The Lies We Told(53)
Who had hurt Emily so badly when she was seventeen? Why was she too scared to go back to her family now? From the little Luke had told her about his sister, he had painted a picture of someone strong and single-minded, yet the woman Clara had met was someone intensely vulnerable, and clearly traumatized. Something else occurred to her. Tom had been in London the day her flat was broken into, turning up out of the blue only a few hours later, looking as though he’d barely slept. Then there was the fact Emily had treasured photos of Luke and her parents, but not one of him – had visibly flinched at the mention of his name.
She sat up straighter, her heart accelerating as she looked at her watch. Ten minutes had passed since Tom’s phone call. She suddenly realized she didn’t want to be alone with him. She needed to get out of the flat.
When she arrived on the Holloway Road half an hour later she stood on the street looking up at Mac’s windows. Though she’d tried to call him on her way over he hadn’t picked up the phone. She rang the bell now and waited, desperate to talk to him about what had taken place at her flat, but the intercom remained silent. Where was he? He knew that she was meeting Emily today; had told her he’d be waiting for her to come back and tell him all about it. So what was going on? Stepping back from the door she looked up at his windows, before catching the eye of Mehmet, the owner of the kebab shop.
‘You all right there, my darling?’ he called.
She went in. ‘Have you seen him today?’ she asked, breathing through her mouth to avoid the stench of sweating meat.
‘No, my love, not since this morning.’
She nodded, fingering the keys Mac had given her when she’d first started staying with him. She’d never just let herself in before because she’d never needed to and it felt a bit intrusive to start doing so now.
‘Some bloke called round for him an hour or so ago though,’ Mehmet went on, turning down the radio from which Taylor Swift’s voice blared, ‘but I don’t know if he had any luck. I nipped out the back for a fag when he started knocking.’
Tom, she thought. Murmuring her thanks, she was about to leave when Mehmet added something that stopped her in her tracks. ‘He’s definitely in, though.’
She looked at him in surprise. ‘Mac? How do you know?’
‘When I came back after my cigarette I heard him crashing around like a herd of baby elephants – and he hasn’t left the flat since, I’ve been right here.’ He raised his eyebrows at her. ‘Thought he was going to come through the ceiling at one point. What’s he doing up there, rearranging the furniture or something?’
The narrow staircase that led from the front door to Mac’s flat was silent as she climbed it, a sense of foreboding rising inside her with every step. When she reached the top she found his front door ajar. ‘Mac?’ she called nervously, but there was no response. Gingerly she gave it a push.
It took a few moments for her to make sense of the scene she was greeted with. A repetitive scratching sound filled the air, and she listened to it in confusion until it dawned on her it was the sound of the needle rasping against the dead wax of a record on the turntable, the noise amplified by Mac’s prized Bowers and Wilkins speakers. To her right, the living room was a mess of upturned furniture and scattered belongings, even the TV had been knocked to the floor. Just like her flat the week before, Mac’s had been completely ransacked. She tried to call his name again but fear made the words stick in her throat. It was only when she turned towards the kitchen that she saw his legs sticking out from behind the half-closed door. She cried out, her shock making the noise fight its way out past the knot of fear in her throat.
‘Mac!’ She ran to him, having to shove the door to prise it open against the weight of his body, then she fell to her knees next to where he lay. A thin line of blood trickled across the pale linoleum floor; his skin was a deathly white, his eyes closed. ‘Mac,’ she cried, ‘Mac, wake up, oh please, oh God please wake up!’ On the floor next to him was an unopened bottle of wine, its glass smeared with blood. Presumably it was what had been used to hit him with. Sobbing now, she searched desperately for a pulse and cried out in relief when she felt the faintest flutter at his throat. ‘OK,’ she said, ‘OK, you’re OK,’ and, her hands shaking, she scrabbled about in her pocket until at last she found her phone and called for an ambulance.
It was almost 11 p.m. and Clara stood on the street outside University College Hospital blinking into the darkness, sick and disorientated after the bright glare of the intensive care unit. For several hours she had sat by Mac’s side, only letting go of his hand to be interviewed by the police and speak to Mac’s mother on the phone. He had woken, once, opened his eyes and, finding Clara there next to him, had smiled briefly. She had bent her head and cried with relief.
He was stable, at last; the doctors telling her that he would make a full recovery, that he had been ‘very lucky’, but that she should leave him now, should go home and get some rest.
Suddenly the enormity of it all, the shock of finding him, the horrible fear that he might die, the hours of stress and lack of food hit her with full force and she staggered towards a lamppost, leaning against it as her legs almost buckled beneath her, choking back the bile that flooded her mouth. She realized she was shaking violently.
‘Excuse me, are you OK?’ A passing nurse on her way into the hospital’s main entrance stopped and looked at her in concern. ‘Are you feeling unwell?’