She hit him again, then again. And again.
‘I am Yac! The doctor said so!’
‘You stupid boy! You’ve driven your father away and now you’re driving me crazy. The doctor did not say so!’
‘The doctor wrote Yac!’
‘The doctor wrote YAC – Young Autistic Child – on his sodding notes! That’s what you are. Young, useless, sodding pathetic autistic child! You are Johnny Kerridge. Got it?’
‘I am Yac!’
He curled himself up in a protective ball as she brandished the shoe. His cheek was bleeding from where she had struck him. He breathed in her dense, heady perfume. She had a big bottle on her dressing table and she once told him it was the classiest perfume a woman could wear, and that he should appreciate he had such a high-class mother. But she wasn’t being classy now.
Just as she was about to strike him again the front doorbell rang.
‘Oh shit!’ she said. ‘See what you’ve done? You’ve made me late, you stupid child!’ She hit him again on the thigh, so hard it punctured his thin denim trousers. ‘Shit, shit, shit!’
She ran out of the room, shouting, ‘Go and let him in. Make him wait downstairs!’
She slammed her bedroom door.
Yac picked himself up, painfully, from the floor and limped out of his room. He walked slowly, deliberately, unhurriedly down the staircase of their terraced two-up, two-down on the edge of the Whitehawk housing estate. As he reached the bottom step, the doorbell rang again.
His mother shouted, ‘Open the door! Let him in! I don’t want him going away. We need it!’
With blood running down his face, seeping through his T-shirt in several places and through his trousers, Yac grumpily limped up to the front door and reluctantly pulled it open.
A plump, perspiring man in an ill-fitting grey suit stood there, looking awkward. Yac stared at him. The man stared back and his face reddened. Yac recognized him. He’d been here before, several times.
He turned and shouted back up the stairs, ‘Mum! It’s that smelly man you don’t like who’s come to fuck you!’
1997
17
Saturday 27 December
Rachael was shivering. A deep, dark terror swirled inside her. She was so cold it was hard to think. Her mouth was parched and she was starving. Desperate for water and for food. She had no idea what the time was: it was pitch black in here, so she could not see her watch, could not tell whether it was night or day outside.
Had he left her here to die or was he coming back? She had to get away. Somehow.
She strained her ears for traffic noise that might give her a clue as to whether it was day or night, or for the caw of a gull that might tell her if she was still near the sea. But all she could hear was the occasional, very faint wail of a siren. Each time her hopes rose. Were the police out looking for her?
They were, weren’t they?
Surely her parents would have reported her missing? They would have told the police that she hadn’t turned up for Christmas lunch. They’d be worried. She knew them, knew they would have gone to her flat to find her. She wasn’t even sure what day it was now. Boxing Day? The day after?
Her shivering was getting worse, the cold seeping deep inside her bones. It was all right, though, she thought, so long as she was shivering. Four years ago, when she had left school, she’d worked for a season as a washer- upper in a ski resort in France. A Japanese skier had taken the last chairlift up one afternoon in a snowstorm. There was a mistake by the lift attendants, who thought the last person had already gone up and been counted at the top, so they turned the lift off. In the morning, when they switched it back on, he arrived at the top, covered in ice, dead, stark naked, with a big smile on his face.
No one could understand why he was naked or smiling. Then a local ski instructor she’d had a brief fling with explained to her that during the last stages of hypothermia people hallucinated that they were too hot and would start removing their clothes.
She knew that somehow she had to keep warm, had to ward off hypothermia. So she did the only movements she could, rolling, left and then right on the hessian matting. Rolling. Rolling. Totally disoriented by the darkness, there were moments when she lay on her side and toppled on to her face and others when she fell on to her back.
She had to get out. Somehow. Had to. How? Oh, God, how?
She couldn’t move her hands or her feet. She couldn’t shout. Her naked body was covered in goose pimples so sharp they felt like millions of needle points piercing her flesh.
Oh, please God, help me.
She rolled again and crashed into the side of the van. Something fell over with a loud, echoing clangggggg.
Then she heard a gurgling noise.
Smelt something foul, rancid. Diesel oil, she realized. Gurgling. Glug… glug… glug.
She rolled again. And again. Then her face pressed into it, the sticky, stinking stuff, stinging her eyes, making her cry even more.
But, she figured, it must be coming from a can!
If it was pouring out, then the top had come off. The neck of the can would be round and thin! She rolled again and something moved through the stinking wet slimy stuff, clattering, scraping.
Clatter… clatter… clangggg.
She trapped it against the side of the van. Wriggled around it, felt it move, made it turn, forced it to turn until it was square on, spout outwards. Then she pressed against the sharpness of the neck. Felt its rough edge cutting into her. She wormed her body against it, jigging, slowly, forcefully, then felt it spin away from her.
Don’t do this to me!
She wriggled and twisted until the can moved again, until she felt the rough neck of the spout again, then she pressed against it, gently at first, then applying more pressure, until she had it wedged firmly. Now she moved slowly, rubbing right, left, right, left, for an eternity at whatever was binding her wrists. Suddenly, the grip around them slackened, just a fraction.
But enough to give her hope.
She kept on rubbing, twisting, rubbing. Breathing in and out through her nose. Breathing in the noxious, dizzying stink of the diesel oil. Her face, her hair, her whole body soaked in the stuff.
The grip on her wrists slackened a tiny bit further.
Then she heard a sudden loud metallic clang and she froze. No, please no. It sounded like the garage door opening. She rolled on to her back and held her breath. Moments later she heard the rear doors of the van opening. A flashlight beam suddenly blinded her. She blinked into it. Felt his stare. Lay in frozen terror wondering what he was going to do.
He just seemed to be standing in silence. She heard heavy breathing. Not her own. She tried to cry out, but no sound came.
Then the light went out.
She heard the van doors clang shut. Another loud clang, like the garage door closing.
Then silence.
She listened, unsure whether he was still in here. She listened for a long time before she began to rub against the neck once more. She could feel it cutting into her flesh, but she didn’t care. Each time she rubbed now, she was certain the bonds holding her wrists were slackening more and more.
