The Other Child (3 page)

She was in the middle of the bridge when she stopped and looked back. Not that she had heard something, but every time she got about this far she had the almost automatic reaction, before she plunged on into the creepily empty Esplanade Gardens, to check if everything was all right – without being exactly clear what she meant by
all right
.

A man was walking down St Nicholas Cliff. Tall, slim, taking quick steps. She could not see what sort of clothes he was wearing. Only a few more yards and he would have reached the bridge, towards which he was obviously heading.

There was no one else to see, near or far.

With one hand Amy held on tight to her bag of books, with the other hand to her front door key, which she had dug out of her bag at Mrs Gardner's house. She had got into the habit of holding it at the ready on her way home. Of course that was all part of her fearfulness. Her aunt forgot to turn the outside light on every night. Amy hated standing there rummaging around in her bag for the key, as blind as a mole. There were ten-foot-high lilac bushes to the right and left, and her aunt – with the typically unreasonable stubbornness of old age – refused to have them pruned. Amy wanted to get into the house as fast as possible. To be in a safe place.

Safe from what?

She was too easily frightened. She knew that. It just wasn't normal to see ghosts everywhere, burglars, murderers and perverts behind every corner. She guessed it had to do with her upbringing – as the sheltered, mollycoddled only child of her straightforward parents.
Don't do this, don't do that, this could happen, that could happen
… She had heard things like that all her life. She had not been allowed to do a lot of what her classmates did, because her mother was afraid that something could go wrong. Amy had not rebelled against the bans; she had soon shared her mother's fears and was glad to have a reason she could give her schoolfriends:

I'm not allowed
…

The long and the short of it was that she did not have many friends now.

She turned round once more. The stranger had reached the bridge. Amy walked on. She walked a little faster than before. It was not only fear of the man that made her hurry. It was also the fear of her own thoughts.

Loneliness.

The other students at Scarborough Campus, an offshoot of the University of Hull, lived in halls of residence for their first year of study, then they formed little groups to rent out the inexpensive houses that belonged to the university. Amy had always tried to convince herself that it was natural and sensible for her to creep under her aunt's wing, because no rent was naturally better than low rent, and she would have been stupid to decide otherwise. The bitter truth was that she had no clique to go in with. No one had ever asked her if she would like to share this or that flat with this or that group. Without the old aunt's empty guest-room things would have looked bleak, and not only from the financial point of view. But Amy did not want to think about that.

From the end of the bridge it was only a few more steps to the park. As usual, Amy turned right, towards the steps. There was a new building in the bend; it was in the last stages of construction. It was not clear whether it would be residential or used by Scarborough council for some other purpose.

Amy walked quickly past it and then stopped short. Two of the tall metal mesh fences that surrounded the house were now blocking the steps and the nearby meandering path, which would normally have offered an alternative. The usual entrance was barred. You could squeeze through sideways, but Amy dithered. That afternoon, when she walked to the pedestrian precinct in the stifling heat to run an errand or two before she started babysitting for Mrs Gardner, the way had still been open. In the meantime there had been a violent storm and an almost apocalyptic flood of rain. Possibly the steps and the meandering path had been damaged. The earthworks and gravel had been washed away. It might be dangerous to take either route up.

Added to that, it was obviously prohibited.

Amy was not the kind of girl to just ignore a law. She had always been taught to obey the authorities, whether she understood their rules or not. They had their reasons; that was enough. In this case she was even able to understand the reason.

Undecidedly, she turned around.

There were other paths that led up into the labyrinthine Esplanade Gardens, but none of them led quickly and directly up to the road and to where people lived. The lowest path led in the opposite direction: down to the beach and the Spa Complex, a collection of Victorian buildings right by the sea, which the town used for all kinds of cultural events. At night, however, they were completely closed off, and not even a nightwatchman was around. Running up the cliff behind the Spa Complex there was a funicular railway, mainly to transport elderly ladies and gentlemen who were no longer willing to struggle up the steep gardens cut out of the rock. But about half an hour before midnight the cars stopped, and now there was no longer anyone on duty in the ticket office. Of course you could also go up on foot, but it was a long and difficult climb. The advantage of this lower path, though, was that it was lit. Large curving lamps, also modelled on the Victorian style, gave off a warm orange light.

There was also a middle way – the narrowest of all three. For a good stretch, halfway up the steep slope, it ran almost alongside the drop before starting to rise so gently that even walkers who were not in the peak of physical fitness were able to proceed with some degree of ease. Amy knew that this path came out right in front of the Crown Spa Hotel on the Esplanade. She would get to the top more quickly if she took the middle way than if she went along the beach, but the disadvantage was that there were no street lamps there. The path lost itself between bushes and trees in blackest darkness.

She took a few steps back, and looked towards the bridge. The man had almost crossed it now. Was she imagining things, or was he really walking more slowly than he had before? More hesitantly? What was he doing here at this time of night?

Keep calm, Mills, you're here
at this time of night
too, she said to herself, although it did not make her heart beat any little bit less fast.

He could be on his way home, just like you!

But tell me, who was just going home now? It was twenty to twelve. Not the time when people normally return home from work, unless they were babysitting for an inconsiderate mum who always came in too late.

I'm going to quit. I can't put up with it any more. Not for any amount of money, she resolved.

She weighed up her options. None of them seemed particularly promising. She could walk back across the bridge to St Nicholas Cliff and then take the long Filey Road up through town – but that would take ages. Then there was always the bus, but she had no idea if her bus was still running this late at night. And a few weeks ago she had used the bus one day when the weather was bad, and she had been picked on at the bus stop by some drunken, pierced youths with shaved heads. She had been scared to death and had sworn that in future she would rather be soaked to the bone and risk a cold than find herself in such a situation once again. Fear – yet again. Fear of walking through the dark park. Fear of waiting at the bus stop. Fear, fear, fear.

She was in charge of her life and it could not go on like this. She could no longer let herself stumble from one crisis to the next, trying to avoid one fear and so inevitably raising another. And in the end standing paralysed in a cool, rainy July night, listening to her own panting breath, feeling her heart pound like a fast and heavy hammer, and asking herself which of her fears was the least worst. In the end it was the infamous choice between the devil and the deep blue sea, and that felt terrible.

The man was now on a level with her. He stopped and looked at her.

He seemed to be waiting for something, maybe for what she would say or do, and as Amy was a girl who had been taught to meet people's expectations, she opened her mouth.

‘The … path is closed,' she said. Her voice croaked a little, and she cleared her throat. ‘The fencing … blocking the path.'

He gave a brief nod, turned away and took the path towards the beach. The lit path.

Amy breathed a sigh of relief. Harmless, it had been completely harmless. He wanted to go home, normally he would no doubt have taken the steps. Now he would probably walk to the Spa Complex and then up from there, and curse inwardly that the journey home took longer than expected. His wife was waiting at home. She would have a go at him. It had got late in the pub with his friends, and now this detour. Not his day. Sometimes everything happened at once.

She giggled, but noticed how nervous she sounded. She had a tendency to dream up the details of the lives of people completely unknown to her. Probably because she was on her own too much. When you did not communicate enough with people of flesh and blood you had to dwell in your own imagination.

One more glance back at the bridge. No one to see there.

The stranger had disappeared towards the beach. The steps were closed off. Amy did not dither any longer. She took the middle path, the unlit one. The little bit of moonlight that trickled through the long veils of cloud was enough to let her guess where the path at her feet led. She would come up at the Esplanade without breaking any bones.

The closely planted bushes, whose full summer foliage was heavy with raindrops, swallowed her up within seconds.

Amy Mills disappeared into the darkness.

OCTOBER 2008

Thursday, 9th October

1

When the phone in Fiona Barnes's living room rang, the old lady jumped. She left the window, where she had been standing and gazing out over Scarborough Bay, and walked over to the side table the phone stood on, unsure whether or not to lift up the receiver. She had received an anonymous call that morning, and the morning before, and last week too there had been two of these harassing calls. She was not even sure if what was happening could be called anonymous calls, as no one said anything on the other end of the line; all she could hear was breathing. If she did not slam the receiver down on its cradle in annoyance, as she had done that morning, then the unknown person always hung up after about a minute of silence.

Fiona was not easily scared, she was proud of her cool head and that she held her nerve. Yet these events disturbed and unsettled her. She would have preferred to just let the phone ring and ring without answering, but then of course she would miss calls that were important or that meant something to her. From her granddaughter Leslie Cramer, for example, who lived in London and was just going through the trauma of a divorce. Leslie no longer had any relatives except for her old grandmother in Scarborough, and Fiona wanted to be there for her now in particular.

So she picked up after the fifth ring.

‘Fiona Barnes,' she said. She had a scratchy, rough voice from a life of chain-smoking.

Silence on the other end of the line.

Fiona sighed. She should get a new phone, one with caller display. At least then she could see when Leslie was calling and leave the rest.

‘Who is it?' she asked.

Silence. Breathing.

‘You are starting to get on my nerves,' said Fiona. ‘You obviously have some problem with me. Perhaps we should talk about it. Your strange approach is not going to get us any further, I fear.'

The breathing became heavier. If she had been younger, Fiona might have thought it possible that she had caught the eye of someone who was now satisfying a primal urge as he listened to her voice on the phone. But as she had turned seventy-nine in July that seemed rather unlikely. Nor did the breathing seem to suggest a sexual stimulation. The caller seemed excited in a different way. Stressed. Aggressive. In extreme turmoil.

It was not about sex. What was it about then?

‘I'm hanging up,' Fiona said, but before she could make good on her threat, the other person had already interrupted the call. Fiona could only hear the monotonous beeping of the phone.

‘I should go to the police!' she said angrily, slamming down the phone and immediately lighting a cigarette. But she was afraid that the police would fob her off with excuses. She had not been verbally abused, showered in obscenities or threatened. Of course everyone would understand that repeated silences on the phone can also be considered a threat, but there were no clues as to who the caller might be. This case was so extremely vague that the police would not try to trace the calls. In any case, no doubt the caller was clever enough to use only public payphones and not to use the same one each time. People today had gained experience from detective series on TV. They knew how to do things and which mistakes to avoid.

What was more …

She stepped over to the window again. Outside it was a wonderful, sun-drenched October day, windy and clear-skied, and Scarborough Bay lay there, flooded with a golden light. The deep azure-blue sea was rough. The waves had shining white crests. Seeing this view, anyone would have been in transports of delight. Not Fiona at this moment. She did not even notice what was in front of her window.

She knew why she was not going to the police. She knew why she had not told anyone yet, not even Leslie, about the strange calls. And why, for all her worrying, she kept the whole story to herself.

The logical question of anyone hearing about it would be: ‘But is there someone who might have something against you? Someone who you could imagine might be involved in these calls?'

If she was honest, she would have to say ‘yes' to this question, which would inevitably lead to further questions. And required explanations from her. Everything would come to the surface again. The whole of the horrific story. All the things she wanted to forget. The things that Leslie, more than anyone else, should not hear about.

If however she played dumb, claimed that she did not know anyone who could have something against her, who would torment her like this, then there was also no point in telling anyone about it.