Lisa.
I press the heels of my hands against my eyes, digging my fingertips into my scalp.
It is Nick’s hand on the small of my back. Nick’s voice murmuring. The thudding isn’t the bass: it’s my own guilty heart.
‘Kat. Shhh. It’s okay.’
I try to shake my head, clutching his hand, willing him to know what is wrong, but he doesn’t ask, and I think of all the times he has come home lately. The times I had told him someone was watching the house, someone had been in the house. My almost hysterical outpourings, and I almost don’t blame him for not asking. But I need to tell him about Lisa. I can’t leave her for hours like I was left. Scared. Alone. In the dark. At least she has a light, I reason, a sofa; it’s not so bad. But it is. It is very, very bad.
‘Nick…’ I snatch a breath while I try to put my words into some semblance of order. It’s almost impossible to know where to start.
‘What the?’ There are deep grooves on Nick’s brow as he stares over my shoulder at the window.
Lightning cracks, and I almost hold my breath as I wait for the rumble of thunder. What has he seen?
Or who?
Even though I am expecting it, I still jump in my chair as the thunder crashes. Nick straightens up.
‘What is it?’ I whisper.
Nick shakes his head, but he can’t tear his eyes away from the window and, almost in slow motion, I turn. The kitchen lights are reflected in the panes of glass and all I can see are our kitchen units and our shadowy figures.
‘Someone was out there,’ Nick says, and my hand gropes thin air until I find his fingers. I grasp his hand tightly.
‘Let’s go upstairs.’ There’s an urgency in my words.
I catch sight of the scan photo on the fridge – God knows where Lisa got that from – and I realise how devastated Nick will be that yet again he won’t be a father, and it’s all my fault. There’s a part of me that wants to usher Lisa out of the house. To tell Nick the surrogacy has fallen through, but there have been so many lies already. I glance at his profile. His curly hair flopping in his eyes. Hair so like Ada’s. Is he already a father? Suddenly I feel weighted down with the past, and it is almost more than I can bear. It’s time for us both to be honest. About everything. I draw a breath so deep my ribcage feels it will burst as my lungs expand, but before I can speak, Nick gasps, and this time I see it too. The face looking in. The eyes staring at us. I am powerless to react as Nick sprints across the kitchen and wrenches open the back door. My hands cover my mouth. The rain bounces off the skylight, fierce and loud.
A muffled cry.
Lightning.
The sound of a scuffle.
Thunder.
‘Nick?’ I rush to the back door, but before I can step outside, Nick almost falls into the kitchen, dripping wet and panting hard. He isn’t alone. He is dragging someone with him and they crumble onto the kitchen floor. There is a sickening crack as their heads make contact with the tiles.
Nick is sprawled on his back, blinking furiously as he raises his hand to his forehead, and I offer silent thanks that he is okay. But what about Aaron?
He is still. Quiet. Lying face down.
And slowly I inch my foot forward and jab my toe into his side.
He doesn’t move.
42
Now
‘Nick?’ I drop to my knees. The tiles are pooled with pink and, at first, I don’t understand but then there’s a horrible realisation. The rainwater is mixing with blood.
‘Nick!’ I pull his hand away from his forehead. There’s a gash running alongside his hairline. I lean over him and yank open the drawer, pulling out a clean tea towel. As I press it to his wound the stark white cotton turns crimson. I look over my shoulder, half-expecting my ankle to be grabbed, hands around my throat, but there is no movement.
Raindrops gust into my face, and the wind causes the backdoor to crash against the worktop. I skirt around Nick and push the door closed, my socked feet almost slipping on the water pooling on the floor. I pick my way, more carefully, back to Nick.
‘Can you sit up?’ I lever my hands under his armpits and pull him hard. As his upper body lifts the colour drains from his face and he sways slightly as he sits, swallowing hard.
‘Sorry. I should have believed you. About the man hanging around. About everything.’
‘Is he?’ I look over my shoulder, I can’t bring myself to say the word. But I notice the rise and fall of his ribcage. He’s alive. ‘Should we?’ I am shaking so hard now I feel my body might break apart. We need to call the police, I know. An ambulance, at the very least, but first I need to tell Nick that Lisa is in the basement. How can I explain? I could go to prison. The very thought winds me and I can’t move. Can’t speak. I’m caught in a tangle of secrets and lies and I don’t know how to unravel them.
‘There are things I need to tell you, Kat.’ Nick grips my hands so hard it hurts.
‘Not now—’
‘Yes. Now.’ Nick’s tone is as sharp as broken glass, and I flinch. ‘It has to be now.’
‘We can’t talk with a body on the floor. He needs help. I’m going to call—’ I pull myself free and start to stand.
‘No!’ Nick grabs my wrist with one hand, twisting the skin, yanking me back to the floor, and a bolt of pain shoots up my arm. ‘Listen first.’ The fingers on Nick’s other hand flutter to his scar as he begins to speak.
At first his words are stilted, forced, his tongue not used to forming the truth. My head shakes ‘no!’ as the weight of Nick’s past crushes down on me, as black and heavy as the swollen clouds that scud outside the kitchen window. He is crying as he speaks, the shoulders I thought were broad enough to carry us both seem to shrink before my eyes. His words trip over each other, desperate to be heard. I don’t want to listen to what he has to say, and yet, at the same time, I know I have to. And unbidden my voice cuts through his and, sitting here, on the wet floor in our immaculate kitchen, we reveal ourselves to be the people we really are. I have never felt more vulnerable and exposed. I’m sharing me, all of me, and he is doing the same, and I’m utterly stricken as I realise the threads of our lives have been woven together in ways I could not possibly have imagined. Is it us? Was it always going to be us that were destined to be? Not Jake? Never Jake?
I try to pull my hand away, but he won’t let me go until he reaches the end of his story, and I have told him mine. Once we are battered into silence by the truth I wrench my hand from his grasp. I don’t want him to touch me. I don’t want him to touch me ever again.
43
Then