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CHAPTER
TWENTY-FOUR

“Hello? Anybody home?”

Saturday, 9:00 a.m. Rachel stood at the end of her bed in a pure white cotton robe, balancing a tray of croissants and coffee and rolling her eyes in amused impatience.

“Hi.” I shook Sammy’s dead eyes from my head, propped the pillows up behind me and cleared a space on the bedside table; she set down the tray and hopped onto the bed, straddling my knees and leaning in to kiss me.

“Did you go somewhere nice?” she purred.

“Not especially.” The robe was loose and, with a little assistance from my index finger, afforded me a most pleasing view. “I am now, though,” I said.

“Cheeky.” She laughed, snatching it shut. Her sleeves rode up as she did so, exposing the prominent scars across her wrists. She saw me notice and quietly covered herself.

“Don’t be so coy,” I said, with just a trace of a sly smile. “It’s too late, you’ve got nothing left to hide.”

“No,” she conceded. “I don’t suppose I have.”

I took both of her hands and brought them close to my chest; she chewed her lip nervously as I turned her palms upward and swept back her sleeves. “Tell me about these,” I said.

She looked down at them awkwardly, let out a heavy sigh. After a moment’s reflection, she smiled sadly and said, “I suppose that’s my tribute to my little sister.” She pulled them away from me, held them up for self-inspection. “Not my finest moment.”

“What happened?”

She laid them back in my lap, tucked her fingers into my palms. “She was a year younger than me,” she said. “We were inseparable when we were little. Everyone used to think we were twins because we looked so similar and Mum used to dress us in identical clothes. In fact, when we were old enough to dress ourselves, we still did it because we’d kind of cottoned on to all the extra attention. I think sometimes even Mum and Dad forgot that we weren’t two halves of the same person. The only time we were apart was when we were at school, because she was in the year below me, but even then we’d slope off together at playtime, and eat our lunch together at lunchtime.” She smiled sadly, gazing among the flowers patterning the bedspread. “Of course, all the other kids thought we were weird and unsociable, so nobody else wanted to play with us, anyway,” she said, laughing. “Well, when I left school I put off going to college for a year while she finished her A-levels, because we both wanted to go to the UEA and study English. I did a year in Sainsbury’s stacking shelves so I could buy us a little car, which turned out to be one of the last of the old-school Mini Coopers. Dad chipped in a bit. He was tired of being a taxi. Anyway, it was the coolest thing, British racing green, and it had wide wheelarches and leather seats, and a CD player. Although the speakers were a bit crap.” Her face fell; she sucked in her bottom lip and fixed her eyes on the swell of my legs between her knees.

I released her hands, lightly traced the scars with my fingertips. I couldn’t find anything to say; my desire for a happy ending to her story was outgunned by inevitability, and I felt suddenly nervous. But I let her go on.

“We’d found some people to share a house with, so the week before term started, we were moving all our stuff, which basically meant Dad hiring a van and doing all the work, and he was following behind us when we crashed. I can’t remember anything about it, but he said I just swerved straight across the road in front of a tractor. No idea why.”

Metal on metal rang in my ears and sent a shudder through my spine. “Jesus,” I muttered, at a loss for anything more profound.

“Anyway,” she continued softly, “whatever happened, all I can remember is standing in the middle of a garden with the greenest trees you can imagine. I mean just greener than green, not like anything I’ve ever seen, and all these colors everywhere that...well, that I just don’t know the words for. Nothing on Earth, just...indescribable. I can’t even see them in my mind now. And, well, Becky stood there right in front of me with this Oh-my-God look on her face, and laughing. And then...” She trailed off, disappeared inside herself for a long moment before finally looking down into my eyes and taking a firm hold of my hands. “And then I could just hear my dad’s voice screaming, ‘Rebecca, Rebecca, oh my God, Rebecca, don’t go! Stay with me, Rebecca!’ I could feel him shaking me, but he’d already given
me
up for dead. With all the blood and everything, he actually thought I was her, although whether it was just wishful thinking or not I’ll never know. And then Becky was looking at me and shaking her head, like
don’t leave me
. She was terrified. And I tried to reach out to her, but I couldn’t reach her, I was being pulled back. And then I don’t remember anything else until a week later when I woke up in intensive care, and there was nobody there because they were all at the funeral. It was the anaesthetist who told me she’d died. And when they did show up, they were far more concerned with their own feelings than they were with mine. I was a mess, and all they’d say was ‘It’s okay, Rachel, it’s not your fault’ over and over, only they made it pretty clear that it was themselves they were trying to convince. And then of course, when the police decided they couldn’t find anything wrong with the car, it just got worse. They never came out and said it, but they didn’t need to. All they seemed to be able to see was a dead daughter and the person who killed her, curled up in the corner crying all the time and getting under their feet. It sounds ridiculous now, I know, but that’s how they made me feel. And I missed her so much I can’t tell you, I mean it was like losing an arm or something, just this constant itch reminding you there’s a big part of you missing, and I knew she was having a far better time being dead than I was being alive, and I was certain that no one would miss me, so I got in the bath with a bottle of aspirin and a carving knife. I ended up dying twice in the space of two months, although the second time I just had one of those hovering-on-the-ceiling things where I got to watch the doctors scurry about and look like they gave a shit. I wasn’t out for long.” She took another long look at her wrists, let out an exaggerated sigh. “And all I got,” she said, “were these lousy scars. Oh, and—” she rapped her knuckles on the top of her head “—nice big bit of titanium, too.”

“Christ. I had no idea...” what to say.

“Well, of course not,” she said. “It’s not like I wear it on a T-shirt.”

I forced a smile. That she had been wronged saddened me, but my total helplessness had me teetering on the brink of rage. “Tell me it got better for you,” I said.

“No, not really. Mum sat me down and bawled me out for scaring her so badly, and then she broke down and wailed about how badly she was coping with losing Becky, and how she couldn’t go on living if she lost me, too, and how did I think I’d feel if it was the other way around, if it was her who’d killed herself eight weeks after my sister. She said I was just being selfish and yeah, I suppose I was, but then
somebody
had to think about me, right?” She reached over to the table and handed me my tea, then went back for her own. “Of course—” she shrugged “—I could understand the loss part because I was feeling it myself, but it was more of a logical thing than an emotional one. I knew they were suffering, but I just didn’t...
feel
for them. Too busy worrying about my own problems, which probably makes me a psychopath or something, but whatever. It can’t come naturally to everyone, can it?”

“Of course not,” I whispered, although in truth I had no idea whether it was the right answer.

“So,” she said, “I guess these scars are here to remind me that however hard it gets, there’s always something better just around the corner, and I’ve just got to wait my turn. Third time lucky and all that.” She smiled and sipped her tea. “And in the meantime, I’ve just got to make the best of it which, from where I’m sitting, it looks as if I am.”

“Do you think so?” It was all I could muster.

“Are you kidding?” She laughed. “I hadn’t been happy for nine years, and then you come along, and I’m walking around with a big, stupid grin on my face, sniffing flowers and smiling at babies like I’ve had a bloody lobotomy! For the first time I can remember, I feel like I’ve got something to look forward to. I don’t know what you’ve done to me, but you’re the first thing I think of when I wake up, and I go to sleep dreaming about you at night. I’ve known you three weeks, for Christ’s sake. I’m losing my sodding mind!”

My head was spinning. I spilled my tea on her bright white bedspread.
Control control control.
“Jesus,” I said, “I might not know much, but I reckon I know all about losing my mind.” And I dealt with that the only way I knew how. After breakfast, I went shopping.

* * *

Six weeks had passed by the time the police showed up. There had been letters from the school, the occasional sounding of the doorbell, and by the end of the second week I’d unplugged the phone, so incessantly was it ringing. But by and large, I’d been left alone.

The neighbors, all of whom worked during the day and were therefore only home after dark, had been reasonably unconcerned at not having seen my parents. They had, after all, seen the lights on in the evenings and heard all of the usual neighborly noises—doors closing, television chattering, toilet flushing. To the casual observer, nothing had seemed out of the ordinary.

When they finally came, on the morning of the seventh Sunday, the smell led them straight to the woodshed. I watched them from the window as they walked brazenly inside, reemerging in seconds to throw up on the grass. Then I sobbed my relief into the perfumed armpit of a softly sprung policewoman, who fawned and gently shushed with perfectly practiced patience.

It was my father’s mother who’d reported us missing, and it was said that when she learned of his fate her heart broke clean in two. Physiologically speaking, I found this hard to accept, but I came to understand the analogy over time. It was, after all, my father’s broken heart that folded his legs and sent his head wheeling to its fatal union with the lathe handle.

In any case, my discovery couldn’t have been more timely; it was a particularly harsh winter, and despite my best efforts, within a fortnight, I’d reduced the food in the freezer to half a dozen pastry cases. My hurriedly developed hunting skills, whilst improving daily, had only netted me three ducks and a gristly, decrepit fox, and by the end of the fourth week, the fauna had wised up completely.

It was around then that I’d turned my attention to Nicola Pye. She lived on the edge of the village and was in my class at school, and I was attracted to her not for her delicious-sounding surname, but for her parents’ propensity for allowing her to play in the woods at dusk. She was also on the plump side and had a tendency to lumber, and as a bonus she seemed to exhibit precious little spatial awareness, all of which would have made her unsportingly easy to catch.

Would I have gone through with it had I not been found? I don’t know. I’d doubtless been deliriously hungry enough to picture Nicola as one of those pork-cut posters you see in the butcher’s shop, but I wasn’t stupid; I realized that, like everything else I’d caught, little girls weren’t made of sugar and spice and all things nice, but rather inedible fat, bone and stringy yucky dangly bits.

What I do know, however, is that my stomach had little say in the matter. Yes, I stalked Nicola in the woods because I was hungry, but I imagined her with an arrow through her neck because it tickled me. Always had.

My father, for all of his faults, wasn’t a monster. He did his best for me, as far as he understood how, but his fate was foretold by the sadness in his eyes at the end of every day. He knew that he was going to die a broken man, that my mother was too feckless and flighty to stay and watch it happen, and that nothing he could do, either in life or in death, would have any bearing on who or what I was to become. He knew, as I know now, that I was born and not made. A product of nature, and nurture be damned.

CHAPTER
TWENTY-FIVE

So. Shopping. Harassed mothers in juice-stained joggers, struggling to control their young. Fat women with greasy hair and damp armpits, hoarding cake and store-brand diet cola. Teenage girls with braces on their teeth, giggling and holding hands as they tried on cheap jewelry. And there, among the rails of in-house designer evening wear, a tiny package of perfection.

She was four or maybe five, blue denim dress with matching buckle shoes and wispy blond hair to her waist. She clung for dear life to a giant stuffed rabbit as the tears streamed down her face. Sniffing and whimpering, she wandered slowly and aimlessly, scanning the faces around her for a spark of recognition.

Women glanced down at her with theatrical concern, looked around briefly for a match before going on about their business with a sympathetic smile. Men gave her a wide berth, mindful of the ease with which honorable intentions can be misconstrued. I, naturally, moved right in.

“Are you lost?” I knelt down in front of her, looked deep into her swollen blue eyes. Any wariness she may have possessed was crushed beneath a ton of despair.

She nodded, bottom lip quivering, eyelashes swatting at the tears. “I can’t find my mummy,” she sobbed.

“Well, look.” I smiled. “You stay with me, and we’ll see if we can see her, okay?”

She squeezed the toy to her face, nodded slowly and took my hand. I stood, meeting the suspicion on passing faces with a defiant, righteous glare. “What’s your name?” I asked.

“Molly.” She sniffed.

“What does your mummy look like, Molly?” I steered her easily toward the front of the store. “Has she got yellow hair like yours?”

A silent nod.

“And is she wearing a pretty dress like yours?”

“She’s got a pink dress.”

Away from the scene of the crime, barely a soul looked our way. “I like your bunny,” I said. “What’s his name?”

She gave it a long, affectionate look and a tight squeeze. “Bunny.” She shrugged.

“Well, that’s as good a name as any.” I laughed. “Does he go everywhere with you?”

She nodded, heaved out a giant sob as we neared the automated one-way entrance barriers at the edge of the foyer. A security guard stood with his back to us, idly chatting to a middle-aged member of staff.

“Excuse me,” I called. “Security!” He turned to face me, eyes narrowed in officious scrutiny. “Can you let me through, please?”

He unquestioningly waved his hand in front of the nearest barrier, which obediently swung open. I guided Molly through with a smile and a thank-you. Easy as that.

“Do you know your mummy’s name?” I asked her, thirty feet from the door.

“Sally,” she replied.

“And has she got a big green bag?”

“With flowers.” Fifteen feet.

I pointed to the slender, tearful blonde flapping her hands at the customer service desk as the beginnings of an announcement rang out over the PA system. “Is that her?” I suggested.

Molly’s face lit up. “Yes,” she exclaimed.

I released her into a run as her mother turned to follow the assistant’s stare and all but fell to her knees.

“Oh my God, Molly,” she cried, folding the girl into her arms. She looked up at me, eyes filled with tears, and mouthed the words “Thank you.” The relief and happiness in her face filled me with an odd, warm glow. All I could do was smile, and beat a hasty retreat.

Okay. Control. We can do this. It won’t change what I did to Sammy, won’t get rid of the spiny, glittery pressure behind my eyes, but I can at least try to even the odds.

I found myself in the market square, neither destination nor purpose clear in my mind but for the notion that dicing a shop assistant might not help me make sense of my feelings this time. People milled around me, hundreds of tiny universes flitting in and out of my own, each driven by its own immediate wants and needs. They darted from shop to bank to post office to shop, fueled by greed and necessity. Retail junkies. Slaves to the rhythm of supply and demand. I couldn’t even bring myself to pity them.

I watched a withered, tweed-suited old man at the edge of the square, gazing sadly at the memorial there. He bowed his head to the list of his fallen comrades and crossed himself with an unsteady hand before turning to the task of crossing the street.

Cars were scarce but quick to appear; the roads through the center of town are narrow and confusing, more of a ratrun than a route. The younger and more able-bodied find no real challenge in not getting run over; those of a slower disposition, however, can quite easily find themselves stranded at the white line, staring down a mail van. With this is mind, I joined the old man at the curb and rendered my assistance.

I strolled down to the river and watched delighted children throw bread to the ducks and swans. Couples walked hand in hand, laughing and cavorting in the sunshine. A golden retriever leaped excitedly into the water to fetch a rubber ball, returning to shake out its coat over horrified passersby.

I strolled into the florist’s shop, where I bought some yellow-and-white chrysanthemums and a pretty blue ceramic vase. The girl behind the counter said she wished someone would give her flowers. I smiled and bought her a rose. She blushed. Said I’d made her day.

Wandering up through town, I was accosted by a troupe of Girl Guides panning for cash. Their leader, a squat middle-aged woman with a basin haircut, explained the need for a total refurbishment of the guide hut; I gave her my number and a promise to paint some walls. She and her troupe were remarkably thankful. I asked her whether Girl Scout cookies would be provided. She told me that was an American thing. “We’ll see about that,” I said, but I wasn’t really sure what I meant, because I didn’t fancy eating any of them. The troupe said they’d see what they could do. Apparently I’d made their day, too.

The traffic parted magically before me as I hightailed it home, wind in my hair, fingers drumming the wheel, the Commodores on Radio 2. Birds swooped down from the trees to glide alongside me, chattering to the deer and the foxes and the rabbits lining the roadside, a thousand fluttering tails and bristling whiskers and tiny twitching noses all united in celebration. The midday sun slid proudly by in an endless deep sapphire sky, and I laughed so hard that I started to cry, though I wasn’t entirely sure why.

I was still sobbing as I closed the gate behind me and wound through the dappled trees; parked the Jensen in the shade and strolled breezily to the door; scooped up the mail from the mat and threw open the downstairs windows.

I floated around the house on a cushion of air, the tension flicking off me in gobs as a million images cascaded through my mind, none staying long enough to be deciphered, but every one leaving wonder and excitement in its wake. I ricocheted from room to room, unable to settle. I made tea, then promptly forgot and opened a bottle of wine. I put the bottle down somewhere and forgot about that, too. I breezed into the kitchen to make some tea, and discovered that I’d already done so. It was cold, which put me off. I decided I’d open a bottle of wine, but couldn’t find a corkscrew. In hunting for it, I found a bottle I’d already opened. I didn’t put it down this time.

I lingered in the kitchen, tried to slow down the thoughts in my head. I grasped wildly at feelings of happiness, turned them around and over and inside out, struggling vainly to analyze them. The more I did so, the more I grieved for Sammy and Kerry and Sarah and the rest. I forcibly rejected them, allowed the mystery train of random thought to regain control. It felt like I’d been standing there ten minutes. The clock said two hours.

And yet this dizzying whirlwind of confused emotions was suddenly overshadowed by the return of that uncomfortable, nagging feeling that I was forgetting someth—

Shit.

Erica didn’t look happy. She sat on the edge of her bed, knees crossed, hands folded together in her lap, fire and brimstone in her eyes. She watched me like a hawk as I let myself into the cage; her breathing was slow and controlled but her temples betrayed a pulse that pounded like a jackhammer. I chose not to ask how long she’d been sitting there.

“Hi.” I smiled.

She didn’t answer; she just stared.

“I brought you some flowers,” I said. “Thought they might brighten the place up a bit.”

She replied with a raised eyebrow and a slow half nod, watched me silently as I went to the sink to unwrap the flowers.

“I thought maybe later you might like to get out, walk around the garden or something.” No answer. “It’s a beautiful day. The deer are out grazing, I noticed.” I rinsed and trimmed the stems, three at a time in two-inch increments. “We could have a barbecue later, if you fancy it.”

When she finally spoke, her voice was hard and accusing and not two feet from my left ear. “You left me alone again,” she said. I whirled around to face her, trying hard not to appear startled. She’d picked up the vase from the floor near my feet and was rolling it from hand to hand, testing its weight. Her eyes blazed with intent.

“Yes.” I sighed. “I occasionally have to do tedious things like work and shop and take rubbish to the dump. If I lock myself in the house all day we’ll soon be very hungry. I’m here now, though.” I tried on an appeasing smile and held out my hand.

She blew a half laugh through pursed lips and wearily shook her head. She clearly wasn’t buying my explanation, and I didn’t blame her; she did, however, hand over the vase.

“Thank you.” I smiled.

“Don’t mention it,” she snarled as she retreated to her bed.

I half filled the vase with water and dropped in the chrysanthemums, alternating the colors and setting them neatly in height order front to back. “There,” I said, proudly holding up the arrangement for her to admire. “A little bit of sunshine in a jar.”

“Lovely,” she said.

Of course, she didn’t mean it. She wasn’t even looking at the flowers. This, however, ceased to concern me the moment I turned around. I’d got as far as “Oh, come on...” when I noticed two things out of place. One was Erica, who was not on her bed as I’d anticipated but was in fact standing three feet in front of me with her arms raised. And the other was the microwave, which did not belong on my head.