Joshua Park closed in, reached for Blue’s shoulder. ‘You all right? We need to go back, get you dry—’
Blue turned, and the man stopped talking. Blue could see herself in Mr Park’s eyes, her bedraggled form caught in the man’s wide pupils.
‘You’re paler than a— What’s happened?’ Mr Park said, and Blue turned away again and faced the tree where she’d conversed with a dead girl. Had she, though, had she?
She could not trust Mr Park’s concern.
Nor could she kill him; the idea was so ridiculous she wanted to laugh, to say to this towering man that an invisible girl had asked her to wring his neck with her own weak hands. What was happening to her? She felt her soul had splintered somehow.
She had to get away. Blue felt water in her boots, rain down her collar, and an ache in her thighs and back. Felt exhaustion wrap its blanket-self around her, invite her to stop a moment, rest here, lie down in the water and forget about Jess and Arlo and Bodhi and Mother and the fact that no one waited at home. Exactly three years ago tomorrow.
‘Will you just stop.’ Mr Park grabbed Blue’s arm and pulled her back. ‘What the hell are you doing? Don’t you know we’ve been worried? Molly’s fret herself sick, Sabina has been trying to phone you, Milton’s blaming himself – you can’t just up and leave—’
Blue yanked her arm free, tried to say sorry, to tell Mr Park that she wanted to be left alone, but the only words on her tongue were, ‘Jessica Pike.’
‘What?’ Mr Park lost the last of his colour, aged ten years in two seconds. Blue thought of Milton blaming himself, worried for her after his strange outburst.
Blue waited for Mr Park to question her. He didn’t.
Blue knew, then, that what the ghost of a girl had told her was true.
She could no longer argue with herself over spirits or projections of grief, over what was real and what was not. She saw the truth of the past in the haggard man’s face – the responsibility, the regret, the horror at that name.
‘I don’t want any of this, I didn’t invite it in,’ Blue said. She wouldn’t look at Mr Park, focused instead on the trees and tried to see a path she could take through the flood. Her foot touched a root beneath the water, and she stumbled, steadied herself against a wet branch. ‘I just need to get away, please, just go back.’
‘I can’t very well leave you out here. You’ll catch your death. Why the hell do you want to stay out here, anyway? Where are you going?’ Mr Park waited for an answer, but Blue couldn’t speak. She had expected Mr Park to say he didn’t know who Jessica Pike was, or at least express surprise, alarm, something other than this swift change of subject.
‘I can’t go back to the house without you,’ Mr Park said. ‘If I do, Sabina will call the police or an ambulance or— Look, will you just come back? We can sort out whatever problem this is back at the house.’
The thought of the house and Sabina and Milton and Mrs Park – of Jessica Pike everywhere, to see her beg again and again for Blue’s help – she couldn’t bear it. Hallucination or not, she knew that vision would come back to her, would give her no peace. The child wanted retribution. The child wished Mr Park dead.
Blue couldn’t help her.
Nor could she turn and look at Mr Park because, when she did, all she saw was a murderer. A child-murderer. The knowledge made Blue waiver, but she had come too far, was too close to getting away to turn back now.
‘Call whoever you like,’ Blue said. ‘I’m not coming with you.’ She waded on, tried to move quickly but was slowed by the flood. The water had risen; it was up to the top of her boots. She just had to get far enough away from Hope Marsh House and its owners to not see that girl again. Then she could concentrate on finding some house, help, a way home.
Mr Park followed. Blue heard his breath, sensed his body behind her.
‘Go back, Mr Park,’ Blue said over her shoulder. Rooks called their crybaby sound, their black-feathered bodies hidden by trees and shadows.
‘Not without you.’ Mr Park raised his voice above the sound of the birds, and Blue could hear his panic and confusion. ‘You’ll kill yourself from exposure if nothing else.’
Why doesn’t he just leave me? Blue thought. Why’s he so bothered about bringing me back?
The ground was boggy and uneven from rocks and lost branches.
‘Please, Blue, just come back. We can sort out whatever the problem is in the morning. Just come back, there’s no reason to be out here—’
‘I can’t,’ Blue said, teeth gritted and head sore.
‘It’s warm, dry, there’s food, there’s company … and look, if it’s been a struggle, then Molly can help you. She’s fully qualified, she can—’
‘Just stop it, will you just stop!’ Blue rested her shoulder against an oak tree, tilted her head back. Branches spread above her like cracks in broken glass. The sky was a dark, hazy grey, and Blue couldn’t tell what was cloud and what wasn’t, if the pinpricks of brightness were stars or raindrops. She didn’t know what time it was, what direction she walked in. She turned to face Mr Park, knew she wouldn’t be able to look that man in the face and so kept her gaze low.
There was Jessica Pike.
She stood behind the giant’s shoulder.
Please, you have to.
‘I can’t, I just can’t.’
‘Can’t what?’ Mr Park said.
Why not?
‘I just can’t, I’m not that sort … How do I know, for sure? How do I know it’s not just my mind playing tricks?’
You know.
‘What the hell are you talking about? What’s playing tricks?’ Mr Park looked behind him, above him, back at Blue.
‘I can’t know,’ Blue said to the girl Mr Park couldn’t see. ‘There’s no proof, for God’s sake, there’s nothing.’
‘Proof?’ Mr Park was at a loss, and Blue saw that it was sympathy on his face, that the man felt profoundly sorry for her, wanted to help her but didn’t know how.
I’ll show you.
A flash of memory brought back Bodhi, curled up by her mother’s side, brought about the memory of her pain and her sorrow and how it flooded Blue, and she didn’t want that, didn’t want Jess to show her anything of the kind. She didn’t.
Jessica turned, instead, to Mr Park.
Whispered in his ear. Whispered and whispered.
Mr Park raised his hand, pressed his thumb and forefinger to the bridge of his nose. He squinted, looked pained, skin wan.
Blue saw Mother again. She saw Arlo. She remembered Bridget sitting at the kitchen table with her cheek pressed to its top, a look of incomprehensible loss on her face, the babe in tears at her feet. Blue thought of her mother in bed, a slim shape beneath the covers, unable to sleep or eat, and Bodhi staring daggers from the corner.
‘You said—’ Mr Park frowned, as though words were alien and his tongue unfamiliar. Gone was his jollying tone, his forthright manner. Gone was his sympathy. His skin looked yellow and sick. ‘A name, you said—’
‘Jessica Pike,’ Blue said.
‘How do you know that name?’
The girl was still at his ear, but she stilled her lips, lifted her eyes to Blue as if to say I told you so.
Blue saw, too, the girl Blue wished she’d been. The child with friends, education, experience that stretched beyond the narrow world of the mystic. She saw all she hoped she would one day be. It sank away from her as a stone sinks in water. There was nothing else but Mr Park and the girl he had killed.
Jessica Pike locked Blue with her dark, dead stare. There was the child she once was, running in red trainers to a brother she loved. Their mother had left them. The girl had friends: an Asian boy with black chin-length hair; a girl with a spherical afro and a cheek bleached by a birthmark. Blue saw them run through the concrete corridors of a residential tower block, heard the slap of their plimsoles, felt their out-of-breath laughs burn her throat. She saw a wide-hipped Polish woman who made bigos stew and bought Jess second-hand clothes. She saw how the girl would sit in her bedroom, still and quiet just like she was told, whilst her brother shot up in the living room, his pulsing vein blood-black. And she saw Milton take the girl by the hand and usher her into his flat next door. She saw him put cartoons on the television, comic books by her side, saw his Polish wife kiss the girl’s forehead.
‘Where did you hear that name?’ Mr Park said, louder. The only colour in his face came from the brown-green mud that had splashed him.
The dead girl at his side was a girl in size alone. There was no innocence in her stare anymore, no youth, optimism, no life. She would never grow old, would not grow at all.
‘You killed her,’ she said.
‘I what? I’ve never killed anything, not a fly.’ Some of his strength returned; anger rose and marked his cheeks pale pink.
‘She was only a girl,’ Blue said. She could run, turn and wade through the water, fight her way to a safer place, but this knowledge would follow her. The image of this child, her lost youth, would follow and haunt her. ‘How could you do that to a child?’
A thick black branch was in Blue’s right hand.
‘You’re mad; you don’t know what you’re talking about. You need to come back to the house, the weather’s addled you— Why are you shaking your head? What’s wrong with you? What are you—’ Mr Park backed away, his eyes on Blue as his arms felt behind him for trees that might block his path.
‘You called her Eleanor, but her name was Jess.’ Blue felt her mother’s spirit flow through her, felt it more than she had these last three years. Her heart was inside her, breaking as Blue’s heart broke.
‘Get away from me!’ Something jarred Mr Park’s foot; he called out, stumbled, fell backwards into the water.
‘What did you do to her?’ Blue wasn’t cold. The tiredness had gone. She lifted the branch higher and rested it on her shoulder like a baseball bat.
‘Nothing, I haven’t done anything, I—’
‘She lived in Birmingham with her brother. It was just the two of them; their mum had left, and the boy was too scared to tell social services in case they got split up. He was a junky, couldn’t look after himself but tried to look after her, tried his best, tried to get clean but couldn’t. Then you found them. How did you do that?’
‘How did you— No, no, you don’t know what you’re talking about.’ In his panic, Mr Park scrabbled backwards through the water, his arms elbow-deep in the mire. He tried to push back with his feet but found no purchase. He called for help at the top of his voice, called again and again, but no one could hear, and now Blue was close.
Blue raised the branch.
Mr Park screamed for help one last time as Blue swung the bough at his temple.
He fell silent.
When Blue touched the hot, rough skin of Joshua Park’s neck, she expected the man’s soul to speak to her. She thought she would see all the man had done, all he had lost and all he had taken, that Blue would understand what had happened to Jess, but Blue didn’t see a thing like it.
She saw Mother.
Blue’s hands became Bridget’s hands, holding and squeezing as Blue’s hands held and squeezed.
Mr Park’s face was under the water, his hair spread round him in a dank halo, but it was Arlo that Blue saw, her cotton-rompered body in the bathtub, her curls snaking through the bathwater, her eyes open beneath the surface, held there by Mother’s hands.
She saw Bodhi struggle under the weight of a pillow. She saw Mother press the pillow against the face of the little boy she loved so much.
Blue held the man down.
Mr Park fought back, hit at Blue, scratched her, knocked her off balance, nearly had her, but Blue held firm. Certainty flowed through her that this was necessary, that this had to be, that there was no other choice, no other way. It was Mother’s certainty, Mother’s psychosis.
Mr Park fell still.
Blue let go.
Stood up.
Stood back.
What had she done?
Good God, what had she done?