by Tana French
They were all looking at me, that unreadable quadruple gaze with the force of a tractor beam. I shrugged, pulling at a shoelace. No.
Why not? If I may ask.
Rafe moved, threw a taut little trill somewhere in the pianos upper octaves. Justin flinched.
Cause, I said. Im not.
Shouldnt you be? After all, if you have no idea
Daniel, Rafe said, almost under his breath. Leave her alone.
I wish you wouldnt go out there, Justin said. He looked like his stomach hurt. I really do.
Were worried, Lex, Abby said quietly. Even if youre not.
The trill was still going, on and on like an alarm bell. Rafe, Justin said, pressing a hand to his ear. Stop.
Rafe ignored him. Like shes not enough of a drama queen without you three encouraging her
Daniel didnt seem to notice. Do you blame us? he asked me.
So youll just have to worry, I said, shoving my other foot into its shoe. I dont care. If I get all jumpy now, Ill be jumpy forever, and Im not doing that.
Well, congratulations, Rafe said, ending the trill with a neat chord. Take your torch. See you later. He turned back to the piano and started flipping pages.
And your phone, Justin said. In case you feel faint, or . . . His voice trailed off.
It doesnt seem to be raining any more, Daniel said, peering at the window, but it might be chilly. Are you going to wear the jacket?
I had no idea what he was talking about. This walk seemed to be turning into something at the organization level of Operation Desert Storm. Ill be fine, I said.
Hmm, Daniel said, considering me. Maybe I should go with you.
No, Rafe said, abruptly. Ill go. Youre working. He banged the piano lid down and stood up.
Bloody hell! I snapped, throwing my hands up and giving the four of them an outraged glare. Its a walk. I do it all the time. Im not taking protective clothing, Im not taking emergency flares and Im definitely not taking a bodyguard. Is that OK with everyone? The thought of a private chat with Rafe or Daniel was interesting, but I could get those some other time. If someone was waiting for me out in the lanes, the last thing I wanted was to scare him off.
Thats my girl, said Justin, giving me a faint smile. Youll be fine, wont you?
At the very least, Daniel said, unperturbed, you should take a different route from the one you took the other night. Will you do that?
He was watching me blandly, one finger still caught between the pages of his book. There was nothing in his face except mild concern. Id love to, I said, if I remembered which way I went. Since I dont have the first clue, Ill just have to take my chances, wont I?
Ah, Daniel said. Of course. Im sorry. Ring if you want one of us to come meet you. He went back to his book. Rafe thumped down onto the piano stool and crashed into the Rondo alla Turca.
* * *
It was a bright night, the moon high in a clear cold sky, flicking chips of white off the dark hawthorn leaves; I buttoned Lexies suede jacket up to my neck. The torch beam lit up a narrow bar of dirt path and the invisible fields felt suddenly huge around me. The torch made me feel very vulnerable and not very smart, but I kept it on. If anyone was lurking out there, he needed to know where to find me.
No one came. Something shifted off to one side, something heavy, but when I whipped the torch around it was a cow, staring back at me with wide, sorrowful eyes. I kept walking, nice and slow like a good little target, and thought about that exchange back in the sitting room. I wondered what Frank had made of it. Daniel could have been simply trying to jog my memory loose, or he could have had very good reasons for wanting to check whether the amnesia was real, and I had no idea which it was.
I didnt realize I was heading for the ruined cottage until it rose up in front of me, a smudge of thicker dark against the sky, stars flickering like altar lights in the windows. I switched off the torch: I could find my way across the field without it, and a light in the cottage was likely to make the neighbors very antsy, possibly even antsy enough to come investigating. The long grass swished, a soft steady sound, around my ankles. I reached up and touched the stone lintel, like a salute, before I went through the doorway.
The quality of the silence was different inside: deeper, and so thick I could feel it pressing softly around me. A slip of moonlight caught the crooked stone of the hearth in the inner room.
One wall sloped jaggedly down from the corner where Lexie had curled up to die, and I pulled myself up onto it and settled my back against the gable end. The place should probably have freaked me outI was so close to her dying, I could have leaned down across ten days and touched her hairbut it didnt. The cottage had a century and a half of its own stillness stored up, she had taken only an eyeblink; it had already absorbed her and closed over the place where she had been.
I thought about her differently, that night. Before, she had been an invader or a dare, always something that set my back stiffening and my adrenalin racing. But I was the one who had flashed into her life out of nowhere, with Sticky Vicky for a pawn and a wild why-not chance dangling from my fingertips; I was the dare she had taken, years before the flip side of the coin landed in front of me. The moon spun slowly across the sky and I thought of my face blue-gray and empty on steel in the morgue, the long rush and clang of the drawer shutting her into the dark, alone. I imagined her sitting on this same bit of wall on other, lost nights, and I felt so warm and so solid, firm moving flesh overlaid on her faint silvery imprint, it almost broke my heart. I wanted to tell her things she should have known, how her tutorial group had coped with Beowulf and what the guys had made for dinner, what the sky looked like tonight; things I was keeping for her.
In the first few months after Operation Vestal I thought a lot about leaving. It seemed, paradoxically, like the only way I could ever feel like me again: pack my passport and a change of clothes, scribble a note (Dear everyone, Im off. Love, Cassie) and catch the next flight to anywhere, leave behind everything that had changed me into someone I didnt recognize. Somewhere in there, I never knew the exact moment, my life had slipped through my hands and smashed to smithereens. Everything I hadmy job, my friends, my flat, my clothes, my reflection in the mirrorfelt like it belonged to someone else, some clear-eyed straight-backed girl I could never find again. I was a wrecked thing smeared over with dark finger marks and stuck with shards of nightmare, and I had no right there any more. I moved through my lost life like a ghost, trying not to touch anything with my bleeding hands, and dreamed of learning to sail in a warm place, Bermuda or Bondi, and telling people sweet soft lies about my past.
I dont know why I stayed. Probably Sam would have called it couragehe always goes for the best angleand Rob would have called it pure stubbornness, but I dont flatter myself that it was either one. You cant take credit for what you do when your back is against the wall. Thats nothing more than instinct, falling back on what you know best. I think I stayed because running seemed too strange and too complicated. All I knew was how to fall back, find a patch of solid ground, and then dig my heels in and fight to start over.
Lexie had run. When exile somehow hit her out of a clear blue sky, she didnt fight it the way I did: she reached out for it with both hands, swallowed it whole and made it her own. She had had the sense and the guts to let go of her ruined old self and walk away so simply, start over again, start fresh and clean as morning.
And then, after all that, someone had strutted up to her and whipped that hard-won new life away, casually as plucking a daisy. I felt a sudden zip of outragenot at her but, for the first time, for her.
Whatever it is you want, I said softly, into the dark cottage, Im here. Youve got me.
There was a tiny shift in the air around me, subtler than a brea
th; secretive; pleased.
* * *
It was dark, big patches of cloud covering the moon, but I already knew the lane well enough that I barely needed the torch, and my hand went straight to the latch of the back gate, no fumbling. Undercover time works differently; it was hard to remember that Id only been living there a day and a half.
The house was black on black, only a faint crooked line of stars where the roof ended and the sky began. It seemed bigger and intangible, edges blurring, ready to dissolve into nothing if you came too close. The lit windows looked too warm and gold to be real, tiny pictures beckoning like old peep shows: bright copper frying pans hanging in the kitchen, Daniel and Abby side by side on the sofa with their heads bent over some huge old book.
Then a cloud skated off the moon and I saw Rafe, sitting on the edge of the patio, one arm around his knees and a long glass in the other hand. My adrenaline leaped. There was no way he could have followed me without me seeing him, and I hadnt done anything dodgy anyway, but still, the look of him made me edgy. The way he was sitting, head up and ready, at the edge of that great spread of grass: he was waiting for me.
I stood under the hawthorn tree by the gate and watched him. Something that had been taking shape in the back of my mind had just made it to the surface. It was the drama-queen comment that had done it: the snide edge to his voice, the irritable eye roll. Now that I thought about it, Rafe had barely said a word to me since I arrived, apart from pass the sauce and good night; he talked around me, at me, in my general direction, never to me. The day before, he was the only one who hadnt touched me to welcome me home, just taken my suitcase and gone. He was being subtle about it, nothing overt; but, for some reason, Rafe was pissed off with me.
He saw me as soon as I stepped out from under the hawthorn. He raised his armthe light from the windows sent long, confusing shadows flying down the grass towards meand watched, unmoving, as I crossed the lawn and sat down next to him.
It seemed like the simplest thing to go at this head-on. Are you mad at me? I asked.
Rafe turned his head away with a disgusted flick, looked out over the grass. Mad at me, he said. For Gods sake, Lexie, youre not a child.
OK, I said. Are you angry with me?
He stretched out his legs in front of him and examined the toes of his runners. Has it even occurred to you, he asked, to wonder what last week was like for us?
I considered this for a moment. It sounded a lot like he was in a snot with Lexie for getting stabbed. As far as I could see, this was either deeply suspicious or deeply bizarre. With this gang, it got hard to tell the difference. I wasnt exactly having fun either, you know, I said.
He laughed. You havent even thought about it, have you?
I stared at him. Thats why youre pissed off with me? Because I got hurt? Or because I didnt ask how youre feeling about it? He shot me an oblique look that could have meant anything. Well, Jesus, Rafe. I didnt ask for any of this to happen. Why are you being such a dickhead about it?
Rafe took a long, jerky swallow of his drinkgin and tonic; I could smell it. Forget it, he said. Never mind. Just go inside.
Rafe, I said, hurt. I was only mostly faking it: there was an icy cut to his voice that made me flinch. Dont.
He ignored me. I put a hand on his armit was more muscular than I had expected, and warm right through his shirt, almost fever hot. His mouth set in a long hard line, but he didnt move.
Tell me what it was like, I said. Please. I want to know; honestly, I do. I just didnt know how to ask.
Rafe shifted his arm away. All right, he said. Fine. It was horrible beyond belief. Does that answer your question?
I waited. We were all hysterical, he said harshly, after a moment. We were wrecks. Not Daniel, obviously, he would never do anything as undignified as get upset, he just stuck his head in a book and occasionally came out with some fucking Old Norse quote about arms that remain strong in times of trial, or something. But Im pretty sure he didnt sleep all week; no matter what time I got up, his light was still on. And the rest of us . . . Just to start with, we werent sleeping either. We were all having nightmaresit was like some awful farce, every time you managed to get to sleep someone would wake up screaming, and of course that would wake everyone else up . . . Our sense of time completely disintegrated; half the time I didnt know what day it was. I couldnt eat, even the smell of food made me gag. And Abby kept bakingshe said she needed to do something, but, God, piles of gooey chocolate things and bloody meat pies all over the house . . . We had a blazing row about it, Abby and I. She threw a fork at me. I was drinking all the time so the smell wouldnt make me sick, and then of course Daniel started giving me flak about that . . . We ended up giving away the chocolate things in the tutorial groups. The meat pies are in the freezer, if youre interested. None of the rest of us are going to touch them.
Shaken up, Frank had said, but no one had mentioned this level of hysteria. Now that Rafe had started talking, he didnt know how to stop. The words were tumbling out hard and involuntary as vomiting. And Justin, he said. Jesus. He was the worst by a long shot. He couldnt stop shaking, I mean really shakingsome little smart-arse first-year asked him if he had Parkinsons. It doesnt sound like a big deal, but it was incredibly unnerving; every time you looked at him, even for a second, it set your teeth on edge. And he kept dropping things, and every time he did it the rest of us nearly had heart attacks. Abby and I would yell at him, and then he would start crying, like that was going to help anything. Abby wanted him to go to Student Health and get Valium or something, but Daniel said that was ridiculous, Justin had to learn to cope like the rest of uswhich was obviously completely insane, because we werent coping. The biggest optimist in the world couldnt have said we were coping. Abby was sleepwalkingone night she ran herself a bath at four in the morning and got into it in her pajamas, fast asleep. If Daniel hadnt found her, she could have drowned.
Im sorry, I said. My voice sounded strange, high and shaky. Every word he said had hit me straight in the stomach with a kick like a horses. I had argued this with Frank and talked it through with Sam, Id thought I had my head around it, but it had never been real to me till that moment: what I was doing to these people. Oh, God, Rafe, Im so sorry.
Rafe gave me a long, dark, unreadable look. And the police, he said. He took another swig of his drink, made a face as if it tasted bitter. Have you ever had to deal with cops?
Not like that, I said. I still sounded wrong, breathless, but he didnt seem to notice.
Theyre bloody scary. These werent uniformed cops fresh out of the bog; these were detectives. They have the best poker faces Ive ever seen, you dont have a clue what theyre thinking or what they want from you, and they were all over us. They questioned us for hours, almost every single day. And they make even the most innocent questionwhat time do you normally go to bed?sound like a trap, like theyre just waiting to whip out the handcuffs if you give the wrong answer. You feel like you have to be on your guard, every second, its fucking exhaustingand we were exhausted already. That guy who dropped you off, Mackey, he was the worst. All smiles and sympathy, but he obviously hated our guts right from the word go.
He was nice to me, I said. He brought me chocolate biscuits.
Well, isnt that charming, Rafe said. Im sure that won your heart. Meanwhile, he was showing up here at all hours of the day and night, giving us the third degree about every single detail of your entire life and making bitchy little comments about how the other half live, which is complete bollocks anyway. Just because weve got the house and we go to college . . . The mans got a chip on his shoulder the size of Bolivia. He would have loved a reason to lock us all up. And of course that got Justin even more hysterical, he was positive we were all going to be arrested any minute. Dan
iel told him that was crap and to pull himself together, but actually Daniel wasnt all that much help, seeing as he thought . . .
He broke off and stared away down the garden, his eyes hooded. If you hadnt pulled through when you did, he said, I think we would have killed each other.
I reached out one finger and touched the back of his hand, just for a second. Im sorry, I said. I am, Rafe. I dont know how else to say it. Im so sorry.
Yeah, Rafe said, but the anger had drained out of his voice and he just sounded very, very tired. Well.
What did Daniel think? I asked, after a moment.
Dont ask me, Rafe said. He threw back most of his drink with a neat flick of his wrist. Ive come to the conclusion that were mostly better off not knowing.
No, you said Daniel told Justin to chill out, but he wasnt much help because he thought something. What did he think?
Rafe jiggled his glass and watched the ice cubes clink off the sides. He obviously wasnt planning to answer, but silence is the oldest cop-trick in the book, and Im even better at it than most. I leaned my chin on my arms, watched him and waited. In the sitting-room window behind his head, Abby pointed to something in the book and both she and Daniel burst out laughing, faint and clear through the glass.