Into the Water(68)

‘I’m not even sure if she does know,’ Katie told him. ‘Lena said she might have overheard something …’ She tailed off, and he could tell by the cut of her gaze that she was lying. He couldn’t believe her, couldn’t believe anything she said. This beautiful girl, who had entranced him, bewitched him, couldn’t be trusted.

It was over, he told her, watching her face crumple, disentangling himself as she tried to wrap her arms around him, pushing her away, gently at first and then more firmly. ‘No, listen, listen to me! I cannot see you any longer, not like this. Not ever, do you understand? It is over. It never happened. There is nothing between us – there was never anything between us.’

‘Please don’t say that, Mark, please.’ She was sobbing so hard she could barely breathe, and his heart broke. ‘Please don’t say that. I love you …’

He felt himself weaken, he let her hold him, he let her kiss him, he felt his resolve subside. She pressed herself into him and he had a sudden, clear image of another pressing against him, and not just one but several: male bodies pressing against his beaten, broken, violated body; he saw this and pushed her violently away.

‘No! No! Do you have any idea what you’ve done? You have ruined my life, do you understand that? When this gets out – when that bitch tells the police – and she will tell the police – my life will be over. Do you know what they do to men like me in prison? You know, don’t you? Do you think I’ll survive that? I won’t. My life will be over.’ He saw the fear and hurt in her face and still he said, ‘And it will be down to you.’

When they pulled her body from the pool, Mark punished himself. For days, he could barely get out of bed, and yet he had to face the world, he had to go to school, to look at her empty chair, to face the grief of her friends and her parents and show none of his own. He, the one who loved her most, was not permitted to grieve for her the way she deserved. He wasn’t permitted to grieve the way he deserved to, because although he punished himself for what he had said to her in anger, he knew that this wasn’t really his fault. None of it was his fault – how could it be? Who could control the one they fell in love with?

Mark heard a thump and jumped, swerving out into the middle of the road, over-correcting back again and skidding on to the gravelled verge. He checked the rear-view mirror. He thought he’d hit something, but there was nothing there, nothing but empty tarmac. He took a deep breath and squeezed the wheel again, wincing as it pressed into the wound on his hand. He switched on the radio, turned it up as loud as it would go.

He still had no idea what he was going to do with Lena. His first idea had been to drive north to Edinburgh, dump the car in a car park and then get the ferry to the Continent. They’d find her soon enough. Well, they’d find her eventually. He might feel terrible, but he had to keep reminding himself that this was not his fault. She came at him, not the other way round. And when he tried to fight her off, fend her off, she just came at him again and again, shouting and clawing, talons drawn. He had fallen, sprawling on the kitchen floor, his carry-on bag skidding away from him across the tiles. And from it fell, as though directed by a deity with a sick sense of humour, the bracelet. The bracelet he’d been carrying around since he took it from Helen Townsend’s desk, this thing which held a power he hadn’t yet figured out how to wield, out it came, skittering across the floor between them.

Lena looked at it as though it were an alien thing. It might as well have been glowing green kryptonite from the expression on her face. And then confusion passed and she was upon him again, only this time she had the kitchen scissors in her hand and she was swinging hard at him, at his face, at his neck, swinging like she meant it. He raised his hands in self-defence and she sliced one of them open. It throbbed now, angrily, in time with his racing heartbeat.

Thump, thump, thump. He checked the rear-view again – no one behind him – and jammed his foot on the brake. There was a sickening, satisfying thud as her body slammed into metal, and all was quiet again.

He pulled the car over to the side of the road again, not to be sick this time, but to weep. For himself, for his ruined life. He cried racking sobs of frustration and despair, he beat his right hand against the steering wheel again and again and again, until it hurt as much as the left one.

Katie was fifteen years and two months old the first time they slept together. Another ten months and she would have been legal. They would have been untouchable – legally, in any case. He’d have had to walk away from the job and some people might still have thrown stones, they’d still have called him names, but he could have lived with that. They could have lived with it. Ten fucking months! They should have waited. He should have insisted they wait. Katie was the one in a hurry, Katie was the one who couldn’t stay away, Katie was the one who forced the issue, who wanted to make him hers, undeniably. And now she was gone, and he was the one who was going to pay for it.

The unfairness of it rankled, it seared his flesh like acid, and the vice just kept squeezing, tighter and tighter, and he wished to God it would just crush him, split his head open, and like her, like Katie, he’d be done with it.





Lena


I WAS FRIGHTENED when I woke up, I didn’t know where I was. I couldn’t see a thing. It was totally dark. But I realized from the noise, the movement and the smell of petrol that I was in a car. My head was really sore and my mouth too, it was hot and stuffy and there was something digging into my back, something hard, like a metal bolt. I wiggled my hand round behind my back to try to grab it, but it was attached.