Friend Request(82)
‘I’ve considered every possibility, believe me. But Esther… what we did… can you…’ Can you forgive me, is what I want to ask her, but I can’t say it, I’m too frightened of the answer, and too ashamed of how selfish I am to need her forgiveness so desperately.
She looks down at her mug, picking at a small chip in the handle with her fingernail. ‘You must have gone through hell when she disappeared. I can’t imagine what that’s done to you.’
‘Honestly, Esther, when I look back I am utterly appalled at what I did, at who I was. Yes, I was insecure, yes, I was worried about losing my precarious place in the social pecking order, but everyone had to exist in that hierarchy, didn’t they? But not everyone did what I did. Not everyone was so… weak. I look at my son, and if anyone ever treated him the way I treated Maria, I would want to rip them apart with my bare hands. I am a different person now. I really hope… well, I just hope you can see that.’ I sit back down opposite her at the table, hardly daring to breathe.
‘I think…’ She stops and looks out of the window again. ‘I think you’ve probably paid for what you did.’ She looks back at me. ‘I can see you’re different now, Louise. I do see that.’
The tension that holds me in its thrall subsides a little and tears prick my eyes. I’ve told three people now, and two of them have considered me worthy at least of understanding, if not forgiveness.
‘That’s what —’ I stop. That’s what Pete said, I was going to say, but for reasons I can’t articulate, I don’t want her to know I’ve seen him. Something like shame fills me when I think about what I said to him, so I’m trying to keep it shut away. Then a strange thing happens, as if the thought of him has conjured Pete into the room.
‘Oh, by the way, guess who I saw on the way here, at Victoria station?’
‘Who?’
‘That man Sophie brought to the reunion. Pete, is it? And here’s the weird bit. He was with a woman, and not only that, they had a child with them, a baby. He was pushing the buggy. I wonder if Sophie knew he was married? I wouldn’t be surprised.’ Esther may have forgiven me, but Sophie still gets her scorn even in death.
‘Oh my God. He told me was divorced at the reunion.’ Has Pete been lying to me? If so, what else has he been lying about?
‘I know! Do you think I ought to tell the police? Although presumably they’re already interviewing him so they must know he’s married. I wonder how he’s got that past his wife, being interviewed by the police and stuff.’
My mouth goes into autopilot and I express surprise and other appropriate responses to this news, keeping it light and gossipy. Inside I am reeling. Is Pete really married? He didn’t seem like the cheating type. But then, what do I know?
At the door, I lean in to give Esther a goodbye hug, but something in her bearing – a barely noticeable hesitation, a momentary stiffening – makes me pull back. She wants to understand, but I don’t know if she will ever get past this, if we can ever be friends.
When she has gone, I sweep through the house like a tornado, finding a place for everything that’s lying around: dusting, hoovering, mopping the floors, changing the beds. When I’ve finished I get in the shower and stand under the jets for a long time, letting them rain down on me, warming me and washing away the grime that has accumulated since I left Pete in the park. I had thought we were getting closer but it strikes me now how little I really know about him. He could be anybody. Something he said to me at the reunion has been nagging at the edges of my mind, and now I remember what it is. He said he would never go to a reunion, described himself as a loner at school. I think about Maria in her childhood bedroom in London, peering out from behind a crack in the curtains. Nathan Drinkwater leans against a lamp post, staring up at her window, expressionless, just watching. I’ve imagined this scene before, but this time Nathan’s face looks different. This time it looks familiar.
Chapter 34
She supposes there was always a darkness in him, a darkness she chose to ignore. Perhaps there was something in her that sought it out, deadly but unthinking, like a heat-seeking missile.
The first time, the things he did to her appalled her, scared her even, but even then there was a part of her that responded in kind: here he is. She kept the marks hidden under her clothes where no one else could see. He praised her, made her feel special, said that there had been a girl at university who thought he’d gone too far, who didn’t enjoy the games like she did.
But then later, they didn’t really feel like games any more. At first, she had enjoyed the thrill of letting him be in control, the delicious shudder of something that was close to fear. She was never really frightened though. But as time went on she could see something in his eyes, something different. It was like he wasn’t there with her. He was somewhere else, with someone else. Someone he didn’t care about hurting.
She had always sensed that there was something from the past that he wasn’t telling her. Something darker even than the games he liked to play, when he gripped her wrists, put his hands over her mouth, around her neck even. Blurring the lines until she couldn’t tell whether she was consenting or not: gasping for air, dizzy, bruised. Broken.
Perhaps it’s simply not possible to truly know another person. When it comes down to it, we’re all alone. Sometimes we don’t even know ourselves.