Intention: a compelling psychological thriller

by C. S. Barnes

  I kissed him, hard, to catch his confession. He was half-right. He hadn’t killed her, exactly, so much as allowed her to die. But there was still something quite wonderful about it all.

  Chapter 20

  It had been a few days since Daniel’s confession. We were spending much of our time together, and yet somehow we managed to navigate around the most obvious topic of conversation quite masterfully. It became harder to leave him for any substantial period of time, but the human body requires a certain amount of nutritional input to maintain an adequate standard of functioning. Eventually I abandoned the nest we had made for ourselves in the living room – which I had previously only left to return home and sleep – and ventured out to the supermarket. When I was close to the entrance of the shop, that’s when I saw her.

  She maintained the same military stature that I had seen during our last encounter. Her rear end was planted on the floor, her feet a perfect distance apart. Each ear stood to attention, upright and alert, waiting for him. I looked at the bowed heads of busy shoppers wandering past us, ignorant, and I wondered – would anyone even stop me? Would he berate himself for leaving her when he came back to find she was gone? I bit back on the urge. It was impractical. With the recent influx of excitement that had impacted my daily routines, I had completely neglected to keep track of Paul’s. Of course he would be there. Where else would they be on a Tuesday afternoon? I glanced down at my watch: 2:38pm. Daniel had robbed me of much of my free time recently. I had neglected so many opportunities with Paul and, nursing a flutter of something at the thought of seeing him again, I only now realised how much I had missed my time with him. Calculating the approximate length of his shopping excursion, I realised that I had to grasp at this chance while it was there. I walked back to my car, started the engine, and followed the quickest route from the supermarket back out towards Prescott Lane. Paul was a relatively intelligent individual and yet, in the weeks before Emily’s death, I had been truly incapable of grasping the security measures – or lack thereof – that he took with his home. Peaches may have endowed him with a sense of security but she was an ineffective tool in that respect given Paul’s increasing tendency to remove her from the house every time he went out himself. However, Peaches’ determined appearance aside, she was an almost entirely wasted measure given that Paul was yet to replace the lock on his back gate that had recently been broken, and, as it turned out, he wasn’t particularly wary about unlocked windows either. Through the pane, the upturned lock mechanism was easily visible and, with a slim enough implement and the proper leverage–

  The window opened with an understated click. I perched on the ledge and lifted one leg then the other through the frame. My previous guesswork had been right; this was the utility room. And so, curious about what I might actually find buried around the house, I wandered without urgency from one room to the next, as if I had just bought the place rather than having just broken in.

  The kitchen was clinical. The living room was understated and modern, with highlights of chrome scattered liberally throughout, and I was disproportionately pleased to see that my guesswork on Paul’s wooden flooring was right. The dining room was unloved, housing nothing more than brown boxes that held the promise of furniture, with a backdrop of garden that could be seen through the patio doors. The garden itself was immaculate, with a lawn neatly shaved into strips of light and shade.

  ‘Anything for Peaches,’ I said to the empty space. But I stalled in the hallway.

  On a waist-high unit at the bottom of the stairs there was a framed photograph. A slightly younger version of Paul stood proudly inside the frame, suited and smiling with an arm hanging around the shoulder of an uncomfortably pretty brunette positioned next to him. His fingertips were digging into her shoulder. Her smile didn’t reach her eyes. Was this the woman that he had told me about? They were familiar with each other, clearly, but I couldn’t comfortably tie them together in a romantic relationship from this image. Just an old friend, perhaps, or his sister even seemed more likely. I wondered what had happened immediately before this photograph was taken, and why Paul would want a snapshot memory of feelings so evidently forged.

  Abandoning the image on the unit, I moved upstairs. I found the spare bedroom disguised as an office, the bathroom – which was where I’d suspected it would be – and then finally Paul’s bedroom. The double bed was neatly made but I was only midway through inspecting his hospital corners when something distracted me. On Paul’s nightstand there was another image, this one of Paul kissing someone who appeared to be the same brunette from downstairs – not his sister, then – although I couldn’t be too definitive about that. Her face was hidden by his but her frame was similar. A happier memory, from what I could see. But I still didn’t understand why it was there.

  There was an elaborate dog’s bed – designed with the appearance of a bed that would belong to a human – in one corner, and a double wardrobe, doors still wide open, in the corner opposite. This wardrobe was entirely full of shirts, organised according to colour so that the display ran as a spectrum from crisp white to almost black. I ran my hand across their edges.

  I hadn’t seen Paul in a shirt once. Not even on the mornings he left without Peaches. Despite planning to leave the room, I was drawn towards the bed. Lying down, I manoeuvred myself into the exact position that I imagined Paul must sleep in, as estimated by the positioning of his pillows. From this angle, there was nothing in what would have been his eyeline. No television, no books. Instead he had a clear view of where Peaches would lie, one head tilt away from the woman who occupied his nightstand. After taking another glance at the photograph – is that what Paul looked at, before he went to sleep? – I buried my face into his pillow. The case was scented by aftershave and perspiration. My nose chased after a flicker of cigarettes that I couldn’t pin to Paul’s character, unless, perhaps like the shirts, that behaviour was reserved for when I wasn’t there to observe it.

  Back downstairs I made an inventory, of sorts. The smells attached to the sofa, the knives readily available in the kitchen, the amount of locks on the front door. I wanted to know the inside of the house as well as I knew the outside, but I had already misplaced nearly an hour in Paul’s home, and he would be back no later than 4:30pm. Assuming, of course, that he’d driven (there was no car in the drive) and that he had stopped to stretch Peaches’ legs somewhere on the way home (which was their usual habit on a Tuesday afternoon). On my walk back to the utility room I considered taking something; something inconsequential that Paul would hardly notice. I shook away images of a shirt, a small knife, and found myself distracted then by a stuffed animal. It had been discarded in the middle of the kitchen floor – it was battered and no larger than an apple. Paul had only bought this for Peaches about a month ago, in the early days of our excursions. He had been caught between this and a more robust-looking plastic hamburger. I thought – as I had done originally – that Paul would have been better off having purchased this second option. Peaches was a beast, after all.

  The toy seemed like the safest choice, but there was a more useful utensil that caught my eye as I walked back through the kitchen, and it was tempting. I ran a thumb over what I thought must be a spare key to the front door, left discarded on the kitchen work surface. There was a key ring attached – the type that comes hollow, for you to force your own picture inside – that had a snapshot of a young Peaches in the frame. I hadn’t noticed it on my first walk through; there had been nothing that I wanted, or needed particularly, from the experience after all. I had come here primarily out of curiosity, I suppose, although that had ebbed on the journey around Paul’s personal space. But how long until the curiosity reappeared? A theft – an actual crime – felt like a step in a very serious direction and I wondered, briefly, whether I was ready for it. Time was a factor, and it seemed unlikely that an opportunity quite this good would wander by me again and so I pocketed the key, feeling something between excitement and trepidation in my gut
as I did so.

  I left through the same unlocked window that had allowed me entry and pushed it closed behind me. The gate knocked when I pulled it shut but, cautious of being spotted, or worse still recognised, I resisted the urge to look around for anyone who may have acknowledged the noise. My car was parked three streets away and so I set off towards it with the sun in my face, a spring in my step, and a heartbeat that was audible. The latter only quickened more when I saw a car – theirs, not mine – travelling in my direction at a pace that was lower than the speed limit. It was Paul’s way, it seemed, when Peaches was in the car with him.

  He wasn’t completely clear from this angle, but Peaches’ head – which was hanging from the passenger window – was impossible to miss. I observed her, smiled – I may have even laughed, I can’t quite remember – and then turned my attention elsewhere for the remainder of the walk, as they drove in the opposite direction to me. Inside my car I pulled the key from my pocket and pressed it into my glove compartment. On the way back to the supermarket, I spent the journey practising my best ‘Bloody traffic everywhere’ before I called Daniel and told him that I was running late. He was kind, as he always was – ‘Take your time, GT, there’s no need to go rushing around for me’ – and for the first time I felt a pang of what I think must have been shame, or at the very least something akin to it.

  Chapter 21

  It wasn’t until the business surrounding Emily’s death that I really realised what had been happening with Daniel. It may come as no surprise at all to learn that I had feelings for him and, on reflection, I suspected that they had been blossoming for some time – for want of a less romanticised verb. It was beyond my control. Somehow Daniel and I slipped into a ‘you hurt, I hurt’ mentality, which was set to be reasonably dysfunctional given how defective we were as humans. Actually, defective may be too strong a word to describe Daniel; he was perfectly well equipped to function adequately around other normal people – but Daniel had a propensity to surround himself with the abnormal. The aunt who wanted to kill herself; the girlfriend who wanted to kill things. Defective? Perhaps not. But there was something unflattering to be said about the company he was keeping.

  Daniel, I decided, made me a better human. I could live, breathe, feel through him and that’s not to say he fixed me – as though I were only in need of minor repair – but he certainly did pull parts of me in closer. A chemical combination, perhaps, long ago lost by my lizard brain, somehow stitched back together by the archetypal boy next door. Daniel was the Victor to my monster; he breathed humanity (back) into me and I both liked and hated him for it at the same time. But, if I was the monster to Daniel’s Frankenstein (which didn’t bode particularly well for Daniel, I don’t suppose), then Paul was The Vitruvian Man to my da Vinci: a limbs-spread representation of the human body, its proportions, and its capabilities.

  How I felt for Paul was how I felt for the rat, the bird, the countless cats that our neighbours had homed despite their total inability to protect them (from me). I wasn’t attracted to him so much as I was curious about him. Although Daniel unknowingly did his best to hinder the preoccupation, it became my mission in life to learn the basic formula of Paul’s. I studied him – inclined towards afternoon walks; often at home alone during the evenings – how I studied the brown rat. Most likely to enter your garden at night; tempted to climb great lengths to reach bird feeders. He wasn’t a romantic interest, no; instead, it felt like he had become a bigger, grander specimen. I wanted to know what made him function, how his life fit together like a jigsaw – what might stop him from working. Paul never did have the Prince Charming effect; he wasn’t Daniel.

  Daniel was always kind and caring; he thought I was genuinely a worthwhile person – and how wrong he was, as it turned out. But Paul? He was something else altogether.

  Chapter 22

  ‘How was the funeral, then?’

  My mother’s expression remained deadpan as she voiced the question, but something about the phrasing felt jarring. Were there different styles of funeral, I wanted to ask, something other than depressing and overemotional for everyone involved?

  The Fault in Our Stars. 2014. Shailene Woodley. ‘Funerals, I’ve decided, are not for the dead. They are for the living.’

  I couldn’t find an answer to how the funeral was. It may have been heartbreaking – in hindsight that was probably a perfect word to use – but in reality, it seemed to me like an overpriced outpouring of faux affection delivered by names that Emily had never mentioned to me, nor to Daniel. ‘There’ll be some who just come for the food,’ Emily had told me during one of our afternoon talks, and she had been right.

  Instead of answering her, I took a step towards my mother and wrapped my arms around her. She remained rigid under the embrace.

  ‘It’s horrible to see Daniel like this.’

  My mother held her rigidity for a second longer but then relaxed against me, lifting her arms up around me as she did so. We held the embrace for a beat longer than I expected, but eventually it was my mother who pushed me away. She cupped my shoulders with her palms and studied me at arm’s length.

  ‘Are you okay?’ she asked.

  ‘I will be.’

  She nodded in response and then turned back towards the kitchen work surface where she was preparing dinner for us both. The funeral had taken place earlier that day but Daniel’s house had become so overrun with money-hungry relatives – his words, not mine – that I had been forced to vacate in order for him to physically accommodate them.

  ‘I can just go home for a couple of days,’ I had told him. Daniel pulled a face at my offer, like the helpful suggestion hindered his predicament rather than assisted with it. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘I’ll miss you, idiot.’

  The Wizard of Oz. 1939. Judy Garland. ‘I think I’ll miss you most of all.’

  ‘I’ll miss you too,’ I lied. Or did I?

  I had packed away the few personal items that I’d left scattered around Daniel’s spare bedroom, including my experiments box, which was now comfortably hidden beneath a larger-than-necessary-for-this-time-of-year coat in the boot of my car. Daniel had said that I could leave it, that no one would disturb it, but I knew how inquisitive family members could be.

  ‘Funny how quickly things can change, even when they seem relatively stable,’ my mother said, bringing me back into the room. She turned, gestured with a carrot, and added: ‘With Daniel’s aunt, I mean.’

  It was an uncomfortable topic to launch a conversation with, particularly after the last time Emily had occupied our dialogue. My mother was yet to address the issue of what we had – or rather, hadn’t – spoken about on the night of our dinner with Daniel. But, while she didn’t push the issue, it was uncomfortably apparent that she hadn’t let it settle either. During our few exchanges there had always been a sense of something unsaid, as if my mother were constantly on the cusp of asking something, saying something, accusing something, but then thought better of it. I wondered whether now would be the time that the real questions were finally asked, or whether my mother’s self-control really knew no bounds.

  ‘She did have cancer, Mum,’ I said, as if this were an explanation all by itself – which, as far as I was concerned, it should have been.

  She sighed. ‘Yes, I’m aware of that, Gillian, but it was such a quick turn, that’s all.’

  It hadn’t advanced overnight, I wanted to tell her, before launching into a comprehensive explanation of exactly how these cells develop.

  ‘I think if Daniel is honest with himself then it was just a matter of time before this happened, really.’ Daniel and I had discussed what we would tell people when they commented, which they would, on the suddenness of Emily’s passing. Overreact, I had told him, overreact and tell them that there’s nothing sudden about cancer. ‘After all, Mum, there’s nothing sudden about cancer, is there?’

  My mother arched an eyebrow at the question before turning away again. ‘I suppose there i
sn’t, no.’

  We continued in this vein for longer than seemed necessary, until much of the information I was giving my mother was recycled from the previous answers I had provided. No one had raised any questions. Yes, she had, technically, been on her own when it happened. ‘It’s hard to say,’ I started. ‘Daniel and I might have both been in the house when it happened, but the time of death is a difficult thing to pin down exactly.’

  ‘Did neither of you think to check on the poor woman?’

  ‘Of course we did, Mum. It was when I was checking on her that I realised what had happened and that’s when I called for help.’

  ‘You?’ my mother asked, more interested now.

  ‘Yes, me. Not Daniel.’ I snapped my teeth around his name, eager to protect him. My mother sensed a change in tone and altered her own accordingly.

  ‘Sorry, love. I thought you might want to talk about it.’

  ‘It’s all I’ve talked about since it happened,’ I said, which was a lie, of course.

  But Daniel and I had talked about lots of things around the topic of Emily. For the first twenty-four hours after her death we discussed her at length. When it happened, how it must have happened, how horrid it was that it had happened at all. We anticipated questions, drafted our answers, and we nursed our guilt in between. Sorry, no. Daniel nursed his guilt in between. There was no need for us both to feel it, I thought.

  The Machinist. 2004. Christian Bale. ‘A little guilt goes a long way.’

  ‘I wondered – worried,’ my mother said, correcting herself. ‘How it might impact you, with what happened to your dad.’

  ‘She’s Daniel’s relative, Mum.’

  ‘I know that, Gillian, but you only recently lost a relative of your own,’ she said, but then sighed, as though disappointed by her own bluntness.