‘No, really,’ I say, my tone sharpening. ‘Let’s worry about itrightnow. You can’t keep me down here, tied up forever.’
‘You’re right about that,’ she says.
I swallow.
‘Go and move her car,’ Darcy says to Max. ‘Put it out of sight in one of the garages for now.’
‘Are the keys—’
‘How should I know,’ Darcy snaps. She turns to me. ‘Car keys?’
With dismay, I remember my keys are on the hall table next to my bag and phone. I’m well and truly fucked.
‘Don’t make me hurt you,’ she says.
‘On the hall table,’ I mutter.
Max nods and leaves.
‘What’s going on, Darcy?’ I ask. ‘Why do you want to destroy my life? Did you kill Mike? Did you set me up?’ I hear a car engine outside and my heart lifts only to sink again as I realise it’s probably just Max moving my Golf out of sight.
She stands and walks over to me. Instinctively I cringe back in my chair, my gaze flitting from her unsmiling face to the knife in her hand.
‘If you hadn’t come along, they’d have picked me,’ she says bitterly.
‘What are you talking about? What do you mean?’
‘I mean…’ She leans in close to me, her eyes flashing, glinting. ‘You stole the life I was meant to have. Because of you, I lost my chance.’
I have absolutely no idea what she’s on about. I need to know what it is she thinks I’ve done. Maybe she’s confusing me with someone else. Maybe I can talk her round. ‘Darcy, if I’ve done anything to upset you, I’m sorry. But doing this… keeping me here, a prisoner in your house isn’t going to solve anything. It will only make things worse. Can’t we talk about whatever it is that’s troubling you?’ I’m trying to sound sincere. To get her to be reasonable.
The front door slams and heavy footsteps cross the hallway above us. Seconds later, he reappears down the stairs. Damn. Max is back. I was hoping Darcy and I could have had the chance to talk alone for a moment longer.
‘You see,’ she says, ignoring Max who is now back by my side. ‘You don’t even know what you’ve done! That’s how little my life has affected you. But I’ve been cursed by you my whole life.’
‘So tell me!’ I cry. ‘Tell me what I’m supposed to have done.’
Max stands by my shoulder and Darcy sits back down on her chair, running her forefinger along the blade of the knife which lies on the table next to her. I try not to imagine it sticking out of my body.
‘Do you remember your brief stay in Ashlands Residential Care Home, back when you were a kid?’ she asks.
Her question wrong-foots me, setting my heart racing again. Why is she asking me about that? I do remember it. I was ten years old, and it was one of the most unsettling times of my life. I’ve tried to fold it away and keep it locked in my mind. It was such a brief period, and nothing really bad happened. The staff were nice enough. I remember them as kind and welcoming, motherly even. But I had just been removed from my family home, from my birth parents – a mother who was mentally unstable, and a father with anger issues. My whole stay at the care home was surreal, like it wasn’t even happening to me.
‘How do you know about that?’ I ask. ‘And what’s it got to do with you? With what’s happening now.’
‘Did you know,’ she said, ‘from the age of eleven, I was fostered by six different families. Six. None of them loved me. None of them wanted me, and I hadn’t wanted to go with any of them because they hadn’t been the right ones.’ Darcy has stopped looking at me. She’s staring ahead at the white wall, but I can tell she’s seeing somewhere else. A different time and place.
‘So,’ I say, ‘we have something in common. We were both in the care system.’
‘Pftt,’ she says, snapping her head around to face me. ‘You were in care for all of two minutes. I got to spend most of my childhood there. You don’t know what that’s really like.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘I really am sorry you had a crappy childhood. But so did I. Until I was adopted, my life was like walking on a tightrope over hot coals.’
‘Oh, poor you,’ she mocks. ‘But this isn’t about whose childhood was the worst. This is about you. And how you stole my childhood from me. How you stole my family.’
‘What?’ I have no idea what she means. For a start, she’s American… How could I have stolen her family?
‘Back then, at Ashlands,’ she says, ‘do you remember the girl in the room next to you?’
