Stranded (37 page)

‘In a café on the beach in the rain,’ I repeat.

‘It
is
raining with you, is it?’

‘Yes. Yes it is. Martha, you’re amazing. Thank you so much. When this is over . . .’

I hear her brave smile down the phone. ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘Yes, I know. Now go and find her.’

There are several beaches in St Ives. Chris stops the first person we see, a man walking two small dogs.

‘Excuse me, mate,’ he says. ‘We’re meeting someone in a café on the beach. That’s all they said. Where do you think that’d be?’

The man purses his lips.

‘Got to be Porthminster or Porthmeor,’ he says. ‘One or the other. You should have got them to be more specific. Porthminster.’ He points. ‘That’s nearest. It’s over there. Porthmeor, right over that way.’

‘Cheers,’ Chris says, and the man walks on.

‘One each?’ I ask. ‘We don’t have much time.’

‘Yes. You get Porthminster. I’ll get the other one. Call me.’

The rain stings my face as I run to the beach. There are not many people around. I pass a few women with pushchairs, a couple of runners and several people walking dogs.

When I step on to the beach, I note that it is wide and sandy. I will never be impressed by a beach again, so I spend no time admiring. No one is on the sand at all.

They are cowards. That hits me like a wave. Throughout my adult life, everything I have done has been about escaping their power, but if I am not afraid of them, they are powerless.

And I am not afraid of them. I am furious, but I am not scared.

The sea is heaving in the worsening storm, with huge choppy waves pitching up and down. As I walk towards the café, I see a woman leaning off the back of its covered balcony, looking across the beach to the water.

She has straight hair that was once blonde but is now a silvery grey. She looks like me, but she is older and perhaps a little odder.

I stand on the sand and watch her turn away from the sea. She is talking to someone who is sitting at a table inside the café. I write a text to Chris. ‘Porthminster,’ I say. ‘Now.’

I walk around to the doorway and step inside the café.

It is a smart restaurant, one of those airy ones with floorboards and wicker chairs. A blonde girl with flawless skin comes towards me with a professional smile, holding a menu.

‘Breakfast?’ she says. ‘Table for one?’

I smile back, forcing my skinny face into some sort of rictus grin, and say, ‘I’m just looking for some friends. Could I check out there?’

She says, ‘Of course,’ and wanders off.

I edge around the corner, on to the terrace. Three of the tables are occupied. The one above the beach has three people sitting at it, and one of them is – actually is – my baby.

I stand frozen to the spot and drink in the sight of her. Her hair is tied back in a single plait, a recognised Village style. It does not suit her. Her face, however, is Daisy’s face. Her nose is slightly turned up. Her mouth, when she is not smiling, looks sulky. She is not smiling.

They have dressed her in a knee-length blue skirt, a white jumper and a pink anorak. She has wellies on her feet. She is with them, and she should be with me.

I cannot wait for Chris. I cannot call the police. This is my daughter, and I have found her, and any second they are going to try to bundle her into a car and take her away.

I start to walk across the terrace to them. Then I run.

‘Daisy!’ I shout. Cassandra turns to me, startled. ‘Daisy!’ I yell again.

Daisy looks up, and our eyes meet, and she grins and gets to her feet.

Cassandra grabs her arm and stops her coming towards me. I watch Daisy trying to shake her off, watch Cassandra tightening her grip. They struggle. The third person at the table is looking at me. I have paid that person no attention at all. It is, I suppose, the famous new leader. From the corner of my eye I can see that it is not Moses.

I glance at the figure.

The world spins and contracts, and I grab the back of someone’s chair to avoid falling over.

I was assuming the cult’s new leader would be someone I didn’t know. I presumed he would be a man. That was the way it made sense. I am still running for my daughter, reaching out for her, grabbing her, but I am unfocused. I am completely thrown off my stride by the discovery that the new leader, the third person in the group, the mastermind of the whole affair, is Katy.

I pull Daisy away from Cassandra, who does not let go. Daisy starts to cry. I hug her tightly to me.

‘It’s all right,’ I say, into her hair. For a second, all I want to do is to drink in the smell of her, her presence, her very Daisyness. ‘I’m sorry, darling. So sorry. I’ve been desperate to find you.’

She cannot speak. Her face is red and she is sobbing into my shoulder. I keep her against me, using all my strength. Cassandra, I see, is furious. She is tugging at Daisy, harder and harder. I hit her to get her away. Then I turn my attention to the new leader.

‘Katy?’ I say. ‘What the hell?’ I am trying to work it out. ‘I knew someone was from the Village. I had no idea it was you.’

She sighs. She is still thin, like she was on the island, but the desperation has gone from her eyes, and she is utterly self-possessed.

‘Oh, Catherine,’ she says. ‘Martha sent you here, did she? I knew we should have dealt with her properly. Philip said he had her under control, but his problem is that he forgets she could conceivably act of her own free will.’

‘To be fair to him, that rarely happens,’ says Cassandra, who has retreated from Daisy for the moment, but is glaring at me, and clearly planning.

‘It doesn’t matter what happened,’ I say. ‘I’ve got my daughter back. She’s back where she belongs, and you are never going to see her again. Never, ever.’

‘You think?’ Katy raises her eyebrows.

‘I know it.’ I look round, waiting for Chris. ‘Daisy, are you OK? Everything they’ve told you about me is a lie, OK? I’ll explain what’s happened when we get away from here.’

Daisy looks scared. She moves away from me slightly.

‘That’s right, sweetheart,’ says Cassandra. ‘Remember? I know it’s hard for you. But remember what we said.’

Katy turns to me. ‘You idiot, Catherine. Blundering in. Upsetting the poor girl. Never mind, Daisy. Here.’ She takes a polar bear out of a handbag and passes it to her. Daisy snatches it and clutches it tight.

‘I told you about Poley,’ I remember.

‘You told me lots of things,’ Katy agrees. ‘You were very helpful.’

‘You’re the new leader Martha talked about.’

‘She didn’t mention my name? We had her well trained in that respect, if in no other.’

‘The woman you had the relationship with, and broke up with, all of that.’ I look at Cassandra. ‘Was that my
mother
?’

Katy looks at Cassandra and they both laugh.

‘No, you idiot,’ Cassandra says. ‘I cannot believe you are my child, and that you could be so stupid. That was a story to make you like her. And to make sure you didn’t see her as anything connected to the Village. She was undercover. You know?’

Daisy has disengaged from me completely. I look at her. She is gazing away, miserable, out to sea.

‘Moses killed Samad,’ I say. I am stalling, waiting for Chris and, I hope, the police. ‘He sorted out the guest house so no one would miss us.’ I step closer to Daisy. She edges away from me.

‘Bravo. Moses has his uses, bless him. I obviously sorted out the trip and disposed of the lighters and so forth. We’d been waiting for you to go away, by the way. Keeping an eye. As soon as you booked your grand holiday in Malaysia, and kindly told everyone you’d ever met about it, we started planning. It was nice of you to go somewhere so remote.’

I look at Cassandra. ‘But why? Why do all that so you could get my daughter?’

She shrugs. ‘You owe me a daughter. And you know full well that if Villagers leave, that means they are dead. Which in turn means that their children need guidance and guardianship from us. It’s not Daisy’s fault you ran away. She deserves the same chances you had.’

‘You were talking on the satellite phone.’

‘I could have killed Jean for finding that,’ Katy says, rolling her eyes. ‘I nearly did, actually, but then I remembered I had no particular quarrel with her. Everyone thought it was yours, or Mark’s or Ed’s, anyway. No one dreamed it was me. Even though I had to be the one to find the water to bring you back to life. I thought that would be a giveaway, but no, apparently not.’

‘Katy,’ I say quickly, because I have to know. ‘How on earth did you fix up the whole trip? I mean, it was Samad’s idea.’

‘Samad was susceptible to being fed ideas. More than that, though, he was susceptible to money. Oh, Cathy. It’s incredibly easy to bribe someone in a poor country, you know. I suggested what he might like to do, then paid him handsomely to do it and let him think it was all his idea. I probed him about deserted islands until he told me the right one. Then I arranged it all. Didn’t you wonder why he was providing such a sumptuous lunch and he never asked any of you for a penny?’

The waitress is approaching. I look at her quickly, begging her silently to call the police. Then I realise I can do it myself. I reach into my pocket for my phone. Katy holds it up: it has been expertly pickpocketed.

‘Sorry,’ she says.

‘But who are
you
?’ I ask. ‘Why did you do all that, to get my daughter? Why?’

‘Who am I?’ asks Katy. ‘Who do you think I am, Catherine? You’re Catherine. You’re dead, it’s official. It said so in the paper. Then I came along. Katy. I’m you, of course.’ She puts a hand on Cassandra’s arm. ‘This is my mother. And this.’ Her other arm is suddenly around Daisy’s shoulder. ‘This is my daughter, Daisy.’

‘Everything OK?’ says the waitress, apparently oblivious to what is happening. ‘Can I get anything for anyone?’

‘Just a cappuccino for our friend,’ says my birth mother with a smile, and the waitress nods and leaves.

‘You’re mad,’ I spit. ‘Both of you. Come on, Daze. We’re going home.’

‘What do you say to that, Daisy?’ asks Katy. ‘Where’s your home, darling?’

Daisy looks miserable. She keeps her mouth tightly shut.

‘Come on,’ Cassandra prompts her.

‘Home is God’s Village,’ she says eventually, and bursts into tears.

‘Oh, don’t be so ridiculous,’ I say to all of them. I take Daisy by the arm and pull her away.

Everything happens at once.

A car pulls up in front of the café. Chris runs up the steps and on to the terrace. A police siren comes closer and closer. Katy and Cassandra perform what looks like a practised movement, and take Daisy between them to the steps of the café. I run after them. Chris stops them in the doorway. They fight him off. Katy kicks him, and he falls over backwards, down the steps.

In slow motion, I see them moving Daisy to the waiting car. She is protected by both of them. The engine is revving up, and it is ready to go. The police car is not here yet.

I do the only thing I can do to save my baby. I grab a bread knife from a shelf, where it is resting beside three baguettes, and just as they have got my crying, screaming daughter to the car, I plunge it into Katy’s back.

There is blood everywhere. The world stands still. I have stabbed somebody and I am covered in blood. Daisy is standing looking at me, stricken, and she is screaming and screaming.

I know, suddenly, that I have lost her. She has watched me commit a murder. I am a murderer. The fact that I did it solely to stop Katy taking her away from me will not change anything; in fact, it will probably make it worse, because I know that Daisy will think it was her own fault in some way.

Katy and Cassandra wanted me to do this. This way, I lose Daisy completely and for ever.

Katy is on the ground, unmoving. The knife is still sticking out of her back. The waitress is shouting for help. The police car pulls up. There is nothing I can do. I cannot pretend I did not do this. There is no possible escape.

I watch Chris take three strides towards Daisy and pull her into his arms. She collapses in to him and he cradles her, turning her away from the gruesome scene.

The policeman, who is not the nice man we spoke to yesterday, immediately starts talking into his radio. He looks worried. He has a little black beard. I walk towards him. Cassandra is staring at Katy. The waitress says the word ‘ambulance’ behind me.

My legs give way. I collapse. There is a chair behind me, so I end up sitting in it. When I look up, Chris and Daisy have gone.

Cassandra has started to talk to the policeman.

‘It was her.’ Her voice is bald, icy. ‘She did it. She stabbed her. In the back. She murdered her.’

He looks at me. I know he is going to arrest me, and, indeed, he does.

They have won. I sit in a cell, and the only thing I care about is the fact that I have lost her. I do not care at all about being in custody. I am not interested in what will happen when I go to court. I could not care less about the media scrum that I know is going on, now that the press has finally caught up with our story. I am sure they will be getting it all wrong.

I like the peace and quiet. I like the food that appears from time to time. I like being able to sit down and look at a wall. Since I cannot have Daisy, I like not having anything.

Days pass. They tell me that Katy is alive, that I did not stab her as deeply as the amount of blood might have suggested. Apparently I missed her heart and all the other important stuff. That, I think, is a shame. I should have pushed the knife in harder.

They have won. Chris has got Daisy for now, but they beat me. From the moment I walked out of there, they wanted to destroy me, and now, years later, they have done it.

A nice man tells me that charges are being dropped and I am free to go. I do not understand this, and I do not bother to think about it either. I do what he tells me to do, and eventually I find myself outside, breathing the fresh air. People shout and thrust cameras in my face. They want me to tell my story. I look around, panic-stricken, and then I see Chris. Chris, and Ed. They come towards me, and take one of my arms each, and they escort me to a car and put me in the back. We drive away.