Kate Simants spent several years as an investigative undercover journalist for Channel 4 and the BBC. She was shortlisted for a CWA Debut Dagger for her first novel Lock Me In and won the UEA Literary Festival scholarship to study for an MA in Crime Fiction. She graduated with distinction. Her second novel, A Ruined Girl, won the Bath Novel Award. She lives near Bristol with her family. Freeze is out from Viper Books on 2nd March 2023.
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PROLOGUE
She stands in the black night wearing only pyjamas, the mist parting around her as it rolls across the open hillside. There is silence, except for her own breath and that faint rasping by her feet. Maybe she could still save him. But she can’t even bring herself to look.
If only she’d done what she was told.
If only she’d stayed on the other side of the wood, in view of her tent.
If only the new friend she’d made that afternoon hadn’t seen those hazel trees. Their long, perfect branches, easy to snap, exactly the kind they needed to finish the den. Sticking straight up, beckoning like fingers, drawing them in.
In quiet, stalking footsteps, she and the other girl had gone further away to that other camp, just beyond. That’s where they found the boys, the smell of their barbecue, their laughter. Older, but not old enough for the beer they were drinking. Their freedom, their easy way with the man they had with them, their chests bare.
Her fingers still held tight to the bark of that thick pine when he turned.
The hazel twigs forgotten.
And when that one boy saw her, if only she’d looked away more quickly. She didn’t know what happens when they see you looking at them.
But she knows now.
She made the new friend promise to say nothing. The adults would only worry. They finished the den, but without enthusiasm – the silly fun of it having evaporated, leaving behind only an awkward awareness that they were too old for dens. Then they went their separate ways, back in time for tea. And by the time her family’s campfire had burned all the way down and she’d zipped up her sleeping bag for the night, she’d almost forgotten about the boys, their party.
But not quite. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw his face. That bounce of black hair, the easy smile. Not like the boys at school. And she did try to ignore it, but something had changed. A circuit had lit up.
And so when she heard them out there, passing the shower block, she went on her own.
She thought they hadn’t seen her when she went inside the squat building, but he was there after she washed her hands and went back out. Waiting by the door, alone now, this black-haired boy. His eyes soft. The kind of forehead that bulges above the eyebrows. A fine, angular nose. Head tilting, half amused.
Not that she knew then how his face would stick in her mind. How she’d see it every day for the rest of her life. In the dark of her room, in the shadows of nightclubs, in the rear-view mirror of every car she would ever own. Imprinted in her mind as if he was right there in front of her. Over and over again, until she learned to fear closing her eyes.
He said he hadn’t meant to startle her, but it didn’t stop him smiling. He couldn’t sleep, he said. Couldn’t she sleep, either? Maybe a walk would help.
So she went with him.
If they hadn’t wanted to build that den, none of it would have happened. She’d be back in her tent, asleep, warm. Safe.
And this boy would be safe, too. This boy on this rocky patch of ground, halfway up the hill behind the woods. This boy who she’d thought was kind, but who wasn’t. This boy – much more like a man than she had first realised – who thought she wouldn’t fight back.
A new voice had told her what to do. She flexes her sticky fingers, recalling it sounding in her head. Quiet, calm – hers but not hers. Saying, Stop. You cannot win like this. Wait until he understands you’re not struggling. Choose your moment.
So she did. She stopped fighting until she knew she could win. She didn’t scream. No one came and no one will know. No one but her, and him.
A shiver goes through her now, half-pain, half-cold. She looks down and sees her legs and they are a surprise, glowing bare white. She blinks away the sense that they do not belong to her any more, that none of her body does.
She has lost a sandal.
There is a single dark track threading the length of her thigh, smearing out at the crease of her knee. Blood, she thinks, without feeling. She is bleeding.
But it’s not just blood. Another wetness that she understands for a fraction of a second and then – no. She makes the choice not to acknowledge it.
She has lost a sandal.
She is bleeding.
Something hurts.
That is all.
The scream of a bird, an owl, jolts her into herself. She doesn’t know how long it has been. Five minutes? Half an hour? Do they even know she’s missing?
She squints down the slope towards the camp. Dark except for the faint outline of the shower block, lit from the other side. And beyond it, through the woods at the edge, where the boys’ group is – a flicker of flame. She watches for the beams of torches, but no one is coming. Their fire is still burning. If she listens hard, past the thundering of her own blood in her ears, maybe she will hear them. Singing. Laughing. Or calling his name, because he must have a name. But there is no sound.
They haven’t realised he’s gone.
She drops the rock, slick as it slips from her fingers. Everything is dark, so dark now, the world reduced to black and white. Too dark for shadows. Even the red on her fingers, thick as a glove, is crude oil in the absence of a moon. She looks down at his face. She waits to feel something. His eyes are open, as if scanning for stars.
The girl looks up. There are no stars.
The silence is punctuated only by the faint, rasping, just-about-something from him. Silence filling the space between each of his shallow breaths, stretching a little longer each time. Her own breath stings in her throat and she tries to remember: was she shouting? Did she scream, before, when he was
when he
when
did she scream? She doesn’t remember it. She thinks she didn’t cry out, not even when she realised what was happening. His hands on her. Even though she knew what it meant. She is fourteen, she’s not stupid.
She brings her fingers up in front of her eyes and what’s on them changes direction, slicking downwards towards her wrist, thick as tar.
There’s a crack from further down the hill, making her jump. She crouches, runs her eyes across the blackness, but she sees nothing. An animal? But the suddenness of it lights up her mind again – shakes her out of this strange, blinking confusion. Yes, you must move, that same ancient part of her says. Act. Do it now! There are things she has to do. Wash. Get back. Stay out of sight. She tears down the hill towards the rectangular glow of the shower block. But she only takes a few steps before her bare toes strike against a rock and she remembers. The sandal. She tracks back to where he lies sprawled on the loose rocks. His chest is still rising and falling. His trousers and shorts are halfway down his thighs and his
and his
and
And there, by a miracle, grabbing-distance from his hip, is the sandal.
Right there. He can’t reach her. She can move quickly, and he can’t. She has to do it. There is no choice. She sets her jaw and dashes in to retrieve it.
In the very same second she snatches it away, he flings his arm out. This time she screams.
From the same direction that she heard the crack, there’s a shout.
“Hey!”
Then footsteps.
She flies off down the hill.
“Wait, stop, what’s happened?” A man. The man from their camp.
She does not wait. She does not stop.
She doesn’t think of anything, of what’s happened, because she can’t change any of that. Can’t control it.
What she can control is what happens next. Who she tells, who she trusts. And it takes her only minutes to make the decision.
She slips unseen into the shower block and stands in the scalding water, scrubbing blisters into her skin, then creeps without a sound into the tent and slips herself back into the
oblivious warmth of her family, as if unharmed.
There and then, she makes the promise to herself. She will trust no one.
From this moment onwards, she will fold herself around this secret. She will build a prison around it with no doors and no windows. There will be questions, she has no doubt, but if she has to lie to keep it hidden, she will lie. She will lie now, and tomorrow, and every day until the questions stop, and if they never stop, then she will never stop lying.
As she lies blinking in the blackness, the secret takes its place. It nestles silently, sharp and cancerous against her heart, its claws reaching blindly in.
© Kate Simants 2023
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