Everything Is Lies
Page 35
‘HURT me?’ he bellows, and Nina is amazed that they can’t hear it up at Rowan’s cottage. ‘Hurt me, you treacherous cunt?’ He snatches up the notebooks, shaking them in her face. ‘The way you fucking talk about me in here! Like I was shit on your shoe! Is this why we’re having the break-ins? Is it your Lord and Master Aaron and his little army of dipshits expressing their disapproval of your fucking literary ambitions?’
She starts guiltily, and her face says it all.
‘You want to be careful, Nina,’ he says, playing his trump card, the one that has always sufficed before now. ‘If you want to get chatty, I can get chatty too. I’ll bet there’s still someone out there who would like to hear what really happened to Uncle Petey.’
Nina has been expecting this.
‘They’d have to prove it, though, wouldn’t they?’ she says. ‘And I think that would be difficult to do now.’
‘Yeah? But would you risk it?’ He leers at her.
‘Yes,’ says Nina, and for the first time in twenty-five years she realizes this is true. ‘Yes, I would.’
* * *
Jared storms out and into the garden. Its peace, its order, the glowing fairy lights all mock him.
He has done everything he can for her, and it means nothing. He’s built this place out of nothing. He’s built her out of nothing, the cold-hearted, ungrateful, worthless bitch.
He fucking killed a man for her, after all.
He shot that Peter Clay right in the face. He’d found the dirty bastard pawing at her as she stood there screaming in her drug-drenched fugue, and he’d seen red … He’d been lucky to get away with that.
He wants to kill her, to grab that thin, fragile bird’s neck and squeeze until her eyes pop out, until she feels just the tiniest part of the pain and anxiety he is now in. He’s been wanting this, on and off, for years, but lately he thinks about it all the time, has thought about how he would accomplish the deed. Considering it is satisfying but terrifying.
It is not, however, more terrifying than the loss of her.
Aaron Kessler, to whom Nina was an insect, is worth more than him to her, he realizes. Sophia, who spends her life avoiding her mother’s phone calls, and who’s abandoned them both to live a highfalutin London life of men and drink – her fucking father’s daughter, all right – is worth more to her than him.
So, it was like that, was it?
He wants to kill her. Yearns for it. No, he wants more. He wants to hurt her while he’s doing it.
And once the doors are open and he fully owns it, then nothing else will do.
He takes the notebooks into his shed, shoving them on top of the pelmet. Nina never comes in here if she can help it. He can move them into the hiding space he’s built for the camera later.
For now, though, he has more urgent plans.
* * *
‘Call Sophia,’ he says.
He’s come back into the kitchen. It’s two hours later and he’s calm again.
She watches him carefully, as though aware this is a trap. In the last few moments she felt a change in the atmosphere, something sinister, something she doesn’t recognize.
‘She won’t come. She never comes. It’s Friday, she’s probably out.’
‘Call her anyway. Tell her it’s important, don’t tell her what it is. I’m going to fix these fairy lights; they keep flashing.’
He turns on his heel and walks back out into the garden.
She calls Sophia and is confronted by her furious resistance.
And just for once Nina wants to say what all these phone calls hint at, to just speak out loud: ‘I’m calling because I love you, and I miss you even when we’re in the same room together. You are all of love I know in the world, and tonight, that’s important.’
But she doesn’t. She doesn’t want to frighten or upset Sophia. Tomorrow, they’ll talk. There’s always tomorrow.
Part of her suspects that Sophia will approve of the new arrangements Nina has in mind. Sophia has never been close to Jared, subconsciously deterred by his glowering self-absorption. It doesn’t matter either way. The changes will happen regardless.
Nina replaces the receiver and carries a cup of tea down to the table at the bottom of the garden.
He is on the stepladder, fiddling with the wires.
‘Is she coming?’ he asks.
‘No. She’s out at a nightclub. She’s over the limit, she says.’
‘Hmm. Sounds like her.’
Everything could almost be normal. But even though she’s always said she is not remotely psychic, she has put the kitchen scissors in the back pocket of her jeans, under her blouse.
He will not be hitting her again.
This is so true, if she but knew it.
‘This is no good,’ he says. ‘It’s knotted; my fingers are too big. I’ll hold it straight while you undo it. Don’t want a fire.’
A fire sounds unlikely to her, but she isn’t interested in quarrelling with him any more. Now the cat is out of the bag, things will start to happen. She needs to find a place to live. She needs work. She has no doubt that there will be plenty of quarrelling to do then.
She places the tea on the table and joins him on the stepladder, him coming down a step or two so she can go up.
She can’t see any knots in the wires.
‘What do you want me to do?’ she asks.
‘Hold still,’ he says, and his tone is blasé, almost too blasé, and she knows what he is about to do even in the split second before the loop goes over her head.
Her fingers flail behind her for the tree, searching for purchase. He is gone, and she knows instantly that he means to kick the stepladder away.
Her terror is boundless, as is her disbelief. Why is he doing this? He, too, will be destroyed.
‘Enjoy this, Nina, you ungrateful bitch. You ruined my life. Sophia and I will be following you soon enough.’
Something galvanizes Nina, then, and she remembers the scissors just as the noose draws tight. The strung lights prevent the noose from completely closing, but she still can’t get her head out, and at the moment it doesn’t matter. All that matters is that she stops him hurting her baby girl.
As she reaches up to cut the wire, he sees the scissors and snatches for her hand, but she’s too quick for him.
The scissors sink deep into his belly, once, twice, and it is this second blow that unbalances him. He falls away, and the stepladder with him, the scissors embedded in his flesh.
Nina scrabbles for the tree, for the branch above, as her eyes grow bloody and turgid and her breath is cut off by her own weight. Her twitching feet grow still.
All of the lights are growing dim.
The last thing she thinks is, Sophia.
Acknowledgements
I’d like to thank the indefatigable team at Michael Joseph for all of their efforts – in particular my editor, Maxine Hitchcock, as well as Clare Bowron, Eve Hall and Emad Akhtar, all of whom offered invaluable suggestions on the text. Thanks are also due to Sarah Harwood, Beth Cockeram, Nick Lowndes and Shauna Bartlett. The more I work with you all, the more I am blown away by your dedication and creativity. You are all awesome and it’s been a privilege.
Once again, all praises are due to my unflappable agent, Judith Murray, and everyone at Greene and Heaton, who I am grateful for every single day. Thanks a million.
I’d like to thank Treadwells Bookshop in London, who were a fund of research material, books and excellent advice on paganism and occultism – anything I got wrong is entirely down to me. Everyone I dealt with in the pagan and magical communities was never less than brilliant, clever and kind. I am a guest that came knocking and now may never leave. Thank you.
My research on cults took various twists and turns, too many to recount here, but should anyone be looking for a place to start, I can recommend Combating Cult Mind Control by Steve Hassan, 1988, published by Freedom of Mind Press, and reissued several times since.
I’d also like t
o thank the following: Chuck Dreyer, Gordon Fraser, Melanie Garrett, Lucia Graves, Dave Gullen, Sumit Paul-Choudhury, Michael Row, Gaie Sebold and Ally Shaw, all of whom were with me when I first came up with the idea in a farmhouse out in South Wales. Thanks to KD Grace for being there for me (we will get back to Avebury some day!), Cambridge Writers for giving me excellent critique on the first few chapters, and Louise Dean and the rest of the Kritikme Krew for some splendid advice and good laughs.
I’d also like to thank my family – Mum, Dad, John, Atsuko, Joe, Darla, Aiden, Arcadia, Finn, Rain, Remy, Oliver, Jacqueline and Lance – for being themselves.
And finally I’m going to take this opportunity to welcome Asta and Hallam to the world. Have fun, you two. Go nuts.
THE BEGINNING
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MICHAEL JOSEPH
UK | USA | Canada | Ireland | Australia
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Michael Joseph is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com
First published 2018
Copyright © Helen Callaghan, 2018
The moral right of the author has been asserted
Cover © Peter Glass/Arcangel Images
ISBN: 978-1-405-92344-6