The Judas Scar (21 page)

Blood brothers.

‘Are you thinking about him?’

‘No,’ she lied.

‘Good. You can’t think about him when you’re with me.’

‘It doesn’t work like that.’

‘It does. When you’re with me, I don’t want him anywhere near you.’ He sat up and his eyes burned into her.

‘I think we should go,’ she said.

‘Not yet. I want to stay with you like this for a while.’

‘I have to get back, Luke.’ She sat up, covering her chest with crossed arms. ‘I need to get back to Will.’

He sat up too and grabbed his trousers angrily. Harmony knew she should say something, apologise maybe, but instead she watched him dress without speaking. She studied his body – not an inch of fat, toned, with clear muscle definition. She imagined he spent hours in the gym or maybe played football twice a week or ran every lunchtime. She was reminded how little she knew about him.

Harmony was careful to leave the studio as they’d found it. Luke put the padlock on the door and spun the numbers to lock it. Harmony strapped herself into the car then reached into the back for her bag. She got out her phone and saw Will had texted her earlier that afternoon. She recoiled as a tremendous wave of guilt crashed over her.

What time are you home?

‘Can you drop me at Fulham Broadway?’ she asked, chewing lightly on her lower lip.

Luke nodded stiffly and turned the engine on as she typed a reply to Will.

Sorry phone been off. Home about six-thirty.

She hesitated then added a kiss.

They were quiet on the drive back through London. At one point he reached for her hand and stroked her. Her body tensed; she wanted to pull away from him. It was all wrong now, his touch, not exciting but duplicitous.

‘I’m away on business for a week from tomorrow,’ Luke said, as he pulled over to let her out just up from the tube station. ‘I’ll contact you when I’m back in the country.’

‘I don’t know,’ she said with hesitation.

‘That wasn’t the response I was hoping for.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘I’ll call you.’

‘Do you have my number? I don’t remember giving it to you.’

‘It was on the bottom of the email you sent me.’

‘Well, please don’t call me. And don’t text either. Use my work email address, the one you used this morning. It comes through to my phone, so I’ll pick it up.’ She slipped her bag onto her shoulder and reached for the door handle.

His jaw clenched with displeasure and his eyes flicked away from her.

‘Luke,’ she said. ‘You can’t put any pressure on me. This is hard enough as it is.’ She opened the door and got out. She looked at him but he stared out of the windscreen as if fixed on something in the distance, his fingers tapping rapidly on the steering wheel. Finally he glanced at her and nodded. Then she closed the door.

He shifted into gear and pulled away. She watched the car weaving through the traffic, and then turned in the direction of the tube station.

She arrived home a little earlier than she’d said. She stood in the entrance hall of their building for a few minutes breathing deeply, trying to gather herself before opening the door. She fumbled with the key in the lock, images of her and Luke bombarding her, each of them sending a small pulse of heat through her body and a simultaneous stab of guilt.

‘Hi!’ called Will from the kitchen. ‘Good day?’

His voice cut into her. Familiar, the most familiar voice in the world. He was excited about something. How could he be? What was there to be excited about?

‘One minute,’ she called back. ‘I’m just going to jump in the shower. It’s like the tropics out there, I’ve been sweating all day.’

‘Okay,’ he said. He appeared in the doorway. ‘I’ll be in the garden. Come out and join me when you’re ready. I’ve something to show you.’ He turned away but then stopped and looked back at her.

‘Oh, and Emma called. She asked if you could ring back when you got in. She sounded a bit stressed.’

‘Thanks. I’ll shower first,’ she said.

She walked into the bathroom, her legs like jelly, and slid the lock shut. She ran the shower, undressed, made sure she pushed her clothes deep into the laundry basket, then stepped under the water and cleaned herself all over. When she was finished she wrapped herself in a towel. She caught sight of herself in the mirror. There were red scratches over her chest and neck, and her lip had a small cut on it. She brought her fingers up and ran them lightly over the cut. She recalled the way he’d cried out as he pushed into her and a wave of sadness swept through her as she realised she was a different person now. Two weeks ago she was one half of a long-term marriage, a loyal wife whose only desire in the world was to conceive a baby with the husband she loved. Now she was a stranger to herself, a person who’d had sex with a man she barely knew, she was a liar, a cheat. She walked through to the bedroom and sat on the edge of the bed. She felt unwelcome suddenly, as if the room was telling her she had no right to be there, that she didn’t belong anymore.

‘Oh God,’ she whispered. ‘What on earth have you done?’

C H A P T E R    S I X T E E N

First year dormitory,

Farringdon Hall,

October 1986

Dear Mother and Father,

I hope this letter finds you well. School is fine. I’ve been doing my best and if you saw how hard I was trying you would be proud of me. The only thing I can’t do at all is rugby. I know this will disappoint you, Father. I’m just a lot smaller than everyone else and also not very fast at running. I will keep trying though! I quite like swimming, but it’s very cold and the water is quite green. If you are in the swimming team, you get to wear swimming trunks, but if you’re not then you have to swim naked, nothing on at all. When I said that I didn’t think that was fair to the PE teacher, he sent me to the headmaster for a caning. I’m learning the hard way that it really is best to keep your complaints quiet. Though I find it very hard! I’ve been saying my prayers every night and asking God to help you do your work. I hope the new church is built now and the villagers are happy they have love in their hearts at last. It’s sometimes quite hard here. Lots of the boys are still unkind to me. There is this one boy, a prefect if you can imagine, who is awful. Mother, you’d say he has the Devil in his eye. I never knew what you meant by that until I saw him. Now I know just what you mean. I’m teased every day but I do try to do what you said and ignore it, though it does get annoying and makes me very cross sometimes. Things are better now because … wait for this … I have found a friend!!! His name is William (Will) and he’s great. We like all the same things like adventure stories and the Beano, and we play this game where we pretend we are marooned on a desert island with cannibals who’ll eat us alive if they catch us. I know you will think this is a very foolish game but it’s really fun! Will is tall and quite strong for his age (our age, I mean!) and he thinks I’m very funny. It’s great! When I hear him laugh it makes me feel so happy I could burst. I feel like he is the only person in this whole place who understands me and likes me for being me and it is very comforting. As you know I have found it very lonely here but now I have Will things are looking up! We talk about everything and I can tell him what I’m thinking and even what I’m feeling deep inside. He has a camera so I’ll ask him to take a picture of us together and send it to you. I’ve grown a lot! You’ll see what good friends we are (you’ll just be able to tell).

The food here isn’t great apart from the puddings. Mother, you would love the jam sponge! They serve it with custard which is as yellow as the African sun and thick like glue but they must put a sack of sugar in it because it’s so sweet it makes my teeth hurt! The showers are stone cold and take your breath away but I’m used to those now. One bad thing here (there are a few but I won’t tell you them all!) is the morning runs we have to do on Tuesdays and Fridays. They make us get up at five-thirty in the morning and run up and down this hill four times. The hill is nicknamed The Killer and at the top you have to touch this tree and a prefect gives you a tick on a piece of paper when you do. It’s very steep and there’s another prefect who stands at the bottom and basically has the job of shouting. I am always one of the last to finish however hard I try and run. The masters are quite scary but they seem to know their jobs and I am certain I am getting a very good education, which I know is what you want for me. I miss the heat of Africa. I wonder if I will see you at Christmas or if I will be going to Aunt Grace’s? It would be nice to come home if you will let me. I’m not sure Aunt Grace likes having me under her feet all the time …

I am doing well in Latin and with my oboe. I’ll take Grade Six in January and Mr Granger thinks I should get a merit at least and a distinction if I’m lucky. I must sign off now as the bell is ringing for supper. (It’s right outside the study and is so loud it deafens you!) If I did have one wish it would be that you came and got me but I know this isn’t possible so I will not think about that anymore.

Please send my love to Nairobi. I miss it. I will try not to get cross or do anything that will make you embarrassed and I will keep trying at rugby, Father. Maybe God will help me with that one!

I know God loves you and the important work you do and I hope He loves me too.

Your loving son,

Luke Matthew John Crawford

C H A P T E R    S E V E N T E E N

Will’s stomach buzzed with nerves as he waited for her. He began to pace, his eyes fixed on the back door. When he saw her coming into the kitchen he ran up to the back door and watched her face as she came into the garden. She stopped on the back door step, her hair wet from her shower, her skin flushed and glowing, and took it all in. The surprise on her face dawned gradually, her eyes jerking from one thing to another, her head slightly shaking in disbelief. He wanted her to love it and he crossed the fingers on one hand behind his back.

‘I did the garden.’

‘I can see,’ she said, giving him a brief smile before returning to survey his work.

‘I know it doesn’t make things better, I know it’s not as simple as that,’ he said. ‘But, well, I couldn’t stop thinking about what you said, about it being neglected and scruffy, and well, once I got started, I couldn’t stop.’

She stepped out onto the terrace, which he’d cleared of weeds and swept. He watched her slowly absorbing the changes.

‘Do you remember how excited we were when we walked out here when we were buying the place? That estate agent droning on about how close the flat was to the tube station and the patisserie that sold the best custard tarts in West London and all we could do was grin at the garden?’

‘Did you have any help?’ she asked. She glanced at him before walking over to look at one of the flower beds.

‘No, but I started first thing this morning. I called Frank and told him I wouldn’t be in and then as soon as you left I got going.’

He’d made himself a sweet, milky coffee, then dressed in a pair of jeans and an old T-shirt and set to work. He dug out an assortment of garden tools from the narrow lean-to shed, including an electric mower which hadn’t been used since the year before. He got a load of rubbish bags from the kitchen, some matches, and a big blue tarpaulin that he could collect leaves and weeds on. The more he worked the more driven he felt, moving in some sort of frenzy, digging, cutting, weeding, dragging, burning. Sweat poured off him as the June heat beat down. This was his way of showing her the future. He didn’t stop to wonder if this was what she’d meant when she talked about the garden being a mess, he just knew he needed to tidy it up, that whatever the outcome, whether it helped or made no difference, it was symbolic in some way.

At just past one o’clock he took a break and went inside. He made himself a tall glass of orange squash which he drank in one beside the sink, then he opened the fridge, cut a chunk of cheese and rolled up a slice of ham, which he ate as he went back outside to assess his morning’s work. The place resembled a war zone, with rubbish, piles of weeds, clods of earth and clippings littering the whole area. He heard his mother’s reassuring voice in his head telling him things always looked worse before they got better and for the first time in months he missed her. If she lived closer then he’d have called her to come and help. She was a fantastic gardener, one of those sleeves-up kind of people who got jobs done quickly with no complaining. He wiped the back of his hand across his sweaty forehead and went back indoors to send a text to Harmony to ask what time she’d be back. She was usually home anywhere between five and seven, and today, the later the better. He wanted to have it perfect. He tidied up what he had done then spent an hour and half turning the soil to reveal moist, deep brown earth, which made a world of difference.

‘Flowers,’ he said to himself.

He checked the phone for a reply from Harmony, but there was nothing. It was three o’clock. He’d take a chance and drive to Homebase, the nearest place he knew that stocked plants. There he filled two large trollies with a variety of herbs, flowers and shrubs. He also picked up a couple of terracotta planters he thought would look great holding the herbs, a huge shiny blue urn, a fully developed specimen rose bush with flowers of such a deep red they could have been stained with blood, an Indian-style parasol with tassels and embroidery in a rainbow of threads, a small cast-iron barbecue, and some citronella candles to keep the midges away.

He checked his watch. He’d be home by half past four. He had wanted to cook her supper as well but if he was going to plant he wouldn’t have time. When he got home he put a good bottle of Pouilly-Fuissé in the fridge and checked there was enough ham left. There were some olives as well, and right at the back of the cupboard, he found a jar of roasted peppers. Enough for supper. He went outside and began to plant. At half past five he finally got a text from Harmony to say she’d be home at six-thirty. He had quite a few plants left in pots and raced to get as many in the ground as possible, but as the clock reached six he knew he wouldn’t have time to finish, so he placed the rest on the beds in their pots. It wasn’t ideal but it gave an impression of what it would look like. Then he laid a rug on the freshly cut lawn, leant the parasol at an angle over it, lit the citronella candles and placed them around the rug, and then went inside to rinse the dirt, sweat, and grass clippings from his sunburnt skin. His heart began to pound with excitement; he couldn’t wait to see her, he couldn’t wait to show her, to start trying to make her love him again.