She doesn’t come the first night. I wait and I wait while the sky turns purple and gold, the twilight seeping into the dairy’s derelict corners, the broken brick walls growing blurry and indistinct, the trees beyond it darkening, thickening. The grasshoppers’ shrill chirping builds to a crescendo and somewhere behind me comes the faint sound of children calling to each other from the streets of Tyner’s Cross. The scent of the evening deepens, musky and sweet. Seven o’clock comes, then eight, the long grass whispers in a sudden breeze and I think about Edie and I think about Connor and the blood roars in my ears and still she doesn’t come.
I wait the next night, and the one after that, and then, on the fourth, as I make my way through the field, I see her: a small figure sitting on the furthest wall. Five to six, the sky still a bright clear blue, the heat still punishing. I see there’s something very wrong long before I reach her. My heart races and I quicken my pace, tramping through the grass, kicking it away from me. When I reach her she’s half-slumped, her head bowed to her chest, her eyes closed. I kneel before her and take hold of her arms. ‘Edie,’ I say, ‘Edie, are you OK?’ When she doesn’t respond I shake her, my panic rising. ‘Edie,’ I say, ‘what have you done? What have you taken? Please, Edie, wake up.’
She raises her head and slowly her eyes focus on me. ‘Heather,’ she says, and starts to laugh, a hysterical, high-pitched giggle. ‘Hiya, Heifer,’ she says and falls against me. I grip her shoulders and hold her upright, and when I look down I see a scattering of tiny needle marks along the insides of her thin arms. ‘Edie,’ I say, my eyes filling with tears, but at that moment she reels away from me, and vomits long and hard into the grass.
I stroke her back until she’s finished and when she’s finally stopped I gently lift her up and help her over to a place in the shade, and she sits obedient as a child on the grass, her back against the wall, her head on my shoulder.
‘Edie,’ I whisper. ‘You have to get away from him. You have to.’
I brace myself for her anger and denial but to my surprise she only says, very quietly, ‘I can’t.’
‘But look at you, look what he’s done to you.’
She begins to cry. We sit in silence for a while and I feel something of the old closeness between us. I savour it, closing my eyes to hold it tight. ‘Edie,’ I say after a long moment. ‘Has he … has he ever hurt you?’ I hold my breath but she remains silent. I begin to wonder if she heard me, and then I feel her head move against my shoulder as she nods. I put my arm around her and hold her to me, while white-hot rage flashes through me. I picture Connor’s face and want only to annihilate it, claw at it with my fingernails until it’s a bloody mess. I could kill him. I know that with absolute certainty. If I saw him now, I could kill him.
After a few minutes she wipes her eyes and sits up a little. ‘He doesn’t mean it,’ she says. ‘He can’t help it. Sometimes I do things, say things that make him … you don’t understand, Heather. You don’t know him. How lovely he can be. He loves me. He really loves me.’
I bite my tongue and will her to keep talking.
‘If you knew the things I know … about his childhood and stuff, the things he’s told me …’
I think about what Liam had said about Connor’s mum but then I think of Liam’s battered, broken face and I start to feel sick again. ‘I don’t care,’ I say hotly. ‘I don’t care about him. I only care about you! Look!’ I say snatching up her thin wrist, holding it up to show her the needle marks. ‘You know this is wrong. You know it is! You’ve got to stop seeing him, you’ve got to get away from him!’
‘How can I stop? How can I?’ Her voice rises. ‘He’s here, everywhere I look there he is.’ Tears pour down her cheeks as she gestures at the towers. ‘I can’t, I can’t get away from him. He’s in my head, always. There’s no way out. It goes on and on and on.’
I pull my arm away and kneel in front of her, staring at her fiercely. ‘I can stop it,’ I tell her. ‘I can make it stop. You just have to listen to what I say. You have to do what I say, and it can all be over.’
She stares at me. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘Think about how you wanted to go to art school and move to London. Think of the life you could have. You’re scared of him. I know you are. Well, aren’t you?’
Through her tears, Edie nods.
Tentatively I move closer to her. I take her in my arms and hold her, breathing in the dirty, greasy smell of her hair, feeling her thin body limp against mine. ‘I can make it all stop.’
She sniffs. ‘How?’
So I take a deep breath and I tell her. At first her eyes widen in disbelief. ‘Are you mad? No way!’
‘Listen to me,’ I say. ‘I can do it. You just have to leave it all to me. Think about it. Is there any other way? Do you want him to be doing this to you in a year’s time? In two years’ time? This is the only way out. I’ll take care of it all.’
She leans forwards, her head on her knees. ‘Oh God. Oh God oh God oh God.’
She begins to cry, great heaving sobs, and I wait. When she’s finished, she sits up, her eyes fastened upon the three towers. After a long time I finally hear her say it. ‘OK,’ she whispers. ‘OK.’
‘Good,’ I say, my heart pounding, my thoughts racing. ‘OK. Good. You need to go home now, go home and get some sleep. And then you call me. You call me when you’re ready. OK?’
She nods.
‘OK?’ I say. I grab hold of her hands and look deeply into her face. ‘I’ll be waiting.’
‘Yes,’ she says, and the expression in her eyes as she stares back at me is half terror, half hope.