In The Dark

  In The Dark

  Vikki Patis

  Copyright © 2021 Vikki Patis

  The right of Vikki Patis to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance to the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  First published in 2021 by Bloodhound Books.

  Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publisher or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  www.bloodhoundbooks.com

  Print ISBN 978-1-913942-28-1

  Contents

  Love crime, thriller and mystery books?

  Also by Vikki Patis

  1. Caitlyn

  2. Liv

  3. Seb

  4. Caitlyn

  5. Izzy

  6. Liv

  7. Seb

  8. Caitlyn

  9. Liv

  10. Caitlyn

  11. Seb

  12. Liv

  13. Caitlyn

  14. Izzy

  15. Liv

  16. Seb

  17. Caitlyn

  18. Liv

  19. Izzy

  20. Caitlyn

  21. Seb

  22. Liv

  23. Izzy

  24. Caitlyn

  25. Seb

  26. Liv

  27. Caitlyn

  28. Seb

  29. Izzy

  30. Caitlyn

  31. Seb

  32. Izzy

  33. Liv

  34. Seb

  35. Izzy

  36. Liv

  37. Seb

  38. Izzy

  39. Caitlyn

  40. Liv

  41. Seb

  42. Izzy

  43. Caitlyn

  44. Seb

  45. Izzy

  46. Liv

  47. Izzy

  48. Liv

  49. Seb

  50. Izzy

  51. Caitlyn

  52. Liv

  53. Seb

  54. Izzy

  55. Caitlyn

  56. Liv

  57. Seb

  58. Izzy

  59. Caitlyn

  60. Liv

  61. Izzy

  62. Seb

  63. Liv

  64. Izzy

  Acknowledgements

  A note from the publisher

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  Also by Vikki Patis

  Girl, Lost

  The Wake

  For Marcel, the light in the dark.

  1

  Caitlyn

  I am a bad mother.

  The words reverberate around my mind as I stare down at the floor, and the small red stain blemishing the white carpet beneath my feet. It is new, this carpet, laid only a year ago when I’d finally had enough of the original dull red. At least it would hide the blood better. The thought is unbidden, horrific, and I push it away.

  I close my eyes, trying to regulate my breathing. In, one two three. Out, one two three. Inhale, exhale. The next thought is louder, so loud it makes my heart skip a beat: She’s done it again. I’m too late.

  I push open the bathroom door, knowing, deep down, what I will find. There is a distinct lack of urgency; my body feels heavy, and my movements are slow as I step inside to find what I have been expecting to find for almost a year. The body of my daughter.

  As soon as I see her – her eyes closed, one hand dangling over the edge of the bath, blood dripping from her fingertips – my heart speeds up, beating so hard that I start to feel dizzy. Sweat prickles along my forehead; my jaw clenches so tightly I hear a crack. And then, movement. Her fingers twitching, a low moan coming from her lips. She is alive. She is alive.

  ‘Isabelle!’ I say, rushing towards her, dropping to my knees beside the bath. ‘Isabelle, wake up!’ I press my hand over her wrist to stop the bleeding, though the wound is not too deep. I have learned how to tell. I reach over and grab her other wrist, and here, the wound is deeper. She is right-handed, and she must have cut her left wrist first, the razor opening the skin like a hot knife through butter. Blood is pulsing out of it, coating my fingers. She moans again, her eyes flickering.

  ‘I’m going to call an ambulance,’ I tell her, letting go of her left wrist and fishing in my back pocket for my phone. ‘It’s going to be okay, darling. You’re going to be fine.’

  ‘It’s all for attention,’ Michael said when Isabelle first started cutting. ‘A cry for help. She’ll grow out of it.’

  But shouldn’t we be answering her cry for help? I thought but didn’t say. He had already gone back to reading the newspaper, his glasses balanced on the end of his nose, while Alicia made hot chocolate for her younger sister and I perched on the armchair, my hands clasped between my knees, feeling out of my depth. That was the first time.

  I am still out of my depth now. This is our second hospital visit in the past twelve months, each ‘cry for help’ getting more and more serious. This time, Isabelle has swallowed a pack of the amitriptyline I was prescribed for insomnia a few years back, as well as cutting her wrists, and so the pace is faster this time, the hospital corridors whizzing past as I run alongside the stretcher on which my daughter lays, wishing Alicia was here, glad she doesn’t have to see it this time.

  ‘You’ll need to wait here,’ a nurse says, holding a hand up in front of her. I stop as if she has activated an invisible shield, blocking me out. I watch Isabelle disappear through the double doors, my hands clenching and unclenching at my sides. The nurse’s eyes soften as our gaze meets. ‘Just take a seat here. We’ll keep you updated.’ And then she is gone in a flash of blue uniform and rubber-soled shoes that squeak on the polished floor.

  I sit in the hard-backed chair, picking at a groove in the armrest, thinking of Isabelle’s last words to me as the ambulance flew down the motorway, blue lights flashing. There’s a photo. They shared it. Everyone’s seen it. A photo. What kind of photo? I get my phone out, tap on Alicia’s number, then put it down again. Michael is in Italy on a business trip; he only left yesterday, and isn’t due back for another five days. What time is it there? What time is it here?

  The clock on the wall reads 4.16pm. 4 + 1 + 6 = 11. 1 + 1 = 2. The same as Isabelle’s life path number. Sensitive, emotional. The mediator. The peacekeeper. Michael has always frowned at my dabbling in numerology and horoscopes, calling it ‘mumbo jumbo’ and ‘that weird, hippy shit’. He is a man of business, only believing in what he can feel in his hands and see with his eyes. But numbers have always made sense to me. I find comfort in them in a world full of chaos, feel myself drawn to them when everything else is a mess.

  Alicia’s life path number is 5. Resourceful, wild. Never still. She is away at university now, studying and partying with equal relish, turning from the child I reared to an adult in her own right. Will Isabelle have the same opportunities as her sister? Will she even make it to university? Will she make it through tonight?

  I think back to the last attempt, the one which I managed to thwart by being at home when I wasn’t expected to be. I had planned to visit a friend for coffee, our usual monthly catch-up, but her father had had a fall and needed her help. And so I wa
s in the bath when Isabelle came flying through the house, her feet stomping on the stairs as she headed for her bedroom. Music blared from her speakers almost instantly, and so I slid down in the water, hoping to avoid another row, until I heard the rattle of the bathroom door.

  ‘Mum?’ Her voice was full of tears, so much emotion in that one word, and I got out of the bath, hurriedly tucking a towel around myself, and took her in my arms, holding her like I used to when she was small.

  I wrap my arms around myself now, desperate for comfort, staring at a scuff mark on the floor. She will get through this. She will be fine. I won’t let her be anything else.

  2

  Liv

  I’m scrubbing at a stain on the kitchen counter when Seb jogs down the stairs, his hair still damp from the shower. A waft of aftershave follows him into the room.

  ‘Morning, love,’ I say, drying my hands and nodding at his cup of tea cooling on the side. ‘Sleep well?’

  ‘Like a log,’ he says, as he often does, grinning his usual grin. I smile back at him. ‘Any bread left?’

  I shake my head. ‘There’s a box of cereal in the cupboard. Chocolate rice pops or whatever they’re called these days.’

  ‘Yes!’ Seb says, taking the box out of the cupboard and pouring a generous bowl. ‘I love these ones. Thanks, Nan.’

  My smile flickers as I remember the ‘reduced’ sticker I ripped off and threw in the bin as soon as I got home. You’d never notice the price of gluten-free cereal unless you had no choice but to eat it. When Seb was diagnosed with coeliac disease back in primary school, I felt utterly overwhelmed. ‘BROWS,’ a woman in Tesco told me once when I was staring uncomprehendingly at the back of a packet of biscuits. ‘Barley, rye, oats, wheat, spelt.’ She ticked them off on her fingers. ‘And may contain. Stay away from anything that says it may contain gluten, it’s not worth the risk.’

  In the years since, both Seb and I have learned a lot. We’ve learned that first and foremost he is a teenage boy, and he gets easily frustrated by having to be different to the rest of his friends. More than once, he’s spent a few days in the bathroom after one of his ‘just a little bit won’t hurt’ moments, or not checking if the food is suitable for him. I suppose he’ll learn the hard way.

  He wolfs the cereal down now, dribbling chocolatey milk down his chin. ‘That’s a clean shirt,’ I say, handing him a tea towel. ‘You’ve no more until I do the washing.’

  ‘Better get on with it then, Nan,’ he says, winking, and I pretend to swat him. He dances past me and places his bowl in the sink, before grabbing his lunch and water bottle from the fridge. ‘See you later.’

  ‘Have a good day!’

  The front door slams and he is gone. I breathe out. He’s a good boy, Seb, though cheeky beyond belief. He’s always been that way, ever since he was a child. Always happy, and willing to lend a hand. He has never shown any sign that he is like his father.

  I was thirty-four when I became a grandmother. I had been a young mother myself, falling pregnant at fifteen, swiftly marrying Harry as soon as I turned sixteen so our daughter was not born out of wedlock. It seems such an old-fashioned word, wedlock. Locked into marriage by a few vows and the magic words: I now pronounce you husband and wife. But when you’re sixteen, without qualifications or any real-life experience, what do those roles really mean? My mother was never going to be a good role model, what with her fondness for staying out late most nights, coming home stinking of booze and cigarettes and men’s aftershave, and her aversion to housework and cooking anything more complicated than bangers and mash. My father had left a long time before, when I was three and had barely formed an impression of him or who he was to me. One day I had a dad, the next I didn’t, and because he hadn’t been around all that much to begin with, I didn’t particularly feel the loss.

  Six months after we married, Paige was born. It was a bright day in August, which started with blue skies and searing heat and ended in a storm so powerful the roads flooded and the thunder shook the car as we drove to the hospital. She came quickly, not wasting any time in announcing herself to the world, slipping out in a rush of heat and blood. Her cries filled the room instantly, her tiny fist reaching toward the sky as the midwife cleaned her up as if in triumph. I made it. I’m here.

  ‘Here she is,’ the midwife said with a smile, placing my daughter on my chest. ‘Congratulations, Olivia.’

  ‘Liv,’ I said automatically, forgetting myself. Harry didn’t like nicknames. ‘I mean, thank you.’ I stared down at my daughter, taking in her red, wrinkled skin and tuft of dark hair. ‘Hello, Paige,’ I whispered, waiting for the advertised rush of love and feeling only pain and exhaustion.

  ‘You need to rest,’ the midwife said, taking Paige back and placing her in the cot beside my bed. ‘A rested mum is a happy mum, and a happy mum means a happy baby.’ My eyes were closing before she finished speaking, fatigue taking over and pulling me under. But when I woke hours later to Paige’s deep-blue eyes staring at me, her tiny fingers reaching for me, that wave of love engulfed me, washing away all the pain and the doubt. Well, some of the doubt.

  I would repeat those words eighteen years later, when Paige laid in the sweat-soaked sheets, baby Sebastian cradled against her chest, her eyes tired but triumphant. Though I’d had dreams of her going off to university and doing all the things I never managed to do, in that moment, I was bursting with pride. My daughter had given birth to a perfect baby boy, with dark curls and tiny fingers that took hold of mine the first time I held him in my arms. And for him, for Paige, I accepted Brad. I opened my heart to a man I did not trust, sat across from him while we ate Sunday lunch at my small kitchen table, watched him hand Seb to Paige for nappy changes. Countless times I gripped the phone in my fingers, listening to him shout in the background while Paige told me not to worry. ‘Everything’s fine, Mum,’ she would say, whispering into the receiver before hanging up. But it wasn’t fine. By the time Seb was four, Paige would be dead, murdered by the man who was supposed to love her, and keep her safe. The father of her child.

  3

  Seb

  Seb is in English Literature when the message comes through. He feels his phone vibrate in his pocket, but he doesn’t pull it out. His nan will kill him if a teacher confiscates his phone again. So instead he pretends to listen to Mrs Hall drone on about Of Mice and Men, a book he curses because his so-called friends have started calling him Crooks, which, though it is light-hearted, stings in a way he doesn’t quite understand. Not yet anyway.

  When the bell rings, Seb shoves his books into his rucksack and hurries out of the room, jogging down the stairs until a voice shouts, ‘No running, Taylor! It isn’t a race.’ But it is. He has to get to the bus before it leaves, else he will have to walk across town and up the hill that feels more like a mountain. And that will make him late for dinner. His nan isn’t strict about many things, but she is especially keen on punctuality, and they always eat dinner together, unless she is working a late shift.

  Outside, Seb almost runs straight into Josh, who has stopped in the middle of the path.

  ‘Beep!’ Seb says, laughing, as he passes his friend. But when he glances at his face, something makes him stop. ‘What’s up?’

  Josh is staring down at his phone, his eyes wide. ‘Have you seen this?’ He turns the phone around so the screen is facing Seb, but he’s too far away to see it properly and he can’t waste any more time.

  ‘I’ve gotta run, mate. The bus driver won’t wait.’

  ‘Check the group chat,’ Josh says, his eyes back on his phone. ‘There’s something you need to see.’

  Seb feels a flicker of concern as he turns and jogs towards the front of the school, his eyes on the bus that will take him home. Once he’s on board, he pulls out his phone and opens Snapchat. There are seventy-two messages waiting for him. He scrolls up, looking for the beginning of the conversation, and pauses, his thumb hovering over a photo. A sense of dread fills him, a premonition that he cann
ot explain. His heart begins to race as he taps it and the photo fills his screen.

  It takes a moment for his mind to catch up to what his eyes are seeing. A girl stands before a mirror, her long hair trailing over her shoulder. Her phone is held up before her face, covering one eye, the flash of the camera reflected in the glass, bright like a firework.

  Those are the first things Seb notices. The second is the fact that the girl is naked but for black underwear and thick fluffy socks. And the third, the thing that slams into him like a fist, is that he recognises the bedroom behind her, the unmade bed with the colourful blanket thrown over the end, and the desk in the corner he knows is littered with eyeshadow palettes and fluffy brushes and blunt eyeliner pencils. The bedside table which has four or five books stacked on top of one another, the lamp with the purple lampshade and silver base covered in fingerprints. The rug that curls up on one end, which Seb has tripped over almost every time he’s been in that room. His girlfriend’s bedroom.