One Small Mistake(69)
I bite down, catching something soft between my teeth.
He releases me, fingers flying to his bloody mouth.
I stumble back.
We stare at each other through the pouring rain; it distorts his features; he is a grotesque reflection in a funhouse mirror. I expect him to jibber with apologies. I wait. There is blood on his teeth and tension in his body. He is not going to say he is sorry. An instinct older than time tells me to flee. Too late. He lunges. I leap back, but the earth is slick, and my trainer shoots out from beneath me. The air is pushed from my lungs as I smack the ground. I lie on my back, struggling to breathe. There’s no time to recover; he is on me, driving me hard into the dirt. I fight him, kicking and clawing. He catches my pounding, flailing fists. With one hand, he holds my wrists hostage above my head, so high up my shoulders burn.
‘Stop,’ I choke.
‘We’re in love. You felt it’ – his free hand grips my bare thigh hard enough to bruise – ‘when I was inside you.’
I squeeze my eyes shut and in the spinning dark I tell myself this is not happening. But I feel the roughness of jeans, the hardness of him digging into my upper thigh and I can’t pretend anymore; it’s happening. The realisation starts in the pit of my stomach and roars to life, rushing up from my gut and out of my mouth in a high-pitched, terrified shriek. Over and over, like a siren.
Mouth claiming mine again, he swallows my scream. His tongue is moist and warm, slug-like in my mouth. I want to turn my head away, but I’m trapped between him and the hard ground, shaking with adrenaline and exhaustion. Pinned beneath him, all I can do is whimper and pant as his fingers move like maggots up my thigh until they are wriggling between my legs, moving my knickers to one side.
He whispers into my ear, ‘Let me make you feel it.’
‘Jack,’ I scream. His name is the only word I can find.
But this isn’t Jack – this is a stranger.
I think back to us as children racing down to the little beach.
The stranger clamps a hand over my mouth and tells me to be quiet.
I think of Jack bringing croissants to my house first thing in the morning.
The stranger yanks my underwear down my thigh.
I think of Jack sitting beside me on his big green sofa with a glass of wine and a smile. The sound of a zipper brings me back to myself. He leans away, unhooking the button of his jeans with his thumb. I bring my knee up into his crotch. He lets go of my wrists to clutch his groin, cheeks puffing, and I scramble from beneath him, slip-sliding on the slick mud. I pull my knickers up and then I am running.
He bellows my name.
I crash through the woods, banging into trees that seem to spring up in my path. My legs are elastic bands that have been pulled too tight. Bark bites into my skin as I squeeze between trunks. Sharp twigs and thorns from bracken slice and scratch as I run. I hear my heart soaring all around, feel blood rushing in rivers through my veins.
He howls for me. He’s close. Still running, I look over my shoulder. Face twisted in fury, he bears down. If he gets his hands on me, he won’t stop. Panic takes flight in my chest like a murder of crows. Then the ground vanishes beneath me and I am falling, tumbling down, down, down.
Sky becomes earth and earth becomes sky. There’s a sharp pain in my skull and, finally, I am still. Everything is blurry and slow. I blink up at the light filtering through the canopy even as black roses bloom across my vision. Warm wetness pools at my temple. Jack is high above me, clutching a tree on top of the bank. He is shouting – I see the angry red of his open mouth – but I am too far under water to hear him.
As he skids down the slope towards me, a final black rose blossoms, and everything sinks into darkness.
Chapter Thirty-Two
35 Days Missing
Adaline Archer
Dad was arrested. That’s right, sis, arrested. I keep replaying the moment he was handcuffed. I just stood on the street thinking I must be in some bizarre reality TV show because this couldn’t possibly be happening.
It started with another solo fishing trip which Dad insisted on leaving for in the early hours. There was a storm last night and it was still wet and windy today, so I was surprised he didn’t reschedule. But our parents do look for any excuse to avoid one another these days. With Dad taking off on more fishing weekends and Mum spending more nights in my guest room, they aren’t in one another’s company very often. I’ve tried inviting them over for dinner but they’re like the north side of two magnets; they just can’t seem to come together. You hear of it a lot though, don’t you? When a couple loses their child, it can split a marriage. I see how our parents struggle every day you are gone, and I wonder if Mum still believes it will be a tragedy if I never have children. Because, if I’m never a mother, I will never suffer the loss or disappearance of a child I’ve raised. That, at least, is a blessing. It’s hard enough losing a sister. Sometimes, I want to ask Mum, if she could erase the memory of you to ease the pain, would she? I think I would.
Anyway, with Dad out of town, it was up to me to drive Mum to the train station this afternoon. She’d planned a visit to her friends in Kent for a few days. At first, I didn’t think it was a good idea, Mum leaving in the middle of all this, but then I looked at her tired, thin face and knew she needed a break.
‘Phone me when you get there,’ I told her on the platform.