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She shook her head quickly. “Nothing.”
“You saw me with that girl, didn’t you?” He didn’t wait for her to answer. “Well, okay then,” he said calmly. “What happens next is up to you.”
“Up to me?” she gasped.
Cole nodded. “You’re old enough now to make your own decisions. You know what you saw. So call the police. Have them look, arrest me. That’s what you should do, isn’t it?”
It felt like a test; she stayed silent.
He shrugged. Nonchalantly. “But what would happen to you, Romilly? Where would you go?”
She knew the answer to this one. She’d listened to him talk at the dinner table about poor children, with nowhere else to live. They ended up in places where they were beaten, abused. Made to sleep in cold dormitories. Even at the age of eleven, he’d told her the horror stories: of the “parties” where men who like little girls paid to fuck, finger, and destroy young delicate bodies.
“Into care,” she murmured.
“And you don’t want that, do you?” he asked. She shook her head.
“So what are you going to do?”
“Keep quiet.”
“Pretend it didn’t happen,” he said with finality. He stood up, watched her for a moment, lying silent in her bed. Then he leaned down and gave her a kiss on her forehead.
So, at night, from then on, she kept her eyes closed. She didn’t look when she heard the slam of his car door, the noise of a shovel in soil at the dead of night. But in her dreams, she heard their cries. Her subconscious at work, imagining them there, tied up. Dead, unconscious. The rest she didn’t know. She was eleven. She hadn’t heard about anal rape, about fisting and foreign objects and forced oral sex. About wrists and ankles so damaged by their shackles they grew infected and maggot ridden. Women so traumatized by their pain and torture they slipped into catatonic states.
He would tease her. On the mornings after he was out there.
“Did you sleep well last night, Romilly?” he would say. And she’d nod.
“Yes, Dad.”
“Nothing woke you?”
“No. Nothing.”
* * *
The detective sits silent as Romilly talks. The cup of tea is cold in her hand. The Labrador stirs from his position by the fire and goes over to her chair, resting his heavy head on her lap, looking up at her with brown, baleful eyes. She places a hand in his soft fur and realizes she’s crying.
She looks over to Adam. His mouth is turned down, his eyes fixed on hers. She can’t tell what he’s thinking. Just after they got married, she thought about telling him. But what would he have said? How would he have reacted to the knowledge his new wife had been complicit in her father’s murders? She’d have lost him then, as she might do now. But she can’t hold it anymore. Locked up inside her.
“What happened?” Adam’s voice comes out hoarse, and he clears his throat. “That day?”
* * *
She knew the keys were a test. Left there on the kitchen table when she got back from school. Her father wasn’t careless; he wasn’t stupid. She picked them up, held them in her hand. Five keys in all, different sizes. She put them down again, then paused, looking over to the shed.
A week ago, there’d been another burial. Another patch of disturbed ground in the garden.
And here were the keys.
Without thinking, she picked them up and walked quickly down the garden. With shaking hands she put them into the locks, one by one. The outer door first, three locks, click click click. Then inside.
She ran her finger over the notches carved in the doorframe. XX, XIX, and XVIII. Three dead, but she didn’t know that then.
Here, she could hear noises. Rustling, quiet taps on the floor. Voices, frantic whispering. It chilled her body, making her shiver. But still she pressed on. She had to know. The last few locks, and she pulled open the door.
At first, she couldn’t make anything out. It was dark inside, and her eyes took a moment to adjust to the black. But she could smell it. Sour sweat, shit, piss. And something else.
