playing—a top ten hit from some manufactured band. I’m not in bed—it’s cold and hard beneath me. Where am I?
Slowly, memories filter through the fog in my brain. The debt collector. Becca. Sophia.
“Sophia!” It comes out in a whisper, scratched and inaudible. Water. I need water. Am I still in the kitchen? I was there when I fell, wasn’t I? My body aches all over, as if everything’s broken, everything’s bruised.
A sudden image assaults me: the syringe full of insulin, caressing my daughter’s skin. Did Becca inject her? Twenty-three, she said, not seventeen, so not an A-level student. Not a student at all perhaps. Who the hell is she?
I picture Sophia screaming as the needle bit, her body convulsing in shock as the insulin seeped into her system.
“Sophia!” The sound bounces back at me.
Where am I? I’m lying awkwardly on my side, the floor so cold, it feels damp, and I struggle into a seated position, blinking in the darkness. Something tugs at my wrists, preventing me from standing.
I’m tied up.
No, not tied—handcuffed. My arms are behind me, pinning me to a wall. I move my fingers over the metal of the cuff’s rotating arms, feel the sharpness of the ratchet holding them in place, tight enough that my wrists are sore and my hands have gone numb. Rigid plastic separates my hands. These are police cuffs, or something close to them.
There’s an object between me and the wall, something cold and hard that digs into my lower back. A metal bar, or a narrow pipe, with enough space behind for the cuffs to pass. My fingers follow the metal to the ground and then back up, ten inches or so to where it disappears into the wall. I pull at it, but it doesn’t give. The music stops, and an advert plays. It’s the radio—some commercial station with energetic presenters and the same forty tracks on a loop.
There are stone slabs on the floor, pieces of dirt or sand rough on my fingertips. I kick one leg out into the blackness in front of me, twisting my body and sweeping my leg to the side until it hits the wall I’m cuffed to, then do the same with the other leg, trying to get my bearings. The room is narrow, with a low ceiling that drips moisture onto my head.
I know where I am.
I’m in the cellar beneath our house.
“Sophia!” The last syllable disappears into a sob. I yank at my arms, the cuffs banging against the metal, again and again and—
I hear her.
I curse the cheery presenters, who are discussing today’s phone-in topic—what’s the worst Christmas gift you’ve ever received?—and screw my eyes shut, focusing on the one sense I need. “Sophia?”
Or maybe it’s something you’ve given! It’s only a week till Christmas, and—don’t judge me on this, Michelle—I still haven’t bought the wife’s present.
Trust me on this one, Ramesh. Don’t get her the saucepan set.
She likes cooking, though!
See what I’m up against, insomniacs? Call in with your stories and suggestions, and stay tuned for festive tunes. See what I did there, Ramesh?
Underneath the vacuous commentary of Michelle and Ramesh, of Rise FM, I can hear breathing.
“Sophia, is that you? Sweetheart, are you there?”
“Daddy?”
Relief rushes through me. “I’m here, baby. Are you hurt?”
She doesn’t answer. I hear a scratching noise—shoes on stone—and I blink the remaining grit from my eyes, slowly letting them adjust. Looking through the darkness, not at it. Since joining CID, I’ve spent more shifts behind a desk than on the streets, but I did my time in uniform. I’ve felt my way through empty warehouses in the dead of night and chased intruders across pitch-black playing fields. The beam of a torch gives a false sense of security, creating shadows in corners and making what isn’t lit up darker still. Trust your eyes, I think.
Our cellar is around ten feet wide and twenty feet long, with steep stone steps at one end that lead down from the kitchen. When we bought the house, we had grand plans to convert it into a room, knocking out the old coal chute and digging down from the front garden to add a high-level window. The quote was exorbitant, and we abandoned the idea. The cellar is too damp to store anything, and as the temperature falls, the mice come in search of warmth and food. Instinctively, my fingers curl inward.
The worst present I ever received, Michelle, was a hand-knitted sock from my mother-in-law.