‘No, not yet. This is the worst feeling. I can’t bear it.’
Kim’s shoulders look small and pointy through the cotton of her long-sleeved top and Sophie wants to touch her, comfort her, but she doesn’t know her well enough.
‘It’s going to happen,’ says Kim. ‘They’re going to open that slab in that tower, they’re going to go down there, and they’re going to find something. I know they are. And it could be something that breaks my world apart completely. And I’m not sure I’m ready for that. I’m not sure I’ll ever, ever be ready for that. I want it to happen but I don’t want it to happen. And I need to know, but I don’t want to know. What if she’s down there? My baby girl. What if she’s down there? With spiders. You know, she suffers from arachnophobia. She’s terrified of spiders. Literally to the point where she can’t breathe if she sees one, where she would physically shake. And what if someone locked her down there, with spiders. In the dark. Alone. That’s what I can’t bear. The idea of her being down there, alone …’
And then Kim starts to cry and Sophie gets to her feet and encircles her in her arms and says, ‘Oh Kim. Oh Kim. I’m so sorry. This must be so tough. So tough.’ The kettles comes to a boil and clicks off but Kim does not make the tea; instead, she collapses on to a chair and stares at the clock on the kitchen wall as it turns from 10.01 a.m. to 10.02 a.m.
Then Kim’s phone buzzes and Sophie can see from here the nameDomflash up on her screen.
Kim straps Noah into his car seat in the back of her car while Sophie gets into the passenger seat. She takes out her phone and messages Shaun.
Kim and I are going to Dark Place. Apparently they’ve found something.
Her message goes unread until they are almost out of the village, when Shaun replies with,Oh God. I hope it’s nothing too awful. We’ll wait here till we hear from you.
Kim drives hard through the country lanes outside the village and then rather too fast up the tiny lane that leads to Dark Place. There’s a female police officer in high vis standing at the gates to the house and Kim winds down her window and says, ‘DI McCoy told me to come. I’m Tallulah Murray’s mother.’
The officer lets her through the gates and they drive up the potholed driveway to the front of the house which is circled with marked and unmarked police cars. Another police officer approaches them and Kim once again winds down her window and explains who she is and the police officer speaks into a walkie-talkie and then asks her to wait in the car for a moment.
The front door of the house is wide open. Inside Sophie can see an elegant marble hallway with a creamy stone staircase circling through the middle to a glass balustrade above, with a huge modernist chandelier hanging at its centre. The walls are hung with abstract art and at the base of the staircase there is a pair of 1960s’ leather lounging chairs facing each other across a low coffee table. It’s exquisitely tasteful, a perfect blend of old and new. But this beautiful house has been left abandoned for over a year and now, finally, everyone will know why.
Dom appears at the front door a moment later and Kim steps immediately out of her car and heads towards him. Sophie would like to follow, but needs to stay in the car with Noah, so she opens her door and swivels around so that she is half in and half out of the car. She watches as Dom says something to Kim and then she sees Kim’s body crumple at the knees and Dom and another man bring her back to standing with a hand under each elbow, before Dom takes her into his arms and holds on to her hard.
Sophie turns and looks at Noah. ‘I’m just going to check your nana’s OK, all right? I won’t be long. You just wait there, like a good, good boy. OK?’
Noah stares at her and then sticks out his tongue and blows her a raspberry and she starts slightly. No child has ever blown a raspberry at her before and the classroom assistant inside her would like to react to it in some way. But instead she ignores it and strides towards the front door.
She rests a hand gently on the small of Kim’s back and says, ‘Kim? What’s happened?’
And Kim is breathing too hard to speak so Dom speaks for her and says, ‘We’ve just got into the tunnel. There are human remains down there.’
Sophie feels a veil fall across her vision and wobbles slightly. ‘Is there any idea yet whose remains?’
‘No. Not yet. But Kim,’ he says, turning to address her, ‘you should know that it is a male.’
Kim sobs. A choking sound.
‘And we found this, as well.’ He holds up a sealed clear plastic bag. ‘Are you able to identify it, Kim?’
Sophie looks at the object in the bag. It’s a phone in a clear plastic case with some kind of design printed on it. She feels Kim’s shoulders crumple under her hand and she hears a noise come from Kim that she has never heard before, half banshee wail, half feral growl, and Kim collapses on to her knees there on the gravelled driveway and says, ‘No, no, no, no, no, no, not my baby. No, no, no, no, not my beautiful baby girl.’
In the back seat of Kim’s car Noah starts to scream and cry and soon the damp air is filled with the sounds of raw human agony being played out in stereo and everyone else falls completely silent.
56
June 2017
‘Zach?’
Tallulah shoves at his shoulder.
‘Zach?’
His body seems oddly solid and resistant, she thinks, as though it has been emptied and refilled with ball bearings.
‘Zach?’ she hisses into his ear. ‘Oh. Fuck. Zach.’
She puts her face to his face which is turned at a strange angle and feels for breath from his mouth and nose. But there is nothing. She tries to move him on to his back but he is too heavy. There is a small patch of blood on the tile beneath his cheeks and she sees a trickle coming from his ear canal.