Lucas (23 page)

‘Right,' I said.

After all I'd put him through, I was confidently expecting him to say goodbye and head straight for the front door, so it came as a bit of a shock when he didn't. Instead, he plonked his rucksack down on the floor and then just stood there looking at me, kind of shuffling around with a bashful grin on his face. I stared at him,
thinking to myself – go home, Simon … please … for your own sake … just go home,
now
, before I get any worse …

But he had no intention of leaving.

I should have taken that as a compliment, I suppose, but I wasn't in the mood for compliments. I wasn't in the mood for anything.

The rest of the night went from bad to worse.

We watched television together in bored silence. I sent him out to make me some tea. I showed him photographs of Mum and snapped at him when he asked me about one of her poems. I made him listen to music I knew he didn't like. And when we went out for a walk in the dark, I pushed him away when he tried to hold my hand.

I was the Girl from Hell.

I hated myself for doing it, but I just couldn't help it. It was as if there was someone else inside me controlling everything I did, someone who didn't give a damn about anything. I don't know where the real me went. Every now and then I heard a voice calling out from somewhere, begging me to think about what I was doing, but it was too far away to have any impact. It was too weak. All I had to do was tell it to shut up and off it went, scuttling back into its hole with its tail between its legs.

The nastier I got, the humbler Simon became – thanking me, apologising to me, being
nice
to me … and I just lapped it all up. It was almost as if I was trying to see how far I could go, baiting him, seeing how hard I could push him before he snapped.

God … I was terrible.

Thinking about it now makes me cringe with shame.

Why did I
do
it?

How could I be such a cow?

I don't know.

I wish I could say that I didn't know what I was doing, but I did – I knew exactly what I was doing. And that's what made it so awful.

I'm sorry, Simon.

I
t thundered during the night. Mostly it rumbled away in the distance, but occasionally it drifted in close and ripped through the sky with a great black roar that shook the walls of the house. The air was hot and heavy, charged with electricity, and my sleep was ravaged with dreams. In one of them there was a room, an enormous bedroom, like a vast and dirty warehouse, with curtained windows and mattresses on the ceiling and a carpet made of pills, and in this gigantic bedroom there was a party going on. Thunderous dance music was blaring out from wall-to-wall speakers and everybody was drinking and smoking and laughing like lunatics. Bright lights were flashing and the whole room was shaking to the music. I was standing alone in the middle of the room looking around at what was going on. In one corner I could see Simon cavorting with Bill and Angel. He was wearing his battered old hat and his long black coat, but underneath the coat he was naked. Bill and Angel were both dolled up in high-heeled boots and sexy underwear and they were crawling all over him, pouting their big red lips as they stroked his hair and pulled at the buttons of his coat. He was pretending to shoo them away, but I could tell he was enjoying it. He kept looking at me, making sure I was watching him. Over by the wall there was a beach area, a stretch of sand that faded away into the wall … but the wall was somehow the sea. It rippled with the movement of waves, and in the distance
a bright green powerboat was racing silently across the horizon. Down on the sand a group of young girls in skimpy bikinis were standing round in a semi-circle clapping their hands and laughing at something. I moved to one side to get a better view. I saw two men, both dressed in boots and baggy shorts. One of them was Jamie Tait and the other one was Dominic. Dominic was lying face down in the sand and Jamie was sitting on his head. Dominic's head was half-buried in the sand and his eyes were white.

Then I saw the swans.

There were two of them. They were walking towards me, each as big as a man, with soleless boots flapping on their too-long legs, and cigarettes held in the tips of their wings. Each had a man's head bobbing on top of their long white necks, and each of the heads was Lucas. I thought at first they were twins, and I wondered for a moment if that's why he was here, to look for his long-lost twin brother. Then I realised they were both the same person. They were joined in the middle. They only had one pair of wings between them. They were both Lucas. He had two heads. One of them was smiling, but the other one had no mouth at all, just a thin white scar running horizontally beneath his nose … or where his nose should be. For there was no nose, just a bone-black empty socket. And there were no eyes, either. No mouth, no nose, no eyes – just a skin-covered skull.

He was dead.

That's
why they can't hurt him, I thought. He's already dead.

And with that thought, the room, and everything in it, disappeared.

I saw a lot of things that night. Some of them I can't remember and some of them I can't forget, but all of them are too painful to think about.

By morning the thunder had moved on, leaving the air stale and exhausted. The day felt hungover. Irritable and sluggish. It didn't want to get going. It was tired. Restless. It had a headache. The sun was out, but its light was cautiously shrouded in mist, and the birds seemed wary of making too much noise. I imagined them tiptoeing around in the trees, whistling quietly among themselves, like little children trying to keep out of their father's way on the morning after the night before.

I got out of bed and went to the bathroom.

The house felt depressed.

I felt depressed.

There's nothing worse than realising you've done something shameful and knowing there's nothing you can do about it. I'd treated Simon disgracefully. I'd belittled him, snubbed him, I'd taken his friendship and thrown it in his face. I couldn't have
been
more vile. And it didn't matter how much I regretted it, or how much I apologised for it, nothing could change the fact that I'd done it. My cruelty was indelible. I'd done it. It was done. There was no going back. No going back …

Damn it.

I slammed open the bathroom door and marched inside, stopping suddenly at the sight of Dominic. He was sitting on the lavatory, holding his head in his hands, dressed in nothing but a pair of grey boxer shorts. My anger turned to embarrassment and I let out a quiet yelp of surprise. Dominic looked up. His eyes were teary and bloodshot.

‘I'm sorry,' I said, backing out. ‘I didn't know you were in here.'

‘It's all right,' he said. ‘I wasn't doing anything.'

I turned to go.

‘Cait?'

I stopped, but didn't turn around.

‘You don't have to go, ‘ he said. ‘I'm finished. I was just going.'

The lifelessness of his voice was painful to hear. It pulled at me, reminding me of what he was and what we used to be – brother and sister. I tried to resist it, I wanted to resist it, but I couldn't. I turned around. He'd slipped a hooded sweatshirt on and was standing with his back to the sink. His head was bowed and he was toying with the drawstring of the hood.

He couldn't look at me.

I let out a long sigh. ‘It's all right,' I said. ‘I'm not going to bite you.'

He didn't seem to hear me.

I moved a little closer. ‘Dom?'

Wearily, he raised his eyes. His face was a picture of confusion: fear, pain, bitterness, pride … It was the face of a child struggling to cope in a young man's body. Or was it the other way round?

He wiped his face and sighed. ‘It's bloody hard, isn't it?'

‘Yep.'

We stood there in a weight of silence. Me in my nightdress, Dominic in his sweatshirt and shorts, both of us desperate to pour out our troubles but neither of us willing or able to start. Dominic lowered his eyes and stared at the floor. I gazed around at the familiar bathroom clutter. Dusty bottles on dusty shelves, toothbrushes, a rusty radio, straggly geraniums in pots, a ceramic fish, a rubber
crocodile, a plastic duck, a sponge sheep … and then my eyes settled on the framed picture hanging above the cistern. It's been there for as long as I can remember. It shows a moose drinking from a sparkling blue lake, the lake surrounded by hills and dark pines. It's a nice enough picture, but there's always been something about it that bothers me. The moose has got his heavy head bowed down and he's dipping his snout into the ring-rippled surface of the water, and I'm always afraid that something's going to sneak up behind him while he's not looking and pounce on him, a wolf or a grizzly bear or something. I know it's stupid. I know it's only a picture, but every time I go into the bathroom I have to tell the moose to watch out. ‘Watch out for them grizzlies, moose,' I say. It's like a prayer. I don't have to say it out loud, a whisper will do, or even just mouthing the words. I
know
it doesn't make sense. I know it's idiotic. But I don't really mind. The way I see it, feeling like a complete idiot is a small price to pay for saving a moose's life, even if it
is
only a picture moose.

I looked back at Dominic.

He looked at me.

The moment had passed.

We both knew it. If either of us had been meaning to say anything, it was too late now. We'd both had time to think, or not think, and we'd both found it too hard. There was too much at stake. Too many skeletons.

Dominic cleared his throat. ‘Well …' he said. ‘I'd better get going.'

I grinned. ‘Me too.'

He didn't get it at first, then the corners of his mouth pricked into a smile. It wasn't much of a smile, but it was better than nothing.

‘Right,' he said, starting towards the door.

I watched him.

He walked heavily, with his shoulders stooped and his eyes down. As he passed me he hesitated, then stopped, and I felt his hand on my arm. The lightest of touches. I looked into his eyes. He held my gaze for a moment, then spoke in a broken whisper. ‘None of it means anything, Cait.'

I shook my head. I wasn't sure what he meant, but I knew he was wrong. ‘Don't do it, Dom,' I said. ‘You know better.'

A flutter of concern showed briefly on his face, then he blinked and the lifelessness returned.

‘I'll see you later,' he said.

He let go of my arm, turned around and walked out.

I listened to his bare feet padding along the landing, then I shut the door and sat down on the edge of the bath and looked up at the picture on the wall. The moose was still there, still drinking calmly from the lake. He was all right.

I wondered if moose-prayers worked on people.

The rest of the day was just a matter of waiting. Whether he believed it or not, Lucas was in trouble. At six o'clock, he'd finish work, cut down Joe Rampton's lane and come face to face with Tait and Lee Brendell. Big trouble. Someone had to help him. He wasn't going to help himself. I kept on running through the alternatives – telling Dad, telling Lenny Craine, I even thought of ringing Joe Rampton and telling him – but whichever way I looked at it, the end result was always the same.

It was up to me.

I tried to convince myself that I wasn't going to do anything stupid, but I knew in my heart that I was. Your
future is set. Sometimes you can see it – you
know
it. You might not understand it, and you might not have any faith in it, but somewhere deep inside, in those unknown places that tell you what to do, you know where you're going. You know it all along.

I knew it.

Once I'd admitted that, all I had to do was wait.

So I waited.

Nothing happened to pass the time, it just crept along, getting slower and slower … and slower … and slower … until the minutes turned into hours and the hours turned into days and I began to think that something was wrong. Either all the clocks were faulty, or it was just far too hot. The heat had melted time, turned it into tar or something … made it too thick to flow …

Melted my brain.

Around two o'clock I lay down on the settee in the front room and closed my eyes. I knew I wouldn't sleep, I was too wired, but I thought it might help to calm me down a little bit …

I woke up with Deefer's wet snout in my face. For a second I didn't know where I was or what day it was, and then I remembered and started to panic. I pushed Deefer away, rubbed the sleep from my eyes and looked at the clock. It's a lumpy old thing with stubby hands and big fat roman numerals, and sometimes it's really hard to read. For a moment I thought it said twenty past twelve. Oh God, I thought, I've slept for ten hours … then I realised I'd got the hands mixed up and it was actually four o'clock.

I let out a deep breath.

Four o'clock was close enough.

I set out for Joe Rampton's lane.

Sunlight was misting through the branches of the poplar trees along the lane, and as I headed down towards the creek I could feel the sweat glistening on my skin. Mosquitoes whined in the air, attracted by the heat of my body, and clouds of midges swarmed silently around my head.

I walked slowly, taking my time.

I didn't know what I was doing.

The only solid thought in my mind was to get to Joe Rampton's lane before anyone else did, find somewhere to hide, and then wait. After that … I didn't want to think about it.

Joe's lane runs almost parallel to ours. It starts from his farm house, winds down through a patchwork of fields, then straightens out and heads off towards the beach, emerging at a shallow bend in the creek opposite the pillbox. Most of the land between the two lanes is taken up with fields, but three-quarters of the way down there's a narrow strip of woodland that stretches from one lane right across to the other. It's not much to look at, just a ragged spread of spindly trees, most of which look as if a puff of wind would blow them over. But if you need to get from one lane to the other without going down to the beach, it's perfect.