Sophie (16 page)

He turns, comes over to me. For the first time since he hit me, hours ago, he stands close to me. He hit me, of course, for not being her. Or for saying so. I’m no longer sure which. But we’ve done this by the rules he set, and still it has come out my way.

“Give me your hands,” he says quietly. I hold them out to him, taped wrists crossed over one another, and he takes a pocket knife from his trousers and cuts the tape. I pull my hands free, wincing as the adhesive parts from my skin, and rub them together, feeling them tingle.

“Thanks.”

He stands up again, walks back over to the door. There are bolts at the top and at the foot, and he pulls them back. With his shoulder he forces the door open, shoving it outwards, and for the first time I see the garden at the back of the house. It’s unruly and tangled, but I recognize it nevertheless. It is perhaps slightly smaller than I imagined it. He stands looking out, and, shakily, I get to my feet and go over to join him.

“There’s the holly bush,” he says, pointing. He’s right; it is starting to grow out again, fresh shoots rising from the base of the trunk. “I did just as she said, found the can and burnt it down when I got back to the house.” He sighs. “I was sad to see it go, I suppose, but by then I wasn’t really caring what happened. It was several hours later. A lot had happened.”

“I know,” I say.

“When I got home, I waited, just like she’d said. I went to her room, and sat on her bed. I must have been there for over an hour. In the end, I didn’t even have to call anyone; somebody must have seen the fire in our garden, because suddenly there were cars and a fire engine and so on all over the lane. They found Mummy first, I think, because they wouldn’t let me near the drawing room. Then the police turned up. They wanted to know where my father was, and where Sophie was. I said I didn’t know where my father was, but that I had his number. I was so tired I was almost asleep on my feet, but they wouldn’t let me sleep; I don’t suppose I could have in any case. When they’d called my father, they started asking where Sophie was again.

“I said she’d gone to the barn earlier on. When I saw the fire from my bedroom I had gone out over the fields to see where she had got to, but she wasn’t there. They all looked at each other, and they looked at the mud on the carpets from my trainers, and presumably they saw how I looked as well, because somebody carried me outside to an ambulance and sat me in it while they went on trying to understand what had happened in the house. Someone else brought me a drink, but I didn’t want it. It was coffee, from a thermos. I wanted to say that I only had orange squash at night, but I couldn’t really make the words come clear. I think I did sleep for a while, then.

“They waited a long time for my father to arrive, but when he didn’t, they took me to hospital. I don’t think anyone could think what else to do with me. They gave me pyjamas and put me in a bed, and I fell asleep for most of the day. When I woke up, there were ashes on the pillow from my hair. People asked me questions, later on, about what had happened. I remembered to ask them if they’d found Sophie yet, and they said no, that I should try to rest, that they’d talk to me about it later. I could see the looks of worry on their faces as they tried to find ways of telling this little boy that his sister had been burned to death while playing in a barn, that they hadn’t even been able to find her body.

“It was my father who, in the end, had to tell me about Sophie, and about Mummy. I sat up in bed, with pillows propped up behind me, and listened in silence. My father had had to come back to England from America, where he had been working. I remember a tall man walking into the room where my bed was, wearing a clean white shirt. He looked tired, but his face was pleasant enough. There had been strangers coming in and out of my room all day, so it was only when he came close to me that I realized he was my father. I recognized his smell. He sat down on the edge of the bed and told me what had happened. He did it very well, I think. It can’t have been easy for him.

“That’s all. This house was put up for sale, but nobody ever bought it. Too many people knew what had happened here, and word gets round about houses that have harboured suicides. It’ll be here till it falls down, I expect.”

I look at him, his face pale in the early light. “What about me?” I say.

“You’re safe,” he says. “I don’t know why. You’re more like her than anyone I’ve met since. I never thought I’d tell anyone all of that.”

“Why all the other Sophies, Matt?” I ask.

He shrugs, rubs his eyebrow with the side of his hand. “I wanted to kill her, later on,” he says. “I wanted to do it properly. Even once she’d gone, she was still in control.”

“Ah,” I say. “That’s how it was.”

“She never really left,” he continues. “I thought, maybe if I killed her properly, she wouldn’t keep coming back. But it didn’t work. It never worked.”

“Where are they?” I say. I can’t help myself.

“Around,” he says vaguely. Of course, this is the only room of the house that I have seen. He raises his eyes to meet mine. “I could have killed you,” he says.

“I know.”

“Don’t worry. You’re safe now. I told you that. But I want something from you.”

“What?” I ask.

“Come on,” he says, and takes me by the hand. We set off across the matted lawn of the garden, still sodden with the rain from the storm, towards the hill.

fifteen

It is not cold; the air moves very gently against my face, and underfoot the ground is dry. There is no sound. In the woods on the hill there was birdsong as we walked, but it has faded and vanished. The morning sunlight, rising above the trees, has vanished. The glistening bushes and wide, deep puddles have vanished. The world has shrunk down, condensed, focused itself here into a small space in which I am kneeling. The light is dim. There are candles back in the house, on the windowsill, and the candle stubs of many evenings scattered across the floor, but I have no light here except the little that filters around the corner.

It is almost beautiful. The floor is clear of the grit and debris that litters the entrance, and the roof, though low, is roughly arched and nearly symmetrical. The alcove is almost like a small altar in a corner of a church. The floor slopes upwards gradually from the entrance, then turns sharply right, widening a little some five yards farther in to form this space. It is calm here; peaceful. Everything that has been told seems such a long way away.

What is most strange is that I am here at all. As Mattie and I walked up the hill in the sunlight, I felt curious emotions stir in me; a sense of exhilaration, of triumph. The walk was difficult. My legs were weak and sometimes unstable, from tiredness, and many hours of sitting in one place, but not from fear any longer. Of all the Sophies there had been, none had managed to pull Mattie through the whole story, shown him everything that had happened, made him face it all. It occurred to me then, looking at it all, that perhaps this would never have happened had I not been, in some way, like Sophie; and while the thought should, perhaps, have repulsed me, instead I found it strangely invigorating. I felt I knew Sophie now, and I knew her to be strong. Mattie had always been weaker than her. I had looked for Sophie inside myself, and she had helped me through.

“I’ve seen the place where the branch broke the fence,” I say, pleased that my voice is still level and pleasant. “The patch of grass. It’s really very small. I suppose two children could sit there and talk, though.” I think to myself. “He never actually told me what happened. Well, that’s not quite true. He told me
what
happened, just not
how
. One last secret.”

At the foot of the end wall of the cage there is a low shelf, just eight inches or so off the ground. It looks as if it’s a natural part of the rock. There are some holes drilled at intervals in the face above which I assume were originally for explosives. All long ago abandoned, long ago forgotten.

Sophie is curled up there, hands pressed together in front of her, knees drawn up. Her red anorak is almost black in the dim light. I can’t see her face very well, but then I am not trying to; it has been many years. And besides, I know already what she looks like. “He really loved you,” I say. I think it is true, as well. “I suppose I’m the only person who knows you, apart from him.”

I wondered, when I first saw her, how it had happened. The truth came slowly, but it made sense. It’s the only way it could have happened. And so I am left with a mind too full of pictures, pictures that I cannot confirm; Sophie asking Mattie to come with her, and he being too afraid. Mattie following her instructions carefully, walking away from the quarry through a night still stained red from the barn fire. Mattie in a hospital bed, holding the key to the quarry cage tightly in one hand, wondering. The days passing, and Sophie going further back into the darkness, finally falling asleep here where I have found her. I don’t know that it was like this, or why she should have wanted it this way, but I can’t help thinking, can’t help it now. Especially now.

“He kept the key,” I say. “All those years, just like you kept the ammonite.” She is so peaceful, so strong, so enduring. If only I had been more like her. If only.

“You gave him the template,” I say. “The key, the secret place. But you were the only one who really knew him. I should have seen that. He said it often enough. You were the only one that knew him, and he was the only one that knew you. I should have noticed. I noticed the candles, but I didn’t notice that.” I stop. I think I am talking too much. She wouldn’t like that; it is a sign of panic, and I am not going to panic. Sophie is quiet.

“I knew you were here,” I say. “That’s really why I came. I came because I promised Mattie, but really I came because I wanted to see you.” I smile at her. “He gave me the key to the cage. I’ve got it here.” I take the key out of my pocket and hold it out tightly. She doesn’t need to see it, of course, but I do it anyway. “He told me where you were. I was—he said I was different. He said I had taken him through it, and no one had done that before. Of course, I knew that. I knew I was as strong as you.”

I put the key back. I don’t know why I keep hold of it. It’s a small, grey key, just like Mattie described Sophie giving him. Just before you reach the alcove where Sophie lies sleeping, there are some other galleries, off to one side. The other Sophies are in there. I’ve looked, and each of them has a small grey key just like mine. None of them work, of course. I’ve tried them all, one by one, many times, over the days.

“I didn’t realize how much like you he was,” I say. “If you could talk to me, I wonder if you’d tell the same story, or whether it would be different. How different would it be? Were you really the way he told me you were?” The other Sophies are lined up quite neatly, although none of them look as if they were asleep, like Sophie does. I suppose Mattie comes back, eventually, to make sure everything is neat and tidy, the way it ought to be.

I take out the key again, turn it between my fingers. I feel slightly light-headed. It’s not surprising, really. I have been through an awful lot, when you think about it.

“Will you tell me your story, then?” I say. “The true story? The real one?”

That’ll take a while,
Sophie says. I smile. She has a pretty voice, low and gentle.

“There’s still enough time,” I say.

© Jeremy Moeran

G
UY
B
URT
won the W.H. Smith Young Writers Award when he was twelve. He wrote
The Hole
, his first novel, when he was eighteen, and his second novel,
Sophie
, soon thereafter. He is also the author of
The Dandelion Clock
. Burt attended Oxford University and taught for three years at Eton. He lives in Oxford.

BY
G
UY
B
URT

The Hole

Sophie

The Dandelion Clock

Praise for Guy Burt’s
The Hole

“Akin to
The Blair Witch Project
. . . The writing is remarkably assured. . . . A story about that most elemental of human fears: being buried alive.”

—The New York Times Book Review

“An impressive and chilling debut.”

—
Cosmopolitan

“A frighteningly good plot . . . Expertly borrows the horror and tension that made William Golding’s
Lord of the Flies
such a success.”

—MetroNews

“Compulsively sinister.”

—The Times
(London)

“[A] compelling psychological tale . . . A quick and intriguing book with a truly satisfying ending.”

—Publishers Weekly

“The suspense and claustrophobia become almost unbearable. . . . A remarkable debut by any standards.”

—Irish Independent

Don’t miss this compelling novel of
psychological suspense
by Guy Burt

On a spring day in England, six teenagers venture to a neglected part of their school where there is a door to a small windowless cellar. Behind the door, the old stairs have rotted away. A boy unfurls a rope ladder and five descend into The Hole. The sixth closes the door, locks it from the outside, and walks calmly away. The plan is simple: They will spend three days locked in The Hole and emerge to become part of the greatest prank the school has ever seen. But something goes terribly wrong. No one is coming back to let them out . . . ever.

“Chilling . . . akin to
The Blair Witch Project
. . . The writing is remarkably assured. . . . A story about that most elemental of human fears, being buried alive.”

—The New York Times Book Review

Published by Ballantine Books.

Available wherever books are sold.