I hear crying, and every hair on my body lifts as I turn. Hanging ominously on the curtain pole is a mask.
Chapter 53
Present Day
Me
Tears spill down Lark’s cheeks. I hate seeing her cry. That I’ve brought her to this. If I hadn’t treated her the way I did, told her I loved her, it would never have come to this.
I recall how my mum used to cry when Dad slept with other women – when he knocked her about. Everyone thought they were such a happy couple – Indigo and Phoenix united in their traveller ways. But I felt her pain. Saw her cry. She told me once – I could only have been six – to never hurt a woman. But maybe I’m more like my father than I realise.
‘Why, Jackson?’ Lark says, not for the first time. But this time she’s clenching a needle, and I know she will kill me soon. And I’ve accepted my fate. Living like this – trapped in a tiny world, one arm clamped to the metal headboard by a chain and padlock for over a year, has taken away my fight.
I hear movement, and although I can barely lift my head from the pillow, I see her standing in the doorway, her eyes wide with shock. ‘Amelia,’ I whisper. ‘Thank God.’
Chapter 54
Present Day
Amelia
Lark wheels around to face me, clenching a needle, tears rolling down her face. ‘Amelia?’ she says, hands shaking. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’
‘Christ, Lark, what’s going on?’ I cry, taking in the sight in front of me: Jackson, looking horribly thin, Lark beside him, her cheekbones prominent, skin pallid, eyes cradled with dark cushions of flesh, her blonde hair cut short and uneven. Gone are her long tendrils. I barely recognise her.
‘What have you done?’ I cry, racing towards her. ‘Oh God, what have you done, Lark?’
‘It’s heroin.’ Jackson’s voice is raspy, defeated, as though he doesn’t care if he lives or dies. His once trendy hair touches his shoulders, messy and greasy, and a straggly beard covers his chin. His eyes are washed out and sallow, his pupils dilated.
Lark points the needle towards me. ‘Stay away, Amelia. This has nothing to do with you.’
‘Lark, please. We used to be friends, didn’t we?’ Jackson whispers, his voice barely audible.
Lark turns back to him. ‘Never friends, Jackson. I love you. I’ve loved you since the first time you brought me here.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he says.
‘Lark … please … give me the needle.’ I hold out my hand.
‘And then you said it had just been a bit of fun,’ she says, ignoring my request. ‘That we were both wrong, that we both let my mum down.’
‘Sorry.’ He tugs on the chain that’s holding him to the bed, his wrist raw, covered in scabs and sores.
‘Stop. Saying. Sorry,’ she yells. ‘Why the hell are you fucking sorry anyway? Because you led me on, left me consumed with so much love for you? Or sorry you lured me in and left me with so much guilt that I’d betrayed my mum? Guilt and love is a dangerous cocktail, Jackson.
‘Then my mum got ill,’ she continues. ‘And my guilt was like my very own cancer – killing me. But I kept it all inside, until that night I saw you with Rosamund in Scotland.’
‘I know sorry isn’t enough,’ he whispers.
‘No it fucking isn’t. This is your comeuppance, Jackson. Your punishment.’ She walks towards him. Strokes his hair, his cheek. ‘You’re not as handsome as you once were,’ she says. ‘Far too thin – your muscles wasted.’
She kisses his dry, cracked lips. ‘I love you, Jackson,’ she says, and biting down on her bottom lip so it bleeds, she plunges the needle into his flesh.
‘You’re right, it’s heroin,’ she says, as his eyes linger on hers. ‘It will kill you.’
I stare. Do nothing. My mind paralysed.
‘Lark!’ I finally scream, blaming shock for my delayed reaction, rather than a desire to see Jackson six foot under. I grab my phone from my pocket, but she bashes it from my hand. It crashes to the floor.
‘He must pay for what he’s done, Amelia.’ Her voice is calm and low, but tears roll down her face. ‘Can’t you see that?’
‘No, please, Lark. You can’t let him die.’
Her eyes are wide, vacant, I barely know her. This should have been the best moment of my life – finding my sister alive after all this time – but as I look at Jackson, life draining from him, it’s one of the worst.
‘I attacked him that day at Drummondale House,’ Lark says – she’s still clenching the needle, pointing it my way. ‘I saw him with Rosamund; I couldn’t believe he would do that to me. I struck him with a branch across his head. A bit like the one you’re holding now. Put it down, Amelia. Please.’
I know I won’t use it, so prop it against the wall. ‘Lark, listen to me, we need to get Jackson help.’ I step closer. ‘Keep with us,’ I say to him, touching his arm. ‘You need to keep with us.’
‘I raced back to the cottage that night,’ Lark goes on. She clearly wants me to know everything. Wants me to understand. ‘Mum was crying in her room. She knew what he’d done – seen him too.
‘I grabbed Jackson’s car keys, some money and Mum’s wig, then took her wheelchair from the car.’
I make a dive for my phone, but she kicks it across the room.
‘When I got back to him he was woozy, confused. I crushed three of my Diazepam, and made him swallow them. In fact, I’ve been putting some
