For a long, poised moment, he does not move away, only the door between him and my shining interlocutor.
Even as Mr Daley sighs, ‘Well, good night then,’ and begins to move away down the hall, Uri says softly, ‘Luc wants you for his own. He cannot be trusted. Do not allow past feeling to interfere with your judgment. Do not fall to him or all will be lost. You may not know it, will not necessarily thank us, but it has always been for you, always.’ Before I can reach out and hold him to me for another fleeting instant, before I can tell him I want to be found by Luc, now more than ever, Uri’s outline wavers and splinters into infinitesimal motes of light that wink out and are gone. And I am hit again by a wave of loneliness so vast that it feels for a second as if I am the one who has broken apart and cannot be put back together.
I send fury, despair, grief shooting straight into the night sky, like a beacon.
Let someone hear it! I scream silently. Exaudi me, Domine.
I realise anew the value of what I might have lost, and it is legion.
Who am I? whispers that inner voice that is never silent. What am I capable of?
Chapter 18
Despite what Ryan told me the night before, I am determined to lay hands on Gerard Masson at this morning’s rehearsal and sift through his innermost thoughts. If he is as blameless as the lamb, something in me will recognise it. I know now that guilt will rise to the surface like oil on the water, like blood. I just need to look for it.
My encounter with the being called Uri last night confirms it. There is an inexplicable power in me that will not be denied, not even by something, someone, not of this world.
The meaning of his warning, however, continues to elude me. Random aspects of his words return to trouble me as I drag Carmen’s glittery pink hairbrush haphazardly through the tangles in her hair, shrug my way into her doll-sized clothes.
What has always been for me?
And why?
And what did Luc’s act of goodwill serve to prove?
Permit?
I chase the answers down the unreliable pathways of Carmen’s brain even though I know they are not there; they are buried somewhere within me, the ghost-in-the-machine.
When I recall again that moment of blank, white pain, I feel a terrible numbness, the echoes of some deeper grief whose cause I cannot yet bring to the surface.
And though I cannot cry tears — was not formed to do so, corrects that small voice inside — I find tears on Carmen’s face as I apply cherry-pink lip gloss carefully to the tiny bow of her mouth, dust the bronzing powder I found at the bottom of her carryall across the bridge of her small, fine nose.
Tears for me, cried by a stranger.
By the time I head down to breakfast, Ryan has already left the house on some wilful errand known only to himself. I find myself missing him already. Beneath the calm surface that Carmen presents to the world, I beat myself up about it. People in your situation, my inner voice informs me dryly, should not form attachments.
It’s a given.
You think I don’t know that?
Could have fooled me.
Smart ass.
As I rise from the table after Carmen’s usual meagre breakfast — her body a machine requiring very little fuel — Mr Daley surprises me by offering me a lift to school.
Louisa Daley’s dark eyes settle on mine for a long moment before she says, ‘Have a good day,’ in a neutral voice, turning away from her husband.
‘We’ve hardly looked after you,’ Mr Daley says apologetically, as he holds open the front door, beckons me out ahead of him. ‘And here’s almost a week gone.
It’s the least I can do.’ What did he hear last night when he was poised outside Lauren’s bedroom door? I am immediately all caution.
‘Well, that’s very kind.’ I put shyness in my voice, hanging my head a little. ‘But after you, Mr Daley. The dogs, you know.’
‘Ah, yes,’ he replies, looking at me quizzically for a fraction too long.
So like Ryan, I can see the son’s future mapped out in the older man’s face. Let there be no more suffering in it, I think. And it’s almost a prayer.
Mr Daley disposes of the baying hounds in the usual manner, and installs me in the front passenger seat, both of us absurdly careful not to touch each other. I suppose I will have to reach out to him again at some point, to be absolutely certain. But I’ll tackle the little music teacher first. The echoes of Mr Daley’s mental anguish are still too fresh in my mind for comfort, and I trust Ryan.
Perhaps too much. Trust has been so long absent from my weird limbo existence that even acknowledging the fact is like a leap of faith.
Stewart Daley makes inconsequential small talk as we drive across town to school. I make the appropriate noises in return. Tell him politely how much I am enjoying my stay in his bucolic town, lying like the professional that I am, the leaf-shaped air freshener swinging like a pendulum between us.
As he drops me off just outside Paradise High’s main gate, he says approvingly, ‘It seems you’ve made a good impression on my wayward son, young lady. Ryan’s even talking about heading back to school in the spring and I like to think you’ve had something to do with that.
Maybe he’s finally giving up on this … nonsense of his.’ I turn, on the point of swinging my legs out of the car. ‘It isn’t nonsense, Mr Daley,’ I reply seriously.
I almost touch him, think better of it, withdraw Carmen’s small hand, take a firmer grip on the daypack between my feet. Later, maybe. I’m no coward. But it’s like what Pavlov did to that poor dog, you know? Once burned.
I add reassuringly, ‘You have to believe she’s still out there, that she’ll come home. I do.’ Immediately, his open, friendly expression shuts down, his eyes go blank. He looks away as he says dully, ‘That way lies madness, you know? It’s what our therapist told us. If you don’t accept she’s dead, you don’t heal. We have to “seal off” the incident. I have to believe he knows what he’s doing.’ I watch as, to the accompaniment of shouted expletives and blaring horns, Stewart Daley, executes a ragged U-turn across two lanes of oncoming school-bound traffic, before burning back in the direction of Main Street.
Gerard Masson stops me before I’m about to sit down on the fringes of the soprano section. Around us, people are still taking their chairs all over the room.
‘Good morning, Carmen!’ he says brightly, one chubby hand on my sleeve.
I pause, staring hard at him. He’s a toucher, and it’s instinctive, my dislike of being touched, like learned behaviour. Plus, he stinks of … alcohol? His skin exudes an overpowering odour, like the inside of a wine cask.
Can no one else smell it? I almost wrench my arm away, then I remember.
Should I do it now? Reach into his head right here and take what knowledge I need from his mind?
‘Good morning, Mr Masson,’ Tiffany interrupts loudly, her best sweetness-and-light game face on. As usual, she hasn’t missed a trick. She’s like a tabloid reporter camped outside my gates, always on my case. ‘Is there something you wanted to tell us before the rehearsal starts?’ she adds. ‘Something we — the sopranos — need to work on?’ She looks around at us, bats her tinted eyelashes, queen of all she freakin’ surveys.
Wretched Tiffany and her big, carrying voice. Every soprano’s suddenly focused on the fact that Mr Masson’s still holding onto me, and I can’t go into some kind of off-the-wall trance with Tiffany’s eyes — not to mention all the rest — boring into me like … well, lasers.
Despite the slight tremor in Gerard Masson’s fingers, his voice is controlled. ‘Well, no, Tiffany. The sopranos are doing just fine. Nothing the general rehearsal can’t fix. I just wanted to corner young Carmen here to offer her
