Intention: a compelling psychological thriller

by C. S. Barnes

  I was glad she did because I just wasn’t sure any more.

  ‘These urges. Who do you feel them for?’

  I thought, harder than I’d thought about all of this before, and I searched for what felt like an authentic and accurate answer.

  ‘They’re both different, I think.’

  Louise nodded and smiled, like she had been expecting this. ‘And I think that’s probably where our conflict lies. You’re a young and healthy woman. These urges that you’re feeling, they’re completely natural, and I’m sure you know that deep down, don’t you?’ She cocked her head, craning for a view of my expression that was angled away from her. ‘Part of the problem is that you’re not controlling these urges properly, because you don’t know where to direct them. Does that sound fair?’

  I nodded. Not so much in agreement, but rather curiosity.

  ‘There are a lot of changes going on your life, and Daniel’s, from what you’ve told me of him, but you actually sound like you’re very good for each other. You’ve never opened up like this before, about him, and surely that’s a sign of something positive.’

  I wanted to ask why but she pushed on again before I could.

  ‘This other person. What function are they serving, right now, apart from complicating your relationship with Daniel?’

  I flicked to Daniel then, his floppy hair and his lazy smile. And then I flicked to Paul.

  Peaches. The house. The unlocked window.

  I shook my head.

  ‘Take your time, Gillian.’

  ‘You’re saying that I should get rid of the other person?’ I asked, knowing that it was an unfair question, but somehow not caring. Perhaps because I knew what her answer would be.

  She smiled and said: ‘If you don’t need them, or want them, particularly, then why keep them?’

  Daniel had told me that he had an open-door policy. He had even mentioned giving me a key but at my request had refrained from it. It was just another thing for me to lose, I’d told him, and that was an adequate half-reason at least. Truthfully, it had felt like a clash of commitments somehow when Daniel thrust a spare house key in my face some two hours after I had taken Paul’s.

  When I’d finished with Louise I went straight home, skirted around my mother’s questions – ‘It went fine, we just talked about Daniel, actually’ – and I packed a bag. My mother didn’t ask where I was going. She had already assumed that I would be going to Daniel’s, because where else would I have been going?

  When Daniel opened the door some thirty minutes later he was clearly surprised, and I thought then that an open-door policy must mean something different to the two of us. His eyebrows were arched and his smile slightly less pronounced than I was accustomed to seeing it, but before I could pick up on either of these traits Daniel beat me to speech.

  ‘This is a nice surprise,’ he started, stepping aside in the doorway as a signal for me to move inside the house. ‘Did we have something planned?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so.’

  ‘Coming in?’ he asked, noting my fixed position on the doorstep.

  ‘I’d like to stay over tonight, if that would be okay.’

  He nodded towards the bag. ‘I had guessed that was where you were going with this,’ he said, pausing for a half-laugh. ‘I told you, you’re always welcome. The spare bedroom is made up.’

  Something pulled at the corner of my lips; a thought, or a feeling, dragging my mouth down into an expression of deliberation. Daniel caught the look and lowered himself into my eyeline. His face was a silent plea for me to speak but I needed a second to formulate the thought. I flicked through film references but couldn’t find the right memory for it and I was unsure of how it should come out, whether it should be forward or understated, whether I should try to sound nervous.

  Was I nervous?

  ‘I’d like to stay in your bedroom, if that would be okay. With you, I mean.’

  Suspicion. 1941. Cary Grant. ‘I think I’m falling in love with you, and I don’t quite like it.’

  Chapter 24

  The last time I looked at the clock it was 1:38am. I waited for another two, perhaps even three, minutes but then decided that I really did need to leave. It wasn’t Daniel, as such. Actually, perhaps partly Daniel, at a push. He was an enthusiastic sleeper, snorer, cuddler. In many ways the latter was what I had silently agreed to when I got into his bed instead of my own, but I hadn’t realised the full extent of the physical contact – after the other kind of physical contact, that is – that happened when two people slept alongside each other. It was, arguably, naivety on my part, and had I not felt such a persistent need to be elsewhere then I might well have enjoyed the moments when I would start to drift off and, quite out of nowhere, a hand would land on my arm, stomach, thigh, as if Daniel were checking that I was still there. I pulled up my underwear and jeans in one motion. While searching the room for signs of my clothing from the night before, I couldn’t help but imagine the medley of surprise and panic Daniel would feel the next time he reached over to the other side of the bed. His imagined reaction was nearly enough to make me stay. Only nearly.

  Fully clothed again I turned to grab one last look at him and, for another second, I thought maybe I shouldn’t leave. Maybe I should put this out of my head and, like a normal girl, spend the night in bed with her boyfriend after a near-satisfying bout of shared physical intimacy. It was my first time – Daniel’s first time – being intimate with someone; our first time waking up next to each other seemed a natural conclusion to that. But there was still an ache, an itch that I couldn’t reach – and I couldn’t believe that was anything to do with what Daniel and I had done. It was far too familiar a feeling for that.

  The house was a different playground entirely at that time of the morning. Streetlights crept in through the windows like non-discreet burglars trying to case the hallway for access points, and as I paced around, half-convinced that I might still be able to talk myself out of what was coming, I felt as if the light followed me. From one room to the next, the dim interrogation lamps fell through the windows, catching at my face on occasion. The longer they persisted the more pronounced their imagined questions became to me, asked without the urgency that they really required under such circumstances. Are you sure you want to do this? Are you really going to make this happen?

  Daniel had two sets of knives in his kitchen. There was the set wedged neatly into the light wooden block that lived on his work surface, and there were the harsher, rougher ones that lived inside the kitchen drawer, beneath the sink and to the left. I ran my fingers over the plastic handles that were sticking out of the blocked set and I remembered:

  ‘Do you even like cheese?’ Daniel had asked, knife in hand, his back towards me.

  ‘It depends on the cheese.’

  A snort of air had escaped him as he shook his head.

  ‘What an answer. Okay, GT, easier question. Do you want cheese on your sandwich, or not so much?’ He’d turned to face me then, revealing a light-hearted smile and a sizeable wedge of cheddar that was lying on the counter behind him.

  I’d nodded, smiled in return. ‘Okay, cheese and ham sandwiches it is then.’

  I could even remember the knife that he’d used.

  The drawer – beneath the kitchen sink and to the left – played host to a range of potentially dangerous implements which were, of course, intended for cooking preparation. There were possibilities, I thought, as I ran my fingers across the handles that were messily bunched together at the bottom end of the space. I stalled at one handle, slightly larger than the others, attached to a carving knife.

  ‘Do you want me to do that?’ I’d asked Daniel on seeing him fumble about with the blade. ‘I don’t want you to hurt yourself, Daniel.’

  ‘Christ, Gillian, emasculating much?’ He turned to assess my face but on seeing my blank expression he softened. ‘I am man. Man carve meat. Woman eat meat,’ he said, in mock caveman tones that balanced out the bitter snap
of his previous response. ‘It’ll be fine. What’s the worst that can happen?’

  ‘You cut yourself?’

  ‘Now if that’s the absolute worst, I reckon we’ll be alright.’

  I remembered how he’d cut the meat, clumsily digging the blade in this way and that, desperately trying to get a better score on the crisped skin.

  ‘Okay, so, I can’t cut meat.’ Daniel had eventually admitted, dropping the knife with a light clang on the kitchen work surface. ‘You’re up, GT.’

  The meat had fallen away from the bone. Daniel just didn’t know what he was doing with a knife. And I remember thinking what a good thing that probably was.

  Shaking off the memory, I grabbed a tea towel from the kitchen work surface and, after pulling the carving knife from the drawer, I secured the blade inside a doubled-up stretch of the fabric. After that, I marched. Out of the house, through the streets, towards Runner’s Route, with a determination that suggested I knew where I was going – and I suppose, by then, I had already decided on an end destination. The time had rolled somewhere beyond 2am. Paul would be asleep, as would Peaches, I hoped, although I had no way of knowing for certain. She could have been roaming, she could have been a barker, eagerly waiting for the sound of an intruder before alerting her owner. But it didn’t seem to matter much by that point. With the bound blade tucked underneath my arm I pressed forward, pausing only briefly to eye something slumped on one of the benches in the park.

  The man’s head was bent so low towards the top of his chest that his neck was barely visible. At that angle, streaks of light from the streetlamps were bouncing about on the bald patch on top of his head, which could be seen through the hole in his hat. On closer inspection it became clear that the man was made up entirely of hole-ridden clothes, right down to the shoes, both of which had small and blackened toes sticking out from their fronts. His feet were guarding what appeared to be near-empty bottles of cheap liquor; I wondered if he’d kept them for their sentimental value. The body rose and deflated with breaths that were so laboured they were almost snores. And I wondered for a second whether this person would be better. Whether Paul deserved what was about to happen to him. Whether deserving it had anything to do with it at all. Which it didn’t, of course. I did realise that eventually.

  The Godfather: Part II. 1974. Al Pacino. ‘If anything in this life is certain, if history has taught us anything, it is that you can kill anyone.’

  The homeless man was an opportunity, yes, but not quite the one that I was looking for. I passed by him and continued through the streets, surprised at how many houses were lit at what I thought to be fairly antisocial hour. When I rounded the corner onto Prescott Lane, there was only one house that still had lights bouncing around its innards. On the thirty-minute walk I had constructed, deconstructed, and reimagined one possibility after another for how the following events may play out; I even berated myself for leaving Paul’s key in my car – for all the use that it would ever be there – before soothing myself with the knowledge that, as far as I had seen, he still hadn’t repaired the back gate. It hadn’t occurred to me that of all the ways in which this could go wrong, Paul still being up and about in the middle of the night was a genuine possibility.

  Dim lights were dotted around the house – various table lamps, I thought, used to light one hallway or another – while the main light was tumbling out of the living room. Whatever Paul was doing, he hadn’t even closed the curtains. I could have, should have, left. But somehow, even then, it all still seemed worth the risk.

  Edging around the house I eventually stood alongside the frame of the living room window, taking deep breaths in and exhaling to steady myself while I attempted to formulate some kind of action. The original plan might still work. Paul being awake, alert – it hardly seemed to matter. Because I was outside his house and I knew what I was doing and I knew how I was going to do it and the basic plan was still very much in place – until I looked through the window. I couldn’t recognise her from the angle she was at, her face dipped down towards Paul, but I felt certain that she wasn’t the brunette from the photographs; the shade of her hair was all wrong. Paul was sitting on the floor in front of the sofa while she sat behind him, her legs open enough for him to have shuffled back in between her thighs. His head rolled around in what I assumed was enjoyment as she kneaded at his shoulder blades. Paul’s reactions slowed as the woman paused to unbutton his shirt.

  So this was who Paul saved his shirts for.

  I watched as she ran her fingers over his chest and then back down over his shoulders, before eventually settling around his neck area. She felt around his clavicle, shifting muscle and skin in such clumps that it looked mouldable, and I lost track of how long I watched them like this. I pulled in a sharp breath as her fingertips settled on his laryngeal prominence; they hovered there for a second longer than I thought they should have done but then she continued on her path down his body. When I let my breath go, the air stuttered out of me.

  Jealousy is disgusting, isn’t it?

  Chapter 25

  I gave them another ten minutes while I assessed my options, observed their apparent intimacy. The woman, whoever she was, was only half Paul’s size. Her frame naturally petite, she clearly wasn’t inclined towards developing her muscular strength. I could take her. It would be easy enough to wrap eight fingers round her neck and press two thumbs, hard, against her windpipe. But what would Paul be doing? It seemed unlikely that he would leave me to go about my business. Likewise, I couldn’t quite imagine this woman standing still and waiting her turn. The whole evening had already been a risk, but this would be too much.

  When I backed away from the window – from their display – there was something that resembled a sinking feeling in my chest cavity; the sensation you experience when it takes longer than usual to find your car keys, or when you realise that you haven’t replied to an important email. I couldn’t watch any more, but it was hardly like there was somewhere else that I could be. I could have gone back to Daniel, I suppose, but I didn’t trust this feeling with him and so I walked, kept walking…

  The pavement was bloodied; small clots of something pressed flat and then smudged away. It took longer than it should have done for me to realise that these marks were squashed berries. There were one or two full-bodied survivors dotted along the side of the road. I imagined them with emotions that didn’t belong to them: shock and abject horror. I had to do something with the feelings. Seven steps later there was a crunch underfoot that stopped me. A partially flattened beer can was wedged underneath my boot; two steps along there was another empty can, and three steps beyond that, there were people still drinking. A group of them – only just younger than me – were spilling from the front garden of a half-lit house, sporting cigarettes and slurred sentiments.

  ‘You’re so special to me, man.’

  I was a full three streets away from Paul’s house by now. It was a built-up area but the drunks didn’t seem to mind. Their conversations increased in volume and I worried for their neighbours.

  ‘I’m not even drunk.’

  ‘You are.’

  ‘Am not.’

  I crossed the road to avoid pushing through the cracks in their group.

  ‘Ask her!’

  The instruction was slurred. I didn’t turn around but I was instantly aware of the words dribbling in my direction. Don’t ask me, I wanted to tell them. I don’t know anything. I quickened my pace to get away from them, slowing only when their voices became indiscernible. It took a full two streets. I was surprised that no one had called the police, reported their disruption – but that wasn’t an action that I was going to initiate. I had seen enough of the police for one summer.

  In the minutes that followed I walked with determination, compulsively even, as if I could outrun what had happened earlier. I focused on the inane and replaced counting seconds with counting streets; houses with their lights on; how many lights to a house. Grange Road had seven
households still awake; Manor Road, five; The Crescent, just two. The lights deteriorated and soon so did the houses, replaced by pavement, empty roads, and over-hanging trees – too-dark stretches where streetlights should have been. I buried my hands in my pockets, lowered my head, pressed forward as though I knew where I was going; I don’t think I had decided by then – that came in the minutes after.

  There were another three streets coming up, the first of which was a matter of twenty short steps away now: Orchard Gardens (four households awake), Winsdor Road (two), Hurst Lane (three). There was a car pulling out from Hurst Lane when I arrived; one male driver. I paused on the footpath while he looked left, right, and then left again before pulling out onto the main road. When I crossed the junction I looked along the stretch of houses. There was one house awake; three lights in the house; one woman at the end of the drive. She was scantily dressed, her left arm midway in the air like she had just waved the man goodbye.

  There was that jealousy again.

  It wasn’t until I ran out of houses, ran out of streets, that I assessed my options: I could walk home through the park, or I could walk back the way I had just come. Paul and her might have been finished by now – but what difference did that make? The park was a three-minute walk away and there were streetlights every twenty-five steps. During the journey, I slowed in between each light; it felt too interrogatory to stand directly underneath them.

  Two minutes away and the air changed. It would have been refreshing under different circumstances but something about this new smell was stale. The pavement became spongy, like the concrete might be about to give way – and part of me wouldn’t have minded if it had. The grass banks that framed the pavement to Runner’s Route had been cut and their dead trimmings were gathering dew. In the thicker patches the spongy feeling became a bounce.

  One minute away from the park and the silence somehow felt denser. It left me wishing for the companionship of the drunken louts, the half-awake houses, the strangers driving home from whatever they had just done to each other. Now I was this close, Runner’s Route was the quickest course back home; I had nowhere else to go. But when I stood at the eastern walkway entrance – an entrance I had passed through two dozen times over the summer alone – the dark expanse that stared back looked less familiar, somehow unfriendly, as though the whole place had been taken out of context. Six steps in and the ground at least became more stable; they hadn’t cut the grass here yet. Twenty-nine steps in and I wandered, on auto-pilot, along the same path that I had trodden earlier, back towards the homeless waster who I expected to still be there. It took a further eighteen steps for me to notice that my footfalls had developed an echo. Somewhere behind me there were footsteps; company.