The first thing I was aware of was the pain in my head. It was unlike any headache I’d ever had before. I felt as if my eye socket had been crushed. Even in my half consciousness, I knew something was badly wrong. I felt sick with the pain and there was a foul taste in my mouth. Vomit mixed with blood. My head spinning, I opened my eyes, but it was so dark, I couldn’t figure out where I was.
Except I knew he was beside me. I could hear his breathing. Smell him. We were still in his car, but we weren’t moving. I tried to orientate myself but wherever we were, there were no streetlights, no sound of passing traffic. We were alone. But as my eyes adjusted I could see we weren’t in the car park at Ness Woods any more.
‘You’ve been out a while,’ Michael said. ‘I was starting to wonder if I’d hit your head too hard before.’
There was a flare as a match was struck and he lit a cigarette. From the brief glow of the flame I could see we were surrounded by buildings.
‘Do you not recognise it?’ Michael asked, blowing smoke in my direction.
The acrid smell of it made me choke. I needed to run. I needed to get my bearings. I slid my left hand to the door handle and pulled at it, but the door wouldn’t open.
He tutted. ‘Child lock,’ was all he said.
‘Please,’ I said, my mouth parched. It was still so warm even though it was dark. There wasn’t a breath of air in the car. ‘Please, just let me go, Michael. I’ve the girls to get home to. They need me.’
He shook his head. ‘Don’t you know where you are?’
I could see shadows, shapes emerging in the darkness. It was starting to look familiar.
Michael flicked on the headlights of the car for just a few seconds. Long enough for me to see exactly where we were and to know that there’d be no one within hearing distance. Set back from the road, the abandoned school site at St Catherine’s – where Clare, Julie and I had been pupils – had long been boarded up, the grounds left to rot and let nature reclaim while decisions were being made about a new purpose. It had been at least ten years since any pupils had walked through these corridors.
A hotchpotch of buildings of different ages, different designs, now silent and empty of the 1,200 girls who used to walk the corridors daily between lessons. It had been an impressive site in its day, sitting proudly on the banks of the Foyle, but now it felt claustrophobic, creepy, isolated.
‘Why?’ I asked him.
‘You’ll find out,’ was all he said, getting out of his car door and walking round to me.
I didn’t know what to do. Should I refuse to move, force him to pull me out of the car kicking and screaming? Would anyone hear my screaming, anyway? Would it use up whatever energy I had left? Should I try to negotiate with him?
Surely what I’d seen during our time together hadn’t been an act? It couldn’t have been. Not all the time, anyway. He’d been so tender. So caring. The long chats we’d shared over coffee. The flowers he’d sent. How tenderly we’d made love that first time. The beautiful words he’d written each week for class. I couldn’t think and my head still hurt.
The touch of his hand on the bare skin of my arm made me wince. It was still sore, more than likely bruised by his earlier violence. He didn’t respond to my yelp of pain, simply told me to get out of the car. I felt the sting of broken glass on the soles of my bare feet as I stood up. I tried to move, to hop away from the glass, but I couldn’t see the ground to see where was clear.
‘Move!’ Michael sneered.
‘There’s glass,’ I muttered, feeling the soles of my feet become wet with blood.
He didn’t speak but pushed me ahead of him, down the covered walkway to the door of what we’d always called the ‘Middle Building’. Though the doors were locked and boarded-up, I could see that someone had chipped away at the wooden boarding, smashed the glass within.
Michael slid his hand through the jagged hole in the door and pulled it open, pushing me in and onto the cold tiles of the floor. If it had been dark outside, inside it was darker. No hint of any light, no glow from the moon, all windows covered, electricity long since switched off. I could hear the constant drip of water, felt dust and grit on the floor, now mixing with my shredded foot. Suddenly a bright light, a torch, was shining directly into my eyes. It disorientated me further.
‘Up,’ Michael said, gesturing towards stairs on my right-hand side.
I remembered my form class, my old geography classroom. I remembered climbing these stairs with a schoolbag filled to bursting with textbooks. The scent of our damp coats in the air. The call of a prefect to stay on the left-hand side – ‘Single file, girls!’
We climbed until we reached the second, and top, floor. He seemed to know where he was going, know exactly what he was doing, and that frightened me. This had all been planned. For how long? And why? The why still made no sense to me.
‘Please,’ I begged again as he pushed me further down the corridor. ‘Why are you doing this? Just let me go, Michael. I won’t tell anyone it was you. I won’t say a word. I’ll do what you want. I’ll run away with you.’
He didn’t speak, just pushed me forwards.
Opening the door of a classroom on the left-hand side, he pushed me inside. With the gentle light of the torch I could see posters, classwork still pinned to some of the walls. The blackboard, with obscenities scrawled along it. A few chairs, lying on their sides. Discarded drinks cans and beer bottles. A mouldy and pervasive smell filled the air, only made worse by the lack of any ventilation.
He walked across the classroom to the door of the small storeroom before waving his torch in the same direction.
‘Get in!’ he said.
‘No!’ I shook my head.
‘Don’t be so stupid,’ he said as if he were talking to a child. As if he were asking me to try something fun and I was being stubborn. ‘Get in,’ he snarled.
I hesitated before he grabbed my arm and pushed me in, my ribs colliding with a wooden shelf as I hit the back of the storeroom. I barely had time to turn around to look at him, when he closed the door and I could hear him move furniture around.
‘I’ll be back later,’ he said through the door.
‘Michael, please!’ I begged, thumping on the door as hard as I could. ‘Don’t leave me here!’
He didn’t respond, but I heard the sound of his footsteps moving further and further away until there was silence again. Silence and utter blackness.
I slumped to the ground, pulled my knees up to my chest. My head ached, my arm, too. My foot felt as though it were on fire. But aside from the physical pain, my God! I was scared. So incredibly terrified. Terrified and angry for putting myself in this position.
I had no idea what time it was. Were the police looking for me? Surely they’d have traced my car, for what good it would do? I thought of Beth and Paul. How I’d betrayed them by going to meet Michael in the first place. How I’d been so stupid. So reckless.
I cried when I thought of Molly. I’d promised her I wouldn’t leave her. I’d promised her the bad man wouldn’t get me. That I’d be there for her. She was only three. A baby. She must be so confused and scared right now. I cried more when it hit me over and over again that there was no chance I was getting out of this alive.
I thought of all of Ronan’s words, how he’d gone to identify Clare. Who would have the grim task of identifying my body? What kind of state would Michael leave me in for them to identify, or would he leave me here to rot in this building? They might never find me. Or would my body end up like Clare’s, locked in a fridge in a coroner’s, miles from home? Would my family have to sit in front of the media and plead for my killer to come forward?
Just one week ago, Michael had shown Clare no mercy. If he’d been the man she was seeing, he’d wooed her, too. At the same time as he was wooing me. He’d allowed her to fall in love with him, at the same time as he was telling me he was falling in love with me. Made her think she had a future with him, only to betray her in the most brutal way.
How had I even considered for one second running away with this man? I’d been so very, very stupid. My baby girl was so young that in a few years she wouldn’t even remember who I was, how I’d loved her. Would she ever understand why any of this had happened? Would I? And if, by some miracle, I came out of this alive, would any of them ever forgive me?
The putrid smell, as if the very walls were sweating in this heat, filled my nostrils. I was sure I could hear the sound of something scurrying in this enclosed space with me. I was afraid to move. I could barely breathe; my chest was so tight I was sure I’d suffocate in this space. I covered my ears to try to drown out the sound of the scurrying, the dripping of water, but I couldn’t drown out the thumping of my heart.