Michael Robotham - Bleed For Me

I must be going the wrong way. I should go back. Ahead I see a police officer sitting on a chair in the corridor. He’s young - no more than a probationary constable - with blond highlights in his hair.

‘I’m looking for a payphone.’

He points back the way I came.

Glancing through an open door, I spy the same doctor that examined me earlier. He’s standing beside a bed, illuminated by a low light. Sienna looks tiny in the midst of the technology around her, like a modern-day sleeping beauty under a spell. A tube taped to her right arm snakes across the sheets and rises to a bag of fluid hanging from a chrome stand.

‘Can I talk to the doctor?’

‘Who are you?’ asks the constable.

‘I brought her in.’

The obese doctor hears my voice and motions me to enter.

‘How is she?’

‘Sedated.’

The tiredness in his voice seems to drain energy from the air. A monitor beeps softly. He checks the display.

‘She’s dehydrated and has some bruising on her legs and back but nothing explains the semi-catatonic state. There’s no sign of head injuries or internal bleeding. We’re doing a toxicological screen.’

Sienna’s nostrils barely move as she breathes and I notice the faint tracings of blood vessels on her eyelids, which seem to flicker as she dreams. It is the face of a child on the body of a woman.

Her lips are cracked and there are scratches on her cheek. Her hospital gown has fallen open along her thigh to her hip. I want to pull it down to protect her modesty.

Gazing at her arms, I notice a network of fine white scars that run along the inside of her forearms. She’s a cutter. Self-harm. Self-abuse. There is more to Sienna than meets the eye; layers that are hidden from the world. Perhaps that’s why she scratches at her surface, trying to find what lies beneath.

How much do I really know about her? She’s fourteen, pretty, with brown eyes and pale skin. She likes diet Coca-Cola, jelly cubes, scrambled eggs, Radiohead, Russell Brand, scary movies and has seen Twilight eighteen times. She’s allergic to peanuts and Simon Cowell and eats crumpets by licking the bottom where the honey leaks through.

She obsesses over boy bands, X Factor contestants and Robert Pattinson, who she wants to marry, but only after she’s travelled the world and become a famous actress.

A year ago she came to the terrace carrying a cardboard box. Her cat had caught a bird in the garden, which was still alive but could no longer fly. The tiny robin lay huddled in a corner of the box, its heart beating crazily.

‘Can’t you do something?’ she asked.

‘It’s too late,’ I told her.

Sienna rested the box on her lap and ran her finger through the soft feathers on the robin’s neck until it died. I had to unhook her fingers from the box and carry it away. By the time I came back into the house Sienna had gone. She never mentioned it again. Not a word.

I know these things because she spent so much time at our place. Sometimes it was like having a third daughter at the dinner table (and again at breakfast) because her mother worked nights and her father travelled on business and her older siblings had left home.

These are superficial details, which tell me nothing about the real person. Occasionally I have watched Sienna and thought I could recognise some secret sadness hidden from the world. It was as if she wore a mask to protect herself - the hardest kind of mask to notice because she had woven it from the most secret parts of herself.

When confronted with danger, people will normally fight or flee, but there is another less obvious reaction, which can be just as automatic. They freeze or close down, thinking and moving in slow motion. They shudder, they shake, they gasp, they gulp, but they cannot run or fight or scream. Something happened to Sienna - a violent event that has traumatised her.

The fat doctor turns from the drip stand. He has a nametag. Dr Martinez.

‘She’s not going to wake up for another six hours.’

‘What about her parents?’

‘Her mother is coming.’

‘Shouldn’t you do a rape test?’

‘I need her permission.’

‘You could test her clothes.’

He glances at the constable in the corridor. ‘Maybe you shouldn’t be here.’

Sienna’s eyes flutter momentarily and open. She stares at me without any sign of recognition.

‘Hello,’ I say, trying to sound reassuring.

Her eyes close again.

A detective interviews me at four o’clock, wanting the facts, telling me nothing. He is not a familiar or reassuring face. He has a strange top lip that curls upwards when he speaks and gives the impression that he doesn’t believe a word I’m saying.

Finally, I’m given permission to go home. I call Julianne and ask her to bring me some clothes and a pair of shoes.

‘What happened to yours?’

‘The police took them.’

She doesn’t want to leave the girls alone. Charlie didn’t fall asleep until two and then only in Julianne’s bed, curled up in a ball.

‘What if there’s someone running around the village stabbing people?’ asks Julianne.

‘It wasn’t Sienna’s blood.’

‘What happened to her then?’

I can’t explain.

She hesitates, weighing up what to do.

‘I’ll get Mrs Nutall to mind the girls. Give me half an hour.’

Mrs Nutall is our next-door neighbour. She’s not technically my neighbour any more, of course, which means I don’t have to put up with her abusing me every time I leave the cottage. In her sixties and unmarried, she seems to blame me personally for every sin, snub or rebuff she has experienced at the hands of a man. The list must be very long.

I go to the bathroom. Wash my face. Feel a disturbing weight on my shoulders. Why hasn’t Sienna’s mother turned up? Surely the police have found her by now.

I hardly know Helen. We have spoken once or twice to arrange sleepovers for the girls and nodded to each other at the petrol station or in the aisle of the supermarket. Normally, she’s dressed in cargo pants and old sweaters and seems in a hurry. I’ve met her husband, Ray Hegarty, a few times in the Fox and Badger. He is an ex-copper, a detective who earned a medal for bravery, according to Hector. Now he runs a security company and travels a lot.

Zoe was attacked six months before we arrived in the village and Liam Baker had already been convicted of GBH when I was asked to do a pre-sentence report. Some people in the village were angry that he didn’t go straight to prison, but most were just happy to be rid of him.

Thirty minutes later, Julianne arrives and waits for me to change.

‘I tried to call Helen,’ she says, adjusting my collar and doing up the buttons I’ve missed. ‘Nobody is answering.’

‘She’s probably at work.’

My left arm and leg are twitching involuntarily.

‘What about your medication?’

‘At home.’

She holds my hand, making it go still. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

In the car, watching the sunrise. Hills lost in the morning mist. The drive from Bath to Wellow takes only fifteen minutes. We have lived in the village for three and a bit years, having moved out of London at Julianne’s suggestion. Cheaper houses. Good schools. More room. It made sense. It makes less sense now that we’re not together.

The locals are friendly enough. We chat over the tops of cars at the petrol station and queue for milk and bread at Eric Vaile’s shop. They’re decent, conservative, obliging people, but I’ll never be one of them. Being single doesn’t help. Marriage is a passport to respectability in a small village. My visa has been revoked.