Lasting Damage

Chapter 23

Saturday 24 July 2010



‘I can’t breathe,’ I gasp. Kit’s pressing the knife too hard against my throat. ‘You’re suffocating me.’

‘Sorry,’ he whispers. He’s buried his face in my hair. I can feel his tears wetting my neck. He takes the knife away, holds it in front of my face. It shakes in his hand. His other arm is round my waist, holding me in place, pinning my arms to my sides. No way I can get away from him; I’m not strong enough.

The knife’s serrated blade gleams silver.

Images flash through my mind: a teapot, chocolate cake, a plastic beaker with a lid, the blue and pink hourglass dress.

It’s our knife, from Melrose Cottage. I last saw it on a wooden tray, beside my birthday cake.

Why didn’t I think that Kit might be here already? How can I have been so stupid? New tears prick my eyelids. I blink, try to hold them back. Try to think. I can’t die now, can’t let Kit kill me. Can’t let my own recklessness turn me into a news headline. People will hear the story of what happened to me and say, ‘It was her own stupid fault’.

‘Don’t be scared,’ Kit says. ‘I’m coming with you. Do you really think I’d make you go alone?’

Go. He’s talking about dying.

‘We’ll go together, when we’re ready,’ he says. ‘We’re in the right place, at least.’

When we’re ready. That means not yet. He’s not ready yet, not ready to kill us both – I cling to this shred of hope.

‘Who was the dead woman I saw on the virtual tour?’ I make a vow to myself: I might not live through this, but I won’t die until I know. I won’t die in ignorance.

‘Jackie Napier,’ says Kit.

No. That’s not right. Jackie was alive on Tuesday. She walked into the room Kit and I were in. Said to Grint, I don’t know where you got her from, but you can put her back. I’ve never seen her before in my life.

‘It wasn’t Jackie . . .’ I start to say.

‘It was,’ says Kit. ‘She wasn’t dead, but it was her.’

She wasn’t dead, but it was her. She wasn’t dead, but it was her. Horror prickles my skin, like the thin legs of a thousand tiny spiders, all over me. I can’t make myself ask if the blood was real. Don’t need to. I know the answer.

I think of Mum asking what woman in her right mind would ruin a lovely dress by lying in red paint. Jackie Napier’s mind must have gone badly wrong.

‘She was lying in blood that didn’t belong to her,’ says Kit.

She still is. If you strangle someone to death, they don’t bleed. ‘Whose blood?’ I gasp, bile rising in my throat. I can smell Kit’s sweat, his desperation – a hard, rotten smell. As if his body’s accepted that it will die soon and is making preparations.

‘You have no idea how much I hate her,’ he says. ‘And I hate myself for hating her.’

But not for killing her. ‘Jackie?’ I say

‘She’d have done anything for me . . .’ The rest of his sentence loses itself as loud sobs shake his body.

When he’s quiet again I ask, ‘Why did you kill her?’

‘Because I. Had to.’ His breathing is uneven. ‘There was no happy ever after for me and her. There’s no happy ever after for me and you, not now that everything’s happened the way it has. It’s left us no way out. We have to be brave, Con. You said all you wanted was to know, and I want to tell you. I’m sick of the loneliness of knowing and not being able to tell you.’

Terror twists my heart. I don’t want him to tell me, not yet, not if killing me’s what comes afterwards.

I stare at the shaking knife. Even if I could concentrate on it hard enough to make it fall out of his hand, I still wouldn’t be able to struggle free. I try to make myself believe that DS Laskey will come in time. I told her the address, told her there was a dead woman here. She might have her doubts about my story, but she’ll come anyway. She’ll want to check.

One dead woman. Not two. Please not two.

‘I’ll look after you, Con,’ Kit says. ‘Jackie said she’d take care of you, but she didn’t mean look after. She meant “take care of” in the other way. There’s something wrong with that, don’t you think? That the same words can mean both?’

Words. I hear them, but they don’t seem to work. They don’t translate. What’s he saying?

I can smell death. Decay, decomposition. How is that possible? How long ago did Kit kill Jackie Napier? How long before a dead body starts to smell? She was still warm . . .

‘What did she say about me?’ I ask.

‘She was going to kill you, Con.’ Kit weeps into my hair. ‘I couldn’t have stopped her, not without . . . doing what I did.’ He kisses the back of my neck. I clamp my mouth shut to keep in the scream that’s ringing in my head.

‘I killed her to save you,’ Kit says.