The Second Sister: The exciting new psychological thriller from Sunday Times bestselling author Claire Kendal

‘I don’t have a moment. Not for this. I need to know yesterday. I won’t have peace until I do. Luke won’t either.’

He shakes his head so vigorously I think of a puppy emerging from the sea. ‘I wish I hadn’t brought Mike to that party.’

‘But you did.’ My hand is on the bare skin of his wrist and I’m not even sure how it got there. The hairs are soft and feathery and dark gold.

‘I saw you talking to him. I knew it would come back to bite me. You should work in Interrogation.’

‘Despite your tone, I will take that as a compliment.’

‘I was nervous going to that party, seeing you after so long. That’s why I brought Mike.’ His face flushes but I don’t take my hand away. ‘You can’t let us be peaceful. You can’t let things calm down enough for us to have a chance.’

My fingers slide up his arm, wrap around hard muscle. ‘What is it they say? You had me at hello – that’s it, isn’t it? The minute you walked into Dad’s party you had me. But the best way to create that kind of chance for us – for Luke – would be to find out what happened to her, to put all this behind us, finally.’

‘That’s more likely to destroy us than help.’

‘Not knowing hasn’t exactly done us wonders, has it?’

‘I can’t go through all of this with you again. I had enough of these arguments – I thought you’d finished with all that.’

‘I never led you to believe that.’

‘Luke is ten years old, Ella. He is a child. He has no understanding.’

‘You know him better than that. How can you look me in the eye if you’re withholding something crucial? That would always be between us.’

‘Mike shouldn’t have opened his mouth. It’ll be a disciplinary for sure. He’d be lucky to escape with just a formal verbal warning.’

‘I won’t let anything come back to Mike.’ My hand makes a broken circle around his bicep, with a very big gap between the end of my thumb and the tips of my other fingers.

‘Don’t.’ He peels my fingers from his arm as if they were leeches. ‘You don’t give a damn about the havoc you leave behind.’ He has never broken physical contact with me before. It’s normally me who breaks it first.

You always warned me about my temper. My bad EKGs, you called them, as if you could see the spikes in my emotions plotted on a graph. Yours are the same, though more frequent.

My EKG must be off the scale right now, fired by the adrenaline that makes me counter-attack. ‘So where were you actually, then, on Saturday night?’

Ted glares at me, refusing to answer, and I have to stop myself from visibly doubling over as an old headline unexpectedly jabs me in the stomach.

Master Joiner Thorne Detained Indefinitely in High-Security Psychiatric Hospital.

I hit Ted from another direction. ‘Since you’re already angry at me, it’s a perfect time to tell you that I am going to try to see Jason Thorne. I wrote to him. Now it’s wait-and-see as to whether he accepts my request to visit, puts me on his list.’

Local Carpenter in Bodies-in-Basement Horror.

‘Have fun with that.’

I cross my arms. ‘He’s a patient, not a prisoner.’

Thorne in Our Side. Families’ Outrage as Suspect Deemed Unfit to Stand Trial.

Ted mirrors me and crosses his arms too. ‘So they say of all the scumbags in that place. You’re not up to seeing Thorne. You never will be.’

I think of the worst of the headlines from eight years ago, when Thorne was first captured.

Evil Sadist Thorne’s Grisly Decorations: Flowers and Vines Carved onto Victims’ Bodies.

That headline made me hyperventilate. It took hours for Dad to calm me down. Mum had to hurry Luke out of the house so he wouldn’t witness my hysteria.

‘There’s no connection between her and Thorne, Ella,’ Dad said. ‘The police would tell us if there was. This story about the carvings is tabloid sensationalism – I’m not sure it’s even physically possible to do that. And they’ve only just arrested him – no real details of what he did have been released by the investigators.’

‘Are you listening to me, Ella?’ Ted is saying. ‘Try to remember what all of this did to you when they first got Thorne. You nearly had a breakdown.’

‘That was eight years ago,’ I say. ‘I’m stronger now.’

Whatever happened to you, I will not turn from it. Whatever you faced, I will face. I brace myself for the pictures. For the sound of your screams. For tangled hair and frightened eyes. But the pictures do not come. I have now gone forty-eight hours without any.

‘You were falling apart more recently than eight years ago.’

‘I won’t let fear and horror stop me, Ted. I owe her more than that.’

‘Thorne has been compliant as a teddy bear since his arrest. He is a model of good behaviour but you will still be the object of his fantasies. You wouldn’t want to imagine what they are.’

‘I can live with that.’

‘He has refused all visitor requests so far, but I am betting he will accept you.’

‘I hope you’re right.’

‘I hope I’m wrong. You will be entertainment. He will consider you a toy.’

‘I don’t care how he considers me.’

‘There’s no point in letting yourself be Thorne’s wet dream. There was a huge amount of evidence tying Thorne to those three women. There’s nothing physical to connect him to your sister.’

‘Really? Nothing? Those news stories last week saying there’d been phone calls between them are nothing? Those journalists were pretty specific. Phone calls are evidence.’

‘Since when do you believe that tabloid shit?’

‘There were reports that they were looking at Thorne for Miranda when he was first arrested. You know it. We asked the police back then but they wouldn’t admit anything. Now the idea is surfacing again, and with much more detail.’

‘It’s a slow news month.’

‘They’re saying—’

‘Journalists are saying, Ella. The police aren’t saying.’

‘Too right the police aren’t saying. The police never say anything. We learn more from tabloid newspapers than we do from them.’

‘There’s a big difference in those sources. You know that.’

‘The police have probably known all along that she talked to Thorne – we asked them eight years ago and they wouldn’t comment.’

‘You were a basket case eight years ago. Maybe they did confirm it and your dad didn’t tell you. Your parents were trying to protect you then. So was I.’

‘No way. My dad would never lie to me.’

He considers this. ‘Probably true. Your mum would, not your dad.’

‘Anyway, Dad asked them again a few days ago and again he got silence from them. They won’t ever be straight with us.’

‘You’re not being fair.’

‘Do you think I want it to be true?’

‘Of course I don’t.’

‘The tabloids are saying she phoned Thorne from her landline a month before she vanished. That’s more precise than eight years ago. Eight years ago there were just general rumours. If she talked to Thorne, would the police know for sure?’ He doesn’t answer. ‘They have the phone records, don’t they?’ Again nothing. ‘Do you know if she spoke to him?’

‘How many times do I have to tell you? I have no information. I can tell you though that whatever those journalists are saying, the police aren’t behaving as if they think it’s a new breakthrough. They wouldn’t have returned your sister’s things if they thought the case was about to crack open. If there actually is evidence that she talked to Thorne, my guess is they’ve always known and decided it was irrelevant.’

‘Then why wouldn’t they admit it to us, if they knew? What would be the harm in telling us? Why is this new information coming out now?’ I tug his wrist in exasperation. ‘Ted! Can you please answer my questions?’

‘Not if I don’t know the answers.’

‘Do you think a journalist got hold of the phone records?’

‘Not possible.’

‘Well someone told a journalist something. Who else if not the police?’

‘Why now, Ella? Why this moment for this new story?’

‘Shouldn’t you and your buddies be figuring that out?’

‘Not me.’

‘So you keep saying. Whatever the reason, it made me remember something else. A little while before she disappeared she told me she was looking for a carpenter to build bookshelves for her living room. It makes sense that she called Thorne.’ My voice is calmer than my pulse.

‘Then why wasn’t her body in his basement with the others?’

‘Even if Thorne didn’t take her, he may know something. Somebody may have bragged to him. These kinds of people do that.’

‘In movies, maybe. He’s clever. He doesn’t reveal anything he doesn’t want to.’

‘Not that clever. They still found the women.’

‘Okay. Let’s say for argument’s sake that she did talk to Thorne. That doesn’t mean he’s responsible for taking her. You accept that, don’t you? Never assume. If you really want to think about what happened to her, you need to be open-minded.’

‘You’re right. I need to remember that more. I might sleep better if I do.’

‘Good.’ He pulls me into his arms. ‘Don’t go. Don’t visit Thorne.’

‘I still need to try to talk to him, Ted.’

‘I don’t want you near him.’ I can feel him gulp into the top of my head. ‘I want to protect you. Why won’t you let me?’

My anger has blown away. I disentangle myself from Ted as gently as I can. I touch his cheek lightly. ‘I need to be able to protect myself. You know that.’ Despite my speaking with what I thought was tenderness, he looks as if I have struck him.

‘It’s all I have ever wanted to do, protect you. Since the first time I saw you.’

His words take me back twenty-six years, to the day we met.

We were four years old and it was our first day of school. I fell in love with Ted during playtime for punching a boy who’d been teasing me about the birthmark on the underside of my chin.

I stood beneath the climbing frame beside my brand-new friend Sadie, but she was slowly moving away to watch the excitement from a safe distance. I was covering my face with my hand, blinking back tears as the boy jeered at me, laughing with some of the others. ‘Look at the baby crying. Bet she still wears nappies.’

‘Leave her alone,’ Ted said. That was the first time I ever heard his voice. Even then it was calm but forceful, the policeman’s tone already there.

But the bully boy didn’t leave me alone. ‘She’s a witch,’ the boy said. ‘It’s a witch’s mark.’ Looking back now, it was rather poetic for a child’s taunt. I later learned his father was some sort of writer, so maybe they talked like that all the time at home. But I didn’t think it was very poetic then. ‘Let’s see it again.’ The boy made a lunge towards me and I jumped back. ‘Take your hand away, witch.’

The boy moved again, reaching towards me. That was a mistake. His fingers only managed to brush my wrist before Ted grabbed the boy’s arm and hit at his face. I don’t know if Ted’s childlike blows really sent the boy to the ground, or if the boy threw himself there to try to get Ted in trouble. But there was no mistaking the blood and tears and snot smeared over the boy’s nose and mouth.

Ted ignored the boy’s screams and sobs, coming from somewhere near our feet. He touched my hand and said, ‘Don’t cover it up.’

It was only a few seconds before a teacher was at Ted’s side to scrape the mean boy up and drag him and Ted off to the headmaster. Ted looked over his shoulder as he moved, and I only vaguely noticed that Sadie had returned to my side to put her arm around me. All I could think about was Ted, and how glad I was that he could see me take my hand away from my chin.

That night, when you asked about my first day of school, I told you about Ted and the boy and my birthmark. ‘Your magic is in it,’ you said, kissing it.

The birthmark has faded now. It is almost invisible. A mottled pink shadow the size and shape of a small strawberry.

When it first started to diminish, not long after Ted’s fight with the boy, I worried that my magic would dwindle away too.

‘The magic goes more deeply inside you,’ you said. ‘It grows more powerful because it’s hidden so nobody knows it’s there. It’s your secret weapon.’

Remembering this, it strikes me that Ted has now been in my life for longer than you. So has Sadie.

I try to reassure him. ‘There are guards everywhere in that hospital, Ted. Nurses. Syringes full of tranquillisers. Thorne must be drugged up to his eyeballs anyway as part of his daily routine, to keep him sluggish and slow and harmless.’

‘Nothing can make Jason Thorne harmless. You know better.’

‘They wouldn’t let him have a visitor if they didn’t think it was safe. They are constantly assessing him.’

‘There’s a gulf between what counts as safe behaviour for Thorne and safe behaviour for ordinary people.’

‘He will need a long record of good behaviour before they let anyone near him. Not a few hours or days. I’m talking years of observing and treating him – they’ll be confident that he’s capable of civilised interaction. They know what they are doing.’

‘Nice to see you put your faith in authority figures when it suits you.’ He slings his bag over a shoulder. ‘Luke will be hurt if you get his hopes up.’ He starts to walk away but then he halts and turns. ‘Have you thought about what it would do to him if something happened to you? There are real dangers.’ He squeezes his eyes shut, then opens them with a jerk of his head, as if he does not really want to. ‘The women are waiting. This conversation is over.’

‘This conversation has only just begun.’

‘You need to stop stirring things.’

‘Stirring things is exactly what I want to do. It’s what I should have done long ago. The ten-year timer is about to go off.’ I push past him, determined to have the last word. If he has anything further to say, it will have to be to my retreating back.

Trick or Treat

The women shift around to make the circle wider and create an empty space for Ted on the grass beside my towel. Ted nods thanks and drops into place, saying hello.

This is the second time he has come to help the group – the first time was last month. The police think it is a good thing for officers to do volunteer work in the community, and I made sure that the women were all happy for him to join us.

‘I want to thank Ted for being here. He has come on his day off to let us kick and punch him, which is extremely kind.’ To my relief, everyone laughs, including Ted, who is doing a good job of pretending that we are not furious with each other.

I always worry about making jokes, even though the women and I agree that we must. Telling jokes is a way of defying the things that were done to them. They are all here because they have been victims of sexual assaults and they are determined not to lock themselves away forever in the aftermath of what happened to them.

‘Ella’s been beating me up since we were four,’ Ted says, and they all laugh again, though my laugh is a half-hearted mask for sadness and guilt, as well as fury and distrust. He and I both hear the complex history behind this comment, including our recent argument, though thankfully they cannot.

Ted leans over to unzip his duffle bag, then pulls out what looks like a puffy astronaut suit. His predator costume. It is navy blue, a poor mimicry of a man’s jeans and T-shirt. Only his forearms and hands remain bare – he will need to use those hands. He stands up, talking as he steps into the suit, and the others stand up too.

‘Here’s the thing,’ Ted says. ‘It’s not about size. Ella’s barely eight stone but she can floor a man more than twice her weight.

‘Slap an assailant’s jaw, he will smile. Punch his stomach, he will laugh.

‘But jab his throat, he’s going to clutch it with both hands and his eyes will water. Hook your thumb into his nose or mouth, he won’t move for fear of your tearing his flesh.

‘So you don’t hesitate. You fight as hard as you can. You give me everything Ella taught you. You can’t hurt me in this suit and I’m wearing protective shoes as well as the helmet over my head and face. So kick – I can see you all obeyed Ella’s instructions to wear trainers and they can’t do me any damage. Punch. Push. Scream. Stomp. Keep it going. Make noise. I am not going to hold back when I attack, so you are going to need to work hard. If your moves work on me, you can bet they are going to work on an assailant.

‘The idea is muscle memory. If you can go through the motions physically, really fighting, then you are going to have the confidence you can do it. Your body is going to remember what to do.

‘I want you awake,’ Ted says. ‘Not afraid. Awake. That is the point of all this.

‘The thing about policemen is we know how scumbags think. Today I am the scumbag. Ella will talk you through the scenarios. But first, she and I are going to enact a new threat and response, so you can see what she wants you to work towards.’

I say his name in surprise. We had not agreed we would do this. We didn’t when he came last month. But he only shoots me his hard villain look, which actually makes a shot of fear go through me.

He continues to talk to the women without pause, clearly not prepared to allow any interruption. ‘You need to promise not to laugh once I’ve got this zipped up. I know it’s Halloween but this is not my costume.’

And of course they do laugh as soon as he says this, because Ted has disappeared into the suit. But his head – that serious mouth, those green eyes, that ruffled hair – are all still visible as he cradles the giant silver helmet in his huge hands. He is a stuffed man, a creature made of dough. When he moves, he makes me think of a life-sized toy space explorer making his way through a gravity-free atmosphere.

‘I’m going to be a bad guy,’ he says. ‘And I am going to approach you in lots of different ways, giving each of you a turn to fight me off. The best thing you can do is to avoid being in a dangerous situation. Avoid being in a position where you need to fight. I want you to deal with me with that in mind. But everyone here knows that avoidance is not always possible. Ready, Ella?’

I move towards Ted, not wanting to look reluctant in front of the women, but it feels like I am dragging myself through mud.

‘You’re in your bedroom asleep,’ Ted says. ‘It’s the middle of the night and you’re woken by an intruder.’

One of the women gives a little gasp in the background.

‘I haven’t gone through this kind of situation yet.’ My whisper is a low hiss that I am pretty sure the women cannot hear. ‘You know how fragile some of them are. We normally do the role play and talk it all through before a session so they’re prepared. I – they – don’t like surprises.’

‘Better for them to see how it works while you’ve got me here.’ Ted pulls me by the hand into the centre of the circle as they watch. ‘I hate wasted opportunities.’ There is an edge to his voice but the others cannot hear it. They must be thinking that this is what we have rehearsed and planned. ‘Practice is always better than theory alone.’ He points down at the grass.

‘Fine.’ I lie down and curl up on my left side.

‘Close your eyes,’ he says. ‘I’m putting the helmet on now. Don’t make me wear it any longer than I have to.’

‘Don’t tempt me.’ The grass is tickling my left cheek and I am trying hard not to scratch it. There is a small pebble beneath my hip and I am not sure how much longer I can ignore it.

Ted puts on the giant silver helmet, which is lined with shock-absorbing material. He zips himself the rest of the way into the suit. His eyes are not the jewelled green of emeralds. They are the earthy green of moss, one of my favourite colours, and I wish I could see them but I can’t. They are hidden beneath two squares of reinforced plastic that look black from outside.

A hand slams onto the ground only inches from my head. Ted is screaming, ‘Wake up.’ His voice is as muffled and scary as anyone’s can be. He is grabbing my right shoulder and rolling me onto my back, pinning both of my arms down and pressing me onto the grass with the full weight of his body. Everything is in slow motion and my ears are buzzing and the sun is dazzling. One of the women cries out.

I have been turned to stone. Every trained reflex I have is paralysed. All that I have practised is dead. Is this what he really wants to do? How he really wants it to be?

I disappear from the park. I am somewhere else, in a city by the sea, and it is almost ten years ago, the last time Ted and I were lying in this position. And I want him on top of me, in this narrow single bed in this rambling old house that seems to come out of a dream and is full of twisting corridors and hidden bathrooms and seemingly vanishing loos as well as multiple other inhabitants I hardly ever see. Whenever he is able to visit, we spend all the time we can in this basement room, pressed against each other, the ocean in our ears. He is so beautiful as we kiss, his expression so soft and blurred, as if our kissing is all there is in the world, and he is lost in it, lost to himself. His eyes are closed but mine are open, wanting to see, unable to look away from his face, which I have loved since I first saw him in the playground sixteen years ago. He seems half asleep and half in a trance. All the time we make love I look at him, not knowing that this is the last time we ever will. Not knowing that as we kiss and I watch him, at this exact moment, you are vanishing.

There is a hissing in my ear, bringing me back. There is grass beneath me and sky above me and the scent of honeysuckle all around me though I am not sure how that can be possible and all I can think is that you loved honeysuckle.

There is a voice spitting questions and commands. Are you scared? Spread your legs. Were these the last ugly words you ever heard? There is a man squirming his feet between mine and using his knees to try to force my legs apart. There is a pebble bruising the small of my back, reminding me where I am.

But still I cannot move. There are women’s voices and they are saying my name over and over again, as if urging me to do something, but I cannot understand what it is. I cannot think who they are.

There is a horror-film face above mine and I do not know who it belongs to. I hear my name. It is not a question, and even though it is still in that same strange voice, it is not said with hatred. Even beneath its static fizz there is a note of concern that brings me back and I remember that the face is behind a mask and it is Ted’s face and I am glad I cannot see his expression. I am glad his murky green eyes are hidden beneath the tinted visor, and his hair is beneath the helmet so that I cannot be reminded of what it felt like ten years ago when I last cupped his head in my hands and pulled it towards me.

He is inching my knees farther apart and I am trying to keep my legs as fixed as marble but it isn’t working. My name is getting louder but Ted isn’t saying it. My name is a screamed chorus of female voices and it isn’t coming from me but it goes through my bones like an electric shock and jolts me and jolts me and jolts me awake.

I let out a grunt and roll onto my left side, taking Ted with me, taking him by surprise and in one continuous motion kneeing his upper thigh once, twice, three times in quick succession. He is crouching now, coming at me again, and I am sitting up with my legs bent in front of me. I raise a leg and kick him hard in the face again and again, until he falls onto his back. I scoot closer to him and bring my heel down on the helmet-shaped cage that covers his mouth and nose. Again it is once, twice, three times. Always the magic number three. My movements are controlled and exact. The impact is precisely as I wish it to be.

He is completely still. Everything is silent. Slowly I stand up, knees bent, looking all around me, holding my hands in front of my face for protection in case he pops back up.

‘Ted?’ I say.

He sits, pulls off the helmet, gives his head a shake. When he speaks this time, there is no hint of the muzzled villain. ‘Each and every one of you is going to be that good by the time she finishes with you,’ he says to the women.