I Know Who You Are(77)

I don’t know whether it was the whiskey or the sleep or the sex, but I’ve remembered something. I know what I did with the gun and I know where it is.

But that can wait.

For now, I just want to lie in Jack’s arms and pretend I might be able to stay here. I’ve spent too long equating love and loneliness; it doesn’t have to be that way. And I’ve spent too long trying to be nice, always trying to do the right thing, doing what I thought I should. Turns out doing what you want to do feels pretty good.





Sixty-six


Maggie does not feel good. She can’t sleep and she doesn’t even want to eat. She stares at the photo of Aimee and wonders why she still hasn’t called. She should have figured it all out by now, but maybe Aimee isn’t as clever as Maggie has been giving her credit for all these years. Sometimes when we put someone on too high a pedestal, it only means they have farther to fall. Maggie checks the landline to make sure it is working.

It is.

She’s cold, so she comes to stand in front of the fire, throwing another log on top. She notices that it didn’t hurt to pick it up. When she looks down at the splinter in her hand, she sees that the black shape has risen to the surface, a halo of white skin separating it from the pink coloring of the rest of her finger.

It’s formed a scab.

Her body knew that this part of it was harmful, so has rejected it.

Just as Maggie has rejected Aimee.

She takes a pair of tweezers from the mantelpiece—there are three different-colored ones to choose from. Then, slowly—because she wants to savor this moment and she already knows how much pleasure and satisfaction it is going to give her—she starts to lift the edges of the scab.

It feels so good.

When the whole thing has been gently torn away, she examines it on her other finger: a tiny black splinter of wood and a piece of her skin, conjoined. She puts the little piece of herself on the mantelpiece. She wants to keep it. She’s not sure why.

The fire is hot now, crackling and spitting, yellow flames wildly dancing in the otherwise darkened room. Holding the tweezers in her hand makes her want to remove some more of herself, but she can’t find any stray hairs on her chin. Looking back at the face in the dusty mirror, for just a moment Maggie feels like she doesn’t know who or what she is anymore.

But she remembers her name, her real one, and wonders if Aimee remembers hers.

Maggie borrowed her name from a dead woman, just as Aimee borrowed hers from a dead little girl. The thing about borrowing other people’s things is that, eventually, you have to give them back. She lifts her splinter-free finger and starts to write her real name in the dust, taking longer to write the A than any other letter.





Sixty-seven


I wake up to the annual sadness of autumn; it’s pitch-black outside the bedroom window, yet my phone informs me that it is morning. The night sky has outstayed its welcome, and the darkness I can see seems to seep inside me, as though the color black is somehow contagious. It feels as if I have forgotten how to turn on the lights, and my life will be little more than a shadow from now on.

Alicia White.

Jennifer Jones.

John Sinclair.

Maggie O’Neil.

The names circle my mind because I’m certain the man I was married to didn’t do this to me all on his own. Sometimes I wish I could go back in time to the day I ran away from home in Ireland. I wonder where and who I’d be now if I had stayed. I wouldn’t have met any of these people, and my life might have turned out simpler, safer, more straightforward. I might have been happy.

I think about Detective Alex Croft. She was right, I have been keeping some things from her, I didn’t have a choice.

I look over at Jack, still asleep on the other side of the enormous bed, the sound of light snoring escaping from his mouth. I take in the shape of his shoulders, the line of his spine, the tiny blond hairs on his neck. His eyes are closed and his hand has formed a fist, as though he might be fighting with his dreams.

Perhaps we all are.

I remember everything that we did last night; it would be hard not to. It felt so good I only wish I hadn’t waited so long to give in to the attraction. I don’t know what happens next. Maybe now that he’s had all of me, his interest will fade away to nothing. I don’t know whether he wants more. I don’t know whether I do. I can’t help thinking it would be nice to stay like this: the pleasure of intimacy without the pain of a formal relationship. Everyone wants something from someone, that’s just how we are made. Most relationships, whatever their nature, are based on some kind of trade and compromise. I’m not na?ve.

I climb out of the bed as quietly as I can. I want to be alone for a little while, make sure the thoughts inside my head are still my own. I want to get back to some vague kind of normal and do the things I used to do before this nightmare began. It feels like I need to do that, for me.

I want to run.

I look back at Jack before creeping out of the room, wondering if this might be the last time I see him like this; stripped back to being himself.

I run the short distance to my house. It’s still early, and when I’m sure no reporters or police are outside, I let myself in. I grab an old rucksack and fill it with a few essentials: makeup, some clean underwear, and my phone charger. Then I walk over to the wardrobe and bend down to remove one of the bottom panels of wood. Ben designed the whole house and garden, but clothes are very much my department, and I had the fitted wardrobes especially made after we moved in. When you have as many secrets as I do, you need places to hide them. I find the gun where I’d put it to keep it from my husband. Concealed out of fear one night, when I was a little too drunk to remember. Afraid of him, and what he might do if he found it. I put the gun in my bag, then I replace the panel in the wardrobe floor and leave.