by Anna Maxted
‘You made me do that!’ Ethan shouted. ‘I didn’t want to but you made me!’ There were beads of sweat on his forehead. ‘You should have taken off your fucking shoes!’ He glared at Mark. ‘Just … drag him up!’
Claudia
It was a gunshot. It was definitely a gunshot. Please let Ethan be dead.
‘George,’ she said, sucking her bruised lip. ‘Ethan’s just playing a game.’
‘No, he isn’t,’ said George. ‘He’s a baddie. He’s hurt you. He’s made Molly cry. I want him to untie you. What was that noise?’
She had to be strong. ‘Molly, darling, you need to make a den. George, see this blanket on the bed? I want you to put that in that big wicker basket there, and Molly, you snuggle up inside it, and it will be your pirate den. Quickly, George. Help her. They’ll be back in a minute.’
It was not exactly a plan, but Molly was exhausted and scared. It might work.
‘No! No. Don’t want to go in basket! I frightened of basket! Want to stay with you!’
Jesus.
‘That’s fine, Molly. You stay with Auntie Claudia. I’ll look after you. Snuggle up. George. Can you see anything – anything sharp to cut this rope? Ouch.’
She had shifted her weight – on to the tweezers. Tweezers did not cut rope.
‘What is it, Auntie Claudia – oh, I see …’
George picked up the tweezers from under her.
The door swung open. ‘We’re back and look who is joining us for the show!’
Ethan’s voice had a manic lilt to it, and the hope died in her chest as she saw Jack dragged in by his hair. His foot was wrapped in plastic – red plastic – or was that … blood?
‘Don’t look, George. Oh God, please … it’s enough. How can you do this, they’re children!’
‘Don’t criticize me. How dare you tell me about how to treat children! Your family don’t know how to treat children – do you, Jack? Do you, Jack?’
‘La-La!’ sobbed George, running over to Innocence and throwing his arms around her.
‘You big brave boy,’ said Innocence. ‘You big brave boy.’ She looked over at Claudia and nodded. What did the nod signify? Claudia could only hope. Well. She was nails. Still wasn’t scared of looking death in the face – although, as Emily would have said, she was older.
‘We’ll see about that,’ said Ethan. ‘Want to see him squeal like a girl?’ Roughly, he pulled George by the arm. ‘Take off your clothes, George.’
‘No!’
George was trying to bite Ethan’s hand. Ethan hit him on the head. ‘Oh, quit whining, that was nothing. You’re still conscious.’
Claudia struggled against the rope. ‘Please, Ethan. Please, you can do anything to me, anything, I mean it—’
‘My bride, I will do anything to you. Patience. But after, yeah? Mark, fetch some towels. I don’t want blood on the carpet.’
Mark nodded. ‘I will be one second, so no one try any funny business.’
‘Shut up, Mark, just go. I think the Glock and I can handle it. Oh, and bring more rope to tie up Sharon Marshall.’ He grinned, insultingly, at Innocence. ‘Never be ashamed of who you are.’
Innocence hung her head.
If anything could be done, now was the time to do it. But Claudia’s hands were tied behind her back so tightly George had been unable to unpick the knots. It wasn’t like in the films, where the kidnapper was careless and the rope easily came loose. Jack was slumped on the floor, white with pain. Once, when they were little, Emily had tipped all the water out of the goldfish bowl because she couldn’t understand why fish didn’t drown. Claudia had come into the room and seen the goldfish flapping and gasping on the floor. Looking at Jack now brought the memory flooding back.
She couldn’t bear to see him like this. Even Innocence looked cowed and frightened, as if she had surrendered all hope. Ethan kept the gun trained on her. There was silence in the room, apart from Molly, who was crying, and crying, and crying. The noise was like a drill hammer, juddering into your brain.
‘JESUS,’ shouted Ethan. ‘Shut UP! My head feels as if it’s about to explode. Someone do something. I tell you, if that brat doesn’t stop crying in three seconds, I am going to shoot her in the mouth. One … two …’
Innocence
‘If you bring her to me,’ Innocence said quietly, ‘I’ll comfort her.’
Ethan gave her a suspicious look. ‘She can sit with Claudia.’
He picked Molly up by one arm and threw her on to the bed. Whimpering with fright, the little girl scrambled to Claudia and buried her face in Claudia’s lap. She was tiny, just bigger than a doll. Innocence felt a rip of white-hot rage. George was standing in the corner, head bowed. She would die before anything happened to these kids. The trouble was, there was a good chance of this event actually occurring, which would be no use to them at all.
‘It’s OK, baby,’ whispered Claudia to Molly. ‘It’s OK.’
‘Jack,’ murmured Innocence. ‘Jack.’
Jack gazed at her feebly, dozily; his eyelids were lowered, his eyes were bloodshot. She felt another bolt of anger. This was no time to play the victim. If she’d had a gun at that moment, she’d have shot him in the other foot.
‘You,’ Ethan said to Innocence, his head snapping around. ‘Get away from him. Over there.’
Innocence screwed up her face. ‘I’ll need a second, if you don’t mind. My ankle is twisted from when you pushed me to the ground.’
‘Bullshit,’ snapped Ethan. He strode over to her and hauled her roughly to her feet. She felt his hand grip her upper arm. He yanked her towards him. ‘Move!’
‘Oh,’ said Innocence as she stumbled and clutched at Ethan for support. She watched with interest as his mouth opened in a howl of pain, and she smiled, gritting her teeth as she twisted the tweezers, jamming them harder, deeper into the soft fleshy part at the base of his spine. As he arched in agony, she tripped him, sliding her foot behind his, so he fell on his back like an upended beetle, clawing desperately at the source of the pain. She grabbed for the gun, but he was too quick. She cringed, instinctively, until she realized he wasn’t aiming at her. His target was George. ‘No,’ she screamed as he pulled the trigger. ‘George, get down!’ George screamed, and Ethan started to laugh. She was grappling for the gun – she couldn’t look, she didn’t dare – at least, at least it had been a quick death, a quick death for a seven-year-old boy.
Jack
A one-man Mexican wave from a cripple, thought Jack, and wanted to laugh. It was weird how the mind worked: instinct first, the primal bit; then analysis, the civilized part, obliged to comment on your actions, to make sense of it, so that you understood why. Jack didn’t need an explanation from the rational part of his brain about what he had just done, although, yes, you could see it as a man leaping in joy, though you could also compare it to a dolphin leaping out of the water. He had acted on his instinct to protect his grandson. The strength had come from nowhere, and the punching, oozing heat in his chest, the breathlessness, the red blood pulsing on to his fingers told him that he had been successful. He had taken the bullet meant for George and there was his joy. The pain infused every part of him, merging with the agony of his injured foot, reaching to his very core, until he was no longer human, only a pulsing ball of white-hot agony. It was funny, what your mind entertained you with in your final moments – one of the few human secrets that would never be revealed. He remembered those dolphins, trailing phosphorescence, the very first night he had set eyes on the woman before him … He steeled himself. He had to reach her, had to drag himself forward on his belly like a wounded snake … Yes, thank God, she had the gun …
‘Mark,’ he said hoarsely. The man had crept noiseless into the room like a cat.
Innocence turned as Mark ran at her with a kitchen knife. She shot him in the chest.
‘Bitch!’ screamed Ethan as Mark fell, curiously silent. Ethan staggered to his feet, grabbed the knife where Mark had let it drop, and pulled Ge
orge to him. He lifted the cowering boy’s white shirt and put the blade to the soft swell of his stomach. ‘Give me the gun or I’ll rip him apart,’ he screamed.
Slowly, Innocence bent in surrender, to push the gun across the floor to him. A tear glistened on her cheek.
‘You little faggot,’ said Jack, forcing the breath to give sound to his words. It took a great force of will to speak; his strength was steadily trickling away. ‘You miserable coward – so full of hate, too weak to take the blame for your own evil. Everyone has bad luck, you’re not special. You want to be a victim, it drives your twisted soul; you want to spread suffering because you can’t bear that other people are loved, unlike you, so weak, worthless and alone … Your fans don’t love you, they don’t know you, no wonder your own mother gave you away. She must have sensed the evil curled inside you like a maggot. Rejecting you was the best decision I ever made—’
With a screech of rage, Ethan hurled George to the ground and lunged at Jack, stabbing him frenziedly in the heart, again and again.
He could hear Claudia’s screams, far, far away, Molly’s squeals of fear, and George sobbing.
Pain on top of pain; it made no difference now. It was like watching another person being thumped; he was drifting away from his rag of a body. He felt Ethan’s hot breath scorch his skin, ‘I hate you, I hate you,’ repeating it over and over, like a child, until there was a bang and his face suddenly split like a smashed pumpkin, shards of brain splattering Jack, warm and wet, and he slumped forward, a dead weight, on top of him.
‘Jack! Jack, oh God … George, baby, it’s all OK now … Ethan is dead … he can’t hurt you …’
The cries of his women blurred into one, as if in a dream, and there were sirens and men shouting, ‘Four nineteen!’ He was vaguely aware of Innocence, wiping her forehead, the gun still in her hand, of Ethan’s body being pulled off him and a gentle voice, a face leaning over him, ‘Jack, please, it’s going to be OK,’ and as the light faded for the last time, the pain lifted and he was filled with a sense of great peace, because he knew it was true.
SANTA MONICA BEACH, LOS ANGELES, TEN MONTHS LATER
Claudia
‘Look what I found.’ Molly thrust a delicate pink shell, like a unicorn’s horn, under her nose.
‘It’s beautiful, darling.’
Carefully, Molly squashed the shell on to the side of the sandcastle. She was wearing a pale red swimsuit and when she bent over, her podgy little legs ramrod straight, she reminded Claudia of Winnie the Pooh stuck in a rabbit hole.
Alfie and George looked up from digging the moat. George was tanned and his legs were covered in a fine dusting of sand. She loved to see him like this: hair tousled, face serious, intent on the business of childhood. When she hugged him after a day on Santa Monica beach, his hair was dry with salt and smelled of the sea and sunshine.
Molly’s lack of understanding had been her advantage. George was recovering more slowly. The pictures he drew – filled with blood, dripping daggers and yellow gunfire – revealed his struggle. But he was a resilient little boy, never so happy as when surrounded by family, doing simple things like digging on the beach. He and Alfie stood back, admiring, as the white frothy sea water curled and tumbled into their trench.
‘Look, La-La!’
Innocence – who disliked being on a public beach; indeed, disliked being on any beach – looked up from her large padded sun lounger. Poor Quintin had hauled it from the car. ‘Superb!’ she called, half an eye still on People magazine. ‘Keep going!’
Claudia wasn’t convinced of life after death, but she liked to think that Jack and Emily were looking down with approval. She had been right to give Ethan’s estate to the charity for young people in care. It was where the money belonged. She didn’t want it, or need it. Nor did she particularly want Jack’s inheritance, but there it was. She had signed the business over to Innocence to run; the children could take over if or when they desired.
Claudia hoped that Jack would have seen the joke. As it was, Innocence had kept the Belle Époque brand intact. She hadn’t replaced ‘every frill and cornice with a sharp corner’, as once threatened; she had been faithful to Jack’s memory. As she said, she found it easier to be faithful to a memory than to an actual man.
Claudia smiled at Alfie; he smiled back. Her whole body cinched in pleasure. It was a constant wonder to her, these little bursts of happiness, like falling stars. Perhaps when you had been close to death, you appreciated the tiny joys of life all the more. The funny thing was, it had always been Alfie. She had taken a long, winding detour to get there, but now she was home.
‘Mr George,’ said Alfie. ‘I’m starving. How about we get ourselves some corndogs?’
‘Yes!’ shouted George, throwing down his spade.
‘Claudia?’
‘Please!’
‘Innocence? They’re made with chicken, so I’m told.’
‘Yes, chicken and horse.’ Innocence lifted her shades. ‘Oh go on. I’ll bring forward my lipo appointment.’
Claudia giggled, and let the warm dry sand pour through her fingers. The truth was, Claudia had always wanted to love Innocence. And in forgiveness there was redemption – for both. ‘Come here, Molly,’ she said. ‘I need to rub more sunscreen on your shoulders, then we can go for a paddle. There. Lovely.’
‘Fank you,’ said Molly, smiling.
‘You’re so welcome,’ said Claudia, and took the child’s hand. As they walked to the shoreline, the sea’s rush and roar was a crescendo of joy in her ears, and the breeze touched her hair with a lover’s caress. It was strange no longer to fear the future. But it was different now, and she knew, with certainty, that all good things would come.
THE END
Praise for A Tale of Two Sisters
“Maxted succeeds in capturing the ways people can talk past each other and miss connections with even those they need most in the world … . [She has a] sure grasp of intimate relationships.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“Maxted is a terrific writer with a droll comedic voice. She excels at creating vivid, believable protagonists, and even her minor characters are full of life.”
—The Washington Post Book World
“With her winning combination of honesty and warmth, Maxted has ensured herself another triumph.”
—Glamour
“Compelling and heartfelt while still displaying Maxted’s trademark humor. If you have a sister, you’ll want to share this book with her, and if you don’t, you’ll wish you did.”
—Library Journal
Praise for Being Committed
“Maxted’s cheekiness and intelligence help this tale transcend the genre.”
—People
“It’s refreshing to find a protagonist who questions whether marriage really means happily ever after.”
—Entertainment Weekly
“Deliciously snarky … Maxted tosses barbs like a champion darts player, and she paints a scathingly hilarious picture of her misguided but appealingly frank heroine.”
—Publishers Weekly
“A lively, romantic romp.”
—US Weekly
Praise for Behaving Like Adults
“A thinking woman’s Bridget Jones’s Diary.”
—USA Weekend
“Maxted smoothly meshes life’s grim realities with youthful optimism and determination … . An entertaining read and, perhaps surprisingly, a marvelous love story.”
—Chicago Sun-Times
“Maxted’s light writing style makes her story engagingly believable but does not belie the depth and range of her sympathetically flawed characters, who are both charming and witty in the face of disaster.”
—Library Journal
“That rare novel that is fun, funny, and truly moving.”
—Philadelphia City Paper
Praise for Running in Heels
“Charming, intelligent, and often hilarious.”
—The
Washington Post Book World
“Strong on humor, heartache, and snappy dialogue.”
—Boston Sunday Herald
“Populated with a cast of entertaining characters, from Natalie’s firefighter best friend, Babs, to the crabby, postfeminist Frannie.”
—Entertainment Weekly
Praise for Getting Over It
“Hilarious.”
—USA Today
“[An] affecting tale … told with wit and gumption.”
—People (Beach Book of the Week)
“A deft, on-target balance of humor and heart.”
—Entertainment Weekly
“Deeper and more psychological than its predecessors … more memorable and rewarding.”
—The Wall Street Journal
“Anna Maxted, bless her, is good … very good.”
—The Washington Post
“Excellent … energetic, lively, and fun.”
—CBS, The Early Show
“Laugh out loud … Hip, readable, often poignant, and always funny.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Good comic fun.”