‘So, she has no reason to be afraid of Freddie?’
Joe drops his head into his hands. ‘No. He’s the one in danger.’
76
Freddie
‘Felicity? Felicity? Are you still there?’
She has backed away from the fissure edge. For several seconds there is no response, and then Freddie hears her voice, low and unhappy.
‘Bamber?’ she says. ‘What’s he talking about?’
‘Felicity,’ he shouts up. ‘Lissy, why on Earth do you think I’m your husband? Are you married? I suppose you could be, and you might have married someone who reminds you of me, people do that, but how could you even remember me after so much time? Felicity, please come back. Please talk to me.’
There is movement above, loose snow falls, then she reappears. Thank God, she’s put the lump of ice down. Instead she holds her flashlight and shines it directly onto his face.
‘Stop trying to trick me,’ she says. ‘You’re Freddie.’
The light half blinds him. ‘Yes, Freddie is my name. Wilfred, actually, but your mother always called me Freddie and you did too when you were tiny. You said Freddie, not Daddy. Do you remember anything about back then?’
She mutters something.
‘What? What did you say? Is there someone up there with you?’
‘I have a wedding ring,’ she tells him.
‘Is it this one?’ He fumbles inside his jacket until he finds the ring he stole from her room the previous morning. The torch beam shifts to focus on it. ‘This is your mother’s ring. See the F & F on the inside? Freddie and Faye. You’ve got a silver lily on a chain too. That was your mother’s. I bought it for her when we were students. She kept it in a porcelain box with violets on the lid.’
Seeing the look on her face, he is glad the gun is in his pocket now.
‘Felicity, what’s going on? How can you not know who I am?’
‘There is a wedding dress in my loft,’ she tells him.
He nods his head, ignoring the thump of pain. ‘White lace, with long sleeves and a sweetheart neckline? I’ll bet you’ve never tried it on, have you? It won’t fit. You’re three inches taller than your mother was, and a size bigger. You take after me, Lissy, although your face is a lot like hers.’
The face above him, so like that of the woman he once loved more than his own life, seems to change. Her eyes open wider, her eyebrows lift, and her lips purse. ‘Seven, eight, nine, ten,’ she says, in the voice of a young child. ‘Coming ready or not.’
‘What?’ Afraid, suddenly, Freddie backs away, retracing his steps. He remembers the gun in his pocket and knows it can’t help him. He will not aim a loaded gun at his daughter.
She speaks again, and her voice is normal this time. ‘If you’re my father, why do I not know you? Why can’t I remember you?’
Freddie takes a deep breath. He’d known this would be hard. ‘I’ve been away, Lissy,’ he says. ‘Do you remember anything about what happened when you were tiny?’
Again, the child’s voice. ‘Eight, nine, ten, coming ready or not.’ Then, Felicity’s own voice again. ‘You attacked me in my house. You tried to strangle me.’
He shakes his head. ‘No, I did not. I came to your house once. It was June last year. I knocked on your door. I shouldn’t have done that. I shouldn’t have taken you by surprise. You ran away. Lissy, you must remember that. You ran across the common. I went after you but I lost you. After that, I didn’t see you again until that time in the bookshop.’
‘You broke into my house.’ She is shouting at him now. ‘You broke a window. You put a knife to my throat.’
He keeps moving backwards. ‘I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.’
‘You locked me in the cupboard. You gave me to the bad men. They raped me and they killed Mummy.’
Absolutely not. I would never hurt you.’
‘Liar!’
She screams down at him. And then she bends and picks up a block of ice. It is huge, over a foot in length, and narrowing to an evil spike. He turns, tries to run. His foot catches in the narrow V of the fissure and the ice block comes thundering down.
77
Felicity
Felicity runs, and the voices drive her on.
So, you’re not married. It makes no difference, he still wants to hurt you.
He hurt you when you were a baby. It was his fault, everything that happened.
He should have been there. He should have saved you.
Run, run, run!
She flees through snow that is getting deeper as she climbs, and she knows she is running from herself, as much as from the father who, her whole life, has been the hidden monster in her nightmares. She runs, and finally, her memories start to emerge.
The men who’d worked in the garden, who’d played with her and given her chocolate, turning into bad men, coming into the house and locking the doors, holding her down while they pinned Mummy onto the kitchen floor and did horrible things to her.
Stop your screaming. Shut the little bitch up.
She reaches a snowfall, the result of a recent avalanche and can go no further this way. She heads west, knowing that to leave the familiar route is foolish, but compelled to keep going.
You’ve killed him. That block of ice split his head in two. You’re a killer now.
He deserved it. He would have killed you. It was you or him.
She has no idea of the time, but the night sky has turned the deep mauve of mourning. The clouds are low and heavy but above them she can see the lighter hues of an impending dawn. A streak of gold, the width of a human hair, appears on the horizon and, in the distance, the mountain tops are becoming visible.
Has she really just killed her father?
Distracted, she misses her footing and drops the flashlight. Before she can grab hold of it again, it rolls away down a snow slope that is the same purple colour as the sky. She doesn’t chase it. Soon she will have no need of a torch. She pushes herself to her feet and goes on. The slope becomes steeper. She isn’t entirely sure where she is any more. She looks around for a familiar peak, a landmark of some kind, but it is too dark and the mountain tops are unfamiliar from this angle. Her muscles are burning and each breath comes out as a sob. Still the memories keep coming. The dam has broken now and there is no holding back the flood.
The men put her in the cupboard under the stairs. She’s hungry and terrified of the dark, but the games they play with her when they take her out are even worse. They take her clothes away and when she soils herself, because she is only three years old, and can’t hold on, especially when she is so frightened, they slap her. They pin her down and climb on top of her and the pain is beyond anything she could have imagined. This pain will kill her. She hears Mummy sobbing and screams for Daddy, but Daddy doesn’t come and she’s in the cupboard again and she can’t decide whether she is afraid of the cupboard because of the dark and the rat she can hear scrabbling around, or whether the cupboard is the only place she will ever feel safe again.
It goes on, for days and days, until she thinks it will never stop, that the only sound she will hear for the rest of her life is that of Mummy sobbing and screaming, and then Mummy stops screaming, and she doesn’t sob any more, and the three-year-old Felicity knows that this is far worse. And still they keep coming. Seven, eight, nine, ten, coming ready or not, and the footsteps get closer and the door opens.