The Bed I Made (42 page)

I pressed my fingers over my sternum and felt my heart, the force of the beat travelling through the bone. ‘So how did it happen? You and him.’

‘We stayed there and just talked. He told me about how much he missed you, how he loved you but you’d just . . .’

‘Flown off the handle?’ I couldn’t help it.

‘He said you wouldn’t give him a chance to explain. I didn’t know what to think. He confused me. I went there all hostile, ready to tell him to fuck off . . .’

In the background of the call a car rushed past, right next to her. She was out on the street: my proud Helen crying on the street.

‘I felt sorry for him, that’s why I agreed to meet him again. At first we just talked about you, then it was other things. I thought he’d try and get me to tell him where you were but he never did – never even hinted. And I started to think that I’d really got him wrong. He was good company – funny, charming, thoughtful.’

‘It’s a lie – an act. He’s playing a game.’

‘I know – I know that now. A few weeks ago, I started feeling – different. We went out for dinner one night – just on, after we’d met in the pub. I was sitting there and I looked up and thought,
I really like you
.’ She took another audible breath. ‘I couldn’t tell you.’

‘So, what happened?’

‘Nothing – not then. I tried not to see him but he kept sending me funny little emails, just snippets that made me laugh. I’d get them in the evening, when everyone else had gone home and it made me feel better, as if I wasn’t the only one still working. He made me miss him – I can’t explain.’

‘He’ll do anything – anything. He makes himself what you want.’

‘Yes – I know.’

‘Did you tell him where I was?’

‘No!’ The horror in her voice told me it was the truth. ‘But I gave in to him. He emailed, said it would be the last time he contacted me and if I wanted him to leave me in peace he would, but I didn’t – I said yes. We went out to dinner, and . . . we kissed. I’m sorry; I’m really sorry.’ She broke down again and I listened, utterly powerless while she cried.

‘Helen,’ I said, ‘I don’t care about any of it. I don’t care. But tell me what he’s done to you. Has he hurt you?’

‘I saw him last night. He’d been out of London for the day but he came to mine on the way back in. I saw him on Friday, too, after you came here. I had to work late so he cooked me dinner – I gave him the keys and he came round and made it so it was ready when I got home from work. It was . . . nice. He didn’t pressure me.’

My message, I thought. She’d never got it. He’d deleted it before she heard it. Then I remembered: I’d mentioned Pete – that I’d met someone else.

‘But yesterday we ended up . . . it was the first time. The lights were on and he was staring into my eyes. And then he said it, while we were . . . “
You know, Helen, you’re really not such a good friend, are you?’’
 
’

I waited until she could speak again, listening to her terrible wrenching sobs. I imagined it, the triumph in his voice. He’d beaten her.

‘He’s coming to see you – he told me. He knows where you are. Kate, I keep seeing his expression,’ she said. ‘It’s like his eyes were empty. It was evil – real evil.’

Chapter Thirty-six

When I got back to the cottage I checked every room, all the spaces and corners large enough for someone to hide; he wouldn’t think twice about breaking in. When I was sure the place was empty, I stood for a moment at the study window and looked out. The story of Bluebeard came into my mind, the new bride waiting at the window, the discovered chamber of dead wives in the castle behind her. The bride had been watching at the window for her brothers to ride into sight, though; help had been coming.

Downstairs I heard my mobile ring once to tell me there was a text. I ran down to read it.
Hope everything OK. About to go to dinner but then on first ferry. Missed you today
.

I rang him straight back but his phone was already switched off. At the tone I hesitated, unsure what to say, whether I should tell him at all. ‘Pete, it’s me – Kate,’ I said in the end. ‘Richard’s on the Island. He’s got a building in Cowes, I saw it. He told Helen yesterday he was going to see me. Victor was him – it was definitely him. Can you ring me? Please – when you get this?’

The sun had dropped behind the woods at Norton now and the whole of the yard was in shadow. I went back into the kitchen and looked out of the window there. The breeze had died away and now the ivy on the back wall was motionless. Somewhere in it, audible even through the glass, a single bird was singing, calling out to announce the end of the twilight.

I could feel Richard moving towards me. It was as if he was altering the charge of the air, making it vibrate. I stayed downstairs, afraid to go up now and lose my view of the doors. I hovered between the sitting room and the kitchen, making myself look out into the yard and on to the path for movement, any sign of change.

He knew about me and Pete; that was beyond doubt. Could he know I was here on my own? Pete had walked down to the ferry this morning; what if Richard had been there, somewhere on the harbour? He had been in London last night with Helen; could he have been here by then? Yes – she’d thrown him out. He could easily have driven down and caught one of the first ferries. He could have arrived on the one which had returned with Pete on it. Or perhaps he hadn’t seen Pete at all. Perhaps he’d just seen me at the café and followed me. The hairs rose on my arms.

Unable to sit, I paced the two small rooms and smoked the last cigarettes. I thought about turning on the television for voices, the illusion of company, but then I would be less able to hear anything else.

As the last of the light went, I realised how vulnerable I was. So what if the doors were locked; Richard wouldn’t hesitate to force them. I wanted to put on every light in the house, drive the darkness back, but by doing that, I would shut off my view of the yard and the path outside, turning the windows into mirrors which would reflect my own image but hide him outside, let him gaze in at me like a specimen in a tank. But I couldn’t bear to leave the lights off, either, and sit in the house in the dark.

All of a sudden, I saw what I was: bait, trapped in the house like a rabbit chained down for a bird of prey. Would my neighbours come if they heard shouting or breaking glass? Maybe not: I’d hardly spoken to them. In my first weeks here I had been afraid to, worried that they would have heard the sound of my crying through the walls at night. And after that had passed, they had nodded, said hello, but they had taken my early distance as a sign that I wanted to keep myself to myself, the girl from London with problems.

I had to leave the house. I couldn’t stay here on my own; I would go mad. The pubs were open; I could at least go and sit with other people for the next three hours. I would get there in the last of the light if I went now. I grabbed my bag.

Outside, the silence had fallen. The birds were roosting for the night and there was no traffic coming down Bridge Road. I locked the door and ran, my feet blurring beneath me, trying not to look in the dark corners behind the outhouses and washing lines. The gate clanged shut. I scanned the street, making myself look where the light from the streetlamps struggled to reach: nothing. I ran to the top of the road and then across the Square, past the corner shop and the chandlery to the Bugle.

I stood behind the wooden partition that shielded the body of the pub from the doorway until my breathing slowed. The skin on my shoulders was prickling as if all the time I’d been running, there had been a hawk hovering silently overhead, having me in its sights but choosing to wait, biding its time.

When I could breathe normally again, I followed the sound of voices round to the bar at the back. It was bright and there were people, twelve or fifteen, sitting at tables and on stools at the bar. I was safe for now; nothing could happen to me here in plain sight. I ordered a glass of wine and sat down where I was visible, trying not to let my head jerk up every time someone came in from the street. My phone was on the table and the lights from the bar shone on it so that I kept thinking that the screen was illuminated but no one rang. I tried Pete again but got the answering service.

Helen – Richard had beaten her at last. He’d won; he’d proved that her loyalty to me wasn’t unbreakable. It was so cruel: he had known that for her, loyalty was the most important thing. People were just puzzles to him, to be analysed and solved – unravelled. Helen’s loyalty, my determination not to repeat what my mother had done; he’d found our principles and made us break them. He couldn’t bear that anything could withstand him. Anything that resisted him, he crushed.

I looked around me at the other people in the room: the woman behind the bar chatting to one of the regulars, a man with a pint of bitter and the paper folded to the racing, the couple in their early twenties holding hands across the table. We were separated by an unbridgeable ravine: on their side was normality, an evening at the pub, and on mine was horror.

I had been in the Bugle nearly an hour when I had the idea of booking into the hotel. It would be safer than going back to the cottage: there would be other people, and someone on the desk all night. I could text Pete and tell him to come and find me there. Then, though, I had the idea that I would have had hours earlier if I’d been thinking clearly: I should go to the mainland. It was the mainland that was safest now, not the Island. I looked at my watch: quarter to nine. If I ran, there would be enough time to get the car and catch the nine o’clock ferry.

I gulped down the last of the wine and made a dash for it. The barmaid called goodnight but I was at the partition before I realised she was talking to me. All I could think about was making sure I was on the boat.
Run
. I tucked my bag under my arm and plunged out into the darkness.

He was waiting for me on the pavement.

Chapter Thirty-seven

‘Hello, Katie.’ His voice.

Nothing could have prepared me for the terror. The shops on the Square, the sky, the concrete underneath me – it all pulled away. Only he remained definite, inches away.
Run
, urged a voice inside, but I was frozen. My guts had liquefied.

He was staring into my eyes as if he could read my mind behind them. The weird flatness of his gaze, the force of it like a current, creating a circuit I couldn’t break. He was completely calm, certain of his control. Though he was standing in front of me now, he’d been sitting on the pub wall before. He had stood up as I’d come bursting through the door as casually as if he’d been meeting a friend by arrangement. Behind him, the Square was empty. There was not a single person there to call out to.

‘It’s been too long.’ His face had its old expression now, the lift in the eyebrow which dared me to challenge him while the smile said he had all the winning cards. His eyes were shining.

At last I got my voice back. ‘I won’t let you ruin my life.’

‘I’m not going to ruin it. I’m part of it now – that’s how it is.’

‘What the hell is wrong with you?’

He laughed. ‘My fierce creature.’

I couldn’t run past him. He was too close, marking me as if we were playing a game, arms slightly away from his sides to catch me if I tried to make a break. Somewhere behind me, just audible over the terrified rushing of blood through my ears, there were distant voices, music. The pub. I whipped round and tried to go backwards but he anticipated me and grabbed my arm. I felt the pressure of his fingers even through my jacket, the sites of the bruises that would come.

I yanked my arm back but he was too strong. I opened my mouth to scream but his hand covered it instantly. Checking quickly that we were still unobserved, he pulled me tight against him as if he were about to kiss me. I felt my eyes widen with horror.

‘Don’t try running away and don’t try screaming,’ he murmured. ‘I want to talk to you and that’s the least you owe me.’ There was no challenge in his face now, no humour, however ironic. He dropped his hand from round my mouth and reached into his pocket. The fingers of his other hand gripped my arm harder still and I couldn’t help crying out just a little. ‘I said, shut up.’

He brought his hand up again and at first I thought he was going to stroke my face like he used to. Then I felt something cold against my cheek. Metal. Grainy – like the grip on a craft knife but heavier. A gun – he had a gun.

‘Let’s go back to yours,’ he said.

He walked side by side with me back across the Square, propelling me along but also managing to conceal from anyone who might look out of a window the fact that he was gripping me. ‘No screaming, Katie,’ he said, as a car pulled up and parked outside the corner shop. ‘It’s very easy to make mistakes.’ I watched the driver get out. He was moving slowly, had hardly eased himself from his seat in the time it took us to go fifteen yards. An old man; even if I managed to break free, he couldn’t help.

In my handbag my phone started ringing. ‘Don’t even think about it.’ He pulled the bag round and reached into it. Then he cut the call off and tossed the phone over the wall into the churchyard. I heard it shatter as it hit stone.

At the door of the cottage he demanded the key. He pushed me in in front of him, making sure his body blocked the way behind me, and closed the door quietly. When he’d locked it, he slid the key into the pocket of his jeans.