Every Vow You Break

by Julia Crouch

  Betty turned to look at Lara. Every ounce of warmth had drained from her face, so, for the first time, she looked her age. ‘I don’t want you to upset Marcus in any way until the end of the run. Is that understood? If you do, you will have me to answer to, and, believe me, I do not take prisoners.’

  Lara pushed her half-drunk glass of iced tea away from her and looked at Betty. So she had been rumbled, and, as punishment, her autonomy and safety had been stripped from her. She remembered how it had been when, as a child, her views had never been taken into account about anything, when her parents, looking down at her from their adult platform, viewed her as an entirely different species to themselves, something on an altogether lower branch of the evolutionary scale. That was exactly what was being done to her now.

  ‘So then, honey,’ Betty said, standing up and clapping her hands together, her beautiful kimono flapping like the wings of a large raptor. ‘Let’s go and see how dear little Jack is doing with the fluffy little kits.’

  Thirty

  SEAN PULLED THE NISSAN OFF THE TRACK AND SWERVED ON TO THE spongy grass at the side of the pond. He cut the engine and turned to smile at Bella.

  ‘Hi honey, I’m home,’ he said, pulling her close and kissing her.

  ‘Swim?’ she said.

  ‘Sure thing.’

  They got out of the car and Sean fetched the blankets, the beer and the picnic from the boot. Hand in hand, they walked round to the other side of the pond, which in England would have been called a lake. Sean shook the blanket out on to the leaf-littered ground at the edge of a jetty with a round inflatable dinghy tethered to it. On their first visit to this, Sean’s cousin’s pond, they had drifted out on the dinghy to the middle of the water, where they had spent the whole afternoon, lazily making love, sunbathing, and swimming in among the trout and bullfrogs that inhabited the cool, stone-lined pool.

  Initially Bella had been worried about being discovered, but Sean reassured her no one ever came up to the pond on weekdays. It was also five miles out of the village, two miles off the main road, and right in the middle of privately owned land, so there was no chance of anyone accidentally coming across them. By this, their fourth visit together, she was completely relaxed about being up here, lying naked on the blanket on the ground with her boy, spending the whole afternoon kissing, touching and whispering with him. It was like Eden for her.

  They pulled off their clothes and ran hand in hand along the jetty to throw themselves into the water, where they made love for the first time that afternoon, the frenzied, unstoppable fuck they had been desperate for since he had picked her up from the creepy old house.

  On the way, as he drove, Sufjan Stevens strumming his laid-back stuff out of the car’s old cassette player, Sean had told her about the history of the Larssen place, about the old man, the cannibal dogs and the mad sister. Bella’s eyes had grown large and round.

  ‘No way,’ she had said. ‘That is so cool.’

  ‘I love you,’ he said, as, a little later, they lay on the blanket, the glow from their lovemaking spreading through them as they sipped ice-cold beer. A dragonfly flashed iridescence across the jade-green surface of the pond. ‘I want to spend my life with you,’ he whispered in her ear.

  ‘Me too you.’ Bella drew him close and held him to her breast.

  Sensible, sensitive, serious and totally reliable, Sean was different from any other boy she had ever known. Had someone proposed those qualities to her before she met him, she would have yawned and pronounced them boring. But in him – well, they were anything but.

  Olly had always had this idea that she and he were two parts of the same person. He’d banged on about it since they were quite young. She had never bought into his theory, and as things got more complicated between them she had actively denied it, suspecting she could actually be a whole being in her own right.

  Meeting Sean made her realise that while she was complete in herself, at the same time he fitted with her – not only physically, but with every part of her. He completed her in a way that Olly never, ever could, no matter how hard he pushed for it.

  She felt warmed through, like caramel. The sun dappled on her naked skin between the broad leaves of the trees around the pond and, with the still heat, the slight wooziness from the beer, and the scraped-clean feeling of making love in the water, she found herself dozing off.

  ‘What was that?’ she said, sitting bolt upright. Something had moved in the trees, crashing through the undergrowth, startling them both awake.

  Sean sat still for a moment, listening carefully, slowly scanning the forest. Then he relaxed and lay back down again, propping his head on his hand, looking at her. ‘A deer,’ he said, pulling her towards him with his free hand. ‘Probably.’

  ‘Or a bear,’ Bella said, resisting him, sitting up and hugging her legs. ‘Or a mountain lion.’

  ‘Very unlikely. And if it was, they wouldn’t come anywhere near us – they’re more frightened of us than we are of them, you know.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, country boy,’ Bella said, turning towards him. She traced the side of his face with her finger and bent to kiss him. He lifted his hand to her breast and she shifted and swung one leg over him, straddling him.

  ‘I’m not scared with you here,’ she said, easing him inside her.

  ‘Too right.’ Sean smiled up at her.

  She began to move on top of him, slowly. Sean closed his eyes and put his hands on her hips.

  ‘Oh, Bella …’

  Then there was a great crash and four swaying figures sprang out of the trees, rifles aimed at them. It all happened so quickly it took a minute for Bella to realise that one of them was a twitching, chewing, pinprick-pupilled Olly. His face was made up with camouflage paint and his bloodshot eyes roved over the scene.

  ‘Tracked you,’ he snarled.

  The insects in the grass and trees, the crickets and cicadas and katydids, all fell silent. A bullfrog plopped from the lily pad where he was sunning himself into the safety of the water, spreading ripples across the pond. Bella jumped off Sean and pulled the blanket over them both.

  ‘Olly, what the FUCK?’ she said.

  ‘Look what we’ve got here, then,’ Olly slurred to his companions. ‘Looks like we’ve got ourselves some real good game.’ He motioned to the three others, who slowly formed a circle around them. Bella recognised them as the gang from the playground. They were all filthy, covered in dust and sweat, and quite clearly off their faces. One, a tall, lanky boy with a shaved head and bad acne, had a joint stuck between his lips and a rucksack on his back. Another, fat and missing a front tooth, was giggling, a horrible, high-pitched snicker. The third, a short, stocky, blond boy, stood right by Bella, his grubby, bulging crotch level with her eye.

  She looked up at her brother.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing?’

  ‘Shouldn’t I be the one asking that of you?’ he said, reaching for the joint. His pinprick eyes bulged and his mouth worked around his words. ‘What did I say to you about seeing this creep? And now what do I find you doing? Camera!’ he barked, holding out his hand. The boy with the erection handed an iPhone to Olly, who took a photograph of Bella and Sean cowering under the blanket. ‘We got some great footage, Bella. While you were in the pond.’

  Bella roared, and sprang up at her brother. The fat boy grabbed her from behind, splaying his sweaty palms over her bare breasts. The other two turned on her and she saw the tall boy leer, revealing two sharp, pointed canine teeth.

  ‘Sean!’ she cried, but Olly had grabbed his gun again and was pointing it straight at him.

  ‘Don’t make a move, lover boy,’ he said. Then he yelled at his companions. ‘Get away from her, you animals. And Bella, put something on, or you’ll get what you deserve.’

  Bella picked up her clothes, which she had thrown off an hour before, when she was free. ‘Olly, please go away,’ she whispered to him as she pulled her dress on.

  ‘I’m not finished yet,’ Olly
said, smiling at Sean.

  ‘Leave him alone.’ Bella threw herself again at her brother.

  ‘Steady Bella,’ Olly said, sidestepping her, his gun trained on Sean. ‘It’s loaded and ready to go. We don’t want a nasty accident.’

  ‘Put it down, Olly.’ Bella planted herself between Olly and Sean.

  ‘Jesus. Guys, do something with my sister,’ Olly said.

  ‘Anything?’ The boy with the canines leered into her face.

  ‘Not that, Kyle,’ Olly said. ‘Just get her out of the way.’

  Kyle put his rucksack down and got out a bottle of Jack Daniels, which he swigged and passed on to the fat boy. Then he pulled out a length of rope.

  ‘This do, Olly man?’ he said. Olly nodded. Bella tried to scramble away, but Kyle was with her in two paces, thumping her on the ground, his whole body on top of her.

  ‘Careful,’ Olly said.

  ‘You just wriggle some more, little girl,’ Kyle hissed into her ear as she struggled to get away from him. ‘That’s real nice.’ He tied her hands behind her back, yanked her up and, dragging her by her hair to a tree, lashed her to its trunk.

  ‘Don’t you even look at her,’ Olly hissed to Sean, as he motioned with his gun for him to stand up. ‘Get him,’ he said to the others. ‘Let’s see what he’s got.’

  The three boys hauled Sean up and held him, one on each arm, one round his neck, so he was splayed, naked, in front of Olly. He put up no resistance, and didn’t make a sound, but he looked straight into Olly’s eyes, not wavering for one minute.

  ‘Leave him!’ Bella screamed.

  Olly put his gun on the ground and, getting a knife out of his belt, moved in on Sean. He placed the blade on his belly, right below his navel, and leered into his face.

  ‘Not such a happy chappy now, are we?’ Olly said, flipping Sean’s penis with the blunt side of his knife. ‘Not like when you were FUCKING MY SISTER, eh? I thought I told you not to touch her.’

  Bella saw Sean swallow. He said nothing, but still he held Olly’s stare.

  ‘Now then,’ Olly said. ‘What am I going to do with you?’

  ‘He’s got a real purty mouth,’ the fat boy said, laughing again with his peculiar, high-pitched cackle.

  ‘And we always knew he was a faggot,’ Kyle said, ‘Right from kindergarten.’

  ‘Fag,’ the blond sneered, then he sang a snatch of ‘Duelling Banjos’. The three of them found this so funny they snickered until their eyes streamed with tears. But they didn’t, for one minute, let go of their hold on Sean.

  ‘Turn him round,’ Olly said. ‘Pull his legs apart.’

  The others did it, roughly, and, powerless, Sean let them do it.

  Olly stood there for a while, considering, looking at Sean’s naked backside, splayed above his shaking knees.

  ‘No!’ Bella screamed.

  ‘Shut it, sister,’ Olly barked. Then he spat at Sean’s back. ‘I can’t bring myself,’ he said in a mincing voice. ‘He’s not my type.’

  Again, his three cronies sniggered. Kyle passed Olly the whisky and he took a long, hard slug.

  ‘Turn him round again, get him on the ground,’ Olly said. The boys pushed Sean down on his back. Olly reached inside his pocket and got out a packet of cigarettes, a pair of gloves and a Zippo. ‘I’ve decided I’m going to be kind to you,’ he said, lighting up a cigarette. ‘Not that you deserve it.’ He delivered a sharp kick to Sean’s ribs, bent close to his face and rubbed some dirt into his cheeks and mouth. ‘I’m going to give you a warning this time, but you’re lucky because you’re also being taught a lesson. It’s good to learn. Hold him tight.’

  Kyle and the blond boy positioned themselves one at each arm. The fat boy put all of his weight on Sean’s legs.

  ‘Now, I’d say this wasn’t going to hurt,’ Olly said, ‘But I’d be lying.’ Cigarette in mouth, he pulled on a glove and knelt, his back to Bella, one hand at Sean’s groin. For the first time, Sean struggled, but the others had him securely under their panting weight. Bella looked away. She couldn’t bear to see their greedy, excited faces as they waited to see what Olly had in store.

  With his free hand, Olly lifted his cigarette high into the air. Then he brought it down to where his other hand had hold of Sean.

  ‘Sizzle,’ Kyle said.

  Sean’s scream made Bella’s knees buckle. Olly lifted the cigarette away and leaned back. ‘Oh look, where’s your little man gone now, eh?’ he said. ‘You made my tab go out, lover boy, with your slippy dick.’ He took the Zippo again, and, bending forward he set it to work on Sean, who wailed like an animal being murdered.

  Olly lifted the lighter and brought it down again. Again, Sean screamed.

  ‘Don’t you ever come near my fucking sister again,’ Olly yelled. ‘Or I’ll fucking kill you. You hear me, creep?’

  ‘That’s enough, man,’ Kyle said after Olly had applied the lighter the third time and Sean had screamed himself out underneath them.

  ‘You won’t be using that for a good while,’ Olly said, stepping back. ‘Let him go.’ The boys moved away and Sean curled up on the ground, weeping with pain.

  Olly stood up and got his gun. ‘Stand up!’ he shouted. Whimpering, Sean scrambled to his feet. His beautiful body seemed to have shrunk and his skin was bleached of its tan. Tears ran rivers down the dirt in his face, and his hands were clamped over his front.

  ‘Your keys in those?’ Olly motioned to Sean’s jeans, which were still in the heap where they had fallen when Bella had greedily helped him off with them. Sean nodded. ‘Get them,’ Olly said to the blond boy.

  ‘Now, lover boy, take your keys, get in your car, start the engine and drive. Drive away from here and don’t come anywhere near my sister again. Understood?’

  Sean went to pick up his jeans. ‘No,’ Olly said. ‘As you are.’

  Sean limped, naked, to his car, got in and drove off.

  ‘And you couldn’t see him for dust,’ Olly laughed. Then he swung over to Bella and took her face in his hand. ‘Now then, little sis, what do you think of that?’

  ‘Bastard,’ Bella spat.

  ‘It’s for your own good,’ he said. He looked her in the eyes and sang, at full volume, the song he had practised the night before when she had tried to sleep.

  ‘Like me in lineaments: her eyes

  Her hair, her features, all to the very tone

  Even of her voice, they said were like to mine …’

  And he squeezed her cheeks so her skin burned with the pulling.

  ‘Who are you?’ she said, as he finished his song. She didn’t see a thing she recognised in her twin brother’s face.

  ‘You know me better than anyone, Bella,’ he said, his voice low.

  ‘I’m going to tell Mum.’

  ‘You try, and there’ll be a nice little gallery going up on Facebook.’

  Bella tasted the bile in her mouth.

  ‘You got a line there, Aaron boy?’ Olly asked the blond boy. ‘Chop chop.’

  ‘Yum,’ Kyle said, reaching into Sean’s picnic basket. ‘Pizza.’

  ‘Like your face,’ Brandon said, and his laughter melted into Kyle’s cackle and they all joined in, until, once more, the tears rolled down their cheeks.

  After they had finished Sean and Bella’s picnic and the lines of white powder had been snorted and the bottle of Jack Daniels was empty, the boys untied her.

  ‘What do I do now?’ she said, gesturing to the spot where Sean’s car had stood. ‘How do I get back?’

  ‘My boys here are hunters. They know all the trails through the forest,’ Olly said. ‘We can provide an escort.’

  And, once again, the boys laughed until they were on the ground, rolling in the dirt.

  Thirty-One

  ‘AND WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?’

  Marcus was smoking on the porch when Lara and Jack got back from Betty’s. At his feet sat two drained beer bottles, in his hand a third, half empty.

  ‘I’ve been up to the farm to
see Betty,’ Lara said, mustering an Oscar-standard performance of unperturbed normality. ‘She gave us some beautiful veg, look.’ She held out the basket of courgettes, tomatoes and basil that Betty, her sweetness rediscovered, had pressed upon her.

  Marcus grunted.

  Lara left Jack to tell his father about the kittens while she took the produce through to the kitchen. As she opened the front door, the rotten smell coming from the cellar halted her in her tracks. It was worse than ever. Determined to sort out whatever was causing the stink, she crossed over to the secret door under the stairs. But her hand was stayed by the two new pieces of wood nailed across it, keeping it shut. She turned and saw a set of keys dangling from a new lock crudely but effectively cut into the front door. Apart from seeing Stephen, this was the best turn-up of a particularly trying day.

  ‘Well done!’ she called to Marcus, as she went through to the kitchen. Her mood was further lifted when she noted that the back door now had bolts at top and bottom, so the house could be completely locked.

  She got herself a beer from the fridge and went to join Marcus. Safety, she thought, in numbers. Jack had finished his story and was pottering around the front lawn with a football that had somehow appeared.

  ‘Thanks for sorting the locks,’ Lara said as she sat on the swing seat next to Marcus, scanning the road for anything untoward. Something at the back of her mind wondered if life was going to be like this from now on – always on the lookout.

  ‘What?’ Marcus said without much interest.

  ‘The doors and the basement. You took me seriously!’

  ‘Not me.’ Marcus held his hands up. ‘I’d never do that.’

  ‘You mentioned it to James though? He must’ve sent someone.’

  ‘Possibly,’ Marcus said, slapping a mosquito on his arm and flicking the bloody remnants on to the deck.

  Lara turned to face him.

  ‘What’s up with you?’

  ‘I’m pretty fucked off if you must know,’ he said, tossing his cigarette butt into a spiky bush that grew up around the porch railings. Then he looked furiously at Lara and paused. She swallowed.