Mo Hayder - Poppet

‘Yes, but what do you think you saw?’

‘Nothing. Nothing at all – I just—’

‘Just?’

She swings her legs out of bed, grabs a pillow to hold in front of her naked body, and goes to the window. AJ gets out and comes to stand next to her, looking over her shoulder at the garden. The ground is frosty – and a clear dark slash extends from the treeline to about halfway down the garden. Exactly as if someone has walked into the garden, stopped to look up at the bedroom window, then turned and gone back the way they’ve come.

He snatches up his T-shirt and jeans and begins pulling them on.

‘What’re you doing?’

‘Someone’s out there.’

‘No – there’s no one there. I dreamt it.’ She sounds panicked. She is shaking, bewildered. ‘AJ – don’t go outside – please don’t.’

‘Have you got a torch?’

‘Please. I’m scared now.’

‘Have you got a torch?’

‘Oh God.’ Moving clumsily, she goes to a chest of drawers and rummages through, dropping things in her hurry. She pulls out a torch. It’s big and reassuringly heavy. He weighs it steadily in both hands.

‘That’ll do.’

He goes down the stairs. She comes trotting behind him, pulling on a kimono. ‘There’s no one there – there can’t be, please stay in here with me.’

The back door is closed and when he tries it he finds it’s unlocked.

‘Shit,’ she hisses, tying the belt of the kimono. ‘I forget to lock it – I never think about it. This is such a safe area.’ She cranes her neck to see past him into the garden. ‘Don’t go out – please. Don’t leave me.’

‘Put some shoes on.’

She obeys, jamming her feet into wellingtons. He pulls on his shoes – no socks – and together they step outside, closing the door behind them with a soft click.

It’s very quiet. Distant traffic sounds from the town float over the roof from behind them, but from the direction of the garden is nothing but the slight rustle of wind in the branches. They stand on the doorstep, listening to the night, hardly breathing. Overhead a security light has come on, but it isn’t strong enough to reach the front of the garden.

AJ switches on the torch. It’s got a strong beam that illuminates the trees down there.

‘There’s no fence,’ Melanie whispers. ‘The builders walked off site – never finished the garden.’

Nothing in the trees is moving – there’s no eye gleam, nothing suspicious. AJ runs the beam into the grass. He takes a few steps into the garden – the frosty ground crunches underfoot. He stops at the place the dark slash from the woods finishes and shines the torch at his feet. Nothing. He’s not a tracker – some Navajo or scout – he’s only pretending to know what he’s looking for. A ghostly blur on his imagination – a nightgown and a patter of small feet. More likely an animal. He thinks about the muntjac that wander from the forests through Patience’s lettuce rows. Better to fix that in his thoughts than anything else.

‘Anyone there?’ he calls into the trees. ‘Something you want?’

Silence.

‘Let’s go inside,’ Melanie hisses. She’s trembling now. ‘I want to go back in.’

AJ stands a few minutes more – trying to put some width into his silhouette. It’s probably nothing, but if there is someone wandering around in the trees he wants them to know there’s a man here. But there’s still no sound. Eventually he switches off the torch and silently re-enters the house. Melanie locks and bolts the door. They check all the windows, then, shivering and cold, they go back to bed.

They lie together trying to get warm, but Melanie is strange. She turns away from him and although she is silent he knows, without looking at her, that she’s wide awake, not likely to go to sleep. ‘Hey,’ he whispers. ‘What did you see? What did you think it was?’

She shakes her head. ‘I didn’t see anything. I was dreaming.’

‘What did you dream?’

‘I don’t even remember now. Something – stupid.’

They lapse into silence. A long time passes and AJ is just falling off to sleep again when Melanie says suddenly, ‘AJ?’

‘Mmmmm?’

‘Do you believe that if you worry about something long enough you can make yourself dream about it? Or even hallucinate it?’

‘Of course. I’d say it’s very likely. What were you worrying about so much that you dreamt about it?’

She shrugs. ‘I don’t know – can’t remember.’ She gives a big fake yawn. ‘Night night, AJ. Night night.’

FLEA GETS TO bed at two but doesn’t sleep until four. She leaves the TV on for company, playing silently in the corner. It’s a bad night; she turns and fidgets and cannot get comfortable. From time to time she half wakes – thinking someone has walked into the room. Sometimes it’s her parents, sometimes it’s Jack Caffery. Once she sits up straight and sees, reflected in the TV screen, a skull – half woman, half horse, the teeth long in the front, gums drawn up. Her hair is blonde and her eye sockets are empty.

Misty? she says.

Yeah, hi, what? she says. Have you got a couple of wraps for me, or is that too much to ask? And why did you put me there? They’ll find me – he’ll find me if you don’t do it for him .

Flea reaches out her hand, but the face dissolves and she’s lying on her bed, her heart carumph-carumphing along in her chest. She stares at the TV, still working away in silence. Fake tans and strutting, angry women in big heels. A woman appears, perched, solemn-faced, on a blue sofa. Short skirt, tanned knees together, turned demurely to face the presenter, who has adopted a serious, sympathetic expression. Flea fumbles for the remote. Turns the volume up.

‘… someone must know something,’ says Jacqui Kitson. ‘Someone must know where she is …’

Flea hits the off button. The TV whines and dies. She rests her elbows on her knees, uses her thumbs to massage her temples. Did last night really happen? Really and truly? Jack says he saw her at the quarry. It has to be true. There’s no other way he could have known.

Outside the window the breaking sun creeps up the long scrape of the valley. The lights of the city of Bath wink out one by one. The city is slowly raising itself out of the monochrome mist. She drags herself out of bed, pads to the bathroom, along the corridor with its wonky floors. On the left is the room where she stores the cardboard boxes that have been taped down. This straggly old house is home – the place she grew up. Mum and Dad are dead – a scuba-diving accident years ago – and the house is so empty without them. A shell. Recently she’s finally got round to packing away their belongings. All part of her healing process – a kind of fartlekking for the spirit. The way she can go on flying.

She cleans her teeth, splashes her face and gets straight into her running gear, sitting on the edge of the bath to lace the trainers. She can’t do what Caffery wants – because it means opening boxed thoughts that have been packed away as neatly as the crates in the other room – stored in the dark edges of her memory. She’s got to keep herself together. If she thinks about it, or lets it in, it’s going to cut her down at the knees. Reduce her to nothing. And that will do no one any good. Not her, not Caffery. Not Jacqui Kitson.

She jumps up, trots fiercely down the stairs.

You can put things back in a box. Yes, from time to time they might pop out and wriggle, but you can make them go back if you try hard enough. The idea is to keep moving. Don’t look down. She gets her running jacket and her keys from the hook. Opens the door to the freezing mist.