‘No,’ he says. ‘You won’t say anything to anybody.’
With his left hand still gripping my hair, he releases my jaw and slaps me hard across the face. ‘Get upstairs.’
I clench my fists by my sides, knowing I mustn’t lift a hand to feel my face, which throbs in time with my pulse. I taste blood, and swallow quietly. ‘Please,’ I say, my voice sounding reedy and unnatural, ‘please don’t…’ I search for the words to use, the words least likely to provoke him. Don’t rape me, I want to say. It has happened enough times for it not to matter, and yet I can’t bear the thought of his body pressing down on mine again, being inside me, forcing sounds from me that belie how much I hate him.
‘I don’t want to have sex,’ I say, and I curse the cracking of my voice that will tell him how much this means to me.
‘Have sex with you?’ he spits, flecks of saliva hitting my face. ‘Don’t flatter yourself, Jennifer.’ He releases his grip on me and looks me up and down. ‘Get upstairs.’
My legs threaten to buckle under me as I walk the few paces to the stairs, and I cling to the banister on the way up, feeling his presence behind me. I try to calculate how long before Patrick will be back, but I’ve lost all sense of time.
Ian propels me into the bathroom.
‘Get undressed.’
I’m ashamed of how easily I comply.
He folds his arms and watches me struggle with my clothes. I’m crying freely now, although I know it will anger him. I can’t stop.
Ian puts the plug in the bath. He turns on the cold tap but doesn’t touch the hot. I am naked now, standing shivering in front of him, and he looks at my body with distaste. I remember when he would kiss my shoulder blades, then trace a line so softly, reverently almost, down between my breasts and over my stomach.
‘You’ve only yourself to blame,’ he says with a sigh. ‘I could have brought you back whenever I wanted, but I let you go. I didn’t want you. All you had to do was keep your mouth shut and you could have lived out your pitiful life here.’ He shook his head. ‘But you didn’t, did you? You went to the police and you blurted it all out.’ He turns off the tap. ‘Get in.’
I don’t resist. There is no point now. I step into the bath and lower myself into it. The icy water takes my breath away and pain grips my insides. I try to fool myself that it’s hot.
‘Now get yourself clean.’
He picks up a bottle of bleach from the floor by the toilet and unscrews the top. I bite my lip. Once he made me drink bleach. Once when I came home late from a meal with the crowd from college. I told him time had run away with me, but he poured the thick liquid into a wine glass and watched while I put it to my lips. He stopped me after the first sip, bursting out laughing and telling me only an idiot would have drunk it. I threw up all night and had the chemical taste in my mouth for days.
Ian pours the bleach on to my flannel and it runs over the edges, dripping into the bath, where blue blooms fan across the surface of the water like ink on blotting paper. He hands me the flannel.
‘Scrub yourself.’
I rub the flannel across my arms, trying to splash water on myself as I do so, in an effort to dilute the bleach.
‘Now the rest of you,’ he says. ‘And don’t forget your face. Do it properly, Jennifer, or I’ll do it for you. Maybe this will wash away some of your badness.’
He directs me until I have washed every bit of my body with bleach, and my skin stings. I sink into the freezing water to relieve the burning sensation, unable to stop my teeth chattering. This pain, this humiliation; this is worse than death. The end cannot come soon enough.
I can’t feel my feet any more. I reach out and rub them, but my fingers feel as though they belong to someone else. I am beyond cold now. I try to sit up, to keep at least half of my body out of the water, but he makes me lie down, my legs bent awkwardly to the side to accommodate the tiny bath tub. He runs the cold tap again until the water reaches the top. My heartbeat no longer thumps loudly in my ears, but taps tentatively in my chest. I feel dull and sluggish, hearing Ian’s words as though from far away. My teeth are chattering and I bite my tongue, but barely register the pain.
Ian has been standing over me while I washed, but now he sits on the closed toilet seat. He watches me dispassionately. He is going to drown me, I suppose. It won’t take long – I’m half-dead already.
‘You were easy to find, you know.’ Ian speaks casually, as though we are sitting in a pub, catching up, the way old friends do. ‘It’s not difficult to set up a website with no paper trail, but you were too stupid to realise anybody could look up your address.’
I don’t say anything, but he doesn’t seem to need a response.
‘You women think you can cope on your own,’ he says. ‘You think you don’t need men, but when we leave you to it, you’re useless. You’re all the same. And the lies! Jesus, the lies you women tell. One after another, tripping off your forked tongues.’
I’m so tired. So desperately tired. I feel myself slipping underneath the surface of the water, and I jerk myself awake. I dig my fingernails into my thigh, but I can barely feel them.
‘You think we won’t find you out, but we always do. The lies, the betrayal, the bare-faced treachery.’
His words wash over me.
‘From the start I was perfectly clear about not wanting children,’ Ian says.
I close my eyes.
‘But we don’t get a choice in it, do we? It’s all about what the woman wants. Pro-fucking-choice? What about my choice?’
I think of Ben. He came so close to living. If I had only been able to keep him safe for a few more weeks …
‘Suddenly I’m presented with a son,’ Ian says, ‘and I’m expected to celebrate! Celebrate the child I never asked for in the first place. The child who never would have existed if she hadn’t tricked me into it.’
I open my eyes. The white tiles above the taps are crazed with grey lines, and I follow them until my eyes fill with water and they blur back into white. He’s not talking sense. Or perhaps I’m not making sense of it. I want to speak but my tongue feels too big for my mouth. I didn’t trick Ian into having a baby. It was an accident, but he was pleased. He said it changed everything.
Ian is leaning forward, his elbows resting on his knees and his mouth touching his closed hands, as though praying. But his fists are clenched and the muscle near his eye flickers uncontrollably.
‘I told her what the score was,’ he says. ‘I told her no strings. But she ruined it.’ He looks at me. ‘It was supposed to be a one-off – a quick fuck with a meaningless girl. There was no reason for you ever to know about it. Except she got pregnant, and instead of fucking off back home, she decided to stay and make my life hell.’
I struggle to pull together the pieces of what Ian is saying. ‘You have a son?’ I manage to say.
He looks at me and gives a mirthless laugh. ‘No,’ he corrects me, ‘he was never my son. He was the offspring of a Polish tart who used to clean the loos at work – I was just the sperm donor.’ He stands up and straightens his shirt. ‘She came knocking when she found out she was pregnant, and I made it quite clear that if she went ahead with it, she was on her own.’ He sighs. ‘I didn’t hear from her again until the child started school. And then she wouldn’t let it go.’ His mouth twists as he does a poor impression of an Eastern European accent. ‘He needs a father, Ian. I want Jacob to know who his father is.’
I lift my head. With an effort that makes me cry out in pain, I push my hands against the bottom of the bath until I am sitting up. ‘Jacob?’ I say. ‘You’re Jacob’s father?’
There is a moment’s silence while Ian looks at me. Abruptly he takes hold of my arm. ‘Get out.’
I fall over the side of the bathtub and collapse on to the floor, my legs useless after an hour in freezing water.
‘Cover yourself up.’ He throws my dressing gown on to me and I pull it on, hating myself for the gratitude I feel. My head is spinning:
Jacob was Ian’s son? But when Ian had found out it was Jacob in the accident, he must have …
When the truth finally hits me, it’s like a knife to my stomach. Jacob’s death was no accident. Ian killed his own son, and now he’s going to kill me.
50
‘Stop the car,’ I said.
You made no move to pull over, and I grabbed the wheel.
‘Ian, no!’ You tried to get the wheel back from me, and we hit the kerb and then veered back into the middle of the road, just missing a car coming in the opposite direction. You had no choice but to take your foot off the accelerator and apply the brakes. We came to a stop, the car parked diagonally in the road.
‘Get out.’
You didn’t hesitate, but once out of the car you stood motionless by its door, a fine layer of drizzle covering you. I walked round to your side of the car. ‘Look at me.’
You continued looking at the ground.
‘I said look at me!’
Slowly you lifted your head but you stared behind me, over my shoulder. I shifted my position to fall within your gaze, and immediately you looked over the other shoulder. I grabbed hold of your shoulders and shook you hard. I wanted to hear you cry out: I told myself I’d stop when I heard you cry, but you made no sound. Your jaw clenched with the effort. You were playing games with me, Jennifer, but I would win. I would make you cry out.
I let go of you, and you couldn’t hide the flash of relief that passed across your face. It was still there when I balled my fist and drove it into your face.
My knuckles caught the underside of your chin, and your head snapped back and hit the roof of the car. Your legs buckled and you slid on to the road. Finally you made a sound, a whimpering, like a kicked dog, and I couldn’t help but smile at this tiny victory. It wasn’t enough though. I wanted to hear you beg for my forgiveness; admit you’d been flirting; admit you’d been fucking someone else.
I looked at you thrashing about on the wet tarmac. The usual sense of release wasn’t there – the ball of white-hot fury inside me was still bubbling away, rising higher every second. I would finish this at home.
‘Get in the car.’
I watched you struggle to your feet. Blood poured from your mouth and you stemmed it ineffectively with your scarf. You tried to get back in the driver’s seat but I pulled you back. ‘The other side.’ I started the engine and drove off before you had even shut the door. You gave a cry of alarm, then slammed the door and fumbled for your seat belt. I laughed, but it still didn’t soothe the rage inside me. I wondered briefly if I was having a heart attack: my chest was so tight, and my breath painful and laboured. You had done this to me.
‘Slow down,’ you said, ‘you’re going too fast.’ The words bubbled through a mouthful of blood, and I saw it spatter on the glove box. I drove faster, to show you I wouldn’t be governed by you. We were in a quiet residential street, with neat houses and a row of parked cars ahead taking up my side of the road. I moved out to overtake them, despite the headlights coming towards us, and put my foot down. I saw you pull your arms across your face; there was a blare of horn and a flash of colour as I swung back on to our side of the road seconds before it was too late.
The tightness in my chest eased a fraction. I kept my foot on the accelerator and we turned left, into a long straight road lined with trees. I felt a jolt of recognition, although I had only been there once before and I could not have told you the name of the street. It was where Anya lived. Where I fucked her. The wheel slipped between my hands and the car hit the kerb.
‘Please, Ian, please slow down!’
There was a woman on the pavement, a hundred yards ahead, walking with a small child. The child wore a bobble hat, and the woman … I gripped the steering wheel tighter. I was seeing things. Imagining this woman was her, simply because we were in her street. It couldn’t be Anya.
The woman looked up. Her hair was loose and she wore no hat or hood, despite the weather. She was facing me and laughing, the boy running by her side. I felt a crushing pain in my head. It was her.
I had sacked Anya after I fucked her. I had no interest in a repeat performance, and no wish to see her pretty but vacuous face around the office. When she turned up again last month I wouldn’t have recognised her: now she wouldn’t leave me alone. I watched her walk towards the glare of the headlights.
He wants to know about his father, he wants to meet you.
She would ruin everything. The boy would ruin everything. I looked at you, but your head was dropped to your lap. Why didn’t you look at me any more? You used to put your hand on my thigh when I drove, twisting in the seat so you could watch me. Now you hardly ever looked me in the eye. I was already losing you, and if you found out about the boy I would never get you back.
They were crossing the road. My head pounded. You whimpered and the sound was like a fly, buzzing in my ear.
I pushed the accelerator flat to the floor.
51
‘You killed Jacob?’ I say, almost unable to form the words. ‘But why?’
‘He was ruining everything,’ Ian says simply. ‘If Anya had stayed away nothing would have happened to them. It’s her own fault.’
I think of the woman outside the Crown Court, her feet in tatty plimsolls. ‘Did she need money?’
Ian laughs. ‘Money would have been easy. No, she wanted me to be a father. To see the boy at weekends, have him to stay, buy him fucking birthday presents—’ He breaks off as I stand up, clinging on to the basin as I cautiously test the weight on my aching legs. My feet sting as they warm up. I look in the mirror and don’t recognise what I see.
‘You would have found out about him,’ Ian says. ‘About Anya. You would have left me.’
He stands behind me and puts his hands gently on my shoulders. I see the look on his face I have seen so many times the morning after a beating. I used to tell myself it was contrition – although he never once apologised – but now I realise it was fear. Fear that I would see him for the man he really is. Fear that I would stop needing him.
I think of how I would have loved Jacob like my own son; how I would have taken him in and played with him and chosen gifts just to see the pleasure on his face. And suddenly I feel as though Ian has taken not one but two children from me, and I find vigour from both their lost lives.
I feign weakness and look down towards the sink, then throw my head back with every last ounce of my strength. I hear a sickening crunch as the back of my skull hits bone.
He lets go of me, holding both hands to his face, blood seeping between his fingers. I run past him into the bedroom and on to the landing, but he’s too quick, grabbing my wrist before I can get down the stairs. His bloody fingers slip against my wet skin and I fight to get free, elbowing him in the stomach and earning myself a punch that takes my breath away. The landing is pitch-black and I’ve lost my bearings – which way are the stairs? I feel around with my bare foot and my toes touch the metal stair rod on the top step.
I duck underneath Ian’s arm, reaching out both hands towards the wall. I bend my elbows as though doing press-ups, then push back hard, slamming my whole weight against him. He gives a short cry as he loses his footing, then falls, crashing down the stairs.
There is silence.
I turn on the light.
Ian is lying at the foot of the stairs, not moving. He is face down on the slate floor and I can see a gash at the back of his head, from which a thin trickle of blood is oozing. I stand watching him, my whole body trembling.
Gripping the banister tightly, I make my way slowly down the stairs, never taking my eyes off the prone figure at the bottom. A step from the end, I stop. I can see the faintest movement from Ian’s chest.
My own breath coming in shallow pants, I stretch out a foot and tread lightly on to the stone floor beside Ian, freezing like a child playing grandmother’s footsteps.
I step across his outstretched arm.
His hand grips my ankle and I scream, but it is
too late. I’m on the floor and Ian’s on top of me, dragging himself up my body, blood on his face and on his hands. He tries to speak, but the words don’t come; his face contorts with the effort.
He reaches his hands up to grip my shoulders, and as he pulls himself up level with my face, I bring up my knee hard into his groin. He roars, letting me go and doubling over with pain, and I scramble to my feet. I don’t hesitate, running to the door and scrabbling for the bolt, which slips beneath my fingers twice before I am able to pull it across and throw open the door. The night air is cold, and clouds obscure all but a thin sliver of moon. I run blindly, and have barely begun when I hear Ian’s heavy tread behind me. I don’t look back to see how far behind me he is, but I can hear him grunt with each step, his breathing laboured.
The stony path is hard to run on with bare feet, but the noise behind me seems fainter and I think I’m gaining ground. I try to hold my breath as I run; to make as little sound as possible.
It’s only when I hear the waves crashing against the shore that I realise I’ve missed the turning for the caravan park. I curse my stupidity. I have only two options now: take the path down on to the beach or turn right, and carry on along the coastal path away from Penfach. It’s a path I’ve taken many times with Beau but never in the dark – it runs too close to the cliff edge and I’ve always worried he might lose his footing. I hesitate for a second, but the thought of being trapped down on the beach is terrifying: surely I have more chance if I keep running? I turn right and take the coastal path. The wind has picked up and as the clouds shift the moon lets out a little more light. I risk a quick glance behind me, but the path is clear.
I slow to a walk, and then stop to listen. It is silent, apart from the sounds of the sea, and my heart begins to calm a little. Waves crash rhythmically on the beach and I hear the distant blare of a ship far out to sea. I catch my breath and try to get my bearings.