Daisy in Chains (40 page)

‘I’m still here.’

‘I know.’

‘I’ll always be here.’

‘I know.’

As the mirror clears Maggie’s reflection gains substance. She can see the pale, pale skin on long, slim limbs. She can see loose and saggy skin, that she can never reveal to the light of day, because its folds and wrinkles are revolting, in spite of the relentless surgery she once endured. She can see the long, angry red scars, on the insides of her arms and legs. Disfigured limbs, that must always be clothed in long sleeves and trousers or opaque tights, that have never known the soft stroke of a lover’s hand. Never felt warm, damp kisses.

As the steam fades completely, so do Maggie’s scars, until they vanish and her flesh blossoms. She is growing, blooming, swelling. All the pounds she once lost by walking endless miles day after day, by existing on near-starvation levels of food, are coming back. She is getting plumper, riper, regaining the former self she once gloried in. She feels the weight of her breasts, the silky slide of her thighs as they brush together, the jiggling of her ass as she moves.

The last trace of steam leaves the mirror and Maggie can see her face again. It is the same face, but looking so very different with so much added flesh, and before the surgery removed the hook of her Jewish nose. Before expensive dentistry corrected the crooked teeth. Her hair isn’t blue any more. It is longer, thicker, curlier, dark as polished jet. Her eyes are conker brown. She has become the woman she used to be, before a broken heart and the shame of public humiliation forced her to flee, to change herself completely. She has become, once again, the woman she will always be inside; and the voice in her head breathes a long, satisfied sigh, happy at last.

She is Daisy.

BBC News Homepage, Tuesday, 12 January 2016, 2000 hours

CONVICTED MURDERER AT LARGE AS PARKHURST WALLS BREACHED

Killer of three, Hamish Wolfe (pictured), could be on the run tonight after escaping from Parkhurst Prison on the Isle of Wight. While the prison has made no official statement, and the Governor remains unavailable for comment, it is thought that Wolfe has already left the island.

According to unconfirmed reports that have reached the outside world through contraband mobile phones, Wolfe, 38, convicted in 2014 of the abduction and murder of three women, made a bid for freedom late this afternoon, slipping away during a disturbance and using a home-made ladder (pictured below) to scale the perimeter fence. Our correspondent has been unable to confirm that police dogs tracked him ten miles across open country to Sandown Airport (pictured), but has seen heightened police activity around the site.

Airport staff have confirmed that a two-seater Cessna has been reported missing from the airfield. It is understood that the plane’s owner is not currently in residence on the island and that the airport’s control room was given no details of a planned flight.

Wolfe is a qualified and experienced pilot and authorities are concluding that he escaped in the plane.

A spokesman for Avon and Somerset police refused to deny that the force is working on the assumption that Wolfe will head back to his home and that they are compiling a list of places and people that he might head for.

While no specific warning has yet been issued by police, Wolfe is considered a very dangerous man and the public should not approach him.

Screenshot placed in Avon and Somerset police files.

MAGGIE ROSE, WHO
started life as Margaret Rose Baron, nicknamed Daisy by her parents, is reading and re-reading the item on the BBC website about Hamish’s escape. When she feels she knows it by heart, she flicks to Twitter, to the stream of misspelled tweets supposedly sent from contraband mobile phones inside the prison, that have been retweeted several thousand times already.

She can find nothing else on the internet to bear out the escape story but knows that Pete has been trying to get in touch with her for nearly an hour now. She has ignored his phone calls, and his texts, but the email from his colleague with the odd name caught her attention. The message contained a link to the BBC site.

She has tried to telephone Parkhurst but the phones are not being answered. She has tried to contact the Isle of Wight police but gets voicemail messages. Somehow she found the energy to get dressed, although she hardly knows why.

She tries to work out how long it would take a fit man to run ten miles. How long it would take a light aircraft to fly from the Isle of Wight to Somerset.

Will he come to her?

She remembers Sirocco’s words on the night the two of them met. ‘He has a plan. You’re part of it.’ If Maggie has played a role in this, she cannot see it. Everything Hamish has said to her, about relying upon her, about trusting her, has been a lie. He has been stringing her along, while all the time planning to escape.

Is he with Sirocco right now? Are they fleeing together?

Unable to keep still, even to stay in one room, she gets up, descends two flights of steps into the cellar and flicks on the dim lights.

Dead flies litter the floor of the first, largest room and crunch underfoot. No matter how many she sweeps away, there always seem to be more. Most are houseflies, but there are others too, moths, crane flies,
huge great bluebottles. She has no idea where they come from in the middle of winter but they appear with a worrying regularity. As though there is something down here that attracts them. Which is impossible, of course. She cleans down here often. It is the most frequently swept, dusted, bleached and polished basement in the West Country.

And still, the flies.

She looks around for the broom, not sure whether she left it down here after her last visit or took it back upstairs to the kitchen cupboard. As her eyes fall on the dark walls, the now empty shelves, the flagged flooring, she has a sense that this may be the last time she ever comes to the cellar.

She should check, one last time, make sure there is nothing she missed.

Three storage heaters line one wall. A fourth stands beneath the high narrow windows. This room, like the rest of the house, is never cold when she is in it. For several years her heating bills have been huge. A faint smear of dust has settled on the heaters but she needn’t worry about that. Not any more.

The high, narrow, horizontally figured windows, alone in the room, are never cleaned. They are beyond dirty, filthy even, as though someone has smeared mud across them, making it impossible for anyone outside to see in. The windows are the one big disadvantage to this house and yet they are necessary all the same. The windows let in the flies.

Maggie walks past them, catching a scent of the chill night air, towards the back of the cellar. The smallest basement room appears to be a bathroom but the plumbing has been disconnected long ago. Turning on the taps would produce nothing but a few splutters of dank air. Any liquid poured into the Victorian-style roll-top bath would drain, not to waste pipes, but into a large, shallow tray that lies immediately beneath the plug. Several large buckets stand to one side.

The bath is spotless. So is the drain tray. So are the buckets.

By the side of the bath is a large plastic container of household bleach. More out of habit than because she knows it is necessary, Maggie opens it and pours it around the rim of the bath. Bleach is thick and it takes time to run down the enamel sides of the bath, gathering in the bottom, draining out into the tray. Slowly, the tray fills. She will
empty it tomorrow, on the land at the bottom of her garden, because pouring that amount of bleach down the drain would be traceable.

The sudden banging makes her jump. Someone is upstairs, hammering on her back door. Knowing she has no choice now but to move with events, she makes her way up, expecting to see Pete. He will want to make sure she knows about the escape, that she is taking sensible precautions. He will think she needs to fear Wolfe. She sensed a new and unsettling coldness in him earlier, but Pete is a good man. He will no doubt offer, once again, to find a room for her at the Crown in Wells.

The very air seems to be thickening around her, making it harder to move freely. Every step she takes upstairs increases the heaviness in her chest. Is it possible, really, that she might never see Hamish again?

Silently she opens the door to the back hallway. She has disconnected the security lights at the back of her house and can only see a dark silhouette through the glass of the door. She doesn’t think whoever is out there is tall enough to be Pete. Her heart leaps momentarily, but too small to be Pete is too small to be Hamish and it settles back down again. She unlocks the door and opens it.

Sirocco.

‘He’s out,’ Sirocco steps forward, as though Maggie will simply invite her in, take her coat and put the kettle on. ‘He’s escaped. Have you heard?’

Sirocco seems to be wearing even more loose, flowing clothing than usual. On her head, clamping down her unruly black hair, is a tight-fitting beanie-style cap. She looks dressed to travel and the sight sends another pang into Maggie’s heart.

There is some hope, though, in her being here. She isn’t with Hamish yet.

‘I saw it on the news,’ says Maggie, wondering how to take this forward. The last time she saw Sirocco she’d been afraid for her life. This isn’t the top of a Ferris wheel, though, here she is on home ground.

‘Read this.’ Sirocco has fumbled in her coat pocket and is holding out a sheet of pale blue paper. ‘Read this and tell me what it means.’

Maggie glances down and sees handwriting that she recognizes. Suddenly, the heaviness inside her seems more manageable. Her heart, that has been fighting to keep beating, picks up its pace.

‘Come in,’ she says, stepping back from the doorway. In the kitchen she will have room to move. In the kitchen there will be enough light. She will be able to see what’s coming.

‘There isn’t time. He’s on his way. You need to read it now.’ Agitated though she may be, Sirocco seems strangely reluctant to come any closer to Maggie. This time, it seems to be she who is afraid.

He’s on his way.
Maggie can hear a drumming in her ears as she backs into the kitchen. ‘Why should I be able to understand it?’ she asks. ‘If you can’t, what makes you think I can?’

Sirocco approaches cautiously. The letter – Hamish’s last love letter? – dangles in the air between them. Then it is in Maggie’s hand. It is damp. Maggie glances down, then back up again.

‘I can’t I’m afraid. I need my reading glasses.’

‘I’ll read it to you. Give it back.’

Still holding the letter, Maggie walks past her, out of the room, heading once again for the basement. ‘I left them downstairs just now. I won’t be a second.’

‘Get back here.’

The stairs are seconds away and Sirocco is following her. ‘Where are you going?’ Her voice has risen, become shrill. ‘Is that the cellar? Are you going in there?’

‘You can wait up here,’ Maggie reaches the cellar door and pulls it open. ‘What did you mean when you said, “He’s on his way”? Why on earth would Hamish come here? This is the first place the police will look.’

She looks back when she is halfway down the steps. Sirocco is hovering, uncertain, at the top.

‘He’s coming for me,’ Sirocco says. ‘He’s been planning it for ages. I’ve been helping. He wrote to me, telling me where to meet him.’ She points to the letter in Maggie’s hand.

‘So why am I involved?’ asks Maggie.

‘He said to ask you. He said he had to write in code, so the prison staff wouldn’t know what he was telling me. If there was anything I didn’t understand, I had to ask you. Let me just read it to you, please. We don’t need to go downstairs. I have to meet him now.’

Maggie’s heart, which has been accelerating for some time now, is
starting to beat painfully. She climbs back up four steps. ‘I may still need to read it for myself,’ she says. ‘But OK.’

Sirocco pulls the letter open and leans back, to catch the overhead light.

Sirocco begins, and then looks up, almost triumphantly at Maggie. Maggie nods at her to go on.