The Nature of Cruelty (16 page)

He starts reading the venues out loud, looking from me and back to the paper several times.

“You’re so nosy. Give it back,” I say, grabbing for the paper. He holds it high out of my reach.

“Are you planning on taking part in one of these?” he asks, intrigued.

“That’s none of your business,” I tell him sternly as he finally places the paper back down on the nightstand.

“So you sing? Sasha never mentioned it.”

“Sasha doesn’t know. It’s just a little hobby. And it’s not like I want to do it for a living or anything. It’s more of a bucket-list sort of thing.”

“You have a bucket list? Is this because of your diabetes?”

I laugh out loud at that. “No, you idiot. How many times do I have to tell you? Having diabetes isn’t a death sentence.”

“It’s not
not
a death sentence, either,” Robert counters.

“Now you’re being melodramatic.”

“Let me go with you when you do this.”

“Eh…no. The whole point is not to have anyone who knows me there. Strangers are safer. That way, if I mess up I’ll never have to see the people in the audience ever again.”

“But I’m so curious,” he whines. “Sing something for me now, then.”

“No way. I’m not ready.”

“I bet you’re sexy when you sing,” he whispers, a faraway look in his eyes, like he’s imagining it.

I can’t think of anything to say to that. I expect him to try to get back into bed with me, but he doesn’t. Instead, he walks to the door. “I’m coming with you to the open-mic night, so don’t you dare even think about going without me.”

“You’re not coming.”

“Yes, I am,” he states, before blowing me a kiss goodnight and slipping out the door.

At work the next day my nerves are on tenterhooks. I haven’t seen Robert since he came to my room last night, and I keep expecting him to show up. But he doesn’t. When my shift ends at three, I feel a brief moment of relief before I realise that I have to go home, and Robert could be there. Avoiding going back, I eat dinner out and then go for a walk over to Speaker’s Corner.

Fareed is there again, and we talk for a while. He has a newspaper with him, and we look through it together, discussing the stories that catch our interest. There’s one about how all of the construction works for the Olympics are ruining people’s homes.

I don’t know why I stay and talk to this guy. I know nothing about him, not even what he does for a living, but sometimes I find talking to strangers an easy experience. There are no preconceived perceptions, so you can tell them whatever you want. It’s kind of the same as my theory that singing for strangers will be easier than singing for people who know me.

I get home at around six, and thankfully Robert isn’t back yet. It’s still pretty sunny and bright out, so I grab a blanket and my copy of
The Oresteia
, which is a book of three plays by the ancient Greek playwright Aeschylus, and go to lie on the grass in the back garden. The first play,
Agamemnon
, is one of my favourites. It shows Agamemnon returning home from the Trojan War, where his wife is planning on murdering him as revenge for his adultery and for killing their daughter as a sacrifice to the gods. Exciting stuff.

Whenever I tell people I study the ancient Greeks, they always get this glazed look on their faces, expecting it to be boring. I mean, some of the history
is
boring, but the literature and the myths are amazing. They portray the human condition in all its dysfunctional glory. I’ve learned a lot about people just from studying this stuff.

I fall into the pages, and the gentle evening sun warms the skin of my arms and legs. I’m almost halfway through the play when I hear a soft clicking noise. Allowing the book to fall to my chest, I shade my eyes and look up. Robert is standing above me, his camera held in one hand, snapping shots of me lying on the grass.

“Hey! Stop doing that!” I exclaim, feeling unusually uncomfortable. Naked, even, despite having all my clothes on.

He fiddles around with the lens, holding the camera at an odd, slanted angle as he continues to photograph me. He’s got a weird look on his face, like he’s so consumed with taking the pictures that he hasn’t even heard me. He kneels down now and leans close, as though taking a picture of my neck.

I reach forward and grab the camera out of his hands.

“What are you playing at?” I snap.

He looks at me like
I’m
the lunatic. “Calm down. I was only taking some pictures,” he tries to reassure me. I am not reassured.

Furrowing my brow, I shuffle away from him and try to figure out how to find the shots he took. I’ve only ever used cheap digital cameras in the past, so this one’s a little more difficult to get to grips with. It must have cost at least a couple grand.

Robert sits there, not even trying to take the camera back from me, like he wants me to see his handiwork. Finally, I get to them. The first one looks like it was taken from up high. His bedroom window, maybe? The next one is closer up, so I presume it was taken out here in the garden. It’s after this that things start to get a bit…weird.

There are a dozen more shots, but they’re all of tiny parts of me: my wrist, a lock of hair lying against my chest, my ankle, my lips, eyelashes, a mole just below my knee. With shaking hands I set the camera slowly down on the blanket before raising my eyes to meet Robert’s. He’s staring at me expectantly. He doesn’t seem embarrassed, not at all.

“Why do you take pictures like that?” I whisper.

“Because I like to.”

“They’re…disturbing, Robert.”

His face simmers with a touch of anger as he says, “They’re beautiful.”

I laugh joylessly. “They make it look like you want to chop me up into little pieces.”

He looks at me like I’m being ridiculous.

“What?” I exclaim. “They do. Please say something to prove me wrong, because I’m kind of freaking out right now.”

“I like photography. It’s a hobby. Taking pictures relaxes me. Lots of photographers like to focus on small details, Lana. You wouldn’t think it was weird if I had a closeup of a flower or a blade of grass, would you?”

“No, but that’s different.”

“It’s not different at all. Some people photograph nature, some do cityscapes. I photograph bodies. Well, female bodies, to be exact.”

“Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Yeah, it’s okay. I get it. There’s just one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“Please take your pictures of somebody else. I don’t want you photographing me anymore.”

“But you’re the only person I want to photograph.”

We stare at each other for several tension-filled seconds before I cough and gather my wits. “Well, I’m sorry about that, but no more. I’m not comfortable with it.”

I pick the camera back up in my hand. I don’t know why, but I flick past the other pictures he took, the ones on the beach, and I gasp. There are more of me. Pictures he took when I didn’t even know he was around. All through the past week we’ve been living together: me eating an apple, me sitting on the couch looking down at my hands, me in the garden watering some flowers, and on and on it goes. I don’t know how he managed to take all these without me realising, but I’m guessing it took a fair amount of creeping. A shiver permeates my body.

Glancing up at him, I see that his eyes are alight with interest. He’s sucking in my reactions like he needs them more than air.

“I don’t…” I whisper and trail off. “I don’t know what to say.”

Robert scratches at his neck. “You’ve, um, become something of a muse.”

“That – that certainly seems to be the case,” I agree, my voice shaky.

Oh. God. There are pictures in here of me
sleeping
. He came into my room without permission – at night. Jesus.

I drop the camera onto the blanket. My stomach twists and turns in distress. I always dreamed of a world where Robert was interested in me. Now that dream has come true, and it’s not at all like what I expected. I feel ill.

“You need help, do you know that?” I say, confronting him. I pick up my book and get to my feet.

“I’m not going to show them to anyone,” he replies, as if that makes it all better.

His statement outrages me. I fling my dog-eared book at him in sheer disbelief. It smacks off his shoulder and then falls to the grass. “You’ve got problems. Just don’t talk to me anymore, Robert. Don’t even breathe in my direction for the rest of the time I’m here. And absolutely no more pictures!”

At this I think of something. I dash to pick the camera up from the blanket.

“What are you doing?” he asks urgently, his voice suspicious.

As quick as I can, I select all of the pictures saved in his camera. I don’t have enough time to only select the ones of me, so I have to delete all of them. For some reason, a slight twinge of guilt twists in me, because even though I’m only getting rid of pictures he took without my permission, violating my privacy, it feels like I’m destroying his art. I push that thought away quickly. It’s not art. It’s voyeurism at most.

He grabs the camera from me now, suddenly realising what I’ve done.

“You deleted them all,” he whispers in disbelief, scrolling up and down as though that might make them reappear.

Tears spring to my eyes. “Yes, and I had every right to.”

His face contorts with suppressed anger. “You had no right,” he grits, his jaw working. “For fuck’s sake, I hadn’t even saved them properly to my computer yet, Lana!”

“I had to get rid of them. You took pictures of me sleeping, Robert. That’s not healthy.” My momentary outrage dissolves, and now I just feel guilty. “I’m sorry, but you can’t keep those kinds of pictures of me. You…you just can’t.”

He stomps right up to me and takes me by the shoulders harshly. His stare is so intense that I don’t know if he’s going to kiss me or smack me. In the end he doesn’t do either. He lets go and brushes harshly past me, stalking into the house.

I’m left standing in the bright, sunny garden, while my heart falls into a dark, perturbed place.

Interlude II
– Robert

September 2004.

T
he first day back at school is always exciting. I’m just home from spending the summer at my dad’s. Turns out, living in Ireland wasn’t as atrocious as I expected it to be. It’s definitely different, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. For instance, back in London we’d steal booze from our parents’ drinks cabinet and go get pissed on some street corner. In Ireland we get someone’s older brother or sister to buy it for us, and then we’ll go drink it on the beach or in the middle of a farmer’s field before stealing a car and going joyriding around the countryside.

I’m basically the king of the guys in my class. They all look up to me like I’m some sort of god of cool. I think having an accent works to my advantage. It makes me exotic to the kids here, someone to emulate.

Today is not only exciting because it’s the first day back, it’s also exciting because it’s Lana’s first day. Sasha and I are two years ahead of her, so we’ve never attended the same school before.

It’s sort of a big deal when a new girl starts here, since it was “boys only” up until a few years ago, having originally been an all-boys boarding school, so there’s a distinct lack of females. I haven’t seen my little redhead all summer, and I’m eagerly anticipating encountering her in the halls or at lunch.

My initial hatred has died down. I no longer blame her for being a friend to Sasha when I needed my sister to be friendless. Now I’ve developed a new feeling for her. It’s something perverse that I can’t quite explain. I enjoy making her miserable…seeing the ghost of pain flicker in her pretty blue eyes.

It’s kind of sadistic, but what the hell, maybe I’m a sadist. All I know is that I live for being around her, for being able to hurt her emotionally. It’s like verbal foreplay. Something in my psyche must be malformed, because if there’s a button in front of me, I’m going to push it. And if anyone’s the human equivalent of a button for me, it’s Lana.

Sometimes she seems so unaffected, yet I can tell I’m getting to her on a deeper level. She never lets it show on the surface. Like a little stoic warrior, she doesn’t give me the outburst that I crave. Perhaps that’s what drives me. I have to keep doing it until she finally cracks.

The signs are minuscule, but after two years I’ve learned to recognise them. When I’ve hit a sore spot, her eyes get huge and her nostrils twitch. It’s adorable.

The sick thing is, I think I might be in love with her.

I know, I know. What right does a sixteen-year-old have talking about love? Perhaps it’s just obsession. Mum says I’m far too intense for my age. I mean, if this is how I treat the people I love, then how on earth do I treat the people I hate? I think about this sort of stuff a lot. When you live in the back arse of nowhere, you have a lot of time to think.

Funnily enough, Mum also says I think too much.

When it comes down to it, though, it’s really just all about Lana. Somehow our relationship has evolved into this unhealthy cycle of me being a dick and her taking it.

I crave our interaction like a drug.

Since we’ve been apart for three whole months, I’m in desperate need of a fix.

Class doesn’t start for another fifteen minutes, and I’m sitting on the grass with my mates Dean and Liam, loosening the tie that my mum made me put on before I left the house this morning. Oh, yeah, there’s another difference between my school here and the one I went to in London — we have to wear uniforms. Ugh.

I see Sasha and Lana approach the school gates, and my heart speeds up. Sasha’s over the moon to have her best buddy back after our summer away. She’s got her elbow resting on Lana’s shoulder as they walk along, reciting some big story, probably about how our dad’s a bastard and she hates him.

They fought more than ever this summer. I can’t count the number of occasions where he’d say something to piss her off and she’d pull a strop. There were lots of feet stomping up stairs and bedroom doors being slammed shut. Now Sasha’s going through a Goth phase; black hair dye and matching nail polish are her new favourite things.