Mesmeris (19 page)

I went to hug him.

He pushed me away. ‘Don’t.’ He looked up at the sky and blinked repeatedly. I waited and watched him struggle to control his emotion, cover it with that armour, that tough, impenetrable veneer.

He looked at me, hard eyes, clenched jaw. ‘You want me to remember, do you? Want to know all about it? Okay, I’ll tell you. The day they took me, I shot my father. Happy?’

‘What?’

‘My mother wouldn’t let me go so they dragged her off me, threw her to the floor. The back of her head hit the doorframe. Surprising how much blood you get from a head wound.’

‘Jack.’ I touched his arm.

He snatched it away. ‘My father was leaning over her and screaming and crying.’

‘Jack, don’t.’

‘What? Now you don’t want me to remember.’ His lip curled. ‘Well, tough shit. D’you know what I did then?’

I shook my head, appalled.

‘I shot him. They put my hand around the gun and shouted at me to shoot.’ He shook his head. ‘The blood, the noise – I couldn’t think. Someone put their hand over mine – and squeezed.’

‘Then it wasn’t you. It was them.’

He didn’t seem to hear me. ‘I made a hole in his head - and his blood, his brains, splattered all over my mother’s face, over her best blouse.’

I put my hand over my mouth, tried not to see what had happened in that house. ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought you here.’

‘Forget it.’ He turned and marched back the way we’d come.

I hurried to catch up with him and put my arm through his, my hand in his pocket. He didn’t push me away but his fingers stayed unclenched, unresponsive. I’d made a huge mistake and saying sorry was not going to make it right, so I said nothing.

It seemed he’d kept his armour intact but, as we walked back along the canal, I saw his lashes were wet, saw tears running down his face. I sat on a bench and pulled him to sit next to me. I held him in my arms and stroked his hair. I kissed his head and he cried on my shoulder, sobbed. Years of grief and pain seemed to pour out of him. Then he lay with his head on my lap and slept, his beautiful face still and peaceful. It was freezing cold, and yet I couldn’t bear to wake him. I watched him sleep and wanted to keep him there. When he was sad, he was all mine, he belonged to me. I knew no one else had ever seen him like that, nobody had ever seen him cry like that. That part of him was mine and mine alone.

When he did wake, he jolted upright and seemed embarrassed. ‘It’s dark.’ He sounded surprised. ‘Better get you home.’ He glanced at my damp shoulder. ‘Sorry about that.’

‘It’s fine.’ I said.

He pulled me to my feet. ‘Can we forget about it?’

I nodded but I knew I’d never forget it.

He fished about in his coat pocket and handed me a battered, faded photograph. ‘I want you to have this.’

I held it up to the lamplight. It was him, a younger him, eager, gentle, innocent.

‘I’ve just remembered how I got it.’

‘How?’

‘My mother put it into my hand when she heard them coming. She said it would make me remember.’

‘But it didn’t?’

‘No, but I kept it anyway. It seemed important, somehow.’

I looked at the photo again. No trace of the shadows, the sadness. This Jack had been full of life, excitement, hope for the future. ‘How old were you?’

‘Eleven.’ His face was in shadow and I couldn’t see his expression. ‘It was taken just before . . . I want you to keep it, to remind you I wasn’t always like this.’

‘I don’t want it.’ I held the picture out towards him. He shook his head and avoided my attempt to push it into his hand. ‘If I have you,’ I said, ‘I don’t need a photograph, do I?’ Dread swamped me. I stared at him. ‘Oh, my God! You’re going to leave me.’

‘No, I’m not.’ He put his arm around my shoulder and hugged me. ‘It’s just - Mesmeris, they own me. One day, when they see a weakness, they’ll kill me. I want you to have something, that’s all.’

‘You can leave them. That priest, the one in Brighton, said he could help you.’

He laughed. ‘He can’t, okay?’ He kissed my nose, his way of shutting me up.

But Andrew had said he could help – and if he could, maybe my dad could too
.

I tucked the photograph in my pocket but couldn’t shake the feeling it was some kind of cursed talisman. Perhaps it was the cold and dark getting to me. The mist over the canal was positively eerie, and I was chilled to the bone, from sitting while Jack slept. I shivered. Jack put his coat around me but it didn’t help. The cold came from inside.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Halfway down our path, Dad appeared. He stared at Jack. The air seemed to crackle between them.

Jack said hello.

‘Can you see,’ Dad said, ‘what you’re doing to my daughter?’

‘Dad!’

He ignored me. ‘Can you see the change in her?’

Jack didn’t answer.

‘No doubt you think it’s a game. A laugh.’

‘No,’ Jack said.

‘She was happy before you came, and now look at her. She doesn’t eat, she never laughs, she looks half dead. Can you see it?’ He was shaking with anger, his fists clenched at his sides. ‘Can you?’

A flicker of emotion, pity perhaps, crossed Jack’s face and then the shutters came down, the shield fell into place.

‘You’d have to be blind not to, wouldn’t you?’ Dad said.

‘Don’t listen to him. I’m fine,’ I said.

‘Go on.’ Dad pointed a trembling finger at the gate. ‘Leave her alone.’

Jack held his hands up. ‘I’m going.’

Dad tried to hold me back but I shook him off. ‘Pearl, come back here.’

Jack strode off so quickly, his long legs covering so much ground, I had to run to catch up with him. He’d almost reached the corner of the street.

‘Stop.’ I clutched at his arm, tried to catch my breath. ‘Stop a minute.’

He stood and watched me, his expression impassive.

‘Ignore him. He . . .’ I shook my head. ‘Don’t listen to him.’

‘What? Did you think that was it? Us over?’

I nodded.

‘Is he right, then?
Am
I ruining your life?’

‘No – no. I didn’t even have a life before I met you.’

‘Well then. Your dad telling me off isn’t going to make me go. I left because I didn’t want to give him a heart attack. If
you
tell me to go, that’s different – I’ll go, but no one else is going to make me.’

Relief made me light-headed.

‘Oh, come here.’ He opened his coat and I snuggled inside, leaned my head against his chest, heard the thump, thump, thump of his heart. He kissed the top of my head. ‘D’you really think, after everything, I’d just walk away?’ He pulled away, looked in my eyes. ‘D’you think I’d miss tomorrow night?’

‘Tomorrow night?’

‘When you come over.’ A lazy smile.

‘What about Leo?’

‘Out.’ He kissed me. ‘And Art.’ He kissed me again. ‘Out all night.’ And he kissed me again, longer, deeper this time so that I wanted to go home with him then and there. ‘You’d better go back,’ he said. ‘Calm your dad down.’

‘He’s not like that normally. He’s never angry.’

‘Well, he’s angry now – so maybe don’t mention tomorrow night.’

I ran back home, my emotions all over the place. I didn’t know whether to be angry, happy, sad, or frightened. That was okay though, wasn’t it? That was normal. I was holding it together. I was doing just fine.

Dinner was awkward. Mum and Dad both avoided looking at me and talked to each other in false, chirpy voices. Their strange act must have unsettled Lydia because, for once, she was quiet.

‘It’s all part of the same cult, that’s what worries me,’ Dad said. ‘They’re becoming quite brazen. Even dug up a new corpse in St Theodore’s – only buried yesterday.’

‘Luke!’ Mum said. ‘We’re eating.’

‘Sorry - And Pearl . . .’ at last he looked at me. Little pink spots appeared on his cheeks, ‘sorry I lost my temper.’

‘What?’ Lydia laughed. ‘
You?
Lost your temper?’

‘It’s fine, Dad,’ I said.

‘It’s only because I . . .’

‘I said it’s fine, Dad,’ I said.

Lydia looked smug. She caught my eye a few times and raised her eyebrows. Winding me up – her favourite pastime.

‘Pearl?’ she said, towards the end of the meal. Her smile made me nervous.

I gave her the evil eye - no effect whatsoever.

‘Were you at Jubilee Gardens last night?’ she said.

Silence. Knives and forks froze in mid-air.

‘No.’

Lydia grinned. Her eyebrow twitched. ‘Just wondered.’

I caught the look that passed between Mum and Dad. How the hell did she know? I tried to think who could have seen me. There were only the kids buying drugs and the ones with the pit bulls. How would Lydia know any of them? I took a few more mouthfuls but my appetite had gone. So, it seemed, had Mum and Dad’s. Only Lydia continued to shovel food into that trouble-making mouth of hers.

After dinner, Lydia washed the dishes while I dried. ‘Sorry for dropping you in it,’ she said. ‘Didn’t realise Mum and Dad would go so weird.’

‘It’s okay.’

‘Just thought it was funny, that’s all. He said you were wrecked.’ She grinned. ‘That, I cannot imagine.’

‘It wasn’t me. Lyd,’ I said.

‘Didn’t think it was,’ she said, ‘until you all freaked out.’ She looked up at me with the smuggest of grins. ‘By the way, d’you like my bracelet?’

She held her arm out. A solid silver bangle dangled on her wrist, engraved with an intricate pattern just visible through the washing-up suds. It looked expensive.

‘Where d’you get it?’

‘Leo gave it to me.’

I breathed in saliva, coughed. ‘Leo?’

‘You know him then? Parka? Brown hair?’ Her sharp eyes glittered, watched for a reaction.

I nodded, remembered Leo talking about my ‘nice’ family.

‘It was him who told me you were at Jubilee.’

‘Keep away from him, Lyd - seriously.’

‘Why? He’s nice.’

‘He’s not nice - and you’re thirteen . . .’

‘Fourteen,’ she said, as if that made a difference.

‘Yeah, fourteen and stupid. He’s, I don’t know, twenty or something.’
And he just happens to be a murderer
.

‘He’s funny and cool,’ she said, the grin gone. ‘You’re just jealous because he’s better-looking than your freaky guy.’

She shook her hands and suds flew everywhere. I caught her before she reached the door. ‘Lydia, listen. Leo hates me. He’ll hurt you just to get at me.’

‘Oh, yeah.’ Her lip curled. ‘It’s all about you, isn’t it? Couldn’t be he likes me, could it? Oh, no – everyone loves Pearl.’

‘He’s evil, Lydia. He tried to kill me.’

‘Oh, God!’ she said. ‘You’re such a drama queen.’ She left the kitchen and slammed the door.

No point in going after her. No matter what I said, she wouldn’t listen. I texted Jack. He said he’d ‘have a word’. Fear for Lydia made me wish I’d let him drop Leo out of the window, after all.

I went to my room, sat at my desk and opened my books in case anyone came in. I doodled, drew eyes all around the edge of my paper. Beautiful, sad, gentle eyes, then frightened eyes, then hooded, black eyes, lustful, hard, cruel eyes. I shivered.

Someone tapped on my door - Dad, asking if we could have ‘a little chat’. A ‘little chat’ reminded me of Jim.

Dad looked as awkward as I felt. ‘I’m worried about you, Pearl.’

I didn’t say anything.

‘There’s something wrong, I know. Is it this Jack? Is he okay?’

Okay? No, not even the blindest of lovers could call him that.

He sighed. ‘Did you tell him Jim wants to see him?’

I nodded so sharply it cricked my neck.

‘Good. So - pressure’s off.’

Except it wasn’t because Jack couldn’t give his DNA, in case there was some on Tipper, on the guy at the flats – on any number of other victims. One solitary tear escaped and ran down my cheek.

‘What
is
it, Pearl?’

I shook my head and shrugged, couldn’t trust myself to speak.

‘Look, whatever it is . . . Are you pregnant? Is that it?’

He flinched at my harsh laugh.

‘Shall I get your mum?’

‘No.’ Mum would never understand. ‘No, Dad. Sit down – please.’

He sat, perched on the end of my bed, his hands clasped in his lap. Solid, safe, dependable hands – hands that had held me as a baby.

‘Before I say anything,’ I said, ‘promise not to tell Jim.’

‘Why would I tell Jim?’

‘Just let me speak, Dad, okay?’

He nodded but already I could see the horrible realisation dawning in his eyes.

‘It’s about Jack.’

‘Right.’ Dad’s voice was flat. ‘What about him?’

‘He’s . . .’ I couldn’t get the words out.

‘He’s what?’ He swallowed. ‘You mean he’s . . .?’ He jumped to his feet, paced towards the door and back again, agitated. ‘He’s one of them, isn’t he? He’s part of this - Mesmeris?’

‘Dad, listen.’

‘No,
you
listen.’ He stopped in front of me, furious, the sinews in his neck standing out. ‘You don’t know what they do. They kill people, Pearl - murder them.’ He stared at my face and then his mouth dropped open and he stepped back, eyes wide, shocked. ‘You
do
know.’ His voice was barely more than a whisper. ‘You know - and yet you . . .’ He shook his head. ‘Oh, God!’ He sat heavily on the bed, his hands over his face. ‘Those children,’ he said. ‘Children, Pearl – your age.’ Tears dropped onto his cassock. They hung there for a moment like pearls on the black fabric, then disappeared.

‘That wasn’t Jack,’ I said.

He made a noise, halfway between a laugh and a sob. ‘
He
told you that, did he?’

‘He was with me the whole time, Dad – the whole time, I swear. Please, you have to help him.’

‘
Help
him?’ He shook his head. ‘Help someone who . . .?’ A shudder crossed his face. ‘No – never.’ He got up, paced the floor.

‘Dad, please - sit down. Let me tell you about him.’

‘I don’t want to know.’ But he sat anyway.

I told him everything I knew about Jack’s abduction, about how he’d protected me, put himself in danger for me, risked his life for me. ‘He loves me, Dad.’

We sat in silence, except for the ticking of my alarm clock and Lydia’s grotesquely cheery music, filtering through the wall.