Lock Me In. Kate Simants

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СКАЧАТЬ of the target, sometimes not – about snowflakes and limp-wristed millennials. It would all be easier to stomach now if Mae could have convinced himself he’d stood up for the victims of DS Heath’s vitriol. But it hadn’t happened like that, had it?

      And wasn’t that why he was here in this flat, right now?

      He turned back to the books, ran his finger along the titles until he came to a slim paperback, cheaply made, well-thumbed. Its spine was peeling away to expose the glue beneath, but Mae knew it immediately. He handed it to her.

      ‘“A Splintered Soul: Collected Essays on Dissociation, Fugue and Recovery”,’ she read, whispering.

      ‘Chapter seven is Ellie.’

      ‘Seriously? What does—?’ Kit started, but she was interrupted by the sound of Christine coming back with the drinks. Kit put the book back and affected a smile.

      The coffee was distributed, and Christine perched on the arm of the angular sofa. She folded her arms over her chest, crossed her legs at the knee. Mae thought of a Transformer toy he’d had as a kid. Bend and fold and click and bam, suddenly you had something totally different.

      He cleared his throat. ‘So where’s Ellie right now, do you know?’

      ‘She’s not feeling good. Gone for some air.’ Then, to Kit, in a woman-to-woman tone, ‘She has anxiety.’ And to Mae: ‘As I’m sure you’ll remember.’

      Kit nodded, sympathetic. ‘That’s no fun.’ She glanced at Mae, who gave her a slight tilt of the head: go ahead, your interview. ‘Mrs Power, we—’

      ‘Ms,’ Mae corrected her.

      ‘Ms Power, my apologies,’ Kit said. ‘We received a call from a workmate of Mr Corsham’s saying that he’s potentially gone missing, so we wanted to talk to Ellie about him.’

      ‘I see.’ She ran her hands over her face, stretching the skin under her eyes for a moment. She looked tired, but not the kind of tired that went away with a good night’s sleep. ‘I’ll ask her to call you, if you like? Although I’m not sure how much she’s been seeing him lately. She’s young. Keeping her options open.’

      Kit smiled. ‘Do you know Matthew at all yourself?’

      ‘A little. We both work at the same hospital.’

      Mae pulled out his notes. Frowned. ‘Really? Because I—’

      ‘Yes. Hanwell. I’m just a cleaner there. He’s in the photographic lab.’

      ‘That how Ellie met him?’ Kit asked brightly.

      ‘She was waiting for me in the canteen one day. They got talking.’

      ‘Sweet.’

      Kit made a note, took a long slug of her coffee, then stood. ‘We’ll need to speak to Ellie as soon as possible. Could you give her this card, ask her to call?’

      ‘Of course.’

      Kit thanked Christine and opened the door, making to leave. She made small talk as they passed to the hall, but it dried up at the front door. There was an awkward silence as Kit tied her shoes.

      ‘Christine,’ Mae said. ‘What happened before—’

      She held up a hand. ‘It doesn’t matter. All I need is for you to treat her carefully. All right?’

      He nodded, handed her a card. There was nothing else to say. ‘Could you have Ellie call us as soon as possible?’

      Christine Power looked Mae full in the face. ‘Be gentle. Do you understand? My daughter is not like the rest of us. If one good thing came from the …’ she paused, skewering the word, ‘mess, back then, I hope you at least learned that.’

       10.

       Ellie

      I waited in Mum’s room, too scared of making a noise to even move.

      I would have known that voice anywhere. Ben Mae. I could make him out clearly as they came down the hall, but the moment they closed the living room door all I could hear was low, muffled and intermittent, and I could hardly catch a word.

      Siggy breathed static in my head, watching me. She knew exactly what had happened last night, but she would never tell me. All I could do was imagine, and that was the worst part: the inability to differentiate between mine and hers. Between real memory and my own terrified imagination doing its best to fill in the gaps.

      When I lost Jodie, I told the police the same story every time they asked, the story that Mum and I had gone over and over. What I saw that last night before she disappeared. Jodie got into Cox’s car. It was red. They were fighting. That was the last time I saw her.

      I’d rehearsed it so many times by the time I told the police, I’d almost believed it was true.

      Dr Charles Cox had been in his mid-forties when they’d got together. She was seventeen. It wasn’t illegal, as Jodie reminded me almost every time we talked about him, even though it was never me who complained about the age gap. What I was bothered by was the fact that he was dating her mother. But even that was something I could overlook, under the circumstances. The fact was that, apart from my own mum, Jodie was the only friend I’d ever had.

      Our friendship lasted four months. From the day I met her to the day she died: 121 days. It was a Tuesday, the first time we met. I’d seen her around before, but she went to the big comprehensive the other side of Hove and wasn’t around much. But that Tuesday morning in April, colder than she was dressed for and drizzly to boot, she was there in the stairwell outside our flat like she was waiting for me. Legs draped widthways across the step, smoking. I tried to go past her and when she didn’t move I turned to go back the way I’d come, backing away from confrontation like I always did. But then she held out the cigarette. Hand-rolled, lipstick on the filter.

      ‘You’re the home-school kid.’

      I nodded.

      ‘Missing your GCSEs?’

      My GCSEs, if I was going to take them, would have been two years off, but I didn’t correct her. Looking at her I knew she had to be sixteen, seventeen at least. If I told her my real age, she’d have been up and out of there. So I just folded my arms, affecting nonchalance, and said, ‘Whatever.’

      She smiled, blew the smoke in a thin, elegant stream from the corner of her mouth. ‘Just you and your mum in there?’

      ‘Yeah.’

      ‘Your dad turn out to be a bastard, like mine?’

      I shrugged, but the answer was an indisputable yes: he’d only been with Mum a few months when she found out she was pregnant, and promptly disappeared when she told him the happy news. The news that he’d died of an overdose found its way to her a week before I was born. I used to ask her about him, what he was like, but I СКАЧАТЬ