After the Storm (25 page)

‘You come from Florida, don’t you?’ he said.

‘Yeah, Clearwater.’

‘That’s the house where I grew up. Kissimmee.’

She looked at the photograph. It was the house of a family without much money, a bit like the house where she’d grown up.

‘I’ve never been to Kissimmee,’ she said.

‘I don’t go back there any more.’

He took her hand again and led her into the kitchen where two waitresses were washing glasses. One of them turned and looked as he strode through the kitchen holding Kim by the hand. It was Gail.

‘You’re doing a great job gals,’ he said.

He took her up the back stairs of the house. She let him lead her through the upstairs rooms, let him show her the rich carpets and the art on the walls. She could hear the music below and she thought I must tell him I’m OK now and I want to go downstairs and dance. He led her up to the landing above and the music was faint now. There was a sharp crack of thunder and the sky outside the windows was lit by a flash of static brilliance. They both stood and watched the storm from a window. The lights that were tied in the trees were moving madly in the wind and she wondered if they would break free and smash on the path below. So he had been a poor boy once. He came and stood behind her and stroked the back of her neck and her shoulders with his warm fingers.

‘You can’t travel back in this,’ he said.

He turned her to him and started to kiss her gently and then moved one large hand up under her dress.

The thunder reverberated like two mountains coming together and Anna flinched. She was walking along the path leading from the cabins to the town looking for Owen. It was madness for him to be out in this storm with such a high temperature. The rain was hitting her face, getting into her eyes and she was cursing him. Could he have headed back to his boat? In his confusion and sickness would he go there? Probably. It was his haven. Now she could see right down the hill towards the shore and there was no sign of his tall angular frame moving below. She gave up and went back to his cabin. She stood inside the threshold and wondered what to do. And then she heard a strange thudding sound and it seemed to be coming from behind the cabin. She stood very still and listened intently. There it was again, a dull thudding, followed by a rustling sound under the cacophony of the rain. It was strange how sounds that seemed perfectly harmless in the daytime took on a sinister aspect when it was the middle of the night. Could Owen have gone back there and fallen down? More likely it was just the wind making some unsecured door bang somewhere nearby; one of the empty cabins perhaps? But she would have to check in case it was him. She had seen a torch in their kitchen and went to get it, switched it on and went outside again. She felt afraid of what she might find as she crept behind the cabins, shining the torch’s beam onto the wet ground in front of her. There was the rustling sound again. She walked in the direction of the noise.

‘Owen? Is that you?’ her voice came out high and squeaky.

Another rustle. She swung round and saw it was the wind sweeping some fallen mangrove branches across the ground.

‘Damn you Owen,’ she said.

She marched back to the cabin and put the kettle on to make tea. The water came to the boil and she was pouring it into her cup when she heard footsteps behind her and spun around, the kettle in her hand. Through the kitchen door she saw Owen taking faltering steps towards her. He had no T-shirt on, just his boxer shorts and he was covered in blood. He was holding Kim’s knife which was black and sticky. His eyes were unfocused as if he was sleepwalking. She saw lines of blood running down his chest and stomach like so many little rivers. He lifted the knife and cut himself again on his torso and fresh blood ran.

‘Don’t do that!’ she cried.

He started as if he was waking up and his eyes came into focus. She put the kettle down with trembling fingers as he walked towards her and then stood perfectly still right in front of her.

‘Why are you doing that?’

‘He said he was saving us.’

It was as if he was seeing another scene, some scene of horror. Her heart was hammering but she saw the suffering man standing in front of her and he needed her help. She had a moment of insight.

‘Did your father hurt your mum?’

His eyes jerked into focus again and now he looked at her intently as if he was seeing her properly for the first time. He reached out his other hand which also had blood on it. He touched the mole between her eyebrows with his forefinger.

‘You have a third eye. You’re one of the real people, Anna,’ he said.

He looked down at the knife in his hand and dropped it.

‘He stabbed my mom and sister and I did nothing to stop it.’

‘Oh Owen…’

He went on in a great rush of words as if he couldn’t stop them coming out now.

‘I heard him come in and I heard my mom scream when she saw his hunting knife and he kept saying “I’m saving you, I’m saving you” and he stabbed her right in the neck and all this blood spurted out and Megan was there and she tried to run but he grabbed her and he stabbed her in the neck too and his eyes were crazy. I ran up the stairs and crawled under my bed and he came looking for me and there was blood all over him.’

He exhaled and rubbed his own bloody hands over his eyes leaving a smear of blood on his eyelids and forehead.

‘He came into my room and saw my Silver Cup which I won for Karate. He picked it up and blood was smeared all over my Cup and he sat down on my bed and started to sob. I was only feet away from him, lying under the bed and I heard him sobbing.’

‘How terrible.’

‘He put my cup down on the floor and I heard this horrible gurgling sound. He’d slit his throat. There was blood everywhere, everywhere and I did nothing to save them.’

He started to howl.

‘Wash me clean,’ he said.

Anna opened her arms to him and he moved towards her. She held him in her arms and rocked him and kissed his head as he cried and cried such bitter tears.

‘What could you have done? You were just a boy, a young terrified boy. It wasn’t your fault.’

‘I should have saved Megan; she was my little sister. He stabbed her in the neck and her blood came spurting out so fast.’

She cradled him in her arms.

‘It wasn’t your fault.’

‘I hid under the bed.’

‘There was nothing else you could have done.’

It was an age before he stopped crying; there were years and years of pushed down tears that needed to come out. At last he raised his head off her shoulder and he seemed completely spent. She bathed the wounds on his chest and stomach and applied antiseptic lotion and he didn’t resist her attentions this time. Beneath the new cuts on his torso she could see a myriad criss-crossing of scars, some recent, some much older. This was not the first time he had cut himself. She bandaged his chest. Then she washed his face and hands and dressed him in a clean T-shirt and boxers and got him back into bed.

‘Come on, lie down now,’ she said gently.

She helped him lie back against the pillows and pulled a clean sheet over him.

‘Sleep now. I won’t leave you.’

She stroked the dark wet hair back from his forehead and a painful shuddering sigh escaped from deep inside himself.

The rain was lessening at last but she knew Kimberly was not coming back and she could not leave the cabin with Owen so desperately in need of her care. He was sleeping now, the sleep of pure exhaustion after great emotion. The towel she’d used to dry him with was soaked in blood, wet with it. She ran a bucket of cold water and left the towel and his T-shirt to soak in the kitchen. She picked up Kimberly’s knife and cleaned it and put it back into its case and then hid it in the kitchen cupboard behind the tinned food. Now she understood why Kimberly hid knives and why Kimberly was so afraid of broken glass. They would all be triggers for Owen’s terrible memories. And they were the tools of his harm too. He must have been self-harming for a long time. It was why he never took his T-shirt off; he was hiding his scars. She looked down and saw Owen’s blood on the front of her T-Shirt. She locked the cabin door and hurried back into their cabin. She found a clean T-shirt to change into and hurried back to Owen’s cabin. The room felt stuffy so she opened the slats of the window. Owen was now deeply asleep. How she longed to stretch out on the bed next to him, to get a few hours’ sleep. She knew he wouldn’t hurt her now. She gave in to the impulse, took off her shoes, pulled the band from her hair and lay down next to him on top of the bed. She sank into a bone weary sleep as the wind outside dropped to a whisper and the trees were silenced.

And if Owen had been able to float above his body that night he would have seen Rob sleeping peacefully in the back berth of Doug’s dive boat as it rolled and pitched gently now the storm had passed. He would have seen Kim lying naked and alone in a bed in the Carters’ villa as the party guests departed. And he would have seen Anna lying next to him on the cabin’s double bed with her dark hair fanned out on the pillow.

Kim woke up around 5 a.m. and her head was throbbing with a vicious champagne-induced headache. Her throat was painfully dry and her eyes were sticky as she pulled them open. She was naked and the bed she was lying in smelled of sex. She put her arms over her head and curled into a foetal position as the details of the night before came back to her. He had been kissing her, touching her and then leading her into this room. She hadn’t resisted. There was no way she could pretend he had forced her. She had wanted sex with him and had orgasmed twice and that never happened.

She had to find her clothes and get out without anyone seeing her. She groped on her hands and knees around the floor and under the bed for her panties, dress and sandals. She slid her dress on before opening the door into the corridor. There would be a bathroom somewhere near here where she could wash herself. She crept along the corridor in her bare feet and found a bathroom with a shower. She slid the lock carefully behind her. First she drank handful after handful of cold water from the tap to slake her thirst. She splashed cold water on her face while trying to avoid her reflection in the mirror above the washbasin. She stepped into the shower. Her body felt a bit bruised and her nipples were tender. While she was soaping herself, and lathering again and again between her legs, she remembered Gail. Gail had been in the kitchen and had seen Gideon leading her through to the back stairs and up to the bedrooms. And Gail was friends with Gary, and Gary was friends with Owen. A wave of hot shame made her tremble under the shower’s blast of water. She got out and towelled herself and pulled on her panties and her dress. Carrying her sandals she unlocked the bathroom door and crept back along the corridor to the backstairs of the house. She couldn’t remember where she had left her purse, which had her money in it. She’d have to leave it as she wasn’t going to go searching for it now. She had to get away from this house as fast as she could.

The kitchen was in darkness and had been returned to order, although she could smell the lingering reek of wine on the air. Cardboard boxes full of glasses were stacked on the large central table and there were plastic recycle boxes stacked with empty champagne bottles. A cover had been put over what was left of the anniversary cake. It had been iced and tiered like a wedding cake. Looking at the cake she became aware of the enormity of his betrayal; for him to have done that on the night of his anniversary party. She tried the kitchen door into the garden. It was locked. She looked around the kitchen and spotted a bunch of keys on a hook by the sink. She tried the keys one by one till she found the right one and pulled the door open. As she sat down to put on her sandals she felt the early morning air on her face and the dew on the grass. She was trying hard to remember if the Carters had any dogs. She got to her feet looking around nervously but could see no sign of dogs who would give her away. She walked through the herb garden and through the rose garden till she found the main path leading to the gates. She was remembering how Gideon kept filling her glass as he led her ever deeper into the garden. And she had gone along with it. She kept coming back to the fact that Gideon had done this on a night when he was celebrating twenty years of marriage to Barbara. It was the unbelievable arrogance of the man; that he could have whatever he wanted. And she had had sex with him so what did that make her?

The main path was in full view of the house and anyone looking out couldn’t fail to see her. She hoped everyone still slept on. She picked her way along the edge of the path in the shadow of the trees lining its route. When she got to the large wrought iron gates she discovered they were locked. Of course, after the last guests had gone the staff would have locked the whole place up. The villa was surrounded by walls and gates, like a fortress. What were the Carters afraid of? And how had Gideon intended to explain her presence in the house, in the guest bedroom? He would find a way round it no doubt; say she’d got drunk and he’d got a waitress to put her to bed.

She was trying hard not to think about Owen as she retraced her steps back through the flower garden and through to the vegetable garden behind the villa. There had to be a way out of here somewhere, maybe an entrance the staff used. Beyond the vegetable garden she saw a wooden door cut into the wall. She headed for this and her gold sandals sank into the soft earth which looked as if it had been recently dug up. The garden door was locked. She remembered the bunch of keys in the kitchen. She hurried back to the kitchen, grabbed these and returned to the garden door. Time was passing and before long the staff might start to arrive. She tried all the keys on the ring. Not one of them opened the garden door. She would have to climb up over the garden wall and get out that way. The wall was high and there were no trees anywhere near the wall which she could use to get a foothold. She returned the keys to the hook in the kitchen; then headed for the large shed she had spotted. This at least had been left unlocked. She peered inside and behind the forks and shovels she saw a small metal stepladder. It wasn’t very tall and wouldn’t reach the top of the garden wall but it would get her within reaching distance. She manoeuvred the stepladder out and placed it against the wall and climbed to the top. She could see over the wall now. The surface of the wall was rough and she grazed the inside of her arms as she hauled herself up the rest of the way until she was straddling the wall. She looked down the other side and it was quite a jump. She took her sandals off and held the straps in her teeth as she jumped from the top of the wall onto the ground. She was winded when she landed and she sat on the ground for a few minutes and cried tears of guilt and shame and remorse. Her white dress was stained with soil and her grazed arms hurt now as well as her head. She got to her feet. She had a six-mile walk ahead of her.