Surtsey waited a moment. ‘I still don’t understand. About your … interest in me.’
Donna got up, animated. ‘We’re the same, don’t you see? We were so different at school I could never have been your friend, but people change, Sur, that’s what I’ve come to realise. People change. Some for the better, some for the worse. Some people become more confident, some less so. Some people deal with grief well, others run away and hide. But everything I saw of you at the hospice, every time you visited, I realised we were becoming closer, we were becoming so similar, dealing with your mum the way we did, looking after her as a team, really, sisters in our sadness.’
Surtsey screwed up her eyes. ‘But you never said anything, you never spoke to me about any of this.’
‘It was obvious you felt it too,’ Donna said. ‘I could tell by the little conversations we had, underneath the everyday chats about your mum.’
‘I don’t remember it like that.’
‘You were telling me all about your life,’ Donna said, pacing up and down. ‘You were inviting me in.’
‘I wasn’t.’
‘You just didn’t know it. You needed a guardian angel and I was ready to step up.’
‘I didn’t need anyone spying on me.’
‘I wasn’t spying, I was looking out for you.’
‘You spied on me with Tom.’
Donna smiled. ‘I didn’t find out about Tom initially. I used to watch you with Brendan, leaving work together, going out on dates. The time you gave him a blowjob on the beach when you thought no one was around. I saw you hanging out with Halima and Iona in the Espy. Then one day I followed you from King’s Buildings on your own and you took a detour to a hotel on Waterloo Place. I was surprised, you didn’t seem like someone with secrets and yet there you were, meeting Tom behind his family’s back.’
‘Don’t bring his family into this.’
‘You’ve destroyed them, you know that? You didn’t think of them when you were fucking Tom.’
‘I didn’t mean to hurt anyone,’ Surtsey said. ‘I didn’t want anyone to find out but you made sure they did when you killed him.’
‘I couldn’t stand to see you throw your life away on that man. You weren’t going to end it, you didn’t have the strength. And he wasn’t going to either, he was just a man following his dick around. I had to be strong, I had to end it, for both of us.’
Surtsey tried to keep her voice steady. ‘There’s no “us”.’
‘Of course there is,’ Donna said. ‘We’re here, aren’t we?’
‘Because you’ve kidnapped me and tied me up.’
Donna reached into the rucksack. ‘You’ll understand one day.’ She pulled out a bottle of clear liquid and a facecloth. She unscrewed the lid, held the cloth over the bottle and tipped it upside down for a couple of seconds then placed the bottle on the table and came over to the bed.
‘What the fuck are you doing?’ Surtsey said. ‘Stay away from me.’
‘You need to rest,’ Donna said. ‘Getting worked up like this isn’t good for you.’
She went to the top of the bed so that Surtsey had to arch her neck to see her. She brought the cloth down to Surtsey’s face. Surtsey twisted her neck, turned her head away, but Donna held her head against the pillow as the other hand pressed the facecloth over her nose and mouth. She struggled but felt it taking her over. Her lungs were saturated and the energy disappeared from her arms and legs. Her head slumped under Donna’s hand. She felt dizzy and sick, clouds filling her mind, then she dissolved into nothing.
44
A shooting pain in her calf woke her. Cramp. She grunted, tried to move her hands towards her leg, felt the rope cut into her raw wrists. She turned her ankle round in slow circles, stretching the muscles in her legs, easing the tension. Gradually the cramp subsided as she breathed heavily through her nose.
She looked up. Out the window the sky was pale blue, stretching darker to the west. She guessed it was just before dawn.
She thought about her phone. Donna said she’d sent texts to Hal and Iona. Surely they wouldn’t just take one message on face value, surely they would get in touch after everything that had happened. She thought about the police, the way Donna had set her up. How she was going to finish it with the tip-offs.
She thought about Tom’s face caved in. Brendan too. Her mum’s rubbery skin in that back room at the hospice. All of it down to Donna.
She took in the room and spotted Donna lying in a sleeping bag on the floor between the door and the water bottles.
Surtsey watched her for a long time. Her chest was rising and falling slowly, a rasp from her nose as she breathed out. Her hands were placed together under her cheek and her knees were pulled up towards her chest. The skin on her face was slack and she looked carefree.
Surtsey felt with her left hand for the knife under the mattress, keeping her eyes on Donna. She got her fingers on the handle and lifted it out. Holding it upside down in her palm, with the handle at the inside of her knuckle and the blade pointing down towards her wrist, she placed it against the rope there and began a gentle sawing motion. The rope wasn’t thick, standard camping cord, but it was probably strong. The knife started making inroads into the material.
Donna made a snuffling noise like a pig at a trough.
Surtsey stopped and waited.
The knife was hidden in her palm, so even if Donna woke she might not notice it unless Surtsey was caught in the act of cutting. She felt sweat on her brow as she moved the knife against the rope. The edge of the material had frayed, it was working. She kept going,
