Ben is almost at the clearing when he hears the scream. It echoes down through the trees and sends a bird flapping from a nearby branch. It’s enough to spur him on, to make him push harder up the steep trail, his muscles straining and his lungs burning. He hasn’t stopped since he took Rachel’s desperate call about Edward, racing to the woods, finding Rachel’s car and the motorbike abandoned in the car park, before following muddy prints up the folly track. What an unholy mess. He only hopes he isn’t too late.
Emerging into the clearing, it’s strangely quiet, the folly standing as a silent monument in the white mist, a soft sobbing noise drifting on the damp air. He spots Rachel a short distance away, crouched over something lying in a deep drift of autumn leaves. Ben blinks and the object takes shape – not a thing, but a person. A body.
Rachel is checking for signs of breathing, clearing airways, gently but firmly tilting a chin. He races forward, his heart in his mouth, relief flooding through him when he sees that it’s not Ellie lying sprawled in the leaves, but the teacher, Edward Morgan, one leg twisted horribly beneath him, his face ashen, blank eyes staring at the sky, blood trickling from his mouth.
‘Where are the girls?’
Rachel jerks her head at the folly. ‘Up there. Safe. Thank god you’re here. He has a pulse, but it’s weak. I don’t think he’s going to make it.’
Ben lifts his head as the soft crying spirals in the air. ‘Back up’s on its way. I’m going up to the girls. Will you be OK?’
Rachel nods. ‘Yes. He can’t hurt us now.’
Ben shakes his head and holds a finger to his lips. He doesn’t have time to explain. ‘Stay here,’ he murmurs. ‘I’m going to Ellie.’
A low groan lifts from Edward, drawing Rachel’s attention. She lowers her mouth to his ear. ‘Edward, it’s Rachel. Help’s coming.’
Ben knows there’s nothing more he can do for the man that Rachel isn’t already doing. He needs an ambulance. Urgent emergency care. Leaving Rachel’s side, he makes his way to the folly entrance, stepping into its dank cavity, feeling his legs give a little as he looks up at the spiralling steps leading to the upper reaches of the tower. His heartbeat is already galloping at the thought. Get a grip, he tells himself. You can do this. It’s just a few steps, that’s all. Do it for Ellie.
‘Dad?’ Ellie’s voice echoes down to him. A frightened tremor in that one word that pierces his heart and forces his foot onto the first step. ‘I’m coming, sweetheart. Stay where you are.’
Step by shaky step, he climbs the tower, almost to the top when a second voice calls out to him, ‘Don’t come any higher.’
Ben grips the stone wall and glances up at the rafters above his head, immediately regretting it as they spin kaleidoscopically, his legs threatening to collapse beneath him. The sensation that he could topple at any moment down the open shaft is overwhelming. Vertigo has him in its grip.
He takes a couple of deep, ragged breaths before he answers. ‘Olivia, I just want to come up and talk. That’s all.’
He takes her silence as acquiescence and forces himself up the last steps, until he is through the gap in the wooden platform.
Olivia stands by the arched opening, one arm wrapped around Ellie, a Stanley knife in her hands, its silver blade pressed against Ellie’s throat. Tears streak down Olivia’s cheeks and he can see the desperation in her eyes. A girl on the edge. Ellie, in comparison, is still and wide-eyed. Good girl, he thinks. Don’t move. Stay calm. He tries to reassure her with his gaze.
Ben assesses the gap between them and knows there’s no way he can cross the space fast enough. Even if his faltering legs allowed it, if he rushed at Olivia, he risks both girls going over the edge, or Olivia hurting Ellie with the blade. Instead, he holds out his hands in a placatory gesture. ‘It’s over, Olivia. We know what happened on Halloween night. It would be best all round if you came down now, safely.’ He edges forward.
‘Don’t. That’s close enough,’ calls Olivia. She presses the knife firmly against Ellie’s skin and he hears his daughter’s whimper.
Ben doesn’t want to risk it. He drops his hands. ‘I’m not moving.’
Olivia blinks slowly. ‘Is he dead?’ Her question is soft, tremulous.
He doesn’t want to lie. ‘Edward’s in a bad way, but help’s coming.’
‘I didn’t mean to hurt him. I love him,’ she adds, the tears glistening on her cheeks. ‘I love him so much.’
‘I know, Olivia. I know everything. Just put the knife down.’
‘But if I let Ellie go, it’s over, isn’t it? I just want everything to go back to how it was – how I thought it was.’
‘Olivia, no one else needs to get hurt.’
The girl’s hands are shaking. ‘I just wanted Sarah to tell me why she’d done it. Why she’d pretended. Why she made a fool out of me.’ Olivia’s voice trembles with emotion. ‘Six months she kept it up. Six whole months. Nothing but a sick game. Like a cat toying with a mouse.’
‘We know she faked all the messages to you from Edward. We’ve got her phone now, Olivia. Catfishing, that’s what they call it, isn’t it? Using a fake identity to deceive someone.’
Olivia nods slowly.
Talking is good, thinks Ben. Talking means she’s not thinking about Ellie, or the blade in her hand. Ben needs to keep her talking. ‘It was very cruel,’ he says. ‘How did you find out? What gave her away?’ He edges forward, his gaze never leaving Olivia and the blade shining against Ellie’s throat.
‘It was at the party. Connor gave Sarah a dare and she went in on him. Kissed Connor right there and then. I couldn’t believe she’d do that to Danny. It was so mean. So childish. I was sick of the party. I just wanted to be at home, so I sent Edward a text from my secret account to tell him I was missing him.’
Ben takes another step forward.
‘The next thing I know, Ellie’s making a huge deal about something showing up on Sarah’s phone. A notification. She was waving it around, trying to get Danny’s attention. It was only when Danny read it out to the group, demanding that Sarah tell him why someone was missing her and sending heart emojis, that I realised it was my message, arriving in Sarah’s inbox. He’d read it out word for word.’
Ben locks eyes with Ellie. He tries to reassure her that he is there, that he won’t let anything happen to her.
‘I didn’t believe it at first,’ continues Olivia. ‘I thought I’d made a mistake, but I took the phone off Danny and I saw it there. My message, from my secret account. MU5E123. I just knew. All that time. All those lies. It was Sarah pretending to be Edward online. Bouncing messages back and forth, pretending to be him… pretending to be in love with me. Telling me I was special… his muse. Making me confess my deepest feelings… making me believe we were in a relationship when all along it was just Sarah, trolling me… laughing at me.’
‘That must have been very painful.’
Olivia nods, her lower lip trembling. ‘That night I lost the two people I trusted most in the world. One because she’d been lying to me. The other because he’d never really existed, at least not as I knew him.’ She takes a shuddering breath. ‘It all suddenly made sense, why Edward had been so good at covering up in class, his offhand demeanour whenever we saw each other in person. I thought he was a great actor, but to him, I really was just another student. Our love affair was a complete fiction. I was never special. Never really his muse.’ She lets out a small sob, her hand shaking, the edge of the knife shimmering in the white light. ‘He never loved me. He never really existed.’
Ben nods. ‘Sarah played a very cruel trick on you.’
Olivia lets out a sob. ‘I didn’t want to hurt her.’
‘Put the knife down and we’ll talk it all through, calmly.’
‘But you don’t understand.’ Olivia shakes her head, her eyes darting wildly. ‘I left them all at the party, but when I got home, I couldn’t sleep. I needed to know why she’d done it. I waited up. Midnight came and went. Then it was 1am. Still no Sarah. I sent her messages. I sent them from my secret account to her “Edward” account, and then from my phone to her phone. I wanted her to know that I knew. I could see she’d read them, but she didn’t reply. Too chicken shit to face me.’
Olivia’s face twists with rage. Ben knows he needs to keep her calm if he’s going to help Ellie, but she’s ranting now, spilling her secrets like a bloodletting.
‘She wasn’t going to face me, so I slipped out of the house. I could see on the location app that she was still at the folly and I found her here alone, hanging out on the top platform, drinking from a bottle of wine, her nose all busted up, blood smeared down the front of the white dress I’d loaned her. My dress.’
Ben notices Ellie wince in recognition.
‘She’d promised to look after it, but it was ruined. She’d trashed the only thing Edward had ever given me – his thank-you gift for that afternoon in his studio and the only remnant of anything real and meaningful between us.’ Olivia’s eyes flash. ‘Sarah blamed you,’ she says, spitting the words at Ellie. ‘She said you’d fought, that you’d broken her nose. She said you had blood on your hands. That she’d make you pay.’
Ben sees Ellie’s eyes widen, a jolt of recognition. ‘It was you,’ she says softly. ‘You sent me those messages.’
Olivia’s eyes glitter with emotion. ‘Sarah was laughing at you, Ellie. She told me you were raging at her, ranting on and on about how you were going to stop Dad’s development. She was laughing about it, but she didn’t see it from my point of view. She didn’t see how everything you and your lot do to block Dad’s project only keeps him away from us, keeps him away from me and Mum. You wouldn’t understand anything about that, though, would you, Ellie? Because your mum and dad actually notice you.’
Ben sees Ellie’s eyes welling with tears. Easy, he tries to warn her. Stay calm.
‘It wasn’t fair,’ says Olivia. ‘You had everything, and you were causing trouble for my family, trying to stop the development. Then Sarah died and Dad still couldn’t be there for me. He didn’t have time, did he? He was too busy worrying about illegal protests and conservation covenants and the whole development slipping through his fingers. I needed you to back off, Ellie. To give up your crusade, so the project could go ahead and I could get my dad back.’
Ben doesn’t like this shift in Olivia’s focus. He needs to keep her trained on him. Not Ellie. Not the knife in her hand. ‘Olivia, look at me. Tell me, why did Sarah do it? Why did she pretend to be Edward? Did she explain?’
Olivia’s expression twists. ‘She had the audacity to say she did it to help me, to boost my confidence. She said she wanted me to feel “worthy of love”. But I didn’t buy it. I think it was a power trip. She did it to Danny, too, pulled his strings, kept him dangling. I think she enjoyed toying with us all, making us her pawns, watching us dance to her tune. It was all just a sick game to her. But she’d humiliated me. She took away the one good thing I thought was mine.’
‘What happened?’
‘We fought up here, at the top of the folly.’ Olivia glances around, wild-eyed. ‘I was sick of her excuses. I couldn’t stop myself. I pushed and scratched her and we were so close to the edge when I shoved her and she… she staggered.’ Olivia shakes her head. ‘One minute she was here, holding onto the opening, and the next she was gone.’
‘She fell?’
Olivia shrugs. She doesn’t meet his eye. ‘I don’t know. I mean, she didn’t even scream. Just dropped, silently, no sound but her body hitting the ground.’ She shudders.
‘When I got to the bottom, I found her lying face-down in the dirt. I knew she was dead. I screamed. I was so frightened. I didn’t know what to do, but I heard something in the woods, rustling noises, coming closer, and I panicked, thinking someone might’ve seen me. I ran away.’
McIvor, thinks Ben, remembering the man’s insistence that he’d heard a woman’s scream, piecing together the details, the man’s strange, reverential care over the body he’d found there, Sarah linked in his disturbed mind to Gemma’s death all those years ago.
‘I ran all the way home. I was so frightened, in such a blind panic, that I darted out in front of a car as I crossed Sally in the Wood. It almost hit me. It was only when I got into bed that I realised Sarah’s phone was still at the folly. It had every message on it. Every last piece of evidence about what she’d done. I thought when you turned up at the house that first afternoon that you’d have pieced it all together, that you’d come to arrest me. It was only when I heard about the words on her skin and the mask you’d found on her face that I got really scared. I’d never do anything sick like that. You have to believe me.’
‘I do believe you, Olivia. We know you didn’t do those things. We know everything now. I just need you to put the knife down and everything will be OK.’
A look of relief crosses her face, a softening in her eyes, a slight relaxation of her arm against Ellie’s body. Yes, he thinks, and for a split second he believes it will be all right, that she will let go of Ellie, until Rachel’s panicked voice rises up from below. ‘Ben,’ she calls, her voice desperate. ‘He’s stopped breathing.’
A sob leaves Olivia’s lips. ‘Don’t let him die,’ she implores. ‘I love him.’ She glances down into the clearing below, and Ben sees the pain and anger rising again on her face. ‘Not that he loves me. He wants her,’ she spits. ‘I’ve been watching them. Together at his house. A cosy dinner for two. Bet you didn’t know that, did you?’ she adds, shaking Ellie, casting an angry glance at Ben. ‘He wants her, not me, and there’s nothing I can do about it.’
Ellie throws Ben an imploring look. He can see the silver edge of the blade pressing against her skin, the beads of blood where the pressure is intensifying. He screws his hands into fists. ‘Help will be here soon, Olivia. Edward will be OK,’ he lies. ‘No one else needs to get hurt.’
He can see it in her face, the hesitation as she teeters between two choices, the shift as she decides.
‘No!’ he shouts, but it’s too late.
In one fluid motion she shoves Ellie away and turns to face the drop.
Ben lunges for her.
Olivia seems to balance for a split second, precarious at the edge, before she steps out into the air.
He dives forward and catches her arm, feels her pulling him over, his body slipping on the rough wooden boards, gravity threatening to drag him over the ledge with her. He groans, his arm nearly wrenched from its socket as he takes the full weight of Olivia and holds her over the void.
Olivia screams, a cry of fear and anguish, but he doesn’t let go and then Ellie is there, beside him, dropping to her stomach, reaching down for Olivia’s other hand. ‘Don’t let go, Dad,’ she says, and they don’t, slowly hauling the girl up until all three of them are lying on the platform, gasping and panting, tears streaming from eyes. Ben holds a sobbing Olivia tightly in his arms, part restraint, part comfort, as Ellie clings to her dad, the three of them locked together safely, until the sound of voices and the static crackle of police radios echoes through the mist, breaking the silence of the folly.