Honest (13 page)

‘What?’

‘Take your
shirt off! Oh let me.’ She tugged the thick, three–quarter sleeved red shirt
from her shoulders and helped me into it, though I protested. My skin was
prickling from the cold in the studio, despite the soft sunshine outside, and I
was
grateful for the extra warmth.

Even more so
when I glanced in the mirror and saw what I looked like; or rather,
who
I looked like.

‘There, you
can go without your shirt now that you’ve spoiled poor Lauren’s clothes.’ She
gave her daughter a light shove.

When it came
to paying, I waved the plastic debit card in the air and peered over the desk
for the chip and pin machine. Of course, I realised: there wasn’t one. This was
the country, the middle of nowhere.

‘It’s cash
only,’ said Abbie, looking as disinterested as humanly possible.

Linda stared at
the card, her nostrils flaring, as if she’d just spotted an insect. ‘Oh, sorry
about that, dear — cash only I’m afraid.’

‘This is all
I’ve got,’ I said. ‘Isn’t there a cash point outside?’

‘I’m afraid
not darling, not unless you’ve got a car to drive into town properly, but
that’s a good couple of miles away,’ said Linda, looking visibly panicked.
‘What about if you called your David to come and give you some cash, or get
some out in town? He must have a car, mustn’t he?’

I swallowed
hard. I didn’t have a choice now, did I? The game was up. I didn’t have any
choice except to call “David”.

When dad
arrived in his puffer jacket and paint–stained jeans, clutching the cash, I
could practically
hear
Linda’s jaw drop open. Dad stopped and stared,
taken aback by my new look.

‘Crikey, look
at you!’ he said, reaching out and touching my new, glossy platinum hair. Linda
glanced uneasily from Dad to Abbie and then to me, clearly sickened at the
thought of
this
man being David.

I didn’t even
want to know what conclusions she was coming to. Besides, I thought — even the
worst probably wouldn’t be as sickening as the truth. I had that to be thankful
for.

‘L—like it, do
you?’ said Linda, her hands shaking as she folded up my towel.

‘Oh yes,’ he
said. ‘Bit extreme, perhaps, eh, flower? Well, what my young lady wants, my
young lady gets.’

‘Right,’ said
Linda, her eyes wide and glistening, utterly shocked.

‘You make a
lovely blonde,’ said Dad. He made to give the cash to Abbie, but Linda stepped
in and snatched it from his hands.

‘Thanks, I’ll
take that,’ she said through gritted teeth, unable to meet his eyes. ‘We’re
closing now. Enjoy the rest of your weekend break.’

Dad took the
handles of my wheelchair while Linda firmly ushered us out the door, the bell
ringing violently as the door swung shut behind us.

Chapter
Eighteen

I kept my
plaid shirt on all weekend, so proud of my new look. I looked like one of the
girls from a pop–rock band, though I’d never liked that kind of music. No, not
my style, really — but men liked it, I knew that much. And that’s what women
did, after all; it’s part of our makeup, looking good for guys. Read any
article in any magazine and it’d tell you
that
.

By Sunday
lunchtime we were packed and ready to go back to the cottage in the hope that
things had calmed down by then. Plus Dad had arranged for Melanie to come for
an earlier appointment the next day, due to my recent “self–harming”, so we
needed to get going.

How was I
going to explain that behaviour, I wondered?
Melanie, there’s a perfectly good
reason why I’ve been falling down stairs and climbing out of windows — my dead
boyfriend made me.

That wouldn’t
go down well. Having said that, there was yet another piece of information —
one I would keep secret, nestled in my head where it was safe— that would send
Melanie’s eyeballs bulging if she ever believed me.

When Peter did
that
thing
to me, when he sort of...entered my body, and took control
and possessed me, well, in truth, I
liked
it. It was strange, and sickly
and uncomfortable and yet...it made us
one
. We were together, combined,
like our time in the bed just hours before Peter died.

It evoked all
kinds of thoughts within me, ones I couldn’t share with anybody, especially not
Melanie. They were private thoughts; the kind I used to feel before we’d even
gone that far. That magical, frightening, psycho–sexual experience every girl
has at one o’clock in the morning, dreaming up scenarios involving the boy who
possessed her thoughts.

And to think
now that he was literally possessing me. How many girls in
Cosmo
could
say they’d experienced
that
?

While I waited
for Dad to pack the car I watched TV. This Morning was on, and they were
interviewing a woman in a dark room with a disguised voice to conceal her
identity. When she spoke it was a strange, deep, echoing, computer–generated
sound.

‘So you
attended the funeral despite your family urging you not to?’ said the male
presenter, clutching a piece of card with This Morning written on the front.
Beside him a female presenter wearing a polka–dot dress plucked two tissues
from a box on the table and passed them to the woman shrouded in darkness.

‘Yes,’ she
said in the strange voice. ‘Nobody really understood why I had to do it. I just
did.’

‘Was it
perhaps for closure, or to say a final farewell to that chapter of your life?’
said the presenter in the polka–dot dress.

‘In a way,
yes,’ said the guest, the voice quavering as she dabbed her face with the
tissue. ‘I just needed to know it was over. The abuse happened for so many
years and I’m so much older now...In a way, it was like the child in me saying
goodbye to him.’

‘Would you
say there was still a shred of affection for your abuser?’

‘No,’ said
the guest. ‘I hated him.’

The male
presenter nodded and checked his card. ‘Now this is the really strange part,
isn’t it, because you say the family of the abuser — who we won’t name on
television— actually held an open casket during the service.’

‘Yes,’ said
the guest.

‘Why was
that?’

The shadow
of the woman shrugged. ‘They were adamant that he was innocent and I suppose
they wanted people to see the face of an innocent man.’

‘And what
did you feel when you saw his face?’ said the female presenter. ‘It must have
been hard knowing that his family were present and could see your reaction.’

‘Yes, I
mean, it was strange really...I sort of felt...relieved. I could be sure that
he was gone forever,’ said the guest. ‘It was like you said, you know, closure.
Seeing him dead helped me accept things.’

‘Mary,
thank you for coming on the show. We’ll take a break now, but stay tuned for
our lunchtime special.’

That night,
back in the cottage I had a dream about Peter and my dad. We were out on the
motorboat on a silent moonlit night. I was on one end of the boat, Peter the
other, and we were just swaying on the inky black ocean with the motor turned
off. The night was so still that not a single wisp of my hair was disturbed as
the boat rocked, and even the chill in the air barely prickled my skin. It was
as if there was no weather at all.

Peter was
hunched over something, pressing down, turning this way and that, grunting
softly, as if he was tightening up a loose bolt in the woodwork. But as I
looked closer I could make out, in the darkness, the shape of a man beneath
him, and Peter’s hands around his throat.

He was
whispering something. Alarmed, my heart thumped as I crawled forward, on hands
and knees, craning my neck to see the face of the man Peter was strangling so
silently.

He was
whispering something through gritted teeth. The night was so still that I could
just about make it out. ‘
This is for Ellen,
’ he said repeatedly, every
word a struggle as he pressed down on the throat. ‘
This is for what you did
to her
.’

In the dream I
started crying, watching the body’s head roll slowly from side to side while
Peter finished him. He didn’t move, or struggle; he just lied still, like he
was dead already — like he’d been dead for years. When Peter sighed and let go,
still sitting atop the torso, he turned and looked at me.

‘We’ll get to
land and get a car and we’ll get away from here,’ he said, steadily. ‘I
promise. He’s gone now. I’ve fixed it for you.’

I opened my
eyes and felt a pair of freezing hands upon my throat. I saw the outline of
them, blue and grey, the long thin wrists with a bulging snake-like vein.

‘Peter!’ I
screamed, rolling over, my knee screaming also in excruciating pain. I cried as
I grabbed my stick from the edge of the bed and swung it around at the phantom,
swiping at thin air, thrashing about in the bed covers.
The dream was
warning me!
Breathing frantically, I searched for him in the dark. I saw a
shadow move and heard a cry, so I swung again, striking him this time. That
body in the dream wasn’t dad’s, but mine! He meant to finish me off!

‘Ellen stop!’
the ghost cried, grabbing my stick in mid–air and pulling me toward his dead,
pale face.

I slashed at
it, screaming in hysterics, clawing at it until it grabbed my wrists and held
me still. I was suspended in my anguish, sweating, legs tangled in the sheets.

‘Stop it! Just
stop it!’ he said. I gulped in air, slowing my cries, my heartbeat returning to
normal as it dawned on me who it was.

It wasn’t
Peter, of course. It was dad.

‘Get off me,’
I said, breathing heavily. He let go of my wrists and backed away against the
window, his silhouette clear to me now against the light from the moon and
streetlamp outside.

‘What’s going
on with you?’ he said, his voice almost a whisper. He looked a pathetic thing,
dark and hunched like the shadow of a vulcher. ‘I only wanted a cuddle. There
was nothing to be afraid of...Just a cuddle with my little girl.’

‘Get out.’ I
spat, pure hatred engulfing me so much I gripped the sheets with my fingernails
and pulled them tight for strength. I could feel tiny rolls of skin underneath
them, fresh from my father’s whiskery face.

‘It’s being
here, isn’t it? Oh god, it’s turning you mad,’ he said, stepping further back
still. His straggly hair was untied and hanging around his shoulders like
seaweed. ‘The way you’re acting lately is getting frightening, El’. You’re
frightening.’

‘Get out!’ I
shouted, pulling the bed sheet up as I twisted and lunged forward, making him
jump and quiver.

‘All right,
all right, princess, it’s okay. It’s just a bad nightmare...That’s all...She’s
okay. She’s okay.’ he muttered to himself as he edged warily around the bed,
holding his hands up in defeat. ‘Melanie will know what to do,’ he said. ‘In
the morning...She’ll know what to do.’

Even as the
door closed I remained upright on the bed, entangled in the sheets, my flesh
goose pimpled and cold, my chest heaving as I breathed. My muscles tightened as
rage pulsed through me, and I gritted my teeth so hard they creaked. I closed
my eyes and tried to focus but I couldn’t relax. I could only let my eyes dart
about the room like a madwoman, seething, a bizarre electricity under my skin.

I wanted to
scream, to hit something, to claw something up like an animal would with its
bare hands. Peter’s hunched, murderous image came to mind and filled me with
his anger, coursing through me like blood of his blood, filling me with his
hate. And at that moment, in my bedroom in the dark, I swore, I
was
Peter.

When my deep
breaths subsided, I collapsed, my knee throbbing in pain, in a bundle amongst
the sheets. I stared at the big bay window and listened to the water in the
harbour, and the sounds of masts knocking each other as the boats swayed. My
limbs stiffened, then relaxed, then stiffened again.

I let it
happen. I lay there, my lips parted, head barely on the pillow, and just stared
out of that window. My skin prickled with pins and needles, and soon my bones
were numb. I had gone numb. I couldn’t even concentrate long enough to wonder
if Peter was entering me or leaving me, or both, or to even register just how
crazy all this was.

I breathed
slowly, purposefully, looking at the dark, mammoth shape of the cliffs beyond
the harbour, the place where Peter and I would hike. I remembered his guitar
playing, and the strange olive tint of his skin in the pale daylight, and his
cool, chapped lips pressing against mine for the first time. I thought of the
miles of ocean and the sharp wind in our ears; of his glistening green eyes
under a hood of eyelid and thick, dark lashes. His wiry hair crowding his head
like a halo.

My body
softened, and my heart ached. Soon the throbbing in my knee turned sore and
unbearable, making me writhe and clutch the pillow against the pain. I groped
inside my bedside cabinet for one of my painkillers, and before my fingers had
even hooked it out of the foil, I saw him in the distance.

He began as a
small shadow, getting longer and more visible as he scaled the grassy hilltop.
I stared so long, the pill poised between my thumb and forefinger, that I swore
I could see the muscles in his calves, as Peter made the long, familiar climb.

Chapter
Nineteen

Melanie crossed
one leg over the other and gave me a long, thoughtful look. I yawned, the
sleepless night catching up with me. ‘So, your dad scheduled an appointment
with me earlier in the week than usual. Why do you think he did that?’

‘I don’t
know,’ I said, rubbing my eyes.

‘I think you
probably do,’ said Melanie, her voice softening. After a pause she said, ‘He’s
very concerned about you.’

‘Oh what, just
because I’m not his little princess anymore?’ saying it sickened me, but
Melanie didn’t bat an eyelid. She didn’t know what I was talking about, of
course. A ‘princess’ was an innocent thing to her; how could she know the ugly,
biting effect that word had on me whenever dad used it endearingly?

‘He said
you’ve been having night terrors, and he thinks they might have something to do
with the incidents recently with the stairs and the window. What do
you
think, Ellen? In your heart of hearts, do you think you’re just suffering
restlessness?’

‘If I am, it’s
because people won’t leave me the hell alone,’ I said. I clasped my hands
together to stop them from shaking, but Melanie’s quick eyes noted them.

‘You’ve had a
lot of stress lately. You’re back here, with all those memories, knowing that
Dennis has been freed. Be honest, Ellen — how does that make you feel?’

I slumped in
my wheelchair and shrugged. ‘I don’t know,’ I said, thinking of the night with
Dennis. Then I thought of the nightmares, lashing out at dad — none of that
bothered me. But the strange goings on, the ones I linked with Peter, they
did
keep me up at night.

‘I’ve been
feeling uneasy.’ I admitted.

Melanie nodded
slowly. ‘That’s good, that’s very good. Do any other feelings come to mind?’

‘Oh, I don’t
know. I’m tired.’

‘Right.’
Melanie tore a piece of paper from her pad and handed it to me, along with her
pen. She snatched up an old copy of
Marie Claire
from the coffee table
and gave it to me to lean on. ‘Let’s try an exercise. I want you to close your
eyes and think about the town, the cottage, Dennis, the trial, Peter, David,
Lauren
—’

‘Lauren?’

Melanie let
out a long breath. ‘Yes, Lauren. Ellen, you probably don’t know this, but I’ve
known Lauren’s mother for a number of years now, and they’re all very nice,
normal people.’

‘I never said
any different,’ I said. ‘I don’t even know the girl.’

‘Yes, fine,’ said
Melanie. ‘Which is why I’m finding it very strange to see you dressed like
that, and with new hair, too.’

‘So what?
Everybody dresses like this. It’s called fashion.’ I hugged my old copy of
Marie
Claire
close, still holding the pen.

‘That’s fine,
but I’m wondering if perhaps you got your style ideas from seeing Lauren.’

‘That’s not a
crime, is it?’

‘No, no, of
course not. Look, we don’t have to get into this if you don’t want to, but I
think it’s worth addressing. I’d like to know what you think your reasons are
behind your recent new look.’ She shrugged.

I’d always
found that funny about therapists; the way they acted as if it didn’t matter
one jot if we wasted our time together. I supposed that could be true, but then
why become a therapist in the first place if you couldn’t be bothered with the
client?

‘I just
fancied going more blonde,’ I said. ‘What do
you
think my reasons were?’

Melanie
uncrossed her legs and scratched her knee through the brown material of her
drab work trousers. ‘Well, I wonder if it’s your way of asking to be friends.
Your way of trying to find a connection with her, or to reach out to her.’

‘Why would I
want to do that?’ I said. I twiddled the pen between my fingers.

‘Well, look,
if you want us to talk about Lauren more we can. There
was
the incident
with the phone calls.’

‘And I told
you that wasn’t me! I said that to
them
.’

‘Yes, we know
you said that, but you wanted to know my opinion and here it is. I think
there’s definite reason to suggest that you’re trying to get Lauren’s
attention, negative or otherwise,’ said Melanie, a new firmness in her tone of
voice.

‘Well you’re
an idiot,’ I said, pointing at her with the pen. ‘It’s my hair and I can do
what I like with it. She doesn’t have anything to do with my decisions.’

‘What about
David? Perhaps you weren’t trying to impress Lauren at all, but him. During one
of our last sessions, you said he was your boyfriend.’

I blinked,
confused. ‘No I didn’t,’ I said. ‘I just told you we were friends.’

Melanie shook
her head, her curls swaying side to side. ‘You told me he’d tried to touch you
in the car.’

‘That isn’t
the same thing as boyfriend!’ I made to get up and accuse her properly, but my
knee gave a twinge and forced me back into the chair, wincing.

‘Well, you
were certainly adamant that something was going on.’

I gritted my
teeth and held my knee, feeling too much pain to argue. Instead I just settled
with saying, ‘It was a mistake. I don’t even remember saying it.’

‘Fine. Let’s
move on. Are you all right?’

‘My knee,’ I
said, breathless. We waited while the pain subsided and then, wiping my brow, I
re–adjusted the paper on my lap and put the nib of my pen to its blank, white
surface.

‘OK. So, I
want you to close your eyes and think of all those things I said before,
including all the people. Go on, close them.’ I did as she told me, keeping my
lips closed too, taking long breaths through my nostrils.

 Immediately I
felt closed in, stuck in my own head. Panicking, I gripped the pad tighter and
tried to breathe even slower, in and out.

‘Now,’ said
Melanie, her voice a soft whisper. ‘Just start writing. Think about those
things, and then start moving the pen.’

I thought of
all those things, and my hand
did
start moving. A flood of adrenaline
made my skin prickle, and I smiled, glad that finally something about these
sessions was working. I could feel it as I wrote that one little word, just
one, leaking out of me and releasing me instantly. It was so easy it was almost
as if it wasn’t me writing it at all.

My hand
stopped when I finished the word. In a soft voice, Melanie asked me to open my
eyes and read out the word I’d written down. I blinked, then became afraid and
dropped the pen.

‘What’s the
matter?’ asked Melanie, leaning forward. ‘Why are you looking at it like that?
What did you write?’

Now I wasn’t
so sure I had written it.

I took a deep
breath. ‘It says
You
.’

Melanie sighed
and ran her fingers through her tangle of dyed red hair. ‘And what is that
supposed to mean, Ellen? Come on, help me out.’ When I didn’t answer, she
groaned. ‘How can I help you if you don’t let me inside your head? What do you
mean by ‘
You
’ Ellen?’

I shrugged,
helpless. ‘I really don’t know,’ I said. I thought about my hand curling around
the pen, the way it had felt, so easy, as if it hadn’t been me writing it.

‘Well tell me
how that word makes you feel, then. Write
that
feeling down.’ Melanie
pinched the bridge of her nose and re–crossed one leg over the other again.

I reached for
my pen on the floor and, without hesitating, I wrote the first word that sprang
to my head. Next to ‘
You’
, I wrote ‘
Threat
’.

‘OK,’ Melanie
said when she read it. ‘We can work with this. So we’ve got two words, ‘you’
and ‘threat. What do you think those words mean together?’

My mouth had
gone dry. I continued staring at those words. I wanted to say,
you should
ask the person who wrote them
, but I didn’t. She wouldn’t understand. I
licked my lips and said, ‘That I’m threatening.’

‘OK,’ said
Melanie. ‘Does that ring true with you? Do you feel like a threatening person
right now?’

‘I don’t
know,’ I said, wringing my hands. Melanie’s eyes watched me, noting every
little detail. She leaned her chin on her fist, her pointed elbow digging in to
the arm of the sofa, and looked from my hands to my face again.

‘Are you the
threat, or do you
feel
threatened?’

I shook my
head, staring at the ugly words on the page. Was that even my handwriting they
were written in?

I thought of
Peter’s anger inside of me, making me hit dad and thrash out like some kind of
madwoman. Then there were my dreams, those constant dreams I had about him,
night after night, and the way he plagued me during the day, never once leaving
my side, even in spirit.

‘Both,’ I
answered honestly.

After Melanie
left, I used the stair lift and filled the bath tub with hot water until it was
hot and steaming to the brim. Every inch of skin felt filthy now, as if coated
in an irremovable layer of sweat and grime, and though I wiped with my palms
and scratched with my nails, the grime only ever spread further.
For once I
just want to get it all off of me.

Using my stick
and the arm of my chair for leverage, I pulled myself up and hooked my good leg
over the side, letting it sink into the velvety hot water. Next I shimmied onto
the ledge and let my bad leg fall into it also, groaning with relief as the
swollen, sore knee was enveloped in a cushion of soothing heat.

By the time my
whole body was in the bath it was bliss. The house was silent, my wheelchair by
the door, and all that existed in those few moments was the water and me. I
scooped great handfuls over my head, soaking my white–blonde hair, my pallid,
freckled skin warming up and becoming rosy.

The light
dimmed outside, cloaking the room in darkness, but as I laid back and enjoyed
the heat I paid no mind to it. Even when the air surrounding me chilled and
made the skin of my shoulders prickle, I ignored it, emptying my head, thinking
of nothing but the warmth.

Soon the air
grew colder around my neck, too cold to ignore anymore. My eyes fluttered open,
and in a flash two hands took me by the shoulders and plunged my head
underwater, forcing me down. I kicked with my good leg and scratched thin air
with my hands, but the weight on my shoulders pinned me so that I could hardly
move.

My screams
sent bubbles whirling before my eyes, obscuring the image of the man holding me
under, though I could feel his fingers gripping me to the bone.

My final
breath flooded from my mouth in a great bubble, and suddenly I was locked in,
the roar of water in my ears, the splash of my own limbs now a muffled sound
far away. My throat was stopped–up as if with a cork and I wretched, the
muscles of my stomach aching as I heaved and heaved, desperate for air.

My mouth shot
open and I screamed. My throat tightened as my voice struggled to blare out
through breathless lungs. Still I kicked and beat with my fists, until a sudden
weakness stifled me and my limbs relaxed. My mind fogged up and I closed my
eyes.

 A
distinctive, eerie tingling under my skin kept me on the brink of
consciousness.

As the
sensation swam up my arms and legs towards my core, the grip on my shoulders
lifted, and I felt weightless and dead as a white–eyed fish, drawn away from
the shore by an overpowering wave. Then my limbs stiffened, the sensation
strengthening my muscles again, even my swollen and sore knee now overpowered
and renewed. I rose up from the water.

I sucked in a
low, hoarse breath, my body quivering yet strong, white as bone in the dark,
dark room. A sound on the landing made my head twitch in its direction, and of
their own accord my hands gripped the edge of the bath and lifted me,
effortlessly, out of the tub onto my feet. I stood and waited for what seemed
like so long, until a creaking noise came from the stairs, and I saw the grey
crown of a head.

I didn’t
recognise the man who came onto the landing, pensive, his blue eyes widening as
he saw me there, naked and pale, waiting for him. I sucked in another long, low
breath, slowly filling my starved lungs with air.

‘What are you
doing, love?’ he asked, his voice so soft and meek it was barely audible. My
ears were so stuffed–up with water that his seemed too far away, and I was
isolated and unaware, and all the while my skin tingled, and numbed, as my feet
took a slow step forward.

The man backed
away against the banister, before stretching out a shaking arm. ‘Let’s get a
towel around you love, eh? Let’s get you warm and in your chair. That poor leg
of yours, hm? Look at it, love, all swollen and red. Aren’t you in pain, love?
You ought to be crying, with a knee as sore as that.’

My fingers
curled and uncurled, growing stronger, until they stiffened up in claws and a
ball of energy fired up in my core. My mouth twitched as I stared at the man,
grey and pathetic, cowering away from me, so infuriating that I shook.

‘What’s the
matter? Ellen, you look so—’

I shrieked and
ran at him, all the energy bursting out of me like beams of furious light
breaking through the surface of my skin. As I hurled myself against him, my
body weightier than the pair of us together now, he was knocked from the
banister and we tumbled down the stairs.

I was knocked
off by the thump as we rolled down and hit the bottom. I hooked my thighs
around the man’s waist and climbed back on. I screamed in fury as the momentum
of all that rage sent my fists down upon his face, again and again, while he
shouted and struggled underneath me.

‘Get off me!’
he cried, blood trickling between his eyes, over his lip and down the chin.
Still I clawed and thumped and smacked him, gripping him between my thighs.

Then suddenly
the rage evaporated from me. I was dry, and limp, and it left me with my hands
raised above my head, quivering, before the tingling sensation left me
completely.