Then Jack, whose airways had narrowed to a hair’s breadth, turned purple.
‘WHAT’S THE PLAN?’ LARA MUTTERED. STEPHEN LAY BY HER SIDE
, his arms and legs woven around her. She was still shackled to the bed, in need of a pee and a glass of water. The smell of their bodies surrounded them, but so scented had she been by Stephen, she couldn’t work out which was her odour and which his. ‘Do you have a plan?’
‘I’m going down to the village this evening,’ he said, propping himself up on one elbow and stroking her back, ‘and I’m going to tell Bella and Olly that I’m their dad. I think they’ll be rather pleased, don’t you?’
Lara lay completely still, unable to comment. She couldn’t imagine what their reaction would be, but rather pleased wasn’t the first that came to mind.
‘Don’t worry. I’ve prepared the ground for them. They’ll be relieved, really. Then I’ll bring them up here, and we can all have tea together. Perhaps you could bake a cake.’
‘I need to pee,’ Lara said.
‘Of course you do.’ He jumped up and unshackled her ankles and wrists. Supporting her – her broken leg was useless – he led her to the bathroom, where he stood over her as she sat on the pan.
‘Let me wipe you,’ he said, reaching for the toilet roll. But as he did so, there was a loud rapping on the side door. Lara caught her breath and looked up at him. He narrowed his eyes.
‘Very enterprising,’ he said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘OK, you’d better stay here.’ He carried her back to the bedroom and quickly chained her up again. The knocking continued, growing ever more insistent.
At last, Lara saw a glimmer of hope. Someone had come up here to rescue her.
‘Mum? Lara?’
Her heart lurched into her mouth as she realised who stood out there in the wood in the middle of nowhere, waiting at his door.
Her daughter.
‘That’s my girl,’ Stephen said.
‘IF THEY’RE IN, THEY’RE GOING TO HEAR THAT,’ SEAN SAID
.
‘Mum!’ Bella yelled again, at her wits’ end. ‘Lara!’ She pressed her ear to the door then she stood back. ‘Someone’s coming,’ she said, hugging her little brother, trying to calm his desperate attempts at breath. ‘Hold on Jacky.’
‘Bella. What a lovely surprise,’ Stephen said as he opened the door, his welcoming smile incongruous, accessorised as it was by a shotgun.
‘Jack’s having an attack,’ Bella said, looking up at him. ‘We don’t know what to do.’
Dog crouched, bared his teeth and snarled at Stephen Molloy.
‘GET BACK,’ Stephen roared at Dog, holding his hand out, ready to hit him. Such was the authority in his voice that Dog reared away on his hind legs and sloped off to the vegetable patch, whimpering.
‘It’s that beast’s fault,’ Stephen said, slinging his gun over his shoulder and picking Jack up. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ He shot a look at Bella. ‘You know he’s allergic.’
‘I didn’t think—’ Bella said, tears springing to her eyes.
‘Come in. I’ll see if I can find something.’ Stephen bundled Jack into the house and Bella and Sean followed.
In the kitchen, he lifted Jack on to the counter and supported him as he rummaged in what Bella realised was her mother’s bag. ‘Thank God,’ he said, finding Jack’s Ventolin and popping off the lid. ‘We can rely on our Lara to be prepared.’
He held the inhaler to Jack’s mouth and with five blasts his breathing began to return to normal.
‘Thank you, thank you,’ Bella said over and over again.
‘Are his tablets in there?’ Stephen pointed to Lara’s bag.
Bella found the blister pack of antihistamines. She handed them to Stephen, who, with one arm still around Jack, took a glass from the draining board, filled it with water and fed two pills to the gasping little boy.
Finally, when the emergency was over, Stephen carried Jack through to the living room and laid him on the sofa, motioning to Sean and Bella to sit either side of him.
‘Wow,’ he said, raising his eyebrows.
‘Thank you,’ Bella said, stroking her little brother’s head as he curled up in her lap.
‘Let’s start again,’ Stephen said, after a moment. ‘Welcome, Bella, Jack and Sean, to my home.’
He stood and looked at them, smiling, expectant.
‘Where’s Mum?’ Bella said at last.
‘Oh. She’s fast asleep at the moment. But, Bella, I think your mother and I owe you an explanation.’
Bella stared at her feet, cowed by Stephen’s presence, embarrassed by the whole situation.
‘You all look completely worn out. Can I get you a drink? Or something to eat …’
Bella ran her tongue over her parched upper lip and tasted salt. She hadn’t realised how sweaty and grimy she was. Her legs stung where brambles had ripped them.
‘Lemonade please, Stephen,’ Jack said, sitting up, his face returned to its normal colour, save for the dirt and the sunburn.
‘Good boy.’ Stephen ruffled his hair.
‘Just water’ll do me fine,’ Sean said.
‘Me too, please,’ Bella added.
As they sat awkwardly waiting for Stephen to fix their drinks – he was going to great pains with ice and lemon and straws – a loud thump came from upstairs.
‘What’s that?’ Bella asked Stephen.
‘What?’ he said, smiling broadly as he carried a tray with three tinkling glasses on it over to the sofa.
‘That noise. Listen. There it is again.’
Stephen put his head to one side. Again the noise came, a distinct banging – something lifting and dropping, lifting and dropping. Bella saw a tiny flicker in Stephen’s jaw.
Jack drained his lemonade, slurping on the straw.
‘It’s that damn porcupine again,’ Stephen said. ‘Remember, Bella, from the other night? It gets up on the roof now – don’t ask me how – then it thumps and rubs itself against the house. First time I heard it,’ he said with a laugh, ‘I thought I had a madman stamping about upstairs.’
‘I thought porcupines were nocturnal,’ Sean said.
‘Not this one.’ Stephen turned, smiling, but not with his eyes.
Bella and Sean each took a sip from their glasses. The fan turning overhead and the thumping from upstairs were the only sounds in the room.
‘So,’ Stephen said eventually. ‘Tell me how and why you come to be up here.’
‘I’d rather talk to you privately,’ Bella said. ‘Not in front of J.A.C.K.’
Jack, knowing full well how to spell his own name, looked up and beamed.
‘Sure,’ Stephen said. ‘We’ll go into my study. Sean, are you OK to stay here? There’s a load of DVDs on those shelves. You might as well start getting young Jack here acquainted with my oeuvre. The back door’s on the latch, too, in case he wants to get out to the snakes. But keep him away from that mutt, yes?’
Bella was worried about the door being unlocked, but Sean managed to appear entirely neutral as he got up and led the little boy over to choose a DVD from the many hundreds that lined the floor-to-ceiling shelves. Perhaps, now that Stephen was so close, he felt he had nothing to fear from Olly.
‘Well then?’ Stephen said, as he sat in his office chair and turned to face the egg-shaped seat he had put Bella in. The thumping was much closer to them in here. It seemed to come from right above Bella’s head.
She told him about the photographs. When she had finished – she couldn’t bear to relate the detail about his hand on her mother’s breast – he put his elbows on his knees and his hands together.
‘You know what this means?’ he said.
‘It means you and Mum are having an affair,’ Bella said.
‘Affair? I’d hardly call it that. I think “affair” implies a bit of a sideshow, don’t you?’
‘What do you mean?’
Stephen held up his hand and silenced her.
‘The point is, Bella, who do you think might be taking these photographs?’
‘Yes, we—’
‘Did you wonder, perhaps, why I came to the door with a gun? Yes? Well,’ he went on, gesturing to the green of the forest that could just be picked out behind the gauze of the insect screens, ‘out there is a demented woman who is hell-bent on getting at Lara because she believes I belong to her and not to your mother.’
‘I don’t want to hear this,’ Bella said, curling up and clapping her hands over her ears.
‘Don’t you? Then why did you come up here?’
‘I want to talk to Mum.’
‘Oh, and you will, Bella,’ Stephen said. He leaned forward and put his hands on her knees and stared at her, forcing her gaze up to meet his. ‘My Bella.’
‘What?’ She tried to break away from him, but he had a firm grip on her legs.
‘You are so like your mother, you know? When I first fell in love with her she was only three years older than you are now.’
‘She was nineteen? But she was married to my dad then.’
Stephen leaned back, slapped his knee and laughed.
‘What’s so funny?’ Bella said.
He continued laughing until tears formed in the corners of his eyes.
‘What is it?’ Bella demanded, closing in right up against his face.
‘My,’ Stephen said. ‘You’re a fiery girl, aren’t you? I like that. No, my darling, what is so amusing is that your mother wasn’t married to your dad when she was nineteen. She never married your dad.’
‘She did. I saw the pictures. They’ve got this scrapbook.’
‘You still don’t get it, do you?’ He took her chin between his thumb and forefinger, pinching her hard.
‘Your mother hasn’t married your father – yet – because your father is …’ He jumped up, opened his arms wide and presented himself like a Royal Shakespeare Company lead taking a bow. ‘Me!’
If he had plunged her into an icy pool, Bella wouldn’t have felt such a physical shock. She fought to get the air back into her lungs, shaking her head, her hands over her ears.
‘S’true,’ he said, beaming at her, his arms still out.
‘I don’t believe you.’ She continued to shake her head so violently her skull clicked.
‘But look,’ he said, handing her a piece of paper from a tray on his desk. Then he sat down and observed her as she read, resting his chin in his hands.
Bella studied the report. Then slowly she looked up at him as she let the paper flutter to the floor, undisguised horror scrawled over her face.
‘It’s going to take a while for you to get used to it, then?’ he said, smiling. ‘Of course. But, my love, my girl, it’s true. It is a fact. And the sooner you come to realise it, the better for everyone concerned.’
‘What about Marcus?’
‘What
about
Marcus?’ Stephen said, picking up the report.
‘Does he know?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Does Mum know?’
Stephen started laughing again. ‘What do you think? She’s here, isn’t she? Look—’ He took her hands, holding them tightly between his own. ‘I gave you a stable childhood; I stayed out of the picture. But I always knew this day would come.’
The thumping continued, right above Bella’s head. She glanced up.
‘I need to see Mum.’
‘She’ll wake up soon.’
‘I want to see her now.’ Bella pulled away and stood up to go. As he lunged to stop her, she sidestepped him and kicked him in the shins. Then she swung away, breaking out of the study and towards the stairs.
Outside, Dog barked and barked.
‘Bella,’ Sean said from beside the living-room window, where he had flattened himself against the wall. ‘Olly’s here.’
‘Make sure Jack stays down here,’ Bella said. She darted up the stairs and ran down the corridor to the room that was above the study. She turned the lock in the handle and flung open the door.
It was like she’d reached the edge of a precipice; she teetered, stalled completely by what met her. Spread-eagled on the bed, her left leg at an unnatural angle, her naked body covered in cuts and bruises, her eyes wild, was a woman. It took a beat to register that this was her mother.
‘Help me Bella,’ she said hoarsely, thumping her body up and down on the surface of the bed. ‘Help me.’
Without a thought or word, Bella rushed to the side of the bed, to see if she could work out how the chains were attached. But she was stopped by her mother’s cry of terror. Stephen filled the doorway, tears pouring down his face, his gun in his hands.
‘It wasn’t meant to be like this,’ he sobbed.
Bella put herself between him and her mother as he fell to his knees.
‘Please forgive me,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean it to end like this.’ He bent his head forward, on to his fist, as if in prayer. Then he reared up and grabbed Bella’s arm. ‘Please say we can move on from here, rewind a bit, do a bit of an edit?’ He smiled up at her through his tears. ‘My daughter?’ He reached out and gripped on to Lara’s leg, making her scream in agony. ‘My wife?’
‘Jack, come here!’ Sean shouted from the hallway.
‘Mummy?’
Jack stopped, open-mouthed, in the doorway. Sean, who had just caught up with him, quickly read the scene in front of them and dived on to Stephen, pushing him away from the women.
‘Get him out of here!’ Lara screamed. ‘Get Jack out of here, Bella!’
Dodging round the men, Bella scooped up her little brother and hurtled, almost fell, down the stairs.
‘You come back here!’ Stephen, who had broken free, roared from the landing. Sean launched at him again, but Stephen managed to sidestep the tackle and Sean plunged down the stairs.
‘Sean!’ Bella cried.
‘I’m OK,’ he said, picking himself up. ‘You go. I’ll keep him off your mom.’
Stephen started down the stairs, with his gun, but his eyes were on Bella, not Sean.
‘Quick,’ Bella said to Jack, who was clinging to her, whimpering. She flung the side door open and they spilled out into the dusky evening air, still and warm after the cold interior of the house. Half carrying, half dragging the little boy, she stumbled across the grass for the shelter of the forest. Dog ran from side to side on the edge of the lawn, barking up into the trees, as if he were providing cover for her.
A great clattering noise erupted behind them, a noise of struggle. Bella glanced around. Stephen had reached the porch, and was pulling free from Sean, his rifle held up, aiming at her and Jack. She continued to run, praying she would reach the trees in time.
‘STOP!’ Stephen yelled, and Bella felt herself pushed to the ground as a gunshot rang out into the air.