What did you say? Is there someone up there with you?’
‘I have a wedding ring,’ she tells him.
‘Is it this one?’ He fumbles inside his jacket until he finds the ring he stole from her room the previous morning. The torch beam shifts to focus on it. ‘This is your mother’s ring. See the F & F on the inside? Freddie and Faye. You’ve got a silver lily on a chain too. That was your mother’s. I bought it for her when we were students. She kept it in a porcelain box with violets on the lid.’
Seeing the look on her face, he is glad the gun is in his pocket now.
‘Felicity, what’s going on? How can you not know who I am?’
‘There is a wedding dress in my loft,’ she tells him.
He nods his head, ignoring the thump of pain. ‘White lace, with long sleeves and a sweetheart neckline? I’ll bet you’ve never tried it on, have you? It won’t fit. You’re three inches taller than your mother was, and a size bigger. You take after me, Lissy, although your face is a lot like hers.’
The face above him, so like that of the woman he once loved more than his own life, seems to change. Her eyes open wider, her eyebrows lift, and her lips purse. ‘Seven, eight, nine, ten,’ she says, in the voice of a young child. ‘Coming ready or not.’
‘What?’ Afraid, suddenly, Freddie backs away, retracing his steps. He remembers the gun in his pocket and knows it can’t help him. He will not aim a loaded gun at his daughter.
She speaks again, and her voice is normal this time. ‘If you’re my father, why do I not know you? Why can’t I remember you?’
Freddie takes a deep breath. He’d known this would be hard. ‘I’ve been away, Lissy,’ he says. ‘Do you remember anything about what happened when you were tiny?’
Again, the child’s voice. ‘Eight, nine, ten, coming ready or not.’ Then, Felicity’s own voice again. ‘You attacked me in my house. You tried to strangle me.’
He shakes his head. ‘No, I did not. I came to your house once. It was June last year. I knocked on your door. I shouldn’t have done that. I shouldn’t have taken you by surprise. You ran away. Lissy, you must remember that. You ran across the common. I went after you but I lost you. After that, I didn’t see you again until that time in the bookshop.’
‘You broke into my house.’ She is shouting at him now. ‘You broke a window. You put a knife to my throat.’
He keeps moving backwards. ‘I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.’
‘You locked me in the cupboard. You gave me to the bad men. They raped me and they killed Mummy.’
Absolutely not. I would never hurt you.’
‘Liar!’
She screams down at him. And then she bends and picks up a block of ice. It is huge, over a foot in length, and narrowing to an evil spike. He turns, tries to run. His foot catches in the narrow V of the fissure and the ice block comes thundering down.
77
Felicity
Felicity runs, and the voices drive her on.
So, you’re not married. It makes no difference, he still wants to hurt you.
He hurt you when you were a baby. It was his fault, everything that happened.
He should have been there. He should have saved you.
Run, run, run!
She flees through snow that is getting deeper as she climbs, and she knows she is running from herself, as much as from the father who, her whole life, has been the hidden monster in her nightmares. She runs, and finally, her memories start to emerge.
The men who’d worked in the garden, who’d played with her and given her chocolate, turning into bad men, coming into the house and locking the doors, holding her down while they pinned Mummy onto the kitchen floor and did horrible things to her.
Stop your screaming. Shut the little bitch up.
She reaches a snowfall, the result of a recent avalanche and can go no further this way. She heads west, knowing that to leave the familiar route is foolish, but compelled to keep going.
You’ve killed him. That block of ice split his head in two. You’re a killer now.
He deserved it. He would have killed you. It was you or him.
She has no idea of the time, but the night sky has turned the deep mauve of mourning. The clouds are low and heavy but above them she can see the lighter