And I couldn’t take it. Scary, huh? That thing I want so much from another person, that thing I wanted from you and could never have, that understanding? Because, I guess, so much of what I’ve done has been so shitty that the only way to deal with it is to pretend that it’s how I am. Not a conscious choice made to keep people distant when I judge them unworthy, but something that I can’t help. Something I can blame you for: if you were here I wouldn’t be like that. If you’d … nah. I’ve judged you and judged you so many times in my head. Found you guilty, condemned you, I’ve argued with you and pleaded so hard that I’d cry in the night and … No more. It is what it is, and I am what I am. And what I am is a coward, a sad, vindictive heap of terror. I don’t deserve understanding. So I cut her loose. Killed it. Who needs someone giving it the full MI5 treatment, trying to drag your background out of you when all you want to do is kill the dark, not illuminate it. I don’t want light, not now. Afraid of what I’ll see perhaps, if someone holds the light up to my face; what might be operating now behind these eyes? Nah. Just prefer the shadows, me, where I can watch and wait and listen, pick up the tail-lines of stories until I can follow the scent back to the origin and then blow it all open for anyone to read about. I’ve got a good life here, things running nicely, all under control. I’m cool, it’s all fine. Yeah. It’s all fine.
Chapter Thirteen
And then things got weird.
Well, no, first things got cold.
The wind swung round to the north, and while it had felt like having stitches in your face before, now it felt like it was inflicting the injuries which would need stitches. ‘It’s like being attacked by Edward Scissorhands,’ as Cerys put it, during one of her ten-second outings. She was so huge she couldn’t get behind the wheel of the Jeep any more and had to be driven by Kai with the passenger seat back as far as it would go. She wound the window down and called it ‘getting fresh air’. The news had come through that her flat was taking rather longer to get straight than it should have; apparently her tosser was some kind of second cousin to the many wankers I’d dated, and had trashed the place before eviction took effect. Cerys had spent a morning swearing and then resigned herself to staying with Kai until just before the twins arrived. It was going to be touch-and-go, but she reckoned she’d be back home in time for the labour twinges.
Kai behaved as though he’d never kissed me, as though the whole of that strange time in the Jeep had never happened. He behaved, in fact, as though I were a friend of Cerys’s, and rarely hung around when I went over. If I spoke directly to him he’d answer me politely enough, but I never saw those unusual eyes light up with pleasure or amusement the way they had the night we’d searched for the spell ingredients. He behaved now like a man who’s carrying his entire life in an invisible suitcase strapped to his back, weighed down and weary.
And then it really got cold. A week after my visit to Vivienne’s, it started to snow. Brief flurries at first, then settling, until a couple of inches lay underfoot. It was picturesque, and everyone started predicting a white Christmas, never mind that it was a month away. Then it got grubby, the buses ran late and trains were cancelled and everyone got annoyed.
And then …
Cerys and I were lounging around in the living room at the Old Lodge. Guy had postponed the external shoot he’d been planning until the weather improved, so we’d been cheated of the promised sight of Jude Law prancing about in the warlock’s shrubbery, and Cerys was feeling peevish.
‘Ow. The doctor says they’re lying back to back in there.’ She prodded her bump. ‘I bet the boy is hogging all the covers.’
‘Not long to go now though.’ I kicked the footstool over so she could put her feet up. ‘Stay in touch, won’t you? Facebook me or something. I really want to see pictures of the twins when they arrive.’
‘You’ll be the first. Well, after old sulkyboots.’ She nodded at the ceiling; Kai was upstairs in his bedroom. We heard his footsteps pacing up and down every so often.
‘What’s he doing up there?’
‘Working, I guess.’
There was a particularly loud set of footsteps which ended with a bang, as though Kai had kicked something over. ‘Do you think I should go up? Check he’s okay?’
Cerys raised her eyebrows at me. ‘Oho, my dear. Are you sure you don’t have a case of the hots for the lanky one?’
I sat back down. ‘Don’t be silly.’
There was another crash from overhead and Cerys leaped up. ‘Ow, he’s making the twins jump. And that feels uncomfortably like being possessed, so please would you have a word, Holl? I’d go but by the time I get up those stairs these two will be teenagers. Ask him to keep the sulking down, or whatever it is he’s doing.’ She turned on the TV. ‘And this is on to cover the sound of anything you feel like getting up to, but I warn you, if you come through that ceiling I won’t be responsible for my actions.’
‘Cerys?’
‘Yes?’
‘Shut up.’
I walked quietly up the stairs and to the door of Kai’s room, tapped and waited. The striding footsteps stopped, there was a pause as though he was trying to decide whether or not to answer, then the door flew open and he stood in the doorway, staring down at me.
‘What?’ He sounded annoyed. No, more than that, wound up. Tight.
I said the first thing that came into my head. ‘God, you’re tall.’
‘No, you’re short. Now, if that’s all,’ and he went to close the door again.
‘Is something wrong?’ The winter afternoon light barely penetrated this far into the House of Goth, but reflected from the snow it managed to edge its way up the landing as far as his eyes, which gleamed amber. His face was pale and pulled thin over his cheekbones, he smelled of sweat and damp laundry and his hair looked unbrushed. ‘We could hear you stomping about.’
Another long pause. He was staring out onto the landing but he didn’t seem to be looking at me. It was as though another person stood between us, like a ghost he didn’t want to acknowledge. Then he closed his eyes and stepped back inside the room. I took this as invitation and followed.
‘Close the door.’
I did so, then my heart sped up. What was he about to do that he didn’t want Cerys to hear? He had his back to me, staring out of the long window, over the balcony ledge and into the forest beyond. His fingers tapped against the glass.
‘Kai?’ Using his name felt strange. Almost as though I shouldn’t, there was some taboo on calling him anything. ‘Would you like me to make you a drink? Cerys has got the kettle on almost permanently down there.’
He didn’t turn round. By the snowlight his skin looked almost blueish pale. ‘I need … something. Something else. Something even I don’t recognise.’
‘Are you all right?’ His voice was wrong, strained, and his shoulders dipped and curved inwards as though to hold something invisible closer to him. ‘Kai? Is there anything wrong?’
His nails tapped the glass again. The tiny noise rang into the quiet like a solid thought. ‘I had a letter,’ he said finally. ‘This morning. I don’t know what to do.’
Then he did turn round, his body a streak of darkness against the window. My heart gave an uncomfortable squirm inside my ribs at his shadowed expression. ‘What kind of letter?’ I asked. ‘Oh, the kind that’s written on paper, I suppose, sorry. Just, you know, thinking with my mouth open again.’
‘It was …’ Kai moved away from the window and folded down onto the edge of the unmade bed, sitting with his arms on his knees, head in hands. ‘It was someone looking for me.’ A bitter kind of smile. ‘I don’t know. What’s got into me? Why do I have the urge to tell you anything at all about my life?’
I shrugged. ‘Because I’m here?’ There was that smell of dampness again, as though he’d put on wet clothes, a sour, uncaring sort of smell, and not only was his hair unkempt but he didn’t look as though he’d showered today either. It was so far from his normal, careful, image that I felt
my heart writhe. Something was very wrong with this man, something soul-deep. ‘And you don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to. But, you know, growing up with Nick … I’m a good listener, Kai, and I’m used to hearing terrible, scary stuff. And I know that letting it out of your head can help.’ I gave a quick smile, remembering. ‘Thoughts lose some of the power to hurt if you share them.’
‘Was it hard? Having a brother like him?’ Kai was looking at the floor, twisting the thumb ring around and around, screwing it up and down over his knuckle. The question sounded unconsidered, as though the answer didn’t matter as much as simply keeping me talking.
‘I love Nick. However he is, however hard it might be, he’s my brother. And I’ve never really known him any other way.’ I took another step closer to the bed, noticing the way the pillows were bunched and distorted and the covers twisted; last night had obviously been a very restless one. ‘And I’ve also learned to keep things to myself, if that’s what’s worrying you. Our parents are very … They don’t … they don’t really understand. They think that Nicholas … that he’s only got to take his medicine and not let things get on top of him and he’ll be fine, so he can’t tell them some of the things that he … So, if you need to talk to someone, I know about keeping things to myself, Kai.’
A short laugh. ‘Thing is, you see, I don’t think I know how to talk to someone. I … I don’t share, Holly. I don’t let people in. Since Merion and I split it’s just been me, no one else to worry about and I like it like that. Oh, there’ve been women, but my relationships have all been short and intense. But mainly short. And now – now something has hit that’s so bad, so hard and I could do with someone, and there’s no one, you know? Shit.’ He lowered his head and cupped his hands around the back of his neck. I could see the quick rise and fall of his chest under his shirt as though he was struggling for control of himself, but his voice was steady when he carried on speaking. ‘What have I been doing so wrong all these years?’
I came further into the room now, and perched my bottom along the edge of the stumpy dressing table. A sudden, short pain dug under my ribs as I remembered some of the rambling, confused conversations with Nicky, some of the thoughts and doubts that he’d shared with me, that I couldn’t share with anyone. A pain and responsibility that I had to carry. Had to. Because he was my brother. I knew how it felt to need to talk … ‘I don’t know, Kai. I don’t think there’s anything so wrong in not wanting attachments. Keep your life clear and uncluttered and take your fun where you find it, that’s my motto.’
‘But what about when you wake up one day and it’s not fun any more? What then? What about when you think “shit, I need to talk about this” and there’s no one there to listen?’
‘I’m listening.’
He rubbed both hands over his face, tiredly. ‘I know. And maybe it’s that, maybe because you had Nick and I had no one that makes us the same, gives you some kind of … I am going to regret this, I know, but I’m so … it’s all got confusing and I can’t make sense of what I think, what I feel.’ He glanced up and I noticed for the first time how shaded and tired his eyes looked, how pulled-down his whole face seemed, as though fifty thoughts fought for his attention at the same time.
I stopped perching on the edge of the table and sat back properly. ‘I’m here,’ I said quietly. ‘If you need an ear, I’m here, Kai.’
‘Yeah.’ An outbreath, long and hard and carrying a decision. ‘This goes no further, right? And definitely not to Cerys. Well, definitely not to anyone but especially not her. No, no one is best, let’s say no one.’
‘All right,’ I said, trying not to sound impatient.
‘Okay.’ And Kai stood up. ‘What? I’m only six foot four, it’s not like I’m a freak or something.’
‘Sorry. It’s … you look different today. More …’ I’d been going to say ‘attractive’ but I didn’t want him to start thinking I really went for the unwashed, unbrushed, unshaven thing. It was rather that he seemed more approachable, more real somehow. ‘… tall,’ I finished feebly.
‘Here. Read this.’ He fetched a letter from the dressing table and thrust it into my hands. Then, as if he were afraid to look at my face while I read, he took himself back to the window and stared out again.
The letter was from a private investigation agency. It asked Kai to confirm to their address that he had been born ‘on or around 15 September 1976’ and handed in to a hospital in Caernarfon.
‘Handed in? What, like a parcel?’
‘I was found in a bus shelter, I was about four hours old and wrapped in a copy of the Daily Mail.’ He tapped the window glass with his fingertips again. ‘You don’t grow up with a warm feeling of being loved with that sort of background.’
I was about to say ‘I can imagine’, but then realised that I truly couldn’t. ‘And you think this letter …?’
‘I suspect it’s my mother, trying to find me.’ He turned around again and started up the pacing. ‘I was adopted, lovely couple, farmers on the coast. Couldn’t have kids of their own so they gave me everything, all the love they’d had bundled up all those years … and then, when I was ten, they died. And then the fun started.’
‘Fun?’ I watched him rub his face again. There was so much not being said, it almost outweighed the words.
‘I was fostered. And with these—’ he waved a hand to indicate his eyes, ‘a lot of people thought I was the son of the Devil. Oh, don’t laugh …’
‘For fuck’s sake, Kai, laughing is the last thing on my mind.’
‘No. I suppose not. It sounds so … so parochial, so stupid and rural. But at that time, up North, it was all very Chapel, very religious. They really believed in the Bible and all God’s works and so the Devil was the downside. I had a lot of foster carers try to beat Satan out of me. Oh, not all of them, some of them were fine, but it was hard, you know? I’d lost the only parents I knew and …’
I nodded so as not to break his flow.
‘So. Merion and I ended up in the same foster home. Both fifteen, both desperate for something to hold on to. For a while we held on to each other, then to Cerys, but it wasn’t enough, not for either of us. She’s okay now, she’s got Mike, she managed it, the transition to a proper life, trust, hope. Me, I still can’t do it. You were right, you know?’
I had to clear my throat. ‘About?’
‘All that stuff you said about me deciding to be a journalist. Went to University when Merion and I split up, got my degree in journalism, ran off to be a hotshot story-digger. Exposing the bad stuff, the warped people, the twisted logic. Oh, I’ve done my share of the celebrity stuff but what I’m best at? It’s showing the world up as pure hypocrisy.’ He scribbled a finger against the bedside table as though composing another exposé in the dust. ‘For every selfless act there’s a dozen evil ones, for every dolphin saved there’s ten kids shot on the streets. You see enough of that, Holly, you realise that there’s no place for love and romance and all that crap, you learn to be hard, to take what you can and not to expect any kind of a future.’
‘But what you do, it helps to make the world a better place. You don’t just see it, you make others see it too. And you’re very good at it.’
An eyebrow raised. ‘I see. You followed my work to expose the child slave trade in Chad, did you? Or was it my undercover work that led to the jailing of a Serbian drug overlord and the freeing of the underage girls he’d been prostituting?’
‘I googled you.’
‘Right, yeah. I can see how that would be easier.’
‘Sorry. But life ran the way you wanted it though. You were …’ I cleared my throat. I was trying to track his emotions, to understand how he felt, and I was becoming aware that, somewhere in the middle of me, was a big black hole into which the understanding fell. ‘You’re happy, aren’t you? And now you’re freaking because the woman who dumped you in a bus shelter might want to get in touch? Isn’t that overreacting a bit? You can always say no.’
/>
‘For thirty-six years I’ve wondered, Holly. What did I do that was so bad she had to abandon me like that? Am I the son of the Devil?’ He stopped, and his pacing had brought him right in front of me. ‘Who am I? And what made me so unloveable that she wrapped me in a fucking newspaper?’ A deep breath. ‘Yes, you were right, talking helped. Now bugger off.’
I stared at him. ‘Are you really a complete bastard, or do you just get off on imitating one?’ Then I cringed inside. The guy has laid himself bare, now he feels shitty. Taking it out on you is the only thing he can do. ‘Sorry.’
‘No, you’re right.’ A shaky hand raked through his hair. ‘Now you can see why all my relationships have been so short. I’m a bastard.’
‘But it was deliberate, wasn’t it?’ There was that hole again, less black now, more of a mirrored surface. This man was so like me that it hurt. Keep them distant, keep them from loving you. Protect yourself.
A shrug. ‘I’m a high-functioning disconnected personality. Work alone, live alone, and when people get too close …’ he dropped his eyes and considered the carpet as though it held the answer to universal mysteries, ‘behave so badly that they get the message.’
‘But why didn’t you tell anyone? If you’d explained, or even mentioned your past, women would have cut you some slack.’
‘Right. So, they’d have caught me in bed with their best friend and thought “oh, he was an abused child, it’s nothing personal”, would they?’
I stared at him. ‘You did that? With someone’s best friend?’
‘Yeah. Quite a few times.’
‘With the same best friend? Or different ones?’
He tipped his head on one side. ‘Oh, there were lots. And other stuff too. I … I hurt people, Holly. And I have enough self-awareness to know why I’m doing it, but I still do it, still drag them in and then …’ He stopped. Slapped the bedside table so that dust jumped and a water glass hit the edge of a lamp with a high-pitched clink.
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