Pip shook her head.
‘I’m not Layla,’ she said, the words dented by the fast beating of her heart. ‘I sent that text to you tonight, but I’m not her. I don’t know who she is.’
Stanley’s face reshaped in the shadows, but all Pip could really see were the whites of his eyes and the white of his shirt.
‘D-do, do you . . .’ he stuttered, voice almost failing him. ‘Do you know .
. . ?’
‘Who you are?’ Pip said gently. ‘Yeah, I know.’
His breath shuddered, his head dropping to his chest. ‘Oh,’ he said, eyes unable to meet hers.
‘Can we go inside and talk?’ Pip nodded to the entrance. How long would Ravi and Connor need to break open the chain and the door and get Jamie out? At least ten minutes, she thought.
‘OK,’ Stanley said in barely more than a whisper.
Pip went first, watching over her shoulder as Stanley followed her down the dark corridor, his eyes down and defeated. In the living room at the end, Pip crossed through the wrappers and beer bottles over to the wooden sideboard. The top drawer was open and the large torch Robin and his friends used was propped up against the edge. Pip reached for it, glancing up at the dark room filled with nightmare silhouettes, Stanley lost among them. She flicked the torch on, and everything grew edges and colour.
Stanley screwed his eyes against the light.
‘What do you want?’ he said, fiddling his hands nervously. ‘I can pay you, once a month. I don’t earn a lot, the town paper is mostly voluntary, but I have another job at the petrol station. I can make it work.’
‘Pay me?’ Pip said.
‘T-to not tell anyone,’ he said. ‘To keep my secret.’
‘Stanley, I’m not here to blackmail you. I won’t tell anyone who you are, I promise.’
Confusion crossed his eyes. ‘But then . . . what do you want?’
‘I just wanted to save Jamie Reynolds.’ She held up her hands. ‘That’s all I’m here for.’
‘He’s OK,’ Stanley sniffed. ‘I kept telling you he’s OK.’ ‘Did you hurt him?’
The sheen over Stanley’s brown eyes hardened into something like anger. ‘Did I hurt him?’ he said, voice louder now. ‘Of course I didn’t hurt him.
He tried to kill me.’
‘What?’ Pip’s breath stalled. ‘What happened?’
‘What happened is that this woman, Layla Mead, started talking to me through the Kilton Mail’s Facebook page,’ Stanley said, standing against the far wall. ‘We eventually exchanged numbers and started texting. For weeks. I liked her . . . at least I thought I liked her. And so last Friday, she messaged me late, asking me to meet her, here.’ He paused to glance around at the old, peeling walls. ‘I arrived but she wasn’t here. I waited for ten minutes, outside the door. And then someone turned up: Jamie Reynolds. And he looked strange, panting like he’d just been running. He came up to me, and the first thing he said was “Child Brunswick”.’ Stanley broke into a small, crackling cough. ‘And obviously I was in shock, I’ve been living here over eight years, and no one has ever known, except . . .’
‘Except Howie Bowers?’ Pip offered.
‘Yeah, except him,’ Stanley sniffed. ‘I thought he was my friend, that I could trust him. Same thing I thought about Layla. So, anyway, I start to panic and then the next thing I know, Jamie lunges at me with a knife. I managed to get out of the way and eventually knock the knife out of his hands. And then we were fighting, out by those trees beside the house, and I’m saying “Please, please don’t kill me.” And as we’re fighting, I push Jamie off into one of the trees and he hits his head, falls to the ground. I think he lost consciousness for a few seconds and after that he seemed a little dazed, concussed maybe.
‘And then . . . I just didn’t know what to do. I knew if I called the police and told them someone had just tried to kill me because they knew my identity, that was it. I’d have to go. A new town, a new name, a new life. And I didn’t want to go. This is my home. I like my life here. I have friends now. I’d never had friends before, ever. And living here, being Stanley
Forbes, it’s the first time I’ve been almost happy. I couldn’t start over again somewhere new as a new person, it would kill me. I’ve already done that once before, when I was twenty-one and told the girl I loved who I was. She called the police on me and they moved me here, gave me this name. I couldn’t go through that, starting everything again. And I just needed time to think about what to do. I was never going to hurt him.’
He looked up at Pip, his eyes shining with tears, straining like he was willing her to believe him. ‘I helped Jamie up and led him to my car. He seemed tired, dazed still. So, I said I was taking him to the hospital. I took his phone off him and turned it off, in case he tried to call anyone. Then I drove him back to my house, helped him inside. And I took him into the downstairs toilet, it’s the only room with a lock on the outside. I . . . I didn’t want him to get out, I was scared he might try to kill me again.’
Pip nodded and Stanley continued.
‘I just needed time to think about what I could do to fix the situation. Jamie was saying sorry through the door and asking me to let him out, that he just wanted to go home, but I needed to think. I panicked that someone might trace where he was from his phone so I smashed it with a hammer. After a few hours, I put a chain across the door handle and the pipe outside the wall, so I could open the door a little without Jamie being able to get out. I passed him through a sleeping bag and some cushions, some food, and a cup so he could fill up water from the sink. Told him I needed to think and shut him in again. I didn’t sleep at all that night, thinking. I still thought Jamie was Layla, that he’d spoken to me for weeks as her so he could lure me into a trap and kill me. I couldn’t let him go in case he tried to kill me again, or told everyone who I was. And I couldn’t call the police. It was impossible.
‘The next day, I had to go to work at the petrol station; if I don’t turn up or I call in sick, my parole officer asks questions. I couldn’t raise suspicions. I got home that evening and I still had no idea what to do. I made dinner and opened the door to pass it through to Jamie, and that’s when we started talking. He said he had no idea what Child Brunswick even meant. He’d only done what he did because a girl called Layla Mead told him to. The same Layla I’d been speaking to. He fell for her hard. She gave him all the same lines as me: that she had a controlling father who didn’t let her out much, and she had an inoperable brain tumour.’ He sniffed. ‘Jamie said it went further with him, though. She told him there was a clinical trial
her dad wouldn’t let her do and she had no way of paying for it and would die if she didn’t. Jamie was desperate to save her, thought he loved her, so he gave her twelve hundred pounds for the trial, said he had to borrow most of it. Layla instructed him to leave the cash by a gravestone in the churchyard and to leave, that she would collect it when she could get away from her dad. And she made him do other things too: break into someone’s house and steal a watch that had belonged to her dead mother, because her dad had given it to the charity shop and someone else had bought it. Told Jamie to go beat someone up on his birthday night because this guy was trying to make sure she wouldn’t get on to the clinical trial that would save her life. Jamie fell for it all.’
‘And Layla sent him on that Friday night?’
Stanley nodded. ‘Jamie said he found out Layla had been catfishing him, using someone else’s photos. He called her right away and she told him she had to use fake photos because she had a stalker. But that everything else was real, just not the pictures.
‘Then she told him that her stalker had just messaged her, threatening to kill her tonight because he’d found out about her and Jamie being together. She told Jamie she didn’t know who her stalker was, but she’d narrowed it down to two men, and she was sure they’d go through with their threat. She said she would message them both and set up a meeting in a remote place, and then she asked Jamie to kill her stalker, before he killed her. She told him to say the words “Child Brunswick” to both men, and that her stalker would know what it meant, he would be the one to react.
‘Jamie told her he wouldn’t do it, at first. But she convinced him. In his mind it was either he do this or lose Layla forever, and it would be his fault. But he says at the moment he attacked me, he didn’t want to do it. Said he was actually relieved when I knocked the knife out of his hands.’
And Pip could see it all, played the scene through in her mind. ‘So, Jamie has spoken to Layla on the phone?’ she asked. ‘She’s definitely a woman?’
‘Yes,’ Stanley said. ‘But I still didn’t entirely trust him. I thought he still might be Layla and was lying to me so I’d let him out, and then he’d either kill me or tell. So after this conversation with Jamie – we talked most of Saturday night – we agreed a deal. We would work together to try to find out who Layla really was, if she wasn’t Jamie and did really exist. And when . . . if we found her, I would offer Layla money to keep my secret. And Jamie would keep my secret in exchange for me not telling the police
he had attacked me. We agreed Jamie would stay there in the bathroom until we’d found Layla and I knew I could trust him. It’s hard for me to trust people.
‘And then the next morning when I’m at the Kilton Mail office, you come to see me about Jamie and I see all the missing posters up around town. So then I knew we had to find Layla quickly and work out a cover story for where Jamie had been, before you got too close. That’s what I was doing at the church that day, I was looking for Hillary F. Weiseman’s grave too, to see if it led me to Layla. I thought it would only take us a day or two, and everything would be fine, but we still don’t know who she is. I’ve listened to your episodes and know Layla messaged you. I knew then that it couldn’t be Jamie, that he was telling me the truth.’
‘I haven’t worked out who she is either,’ Pip said. ‘Or why she’s done this.’
‘I know why. She wants me dead,’ Stanley said, wiping one eye. ‘A lot of people want me dead. I’ve lived every day looking over my shoulder, waiting for something like this to happen. I just want to live. A quiet life, maybe do some good with it. And I know I’m not good, I haven’t been. Like the things I said about Sal Singh, the way I treated his family. When it was all happening, here where I lived, I looked at what Sal had done, what I thought he’d done, and I saw my dad. I saw a monster like him. And, I don’t know, it seemed a chance to make amends somehow. I was wrong, I was horribly wrong.’ Stanley wiped the other eye. ‘I know it’s not an excuse, but I haven’t grown up in the best places, around the best people. I learned everything from them, but I’m trying to unlearn all those things: those views, those ideas. Trying to be a better person. Because the worst thing I could be is anything like my dad. But people think I’m exactly like him, and I’ve always been terrified that they’re right.’
‘You aren’t like him,’ Pip said, taking a step forward. ‘You were just a child. Your father made you do those things. It wasn’t your fault.’
‘I could have told someone. I could have refused to help him.’ Stanley pulled at the skin on his knuckles. ‘He probably would have killed me, but at least those kids would have lived. And they would have made better lives than I’ve made of mine.’
‘It’s not over, Stanley,’ she said. ‘We can work together, find out who Layla is. Offer her money or whatever she wants. I won’t tell anyone who you are. Jamie won’t, either. You can stay here, in this life.’
A small glimmer of hope flashed across Stanley’s eyes.
‘Jamie is probably telling Ravi and Connor what happened right now and then –’
‘Wait, what?’ Stanley said, and in one blink, the hope was all gone. ‘Ravi and Connor are in my house right now?’
‘Um,’ she swallowed. ‘Yes. Sorry.’ ‘Did they break a window?’
The answer was written on Pip’s silent face.
Stanley’s head dropped from his shoulders and he breathed out all his air in one go. ‘Then it’s already over. The windows are fitted with a silent alarm that alerts the local police station. They’ll be there in fifteen minutes.’ He drew one hand up, holding his face before it fell any further. ‘It’s over. Stanley Forbes is finished. Gone.’
Pip’s words staled in her mouth. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know, I was just trying to find Jamie.’
He looked up at her, attempted a weak smile. ‘It’s OK,’ he said quietly. ‘I never really deserved this life anyway. This town was always too good for me.’
‘I don—’ But the word never made it out of her mouth, crashing instead against her gritted teeth. She’d heard a noise, nearby. The sound of shuffling footsteps.
Stanley must have heard it too. He turned, walking backwards towards Pip.
‘Hello?’ a voice called down the hall.
Pip swallowed, forcing it down her throat. ‘Hello,’ she replied as whoever it was approached. They were just a shadow among shadows until they walked into the circle of light given off by the upward torch.
It was Charlie Green in a zipped-up jacket, a light smile on his face as his gaze landed on Pip.
‘Ah, I thought it must be you,’ he said. ‘I saw your car parked on the road and then I saw the light on in here and thought I should check. Are you alright?’ he said, eyes dropping to Stanley for just a moment before flicking back.
‘Oh, yes,’ Pip smiled. ‘Yes, we’re all fine here. Just talking.’
‘OK, good,’ Charlie said with an outward breath. ‘Actually, Pip, could I just borrow your phone quickly? Mine’s dead and I need to message Flora something.’
‘Oh, yeah,’ she said. ‘Yeah, sure.’ She pulled her phone out of her jacket pocket, unlocked it and walked the few steps over to Charlie, offering it to him on her outstretched hand.
He picked it up, his fingers scratching lightly against her palm.
‘Thank you,’ he said, looking down at the screen as Pip walked back to where she’d been, beside Stanley. Charlie’s grip tightened around the phone. He lowered it, slipped it into his front pocket and pushed it down.
Pip watched him do it and she didn’t understand, she didn’t understand at all, and she couldn’t hear her thoughts because her heart was too loud.
‘Yours too,’ Charlie said, turning to Stanley now. ‘What?’ Stanley said.
‘Your phone,’ Charlie said calmly. ‘Slide it over to me, now.’ ‘I d-don’t –’ Stanley stuttered.
Charlie’s jacket rustled as he swung one hand behind him, tensing his mouth into one sharp line, his lips disappearing. And when he brought the hand back out, there was something in it.
Something dark and pointed. Something he held up in his trembling grip and pointed at Stanley.
It was a gun.
‘Slide your phone over to me, now.’
