Bring Me Back (B.A. Paris)(53)

He would realise, of course he would realise, that he’d made the wrong choice and ultimately, he would regret it. But it would be too late. By then, I’ll have disappeared again, never to come back. Tomorrow, I’m leaving.

The voice is not impressed. I can’t believe you’re giving up that easily, it scorns. If you really want something you have to fight for it, surely you know that by now. I did fight, I reply. I fought and I lost. Finn doesn’t want me. That’s because you fought the wrong person, replies the voice. It’s Ellen you should be fighting, not Finn. If you want Finn, you’ll have to fight Ellen. Properly. To the death.

The thought terrifies me. What you’re asking me to do is impossible, I tell the voice. I can’t kill Ellen. You’ll have to if you want to survive, it says. You said yourself that there wasn’t room for both of you. I can’t, I say again. Of course you can, says the voice. Who do you want Finn to have? You, or Ellen. It’s your choice.

But I don’t want to make the choice. I think about what I can do and I decide to give the choice to Ellen. The countdown is over. It’s up to her now. She has one day. If she can get Finn to prove that he loves her, to the exclusion of all else, to the exclusion of me, she can have him. If she can’t – well, Finn will be mine. And I’ll be able to get rid of Ellen once and for all.





FORTY-EIGHT

Finn

I’m tempted to reply to Layla’s email and ask her what happens now that I’ve received the last doll. What has she planned for tomorrow, now that time has run out? What I hope is that she’ll concede defeat and give me a time and a place where we can meet. But her inferred threat against Ellen plays heavily on my mind. It seems inevitable that there’ll be a confrontation of some kind.

If she turns up at the house, how will it feel to see her again? Will I fall instantly in love with her, regret that I hadn’t chosen her over Ellen? Probably. There might still be a chance for us. There’s such a distance between Ellen and me that I’m not sure we’ll ever recover. We didn’t speak at all on our way back from The Jackdaw. Come to think of it, we didn’t speak while we were at The Jackdaw either. We ate our meal in almost total silence. Well, I ate and Ellen pushed her food around on the plate. She’s become so thin, thinner than she’s ever been. Why hadn’t I noticed?

At least the terrible pressure of the last ten days is off. Each day seemed so long and yet, as each day came to a close, as each email came in, reminding me that I was one step nearer the end, reminding me that I had let another day slip by without taking action of any kind, I wanted to snatch it back again.

I feel I could sleep tonight, a proper sleep, a dreamless sleep. I haven’t slept in my bed for a week now – I’ve taken to falling asleep on the sofa – so I’m longing to climb into it. Ellen is moving around up there so I’ll have to wait until she’s asleep. I fish a bottle of whisky out of the cupboard and pour myself a glass, a drink to remind myself that I haven’t given in to Layla.

It’s well past midnight by the time I go up. In the bathroom, I have a quick shower and walk into the bedroom. I expect Ellen to be asleep but she’s sitting on the bed, dressed in one of my old shirts, waiting for me. I come to an abrupt halt. I’ve never been shy about being naked in front of Ellen but now, I feel awkward.

‘I thought you’d be asleep,’ I say.

‘I decided to wait up for you.’

‘You shouldn’t have. You’re tired, you need to sleep.’

‘Maybe, but I want to talk to you.’

‘It’s late. Can we talk tomorrow?’

‘No. Tomorrow you’ll be in your office, where you seem to spend all of your time now.’ She looks sadly at me. ‘What’s happened to us, Finn? Why do you never come up to bed until late? If you come up at all.’

‘Because I can’t sleep.’

‘Because of Layla?’

‘Yes, because of Layla. It’s not been easy, these last few weeks, not knowing if she’s going to suddenly turn up.’

‘Do you love me more than you loved Layla?’ she asks, an echo of what Layla asked me in her email all those weeks ago.

‘What kind of question is that?’

‘A perfectly normal one, given the circumstances, given the fact that Layla is my sister.’

‘She always has been, yet you’ve never asked me before.’

‘Because I was too afraid of what the answer would be.’

I grab a T-shirt and some boxers from the drawer. ‘The love I had for Layla was different.’

‘In what way? Better, worse?’

‘Just different. Look, can we have this conversation tomorrow? I’m tired, I want to go to sleep.’

‘When was the last time we had sex, Finn?’ I don’t say anything, because I can’t remember. ‘Shall I tell you when it was? It was before Layla left that Russian doll on the wall, before she came back into our lives.’ She gets off the bed, comes over, takes the clothes from my hand and throws them down. ‘Make love to me, Finn.’

I stare at her, because she has never asked me to make love to her before. Also, I know I’m not going to be able to, not while my head is all over the place. Not while my head is full of Layla.

‘We haven’t had sex for so long.’ Her hands move to the buttons on her shirt and she begins to undo them one by one, her eyes never leaving my face. She lets it slide off her shoulders and onto the floor. ‘Make love to me, Finn. Make love to me like you used to make love to Layla.’