He motions to my knickers. Soiled. Yellow.
“Those next.”
“I want to leave them on.”
He shakes his head.
I push them down, turning my back, stepping quickly into the bath and sliding beneath the surface, curling up into a ball. He pulls his chair close so his knees touch the edge of the bath.
He hands me a pink disposable razor.
“Do your legs.”
I hesitate. He reaches into the water and grabs me by the left ankle, lifting the leg upwards. I don’t have time to grip the sides of the bath. I slide completely underwater. He’s holds my leg higher, keeping my head under. I can’t breathe. I may never breathe again.
When he drops the leg, I come up spluttering and coughing, leaking snot, eyes stinging.
“Either you shave or I do it for you.”
I shave, one leg at a time, propping each on the edge of the bath. He watches. My hand is shaking as the blade carves a track through the foam.
Then he tells me to stand up. I cover my groin and breasts. He points to my pubic hair.
“We have to do something about that.”
I don’t understand.
“Shave it off.”
My hand is shaking. I can’t do it.
Nobody has ever touched me there. Nobody. The only guy who ever tried was Gerard Bryant who pushed his hand up my skirt at the Odeon in Oxford, but got a punch in the stomach for his troubles.
I don’t punch George. I stand very still and taste the tears that are running into the corners of my mouth. He talks to me as he works, but the words don’t register. When he’s finished he holds up the towel, putting it around my shoulders, drying me gently, my arms and legs, between my toes…
He lets me keep the towel around my shoulders as he opens the trunk and removes the top shelf. Beneath there are bras, knickers and lingerie. He chooses a nightgown.
“Put this on.”
“Why?”
“Because I want you to.”
I raise my arms. The fabric slides over me. I stand self-consciously, still feeling naked. He puts his hands on my shoulders and makes me sit while he brushes my hair and pulls my face towards his, using a tube of lipstick to paint my lips.
He puts his hand under my chin and lifts my head so that I’ll look at his face. His thumb and forefinger are digging into my cheeks, pulling my mouth out of shape. I don’t want to look into his eyes. Instead, I try to concentrate on a spot just above them, a patch of dry skin on his forehead.
“Don’t you look pretty?” he says, pointing me towards the mirror.
He makes me stand.
“Do a twirl.”
I shuffle in circles. Then he leads me to the bed and forces me forwards, his hands urgent, lifting the nightdress over my hips, bunching it around my waist. His breath quickens with the march of his fingers.
I should fight. I should bite and scratch. I should jam my fingers into his soft bits. Instead, I squeak like a kitten as his fingers invade me.
I don’t know what happens next. My mind goes blank. He’s talking to me but the sound is washed away. I’m writing in my head, putting words together randomly.
I become a different person. I can be somewhere else… in a safe place. Why can’t I be an angry person, who can fight and punch and kick? Why can’t I set loose the dogs of war? I don’t know what the “dogs of war” are or if they’re real dogs but they sound pretty scary.
He’s unbuckling his belt. Sliding down his trousers. My face is pressing into something soft-a blanket made of fur, so soft and warm.
“Do you know what you’re lying upon, Piper?” he whispers. “Lots and lots of animals; pretty little dead things all sewn together. Once they were alive and now they’re not.”
The words echo inside my head.
“Rabbits. Baby seals. Foxes. Beavers. Shall I tell you how they died? They were bludgeoned or electrocuted. They were skinned, their pelts pulled over their bleeding heads. Their little hairless bodies were thrown onto a pile, some still breathing, blinking, dying…”
His lips are pressed to my ear.
“If you ever disobey me, Piper… if you ever try to escape… I will strip off your skin and toss your body on a pile just like all those pretty little dead animals.”
His hand snakes around my head and covers my mouth and nose. My head snaps back. I claw at his hands and a rushing sound fills my head, drowning out my silent screams. I don’t feel pain. My mind has gone blank. He cannot touch me now. He cannot reach inside my head.
I have found my hiding place.
25
On an icy morning the news runs hot and normality lifts from the streets of Bingham like a flock of startled birds. Residents read the headlines over breakfast or watch the reports on morning TV.
Natasha McBain. Three years missing. Five days dead.
By ten o’clock there are broadcast vans parked on Bingham’s village green and reporters are going door to door to get reactions from neighbors and friends. Memories are revisited and raked over like the embers of last night’s fire, while the girl in question is being reinvented and rebranded. Natasha McBain is no longer the troublemaker and delinquent who ran away from home. She is a victim. Abducted. Imprisoned. Sexually violated. A predator is living in their very midst-one of their own, perhaps-a neighbor, a work colleague or that strange man over the road whose basement lights burn all night.
The police car navigates through a crowd of reporters who are milling outside the gates of The Old Vicarage. Two constables force them back onto the road and the gates close again.
Grievous steers the car along a crushed marble driveway, pulling up outside a double garage. Ahead of us, the gardens spread across two acres, dotted with huge old trees, garden beds and patches of manicured lawns. There is also a pond, a tennis court, a croquet lawn and greenhouses full of spring seed trays.
“This is some place,” he says. “Must be worth a pretty penny.”
“Dale Hadley is a banker,” I say, which says enough.
I glance at the detective constable. He has toothpaste in the shell of his ear. I point it out and he tilts the rear-view mirror, examining himself. Annoyed.
“The lads put toothpaste on my desk phone,” he explains. “Old dogs, old tricks.”
DCI Drury is already inside the house, trying to explain to Piper Hadley’s family why they weren’t informed that Natasha McBain had been found.
Dale Hadley is a short, stocky man with graying hair and deep lines around his eyes. His shoulders are as wide as his waist and his clothes look ill-fitting on his odd-shaped frame. He’s pacing the kitchen, fists clenched.
“What else haven’t you told us? What else are you hiding?”
“I understand you’re upset, Mr. Hadley, but the news blackout was necessary. We had to check the whereabouts of suspects. Establish alibis.”
“Which includes me! That’s why I had one of your detectives come here asking me where I was during the blizzard.”
“You have to understand-”
“No, you have to understand. I will not be treated like a fucking criminal. My daughter has been missing for three years. We’ve heard nothing. Not a whisper. Now we learn that you’ve been keeping information secret.”
“I will never lie to you,” says Drury, “but there will be certain things the police must keep to ourselves.”
Through an open door, I see a sunken living room where a girl of about eleven is holding her hands over her brother’s ears.
“Daddy!” she says.
“Sorry, Phoebes.”
The children go back to watching TV.
Dale Hadley turns again to Drury. “You must have some idea where she is.”
“We’re looking, I promise you. I have officers going door to door and dozens of volunteers searching the fields around the farmhouse. They’re going to keep looking, I promise you.”
“What farmhouse?”
“We think Natasha was trying to get home. It’s likely she didn’t know her parents had divorced and moved house.”