Hold Your Breath

‘Katherine Marchland?’

Another figure has appeared to the left of the short man. This one’s also male, but younger – he only looks about twenty-six or -seven – and much taller. ‘I’m Detective Constable Malik. Please come this way.’

He doesn’t smile exactly, but his mouth thins into a shape that I think is meant to be comforting. His movements are gentle and courteous as he holds the door open for me, leading us deeper into the building. The light quality is poor – the corridor is windowless and lit by dim white strips, with some of the bulbs blinking as if they might give up the ghost at any moment.

‘Just in here,’ he says, and opens the door to a small room, also windowless. I recognise it instantly as a police interview room from any number of television dramas. It even has one of those dark-glass sections in the wall, presumably for people to watch behind it unseen. The only thing different is that I can’t see one of those big old cassette recorder decks on the desk, although I can see something long and thin hanging from the ceiling, so I presume it must be a microphone hooked up to a recording device somewhere out of sight.

‘Do take a seat,’ he says, motioning to the one he clearly wishes me to sit in, then asks, ‘Would you like some water?’

I nod, grateful for the offer. ‘Yes please. Thank you.’ Maybe things aren’t quite as bad as I’d thought. This man seems kind.

He opens the door, presumably to go out and get the water, but a woman walks straight through it before he can exit. ‘Ms Marchland? My name’s Detective Inspector Tamara Cousins. I’ll be leading this interview with DC Malik.’ She’s short, and quite a bit older – maybe early forties. Whereas the younger officer is clearly a local, with a pleasantly soft Northumbrian note to his voice, her accent is a surprise – rather posh and tight.

At this, DC Malik leaves the room and returns seconds later with a plastic cup filled with water. ‘Are we all set up?’ DI Cousins asks her colleague.

He nods. ‘Fine to go ahead.’

‘OK, for the recording, present in this interview we have currently speaking Detective Inspector Tamara Cousins and Detective Constable Leon Malik.’ She then looks at me: ‘Please confirm your name and date of birth.’

‘Katherine Marchland,’ I say, a little shakily. ‘I was born on the 4th September 1977.’

‘I gather you were formerly known as Katherine Carlson – although I understand Marchland is a name you have created rather than one you acquired through marriage – and you live at Number 2, Station View Walk in the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham?’

I nod.

‘Could you answer “yes” or “no” please for the recording?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good. Ms Marchland, you do not have to say anything but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.’ She’s looking right at me, watching for a reaction. I don’t give one, just stare back, trying to ignore the rush of panic sweeping through me. ‘As I explained on the phone, you’re not under arrest at present, and I’d also like to make it clear you’re free to leave at any time. Do you understand everything I’ve just said to you?’

I nod. ‘Yes.’

‘Splendid. I’ve got here that you are currently employed as a staff writer on a newspaper. The Dagenham and Rainham Advertiser. Is that right?’

‘Sort of. I do bits and bobs. Sell some advertising space, write some copy.’

She nods, looking at the papers in front of her. ‘The purpose of this interview is to help us understand your perspective on certain incidents which have come to our attention.’ Her eyes flick back up to my face and stare directly into mine. ‘In other words, Katherine, we’ve seen the video.’

She holds my gaze for a couple of seconds, then presses on. ‘What you say in this interview will be recorded. We will take into account what you tell us today when we decide whether to pursue formal arrest and any potential criminal charges. You have not brought any legal representation with you, and I believe you declined the offer of a solicitor to be appointed for you?’

I nod again. ‘Yes.’

She produces a folder from her bag under the desk. ‘I trust you have an idea as to why you’re here?’ It’s said like a question, and she raises her eyebrows at me.

‘I do. I’m here because …’ I take a deep breath, trying to stop my speech becoming shaky, ‘because of what happened in the woods. All those years ago.’

Chapter 7

1987

I woke up to blood. Tiny, tiny drops of it on my pillow. I examined them through my sleep-blurred eyes. Then I felt the sting of a cut in my finger. It was small, like the droplets of blood, but it was there. It took me a few minutes to discover what it was – a discovery that rather pleased me. There was a large stag beetle, the size of a small mouse, climbing up my wall near my bed. I knew they would come. Animals usually sought me out. I think it was because they knew I wasn’t a threat. I was curious rather than predatory.

‘Hello,’ I said to it. ‘What shall we do with you, then?’ I scooped him up in my hands, feeling his pincers trying to cut me again. I let him cut me. I didn’t mind. After all, he was here first. I was the one trespassing on his territory.

I walked down the stairs, giving them some celebratory creaks (maybe more creatures will come, I thought). Dad was in the kitchen, a small, cold place, colder than the rest of the house, which was odd as I’d always thought of the kitchen as being the warmest, filled with stoves and ovens. In spite of the cold, Dad was just in his pants, brandishing a screwdriver over the old toaster from home as he leaned over the rough, stained kitchen table.

‘Dad?’ I said, watching him from the doorway.

‘Morning, Kitty,’ he said, not looking up.

‘How old are you?’ I asked.

He looked up then, clearly surprised by my question. ‘I’m thirty.’

‘How old were you when you stopped crying when you hurt your hand or got a cut or fell over?’

He looked a little irritated now, and turned back to the toaster. ‘Er … I don’t know. Probably your age.’

‘I’ve been bitten by a beetle more than once this morning and I haven’t cried once. I haven’t really felt the need to.’

He gave me one of his confused looks. He often looked confused when I told him things I found interesting.

‘Mum cries all the time though,’ I said, a little quietly.

‘Well, Mum’s different,’ he said. He seemed to be finished with the plug part of the toaster now and went to plug it into the wall. ‘The bread’s stale,’ he nodded towards the loaf. ‘We should have got some on the way last night but I didn’t really think about it. So we’ll toast it. Then it will taste fine.’

‘Will it?’ I asked, rather surprised by this new information.

‘It will. Come and sit down.’

I looked around the kitchen and found what I was looking for. I dragged a small but deepish bowl from the countertop and dropped the beetle into it. ‘What the hell is that?’ he said, looking at the bowl in disgust.

‘The beetle. The one I just told you about.’

‘We don’t want it in here. Throw it out in the garden. You can’t carry on with this weird animal adoption thing, Kitty. You’re getting too old for it now. It may have been, I don’t know, cute or eccentric when you were young. You’re ten years old now … it’s just not normal.’

He stopped, then turned away as if he’d changed his mind.

‘Why?’ I said, folding my arms. He was starting to upset me, but I tried not to show it.

‘It’s just not … something you should be doing.’

I kept my arms folded. ‘Mum used to say my creature curiosity was the sign of a mind that one day would do great things – because I’m interested in things. In animals, in wildlife, in—’

‘OK, OK,’ he said, holding up his hands. ‘I’m sure that’s all very true. But your mum doesn’t like little creatures any more, does she? You’ve seen how she can react to them. Just … just chuck the beetle out, all right?’

‘After the toast,’ I said, sitting down. I could see him deciding whether to argue further or not. He chose not to. It was for the better, I thought.

He left me to my breakfast, muttering about unpacking some clothes and going for a pee. He was right about the toast. It didn’t taste stale, although I had to cut off a little green bit on the side. I accidentally ate some of it before the amputation and it tasted like plants. Strong ones, with a bitter, furry taste. The rest of the two slices was fine, though.

Dad came back quicker than I expected, dressed in a t-shirt and one of his older pairs of jeans with a few holes in them. ‘Where’s Mum?’ I asked immediately.

He let out one of his I-would-prefer-not-to-talk-about-it sighs. ‘She’s still asleep.’

‘Do you need me to wake her?’ I went to stand up.

‘No.’ His hand shot out to stop me. He gripped me – not too hard, but firm. ‘Please, Kitty. Just let her sleep. It’s still very early. It’ll be the only peace and quiet I’ll get all day.’ He looked sad when he said this, and the lines on his face seemed more there than usual. Jemimah Prince at school once described my dad to her mother as ‘a young popstar dad’ compared to her ‘crumbly old git of a dad’. Jemimah’s mum didn’t seem too impressed with this description and told her daughter to keep such rude evaluations about her father to herself. She said her comments about my dad were ‘inappropriate’ and then frowned at me, as if I’d said them. I didn’t really know what to think. I didn’t think my dad looked like a popstar. I suppose his tallish thinness and dark-brown hair made him more noticeable than the chubbier, slightly grey-haired dads I sometimes saw at school plays or Christmas fetes, but to me he was just my dad. Nothing more remarkable than that. But now, I wondered if Jemimah were sitting at this table at this moment and saw those lines on my dad’s face, with his tired, dark eyes and sad expression, whether she’d still describe him in the same way. I thought it unlikely.

‘Let’s go and take your beetle outside,’ he said, sounding kinder now. ‘We’ll say goodbye to him together. OK?’

I nodded and counted the burn marks on the kitchen table while he went to find a jumper from the car. I had already got dressed, but Dad had something draped over his arm and seemed keen for me to take it. ‘You’ll be a bit cold,’ he said. ‘Put your mum’s coat round you.’

I’d worn Mum’s coat before and I had always liked how much it smelled of home – when home was a happy place, a place I liked to remember. A little while ago, probably just over a year back, Mum and I would spend most Saturday mornings going to the shops to buy ingredients for a pie, then spend the afternoon making it. Rolling the pastry together, filling the insides with apple in sugary syrup from a tin, her telling me what a clever girl I was when I made a pattern on the outside that went all the way round the rim. Thinking about this made me a little sad, so I wrapped the coat around me, bunching it up so that it didn’t trail along the ground, and tried to press the thoughts out of my mind. I followed Dad as he carried the bowl with the beetle in and walked away from the house through the trees. Their branches went high – higher than most trees I’ve seen – and although it was autumn, most of them still had their leaves, dark green and spiky, sticking to their branches. ‘Here we go,’ Dad said, kneeling down by one. ‘This is far enough away from the house. Let’s let him out here.’ He handed me the bowl.

I didn’t say anything as I let the beetle go. I would have been sad if I was at home. Friends like a large stag beetle were hard to come by, though perhaps not quite so hard as human friends. One of the nicer teachers at school, Mrs Clifton – she taught another class but helped out at break times – once took me aside at the end of lunchtime play and asked if I’d like it if she helped me make some friends and how she was worried she always saw me on my own. I said I was fine as I was, watching the butterflies on the bushes and the birds nesting in the trees. She went away eventually, but part of me wondered how things would have been if I’d said yes, I would like some human friends. But I missed my chance, and she didn’t ask again.

‘No! No! No!’ I heard the shrieks and dropped the bowl.

Dad jerked around quickly, then immediately started walking towards the little house. ‘Come in, Kitty,’ he said sharply.

‘I will not do it!’ My mother’s shouts echoed around me and I watched my dad go inside the house. Heard him trying to calm her.

I turned back to the beetle. He wasn’t moving. Just standing on the trunk of the tree. Poised. Unsure. Sensing danger.

I know how you feel, I thought. Then I put my cut fingers into my mouth and sucked them gently as I went back inside.

Chapter 8

We spent that first day getting unpacked. Mum even started to feel better enough to help at one point, although she kept getting distracted. Most of the boxes she opened led to her sitting cross-legged on the floor examining her own collection of mugs or balls of Dad’s socks, as if they were really interesting things from another planet that had just been discovered.

We had lunch later – about 2.30, according to the old metal clock above the fireplace that was already there when we arrived. Lunch consisted of toasted stale bread again, with Marmite this time, and Dad said he’d drive to the nearest shops later and get us some supplies. I think he was getting tired of checking each slice for mould before he bit into it.

‘Can I come with you?’ I asked. I was keen to see the world outside the woods. Just to make sure it was still there.

‘No,’ he said, gruffly.

‘You want me to stay here alone?’ I was annoyed with him, mainly because he was doing this stupid thing where he didn’t look at me properly. He did it when he was going against what he knew I wanted.

‘You won’t be on your own,’ he replied, quietly. ‘You’ll be with Mum.’

I looked over at Mum, who, having cut off all her crusts, was now eating them one by one, leaving the main (and best) part of the slice of toast on the plate.

‘She could come too.’ It seemed like a reasonable suggestion to me.

‘Just stay with her. We’ll see if we can get that old TV working.’

I didn’t jump for joy at this. He knew I didn’t really care about TV. ‘I think I’d still rather come,’ I said, simply.

‘And I’m the adult so what I say bloody goes,’ he said, angrily. He was looking at me now, his eyes sharp and filled with warnings. I often ignored signs like these and he would get into a rage where he’d go white and then red and then white again and have to go and lie down.

‘I wish Mum was the one who was still normal,’ I said.

I heard him drop his knife with a clatter. I didn’t look up. I was staring at my plate. Trying not to move.

‘Are you trying to upset me, Kitty? Is that what you want? I’m doing my fucking best, you understand! I’m—’ He stopped. Got up. Then walked out of the room. I heard him putting his coat on in the little hallway cloakroom thing. He took a long time doing it. Mum was already crying, but not making as much of a fuss about it as normal, just wiping her tears on the plastic bag the bread was in. ‘I’ll be back in about an hour, hopefully.’ Dad didn’t come back to say this. Just called it from the doorway. ‘Do not let your mum go outside. Keep the door shut. Keep talking to her. OK?’

I let a few seconds pass before I finally called out ‘OK’ in response. I heard the latch and the door slammed. And then he was gone.

And I was left at the kitchen table, watching the ‘o’ of the word ‘Hovis’ go all blurry from my mother’s tears.

Eventually, I finished the unpacking. I thought I might as well do it on my own, even if I couldn’t quite reach the high things and the chairs didn’t look too safe to stand on. I got the things all packed away – saucepans in the cupboard, clothes in the rough, scratchy old wardrobes and drawers. Mum even helped me fold my cardigans neatly, humming the theme tune to Coronation Street as she did it. With the clean, though slightly tatty, carpets and light green curtains now feeling a little more familiar, the place had started to feel more like a home. Just not our home.

I didn’t hear the door go. I was sitting on the stairs, so wasn’t far from it, but I was concentrating on encouraging out a large spider I’d seen crawl into a hole at the bottom. I thought it would make a nice replacement for the beetle I’d been forced to cast out earlier, so I spent a good few minutes trying to coax it into a bowl, though without success. I’d just given up and had gone to put the bowl back in the kitchen when I saw that Mum had disappeared from the lounge. I went through, into the hallway. The front door was open, swinging in the breeze. It was starting to get dark. Darker than I had expected. How long had passed since Dad left? It must have been more than an hour. More than two, if it had got dark already?

I ran and put on my wellington boots and a coat, then went outside into the twilight. Although not as new-cold-crisp as it had been this morning, the wind was blustery and I hugged my coat close to me as I walked around the outside walls of the house. ‘Mum!’ I shouted, peering around the corners, hoping to see her crouched on the ground, playing with some leaves or something. Right around by the back wall, I did find something. But it wasn’t Mum. It was on the wall. A word in big, black letters, scrawled in what looked like paint.

LEAVE.

I knew I probably shouldn’t have, that I should have gone back inside immediately, but the glinting of the letters made me do it: I reached out and touched the bottom half of the ‘L’. My fingers came away wet. It smelled like paint. And if the paint hadn’t dried in the blustery wind, that meant it hadn’t been done very long ago. My mind started racing. I remembered a creak I’d heard just before I found the spider – a sound I’d dismissed as a tree moving in the wind. Could someone have sneaked up on us in the dark without me knowing? Was someone watching me as I stood there, at the back of the house, just a tiny insignificant figure amidst the enormous woodland?

‘Mum!’ I shouted again. I heard a noise to my right. A strange scratching noise, as if someone was scraping something against the side of the house. Someone I couldn’t see. I looked all around me, but I couldn’t focus on anything. It was like the forest was closing in, the light getting dimmer by the second. A flurry of birds suddenly erupted from a nearby tree, screeching and squawking, and I felt my pulse increase, my temperature drop and goosebumps break out across my skin. I tried to call for Mum, or Dad, or anyone, but my throat was tight and croaky. In the end, I just ran.

I ran as far away from the house as I could in my wellington boots. When I was completely out of breath, I crouched down behind a big thick tree trunk and peered around it. The house was a small speck of light through the trees. I watched and waited for a little while, listening hard to the rush of the leaves and the wind. Then I saw something move, up near the house. Did they go inside? Or had they gone round the other side again?

My heart was pumping, my thoughts racing, wondering if it was one of the murderers I’d seen pictures of on TV and in the newspapers Dad read. Or if it was someone else. Something else. It was the worst ‘or’ in the whole horrible world. Because it would mean something really, really bad. It would mean Mum was right. They were listening. The trees were listening. The animals were listening. And they didn’t want us here. They were not going to let us live.

I ran again, blindly through the woods until suddenly the trees vanished and I was standing on a road. A long, winding road, with trees either side. It was completely empty – no cars, driving or parked. No signs. No glimmer of light to suggest the house in the distance or the direction I’d come from. Nothing. I’m lost, I thought to myself with a flash of fresh new panic, wondering how long it would be before the wolves or cannibals would arrive to eat me. I walked along the edge of the road – away from the house, I thought, but I wasn’t completely sure. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a light. A glinting light. It was a car.

I once saw someone in a film waving down a car. They had put their hand out and the person driving stopped and the other person got in. I thought that was maybe what I should do, but before I’d decided I saw the car slowing anyway, so I just stood there, at the edge, watching it crawl to a stop. There were two people in the front seat and the driver wound down their window. It was a woman. She looked like she was about to speak, but before she could, the passenger-side door burst open and a man jumped out. A man I knew. I’d been crying already without realising, but at the sight of him I immediately burst into full, gasping tears.

‘Dad?’ I sobbed.

‘Kitty! What the hell are you doing out here? What’s happened to you?’

He was staring at me as if I looked a fright – and when I looked down I saw that I did. There were mud marks on my coat, one side of it was scratched so much the material had almost ripped, and my hands were cut and bleeding.

He saw that I was crying, trying to speak, and he came round to me and clasped my hurt hands. ‘Kitty, darling, tell me. Where’s Mum?’

I shook my head, and the tears rolled down my face.

I saw the worry growing in his tired eyes. Then he looked back at the woman, now standing by the door of the car, looking at me with big, curious eyes. She was rather beautiful, and slightly older than Dad. Her hair was short and modern-looking and she was wearing a brown leather jacket. ‘We need to find her,’ Dad continued. ‘Let’s get back to the house.’ The woman didn’t say anything, just nodded and got back behind the wheel. Dad led me by the hand to the car and helped me into the passenger seat.

‘Drive,’ he said, and she zoomed off. The trees blurred past the window. I was pulled away from them by Dad, who was trying to ask me questions. ‘Kitty, when did you last see Mum? Where was she when you last saw her?’

I tried to think about it, about how much time had passed, but I couldn’t get my thoughts in order. He got impatient. ‘Kitty! Please, answer me.’

‘I … I think she was in the lounge. I left her painting her nails with her favourite violent colour.’

‘Violet,’ he corrected automatically. ‘And how long ago was this?’

I shook my head again. ‘A little while. I forgot what the time was. You were gone so long. Why were you gone so long?’

He looked at me and I thought he was about to say something, then he turned back to face the way the car was going and carried on looking ahead.

It didn’t take us long to get back to the house. The car wound into the thicker parts of the trees and up towards the front door – still open, as I had left it.

‘There’s something else,’ I said, but he didn’t wait to listen.

‘Marjory!’ he shouted at the top of his voice and ran into the house.

‘Don’t worry,’ the woman said, turning round to face me. If she had been a new class teacher, or one of the team of women who gave me milkshakes at the café in the high street, I probably would have liked her. But right at that moment, I just wanted to get back in the house with Mum and Dad and close the door. ‘I’m sure your dad will find your mother soon.’

‘How do you know?’ I asked.

She didn’t seem to know what to say to this straight away. She paused for a moment, then said, ‘Whatever will happen, will happen.’

A noise to my left distracted me, and I turned to see Dad running out of the house. He still looked frantic. ‘No sign of her in there,’ he said.

‘I’ll get Kitty inside,’ said the woman in a businesslike way. ‘I’ll come and help you look for her in a sec.’

He shook his head. ‘No, both of you stay—’

A scream stopped him mid-sentence. Then another. Then a cry. It sounded just a short distance away.