Nemesister: The gripping women's psychological thriller from Sophie Jonas-Hill

by Sophie Jonas-Hill

  I looked at the expanse of grassland rising away from the car, then I started walking, dressed for dinner and with Red’s shotgun slung carelessly over my shoulder. My eyes blurred, and I went toward a horizon fractured by tears, following the ghost of the path I’d carved for myself a day or so before. The grasses hissed and sighed at my waist, and I spread out my fingers to touch them as I went. I looked back at the car and the echo of a gunshot rolled and cracked though my mind. I could see him, Paris, one long arm extended through the window as he fought to get free of the car and failed; as he yelled and demanded I come back for him, as he reached for the gun by his side and waved it, as it fired.

  The rocks were invisible beneath the grass, a small, grey outcrop under the green. I bent down and touched them, saw the indentation to one side where I must have lain, for however long the crack to my head had put me out. I’d been shot, I’d gone down, and hit my head on them, and had no memory of waking up again. The bag I was looking for was tucked out of sight behind the rocks, I’d even placed a few stones on top of it, just to be sure. The ratty blond wig in its pigtails was a few feet away, where it must have fallen from my head. It looked like beauty parlour roadkill.

  I stood up and shaded my eyes. The lush green land curved away from me, trees marking the line of the brackish river that eventually wound its way down to the shack. I was on the crest of a small ridge; it would only have taken a few steps to be over its peak and I’d have been invisible from the road, swallowed by the marsh as it had tipped and rolled me onward, down toward the water. I took a breath and hurled the shotgun, sending it spinning through space, turning away before it hit the ground. I thought of it lying in the grass, waiting to be discovered like some hillbilly Easter egg. Well, good luck to whoever found it.

  I changed my clothes at the roadside and used a scarf I had in my bag to cover my bruised forehead. I looked more like a chemotherapy victim than anything and I figured the implication might keep questions at bay for a while. I thrashed about in the grass verge around the boulder, and my foot struck the pistol Paris must have dropped after he’d shot me, accidentally or otherwise. The pistol was a lot more my style than a shotgun, so I picked it up. Well, it was better than leaving it lying around, messing up the place.

  When I passed the gas station again, no one was about: no police cars, no renegade redneck mobs. I thought of the handcuffed Red, and what story he might have come up with for the attendant, and honestly wished I could have been a fly on the wall for that one.

  I drove back into town as if I were watching the world on a TV screen. I’d found my dark glasses and was glad, not because they saved my eyes from the sun, but for the barrier they formed between the world and me. There was a small family-run bed and breakfast I’d noted a few days back, and eventually I found my way there, stopping off beforehand to buy some things, a new case to put them in, and a car to put that in.

  There’s nothing like a cash sale to cut through the questions. The car was for sale outside a private house, a handwritten sign posted in the rear window. It was silver, inconspicuous; middle of the range, middle of the road, forgettable.

  I wasn’t. Neither was my story of escaping from an ex-husband, to explain the bump on my head. The cops had already seen to him, but I was getting out of town, and I didn’t want no one but them to know about it. His mother was just as bad, and as he’d slept with my best friend, there wasn’t anything here for me no more. The man selling the car nodded sagely, embarrassed by the flood of information, but sympathetic. I’d left Red’s truck parked outside a run-down house three blocks away, with the keys in the ignition, sure that fate and the occupants would take care of it for me. The man selling the car wished me luck and hoped my ex got all that was coming to him. So did I.

  The landlady of the boarding house was like her establishment: warm, friendly and over decorated. She took in my natty headscarf and shades, drew her conclusions and kept them to herself. I asked if she could bring me something to eat, said I was jet-lagged and asked not to be disturbed.

  I did not allow myself to think until after she’d knocked on the door and left me a plate of sandwiches and a glass of milk, with a home-baked cookie on the side. I ate, stripped off my clothes and stood under the shower with the water hammering on my face. Then, I thought.

  I thought about everything I’d done, everything I’d believed, everything I’d not done but had come so close to doing. I thought of Lisa; Lisa I’d loved, Lisa I’d lost and Lisa who Red had not killed. The world I’d created for myself, the world I’d lived and breathed and worn for months, cracked and broke and fell away from me, and I was left small and naked and curled on the floor of the shower as the water washed my tears away. Then I slept, and dreamed of nothing but the crack and sigh of the swamp.

  Chapter 26

  AN INNER CALLING prodded me awake hours later, stiff and hungry. I was ashamed to see just how dirty I’d still managed to make the nice, crisp sheets on my bed, as if even after all my scrubbing, something of the previous night had sweated out of me. I showered again, inspected my wounds – the one on my forehead now a delicious shade of purple – and did what I could with the clothes I had, to look like a nicer girl than I was.

  I went down the stairs, thinking about breakfast though it was nearer to supper. I walked into the guest lounge, and was greeted by a chorus of glass-eyed stares. The place was peppered with dolls the way a freeway is peppered with roadkill: dolls in bonnets, dolls with curls, dolls dressed as Native American squaws and, perhaps most incongruously of all, a traditional cherubic Victorian child wearing a bunny-girl leotard and ears. They looked at me and I looked at them, and I got the distinct impression I’d interrupted something I shouldn’t have.

  Tucked away to one side of the room was a white desk, its cabriole legs painted with pink roses, and on it the familiar bulk of a computer. A lace tea cloth had been draped over the monitor, as if to remind it of its place; and above it, on the wall, was an embroidery of an austere Virgin Mary, reminding me of mine. There were a lot of moths preserved under glass, dusty and silent, as if each were trapped against their own personal windows, too tired even to flutter. I looked at the computer, and my fingers itched to get back online.

  ‘Alright,’ I told the assemble, ‘I won’t tell on you, if you don’t tell on me,’ and went to find the landlady.

  She found me, coming out from backstage as I re-entered the reception area, and greeted me with a wider smile than I’d seen in a long time.

  ‘Anything I can do for you, darlin’?’

  Resisting the urge to ask for a hug, I asked if I might use the computer to check my emails.

  ‘You sure can,’ she said. ‘But y’all sure it can’t wait till morning? You look real done in.’

  ‘That’s okay, I slept most of the day. I feel better than I look,’ though that wasn’t saying much. I’d tried brushing my hair over my bruise, but I noticed her eyes flick up to it just the same. She frowned.

  ‘You sure you shouldn’t pass by the ER, darlin’? That looks more than what witch hazel can see to?’

  ‘Already been,’ I said, feeling it was the most heinous lie I’d ever told, ‘and I’ve never been one for hospitals.’

  ‘Alright, I done my best.’ Her face settled into the resigned smile of a woman with teenage children. ‘Can I at least get you something from the kitchen?’

  ‘Coffee would be great, and some more sandwiches, thank you.’

  ‘I’ll put some angel food cake on the side,’ she said. ‘You look fit to faint, if you don’t mind me sayin’.’ I watched her pad off, and decided I didn’t mind at all.

  The dolls made no comment on my return, which I took as an encouraging sign. As the computer groaned into life, I flipped back its lace shroud, and waited for the screen to go blue.

  I logged on to Facebook as myself first, and updated my status with pictures of Mexico I’d stored in preparation. It seemed pointless, as everything I’d planned had, quite literally, gone sou
th; but as I’d no idea what else to do until I found Paris in the morning, I thought I might as well stick to the plan. I spent an hour uploading fake diary entries and sending messages to my few remaining real friends to bolster my alibi, telling them all that ‘it sure is hot in Wahacca this time of year.’

  ‘You been on vacation?’ the landlady asked when she brought my food, complete with angel food cake as promised. ‘It just takes my breath away how people can keep in touch these days, it scarce feels as if they’ve gone sometimes.’

  Frances had left messages about borrowing money again, along with a heavy handed reminder about Mom’s birthday, both of which I ignored. When I was done, I signed out, drank my coffee and decided to log on as Margarita. Her profile jumped with notifications: a tumble of messages in her inbox and three friend requests from strange men. After I ignored most, I saw a message from Mary Contrary, the girl I’d met through the survivor websites. I smiled to myself, took a last swig of coffee, and opened it. Come to think of it, it was quite nice to feel someone cared enough to see how Margarita was doing, seeing as she’d been offline for a while.

  And yes, Mary was asking how I, Margarita, was, and why she hadn’t heard from me, and apologizing for not being in touch herself for weeks. She told me she was feeling much better; she was going to come into some money soon and start a whole new life. She said she wanted to say goodbye. I turned away to bite my sandwich, then read the last line of her message.

  ‘I was wondering, after what we talked about, did you ever catch up with that bastard Red, like you said you wanted to?’

  I paused, mouth full of turkey on rye. I put down the rest of the sandwich and began to scroll through her messages, my finger jabbing at the mouse. I flicked back and back, scanning the screen until I reached the first time I’d mentioned to her that I had a sister.

  Red.

  I hadn’t used that name once, not ever, not in any message on Facebook or email. I loaded up the survivors’ website and read though all the messages to the girl who’d revealed herself to be Mary Contrary from Facebook: nothing. I’d called him every name under the sun, but I’d never called him Red, not to anyone else. Hell, I’d never even called him Rooster.

  Them that knows me, calls me Red.

  I got up from the computer and went to the window. Night had fallen and the little garden outside was singing with insects, the air rich and verdant. Was it possible? I looked back at the dolls, all of them staring at me, their faces arch, impassive, as if they already knew. No, it wasn’t possible, it couldn’t be.

  I sat down and read her messages again. I found a notepad and pencil and, relishing the triumph of analogue technology, I charted the times she’d asked what I was going to ‘do’ about my sister’s husband, when she’d told me how ‘they’ never got caught, how ‘they’ deserved everything that was coming to them, how I had to ‘do’ something. Not once had I called him Red or Rooster. Neither had I called him Red when she’d asked about the guy my sister had slept with, and suggested that if I found him, he might be able to help. Or when she’d congratulated me on being so strong, on taking out the truck driver, on all the training I was doing. Not even when she’d told me I was amazing, that I could do what all of them couldn’t, get revenge on one of the bastards.

  ‘It’s you, isn’t it?’ I said to the screen. She’d been alive all along, just like Red said. Lisa had been alive and she’d been talking to me, goading me, pushing me. I was wrong, she had contacted me after all. I looked at the message, it was sent seven hours ago, when I’d already left Red at the gas station. She’d slipped up, she’d been expecting to hear something by now but she hadn’t, and she wanted to know, she was desperate to know. Because it was personal.

  I put down my pencil, the words of her message throbbing behind my eyes. For a while I was too numb to feel anything, to take on board what she’d done to me, my big sister, my Lisa. I was aware of the hum from the monitor, the warm thrum of the garden and the cold, merciless twist of loathing inside me. The dolls said nothing, but I was sure they were all thinking it.

  Of course she’d had to message me, to ask me, because for the first time in months, she didn’t have someone telling her what I was doing. Because Paris wasn’t with me any more. I’d been so busy convincing him we were in love that I’d ended up believing my own lie. No, worse than that: I’d believed his.

  The only thing he hadn’t known was what I’d intended to do with Red after the con, and the shack and all of that. So what else could he do, but go along for the ride until it became obvious. And then? Make sure there wasn’t anyone else left to stop me, including himself. Sure, he’d gone a bit overboard on that – he’d probably meant to pull over and throw me out, oh, and keep the money as back-up – but he’d managed spectacularly to do what he’d intended: give me no way to back out. Fuck me, but you almost had to admire them. The both of them.

  ‘Bitch!’ Margarita exploded, ‘Fucking bitch! An’ that two-faced son of – that – that fuckin’ bitch!’

  I turned out the lights in the lounge and sat in the dark for a while.

  ‘So,’ Margarita said to me, when she was calmer. ‘What ya gonna do now?’ Her voice faded to a chuckle within me.

  Chapter 27

  AFTER TRAVELLING SOUTH-WEST along the freeway for some time, alone but for Margarita and Mr Pooter, my sister’s stuffed toy rabbit, I became almost hypnotized by the repetitive spill of the world scrolling past. The landscape was uniformly flat to the point of modesty, as if the expanse of sky above had quite robbed it of the will to achieve anything more than hot and green. I liked it. It stopped me thinking; it stopped me asking myself questions; it stopped me from wanting to run. I felt as if the wheels of my new silver car were locked into train tracks, taking me where I had to go without my having a say in the matter.

  The freeway eventually rose up on stilts at junction 311. My course took me through a dizzying spiral and onto a slip road, to be delivered into the parking lot of ‘Stop Three Eleven’, taking inspiration for its name from the junction. It was a truck stop built around a casino, or casino built around a truck stop; either way with all the architectural style and panache of a convenience store. A white cube with a red tiled hat, wet dark windows and the peak of a veranda shading its door. It offered an all-day buffet of mac n’ cheese, fried chicken and three bean salad, where you could drink and drink for hours and yet never truly get drunk. The champagne didn’t taste like cherry cola, it tasted like Gatorade and desperation. It was everything I could have wished for. I checked the exits, quartered the ground and got back into my car. I gave ‘Three Eleven’ a final glance in my rear-view and headed for the junction and the way back to the city.

  Once there, I sat in my car outside a beauty salon in town, with treatments listed in French on a board outside. It was the kind of place more used to a style and set than nail extensions; windows shrouded in lace curtains as if hiding something from polite company.

  A quick internet search had provided me with the direct numbers for the wards in the county hospital and common sense narrowed it down to three. The first drew a blank, so I rang the second. As I listened to the rings before my phone was answered, I pulled the cardigan I’d bought tight across my chest, and folded my arm under my breasts, as if I were supporting a bust ten times the volume of my own. I was sucking on two marshmallows and had the car radio tuned to the local station, turned up just a little too loud.

  The woman who answered when I was put through to the ward, sounded as if she were finishing a long shift and her voice was already half out the door. I went into my rant as if she’d known me from grade school, as if there was nothing but a garden fence between us.

  ‘I’m phoning about my boy, he been with y’all for a day or so now, he not bothered to ring home, mind. He’s the name of French, Peter French?’

  ‘Yes ma’am, we got him here, but it’s really a might early …?’

  ‘Oh, he is, is he? Early or not darlin’, I should like to tan h
is hide for him, so help me God!’ Well, you know what boys are like, I said. If I’d told him once, I’d told him a thousand times, driving those damn fool cars like he was the only thing on the road. I’d pass by and see him, only I had diabetes and my foot was nearly took off last year, so I was on sticks, but my neighbour, the one with the ride-on and the dog that barks, well, he said he’d take me, only he wasn’t gonna be free until later and I wanted to know if it were worth my while coming. ‘I mean, if he’s gonna be let out today anyhow’s, I can just save myself the bother, now can’t I?’ Well, she understood. She had two boys herself and was worried as hell about the eldest, getting mixed up in gangs and what-not; you hear such terrible things. She wasn’t really sure if Paris was being discharged yet, but sure, she’d check her notes.

  While I waited for her to return, I refreshed my marshmallows, slurping a drop of pink goo as it escaped my mouth a second before she picked up again.

  ‘Well, you didn’t hear it from me, but he’s gonna be signed out some time after four.’ Well, I was mad as hell with him, stupid boy, but he was okay, wasn’t he? He was. It was nasty but superficial, she told. Yeah, I thought, that figures.

  Peter French, the name Paris always said he used when he had to sign anything official, had been in for twenty-four hours, sleeping for the most part. He’d gotten a wound in his side where the steering column of the car had pinned him to the seat, but it hadn’t hit anything vital, flesh wound, that sort of thing – well, thanks for that, she was an angel, really she was.

  I’d prepared to ask if I could speak with him after all, but she was way ahead of me.

  ‘I shouldn’t really, seein’ as how it’s before visiting times n’all …’ I heard the noise as she leant forward. ‘Yes ma’am, seems as if he’s awake.’ She dropped her voice, I could almost picture her wink. ‘You want me to pass him the phone?’ She chuckled.