by Rick Wood
Once freed, I don’t wait around to feel the relief of freedom or the release of pain; I leap to my feet, full of fury, and charge to the stairs so hard that I stumble over the first few and knock against the wall.
The door to Harper’s room opens and Destiny appears at the top of the stairs. She grins at me. Mocks my desperation. Waves the knife around like a cigarette.
I stampede up the stairs, taking them two at a time, and when I swing my fist and it lands in the side of her head, I’m almost as startled as she is, but it doesn’t last long; my focus is on the knife.
She falls to her knees. I take hold of her wrist in one hand and squeeze against the bone. It feels so fragile, like a child’s wrist, like I could snap it if I knew how. But I don’t. I just squeeze until her grip loosens and I take her knife from her.
Inside the room I see her. My daughter. Fixed to the bed. Her skirt lifted over her belly and a line of blood trickling onto the bedsheets.
“Dad…” she whispers.
My anger takes over, and I don’t care what happens to Destiny, I don’t care what I do to her, I just want her gone; whether by her choice or by a body bag.
But I’m still dizzy, still weak, and all it takes is Destiny to barge into my waist and, despite the lesser strength her age and gender has given her, I tumble down the stairs, knocking my neck against a step and my spine against the wall, until I land at the bottom and the knife tumbles out of my hand.
I lift my head and wait for everything to return to focus while Destiny returns to Harper’s bedroom and the door closes.
I stumble to my knees. There is a pain in my neck. An aching in the base of my back and up my spine. My knees feel tender.
I struggle to my feet and fall back down again, just avoiding the knife on the floor, panting, wiping blood from my sleeve, unsure whether it’s mine or hers. I force myself to stand, catching sight of Felix as I do. In the living room. An empty body. Vacant of life. Unable to hurt anyone else.
I did that, I remind myself.
I did that, and I am stronger than I think.
If I can defeat a big guy like that, then a teenage girl should be nothing.
I take the knife and use the bannister to balance my body. I stand, for a moment, swaying from side to side, waiting for the headrush to leave. My head is pounding, and I know I’m concussed or something like it, and in dire need of a hospital, but I can drop down dead for all I care; so long as I make sure Harper is safe first.
I’m lucky, really. Some people die falling down the stairs. I just have a headache and a few pains.
That’s all they are.
Just a headache. Just a few pains.
Even though they are far, far worse, that’s what I have to tell myself; just a headache. Just a few pains.
Minimise it.
Shrink the agony to a tiny little twinge, and that’s all it will be.
I try the first few steps. I’m swaying from side to side, but I’m staying upright, and that’s the main thing.
59
Harper
Dad’s fall down the stairs is followed by silence, and Destiny returns to the room with even more smugness — if that’s possible.
She shuts the door. Drags my chair across the room and wedges it against the door handle. Turns to me and shrugs sympathetically.
“Looks like we’re out of time,” she says, and then she’s on the bed and she’s on me and her hands are around my throat and her thumbs dig into my windpipe, and she knows where to press to stop the air, it’s like she’s done this before. Her face changes. It contorts, fading from one visage of rage to another, her smiles and chuckles and smugness have changed into the fury she needs to kill me.
I stare up at her, struggling, pulling on my handcuffs, pulling on the rope around my ankles, feeling more and more helpless.
I still have to fight. I have to try.
But the fight starts to leave me.
I weaken.
The world begins to fade.
My body stops struggling, stops battling.
But I can hear something. The door. Distant, like it’s far away. A banging against it.
Destiny presses down harder, like she wants to speed up my death.
The banging continues, then the door bursts open and Dad runs in and knocks Destiny off me and I suck in air, suck it in, breathe and breathe and breathe and turn my head to see Destiny leap to her feet; but this only presents her gut to Dad’s knife.
It goes through her dress and sinks through her flesh, but Dad doesn’t stop there. He pushes. Harder and harder, as the knife goes further into her body.
She looks helpless. There is a new vulnerability in the way she looks from Dad to me, then back to Dad. A fear she has yet to show either of us.
Dad doesn’t stop. The knife is deep within her, yes, but it’s not enough, so he twists it. Holds it in her and, with all his strength, twists it, and I don’t know whether to be grateful for him or scared of him.
He pushes her against the wall beside the window, which he opens.
With a scream and a burst of strength, Dad pushes her to the window, drops the knife to open it, and she topples over the ledge, falling out of it headfirst.
Dad stands at the ledge, looking down.
He doesn’t move. He stays at the window, his back to me, staring downwards. Panting. His whole body is heaving as he breathes.
Finally, he looks over his shoulder at me, and I don’t know what I expect to see — a look of terror, fear, despair, happiness, I don’t know…
In the end, it looks to be all of those.
He says two words that I can tell he really needs to say:
“It’s over.”
60
Will
“It’s over.”
I say it again for my own sake.
“It is over.”
There’s guilt for the damage I’ve done to a young woman, but also relief, desperate relief.
Felix is dead downstairs.
And Destiny is… well, she isn’t moving.
And my daughter stares at me, a mixture of tears and respite.
I rush to her side, and untie the ropes from her ankles. I left the keys to the handcuffs downstairs, but I’m reluctant to leave her.
“The keys are downstairs,” I tell her. “I’ll be right back, I promise, I’ll be right back.”
I’m terrified to leave her, scared of what could happen, so I leap down the steps three at a time, fall down the last few, then skid around the hallway and into the living room.
Felix stares at the ceiling, his body still.
I did that.
But I can’t think about it now. I can deal with it later.
I take the keys and race back upstairs.
I breathe a sigh of relief; Harper is still there.
I place the keys into the lock, almost fumbling, and release her wrists.
Almost as soon as the handcuffs drop behind the bed her arms are around me, and they are hugging me so tight that, for a moment, I can’t breathe.
I wrap my arms around her, and we do not let go.
My collar becomes damp as she cries into it, and she is so loud, but it’s fine. It’s all fine. There’s blood on the bedsheets, and blood sticks to my shirt. There’s pain throughout my body, and there’s terror in Harper’s sobs. But these are all things we can deal with later.
For now, I just hold her.
Then I whisper in her ear, “I am so proud of you.”
She cries harder.
“I love you so much,” I continue. “I am so proud of you. I am so, so proud. You were so strong. And I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry.”
She pulls me tighter.
“I am so sorry…”
61
Harper
They are words that I’ve wanted to hear for so long.
I’m proud of you.
I love you.
I’m sorry.
But none of it can match the feeling of watching my father fi
ght for me. He didn’t leave me, he didn’t let her hurt me, not too much anyway, he came back, and he came through.
Despite being pushed downstairs, knocked about and covered in blood, he came back for me.
That’s all I’ve ever wanted.
I pull away for a moment. His eyes are damp too. Not as damp as mine, I’m sure, my cheeks are soaked, but there is pain in there, and there is love too.
“I’m sorry too, Dad,” I tell him.
“Don’t, I am the one who should be sorry.”
“It wasn’t your fault, that girl was crazy.”
“I don’t just mean that. I mean…”
He looks down.
“I know,” I tell him, then I wrap my arms around him again, and I don’t stop crying.
Eventually, he pulls away and says, “I need to go call the police now, okay?”
“Don’t go.”
“I’ll be one minute, then I’ll be right back, I promise.”
I nod, but I still cling to his hand. He stands and backs away, and he escapes my grasp, but he doesn’t stop watching me until he’s out of sight.
A few seconds later, I hear his voice as he speaks down the phone.
I step away from the bed. My legs are weak. There is a pain running up the inside of my thigh, but I don’t think the cut was too deep. It stings, but it doesn’t stop me from limping across the room to the window.
I pause, feeling the cold air, not realising how sweaty I am.
Destiny’s body lies on the drive below. Her arms and legs spread out chaotically. A pool of blood spreads from beneath her stab wound, and most of her dress is a thick red.
She turns slightly.
She’s still alive.
I consider whether to tell Dad when he’s back. Whether we should do something about it.
But alive or not, she’s not getting up.
We’re safe now.
I don’t believe it, and I have to keep telling myself it, but we’re safe. I’m sure of it.
Dad returns to the room and joins me at the window. Once he sees what I’m looking at, he goes to pull me away.
“No… I have to see this…”
It’s ridiculous, I know, but I have to watch her. I have to make sure she doesn’t get up. I have to make sure she doesn’t come back. So long as she’s on the drive, she can’t hurt me, and I have to make sure she stays there.
Dad seems to understand. He places an arm around me, kisses my forehead, and stays with me until the police arrive.
62
Will
The sirens are distant, at first, then they grow louder. Before I know it, they are deafening.
I go outside to greet the police and direct them inside.
An ambulance arrives next.
A paramedic comes toward me, but I tell them my daughter’s upstairs and she’s more important. Another tends to Destiny, though I don’t know how much they’ll be able to do for her.
Another ambulance arrives and the paramedic insists on seeing me, and I reluctantly oblige. I refuse to go to the hospital though, not wanting to be away from Harper. Even if we both go to the hospital, they might put us in separate rooms, and I am staying wherever she is.
They fetch me some water and a few pills. They bandage my lower back and do other stuff I don’t pay attention to.
A police officer takes my statement, my record of what happened here. He says he’ll need me to come to the station and talk more about it later.
The media arrive quicker than the police anticipated, but they manage to keep them off the drive.
Then, after a moment of silence passes, I wonder if I should ask my questions now. Despite all the police officers here, I am still worried that one of them could be lying, that they could be a fake, like Felix, and I have to remind myself that they would know if one of them wasn’t their colleague.
“So who was he?” I ask.
“Simon Felix?” the police replies, as if he needs to confirm who I’m talking about.
I nod faintly.
“He wasn’t lying about being a police officer, only about whether he was still in active duty. He was discharged nine months ago.”
“Why?”
“The same delusions that destroyed his marriage destroyed his job. He kept imagining suspects were doing things they weren’t. Then he started harassing his female colleagues.”
“Really?”
“Last I heard he was trying to use his computer to hack the police database. He was a really messed up man, I’m afraid.”
“You don’t have to tell me.”
The police officer places a hand on my shoulder.
“You protected your family,” he tells me. “You did what any of us would do. Remember that. The problems he was having were not yours.”
I nod. I go to say thank you, but the words don’t meet my lips.
He wanders away, shouting at the media to get back. I see the flashes of their cameras reflected in the puddles, but I am out of sight in the back of this ambulance.
The paramedic applies a few finishing touches to the bandages, then turns and asks me whether my head is feeling any better. I reply, but I’m not sure what I say.
My focus is on Destiny. They have placed her on a bed and are putting her in the back of an ambulance.
I’m pretty sure I hear one of them say they are taking her to intensive care, and I wonder how she’s managed to survive.
63
Harper
I watch the melee of people from my bedroom window as the paramedic stitches my leg, saying every few minutes that they will need to take me in.
I tell them okay, but not yet.
First, I need to see this.
Not the media craning to get their photos, the sick vultures preying upon the wounded, their voyeurism more important than ethics.
Not the police gathering, putting up tape, talking to Dad.
Not even the coroner taking out Felix’s body.
It’s Destiny I’m interested in. The fear that she will get up at any moment still grips me.
The paramedics gather around her. They press their hands against her stab wound, trying to stop the bleeding.
When she’s ready, they lift her onto the stretcher and take her to the ambulance.
Just before she goes in, her eyes open.
They lock onto mine, if only for a few seconds.
And, at the very moment she disappears into the vehicle, I am sure I see her smile.
A small, sinister smile.
A tiny act of malice.
And one I am sure was intended for me.
Three Weeks Later
64
Will
Another day of teaching ends and I am exhausted.
But it’s a good kind of exhaustion.
I’ve been on my feet all day, delivering lessons I spent Sunday afternoon designing, full of activities where my class is moving around, interacting, and engaging in their learning. The monotonous procedure of lecturing through a mock paper is a distant memory.
The students even say goodbye to me when they leave my classroom. It’s a small action, and it’s bizarre that it means so much, yet it’s something I haven’t had for years — where, instead of shuffling out with their heads down, they smile at me and tell me to have a good afternoon.
One girl even says thank you. It feels strange yet brilliant.
When I arrive home with a box of books, Harper is in the kitchen. I hear sizzling from a frying pan and I am greeted with the most pleasant of aromas.
“Oh wow,” I say. “What are we having?”
I walk up to her and give her a hug with my spare arm, then place my box out of the way.
“Bacon, sausages and eggs.”
“Sounds perfect.”
She serves our tea and we sit opposite each other, eating whilst in eager conversation. I ask her about her day and she tells me about her science lesson where they were dissecting pig hearts. It sounds gross, but the experiment isn’t wha
t she focusses on — it’s the new girl she was paired with, and how she was able to have a laugh with her.
I’ve never heard her talk about having a laugh with another girl before. I ask what this girl’s name is, and she tell me it’s Hope.
“Maybe you should invite Hope around,” I tell her. “Or go to the cinema with her at the weekend or something.”
“Maybe,” she replies, not in a dismissive way, but with actual thought given to it.
She asks me how my day was, and I tell her about trying a few new tasks in my lessons, and she nods and smiles.
During this whole conversation, Natalie’s name doesn’t come up once. It’s not that I want her to forget her mother, quite the opposite; should Natalie be willing, I hope she and Harper will be able to have a relationship separate from us. Only problem is, Natalie doesn’t seem willing. She hasn’t so much as called to see how her daughter is, and it’s partly upsetting, whilst also being a relief.
Natalie is toxic. She drinks to excess, creates tension and, let’s be honest, must have been having multiple affairs she probably can’t even remember.
And Harper is thriving without her.
“So what do you fancy doing this evening?”
“Dunno. I’ve heard there’s a new movie on Prime about an a capella group or something. Fancy it?”
“Sounds perfect.”
We finish tea. I wash up and she dries as we listen to music, even swaying a little to the beat. Once the kitchen is sparkling again, we start the movie and settle down on the sofa.
“Oh!” I say. “I almost forgot — what about the popcorn?”
“I think we’ve only got microwave popcorn.”
“That’s fine.”
I go to get up, but she puts a hand out and says, “It’s all right, I’ll do it.”
She pushes herself up and walks to the kitchen.
I sit alone, with nothing but the distant sound of popcorn popping in the other room. A few photo frames are now displayed on the windowsill beside the television, and me and my daughter smile back at me.