The Well (33 page)

Once settled, Sammy had wanted hot chocolate. And, as she often did, she wanted everyone to have one.

Doing the rest wasn’t hard, though Sammy was almost certain that her mother would see what she was up to. Lady Mango was on the worktop,
helping to make the hot chocolate
, Sammy had said. Her mother brought her the first cup of hot milk and Sammy slowly started to put in the chocolate powder. As her mother turned to put the second cup in the microwave, Sammy dropped into the cup roughly half of the powdered sleeping tablets. Then she added the rest of the chocolate and stirred it in. She then did the same with the second cup, while her mother took the third – the Hannah Montana cup that Sammy insisted on having – to the microwave.
That way
, thought Sammy,
I won’t mix up the cups
.

Once all three drinks were made, Abby carried them on a tray into the lounge. “Right,” she said. “Once we’ve had these, it’s off to bed – again. OK?”

The question was directed at Sammy.

Sammy smiled, hoping that her mother couldn’t sense any of her inner turmoil.

“OK, Mummy,” she said.

15

“Jim? You awake?”

“Yeah.” Jim rolled over. In the darkness he couldn’t quite make out Sarah’s features.

“I can’t stop thinking about them,” she said.

“I know. Me neither.”

“I know I need to sleep, but I can’t.”

Jim pulled her close. “Do you want to talk?”

“I do,” she said. “But I feel talked out. Cried out. I feel drained and empty. And just when I think I’m numb to it all, it comes rushing back to hit me again.”

“I know what you mean. Do you want a drink?”

“Tea? Chocolate?”

“If you want. I was thinking more like a whiskey.”

“I don’t want to be asleep if – if anyone calls. And I don’t want to be over the limit if we have to drive somewhere.”

“You’ll be fine with one,” said Jim. He disentangled himself from Sarah, pulled on his robe and went downstairs. He returned with two glasses, each containing what looked to Sarah to be more than a double shot. She took the glass and drank. The whiskey burned as it went down.

“I keep asking myself – and wanting to ask – useless questions. Questions that only get me more upset. You know, like
where are they?
and
what are they doing?
”

Jim sipped his drink and let her talk.

“Do you think the police are doing enough?” she asked.

“I think that they’re doing as much as they can. But to be honest, they could throw every policeman in the north of England at this and we still wouldn’t know if it would be enough.”

“I can’t bear it,” sobbed Sarah, tears beginning to flow again. “I keep seeing his face.
That man
. I can’t cope with thinking about what he might be doing. What he might have done. Jim, I’m so scared.”

“I know,” said Jim. “Me too.”

“I don’t want – I couldn’t cope – with losing Becca.”

“Hey,” said Jim, “don’t think like that.”

“It’s hard not to. You must be thinking the same things?”

Jim nodded. “Sometimes.”

“Can I ask you – when you lost Chris – how did you cope?”

Jim sighed. “Mostly, I didn’t. It was very hard – but I had to keep it together for Matt. I thought that I’d lost everything; it was
so
awful. Even with lots of warning, with Chris being ill for so long, I still felt unprepared. But I had to keep going, for Matt. It took a long time.”

Jim put his arm around her shoulders, his own face growing wet.

“It’s at times like this I wish I believed in God,” she said. “So I could pray.”

Jim scowled. “I’ve never believed less,” he said. “I hope they catch the bastard.”

“I don’t care if they do,” said Sarah. “I just want the kids back. I just wish – wish – that they’re OK.”

She took another drink and prayed anyway.
Please God,
she thought,
please let Becca and Matt be OK.

She wondered again where Becca was and what she might be doing – but of all the awful things that Sarah might imagine, she could never have guessed the terrible reality that Becca was shaping for herself.

16

When she could work no more, Becca slumped backwards, dizzy with exhaustion. She couldn’t imagine feeling more tired or hungry, but was satisfied with her progress.

Her whole day had been spent digging away the dirt of ages and pulling reluctant stones from the well wall. Considering that she only had to make a hole big enough for herself to fit into, it surprised Becca that it had taken her most of the day and nearly all of the night.

The work had been hard. The stones had been very difficult to shift, compacted as they were for hundreds of years. With no tools with which to work, she had to do everything with her hands. She had carefully worked her fingers along the cracks between the stones to shift whatever had been used in place of mortar; then pulled hard at the stones when there was little to grip; waggled them patiently for what seemed like hours, trying to loosen them. The progress was slow, glacial even – but it
was
there.

She’d stopped several times to rest or drink water – and had twice fallen asleep. Her stomach still ached, but whether it was solely from hunger or also from some kind of infection, she couldn’t tell – she’d had two more bouts of diarrhoea, which had been very painful. Despite having enough to drink, she felt terribly dehydrated. When she stood, she felt dizzy. Much of her body was numb, especially her hands. They seemed bloated to her, pudgy and unfeeling.

The well was a hell-hole with a stench that she never got used to: rotting flesh, urine and excrement. Now that the water had reached its level, it wasn’t moving enough to replenish that within the well. And, she guessed, Matt would be pretty ripe by now. She was relieved that she couldn’t see him.

When night fell she continued to labour, almost like an automaton.

Down in the well, the darkness didn’t make that much of a difference, especially as she was working under water where her hands were her only eyes.

Every so often, one or more crows would shout from above with their unnatural cry. Becca ignored them. At one point, she’d driven herself on by thinking of home – a warm bed, shower, food and hot drinks. She had no mirror, but knew that she must look like some kind of animal-child, filthy, cut, bedraggled. She pushed away thoughts of home and filled her mind with the most immediate task to hand – whether it was moving a stone or digging mud.

So now, her labours almost complete, she settled back to rest and think about the remaining work. She felt that there were just a few more stones to move: perhaps two or three. It would be best if she could move them tonight, but the effort was well beyond her. And she would need to rest – not only tonight, but probably again in the morning after she’d moved the last of the stones. It would be, she knew, difficult to judge how much to rest. If she rested too much, she’d probably pass the point of being able to even attempt to escape. If she didn’t rest enough, she’d probably pass out partway, or not have the strength to pull herself along fast enough.

Time was, she knew, not on her side. One more full day in the well and she felt sure that she’d be too sick to even move.

All of her muscles ached. She coughed again and closed her eyes. Her body was trying to run on reserves that it no longer had – and when, within seconds, sleep claimed her, it was an absolute sleep with little room for dreams.

Every so often her mouth moved, murmuring fearfully, but even if there had been anyone to hear her they wouldn’t have been able to make out the words.

17

The discomfort of lying on the hard floor didn’t trouble Thomas Randle too much, but his leg hurt badly from walking with it outstretched. He’d slept fitfully: every so often he’d doze off, but then wake ten or twenty minutes later, his thoughts already on the girl. He couldn’t wait for sunrise.

-

Entwined, Abby and Helen were out to the world, in a sleep so deep that they would have struggled to rise even if the house were on fire. For the second time that night, they’d not noticed Sammy carefully slip from between the sheets. She’d crept back into her own room; there she’d set the alarm on her clock radio for three hours ahead – to wake her well before dawn – and turned its volume down low. When she’d first got into her own bed, Sammy had thought that she wouldn’t sleep, but she soon nodded off; it helped that the girl in the well was already in a sleep so deep that Sammy could barely sense her.

-

Sarah and Jim lay awake, talking and crying in a perpetual emotional agony that only those who have suffered the same thing could in any way understand.

-

In the hospital Julia Davis sat by her husband’s bed, drinking coffee. Ed was either sleeping or unconscious – probably the latter, since he wasn’t snoring. After enough alcohol to fell almost any man, a beating that had taken him to the edge of his life and a dose of morphine to numb his pain, he probably wasn’t waking up any time soon. Julia hated sitting alone and missed Hannah. A part of her even questioned why she was here. Despite everything, she still just about loved Ed – what she didn’t know was
why
she loved him.

-

Stephen Carter and Jenny Greenwood were still very much awake, making love for the second time that night. They’d gone for a drink when their late shift had finished, both equally despondent at the day’s events. One drink had turned to three, after which Jenny had thought
fuck it, life’s too short
. After a couple more drinks back at the house Jenny shared with Trudy, her Border Collie, Jenny and Stephen had lost themselves in each other, but not before she had made it clear to Stephen – very clear – what would happen if anyone at the small police station ever found out. Trudy, who normally slept at the bottom of Jenny’s bed, spent the night outside her room, mostly awake and occasionally whining softly for her mistress.

-

Hannah turned in her sleep and briefly awoke. For just a moment, everything seemed normal, but then the events of the last few days resurfaced in her mind. Becca. Her father. She sat upright, scared, imagining that she was alone in the house. Then she remembered the policewoman, sitting downstairs – and relaxed. She crept to the top of the stairs and looked down into the living room. The policewoman was sitting on the sofa, the television turned down so low that Hannah could barely hear it. She turned and went back to bed, closing her eyes to sleep. Just before she slipped away, she saw for a curious moment the face of a young girl, who was perhaps eight or nine, smiling at her. Hannah felt that she somehow knew her, but couldn’t place from where. When sleep came back to her, it was shallow and restless.

-

At the top of the well, a large black bird hopped from stone to stone.

1

When Becca awoke, she felt far worse than before she had slept. In addition to her familiar hunger, cough, stomach cramps and fatigue she now ached comprehensively from her prolonged exertion the day before.

She looked up to the sky. She couldn’t tell what time it was: it was still dark. She groaned inwardly, wishing she’d slept longer. She considered trying to sleep again but decided to press on.

She stood, unsteady on her feet, and took a drink of water from the bottle. She realised that she’d drunk more than she thought the day before.
It doesn’t matter,
she decided.
I only need enough for today. And not even for all of that.

Last night, when faced with moving the few remaining stones, she had felt unable to continue and had fallen asleep exhausted. Today, she really wished she had kept on and finished the job.

She slowly stretched herself, as she would before swimming, feeling her body protest but knowing that she had to not only get her circulation moving but also loosen her tightened muscles. As she moved, her stomach groaned, loud enough to hear in the well.

Christ I’m hungry
, she thought.

As she stretched, she briefly lost her balance.
Whoa
, she thought, the well swimming around her. Disorientated and dizzy, she steadied herself against the wall until she felt able to stand.

It would have been all too easy to sit back down and rest, perhaps sleep, but Becca pushed herself on.
I’ll rest later,
she thought,
when I’ve finished digging. At least my cough has settled down.

She knelt back down, put her hands into the grimy water and felt her way around the hole, seeking the remaining stones with her fingers. There were just three, as she’d thought. She ran her hands behind these; beyond them, as with the rest of the stones she’d moved, there was compacted mud and smaller stones. She would have to clear most of that, too.

Unbidden, her mind kept dwelling on her biggest fear, that once beyond where she could currently feel with her hands, the tunnel narrowed to the point where it couldn’t be traversed. If it happened within the first few feet, perhaps within ten feet or a little more, she might be able to back out. Becca really didn’t like to think what would happen if the tunnel narrowed when she was much further out than that.

She began to tug at the first stone, reflecting on how hardened she’d become over the last few days – not physically (although she now suspected she had the hands and knees of a labourer) but emotionally.
Emotionally hardened
, she wondered,
or just numb; uncaring?
She reflected on how little she now objected to sharing a confined space with a corpse. She felt that she’d fallen into the well as a girl; if she emerged alive it wouldn’t be either as a girl or a woman. She’d be something else. Something stronger, perhaps. Or something less caring, less connected. Something harder.

The stone felt like a large, troublesome tooth. As she pulled, there was only the smallest amount of give. Not enough to loosen it, but enough to work with. She pushed her fingers around the edges of stone, gradually rubbing the cement-like dirt away. She worked for around twenty minutes and then tried the stone again. It was a little looser but not enough. She returned to scraping away the dirt.