Authors: Joanna Rees
But there was nothing.
She stared at the mess she’d made, winded with disappointment.
In the silence, the exercise-yard clock outside chimed midnight. She heard a faint cheer from the guards.
Romy hugged the blanket to herself and made herself a promise. A New Year vow. If she had no past, then she was going make sure she had a future. No matter what. And it was going to start right
now.
But back at the dormitory, Claudia wasn’t waiting for her as they’d agreed. She wasn’t in bed. Or in the bathrooms.
‘Where is she?’ Romy demanded, not caring who she woke up. ‘Where’s Claudia?’
Tara was shaking as she sat up in bed. Tears were running down her face, and her cheek was blotchy and red from where it had clearly been slapped. ‘The boys took her, Romy. Fox and Pieter.
Up to the top floor.’
Romy wasn’t the only one taking advantage of the fact that the guards were distracted tonight.
‘Shit,’ she muttered, already sensing trouble as she raced out of the dormitory. She’d never been up to the top floor before. It was where the eldest orphanage boys lived, the
ones who were practically men. The first thing that struck Romy as she sneaked in through the dormitory door was the warmth. A heater blasted out. A radio played and an electric kettle steamed on a
unit by the sink. The four empty beds each had clean blankets and sheets, with reading lamps on little tables next to each one.
Romy felt the injustice of it all, like a wasp sting. All this luxury. Right above her head. All this time.
She heard a low rumble of voices behind a door at the far end of the room. Laughter. Then what she’d dreaded – a cry – a voice that she recognized straight away as
Claudia’s.
She hurried to the door and strained on tiptoe to look through its small square of glass.
Claudia was lying spread-eagled on a cast-iron bed, her nightdress pulled up around her waist. Her mouth was bound with a gag, her wrists tied to the bedposts. She was twisting and bucking her
legs in a futile attempt to get away.
Romy saw Fox – six foot tall now and set to join the army in less than a year – unbuckle and kick off his trousers. Pieter, Monk and Heinrich clapped and cheered him on.
Romy’s legs were shaking so hard she couldn’t move. She squeezed her eyes shut and desperately tried to come up with a plan. But there were four of them in there. All bigger and
stronger than her. What chance would she have?
She thought of the guards downstairs, but then she thought again of the photos inside her jacket. The guards would not help her. They’d probably just join in.
She could hear Claudia’s muffled screams now. Suppressing a sob, she sneaked a peak through the window once more. Claudia’s eyes were widening with terror. Fox was hunched over her
open legs and was thrusting violently against her.
Enough!
Romy bust the door open and ran through it, yelling with all her might.
Fox had just pulled away. His back was to Claudia. He was flushed and sweating and was just swigging from a vodka bottle when Romy charged at him, ramming the letter opener with all her might
into his abdomen.
He punched her hard in the face, knocking her to the floor. She curled up, waiting for the first blow to land. She knew she was never going to get out of this room alive.
But the attack never came. Instead, Fox moaned softly. She looked up to see that he was staring down at his bare stomach in disbelief. The handle of the letter opener was sticking out of it. Its
blade was buried inside him.
The vodka bottle slid from his grasp and shattered. He staggered back, knocking an oil lamp off the bedside table. Its green glass smashed as it hit the floor. Flames began licking hungrily
across the dry wooden boards.
Heinrich, Pieter and Monk fled past Romy, running for help. Fox lurched towards her, but then sank to his knees. His naked legs and shrunken genitals were now soaked and dripping with his own
blood.
‘You fucking evil bitch,’ he said. ‘I’m going to—’
He reached out for her, to seize her, but even that exertion proved too much. He slumped back against the wall, groaning, twisting the silver handle of the letter opener, trying and failing to
pull it free. A thin rivulet of blood trickled from his mouth.
‘Burn in hell,’ Romy told him, getting quickly to her feet.
Smoke was filling the room. The corner of the bedspread over the mattress caught fire.
Coughing, Romy grabbed Claudia, untying her bindings with shaking hands. Claudia was bleeding, a circle of red widening across her nightdress. Her glazed eyes stared right through Romy, as if
she wasn’t even there.
‘Claudia! Clau!’ Romy shouted.
No response. It was as if she was in a trance. Romy growled with exertion, pulling Claudia off the bed and hauling her towards the door.
Fox had started making a horrible gurgling sound and Romy was choking too now, as the smoke grew thicker. A sudden whoosh of flames behind her. A crackling of varnish burning on wood.
Romy pushed Claudia through the door, into the deserted dormitory beyond, just in the nick of time. She turned to see flames and smoke engulfing the room.
The fire alarm rang out as Romy hurried down the stairs, half-carrying Claudia now, determined that she would not leave her behind. She could hear men’s voices shouting below. Any minute
now and the guards would be here. If she and Claudia carried on this way, then they’d run straight into them.
Halfway down the stairs a small window was set into the landing wall. Romy stood back and kicked straight through it, before stamping out the remaining shards of glass. Icy wind blew in at her.
The darkness beckoned outside. Cover. A chance to escape.
‘We have to get out and up onto the roof,’ she said. ‘Now,’ she told Claudia, pushing her towards the small opening. ‘Please, Claudia. Or we’re dead . . .
’
Finally Claudia seemed to break free from her trance. She stared into Romy’s eyes, then nodded and began squeezing herself through the tiny windowframe and sideways onto the thin window
ledge.
Romy edged out after her. Before them was a sheer drop into a deep ventilation shaft, thirty foot deep. Fall down it and they’d most likely break their necks.
Claudia began shaking uncontrollably, as the thick snow swarmed furiously all around. Romy took off her jacket and gave it to her friend. But as she did so, the folder inside slipped and fell.
The photographs got caught up in the flurry of snow, black on white, disappearing into the night.
But Romy had no time to worry about that now. Even over the wind, she heard the thunder of footsteps in the stairwell behind them.
‘We have to get across,’ she told Claudia, focusing on the flat roof ahead, four feet away, across the shaft. ‘I’ll go first.’
She didn’t give herself time to think about it. She didn’t look down. Kicking off the ledge, she launched herself across the gap and made it – just – hooking her
shoulders over the far roof lip, before quickly hauling herself up.
Claudia hadn’t moved. The ledge glistened in the moonlight beneath her bare feet. Romy cursed herself. She should have given Claudia her boots too.
Shouts. Louder. Closer.
‘Now!’ she screamed to Claudia. Any second and she’d be seen.
Another shout, this time right behind her, finally spurred Claudia into flight.
One second she was just standing there, quaking, and the next she’d thrown herself forward and was flailing mid-air, desperately reaching out for the lip of the roof.
She missed. But Romy didn’t. Coiled and ready, she seized Claudia’s wrist as the older girl’s body slammed into the wall where Romy now stood. The weight of most children of
Claudia’s age would have been sufficient to drag Romy down into a pile of broken bones at the bottom of the shaft. But Claudia was light – little more than a bag of bones herself. Romy
would not let her go. She hauled Claudia up and got her onto the roof beside her.
They ran across the roof of the refectory, slipping and sliding all the way to the end. Then down the metal ladder onto the roof of the laundry office to its edge.
‘Now! Jump!’ Romy said, taking Claudia’s hand this time and not giving her time to think. They plummeted down onto the laundry van in the yard. Its canvas roof shrieked and
gave way with a giant rip. They landed with a thump on the bare metal bottom of the truck, a pile of snow cascading down around them.
‘I can’t go on,’ Claudia cried, but Romy was already scrambling up.
Blood was running down the inside of Claudia’s legs. Her nightdress was soaked, translucent.
‘Here, take my boots,’ she told Claudia, unlacing them and hurriedly jamming them onto her friend’s feet. Romy pulled her jacket tighter around Claudia’s shoulder,
tenderly brushing the sweat-soaked hair from her friend’s face.
‘Stay with me,’ she said. ‘We can do it.’
She forced her way through the hatch into the driver’s cabin and leant in. Through the windscreen and the dancing snow beyond was the service gate. If only she knew how to drive, she could
start up this truck, ram right through those gates and drive them both to safety. But she couldn’t drive. In fact, it was only now, staring at the gates, that she realized she knew nothing of
the outside world. Nothing but the views she’d glimpsed from the roof. Even if she did make it out of here, what chance did she really have of surviving?
But just as these doubts threatened to overwhelm her, she remembered something else. Another view from the roof. The woods. Just there outside the orphanage. Get as far as the woods in this
storm, and she and Claudia might just give their pursuers the slip.
She grabbed Claudia’s hand and shuffled to the back of the van, then jumped down into the yard. She held out her arms to help Claudia.
She could hear alarms ringing out all around now. Flames licked out into the darkness from the top of the building. The lights inside the orphanage were all coming on. Dark silhouettes were
appearing in the windows, the faces of orphans pressed up against the grubby glass panes, peering out into the blizzard to try and see what was going on.
Romy couldn’t think about the children now. They knew the fire drill, she reassured herself. They’d all be out here soon. And so would Lemcke and the guards.
Lemcke. The very word rang out like a whip-crack in her mind. She’d rather die trying to escape than let him get hold of her.
Hauling Claudia, who stumbled after her across the concrete, leaving drops of blood in their footprints in the snow, they reached the gates and started to climb. Romy’s sodden socks
slipped on the ice-cold metal bars. But she kept going and soon reached the top.
The single-track road ahead was a tapestry of black ice and snow.
She and Claudia dropped down onto it. Romy pulled Claudia with her over into the trees. They fell into a ditch, landing thigh-deep in snow, and fought their way through it and out the other
side.
‘Our only chance is to disappear into the woods,’ Romy said, cold gripping her feet like a vice.
They ran on, the orphanage alarms still ringing out behind them. Romy delved in her pocket and clicked on her torch, desperate not to get caught in another drift. She immediately saw that to the
left the woods were thicker and the snow less deep, as the land dipped sharply towards what looked like a river valley below.
Behind them, she heard a shout. She looked back. Through the trees she glimpsed a flicker of torches at the orphanage gates. Boots clattered on the icy road. She thought she heard Ulrich’s
voice and his whistle blowing, and then the sound she’d most feared. The dogs.
A howl went up. Another. Snarling. A yelp. The creatures were desperate to be let off the leash.
Then silence.
‘Run!’ Romy said, but it was already too late.
A hiss of barrelling motion. Of muscle crashing past bushes and trees.
Then the dogs were upon them. Two Alsatians. Ulrich’s pride and joy. Both of them drawn by the scent of Claudia’s blood.
Claudia screamed as the dogs piled into her and knocked her to the ground.
Romy snatched up a heavy branch and swung it hard, two-fisted, down onto the nearest beast’s spine. It yelped, twisting to one side, but then only tore back all the more fiercely into
Claudia, who’d now curled up in a tight ball.
A lattice of torch beams criss-crossed through the trees. The guards had realized where they were.
Romy brought the branch crashing down on the dog again. This time she struck the creature hard across its brow. It slumped sideways in the snow and did not move again.
But the second dog now had its jaws locked around Claudia’s neck.
Claudia stared wide-eyed up at Romy. Her cheek was torn open. Her back was arched, her whole body stretched, as if at any second she might actually snap.
‘Go,’ she mouthed at Romy.
And this time Romy knew she had no choice. She turned and fled into the dark, just as Ulrich burst triumphantly into the clearing and stared down at Claudia’s bloodied body in the
snow.
But Romy was already gone. Stumbling deeper into the dark wood, with tears pouring down her face, Romy was running for her life.
June 1984
On the hotly anticipated day that Griffin Maddox was destined to tie the knot with Storm Haileux-Maitlin the New England sky was a cloudless aquamarine blue and the rolling
lawns of the Little Elms estate shone emerald in the sunshine.
Inside the house Thea picked up the net-fluffed skirts of her baby-pink bridesmaid’s dress and tiptoed over the brand-new carpet, careful not to trip over the photographer’s lighting
cables, which snaked across her path.
The recently refurbished top floor had the frenzied backstage panic of a catwalk show, as Mimi, the wedding planner from New York, shouted into a walkie-talkie about a time-check, marching out
of the adjacent bedroom where Storm was being dressed in a cloud of cream taffeta by a coterie of hangers-on.
Thea scooted out of the way and looked through the round picture window down to the gardens at the back of the house, where the yew-tree walk had been made into an outdoor chapel, complete with
a white wrought-iron altar and canopy.