Thursday 00:15
Richard locks the car doors as we drive in the darkness.
“Why did you do that?” I ask, trying not to sound as scared as I feel.
“Don’t know. Instinct? Driving through these woods late at night tends to creep me out. Doesn’t it do the same to you?”
I don’t answer at first.
“You said you knew somewhere we could stay—”
“Yes, I think trying to find another hotel when it is already so late is going to be impossible. My wife’s parents used to own a house not that far from here; ten minutes tops. They died a couple of years ago, and it’s the kind of place an estate agent would say was ‘in need of modernization,’ but there are beds and clean sheets and I have a spare key. Want to risk it?”
It doesn’t feel like I have many options. I don’t want to take him to my mother’s house, and it seems a little selfish to insist we drive all the way back to London now; by the time we got there it would almost be time to come back.
“Okay,” I say, too tired to form a more elaborate response.
He switches on the seat warmers, turns on the radio and, hard as I try not to, I find my eyes closing for a little while.
I should have learned to be more careful where and when I fall asleep.
One of the last things that I remember clearly about my sixteenth birthday party was Jack taking a photo of the five of us. The rest of the night has always been a bit of a blur at best.
We drank a lot more after he left, I remember that much. Then we all did one another’s hair and makeup. Zoe had brought some of her latest fashion creations that she had made on her sewing machine for us to try on: skimpy dresses, low-cut tops, and skirts so short they looked more like belts.
Rachel went to work on Catherine Kelly’s face, as though it were a project in art class. She applied a thick layer of makeup, filled in Catherine’s bald eyebrows with a pencil, then stuck false black lashes to the blond ones around her eyes. Zoe lent her a dress, and Helen did her hair—squirting it with the water bottle my mum used for ironing, before blow-drying her whitish-blond curls straight. She said there wasn’t time to comb out all the knots, so cut them off instead. I remember random little clumps of hair discarded on the carpet.
The transformation was quite remarkable, and Catherine was almost unrecognizable when they were finished with her. Lives are like light bulbs; they’re not as hard to change as people think. Catherine looked beautiful, and she knew it too, beaming at her own reflection when the girls let her look in the mirror.
“Try to smile with your mouth closed. Nobody wants to see those ugly braces,” said Rachel. Catherine did as she was told. “Look at that pretty little mouth now. The boys are going to love you,” Rachel added, patting her on the head as though she were a pet.
Her new smile looked uncomfortable to wear.
I didn’t know what boys Rachel was talking about—we never hung around with any—but I think I must have looked jealous, because she offered to paint my nails for me then. She held my hands and wrote letters on my fingernails with red varnish, spelling the word GOOD on one hand, and GIRL on the other.
I’d already drunk far more alcohol than I was used to—the room had started to spin—but Rachel, Helen, and Zoe said they were going to the kitchen to find more, leaving Catherine and me alone in the living room.
“Are you glad you came?” I asked her.
She blinked at me, her new false eyelashes exaggerating the action, and once again I marveled at how different she looked. Then she told me something I had never known about her; I’m not sure anybody did. Perhaps because they never asked. She’d clearly had too much to drink too, and her sentences were interspersed with hiccups.
“I used to have an older sister, we did makeovers like this together, but she died. My dad had a little boat and we would go with him sometimes at weekends. That’s where it happened. But before then, sailing was fun and he taught us how to make lots of knots. Look, I’ll show you.” She pulled the laces out of her sneakers with a sudden and strange enthusiasm. “This is a square knot … this is a figure eight…” Her fingers were so fast, tying, twisting, and looping the laces together before holding them up each time. I watched with a sense of bewildered fascination. “This is a sliding knot—just like the one you’ve used in the friendship bracelets—and this is a bowline, which I like better because you can control how far the loop constricts … see?”
I stared at the final knot.
“How did she die? Your sister?”
I doubt I would have asked the question so bluntly if I hadn’t been so drunk. Catherine untied the laces and started to thread them back in her shoes.
“People always presume that she drowned because it happened when we were sailing, but an asthma attack killed my sister. She forgot her inhaler. My dad blamed himself and my parents have been really sad since she died, really sad. He lost his job, sold the boat, and our house isn’t a very nice place now. I think maybe that’s why nobody talks to me or invites me to anything anymore. Until you did. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” I whispered.
“Can I hold her?” she asked.
I stared down at the gray kitten asleep on my lap. Kit Kat. I was so drunk I had forgotten she was there.
“Of course,” I said, lifting her up and handing her to Catherine.
She held the cat in her arms and rocked it, as though it were a baby.
“Come on, it’s time to go,” said Rachel, appearing in the doorway wearing her coat.
It was one I hadn’t seen before, made of fur, which I guessed was fake. I looked at the clock and saw that it was almost eleven.
“Go where?” I asked.
She pointed at me, smiled, and started to sing.
“If you go down to the woods tonight, you’re sure of a big surprise.”
“I don’t want to go to the woods. It’s late and cold and—”
Rachel ignored me, and pointed at Catherine instead while singing the next line.
“If you go down to the woods tonight, you’d better go in disguise!”
Zoe and Helen appeared behind her and all three started laughing.
The woods never scared me during the day, but at night they seemed to change into something different when I was a child. Somewhere dark and dangerous, where bad things might happen. It was meant to be my birthday party, but it was clear that what I did or didn’t want to do was irrelevant. Rachel took my mother’s flashlight off the hook by the door in the kitchen, and led the way. There was a path from my backyard that led straight into the woods, and she knew it as well as I did by then.
I remember the sound of us all walking over a carpet of dead leaves.
I remember the cold.
And I remember seeing four men sitting on makeshift log benches, in what I thought was our secret, private place. They had lit a small fire in the middle, surrounded by white stones. It flickered and hissed and spat.
They all smiled when they saw us.
I didn’t recognize the men. Even after what happened, I could never describe their faces. In my broken memory of that night they all looked the same: skinny with brown hair, four sets of small black eyes with dark shadows beneath them. They were much older than us, late twenties or early thirties maybe, and they were drinking beer. Lots of it. There was a pattern of crushed cans around their feet.
I was scared at first, but Rachel clearly knew them, as did Helen and Zoe. They went straight over and sat on the men’s laps.
“This is Anna. She’s new and she’s sweet sixteen at last. Aren’t you going to wish her a happy birthday?” Rachel said.
“Happy birthday, Anna,” the men replied with strange smiles on their faces.
They seemed to be amused by something.
Rachel draped an arm around my shoulder, and I noticed her fur coat again. Perhaps because I was so cold in the skimpy dress she had made me wear.
“Do you like my new coat?” she asked. “Zoe made it for me.”
Zoe was always making things for her friends: pencil cases, cushion covers, tiny little dresses. She bought the most interesting material she could find in markets, and borrowed her mother’s sewing machine to make her creations, but I’d never seen anything as elaborate as a coat before. It looked so real. I couldn’t stop staring at the fur.
“I’ll let you borrow it if you come and say hello to our new friends,” Rachel said. “They’ve been waiting to meet you.”
She took me by the hand, and led me to the nearest man. Then she told me to sit down on the fallen tree trunk next to him. I didn’t want to, but I didn’t want to be rude either. So I sat down next to the stranger, who stank of body odor and beer. When I started to shiver, he rubbed my bare leg with his big ugly hand, saying it would help me warm up.
Catherine Kelly sat down next to me, and looked as frightened as I felt.
A bottle of vodka was passed around, along with strange-smelling cigarettes. More logs were added to the fire, and dance music was played. Which seemed odd to me, given nobody was dancing. I thought the men must have owed Rachel some money, because they all took out their wallets and gave her a handful of notes. I thought it might have been for the pills she took out of her purse, but that wasn’t all the men were paying for.
“Take one,” she said, coming over to Catherine and me.
There were two little white shapes in her hand. They looked like mints, but I knew enough to know that they weren’t.
“No, thank you,” said Catherine, and I shook my head too.
“You do want to be in our gang, don’t you, Catherine?” Rachel asked.
The girl stared up at her. Then she took the pill, washing it down with vodka straight from the bottle.
“And you don’t want to be the new odd one out, do you?” Rachel asked, looking at me.
I took one too. She smiled, then kissed me in front of all the others. She stuck her tongue deep inside my mouth, and afterward I wondered whether it was just to make sure I’d swallowed the pill. The men clapped and cheered while they watched.
Rachel took off my sneakers then.
I was too drunk and cold and stupid to ask what she was doing.
She tied the laces together, then hurled them up into a tree. My shoes dangled from a branch that was too high to reach, and everyone laughed again. I didn’t like how they were looking at me.
“Now you can’t run away from us,” Rachel whispered in my ear.
She wanted to dance, so we did, until I felt so dizzy I fell to the ground. Even when I was lying motionless on the forest floor, the woods still seemed to spin around me. I lay in the dirt and dead leaves and struggled to keep my eyes open. I was so tired all of a sudden. She pulled the top of my dress down and pushed the bottom of it up; then I remember the sound of her disposable camera.
Clickety-click. Clickety-click. Clickety-click.
The next thing I remember was her kissing and stroking me, with everyone watching. They were all smiling at us, even Catherine Kelly, and I felt strangely happy too all of a sudden. So much so that I didn’t mind. When I next opened my eyes, I saw Helen on her knees in front of one of the men. He had a fistful of her shiny black hair. Another man had his hand up Zoe’s skirt, and I noticed that she was naked from the waist up. Catherine appeared to have passed out on the forest floor, and one of the men was pulling her clothes off.
Rachel put her hand on my cheek, turning my head to face her. She kissed me again, sliding her fingers between my legs. It felt so nice, but then other hands started touching me, rough ones, replacing hers. When I opened my eyes again, the man I had been sitting next to was squeezing my breast with one hand, while rubbing himself with his other. I heard someone cry. I thought it was me, but then I saw Catherine, completely naked and facedown in the dirt. One man was on top of her, another appeared to be waiting.
“Come on, don’t be a cock tease, at least suck it or something,” said the man who was touching me. “We’ve all paid good money to celebrate your birthday with you. Be a good girl like it says on your nails.”
I looked down at my fingers, where Rachel had painted the words.
“Get off of me,” I whispered.
“You wanted to be part of our gang, well this is what our gang does,” Rachel said, trying to hold me down. “How do you think I paid for your new clothes and the highlights in your hair? Grow up, Anna. It’s just sex. It will hurt the first time, but then you’ll be fine, I promise. Try to relax.”
I didn’t want to relax. Fear flooded through my entire body as he tried to push my legs apart. Then anger. I slapped him, pushed her, and struggled to my feet.
“Get the fuck off of me,” I screamed at them both.
“I want my money back,” he said to Rachel.
“Just use the other one, I’ll give you a discount,” she replied, looking over at Catherine.
I watched as he walked over to join the other men. They were no longer forming an orderly line.
I know I should have tried to pull them off.
I know I should have helped her get away. It was all my fault that she was there in the first place—I invited her—but I was so scared of what was happening.
I don’t know how many of them took their turn. I watched in horror for a little while, trying to find my clothes, while Rachel took photos of them doing it.
I’m ashamed to say that I did nothing.
As soon as I found something to cover my naked body with, I ran all the way home in bare feet without looking back.
“We’re here,” says Richard.
I’m so tired, I don’t know whether I was asleep or just resting my eyes. He’s already turned the engine off, and as I stare out of the windows into the darkness, I see that we are surrounded by nothing but trees. It’s cold in the car, as though we might have been parked here for a while, and I realize I’ve no idea how late it is.
“Where are we?” I ask, taking my phone out of my bag to try to check the time.
But the battery has completely died now, and the knowledge that I am in the middle of nowhere, with no way of contacting anyone, makes me panic.
He must see the look on my face.
“My wife’s parents’ house, remember? I promise I didn’t bring you out into the woods to murder you.”
He smiles at his own joke, but I don’t. Given the stories we’ve been covering the last couple of days, it doesn’t seem at all funny to me.
“Sorry, I always did have a dodgy sense of humor and, like you, I’m crazy tired. The driveway is right there, see where I’m pointing?”
“Whose car is that parked outside?” I ask, turning to face him.
“It’s my wife’s.”
“Your wife’s? Did you know she’d be here?”
“No, of course not. Do you think I want my wife to meet someone I used to cheat on her with? It’s late, we have to be on-air in a few hours. I don’t know what she’s doing here, I thought she’d be in London, but I’m sure she will have gone to bed already. We have two young children, remember? You won’t even see her.”
“But why would she be here?”
“I don’t know. We’ve been talking a lot about her coming down to sort through some of her parents’ things, so we can sell this dump. Maybe with Blackdown being all over the news the last couple of days, she finally decided to do it.”
“This feels a little awkward.”
“It’s really late. She doesn’t know what happened between us. Like I said, she’s probably gone up to bed already. I don’t see any lights on, do you?”
He reaches to open the car door but I still don’t move. I can’t. It feels like I’m in danger.
“I’m sorry, Richard. I know it was years ago, ancient history and all that, but I still feel really uncomfortable about the idea of meeting your wife.”
“What are you talking about? You’ve already met.”
I have one more left to go.
Finding a way to get her here, to this old house in the woods, posed a tricky challenge at first, but in the end all it took was a phone call. The solutions to difficult problems are often surprisingly simple.
I admit I’m tired now. But like my mother used to say, if you’re going to do something, you may as well do it properly. I plan to finish the job, because they all deserve to die.
Rachel Hopkins used sex to get what she wanted. When that wasn’t enough, she used other people. It started with her grooming school friends, taking semi-naked pictures of them, and selling the results to men at the local pub. The photos she sold never showed any faces. Rachel saved those for a sideline in blackmail. She earned good money and a bad reputation from both ventures, and it led to other things. When the men got bored of one girl, so did she, and moved her attention and affection to another.
Her photography started to get a little more inventive and adventurous too. Teenage girls were filled with alcohol and drugs, until they were willing to take off all their clothes, and let her take pictures of them knowingly. Eyes half closed but legs wide open. I never saw a man’s face in any of the photos I found, but sometimes I could see their hands. Grubby fingers touching, holding, scratching, pinching, and sticking themselves inside things they shouldn’t.
Rachel kept the pictures in a shoebox in her wardrobe.
That’s where I found them and I didn’t like what I saw.
You have to understand that I have witnessed some terrible things during my lifetime. Human beings are capable of inflicting unspeakable misery—on themselves as well as others—and there are so many things I wish I could unsee. Police and journalists get exposed to inhumanity every day, but those horrors aren’t a secret. They get reported so that the whole world knows the truth and justice can be served. The whole world doesn’t need to know about what happened in Blackdown all those years ago. But the people responsible must be punished.
None of the other girls were as bad as Rachel; she turned them into the worst versions of themselves. But they let her. They could have said no. There is always a choice.
They made the wrong one.