Freeze: the Chilling Richard and Judy Book Club Pick

1

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.

2And 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.

3He said he hadn’t mean 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.

4She 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

5when

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.

6From 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.

7

1

DEE

Twenty years later

Twelve days. Less than two weeks’ work. But it’s money, and that’s why I’m doing it. Anyone can manage a few hundred hours of dealing with other people. A dozen mornings of forcing myself out of bed, washing, eating, functioning. I’ve done it before and I can do it again. They’re not paying me to be chatty, or fun, or sociable. They’re paying me to show up with a camera and shoot the bloody thing.

It’s only twelve days. And then I can come home and crawl back under my duvet.

Regular as clockwork, minutes after waking, there’s Leo’s voice in my head. Come on then. Day’s a-wasting. Up and at ’em.

I squeeze my eyes shut, force him out and turn onto my side. In the corner of the bare room is the suitcase. A ridiculous pink-and-orange thing more suited to a twenty-something on an Ayia Napa bender than a self-shooting TV director on location. But that’s what you get when you’re renting a room in someone else’s house and your own flat is so full of demons that you can’t face going back to get your luggage.

8So there’s that.

I packed last night in under an hour, then spent the rest of the night checking my kit. It’s fair to say Tori’s priorities were different from mine. Which shirt set off her eyes best? Would three colours of lipstick be enough? Which earrings to take, which to leave? Did I have room for her straighteners? What about the wedges? And how was she seriously going to manage the whole thing without a single stylist?

Bear in mind we’re going to be based primarily on a ship, in the Arctic.

My suitcase doesn’t contain earrings or mascara, because my job is firmly on the other side of the camera. Always has been. Even when Tori and I first started out as researchers almost a decade ago and it seemed like the whole team spent hours preening and blow-drying every morning in the hope that someone important spotted them and made them the Next Big Thing, my sights were always set on camera-work. I wanted to make documentaries. I wanted the thrill of the investigation, the piecing-together of the puzzle.

And yet, here I am. Self-shooting director for a reality-lite six-parter with a £100,000 prize. Exec-produced by Tori herself and her soon-to-be husband, in their first solo venture. Never mind his non-existent track record; somehow, between them, they’ve scraped together the cash to fund the show. But everything’s tight, starting with the crewing. The original plan to fit out the ship with remotely operated cameras went out of the window as soon as the quote came through, and even though I’m paid to direct and shoot, it’s still very much mates’ rates.

9But it’s not like anyone else has been beating down the doors to hire me lately.

‘Deedee! Half an hour!’ she calls from downstairs. Her voice rides high over the state-of-the-art speakers in her kitchen, playing the sort of mindless pop that would make the Tori I met fifteen years ago in the graduate scheme roll her eyes out of her head.

Not that I’m in a position to complain. Her kitchen, her rules.

Her feet on the stairs, a knock at the door.

‘Dee! Are you even up? Got coffee!’

The door swings open and there she is.

My best friend – the beautiful, successful, ceaselessly positive Tori Matsuka.

‘This is going to be amazing,’ she says, dancing with excitement the moment the Americano is safe in my hands. ‘The actual Arctic Circle!’

And this is the thing about her – the reason for her popularity; and her ratings, which broke records from the moment she started presenting and have stayed stratospheric across everything she’s fronted. She is on, all the time. She is 100 per cent bubbles. Cynicism doesn’t reach her. I’m not going to pretend I don’t admire it: her ability to be so unendingly optimistic, so apparently bulletproof.

I love her, I do. But sometimes, by God, it is exhausting.

Don’t get me wrong. Tori deserves everything she has, and without the lifeline she threw me six months ago I’d have struggled, no question. I’d have sunk. It’s simply that being the yin to someone else’s yang does get old after a while.

She flings my curtains open now, flooding the white-walled 10spare room – still not my room, because it’s definitely, positively, only temporary – with flinchingly bright daylight.

‘Oh God, you’re not even packed! Let me help you.’ And then the wardrobe is open, and she’s on her knees, peering under the bed that I’m only now climbing from.

‘I am packed.’ I gesture loosely to the case, without looking at it.

She laughs, sees I’m serious, then frowns and goes over. She lifts the lid. ‘That,’ she says, looking from the stacks of folded grey and black fabrics to me, and then back again, ‘is not what you’re taking for the whole trip.’

‘Yeah, it is.’ Twelve pairs of knickers, a couple of bras. Thermals, layers, jeans. Two blister packs of Citalopram, the dose checked and double-checked. Last thing I need is to run out in the middle of nowhere. ‘It’s fine, leave it.’

‘What about that blue top? You look great in that.’

‘Tore a hole in it.’ I’d been trying to customise it for use with a body-worn camera rig, but it went wrong. ‘Also, it really doesn’t matter what I look like. Who am I trying to impress – the seals?’ I go over and snap the case shut. ‘At least I’ll stand out against the snow.’ According to the brief that our researcher Annabel sent over, we’ll be spending most of the time in the ship-issue outersuits anyway.

Downstairs the front door opens.

‘Tori? Food!’

She’s out of the room in three paces. I go out, lean over the banister for as long as it takes to see her locking faces with Will, the fiancé. They’ve been together for almost two years, but my tenancy here pre-dated the engagement by a few weeks. 11Although he still spends most nights in the flat above his Old Street office, there’s been talk of selling the house after the wedding in a few months’ time. If I don’t jump soon, the push is going to come eventually.

Will senses my presence and looks up, waggling a paper bag, rounded by the food inside. ‘Bacon butty?’ he offers, before taking a bite of his own.

‘Are you driving us?’ I ask him.

‘She means, could you drive us, please?’ Tori mock-whispers in his ear. ‘Also, no thank you, I’m fine for breakfast, Will, but that’s very kind of you to offer.’

‘No thank you, Will, but that’s very kind of you to offer,’ I yawn.

He laughs, wipes the corners of his mouth, checks the watch that would, on its own, pay the debt that neither of them has the slightest clue I owe. What would Leo make of a watch like that? One that would have solved everything for him, in one go?

‘Dee?’ Will says, and I blink, caught not paying attention. ‘Leave in fifteen, yeah?’

‘Fifteen. Yep. No problem.’

I go back into my room and close the door, and am confronted by the mirror hanging from it. I stare back at myself.

Funny how you can spend years wishing to be thinner and, when it’s finally granted, it comes as fast and vindictive as a sandstorm. These last months have shrivelled me in more ways than I’d like to admit. I’m thirty-six years old. I could be fifty.

The face in the mirror blinks emptily. You can do better than that, Leo’s voice says.

12I make myself smile, but it’s brittle, sad. Wrong again, I tell him.

Twelve days. Then I can come back, my bank balance a little closer to the target. A little closer to redemption. Then I can close the door again and drop the act.

And it’ll just be me and him and my thoughts again.

13

2

TORI

And just like that, after the months of planning, the agonising over the contestants, the screen tests, the recces, the endless budgeting woes: we’re off. The first shoot of my own production company, Tori Tells Stories, is actually under way. I close the door behind me and head down to where Will’s 4x4 is humming into life.

Dee’s already in the back. ‘You know those shoes aren’t going to work, right?’ she says, eyeing my wedges. ‘On the ice sheets, I mean.’

I waggle an exposed toe as I get in. ‘No reason I can’t take a little bit of fabulous with me, is there?’

The look she gives me, the shake of her head: it’s like she’s forgotten that all of this I do – the shiny exterior – is part of the job. Does she not remember those endless nights in our twenties, going over and over YouTube tutorials on walking in heels, contouring, the sweet spot of a good smile? Stuff I’d scoffed at in university before realising, nearly too late, that all the degrees in the world wouldn’t get me onscreen work if I didn’t look the part. Dee was the one who’d reminded me, right before that big-break audition two years ago, shortly 14before I met Will, that I wasn’t to use any words longer than three syllables.

She knows it’s a front. But somehow, these days, it’s like it’s all she sees.

I film myself clipping on my seatbelt and giving a peace sign, then type the caption: #FrozenOut: eight leaders, seven Arctic challenges, one ship, one £100k winner! Bring it on! I follow it with the familiar hashtags, my thumbs flying across the keys almost on muscle-memory alone. #Arctic #£100k #eightleaders.

‘House all locked up? Cameras set?’ Will asks as I post the video to the socials.

I sigh, annoyed, then open the car door.

‘I’ll go,’ Dee says.

She gets out and Will gives me a look.

‘What?’

‘Five grand on a brand-new security system and you forget to check it? So you’re only concerned about the house when you’re actually in it?’ Then he frowns. ‘You would tell me if there was something going on, right? Like a fan, or whatever?’

I exaggerate an affectionate eye-roll. ‘We’ve been over this.’

It’s half true. What we’ve been over is his assumption that my new-found fame has prompted my concern about safety from strangers.

The truth of it is: strangers, I can deal with.

Will flexes his fingers on the wheel.

‘You’re not nervous, are you?’ I ask him. I poke him gently in the side. ‘Not going to miss me so much that you cry?’

‘I’ll be fine.’ There’s a lot to do here when we’re gone – negotiations about foreign distribution, advertising meetings. Will’s 15got a lot riding on Frozen Out too, though for him it’s more pride than anything. We’d hoped his family would back it, but when our cashflow issues really showed themselves, his father (not Dad, never Dad) got cold feet. So the money propping up this show is nearly all mine. Not that I’d worry Dee by admitting it.

I lean over and kiss his cheek. ‘Your father will be proud, sweetheart. We’re going to show him what you can really do.’

From the way his jaw tightens, I can tell that wasn’t the right thing to say. And that tiny, niggling question comes to me again. Do I really know this man well enough to marry him?

Dee reappears from the house, and Will turns to kiss me back as she comes down the path.

‘Don’t worry about me, Tor,’ he says. ‘Concentrate on you. Focus on doing your best.’

I wince slightly at his tone: we didn’t put up that extra shelf in the office last weekend for his awards, did we? But I remind myself we’re an hour from a big goodbye, and I holster it.

‘I’m not worried about anything at all.’

‘What you should worry about,’ says Dee, getting in behind me and slamming the door, ‘is that Annabel’s already called me five times this morning to make sure we’re on schedule.’ She belts up, then gives me a look. ‘Tell me again why we chose her?’

I laugh and don’t look at Will, who insisted that what convinced him to hire the researcher was her efficiency, and definitely not her ludicrously low rates.

‘She brings balance,’ I say lightly. ‘Enthusiasm to counter your relentless apathy?’

16‘Whatever. A job’s a job. Let’s go.’

It’s a bright day and the traffic is unusually fluid. Will weaves expertly out from my leafy street in Chiswick towards the M4. He finds a lively station on the radio, and I sneak my hand onto his thigh. His muscles tense deliciously under my touch and he takes his eyes from the road to give me that stomach-flipping grin of his. That’s what it takes to zip that other, snarky little voice about our relationship, because my God, this boy.

I hear Dee shift around in the back of the car and swivel in my seat. She’s got her phone out, staring at the screen but not scrolling, not texting. Biting her lip. Meaning it’s that guy again. Leo, the one she had the fling with.

‘You might as well,’ I tell her, making her jump.

She stuffs it quickly away into the pocket of her backpack. ‘Might as well what?’

‘Text him? I mean, once we’re out there, there’s no internet, so if you’re going to do it, do it now.’

‘Tell me about it,’ Will says. ‘When I was out there XC-ing last year, I hardly got a single message in or out for the full two weeks.’

‘XC?’ Dee asks flatly.

‘Sorry, sorry. XC – cross-country.’ He glances up at her in the rear-view. ‘Cross-country skiing?’

‘Why didn’t you say cross-country skiing?’

He laughs and looks away, unaffected. Would it be so hard to be nice to him? Given that Will’s her boss, actually. Dee meets my glare and gives a small shrug of apology, before looking studiously out of the window. It’s the same chill that comes over everything whenever Leo is mentioned. I never met him when 17they were together, and now I wonder if I ever will. Whoever he is, he cast one hell of a spell.

Quietly I try again. ‘Seriously, Dee. Just message him. You could break the ice a bit now, and then by the time we get back maybe he’ll be up for a fresh—’

‘Can you leave it?’

‘Okay, okay,’ I say, holding up a hand. ‘Sorry. You know what you’re doing.’

Except that she doesn’t, not really. How long has it been? Almost half a year. Something happened right before she suddenly decided to rent out her flat and move in with me. God knows why it went so cold. I’ve never known Dee so unhappy. Nothing would shift it, not for months. I’d hoped this job – the chance of a huge change of scene – would make the difference. Take her back to who she’d been, before. It’s mad to think that not so long ago, on learning we both had an empty weekend, she demanded that I meet her at the airport with only my passport, my credit card and an open mind. But it’s like that adventurous woman I thought I could rely on for ever is … gone.

I shift back round and then get out my own phone, feeling suddenly edgy about the lack of comms where we’re headed. Despite the show being the kind of format that would usually broadcast daily and semi-live, the whole show has been structured as a pre-shoot, to be edited and broadcast months down the line. It’s a decision that was made precisely because we won’t be able to transfer the material in time for a daily show. Once we’re out there, it’s total isolation: just the ship, the cameras, the ice.

We hit the M4 and Will puts his foot down, swinging around 18the other traffic and out into the fast lane, his natural territory. I consider calling my dad, but it’s been too long to get away with merely a quick goodbye. So I text instead, promising a proper call when I return. I get a message back within seconds. Love you, sweetie. Your mum would be so proud of you.

Will glances over. ‘Your dad?’ I nod. ‘Want me to send him updates?’

‘God, no,’ I tell him. They’ve only met once, and the last thing I want is for them to start gossiping about me behind my back in my absence. There are things Will could find out from him that could ruin us. Us, this show, my career – everything. So I need to keep them as far apart from each other as I can; at least for now.

I lean my forehead against the cool of the window and watch the airport come into view.

Long-term, I’m going to have to come up with a different solution. I’d hoped I could keep it hidden for ever, but that all changed the moment I got the letter.

19

3

DEE

It’s not her fault. All she’s done since my world collapsed under my feet is take care of me. If there’s one person I could open up to, one person I could trust, it’s Tori. But what would she think of me, if she knew? How would she square the person she thought I was with the truth of what I’ve done?

The answer is: she couldn’t. No one could. And so I keep on putting the bricks in the wall between us, shutting her out.

I stare out of the window, watching the transition from normal-height lamp posts down the central reservation to the stumpy ones they switch to closer to the airport. We’re nearly there.

It’ll bring me nothing but misery, I know, but I get out my phone again. I bring up the final message I sent him.

Leo, I read. I didn’t mean you to find out like that. I made a mistake. I’m so sorry.

I screw my eyes shut. I see the minute twitch of his face when I got into the car next to him, the very last time I saw him. I hadn’t realised anything was wrong, so I’d chatted away. I asked him about his class that day, and the adult piano student he was tutoring on Tuesday evenings. I didn’t know anything 20had changed. I didn’t know that the window I’d had to make everything okay – to give me a shot at spending my life with him – had already closed.

I was going to tell him the truth. I really, truly was.

After he threw me out of the car, I stood out there on the corner for an hour with my phone, calling and calling. So certain that he’d come back. All the messages I sent are still here, unanswered. Would it have made a difference if I’d put it better? Would I’m sorry I lied have cut it? I’m sorry I ruined your career?

I tap out a message. I don’t know why I do it. The hundredth, the thousandth draft of the same thing.

I would give anything to change what happened. Or even just to explain. I know you always said: no excuses, no regrets. But I do have excuses. They’re really good ones. And regrets, too. Massive ones; regrets coming out my ears, honestly. I see Leo smile as the words form on the screen.

But he’s not going to smile. I let backspace eat it all. This time I write the shortest, the most condensed version there is.

I love you.

And then I delete that, too, and switch the whole thing off. I spend the rest of the journey staring at the back of Tori’s beautiful, blameless head, wishing I could tell her, but knowing that I never, ever will.

21

4

DEE