In the mirror, I see his dressing gown hanging from the radiator behind me. I can’t escape him. My thoughts go back to when he brought that first girl home from a conference one Saturday afternoon.
She is down on her luck, he tells me. ‘She needs a place to stay.’ He flirts with her, pretending to innocently touch her when he knows I’m looking – her hand, her shoulder, her waist. The girl is lapping it up, fawning over him, laughing in my face. I can’t bear it. He takes me outside and tells me I’m being ridiculous. My head is spinning. I have to go to bed early. ‘It’s probably you just getting used to the new medication,’ he says. I wake up sweating, faint giggling rising through the floorboards. I creep downstairs. He is in the living room with the girl stripped to her knickers. I march up to them. It’s not a choice. When I raise a hand, she flinches. She thinks I’m going to hit her. But no. I wrap my hands around her neck. She fightsback, briefly. Her nails claw at my wrists. She kicks me. But I don’t let my hands leave her slender neck, and I squeeze the life out of her as Justin watches from the sofa. She goes limp. Justin gets up, walks over to me and softly says: ‘That’s my girl.’
He denied it. Of course he did. Contested my claims for the months I kept arguing with him. ‘I keep telling you. I stepped out of the room. And when I got back, she had taken her clothes off.’
I look up into the ensuite mirror, shocked at the paleness of my skin tinged with yellow, thinking about the next three bodies that ended up in the lake. With Phoebe that’s going to be five now. Not forgetting Daisy, who he said we had to dispose of in a different way. Different footprint, he said. People would be looking for her.
‘We have a problem.’
I turn to Justin, his arms spread out like Jesus on the cross, holding the wooden door frame. I scream. ‘That’s Immy in the next stall, isn’t it?’
He gives me that look.
‘No more, Justin. Absolutely, no more.’
He remains still and silent, looking at me the way Phoebe did before her eyes rolled into the back of her head.
59
SCARLETT
Beth! I thought she was the victim in all this. I trusted her. She confided in me. Told me all about her illness. I felt sorry for her.
How could I have got her so wrong?
And the bigger question is, how does Justin fit into all of this? And what did they do to my sister?
I remain curled up in the foetal position, struggling between breaths as I cry until no more tears will come. Tears for Phoebe, dead only metres away. For my sister. For me. For Mum.
Mum.
I won’t let them do this to her.
Various scenarios flash through my head of how this is going to play out. But none of them end well. I scramble across the stall to the eyehole and force myself to take another look at Phoebe’s lifeless body lying on the mattress. This must’ve been what Justin meant by me having a bed in the morning.
The main stable door opens. He’s back. Or she is. My body trembles with the thought that it’s now my turn. If it is, whatthey don’t know is that I haven’t eaten what Justin served up. And that I’m ready to fight.
Because one thing’s for sure.
I refuse to give up.
I will get my revenge for you, Daisy. I will.
And for Phoebe now, too.
I look around, searching for something, anything, that I could use to overpower Justin and Beth. Do I have the strength to take them on? I’m strong from all the training I do, but the lack of water and sleep has weakened me. And food. I haven’t eaten since the cheese and crackers Justin served yesterday evening. I shake my head. That wasn’t even yesterday. I’ve been here two nights now. I could easily overcome Beth. But Justin – he’s going to be a challenge. But never underestimate a woman on a mission.
I lie down, pretending to be out for the count. My senses alert me to a brief presence at the door to my stall, as if whoever is there wanted to check on me before moving on to Phoebe. The door to Phoebe’s stall slides open. I edge across to see what’s going on. Justin, this time, is unravelling a black body bag. A rush of dread snakes up my spine. It’s the same kind of bag I saw in the lake.
The sordid fuck has been dumping the bodies there after completing his sick work. His wife’s sick work. Why not Daisy, though? It had to be because of her profile. She wasn’t homeless like Phoebe, like Zita.
What a perfect team they make.
But still I can’t work out the why. Are they just a couple of serial killers working together? I stifle a gasp as Justin manhandles Phoebe’s body into the black bag and zips it up, showing no respect for her lifeless form. Standing up, he puffs out a long breath and brushes his hands together. He grabs one end of the black bag and unceremoniously drags it from the stall.
60
SCARLETT
