Helen Callaghan - Dear Amy

I was trembling, the floor shaking beneath my feet.

‘You left me for another woman and now you’re here on a booty call, that’s what the matter is.’ I rubbed at my face, which now felt cold and damp, like the rest of me – drained and humiliated. ‘How dare you? How fucking dare you?’

‘I didn’t see you objecting…’

‘Pay attention, Eddy. This is me objecting. This is me objecting right now .’ I flung out my arm and pointed to the door. ‘You sleazy bastard. Put your shoes on and get the fuck out.’

Something flashed in his face then, a series of emotions at war with desire. Should he be conciliatory, apologetic? Should he feign ignorance of what had offended me? Should he be cheeky, seductive? But mostly he wanted to be angry that I had exposed him, and that was what won out.

‘You’re mental, Margot. You’re crazy.’

‘Get out!’ I bellowed. My own shame was vanishing now, consumed by a very real anger, a furious rage. ‘Get out of my house and don’t come back!’

‘I don’t know why you make me do these things,’ Chris says. His voice is broken, as though he’s on the brink of tears. ‘Why can’t we just be happy? Why can’t you just be grateful?’

Katie does not reply, does not seem to be expected to, even though he has removed the gag. He’s not even looking at her, in any case. Her chest hurts and her right side, from shoulder to hip, aches as she huddles on the dirty tartan blanket.

She had tried to hit him with the mug and its scalding contents and run for the door, but she gained only a few seconds before he caught up with her, and his fury had been terrifying, unlike anything she could have imagined. She’d been sure that she would die, and was surprised to find, in the aftermath, as she wheezed through bruised ribs, that she hadn’t.

He threw her down the steps, back into her cellar prison, and left her there without food and water for a long time.

This is his first reappearance.

‘I have tried and tried my best for you.’ He rubs at his sallow face with a kind of frantic energy, which she knows bodes ill. ‘You girls, you’re all the same.’

Katie remains silent. She has been a prisoner in the cellar for… four, no, maybe five weeks. She would strike off the days on the stone as a calendar, except that she has no way of telling when one day has ended and another begun. Anyway, marking the stone might make her captor angry, and Katie will do anything, anything at all, to prevent that from happening again – though whatever she does, it’s never quite enough.

‘What do you think would happen if I turned you over, eh? If the others got wind of you, got their hands on you? You can’t imagine the things they’d do to you.’ His eyes are huge, almost comical, though she knows better than to laugh. ‘They’re ruthless. They know no mercy, I tell you. There’d be nothing left of you but a red wet stain on the floor.’

She has heard this story many, many times before. He tells it again and again, almost word for word, as though it is a script, an oath, a prayer. He is part of a gang, which seizes and holds young girls for sex. She is constantly being told how fortunate she is that Chris has protected her so far from their more violent demands. He could revoke this protection at any moment.

All Katie knows is that she has to hang on until somebody finds her, or Chris makes a mistake. She imagines rescuing avengers charging in here, sweeping her up in their arms. To her surprise, it is not her dad she dreams of coming down here and beating Chris to within an inch of his life while her mum carries her to safety, but Brian; his huge beefy arms, his soft blue eyes that can go very hard indeed if, as he often says, someone “is taking the piss”.’

Chris swipes at his own eyes with his fingers.

‘Why do you do this, Katie? Why?’

Now he does seem to want an answer.

She thinks for a moment, and because she is young and convinced that evil is not a universal condition, because the longing to be back with her mum and Brian is a physical ache as terrible as her crushed ribs, she tells the truth:

‘I just want to go home.’

She bursts into tears.

Her voice is tiny, quavering in the dark space, but still he flinches, as though she has slapped him, and his little red eyes swivel down to her, with their ever-present rage and a tinge of fear.

‘What are you on about? I already told you. You can’t go home. You’re dead if you go home.’

‘I know, you said, but…’

His fist hits her hard in the temple, and her teeth clack together, stamping her tongue with cuts. Her mouth fills with blood.

‘Do you think I’m lying? Is that it? DO YOU, YOU UNGRATEFUL LITTLE SOW?!’

He launches himself at her.

And as the terrible evening wears on, she finds at one point she is lying on her belly, her cheek crushed into the stone floor. On the wall opposite, under the swaying light of the bulb, she can see thin words etched on to the bricks nearest the floor, like hen scratchings. From here she can read them: ‘12/1/1998 BETHAN AVERY’.

It was Saturday morning, and only just dawn. The rehearsals for the school play over at St Hilda’s started at ten – we were putting on The Duchess of Malfi for Christmas, and we’d all taken to calling it, behind the head’s back, ‘The Anti-Nativity’. Estella, the drama teacher, managed our teenage actors and Lily, the art teacher and my comrade-in-arms during the interminable staff meetings the head held, was leading the costume and set design side of things. I was there more in the capacity of a runner than anything, but it was all good fun, and later Lily and I would have a late lunch and a gossip in town.

At the moment, it was a good thing to keep busy.

I was faintly hung-over – feeling seedy but not sufficiently so to justify any more time spent in bed. I threw the covers off, willing myself to get up, finding I didn’t quite have it in me.

Eddy, I thought to myself, with a sick lurch of guilt and regret.

I forced myself on to my feet anyway. I felt worn out. I had dreamed of Bethan Avery. Before climbing into bed, I had Googled her, and spent hours on a Wikipedia trail full of stolen children and their murderers, each link leading to a new page, before I had dropped the whole thing in disgust and headed for bed.

But the damage had been done, and I had tossed and turned all night long, rebuilding the dead girl in my dreams. All I remembered now was someone offering me a thighbone wrapped in silk. ‘Oh God,’ I’d replied, paralysed with dread. ‘Is that Katie’s? No, no, it’s Bethan’s. Definitely Bethan’s.’

I also remembered Eddy was crying on the couch but wouldn’t tell me why, keeping his face covered with his hands. It had shocked me. I found it nearly impossible to imagine Eddy crying over anything.

I shuffled downstairs to make a cup of tea. I shoved our wine glasses into the dishwasher, deliberately forcing myself not to remember the humiliating events of the previous evening. I sat down in my nightshirt at the kitchen table and shivered – the kitchen has always been a cold room.

Through the window I could see the violent rose-gold of a brilliant dawn. It was going to be a pretty day.

I forced myself into my run, driving out my ghosts with each step, and when I got back I made sourdough toast and tea while I considered the early papers. After an hour or so of letting my tea grow cold, I decided that I wouldn’t entirely fritter the morning away. I had the other ‘Dear Amy’ letters to answer. I emptied out the contents of my bag and immediately put the essays back inside it. No thank you.

The letters lay tumbled out in front of me. I picked up one with an expensive-looking watermarked envelope, directed in a light, sloping hand. It contained a short missive admonishing me for mentioning that adoption or abortion was a possibility for the fifteen-year-old in last week’s issue, who had grown great with child after a night of passion with a member of the local rugby club.