Blood Guilt (10 page)

Again, Harlan’s chest
ached with a contradictory mingling of joy and guilt. “You don’t seem to
understand. I can’t wipe this blood off my hands. It’ll be there forever,
tainting everything I touch.”

“No, Harlan, you don’t
understand. I’m not scared by that. I’m scared of being alone.”

“I don’t want to be alone
either.” Harlan’s voice grew low with longing. He’d learnt all about loneliness
in jail – the kind of loneliness that was so severe you felt it like a physical
pain. “I want to fall asleep with you in my arms every night and wake up with
you beside–” He broke off. He could feel his resolve weakening with every word.
He pushed himself away from the door. “I’m sorry, Eve, I can’t talk anymore.”

“So that’s it.” Eve’s
voice was on the edge of tears. It took hold of Harlan and stopped him from
retreating any further. “You’re just going to hide in there and drive yourself
crazy agonising over something you can’t do anything about.”

“Please go. Please!”

“Okay, but first I want
you to promise me that you won’t do anything stupid like kill yourself.”

“You don’t need to
worry about that.”
The thought of suicide hadn’t crossed Harlan’s mind
since Ethan went missing.

“Promise me.”

“I promise.”

“I’ll be back tomorrow
to make sure you’ve kept your promise. I’m not going to give up on us so
easily.”

As Harlan listened to
Eve’s footsteps echo away, an urge came over him to tear the door open, run
after her and fling his arms around her. Resisting it with a wrench of
willpower, he fell back against the wall, hugging himself, sliding to the
floor. “She’s coming back,” he murmured, lips twitching as if they didn’t know
whether to smile or grimace.

Harlan held onto that
thought, using it to get him through the long night when he was being tortured
by images of what he’d done to Robert Reed and what others might be doing to
Ethan. The next morning he woke up telling himself he wasn’t going to be in
when Eve came knocking. But all day he sat in the living-room, listening out
for her. To kill time, he turned on the television. Susan Reed appeared on the
lunchtime news wearing a t-shirt with Ethan’s face on it and the words ‘Have
you seen ETHAN REED?’. She spoke to the news reader from her tiny kitchen,
which was crammed with people sorting through boxes of posters and leaflets.
Her expression was no longer dazed. Her frowning, bloodshot eyes somehow
managed to simultaneously convey a sense of fatalistic weariness and steely
determination. The Baptist preacher, Lewis Gunn, stood grave-faced at her side,
resting a supportive hand on her shoulder.

“The search for my son
will continue as long as it takes,” Susan told the news reporter. “Whether that
be days, months or years. We’ll never give up hope of finding him.”

When Susan finished
speaking, the preacher, in his usual vigorous manner, informed the viewers that
he was organising several events to raise money for the reward fund. He
appealed to people to give generously and read out a telephone number for
donations. Harlan greeted the announcement with mixed feelings. The offer of a
large reward often led to an influx of new information, most of which, although
of little or no use, was given in good faith. But it also brought out the
chancers and scammers, passing the police weak or even knowingly false
information in the hope of getting their hands on the money. 

The knock eventually
came late in the afternoon. Harlan sprang up and hurried to the door. “Eve?”

“Hello, Harlan. I told
you I’d be back. I’ve brought you some pasta.” Eve waited a moment to see if
Harlan would open the door, before adding, “I’ll leave it out here for you.”

Saliva filled Harlan’s
mouth – he hadn’t eaten a decent meal since visiting Eve’s flat. He looked at
the door handle, swallowing. Hating himself for it, he slowly reached for the
Yale lock and opened the door. His gaze flicked from Eve’s face to the plastic
carton of pasta she held, as if he couldn’t decide which he wanted more. In
return, her eyes moved over him anxiously as if searching for signs of illness
or self-abuse.

Wordlessly, Harlan
motioned for Eve to come in. She moved past him, glancing from side to side,
her gaze lingering on the sheets scrunched at the bottom of his otherwise bare
mattress, the bathroom with its mound of dirty clothes and towels, and the
kitchen work-surfaces cluttered with unwashed pots, half-eaten cans of baked
beans and spaghetti, and mould-flecked bread. “Cosy, isn’t it?” Harlan said,
with a crooked smile.

In the living-room, Eve
handed him the pasta and sat on the sofa watching while he voraciously consumed
it at the table. “Why are you doing this to yourself?” she asked when he’d
finished.

“You know why.”

“Jim says the boy’s
dead.”

Eve’s words laced
Harlan’s forehead with lines like cracked clay. “He can’t know that for sure.”

“No, but that’s what
him and all the other detectives on the case think. That’s what you think too,
isn’t it? I can see it in your eyes.”

Harlan broke his gaze
from Eve’s, looking at the sheer cliffs of concrete, glass and steel outside
his window. “We could be wrong.”

“Even if you are,
there’s still nothing you personally can do about it.”

“There might be. I
might think of something.”

“Like what?” Eve’s
voice was gentle, but her question contained a note of challenge.

“I…I don’t know. I just
know that I owe them this.”

“No you don’t!” Eve was
on her feet suddenly, moving towards Harlan. He flinched at her touch and held
her at arm’s length, as if afraid she’d catch something nasty off him. “You owe
yourself. You owe us.”

Harlan shook his head
fiercely, still not looking at Eve. “There can’t be any us.”

“This is crazy.” Eve’s
voice was hard, but her hands that clasped Harlan’s arms were tender. “I love
you. Fuck knows why. Maybe it’s because only you really understand what I’ve
been through. And you still love me. You don’t need to say it. I know you do.”
She tried to pull him to her. His arms trembled, but didn’t bend. “How can that
be wrong? How can love be wrong? If you can tell me, I’ll leave right now and
never bother you again.”

Harlan couldn’t tell
her. Suddenly his arms gave way and he collapsed into Eve’s embrace.
Uncontrollable tremors ran through him. This was what he wanted more than
anything, yet part of his mind, his soul, railed against it. He tried to draw
away from Eve, but she held him tight as though trying to squeeze every last
drop of resistance out of him. “Don’t,” she said.

“Look at me.” Harlan
made a sweeping gesture at the room. “Look at this place. I’m no good for you.”

“You are good for me,”
Eve soothed. “I love you. I want to be with you no matter what. And as for this
place, well, you don’t have to stay here. You can move in with me.”

Harlan shook his head.
“I need to be here.”

“Why?”

“In case.”

“In case of what?”

“She…Susan Reed, she
knows I live here. So she knows where to find me if she needs me.”

Eve looked at Harlan
with a baffled frown. “Why would she come to you for help? She hates you.”

Harlan’s mouth screwed
into a grimace. “I know it’s absurd, I know, but I’ve got to be here for her.
I’ve got to.”

Eve stroked his face,
the angular jut of his cheekbone, the roughness of his stubble-flecked jaw.
“Okay, stay here, and I’ll stay here with you.”

“But this place is a
dump.”

“It’s not so bad.” Eve
smiled. “Nothing a woman’s touch can’t fix.”

Harlan smiled faintly too,
remembering how Eve had transformed the first place they’d lived in together –
a dingy one bed-roomed flat above an off-licence – into a comfortable love
nest.

“So it’s settled,”
continued Eve.

“I…I’m not…” Harlan
mumbled uncertainly.

Eve tilted up his chin
and looked him in the eyes. “It’s settled. I’m going to fetch some clothes from
my flat. I won’t be long.” She leaned in and kissed Harlan. At the touch of her
lips, the last of his resistance seeped away.

“Okay.”

As Harlan saw Eve to
the door, guilt gnawed at him with sharp teeth. He returned to the living-room
and stared out the window, half watching for Eve, half studying his own
reflection, wondering how it was possible to feel so good and so bad at the
same time. Perhaps there was no way to reconcile his longing for Eve with his
sense of obligation to Susan Reed. Perhaps he was just going to have to accept
it, let it wash over him, see where it took him. He knew one thing – if his
future with Eve was uncertain, without her it was non-existent.

An hour or so later,
Eve returned with a bag of clothes and a box of cleaning products. She set to
work on the flat straight away, scrubbing the bathroom and kitchen till they
gleamed, hoovering and dusting the living-room and bedroom, bagging the dirty
linen ready for the laundrette, changing the bedding. And when she was done
with the flat, she set to work on Harlan, cutting his hair, running him a bath,
climbing in it with him, soaping his back. Afterwards, they ordered takeout and
ate it on the floor in front of the gas fire, talking and listening to the wind
whip at the windows. They talked long into the night. Eve told Harlan about the
new career she’d embarked on in the past year. She told him, at his insistence,
about the relationship she’d had during his incarceration. He told her, equally
reluctantly, what prison had been like for him. They talked with some sadness
but no resentment about Tom – his seemingly boundless energy, his huge sense of
fun, his cheeky laugh. When they were finally tired of talking, they undressed
each other and made love and fell asleep in each other’s arms.

Chapter
8

Over the next few days
Harlan and Eve hardly spent a moment apart. They bathed together, ate together,
slept together. She dragged him out to restaurants, to the cinema, even to an
art gallery. It felt both unnerving and exhilarating to him, doing normal
things as if he was a normal person. Sometimes in the middle of a meal or
whatever, he’d find himself staring off into the distance with eyes that were
adrift in a sea of guilt. At other times, he’d wake in the middle of the night,
lathered in sweat, chest heaving, grinding his teeth, trying to push Eve away.
But she wouldn’t let him. She’d hold him to her, stroking his hair, shushing
him as if he was a child that needed calming, until his body relaxed back into
the bed. Occasionally, when the guilt burned and bit so deep he felt like
bashing his head against the wall, he’d shout, “This is wrong!”

To which Eve’s reply
was always the same. “Love’s not wrong.”

Gradually, as days
turned into weeks, normality started to feel less unnatural to Harlan. The
attacks of guilt became more and more infrequent. He went a minute without
thinking about what he’d done to Robert Reed and what was happening to the family
that’d survived him, then five minutes, then fifteen, then half-an-hour. One
day, as he and Eve sipped coffee in the café of a department store where they’d
been shopping for cushions and curtains and other items to make the flat more
homely, it suddenly struck him that he hadn’t felt even a twinge of guilt all
day. He lowered his cup, his throat so tight he couldn’t swallow. “You’ve got
that look on your face again,” said Eve, reaching for his hand.

Harlan flinched from
her touch, jerking to his feet so hard he nearly knocked the table over. “I’ve
got to get out of here.” His voice trembled with urgency. “I’ve got to get back
to the flat right now.”

“Calm down, Harlan. Sit
back down and let’s talk about this.”

Harlan shook his head,
turning to leave. Gathering up the bags of shopping, Eve hurried after him,
pausing to pay the bill, not waiting for her change. She caught up with him at
the store’s entrance and gasped, “Wait! Slow down.”

Harlan ignored Eve. As
if he was being pulled along by an invisible chain, he ran through the streets
to his car. One image kept wrenching at him – Susan Reed hammering at the door
of his flat, calling his name. Calling to him for help. When he got to the car,
Eve was no longer behind him. He didn’t wait for her. He jumped into the car
and accelerated tyres squealing out of the car-park. He drove back to his block
of flats like a man possessed, and sprinted up all twelve flights of stairs.
Breathing raggedly, he arrived at his floor fully expecting to see Susan stood
at his door. She wasn’t there, of course.

Harlan’s shoulders
sagged as though from unbearable weariness. Feet dragging, he entered the flat
and crumpled onto the sofa. He sat with head hanging and eyes closed.
Half-an-hour later, when Eve came into the flat, he looked at her and said,
“I’m sorry.”

A faint, tender smile
passed across Eve’s features. “There’s no need.” She sat down next to him and
gently took hold of his wrist. “We’ll get through this. I promise you. We can
get through anything as long as we’re together. Say it to me.”

Reluctantly, without
much conviction, Harlan repeated Eve’s words. “Say it again and really mean
it,” she said, placing her hands on either side of his face and holding his
gaze with her own. He took breath and said it, and this time he felt the words
in his heart and head, reassuring him, calming him.