So I had to go back. I kept going back to her and we kept not talking. I would spend an hour with her, or two, but when I left her it felt as though it had been days. I worried sometimes that I had drifted and lost time. I do that, occasionally. My father calls it absenting myself, as though it’s something I do on purpose, something I can control, but it isn’t. I’ve always done it, ever since childhood: one moment I’m there, and then I’m not. I don’t mean for it to happen. Sometimes, when I’ve drifted away, I become aware of it, and sometimes I can bring myself back – I taught myself a long time ago: I touch the scar on my wrist. It usually works. Not always.
I didn’t get around to telling her the story, not at the beginning. She pressed me, but I found her pleasingly easy to distract. I imagined that she was falling in love with me and that we would leave, she and Lena and I, we would uproot ourselves, leave the village, leave the country. I imagined that I would finally be allowed to forget. I imagined that Helen would not mourn me, that she would move on quickly to someone better suited to her steady goodness. I imagined that my father would die in his sleep.
She teased the story out of me, strand by strand, and it was clear to me that she was disappointed. It wasn’t the story she wanted to hear. She wanted the myth, the horror story, she wanted the boy who watched. I realized then that her approaching my father had been the starter: I was to be the main course. I was to be the heart of her project, because that was how it had started for her, with Libby and then with me.
She coaxed things out of me that I didn’t want to tell her. I knew that I should stop, but I couldn’t. I knew that I was being sucked into something from which I wouldn’t be able to extricate myself. I knew that I was becoming reckless. We stopped meeting at the Mill House, because the school holidays were starting and Lena was frequently home. We went to the cottage instead, which I knew was a risk, but there were no hotel rooms to rent, not locally, and where else could we go? It never crossed my mind that I should stop seeing her; back then it seemed impossible.
My father takes his walks at dawn, so I’ve no idea why he was there that afternoon. But he was, and he spotted my car; he waited in the trees until Nel had left and then he beat me. He punched me to the ground, kicked me in the chest and shoulder. I curled myself up, protecting my head, the way I’d been taught. I didn’t fight back, because I knew he’d stop when he’d had enough, and when he knew that I couldn’t take any more.
Afterwards, he took my keys and drove me home. Helen was incandescent: first with my father, for the beating, and then with me, when he explained the reason for it. I had never seen her angry before, not like that. It was only when I witnessed her rage, cold and terrifying, that I started to imagine what she might do, how she might take her revenge. I imagined her packing her bags and leaving, I imagined her resigning from the school, the public scandal, my father’s anger. That was the sort of revenge I imagined she might take. But I imagined wrong.
Lena
I GASPED. I gulped as much air as I could and jammed my elbow into his ribs. He squirmed, but still he held me down. His hot breath in my face made me want to hurl.
‘Too good for you,’ I kept saying, ‘she was too good for you, too good for you to touch, too good for you to fuck … You cost her her life, you piece of shit. I don’t know how you do it, how you get up every day, how you go to work, how you look her mother in the eye …’
He scraped the nail hard against my neck and I closed my eyes and waited for it. ‘You have no idea what I’ve suffered,’ he said. ‘No idea.’ Then he grabbed a fistful of my hair and yanked hard, then let go suddenly so that my head slammed into the table, and I couldn’t help it. I started to cry.
Mark released me and stood up. He took a few steps back and then walked around to the other side of the table so that he had a good view of me. He stood there and watched me and I wished more than anything that the earth would just open up and swallow me. Anything was better than him watching me cry. I stood up. I was sobbing like a baby that’s lost its dummy and he started saying, ‘Stop it! Stop it, Lena. Don’t cry like that. Don’t cry like that,’ and it was weird because then he was crying too, and he kept saying it, over and over, ‘Stop crying, Lena, stop crying.’
I stopped. We were looking at each other, both of us with tears and snot on our faces, and he still had the nail in his hands, and he said, ‘I didn’t do it. What you think I did. I didn’t touch your mother. I thought about it. I thought about doing all kinds of things to her, but I didn’t.’
‘You did,’ I said. ‘You have her bracelet, you—’
‘She came to see me,’ he said. ‘After Katie died. She told me I had to come clean. For Louise’s sake!’ He laughed. ‘As if she really gave a shit. As if she gave a shit about anyone. I know why she wanted me to say something. She felt guilty about putting ideas into Katie’s head, she felt guilty and she wanted someone else to take the blame. She wanted to put it all on me, the selfish bitch.’ I watched him turning the nail over in his hands and I pictured myself lunging at him, grabbing it and driving it into his eyeball. My mouth was dry. I licked my lips and tasted salt.
He kept talking. ‘I asked her to give me some time. I told her that I would speak to Louise, I just needed to get straight what to say, how to explain it. I persuaded her.’ He looked down at the nail in his hands and then back at me. ‘You see, Lena, I didn’t need to do anything to her. The way to deal with women like that – women like your mother – is not through violence, but through their vanity. I’ve known women like her before, older women, the wrong side of thirty-five, losing their looks. They want to feel wanted. You can smell the desperation a mile off. I knew what I had to do, even though it made my flesh crawl to think about it. I had to bring her onside. Charm her. Seduce her.’ He paused, rubbing the back of his hand over his mouth. ‘I thought maybe I’d take some pictures of her. Compromise her. Threaten to humiliate her. I thought maybe then she’d leave me alone, leave me to grieve.’ He raised his chin a little. ‘That was my plan. But then Helen Townsend stepped in, and I didn’t have to do anything.’
He tossed the nail to one side. I watched it bounce on the grass and come to rest against the wall.
‘What are you talking about?’ I said. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I’ll tell you. I will. Only …’ He sighed. ‘You know I don’t want to hurt you, Lena. I’ve never wanted to hurt you. I had to hit you when you came at me back at the house – what else could I do? I won’t do it again, though. Not unless you make me. OK?’ I said nothing. ‘This is what I need you to do. I need you to go back to Beckford, to tell the police that you ran away, you hitchhiked, whatever. I don’t care what you tell them – only you have to say you lied about me. You made all this up. Tell them you made it up because you were jealous, because you were mad with grief, maybe just because you’re a spiteful, attention-seeking little bitch, I don’t care what you tell them. OK? Just so long as you tell them you lied.’
I squinted at him. ‘Why do you think I would do that? Seriously? What the fuck would make me do that? It’s too late, in any case. Josh spoke to them, I wasn’t the one who—’
‘Tell them Josh lied, then. Tell them you told Josh to lie. Tell Josh that he has to retract his story too. I know you can do it. And I think you will do it, too, because if you do that, not only will I not hurt you, but,’ he slid his hand into the pocket of his jeans and pulled out the bracelet, ‘I’ll tell you what you need to know. You do this one thing for me, and I’ll tell you what I know.’
I walked over to the wall. I had my back to him, and I was shaking, because I knew he could come for me, knew he could finish me off if he wanted to. But I didn’t think he did want to. I could see that. He wanted to run. I nudged the nail with the toe of my shoe. The only real question was, was I going to let him?
I turned round to face him, my back to the wall. I thought about all the stupid mistakes I’d made on the way here and how I wasn’t about to make another one. I played scared, I played grateful. ‘Do you promise? … Will you let me go back to Beckford? … Please, Mark, do you promise?’ I played relieved, I played desperate, I played contrite. I played him.