The Monster's Wife(77)

“See how the skin on my arm is darker?” He moved her hand to the left. “And the scar over my heart? I do not know where I came from, not as you do, though I have searched long and hard for a mother, a father, a home.”

As he traced her finger over the scar she saw the lighter shade of it, the tightness of the pink flesh like the skin on boiled milk.

“At night I tell myself stories, that my skin came from a nobleman, my heart from a general in the war, my brain from a philosopher in Ingolstadt. For that is where I was born, in a graveyard, under the shadow of a hanging tree. That is where he made me.”

“Victor?”

“Yes,” he spat the words, “Victor. Herr Doktor Frankenstein.” He dropped her hand and stared down at her lap where the dirty dress had ridden up, not far enough that the bruises were visible, but enough so that they could both see the seam along her thigh, how the skin of the thigh was milky smooth though the calf was freckled.

He pulled open the neck of her dress and peered down at her left breast. It was smooth and creamy white, the nipple dark and large, the stitching round it forming a ragged circle. Her other breast was smaller, paler, its nipple pink and hard. She twisted away from him and shuffled back against the wall of crosses, clasping her dress tightly over her breasts.

Adam sat back and began to fold his shirt. “He needed a new heart for you. Yours did not work any more.”

“No.” The coldness of his words froze her bones, shrivelled her up inside. She hid her face in her dress.

“Your friend... He used her heart. Her skin.”

“May.” The word was muffled.

She saw it more fully this time - the lurch of the body under the sheet, the hand reaching out to her, imploring. Dark hair matted with blood and the eyes staring blankly. She had turned on her heel and run and left her friend, her May. All the memories were there at once - May’s trembling hands, her sad eyes the last time they held each other, whispering goodbye.





68


For a long time she sat with her head buried and her back pressed into the wall. She had let him touch her, care for her - Victor, with his calming words, so wise and easy to believe. He was the killer and yet she’d loved him because he was all she knew. He had dug her up and pried inside her, forced her to steal her friend’s heart – the friend she’d left behind.

Knowing that was worse than any other pain. She should find a sharp flint and cut the heart from her chest, but each time she tried to rise, to go out on the beach and look for a weapon, the rhythm of her new heart’s beats played in tune with the lapping of the sea outside. Inside her chest, beneath her ribs, lay everything she’d loved, all that was thriving in the world. It wasn’t hers to destroy.

She sat up, head sore, throat dry. Adam was gone. After a while, she heard the shuck and scud of stones thrown in the sea. The fire was just glinting embers by the time she curled on her side and fell asleep.

Some time in the night, Adam must have come in and lain down with her, because she woke to the warmth of his body behind her and the gentle sound of his breath in her ear. He murmured something, a foreign word spoken in sleep. German. That was the name of his language. His hand rested lightly on her hip and she thought of moving it, was surprised to find that she didn’t want to. Instead, her body nestled against his and she liked the warm smell of it, calming her until she drifted off again.

She woke to grey light spilling gloomily in, changing the carved crosses into a spectral graveyard. A fine spray of seawater hit the mouth of the cave. Her back was cold. The space behind her was empty. She sat up and took in the dead fire, the empty cave. Adam was gone. May’s heart struck hard against the tender flesh of the scar as if it blamed her. She bit her lip and fought back a sob of despair. What would she do? Where would she go? Her skin stung.

She looked down to see her fingernails scratching wretchedly at the scar on her thigh - May’s thigh. They dug under the dark jewels of dried blood, scratching until fresh blood bloomed on the milky skin and trickled onto the cave floor. She kept on, scoring angry, pink lines until a voice stilled her hand.

It came from the beach and was soon joined by another man’s. They spoke in the bitter tones that had sounded so familiar the night before. Crablike, she scuttled to the wall and pressed her back to the sharp crevices of it, breathing shallowly as the voices came steadily closer.





69


“I heard someone banging about in here.”

“Ach, you’re dreaming, man!” A dark-haired man walked inside the cave and kicked a stone. From her corner, Oona saw his stout boots and heavy fisherman’s coat. She shrunk back, pressing herself between upright shelves of rock.

His fair-headed friend was smaller, thinner, his voice high and nervous. “If they left the boat, they’d have ended up on this stretch of coast.” It was that last word - coast - that made her remember. They’d lain on the beach, his mouth pressed hot on hers.

“It could’ve been anyone last night, dark as it was. We don’t even know if the doctor was telling the truth. You were soused then and you still are.” The dark-haired man punched his friend’s shoulder, cocky and cruel. Oona remembered him using his fists on Victor, over and over. That must be when Victor told him the truth about things. His name was Stuart and the other was Andrew. He squatted down, searching the floor for something.