Mercy (20 page)

— Louisa knows me well — run you home afterwards.

We have a lot to cover. I can start getting in touch with all the best schools, get the trustees talking about you.’

I feel that strange discomfort again, as if Carmen’s trying to tell me something.

229

Paul’s face is open and there’s nothing sleazy about his body language. Unlike Gerard Masson and Laurence Barry, he doesn’t even try to touch me. Or hold me to a promise. In fact, he turns and tidies up his things while he waits for my answer.

‘You have a remarkable voice, Carmen,’ he says gently. ‘You’re very young. And Fiona Fellows seems to have a …
blind spot
where you’re concerned, doesn’t realise the treasure she’s been sitting on. Probably literally, the way she talks about you …’

The stitch in my side flares more painfully still.

‘I don’t think you’ve been made aware of all your options,’ he continues, snapping his messenger bag shut before turning to face me. ‘I’ve got links to the best music faculties in the country. That’s all this is about. I’m not like Gerard Masson, with his stupid little crushes and extra practice sessions. I’ve been at the receiving end of that kind of thing myself, and it’s the last thing I’d do to you.

This is purely about your
future
.’

For a moment I feel dizzy. Should I go with him or go find Ryan?
Lauren or Carmen?
The disembodied pounding in my side intensifies, like something torn.

When I still don’t say anything, Paul raises an enquiring eyebrow.

230

I shake my head, knowing any normal girl in my position would accept in a heartbeat. But that’s just it.

I’m sorry, Carmen
,
but
I’m batting for Lauren
. And for me.

‘Uh, thanks, but I’m good,’ I reply. ‘Got things to do tonight.’

‘Raincheck?’ Paul says good-naturedly. He straightens up, stretches elegantly. ‘Though you seem like a smart girl — I’m sure you’ve figured it all out already.’

‘You bet,’ I say, giving him a stupid, girly wave over my shoulder as I leave, hoping it seems natural. Not believing he means any of it for a second.

It’s dark by the time I make my way back from the lockers and head across the Paradise High car park, pulling Carmen’s hood up to hide my profile from the breeze, and from curious eyes. I notice Paul Stenborg herding the last of his charges onto the bus bound for Port Marie. He doesn’t give me a second glance as I pass under a nearby streetlight and head for the pedestrian gate next to the school’s main driveway.

I wonder where Laurence Barry is, and what he’s doing.
Tonight
, I think,
we’ll see what you’re hiding
231

down there, old man
.

I pull the edges of Carmen’s hood forward even more, turn up the collar on her denim jacket, and start threading my way across town; peer into the windows of the family restaurants on main street, the town’s only video rental store. And I think about Ryan constantly, even look forward to eating his mother’s strangely tasteless but immaculately presented cooking in awkward silence, because he might be at the table, close enough to touch.

If I can bring myself to do it.

I walk slowly, enjoying the faint tang of salt in the air. Even the sounds of dogs going berserk in their front yards as I pass by just makes me smile. I don’t know how long I have, and, for once, I don’t want it to end. Though it isn’t the kind of boy-meets-girl scenario anyone in their right mind would wish for. You have to take it as it comes, I guess.

And then, within sight of Ryan’s street, I feel a light pressure on the back of my neck, a small sting, and I go down.

232

When I wake, it’s dark. So dark at first that my eyes have trouble making out anything. I’m on my side, facing a wall. There’s a heavy weight around my neck, unaccustomed pressure.

I think maybe I fainted on the footpath and I’m having difficulties focusing, but then I’m hit by a wave of smells so strong I gag out loud. Human waste, old food, rust, bleach, mould, blood. Layered over the top of each other, the air so foetid and soupy I can taste it on my tongue.

And I’m lying on something coarse. It creaks when I shift my free arm experimentally, lift my head an inch or two. A camp bed?

233

There’s breathing in here, not mine. The sound of a clock ticking.

‘You okay?’ someone whispers. It’s a girl.

For a minute, I wonder if I’ve fallen out of Carmen’s life into a new one. Where
am
I? What am I doing here?

I try to sit up, and discover the weight around my neck is some kind of iron collar. I follow the chain with my hands to find it padlocked to a metal cleat in the wall behind me. There isn’t much room to move once I sit up. And I’ve caught sight of that faint, telltale luminosity coming off my skin, so I stay facing the wall. I don’t want to freak out whoever’s in here with me. They’ve probably got enough to deal with already.

In my head, I am able to run, in order, through the full Latin verse that Mahler set to music over one hundred years ago, and backwards through every single thing that I have done since the bus from St Joseph’s first drew up in the car park of Paradise High, and I know that Carmen Zappacosta and I are not yet done.
All
the details are still there. Clear and sharp and immediately accessible.

So where am I?

Ryan!
I think suddenly, my breathing quickening. I was supposed to meet him. What will he be thinking?

It’s like I fell into a rabbit hole between the school and 234

his place.

I feel for my general shape in the dark and I recognise the same denim jacket I put on this morning over the same hooded sweatshirt, Carmen’s improbably narrow, little-boy jeans. The same dirty, canvas sneakers.

Carmen’s bag is gone, along with her sparkly wallet, her mobile phone and her music, but I’ve already committed that to memory anyway and earthly possessions seem the least of my troubles. I glance quickly through the hair hanging down over my right shoulder. It, too, seems the same. Curly. Long. Dense. Almost too heavy for my head.

Through my screen of wild curls I make out two shapes in the darkness on different sides of the room, both with long, straight hair, one big, one tiny, like a bird girl.

The taller one is visibly trembling, as if she is dangerously close to hypothermia. The small one is so still she might be made of stone. Though it should be too dark for me to make out their features, I can see them as clearly as if the sun is shining overhead and I know who they are. And I can make out the dimensions of the room, too, which is bare save for a staircase in the far corner. Like the staircase in Ryan’s dream.

Like their faces, I’ve seen this room before.

235

‘You get used to it,’ says the bird girl quietly. Her voice is dry, like fallen leaves. It sounds almost rusty, like she hasn’t used it much lately. Except maybe to scream.

I try to reconcile the outline of the smaller girl with the photos from her dresser. She looks beaten, emaciated, unlovely. Her ash blonde hair seems white to my eyes, even in this light.

‘Lauren?’ I ask, though I don’t need to, nausea in my words. The smell in here is so strong, it’s crowding my thoughts, the very oxygen out of the room.

‘Who wants to know?’ she replies. Her voice is thin and uninterested.

‘Ignore her,’ pleads the taller figure, Jennifer. ‘She doesn’t seem to care if we ever get out! Does anyone else know we’re here? Please say yes.’ She is speaking barely above a low whisper, but she might as well be screaming, fear crowds the spaces between her words.

‘Her brother does,’ I say, hoping my voice sounds reassuring. ‘We were supposed to come back here tonight, to try and get you both out. But something happened on my way back from Paradise High before I could meet up with him. Any idea what that was?’

A chemical taste rises in my mouth and I have to stop to vomit over the side of the bed. So much for never 236

getting sick. I face the wall again, gasping, waiting for the unfamiliar nausea to subside.

Ryan
, I think miserably.
I found them
.
Now what
do I do?

Like an unconscious echo, Lauren gasps aloud,

‘Ryan?’ and she begins to cry.

It is like a dam bursting, and a chill flash breaks out across my skin. Lauren sounds inhuman, like a wounded animal, and across the room Jennifer shifts uncomfortably on her metal cot.

There’s a sudden loud banging on the door above us, at the top of the stairs, and Lauren’s crying cuts off abruptly like she’s been choked.

‘Don’t make me come down and hurt you, Lauren!’

a man’s voice bellows. So distorted with anger I can’t tell whether I’ve heard it before. Lauren gives a tiny whimper and lies down. Her cot shifts and creaks.

Jennifer and I are silent for a while and then we start talking again, as if the other girl isn’t lying there, facedown and rigid, listening to every word we say with every cell in her body.

‘Did he hurt you?’ I ask Jennifer fiercely. I dart a quick glance in her direction. She’s still shaking like a leaf in the dark.

237

‘Apart from ripping some hair out of my scalp because I wouldn’t do what he wanted, and sticking a needle in my neck, no,’ she whispers. ‘I’m still in one piece. But I’m so
scared
.’

‘He hasn’t had the time to do anything yet,’ I say.

‘He’s been greedy with the two of us. Snatching us so close together.’

‘So far, all he wants me to do is
sing
,’ the girl continues, puzzlement in her voice. ‘But I think he’s a little … disappointed.’

‘That’s good,’ I reassure her. And it is. I’m relieved.

He’s had her for almost a week and all he’s done is ask her to perform a few tunes? ‘That’s great. You’re okay.

Hold onto that.’

‘There’s a room just up the stairs,’ Jennifer adds, her voice growing a little stronger. ‘With a piano in it. A baby grand. Candle holders. A gold music stand. Armchairs.

Like a recital room. He keeps it real tidy. That’s where he takes me when I’m not here. Sometimes he takes
her
instead.’

I look over quickly. Jennifer inclines her head in Lauren’s direction in the dark, forgetting I shouldn’t be able to see, though of course I can.

I hear the other girl draw a sharp breath. Force 238

myself to leave her alone a while longer, though I have so many questions. She’s not ready to talk. She may never be ready.

‘He just looks at you?’ I repeat in Jennifer’s direction.

‘When he makes you sing?’

‘He says that he was always obsessed with me, but I’ve changed. I’m not the girl he remembers. I’ve
defiled
his memories of me, even though my voice is better, stronger, than it ever was. Things can change a lot in two years.’ There’s a shudder in Jennifer’s rich, expressive voice. Her words tumble out so quickly I can barely make sense of them. ‘He said I left town before he could act on it, that he shouldn’t have hesitated before, but he’s been waiting for me to come back ever since.

And the minute I did … I shouldn’t have opened the door. I just wasn’t expecting to see him there, so late.

‘Plus, I’d had a crush on him forever — it all came rushing back, and that didn’t help. I wasn’t to know he was some kind of … pervert. I wasn’t thinking. I was kind of …
flattered
he remembered me.’ She sounds disgusted with herself.

I wrinkle my forehead in the dark. A
crush
?

Flattered?
Out of the corner of my eye I see Lauren sit up suddenly, pushing her long hair back from her face 239

with shaking hands.

‘I only came back because my aunt insisted I sing at Julia’s wedding,’ Jennifer says. ‘So who else knows we’re here?’ The hope in her voice is painful to hear.

‘Just me and Ryan,’ I say, my back to them both, still facing the wall. ‘But he should be on his way right now.’

I sound more confident than I feel. ‘He knows where we are. We’d planned to get you out of the basement tonight, anyway. He’ll just have to get started on his own. We just have to wait a while, and we’ll be free.

Simple as that.’

‘That’s fantastic,’ Jennifer murmurs, relief flooding her voice, though she cannot stop shaking. ‘So fantastic.

I keep thinking I’ve stumbled into someone’s idea of a sick joke. Though he did say something strange before I passed out. Said it was a shame I’d gotten so big and so

… fat.’ There’s indignation in her tone.

That makes me frown. Something familiar in it.

‘Said he liked me much better when I was smaller,’

Jennifer says incredulously. ‘Like
her
, I suppose.’ In the dark, I see her wave vaguely in Lauren’s direction.

I hear Lauren inhale sharply, and I reach the same terrible conclusion a heartbeat after she does.

‘You mean,’ Lauren says in a trembling tone, ‘all 240

this time I’ve been here because of … of
you
? Like some substitute for
you
? He couldn’t have you, so he took
me
?’ Her voice flies up the scale, breaks sharply on the last word.

‘You don’t know that,’ I say, but she’s right. The timing is too awful, the coincidence too awful. Just over two years ago, both girls were bird-bright, tiny, centre-stage together for one mesmerising performance. Two rare sopranos brimming with talent. Then one flew the nest and the other was swiftly … caged.

Lauren begins to wail. ‘Do you KNOW what he’s DONE to me?’

She’s suddenly uncaring of whether the monster above us can hear as she mercilessly catalogues the sins that have been perpetrated against her since she was taken. As she speaks, her voice drops lower and lower, grows mechanical.