I remember it all. I remember nothing important.
‘I can understand you wanting to forget some things,’ he says. ‘But don’t you want to know who you are, or if you have family?’
‘I have no family.’
‘You mentioned your mother.’
‘I won’t talk about her.’
‘What about your childhood?’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘It does to me,’ says Cyrus. ‘And it will to you, if you let it.’
I sigh and close my eyes. ‘You want to go where I have been.’
‘Yes.’
‘To see what I have seen.’
‘I think I’m owed.’
‘I can’t go back there.’
‘I’m not asking you to go back.’
‘Yes, you are. You want to open up my mind and peer inside, but I am not a plaything. I am not an experiment.’
‘I know what he did to you – what he took.’
I feel myself getting angry. ‘You know nothing.’
‘Where did he find you?’
‘He didn’t find me.’
‘Come on, Evie, help me. Don’t let this monster win.’
‘He’s not a monster.’
‘He kidnapped you. He locked you up.’
‘No.’
‘He deserved to die.’
‘Don’t you dare say that!’
‘Hostages often grow attached to their captors, but that’s not love, Evie. Kidnapping a child. Imprisoning her. Abusing her. You can’t think that’s love.’
‘You don’t understand.’
‘Explain it to me.’
My eyes are fractured with tears that refuse to fall. ‘You want to know about love,’ I whisper. ‘Love is allowing yourself to be tortured to death rather than tell people where someone is hiding. Love is dying slowly and horribly, rather than betraying them. You think Terry was a monster. You think he locked me in a room and abused me. You’re wrong. He died rather than tell them where I was hiding. He saved me.’
‘Saved you from who?’
‘I can’t tell you.’
‘Why?’
‘He made me promise.’
‘That’s not a promise, Evie. It’s a threat.’
I give him a pitying stare and shake my head.
‘Just tell me your real name,’ he says. ‘Surely I deserve that much.’
‘I can’t.’
‘Why?’
‘Everybody I love dies. I can’t let that happen to you.’
72
My nightmares no longer involve my family. Evie inhabits my dreams, calling my name, hiding in a dark place as chaos unfolds around her. I cannot save her. I can never run fast enough, or jump high enough, or reach far enough, to grab her fingertips as she falls past me into the void. I wake screaming, damp with sweat, my heart hammering and her name dying on my lips.
I don’t know what triggered the explosion that killed Felicity Whitaker and destroyed part of my house. It could have been the central heating kicking in, or static electricity, or maybe Felicity changed her mind. Evie doesn’t believe that. She saw the truth.
I was wrong about many things. Terry Boland didn’t abduct Evie and lock her in a secret room. He didn’t sexually abuse her or force her to live off scraps and dog food. I don’t know what is more disturbing – the notion of his innocence, or the knowledge that he died protecting her.
One thing is worse – the realisation that she heard it happen. She listened to him screaming as the acid was poured into his ears and hot pokers burnt away his eyelids. She heard them calling her name, ripping up carpets, toppling furniture, punching holes through walls.
How many days did they search for her? How many nights? Come out, come out, wherever you are.
Evie stayed hidden. She’s still hiding. It’s why she took the gun. It’s why she slept with a knife beneath her pillow. It’s why she constantly looks over her shoulder, searching for figures in the shadows; people watching her from doorways, or parked cars, or white vans.
Sometimes late at night, when I hear a car door slam or footsteps on the pavement, or the scaffolding rattle, I imagine someone is climbing towards Evie’s old room, trying to find her. I get up and navigate around the paint tins and bags of plaster, wishing the builders would finish soon. I check the windows are locked and go back to bed, but I won’t sleep again.
Evie will stay at Langford Hall, at least until next September when she turns eighteen. I won’t be allowed to foster her again, but Caroline Fairfax is quietly hopeful that Evie’s release date will be honoured. After that, I don’t know what will happen. Maybe they’ll send her to a secure psych unit like Arnold Lodge in Leicester or she’ll begin a programme of day release. I’m hoping for the latter.
Will Evie ever be free? I wish I knew. It’s like that old story of the man who falls into the river and is dragged downstream towards the waterfall. A fisherman holds out a rod and says, ‘Grab hold, I’ll pull you in,’ but the man replies, ‘It’s OK, God will save me.’ Then a hiker leans from a fallen log and says, ‘Grab my hand, I’ll lift you out,’ but the man waves to him and says, ‘God will save me.’ Finally, a helicopter hovers overhead and a crewman throws down a rope ladder. The drowning man ignores the offer, saying, ‘Don’t worry, God will save me.’ Moments later he crashes over the waterfall and perishes on the rocks below. Later, at the gates of Heaven, he says to God, ‘Hey, didn’t you see me down there? Why didn’t you save me?’ And God replies, ‘I tried three times, but you turned me away.’
I’m the last person who should be telling religious jokes, heathen that I am, but Evie Cormac cannot do this on her own.
Many years ago, a university lecturer of mine, Joe O’Loughlin, told me that a truly effective psychologist is someone who commits; who goes into the darkness to bring someone out. ‘When a person is drowning, someone has to get wet,’ he said.
I’m ready to get wet, Evie. Hold on.