by Simon Lelic
But then, after that – that’s when I lost control. I lunged again, and then again and again, until it felt like I would never stop. All the fear I’ve ever experienced, all the rage that for so long had bounced around inside me – it spewed from me in a torrent. At that instant Sean Payne was my father and I … I was Sydney Maggie Jessica Elsie, all the victims I knew come together as one.
I don’t know how long it went on for. Seconds maybe, though it seemed like longer. Like actually it’s not a moment now that in my mind will ever stop. I remember collapsing afterwards on to the stony floor and I remember forcing myself to look at what I’d done. And I remember too that I felt … not glad, exactly. Never that. But I remember it wasn’t what I’d done that I was most alarmed about. What worried me, at that point, was what it meant.
The plan, after that, came to me in stages. For some time I just sat there, expecting to be found. But the night remained as empty as it had seemed to me when I’d been standing in the kitchen – how long ago that felt – and though I waited for someone to come, no one did. Which is when it occurred to me that maybe no one would. Gradually my breathing stilled and the adrenaline left my shaking hands. And I noticed the blood. Saw it properly for the first time. It was black in the darkness but wet. Warm, at first, though steadily, against my skin, it turned cold.
I stripped right there in the alleyway. I felt panic rising within me as I did so and it was only once I’d torn what I’d been wearing from my body that I felt it gradually subside. And then again after that I just stood there, not knowing what was supposed to happen next. I held my clothes before me in a bundle. I had to get rid of them, obviously. My clothes, the knife: I had to get rid of everything.
I would throw them in the Thames. I would wrap them in a rubbish sack from one of the nearby bins and I would drop them into the river the next morning. I would shower, clean myself up and act as though none of this had really happened. Except … there would be evidence, wouldn’t there? I couldn’t possibly hope to erase it all. And it had happened right outside our house. The police wouldn’t just ignore that, particularly given our history with Elsie’s father. Jack in particular. He’d fought with Sean Payne. Shouted at him, swore he’d kill him in front of everyone in the local pub! The police, if they didn’t blame me, would surely try to pin what had happened on Jack. They’d have to. Wouldn’t they? Unless … unless …
It was like a daydream, initially. One of those what ifs that feel as fanciful as the prospect of flying to the moon. But then, as one thought dominoed into another, that daydream turned into something real. Not a what if any more – a why not? I began to understand how what I’d done could offer a way out, for Elsie, for Jack, for us all.
I can’t tell you whether I believed it would really work. After … what had happened … I couldn’t think straight. At least, it didn’t feel like I was making decisions logically but perhaps it was some deeper instinct at that stage that took over. I knew my father, at some point, would come after me – and that if I kept the knife I could make it look like he’d used it to attack me. The knife, in turn, would tie him to Sean Payne’s murder. And as for his motive … my father had been trying to hurt Jack from the start. Couldn’t this, if I presented it correctly, be seen as another step on that road? Not only did he want Jack blamed, he wanted him out of the way, because with Jack gone he could finally get to me.
The hardest part was planting Jack’s driving licence. Not the physical act itself. The driving licence was in Jack’s wallet on the kitchen table. Once I’d taken care of the rest of the evidence, I wouldn’t even need to go sneaking around upstairs. No, the difficult part was convincing myself to leave it for the police to find. It felt so wrong. So counter-intuitive. I had to remind myself over and over again of the reasoning, just to be sure I wasn’t making a huge mistake. But after a while I felt as certain as I would ever be. The driving licence would be enough to put Jack in the frame – to make it look like my father had set him up – but it was also tenuous enough in terms of evidence that it would surely never hold up in court. Assuming it ever came to that, and the whole point was it never would. I wouldn’t let it – because if all else failed I would turn myself in. That was the lifeline I clung to: the knowledge that at any point I chose, I could act to bring things to a stop.
But Jack. There was so little I could do to reassure him, which is why it’s so important to me that he understands now. And he does, I think. I really think he does. He knows now the full story about what happened between me and my father and he understands how terrified I was when I found out that he’d come back. Above all, he knows that I was only ever trying to protect him. To protect us. That was the other reason for leaving the driver’s licence: for my plan to work, I needed Jack out of the way. I needed him safe. Somewhere my father couldn’t get to him, because I knew that if he could he would hurt Jack to hurt me – more so, even, than he had already. So that’s why Jack had to go through what he did. That’s why, when it looked like Inspector Leigh wasn’t going to arrest him, I tried to drive Jack away. I couldn’t confide in him because if he knew what I planned to do he would have stopped me. Or, worse, he would have tried to help me and I could never have allowed him to do that.
If anything that’s the part Jack was upset about most of all: that he couldn’t be there for me, as he sees it, when I needed him most. But now … it’s strange, the way things have turned out. There’s a closeness between us – a tightness – that somehow surpasses what we had before. And in other ways, too, Jack’s about the happiest I’ve ever seen him. I know for a fact he doesn’t miss his job. There was never any real threat of criminal proceedings against him – that was just the police trying to scare him – and now that he’s finally got the time, he’s relishing the opportunity to try writing. He still calls his parents every Sunday but I get a sense when I hear him on the telephone that the dynamic between them has changed, that rather than a child ringing up to seek approval it’s a conversation now between adults. Maybe that’s not quite how Jack’s parents view it yet but given time I don’t doubt they’ll come to see it that way too.
If Jack worries, I think it’s mainly about other people. There’s Bart, for one, who Jack continues to insist on apologizing to virtually every time they get together. Also, Sabeen and her family. It was Bart, it turned out, who tipped them off, who warned them Jack’s secret had been discovered, the very day Jack found out himself. None of us knows where Ali and the others have ended up but that they’re safe is the only thing that matters. And – to me at least – that they know that they are because of Jack.
Which just leaves me, I suppose – because it’s about me I know Jack worries most of all. Sometimes I catch him looking at me and when I notice he just gives me this little smile – like he wants to say something but also like he realizes he doesn’t have to and that for me that smile is enough. He’s concerned, I guess, about my well-being, about how everything that’s happened has affected me. I don’t mean physically. The wound I suffered has left a scar but it’s not like I’m not used to scars. I’ll admit I wasn’t as prepared as I thought I’d be for the pain, nor for the sight of so much of my own blood, and for a time right after it happened I was convinced I’d driven the knife too deep. But I’m fine now, basically. Physically, I’m fine.
As for the rest of me … I guess that’s all fairly fine too. As fine as it ever was. I expect Jack wonders mainly about the guilt I’m experiencing and I admit I worry sometimes about that myself. Because … I don’t know. It’s not clear to me how I feel about that side of things either. I know guilt is something I’ve lived with all my life and that I feel less guilty about Elsie’s father than I did – than I do – about what happened to my sister. Plus, there’s Elsie. There’s nothing anyone could say that could convince me she’s not better off now than she was before.
So I do: I feel fine. Better than fine, if I’m honest, and if ever I feel guilt it’s usually about that. But that’s a long-term thing really,
something I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to reconcile: my determination on the one hand to be happy and my uncertainty on the other hand about whether I have the right. But I’m working on it. I’m working on a lot of things. My relationship with my mother, for one.
Even though my mother was more directly involved, she knows less about what happened than Jack does. Jack knows everything: there are no secrets between us any more. But my mother … she knows what she did, obviously – retracting the alibi she’d given my father, letting me in so I could plant what I needed to among his things – but I never fully explained to her what I was planning. She did what she did because I asked her to and because I told her that in the end it was the only way to keep us safe. She’s aware that my father has been charged with murder of course but it’s as though the fact that he’s gone is the only detail she needs to know. It’s just how she is, how she always was: happy to turn a blind eye. I don’t blame her for being like that the way I used to. She has her way of coping, I have mine, and it’s not like I can claim now that hers is any more destructive.
So, yeah, me and my mum: we’re doing OK. I’m not suggesting we’ll ever have a model relationship. All I’m really trying to say is that we’re better than we used to be. Probably, actually, than we’ve ever been. And it’s not that I haven’t always loved her. It’s just … I don’t know. It feels easier to love her now, that’s all. And it’s safer now my father’s gone too.
My father.
I have to remind myself every so often that he really is. Gone, I mean. Because he’s going to prison, I know that, and I know he’s never getting out, but even so I sometimes wonder whether it wouldn’t have been better if I’d actually killed him. I thought I would have to, at one stage, and when I came face to face with him in our bedroom I genuinely tried. I couldn’t stop myself, the way I couldn’t stop the anger when I confronted Sean Payne. But whereas Elsie’s father was in no state to defend himself, my father swatted me aside so easily it was blind luck I was able to finish what I started. And this way … what was the word my father used? Poetic. That’s it exactly. It’s poetic that he’ll be found guilty of precisely the type of crimes he really committed. I try to remember that whenever I feel afraid. Whenever I wonder whether the police are still watching me, for example, or I succumb to a sudden rush of guilt. It’s right what’s happening to my father. He killed my sister. If he could have he would have killed me. And if I hadn’t done what I did, nobody would have had the chance to impose on him the punishment he’s always deserved.
But you know what? I don’t want to think about my father. What I want to think about is what I started to, before I allowed myself to get distracted.
Jack and I, we’re in a flat now. When we put the house on the market it was sold by the first weekend and now we’re just waiting for the conveyancing. I’m disappointed, obviously, because had the circumstances when we found the house been different it might genuinely have had a chance of becoming our home. Our forever house, just like on those cheesy TV shows. But it’s served its purpose and frankly the apartment we’re living in is a thousand times more practical. It’s purpose-built, two bedrooms, with a little Juliet balcony and access to outside space. We’re only renting for the time being but living here has made us realize that a place like this is all the three of us really need.
No, I’m not pregnant. And no, it’s still not likely that I’ll ever be. I mean maybe … one day … but not just yet. For the time being I want to relish this feeling I’ve got that this family I have around me right now is as perfect already as I ever could have wished.
Officially Elsie lives with her aunt. Her aunt’s OK, sort of, certainly not as bad as her brother was. But despite Elsie growing up practically around the corner from her, she’s only ever met Elsie half a dozen times. And she admits it: she only took Elsie in for the money. Her father didn’t have much but there was a surprising amount of equity in their old house. And the way all the legal stuff worked out is that the cash went with Elsie to her new guardian. So Elsie’s aunt, she’s happy enough. All the more so given that Elsie spends most of her time these days with us.
And we are: we’re like a family, and that’s the point I set out to make. My real family was broken, defective right from the start. But who’s to say what constitutes a family anyway? Ours, it’s non-traditional, a bit like our Christmas is likely to be. We each have our roles but the best part is that none of them are fixed. Take Jack and me. We’re the parents, mostly, but sometimes we’re also the kids. Jack to me is like my husband but he’s also my very best friend. To Elsie Jack acts like some wise old uncle but I suspect she sees him more as an overprotective brother. A good one, though, a kind one – and the knowledge that there is kindness in men is something it’s important Elsie’s able to believe.
As for me, I do my best to be whatever Elsie needs me to be. It’s hard sometimes, given this secret that will always exist between us, and I can’t help worrying that if we spend too much time together, one day she’ll turn out the way I have. Although, who knows? It’s just possible it will be the other way round. Because it’s like I said: it’s not always Jack and me who play the parents. I tend to assume that it’s my role to look out for Elsie. But like an angel sent by my little sister, maybe it’s really Elsie who’s here to save me.
Acknowledgements
Love and thanks to my wife, Sarah, without whom this novel simply wouldn’t have been written. Frankly, she deserves a co-author’s credit on the front cover. Thanks as well to my mum, dad, sister, Matt, Sue, Kate and Nij: family, all. Kristina Astrom and Jane McLoughlin were two of the earliest readers of this novel, and I cannot thank them enough for their generosity and their time. A special mention, too, to Jess Lavender and all at Brighton Shotokan Karate Club for helping me work out my writerly frustrations – of which, as ever, there were a few. Finally, thank you to everyone at Berkley, Viking and Felicity Bryan Associates, Amanda Bergeron, Katy Loftus and Caroline Wood above all.
THE NEXT THRILLER FROM SIMON LELIC
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Susanna Fenton has a secret. Fourteen years ago she left her identity behind, reinventing herself as a counsellor and starting a new life. It was the only way to keep her daughter safe.
But when a young man, Adam Geraghty, walks into her office one day, claiming he needs Susanna’s help, she begins to fear that her secret has been discovered.
Who is Adam, really? What does he want from her?
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THE BEGINNING
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First published 2017
Copyright © Simon Lelic, 2017
The moral right of the author has been asserted
Cover photo © Amy Weiss/Arcangel Images
Design by Lisa Horton
ISBN: 978-0-241-29655-4
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