I took another step forward. 'I missed you,' I said.
'You fucking ran away,' he said. &
'I was scared,' I said. 'But afterwards I thought about it. You understood me. You dominated me. Nobody ever understood me the way you understood me. I want to understand you.'
He smiled. 'You're mad, you are.'
'It doesn't matter,' I said. 'I'm here. I'm in your hands. There's just one thing.' Another step forward. We were quite close now.
'What's that?'
'All that time, when we were together, you were just this voice in the dark, looking after me, feeding me. I used to think about you all the time, wonder what you were like. Will you let me kiss you just once?' I moved my face closer to his. He smelt of something bad. Sweet and chemical. 'Just once. It won't matter.' Close up, it was such an ordinary face. Nothing frightening about it. Nothing special. 'Look at me,' I said, holding my hands out, open and empty. 'I'm just here, in front of you. Just one touch.' As I leant over I thought of him not as a man but as a sheep's head. That was important. I imagined a dead sheep's head that had been cut away from the body. 'Just one kiss. We're both lonely. So lonely. Just one.' I softly touched his lips with mine. Nearly now. Nearly. Slowly. 'I've waited for that.' Another kiss. I brought my hands up to his face, gently touching the side of his face with my palms. Wait. Wait. A dead sheep's head. Tongue on the rotten tooth. My face moved back. I looked at him wistfully and then I pushed my thumbs into his eyes. They were only the eyes in the skull of a dead sheep. A dead sheep who had kept me in the dark and tortured me. I knew that the nails on my thumbs were long. I gripped on the side of his head with my other fingers like claws and the thumbnails gouged into his eyes and I saw with interest that my thumbs, as they pushed into his head and scraped in the sockets, were now streaked with liquid, a watery liquid streaked with yellow, like pus.
I thought he would grab me. I thought he would kill me. Tear me into pieces. He didn't even touch me. I was able to step back and pull my sludgy thumbs out. A strange scream came from deep inside him, a howl, and his hands went up to his face, and his body folded up and he lay wriggling on the floor, spluttering and whimpering.
I took a step back, out of the reach of this grub-like creature, squirming and squeaking on the floor. I took a tissue from my
2OQ
pocket and wiped my thumbs. I took some deep breaths, filling my lungs. I felt like a drowning swimmer who had reached the surface and was breathing in the beautiful clean life-giving air.
Twenty-nine
There was the moon still, and there were the stars. Frost on the surface of everything, a glitter in the semi- darkness. A world of ice and snow and stillness. The cold cut into my face. I breathed in, quite steadily, and felt clean air in my mouth, and streaming down my throat. I breathed out again and watched how my breath hung in the air.
'Oh-oh-ohhh, nu-nu.'
Sarah made a sound like an animal, a piteous, high-pitched tangle of syllables. I couldn't make out the words. I put my arm more firmly around her shoulders to hold her up and she hung off me, whimpering. Her body felt tiny against me and I wondered how old she was. She looked like a snotty, unwashed little kid. She crumpled and put her head on my chest and I could smell her greasy hair and her sour sweat.
I put my hand in the pocket of my jacket and pulled out Ben's mobile. There was just enough power now. I dialled 999. 'What service, please?' a woman's voice demanded. I was stumped for a moment. All of them really, except the fire brigade. I said there were serious injuries and a serious crime. We would need two ambulances, and also the police.
I put the phone back and looked at Sarah; her small, slightly flat face was a ghastly white, with spots all over her forehead and a swollen mouth. Her lips were pulled back in a terrified, silent snarl. She looked like a trapped animal. I could make out a bruise on her neck where the wire had been. Her whole body was shaking. She was only wearing a long-sleeved T-shirt and some cotton trousers, thick socks but no shoes.
'Here,' I said, and took off my quilted jacket and put it round her. I pulled the collar up high so her face was protected from the air. 'You're wearing my shirt,' I said and put my arm back round her.
A sound came from her shivering body. I couldn't make out what she was saying.
'They'll be here soon,' I said. 'You're safe now.'
'Sorrysorrysorrysorry.'
'Oh, that.'
'It wasn't me. Not me. Mad. I thought I was going to die.' She started to weep. 'I knew I was about to die. I was mad.'
'Yes,' I said. 'I've been mad like that too. But I'm not any more.'
The blue lights and sirens came over the hill. Two ambulances and two police cars. Doors swung open. People jumped out and hurried towards us. There were faces looking down at us, hands separating us. Stretchers were laid on the ground. I sent a couple of people inside. I could hear Sarah beside me, sobbing and sobbing, till her sobs turned into a raw, retching sound. I could hear voices being soothing. The word 'Mummy' cut through the babble. 'Where's Mummy?'
A blanket was draped over my shoulder.
'I am perfectly all right,' I said.
'Lie down here now.'
'I can walk.'
There were shouts from inside. One of the men in green overalls ran out and whispered to a young policeman.
'Jesus Christ,' the policeman said, and looked at me hard.
'He's a killer,' I said.
'A killer?'
'But it's quite safe. He can't see anything. He's not dangerous any more.'
'Let's get you into the ambulance, my dear.' The voice soothed me as if I was hysterical with shock.
'You should call Detective Inspector Jack Cross,' I continued. 'My name is Abigail Devereaux. Abbie. I put out his eyes. He'll never look at me again.'
They drove Sarah away first. I clambered into the second ambulance with the blanket still around me. Two people climbed in with me,
a paramedic and a female police officer. Somewhere behind me I was aware of a growing clamour, voices shouting urgently, the wail of a third ambulance coming down the road. But I didn't need to bother with that any more. I sat back and closed my eyes, not because I was tired -I wasn't, I felt quite clear-headed, as if I'd slept for a long time but to block out the lights and the clutter around me and to stop all the questions.
Oh, I was so clean and so warm. I had shampooed hair and scrubbed skin, and my fingernails and toenails were clipped to the quick. I'd brushed my teeth three times, then gargled with some green concoction that made my breath feel minty right down to my lungs, I sat up in bed, wearing an absurd pink nightie and covered in stiff, hygienic sheets and layers of thin, scratchy blankets, and drank tea and ate toast. Three cups of scalding hot sugared tea and a piece of limp white buttered toast. Or margarine, probably. They don't have butter in hospital. There were daffodils in a plastic jug on my locker.
Different hospital, different room, different view, different nurses bustling around with thermometers and bedpans and trolleys, different doctors with their clip charts and their tired faces, different policemen staring at me nervously then looking away. Same old Jack Cross, though, hunched in the chair like an invalid himself, with his hand around his cheek as if he had a toothache, and staring at me as if I frightened him.
'Hello, Jack,' I said.
'Abbie .. he started, and then stopped, working his hand round so his fingers covered his mouth. I waited and eventually he tried again. 'Are you all right?'
'Yes,' I said.
'The doctors said
'I'm all right. They just want to keep me under observation for a couple of days.'
'I'm not surprised, I don't know where to begin. I .. .' He shifted in his chair and rubbed his eyes. Then he
