Final Cut(88)

Back here. He knows.

‘Monica’s told you?’

My voice is blank, but he ignores me anyway.

‘What are you trying to do?’ he says. ‘Make your documentary?’ His tone mocks me.

‘No.’ I look him in the eye. ‘Find out the truth.’

‘About what?’

‘You know what.’

He laughs, quietly, but his voice is black with sarcasm, bitter. I recognise it. I can hear him back then, the same laugh.

You know what you are, he’s saying. You know what you’ve always been.

My mind begins to slip, to fall away. I grip the side of the boat.

‘Why are you lying?’ he says.

I knew him, I think. Back then. I knew him.

‘You trying to finish what you started?’

‘What I started?’

He laughs.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ I say. My mind races. ‘I want to know what happened to my friend.’

‘Your friend? The friend you killed?’

‘No!’ I say.

My mind cowers, tries to flee into a dark corner, but now I can’t hide from the memories. I see Daisy then, back as she was in the film. She’s pleading. Help me! Please! You said they wouldn’t hurt me.

And I’m there. Holding the camera. I’m there now.

I won’t, I’m saying, but I don’t know if that’s true, because there’s someone standing behind me, watching me and Daisy, and he wants me to hurt her, he wants me to kill her. I’m desperate to turn round, to tell him I’ve changed my mind and that this is sick, he’s crazy, we have to let her go, but I can’t. This is the only way I’m going to get what I need, it’s the only way to make the sickness go away.

I hear myself sob. I’m not sure if it’s the me – Alex – who’s here on the boat, or Sadie way back then.

Do it, comes a voice. I’m back there again. I put the camera down, making sure to keep my friend in shot. I take a step towards her. I hear someone laugh, and I jolt: I’m still on the boat and it’s Bryan, here and now, in front of me.

I’m reeling with the pull of the waves, the violent ebb and flow of the past and the present. I stand, and the boat rocks, spray hits, needles of ice. I almost slip, but catch myself in time. It shocks me back into my body.

‘You’d better watch yourself, baby.’

Baby? Despite his venom, the word lands on my skin as soft as falling snow, as if it’s a word I could once sink into. I remember him calling me that before. I remember him giving me the camcorder. A present, he said, for my special girl. If only I’d known how he’d one day want me to use it.

Images flicker. I see Daisy; she’s on her knees. The camera is running. But what happened next? The memory won’t come, it’s lost, the data overwritten in the decade since.

He stands up now, moves towards me. The boat rocks once more and he laughs as I stumble.

Bryan. It’s Bryan, laughing now, just as it was Bryan who was laughing back then. Bryan who told me my best friend had to die.

‘You! You killed her!’

He shakes his head, but he’s still smiling.

‘I remember it now, I know I do. You killed her. And you made me film it.’

His smile is black. ‘No, baby. You did.’

I’m falling, I can feel it. Bitten by the salt spray, my mind is corroding, my body eaten away. What balance I had is skewed. My whole being revolts. No! I didn’t kill anyone! it screams. But even as it does, I realise that it’s true.

I’ve got what I wanted, I think, wryly. I wanted the truth, and here it is.

I clutch the side of the boat and look beyond him. The sun is up, but it’s clouding over.

‘Take me back.’

‘And let you tell people what happened?’

I scuttle away from him, but there’s only so far I can go. My foot connects with something – coiled rope, perhaps – and I stumble once more.

‘Careful, now,’ he says, but it’s without concern. He steps closer and pushes me, not hard, but enough that I’m forced to sit heavily on the edge of the boat. The water soaks through my trousers, numbingly cold.

‘We don’t want you falling in, now, do we? Such a tragic accident …’

I remember my friend.

‘What did you do to her?’

‘We buried her. You know that.’

I have to ask, even though I already know.

‘Where?’

‘You know that, too.’

I try to figure it out. Did she jump, but survive, only to have Bryan kill her anyway? Bastard, I think. Bastard. But somehow I know instinctively not to say it out loud. I see him, standing over me; he has his belt in his hand. He’s wrapped it round my neck. He’s going to teach me a lesson, he says. It’ll be fun. I need to learn how to behave. I need to learn who it is, out of all of them, who loves me the most.

No, insulting him won’t help. I remember now. The only thing that ever worked with him was me on my knees, pleading, begging. And even that failed towards the end.

‘Let me go.’

‘Alex,’ he says, spitting my name with a spiteful smirk. ‘You know I can’t do that.’

‘Please.’

He shakes his head. ‘I really thought you were gone for good, you know. We all did. Yet here you are. And we can’t make the same mistake again.’