by West, Sam
As soon as it was out of his mouth, he knew it had been the wrong thing to say.
Paul’s eyes narrowed, his voice pure ice when he replied: “I don’t think that money is going to cut it, do you?”
“Paul…” he began hopelessly, not knowing what the hell else to say.
“Is everything alright out here?” Mary asked, appearing behind him.
Oh, dear God, please, no.
Yes, everything’s fine, why don’t you go back inside? I’ll be there in a minute.”
He felt the iciness of her gaze boring into the side of his face, felt the weight of her silent questions on his conscience.
Who is this man? Why are you being so secretive? Why aren’t you introducing me?
“You must be Mrs Atwood,” Paul said, extending his hand.
When James glanced downwards, he saw that Paul had removed his foot.
No threatening behaviour to report here, folks.
“Please, call me Mary,” she said with a smile, accepting his offered hand.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mary. I’m an old friend of your husband’s.”
A look of confusion flashed across her face, and she turned to James for clarification.
Who the hell is this person?
“Well, thanks for stopping by, Paul. I’ve got your number, why don’t I give you a call sometime?”
Their eyes locked and James silently pleaded with him.
Please, just go away. Please don’t do this in front of my wife.
Paul grinned boyishly, his face open and innocent.
Can Mary see the similarity?
“Actually, seeing as you and me go way back, I thought that perhaps we could discuss this inside. I would feel more comfortable doing this with your wife present.”
He glanced at Mary, but her expression was neutral, unreadable.
She has to know. Woman’s intuition, and all that.
She laid a gentle hand on his shoulder and he flinched. If she noticed, she displayed no outward sign of showing it.
“Perhaps you should come in,” she said.
James’s heart sank all the way down to his Argyle socks.
Maybe this was for the best. Why fight it?
Perhaps his entire life had been leading up to this one moment. If the truth was here, quite literally staring him in the face, then Mary was going to find out sooner or later. He was sick of running, sick of the guilt that he carried around with him.
Let’s sort this out, once and for all.
This had to be the best way to do it. To confront the truth head on. Maybe, with all of them in the room together, he could make them both understand.
I need to put my shoes on, he thought. Wearing just his socks left him feeling inexplicably vulnerable, like those dreams he sometimes had of taking his school-exams naked.
Having no choice in the matter, he stepped to one side to let Paul pass.
My son. Dear God. My son.
* * *
What the hell is with my husband? Who is this kid?
Mary had no idea what was going on, but she was going to get to the bottom of it. James was distinctly uneasy, and a bad feeling crawled in her guts. But the lad seemed nice enough.
And familiar. Very, very familiar.
She reached the door to the living-room, turning round to face them.
“Why don’t you two go and sit in the living-room, I’ll go into the kitchen and fix us some drinks. What would you like?” she asked the boy. “Tea? Coffee? Something stronger?”
He smiled affably at her. “Coffee would be lovely. I’m driving.”
“Sure. I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name.”
“It’s Paul.”
Paul. Why was that name so familiar? She looked at her husband, and his face had turned white with two, little red spots high up on each cheek.
What is going on here. Why does he look so scared?
James managed a weak smile for her, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to return it. They entered the living-room and Mary continued down the hallway to the kitchen.
In her spacious kitchen, she longingly eyed the Merlot on the white marble work-top.
Sod it, she thought, pouring herself a generous glass from the opened bottle. I’ve got a feeling I’m going to need it.
She spooned out the instant coffee into three mugs and set them on the wooden tray, waiting for the kettle to boil.
Paul, she kept thinking as she busied herself pouring milk into a jug and fetching the bowl of sugar, turning the name over and over in her mind. Then it dawned on her.
Paul Breed? Then lad that James had said he sacked today?
For some reason, that fact didn’t sit easy with her. So then why was he here? To rant and rave and cause a scene? And why on earth would he say that he was an old friend of her husband’s? To be honest, that was just plain weird, given how much younger he was than James. How much history could they possibly have together?
And if it was the kid that James had fired today, why did he just let him so passively into the house? Did he have some hold over her husband, or something? A deep, dark secret?
Hey, perhaps he’s been shagging the secretary…
She almost smiled at that, but the smile dropped before it had properly formed. There were lots of pretty young girls working at I Can’t Believe It’s True!. Could her husband be having an affair?
No, surely not.
Draining the last of the wine in her glass, she picked up the tray and made her way back into the living-room for answers.
In the living-room, Paul was leaning back in the plush, brown-leather sofa, like he belonged there. A twinge of irritation stabbed at Mary’s heart.
Make yourself at home, why don’t you?
James was perched on the edge of the highbacked, stripy armchair, looking decidedly ill-at-ease.
“Coffee,” she said, setting the tray down on the sturdy, wooden coffee-table in the middle of the large room.
She picked up one of the mugs and handed it to Paul. “Help yourself to milk and sugar.”
“Thanks,” he said. “You have a lovely home. Lots of books. I like seeing books in a home, it says a lot about a person.”
“Thank you.”
She picked up the two remaining mugs, handing one of them to her husband and perching on the edge of the other, floral-upholstered sofa, opposite Paul. James didn’t say a word, his expression pinched.
Right, she decided. She was going to get to the bottom of this if it killed her.
“So, Paul, what brings you to our door this evening? Is your surname Breed, by any chance?”
He smiled at her, but somehow it didn’t quite touch his emerald-green eyes. “You and your husband talk then, I take it. I presume that he told you he fired me today? Do you share a lot? Tell me, what other type of things do you talk about?”
“That’s enough,” James said quietly. “If you have any respect for me at all, you’ll let me take it from here.”
Mary stared at her husband in disbelief.
I don’t know what the hell this is, but whatever it is, it’s bad.
To her surprise, she felt the onset of tears prickling her eyes. She blinked them away.
“James?” she said softly. “Please tell me what’s going on. Who is this boy?”
“My son,” he said simply.
The room lurched around her, like she was on a ferry in a storm.
Yes. He has his father’s eyes, was all she could think. Of course I knew it. From the second I saw him, I knew it.
Pain scorched her thighs and she cried out – she had tipped most of the boiling, black coffee into her lap. Setting down the mug on the floor by her feet, she pinched the fabric of her beige, linen trousers between thumb and forefinger, shaking it so that the coffee cooled and took the sting out of the burn.
“Mary? Are you okay?” James asked, jumping to his feet.
“I’m fine.” She lifted her gaze to meet his. To her dismay, he looked scared.
No, scrap that, he looks terrified.
“No. I’m not fine,” she said, correcting herself. “This is not fine. Not fine, at all.”
“I know how hard this must be for you,” Paul said, not sounding sorry or sympathetic in the slightest. “You must have a lot of questions, and I would be thrilled to answer them for you.”
“Let me take it from here,” James said, the warning stark, despite the quietness of his voice. “Mary doesn’t deserve this.”
“No, I’m sure she doesn’t. She deserves much better than a pig like you.”
Mary watched the way James’s face closed over, the way his jaw seemed to harden and set. “Get out my house.”
“That’s no way to talk to your family. I think you should sit down.”
“It was a mistake, letting you into my home. Get out now, before I call the police.”
“I think we should all try to calm down,” Mary said, finding her voice. “We need to discuss this, all of us. I need to understand. And I’m sure Paul does, too.”
Why am I being so calm, she wondered. Maybe it’s the shock.
Paul twisted in his seat and opened the rucksack by his side, pulling out a gun.
Mary gasped, her heart pounding painfully hard against her chest. The room lurched again, more violently this time, and went grey and grainy around the edges.
“Paul?” James asked, his voice low and full of terror. “What are you doing?”
“I came here for some answers, Dad. And I will get them anyway I can. Now, where’s that luscious little sister of mine?”
“Oh, you sick fucking bastard…” James began.
“She’s not here,” Mary interrupted.
“Oh. So where, exactly, is she, then?” Paul said, casually pointing the gun at her.
That action alone caused her stomach to lurch and her bowels to loosen and grumble. “You leave my daughter out of this,” she said, calm on the outside and quaking on the inside. “This is between you, and James. Why don’t you just put the gun down and we can talk about this calmly and rationally. I can understand you’re hurting, Paul. This has come as a massive shock to me and I can’t even begin to imagine what you are going through.”
“That’s right, you dumb bitch, you can’t. You can’t even begin to know, so don’t go all amateur psychologist on me, it’s pathetic. So why don’t you just shut the fuck up already and take off your fucking clothes?”
Mary’s head swam and her entire body trembled.
This can’t be happening. How could her life go from neat and orderly, to this in the space of five minutes? It didn’t make sense. Nothing made sense.
“Look, Paul, Mary’s right. I’m sorry if I came across as harsh. We can talk this through, all three of us. Just put the gun down.”
“Oh, the three of us will be doing a lot more than talking. So, Mary, I’ll ask you one more time, take off your fucking clothes or I’ll put a bullet between your husband’s eyes.”
Her blood was like ice-water, pumping round her veins.
I can’t do that, came the sure and true thought. Paul turned the gun onto James. Dully, she noted that it looked like a handgun from some action movie that James liked to watch now and then. Except this was longer.
A silencer? she wondered.
“Did you know about me? Mum said you did. She said you knew about me and when she told you, you laughed in her face.”
James visibly winced. “Oh, Jesus, Paul, nothing could be further from the truth.”
Mary didn’t understand. What did James’s mother have to do with anything? Hadn’t she died years ago, before they had met?
“Would you care to enlighten us, on what the truth is, exactly? Your wife and I are dying to know. Mary, why are you still dressed?”
Her limbs felt like lead, and when she looked down at her hands clasped meekly in her lap, they trembled like she had Parkinson’s.
“It’s not what you think,” James said. “I was raped.”
Raped? she thought numbly. What the hell is he going on about?
Paul suddenly jumped up and fisted her silky blonde hair, pressing the gun to her temple. She whimpered in terror, noises and voices around her strangely distorted, like she had a bucket over her head.
“Leave her alone!” James shouted.
The blood pumping through her veins was deafening in her own ears, almost drowning out external sounds. Dimly, she was aware that she couldn’t catch her breath, that the sound of ragged breathing was her own.
The muzzle of the gun was cold and hard against her temple.
What would it feel like, to have one’s brains blown out, a distant part of her mind wondered. Surely it wouldn’t hurt? There would be an explosion of searing agony, but wouldn’t it only last for a second? Less than one measly second before the nothingness came?
“…so you’d better strip.”
She caught the last part of the sentence over her wildly beating heart, hyperventilation, and ringing in her ears. She looked up and locked eyes with her husband. Somewhere along the line – she knew not when – he had sat down again. He looked beseechingly over at her, his green eyes wide and pleading. Never had he looked so lost, so heartbroken.
Her hands raised to the top button of her beige, silk blouse. Her fingers refused to cooperate, numbed by fear and total disbelief that this was really happening.
Just do as he says. Then all of this will stop.
“Very good,” Paul said, watching the ascent of her fingers as they fumbled down the buttons of her top.
“I’m so sorry,” James said. “I’ve been wanting to tell you since the first moment I met you, but somehow, the time was never right. The years passed and still I hadn’t told you. I was raped, baby, it wasn’t my fault. I just felt so dirty.”
She couldn’t bring herself to look at him. He was sorry. Sorry didn’t cut it.
Rape. That one word echoed in her head, alien and frightening. It doesn’t make sense.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, James. Tell me what? That you had fathered a kid from before you met me? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Your wife is a real hottie, Dad. A little more flat-chested than I usually go for, but still a total, fucking babe. She’s kinda ethereal. Ethereal. Is that even a word? Like a fucking angel, or something, flapping her pretty little wings all over heaven.”
Mary barely heard him. He disgusted her. Right now, her very own husband disgusted her, too. The blouse was completely undone now, dangling in two silky sheets at each side of her petite torso.
“Yeah, she’s a fucking goddess, Dad, you are one lucky fucking bastard. Whatever did you do to land her?”
Mary kept her head bowed, her vision swimming with tears.
She was slow to look up when movement danced just outside her field of vision. Only when the muffled blare of the gun sounded, did she raise her head. Through the blur of tears and panic, she saw her husband writhing on the floor.
“You fucker!” James roared.
He was clutching his foot in the foetal position, his words giving way to sobs that made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end.
“I told you to sit the fuck down, not try and snatch the gun like a fucking retard. And it’s only your fucking toe, don’t be such a baby.”
Paul’s voice was almost drowned out by her husband’s incessant sobbing, and on trembling legs she stumbled towards him, landing with a heavy thump on her knees by his side.
“James,” she cried, reaching out to sweep away the dark hair that flopped onto his creased brow.
“Keep away from him!” Paul shouted.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the butt of the gun come crashing down towards her temple. Fiery agony exploded in her head before she slipped into blackness.
CHAPTER SIX
Groggily, she opened her eyes. Her headache was fierce, her brain pounding in time to the frantic beating of her heart. She looked over at her husband and let out a startled cry.
“Welcome back, princess,” Paul said.
But Mary barely heard him. Her husband was lying on his side on the red, oriental rug. Silver masking-tape covered his mouth and his arms were lashed behind his back. His feet were bound with rope. His right foot was a bloody mess where Paul had shot him in the toes.
“James,” she gasped.
He groaned into the gag, his eyes pleading with hers. But pleading for what, she did not know.
Slowly, Mary came to realise that she was back on the sofa. She was lying on her side, her head resting on the floral cushions she had so carefully chosen out of the Laura Ashley catalogue. She went to sit up, groaning with the effort. Her head screamed in protest and she gritted her teeth against the pain.
“Fine, you may sit up, but if you move more than that, I’ll shoot your husband in the cock.”
Paul was sitting on the sofa opposite her, in the exact same spot he had sat when she had first invited him into her home. He looked so relaxed, so nonchalant, like he didn’t have a care in the world. The gun was perched on his thigh, his finger lightly resting on the trigger.
“Why are you doing this?”
Her lips felt fat when she spoke, her tongue thick, like she had been punched in the mouth.
“Because I thought we could have some family time. I thought it was high-time I got to know my dad. Now, this is what is going to happen. You are going to stand up, and you are going to strip. If you try anything funny, I think you know what will happen.”
Mary started to cry. She knew she shouldn’t, knew she should try to stay in control of herself and the whole, fucked-up situation, but she couldn’t help herself.
“Please. You don’t have to do this. Please, just stop…”
“No. Get. Up.”
Sobbing like her heart was breaking, she got to her feet. She could feel the weight of her husband’s gaze on her, but she steadfastly refused to look at him.
This is all your fault, you bastard.
Then she cried all the harder for even thinking such a thing. Crying, she shrugged the opened, silk blouse down her arms. It fell in a silent whisper to the ground.
“Very nice. Trousers next.”
Her tears were having a strangely numbing effect on her. She felt as though she were in a nightmare, that none of this could possibly be real. Her numbed, trembling fingers hovered over her beige, linen trousers that were a shade darker than her blouse.