فصل 52

52

PART THREE Monday, 24 August

MARK

It was late when he got home, just after two o’clock in the morning. His flight from M?laga had been delayed, and then he’d lost his ticket for the car park and it had taken him an infuriating forty-five minutes to find his car.

Now he wished it had taken longer, he wished he had never found the car at all, had had to stay in a hotel. He could have been spared, then, for just one more night. Because when he realized, in the darkness, that all the windows of his house had been smashed, he knew that he wouldn’t be sleeping, that night or any night. Rest was over, peace of mind destroyed. He had been betrayed.

He wished, too, that he had been colder, harder, that he had strung his fiancée along. Then when they came for him, he would be able to say, “Me? I’m just back from Spain. Four days in Andaluc?a with my fiancée. My attractive, professional, twenty-nine-year-old girlfriend.”

It wouldn’t have made a difference, though, would it? It wouldn’t matter what he said, what he did, how he’d lived his life: they would crucify him anyway. It wouldn’t matter to the newspapers, to the police, the school, the community, that he wasn’t some deviant with a history of chasing after girls half his age. It wouldn’t matter that he had fallen in love, and been fallen in love with. The mutuality of their feelings would be ignored—Katie’s maturity, her seriousness, her intelligence, her choice—none of these things would matter. All they would see was his age, twenty-nine, and hers, fifteen, and they would rip his life apart.

He stood on the lawn, staring at the boarded-up windows, and he sobbed. If there had been anything left to smash, he would have broken it himself then. He stood on the lawn and he cursed her, cursed the day he’d first set eyes on her, so much more beautiful than her silly, self-assured friends. He cursed the day she’d walked slowly towards his desk, full hips swinging gently and a smile on her lips, and asked, “Mr. Henderson? Can I ask for your help with something?” The way she’d leaned towards him, close enough that he could smell her clean, unperfumed skin. He’d been startled at first, and angry, he’d thought she was toying with him. Teasing him. Hadn’t she been the one who started all this? And why should it be him, then, left alone to suffer the consequences? He stood on the lawn, tears in his eyes, panic rising in his throat, and he hated Katie, and he hated himself, and he hated the stupid mess he’d got himself into, from which he now saw no escape.

What to do? Go into the house, pack the rest of his things and leave? Run? His mind fogged: Where to go, and how? Were they already watching? They must be. If he withdrew money, would they know? If he tried to leave the country again, would they be there? He imagined the scene: the passport official glancing at his photo and picking up a phone, uniformed men dragging him from a queue of holidaymakers, the curious looks on their faces. Would they know, when they saw him, what he was? No drug dealer, no terrorist—no: he must be something else. Something worse. He looked at the blank and boarded windows, and imagined that they were inside, they were waiting for him there, they’d already been through his things, his books and his papers, they’d already turned the house upside down searching for evidence of what he had done.

And they would have found nothing. He felt the faintest gleam of hope. There was nothing to find. No love letters, no pictures on his laptop, no evidence at all that she had ever set foot in his house (the bed linen long gone, the entire house cleaned, disinfected, scrubbed of every last trace of her). What evidence would they have, save for the fantasies of a vindictive teenage girl? A teenage girl who had tried herself to win his favour and been resoundingly knocked back. No one knew, no one really knew, what had passed between himself and Katie, and no one need know. Nel Abbott was ash, and her daughter’s word worth just about as much.

He gritted his teeth and fished for his keys in his pocket, then walked around the house and opened the back door.

• • •

SHE CAME AT HIM before he had time to turn on the light, barely flesh, nothing but a dark maw, teeth and nails. He batted her away, but she came again. What choice did he have? What choice did she leave him?

And now there was blood on the floor and he didn’t have time to clean it up. It was getting light. He had to go.