Dark Winter

Marsha was going to cook something special. There were vegetables and opened packs of meat. The table was half laid.

I had moved slowly to the other end of the room and locked the door to the garage. I hadn’t wanted to clear the bottom of the house only to have the boys come in behind me.

I suddenly realized I was still throttling Homer, and released my grip. As blood rushed back into my hand, I leant against the sink and stared at the garage door. That was the one I should be going through, but I couldn’t help myself, I needed to go upstairs.

I went out into the hallway again and put my foot on the uncarpeted bottom step. The bare wood creaked unnaturally loudly.

The girls’ old room was waiting for me at the top of the stairs. Six years ago, it had been the world’s biggest shrine to Pocahontas – T-shirts and posters, bed-linen and even a doll who sang something about colours when you pressed her back. The door was closed, but that door wasn’t the problem.

The next room down on the left had been Kev and Marsha’s. The door was slightly ajar.

My heart sparked up again, my mouth went dry.

Why the fuck have you come up here? You promised yourself you never would again.

I couldn’t help it. I edged nearer, as if the door was a dangerous animal, and smelt that faint, metallic tang again, as strongly as if it was really there – and then the stench of shit.

Fuck this. I headed back towards the stairs, but stopped and turned back, lying to myself that I had a reason to stay.

Get a grip! You’re here to find Kelly.

The video was running. I wasn’t able to stop it. Sinking down on to the bare floorboards of the landing, I just stared at the part-open door, my head replaying every last fucking detail.

It had only been when I’d inched round the frame that I’d got my first glimpse of Marsha.

She’d been kneeling by the bed, arms spreadeagled on it, the bedspread covered with blood.

I’d gone in, forcing myself to ignore her. The room was clear. The en-suite was next, and what I’d seen there had made me lose it, totally fucking lose it.

Bang, I’d smacked back against the wall and slumped on to the floor. Blood everywhere. I’d got it all over my shirt and hands; I’d sat in a pool of it; it had soaked the seat of my trousers.

Stop this – fucking stop it! Cut and run . . .

Too late. Much too late. Aida had been lying on the floor between the bath and the toilet, her five-year-old head nearly severed from her shoulders. Just three inches of flesh left intact, the vertebrae scarcely attached.

Then I’d really seen Marsha. Her dress had been hanging normally but her tights had been torn, her knickers pulled down, and she had shit herself, probably at the point of death.

All I had seen in that moment was somebody I really cared for, even loved, on her knees, her blood splattered all over the bed. And she’d had the same done to her as Aida had.

Not even Homer could divert me now. I was taking deep breaths and wiping my eyes, just as I had done then. Feeling the same shock and disbelief, the same devastating feeling of failure.

What if you’d got here earlier? Could you have stopped this fucking nightmare?

I wiped my face.

I had to cut away, or I’d go crazy. It had taken me years to learn how to keep the zoo gates closed, and I’d done myself no favours by giving them the chance to open.

I gripped the banisters and pulled myself up, and then went downstairs to see her.

9

Kev had shown me the ‘hidey-hole’, as he called it, the same day he showed me where all the weapons were concealed, just in case shit happened. It was built from the boxes the kitchen appliances had come in, under an open staircase in the garage that led up to a little makeshift loft where he used to stack his ladders and stuff. The kids knew they had to run straight there if Kev or Marsha ever shouted the word ‘Disneyland!’ They were to keep very quiet, and they weren’t to come out until Daddy or Mommy came and got them.

Back down in the kitchen, I took a deep breath and got myself together, then went through into the garage.

In the old days they could easily have fitted three extra vehicles beside the company car Kev always used to keep there, a navy Caprice Classic bristling with aerials. ‘Fucking thing,’ he would always complain. ‘All the mod cons of the nineties, in a motor that looks like a nineteen-sixties fridge.’

The kids’ bikes had used to hang from frames on the breeze-block wall. They’d been disposed of with all the other clutter that families accumulate. All that was left was a collection of unused removal boxes that we’d stacked under the staircase. Kelly had made herself a new Disneyland.

I moved towards them, calling out gently. ‘Kelly? It’s Nick. Are you there?’

When Kev had made his cardboard cave he’d provisioned it with a few dolls, bottles of water and chocolate bars. Last time I’d approached it on my hands and knees, the pistol down my waistband. I hadn’t wanted Kelly to see a weapon, hadn’t wanted her to know there was a major drama going on.

I’d tried to coax her out as I moved Kev’s boxes aside, inching towards the back wall.

And that was where I’d finally found her, eyes wide with terror, sitting curled up, rocking backwards and forwards, holding her hands over her ears, her eyes red, wet and swollen. It was only much later that I discovered she’d seen and heard the lot.

This time I only had to move one of the packing cases. She was sitting against the wall.

‘Hello.’

She was wearing a green T-shirt with some kind of sports logo, red and white trainers, and a pair of low-cut jeans that exposed her hip bones. It wasn’t terror in her eyes this time, they were just kind of sad and tired, and a bit puzzled, as if she was trying to work out why mine looked red as well.

‘Found you at last.’ I grinned. ‘You play a mean game of hide-and-seek.’

She didn’t return my smile. Her blotchy, tear-stained face stared at me as I crawled towards her.

It didn’t matter what state she was in, she was as pretty as ever. She’d inherited the best of both her parents: her mother’s mouth and her father’s eyes. ‘Biggest smile this side of Julia Roberts,’ Kev used to say. His mother came from southern Spain and he looked like a local: jet-black hair, but with the world’s bluest eyes. Marsha reckoned he was a dead ringer for Mel Gibson.

‘Come on, let’s get you out of here. I need some fresh air.’

She stared at me for what felt like for ever, as if she’d been travelling to some far-off place and just come back, and was trying to work out how everything had changed. Finally, she gave me the briefest and bleakest of smiles. ‘Sorry.’

I shifted a box to make it easier for her to get out. ‘About what?’

She glazed over again, as if she still wasn’t quite connecting. ‘Today.’ She shrugged. ‘Everything.’

‘It’s OK, don’t worry. Hey, you still like playing on swings?’

10

I closed down my cell as we walked into the back garden and put my arm round her. I’d told Josh she was fine, we just needed a bit of time. He said he’d go down to the stores and grab a coffee. Call him whenever.

Last time I’d found her in the hidey-hole I’d taken her hand and guided her gently out. Then I’d picked her up in my arms and held her tight as I carried her into the kitchen. She was trembling so much I couldn’t tell if her head was nodding or shaking. When we drove away from the house a bit later, she was almost rigid with shock.

Dr Hughes had told me some things early on in her treatment, which felt like it had happened a lifetime ago.