At the building in the woods, he knocked firmly at the door, opened it, and slipped the reed into his mouth.
‘I’m back and coming in.’ There was no response. Without thinking he called out, ‘Lucy! Are you all right?’ To his relief, she replied.
‘It’s your funny voice and my music. I told you last time, I can’t hear you.’
He took the hood from behind the door, pulled it over his head, and walked in to find Lucy on the bed with the headphones pushed away from one ear.
‘How did you know my name was Lucy?’
For a moment he panicked; that was a bad slip. He replied more in hope than in knowledge. ‘It was on your purse.’
‘I’m not a little girl, I don’t write my name on my purse.’
‘I meant in your purse.’ Surely it was there? He was almost certain he’d seen it on a library card. ‘It was in your purse on a card.’
‘You’ve been going through my things!’
She sounded indignant. He took this as another good sign. If this small intrusion seemed so outrageous she’d clearly accepted her current captivity as something beyond her control and resolved to endure her imprisonment. She hadn’t queried that her name was in her purse so he diverted her with a reward.
‘Time for some exercise. Come here so I can unlock the handcuff. You can keep it off while I get supper. I’ll trust you to put it back on and let me lock it after you’ve eaten.’
After supper she obediently came back to the slot, put the handcuff around her wrist and allowed him to lock it. By the time he’d finished cleaning up she was on the bed listening to music. He went to his private room and stared blindly at his collection. Putting the sedative in her drink was necessary and it would be kinder in the long run. She might wake with a muzzy head but she’d have no memory of what happened to her. That would be a blessing. If only something had blocked his childhood memories he wouldn’t be here now.
His collection had been different then. Moving from care home to care home it had been the one constant in a changing world. When he found his sister, 27 years after they’d been separated, he discovered Reena had become just like their mother – wanton. Three years later he’d traced their mother to the caravan site. The day he’d gone to see her, for the first time since she’d left him alone, remained as vivid as the days of his childhood. He’d packed a worn canvas shoulder bag with binoculars, waterproof cape, a sandwich and a thermos of tea. In his pocket he’d placed a twitcher’s notebook with a pencil lodged firmly in the spine. After checking his appearance, he was ready to merge with the birders who flocked to Reculver.
The bus arrived at The King Ethelbert just before 10 a.m. Skirting the twin towers of the ruined abbey, he walked to a vantage point overlooking the caravans. Here and there the sun glinted off the polished chrome of a few proud owners. The flight of a seabird caught his eye. To keep up appearances, he made a perfunctory show with the binoculars: a sandwich tern, as common here as house sparrows were in the backyard when he was a child. The moment passed. He settled and waited. Later, in the Ethelbert, he would hear tales of ritual sacrifice, stories of infant skeletons excavated from within the confines of the Roman fort. Others would speak of a crying baby, the sounds of a child abandoned in the ruins of the abbey. He knew that anguish. He’d been abandoned in the ruins of their mother’s life.
Apart from the gulls, it was quiet. He ran his glasses over the rows of caravans and focused on the door of the one which had been their mother’s home since long before he found her. Nobody stirred. Even for a Sunday, the residents of Reculver Caravan Park were slow to rise. He adjusted his position under the hedge and settled to wait. Periodically he made a show of following a bird with the binoculars, but all the time his ears were alert for sounds from the caravan.
Eventually, with a noise of rusty hinges, the door opened and their mother appeared, lank bottle-blonde hair scraped into a short ponytail and her lips an improbable garish slash of red against the pallor of her sleep-puffed face. Ignoring the world, and a chill wind from the North Sea, she began lifting her un-ironed sweatshirt to scratch a breast. The thought of that sight, exacerbated by age, disgusted him. He turned his binoculars away and followed a bird until it disappeared over the cliff edge; yet another sandwich tern.
The hinges squeaked again and an unshaven man shouted an instruction after their mother who was making her way down the path to the local store. Mother! The word had long since lost any trappings of affection. He used it only to define the woman he’d come to despise. The wait while she made her way to the shop and back wasn’t long. She returned with a clear plastic bag in each hand, full of cheap ready meals, cans of lager and bottles of wine, as far as he could tell through his twitcher’s glasses. As she disappeared into the caravan the anger that motivated him returned. Outwardly he still appeared calm but the birdwatcher’s pencil snapped in his hand. Their mother didn’t deserve him; she didn’t even deserve his sister. He and Reena were the unloved by-products of their mother’s reckless pleasure.
He’d returned many times to observe from beneath the hedge. Whenever he watched there was usually a man. Not always the same man but always a man and drink; there was always drink, bottles and cans but seldom any glasses. Gradually he was able to confront what their mother had been and what she’d become. That knowledge led him to the light. He learned to control his revulsion but the disgust remained to drive his motivation.
It was twelve years ago when he began preparing his mission. Teresa had been the first and then Kimberley but, although everything had gone to plan, ultimately each of the girls had thwarted his goal. There’d been no child for him to treasure from afar. This time he was sure it would be different; with Lucy he would succeed. If not, he had time, there would be other girls.
Whenever he sat under the hedge at Reculver he saw only what their mother had become. The last time she’d abandoned the ponytail. Dark roots were prominent in her unkempt hair. A short skirt had revealed too much of her wasted, varicosed legs. It pained him to know he was flesh of that body. It pained him but it fired his resolve. The sight of her never failed to stoke his motivation.
Deep in thought in his private room, he became aware that there was no sound from beyond the open door. Slipping the reed into his mouth and pulling down the hood, he moved to get a better view through the chain-link partition. The sedative was having its effect; Lucy appeared to be sleeping. Her time had come.