فصل 70

70

LENA

I stood in the shower for a long time with the water as hot as I could stand it. I wanted to scour my skin, I wanted the whole of the past day and night and week and month washed off me. I wanted him washed off me, his filthy house and his fists and the stink of him, his breath, his blood.

Julia was kind to me when I got home. She wasn’t faking, she was obviously glad that I was back, she was worried about me. She seemed to think that Mark had assaulted me, like she maybe thought he was some sort of pervert who couldn’t keep his hands off teenage girls. I’ll give him this: he was right about one thing—people don’t understand about him and K, they never will.

(There’s a tiny, twisted part of me that sort of wishes I believed in an afterlife, and that the two of them could pick up again there, and maybe things might be all right for them, and she’d be happy. As much as I hate him, I’d like to think that somehow Katie could be happy.)

When I felt clean, or at least as close to clean as I thought it was possible to get, I went to my room and sat on the windowsill, because that’s where I do all my best thinking. I lit a cigarette and tried to figure out what I should do. I wanted to ask Mum, I wanted to ask her so badly, but I couldn’t think about that because I’d just start crying again, and what good would that be to her? I didn’t know whether to tell Julia what Mark had told me. Whether I could trust her to do the right thing.

Maybe. When I told Julia that Mum didn’t jump, I expected her to tell me that I was wrong or crazy or whatever, but she just accepted it. Without question. Like she knew already. Like she’d always known.

I don’t even know if the shit Mark told me is true, though it would be a pretty weird thing to make up. Why point the finger at Mrs. Townsend, when there are more obvious people to blame? Like Louise, for example. But maybe he feels bad enough about the Whittakers, after what he’s done to them.

I don’t know whether he was lying or telling the truth, but either way he deserved what I said to him, what I did. He deserved everything he got.