I start again.
It’s nearly nine when I sit on the sofa and open the envelope. A pile of papers. Some of them are clipped together with a paperclip. A handwritten note at the front.
Amy—
You need to read these. Just do it.
— Shepherd
I look at the note until my eyes burn from not blinking. The way he’s written my name, the way he’s signed his name. I wonder if he had to think about what to write. It looks utterly carefree, easy. As though he picked up the pile of papers somewhere, casually, and then just scribbled off a few lines without even thinking about it.
I go through the pile. I notice there’s nothing careless about it. There are articles he’s printed off various websites, with bits underlined. Under that, three chapters from a book called Unstuck, with bits highlighted in green.
Unexpectedly, the last page is another handwritten note.
Amy—
Dig deep, find the grit in you.
— Shepherd
Then his phone number again. Just in case I lost the last one he gave me. Which of course I haven’t. I know exactly where that bit of card is. Just in case I need it. Which I never will. I know his number off by heart already.
Not that I’m going to use it.
My mind drifts to yesterday’s hurts. Her cackling laughter. Her keen footsteps passing my room.
Him inside her.
I get up from the sofa, look down at the sheets of information in my hand, then chuck them into the rubbish bin.
I check that the steel lock I put on my heart is still closed, the key lost long ago. I squeeze the chains wrapped around my heart tighter, until it hurts.
I don’t sleep a wink. I’m too busy checking the lock on my heart, a thousand and one times.
30
YOU
I’ve been dragging my feet from one day to another. The memories of my torn family are bad. This means my checking is bad.
Echoes of a cackling girl in Shepherd’s room last weekend has made them much, much worse. Not that I’ll ever admit that to him.
I wish I could start doing something constructive. I don’t want to be broken anymore.
Sometimes I lie there waiting to hear Shepherd’s boots on the stairs outside. I’m safer when I hear him go past. I know for sure the door will be locked downstairs. Then I can go to sleep. Sometimes it’s been three in the morning.
After I finish my evening walk by the lake, circling it twice, I head back to meet the girls in the recreational room. On the way, I get a text from Shepherd.
Where’re you? Knocked, you didn’t answer. Come to mine NOW, S
I think the word Please isn’t in his vocabulary.
I woke up this morning not feeling very well. My throat is still dry, my neck sore, my whole body hot and aching.
I hate him and I miss him.
Him and his darkness.
I weigh it against how I feel. I’m already sick. Already sore, already miserable. The fever at least makes the world hazy, makes me feel reckless. Blunts everything.
I look up at the front of the estate, all the way up to the top floor. All his windows are in darkness. The floor below, just the lights from my room shining dimly through to the front. His windows look much more dangerous than mine.
I send a reply.
Give me half an hour? A
I only have thirty minutes to do all the checking. I can’t rush it. I need do it properly first time. No mistakes. Everything six times, get the pattern right.
I go up the stairs half an hour after I sent Shepherd the text. I’ve not even managed to take my coat off.
It’s only when he opens his door I realise how much I need him. Every day. Like popping a prescription pill.
Stop staring, Amy. It just makes your neediness seem more pathetic.
‘Amy,’ he says, grimacing. ‘Where you been?’
I step into his hot, dark room, feeling him close and smelling something strange but familiar. He smells like baby powder and whiskey.
He’s nothing but trouble. He acts like a jerk, most of the time. He can even be very cruel. But I see the same broken in his eyes I see every day in the mirror. And I can’t help but be drawn to him because of it.
We’re in his small kitchen space. He takes my coat and hangs it on a hook on the back of the door, over his leather jacket. He looks smarter today. Dark-grey designer trousers, a black collared shirt, sleeves rolled up to his elbows. I can see the veins through his skin like a labyrinth inside him. A map to his soul.
‘You look pale, Amy. You don’t eat enough.’
He pulls out one of the chairs for me to sit on.
I shrug. ‘That’s not true.’ It is. ‘Maybe I didn’t eat enough today, or I’m just tired, or something.’
‘You’re lying. You’re staying for supper, then.’
‘No – I mean – I wasn’t hinting or anything —’
‘You’re staying for supper. It’s not a request.’
I wait for him while he goes downstairs into the main kitchen. He brings up two steaming bowls of soup and puts them on the table. He sits opposite me and looks me in the eye.
‘Eat it.’
‘Thank you, for this.’
‘It’s just chicken soup.’
He’s still holding that eye contact with me, expectantly, as though he’s waiting for me to say something or do something that will roll things forward somehow.
He’s going to stare at me until I say something to break the silence. I don’t want to say anything. I just want to look. To have a reason to look. To
