Never Alone (24 page)

It’s Kitty’s face. Her eyes are screwed shut, and her mouth is wide open, as if she is screaming.

Sarah stares at her phone, trying to process what she’s seeing. The message has come from Kitty’s phone. Is it some kind of joke? Has Kitty sent her the message by mistake?

She tries Kitty’s number, but of course the mobile signal isn’t good enough for a call, and it disconnects immediately. She picks up the landline, and dials Kitty from that. This time, it rings and rings, unanswered, until eventually the voicemail kicks in.

Leave a message, it’s Kit Carpenter, bye!

‘Kitty, ring me as soon as you get this – it’s Mum. Ring me now. Please.’

Sarah pulls up the picture again. Why is it so blurred? She sits awkwardly back on the sofa. She has the two phones in
either hand, staring from one to the other. There is only one thing she can do – something she should have done earlier.

‘Emergency, which service do you require?’

‘Police, please,’ she says firmly. There is a short pause, then a different voice.

‘Yorkshire Police, what’s your emergency?’

‘I think my daughter is in trouble,’ Sarah says. Her voice is tight with panic.

‘Right,’ the operator says, ‘what sort of trouble?’

‘She went for a walk to the village earlier. She isn’t answering her phone. And I’ve just received a picture message from her phone. It’s a picture of her face, it looks like she’s screaming.’

‘Can I take some details from you, and we’ll get someone to help. What’s your name?’

Sarah’s voice trembles as she reports her name, her address, her date of birth, Kitty’s name, Kitty’s date of birth…
It’s all taking too long
, she thinks.
It’s all just too slow.

‘Please,’ she says, feeling the tears starting now, at last, because she’s on her own again and she thinks she might just be going mad, might be losing touch with reality, ‘please help me… I think someone has got her…’

‘Why do you think that?’ says the voice. There is no curiosity there, no sense of wonder. The operator is reporting facts, typing them up fast.

‘I just know,’ Sarah says. She needs to choose her words carefully. ‘There’s someone who has been watching the house. I know this sounds strange. I reported it – I spoke to a detective. Amy Foster. She told me to ring, and give you a number, only I don’t know where it is now…’

‘I can look that up for you. Did you give your home address?’

‘Yes, yes.’

‘Here we go. You reported a harassment yesterday.’

‘Yes. He was here again. He was here this morning. I told him to leave. He did. Kitty was angry about it. She might have gone to find him; I don’t know. She said she was going to get some fresh air, see if her friends were home, but maybe she went to look for him?’

‘Can you just confirm who it is we’re talking about, Mrs Carpenter?’

Sarah shudders over the name. Over the thought that he has somehow got hold of Kitty. That she is screaming.

‘Will,’ she says. ‘Will Brewer.’

Sarah stands in the kitchen staring out over the yard, over the whiteness and Kitty’s tracks, which are fading as the snow blows and swirls over them. The sun has gone in; the clouds are heavy and getting darker.

The year they first moved into Four Winds Farm, the snow was heavy, like this – heavier. The kids had been out there building a snowman with Jim. Then they’d built an igloo up on the field. There was so much snow they hardly knew what to do with it. Afterwards, they all piled back into the house and Sarah made them all hot chocolate and they warmed up in front of the fire.

There was snow every year, of course. Sarah couldn’t remember them ever bothering to make a snowman again, much less an igloo. They were teenagers by then and the snow was an inconvenience, something to be trudged through, something that cancelled clubs and meet-ups and dates.

The clock ticks and the wind blows, and the landline doesn’t ring. She checks her watch. Fifteen minutes have passed since she talked to the police about Kitty. They told her someone would call her back, and that it might be a little while but to rest assured that someone was dealing with it.

‘It’s urgent!’ she’d said to them, her voice sounding high and quavery even to her own ears.

Someone will call her back. They are dealing with it. She has to trust that they are.

This is no good – what can she do, sitting here? She pulls on her boots and her coat and finds her hat and gloves. Tess jumps up from her bed.

The snow is knee-deep in parts of the yard. If she wants to get the Land Rover out she might need to dig a path through to the driveway and probably beyond. The snow piles over the top of her boots and soaks through her jeans quickly. When she gets to the gate it feels deeper; the wind has blown it across the road between her house and the Buttons’, and it’s only a low hump in the white expanse that shows where the dry stone wall is. The ditch must be just in front of it, but you’d never know. Underneath the snow, the stream must still be flowing down the hill.

Something looks odd about it; even with the drifts, there is an odd shape on the Buttons’ drive. She trudges a few steps closer. It’s a car, half-hidden in the snow. It takes a while to get to it, minutes more to brush enough of the snow away to confirm what she suspected: it’s Aiden’s car. She pushes snow away from the passenger window, suddenly fearful that he’s inside it – but the car is empty.

Why would he leave the car here? Perhaps her driveway looked worse, and maybe he left the car here knowing the Buttons were away? But that raises another question, one that is more terrifying still. Aiden’s car is here – so where is he?

There are no footprints here, no sign of life. Kitty must have cut through over the stile behind the cottage, gone down to the village through the fields.

She fishes her mobile phone out of her pocket, dials Kitty’s number.

Leave a message, it’s Kit Carpenter, bye!

She cuts it off. There is no point leaving another message. She tries Sophie’s phone, which doesn’t even ring, then
George’s, then she gives up. The phone bleeps an alarm – the battery is almost gone. It should have lasted longer than that; the cold must have drained it.

The village below her is lost in a swirl of grey-white cloud. She can barely make out shapes, and then they are gone. Turning to go back to the house, she can hardly see that either; it is snowing again, and within a few moments it’s swirling and drifting and hitting her face like needles. She pushes her way through, trying to match her feet into the tracks she has already made. At the gate she gets her foot caught in something and falls face-first, hands out in front of her diving through soft snow. It’s difficult to stand up again; there is nothing solid to push against. In the end she gets to her knees and manages to get up.

Now it becomes urgent to get back to the house. There is something menacing about the way the sky has turned dark and now she cannot see the road, cannot see the Buttons’ house, can only just make out the back wall of the cottage and the posts of the stile into the sheep field sticking up through the drifts.

‘Tess! Tess!’ she calls, her words snatched away as soon as they leave her mouth.

She hears an answering bark from somewhere.

In the shelter of the cottage the snow has banked up, driven by the wind up from the valley. She fights her way through it, around the corner and into the yard. Between her and the house she can just make out a figure, something moving.

At first she thinks it must be Tess, but it’s too big for that. It’s a person, someone wearing white, moving slowly, and nearly at the door.

‘Kitty!’

She moves faster, pushing through the drifts, exhausted already, until she gets to the door too, shoves it open and
shuts it fast. Even in those few seconds the snow has blown into the hall. She stamps it off her boots, tries to shake herself down.

‘Kitty?’

Tess is in the kitchen, wagging her wet tail at the figure who is trying to rub her down with a towel. It takes her a second to recognise who it is, because the person is wearing white ski trousers and a grey pullover. A white ski jacket with navy blue piping along the seams is hanging, dripping, over a kitchen chair.

It’s Will. Of course it is Will.

‘Where’s Kitty?’ Sarah asks, as soon as she can speak without coughing.

‘Kitty? No idea. Isn’t she here?’

Sarah launches herself at Will, taking him by surprise and pushing him up against the wall. ‘Where is she? What have you done?’

He laughs at her. He actually laughs.

And then he turns sideways, twisting out of Sarah’s feeble, frozen grip. He stands in the middle of her kitchen, his hair wet at the ends, his blue eyes intense, hands loose at his sides. A sob that she is powerless to stop rises in her throat and she drops into a crouch, falling back against the wall and pulling her knees up to her chest.

‘Sarah, Sarah,’ he says, soothing. ‘It’s all right. It’ll be okay. Has Kitty gone somewhere? What’s happened?’

‘She – she went down to the village… I got a text from her phone…’

He waits for her to say more but she cannot. She is shaking from the cold; her lips are numb.

‘We need to get you out of these wet things. Come on.’

She resists him as he starts to peel off her coat, pulls her up to a standing position, then manoeuvres her round to the
kitchen chair, where he unzips her boots and pulls them off. Her jeans are soaked.

‘I’m going to find you some dry clothes,’ he says. ‘You stay here, I’ll be back in a moment.’

He puts the kettle on, then leaves the room. Sarah listens to him going up the stairs, then hears the creak of the floorboards in her room.
I don’t want him here,
she thinks. Her coat is hanging over the chair in front of her. She reaches for it, then searches through the pockets for her mobile phone.

It’s not there.

She looks again, checks all the pockets, even the ones she doesn’t use, checks the lining in case the phone has fallen through. Outside, the wind howls; the snow patters against the kitchen window, even drowning out the rattle of the water in the kettle rising to a boil.

‘No!’ Sarah yells, and rushes for the door. She must have dropped her phone outside, maybe when she fell. The wind blasts through the house the moment she opens the door. The snow has drifted against the door and it falls inside.

Strong arms catch her just as she is about to run out in her socked feet.

‘What are you doing?’ Will drags her back from the door and wrestles it shut against the wind. ‘You can’t go out again – look at it!’

Sarah presses her hands against her face. ‘My phone – I must have dropped it! What if Kitty’s in trouble?’

‘Then she’ll call the landline. Look, come on – you need to get a grip. Everything’s fine, I’m sure of it. Come on, come back into the kitchen.’

She lets him lead her by the arm and sit her down again. The kettle clicks off and the wind howls around the house, rattling at the windows. She watches, almost dazed, as he makes a pot of tea, taking care to warm the pot and stir the
tea around inside before putting it on a trivet on the kitchen table.

‘Where did you get those clothes?’ she asks. Her teeth are chattering. He looks odd, in those white ski trousers that are too big around the waist and a little too small in the leg. The braces are still on his shoulders; if he slipped them off the trousers would fall down.

‘I borrowed them. Better for this weather, right?’

‘Borrowed them from whom?’

Jim has a pair for the snow. They went skiing years ago, in fact the first time was at university with the Ski Soc. The three of them, her, Jim and Aiden, fooling around in Val d’Isère with all the posh kids. Jim’s ski gear is dark blue, though, flashes of neon yellow through the sleeves. Sarah is shaking so much when he finally hands her a mug that she doubts she can hold it.

‘Right, I’m going to help you undress now. Is that okay?’

She doesn’t assent but he does it anyway, helping her to her feet and undoing her jeans, tugging them away from her skin. Her legs, when they’re finally on show, are mottled and bluish with bright pink patches. He has found a pair of jogging bottoms and he helps her to step into them, a pair of thick socks. Sarah has been watching all this take place as if she is one step removed from it all, as if it is happening to someone else, and now she looks down at the top of Will’s head as he kneels at her feet, pushing a thick sock, rolled up, over her toes and then pulling it up her calf. He strokes her foot firmly but tenderly, then moves to the other foot and does the same, applying full concentration to it.

He is here,
she thinks.
If he’s here, he is not with Kitty. She must be fine. She’s safe.

‘Stand up,’ he says.

She does as she’s told. He pulls her sweater over her head while she raises her arms like a good girl. Under it she is
wearing a vest and her bra. He has found her a T-shirt and a zipped top that she hasn’t worn in years. Casually he runs his hand across the front of her chest, over her breasts, as if he’s feeling to see if the fabric is wet, nothing more. When she doesn’t react, he does it again, this time lingering.

She tries to fold her arms across her chest but he gently pulls them away. He rolls up the T-shirt and puts it over her head. She puts her arms through the sleeves and then takes the sweatshirt from him. ‘I can manage,’ she says.

‘Sure.’

He sits at the kitchen table and lifts the mug of tea to his mouth, sipping it.

‘Good job I’m here, right?’ he says. ‘You’d be in hypothermic shock now. You might have collapsed and had a heart attack.’

‘Hypothermic shock’ sounds like something he might have made up, just to sound knowledgeable. She doesn’t want him here, wants him to go, but she is wary. She is on her own. Where is she going to go? Where is he going to go? And in any case, the police are supposed to be calling her back, or coming out to see her, if they can. She will just have to manage this the best way she can.

Stay calm. Think. Don’t piss him off.