by Kingsley Ash
‘Because I’m in love with you.’ He says it without pause or thought, like it’s second nature to say it. A thousand butterflies explode inside my tummy and turn into shooting stars. ‘Because the second I set my eyes on you, the world told me it was wrong. Still keeps telling me these feelings I’ve got for you are wrong — twisted. And the sick bastard that I am, well, that just sucks me right in to you like a fucking blackhole. I know you love me back, Amy. I heard it. Burnt it into my soul. You said it. And you can’t ever take it back.’
Shepherd was never good. I know that. He wasn't a good person even when I was a little girl, even though he took care of me for a while. He would have hurt me eventually and probably enjoyed it, but I don't think he was born a monster. He was just an animal until the gang showed him how to be a bad, scary beast. Showed him what he could do. He wouldn't have gone to prison, wouldn't have come back the way he is, but they helped him do it. And now, now he's just my monster. And he’s everyone else's enemy.
I love him.
But will he still love me?
I don’t know what to do anymore.
I turn my head to the side so he can’t see this love burning in my eyes. He grips my chin and tugs it back, forcing me to look at him.
‘Haven’t I fucked the truth into you?’
‘I’m scared.’
‘Amy, wake up and see what I am. Darkness to fight your darkness. Evil to fight your evil. I’m all darkness, all evil, and I did what I did all those years ago to protect you. I did that. So here I am, your evil, your darkness. Now that you have me, you need to get used to the idea.’
Lies tear us apart, and the truth gets lost in the hurt.
‘I love you, Amy. It started when I was nine. The second you said Hello, I fell in love with you. Now every time you say Hello, I fall in love with you all over again. I know I’ve hurt you — I still hurt you. Lying and hurting are my ways. I’m a monster, not a gentleman. I’m the fucking dragon not the hero. But I’m your evil who’ll fight evil for you, so you need to quit locking me out. I’m not going anywhere. Whatever it takes, Amy, baby, whatever it takes to save you, I’ll do it.’
He isn’t the knight in shining armour. He is the wicked dragon determined to blow fire into the darkest corner of my world. And he will either save me, or turn me to ashes.
‘I forgive you for lying, Shepherd,’ I whisper into the darkness.
I forgive you because my lie is the biggest lie of them all.
I will tell him. Just not yet. There’s something I need to do first.
It isn’t that I doubt him, it isn’t that I won’t — it’s that I can’t doubt him. Not anymore. Can’t because if I doubt Shepherd then my heart will die. Then I may as well live my life in a cage, the one in which I go mad from all the checks that keep me locked up. Because if Shepherd, the man who’s teaching me to become the girl I wish to be, would willingly destroy our future to get revenge . . . then this love we keep is a lie.
I let my head fall against his chest. He wraps his big arms around, cocoons me. I feel the whole weight of his body press into me. His strong arms are like armour against the pain I’ve kept locked inside my damaged heart. Then I start to sob and shake, and I feel sad for Elizabeth, again. For all the other girls.
I breathe Shepherd in, addicted to his toxic love, the protective scent of nicotine and musk overpowering the sickly stench of horror. I breathe him in, and try to lock it in my heart.
I’m at breaking point, Shepherd. The time is up. The jury’s out. It’s time to move my feet.
I’ve been a fool, unloving you. You’ve been the brave one. The heart on my sleeve. And I’ve been the hard one. So hard to please.
Please don’t give up on me.
51
YOU
I’M WEARING MY WARMEST clothes — my swallow jumper and a padded jacket, with Shepherd’s white T-shirt underneath — but still the air nips, and my shoes are quickly sodden from the slushy grass.
The shivering has set into my bones, and I can’t feel my feet they’re so numb, but still they take me away from Swan Lake, towards the bus stop. I keep my head down in the drizzle. My seahorse bag over my shoulder already feels too heavy.
In the bus shelter, the rain starts to fall more heavily on the corrugated roof, and a slab of snow slides off, landing in a slushy heap on the pavement. I shiver, rub my arms.
The metal seat is thin and hard against my body. I listen to the rain, watching the grey mess of old snow and rain mingle on the pavement.
I get on the bus and pay for my ticket with the money Rebecca lent me, taking a seat near the back, lowering my head in case any of the other passengers recognise me.
My bag is on my lap and I unzip it to check the Black Magic box is safe. It’s really me I want to check on. I’m not sure how safe I feel, but Swan Lake never kept me safe. It was my prison.
I get off the bus at Greystone train station, and use the last of Rebecca’s money on a return ticket to Willow Heights.
Where Elizabeth is.
From Willow station it’s a short walk to the hospital, but the rain slows me, running in tears down my face.
I’m inside the hospital grounds. I just need to find her flat. The address is on all the letters she sent me, letters I never replied to, but always read.
Daisy’s death is heavy on my mind. Death, close around me. Oblivion, which is what I thought I wanted.
I remember Elizabeth’s first letter, a year after I was signed into Swan Lake. She’d been too brain damaged to write earlier. Last year, she was well enough to move into her own flat within the grounds of the care facility.
I look into the window of the flat and see her lying on the sofa. The room looks warm and cosy.
Snow begins to fall lightly on my shoulders. I tap on the window and she looks up, her golden blonde hair falling on her cheek. She recognises me at a glance. I see her mouth speak my name.
I press the wet glass with my hand, wanting to touch her, and she must feel the same because she runs then, to the front door. I hear it open and turn, and she’s there, too close to see, her arms around me and her lips on my cheek and her skin against mine.
‘Amy! Oh my beautiful daughter.’
My mother isn’t dead.
My mother is very much alive and is holding me tightly, scared to let me go.
I think I was eight years old when I wandered into my father’s shed and saw the photographs. But my traumatised heart, my damaged brain, had smudged out the truth.
And then I remembered to forget.
My father raped Elizabeth when she was only thirteen. They forced her to hide the pregnancy. The woman I thought had been my mother pretended she’d given birth to me.
On the night of my seventeenth birthday, my father gave me his special camera.
I held it tightly, even as the argument unfolded. Elizabeth tried to snatch it. I thought she was jealous, that’s why she was so angry. I didn’t understand what she meant, when she shrieked at Dad that she won’t let him, that she will stop him. That she will reveal the truth.
Elizabeth ran into the shed, the forbidden dark room. I followed.
I watched her smash open my father’s chest with a hammer, and then I saw them. The DVDs. She told me everything about my father’s abuse. Then she told me her secret.
I was her daughter.
Then my father entered the shed. I remember my sister begged him to leave us alone, that she wouldn’t report him if he let us leave.
But I wasn’t going to keep quiet.
I took my phone out, threatening to call the police. Elizabeth begged me not to, scared of the man who abused her as a child.
My father came at me. The look on his face scared me to death. He was like a toothy monster, bent on killing me.
But Elizabeth stepped in, protecting her child, and everything after was a blur.
I heard an almighty crack as Elizabeth’s head hit concrete. I stopped, afraid. I’d seen what my father was capable of.
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An ambulance took Elizabeth away. I wasn’t allowed to go with her. Police Constable Clark arrived at the scene. My father had me taken under custody. He told the police it was me who hurt Elizabeth. I was mentally unstable, addicted to drugs, it was a tragic accident. His word as the mayor over a little hysterical girl, made it easy for him to have me sanctioned in Swan Lake until I was deemed safe to be let out.
I blamed myself for Elizabeth’s brain damage. I should have kept quiet. And so I did.
Until Shepherd came back into my life.
‘Are you happy?’ Elizabeth says. ‘I only want my baby girl to be happy.’
She holds me tightly, and starts to hum her lullaby.
‘Yes, Lizzy. I am happy. When I was nine I met a boy, and we fell in love.’
52
ME
In the dayroom, the smell of roses and citrus and pine. The television is too loud. The shattered jigsaw puzzles are on the floor. I head down the corridor, and pass an old patient in a wheelchair. She’s wearing Fab5’s red plaid T-shirt.
My heart sinks when I find Diana alone in her room. She’s thinner. Her bones are the only thing left in her arms and hands. Her eyes fall open. She stretches her fingers at me. They rock the way light does at the bottom of a swimming pool.
The plastic patient bracelet hangs around her wrist. ‘Shepherd.’
‘Hey Diana.’
‘Shepherd, my dear boy. Have you found your mummy?’
She sounds distressed.
‘No, Diana. My mum is dead, remember?’
‘Oh . . . yes . . . such a pity. Such a pretty young thing. Very talented too. The singing voice of an angel. And she could never be found without her yo-yo. I think it was the only gift her mummy gave her. Oh, she was so very talented with her yo-yo.’
I feel bile rise in the back of my throat and I try to maintain my stance despite my quickening blood loss.
‘You remember what colour it was?’
‘Of course. It was bright yellow,’ Diana says. ‘I remember it so well because she used to say it was her only bit of sunshine in her world.’
I burn cold.
I’ve seen a bright yellow yo-yo in Greystone.
In the woods.
In Bishop Clark’s caravan.
My gut twists, squeezes tighter and tighter, until it feels like a knife punctures my lungs. I can’t fucking breathe.
‘Shepherd? Shepherd, dear? Are you alright?’
Diana’s voice manages to calm the sense of dread racking through my body.
‘Yeah, Diana . . . Just need to help my mum rest in peace.’
Outside Swan Lake, I feel a storm coming. But it doesn’t stop me. I drive to the woods, as lightning lights up the dark sky, and park my car by the treeline. The wind stills and the storm passes when I get closer to Angel’s Stone.
It’s time to go home.
53
ME
When I get to Violet’s cottage, the sky is clear.
The eye of the storm.
The cottage is small. The woods suffocate it. The sun lights the wet stone path as I walk up.
The roof has caved in. An ash tree grows through the middle of the house. The front door is opened, held open by a clump of weeds.
The sunlight follows me inside and illuminates the mould, damp and moss that cover the walls. The burnt leg of a chair is propped in the fireplace. The mantelpiece is choked with ivy. The fireplace is decayed with matted feathers. I could walk from one end of my mum’s house — my house — to the other in ten steps.
To the left of me, there’s a windowless room. It smells like a cave. The roof is still intact and a sturdy lock is rusted on the door. At the other end, there’s a smaller room, with a rotted stuffed pink unicorn on the bed. This must’ve been my mum’s room. I go inside.
There’s a hole in the wall, the breeze from a window messing the leaves around the floor. I spot a little yellow suitcase underneath her bed, swagged in dirt and years of dust.
Inside this case are the worldly possessions of my mother, I just know it. There’s a frayed yellow ribbon tied around the handle. The lock has rusted. I need to know what’s inside.
I sink to the hard floor and open it. One of the hinges breaks. It’s held on for too long a time.
Some things are too much.
Inside there are baby clothes. Little vests, a knitted cardigan with ducks on the buttons, and a pile of nappies. There’s a pair of shoes, black patent and worn down. I cradle one in my hand and look inside. The shape of her toes is still pressed into them.
There’s a dress made of shiny fabric, a few blouses, and a coat with ripped lining. At the bottom of the case I find a purse with money in it, hand-written song lyrics, and a tarnished silver bracelet with a . . . seahorse charm.
Huh . . . maybe US is destiny.
This tiny suitcase is proof that my mother, Violet Adams, and her baby, Dean Adams, existed. We had a place in the world. Until we were thrown out like roadkill.
I’m all curses and tempest, black fire and fury, and without thinking I hurl the case across the room. All my mum’s possessions scatter.
It’s then when I hear her.
It’s then when I feel her warm hand on my bitter, cold arm.
In the dim light of the sun, I look up.
Amy.
Even in my darkness, she’s the little bright.
When I see her standing there, looking at me, tears in her eyes, my grieving heart thumps harder.
‘How’d you know I’d be here?’ I say.
I’m afraid you’ll rip my heart in shreds.
‘I just got back from Elizabeth’s and saw you leave Swan Lake. I followed you.’
I go to say something, but she sits down next to me and says, ‘Before you say anything, there’s something I need to tell you. Something I should have told you a long time ago.’
I breathe her in.
Her sunshine hair is all undone, the little white brain of her bun gone. Her eyes all swollen and red. She sniffs and shrugs.
‘After my sister got hurt, I think I must’ve had a mental breakdown. I didn’t deserve to be alive, not if Elizabeth wasn’t. They told me that when she first woke up, she was like a zombie. The fault in her head — I caused that. Why couldn’t I have just kept silent?’
She closes her eyes for a moment, takes a steadying breath. ‘The hate infected every piece of me and to punish myself I stopped living. I felt like a broken doll forced to perform by invisible strings when all I wanted was to stop. The checking was my only way to keep still.’
Amy looks at me with such emotion, my dead heart restarts.
‘But then you appeared like magic, like a white rabbit from a hat. And I fell in love with you all over again. I wanted to fix my broken strings. I wanted to look up at the night sky and see hope in the stars again, just like I did when I was a little girl.’
Her smile doesn’t hide the vulnerability in her voice. ‘I hated you, Shepherd. I hated you so much for leaving me behind. I needed you when my sister nearly died and I was put inside my cage. I hated that the one person I needed the most was the one person who hurt me the most. And yet, I still needed you. You were the only person who could tell me Elizabeth would be alright and I would believe it.’
This.
This fight me and Amy had that led us up to this moment. This fucked up situation where I had to hurt the only person I gave a shit about in the whole goddamn earth sphere.
I reach my hand up, my fingers trembling for some fucking reason and I brush away the hair from Amy’s eyes.
I push the pain boiling in my chest down, and say, ‘The night I left you alone in the woods . . . ’ My voice is rough with guilt and I pause.
I fed you to the fucking hyenas. . .
‘. . . I’ve never looked in the mirror right since then. Can’t ever forgive myself for it. Kicker is, I did it to save you from me.’
I was becoming something dark.
I swallow the hard lump in m
y throat. ‘The graffiti on the wall — Amy, it wasn’t me.’
She looks surprised. ‘I wish you told me, Shepherd. Why didn’t you?’
‘It was too late by then, you hated my guts. In the end, that’s what I wanted so I let you believe it. The next day I hunted out the real culprit. It was one of the lads in my gang. I beat the living daylights out of him. Put him in hospital.’
‘You did?’
I’m afraid you’ll tear me apart.
‘Yeah . . . I could’ve killed him. That’s how much I loved you, Amy. I could’ve killed any guy who hurt you. The reason why I pushed you away. I was falling deeper into bad and I had nothing to give you back then. No money, no name, no future. Christ, you deserved a fucking king.’
I close my eyes, sniff. ‘I’m sorry, Amy. From the bottom of my fucking shitty heart, I’m so sorry. I should have found another way to keep you from me.’
I feel her hand on the back of mine. ‘It’s okay, Shepherd, I forgive you. I know what it’s like when darkness is your world. You lose yourself in the shadows and it’s so easy to forget who you are, who you wish to be. You were a kid and lost and hurt by the people who should have protected you. You did it to save me from the monsters. I love you and I don’t ever want to be the reason you hate yourself.’
‘I’ve been such a bastard to you, Amy. Since I got back. Lying and blackmailing. I just don’t know any other way and I fucking hate myself for it.’
‘No, please don’t think like that. You’ve been trying to take care of me. All this time. I didn’t see it.’
‘I didn’t let you see it.’ I scoff, a bitter regret. ‘I remember hearing that saying as a kid: If you love someone, set them free. So I did. I set you free. But now I know that’s bullshit. If you love someone, you hold on tight, and you never let fucking go.’
She half smiles, and I get that stranger-thing feeling again.
‘We’re one and the same — you and me,’ she says. ‘Guilt made me hide from you. My sister is broken, Shepherd, and she will always be broken. I can’t fix her. Never. And it’s my fault. I need to tell you something . . . I just hope you can forgive me. Because I can’t live with you hating me.’