‘I need to find Sam. Can you tell me where he is?’
Amy closed her eyes. A single tear escaped its confines and ran down her cheek.
‘Where is he, Amy?’
A long silence and then finally she whispered:
‘The woods.’
Amy categorically refused to leave the sanctuary of the Portakabin, so Helen had to use the dog. She left Charlie to babysit Amy, ordering Mark with her. Simpson, the retriever, buried his nose in the bloodstained rags that had once been Amy’s clothes, then shot off through the woods.
It wasn’t hard to see where she’d been. Her progress through the wood had been so blind, so crashing, that she’d rent great holes in the thick undergrowth. Bits of cloth, bits of skin decorated her path. Simpson hoovered these up, bounding through the foliage. Helen kept pace behind him and Mark was determined not to be outrun by a woman. But he was labouring, sweating alcohol.
The lonely building came into view. A municipal swimming baths, long since earmarked for demolition, a sad relic of fun times gone by. Simpson clawed at the padlocked door, then broke away, racing around the building before eventually coming to rest by a broken window. Fresh blood decorated the cracked panes. They had found Amy’s cocoon.
Getting inside was tough. Despite the building’s dereliction, care had been taken to secure every possible entry and exit. Secure it against whom? Nobody lived round here. Eventually, the lock was forced and the usual ballet began, shoes cased in sterile covers skating over the floor.
And there he was. Lying fifteen feet below them in the diving pool. A brief delay as a long ladder was sought, then Helen was in the pool, face to face with Amy’s ‘Sam’. He was a straitlaced kid, bound for a law firm, but you wouldn’t have known that to look at him. He looked like the corpse of any old dosser you might find on the streets. His clothes were stained with urine and excrement, his fingernails cracked and dirty. And his face. His gaunt face was contorted into a hideous expression – fear, agony and horror written in his twisted features. In life he had been handsome and winning. In death he was repulsive.
Would they ever stop torturing her?
Amy thought she would be safe at Southampton General. That she would be left alone to heal and grieve. But they were intent on tormenting her. They refused to let her eat or drink, even though she begged them to. Her tongue was swollen, they said, her stomach too contracted and her bowels might tear if solids passed through them. So they’d hooked her up to a drip. Maybe it was the right thing to do, but it wasn’t what she