Andrew let me in, eventually, though he was reluctant. The way he looked at me standing on the doorstep, I could see he was torn between wanting to rip my clothes off and sending me away. He didn’t like that I’d turned up unannounced.
‘I’m working,’ he’d said, looking pained. I noticed his hands were covered in paint as he glanced up and down the street. ‘But you’d better come in.’
‘Are you alone?’ I’d asked nervously, my eyes flicking around his hallway.
He nodded, that look in his eyes. And the scent – the scent that had driven me wild since the first moment we met – was stronger than ever, as if his entire house was steeped in it. No wonder it was always on him. After only a few breaths, I felt giddy, drunk, as if I’d been transported to a completely different place. A different time. I remember wobbling as I took off my coat, holding on to the wall to steady myself as he hung it up.
‘Come through,’ he said, a smile turning up one side of his mouth, as if he was getting used to the idea of me being there. And the scar – oh God the scar – creasing upwards, sending me into more of a meltdown. I prised my eyes away.
‘What do you think?’ he said, gesturing to the large canvas on an easel. ‘My latest.’ As I followed him into the room, my senses were on fire. I felt disorientated. The small studio was cluttered with paintings in all stages of completion leaning against the walls, and there were tables littered with tubes of paint, pots of brushes, bottles of all kinds containing different coloured liquids. The wooden floor was splattered with what looked like years’ worth of spilt paint. A huge, dried-up palette. A record of his work.
‘It’s not finished,’ he’d said. ‘I didn’t want you to see it yet.’
‘Wow,’ was all I’d said, staring transfixed by the canvas. ‘It’s…’ I turned my head sideways to see if that would help my brain make sense of what I thought I was seeing. His pictures were always bold, daring, almost violent in nature – some of the nudes I’d seen online had hateful angry faces set over stunningly slim, perfect bodies, while others had grotesque and distorted bodies with the face of an airbrushed model. But this was different. This was intrusive, private, almost voyeuristic of someone else’s pain.
The painting was of me.
‘Do you like it?’ he said. The likeness was uncanny – he’d captured a side of me I didn’t know existed, painted me in a way no mirror or photograph ever could portray. But as for liking it, I didn’t know.
‘I…’ I went closer, wanting to touch it, but I could see the paint was still wet. ‘I’m bleeding,’ I’d said, stating the obvious. A glistening red trail led from my lips. ‘And I’m on the ground. Naked.’ It took a moment to realise, and even then it was only because a couple of printed-out photographs of me were clipped to the edge of the canvas.
‘You took photos of me when I fainted?’
‘You looked so beautiful,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t resist.’
Then I heard a noise. ‘What’s that?’ I jumped, terrified his lodger would come back, fearful of the consequences. I didn’t want to meet her, didn’t want to see the face of the woman I hated so much, who’d caused me so much pain, who had unconditional access to the man I loved when I didn’t. ‘Is it her?’ I felt the panic rising in me, déjà vu choking me. ‘Is it Paula?’
‘Who the hell’s Paula?’ Andrew said with a laugh, amused. ‘It’s just the back door blowing shut in the wind,’ he said, coming up to me. ‘Anyway, my lodger’s name is Beth, and I have no idea why you’re so hung up about her. She’s nothing to me. She was just a fling, pays her rent.’
I still didn’t believe him.
As he took hold of me, it was like a fog gathering in my mind, obscuring all sense from my consciousness. Or rather, unveiling my unconscious bit by bit. We staggered backwards as his mouth came down on mine, his hands all over me. ‘No, you’re lying,’ I said, mumbling as he kissed me harder. He didn’t hear. Didn’t care that my heart was racing, that a sweat was breaking out on me. He had no idea that I was losing myself, that I was transforming into someone I didn’t recognise. I still had no idea why.
I kissed him back as he tore at my clothes, hoping it would somehow ground me. We crashed into a table, everything spilling, falling to the floor. He didn’t care. He swept stuff aside, pushed me down. My face was in the mess, the spilt liquids, inhaling the heady vapours from the bottles, making me feel high.
And then that single, indefinable smell again – so strong now it almost hurt. The same scent that was always on him. Mixed up with his aftershave, it passed as something intriguing, beguiling, attractive. But now, with my face pushed close to the source, I felt sick, terrified, as if something bad was about to happen. There was something oily and slick on my cheek. Nothing pleasant about it.
‘No!’ I screamed, but he didn’t stop. The scream wasn’t for him, anyway. It was for another time, another place.
‘I want you, Lorna,’ he said, his mouth against my ear, his body rammed hard up against me. I was almost gone by this point, even though I didn’t see it at the time. Couldn’t fit together the final pieces of the puzzle. Some were still missing, lost, hidden away. The eclipse wasn’t yet total.
We went upstairs, me staggering as though I was drunk, yet happy that I was finally inside his house, that I meant something to him. And, as ever, I blocked out the guilt, convinced myself it would be the last time I’d see him, that I’d come to call things off, end it all calmly. I hadn’t even dared to mention about the clinic at that point, ask if he was going to report me. That could come afterwards. Our need for each other was too strong. I was intoxicated. I wanted him one last time. I sensed it was going to be the best yet.
‘Tie me up,’ he said as we went into his bedroom. It was messy, strewn with his clothes, more paintings, boxes of stuff everywhere, his bed was unmade, the sheets all over the place.
‘What?’ I said, trying to raise a smile. He pulled off my top, undid my bra. I thought he was joking.
‘I want you to. We’ve talked about it.’ He took off his clothes then, lying down on the bed. ‘Do it for me.’
‘Really?’ I was so lost in it all that I’d have done anything he asked.
‘Really,’ he said seriously, pointing to some ties lying in a tangle on the floor.
When I saw them, I said something about being well practised, about him doing it with the lodger, but I can’t really remember how it came out as I bound up his wrists and ankles to the metal bed frame, tightening the knots more than was warranted. Then he’d joked about me being the expert. But my jealousy was still burning deep. There would be no loosening or getting away. I made sure of it, my eyes fixed on him as I worked. Part of me hated that he looked helpless spread-eagled like that – less of a man – but something in me ignited. As if he deserved to look pathetic.
‘Good girl…’ he said.
Good girl…
My head swam at the words, warped my brain with even more confusion. I felt like a kid, drowning in the past, but trying to stay in the present. It wasn’t working. I was losing my grip.
‘Draw the curtains,’ he said. ‘I want it dark. And put some music on.’ He flicked his eyes over to an old record player, a stack of vinyl propped beside it.
‘Oh, cool,’ I’d said, loving that he was into all that. I was learning more about him now that I was in his home, soaking up the real Andrew, the one I’d always wanted to get to know, as though I’d been allowed a private viewing of his mind. This was his domain. His stuff. His life. I felt special. Better than her.
Better than Paula.
My eyes flared with bright lights. Someone else’s bedroom. Someone else’s woman.
A gin bottle smashing against the wall.
I grabbed hold of the bed.
‘Just play what’s already on there,’ he said. ‘It’s one of my favourites.’
When I steadied myself, I dropped the needle, turning it up, waiting to be surprised. I was back on the bed as the first track played. I teased hi
m, making him writhe, doing what I knew he loved – as well as some stuff he didn’t – until he couldn’t control himself any longer. I wasn’t particularly listening to the music, even though I knew the artist. But something was flickering deep inside still, nagging at my unconscious mind. Tugging at threads. Waking up the past.
‘You look ridiculous,’ I’d said afterwards, kissing him, feeling powerful as I loomed over him. I’d giggled some more as we kissed again, me stroking his skin, straddling him. Showing him I was still in control.
‘I love you, Lorna,’ he said, looking up at me, but I didn’t reply. Not even when he asked me if I loved him back. Over and over. He wanted to hear it so much, but I couldn’t. Something was happening to me and I wasn’t sure what. I felt as though I was coming out of my body. It was terrifying, like a raging illness taking over. For a few seconds, I literally couldn’t breathe. My throat closed up. I felt like someone else entirely.
Then it came out of nowhere.
The song.
The trigger pulled.
The gunshot.
I screamed. It was like an explosion – a nightmare ignited, but it wasn’t just in my head. It was real. All around me. The past colliding with the present.
No stopping it.
I was living it, though I didn’t realise it at the time. All I knew was that I was terrified, and I had no idea why.
‘Fuck, no!’ I clawed at my face, staring at him, screaming over and over, covering my ears, trying to block out the music. Then I hit him, lashing out, hating him, the loathing spewing out of me. I couldn’t help it, couldn’t hear his protests even though I could see his mouth moving, begging me to stop. The look of horror as his expression changed from pleasure to pain.
All I could hear was that song cutting right through me. It wasn’t music any more. It was a wormhole to memories I’d long forgotten. A past blocked out.
I was back there.
More real than reality.
‘No, no, nooo…’ I heard myself screaming. It didn’t sound like me. I was above him, my arms thrashing wildly, my nose on fire with the smell – it was in my hair, on my face, on him. It burnt my nostrils.
Sandalwood cologne mixed up with the stink of linseed oil, turpentine – the smell of him.
My father.
Good girl…
The spillages in his workshop. Me passing out, waking up in it. The stink up my nose.
The grotesque dead birds hanging around him.
Paula. My parents’ lodger. That night in his bedroom.
My mother… blaming me, leaving me for months, the remains of my cremated father kept ever since as her sick prize. Rarely letting him out of her sight. Untrustworthy, she said.
‘I hate you, I hate you, I hate you…’ The words spewed out of me, even though I wasn’t really me any more; didn’t know what I was doing.
The man I saw in front of me wasn’t Andrew either – he’d long gone. His face and body had morphed into the grotesque image of my father hanging by his neck – his body naked, the blood pooling in his groin.
His thing sticking up.
A total eclipse.
A full set of triggers.
And it ripped everything out of me that I’d hidden from myself all these years – the trauma I’d never been able to process was being played out right in front of me, set in motion by things I had no idea about until now. It was my unconscious’s way of dealing with it. Of processing the past. My brain doing what it had to do.
Unlocking itself.
An explosion.
Except it was Andrew – the man I loved – not the one I hated for what he’d done to me and my mother, for abandoning us, for blaming me in the most horrific of ways.
This is what happens when you watch people, when you tell secrets… It’s your shame now…
I couldn’t control myself. I didn’t know what I was doing.
(But no one will believe that in court, Lorna. You deserve everything you get.)
I was pouring sweat, raging, desperate to get out all the things I should have said to my father when I’d caught him with Paula that night.
She lived with us, paid my parents to rent a room because they needed the money. To help clothe me. Feed me. Send me to ballet class.
The lodger.
My mother had no idea about their affair. She often worked nights in a factory. When she got a sniff of things, when she forced me to tell her what I knew, it destroyed her. I pulled back my arm and thumped Andrew hard in the jaw at the memory. He let out a cry, but all I could see was his scar. I wanted to pummel it into oblivion, never have to think of it or him again.
It was in exactly the same place as the gash my father ended up with on his lifeless face when our neighbour raced next door to see what was wrong. He’d heard me screaming when I’d found my father hanging in the workshop. He grabbed a Stanley knife from the workbench and cut him down, accidentally slicing into my father’s lip as he hacked at the cable round his neck. It didn’t matter. He was already dead.
Little nine-year-old me stood there helpless, watching, knowing it was all my fault for spying, just as his note had said. And he was right. I’ve carried the guilt ever since.
Beneath me, Andrew begged for me to untie him, to calm down, to get a grip of myself. I could see he was smarting from the blow. The bed rocked from him struggling but he was bound fast. I barely knew what I was doing when I pulled the extension cable from the wall, barely noticed the hypnotic melody of Elton John’s ‘Tiny Dancer’ on the turntable as I wound the cable around his neck. I pulled hard for as long as I could, watching his cheeks go red then purple, his tongue bulging out of his lips as he coughed and choked, his bursting eyes staring up at me, imploring me to stop when he couldn’t speak any more. Coughs and spit bubbled up his throat.
I had no idea what I was doing. All I knew was that if I didn’t do it, the pain inside me would be stuck in there forever, would never go away. It wasn’t me – it wasn’t Lorna the daughter, the mother, the wife, or even the lover acting out. It was the child within me – the little girl who’d been imprisoned for so long.
She was mad as hell.
When the thrashing and writhing slowed, I knew I had to make sure he was gone for good. I wanted the rot out of me. But I could still see the tiny tick of an irregular pulse at his throat, the occasional twitch of one of his tied-up hands, his eyes rolling in his head. Panicking, I tore round the house, searching in the lodger’s room, the bathroom, the living room and studio… for what, I had no idea. Anything to finish the job. Then I saw it in a kitchen drawer.
Back in the bedroom, I bound the cling film round and round his head – layers and layers of it – making certain he wouldn’t be able to breathe. I wasn’t quite strong enough to strangle him to the end, but there was no way he’d survive suffocation. When I’d finished, his features were unrecognisable through the plastic. He could have been anyone. Except he wasn’t.
He was my father.
Afterwards, I sat on the bed beside him, panting, sweating, staring, not knowing who or where I was, or even what to do next. I’d not thought that far ahead. All I knew was that the puzzle was finally complete. And, for a time, it felt good. I felt free. Purged of the pain and trauma. To me, it made perfect sense.
I’d revisited my childhood. Put things right. Good therapy.
Then reality slowly hit. Like drunkenness wearing off, I was gradually sobering up, realising the consequences. I’d killed a man in cold blood. Andrew. The man I loved.
I sat with him for a while, dazed, staring at him, praying none of this was real. But it was. I thought about turning myself in there and then, calling the police. The guilt and self-loathing wrung out my insides. How could I carry on with my life after this? But then I thought of Mark, of Freya and Jack. How they needed me. Besides, I knew I was good at keeping secrets – other people’s as well as my own. I’d done it all my life. This would be the biggest one yet.
I don’t even know how I got hom
e later that afternoon, but, gradually, I turned back into me, got dressed, gathered my stuff. I cleaned Andrew’s body with a wet towel, wiping all traces of me off him. I took the towel with me, dumping it in a skip on the way home. Threw up in the gutter. Sat on a park bench, thinking what to do, gathering myself. I felt myself turning numb from the inside out.
Self-preservation yet again.
I didn’t realise it then, of course, but it was because of Mark that I killed the only man I’ve ever truly loved – him, posing as Andrew, saying he was going to report me. I’d never have gone to his house otherwise. And Andrew died not knowing I loved him back.
And now I pray every day that the baby inside me is his, not Mark’s, that they’ll let the baby have a paternity test, though I may never know for sure. If I go to prison, which I will, they said that I’ll be able to keep my son or daughter for eighteen months if there’s a place at a mother and baby unit. After that, I don’t know what will happen.
So this is my confession, the last journal entry I will ever make. There’s no looking back for me now. No reflecting. No forward movement or change. No personal growth or bettering myself. Just stasis. One day blurring into the next as I watch myself get bigger and bigger. I’m not asking for forgiveness by writing this, so don’t pity me. Whoever reads it, whoever hears my story, if you truly listen to me, all I’m asking for is understanding.
And one day, if Freya finds it in herself to visit me here, I’ll tell her my story – explain why Annie has to be her mummy now, help her comprehend why I’m locked up – even though the little girl inside me has been set free. I’ll explain how secrets from long ago sometimes stay buried, lying dormant, festering, hidden, waiting for the perfect conditions to strike. And how the worst kind of secrets are always the ones we keep from ourselves.
Ready for another absolutely gripping psychological thriller that gets right under your skin? Order The Reunion for an emotional rollercoaster ride with a twist that will take your breath away!
The Reunion
Tell Me A Secret Page 31