‘Anna! I can’t deal with—’
She grabs me hard by the elbows. ‘But you have to! I should have pressed her more, should have helped her more.’ Her grip tightens. ‘She’d want me to help you, Cat. You need to get away. You need to—’
I step backwards, dig my nails into her fingers until she lets go.
‘You do what you have to, Anna,’ I say. My voice is unsteady. My legs tingle with the panicky urge to just start running. Instead, I turn around and make myself walk away. ‘I can’t talk now.’
And I ignore her shouts and that urge to run, until both have gone.
The Links is completely deserted. But here, I feel eyes on me; my skin crawls with the familiar certainty of being followed, examined. I turn back once, look around the flat, empty parkland. No Anna. No one at all.
I pull up my hood and keep going. Past the same trees fighting the same bitter wind as on that freezing dawn morning all those years ago: sycamores and elms hiding tormented ghosts swollen black with plague. Past the same brownstone tenements and terraces where the murderers of children lived and lurked. And watched.
All those obstacles, those booby traps Grandpa laid so that we would never want to leave 36 Westeryk Road. He’d overegged it, I suppose, as abusers do; by the time we’d crossed over the Links, we were as tired of being afraid as we were of running. And we knew by then that he was a liar. 36 Westeryk Road was just as frightening, as dangerous, as anywhere else. But we loved him still, even against all of that fear and lying, the hot copper stink of blood on our skin. Because then, as now, it was still so easy to separate Grandpa from Bluebeard. So necessary. Far harder and more painful to push them together, to accept that the biggest nightmare from my childhood was once my very favourite person after El. There’s grief for that, too, now as then – as if I’ve lost him twice. As if he never existed at all.
I glance back towards the road before turning onto Lochinvar Drive and heading down towards the yacht club. I have to squeeze around a few more boats on raised blocks to get close to the water. The wind coming off the Forth is as cold as ever, but it’s low; the jostle and rattle of the moored yachts seems muted, faraway. I stand still at last. Breathe in, breathe out.
I look down at the stone slip and then up beyond Granton’s breakwater wall, northeast towards the small squat islet of Inchkeith, the yellow smudge of its lighthouse barely visible. The dark water beyond it. The deepwater channel. I look and I look, and I’m nearly glad when the clouds drop lower over Burntisland, and the rain starts bucketing down, hard and fast enough to drum at my aching skull and obscure my view.
My phone beeps. It’s a text from Ross.
Have to check in with work, then I’ll pick up something for dinner. Any requests? x
I don’t reply. Even though there’s nothing wrong with what he’s said. He has a job. We have to eat. We haven’t died. Which doesn’t stop me flinching when the phone beeps again.
18 April 2018 at 14:55
Inbox
john.smith120594@gmail.com
Re: HE KNOWS
To: Me
YOU’RE RUNNING OUT OF TIME.
REMEMBER WHAT HAPPENED ON THE 4TH OF SEPTEMBER.
THEN YOU’LL UNDERSTAND.
YOU’LL KNOW WHAT YOU HAVE TO DO.
Sent from my iPhone
I won’t know. I don’t know. I’ve remembered everything – every last horrible fucking thing – and I still haven’t a clue what it is I’m supposed to understand. To do.
No more riddles, Mouse. This isn’t a game. This isn’t Mirrorland. Tell me what you know. Meet me. Tell me. Or leave me alone.
I send my reply, turn back for the road. The rain is getting worse. The sky has become so dark it’s as if dusk has arrived. I struggle to negotiate my way around the boats in the yard. Their hulls are jagged with rust and barnacles. They smell of the sea, of the things that lived and died in it. I shiver. And when I hear something too close behind me, I whirl around, the knuckles of my hand smacking loudly against the nearest boat. I go down hard and fast, dizzy and sliding against the slick concrete, ending up spread-eagled on my back. I turn my head, straining to hear anything over the rain – and then, through that narrow space under the raised hull, I see boots. Leather with steel-cap toes. And above them, jeans.
I scramble backwards, struggling for purchase on the slick ground. By the time I manage to get back onto my feet, I’m breathing too hard, too loud. But I don’t run. I want to run – I always want to run – but instead, I inch around the boat, and then launch myself into its black shadow. And when I come up against movement, solidity, I punch and I kick and I shout. And I scream.
Hands reach for me, and I scratch at them, punch them away. A greater weight pushes against me, but it isn’t as angry, as desperate, as prepared to fight dirty. I stab with my nails, kick up my knee again and again and again.
‘Stop! Stop.’
Vik lurches into the little remaining light, holding up his palms.
‘You!’ I shout, and the loud, outraged fury in my voice – the authority – hides the relief.
‘Cat, please. Stop!’ The last he shouts as I come towards him again. He’s soaked to the skin, his jacket plastered against his torso, rain dripping into his eyes and off his chin. He looks wretched.
I stop. It takes about all the energy I have left, but I do. We stand staring at each other in the shadows and the rain, both breathing hard and too fast.
‘How long have you been following me?’
‘Cat, I—’
‘How long, Vik?’ I shout. Because now that all the rage inside me has finally escaped, not even the promise of an explanation – of any possible end to all this not knowing – is enough to call it back.
He looks down at the ground. ‘Since you came back from America.’
‘How the fuck did you know I was back?’ I ask – before it occurs to me that the question I should be asking is Why? And then a sudden suspicion turns me in a new direction. ‘Do you know Mouse? Is she – are you—’
But although Vik is already shaking his head no, the weariness in it, his lack of confusion as to who Mouse is, only makes my suspicion more certain. ‘You know her. You know her! You’re both—’
‘Cat. I need to—’
‘Wait. Is Marie in on whatever the hell this is too? Is that what your bloody phone call yesterday was about? You have to get out of that house. Are all of you—’
Vik steps forwards. ‘There’s something I need to tell you.’
‘Then tell me.’
I can hear him swallow, even over the hammering rain. And then he looks at me without blinking. ‘I’m Mouse.’
‘What?’
His gaze slides away. ‘I’m sorry. I’m Mouse. At least, I’ve been pretending to be her. I’m the one who’s been sending you those emails.’
I step back, shake my head. ‘I don’t – I don’t understand. Why?’
‘Because El asked me to,’ he says.
‘Show me your phone.’ I’m still shaking my head. I can’t seem to stop. ‘Show me your phone, Vik. Now.’
He reaches into his jeans pocket, brings out an iPhone, and keys in its passcode before reluctantly handing it over.
I open his inbox with trembling fingers, smearing rain across the screen. And right at the top:
Cat Morgan
No more riddles, Mouse. This isn’t a game. This isn’t Mirrorland.