The One

by John Marrs

  Christopher watched Amy’s arms begin to unfold and her shoulders droop slightly. Then, just as quickly, she tensed up again.

  ‘You almost got me there. But do you know why I can never believe a word you say? Because I’ve read passages in books that you highlighted and then quoted to me verbatim about how you feel, and passed them off as your own. You tell me what you think I want to hear.’

  ‘It’s only because I’m not used to expressing myself. This is new to me, Amy. I didn’t even know people like me could fall in love.’

  ‘People like you. You mean psychopaths, right?’

  Christopher nodded.

  ‘My boyfriend, the psychopath. The one thing your books have taught me is that psychopaths are master manipulators.’

  ‘That’s true, but not when it comes to you. How have I ever manipulated you?’

  ‘You knew what you were and what you were doing and you still let me fall in love with you.’

  ‘Be honest with yourself, I didn’t do anything. We were Matched. We were predetermined.’

  ‘You chose to take the test and to meet me. If there was any humanity inside you at all, you would have stayed the hell away.’

  ‘I’m sorry, but I was curious to see who’d be Matched with me, and then when I met you, I felt something I’d never experienced before … something that was completely alien. I needed to get to know the person having that effect on me to try to understand why it was happening. I even read up on it because I didn’t think it was possible to … but I’d fallen in love with you.’

  Amy shook her head. ‘Please stop lying to me,’ she said, but from the quiver in her voice, Christopher knew she was beginning to believe him.

  ‘I know what I am, Amy … or at least I know what I was. I was a man who craved infamy for my crimes and I felt a pleasure I can’t describe from ending other people’s lives. I was selfish, I was devious, I cared for nothing and no one, I was everything that you were not. But when I am with you, I’m … better. At least, you make me want to be better.’

  Amy wiped her eyes with her sleeve as she listened, then took a few hesitant steps forward and crouched down so their eyes were level.

  ‘Do you love me, Chris?’ she asked. ‘Do you, in your heart of hearts, really love me?’

  ‘Yes,’ he replied firmly and without missing a beat. ‘Yes, I do love you.’

  For once, Christopher had let himself be vulnerable. It wasn’t because he was securely fastened to the chair, or that he had been caught. He could tell that Amy saw this. She saw that he was a lost little boy, someone who had spent his life unable to fit into society, someone who was aware of the difference between right and wrong, but chose to do wrong anyway. He wanted to change for her and she saw someone who needed her stabilising influence. She saw their shared future.

  Amy slipped her hand in her pocket and pulled out the keys to the handcuffs.

  Chapter 93

  JADE

  Jade took the keys to Kevin’s four-by-four from the hook in the kitchen cabinet and climbed into the truck.

  After the revelation that Kevin wasn’t her DNA Match and that Mark was, she’d stormed back to the guest house and spent the next hour pacing the bedroom, trying to get a handle on her mixed emotions. She was furious with herself for having allowed things to have gone so far with Kevin when she knew that she didn’t love him. But she was also furious with Mark for lying to her. It was because of him that she’d felt like such a rotten person for so long, being attracted to someone who was out of bounds. Without trust and honesty, was being Matched enough to keep two people together?

  With the clothes she’d thrown into a holdall on the passenger seat beside her, she drove along the dirt track driveway towards the highway. The radio played the opening bars of a Michael Bublé song, and it reminded her of how she’d used to tease Kevin for having the musical taste of a housewife double his age. He didn’t care, he said, music was music and, as long as it made you feel something, it didn’t matter who was singing it. Jade turned up the volume to ‘You’re Nobody Till Somebody Loves You’.

  She followed the road signs back in the direction of Echuca Moama on the Murray River, and an hour later checked herself into a budget hotel. She knew that eventually she’d have to return to the farm and face the Williamsons, but for the next few days she needed respite from them all, and especially from Mark.

  Jade tried to stop herself from thinking about him by taking in the local sights, going on a trip along the water on a historic paddle steamer, joining thousands of strangers listening to blues and roots music at the annual Winter Blues festival and exploring nearby towns, red gum forests and wetlands. But nothing worked. Her anger towards Mark remained ever potent, despite the fact that she knew his actions had come from a selfless place.

  After a fourth fitful night of sleep, she awoke early to the sound of birdcalls. She climbed into Kevin’s truck and from memory drove to where he’d taken her to watch her first Australian sunrise the day after she arrived on the farm. She hoped the calmness of the arrival of a new day might help slow her brain from racing at a hundred miles an hour.

  She sat on the vehicle’s front bumper, watching the sun begin its ascent into the sky, when a noise on the gravel disturbed her. She turned her head. It was Susan.

  ‘I hoped you might be here,’ she began. ‘Do you mind if I join you?’ Her tone was much softer and less confrontational than it had been a few days earlier. ‘I’ve been back here every morning since you ran out, just in case you came. I used to bring Mark and Kevin up here when they were boys. Kev liked to see as far into the distance as he could. He wanted to travel the world one day.’

  ‘I remember him saying,’ Jade murmured. ‘He wanted us to do it together.’

  She closed her eyes and tried to recall Kevin’s voice. It had only been a few weeks since his passing and already she was beginning to forget how it sounded. Despite everything she felt for Mark, she still missed her daily conversations with his brother. Susan stretched her arm out and wrapped it around Jade’s shoulders. ‘So you married my son even though you didn’t love him.’

  Jade nodded.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I knew how happy it would make him. I was very fond of him and I wanted his last days to be happy.’

  ‘You wanted the same thing for him as Mark did. And Kevin’s last days were happy and for that I’ll always be grateful. The both of you placed his needs above your own, I see that now. Please don’t hate Mark for it.’

  ‘I don’t hate him, Susan, but that’s not to say I’ve haven’t spent the last few days pissed off beyond belief. I’m usually pretty sure of myself – normally it’s one strike and you’re out. But Mark has my head all over the place and I don’t know what to think or how to feel. The only thing I know is that, after everything that has happened since I got here, I need some space and to get away from your family. I don’t mean that to sound as nasty as it does.’

  ‘No, it doesn’t sound nasty at all, love. And I’m not going to pretend I know what it’s like for you. But please take some advice from an old ’un; don’t let the chance to be happy pass you by. I had to let go of my anger at the disease that was killing my son as the only person that hate was hurting was me. Now you’ve got to let your anger towards Mark go. I’m sure that’s what Kevin would have wanted. If you’ve got the opportunity to love someone as much as they love you, then grab it with both hands and hold on to it for dear life.’

  Chapter 94

  NICK

  Nick didn’t understand why Sally was so averse to accepting pain relief to make her labour a little more bearable.

  For the best part of a month she’d complained of crippling headaches that had made her feel sick, but she’d been unable to take anything stronger than paracetamol. Now she was being offered a cocktail of drugs but she refused to accept any. Nick knew, in her position, he’d have taken enough to knock out a hippo, especially after the twentieth hour passed.

  Wa
tching Sally’s body contort in pain, he wondered if she was trying to prove a point. Nick had been hurt mentally by sacrificing his Match for her and the baby. Was she voluntarily going through such physical discomfort to prove she could hurt too? He shook his head and decided he was being foolish – nobody would put themselves through that just to make a point.

  ‘That’s it Sally,’ said the midwife confidently. ‘Keep pushing when I tell you, and don’t worry, you’re doing great.’

  ‘I can’t,’ yelled Sally, and looked at Nick with such desperation in her eyes he felt bad for being responsible for so much of her pain. He regained his composure, held her hand firmly and rubbed her shoulder.

  Nick realised that, no matter what had happened in the past or what had been taken away from him, at that moment the only two people in the world that mattered were in that room with him. He made a silent vow to make the best of their relationship for the sake of Sally and the tiny person about to make its way into the world to join their unconventional unit.

  ‘You can do this, babe,’ he said softly. ‘I’m here, I’m not going anywhere again.’

  ‘But what if—’

  ‘There’s no what if,’ Nick interrupted. ‘I’m in this with you for the long haul. I promise.’

  During a break in her contractions, the midwife suggested Nick took a break. It had been twenty hours – he needed something to eat. Sally was the one doing all the work, yet supporting her had left him shattered and he desperately craved something sweet. A £2 coin bought him a Snickers bar and a full-fat Coke in the hope that the sugar-rush might perk him up. Then, with nobody else in the corridor to catch him, he took a few sneaky drags from the e-cigarette he had tucked inside his pocket while they had been waiting for the taxi to take them to the hospital.

  For a moment, Nick allowed thoughts of Alex to creep into his head and he wondered how he might be coping back home in New Zealand. They had both agreed to block each other on Facebook so neither could see the other getting on with their life. But that didn’t stop him wondering if Alex had started dating again and, if so, who the lucky person was – and whether they were male or female. He couldn’t imagine what it might be like to be with someone new after losing the person you were designed to be with. How could any potential relationship stand a hope in hell when you know you’ve loved somebody else with every inch of your being?

  He threw his empty can and sweet wrapper into a bin, but as he made his way back to the ward he heard a loud alarm and beeping sounds coming from the direction of Sally’s room. He quickened his pace until he spotted her midwife and two nurses pushing Sally and her bed out of her room, into the corridor and towards a sign which read ‘Theatre’.

  ‘Sal?’ Nick yelled but she didn’t respond. She lay motionless with her eyes closed. ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘There have been some complications, Nick,’ the midwife explained calmly, as a porter took her place. ‘Sally has fallen unconscious and is not responding to our attempts to revive her.’

  The colour drained from Nick’s face and his legs threatened to buckle. ‘And the baby?’

  ‘Our first priority is Sally, but an obstetrician is on her way now to perform an emergency caesarean while we work on Sally. There’s a team in theatre ready.’

  ‘Can I go with her?’

  ‘I’m afraid you can’t. Let me take you to the waiting room and as soon as I get any news I’ll come and find you.’

  ‘She’s been having headaches for weeks …’

  ‘We’re doing all we can for her, now let’s get you into the waiting room.’

  As the glass door closed behind him, Nick stood helpless and stared at the midwife as she hurried down the corridor and out of sight.

  He was too numb to take in his surroundings, but stood in the empty room bolt upright and motionless, his brain whirring ten to the dozen as he tried to make to make sense of what was happening. He’d already lost Alex; losing both Sally and their child was unthinkable. Without them, he would have nothing. He would be nothing.

  The midwife returned fifteen minutes later, accompanied by the obstetrician. He knew by the look on their faces what they were about to say, long before the words fell from their mouths.

  Chapter 95

  ELLIE

  Ellie stood over Matthew’s lifeless body, frozen in a moment that would change everything.

  Her hand began to tremble as she covered her mouth with it, suddenly struck by the enormity of her actions and petrified she might let out an involuntary scream. She glanced around the office, unsure of which way to turn as the shaking spread to her legs. She was scared that if she dared sit down to steady herself, she might never get back up again. She wanted to escape her office, jump into her car and drive home to the safety of Derbyshire and her family, leaving Matthew hundreds of miles away. That would have been possible had she not just deliberately killed him.

  Ellie took several deep breaths and tried to focus her mind on her now limited options. Andrei would help her, she reckoned. She felt for the panic alarm and pressed down hard. Less than a minute later, she heard his shoes running down the marble floored corridor before he burst through the door with a baton in his hand. He stared at her and then at Matthew’s body on the floor, his head now framed by a halo of blood.

  Andrei’s face remained expressionless.

  ‘I need your help,’ she said, her tone hushed but panicked.

  He checked around the room for any potential threats and pulled out his mobile phone.

  ‘You won’t get a signal,’ she continued. ‘He saw to that.’

  ‘Change into clean clothes and then we are leaving,’ Andrei said gruffly, gesturing to the spots of blood splattered across her dress. ‘I know people who can make it look like this never happened.’

  Ellie glanced at him with nervous gratitude.

  ‘Change now,’ he repeated, his voice more authoritative.

  She hurried to her adjacent bathroom and dipped into her wardrobe where she kept a selection of spare clothes, pulling out a virtually identical blouse and skirt. She rinsed her face under the tap and the remaining blood from her hands. For a moment, stared at her reflection in the mirror, unable to fully comprehend her living nightmare. ‘He did this to himself, he gave you no choice,’ she said out loud. ‘You’re a good person who has done amazing things for the world. He didn’t just want to take it away from you, he wanted to take it away from everyone. He did this to himself, not you.’

  A thud from the office brought her back to reality and she returned to find Andrei rolling up Matthew’s body in the rug he’d died upon.

  ‘We leave this room for my people to clean up,’ he said, and dragged Matthew into the bathroom out of sight. ‘Do not allow anyone else in.’

  Ellie obeyed and Andrei escorted her into the corridor just as Ula ran towards her.

  ‘You weren’t answering your phone!’ she said, concerned.

  ‘I have a meeting I need to—’

  But Ula cut her off. ‘Your office, it’s being streamed online.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Look,’ she yelled, then pulled Ellie by her arm into her room. ‘You and Tim are all over the Internet. Everyone can watch and hear you arguing. But I don’t understand. How can you be here and yet on my computer you’re still in there?’

  Ellie looked at the video footage of her and Matthew. By her estimation it was time delayed by approximately fifteen minutes – to the beginning of their confrontation – as Matthew was pouring his second whisky. She watched as he carried the decanter back to the sofas, and inwardly shuddered at the thought of what the object would be later used for.

  ‘Who can see this?’ she asked, alarmed.

  Ula checked. ‘I think it’s automatically playing on every employee’s computer or tablet through the internal messaging system.’

  ‘Get hold of IT and tell them to shut it down.’

  Ula picked up the phone while Ellie looked at Andrei for reassurance, but for the firs
t time since he’d began working for her, she witnessed concern in his steely grey eyes.

  ‘They’re saying the IP address is from the desktop computer in your office,’ Ula said, ‘and it’s also being sent as a live feed to dozens of other online sources. YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook, Twitter … Anyone in the world can watch right now and it’s all coming from your computer’s webcam.’

  Andrei ran back into the office with a terrified Ellie in pursuit. She shut the door behind her as Andrei yanked all the leads from the iMac, then picked up the machine, lifted it over his head and hurled it to the floor. He slammed his foot into it half-a-dozen times.

  As she and Andrei left her office for a second time, she saw that a small group of secretaries had now huddled around Ula’s screen. They took an awkward step backwards when Ellie reappeared.

  ‘It’s still showing,’ Ula said. ‘I’m sorry but IT says it’s not broadcasting from the servers in our building so there’s nothing they can do to cut the feed.’

  Ellie froze. In approximately five minutes, the world would watch as Matthew explained how he’d compromised her database and how 2 million people who’d trusted her were the victims of mis-Matches. Then they’d see one of the world’s most prominent businesswomen beat her unarmed fiancé to death. And she was powerless to stop it.

  All eyes, with the exception of Ellie’s, were on Ula’s computer screen. Ellie took a succession of deep calming breaths and leaned against the wall of her office, slowly sliding her back downwards against the glass until she reached the floor.

  At Andrei’s order, Ula ushered everyone else out, leaving just the three of them. Ula and Andrei were finding it hard to draw themselves away from the screen, and Ellie didn’t try to stop them. She was forced to listen again to the dull thwack of the decanter as it hit Matthew’s head, the sound of him collapsing to his knees, followed by that of her hitting him a second, fatal time.

  Ula gasped and glared at her in disbelief.