скачать книгу бесплатно
‘What about that coffee?’
‘I like coffee,’ I say. This seems flirtatious too. It is a register I didn’t know I had. It is not the register I was trying for. Again I sound like you.
‘So do I. Goodbye for now, Ella.’ With these words he steps away and disappears into the kitchen so I don’t have to do any more work at extracting myself. It occurs to me that Adam Holderness has an instinct for doing many of the things that I like men to do. Most of them involve not invading my space bubble.
The Fight (#ulink_171c008e-1247-5837-931a-f07501261d80)
Sadie makes her presence felt in the hallway, though I have been aware of her hovering at the edge of the kitchen, arms crossed and glaring at me, during the last minute of my talk with Adam Holderness.
I say, ‘Why are you so angry? I’m trying to be understanding, but you’re pushing it.’
‘It is no longer possible to trust anything you say.’ She swallows hard. ‘You’re so impulsive.’
‘Sadie—’
She cuts me off. ‘I never know what you’re going to do next. When you’re around I’m constantly on edge. Do you think it’s normal to beat up my guests?’
‘He deserved it.’
‘My boyfriend’s brother deserved for you to knock him over?’
‘I didn’t knock him over. I adjusted things to get him to take his hand off my ass. I didn’t know who he was but it wouldn’t have made a difference if I had.’
‘It was embarrassing. So was watching you crawl all over Adam Holderness. At least he got you to leave Brian alone.’
In a flash, Sadie has moved from ambivalent affection to naked hatred. I have seen her do this to other people. At last, after a period of grace that has lasted longer than I ever expected it to, Brian’s wandering eye has triggered her rage at me.
‘How much have you drunk tonight?’ I say.
‘Two glasses of wine. I don’t need alcohol to see you clearly for what you are.’
‘Are you ill?’
‘Brian belongs to me. I should know by now how little such things mean to you. You never stopped running after Ted while he was married.’
‘That was cruel. You know it’s not true.’
‘How dare you flirt with my boyfriend under my nose? How dare you meet up with him behind my back?’ She steps towards me.
I step away, trying to keep space between us, repeating the manoeuvre I used a few minutes earlier with her would-be brother-in-law. ‘You can’t seriously believe that.’
‘If it’s not about your sister it’s about making sure every man in the room is watching you. You’ll do anything for attention.’
I am starting to shake, but with anger more than hurt. ‘Get out of my way so I can leave.’
‘Are you actually ashamed of the things you do? Do you know how sick you are? You’re sick. Sick sick sick.’
‘I told you to get out of my way,’ I say. ‘Don’t make me make you.’
‘Going to practise your self-defence on me? Or do you only beat up boys?’ She shoves me so hard I crash backwards into the door. I look up to see her towering over me. ‘Get out of my face, you sick fraud.’
A tiny, disinterested part of me is fascinated by the question of whether I only beat up boys, because it is something I have never considered before. I have no doubt that I could send Sadie flying, despite her big advantage over me in height and weight. But could I push back at a woman? Everything about me centres on protecting women, but if my life depended on it, yes. Certainly if Luke’s did.
Sadie does not deserve to know any of this. I choose not to shove back, but I close over, giving her nothing more than the silence she is now earning.
‘You’re so fake,’ she says. ‘Even what you have people call you is fake. You’re not Ella. You’re Melanie. Melanie, Melanie, Melanie.’
‘You have no right to use that name.’ I stand up smoothly. Our mother taught us to rise from the floor the way she used to when she was in the corps de ballet, before she got pregnant with you and gave up her dream of being principal ballerina. I face up to Sadie, taking command of the stage.
You have your mother’s strength and single-mindedness. Dad has always said this to both of us. That’s why your love is so powerful. It’s also why your arguments are so fierce.
Sadie steps back. She actually looks afraid. Her voice trembles, despite her words. ‘I know things about you. I know everything about you. Stay the fuck away from my boyfriend. Get the hell out of our house.’
And that is what I do. I get the hell out, not letting myself look back. I can hear the door slam behind me, followed by a kick and a scream of rage so loud they echo through the thick wood. But already I see the truth of Sadie. Not a new Sadie but the one who has been there all along, hiding from me in plain sight.
Another of your Sadie pronouncements is hurtling around in my head. She’s pathological in her concern for what people think of her. She must lie awake at night worrying about who knows the truth of what she’s really like.
Within ten seconds she will turn around and smile sweetly and remark on how violent and noisy the wind and rain are. And if any of her guests suspect the true source of the fury and noise, they will be too well mannered to say.
Monday, 31 October (#ulink_4b709653-3674-58f5-9330-b005165e8614)
The Scented Garden (#ulink_e0dbaae0-5d49-5f6b-9a81-13c9b5bb3508)
The park keeper is waiting for us at the black iron gates of the scented garden. Already a Closed to the Public sign is dangling from them. I hang a second sign beside it – Self-Defence Class Taking Place – because I don’t want passers-by to be alarmed by the noises we make. He ushers us in. All the while, I am looking over my shoulder, wondering where Ted is and triple-checking my phone in case I have missed a text from him.
Maybe he isn’t going to turn up. Maybe he is busy with the new woman Sadie thinks he is seeing, though I have been wondering since Saturday if Sadie was lying.
Wishful thinking, you say.
While I clear away beer cans and cigarette butts and decide that this place ought to be renamed the Alcopop Garden, the women mill about in the late autumn sunshine, which has burnt away most of the wetness from the grass since Saturday night’s rain. One woman crouches at the edge of the pond, watching the water lilies and goldfish as if they are the most fascinating things she has ever seen. Another has her nose buried in the climbing roses, her eyes closed as she inhales. The other two sit and whisper together on a wooden bench beneath a wisteria-covered bower.
As I slip my phone into my bag, it buzzes with a text from Ted, who tells me he is waiting at the gate.
Your voice is in my ear. You are too forgiving. Too desperate. Don’t make the same mistakes as me.
‘Do you want to gather over there on the grass?’ I say to the women, gesturing towards the circle of towels I have set up at the far edge of the garden, off to the side and out of the sightline of anyone standing at the gate. ‘I’m going to go and meet Ted so he and I can talk through what we’ll be doing. We’ll start in ten minutes.’
Ted is dressed like a football player this morning and it suits him, with his navy T-shirt untucked over the elastic waistband of his black shorts. I like the way this looks, like a little boy. He is not hiding or covering up, though – his stomach is as flat as it was when we were teenagers.
I say, ‘I missed you Saturday night.’
He blows out air. ‘Sadie’s party. That can’t have been fun.’
‘She broke up with me.’
‘More fun than I would have thought, then. Can’t say I’m sorry. Or surprised.’
‘She said you’re seeing someone. She said that that’s why you didn’t come.’
He exaggerates a backwards stagger, as if I have thrown too much at him. ‘Sadie’s jumping to the wrong conclusions as usual and wanting to fuck things up for us.’ He almost smiles. ‘But did you dislike the idea?’
‘Yes.’ I say this softly. He gives me that melting look of his, so I feel a qualm at breaking the mood. My promise to Luke has taken me over and I am not going to have Ted alone for long – I need to ask him quickly, while I have a chance. ‘You know your friend Mike, who you brought to Dad’s birthday party?’
The melting look goes in an instant. He is as guarded as he would be talking to a drug dealer on the street. He has guessed what is coming. ‘Obviously I know him. Since I brought him.’
‘He was telling me how sorry he was for our family. You know how people get nervous about what to say. He seemed genuinely nice, though, Ted.’
‘He’s a good guy.’
‘I think he really cared, that he was sad for us, sad that we still don’t have answers. Maybe it’s especially uncomfortable for a police officer when he’s off duty and trying to be social.’
‘Christ. That’s why he’s best kept in a room with machines and not let loose on actual human beings.’
‘You’re the one who took him out.’
‘And I am kicking myself for that.’
‘I asked him how he knew about her. He said he was in High Tech Crime when she disappeared. He still is.’
Ted crosses his arms. ‘Making polite conversation, were you?’
‘It got me thinking. He would have worked on her laptop. The police finally returned some of Miranda’s things. My mother swears she hasn’t opened the box yet.’ Ted makes a harrumph of scepticism at this. ‘I know,’ I say. ‘She got Dad to put the box in the attic. He says from the weight and feel of it he doesn’t think the laptop is inside. I wonder if you had any thoughts about why they might have kept it.’
‘None. I’m Serious Crime, Ella, not High Tech, as you well know. Jesus – Luke had to teach me to work my smart phone. You know I’ve never had anything to do with Miranda’s case because of my personal involvement with your family.’
‘I know officially you know nothing, but I also know how all of you talk to each other.’ He almost lets himself smirk but manages to hold it in. ‘I thought maybe Mike said something.’
‘No.’
‘He did. I know you, Ted. I can read your expressions.’
‘You can’t ever let us have a moment, can you?’
‘Yes I can.’
‘You might think you can read my expressions but you can’t read yourself.’
‘I don’t have a moment. Not for this. I need to know yesterday. I won’t have peace until I do. Luke won’t either.’
He shakes his head so vigorously I think of a puppy emerging from the sea. ‘I wish I hadn’t brought Mike to that party.’
‘But you did.’ My hand is on the bare skin of his wrist and I’m not even sure how it got there. The hairs are soft and feathery and dark gold.
‘I saw you talking to him. I knew it would come back to bite me. You should work in Interrogation.’
‘Despite your tone, I will take that as a compliment.’
‘I was nervous going to that party, seeing you after so long. That’s why I brought Mike.’ His face flushes but I don’t take my hand away. ‘You can’t let us be peaceful. You can’t let things calm down enough for us to have a chance.’
My fingers slide up his arm, wrap around hard muscle. ‘What is it they say? You had me at hello – that’s it, isn’t it? The minute you walked into Dad’s party you had me. But the best way to create that kind of chance for us – for Luke – would be to find out what happened to her, to put all this behind us, finally.’
‘That’s more likely to destroy us than help.’
‘Not knowing hasn’t exactly done us wonders, has it?’
‘I can’t go through all of this with you again. I had enough of these arguments – I thought you’d finished with all that.’
‘I never led you to believe that.’
‘Luke is ten years old, Ella. He is a child. He has no understanding.’
‘You know him better than that. How can you look me in the eye if you’re withholding something crucial? That would always be between us.’
‘Mike shouldn’t have opened his mouth. It’ll be a disciplinary for sure. He’d be lucky to escape with just a formal verbal warning.’
‘I won’t let anything come back to Mike.’ My hand makes a broken circle around his bicep, with a very big gap between the end of my thumb and the tips of my other fingers.
‘Don’t.’ He peels my fingers from his arm as if they were leeches. ‘You don’t give a damn about the havoc you leave behind.’ He has never broken physical contact with me before. It’s normally me who breaks it first.
You always warned me about my temper. My bad EKGs, you called them, as if you could see the spikes in my emotions plotted on a graph. Yours are the same, though more frequent.
My EKG must be off the scale right now, fired by the adrenaline that makes me counter-attack. ‘So where were you actually, then, on Saturday night?’
Ted glares at me, refusing to answer, and I have to stop myself from visibly doubling over as an old headline unexpectedly jabs me in the stomach.
Master Joiner Thorne Detained Indefinitely in High-Security Psychiatric Hospital.
I hit Ted from another direction. ‘Since you’re already angry at me, it’s a perfect time to tell you that I am going to try to see Jason Thorne. I wrote to him. Now it’s wait-and-see as to whether he accepts my request to visit, puts me on his list.’
Local Carpenter in Bodies-in-Basement Horror.
‘Have fun with that.’
I cross my arms. ‘He’s a patient, not a prisoner.’
Thorne in Our Side. Families’ Outrage as Suspect Deemed Unfit to Stand Trial.
Ted mirrors me and crosses his arms too. ‘So they say of all the scumbags in that place. You’re not up to seeing Thorne. You never will be.’
I think of the worst of the headlines from eight years ago, when Thorne was first captured.
Evil Sadist Thorne’s Grisly Decorations: Flowers and Vines Carved onto Victims’ Bodies.
That headline made me hyperventilate. It took hours for Dad to calm me down. Mum had to hurry Luke out of the house so he wouldn’t witness my hysteria.
‘There’s no connection between her and Thorne, Ella,’ Dad said. ‘The police would tell us if there was. This story about the carvings is tabloid sensationalism – I’m not sure it’s even physically possible to do that. And they’ve only just arrested him – no real details of what he did have been released by the investigators.’
‘Are you listening to me, Ella?’ Ted is saying. ‘Try to remember what all of this did to you when they first got Thorne. You nearly had a breakdown.’
