The Ice Cream Girls (47 page)

‘I’m sorry,’ I told her, holding out my hands. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘We have to go, OK?’ she said to me. She gently moved my hair away from my face, and my face felt cool again, instantly better. ‘OK?’ she said, her voice soft and kind. Kind, she was being kind. She had saved me and she was being kind. I had to do whatever she said. And she was saying we had to go so I had to do that. I had to go.

I nodded to her that I understood. I understood that whatever she said I would do, because she was nice to me.

‘Good. Good,’ she said. She was kind again by putting her arm around me. She was being lovely to me. Serena wasn’t as cold as I thought. She was lovely and she was lovely to me, even though I had done that thing that was an accident. ‘Come on, let’s go.’ She moved me towards the door. I moved my legs but she moved me, gently telling me with a slight nudge or tug where I had to go.

Outside, the air was cold and sharp against my face. Another welcome cooling moment. What month was it? Why was it so cold? What day was it?

I was going to ask Serena, but she had let me go. She had stopped holding on to me, something that I needed more than anything, and stepped away.

‘What are we going to do?’ I asked her. Because whatever she said, I would do. I owed her that. I owed her everything, so all she had to do was tell me and I would do it.

She didn’t say anything. She didn’t look as confident as she did back in the house. Now she was shaking, and she looked small and scared; her eyes were leaking and making her face even more wet.

‘Serena,’ I asked again. ‘What do we do now?’

‘I don’t know, Poppy,’ she said. ‘All I know is that we had to get out of there.’

‘Do you . . . do you think he’s . . . ?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, I think he is.’

My whole body lurched at the thought of what I had done.

‘What are we going to do?’ I asked her.

‘I don’t know,’ she said.

‘Are you going to tell?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘What about the police?’ I asked her.

‘I DON’T KNOW!’ she suddenly shouted back. ‘I don’t know anything. Stop asking me questions because I don’t know.’

I covered my mouth with my hands, as my breaths started to come in short, gasping bursts. ‘Oh my God, M—’

Serena was suddenly bent over, twisted towards the evergreen bush outside his house and she was retching, her body moving in violent jerks, but she was throwing up air, just dry heaving.

She stood upright and rubbed at her dry mouth with the back of her sleeve. ‘I can’t be here,’ she said out loud. ‘I just can’t be here.’

‘Can I come with you?’ I asked. I didn’t want to be alone and she was the only person I knew who would understand why.

‘Do you understand what happened?’ she asked. ‘Do you? Why would I want you to come with me? Why would I want you anywhere near me?’

‘It was an accident.’

‘I don’t mean that. None of this would have happened if you’d just left us alone. We were doing fine until you came along.’

‘But that’s not true. Serena, just—’

‘Leave me alone. Just leave me alone.’ She took off so suddenly, so fast, I didn’t have a chance to stop her, to beg her to let me come with her. She ran away from me, from where we were, as fast as she could, leaving only the sound of her plimsolls slapping on the paving stones behind her.

I turned in the other direction, heading for home. I had nowhere else to go. I had no other friends because I had no friends – Marcus had seen to that. I had to go home, tell my parents everything, warn them about the photos, tell them I was sorry and have them listen and love and comfort me.

I knew they’d protect me, they’d look after me. I started to walk faster as the thought of them holding me, kissing me, telling me it was all going to be OK grew stronger and larger in my mind. I had to get home. I would be safe and loved and looked after there. Home. My legs moved faster, faster and faster until I was running, pounding the streets, tearing them up so that I could get home as soon as possible; I could get to safety as soon as possible.

The house was in darkness when I arrived. Everyone had gone to bed early and I was alone. I stood in the blackness by the front door, listening. If I heard even a creak from my parents’ bedroom I would go in, tell them everything. I didn’t want to wake them to tell them this; it would be too distressing to wake from sleep to find your daughter has killed her boyfriend you knew nothing about. I could not do that to them.

I waited and waited and waited. But nothing, not even the slightest, tiniest creak.
In the morning
, I decided.
I’ll tell them in the morning
.

In my bedroom, I ripped off my clothes and bundled them up. They had spots of blood on them. I had to hide them for now – I didn’t want Mum or Dad or, worse, Bella or Logan to come in in the morning and find them. I pulled back the carpet from under the window and removed the two loose floorboards. I pushed the clothes in with everything else Marcus-related I kept there.

Still shaky and shaking, I used my pot of Pond’s to remove the grime and the invisible spots of blood on my face, the drops of wetness I had felt in my mind splashing on my face. I could not run a bath without waking everyone up so I cleaned myself as best I could, then I climbed into my bed and pulled the covers up over my head. I was safe under there, no one could find me or see me. No one would know what I had done.

In the morning, I would tell Mum and Dad everything. They would know the best thing to do and I would be all right. All I had to do was get to morning and then I could tell them.

Morning came and went and I could not find the words to tell. Morning after morning came and went, until I ran out of mornings and Mum and Dad found out everything from Detective Inspector Grace King, ringing from North West London CID.

And the nightmare that was the story of The Ice Cream Girls began.

serena

‘I’m going to tell you something that I haven’t ever told anyone else. It is the reason why I have a conscience that taunts me, it is why I feel so guilty all the time. But when I tell you, I want you to try not to judge me too harshly. I want you to try to understand why I did what I did.’

Evan and I have moved into the back garden. I wanted to talk out here because the words, the secrets I tell him, will rise up into the night air and will be scattered by even the smallest of breezes; they will not stay in our house, locked into the bricks and mortar of our home, distantly echoing to us what I have done whenever they get the chance.

Out here, we can talk and the truth will be set free. We were laying side by side on the grass, staring up at the night sky. Now, because of the gravity of what I have said, Evan is sitting up, he has crossed his legs and he is sitting in front of me, waiting to hear my confession.

I sit up, too, match his position by crossing my legs in front of me. I gently reach out for his hands and take them in mine, slip my fingers into the spaces of his. I want to hold on to him while I tell him this bit. I want him to know that what I say was then, it is not now. It is not me.

My lips are dry and parched under my tongue as I try to wet them, my throat is tight and taut. I do not want to say but I have to. I have to be honest.

‘About an hour after I got home, I got up and I got dressed.’

Evan’s face gives nothing away, no sign at all of what he is thinking. His fingers have tightened around mine, though, which tells me he is scared of what I am about to say.

‘I sneaked out of the house.’

Evan’s fingers tighten like mini vices around mine, clamping my fingers to him, holding me secure.

‘I walked for a while – it was late and it was dark and I was scared – but I had to do it. I want you to understand that I had to do it. No matter what it meant about me, I had to do it. I walked and walked until I was far away enough from home, then I found a phonebox and called an ambulance. I told them that someone was hurt, I told them the address and then I hung up.

‘I know he was a despicable human being and he had terrorised and abused me for years, but I could not stand the thought of him being there all alone. I . . . I still loved him. And the thought of him lying there for days on his own was too much to bear. It was bad enough, distressing enough, that I would never see him again. I had to make sure he was all right. As all right as could be.

‘When the police told me he had died later, from a stab wound to his heart, I realised that if I had gone out earlier to make the call, he would probably still be alive. It was my fault. I let him die. I’ve hated myself ever since.’

‘You weren’t to know,’ Evan says. ‘You weren’t to know that Poppy would go back and kill him.’

‘No, but I had . . . I wanted it to end.’ I press my hands on my face, my fingertips pushing on to my closed eyelids, trying to hold back the tears, trying to hold back the flood with a thimble. ‘I wanted him gone. I just wanted him to stop. To be out of my life, to leave me alone. And I knew, deep down, I knew the only way that would happen would be if he was . . . I just wanted him to stop hurting me, so I wanted him to stop being. I feel so guilty because I wished it. I willed it.’ I shake my head, my fingers dripping with the tears that run down them. ‘In more than one moment, I wished him not here any more. And then it happened. Because of that fight, because he stumbled after he hit me, it happened. She could go back and kill him because he couldn’t fight back. I wished him gone and it happened.’

‘You weren’t to know that he’d die, Serena. You can’t blame yourself for that. And you called an ambulance, you didn’t just walk away and forget him.’

‘It was too late, though.’

‘I know, love, I know. But why didn’t you tell anyone that you called the ambulance?’

‘Because when Poppy and I both went in to tell the police what happened, to tell them it was an accident, they wouldn’t listen to me. They kept jumping to conclusions; they kept telling me that I had killed him. If I told them I had left the house that would mean the only confirmation from Mum and Dad that I had come home when I said I did would be gone. And if I told Mum and Dad, they might have had to lie to save me. And I had caused them enough pain already.’

Evan nods in understanding.

‘I did want to go back, you know? I wanted to go back and stay with him until help came. I wanted to be with him because when he was on the floor he looked so peaceful, so gentle. He hadn’t been like that in so long, I just wanted to be with him like that one last time. He was like
him
again.’

Unexpectedly, Evan asks me, ‘Why did you love him?’

‘I—’

‘Not why did you stay with him; why did you love him? What was it about
him
that made you love him in the first place?’

‘I can’t remember,’ I admit. ‘I remember that I loved him. I remember that it was this hideous, achy feeling every time I thought about him not being with me and him being with her, but I can’t remember what I felt for him. I can’t put my finger on something and go, “Yes, that’s it”. You know? I can’t say with any sort of certainty that he was kind, because I don’t think he was. I can’t remember one instance of him being kind. I remember him being nice, although that got less and less often as time went on. I remember him being so proud of me when I did well at school and in my exams. I remember feeling safe with him at the start, but then that went away.

‘You see, that’s where my memory loss is worst. I can’t remember anything that would make him special and worth everything he put me through. It’s one of the biggest things that’s fallen through the memory gaps in my mind.’

‘Maybe it’s not memory loss,’ Evan says.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Maybe you don’t remember because you didn’t really love him,’ he says gently.

‘But I did. I know I did.’

‘Maybe you’ve spent all these years trying to convince yourself you did because that would explain why you stayed with him after he beat you and raped you and terrorised you.’

I look away, look down at the grass beneath us, rather than look at my husband, my mirror of truth.

‘Sez, he traumatised you for years. My guess is that you were so scared of him telling your family, of him going through with his threat of killing you, that you found the only way you could cope with staying with him was to try to convince yourself that you loved him.

‘And maybe you did in the beginning. You were a teenager, he was your first love, he was probably the first male to show any real, genuine interest in you. He knew what he was doing – older men who go out with young girls always know what they’re doing. What sort of girls to pick, who will keep a secret, and who can be manipulated into doing whatever they want.

‘He picked you and you fell for him, that’s nothing to be ashamed of. I’m sure he’d done it to several other young women. Telling yourself that you loved him to explain away being scared of leaving is nothing to be ashamed of, either. Sweetheart, you did the best you could. I truly believe that. You found the strength to walk away in the end. So many women – grown women – don’t.’

Evan’s words creep over me, climb over my skin and sink into my body like a host of twinkling stars – they light up my blood and make me hot all over.
Maybe I didn’t love him.

‘You’re a good person, which is why you feel guilty for what Poppy did. But, Serena, you’ve got to let
him
go now. Let him go and get on with your life.’

‘I have.’
Maybe I didn’t love him.

‘No, you haven’t. You are letting him rule your life, still. You are protecting him, still. You almost let our marriage fall apart rather than tell me the truth about him. You need to let him go, and you need to let the person you were when you stayed with him during his abuse go.’

‘But how?’
Maybe I didn’t love him.

He shrugs. ‘No idea. That’s something you’ve got to work out for yourself, because if I tell you you’ll be doing what I would need to do to let someone and my past go. You need to do what
you
need.’