Every Vow You Break

by Julia Crouch

  ‘Brr.’ Lara shivered.

  ‘Look inside,’ Stephen said, flashing his torch through the doorway.

  Peering in, Lara saw a stained sleeping bag, an old hearth with the remains of a recently built fire in it, a litter of empty food containers and wrappers, and a half-full gallon-sized water container. On the floor, spelled out in large twig and leaf letters, and enclosed within the outline of a heart made of small stones, were the letters ES + SM. It was the dolls, though, that made the goosebumps rise on Lara’s neck. Fashioned out of bird skulls, bone bits and root fibres, the bigger one had material from Stephen’s shirt wrapped around it – the shirt that had had been stolen from the launderette. The other wore a piece of Lara’s green top. Lara looked up at Stephen, who had come in behind her.

  ‘I washed it and hung it out to dry the day after you first came here,’ he said, reading the question in her eyes. ‘It disappeared. Thought a bear had got it. I’d done a great job on the wine stain, too.’

  Lara looked back down at the dolls. Each had six big thorns stuck into its torso.

  ‘Spines from the devil’s walking stick. Grows all the way through my forests,’ Stephen said.

  ‘Ouch,’ Lara said. ‘So she’s playing Witch. How long do you think she’s been in here?’

  ‘I dropped by about ten days ago, on my way for a swim. It was completely empty. This is all new. Fuck her.’ For a second he seemed to lose control, kicking at the stone heart and the bird-skull dolls, the sleeping bag and the water bottle.

  ‘Steady.’ Lara laid a hand on his shoulder. ‘You’re spoiling our evidence.’

  He looked at her, fire in his eyes.

  ‘She’s trying to destroy us,’ he said. He broke away from her and stormed outside to the gloom of the forest.

  ‘Come out, Sanders,’ he yelled, holding his gun ready. ‘Come out and face us.’

  But only silence answered him.

  ‘I want to go back to the house now,’ Lara said, placing a calming hand on him. The light was fading fast – the patches of sky between the trees turned from pink to grey. Even with Stephen by her side, even with a torch, she didn’t fancy being out here when the final tint of light dissolved and they were slung into pitch black.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, looking around in a way that told her he, too, wanted the shelter of four walls.

  Silently they picked their way through the brambles and vines that seemed to have grown up behind them since they started out.

  Stephen held his gun ahead of him like a soldier moving through a jungle, like he had in his award-winning role in that Vietnam movie. Lara lit their way with the torch. Time was moving on. She should think about setting off back to Trout Island. But she didn’t want to. She wanted to stay with Stephen and she didn’t want him to be on his own with that woman somewhere out in those trees, watching him.

  Also, she didn’t think she could drive down that dark mountain on her own, in that unreliable car, with that fear of hers of evil eyes popping up in the rear-view mirror. It was bad enough back home, night-driving through benign, leafy Home Counties English lanes. But here, in a landscape used for thousands of celluloid nightmares, with the additional threat of an authentic madwoman on the loose, she didn’t see how she would get back to the village without collapsing in dread.

  So, when they reached his porch and he drew her to him and asked if she would stay a bit longer, she was quick to agree.

  He unlocked the door and they both went in, but he didn’t put the lights on. Using the torch, he led her to the living room and drew her down on to the big leather sofa. She held herself close to him, pressing her head against his chest.

  ‘Tell me about her. Tell me what she did to you.’

  She stretched her legs along his and listened to the rumble of his voice.

  ‘I started getting these text messages from someone. They weren’t so sinister to begin with. Flattering stuff about my work, that sort of thing. A bit weird, you know, coming from someone you don’t know. But it happens. It’s part of the deal you make with the devil in this game. Like not being able to walk down the street without people wanting your autograph or to talk to you. Sometimes you want them to go away, but you have to be civil. You have to be polite.

  ‘Then the messages started getting personal – about my body, about what this person would like to do with me. I ignored them, thinking the sender would get bored and stop, but my silence only seemed to egg her on. I started finding these handwritten notes pinned to my door, written in green capitals, with the unique prose style and questionable spelling that told me they were from the same sender. I also found them on my trailer door if I was working, or tucked behind my car windscreen wipers.’

  ‘Scary,’ Lara said, stroking his beautiful forearm. Each slender muscle was distinct. The real fibre of him under her fingertips.

  ‘Exactly.’ He put his lips to her hair. ‘But then the messages began to get proprietorial – the shirt I was wearing didn’t suit me, I shouldn’t be ordering that for my dinner at Ugo’s. Things started turning up on my doorstep: bottles of whisky, boxes of chocolates, bunches of flowers, teddy bears. Teddy bears! Deliveries of pizza, books and clothing would arrive – stuff I never ordered. I changed my phone number three times, and employed a security guard at my gate, but she always managed to find a way to get to me. And by trying to block her way of course I made her angrier and angrier. The messages took a nasty turn, the gifts were less benign – tons of rotted manure dumped in my driveway, two dozen dead roses, what looked like a human turd in a Godiva box.’

  ‘Ugh.’

  ‘And by this point, the relentlessness and the nastiness of it was getting to me. I cancelled a dinner where I was supposed to talk because I didn’t want to put myself on a public stage. I started to get really paranoid about the level of security at the studios where I was working.’

  ‘And the police were no good?’

  ‘They had so little to go on. She was so clever; she was almost invisible. They never once saw her. And then—’ He stopped, and breathed in, steadying himself.

  ‘And then?’

  ‘I had a series of accidents. To an outsider each one might have looked like bad luck or carelessness – indeed that’s how the police viewed them. And I suppose I was beginning to lose it. But I’m certain she had a hand in it somehow. I mean, nothing like that had ever happened to me before she turned up.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘I had a tyre blow out just after I turned out of my house on to Mulholland. On a bend on the edge of a mountain. I was lucky I didn’t go over. I’ve got this high deck that comes off the second floor of my house, cantilevered over the valley.’ He used his hands to describe the layout. ‘You’ll see it one day soon. You’ll love it. One of the wooden steps leading up to the deck from the pool collapsed as I climbed it, and I fell, breaking my ankle. It could have been my neck. Then I got some sort of food poisoning that put me in hospital for three days. And one evening I lit the barbecue and this happened.’

  He shifted round and Lara propped herself up to watch as he lifted his T-shirt and showed her his chest. Where it had once been smooth, taut and golden, now it was shiny, mottled white and purple. She reached out to touch the scarring. He held her hand on his damaged skin and looked at her.

  ‘The police advised me to take the barbecue incident to the manufacturers. And not to drink too much champagne while cooking on an open flame. The only woman they found in LA with the name Elizabeth Sanders was tiny, eighty-nine years old and with no record at all of anything untoward. It couldn’t be her. It was a made-up name, and she was untraceable.’

  ‘Poor you,’ Lara said, laying her head on his chest, running her fingertips along the ridges and valleys of the crackled scars.

  ‘“If I can’t have you then nobody can” was the message that pushed me over the edge. I was taking too many painkillers – my leg was still weak and I was undergoing skin grafts for the burns – and I was mixing them with alcohol. Very bad
. I stopped going out. I became the proverbial prisoner in my own home. I felt so alone, Lara.’

  ‘Poor you. Poor love.’ Lara reached her arm up and held him tight to her.

  ‘Betty was the only person I could talk to back then. She was a rock. She came in, found me after the overdose.’

  ‘Overdose?’

  ‘She did a great job of covering it up. But I thought it had got out on to the rumour corners of the internet?’

  ‘I never heard anything about an overdose.’

  ‘Well, let’s just say I didn’t see much point to my life at that time. Betty got me into rehab in Utah. Then, when I came out, she and James suggested I move over here, disappear for a while. She even found this land for me. So I quite literally vanished. Even my management don’t know where I am. I never dreamed Sanders would find me. But now she’s here and I’ve got to leave. I’ll go to Mexico. Or Europe.’

  ‘And she will have won. We have to stop this, Stephen. We need to tell the police and get her arrested, for trespass at the very least. We can do that.’

  ‘It’s true. Over here, they view crimes against property far more seriously than crimes against the person.’

  ‘We have to stay put,’ she said, sitting up and looking him in the eye. ‘Whatever happens.’

  ‘I like the sound of that “we”.’ He closed his eyes and rested his forehead against hers. ‘Stay with me tonight, Lara.’

  ‘What will I say to Marcus?’

  ‘Say a tree came down in the storm, say the road is impassable. It happened before, last year. I was stuck up here four days. It’s entirely feasible. I need you here in so many ways, Lara. Please.’

  ‘So I left my bag up here when I came up blueberry picking yesterday with Jack, so I couldn’t go into town because I didn’t have a purse, so I had to come up here to pick it up. And then there was the big storm. You did have it down in the village?’ She twirled the cord to Stephen’s office phone between her fingers.

  ‘Yes,’ Marcus said. His annoyance at being left on his own in charge of Jack reached her clearly through the phone line.

  ‘So, after the storm had passed, I set off down the mountain. But this big oak has come down about a mile away from Stephen’s. The road is impassable. I came back here and Stephen rang some emergency line and they say they’ll have it cleared by morning. So he’s offered to put me up for the night.’

  Stephen handed her a glass of wine and raised his eyebrows in question.

  ‘That’s very kind of him,’ Marcus said.

  Lara gave Stephen the thumbs-up.

  ‘He’s a real mate,’ Marcus went on.

  ‘I’ll be back as soon as the road is cleared.’

  ‘I’m sure you will. And what’ll I do about Jack in the morning when I have to go to work?’

  ‘Look, this is not my fault,’ Lara said. She actually felt quite indignant. ‘Get Bella or Olly organised. Or go round and see Gina. I’m sure she’ll help.’

  ‘All right then,’ she heard him sigh. ‘I suppose it’s not impossible.’

  ‘I’ll see you tomorrow evening, then,’ she said.

  ‘All right. And Lara?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I know Mr Molloy is a world-famous movie star, but hey, no hanky panky eh? Or I’ll send the boys round.’

  For one second, Lara wavered. Then she gathered herself. ‘What, Olly and Jack?’ she said. ‘I’m scared.’

  ‘Take care love,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry about things back here. I’ve got it all under control.’

  ‘How did that go?’ Stephen held his arms out to her as she joined him in the living room.

  ‘Exhausting,’ she said. ‘His first reaction was “how am I going to cope?”. Not “poor you, take care”.’

  ‘Poor you. Take care,’ Stephen said, sitting and pulling her down so she straddled him.

  Later, they had a long bath together in a sunken tub that Lara hadn’t seen before.

  ‘I dreamed about doing this with you in here,’ he said, as she lay on top of him, their bodies sliding over each other in the scented, soapy water.

  ‘I love all of you,’ he said, moving her over and kissing the stretch marks that striated the tops of her breasts, the bottom of her belly. ‘I always have.’

  ‘Don’t ever go back,’ he said, leading her, naked, to his big double bed. ‘Don’t ever go back to him.’ He stretched her out and started to stroke her, gently, from her toes to her hair. She felt numb with pleasure. She had never been so adored.

  Thirty-Eight

  ACCUSTOMED TO BEING WOKEN EARLY BY JACK, LARA OPENED HER eyes after too little sleep to find her face pressed into Stephen’s scarred chest. It took her a couple of minutes to remember where she was, that she hadn’t dreamed the last fourteen hours. She listened to his steady, satiated breathing as their body heat mingled in the cool bedroom air. Clear skies on top of a soaked forest had made the night almost chilly, but they had hardly noticed.

  All Lara knew in the fresh morning light was that this was home for her, and she wanted to remain. She lay trying not to wake him as she worked it out. Jack would come and live with Stephen and her, out here in the woods, and, when that Sanders woman had been dealt with, they’d go back to LA. Bella and Olly could stay with Marcus during term time until they finished sixth form, then they would choose whether they went to university in America or England. It all seemed so simple, so obvious to her as she lay there in Stephen’s arms on that first morning, in his bed.

  Of course, she had broken her promise to Betty about holding back. But Betty had been proved wrong about not telling Stephen about Sanders. It would have been far better if Lara had confided in him earlier. And even Betty with her steely eyes couldn’t have stopped what was going to happen between her and Stephen.

  ‘Hello you,’ Stephen said, turning her on to her back and smiling deep into her being.

  ‘I have a problem,’ Lara said as, much later, they stepped out of the shower they had just shared. ‘I can’t see.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Stephen enveloped her in a fluffy white towel that reached from her shoulders to the ground.

  ‘I didn’t bring any spare contact lenses, and I had to take my old ones out last night. I thought I had some in my bag, but I don’t. I won’t be able to drive without them.’

  ‘Now why would you want to do that, though?’ Stephen said, gently rubbing her dry with the towel.

  Later, after a breakfast of blueberries and home-made creamy yoghurt, Stephen put on his long-hair Sam Miller disguise, picked up his gun and kissed Lara on the lips.

  ‘Won’t be long,’ he said.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘There’s this package I have to pick up from the post office in the village. A very important document. I’ll be back in no time. Just stay in the living room, keep the curtains drawn and don’t go out.’

  ‘I can’t stay here alone,’ she said, and she meant it. ‘Couldn’t you get Trudi Staines to fetch whatever it is for you?’

  ‘She’s not answering her phone,’ Stephen said quickly. ‘And I need the package now.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said.

  ‘Poor you.’ He encircled her in his arms. ‘You’re scared, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’ She smiled up at him.

  ‘You could come down with me,’ he said. ‘If …’

  ‘If?’

  ‘You’ll have to lie low when we get into Trout Island. And I’ll have to take a bit of care. We don’t want anyone seeing there’s no tree-on-road situation.’

  So they went down the mountain in the open-topped Wrangler and, on the outskirts of the village, Stephen pulled over. Lara climbed into the back seat, and he passed her the gun.

  ‘I don’t want this,’ she said.

  ‘You’d better take it. It’s locked, don’t worry.’ He threw a rug over her and drove on down into the village. Lara felt claustrophobic and hot under the blanket, but it beat being on her own up at the house. The Wrangler drew to a stands
till.

  ‘We’re at the post office. Stay down,’ Stephen said, as he got out of the car. ‘I’ll be two minutes.’

  As Lara lay as still as possible underneath the blanket, two familiar voices approached.

  ‘Come on Jacko, let’s try it again. It’s just like learning nursery rhymes. What is a traitor?’ Marcus said.

  ‘What is a traitor?’ Jack repeated.

  ‘Why, one that swears and lies,’ Marcus replied in a pretending-to-be-a-woman voice.

  ‘And be all traitors that do so?’ Jack said, and Lara’s heart contracted.

  ‘Every one that does so is a traitor and must be hanged,’ Marcus went on in his woman voice.

  ‘And must they all …’ Jack said. He paused. ‘Yes. I remember … be hanged that lie and swear?’

  ‘EVERY ONE!’ Marcus roared, and Jack giggled. ‘But it’s swear and lie, Jacko,’ Marcus said, in his own voice.

  ‘But I was good though, Dad, wasn’t I?’ Jack said. ‘I learned my lines.’

  ‘Like a top pro,’ Marcus said. ‘Good as your old dad.’

  ‘Look!’ Jack said, his voice coming close, far too close for comfort. ‘Stephen’s car.’

  ‘What?’ Marcus said. Lara could smell his aftershave as he leaned into the vehicle. There was a pause, long as a lifetime. Lara held her breath and prayed Stephen wouldn’t come out of the post office.

  ‘Nah. Can’t be Stephen’s car, Jacko. He’s stuck up the mountain with Mummy remember? Poor old fella.’

  ‘Look, though, Daddy. Stephen’s dents,’ Jack said, his voice getting further away as he squatted down to point at the crumpled side where Sanders had tried to run them off the road. For a moment Lara was distracted from her precarious situation by the sudden puzzling thought that Stephen hadn’t even for one minute suspected that Sanders might be behind that trick. Or the launderette episode.