the energy to get dressed when her phone rang. She picked it up listlessly and looked at the screen. It was Kay, and she wasn’t in the mood for another of Kay’s lectures.

  ‘Before you start. I don’t care what you say, I’m not staying. I . . .’

  ‘Becca. You’re OK!’

  They both spoke at once.

  ‘Why wouldn’t I be?’

  ‘There was . . .’ Kay took in what she had just said. ‘You’re not . . .? Not again, Becca. What’s wrong now?’

  ‘Oh . . .’ She didn’t want to talk about it, but neither did she want to sit in her room staring into blank space. ‘Why wouldn’t I be OK?’

  ‘It was something I heard on the news. A young woman was attacked near one of the caravan parks on the way to the coast. I wanted to make sure . . .’

  And Becca was back in the road, watching Paige scramble into the car that had kerb-crawled them, then headed off in the direction of the coast, the face in the window looking back at her, shadowed, like a mask. ‘Who? Did it say who?’

  ‘No, nothing. They just said police were investigating . . . Becca, do you think it might be someone you know?’

  ‘I don’t know. Listen, I need to get to work. I’ll call you, OK?’

  Kay looked at the silent phone and grimaced. It was typical of Becca to begin her conversation with an announcement she was giving up her job and end it abruptly as she raced off to work to find out what was happening. But she was safe, that was the main thing.

  Kay returned to the news. There was more information about the girl now. It was an assault, and the girl had been hurt – badly hurt. Police described the attack as ‘sickening’, strong language for people who were all too familiar with the worst one person could do to another. There was nothing about her identity – either the police didn’t know or they weren’t releasing it.

  It wasn’t Becca. But it could easily be another girl like Becca; there were too many out there on the streets, with indifferent or hostile homes, lonely and vulnerable. Becca had been doing well – until something had stopped her in her tracks. Maybe she’d remember she trusted Kay and tell her, but until then . . . Well, at least Becca was safe, or as safe as she ever was, but one girl was not.

  The sad truth was there were too many candidates in the Bridlington area to be the victim of this particular crime. Too many vulnerable girls. Violence was inevitable if you had a policy of flooding the poorer coastal towns with the troubled, the homeless and the dispossessed.

  If you populate an area with prey, the predators will not be far behind.

  Chapter 18

  Jared barely slept that night. He’d sat with the girl as the paramedics came, the lights flashing around him, on and off, on and off, and they were carefully easing him out of the way as one of them bent over the girl and the other started talking urgently into his radio. She was still alive, the girl without a face, as they strapped her to a stretcher and took her away.

  They’d wanted to take him in as well, but he refused. At first, he thought they were arresting him, then he realised they were concerned about his condition. Shock, the paramedic said. The police came and he’d answered their questions as best he could, promising to go into town the next day to sign a statement. After they’d all gone, he crawled back into the caravan.

  He sank down onto the bed and pulled the blanket round his shoulders. He was shaking. He couldn’t remember ever being so cold. Round and round. It kept going round and round in his head as he tried to tell himself a different story – this time, the girl came running out of the night, and he was ready – he wasn’t pissed, he wasn’t arsing around with his key. He was alert and on the case, getting the door open, letting her in and closing it, turning everything off, so when the car engine roared and the lights hit the side of the van, it was just another empty caravan, no girl frozen in the sudden brilliance.

  Round and round.

  In the end, he swallowed a couple of pills, then a couple more, washing them down with whisky on the assumption he’d puked up most of the booze from earlier. He was sober enough now, and he didn’t want to be.

  But the pills didn’t put him to sleep. They added colour and brilliance to the memories that were scrolling relentlessly in his head.

  Go back.

  Go back . . .

  He was eleven. He was climbing a rock face in Derbyshire. The sun was beating down on his bare torso. The climb was tough – tougher than anything he’d tried before. Below, he could hear Charlie panting slightly as he followed Jared’s route up the wall.

  ‘To your left, just up . . . bit more . . .’ His father, up on the top, taking in the slack on the rope. Jared’s reaching hand touched the grip high above him and he launched himself, one hand secure, his body swinging round and then he was up there, above the overhang, grinning in triumph.

  ‘That was one tough overhang, mate. Well done.’ His father’s hand gripped his shoulder briefly, then he helped Charlie up over the last scramble. ‘And you. Good climb!’

  Jared knew that though his dad treated Charlie almost like a second son – the child of a friend who had died in the Gulf War, the boy Jared had grown up with, gone to school with – his dad was proud that his own son was always the one who was first, the one who led the hard climb, the one who broke trail on the tough routes. A leader, like his dad.

&n
bsp; The rain was beating down on the caravan roof, and here he was on the bleak Yorkshire coast, a wreck who couldn’t stay sober long enough to save a girl from . . .

  . . . making that sound, like Charlie trying to breathe, Charlie, trapped . . .

  He’d walked out of that cave with a blanket round his shoulders and hot tea inside him, while Charlie . . . He could still see the contempt in his father’s eyes as he looked at the son he had been so proud of.

  The son who’d left his mate to drown slowly in a tunnel.

  Jared jerked upright. He was on the bed in the caravan. He was years away from the cave.

  And just hours away from the girl. He wrapped a blanket round himself in a futile attempt to keep warm and huddled up on the bed, listening to the relentless drumming of the rain on the caravan roof – didn’t it do anything but fucking rain here? – and tried not to think too much about what had happened. But the events kept playing over and over on a loop in his head: the screaming, the cave, the unspoken accusation in his father’s eyes, and then the girl lying injured by the side of the road as if someone had just dumped her there like a piece of rubbish.

  He could have helped her, but he didn’t.

  He scrabbled around on the small table by the bed until he found his stash, then rolled himself a joint and lay on the bed smoking as the night hours moved slowly past. What was the point of going in to Brid to make a statement? He’d already told them everything he knew. Come morning, he’d pack up his car and leave, get away from all this, just forget about it.

  What happened, mate? How did you get it so wrong?

  His father had asked him that, and Jared hadn’t been able to answer.

  And now he was the man who’d let a frightened girl run off into the dark, to get trashed by a bunch of cunts who—

  ‘Fuck it!’ he said to no one in particular as he waited out the long night.