by Jack Jordan
She studied her reflection: scraped hands and knees, bruises all over her body from the fall down the stairs, and a throbbing wound on her scalp that was hot to the touch. Her arm was covered in bruises from the hitman’s fingers digging into her skin.
Paige sat on the bed as she slipped on her underwear and hooked her bra in place. She looked at the photo frame on her side of the bed.
It was a photo of the three of them together: Ryan, Chloe, and her. But Ryan’s face was no longer there – it had been cut out.
Paige snatched the frame from the bedside table and examined it.
I didn’t do this.
She threw on her dressing gown and began to check every photo frame in the house: he had been cut out of all of them.
This can’t be happening. I know I didn’t do this. I’m not crazy.
She knelt before the bookshelf in the living room and grabbed the photo albums from the bottom shelf. She flicked open the first album and raced through the pages. Ryan’s face had been removed from the photos: Ryan holding Chloe in the hospital after her birth, Ryan pushing Chloe on her first bike, their first family vacation abroad, birthdays, Christmases. He had been erased from every picture they had.
‘I’m not mad,’ she whispered over and over as tears fell onto the pages.
Paige frantically searched every album, flicking the pages faster and faster, seeing nothing but holes where Ryan’s face should have been.
Surrounded by tarnished photo albums, she sobbed into her grazed hands.
What is happening to me?
A photo from Chloe’s first birthday looked up at her from an open album. Chloe’s eyes were glowing from the lit candles, Paige was smiling and genuinely happy, sitting beside a man without a face.
How will I remember what he looks like?
However angry she was at Ryan, she wouldn’t do this – she wouldn’t go this far, however much she drank. She grabbed her mobile and called DI Graham Balding.
‘Balding,’ he said.
‘Graham, it’s Paige Dawson.’
‘Oh, hi,’ he said, sounding distracted. ‘Everything all right?’
‘No, it isn’t. Someone has come into my house and cut Ryan’s face out of all our photographs.’ She waited eagerly for his response, for him to finally believe her.
‘You drove into your husband’s gravestone the other night, Paige. It wouldn’t surprise me if you did this too. I told you – you need to stop drinking.’
‘I didn’t do this, I swear…’
‘Are there signs of breaking and entering?’
‘No, but…’
‘Are you still drinking?’
‘This isn’t happening because of my damn drinking!’
‘Paige, go to therapy and put down the bottle, and then these things will stop. Trust me.’
‘Graham, I didn’t do this! I promise you, I didn’t!’
‘Who else could have done it?’
‘That’s why I’m calling you, I don’t know!’
‘You’re angry with your husband for committing suicide. You’re so angry that you drove into his gravestone. Now you’ve done this. I’m sorry Paige, but I can’t have you calling me every time you drink too much and screw up. I have real cases to solve.’
‘Well, I hope you don’t have any missing girls relying on you. Your track record isn’t too good, is it?’
She sat on the floor, staring at her faceless husband as the dialling tone rang in her ear.
ELEVEN
Paige was drunk when the doorbell rang. She opened the door to find Greta on the other side. Without a word, Paige went back to the sofa and Greta came inside.
The destroyed photo albums lay strewn across the carpet. An empty wine bottle sat on the coffee table beside another half-full bottle and a freshly poured glass. Greta stared at the mess.
‘I didn’t do it,’ Paige said, before taking a gulp of wine. ‘You won’t believe me. No one else does.’
Greta stared at her, lost for words.
‘I thought you hated me,’ Paige said.
‘I could never hate you.’
‘I’d hate me.’
Greta took the empty bottle of wine and went into the kitchen. Paige heard the bottle fall into the bin and a cupboard open and close. Greta came back into the living room with a wine glass and filled it with wine from the bottle on the table. She sat on the opposite sofa and took a sip. Paige hadn’t seen her drink before.
‘I’m not going to hold what happened against you. You’re a broken woman, Paige. You have poor judgement, a skewed outlook on the world, but you’re not malicious. I know that.’ She took another sip. ‘I’ve been hard on you and I’m sorry. I shouldn’t scold you for grieving differently from me.’
Greta looked down at the photo albums and sighed.
She thinks I’m mad, just like everybody else.
‘With Chloe and Ryan gone, there is nothing to keep our bond but memories. I don’t want to lose you from this family. You might not be blood, but you’ve been a part of our lives for twenty years. I’m not going to lose you now.’
‘Does Richard think that, too?’
‘Yes.’
‘I doubt that, after what I did.’
‘We’ve talked about it. We all grieve differently, he sees that now.’
They sat in silence for a moment, sipping at wine in the house full of memories.
‘Do you still want to be a part of this family?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’m glad.’
‘You can have your key back.’
It sat among the mess on the coffee table. Greta picked it up.
‘Thank you.’
Greta looked at the wine in her glass.
‘Are you eating?’
Paige tried to remember the last time she ate. Had it really been the day she returned from the police station? She had to have eaten since then.
‘I’ll make you something.’
Paige looked at her watch.
‘I have to go out soon.’
Criticism sat at the tip of Greta’s tongue, but she kept it locked behind clenched teeth.
Yes, I’m leaving the house drunk.
‘I’ll make something for you – you can eat it when you get home.’
‘Okay.’
Paige drank the rest of her wine and stood unsteadily; Greta stood, too. Neither knew what they should do. Hug? Kiss?
Paige went to the door, slipped into her shoes, and put her bag over her shoulder.
‘See you soon.’
‘Yes,’ Greta said.
Paige shut the door.
***
Paige read the posters on the wall, bent over Dr Abdullah’s desk. She tried to ignore his beast-like grunts and the feel of him inside of her. She read the posters and wondered how much longer it would take for him to climax.
His sweaty hands grasped her waist. If only he could do it without holding her.
Stop thinking of his hands. Think of the posters. Look at them, nothing else.
A Samaritans poster was stuck to the wall, with the headline: ‘Don’t face depression alone: talk to someone.’
If only it were as simple as that, she thought as she jolted with the doctor’s thrusts.
She had never seen her sexual relationship with the doctor as abusive, but instead viewed it as two consumers trading with each other: he wanted sex; she wanted pills. But the more she visited Dr Abdullah, and the more she got on her knees and tasted him in her mouth, she realised that he knew exactly how she felt about their encounters. He wasn’t stupid. He knew that she hated every minute of it. If he tried to kiss her, she turned her head away. When he climaxed in her mouth, she spat it out as though it were toxic. The way she looked at him must have shown how she felt about him. Dr Abdullah had the nerve to look into her eyes, see a damaged, lost woman, and unzip his flies.
Posters. Look at the posters. Stop thinking about him.
Dr Abdullah’s grunts got louder and deeper. If she h
adn’t been so disgusted with him and with herself, Paige would have laughed. She winced when his grip on her waist tightened.
Oh good. It’s nearly over now.
He thrust one final time, hard and deep, and stayed there for a moment, quivering against her. Paige waited, staring lifelessly at the wall, at the posters, until he released her.
They dressed in silence, filled with shame and embarrassment. Once dressed, the doctor sat in his desk chair.
‘The pills,’ she said.
He nodded silently, still out of breath, and retrieved the packets from the top drawer of his desk. She took them from him and turned to head for the door.
‘Wait. I need to speak with you.’
She faced him, and remained standing even when he signalled for her to sit down. He sighed, took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes.
‘That was the last time.’
The words hit her like fists.
‘What?’
‘I can’t risk my whole career for…’ he cleared his throat, considering his words. ‘You. I can’t keep doing this with you.’
She couldn’t say anything. All she could do was stare at him through building tears. I need my pills.
‘My colleagues are beginning to notice the missing stock. A pack here and there was manageable, but now you’re taking so much more and I can’t cover my tracks. If this continues, there will be an investigation into the missing stock. I can’t lose my job, my licence, my family for… you.’
‘You mean sex. You aren’t doing this for me – we’re not lovers – you’re doing it to get your end away. Stop trying to be poetic.’
‘You know what I mean. And you know, deep down, that this is wrong.’
‘I’ll tell them.’
‘Pardon?’
‘I’ll tell them that you were stealing pills to give to me in exchange for sex.’
‘I’m trying to do the right thing, Paige.’
‘I need my damn pills! Don’t do this to me.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Screw your apology. I want my pills!’
‘You won’t be getting any extras from me. You won’t tell, I know you won’t.’
‘And why won’t I? What have I got to lose?’
‘The last bit of self-respect you have left.’
She could feel warm tears on her face, but she was too angry to wipe them away. Her hands balled up into furious fists by her sides.
‘Could you really go out there and tell my colleagues what you’ve been doing? Bending over this desk, getting down on your knees? I don’t think your dignity can take another battering, do you?’
When the desk lamp hit his head the bulb shattered. His glasses fell from his face and blood began to trickle from a cut above his brow. He barely had time to cover his face before she began hitting him with her fists. Every punch symbolised each time he had used her body as a self-gratifying tool, for knowing that she longed for it end as quickly as possible, and doing it anyway. After a few blows, he snatched one wrist, and then the other, and looked at her with utter contempt.
‘Get out of here, you whore!’
She spat in his face and ran out the door as the saliva slithered down his cheek.
Everyone in the waiting room stared at her: the deranged woman stumbling to the door with tears shimmering on her face. She stormed out of the GP surgery and sobbed into her hands.
TWELVE
Paige woke up to the memory of her altercation with the doctor. She couldn’t seem to leave her bed, or even lift the duvet from over her face. Reality was waiting for her, but she longed for it to leave her be.
Her mouth was dry and sticky, and her head was pounding. She couldn’t remember the last time she woke up without a hangover, or woke up in her bed and not the sofa.
She hadn’t washed the bed sheets since Ryan last slept in them. She burrowed her face into the sheets, inhaled him, and longed for him to be back in her life, by her side, so she didn’t have to keep waking up alone.
What sort of forty-two-year-old woman has sex in exchange for drugs, with a man who repulses her?
Contempt washed over her like bleach as she remembered the act. She felt filthy and disgusted with herself. She resented every breath she took.
Her hand crept out from under the duvet and patted the bedside table, feeling for her tablets. Her fingertips felt an empty tray – she had taken them all.
She got up and groaned. Even that made her feel nauseous.
The room reeked of alcohol and cigarette smoke. She coughed hard and heard phlegm loosen in her lungs as she headed for the bathroom to pee. Blood swam in her urine beneath her. She flushed it away.
Why had she agreed to the arrangement with him? Why did she let men treat her like that? Like an object to be used? It was as though the acceptance of abuse was hardwired into her brain. The doctor hadn’t forced her, she had given herself to him – he simply took what was being offered. Instead, she had been the abuser: by giving herself to him, by not respecting her body and her worth, she had violated herself.
She had no idea when the cycle of recklessness began, but she knew that it had to stop. That kind of encounter wasn’t just a violation of her body, but of her mind. It plagued her mind like a poison, as though the physical act were a venomous bite. The bite hurt, but it ended - it was the venom that seeped into her body until it had polluted every single part of her. It changed everything she knew. Being touched by another person’s hand was like being scorched with a branding iron.
As she left the bathroom for the stairs, she stopped in her tracks. Chloe’s bedroom door had been left ajar.
Did I go in there last night?
She couldn’t remember, and couldn’t escape the feeling that something was wrong.
She pushed the door open.
The room didn’t smell like her daughter anymore. It smelt of fresh air, laundry detergent, and furniture polish. The carpet had been vacuumed. Paige stepped inside.
The bed sheets had been stripped and replaced with a clean set. The window was open to let cold air enter the room and Chloe’s scent escape. Every surface had been polished; objects had been tidied away; the photos and posters had been ripped from the walls; everything had changed. It wasn’t Chloe’s room anymore.
Paige knelt down in front of the bed and pressed the duvet to her wet cheeks. She inhaled, but smelt nothing of her, only detergent. It was as though in destroying Chloe’s memory, in ridding her of her final connection to Chloe, her daughter had been killed all over again. She sobbed into the duvet until she heard the front door open.
Greta did this.
She ran out of the room and down the stairs. Greta was talking up to her, until Paige slammed her into the front door.
‘How could you do that!’
‘What did I do?’
‘You destroyed it! You destroyed everything!’
‘You’re mad! You really have gone mad!’
‘Why did you do it? Why did you have to take her away from me?’ Paige’s face was inches from Greta’s, her saliva spraying onto her skin. She pulled Greta from the door and shoved her against it again. ‘I hate you! You’re dead to me!’
She yanked Greta from the door by her blouse and threw the door open.
Greta stood in the living room, sobbing, with a rip in her blouse that revealed her vest and lily-white skin.
‘GET OUT!’
Paige lunged forward, snatched Greta, dragged her to the door and shoved her out of the house. She picked up Greta’s bag from the carpet and threw it out of the door. Her belongings scattered on the ground.
Paige slammed the door shut, fell against it, and sobbed as she slid to the floor. She looked up the stairs from where she sat, staring at the door to Ryan’s office.
If only he hadn’t died. None of this would have happened.
She had lost nearly everyone in her life: her daughter, her husband, her in-laws and her doctor – and with him, her pills. All she had was her lonely life and he
r empty house filled with ghosts of the past.
A thought came to her.
The gun.
She had put it back in Ryan’s desk. She raced up the stairs, bounded into the office and threw open the drawer.
The gun was gone.
THIRTEEN
Paige had only turned her back for a minute and Chloe had vanished. She found her sitting on the floor in the toy section in front of a large purple bear with love hearts for eyes.
‘I’ll buy it for you, darling, but only if you don’t run off again.’
She took Chloe’s hand and led her to the checkout counter. The young retail assistant stifled a yawn and scanned the price tag without even looking at them.
‘Nineteen pounds ninety-nine.’
‘For a bear?’
‘That’s what it says.’
Wise arse.
Paige searched for her purse inside her handbag. When she found it and tried to pull out her debit card, change scattered all over the floor.
‘Chloe, pick them up for me, would you?’
Chloe didn’t move at first, just continued to stare up at Paige, almost as though she was frightened of her.
She doesn’t like it when I drink.
‘Please, Chloe, help Mummy.’
Paige paid for the bear as Chloe slowly picked up the coins. She opened her handbag and told Chloe to put the coins inside. She would sort it all out later when they got home.
With the bear tucked under Chloe’s arm they continued to walk around the store. Paige couldn’t remember why they were there. It hadn’t been for the bear or the shoes.
‘We could get a tie for Daddy,’ Paige said. ‘That might be nice. What colour do you think he would like?’
Chloe didn’t say anything; she was too distracted by her new bear.