You Can Stay

by Elle Connel

Genres: Horror; Psychological Thrillers; Suspense

Synopsis

She's the perfect host. He's the perfect victim.

Someone is hunting Connor. Alone, freezing, in the wilderness of Bodmin Moor, on an elite Special Forces training exercise, he'd be a fool to scorn the kindness of a local stranger. Wouldn't he?

At first, Eilidh seems to be an impeccable host. She offers Connor food and a warm bed - he finds it nearly impossible to leave her charming farmhouse.

But the choice isn't his to make.

There have been others before. None, though, as perfect as him.

Why would she let him leave?

Praise for Elle Connel:

"I loved the classy writing and ever-growing sense of unease in this clever subversion of a classic country house mystery" - Harriet Tyce
"A chilling drama" Sunday Times
"Misery for the Goop generation. You Can Stay is fantastic - an absolute treat of a book." - Catherine Simpson
"Witty, grounded and entertaining, this is a thrilling read." - Lynsey May
"You Can Stay was so gripping I read it in one compulsive sitting!" - Claire Askew
"Sinister and atmospheric" - Chris Brookmyre
"Absolutely loved this - so dark, yet laced with humour, and such clever plotting. Loved the characters, and the ending is sublime." - Susi Holliday
"I have never fallen so hard for a book this far out of my comfort zone. A stunning book about gender and power, and a fine homage to Stephen King's Misery. Deeply unsettling, and impossible to put down." - Claire L Heuchan
"A gripping mystery." - Nathan Ripley

(P) 2022 Headline Publishing Group Ltd

Release date: April 14, 2022

Publisher: Headline

Print pages: 416

Sample

Acknowledgements

Thank you Alex Sharp, you twisted fella, for not only insisting I write this book as soon as I’d told you the idea, but also for making sure I had space and time to write it, every day throughout the second lockdown. You have earned your dedication, and I remain your Number One Fan.

Thank you to Daisy Parente and all of the team at L&R for having the most enthusiastic reaction to the first draft, and for all of your continuing support. You are the best.

Thank you to Jack Butler at Wildfire. I have really enjoyed working on this story with you; special thanks for your curiosity about these two disturbed souls, and for encouraging me to go deeper into their minds.

Thank you Karen Ball for your eagle-eye, and for helping me to assassinate various darlings who were hindering the story. Thank you Serena Arthur for doing the less visible (but no less magical) things that bring a book into the world.

Thank you Claire Heuchan for the Sol Stein book, and for numerous Zoom book chats.

Various people helped me with the military research for this book, in particular Bruce Wilson, who was very generous with his time, and never once laughed at my ignorance. Thank you also to former soldier Andrew Lawrence, and to the former RAF pilot who wished, for reasons I quite understand, to remain anonymous. All mistakes, or liberties taken, on military procedure are mine alone. The original idea for the book came from Ollie Ollerton’s descriptions of using locals as ‘the resistance’ during Selection, detailed in his excellent autobiography, Break Point.

Thank you Stevie Buckley for keeping a straight face during our conversations on how to dislocate someone’s ankle during sex. Thank you Cici Buckley for texting me to tell me you had gamely tried out the logistics. The book would not be the same without you guys.

Thank you Liz Ross for being kind enough to talk to me about growing up in Belfast.

It takes a village to keep a writer sane when writing a book, and I thank with all my heart: Caraigh McGregor (no relation to Eilidh), Simon Atkins, Stewart Morrison, Scooby, Abi, Rose Filippi, Bridget Gray, my brother Tim (kopfkino!) Ribchester and Eli Wieland, Rosie and Graham (and Mirren), Hannah and Lewis, Phil and Julie, Graham West, Becca and Marty Rufer, and anyone I’ve missed who sent me a supportive message or made me a cup of tea, or looked after my children. I feel weird thanking Gabriel and Harry for their part in creating such a novel, but you guys make me happy and make me laugh every single day, and I am so lucky and grateful to have spent the various lockdowns with you.

On that note, thanks Mum and Dad. Mum, I know you expressed horror when I told you what I was writing – ‘what will people think of your upbringing?!’ I place the disclaimer here that my upbringing was perfectly normal. It’s absolutely not your fault I was allowed to watch Silence of the Lambs at the age of 12.

Thank you Buster for keeping my feet warm on the bed, and for making me go for a walk when I needed to.

In case anyone was in any doubt about the inspiration for this story, thank you Stephen King for writing one of the greatest psychological horror tales of all time, Misery.

Prologue

She can see nothing beyond her fingers. Darkness smothers the moor. Even the sheep, greying balls at dusk, have vanished now as midnight approaches. She feels her way through the dry leaves and the heather, squatting, grasping for ­kindling, hoping her hands do not attract a nip from a sleeping adder or a rat’s nest.

When she builds this fire, it will be seen and smelled for miles around. She is taking her chances.

Something rubs along her legs – the collie. She heaves stones into place, marking a circle. This is not how she envisaged it all ending, but she is here now, and there is nothing more to be done.

‘It just didn’t work out,’ she imagines herself saying to people in the village, people she knows, friends, like the man in the health food shop. ‘It just didn’t . . . work out.’ That’s all you can say at times like this, if anyone were to ask.

But they won’t, though, will they?

She’d left the three lumpen bin liners lined up next to the pile of logs she’d brought from home, and now she fumbles towards them. When she feels her fingertips touch plastic, she hooks them under her feet, kicks and pushes them closer to the kindling, grunting at their weight.

She’d driven up here, as far along the track as she could, parked in the scrub, car embedded in gorse thorns, then lugged the bags one by one the rest of the way to the ridge. She had double bagged the heaviest one, but she couldn’t get it off the ground, so she had to hope it didn’t split on the rocks as she dragged it over. She doesn’t know quite how she did it. Her mind is foggy from the bleach fumes she’s been inhaling all day.

Serves her right. No. She catches herself. We all make mistakes on life’s journey. It won’t happen again. Fresh start.

She tips the contents of the first bag on top of the kindling pile. Clothes flutter. Clotted blood has dried on the T-shirt, turning it stiff. It comes tumbling out, skewing the kindling. She rearranges the sticks, then reaches into her pockets for the firelighters and matches, scatters the firelighters. The first strike scorches her thumb and she drops the match, watches it fizzle.

She is shaking. She pulls herself together.

The second one takes. The firelighters ignite with a puff.

Flames spread. Choking smoke.

Her eyes sting.

She waits a few minutes for the fire to take hold. Then she heaves over the other two bin liners. Piece by piece, she slowly feeds the contents to the fire.

She stands back. The heat is almost unbearable.

  

All night she waits on the moor, crouching, pacing, crouching again. She is a shadow, cloaked in smoke, a smudge on the night. The fire takes a long time to burn out. When the ash glow dies, she chucks the dregs of her water bottle over the pile. Hissing steam bleeds into her hair, gets in her nose. What’s left is a tacky greyish powder. The dog is very interested in it. She pushes his nose away. Using the bucket that had contained the sheep feed, she gathers and scatters, gathers and scatters, among the heather, until it is done.

She sighs.

They will come again though. This much she knows.

1

The scene was hideous.

The body had been dragged across the lawn, under the washing line and towards the back hedge, shedding blood and viscera as it went. Turf had been clawed away in the struggle. There were feathers everywhere: dense, silky grey underdown and longer, greasier plumes still clinging hold of skin scraps. It looked as though it must have been a gull; there was too much mess for it to have been anything smaller, like a pigeon.

Connor stood at the back door, still wearing his jacket, clutching his travel bag. He stared at the mess on the lawn, as Bronson poked his nose into the slimy trail. He had half a mind to leave him to it. Was Bronson even his dog anymore? He had been allowed to choose the name – compensation for not being given a say over the breed. He’d wanted a pittie or a staffie. In the end, Michelle had insisted on a labradoodle. ‘For Ivy’s sake.’

He dropped his bag on the decking and walked out onto the lawn. ‘Bronson, get out of there.’ Connor grabbed the dog’s collar.

Where was Michelle, anyway? Ivy was playing at her sand table on one side of the garden, slapping dirt pies onto a baking tray and squashing them with a trowel. He’d let himself in with his key, after ringing, as a courtesy. Ivy had come toddling to the door, slipping on the laminate in her crocodile wellies, holding out her arms. ‘Daddy!’

He had no idea what she made of him, coming and going like this. Though with all the tours and exercises he had been on throughout her small life, she must have been used to it, this man who popped up from time to time with his tight hugs, his particular smell. One minute he was reading her bedtime stories and slicing up her fried egg at tea time. The next, he’d vanished.

The house seemed to change shape too now, every time he visited.

Visited.

Sometimes it felt smaller than he remembered, stuffed with the spoils of Michelle’s TK Maxx habit; velveteen cushions, throws, button-studded pouffes. Other times she had tidied the place into a stark, minimalist gallery, all personal treasures hidden, Ivy’s toys concealed in neat seagrass boxes, tucked into shelves.

There had never really been much space on the canvas for him. Even back when they’d first bought the place together – when Michelle had been pregnant with Ivy and had refused to go into military accommodation – he hadn’t really bothered to stamp his own presence over the house. He didn’t own much stuff. An Xbox, which she kept in one of Ivy’s toy crates, stowed out of view; a pair of TRX straps suspended in the garage for his resistance work outs. Moving out, two months ago, hadn’t been much of a chore. And neither Michelle nor Ivy seemed to have had to give up much, losing him, which had stung.

The two-bed flat he’d moved into, above the nail parlour, was comfortable enough – chromed, painted neutral by a property developer, noisy, though that didn’t bother him because he slept, in Michelle’s words, ‘like dead wood’ – but it didn’t really feel like his own either. It was a place, as Michelle had said in one of her sharper moments, where ‘you can be yourself’. He’d asked her what she meant, and with no emotion, no sarcasm, no bitterness, just pure, devastating candour, she had said he could live the way he wanted to there: get blind drunk, leave curry cartons on the floor, vomit as loudly as he liked, have the boys round, give in to his impulses. He could bring home one of the tramps he found in those nightclubs in town, made for teenage girls and old perverts on coke.

For years she had never minded him being wild – not every night, but maybe a couple of nights a month – when he was home on leave. She had seemed to understand it was part of the deal, that he had things he needed to get out of his system, things that couldn’t be stowed in seagrass boxes. She had been wild in her way too; they had both liked a vodka or two, a Sunday spent all day in bed until the takeaway arrived at sundown. She had forgotten that it was in one of those hideous nightclubs they had first kissed; she had first traced her finger over the Celtic tattoo on his forearm, puzzling at its meaning (he didn’t know either, he had just liked the pattern on the tattoo parlour wall).

But it was different now.

He watched Ivy for a while, slapping out her sand pies, muttering to herself in the sing-song voice she had picked up from CBeebies. ‘I’ll just pop these in the oven.’ She slid the tray under the sand table and waited, then, ‘Ping. That’s them done.’

Loving her had never been the problem. Look at her. In her wellies, her glitter cardie, her space buns knotted loosely on her perfect little head. But when he tried to force himself to rise to the occasion of being her father – to feel the same urgency and drive for taking her to soft play, or clearing up her plastic dinosaurs with the stabby tails, as he felt when he collected his weapon from the armoury – it just wasn’t there.

Bronson grunted, and Connor let go his collar. He supposed he could show willing by cleaning up the dead bird. He began kicking the debris into a rough pile with the toe of his boot. He went into the kitchen and retrieved a handful of poo bags from the cluster Michelle kept by the biscuit tin – a revolting place for them, he thought, but then it wasn’t really his place to criticise. He didn’t live here anymore.

As he headed back down the single step onto the decking, he saw that Ivy had abandoned the sand table and was now sliding around in the guts and torn turf on the lawn, cackling gaily as she lifted piles of bloodied feathers to toss in the air. She caught his eye and giggled.

‘Daddy, Ivy making snow!’ She tried to throw a feather at him, and looked dismayed as it buoyed on the wind before drifting straight back into her own face.

‘Come on, now.’ Connor lifted her out of the way onto the cleaner grass. Immediately she began to scream.

‘All right, fine, play with it.’ He put her down again. She laughed, and then he laughed, and he felt a recoil of shame as she tossed another feather into the air and it drifted towards her mouth. He picked it away, and kissed her, and they played for a few moments, blowing the crusty red feathers at each other on the cushion of the breeze. There was no harm in it really. Children had probably played with worse, in Victorian times, or maybe even during World War II. Connor managed to scoop some of the larger bits of bone and flesh into one of the poo bags. What kind of father am I? he thought.

‘Connor, what the f – fudge?’ He turned to the door.

Michelle was standing in the frame, frowning. He had a confused twist of feelings, seeing her tall, broad stature, her smooth black skin, natural curls. He still had strong urges to touch her, a slight resentment that she was still beautiful, desirable, despite having chucked him out. He scanned her, looking for any sign of how she felt about him, of whether she might be seeing someone else; a new earring in the row of piercings on her cartilage, a new shade of lipstick, a spark in her eye. He wanted to cross the grass between them in two strides, lose one hand in her curls and the other in the folds and curves of her body.

‘Connor.’ She tutted and looked away, and he knew she wanted him to stop staring.

‘Sorry.’ He went back to scraping the feathers into the poo bag. Control your impulses, Connor.

‘What’s she doing?’ Michelle asked.

‘Playing. Where were you?’

‘Toilet, where do you think I was? It is allowed. Jesus Christ, Connor, a dead bird.’ She strode forward and snatched the poo bag from his hand. She picked up Ivy, stuck her on one hip, and through some miracle managed to manoeuvre her out of the way and put her down without making her cry. He watched her bent back as she squatted.

With one bare hand holding open the small plastic bag, another bag inverted over the other hand, she gathered the feathers and slime, exposing a swathe of fresh clean lawn underneath it. She did this several times, until the grass looked pristine except for a few lumps of upturned turf. How did she do that?

He could clean things too – guns, shoes. Square off his kit. Tidy his bunk until it was immaculate. At work, he was meticulous. He could spend an hour polishing a semi-automatic, getting in all the cracks. Why was he unable to feel the same zest for looking after his home? Michelle was capable of maintaining the ebb and flow of a house, keeping the kitchen counters wiped, cleaning up crumbs as soon as Ivy had spilled them, all in a smooth rhythm. She could do that in one beat and run her online hair care business the next, packaging up orders of Curl Custard and Moisture Mayhem while Ivy was napping, dividing her time like slicing a cheesecake.

It wasn’t part of his nature to switch roles or multitask in the same way, and, if he was being honest with himself, he didn’t really want it to be. He assumed Michelle must enjoy looking after the house, or why else would she put so much effort into it?

‘What time’s your taxi coming?’ she asked, stamping down the turf. She wiped her trainers clean on the grass.

‘Pretty soon,’ he said. ‘I just wanted to come by, say goodbye.’

‘You’ll be back before you go to jungle phase?’

‘Aye. Weekend visit after hills, then it’s eight weeks straight. Jungle and then SERE – escape and evasion.’ He glanced across at Ivy, then tentatively reached out his arms. Michelle seemed to sense his hesitation, but she bent down and picked up Ivy anyway, then passed her to him. Ivy planted a wet kiss on his cheek.

‘Where you going for the hills?’ Michelle asked.

‘Brecons.’

‘What about SERE?’

‘Bodmin Moor. It’ll be fine. I’ve done SERE before, for sniper training. It’s not much fun, but – you just get through it, don’t you?’

Michelle nodded. ‘Yeah, well. Be careful, won’t you?’

‘It’s just training,’ he said, though they both knew that was only a half-truth. Just training. Selection was training for Special Forces – Special Air Service and Special Boat Service. Elite soldier training. Connor’s dream, since he’d first seen his face in the mirror, beneath the green Royal Marine beret, aged sixteen. That had been ten years ago now. He’d had it all mapped out in his head: Commando, Corporal, Girlfriend, Sniper, House, Kid, Special Forces. He had not factored in a relationship breakup. This was supposed to be his finest hour – the final step towards the peak of his military career, more money, a better house. If he could just get there, he knew he would be able to settle down. Tame whatever devils were lurking from all those past tours. He’d have nothing to prove any more. And he wouldn’t be spending all his field time with his eye stuck to a viewfinder, knowing at the end of it he’d have to shoot a person he had watched for days. He wouldn’t have to take pot shots at drug boats from Royal Navy warships. It would be close, hand-to-hand, immediate, alive combat.

If anyone had asked him what he expected from Selection he would have said something like, ‘Probably pretty gruelling.’ But he wasn’t deluded. Gruelling was how most people casually described it. Gruelling wasn’t even funny as an understatement. He knew he was about to go through hell. But he needed this.

He took a step towards Michelle, tripping on a lump of turf, stumbling into her. She caught him, and his arms closed round her shoulders. When he felt the cool, swift movement of her nose, reaching up behind his ear – the intake of her breath, a gulp of his scent – he knew there was still something there.

‘When it’s all done, and I’m badged, I could move us all. Poole is beautiful. The base down there has loads going on. There’s the sea. Ivy would love it. You can move the business to wherever you want. Aye?’

‘Aye,’ she laughed gently, mocking his West Coast Scottish accent. ‘We’ll see,’ she said quietly into his shoulder. She nudged him away.

Connor bit his tongue. ‘Aye. I’ll say goodbye then, will I?’ He turned around so she couldn’t spot his eyes pooling. His cab was coming. Which fucking marine wanted a cabbie to see them crying?

‘Right, one more cuddle, you.’ He crouched down next to Ivy. ‘Listen, Daddy’s got to go and save the world. Is that all right?’

Ivy frowned suspiciously. ‘I don’t want Daddy to go.’

He couldn’t really argue with that. ‘It’ll just be like I’m down the road again,’ he said unconvincingly. ‘You can get up to girly fun with Mummy and Auntie Jess.’

He heard Michelle tutting. Why couldn’t he do or say anything right?

‘I’ll be back before you know it. I love you.’

He put her back down, touched Michelle’s face awkwardly and brushed her curls over her shoulder. ‘I love you,’ he whispered. ‘I’m so sorry . . .’

She gave his hand a squeeze, a chaste one.

‘I think that’s me.’ He couldn’t hear the taxi, but he needed to get away. He picked his travel bag up off the decking, then glanced back as he went inside to the dark of the hall. One last look.

By the time he stepped out of the front door, the cab was at the kerb. He let the front door slam behind him, gave a cheery greeting to the cabbie and slid into the back seat. The pungent tree air freshener scent snapped him out of his mood. He pulled on his game face.

‘Station, is it? Off on a tour?’ the cabbie asked, casting a glance in the mirror over Connor’s chest and arms. He was wearing civvies, a white T-shirt and navy jacket, but he knew he still had that look about him. It was impossible to hide. That was partly the point. Why else would the Marines spend so long training you if the demeanour they imprinted on you – courage, determination, unselfishness, cheerfulness in the face of adversity – could be pulled on and off like a mask?

‘Just training,’ he said, as the car pulled away. ‘Nothing fancy.’

2

It was every bit as hideous as he had known it would be.

During the final leg of the hills phase, the ‘Long Drag’, a 60km march across the Brecon Beacons, he had vomited constantly. But he had kept going. The reflux from his empty stomach had only lubricated his bloody mindedness. He would die before he’d let his body’s feeble whims win out. During that time he cursed himself with every step. He was a waster, a fuck-up. He had lost everything, and would return home humiliated if he didn’t keep going.

When he’d arrived at the base in Hertfordshire, the place had been crawling with dick-wavers, posturing, puffed up tools, drunk on protein shakes and bone-headed bravado, full of know-it-all Selection tactics and SAS jargon they had read on the internet.

‘All right mate, what you need to do, before every CFT, is down a protein shake.’ ‘What you need to do is figure out where the sheep paths lead, when you’re on the Fan Dance.’

What you need to do, Connor thought, is stuff some sweaty socks in your gob and shut the fuck up.

The drop-out rate and the failure tally had both risen rapidly in the first few weeks and most of the dick-wavers had been sent home, crushed by the physical reality of the training.

There was only one woman on Connor’s intake, Kelly Bryant, a marine medic he knew a little from tours. She had drawn askance looks from some of the lads, but she kept her head down, kept polite even when a pair of her underwear had ended up as the table centrepiece in the canteen. She was still here.

The Directing Staff, on the other hand – fearsome by reputation – were far more muted than Connor had expected. While his first drill sergeants in the Marines had screeched, poked their sticks into everyone’s lockers at inspection time, tossed recruits’ clothes on the floor, made their eyes bulge like a toad’s when roaring at them to cross a bog or duck under a net, the Selection DS barely lifted their voices during drills. When they wanted to really make you feel like shit, they would feign indifference to your struggle, shrug instead of jeering you on, avert their eyes while they sipped their coffee. Instead of staring you down and forcing you to work harder, their contempt was in their quietness, and the quieter they were, the shittier you were doing.

Connor needed someone to shout at him. It was what he was used to. So he’d developed a rich, blue-tongued inner voice that would flay his skin loose whenever he needed pulling up short. It had worked. The voice had dragged him through his final march, and left him, at the last rendezvous, just past the finishing line, squatting, then falling backwards in relief, yanked by the weight of the Bergen on his back, stuffed with bricks to make up the weight requirement. He drifted away from his body then for a few seconds, saw himself, a greying waste, nothing left.

The weekend home, afterwards, had been even worse.

Michelle had arranged for them all to go to the trampolining place together, and he’d been elated at the thought of seeing her, but also nervous at what he might feel at the sight of Ivy. Half an hour before they were due to pick him up he drank just one glas. . .