The sun had dropped behind the woods at Norton now and the whole of the yard was in shadow. I went back into the kitchen and looked out of the window there. The breeze had died away and now the ivy on the back wall was motionless. Somewhere in it, audible even through the glass, a single bird was singing, calling out to announce the end of the twilight.
I could feel Richard moving towards me. It was as if he was altering the charge of the air, making it vibrate. I stayed downstairs, afraid to go up now and lose my view of the doors. I hovered between the sitting room and the kitchen, making myself look out into the yard and on to the path for movement, any sign of change.
He knew about me and Pete; that was beyond doubt. Could he know I was here on my own? Pete had walked down to the ferry this morning; what if Richard had been there, somewhere on the harbour? He had been in London last night with Helen; could he have been here by then? Yes – she’d thrown him out. He could easily have driven down and caught one of the first ferries. He could have arrived on the one which had returned with Pete on it. Or perhaps he hadn’t seen Pete at all. Perhaps he’d just seen me at the café and followed me. The hairs rose on my arms.
Unable to sit, I paced the two small rooms and smoked the last cigarettes. I thought about turning on the television for voices, the illusion of company, but then I would be less able to hear anything else.
As the last of the light went, I realised how vulnerable I was. So what if the doors were locked; Richard wouldn’t hesitate to force them. I wanted to put on every light in the house, drive the darkness back, but by doing that, I would shut off my view of the yard and the path outside, turning the windows into mirrors which would reflect my own image but hide him outside, let him gaze in at me like a specimen in a tank. But I couldn’t bear to leave the lights off, either, and sit in the house in the dark.
All of a sudden, I saw what I was: bait, trapped in the house like a rabbit chained down for a bird of prey. Would my neighbours come if they heard shouting or breaking glass? Maybe not: I’d hardly spoken to them. In my first weeks here I had been afraid to, worried that they would have heard the sound of my crying through the walls at night. And after that had passed, they had nodded, said hello, but they had taken my early distance as a sign that I wanted to keep myself to myself, the girl from London with problems.
I had to leave the house. I couldn’t stay here on my own; I would go mad. The pubs were open; I could at least go and sit with other people for the next three hours. I would get there in the last of the light if I went now. I grabbed my bag.
Outside, the silence had fallen. The birds were roosting for the night and there was no traffic coming down Bridge Road. I locked the door and ran, my feet blurring beneath me, trying not to look in the dark corners behind the outhouses and washing lines. The gate clanged shut. I scanned the street, making myself look where the light from the streetlamps struggled to reach: nothing. I ran to the top of the road and then across the Square, past the corner shop and the chandlery to the Bugle.
I stood behind the wooden partition that shielded the body of the pub from the doorway until my breathing slowed. The skin on my shoulders was prickling as if all the time I’d been running, there had been a hawk hovering silently overhead, having me in its sights but choosing to wait, biding its time.
When I could breathe normally again, I followed the sound of voices round to the bar at the back. It was bright and there were people, twelve or fifteen, sitting at tables and on stools at the bar. I was safe for now; nothing could happen to me here in plain sight. I ordered a glass of wine and sat down where I was visible, trying not to let my head jerk up every time someone came in from the street. My phone was on the table and the lights from the bar shone on it so that I kept thinking that the screen was illuminated but no one rang. I tried Pete again but got the answering service.
Helen – Richard had beaten her at last. He’d won; he’d proved that her loyalty to me wasn’t unbreakable. It was so cruel: he had known that for her, loyalty was the most important thing. People were just puzzles to him, to be analysed and solved – unravelled. Helen’s loyalty, my determination not to repeat what my mother had done; he’d found our principles and made us break them. He couldn’t bear that anything could withstand him. Anything that resisted him, he crushed.
I looked around me at the other people in the room: the woman behind the bar chatting to one of the regulars, a man with a pint of bitter and the paper folded to the racing, the couple in their early twenties holding hands across the table. We were separated by an unbridgeable ravine: on their side was normality, an evening at the pub, and on mine was horror.
I had been in the Bugle nearly an hour when I had the idea of booking into the hotel. It would be safer than going back to the cottage: there would be other people, and someone on the desk all night. I could text Pete and tell him to come and find me there. Then, though, I had the idea that I would have had hours earlier if I’d been thinking clearly: I should go to the mainland. It was the mainland that was safest now, not the Island. I looked at my watch: quarter to nine. If I ran, there would be enough time to get the car and catch the nine o’clock ferry.
I gulped down the last of the wine and made a dash for it. The barmaid called goodnight but I was at the partition before I realised she was talking to me. All I could think about was making sure I was on the boat. Run. I tucked my bag under my arm and plunged out into the darkness.
He was waiting for me on the pavement.
Chapter Thirty-seven
‘Hello, Katie.’ His voice.
Nothing could have prepared me for the terror. The shops on the Square, the sky, the concrete underneath me – it all pulled away. Only he remained definite, inches away. Run, urged a voice inside, but I was frozen. My guts had liquefied.
He was staring into my eyes as if he could read my mind behind them. The weird flatness of his gaze, the force of it like a current, creating a circuit I couldn’t break. He was completely calm, certain of his control. Though he was standing in front of me now, he’d been sitting on the pub wall before. He had stood up as I’d come bursting through the door as casually as if he’d been meeting a friend by arrangement. Behind him, the Square was empty. There was not a single person there to call out to.
‘It’s been too long.’ His face had its old expression now, the lift in the eyebrow which dared me to challenge him while the smile said he had all the winning cards. His eyes were shining.
At last I got my voice back. ‘I won’t let you ruin my life.’
‘I’m not going to ruin it. I’m part of it now – that’s how it is.’
‘What the hell is wrong with you?’
He laughed. ‘My fierce creature.’
I couldn’t run past him. He was too close, marking me as if we were playing a game, arms slightly away from his sides to catch me if I tried to make a break. Somewhere behind me, just audible over the terrified rushing of blood through my ears, there were distant voices, music. The pub. I whipped round and tried to go backwards but he anticipated me and grabbed my arm. I felt the pressure of his fingers even through my jacket, the sites of the bruises that would come.
I yanked my arm back but he was too strong. I opened my mouth to scream but his hand covered it instantly. Checking quickly that we were still unobserved, he pulled me tight against him as if he were about to kiss me. I felt my eyes widen with horror.
‘Don’t try running away and don’t try screaming,’ he murmured. ‘I want to talk to you and that’s the least you owe me.’ There was no challenge in his face now, no humour, however ironic. He dropped his hand from round my mouth and reached into his pocket. The fingers of his other hand gripped my arm harder still and I couldn’t help crying out just a little. ‘I said, shut up.’
He brought his hand up again and at first I thought he was going to stroke my face like he used to. Then I felt something cold against my cheek. Metal. Grainy – like the grip on a craft knife but heavier. A gun – he had a gun.
> ‘Let’s go back to yours,’ he said.
He walked side by side with me back across the Square, propelling me along but also managing to conceal from anyone who might look out of a window the fact that he was gripping me. ‘No screaming, Katie,’ he said, as a car pulled up and parked outside the corner shop. ‘It’s very easy to make mistakes.’ I watched the driver get out. He was moving slowly, had hardly eased himself from his seat in the time it took us to go fifteen yards. An old man; even if I managed to break free, he couldn’t help.
In my handbag my phone started ringing. ‘Don’t even think about it.’ He pulled the bag round and reached into it. Then he cut the call off and tossed the phone over the wall into the churchyard. I heard it shatter as it hit stone.
At the door of the cottage he demanded the key. He pushed me in in front of him, making sure his body blocked the way behind me, and closed the door quietly. When he’d locked it, he slid the key into the pocket of his jeans.
‘Shall we have a glass of wine?’ he said. ‘Like old times?’
I stared at him. What could I do? I didn’t dare make a run for it now. Both the doors were locked: there was no way I could get enough of a head start. He would be on me within seconds.
‘You sit at the table where I can see you.’ Without turning his back, he picked up one of the bottles Pete had brought to dinner. I’d been saving it, something of his when I thought it was all I would have. Perhaps it would be now. ‘This is decent stuff for a change, sweetheart,’ he said, holding it up to the light. ‘Have you come into money I don’t know about?’ He pulled open the cutlery drawer and got out the corkscrew, then took glasses from the top cupboard.
‘You know where everything’s kept.’
He inclined his head gently to one side. ‘Your windows are less secure than your doors. Anyway, let’s go through. I don’t like this poky little kitchen.’
He steered me into the sitting room and on to the sofa. I willed him to take the armchair but he sat down next to me as comfortably as if we were a couple having a night in. He arranged himself sideways, his arm extending along the back of the sofa towards me, and I shrank away.
‘Old friends,’ he said, leaning across and chiming his glass against mine.
‘How long have you known I was here?’
‘Long enough.’
‘How? Helen said she didn’t tell you.’
‘Oh, you don’t doubt her now, do you? Why would you do that?’ He smiled. ‘No, she didn’t tell me – don’t worry. But she works so hard, doesn’t she? Always on that laptop when I went round and very trusting about leaving it open.’ He took a sip of wine.
I looked away. The blanket I’d arranged for Victor was still folded into the seat of the armchair. In the window opposite, I could see our reflections. I’d forgotten how powerful he was. He wasn’t as tall as Pete or as broad but the gym work kept him bulky and strong. His image almost filled the glass, leaving little room for mine.
The window.
I made myself look back at him, praying he wouldn’t see in my face the idea that had come to me, the sudden flare of hope. Both the doors were locked and the key to the one at the front was in his pocket. I wouldn’t be able to break through either: the glass panel in the kitchen was too small and the sliding doors were reinforced glass. I wouldn’t have time to undo the catch on the window, push up the sash, but if I broke the pane, the hole would be large enough.
‘Why did you do it, then?’ I said, playing for time, trying to think. ‘Pretending you didn’t know, sending me all those emails.’
‘Why?’ he said, and the anger came back into his voice. ‘Did you think it was nasty of me?’ His voice was rich with sarcasm. ‘After what you did? You cut me off – didn’t even have the courtesy to answer my phone calls. You changed your fucking number. I won’t be treated like that.’
‘You tried to rape me.’
‘Rape you? Sweetheart, I don’t think there’s a jury on earth who would buy that story. How many times had you done it willingly? You can’t pretend to me you don’t like it rough. Let’s have a little honesty, shall we?’
His hand moved over the gun, feeling its shape through the material of his shirt. My stomach turned over.
‘I think you’ve forgotten that I rescued you,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘Remember how lonely you were? All you ever did was work. Admit it – I was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to you.’ He laughed.
‘I’m never coming back to you.’
His fingers moved under the fabric now and I heard a nail scratch over the handle. ‘Do you think that’s what this is about? Me wanting you back?’
A flare of terror went through me. I had to move now. He looked at me, his expression a mask of amused contempt, and I threw my wine glass in his face.
I heard a shout but I was moving before I could see his reaction. I flung myself across the room and on to the armchair and I picked up the vase from the side table and hurled it through the window.
I heard the sound of breaking glass, the brittle music of the shards falling on to the concrete outside, and then there was a thump, something hitting the back of my head, a flash of light.
The pain was the first thing. All sensation had centred in my head and agonising waves were radiating from the back of my skull through the tissue of my brain. I stayed still and tried to shut it out, focus. Everything in front of my eyes was red, a red so dark it was almost black. I was on my back and my body was stiff, as if I hadn’t moved for some time. I listened, and close by there was breathing, just audible. A current of cold air flowed over my face.
It was some seconds before I even remembered. Richard was here. He had a gun. I’d tried to make a break for it. I pressed my fingertips down, felt carpet under them. I was still in the sitting room. I hadn’t got anywhere.
‘Open your eyes. I know you’re awake.’ The voice was very close.
I kept them closed, not wanting to obey his orders, afraid of the pain that would come with the light.
‘Open your eyes.’
Until I did, I was powerless anyway. Gradually, I forced them open. I was looking at the ceiling. At the edge of my vision on the right there was the fringe around the bottom of the sofa and when I turned my head fractionally to the left, triggering another wave of pain, I saw the terracotta base of one of the table lamps lying next to me, missing its shade. The weight of the thump on the back of my head – it was what he had used to stop me, the first thing that came to hand. The room was darker, the remaining lamp on the table next to the sofa providing the only light. The cold air was coming through the broken window.
I lifted my head a little and saw him. My legs had been pushed apart and he was kneeling between them, his hands on either side of my body supporting him as he leaned over me. I gave a cry and he laughed. I wasn’t aware of my body, I realised; I couldn’t even tell whether or not I was wearing any clothes. I moved my left hand to my waist. My jeans were still there, still done up.
‘What, you think I’d touch you now? You don’t understand me at all, do you?’ he said, bringing his face closer. He’d been smoking while I’d been unconscious. How long had it been? ‘Everything would have been fine. I would have forgiven you – yes, even after all the shit you’ve pulled on me – but not now. You’ve made it impossible. You’re worth nothing to me – you’re just a whore. A whore like your mother.’
‘Fuck you,’ I said.
He moved his right hand and picked up a knife that had been lying on the carpet. It was the carving knife. The incredible became real: he really was going to kill me.
I brought my hand up and jabbed him in the eyes. He was almost quick enough but not quite. I missed his left eye but, as he turned his head, my other finger caught his right eye, not the straight stab I’d wanted but enough to cause him to shout out in pain. In the second or two in which he clutched at his face, I rolled back, trying to free my legs from either side of his body. I turned on
to my front, tried to scramble away, but he was on me. He caught the neck of my jumper and pulled me up by it. The wool became a line across my throat, constricting my breathing.
He’d dropped the knife in his surprise but now he snatched it up again. I couldn’t see behind me but I swung my elbow back as hard as I could and I felt it connect with his ribcage. He grunted and tightened his grip round my throat. My vision was chequering and I felt as though I was rocking back and forth. The carpet seemed to be rising to meet me. I leant back slightly, desperate to take a breath.
He pulled tighter still on the jumper and I gagged. He put his face forward, letting his cheek touch mine. ‘You won’t win, however much you struggle. Nobody beats me.’
I pulled my head forward the few inches that I could and then I smashed it back, catching him in the face. But the contact came at the point on my head where he’d hit me with the lamp. The pain was disabling. All I could see was colour bursting in front of my eyes, a kaleidoscope of agony.
Behind us, in the kitchen, there was a crash, the sound of the door being kicked in. I couldn’t see anything but the pressure went from around my neck as Richard let go of my jumper. I fell forward, my hands meeting the cold tiles in front of the fireplace. He was scrambling to his feet and I put my leg back, knocked one of his out from under him. He grabbed a handful of my hair, pulled the back of my head against his chest again. The knife was in his hand but he hesitated.
It was just a moment but the hesitation cost him because, in that second, Pete seized the poker from the stand by the fireplace and knocked him sideways. He fell, hitting his head on the edge of the tiles. Somehow I got up, scrabbled out of range of the hand that grabbed at me. Pete pulled me across the room but Richard was up on his knees, the light of victory still in his streaming eyes. In his hand was the gun.
The Bed I Made Page 32