She was cold. Not just cold, but freezing! She couldn’t feel her feet at all, and her fingers felt like lumps of ice as she tried to draw the bedclothes tighter. She could hear someone from far away, but she didn’t want to get up. She just wanted to snuggle down and get warm.
Vikki burrowed deeper, and felt the pain. Her arms, her legs, her head … The bed was uncomfortable, hard and lumpy. The eiderdown was stiff beneath her frozen fingers; it crackled when she moved. It felt like … canvas?
Slowly, painfully, memory returned, and she felt again the fear of being hunted. She recalled how vulnerable she’d felt, alone on the moonlit road that seemed to go on forever. And she remembered scrambling into the ditch and crouching low against the hedge each time a car went by, wishing she had the courage to ask for a lift. She remembered, too, sitting on the roadside, tears streaming down her face as she tore the scarf in half to bind her swollen feet, and forcing the shoes back on again.
Vikki couldn’t remember turning off the main road, but she must have done because her next memory was of seeing the pub and the sign with a dog on it and the blank space where there should have been a man. The Invisible Man. So, Joanna hadn’t been pulling her leg after all.
The path behind the pub was easy enough to follow through the trees, dappled as it was by moonlight, and Vikki remembered the overwhelming wave of relief she’d felt when she saw the narrow boat tied up beside the abandoned locks. But from that point on, her memory failed, and she had no recollection of coming aboard.
But there was something else tugging at her memory. Lurking there in the dark recesses of her mind; something evil, something …
Suddenly, the events of the night before came rushing back, and she cried aloud.
“I think she’s waking up.”
The cover was being pulled away. Canvas crackled. Vikki tried to cover her eyes, but her arms wouldn’t move and no matter how hard she squeezed her eyelids shut, light kept exploding inside her head.
“Oh, my God!”
Vikki didn’t recognize the voice. Didn’t want to open her eyes to see who was speaking, afraid that it would be a policewoman waiting to arrest her.
It had all been for nothing, she thought bitterly, and began to cry.
“Let’s have this tarp off her and get her inside. Put her in my bunk, but be careful.” Hands, gentle hands, moved over her body. Vikki felt herself being lifted. Was that Joanna’s voice she’d heard? Or was she dreaming?
The voices began to fade, and she could feel herself slipping away again.
“She should be in hospital.”
“You’re right,” agreed a second voice. “I’ll ring for an ambulance from the call-box outside the pub. I’ll stay there to show them the way in.”
“No! Please, not hospital. I’ll be all right.” Vikki opened her eyes
and struggled to sit up, but cool hands gently held her down, and she found herself looking up into the face of Joanna Freeborn. Vikki clutched the woman’s hand.
“Please, Joanna,” she pleaded. “I don’t want an ambulance. I’ll be all right. It’s just a few bruises.”
Joanna snorted. “Just a few bruises?” she scoffed. “You should see the size of the lump on the back of your head, for a start. Your face, your chest, your stomach … Who did this to you? What was it? Some sort of free-for-all?”
Vikki had prepared herself for the questions during her long walk from town. She eased herself into a sitting position to give herself time to collect her wits, and to avoid Joanna’s eyes as she lied to her.
“I went with this bloke,” she said. “He looked all right, but once he got me in the car, he drove out into the country and pulled off the road. Then he dragged me out of the car and started knocking me about. He was shouting at me all the while. Something about being on his patch, and he said if I came back again, he’d finish me for good.”
Vikki looked up at Joanna. “That’s the last thing I remember until I woke up in a ditch. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t go back. Then I thought of you. I’m sorry, Joanna, but I didn’t know where else to go.”
Joanna put her arm around the girl and hugged her gently. “You’re safe here with me,” she told her.
Tears welled in Vikki’s eyes. “But please, Joanna,” she whispered, “don’t make me go to hospital.”
Joanna sighed. “Very well,” she said with obvious reluctance, “but I want you to promise me that you’ll tell me if you have trouble with your eyes—double vision, blurring, anything like that. Promise?”
“I will. Honestly.”
“Hmm!” Joanna looked sceptical. Without taking her eyes off Vikki, she lifted her head and spoke to someone behind her. “I think
the first thing we need to do is strip her off, clean her up, and do what we can for those cuts and bruises,” she said.
“I’ll do it.” The voice was low and curiously melodious; the same voice Vikki had heard when she first woke up, and she was suddenly afraid. She’d never considered the possibility that someone else might be there on Joanna’s boat. “We need some Elastoplast. Do we have any?”
“I think so. I’ll see.” Joanna rose to her feet, careful to avoid spilling the bowl of steaming water the second woman carried as they manoeuvred around each other in the confines of the narrow boat. She disappeared, and the young woman set the bowl down beside the bunk and, with gentle fingers, began to undress Vikki.
“Careful, now,” she warned as Vikki tried to help. “Just lie still. I can manage. And don’t be afraid to tell me if I’m hurting you.” She smiled. Unthinking, Vikki returned the smile … and winced.
The young woman winced in sympathy and shook her head. “Lie still,” she admonished once again. “Just relax; you’re very tense.” She had a pleasant, soothing voice, and the water was lovely and warm. Vikki closed her eyes and began to drift.
The woman wasn’t much more than a girl herself. Fair-haired and slim, her features were small and regular, but her eyes were large and soft and brown and ever so slightly bulbous. Like those of a rabbit, Joanna had thought when first they’d met.
Where she had come from, Joanna didn’t know. Neither had the girl volunteered her name. She had just appeared one night when they were packing up after a show. She wore a long print dress with little if anything beneath it, and sandals. Nothing else. Her worldly possessions were contained in a rucksack that she carried by the straps rather than slung across her shoulders. That position was reserved for her guitar.
She said simply that she’d like to join them. She wouldn’t be any trouble. She’d done a little acting but she liked singing best, and
when members of the group tried to put her off, she sat cross-legged on the floor and began to play.
Her voice was thin, but there was a haunting quality about it that caught and held them. Her slender fingers caressed the strings to draw forth sounds that flowed like water from a bubbling spring. The notes grew stronger, surging like a mighty river, then faded once again to the murmur of a placid stream.
It was late and most of them had to work the following day, but for twenty minutes this thin, pale girl held them spellbound with her magic. And when the last note faded, a sigh went round the room, more eloquent than thunderous applause. The girl rose to her feet and slung the guitar over her shoulder. She didn’t speak; just stood there quietly, looking from one to the other with those enormous soft brown eyes.
“What’s your name?” It was Joanna who spoke first.
“I am whoever you say I am,” the girl replied.
“Then I shall call you Bunny. Where do you live?” The girl pointed to the rucksack and shrugged. “Then you’d better come home with me,” Joanna told her, and Bunny had been with her ever since.
Bunny never talked about herself. But she was no stranger to work. Less than a week after she came, she landed a job cleaning rooms at the Invisible Man, where Joanna worked behind the bar. And she went through the narrow boat from stern to stern, cleaning, polishing, and doing all the things Joanna had promised herself she would get around to doing one day but never did.
Joanna returned. “What do you think?” she asked in a low voice. Vikki lay with her head on one side, eyes closed, breathing regularly.
Bunny paused and eyed the girl critically. “Somebody has certainly beaten the shit out of her,” she said matter-of-factly, “but she’s young, and apart from that lump on the back of the head, I don’t think there’s any permanent damage.”
“She must have walked all the way out here, poor kid. And in
those shoes!” Joanna lifted one of Vikki’s feet. The heels were rubbed raw, and broken blisters covered much of the ball of the foot. “Funny, but I never thought I would see her again.”
“This is the girl you told me about? The one in the cells?”
“That’s right.” Joanna sighed. “She says she was beaten up because she was operating on someone else’s patch, but I don’t know. The thing I can’t understand is why she’s so terrified of going into hospital.”
“You think whoever did this might be looking for her?”
“Could be,” said Joanna slowly. “But perhaps it’s better not to ask. At least for now.”