‘We can go back to before,’ I tell him softly, stepping close enough that he can feel how fast I’m breathing, how much I’m trembling. ‘All you have to do is say yes.’
The silence is so delicate I daren’t breathe for fear of breaking it. I touch his arm and he looks down at my hand in wonder, as if he has never seen it before. He opens his mouth just as his phone rings in his pocket, and my heart jerks at the sound of it. I stare as he removes it and looks at the screen briefly before taking the call. It only lasts forty seconds or so, and at the end of it he speaks only three words: ‘Love you, Mum.’
‘William, please, just look at me. Here.’ I stop and he turns to face me and I try not to let my eye be drawn to that red striped hammer in his hand but I can’t help it, it’s there, and for a moment I see the head of it the way it looks in my dream, furred with hair and blood and flakes of white bone. Acid rises in my throat. ‘You’re frightening me. Whatever this is about—’
‘It’s about Edie Hudson. You made it about Edie Hudson.’
‘—we can sort it out. Please put the hammer down. Please take me home.’
‘I can’t do that. Not now. It’s too late. Plan B. I’m so sorry, Frances.’
‘What did your mum want, William? What did sh—’
‘Frances—’
‘Just tell me what this is ab—’
His hand swings out of nowhere. I never even see him lift his arm. He strikes me on the jaw, snapping my head back so fast spit flies from my mouth. I can hear the clack of my teeth coming together, the way my mouth fills with blood. It tastes metallic, like sucking pennies. There is a glittering pain along the shelf of my jaw and up towards my left ear. I don’t fall down but I need to grab hold of the nearest tree for balance because the whole world is spinning.
William is standing very still, his expression barely changed. I lift my hand to my jaw and it comes away smeared with blood.
‘Next time it’ll be the hammer,’ he says.
I wipe my blood-smeared palm on my jeans as William nods for me to follow him. After only a second’s thought I do so. I don’t know what else to do.
Samantha – Now
The pain begins at the crown of my head and travels sluggishly down my neck and the rack of my spine, bloody and feverish. My head is filled with a high-pitched note, the long, singular tone of tinnitus. Alex walks through the doorway, looking oddly incongruous wheeling an old-fashioned hostess trolley. On it is the little olive teapot, a cup, a saucer and a bowl of sparkling white sugar lumps. He doesn’t look up at me and he speaks only one word to his mother: ‘Tea?’
She nods briskly, and then, horribly, reaches out and strokes her fingers down the side of his face. ‘I forgive you, Alex,’ she says mildly. ‘For all your dirty little sins. You can’t hide anything from your mother.’
‘Mum, I never – I would never—’
‘Ah-ah,’ she says softly, and slaps him gently on the face. It’s a tap, a reprimand for a child. It’s sickening. ‘No more lying. You know what you did. You know what you are.’
He leans over and kisses her softly on her temple, the good side of her head, the one without the ugly snarling wound stitched across it.
She takes the tea from him with a slow, careful smile and says, ‘You always were the apple of my eye, Alex Thorn.’
She looks over at me, smiling that same gentle smile, telling me about the tea Alex makes especially for her, using the flowers from the garden. Rosebud and chamomile, dandelion, jasmine and chrysanthemum. I let her voice fade into the background. I try not to think about Frances, about where she is and what may happen to her. I wish I could speak to her, or warn her. She’s with a killer. If only I could reach my phone. Or my knife.
Alex says something and Mimi laughs. It’s a nice sound, like the scales on a flute. I close my eyes dreamily. An old friend of mine, Theresa, once hand-stitched me a sampler, which I’d framed and hung over my bed. One word, beautifully cross-stitched in brightly coloured threads: FUCK. When I close my eyes I can see it imprinted over and over on my eyelids in glorious technicolour and shimmering neon. It’s a clarion call. FUCK. It’s an urgency I feel running through the marrow of my bones like a voltage with a high-pitched hum. It’s an intensity that demands to be felt through the agony of my poor, throbbing head.
My eyes snap open.
‘You’ve gone very pale, Samantha. I do hope you’re not going to pass out.’
‘I think she’s fractured her skull, Mum.’
‘Nonsense. You’ve no idea how hard it is to break bone with a hammer. Edward used to do it all the time for his bonemeal. He once struck a pork knuckle seven times and the bloody thing barely dented the surface. Took a mallet to it in the end. Talk about using a sledgehammer to crack a nut!’ Again she laughs, but her face doesn’t look right. It’s her eyes, maybe. She takes another sip of tea, lifting her hand to point at me. ‘Take the scarf out of her mouth, Alex, would you? She looks like she’s got something to say.’
He does so gingerly.
I let the words fall from my mouth with a snap.
