One Small Mistake(75)
‘I’m not going to hurt you,’ he insists. ‘I’m not. Listen to me, I lost control this morning; I thought the second we went back to Crosshaven, you’d overanalyse everything, overanalyse us, and you’d put an end to it because that’s you all over, Elodie. You have something good and you let it go, you have something bad and you hold it tight. I panicked, okay? I wanted what we had last night. I wanted to make you remember what we had last night. Look …’ He breathes out. Runs his fingers through his hair again. ‘Now I have you here with me, I’m calm, in control. I won’t hurt you again and now’ – his expression softens – ‘we have time for me to make it up to you.’
I swallow. ‘That day in the woods after I was taken, if I hadn’t agreed to your plan to come to Wisteria, would you have let me go?’
He searches my face and I know the answer; even if I’d begged to go back to Crosshaven, he’d have dragged me here against my will. ‘I hoped it wouldn’t come to that, but I knew once we were alone, truly alone, you’d realise how you feel about me. It was different for me, I knew I loved you that first time we met, right here, right outside. This is our place. It brought us together …’ He trails a fingertip down the side of my face as though we are two lovers and not a captor and his captive. ‘And now it’s going to keep us that way.’
My stomach turns over and I swallow against the rush of bile.
He is watching my mouth with the same hunger he did last night, moments before he kissed me. My heart thuds hard, but this time it is with terror, not excitement; if he decides he wants me, there is nothing I can do with my hands tied above my head. So, before this spark of lust turns into wildfire, I whip my head to the side, catch his finger between my teeth and bite down so hard, I taste blood. Wrenching his hand back, he stumbles. I am tense, terrified, waiting for him to react. He examines his torn finger with shock. Then laughs. ‘Last night was perfection, Elodie. You were everything I knew you’d be.’
Chapter Thirty-Four
36 Days Missing
Adaline Archer
After picking Dad up from the police station on Saturday night, I drove him back to mine. I wasn’t even surprised to see Ethan still hadn’t returned. Dad mumbled something and went upstairs for a shower.
I don’t know if you know this about Dad, but he only ever cries in the shower. The first time I heard him, Nanna had just died, and through the wall came this soft burbling beneath the spray of the running water. Now, fifteen minutes later, Dad emerged from the bathroom in a cloud of steam, the redness of his eyes the only sign he’d been crying, and I stood in the doorway of my bedroom in my Saved by the Bell pyjamas and was so shocked that my dad, my strong dad who could carry my six-year-old self under his arm without breaking a sweat, had been crying. I think it was the first time I realised parents were just people and not unfeeling cornerstones of our family.
The evening I picked Dad up from the police station, I was still riding that wave of power at having made a difference, and I called Mum. Calmly, I told her what had happened with Dad and the arrest. She started gabbling, but I spoke clearly and concisely and said I knew she and Dad weren’t in a good place, and if they didn’t want to stay together that was fine, but they had to at least try to communicate because throwing thirty-five years of marriage away without so much as a conversation wasn’t acceptable and running away wasn’t going to solve anything either. She didn’t contest my point, so I went on, impressing upon her that of course she was hurting, and I’d never know how much because, as she pointed out, I’m not a mother, but Dad was hurting too, and his pain was just as valid as hers.
Mum was so quiet, I thought maybe she’d hung up. Then she said, ‘I think your dad needs to join me in Kent. Trish and Colin have plenty of room here.’
By the time Dad came out of the shower, eyes so red I knew he’d been sobbing, I’d booked train tickets.
The next morning, I dropped him at the station, and we stood awkwardly on the platform. You and Mum are huggers. Dad and I are not. But he stood there with his suitcase, dressed in his jacket and a cap that belonged to Grandad, and I was struck again by the realisation that he was no longer that big, strong man who could set me atop his shoulders for apple picking in the summer. Sometimes, I still see our parents through a child’s eyes, as though they are faultless and all knowing, but if Dad were a stranger in the street, I’d consider him an older gentleman. And then, out of nowhere, I thought, when Mum and Dad die, with you gone too, I’ll be all alone. My breath caught in my throat. I wasn’t meant to be all alone. Impulsively, I hugged Dad. He made an oomph noise as I squeezed him tight. It wasn’t the kind of easy, natural hug you’d give. Dad patted me on the back.
‘Mum’s going to meet you at the other end,’ I told him because he’d lied about the fishing trip, and it was important to reiterate that we’d know if he got off at the next stop and didn’t make it to Kent.
I drove around for an hour, just thinking. I wasn’t looking forward to returning to an empty house, so I switched the radio on and turned left and turned right until I found myself outside yours again.
The first and last time I slept at your house was in the days after Noah died – until the morning I came downstairs, and Jack was standing in your kitchen with a cup of tea. Let himself in with a key you’d given him. I was surprised; I didn’t have a key to your place, our parents didn’t. He told me you’d rung him in the early hours, complaining my presence in your home was suffocating, that you wanted me to leave but didn’t want to hurt my feelings. I was so embarrassed, so stung, I didn’t even argue, just got my things and left while you were still sleeping. Later though, I wondered … I told Ethan I thought Jack had lied, but Ethan said if you didn’t want me to leave, you’d have called to find out why I left. And that was it. I never brought it up again, but it niggled. Still niggles. In the months that followed, things between us were frosty, so I thought maybe there was truth to Jack’s story, and then I was angry you involved him, humiliated me the way you did, and beneath it all was the pain that those days we spent together meant more to me than they did to you.