Despite everything, I manage to sleep solidly for the first time in weeks, maybe because I’ve sorted things with Ellen. When I wake, I feel stronger, refreshed. I stretch out my arm and realise Ellen isn’t beside me, that she must already be up, and I leap out of bed, hoping she hasn’t got to the post before me. As I’m throwing my clothes on, I realise that it’s Sunday, which means there won’t be any post. The relief I feel is short-lived; I can’t imagine Layla letting me off for the day, especially when I remember that last Sunday, she left me a Russian doll on the wall.
I go down to the kitchen and find Ellen sitting at the table, a cup of coffee in front of her.
‘I’ll go and get some fresh bread for breakfast,’ I say, planting a kiss on the top of her head.
‘I’ll come with you,’ she offers.
‘No need, it’s fine. Stay and finish your coffee.’
‘I have. Anyway, I could do with a walk.’ She reaches under the table. ‘Come on, Peggy.’
There’s nothing I can do except grab the Russian doll – if there is one – off the wall before she sees it. But as we walk down the path there’s no sign of a doll and I don’t know if I should be grateful or worried. Maybe Layla has left it somewhere else this morning, in which case I’m going to have to hunt for it surreptitiously when we get back.
We buy the bread and walk back to the house hand in hand. As we approach the house, Ellen stops suddenly, dragging me to a standstill, and my senses immediately go on alert.
‘Oh my God,’ she says, pointing towards the house, and she sounds so incredulous that for a moment, I think Layla has turned up. ‘Look, Finn, on the wall!’
‘Oh my God,’ I echo, glad it’s only a doll, not Layla, because I’m not ready to see her, not now, not like this. I’m about to say something more but Ellen is already running, past the house, down the road, all the way to the corner. Ignoring the doll, I run after her, wondering what she’s seen, wondering if she saw Layla.
I catch up with her in the next road. ‘Did you see anything?’ I ask.
She shakes her head, out of breath. ‘We must have just missed her.’ She looks up at me, the all-too-familiar fear and excitement on her face. ‘She was here, Finn, Layla was here! She left a doll on the wall!’ Her eyes fill with sudden tears. ‘We might have seen her if we’d walked back a little faster.’
‘She doesn’t want us to see her,’ I say gently, putting my arms around her.
‘Why hasn’t Tony found her?’ she says, her voice wobbling, angry now. ‘How much longer are we going to have to wait?’
‘I don’t know,’ I soothe.
‘Can you phone Tony? Ask him if they’ve found anything. She must be in Cheltenham, she has to be.’
‘If there was any news, he’d have told us. And I don’t want to phone him on a Sunday again. I’ll phone him tomorrow, alright?’
She nods mutely and I curse Layla for leaving the doll on the wall. Where the hell is she anyway? I’m not so sure that she is in Cheltenham. Just because Ellen saw her there and the envelopes have a Cheltenham postmark, it doesn’t mean she’s living there. She could have dropped them into a postbox in any of the outlying villages and they would automatically go to the main post office at Cheltenham to be sorted.
‘Can we go to Cheltenham?’ Ellen asks. ‘We were only gone about half an hour. She can’t be that far ahead.’
‘We don’t know that she’s in Cheltenham,’ I say.
‘She is,’ Ellen says fiercely. ‘I know it.’
‘I really don’t think—’
‘I don’t mind going on my own. I’ll get the car keys.’ She heads towards the house, taking the Russian doll from the wall as she passes.
So we go to Cheltenham on what I know is a wild goose chase because we’re not going to find Layla sitting in a café or walking along the road any more than I would have if I’d stopped on the way back from St Mary’s that time. We traipse the streets anyway, and when Ellen eventually concedes defeat, we stop for lunch. It’s not a huge success. Neither of us is in a talkative mood, so we sit largely in silence, each of us lost in our own thoughts.
We get home and Ellen disappears into her study for the rest of the afternoon. In the evening, we watch a film which neither of us really follows. After Ellen has gone up to bed I sit down at the kitchen table and check my phone for emails. There’s one from Layla. I already know what it will say.
THREE
I don’t usually write back but after the near-miss this morning, I do.
Where are you?
A reply comes straight back and I can’t believe that at last, she’s actually going to tell me. I take a breath and open it.
CLOSER THAN YOU THINK
FORTY-FIVE
Layla
I wanted to stop the countdown. I was so sure I’d been caught when I left the first of the ten dolls on the wall last week. But the voice reassured me. You can post the others, it said. You don’t have to take any more risks. Except that yesterday, I had to leave another on the wall, because it was Sunday again.
Last week, I ordered more Russian dolls. The voice told me to. I ordered twenty this time. They were delivered the next day and it gave me a real rush to open the box and see them lying there, waiting for me to perform caesarean after caesarean after caesarean and release all the little babies. I don’t know what the voice has planned for this newest lot. It’s getting harder for me to ignore it, to shut it out. Maybe it thinks that I’m going to have to extend the countdown. But I have faith in Finn, in his love for me. He will get rid of Ellen.
There are only two days left. If I could, I’d end it all now. It’s why I replied to Finn’s email, asking where I was. Don’t tell him, the voice said, don’t tell him where you are. I couldn’t defy the voice but I gave Finn a clue, hoping he would understand.
And bring me back, before it’s too late.
FORTY-SIX
Finn
I start awake, my heart pounding, my body sleek with sweat. Disorientated, I look around me and find I’m lying on the sofa in the sitting room. It was a nightmare, I tell myself, that’s all. If I go upstairs, Ellen will be safe and sound in bed, not lying crumpled at the bottom of a cliff, her body bloodied and broken. It was only a dream.
It had been so vivid though. I was standing close to a clifftop edge with Ellen while Layla urged me to push her onto the rocks below. I couldn’t see Layla, there was only her voice but I understood the choice I had to make – if I wanted to see Layla, I had to kill Ellen otherwise Layla would disappear again, this time forever. And Ellen, sensing what I was about to do, grabbed hold of me, dragging me off the cliff with her. And as we hurtled to the ground below, my voice was one long scream of Laaaaaaaylaaaaaa!
Had I screamed her name out loud? Is that what woke me? I wait for the drumming in my ears to stop and establish that the house is silent, that if I had been calling out in my sleep, it hadn’t woken Ellen. Dawn is filtering its way through the night sky and I get groggily to my feet, feeling more exhausted than before I fell asleep. Coffee, I need coffee.
The closer than you think message has been going round and round in my head, like a stuck recording. Because of the message I sent warning that the police were looking for her, Layla knows I think she’s in Cheltenham, so if she’s closer than Cheltenham she could be in any of the nearby villages – or even in Simonsbridge itself. It would explain how she’s been able to leave the dolls so easily.
I told Ellen that I’d spoken to Tony, as she had asked me to do, and that he’d said they hadn’t found Layla yet but that they were still looking. None of it was true but it put her mind at rest.
It’s almost over anyway. Yesterday, I got another doll in the post, and the subsequent email – TWO. Today I’ll get the last Russian doll and tomorrow – well, tomorrow I have no idea, only that my time has run out. Ellen is still here, I haven’t got rid of her as Layla asked me to do. So what next? Is she going to carry on with her game, extend the countdown? God, I hope not. But what if it becomes something worse, what if she hasn’t been bluffing? It’s disturbing to know I have no idea what Layla is capable of doing.
I hear Ellen’s footsteps on the stairs and realise with a start that I haven’t checked if the envelope has arrived. I get to my feet then sit back down again. It’s the last one, so it hardly matters if Ellen gets to it before I do.
The mail only arrives as we’re having breakfast. I go out to the hall but Ellen follows me.