‘Colleen!’ Ella called after me.
‘Press the alarm. Get a nurse to stay with you.’ My voice was shaking. ‘Tell them Jake didn’t do it. That whoever it was could be in the hospital. I’m going to get the Gardaí.’
I left the room, my head spinning, Ella crying out after me to wait.
I passed a coffee shop – shutters down, too early to open. ‘Stupid, stupid,’ I muttered as I hurried along the hospital corridor, the plimsolls flapping the vinyl floor.
Jake saved my life. How the hell had he known where I was? And who the hell had brought Ella to the farmhouse?
Hearing footsteps behind me, I looked back and caught my breath. It was only a doctor. He slipped past me like a ghost, head down.
I was jittery, my senses heightened through lack of sleep and shock. I paused for a moment, waiting for my heartbeat to slow, but it kept on thumping. If Ella was right, they’d arrested the wrong man and Jake was innocent – of that, at least. And whoever had locked Ella and me in that cellar – whoever had set it alight and left us to die – was still out there.
A woman looked up from the hospital reception desk. I must have looked peculiar in the filthy dress, and flapping shoes. ‘Are you OK?’ she called. ‘Let me fetch someone to help.’
I ignored her, my mind racing. Who would have had a photograph of me as a teenager, and that awful one of me stark naked in the guesthouse?
The realisation slammed into me like a punch. ‘Christ!’
The automatic doors shuddered open and I plunged through them, the cold morning air hitting my cheeks. I leaned against the wall, and buried my head in my hands. ‘No!’ I cried, shaking my head, not wanting to believe it, even though I knew it was true. ‘It was Gabriel.’
*
Gabriel had pushed me to take drugs all those years ago, promising I would feel amazing. ‘You’ll never cry again,’ he’d promised. ‘They’ll take away your memories of Bryony – you’ll forget all about her.’
And I had, for a time.
Gabriel dealt in the big stuff, but I hadn’t cared. He manipulated me, and I let it happen. I loved the risks we took, the stupid reckless things that made me feel I was leaving myself behind, no longer Colleen, or Bryony’s big sister.
Gabriel had been at the farmhouse the first time I almost died. His grandfather had passed away a month before and left him the old place. We’d driven there, already high, planning to stay for a bit. Gabriel had wanted us to lie low – said the police were after him.
That night he’d looked at me differently. It was as though the loss of his grandfather had made him see me properly for the first time. He said he loved me, loved the way I couldn’t give a shit whether I lived or died.
At the time, I hadn’t.
When I overdosed he panicked. He called an ambulance then fled, and I never heard from him again.
After a stint in hospital, I lived on the streets of Dublin. That’s where Jake found me. He offered to buy me coffee and we ended up talking for ages.
He told me he’d left America after the death of his mother, and was hoping to reconnect with his father. I didn’t say much, but listening to him as I sipped my strong, sweet coffee had felt good. He was older than me, attractive, but that wasn’t what drew me in. It was how kind and supportive he was, a good listener. I felt safe being close to him. I was ready for something different. I needed him.
He was a surgeon, he said, in a private hospital. He liked saving people.
He saved me. Then almost destroyed me.
But he didn’t lock me in that basement and try to kill me. Gabriel did.
*
There was no sign of the Gardaí, so I crossed the road into the car park. Perhaps they’d parked up behind the hedge. As I walked, my mind flashed back to the half-empty bottle of black hair dye I’d left at the guesthouse. Had Gabriel used it to colour his hair, so he looked like Jake?
I reached the overgrown hedge, and peered round. The area was deserted, and I suddenly felt sick and dizzy. I doubled over, hands on my knees, and coughed until I retched. Everything was catching up with me. I felt scraped out. Empty.
The early morning silence settled around me, and the rising sun had turned the sky apricot. I straightened and wiped my mouth, noticing a doctor and nurse walking into the hospital. I was wasting my time here. There was still no sign of the Gardaí.
As I turned to head back, a car that had been parked some distance away drew up beside me, its silvery colour half obscured by mud. A man jumped out of the driver’s seat, and before I could react he’d slung an arm around my shoulder, and pressed something sharp against my back. ‘Don’t scream,’ a low voice hissed in my ear.
Despite the bulky fleece, and baseball cap pulled low, I knew who it was.
‘Get off me,’ I yelled.
‘Shut up, bitch.’ He grabbed my throat, and I felt my necklace break and slip away. ‘Get in the car.’ He moved the hand with the knife to ease open the back door.
Twisting my head, I looked at his bright blue eyes – eyes that had attracted me years ago, when I was a teenager, still mourning the death of my sister.
His arm tightened across my throat like a vice, and he yanked me close to his body, his breath hot on my cheek. He stank of petrol and sour sweat and my stomach heaved.
‘I heard on the news how you and your sister survived. How about that?’ He barked out a laugh. ‘A sister who survived! Things are looking up.’
I tried to kick him, but he had me pinned to his body, the knife close to my throat now. My eyes darted about. This is a hospital, for Christ’s sake, in broad daylight. Where is everybody?
With a sudden, deft movement, he manoeuvred me into the back seat of the car and jumped in beside me, slamming and locking the doors. He removed the baseball cap and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. ‘I hope you liked the wreath, and my messages, Colleen.’ His breath was foul.
‘But the texts were from Jake.’
He shook his head. ‘When I dropped off the lilies, I saw your phone charging. No password, you silly cow. An unexpected bonus.’ He sounded almost proud. ‘I deleted Jake’s number and added mine next to his name.’ He paused. ‘My mother would have been proud of my ingenuity.’ Now he was being sarcastic. I remembered his parents had disowned him when he flunked his chemistry degree. He didn’t miss them, he’d said. But he’d loved his grandfather. ‘The only person who cares about me,’ he’d once told me.
‘It didn’t take long to work out which hospital you were at.’ He trailed the blade of his knife down my cheek.
I flinched away, blood pounding in my ears. His chin was thick with bristle, his pupils dilated. I wondered if he’d taken something. The thought that I’d had sex with him a week ago made me want to vomit.
‘I came here to find you, and you served yourself up on a plate,’ he said.
‘Why are you doing this?’
He seemed astonished. ‘You knew I loved you, Colleen. I told you last week how I never got over losing you.’ Had he? I couldn’t remember.
‘I nearly died of an overdose in that farmhouse, or have you forgotten?’
He replaced the baseball cap and tugged it down. ‘I spent ages looking for you after I got out of prison,’ he said, as if I hadn’t spoken.
‘You were in prison?’
‘Over fourteen years for dealing, and you didn’t once wonder where I was?’
Thinking back, it must have made the news, but I’d been in no fit state to know. ‘It took me a long time to recover. I didn’t—’
‘It took me a long time to track you down,’ he cut in. ‘I guess I didn’t have you pegged as a good little housewife.’ He smirked. ‘That husband of yours barely let you out of his sight, did he?’
‘You know about Jake?’ And then it hit me. ‘You were following me.’
‘Biding my time, Colleen. And it was worth the wait, because you suddenly took off to Sligo alone. Imagine how that felt.’ He bared his teeth in a grin. ‘In the end, it was almost too easy.’
‘Gabriel, please.’
‘You agreed to have a drink with me, you slept with me, you cried on my shoulder like a baby about your shitty husband. You told me you needed me, Colleen.’
I didn’t. I wouldn’t have. Did I? A shiver travelled up my spine. ‘I don’t remember.’ My eyes trawled the car park. Someone had to turn up soon. Just keep him talking. ‘I’d had too much to drink.’ I struggled to keep my voice steady. ‘It was a mistake. I didn’t want to go down that route again. I’ve been sober for years.’
‘You wanted it, Colleen.’
‘No. No, I didn’t.’ My voice quavered.
‘You betrayed me.’ He ran his hand down my arm and across my thigh. My skin crawled. I wanted to launch myself at him, but knew he would overpower me.
I couldn’t believe now how excited I’d been to see him in Sligo in a coffee shop, where I’d been sitting alone and scared, wondering if I’d done the right thing by leaving Jake. It hadn’t occurred to me how much of a coincidence it was to bump into Gabriel, after so long. He’d seemed different at first, more mature, said he’d got a good job and had been working in England since he last saw me. All lies. He was a good liar.
Maybe I’d hoped, as we drank espressos, that somewhere deep down I still loved him. But I hadn’t. I’d left that eighteen-year-old girl behind me.
When I told Gabriel how awful things had been with Jake, he convinced me to go somewhere for a drink for old time’s sake, and one drink had led to another. He’d made sure of that. He’d always been persuasive. I wondered now if he’d spiked my drinks, and that was why I couldn’t remember anything else about that night.
‘I didn’t know where you’d gone, Colleen.’ His voice had taken on a pathetic tone. ‘You left me in that room and brushed me off with a text. You didn’t care. I only had the film of you and me.’ He wet his lips with his tongue. ‘Thank God I had the film.’ He gave a humourless laugh, and I remembered the laptop’s blinking light at the guesthouse, and how I’d assumed it was charging. ‘Did you like the photo of us, Colleen? It’s a still from the movie.’
Jesus. ‘You’re sick, Gabriel. You need help.’
Without warning, he rammed me hard and I began to scream.
‘Shut up!’ The flat of his hand collided with the side of my face, before he pressed his fingers deep into the flesh of my arms. ‘Shut up,’ he said, softer, and I fell silent.
My ear throbbed with pain. ‘You’re hurting me.’
‘You deserve it.’ He stroked my cheek as I sobbed, before slamming my head against the door. The pain was intense and I fought a slide into unconsciousness. He lowered me onto my back. I felt the prick of a needle in my arm, before he covered me with a blanket and launched himself into the front, starting the engine.
I touched my head, and my fingers came away bloody. I tried to ease myself up, heart banging against my chest, but the pain in my skull forced me back, and the car sped away.