I use Shepherd’s shower gel, my hand shaking so much it spills across my wrist and into the bathwater. I get enough of it to soap my hands and get rid of the smell of sick from my hair and body.
The smell of the shower gel reminds me of the time he rescued me in school.
Thirteen years old. In class. With my hair over my face, shielding my shame and tears. A little pool of blood. I felt a tap on my shoulder. I looked up to find him and his rare smile, holding a pair of trousers from lost property.
I splash cold water on my face and rinse my mouth out with soapy bathwater.
‘I was thinking about that first time I saw you here,’ he says.
His voice is so close and it feels like he’s sitting right next to me. I can see his long legs stretched out in front of him.
‘That prick estate agent just barged in through the door. You must’ve been in the middle of checking. Amy, you gave me such a filthy look. I figured it was because you hated my guts. But now I’m thinking it was a mix of the two.’
‘I don’t remember — did I?’ My teeth are chattering. My throat is sore. Had I been screaming? It feels like I had.
‘You did.’
‘The door was open — they’d left it on the latch.’
He laughs. ‘How’d you ever manage with them leaving the door open? Jesus.’ The tone of his voice changes, then. ‘You were looking at me like I was Freddy Kreuger, somebody who’d crossed the threshold when you were in the middle of checking the door. You were the sexiest ball of fury I’d ever seen.’
I pull at the plug with numb fingers, listening to the sound of the water pouring away. I’d listened to that noise from my bed, in the room below, the swish and gurgle, wondering what he was doing having a bath at three in the morning.
‘I’m not sexy,’ I say, and I look at the scars on the tops of my legs.
‘That’s my call. Are you done?’
I manage to get up and put a towel around me. It’s still a little bit damp from when he showered this morning. I soak into the feel, like it’s cotton wool soaked in goodness. I feel drained of energy, so I sit on the bath, and wait for my skin to dry on its own. I don’t want to touch myself.
‘I’ll put the kettle on,’ he says. ‘Pass your clothes through, I’ll put them in the laundry room.’
‘Thank you,’ I say, a gravelly whisper.
I dress in the T-shirt and the trousers he left for me. They feel peculiar, so baggy that I have to hold the waistband up as they keep slipping off. I feel half-naked. On the back of the bathroom door is a towelling robe, wintry blue. When I put it on, it goes round me almost twice and reaches to the floor. That will do.
I meet him in his little kitchen. There’s a faint smell of some sort of disinfectant. He puts a cup of tea on the table and I sit there. I rub my bare feet against the rough itch of the wooden floor.
‘I get this feeling that you blame yourself for your sister’s damaged brain,’ he says.
‘Please, I don’t think I can. Not now.’
‘Can you at least tell me who you’re scared of? All this checking if the doors are secure, it’s gotta be because you’re afraid of someone, Amy. Who?’
He says the word ‘who’ as if he’s ready to pummel the perpetrator into the ground with his fist.
He looks at me expectantly. ‘Is it Archer? You mentioned he was gonna get married to Elizabeth but it was a secret. Did he hurt her? Did he do something to you?’
I bite my lip. Swallow. Then think for a little. ‘When I was sixteen, I wanted to borrow Elizabeth’s dress for my friend’s birthday party, so I went into her wardrobe. Rummaging around, I found my sister’s secret wedding dress. It was tucked deep inside, hidden in a small white chest. The label read Oxfam and was priced £14.99. I never understood why she lied to me about her dress. She told me Archer bought her a designer French dress that cost thousands.
‘It always baffled me why she was planning to move into a flat above a chip shop when Archer lives in a luxury apartment by the docks . . . He never bothered to visit her in the hospital when she was in a coma . . . That isn’t love.’
I drink some of my tea. It hurts the back of my throat, but it feels magical. The scent of Shepherd blushing from the robe, wraps around my body, makes me feel warm and protected.
‘Why did Elizabeth keep her relationship a secret for so long?’
‘Our parents were very protective. It’s one reason why it took Elizabeth until she was twenty-nine to decide to leave home. Mum and Dad liked us to be where they could see us. They liked to keep the family close.’
‘Was she scared of your father?’
‘My father was always closer to Elizabeth.’ I look him in the eyes. ‘It hurt me he loved her more.’ I take a deep breath, and then I fall silent.
‘You’re going to be okay,’ he says. ‘You’re safe here. You’ve got me, Amy. Nobody’s gonna hurt you. They’ll have to go through me first. Got it?’
I want to believe him, I want to trust him. No, I do trust him. After all, I’m sitting in his room wearing his clothes. ‘You can’t promise that.’
He considers this, and says, ‘Yeah, I can promise you that. You’re not on your own with this anymore. You got
