I had exiled my Nick memories to dreamtime and now they were haunting me. Love I realised, that sweet madness, had become bitter fear, regret even.
Cap pulled down low and glowing like a light bulb I purchased a pregnancy test. Rushing home I locked myself in the toilet, and counted down the endless minutes. I prayed. Please let there be only one line. Over and over. Two undebatable lines appeared.
I’d never felt so alone, so afraid and uncertain. Ashamed.
‘You’re looking tired Deb,’ Mum said the next morning. Her hair was still wrapped in a towel, her glasses propped on the end of her nose as she ate breakfast and read the paper which was folded in half on the corner of the counter. ‘You’re studying too hard, staying up too late.’
I shrugged and fiddled listlessly with my food. ‘You okay, Deb?’
‘I don’t know, Mum.’ Her eyes held sudden fear.
‘It’s Nick, isn’t it?’ she guessed. Her lips pressed together in a firm line as I nodded.
‘Men,’ she despaired, shaking her head and taking my hand.
‘I’m pregnant, Mum,’ I spluttered. My words hit her like a slap. She dropped my hand and clasped hers to her mouth. In that instant she aged ten years and I felt horrible.
‘Oh Deb … How far along?’ she managed. Her hands now covered most of her face; her eyes were terrified as they peeped over the top of her fingers. I knew what she was thinking. Laugh Deb. Please laugh so that I can breathe. Let this be a cruel trick, a joke, a sick joke, a lie. I don’t care. Anything but the truth.
But all I could do was stare back at her. Finally her shoulders slumped and she exhaled. The image she had of my future was lost. ‘Seven weeks,’ I mumbled.
We remained at the table for a long while. The breeze made the drapes billow carelessly. The Lorikeets bickered and squawked outside. The odd fig fell to the ground with a thump.
‘You’ll be late, Mum,’ I said eventually, ‘you’re not even ready yet.’ Usually she took at least twenty minutes to blow dry and style her light brown hair before setting off to work. She didn’t leave until it was perfectly flicked, until she’d applied make-up and perfume. She was an attractive woman but right now she looked old and tired. I’d brought back every ordeal she’d ever experienced, sucking the life from her.
‘I don’t care Deb. I work long enough hours that on the odd occasion I can take a little time if I need it.’
Standing up she took her bowl to the sink and let it clatter to the bottom. ‘It’s totally up to you whether or not you tell Nick. After everything that’s happened you don’t owe him anything.’
‘Maybe,’ I agreed.
She turned back to me. ‘Do you know what you want to do, Deb?’
The enormity of making such a decision was terrifying. ‘I only know that I can’t raise it, Mum.’ I felt too young and too impulsive for motherhood, and I had scant means of support. Maybe I was just plain selfish, not ready to make sacrifices.
‘If you want to I’ll help you, we’ll survive.’ Her kindness made me tearful and I blinked hard and sniffed.
‘No, no I can’t Mum.’ The idea alarmed me. I wasn’t ready to face the harsh reality of life with a baby at eighteen.
I looked up at her, at the strain on her face. ‘Others have managed,’ she said.
I writhed on my seat. I would not remain intact under those circumstances. My world would become a horrible place, and I horrible in it. My child would suffer.
‘I can’t Mum.’ I shook my head with grim determination. I felt like a failure. She came to me and wrapped me in her arms tightly, creating a twilight world where I was her little girl again, and everything was alright.
After a long while she released me and clasped my shoulders instead, looking into my eyes earnestly. ‘You do what you think is right. I’ll support you.’
‘I don’t deserve you Mum,’ I cried, sobbing with relief and gratitude.
She smoothed the hair on my forehead away from my face. Tendrils stuck to the tears on my cheeks. ‘We don’t measure these things Deb. Look at the things you and George have had to go through, the pain your father and I have caused you! It’s nothing to do with deserving or not deserving, it’s purely about loving. And the love I feel for my children transcends everything, it always will … no matter what.’
The next morning I wandered down to the beach early. I sat on a large flat rock, far from prying eyes. Only the aimless gulls witnessed my emotional contemplation, my confused pondering. After everything we had been through. How would I tell Nick?
The water was filing cabinet-grey. Soon it would become blinding, like sheets of steel burning up in the sun. Usually this was my favourite time; the breeze was still cool, the sun warm, but not yet fierce, the sand almost bare. Later it would be cluttered with noise and movement, with so much distraction.
Nick had a right to know, we were both equally responsible, but I didn’t want him to feel trapped … or worse, to try and force me to do something I’d regret. The thought of how his family might react and what they were capable of made me shiver, even in the warm sunshine. They would frame me, the girl who had ensnared him, the one who had plotted to trap him.
As I reached for my bag, I recognised him. Fate had called him here. He rounded a bend on the beach and my heart immediately leapt into my throat, crashing and burning when I noticed that he was not alone. It was only a fortnight since I’d last seen him, but he looked very different, reanimated. Beside him, standing almost as tall as him was a slender girl with long blonde hair. They walked together in the shallow water, her hand held loosely in his.
I clamped my eyes shut. Nausea clutched at my gut. When I opened them the image was just as cruel as before, worse as they merged in a kiss. Self-pity threatened to spill onto my cheeks. I swallowed so hard it hurt, cursing myself for my stupidity, the self-inflicted vulnerability of my situation.
Quickly, I hastened to escape the beach as fast as possible, to bury myself in some murky oblivion, to wallow in misery. My movement drew his attention and he turned to stare in my direction. I ran.
Later I lay on my bed, Bon Jovi’s You Give Love a Bad Name playing too softly in the background, torturing myself. He was obviously recovered from whatever mental problem had plagued him. So rapidly too. He seemed restored. Physically at least. I felt like punching my belly, but something stopped me. Instead my hands lost velocity and fell limply onto my stomach. For a minute I continued to wish that I could gouge the thing out from inside me and destroy it, knowing that I could if I had an abortion, knowing that I would hate myself for it, forever. Morbid thoughts polluted my mind, sickening me with ideas I would never act on. Only the throb of his motorbike nearing distracted me from that dark place. Why now? Why had he come now? Guilt because I’d seen him on the beach?
I peeked over the window ledge, my heart racing, but not in the way it had all of those months ago. I did not want to see him. I did not want to speak to him. For a long while he remained where he was. Finally he dismounted and walked slowly up the path and out of my sight. I pulled the sheers quietly across the window with trembling fingers and collapsed face down on my bed.
Mum was prepared.
‘Nick, hello,’ she said, a brilliant actor after years of experience, hiding the hurt that she felt on my behalf so well.
‘Is Deb around Mrs Brayshaw?’ he asked directly as, unable to contain my curiosity, I crept stealthily into the passage to listen. I was confident that my mother would not betray me.
Her voice was firm, but not unkind. ‘I’m sorry Nick, but she’s not.’
I sensed his hesitation. Did he want to know where I was? ‘Will you tell her that I stopped by, that I wanted to say hi?’
‘Sure,’ she answered. I heard her start to shut the door. ‘You take care now.’ He paused on the doorstep and I had a sense that he knew that I was in the house. Eventually his footsteps retreated.
I did not run to the door and wrench it open. I did not yell for him to come back. Instead
I slumped down on the passage floor and began to cry, my knees up, my forehead on my arm. Great shaking sobs heaved through my body.
‘You’ll be okay baby girl,’ Mum soothed, rushing over and dropping to comfort me. ‘Just let it all out. I won’t leave you.’
And that was the one certainty I had. Something I could trust. She would not leave me and she never lectured me. What was done was done. My shame and sadness were burden enough.
37
KATE
Time passed and summer proper arrived, driving the experience of that October night away, with barbeques and night-time sunshine, with the increased pressure of final term. The night terrors had returned, despite my efforts at sleep hygiene, slowly worsening in a frustrating cycle which made it hard to pin-point reasons for the escalation. I couldn’t be definite, couldn’t say that as of today they were bad, that yesterday they were better. It was like a slow trend, waxing and waning. Some nights were peaceful, others were not, and slowly there were more that were not.
James and Ethan continued as a constant blur on the fringe of my life. Sometimes I almost forgot that they were probably lurking in the shadows. At other times I felt resentful, although I remained inexplicably tolerant, maybe out of respect for Nick, or maybe because I had never really learnt to be assertive, I was too fearful of the consequences. Maybe I enjoyed the ridiculousness of the situation, or the twisted flattery it implied.
To some extent I feared them. What did I really know about them? Trust was the biggest thing. I did not fully trust them.
Sometimes we met up, not that I even had a phone number for them, or had asked for one. I wasn’t confident that I wouldn’t succumb to further difficulties as a result of having it, that in a weak, or lonely moment I wouldn’t make a complete fool of myself. I’d done it before. Best forgotten, but never forgotten, thank you Sam. I flushed just thinking of it. ‘Scary stalker girl’, Sam whispered. It had been one pathetic moment, and it had involved a teacher. Luckily he did not have a Lolita-type inclination, but I could never live my foolishness down, in my own mind anyway. Understandably, not wanting to spend his best years incarcerated, he had avoided me. So much oestrogen, so little testosterone. A girl’s boarding school was a pretty unnatural place!
Instinctively I knew that if I ever needed James or Ethan they would not be hard to find, they’d rescued me twice already. They appeared at my side while I was walking to a lecture, or down to the practice block, like they could walk through walls, or sprout from trees. On other occasions they waited for me in the dimness alongside my car after work, suddenly apparent as I neared.
‘Have you heard from Nick?’ I asked them one night.
‘He’s okay, Kate, just incognito,’ James replied, trying unsuccessfully to reassure me as he hefted my leaden music bag into my boot.
‘Why?’
They looked at each other and I began to feel irritated.
‘Don’t do that,’ I insisted, ‘it’s rude.’
James shrugged. ‘Sometimes he has to get away.’ He leaned against the side of my car. This was about as close as I got to ever imagining him in my car. The door opened with a squeal like a pig on slaughter day and I got in.
Raising my eyes I sighed, disappointed. It wasn’t something I understood, but Nick seemed completely incapable of staying in one place for long. ‘What’s he running from?’
‘I think you know the answer to that.’ James pushed himself off the car and slammed my door shut. I wound the window down.
‘Me?’ I guessed.
He regarded me evenly.
‘I want to talk to him.’
He dropped to his haunches. I thought of a panther. His spellbinding gaze locked with mine. A thousand butterflies took flight in my stomach and then into my throat, filling the car as I exhaled.
‘I know you do.’ And then he and his brother were gone, leaving me to my contemplation.
I wondered about James, about where he’d come from, what he wondered about, whether he thought me pretty or frivolous, what he thought when he saw me having dinner with friends or drinks at the bar. But in quiet twilight-moments of half-sleep, the nature of my preoccupation changed and I became consumed by frightening ideas. Sick, twisted scenarios seemed to rise like living dreams, unbidden, from the depths of my troubled mind. They did not involve James and hot wax. Instead I saw him murdering me. Bent over my body, his muscles tight and sinewy, the veins across his forehead raised in pressured pulsation, as he pulled the cord around my throat taut. I choked as Ethan looked on, unflinching, knives in his icy, violet eyes. The sick, nauseous hurt of unremitting betrayal was like a never-ending kick in the guts.
Just when it was so important to do so, it was becoming harder and harder to concentrate on my studies. My performances were increasingly unpredictable.
‘Is she using drugs?’ I heard whispered amongst the faculty as they checked off some of the usual suspects. Weight-loss, yes; edgy and unsettled, yes; erratic, God yes; emotional, yes; tired, yes; crazy unfathomable energy when not tired, yes.
But I confused them. Sometimes I delivered inspired performances and moving interpretations, easily eclipsing my peers, leaving them baffled and excited.
‘Well if she’s on anything it can’t be that bad.’ Heads together, brows furrowed, marvelling at the marvellous, however short-lived.
Then a miserable failure, ‘Oh, yes it can.’ Hands covering mouths, flabbergasted at the new lows I’d discovered. What the hell is she doing here? ‘You definitely suck.’ Sam summarised.
I shared my predicament with no-one, making my friends curious about my mental health, my constant state of distraction. My parents were never a consideration. They would be heavy-handed, stepping in and forcing me home, possibly alerting the police to James and Ethan’s over-involvement in my life.
I thought about Deb, remembering the anxiety I’d heard in her voice when she cautioned me about making contact with Nick. ‘The last time I spoke to him he wasn’t himself. He wasn’t well, some sort of breakdown after Daniel. I know he got better after that. I saw him from a distance and he looked okay, and Mum said he was. But that last time I spoke to him. Well, that’s my clearest memory. It kind of haunts me. He was a stranger. I didn’t know him. Be careful, Kate.’ Her words bothered me, but she lived a simple life now, content with her isolation, her family around her. I would not bring this to her door, again.
Days lengthened and we ate late, sometimes on the veranda at the back of the house. Usually, when I wasn’t working, Francois, Pierre and I ate together. Since I’d stopped hanging out with Mads after work I barely saw her for more than an instant, usually in a swirl of perfume and big hair dressed in something from Trash Monkey, maybe grabbing a chip off my plate, or a slug of my tea. Sometimes she’d appear wrapped in a towel and ask whether I had a top she could borrow, her mouth turning down in distaste at the neat row of Target specials.
‘Jeez Kate, I’ve got to take you shopping some time.’ But she’d be back the next week asking the same thing, her laundry an untidy mess behind her door.
‘Your clothes look beautiful on you, Kate,’ Francois said kindly, as Mads swished out the door. He shopped at Politix.
Mercifully nights were short and when everyone else had headed to bed I retreated to my room to study until I could procrastinate no longer. When rest became a necessity and not an option, I’d sink into a dark slumber.
And so it was on this night, like so many others, that I met with the void which was the door to my unconscious. Anticipation entered my dream, quickly followed by a sense of menace, of suffocation, and of death, long and agonising. And then, unexpected brightness. A harsh glare. Light from the inside of a cold hard barrel pressed against my eye. Click. Annihilation. No. Not yet.
I leapt out of my bed and ran to the window in a desperate bid to escape, ripping the curtains from the rail as my brain responded in its pre-programmed, primitive way. My survival instinct drowned out all other voices. Fear was my narrow lens.
Rustling. In a split second I had turned to attack, to fight for my survival, every inch of my body alert, tense. My hands were raised, my fingers claw-like as I moved to throw myself in the direction of the sound. Kill or be killed.
Gentle words. I froze.
‘Shhhh, it’s me,’ and again, ‘Shhhh, it’s okay Katie.’ Soft, soothing sounds. A voice. A male voice. The agony of confusion tumbling through my mind.
Then another voice, whispered in my thoughts. ‘Don’t listen to their lies.’
Indecision. ‘Where am I?’ I must have spoken because the voice in the corner answered.
‘You’re in your room. You’re safe.’ So slow, so measured, so deep and calm, so soothing, familiar.
No. No. It’s not possible. Yes. Maybe … maybe it will be okay. A jumble of thoughts, but the whispering had stopped.
And so I started coming to, the usual confusion melting into a slow wave of mental acceptance, my body following with a shock response. I had been dreaming, again. It was only a dream. I shut my eyes and opened them. The room blinked and settled back into the present.
A human form stood in the corner of my room, cloaked in shadows. I screamed.
‘Shhhh, it’s me. It’s okay.’ That familiar voice again, words repeated as he rushed across the room.
‘James?’ I asked in confusion. His eyes luminesced in the dark.
‘Yes.’
‘What are you doing here?’
My teeth chattered. I had started the inevitable trembling, hands first, body following. My heart hammered so hard it hurt and I struggled to catch my breath. I worked to control my breathing – deep and slow, deep and slow. The gears in my mind changed down. Fight-flight to vigilance to protective mode to dazed.
‘You aren’t meant to be here,’ I mumbled, as he reached out to comfort me.
‘I’m trying to keep you safe,’ he said. Nothing made any sense. ‘Come back to bed.’ A muddle clouded my mind as he took my hand. James was here. On his own.
‘How’d you get in?’ I asked, as he lay down beside me and took me in his arms. A warm circle of security embraced me.
Awakening: Book 1 The Last Anakim Trilogy Page 27