Falling For You (37 page)

‘That man I told you I nearly killed the night I finally snapped ...’ I look up now as Rose pushes a warm drink into my frozen hands.
When did she get that for me
? I shake my head, trying to concentrate. ‘Rose, that was a mistake.’

‘Of course it was a mistake,’ she says stoutly.

‘
I mean
, I thought he was my father, Rose.’

She sits back down in front of me again, her elbows on her knees, just touching mine and I long to be back in the place where I was with her just a
short while
ago. I long to find some reason not to say what I know I’m going to have to say next.

‘Your
dad
?’ she says and I see her taking that in, processing it. She’s heard second-hand about some of what I’d suffered at his hands but she’s never known violence in her life, this girl. There have been other sorrows, no doubt of it; her
m
um dying, her
d
ad injured and all the rest of the cavalcade of broken dreams but she’s never known violence like I have. She’s never known what it’s like to be hunted. Could she even begin to understand?

I nod.

‘He’d tied my dog to a tree,’ I tell her in a dull voice. ‘He tied him there and left him to die. I knew he’d discovered my plans to get the family away from him. I knew he’d want his revenge. You have to understand ...’ my voice takes on a pleading tone. ‘I never wanted any truck with my father, Rose. He was a vicious and brutal man and I never wanted to be like him but that night I saw ...
I saw
that the only way we’d ever be rid of him was if I could become
more
like him, better at being Him, more savage and ruthless than even he was.’ She looks up suddenly and I catch a glimpse of the look in her eyes, full of sympathy and horror and sadness all at once.

‘So I went looking for him.’ The memory opens up, a sudden vista onto a long-ago day, how the well-oiled doors at the back of the barn opened obligingly for me, soft as a whisper. ‘He would never have heard me coming. It had been raining hard that day,’ I tell her softly. I remember the acrid smell of the wet straw, the barn-yard smell hitting me as I let the door close silently behind me. There was only a dim lantern in there.

‘I remember being frustrated that there was barely any light; that this thing would have to be done in semi-darkness. Now that I’d psyched myself up to facing him, I wanted to be sure he knew that it was me who was doing it; I wanted there to be no mistake about it
.
’

Her eyes narrow at the tremble in my voice, because I have already told her
that there was a mistake
, haven’t I?

‘When I first caught sight of him,’ I continue, my voice a croak, ‘he was a dim figure at the far end of the barn, he had his back turned to me. His head was bent in a strange, almost apologetic manner that I’d never associated with my father before. It almost stopped me in my tracks ...’ For one second, his hunched shoulders nearly made him feel too human. I thought;
maybe this has really affected him, knowing that we were all prepared to leave him this way? Maybe there is some humanity tucked away in the far reaches of his dark heart?’

She makes a small sound in her throat because I know she does not want to hear what happened next.

‘I thought that but then - right at the same second my eyes lit upon the tools he’d have used to take down Kahn. The stun gun all complete with the darts he’d have needed to subdue my dog were all there, discarded on one side. There was also a heavy metal shovel lying beside it on the floor. Just in case Kahn hadn’t been completely knocked out by the first shot.’  

‘You hit him with it?’ she winces.

‘I hit him with it
once
.’ I wring my hands together, getting the words out. ‘After the first cry rang out he never made another sound. It was so dim I could barely see but I heard the crash as his body fell heavily to the floor. His flailing arms sent the lantern spinning so I couldn’t even see him after that but I knew exactly where he was.’ She gasps, and I can see how she is affected by this new revelation from me.

‘I kept expecting him to get up and come after me, Rose.’ I remember how I’d been psyched up for that; his reaction t
o
the fact that somebody had finally taken a stand. ‘I stood there expecting him to jump up and lash out with his fists any minut
e
.’

‘And ... he didn’t?’ her voice is a whisper. ‘He didn’t come after you?’

‘No. I must have hit him real hard, Rose. Harder than I’d meant to.’ The terrible stillness and silence of the body as it lay slumped on the barn floor, returns to me now. I remember waiting there in complete and utter dread after I’d done it, telling myself that my father must surely be faking it. He was as strong as an ox, I knew that. He was faking it so when he turned round and suddenly grabbed my ankles I’d get the same shock as I’d just given him. I wouldn’t get away with it, he’d never let me ...  But he didn’t get back up.      

‘He didn’t do anything. He just ... he didn’t move. I thought I’d killed him.’ Rose has half-covered her face with her hands at this moment, still watching me. Does she still believe that I am so
honourable and good?

I think maybe not. I think maybe right now she’s asking herself who was the guy she slept with last night,
who was he?
Because he sure as hell wasn’t who she thought he was. And we haven’t even got to the full truth of what happened, yet.

We haven’t got to the crux of my terrible mistake.

‘That’s when you ran away.’ Her voice is a whisper. ‘You left the family behind. You thought you’d
killed
him?’ She winces, acutely uncomfortable, but still she places her hand on my knee. I know I do not deserve it, but I am grateful for that, for her touch. Her fingers are small, light as snow
flakes
, but I feel her acutely. 
This will be the last time she ever touches me,
the thought falls like a waterdrop from the ceiling, sizzling into my mind. When she finds out what I did, she will alert the whole world to my presence up here; I know she must do. She wanted justice, didn’t she? She told me this the day we spoke about her dreams, how she wanted to go to Uni, how she wanted to prove there was still some justice out there. It’s because the man who hurt her
d
ad has never been brought to book? She will blow my cover here, yes, and then I won’t be able to help Sunny but it’s even worse than that.

When she knows ... a violent spasm spirals up from my chest and into my throat, making me cough, making me almost choke ... when she finds out the truth, she will hate me. She will not want to speak to me or even look at me ever again.

But right now, I can see she is still struggling to make sense of what I’ve told her, she’s wrestling with my confession so she can put it in a box labelled ‘acceptable’ in some form.

‘Lawrence, I can’t even imagine how bad that must have been for you. How terrible that must have felt...’ 

I look away, knowing that I do not deserve her compassion.

 ‘It didn’t
feel
bad, Rose.’ I catch her eye, wanting her to understand, ‘After I hurt him, that’s when I
stopped
feeling bad. That’s when all the pain I felt at losing Kahn just upped and went.’ She looks pained, puzzled. ‘I know. I didn’t understand it myself at first, but then I saw that maybe I’d lopped some essential part of myself off in order to do what I did.’ I pause, and then I say it. ‘Maybe it was my heart?

My mouth is twisting into strange shapes, now, making it harder for me to tell her the rest. ‘When I walked out of there that night all I felt was numb. The fact that I’d be leaving my
m
um and brother behind... I felt okay about it. They would have to clear up the mess, that was true, but at least now, I figured, they’d be free. I’d saved them. I didn’t have to worry about my dog anymore, he was gone. I couldn’t afford to grieve for any of them. I had to get away. I’d done it. I’d finally found the courage to take my father on and show him that he could be hurt too.’

I see a new thought cross Rose’s mind now. She frowns; she doesn’t say anything, but I mark it.  It’s like encountering a bump in the road, just a little bump where you carry on but you know later on you’re going to find you’ve got a nail stuck in your tyre.

‘It should have been my moment of sweetest triumph, Rose, but it wasn’t. It was as hollow as a defeat. For a long time I ran through the woods, desperate,
numb
, all I could hear were his last words to me, ringing in my ears …
in the end I have to win, even if it means finishing the lot of you
…  I’d taken him at his word, annihilated him first. Sorted it. It was His way though, and that was the problem.’

‘That guy in the barn …’ Rose’s face, so close to mine, her voice, whispering and suddenly tremulous, brings me immediately back to the present  ‘You just told me he wasn’t your father.’ It’s coming back to her now. That the man was someone else. That that might be significant.

‘No.’ I look up at her suddenly, aware that up to this point she has been listening intently but now she has moved a little further away from me. Her hand slides softly off my knee. It is a small movement, a slight adjustment in position but it is like a faint powdering of snow blowing off a mountain-top, barely anything at all, a breath of wind, but it presages an avalanche.

 It is coming to her, I know. What I did. Who I am, even though I have not come out and said it in so many words. Not yet.  

‘I never meant to hurt him, Rose. I took the wrong guy down, that’s all.’

‘That’s
all
…?’ She has got to her feet shakily and I’m aware of a distance and a faint dread in her manner that wasn’t there before.

‘If he wasn’t your father...’ I watch her standing there now, her breathing coming slightly hard and uneven. What is going through her mind? I can see the short puffs of her breath from the light that’s streaming now through the little windows. I can see the stray tendrils of hair around her head, like a halo thrown into relief by the fire. She can’t quite bring herself to look at me at this moment. When she looks at me, she will see the truth etched into the remorse in my eyes, and I know she fears this. She dreads to know it.

 ‘What was his name?’

‘What?’ My tongue is so thick in my mouth, reluctant to speak. Now that we’ve come to it, I find that I have not the courage in me. I can’t tell her.

 ‘His… his
name.’
She shakes her clasped hands in front of her, a pleading gesture. ‘Tell me his name, Lawrence.’ I frown.

It occurs to me now that I never knew what his name was. I shake my head.

‘
I’m sorry, Rose
. I didn’t even know it wasn’t my father till my friend Marco caught up with me.’ I stand up, and she backs away from me, her eyes widening slightly.

‘You don’t know his name?’ She doesn’t believe that. I can see it in her eyes. She thinks that I
must
know. That nobody can make a mistake like that - and not stick around to see it through, check out the damage, make some amends...