The Split - Sharon Bolton Page 0,104

glacier is a deathtrap.

His foot slides again and he tumbles several feet before landing hard against a low ridge of ice. He lies, winded, on the verge of giving up, and has a moment of luck. There are six indentations in the crusty covering of snow on top of the ice. She is wearing crampons. And she has left a trail.

72

Felicity

Felicity is moving dangerously fast up the glacier but after two hours she has to rest. She is hotter than she should be, even given how quickly she’s been moving, and the wound on her thigh is throbbing. She finds a smooth patch of ice to sit on and pulls her pack from her shoulders. Sipping water and nibbling chocolate, she knows she has to keep moving. The storm is dying away but if another comes up, she cannot be on the glacier without shelter. A strong gust will send her skidding over a cliff or into a deep fissure. Worse, she suspects a bigger movement of the ice is imminent. As she’s climbed, she’s felt tremors, heard the regular thunder of falling snow and ice, even the sonorous groaning of shifting ice plates. She knows she has some distance to go before she reaches the ice sheet and the hidden cave. This is not a good place to linger.

The physical exertion has helped, though, and her head is more like itself again. She can no longer sense a host of trapped creatures scrabbling to get out. They are still there, but they are behaving. They are a little like children, or pets, waiting to see what the woman in charge will do. The sense of authority makes her feel calmer. Ready to take a risk.

‘Bamber,’ she says. Are you there?’

The voice snaps back. Always.

She shouldn’t have asked. It is too horrible, this sense of a parasite inside her. Felicity shuts her eyes tight, and clamps her hands over her ears, but there is no shutting out a voice that comes from her own head.

‘Who are you,’ she says, ‘if you’re not me?’

Silence.

Felicity tries again. ‘Is it, I don’t know, a Jekyll-and-Hyde thing?’

A subdued giggle.

How can part of her be laughing, when there is nothing remotely funny about the situation? How can she have no control over her own feelings?

‘Do you hate me?’ she asks, remembering the journal she found at home in Cambridge. ‘Are we enemies?’

Another fast response. No. I look after you.

From somewhere nearby comes a crashing that echoes around the mountain. A huge piece of ice has fallen from one of the upper peaks.

He’s coming. We have to go. Now.

Felicity feels an urgent compulsion to get up and run, as though hands are on her shoulders, tugging her upwards. She resists, but it isn’t easy.

‘Who are you afraid of?’ Felicity asks.

Freddie, replies Bamber. Freddie, Freddie, Freddie. Come on, we have to go.

There is no mistaking the fear in Bamber’s voice, a fear reflected inside Felicity. Still she stays where she is. ‘Can you remember Freddie?’ she asks. ‘The things he did, why we’re so afraid of him? Because I can’t.’

Yes, of course I remember Freddie. He hurts us. He puts us in the cupboard. He attacked us in Cambridge. He tried to kill us.

It is too frustrating. Felicity wants to bang her head against the ice, to release the memories that have to be in there somewhere. How can Bamber know all this and she not?

‘Did he rape me? Us, I mean.’

Yes, yes, yes. At least, I think so.

‘What do you mean, you think so?’

I can’t remember. Long time ago. Ask one of the others.

‘Others?’ Felicity feels physically sick. ‘There are others?’ Even as she says the words, she knows it is true. They are with her now, watching, waiting for their moment to step in. A memory strikes her, a phrase in a journal entry. The others tell me …

Beneath her, the ice shudders. She has to move.

‘Did you write the journal?’ she asks.

No, that was – someone else. I told you, I don’t hate you. I look after you.

‘Who? Who else? Who hates me?’

Bamber is silent.

Another sound from the glacier, but not tumbling ice this time. She hears a muffled cry and the sound of something heavy sliding down the ice. Freddie has almost caught up.

Come on, come on.

This time Felicity can’t resist Bamber’s panic. She gets to her feet and sets off again.

73

Freddie

Freddie has heard Felicity speaking. Her voice has drifted down to him on the wind. Knowing her to be close, he picks