In a Dark, Dark Wood(55)

‘Now, tell me, what do you remember of last night?’ She returns to the subject like a very beautiful, well-brought-up cat circling a mousehole. I want to go home.

The scab beneath the dressing tingles and tickles. I can’t concentrate. Suddenly out of the corner of my eye I see the uneaten clementine sitting on the locker, and I have to look away.

‘I remember …’ I blink and, to my horror, I feel my eyes fill with tears. ‘I remember …’ I swallow fiercely, and I dig my nails into my torn and bloody palms, letting the pain drive out the memory of him lying on the honey-coloured parquet, bleeding into my arms. ‘Please, please tell me – who—’ I stop. I can’t say it. I can’t.

I try again. ‘Is—’? The word chokes in my throat. I shut my eyes, count to ten, dig my nails into the cuts on my palm until my whole arm is shaky with pain.

I hear an exhalation from DC Lamarr, and when I open my eyes she looks, for the first time, worried.

‘We would like to get your side of the story before we muddy the waters,’ she says at last, but her face is troubled, and I know, I know what it is she is not allowed to say.

‘It’s all right,’ I manage. Something is coming apart inside me, breaking up. ‘You don’t need to tell me. Oh G-god—’

And then I cannot speak. The tears come and come and come. It’s what I feared. It’s what I knew.

‘Nora—’ I hear from Lamarr, and I shake my head. My eyes are shut tight but I feel the tears running down my nose and stinging the cuts on my face. She gives a small, wordless sound of sympathy, and then she stands.

‘I’ll give you a moment,’ she says. And I hear the door of the room creak open, and then flap shut, swinging on its double hinges. I am alone. And I cry and cry until there are no tears left.





21


I RAN DOWN the stairs as quickly as I could, trying not to cut my feet on the glass, holding onto the bannister so as not to slip in the wetness of the man’s blood, and there he was, curled in a small pathetic heap at the bottom of the stairs.

He was alive. I could hear his soft whimpers as he struggled to breathe.

‘Nina!’ I bellowed. ‘Nina, get down here! He’s alive! Someone dial 999!’

‘There’s no f*cking signal,’ Nina shouted back as she scrambled down the stairs.

‘Leo,’ the man whispered, and my heart froze. And then he raised his face from his painful hunch, and I knew. I knew. I knew.

I remember that moment with complete, heart-stopping clarity.

‘James?’ It was Nina who spoke first, not me. She slipped rather than walked down the last few stairs, landing in a heap beside us on the floor, and her voice cracked as she gently felt for his pulse. ‘James? What the f*ck are you doing here? Oh my God!’ She was almost crying, but her hands were doing their automatic work, checking where the blood was coming from, checking his pulse.

‘James, talk to me,’ she said. ‘Nora, keep him talking. Keep him awake!’

‘James …’ I didn’t know what to say. We hadn’t spoken for ten years and now – and now— ‘James, oh my God, James … Why, how?’

‘Te …’ he said, and he coughed, blood flecking his lips. ‘Leo?’

It sounded like a question, but I didn’t know what he meant. Tell? Tell Leo? I only shook my head. There was so much blood.

Nina had his hoodie unzipped and she had found scissors from somewhere and was ripping up his T-shirt. I almost shut my eyes at the sight of his body, that skin that I had kissed and touched, every inch, spattered with blood and shot wounds.

‘Oh f*ck,’ Nina moaned, ‘we need an ambulance.’

‘Did …’ James was trying to speak, in spite of the blood bubbling at his lips. ‘Did she … tell you?’

About the wedding?

‘He’s got a punctured lung. He’s probably bleeding internally. Press on this.’ Nina guided my hand to a pad of torn-up T-shirt pressed against James’s thigh, from where blood was pumping frighteningly fast.

‘What can we do?’ I was trying not to cry.

‘For the moment? Try to stop him bleeding out. If that artery keeps going like that, he’s dead no matter what. Press harder, it’s still bleeding. I’ll try a tournique but …’

‘Oh my God.’ It was Flo. She looked like a ghost standing there, her hands over her face. ‘Oh my God. I’m … I’m so sorry – I can’t … I can’t deal with b … blood …’ She gave a little gasping sigh, and collapsed, and I heard Nina swear under her breath, long and low.

‘Tom!’ she bellowed. ‘Get Flo away from here! She’s fainted. Get her to her room.’ She pushed the hair back from her face. There was blood on her cheekbone and on her brow.

‘Clare …’ James said. He licked his lips. His eyes were fixed on mine, like there was something he was trying to tell me. I squeezed his hand, trying to hold it together.

‘She’s coming.’ Where the hell was she? ‘Clare!’ I shouted. No answer.

‘No …’ James managed. ‘Clare … text … Did she say?’ His voice was so faint it was hard to work out what he was trying to say.

‘What?’