The Family Upstairs(40)
‘What the fuck is it now? For fuck’s sake!’
Almost in slow motion she sees his hand coming down towards her face and then she feels her teeth jolt inside her head, her brain slapping off the insides of her skull as he hits her.
And there is blood now, warm blood running from the small of her back. ‘I’m hurt,’ she says. ‘Look. There was glass and …’
But he’s not listening to her. Instead he forces her back on to the counter again, the glass piercing a new section of her back, and then he’s inside her and his hand is over her mouth and this was not how it was going to be. It was going to be consensual. She was going to let him. But now she hurts and there is blood and she can smell the charred meat on his hand, see the blank fury on his face and she just wants the passports, she wants the fucking passports, she does not want this and her hand finds a knife; it’s the knife she used to slice the tomatoes, the knife that cut through their skins like butter, and here it is in her hand and she plunges it into the side of Michael’s body, into the space below the hem of his T-shirt, the soft, tender white part where the skin is like a child’s skin and it goes in so easily she almost doesn’t register that she’s done it.
She sees his eyes cloud over briefly with confusion, then uncloud with realisation. He pulls out of her and staggers backwards. He gazes down at the blood pumping out of the hole in his side and covers it with his hands but the blood keeps pumping out. ‘Fucking Christ, Luce. What the fuck have you done?’ He gazes at her with wide, disbelieving eyes. ‘Help me. Fuck.’
She finds tea towels and puts them into his hands. ‘Hold them tight,’ she says, breathlessly, ‘hold them against it.’
He takes the cloths and presses them to his side and then she sees his legs buckle and he’s falling to the floor. She tries to help him up again but he bats her away. It suddenly occurs to Lucy that Michael is dying. She envisages herself making a phone call to the emergency services. She imagines them arriving here, asking her what happened. She would tell them that he raped her. There would be evidence. The broken glass still embedded in her back would be proof. The fact that he still has his trousers around his ankles. Yes, they would believe her. They would.
‘I’m calling an ambulance,’ she says to Michael whose eyes are staring blindly into nothingness. ‘Just keep breathing. Keep breathing. I’m calling them.’
She pulls her phone from her bag with shaking fingers, switches it on and is about to press the first digit when she realises this: she may well be believed, but she will not be released. She will have to stay in France, answer questions; she will have to reveal that she is here illegally, that she does not exist, and her children will be taken away from her and everything, absolutely everything will unravel, horribly, quickly, nightmarishly.
Her finger still rests on the screen of her phone. She glances down at Michael. He is trembling. Blood still flows from his side. She feels sick and turns to face the sink, breathing hard.
‘Oh God oh God oh God. Oh God oh God oh God.’
She turns back, looks at her phone, looks at Michael. She does not know what to do. And then she sees it; she sees the life pass from Michael’s body. She has seen it before. She knows what it looks like. Michael is dead.
‘Oh God. Oh God, oh God.’ She drops to her haunches and feels for his pulse. There is nothing.
She begins to talk to herself.
‘OK,’ she says, standing up. ‘OK. Now. Who knows you were here? Joy, he might have told Joy. But he would have told her that Lucy Smith was coming. Yes. Lucy Smith. But that is not my real name and now I am not even Lucy Smith. I am …’ Her shaking hands find the little felt bag and she pulls out the passports. She flicks to the back and reads the text. ‘I am Marie Valerie Caron. Good. Good. I am Marie Caron. Yes. And Lucy Smith does not exist. Joy does not know where I live. But …
‘School!’ she says. ‘Michael knew where Marco went to school. But would he have told Joy? No. he would not have told Joy. Of course not. And even if he did, they only know Lucy Smith, not Marie Caron. And Stella is at a different school to Marco and no one apart from me and Samia knows where that is. So, what about the passport people? No. They would be somewhere so deeply buried away in the criminal underworld that no one would even think to look. The children: they knew I was here, but they would not tell anyone. Good. OK.’
She paces as she speaks. Then she looks down at Michael’s body. Should she leave it? Leave it for Joy to find tomorrow morning. Or should she move him, clean everything? Hide his body? He is a big man. Where would she hide him? She would not be able to hide him completely, but maybe for just long enough for her and the children to get to London.
Yes, she decides, yes. She will clean everything. She will pull his body down into his wine cellar. She will cover it up with something. Joy will come tomorrow and think he has gone somewhere. She won’t know he’s missing until his body starts to smell. By which time Lucy and the children will be long gone. And everyone will just assume he was killed by someone from the shadier parts of his life.
She pulls open the cupboard beneath the sink. She takes out bleach. She opens a new roll of super-absorbent kitchen towel.
She starts to clean.
29
CHELSEA, 1990
Phin and I sat on the roof of the house. Phin had found the roof. I had no idea it existed. To access the roof, one had to push open a trapdoor in the ceiling of the attic hallway, climb up into a low-roofed tunnel and then push open another trapdoor which opened out on to a flat roof with the most remarkable views across the river.