Finally …
He seized my wrist in a bone-crushing grip. I sat very still and tried not to gasp in pain.
‘Shut up, will you. Just – shut up.’
I carried on, apparently clueless.
‘There’s no need to take that tone. I’m just trying to help. I mean to say, Leon, at the end of the day, sometimes, it does us good to talk, so why don’t you tell me. I’m sure you’ll find, once you do, that it’s not so very bad after all and then –’
‘What do you know? What do you know about anything? What do you know of pain? Unbearable pain … that just goes on. And on. And endless grief. That never stops. Because it hurts. Everything hurts. Everything … hurts so much. It never stops. Ever. It never goes away. And I can’t bear it. I just can’t bear it any longer.’
His voice cracked. ‘You’ve no idea what you’re talking about, have you? You’re just some empty-headed historian …’ His voice broke. ‘I lost them. They’re gone. How can you understand what it’s like to be left behind? To be the one who has to carry on. You don’t know. You can’t possibly know. You can’t possibly …’
He caught hold of my other arm, shaking me in time with his words. ‘You can’t know … you can’t possibly know …’
His heart was breaking.
So was mine.
Something wet splashed on my hand. It might have been his tears – it might have been mine. Too dark to tell.
He caught his breath. ‘They’re gone. They left me.’
I know, love. You left me.
I remembered I wasn’t supposed to know any of this.
‘Who’s gone? Tell me. Who left you?’
‘All of them.’ It was a shout. ‘They all left me. They – died. That bitch. It was her fault. When I find her …’
Suddenly, the atmosphere inside the pod curdled. Before, it had been grief. Now grief had turned into something else. Something black and dangerous. All at once, I was more afraid than I had been with Ronan.
He pulled me close in the dark.
‘When I find her … and I will … she’ll pay.’
‘Oh, yes,’ I said, sarcastically. ‘Because that will bring them back, won’t it.’
He threw me. Effortlessly. I crashed against the locker doors. He picked me up before I could move and threw me again. This time I crashed into one of the chairs and it hurt.
He grabbed the front of my sweatshirt and hauled me to my feet.
I said nothing. I didn’t struggle. I placed all my faith in the good man I knew was in there somewhere.
His face was in mine. Dark and dangerous.
‘I can’t find her, but I have found you. And you’re no innocent, are you? Somewhere along the way, you’ll have deceived and lied to some poor sod. It’s what women do. And when I’ve finished, I just throw you outside and tell people you were already dead and no one will ever know.’
He had one hand at my throat and the other under my sweatshirt. I made myself stand very still. He was hurting me, but I had to stand still. His breath came in hot gasps.
I said quietly, ‘Oh, Leon, you poor man. You poor, poor man.’
At first, I didn’t think he’d heard me. Then his hands dropped. He took in a longer, deeper breath. Then another. He stepped back and saw, I think for the first time, what he had become.
He dropped. As if everything in his body had suddenly given way. As if he had just fallen apart. He fell to the floor and I went down with him. I pulled him into my arms, laid his head on my chest, and rested my cheek on the top of his head.
His silence frightened me.
I said softly, ‘Leon, let go. Just let go. I promise I’ll catch you, but it’s time to let go now.’
Chapter Eighteen
Much, much later, things had calmed down a little.
I’d ignored his protest, flipped the trip switch, and given us enough power for a cup of tea. There was no alcohol in the pod. First thing I’d checked.
We’d had the lights on only for a minute, but long enough for me to catch a glimpse of his white, worn face and haunted eyes. We weren’t out of the woods yet.
I sat alongside him on the floor. I’ve no idea why we were ignoring the seats. We sipped our tea.
He picked up my wrist.
‘Sorry.’
‘It wasn’t your fault. I deliberately pushed you.’
‘I could have hurt you a lot.’
‘I knew you wouldn’t.’
I felt him turn and look at me. God knows what he thought he could see in this dim light. We’d need to snap another lightstick soon.
‘Who are you?’
‘Lucy.’
‘Not helpful.’
‘I never am.’
A pause. ‘You helped me.’
And I wasn’t done yet.
I drained my tea.
‘Tell me about it, Leon.’
A longer pause.
‘It’s not a – good – story.’
I knew that. And no happy ending, either. He’d told me this story, long ago, in a hotel room in Rushford, on a night I would never forget and couldn’t tell him about. This time I must listen carefully and not make that stupid ‘book’ mistake again. Come on, Maxwell, you’re supposed to be a professional.
‘Tell me.’