Left for Dead Page 8

  ‘I’d love to. Come on Una!’

  Charlotte took the lead from George’s hand and began to walk down the long drive.

  ‘I thought you’d be back,’ George called after her. ‘I was surprised you didn’t come back with Will yesterday.’

  Charlotte stopped and turned. Una looked up at her, eager to continue their journey.

  ‘Will was here? Yesterday?’

  ‘Yes, he got caught in that rain. He seemed very intent on looking around before the demolition work starts. I just left him to it.’

  Chapter Fourteen

  Present Day - Morecambe

  The uneasy feeling in Charlotte’s stomach had returned. The first time she’d ever experienced it was at the camp. And now she was back, so was that sense of constant apprehension.

  She still couldn’t put her finger on it. Did she imagine it? Awfulising is how the CBT guy had described it. Making mountains out of molehills in non-psychobabble speak. Or in pub talk, you’re probably a bit doolally.

  There were so many things going on now. Lucia at the school gate. The unaccounted-for movement in the guest house kitchen. The anonymous Facebook request. Even Will returning to look around the camp without her. It just didn’t feel right.

  She thought about what the CBT guy had said.

  ‘If ever you feel anxious, touch something solid and ask yourself, is everything okay now? Will everything be okay tomorrow?’

  She tried it out. Everything was fine at that moment. But how could she know about tomorrow? Or the next day?

  Charlotte walked past what remained of the family pub. They used to call it the Tudor Bar back in the eighties. The small pond in the beer garden was overgrown now, evidently drained some time ago. The whitewashed pub was boarded up, vandals’ messages now sprayed against the walls. Even the tiles on the roof were beginning to break loose. It was remarkable how quickly the dilapidation began.

  She recalled great times in that pub. After Bruce. She even remembered a couple of nice evenings in there with him. Before the possessiveness began.

  The entire site was boarded up: the chalets, the big ship in which the entertainments complex was based, the family theatre - everything was inaccessible, biding its time until the diggers arrived.

  Charlotte wanted to put her bad memories behind her. She needed to walk to the old stone tower and look out at the beach beyond it, through the gate. She’d reached the end of the camp’s grounds now, with the tower to her right and the gate to her left. She couldn’t recall if the tower had been locked up then. They probably hadn’t taken much notice of it, with that general disinterest that kids have in anything historical.

  Una was panting and Charlotte stopped to pet her. She had never owned a dog before. She liked the feeling of having undemanding company, a pal who knew when to shut up and stay quiet. She played with Una some more, deciding she might quite like to have a dog. Sometime in the future. Will didn’t like dogs as a rule.

  The two of them made their way up to the tower. It was chained, but the door opened slightly. If she was younger and slimmer, she might have been able to push through. As it was, it was too narrow a gap.

  She walked along the bank, Una looking back at her regularly as they made their way through the long grass.

  ‘Good dog,’ Charlotte encouraged her. ‘Who’s a lovely dog?’

  As she’d expected, the gate into the beach was chained. However, she still gave it a shake when she got there. The chain slipped through the handle and dropped to the ground. It had been recently cut. Although the chain itself was heavily rusted, the cut was shiny and new.

  Charlotte had to pull the door open a little to get through. The grass had grown high on either side of it, so it took some force to pull it open. A piece of rotten wood broke off. She threw it aside. It wouldn’t matter - the builders would level the place soon.

  There was the beach. She tried to recall the events of that night. Why had she run in this direction? Why didn’t she find sanctuary elsewhere? She could have gone to see George and his mates in the porter’s lodge, or doubled back to the chalets. Anything would have been better than running this way.

  She tried to cut herself some slack. She wasn’t even twenty years old at the time, and it was difficult to recall quite how naïve she’d been at that age. Bruce was the second man she’d been with. Will was only the third. All those years with the same man. Dating sites and Tinder had completely bypassed her generation, even though they used computers and were happy with technology. She didn’t want to be divorced. She didn’t want to be Jenna, alone and apparently single, with no roots set down in a long-term relationship.

  Charlotte closed her eyes, picturing that night. She tensed, recalling how angry Bruce had been. They’d split up by then, and she thought he was done with her. But that night, she and Will had had a lover’s tiff. Just a stupid thing, something about Abi getting too close to him. But she’d stormed off like the silly cow she could be sometimes. And that’s when he’d chosen his moment. There was still no doubt in Charlotte’s mind that Bruce intended to rape her that night.

  She pictured the struggle on the beach, her striking him with the stone, his body collapsing onto hers. She still remembered his weight; he was so heavy to move. She’d panicked and run. And lost the necklace. The necklace that somebody now claimed to have.

  She took out her phone and opened up the message once again. There was no signal at this side of the camp, but she wrote a reply anyway.

  Describe it to me. Who are you?

  It would get sent when a signal returned.

  She thought about herself, running back along the beach, terrified that she’d killed him. She daren’t go back, yet she hardly dared step forward.

  A strange disorientation came over her, as if she might faint. She found a large piece of tree trunk that had been washed up at the edges of the beach where it met the grass, and took a seat there.

  Would she have done anything differently? Even now, at her age?

  For starters, she’d have known better than to start dating Bruce. Even if he had been perfectly charming at first, she liked to think she’d see through him. If she’d been in the same situation now, she’d still have no choice but to strike him with whatever weapon came to hand. Even if it had been present day, there was no signal on her phone. She couldn’t have even sent a Facebook message to Will or Jenna, though there’d probably have been wireless connections had the camp still been open.

  She was spiralling again; CBT guy had warned her. It started with a simple question and before she knew it, she was out of control. No wonder she felt so dizzy; she’d put herself in a spin.

  Charlotte felt ready to stand up once again. Una was poised and waiting, eager to walk by her side. She did her best to re-fasten the wooden door with the chain. Even though it was a pointless exercise, she thought it best to leave it as she found it.

  She walked down the bank, heading back towards the main camp, but taking the same route she did that night, veering to the left towards the staff chalets. There was one thing she’d never quite recalled about that panicked run back to her room that night. Maybe being back on the site would help her remember. She’d passed the crazy golf on her right and the arcades on her left. The bright, coloured paint which had once adorned the concrete obstacles on the crazy gold course was now faded and flaked. The fake, green grass was torn and weathered. There was a discarded fruit machine outside the boarded-up arcade. They’d had so many laughs playing Pac-Man and Donkey Kong back in 1984. She closed her eyes again, trying to transport herself back to that night. She was sure there was a storage area at the end of the arcade.

  ‘Come on girl,’ she said to Una, who’d found something to sniff.

  She was right. There wasn’t much left of it, just enough to confirm she wasn’t imagining things. As she’d rushed past the gas canister storage area, fleeing from the beach, she’d had a terrible feeling that somebody was hiding there. She’d been much too scared to go back and
investigate, but in her memories of that night, she thought she’d made out a figure lurking there, trying not to be seen.

  She walked over to it, standing up inside and lining up her head with the brick wall. The roof had long since rotted away, but she’d remembered it correctly - there was room for an adult to stand up in there.

  Charlotte stopped and took a deep sigh. She’d drive herself crazy if she continued this wild goose chase. Bruce was gone. He must have been scared that she’d report him and had made himself scarce. He was gone, he was out of her life, so why was she obsessing with it still?

  Charlotte heard a ding in her pocket. Her phone had found a signal now she’d moved back into the heart of the holiday camp. She moved Una’s lead to her left hand and took a look at her phone. It was a Facebook message. Probably Lucia was moaning about school again. Or perhaps Will, updating her on his first day at the college.

  It was neither. The message was from the unidentified person who’d connected with her previously. And whoever it was had gone one better than describing the necklace that she’d lost on that beach over thirty-five years previously. They’d sent a picture of it. There it was, right in front of her: the necklace that her mother had given her just before she’d died.

  Chapter Fifteen

  1984 - Sandy Beaches Holiday Camp

  The first days at Sandy Beaches Holiday Camp passed in a blur for Will. He wasn’t used to the constant cycle of shifts, having never worked a full day at a job in his life. By the time his first six days were completed, not only had he graduated to his own workstation, but he was also due a day off.

  ‘You need to get up and leave the site early,’ Abi had warned him. ‘If someone is off sick, they’ll come and knock you up for a breakfast shift to cover for them. You need to be off the premises at the crack of dawn and don’t even think about coming back until the evening shift is done.’

  Will was sitting in the staff canteen between shifts, coaching Abi with her maths.

  ‘You know, you’re doing alright here Abi. I’m not sure why you keep failing the exam. You’ve just completed half of a past paper and that’s a pass score if ever I saw one!’

  ‘Really?’ Abi asked. ‘Was that a past paper?’

  ‘Yes, I tricked you,’ Will smiled. ‘I’ve a feeling you suffer from what doctors call white coat syndrome. I think you get into such a state before an exam, you can’t see the wood for the trees. When I gave you exam questions and you didn’t realise it, you did fine.’

  ‘I can’t believe you’re helping me with this,’ Abi said. ‘I’ve felt like I was on my own for so long. I’ve only known you a week and look at me! They’ve given me a regular Sunday night at the Old Codger’s Bar and I’m doing better with my maths than I’ve ever done. Thank you Will, thank you.’

  She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. Will got a close up of her cleavage as she leaned in, and noticed that the love bites were beginning to fade. They hadn’t been replaced with a fresh batch either.

  His cheeks coloured and he smiled awkwardly at Abi.

  ‘It’s no problem Abi, seriously. I’m happy to help.’

  ‘You like Charlotte, don’t you?’ Abi scowled. ‘I felt it just then, the way you tensed when I kissed you. I don’t bite you know!’

  The irony of that comment appeared to have been lost on her, Will thought.

  ‘I really like you Abi - a lot - and I’m very happy to help you out. I can think of nothing more satisfying than to set you up for an ‘O’ level pass in maths as a by-product of working here over summer. But it comes without strings, you know. And yes, I am interested in Charlotte, but she doesn’t seem to be so interested in me.’

  ‘She’ll have a problem getting away from that Bruce,’ Abi replied, ‘He’s a nasty piece of work. Whatever made an attractive girl like her get together with an idiot like that?’

  ‘Is he a regular here?’ Will asked.

  ‘I’ve been back three summers in a row now; he was a fixture when I arrived. He’s a bit of a ladies’ man too. He had another girlfriend before all the students started arriving. A nice girl called Lynn. She’d been here more summers than I have. One day, she just left. No explanation, no fanfare, she just packed her bags and left. Charlotte and Jenna arrived soon after, once the universities and colleges started finishing for summer. And Bruce was straight in there. I’ve made my fair share of bad choices with men, but I know enough to leave that one well alone.’

  ‘Yes, I’ve seen him in action twice now. You know that night in the bar when everybody was making a big deal about my sore hand? That was Bruce’s work.’

  ‘Did you tell anyone?’ Abi asked, looking at his hand to see how it had healed.

  ‘No, nobody saw him either. I’m a veteran of school bullying - I know how this stuff works. Casual intimidation, no witnesses, nothing that can’t be explained away as a fall, a bump or a clumsy accident. I’m just giving him a wide berth for now, but what can you do? I’m really worried about Charlotte. I’ve tried to get her to talk about it, but she changes the subject. She’s caught I think - scared. But what can she do if she’s trapped like that?’

  ‘Just be careful with Bruce,’ Abi warned. ‘Be careful you don’t wade in over your head. I know you want to help Charlotte. But make sure it’s not you handing in your notice and packing your bags like Lynn did.’

  That conversation bothered Will all night. He barely slept, churning it over and over in his mind. At least he still had the room to himself; he’d heard some real horror stories about mismatched room shares. Abi had to put up with noisy love-making every night from her red-blooded roommate Reese, who seemed to return to the chalet with a different man every night.

  The few double beds that were available were moved from room-to-room, landing-to-landing, as relationships started and ended and deals were struck to secure the much-coveted furniture. Rumour had it that £40 or more was often paid to secure a bed swap, almost a week’s wages. He’d never had a life experience like it before.

  His restlessness ensured he was up at the crack of dawn on the morning of his first day off. He’d checked the bus times and figured out his strategy. He would take breakfast in one of the on-site fast-food bars which opened at half-past seven in the morning. That way he was out of his room early and didn’t have to use the staff canteen, where he might be apprehended to work a shift if anybody had reported in sick. The first bus into Morecambe was at half-past eight, so he’d nurse a cup of tea and read the newspaper until it was time to move on. He reckoned he was safe that way.

  Will was running a little late for the bus, which was laid on for the benefit of the holiday-makers who wanted to spend a full day in the nearby resort. It was one of the few staff perks, so they all made use of it to get off the site. It was a double-decker on which were painted the words Sandy Beaches Holiday Camp - Your Seaside Adventure Begins Here!

  ‘Damn right it does,’ Will thought to himself, running towards the vehicle as fast as he could manage on a full stomach. He’d just seen the black smoke from the diesel engine belch out of the exhaust. It looked like the driver was loaded with passengers and ready to go.

  Will jumped on board just as the doors were about to close. The driver gave his staff card a cursory inspection and waved him on.

  Surveying the lower deck, he could see the majority of the seats were taken, so he opted for the upper deck. The driver was taking no prisoners; the vehicle lurched forward as Will thrust out his hand to grasp a nearby railing. Walking up the small staircase felt like a battle with centrifugal forces as the driver turned the bus around and headed out towards Morecambe. Eventually, he made it to the top deck, which was much less crowded, so he took a vacant seat.

  Following Abi’s advice, he was clear of the camp for the day. He wouldn’t take the last camp bus back because it always arrived in time for tea. Abi recommended taking the municipal bus service, which sent the last bus out at half-past ten.

  As Will settled into his seat, he looked out
at the view from the top window. The nuclear power station dominated the coastline, which was dotted with static caravan parks. Predominantly though, it was very rural, with the winding lane to Heysham lined with open, green fields.

  ‘Hi Will, is it your day off too?’

  He turned around to see that Charlotte had spotted him from one of the rear seats and had moved to sit behind him.

  ‘Hi Charlotte, fancy seeing you here.’

  He scanned for Bruce. There was no sign of him.

  ‘Are you on your own?’

  ‘Yes,’ Charlotte replied, ‘I managed to get a day off at short notice. I did a swap with somebody.’

  He noticed the hesitation in her voice. She was holding back.

  ‘What’s your plan for the day?’ he asked, figuring she’d tell him if she wanted to.

  ‘A day in Morecambe. No particular plan. I just needed to get away for a day.’

  ‘Any reason?’ Will chanced. ‘Is everything okay?’

  Charlotte paused a moment, as if considering whether to trust him.

  ‘Yes, I’m fine thanks. I just wanted to get away from the place. It can all feel a bit claustrophobic after a while. The same faces, the same shifts every day. You haven’t been there long enough to be sick of it yet. How are things going with Abi, by the way?’

  ‘Oh, we’re not an item or anything like that.’

  ‘I wasn’t suggesting…’

  ‘No, I’m just helping her with her maths. Wasn’t she amazing in the bar the other night? Did you know the guys in the band are paying her to sing on Sunday nights? She can’t believe her luck. She’s over the moon.’

  ‘What do you make of her?’ Charlotte asked.

  ‘I like her. I know a lot of people find her a bit much to take. But I think she’s got a heart of gold. I also think that somebody needs to show a bit of faith in her. She has zero self-confidence. Why do you ask?’