Darkside

Lucy caught her breath.

Do your job, crybaby.

‘What’s Jonas’s job?’

‘Protecting the boy, of course. That’s always been his job. He’s the protector.’

‘And who are you?’

There was a long pause.

‘I am the killer.’

Something in Lucy hoped she might be dreaming, but the cold and the smell of mouse droppings and the knife in her hands all felt very real to her. She made a huge effort to speak simply and gently so as not to provoke the person who was no longer her husband.

‘Who is the boy?’

‘The boy is us. He’s who we used to be.’

‘What do you need to protect him from?’

Silence.

‘How can Jonas protect the boy?’

The man who wasn’t Jonas shrugged, but looked sly. He knew.

‘Why does the boy need protection? What happened to him?’

‘Shut up!’ The man who was not her husband put an angry foot up on to the floor of the attic. ‘You’ll wake him!’

Lucy spoke quickly and gently, trying to talk her way past the killer to reach Jonas. ‘Was it something to do with the fire, Jonas? What happened to you and Danny up at the farm? Did somebody hurt you, sweetheart? Did somebody—’

‘Don’t! Please don’t!’

Huge tears welled in Jonas’s eyes and his face instantly relaxed into something so young and vulnerable that Lucy gasped. That little boy who’d been at her hospital bedside was suddenly standing here in her attic as if by magic.

‘Jonas?’ she whispered.

The boy/man shook his head and pushed his tears away with the heel of a rough hand. ‘Please don’t talk about it. Please don’t make me say.’ Then he covered his face with his hands and his young voice was muffled. ‘Where is this? I don’t want to be here. Don’t make me be here.’

It broke her heart. She actually felt a pain, as if that tender organ was being torn in two, and she put a hand to her breast, knotting the blue sweater in her fist.

‘Jonas,’ she whispered, her voice hoarse with emotion.

Jonas slowly took his hands from his face and looked at her, and Lucy gave a huge sob of relief to see her husband standing there once more.

‘I wouldn’t hurt anyone, Lu. You know that!’

It was as if the last two minutes had never happened. No killer with his cold, dead eyes, no boy-Jonas tortured by the memory of something so terrible that it had split him apart. Those fragments of the whole lived separate lives – the boy sleeping, Jonas protecting him, the killer dormant until the stress that she had caused threatened to reawaken the horror he’d already lived once. If something had gone wrong with that delicate balance, the only person to blame was herself. She had been the tipping point.

Lucy burned with shame and selfishness.

With one self-obsessed handful of pills, she had made Jonas start to fall apart.

Despite the shock of the truth, Lucy felt a sudden surge of pride in Jonas. There was one thing he had done supremely well: he had protected the boy within him like a tigress does a cub. He had become a protector both personally and professionally; his whole life – conscious and subconscious – had been devoted to keeping that small child from having to face whatever it was that had been done to him.

She realized with a sharp pang that Jonas had been more of a parent than she would ever be. He had worked so hard and done so well. The boy had grown up into a good man, had got a good job and had loved her like no other. He had suffered setbacks and sadness and nothing had broken him.

Until she had tried to kill herself.

And now she understood everything.

Tears started to blur her vision.

‘I know you love me, Jonas.’

‘Of course I love you!’

‘But protecting me is making you hurt other people instead, sweetheart. The notes you wrote: Call yourself a policeman? … Do your job … You knew you were hurting the wrong people …’

Jonas looked confused. ‘What do you mean?’

Her tears were coming thick and fast now – as she knew in her heart the truth of what she was about to say.

‘Jonas … There’s somebody inside you who wants me dead.’

‘What?’

‘It’s OK. I understand. You have to protect the boy. He needs you to be strong, Jonas. Now more than ever.’

‘Lucy, honey, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Please come downstairs …’

He held out his hand to her – the way he had at the altar. She had given him her hand then and he had slid the ring on to her finger and vowed to love her for ever.

‘You killed the wrong people, Jonas.’

She had lost it.

‘I didn’t kill anyone, Lu. I swear to you. Sweetheart, please just come downstairs with me, so we can talk properly. It’s freezing up here. Please, Lu? Please?’

Lucy stared at his outstretched hand and then looked up into his eyes with an expression of such helpless agony on her face that he flinched.

‘Jonas,’ she choked, ‘you’re still wearing the gloves.’

Jonas looked down at his hand. It shone, stretched and strange in the white light of the lantern, and he held it up so he could see it better.

He was wearing a near-translucent surgical glove.

Why?

Why?

He frowned stupidly at his own fingers, all smooth and pale and plastic. He raised his other hand and saw it was the same. He felt disorientated. Why would he be wearing these gloves? It made no sense.

‘I love you with all my heart, but you can’t protect me any more. It has to stop.’ Lucy’s voice was a dull whisper. It had lost all hope.

Jonas said nothing – still consumed by the sight of his own shining fingers.

‘This is the job you were meant to do, Jonas,’ Lucy said, and – with hands that did not shake – slid the knife into her own throat.

‘NO! NO! NO!’

Jonas reached her in two seconds and caught her before she fell. The knife was lodged in her jugular, blood beat from her neck in time to her heart, while she made a very small mewling sound, like a kitten in a box.

Jonas made all the noise. He screamed her name and screamed for help and tried to stop the blood with his hands, then dragged her towards the hatch. He had to get her to hospital. He barely touched the ladder, dropping on to the landing in a heap with his wife in his arms, then down the stairs, slipping halfway, banging his head, and falling to the hallway, holding on to Lucy in a tangled mess of blood and arms and legs.

He raised his face from the cold flagstones, sat up and pulled her on to his lap, repeating her name like a talisman against bad things. If only he kept saying Lucy then she would not die. Would not.

Her copper hair was darkened by thick blood, and her face was spattered and smeared. Her eyes were still