White Bodies(44)

I don’t spot her until I’m pretty close. At the last bench before the café, her head bent down, reading—not looking out for me at all. She makes a tight shape, clenched in, focused on her book, and I can’t see her face. And yet, I know instinctively that it’s her—and I think I would have known even if she wasn’t wearing the scarf. I had always thought of Scarlet as intense, somehow electrically charged, and that’s how she seems now. I draw near and she looks up, sternly saying my name. No hint of a question, just a matter of fact; no recognition that there’s an element of absurdity in our encounter.

“Did you come down from Manchester today?” I’m trying to start a normal conversation. “Was it easy to get away from Luke?”

“Yes, I came down this morning. Luke thinks I’m on a training course.”

I look down at her hands, which she holds in her lap, resting on her book. Her nails are bitten down and there’s a roughness to her skin; not what I expected from someone who works in a beauty salon.

“It’s strange to see you in person,” I say. “But you’re just as I imagined.”

I thought my observation would prompt some reaction—maybe “Really? What do you mean?” or some comment about me, how she had imagined I would be. But she doesn’t seem curious at all, and while I observe her white, freckled face and stained red lips, she stares ahead at the lake and the heath, and the city in the distance.

“I thought you wouldn’t come. . . . You’ve been disengaged recently.”

She’s right. Before Belle died, I was having doubts about Controlling Men; and since her death I’ve found it hard to connect with anything—even important things, like the split with Wilf, and Tilda’s wedding.

“Look at this.” She pulls up her sleeve and shows me three burns on her skinny forearm, raised circles of mottled red.

“And you have more on your back?”

“That’s right. Each week it gets worse—burns, kicks, punches. And if I run—what? I have to live in fear that he’ll follow me, that he’ll go mad like Joe Mayhew. And it’s no good thinking the police can protect you—they can’t.”

“I know . . .” Then: “My sister’s marrying Felix . . .” Scarlet’s burns are stoking up my paranoia.

“Fuck.”

“What are we going to do?” I watch a man and his small son throwing sticks for a golden retriever. “Really, Scarlet. You’ve been talking about taking control somehow . . . but I don’t know what you mean. It seems so impossible.”

The dog bounds up to our bench and sniffles at some crumbs by our feet. I stroke its fur, but Scarlet shivers and moves away until the dog runs back to the lawn and the sticks.

“I have an idea,” she says, sounding tentative, like she hasn’t made up her mind yet about revealing it to me.

“It’s going to freak you out, Callie. But do listen. Have a cool head . . . and think of the alternatives.”

“Tell me. . . .”

She leans forward, and a dark strand of hair falls out of her head scarf. She takes off her sunglasses and turns her face to mine, and I see how blue her eyes are. Deep set, with black lashes.

“I’ll get rid of Felix,” she says, “if you get rid of Luke. We’ll make a pact.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I think you do. I’m saying I’m prepared to destroy Felix, to save your sister—but you must do the same for me. Nobody will find out, because I’m unconnected to Felix, no motive, nothing—and you’re the same with Luke.”

Her voice has changed—she sounds resolute, like she’s telling me what to do, not asking me. And I fear her answer to my next question.

“What do you mean—destroy?”

“I mean kill in order to prevent a killing. Kill in order to save a life.”

I slump backwards, wanting to get my face away from hers.

“That’s insane. It’s a movie plot, not real life.”

“Think carefully . . . women die every week because they do nothing, because they let these fuckers take control. It doesn’t need to be like that, not if people like you and I are strong.” She lays her rough hand on my arm and lowers her voice. “You should know that Belle agreed with me, and look what she did for us.”

She doubles up to reach a leather bag that’s under the bench, and pulls it onto her lap.

“Here . . .”

I look inside and see several syringes and medical-looking boxes.

“I brought these to show you, so that you would know Belle was committed. She stole them from the hospital so that we could use them.”

“I don’t believe it. . . . I don’t believe that Belle would do that.”

“You have to—these drugs and these syringes are the proof. I have diamorphine here—if it’s injected in a vein, it will kill someone in minutes.”

I feel myself collapsing into the bench, battered by Scarlet’s words. She’s so extreme, so crazy—and yet, as I look at her hunched body, her cold gaze, I believe she’s serious.

“That’s not all, Callie . . . I know who Felix is. You’ve dropped enough hints and it’s an unusual name—and I read the papers.” She’s putting her book into her bag, preparing to leave, telling me that she’ll take care of Felix, and she’ll find a way of telling me about Luke, and how I can keep my part of the bargain. She turns to leave, and I say, “Wait, let me walk with you. . . .”