The Monster's Wife(31)

“You have changed your opinion of him.” May’s voice was oddly accusatory.

Oona swallowed hard, unsure of why she felt guilty. “You were the one who cajoled me into working there, May. A fortnight ago, you were baking his cakes and turning down his bed. I don’t think you should condemn me for softening towards him.”

In the firelight, May’s face took on a devilish mien. “Has he told you what he plans to do when he returns to Geneva?”

Oona shrugged, unsure why she was supposed to care and somewhat startled that she did. Across from them, licked orange by the flames, Stuart and Andrew spoke in hushed voices, mouths pursed round clay pipes like old gossips. Stuart swigged cider and swilled it. Andrew’s eyes drifted towards Oona’s face and slid away.

“How curious he’s not confided in you, since you’re so close.” May arched her back, catlike, and smirked. “You’ve not been asked to his wedding then?”

Oona stared blankly in front of her. In the background, the mad cackle of dancing girls merged with the bleary cant of the lads.

“So the doctor said nothing about his beautiful bride to be? Oh well.” May clapped her on the back and smiled.

Oona’s skin prickled, remembering the flush that had risen in her when Victor took her likeness, the pleasure that blossomed in her belly when she watched him work. “Just because I don’t think he’s a murderer any more, doesn’t mean...”

May giggled and rested her head on Oona’s shoulder, slurring drunkenly. “If it consoles you, she’s no beauty. He showed me a miniature likeness in a locket of his and I thought what a shrewish face she has, not lovely like my Oona.” She kissed the bare skin of Oona’s shoulder.

Oona barely felt it, her mind on the drawing she’d come upon in Victor’s journal - sch?ne Elizabeth. Those fine eyes. Everyone was to be wed except her and they would live a long while and be happy. That was supposed to be a joyous thought. As for her, Heaven awaited. She had often been told she was lucky to reach it so early, but she did not feel lucky. The world jabbed in like broken glass.

She reached for the jug and Stuart passed it, laughing. Tipping it to her mouth, she let the sweet fire warm her throat and drank ‘til her tongue was thick and her pain collapsed into an aching stupor. Youth whirred past and the tide butted stupidly on the rocks. She saw and heard none of it.

Like the frog, she would be dead soon. There was so much she did not know. She would die far too young, as Victor’s mother had and her own mother too. She had not even felt those ordinary things: cradling a baby; kissing and being kissed. Before now, she had never thought of wanting them. For the first time she knew that she must not let her life be swallowed untasted.





26


Time unfolded and folded again in the drunken space of the beach, its pebbles already prickling sea-sweat, its bare feet slapping cool water, glug-glug sipping from the neck of the cider jar. May left her side to go and lie with Stuart in the cool of the shadowed dunes. For a long time Oona drank alone.

When she had finished the jug, she let it slip from her fingers into the sand. Her lips were numb. Her head lolled to the side and she groaned, hoping she wouldn’t be sick. There was an arm around her shoulders, propping her up, a face next to hers. May.

No, May had no stubble. She smelled salt and bitumen. Lips grazed her cheek. She squeezed her eyes tight shut and it was Victor stroking her arms. It was his tongue pushing between her lips, his face nuzzling her hair.

She pulled Victor closer, her nails reaching under his shirt to claw his back, amazed that such feelings had lain buried in her, secret desires stirred to life. She bit his ear, urging him on, relishing the hoarse breaths burning her neck, faster and faster.

He stopped moving and collapsed against her, his head in the hollow of her throat. Something warm and wet soaked through the thin fabric of her dress and leaked across her belly. In her mind’s eye, she saw blood matted in hair, a limp body rolling from her. Her dream of Victor fell away.

It was Andrew who had kissed and touched her and who now snored contentedly against her neck. She clawed his back, no longer urging him on, but instead trying to shift his weight so that she might get some air. He would not shift and he was so very heavy.

She craned her neck back to stare at the fire that was burning down a bit now. The sea spat salt at it. Embers hissed, making smoke ripple up. Behind the fire, silhouetted, a man watched. Who knew how long he had been there, staring as Andrew pawed her.

She stared back, daring him to hold her gaze unembarrassed. The man’s proportions were big. He was tall, much taller than anyone she knew. He turned to the side and the fire lit the sliver of a scar, the gleam of a shaven head, a naked chest. He glanced back once, eyes glowing hate.

Pale blue eyes.

He turned towards the fire and his silhouette parted the flames like red hair before the night’s mouth swallowed him.





27


The world was too light and too loud. The stench of rotting fish made Oona want to retch. She hunched by the damp remains of the fire trying not to breathe in too deeply. The silhouettes of tall ships dwindled at the cusp of the firth. Watching them hurt her eyes. She lay back on a pillow of smooth stones.

Fragments of faces painted the insides of her lids. Her head throbbed. The pale eyes of the scarred man watched as Andrew pushed against her, the same man who had peered in through the window of the big house, the man Victor said she’d imagined. But by last night, the effects of the laudanum had faded. What she’d seen had been real, though why the man watched her she could not guess. Whatever the reason, he frightened her.