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  ‘It’s the only bloody hope for this town,’ my dad had said. ‘Over a thousand jobs have been promised for the factory alone. Skilled bloody jobs as well. Industry! It’s what we need – we can’t just send it all abroad.’ He’d get quite heated about it, slide into casual racism if you let him run with it long enough.

  You can see the wind turbines in the distance when you stand on the seafront, spinning round silently. I like them. The smooth swiftness is calming somehow. I try to think of them now; to block out Paige and this crowd around me. To erase what Paige just said.

  She soon yanks me out of it. ‘You’re fucking deluded, love. I feel sorry for you. You’re a joke! And not a very funny one.’

  The other girl, Kat, twists strands of her hair around her hand. It’s almost down to her waist.

  ‘And,’ Paige starts again, ‘if you’re so convinced that he’s innocent, your precious husband, why have you changed you name back so you don’t have the same name as him anymore? Embarrassed, are you? You should be.’

  ‘No, actually. I never changed my name when we got married. There’s no law that you have to, you know. Ever heard of feminism? Equal rights? Choice?’

  Paige screws her face up, deep grooves appearing in her forehead. ‘Well, what’s the point in that? Why bother getting married? Not surprised you don’t want to be associated with him. But the fact is, you fucking well are.’

  A woman is striding across the road towards us now, looking puzzled.

  ‘Hey! What’s going on here?’

  ‘Miss, miss,’ says Paige, her tone entirely different. ‘There’s a lady outside the school gates acting suspiciously.’ She emphasises the syllables of the last word, parroting the warnings they’ve had to report anything strange. The teacher already has a mobile phone up to her ear and she doesn’t stop, checking for traffic as she powers over the road.

  ‘Just stay away from me, OK. Stay away from my… home.’ I stop myself saying caravan, just in case. ‘I know you’ve been throwing fireworks and stuff. Just leave me alone, OK?’ I say it to Paige, but then look around the rest of the group.

  ‘Stay away or what?’

  I push through the two boys behind me and start to run.

  I hear Paige say something and someone replies, ‘I didn’t know it was her, did I?’

  ‘Excuse me. Madam. Excuse ME.’ An adult voice. The teacher is calling after me now but I don’t look back or slow down until I get back to the seafront.

  I am out of breath when I reach the end of the road. My foot hurts where I cut it at Jeannie’s, and there’s a warm wetness in my sock. Blood again.

  When I look back, the teacher has stopped chasing me. She’s just looking down the road after me.

  I think about the phone calls. Kayleigh texting and talking to a man. Could Chris really have been calling her, huddled up in the loft? Pretending to nip out to the shops? Going out to play football? While I was out visiting Mum?

  I close my eyes and breathe deeply to try to block out the images in my head.

  Twelve

  Tuesday, 10 November

  Julie lets me use the pool some evenings, even though it’s officially closed out of season. I try not to think too closely about whether it’s still being cleaned properly or not. I think the staff, what’s left of them in the winter, have parties in here. I’ve seen bottles under the loungers and once a piece of foamy white bread floating in the pool.

  I don’t know exactly what they do on the site out of season, apart from drink in the bar sometimes, but I see them flitting between the vans still in their uniforms – cheap, faded red polo shirts with a yellow logo, staggering with buckets of soapy water or carrying straining bin bags. Perhaps they just have nowhere to go back to in the winter months. I think maybe Julie just keeps them on because they need a job. ‘Julie’s waifs and strays,’ I’ve heard people in the bar say. I suppose I’m one of them.

  Swimming helps to clear my head, and it feels like something of a luxury having a pool on-site and mostly to myself. I wouldn’t come in if anyone else was in here.

  I pick up my costume from the back of the chair; still damp from my last swim. I wash everything in the tiny kitchen sink but nothing dries properly in this caravan. All of my clothes have a musty smell to them. I should use the launderette in town. I wrap the costume in an equally damp towel that I pull from the mountain of the clothes monster on the bed – arms of jumpers tangled and knotted up with the legs from tights that I never wear.

  I roll the costume in my towel and shove it under my arm, heading over to Barnacles to get the pool key from Julie. It’s dark right across the site now, I can barely see where I am going. An almost imperceptible drizzle is fizzing in the air.

  Something makes me jump. As my eyes adjust, I think I see something out of the corner of my eye, disappearing around the side of the van. I am aware of my breathing: shallow, loud. It makes me think of The Watchers’ video again.

  I stop still and hold my breath. There’s nothing, no sound. I know I shouldn’t, but I am drawn to look – I can’t risk anyone damaging the caravan while I am out, setting a trap. I turn the corner quickly, ripping the plaster of fear off, hitting my shin on something sharp and metal at the back of the caravan. The pain against my bone makes my eyes water. I hear a rustle. My own coat, the wind swirling around me.

  I dart between the caravans, but then I am out in the open again, alone. Nobody there. A light goes on somewhere – a caravan or a torch? Creeping around the side, I see it now, another caravan about three along from my bay; I haven’t seen anyone around here before. I can hear muted sound coming from it, the walls are so thin. I cup my hands around my eyes and strain to see who’s inside, but can only make out a bulky shadow, the TV a flickering square blur. Craning my head around, there’s a crack behind the curtains, the sliver of a bulky man, work boots, oily jeans. I strain further, then panic when the brick I am balanced on for height topples and falls away, scraping against my ankle and causing me to automatically claw at the plasticky glass of the caravan window. I see his feet stop in their tracks, and he lunges for the window so I cower down against the side of the van in the dark, trying not to breathe. The door opens and a torch beam searches the grass. ‘Hello. Who’s there?’

  Crawling along the ground to make the least possible sound, I manage to get to the far end of the caravan as he is at the other end, shining his torch in the opposite direction. Still on all-fours, plotting my moment to get up and get back on the path, I see something move again – but it’s a few caravans away, obscured in the wheels and wires and shadows. Another pair of legs. They’re outside my caravan. And they don’t belong to the man whose caravan I just peered inside, because he’s still there, shining his torch. I hold my breath and duck my head down again as I sense him move towards me, but he heads back inside the caravan. I check he isn’t looking out of his windows, but the curtains remain still. The legs outside my caravan have gone.

  And now I can’t piece it together. Maybe I got confused in the panic, between the man’s feet and the feet outside my caravan. I’m so tired – maybe I just mixed things up again. But I don’t think so. I consider running back into the caravan, locking the door, but decide a swim will clear my head. I pick up my towel and costume where I dropped them, try to wipe off the mud.

  The bar is empty and Julie eyes me suspiciously when I ask for the pool keys. ‘You’ve not been drinking, have you?’ she asks. ‘You can’t go in there when you’ve been drinking.’

  ‘I’ve not had a drop all day,’ I tell her. ‘Just gallons of tea.’ And it’s true. Although I could do with one now.

  I let myself into the pool house. It’s a small pool, just for kids for messing around really. I imagine it’s packed in the summer; I can almost hear the screeches and yelps reverberating around the place, toddlers staggering along the poolside in their arm bands.

  I don’t smell chlorine, certainly not as much as I would like. Is it clean, or stagnant and dank until the summer? T
here’s grey water gathering on the tiles at the edge of the pool. With the bright lights on, beyond the glass is complete blackness and all I can see when I look out is myself reflected back. Even when I cup my hands up to the window I can’t see anything except the November night. I half laugh to myself. Usually in films when people are in pools alone after dark, it’s for some kind of love scene.

  I don’t bother using the changing room to get changed. There’s no one around and it feels creepy in there, like you’re hemmed in, backed into a corner. Instead, I contort my limbs to get my swimming costume on and remove my clothes without revealing anything, just in case. I pull the costume over the top of my leggings, then I wangle them out leg by leg, along with my underwear. I can hear some of the stitches give way at being stretched so far. There’s blood on my ankle bone from falling at the caravan, and my shin is already starting to bruise. I twist my shoulder painfully, whipping my bra out from under the costume.

  My clothes are piled on a white plastic chair under a brightly coloured umbrella. The water is completely still, with a few beach balls and foam floats puncturing the surface. Dipping my foot in, the water is freezing. It’s too shallow to jump in but I have to force myself to climb straight in and put my whole body under or I will never take the plunge. I put my head under to slick my hair back before rising to the surface, gasping in the air. The water already feels warmer.

  I swim breast stroke then front crawl for a few laps. Last time I did twenty without stopping, so I force myself to push through to twenty-two, my chest heaving. I am seriously unfit.

  Clutching a striped beach ball, I lie on my back, staring at the pointed, glass-paned roof. I can see myself floating in the blackness, serene and weightless. I lie there for what feels like fifteen or twenty minutes, thinking about nothing except how light my limbs are, how good it feels to do nothing after the effort of the laps. It almost makes me wonder if I have drifted off to sleep.

  It reminds me of Chris and me lying on the beach here at Shawmouth earlier this summer. It must have been in June. A sudden warm day so everyone swarmed outside. We shared a pair of headphones, one earbud each, and crammed together onto one towel. We were tipsy after a picnic of cava and crisps, looking up at the clouds, listening to John Cale’s ‘Half Past France’. The beach was overcrowded with families and groups of teenagers on a rare hot day, but we really did feel miles away from them all. I commented to Chris that it felt like the song fitted so perfectly. He said, smiling, that’s why he’d put it on. ‘D’uh.’

  Even remembering the good times together brings me more pain than comfort. I try not to let the past creep in, but the smallest thing can trigger the deepest cut: a turn of phrase, a flash of someone’s facial expression. A kind of déjà vu.

  I need to go out again tomorrow; be busy; ask more questions.

  My floating is broken by a sound. Maybe it’s just the sound of the pool water sploshing by. But I am tense, on edge now, scanning the big screen of the glass ceiling for signs of movement. Then again. This time, I know it’s definitely something. The door rattling? Someone trying to get in? I grasp to try to get upright – the serene picture in the glass is fractured, my mouth and nose filling with water, choking me for a few seconds.

  I look up again at the reflection for clues – a faster way to see who’s there, but the water is making everything in the picture move now like a hall of mirrors. After a lot of splashing, obscuring the origin of the noise, my feet find the scratchy floor. I scrape my big toe on the rough surface, trying to pull it round, and a faint wisp of blood curls up in the water. I freeze when I hear the next noise; the door rattling. I look towards it. A flash of colour. Or was it just the speed at which I moved my head, the shock? It’s gone. Then the echoing of the door slamming. Did I close it properly? Has it caught on the wind? Like Mum’s door that time she went missing.

  I walk over to the metal steps to climb out of the pool. I can’t seem to move fast enough, the water getting heavier and heavier in front of me. I eventually climb out, slipping off the metal step and bashing my shin again. I grab my towel, but it’s wet through straight away, making me feel even colder. Pressing my face against the glass, I cup my hands around my eyes to try to see out, but I can’t see anything. Shivering, I pull my clothes on over my wet skin and swimming costume. They stick to me, dragging against my skin. I turn out the lights but I can hardly lock the door for looking behind me and because my hands are shaking with the cold. Outside, I listen for the sound of anything but I can’t separate the sound of the wind from the possibility that it’s someone moving around. I make a blind run for it towards the light in the doorway of Barnacles.

  When I get inside, in the brightly lit foyer, I can see that dark stains of water are seeping through to my clothes. My wet hair is dripping onto my back and the floor, freezing white droplets appearing on the strands.

  In the bar, Julie is serving. She looks up and sees me straight away, a puzzled look appearing on her face. ‘Everything alright?’ she mouths. She is pulling a pint for someone. I nod but I just dangle the keys on my finger, putting them on the end of the bar in an exaggerated manner, making sure she sees they are there. I am stretching out like I am crossing a body of water, as if one foot has to stay on land. As soon as I drop the keys, I make a run for the door before Julie asks any more questions. I see her do a small shake of her head and raise her eyebrows.

  It is so cold, my teeth are chattering uncontrollably when I get back outside. Back at the caravan with the gas fire on, I can feel the moisture in the air from my clothes. I barely sleep at all, listening out for every little noise.

  Thirteen

  Wednesday, 11 November

  It’s busy in the town. I wouldn’t usually come in now in the daytime. Young children skip ahead of their parents down the pedestrianised shopping area, swinging bags or clinging on to the handles of pushchairs, gabbling away about their day at school. A cloying, overpowering smell and heat floats out of the bakers, where a queue to the door is forming.

  I am hyper alert. It feels like I am somewhere where the music is turned up too loud. It’s times like these that I’ll think I catch a glimpse of Chris in a crowd. I consider turning back, waiting until later, but I am dressed now. I am ready. I need to push on.

  Then I see her. Shit, it’s Amanda from work – she’s coming out of Marks & Spencer with another woman and she’s headed right towards me. She must have the day off. She came to see me at the house just after Chris went missing. Brought flowers and chocolates and a card signed by everyone at work. It was painful: a fishing expedition. She’d either been asked by Mike, the boss, to scope out whether I was likely to be back soon, or she was looking for dirt she could share with her cronies over their Ryvitas and Heat magazines in the lunchroom at work. I tried to go to the kitchen to make coffee just to get away from her, to cut off her incessant yapping, but she followed me everywhere, poking and prodding me, asking questions in a sugary, mawkish tone. How was I feeling? What had happened? Was I coping? I pull up the collar on my coat across the bottom part of my face and put my head down, focusing on the smooth, grey concrete and powering forward to try to get past her as quickly as I can, without her noticing me.

  ‘Oops, sorry, I wasn’t looking where I was going!’ It comes out automatically, though I’m too dazed to work out what’s happened. I expect it to be Amanda but it’s someone else.

  The woman smiles back at me serenely, her frizzy grey hair catching on the wind. She’s got a waterproof outdoors coat on and walking boots. Hand-knit fingerless gloves. ‘Come, come, my dear. Please.’ She guides me towards a cluster of chairs, as small as those you sit on in primary school. My buttocks are spilling over the edge of the chair; it feels like it could collapse. The woman sits on a low stool in front of me. ‘I’m Mary,’ she says. There’s something unnerving to me about the slow, calm way she delivers her words and the blankness on her face.

  Close by, other people are plonked on these chairs too, their carrier bags
from JD Sports, fruit and veg from the market clustered around their feet. One man is crying, while a woman clutches his head at the sides. Her eyes are closed and she’s saying something to herself under her breath.

  ‘What’s your name?’ Mary asks me but I don’t answer her.

  ‘I sense that you have great pain in your life,’ she says to me. Again, I don’t reply.

  ‘In the name of Jesus, we believe that God loves you and He can heal you,’ Mary says, her voice as matter-of-fact as before.

  Amanda is parallel to us now, so I can’t draw any attention to myself by running away. I put my head down. Mary is kneeling in front of me, her hands are on the top of my bowed head. She’s chuntering something under her breath. Nausea is welling up inside me; I feel choked, claustrophobic. The chair scrapes and falls behind me, and Mary stumbles backwards. She doesn’t fall but the commotion means people turn to look.

  Amanda’s face screws up, then starts to change shape again. ‘Is that you, Rebecca?’ She stops for a moment to think and changes direction to come back towards me – telling her friend to wait. So I run, kicking the chair out of my path. My field of vision is taken up by a group of people – they must be some sort of religious nuts anyway – crowded around a young boy and his mum. They turn to stare at me and I run right through their little circle, the mother leaping out of the way.

  People are stopping to stare at me. They probably think I’m a shoplifter.

  I slow my run to a fast walk and duck into the shopping centre through the glass doors, drab spa-type music piping in so quiet you can hardly hear it. Inside, it’s dead. A woman manning a stand-alone make-up stall twiddles with her phone. She’s obviously given up on the commission and just wants to go home. I look purposeful to avoid a man hunting around for someone to pounce on about a cable TV subscription.