by Alex Lake
‘Only one grave needed on this journey,’ Jean said. ‘And I prefer the saying “Revenge is a dish better tasted cold.”’
‘Very fucking cold,’ Sarah said. She leaned her back against the wall. ‘What’s the revenge for, Jean? What have I done to you?’
‘Everything,’ Jean said. ‘Everything that ever went wrong for me is your fault.’
Despite the situation, Sarah laughed. It was ludicrous: she had no idea what Jean was talking about, yet she was holding her responsible for all the things wrong in her life.
‘Don’t laugh,’ Jean said. Her voice rose to a shout. ‘Don’t you dare fucking laugh at me!’
‘I’m sorry,’ Sarah said. ‘It’s just – I don’t know what else to do.’ She started to laugh again, but the laughter turned into a cry as Jean lurched toward her and yanked on the chain.
She pulled it hard, again and again until Sarah thought her neck would snap. When she finally stopped, Sarah slumped into the fetal position, her temple on the floor. She lifted her hand to her throat and pressed it, feeling for damage.
‘All curled up,’ Jean said. ‘Like the baby you killed.’
Sarah opened an eye and looked at her.
‘What?’ she said. ‘What baby?’
‘My baby,’ Jean said. She stood up and lit another cigarette. ‘My baby, the one you killed.’
‘Jean,’ Sarah said. ‘Are you talking about the time you were pregnant? When we were eighteen?’
Jean crouched next to her. ‘Now you get it,’ she said softly. ‘Now you start to see.’
‘I don’t see how you think I did anything to you. You did it all yourself.’
Jean shook her head. Her lips curled up in a look which was part-hatred and part-fury.
‘No,’ she said. ‘You took it all from me. I wasn’t sure about doing it. You remember? I was considering having the baby. I was going to have it. But you persuaded me not to. You told me it was for the best. Took me to the clinic. Held my hand.’
Sarah bit her lip. She remembered the summer it had happened, remembered the excitement of college on the horizon, the sense of the world opening up, of new beginnings. And, along with it, hours of tears and long conversations with Jean about what to do about the baby growing inside her.
To Sarah it was obvious; it was a mistake and it needed to be corrected. She’d seen Jean’s reluctance as nothing more than the result of confusion and worry.
‘It wasn’t like that,’ she said. ‘We were friends. I was there for you.’
‘You were there to lead me astray!’ Jean said. ‘I would never have done it if it wasn’t for you!’
‘Jean,’ Sarah said. ‘I supported your decision, I didn’t—’
‘You persuaded me to do it!’ Jean said. ‘You told me it was normal and it would be OK and lots of people did it – and I trusted you! I trusted you and you abused my trust to persuade me to do it. And I know why you did it. You did it because you liked it. You like seeing babies die.’ She shrugged. ‘I mean, what other explanation is there? Who could want to make me do such a thing unless they liked it?’
‘Jean,’ she said. ‘It’s not true. I thought it was for the best.’
‘But it wasn’t, was it? There were complications. Something no one could have predicted. And the result was I didn’t just lose my baby. I lost any chance to ever have a baby again.’ She stared at Sarah, and shook her head. ‘Complications. Thanks to you.’
‘I didn’t make you do anything!’ Sarah said. ‘It’s absurd to say I did!’
‘No,’ Jean replied. ‘It isn’t. If it wasn’t for you I would not have done it. You remember at the clinic when I tried to pull out? You pushed me, you physically pushed me into the room.’
Sarah remembered the scene well; on their way into the medical room Jean had turned to the nurse.
Stop, she said. Wait.
She looked at Sarah. She spoke in a low voice.
I don’t think I want to do this.
You do, Sarah had said. It’s hard, but you know you need to do it.
And then she’d put her arm around her friend and guided her into the room.
Guided.
Not pushed.
But it seemed Jean didn’t see it the same way.
‘And that was it,’ Jean said. ‘My baby was gone. You killed her. You pushed me in there. I didn’t want to go in, but you made me. I was too weak, too confused to stop you, and you saw it and took advantage of it. You may as well have done the operation yourself.’
‘Jean, this is sick,’ Sarah said. ‘You’re—’
‘DON’T CALL ME SICK!’ Jean shouted. ‘How can you call me sick? How can you call me – anyone – sick? You murdered my baby, Sarah. You’re disgusting.’
Sarah held her hands up. ‘I didn’t murder any baby, Jean.’
‘You took my baby from me and it ruined my life.’ She started to pace the basement. ‘I had a place at college, up in Vermont, but I didn’t go. You remember? I deferred a year but I never took it up. It would have been pointless; I was trapped in my own head. All I ever thought about was my daughter. The one you killed. Every night, she was the last thing I thought of; every morning she was the first. All I wanted was to have her back. It was torture, Sarah.’
‘You don’t know it was a daughter, Jean. You can’t know.’
‘She was a daughter! I know she was. A mother knows these things, Sarah.’
‘I’m sorry, Jean. I really am. I know how you felt. I’ve seen other—’
‘You have no idea how I felt! And don’t tell me you’ve seen it in other patients. And then you all went off and got degrees and jobs and I was stuck here. And Jack was my way out but that didn’t work either, because he was too weak and stupid to see the kids needed some discipline. And so here I am. And you did it to me. Like you’ve kept on doing, ever since.’
‘Jean,’ Sarah said. ‘I’m your friend. I’ve always been your friend.’
‘You’ve never been my friend!’ Jean screamed. ‘You’ve looked down on me and patronized me and made me look stupid ever since we met. Like Sean. He turns up and you decide he needs a girlfriend, which is typical of you, by the way, interfering in everybody’s lives, a fucking neighborhood busy-body, and so you set him up with Becky, your little friend with the good job.’ She folded her arms. ‘You never thought of me. I didn’t deserve to be considered. You didn’t even mention it to me.’
‘Jean. This is a bit of an over-reaction to a date I set up for someone else. I thought they were a good fit, that’s—’
‘Bullcrap!’ Jean shouted. ‘And it’s not a reaction to that. The fact you would even say such a thing proves my point! This goes back to the very beginning. I’m nothing to you, Sarah. I never have been. And you’ve never even noticed how I feel about you. You’ve never even bothered paying attention enough to notice the single most important feeling I have about you.’ She spat and a gobbet of phlegm landed on Sarah’s cheek. ‘Hatred.’
‘Jean,’ Sarah said. ‘I’m sorry—’
‘Don’t even bother,’ Jean said, the emotion drained from her voice. ‘Like I said, this goes back a long, long way. But it was when you set up the doctor with your smug bitch friend that I decided it was finally time for you to pay. Time for me to get my revenge. So I set all this in motion. The Facebook account. All of it.’
Sarah didn’t reply. There was no point; Jean was not asking for her opinion – she had her own facts, and they had taken root inside and been fed by her bitterness until they had hardened into part of who she was.
And there was nothing Sarah could do about it.
‘So,’ Sarah said. ‘What’s next?’
Jean stopped pacing and turned to look at her.
‘I’m glad you asked,’ she said. ‘I’m going to enjoy telling you.’
10
‘What I was intending,’ Jean said, ‘was to kill you and make it look like the suicide of a desperate woman who had been struggling for a few months. Ben wasn’t really part
of the picture.’
She began to pace the room again. Sarah felt a coldness chill her from the inside. Jean was not reachable, not a person she could reason with. She had formed her conclusions; any evidence would simply reinforce them, whatever it was. She couldn’t even get started; if she confessed, then she was guilty and deserved punishment, if she denied it, she was demonstrating how callous she was. It was like the Oedipus Syndrome: display it and you proved it was correct. Show no sign of it, and you were suppressing it, which was merely more evidence it existed.
‘And then,’ Jean said, turning to look at her with the attitude of a teacher, ‘you didn’t drink the wine.’ She sighed. ‘At first I was annoyed, but the more I thought about it, the more I saw it was a good thing. If it hadn’t happened, you’d be dead now. I’d be satisfied, but all this would be over. And it’s been fun, watching you suffer. I want to watch it some more. I’m glad it turned out this way. I wish I’d thought of it myself.’
‘So you’re going to keep me down here and starve me? Stub cigarettes out on my hands? Drag me around by the chains?’ Sarah closed her eyes. ‘Is that really what you want to do? You’re a torturer now? It doesn’t exactly fit with your boasts about being such a great arranger.’
‘Oh,’ Jean said. ‘It’s much worse. I’m going to make you choose how you die.’ She smiled. ‘When the time comes, you will be given three options. They are variations on the same theme – the removal of one of the essentials of life – but they differ in the length of time they take. You can choose the removal of food. You can choose the removal of water. You can choose the removal of oxygen.’
She did a little hop.
‘Neat, no? Starvation, dehydration, suffocation. You choose. But first I plan to make you truly suffer. So for now, you’ll get food and water.’ She smiled. ‘Although no bathroom visits.’ She pointed to the corner. ‘You can do your business there, like an animal.’
‘Why not kill me now?’ Sarah said. ‘Why wait? Suffocate me. Go on.’
‘Not yet,’ Jean said. ‘Because, now I think about it, Ben is part of the picture.’ She lowered her voice. ‘Along with Miles and Faye and Kim. You see, Sarah, not only am I going to kill you. I’m going to take your family. Like I did with Jack. And – even better – you’re going to watch me do it.’ She glanced at the unoccupied chain. ‘And when you’re gone, I’m going to need a few more of those. Your kids are going to learn discipline, Sarah. And about fucking time too.’
‘No,’ Sarah said. ‘No, Jean. Please. You can do what you want with me, but leave Ben and the kids alone. They haven’t done anything to you. They haven’t killed any babies.’ And neither have I, she wanted to add, but didn’t: she didn’t want to start that discussion again. ‘Please don’t hurt them. Please.’
The thought of the three of them down here, chained in the darkness, was physically painful; she pushed the image from her mind. It made her want to tear the walls down to get out, rip the chain apart link by link, whatever it took. And in her anger she believed, for a moment, she could.
For a moment.
A moment that passed. And then she noticed Jean was looking at her with a puzzled expression.
‘Hurt them?’ she said. ‘Why would I hurt them? Like you say, they’ve done nothing to me. I’m going to help them, Sarah. I’m going to teach them to be good people.’
‘What?’ Sarah said. ‘What are you saying?’
‘I’m saying they’ll be better off with me. And they’re going to need a mom, the poor little things. Think about how they’ll feel when they learn Mommy killed herself, that she didn’t love them enough to stick around for them. They’ll be devastated. It’ll take years for them to get over it, if they ever do. They are going to need a female role model in their lives.’ Jean reached for another cigarette and lit it. ‘Which will be me.’
‘You’re the last thing they need,’ Sarah said. ‘They need someone sane, for a start.’
‘You mean like you?’ Jean said, her tone syrupy. ‘So they can grow up knowing their mom killed her friend’s baby and got a bit sad so she fucked a man who wasn’t her husband? You think you’re a good role model?’ She shook her head. ‘No. They’ll be better off with me.’
Sarah opened her mouth to speak but Jean raised her hand to silence her. ‘Just think,’ she said. ‘With all they’ll have been through, they’ll probably have some behavioral issues. Which is where the basement will come in. Especially Miles. He’s going to need a very firm hand. See? I’ve got it all figured out.’
Miles. Her firstborn. The baby boy she’d cradled against her chest in the minutes after he came into the world. She remembered it all: the sleepless nights which were long but which she missed, now, because they had been full of wonder at the life she and Ben had created, the first time he’d crawled, the first word he’d spoken. The terror when he had been taken to the hospital because he had a serious sinus infection and they had watched him be taken into a room and given antibiotics intravenously. The pride on his first day of school; the tears on his first day of school.
And now Jean was going to chain him, her little boy, in a basement. Like she had Daniel and Paul. No wonder they did what their mom – their stepmom – told them. They were terrified of her.
‘Please, Jean,’ she said. ‘Please.’
‘Please what? Please don’t help them? I don’t understand you, Sarah. Why would I not do this? And Ben? Don’t you want him to be happy? He deserves to love again, after his wife killed herself.’
There was no point explaining it; Jean was beyond explanation. But there was one thing which would put a stop to all this, one thing Jean could not control.
‘Ben will never go along with this,’ Sarah said. ‘He’s not interested in you.’
‘You think?’ Jean said. ‘He’s always been very good to me, Sarah. He admires me. You told me so.’
‘He admires you because he thinks you’ve kept it together despite what you’ve been through.’ Like the loss of a husband, she thought, which, it turns out, was less of a tragedy inflicted upon her than it seemed at the time, given that she killed him. ‘But he’ll never love you, Jean.’
‘We’ll find out,’ Jean said. ‘But admiration is a start. And it’s not a long way from admiration to whatever else I want it to be.’ She took a drag on the cigarette. ‘And I can be very persuasive, Sarah. I’m guessing you two haven’t been having too much sex lately, what with all the goings on. And he’s kind of upset with you. I’ll be there to comfort him, pour him a drink. Give him a back rub. He won’t need to feel guilty if one thing leads to another. It’ll be a way to escape, at first. You of all people understand that, don’t you? But it’ll grow into more.’
‘No,’ Sarah said. ‘No. It won’t happen. He isn’t interested in you. He isn’t.’
‘In my experience,’ Jean said, in a low voice. ‘When you put your hand in a man’s pants and start to suck him off, he’ll let you. Especially if his wife is no longer in the picture.’
‘You’re disgusting,’ Sarah said. ‘You’re sick and disgusting.’
Jean ignored her. ‘I’ll make it irresistible to him, Sarah. Give him all the sex he wants, however he wants it. Tell him I love it. Beg him to do it to me. And he will go crazy for it. Men do, Sarah. And it can get addictive for them. So yes, at first I’ll just be a distraction from the mess in his life, but it won’t be long before he sees it’s more than that. He needs me to help with the kids; it makes sense for us to live together, to create a happy, stable family environment for them. And if he gets filthy sex whenever he wants it, so much the better.’
‘He won’t,’ Sarah said. ‘I know Ben. He won’t.’
‘You keep telling yourself that. And in the meantime I’m going to enjoy telling you about it,’ Jean said. ‘I’m going to keep you down here, in the dark and quiet, and whenever I need a little pick-me-up I’ll pop down here and fill you in on the latest. Maybe tell you about the meal Ben and I shared before I blew him on the couch in your
house. You can give me some tips; tell me what he likes.’
Sarah looked at the door; it was closed. The room was soundproof, according to Jean.
But not when she was coming in or out. Then the sound could travel.
‘Get out,’ she said. ‘Leave me alone.’
‘You want me to bring you some food? Drink?’
Sarah shook her head. ‘I don’t want anything from you.’
Jean shrugged. ‘You’ll change your mind,’ she said. ‘One way or another. Or maybe not. But it’ll be a painful way to go.’
She turned to the door and opened it and Sarah started to scream. It was a raw, hoarse sound and it hurt her bruised throat but it was all she had and she gave it everything. Anyone in the house – anyone near it – must have heard.
Jean slammed the door shut.
‘You stupid fucking bitch,’ she said. ‘You think anyone can hear you?’
Her tone was sneering, but Sarah could see she was uncertain.
‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘And so maybe this is all over.’
Jean laughed, but it was not a confident laugh. She pointed at Sarah, her index finger shaking.
‘If it is, I’ll still make sure you die,’ she said. ‘I’ll come down here with an ax and hack you to death before anyone can stop me. So if I was you I’d be careful what I fucking hope for.’
Her anger was proof she was shaken; Sarah enjoyed seeing it. It was – however small – a change in the balance of power in her favor.
‘Go on,’ she said. ‘Leave me.’
Jean studied her. ‘I open the door and you’ll scream,’ she said. ‘The chances are slim, but someone might hear. Anyone. I see your plan. It’s smart.’ She reached into her back pocket and pulled out a Buck knife. ‘But not so smart. Did you think I’d come down here unarmed?’ She shook her head. ‘Tut, tut. Now, tell me Dr Havenant, can a person scream without a tongue?’
11
Yes, Sarah almost said, yes, they could. At least, they could make a noise. Words would be beyond them, but they would be able to make sounds.