The Betrayals(98)

He turns his head. The moonlight slides across his cheek, narrowing it. There is something in the plane of it, the shape. There is sharp grit in her throat. Her heart is her enemy, threatening to give her away. He crushes out the cigarette on the windowsill as though there is skin underneath it, and suddenly she knows him.

She shuts her eyes. For a moment she feels Mam’s hands dragging her shirt over her head: skin-a-rabbit, sweetheart – and then Mam jumps to her feet, whirling to hiss at her – be quiet – and back to the door, eyes wide. The Rat (although she is too small and young to be a rat, she doesn’t yet know what she is, only that she’s Mam’s) trembles. There was comfort, and now it’s gone. Mam bends her head, listening, and the room takes advantage to creep inwards, the way it always does when Mam isn’t looking. She cracks the door open, holds her finger to her lips, and slides out into the passage. The Rat knows she is meant to stay where she is. Make no noise, stay where you are, whatever you do, darling, you must not … But Mam inches along the passage, under the shreds of sunset-sky between the rafters. Then she disappears. She has gone down the stairs. For once, distracted, she has left the door open.

The Rat (not-yet-Rat) slides her body into the gap. She takes a few steps and nothing happens, the floor doesn’t collapse or the sky explode. She can smell fresh air blowing through the gaps in the roof.

She goes down the stairs. She’s holding out her hand, wanting Mam to take it. But Mam is out of reach, standing by a little round window with a black one, a human-headed crow. He laughs, and immediately she dislikes him, wants to run forward and drag Mam away.

‘… mustn’t come up here, not in daylight – you gave me a shock.’

‘I was curious. You didn’t go back to your room.’

‘You mustn’t follow me!’ But she sighs, and the Rat can hear the beginning of a laugh in her voice, like the onset of a cold.

‘I can’t resist your animal magnetism.’

‘I’m not an animal. I’m a woman.’

‘You can say that again …’ He leans forward. ‘I could do it here, right now. Just looking at you …’

‘No!’

He laughs again, and grabs her. They reel. The Rat shivers, wanting to rip him off, somehow knowing that Mam would be angry. The two of them are crushed together as if they’re trying to step into each other’s clothes. He grunts. He nuzzles into her neck as though he’s going to bite her.

Then he stops. He looks up, over Mam’s shoulder. At the Rat.

‘Where did that come from?’

Mam whirls round. Her mouth opens. ‘Get back!’

‘Is it yours?’ He tilts his head, looking at the Rat as if he’s calculating how much meat is on her bones. ‘I didn’t realise … She looks like you, doesn’t she?’

‘You mustn’t tell – no one knows – they’d throw me out.’

‘Of course I won’t,’ he says. But he’s smiling, his eyes still narrowed, and his gaze hasn’t wavered. ‘A bastard in the attic. I shouldn’t be surprised, should I? When you’re such a hot little whore …’

A silence. Mam’s face is flushed. Those words were bad words, you could hear it in his voice, but she is smiling. Smiling as though she hasn’t heard. The Rat – the bastard, whatever that means – takes a step down, towards them both.

Mam says, ‘Get back to the room! I told you before. Now.’

She hesitates. She opens her mouth.

‘Now!’

She stares at them. The black-robed man’s smile widens. He raises his hand and gestures, twirling a finger in the air: go on then, run away. Then he pulls Mam back into his arms. He puts his mouth on hers: but his eyes flick to the Rat with a pleased glint, enjoying his victory.

The Rat turned and went up the stairs. All the way up she was waiting for Mam to run after her and take her hand. But she didn’t. The Rat got to the room and lay down on her back, with the door open a crack. The sunset-light went redder and smaller and then it was dark and Mam still didn’t come, and she stayed awake for as long as she could, waiting and waiting for Mam to say goodnight, but she didn’t come that night and the way it feels now it’s like she never came back at all, ever, after that; even though she did.

Watching the man breathe out the last lungful of smoke, the-fat-and-old-but-same man, she remembers the empty ache in her chest, the sobs building, because Mam had never – she always – she loved, before that the Rat had always known that whatever happened she loved—

It is the same feeling as the not-hunger she feels now, thinking of Simon. And fear. Fear like now, too. She puts her hands over her mouth, very quietly, and bites into the soft part of her palm.

The man puts his hands in his pockets and walks forward, towards the foot of the stairs. He cranes to peer upwards. Then he ascends, step by deliberate step. The banister wobbles and he shakes it harder, pausing to enjoy the faint crackle of breaking wood. Then he disappears into the darkness at the top.

She relaxes. Her insides are shivery, but now he’s gone. She can run. The predator-shadow has passed over her. His attention is elsewhere.

His attention … He must be at the foot of the other staircase now, the one that leads up to her little room – Simon’s room.

Simon. Simon is hiding too. He mustn’t be found. It’s important. Whatever you do you must not … Not by this man, especially not by this man.