No chance at all. Amber knows her life is essentially done with; has known it since Vic was arrested, has wondered why instinct still drove her to fool herself that she had a chance. There’s nothing, now: no freedom, no safety, no peace. The whole country has seen her adult face; shouting from their TV screens, snarling over their morning cuppa. She belongs to them now: the bogey-woman made flesh; public property once more. She knows she’ll never walk in anonymity again.
Nonetheless, she sets off after them. Maybe there’s a chance for Kirsty still. A chance for her children.
Martin is a buzzing mass of joy. He can hear her voice drifting over the sound of the sea, hear her desperation as she begs him to stop. This is the best thing that has ever happened to me. Tomorrow I’ll be visible. Tomorrow they’ll all know who I am. The man who uncovered the truth.
Excitement makes his body fleet. Normally, running, even a quarter of a mile of it, renders him weak and self-hating. Tonight, with the stirring sea-surge and the thrill of his discovery to spur him on, he covers the ground like a young gazelle; jumps the builders’ detritus by the side of the railway stop without breaking his stride, races on towards fame and freedom.
He feels wild with power. His two worst enemies. Life drops a gift like this in your lap once and once only. Kirsty Lindsay: I knew there was something about you. I knew you were hiding something. But this? I never would have imagined it. There you’ve been, hiding in plain sight, probably been keeping up with her all this time, laughing in the face of the world. But you’re going to get yours now. Oh my God, you’re going to get yours.
He hears her bleat again over the wind. ‘Wait! Oh, please! Please wait!’
He hears a scuffle, a clank, behind him, and hazards a glance over his shoulder. She’s reached the building site, has hit something and fallen. Martin stops for a moment to watch her flounder. Throws his head back and laughs.
They’re halfway down the pier now, and Kirsty continues to run, pushing herself through pain, feeling the tightening in her chest, the panic pounding blood through her jugular. Stop. Please stop. We can talk. We can work something out.
But bit by bit, she’s gaining ground. She’s never been a runner, but desperation lends her speed. I have to stop him. Have to. He reaches the building works at the station, skims over the top of them as though his shoes have wings. Her knee hurts where she banged it. She knows she’s not going to be able to keep up the pace, that she’s pushed beyond her capacity; but he’s only six paces ahead now. If she could just slow him down. Make him stumble.
She reaches the pile of builders’ rubbish, tries to vault it as he has. But her foot catches on something – some metal thing, half hidden in the dark – and suddenly she is falling, hands out to catch herself. Lands on a pile of timber, her hand slipping down the side and landing on something with rough metal edges. She feels a stab of pain, then her hand closes, instinctively, over it. It’s heavy and curved: two short lengths of tube, set at right-angles to each other, with bolts protruding from their ends. She knows, without seeing, exactly what it is: a coupler, the heavy metal joint that links the struts of scaffolding, makes the structure strong. She knows all about scaffolding. She and Jim spent eight hard months with it cladding the house when they first moved in and discovered that they’d bought a home with subsidence.
The thought of Jim makes her jerk her head up, makes her stare down the walkway, expecting to see Rat Man’s retreating back a hundred, two hundred yards ahead. To her surprise, he’s still there, standing just the other side of the works, his arms folded pugnaciously, laughing. ‘Jade!’ he shouts. ‘Jade Walker!’
She feels a surge of rage. The memory – ingrained, festering – of being that girl. Of being singled out in the schoolyard over ancient slights by long-gone siblings; of adults chasing her off wherever she settled; of barred doors and hungry nights; of the father with the brutal hands; of the vicars-teachers-case-workers who turned their faces to the wall. It all slow-burns inside her, ready always to ignite. Being Kirsty is her control, her safety; the one thing that stands between her and the savagery of her past.
‘No!’ she shouts, buffeted by the wind, struggling to her feet. She is barely aware that she still has the coupler in her hand, that she’s gripping it tight enough to bruise, her fingers full-stretched to hold its bulk. ‘No! I’m not! I’m Kirsty Lindsay! Kirsty Lindsay! I’m not her! I’m not!’
‘Jade!’ he repeats, and points at her; the priming gesture of the schoolyard bully.
‘Don’t say that!’ she shrieks. Her legs carry her towards him through the tempest. She no longer harbours hopes of reasoning with him; no longer thinks of anything other than the gloat on his face, the triumphalistic bray of his laugh. ‘Stop it! I don’t know her! I’m Kirsty. I’m not her. I’m not her!’
‘Yeah,’ shouts Martin Bagshawe, flushed with victory, mouth wide with hilarity. He’s never felt so alive, so electrified by his own power. ‘But you will be tomorrow, won’t you?’
She swings her arm at the gaping mouth, to shut him up.
Chapter Forty-five
The rain begins to weaken as quickly as it picked up. Shuffle-jogging up the boardwalk, Amber almost trips over them before she sees them. And then they’re there, beyond the heap of scaffolding poles, in the shelter of a pile of boards. She sees Kirsty’s back first, hunched over as though she’s crying. She thinks initially that he has got away: that she’s given up in despair and resigned herself to mourning. And then she sees the legs, the white sneakers, the toes pointing up at the racing clouds above.
‘Oh God,’ she says, and stops, dead. Kirsty doesn’t notice her at first; she’s bent over him, staring at his face. Sick and weak, Amber gets into eyeshot and sees that the man on the floor is Martin Bagshawe.
She gasps. Kirsty hears, whirls round, white-faced. ‘I didn’t mean to,’ she says. ‘I didn’t…’
Amber covers the last few steps, and stands behind her. ‘Oh Jesus. What’s he doing here?’
Martin is snoring. Though she recognised him from a distance, she sees now that the whole of the left side of his face – the side that was away from her as she approached – is stove in like it’s hollow, broken teeth scattered in the pooling blood beneath his ear.
‘You know him?’ asks Kirsty.
She shrugs the question off. Immaterial. ‘Jesus,’ she says. ‘What did you hit him with?’
‘I don’t… I…’ Kirsty looks down at her right hand. Sees the coupler still gripped in her palm and flings it away as though it has turned red-hot in her hand. It clatters across the boards, comes to a rest in the gutter. ‘I didn’t… Oh God,’ she says. ‘He’s OK, right?’
‘No,’ says Amber. ‘He’s not OK.’
She drops to her knees beside Martin and feels for his pulse. It’s slow, but it’s there.
‘I didn’t mean to,’ begins Kirsty. ‘I didn’t realise I… Oh God, what are we going to do?’
Martin draws a blubbery, wet sigh through his mangled mouth. He’s not breathing through his nose, because his nose is smashed sideways like plywood. She must have hit him with the full force of her arm.
‘What are we going to do?’ she asks again.
‘I don’t know. I don’t know.’ Amber’s trying to think, trying to brush away the memories of how her mind worked all those years ago. We’ve not got any woods to bury him in, that’s for sure.