فصل 61

61

LENA

He apologized when he let me out of the boot. “I’m sorry, Lena, but what would you have had me do?” I started laughing, but he told me to shut up, his fist clenched, and I thought he was going to smack me again, so I did.

We were at a house by the sea—just one house, all by itself, right on the cliff, with a garden and a wall and one of those outdoor pub tables. The house looked like it was all locked up, there was no one around. From where I was standing I couldn’t see another building anywhere near us, just a track running past, not even a proper road. I couldn’t hear anything either—no traffic noise, nothing like that, just the gulls and the waves on the rocks.

“No point screaming,” he said, like he’d read my mind. Then he took me by the arm and led me over to the table, and handed me a tissue to wipe my mouth.

“You’ll be all right,” he said.

“Will I?” I asked, but he just looked away.

For a long time, we just sat there side by side, with his hand still on my forearm, his grip gradually loosening as his breathing slowed. I didn’t pull away. No point struggling now. Not yet. I was scared, my legs were trembling like mad under the table and I couldn’t make them stop. But it actually felt like that was good, like it was helpful. I felt strong, the way I had when he found me in the house and we fought. Yeah, OK, he won, but only because I didn’t go for the kill straightaway, only because I wasn’t sure what I was dealing with. That was only the first round. If he thought that was me beaten, he had another thing coming.

If he knew what I’d been feeling, what I’d been through, I don’t think he’d be holding on to my arm. I think he’d been running for his fucking life.

I bit down hard on my lip. I could taste fresh blood on my tongue and I liked it, it felt good. I liked the metal taste, I liked the feel of blood in my mouth, something to spit at him. When the time was right. I had so many things to ask him, but I didn’t know where to start, so I just said, “Why did you keep it?” I had to try really hard to keep my voice steady and not let it crack or shake or waver or show him that I was scared. He didn’t say anything, so I asked again. “Why did you keep her bracelet? Why not just throw it away? Or leave it on her wrist? Why take it?”

He let go of my arm. He didn’t look at me, just stared out at the sea. “I don’t know,” he said wearily. “Honestly, I’ve no idea why I took it. Insurance, I suppose. Clutching at straws. To hold something over someone else . . .” He stopped speaking suddenly and closed his eyes. I didn’t understand what he was talking about, but I had a feeling, like I’d opened something up, an opportunity. I moved very slightly away from him. Then slightly more. He opened his eyes again, but did nothing, just kept staring at the water, his face expressionless. He looked exhausted. Beaten. Like he had nothing left. I drew back on the bench. I could run. I’m really fast when I need to be. I glanced back at the track behind the house. I’d have a good chance of getting away from him if I headed straight across the track, over the stone wall and across the fields. If I did that, he wouldn’t be able to follow in the car, and I’d have a chance.

I didn’t do it. Even though I knew it might be the last chance I’d get, I stayed put. If it came down to it, I thought, it would be better to die knowing what happened to my mother than to live and always wonder, to never ever know. I didn’t think I could bear that.

I got to my feet. He didn’t move, just watched me as I rounded the table and sat down opposite him, forcing him to look at me.

“Do you know that I thought she’d left me? Mum. When they found her and they came and told me, I thought it was a choice. I thought she chose to die, because she felt guilty about what happened to Katie or because she was ashamed of that, or . . . I don’t know. Just because the water had a stronger pull for her than I did.”

He said nothing.

“I believed that!” I shouted it as loud as I could and he jumped. “I believed that she abandoned me! Do you understand what that felt like? And now it turns out she didn’t. She didn’t choose anything. You took her. You took her from me, just like you took Katie.”

He smiled at me. I remembered how we used to think he was handsome, and it turned my stomach. “I didn’t take Katie from you,” he said. “Katie wasn’t yours, Lena. She was mine.”

I wanted to scream at him, to scratch his face. She wasn’t yours! She wasn’t! She wasn’t! I dug my nails into my hands as hard as I could, I bit my lip and tasted the blood again, and listened to him justifying himself.

“I never thought of myself as the sort of person who would fall for a girl. Never. I thought people like that were ridiculous. Sad old losers who couldn’t get a woman their own age.”

I laughed. “Exactly,” I said. “You thought right.”

“No, no.” He shook his head. “That’s not true. It isn’t. Look at me. I’ve never had any trouble getting women. They come on to me all the time. You shake your head now, but you’ve seen it. Christ, you did it yourself.”

“I did fucking not.”

“Lena—”

“Do you honestly think I wanted you? You’re deluded. It was a game, it was—” I stopped talking. How do you even explain something like that to a man like him? How do you explain that it was nothing to do with him and everything to do with you? That—for me, in any case—it was about me and Katie and the things we could do together. The people we did them to were interchangeable. They didn’t matter at all.

“Do you know what it’s like when you look the way I do?” I asked him. “I mean, I know you think you’re hot or whatever, but you have no idea what it’s like to be like me. Do you know how easy it is for me to make people do what I want, to make them uncomfortable? All I have to do is look at them a certain way, or stand near them, or stick my fingers in my mouth and suck and I can see them go red or hard or whatever. That’s what I was doing to you, you retard. I was taking the piss out of you. I didn’t want you.”

He scoffed, gave this unconvinced little laugh. “Right, OK,” he said. “If you say so, Lena. So what did you want? When you threatened to betray us, when you went shouting your mouth off so your mother could hear—what did you want?”

“I wanted . . . I wanted . . .”

I couldn’t tell him what I wanted, because what I wanted was for things to go back to the way they were. I wanted us to go back to the time when Katie and I were always together, when we spent every hour of every day with each other, when we swam in the river and no one looked at us and our bodies were our own. I wanted to go back to the time before we came up with that game, before we realized what we could do. But that’s only what I wanted. Katie didn’t. Katie liked being looked at. For her, the game wasn’t just a game, it was more. Right back at the beginning, when I first found out and we were arguing about it, she said to me, “You don’t know what it feels like, Lena. Can you imagine? To have someone want you so much that he’ll risk everything for you—like, everything. His job, his relationship, his freedom. You don’t understand what that feels like.”

I could feel Henderson watching me, waiting for me to speak. I wanted to find a way to say it, to make him see that she was getting off not just on him but on her power over him. I’d have liked to be able to tell him that, to wipe that look off his face, the one that said he knew her and I didn’t, not really. But I couldn’t find the words just then, and in any case it wasn’t the whole story, because no one could deny that she did love him.

There was a pain behind my eyes, a sharp pinch that told me I was about to cry again, and I stared down at the ground because I didn’t want him to see the tears in my eyes, and I saw that lying in the dirt, right between my feet, there was a nail. It was a long one, three or four inches at least. I moved my foot slightly so that I was covering the tip of it, then I pressed down to raise up the other end.

“You were just jealous, Lena,” Henderson said. “That’s the truth, isn’t it? You always were. I think you were jealous of both of us, weren’t you? Of me, because she chose me, and of her, because I chose her. Neither of us wanted you. And so you made us pay. You and your mother, you . . .”

I let him talk, I let him spout his deluded bullshit, and I didn’t even care then that he was so wrong about everything, because all I could focus on was the tip of that nail, which I’d levered up with my foot. I slipped my hand under the table. Mark stopped talking.

“You should never have been with her,” I said. I was looking behind him, over his shoulder, trying to distract him. “You know that. You must know that.”

“She loved me and I loved her, completely.”

“You’re an adult!” I said, keeping my eye on the space behind him, and it worked—for a second he glanced over his shoulder and I let my arm slip lower between my legs, stretching out my fingers. Cold metal in my grasp, I straightened my back, prepared myself. “Do you really think it matters how you felt about her? You were her teacher. You’re twice her fucking age. You were the one who was supposed to do the right thing.”

“She loved me,” he said again, hangdog. Pathetic.

“She was too young for you,” I said, gripping the shaft of the nail tightly in my fist. “She was too good for you.”

I went for him, but I wasn’t quick enough. As I sprang to my feet, I caught my hand under the table, just for a second. Mark lunged at me, grabbing my left arm, yanking it as hard as he could, pulling me halfway across the table.

“What are you doing?” He leaped to his feet, still holding on to me, and pulled me sideways, twisting my arm back behind me. I yelped with pain. “What are you doing?” he shouted, pushing my arm higher, opening my fist with his fingers. He took the nail from my hand and shoved me down on to the table, his hand in my hair, his body on top of mine. I felt the metal spike graze against my throat, the weight of him on top of me, just like how she must have felt him when they were together. Vomit came up to my throat and I spat it out and said, “She was too good for you! She was too good for you!” I said it again and again until he’d crushed the breath out of me.