‘It’s not forgivable, not to realise how it was going to look when I did it. I should have known that all along. Before I even thought about doing it. Just so I knew what it meant.’
‘I don’t understand you, Lucy. What should you have known? That there was going to be blood? That woman lived in blood. Your blood, for one. You can’t let these details get in your way. You have to push them out of your mind.’
‘You didn’t see them. You didn’t see what that man looked like.
You know what I want to do? I want to go down there now and say to the police, I did that. I almost did it. I walked past them on my way here and I thought, I just have to go over there and say to those police,
“It was me. I’m sorry I did it, but I did. So where do we go from here?”
And I almost did do that. Except you can’t turn time back, can you? I wish I could. I can still hear the shots, you know. I’ll never forget that.’
In her electronic world, the shots were a trigger. Once they were fired, time stopped and the world was split apart, burned and broken, to be remade as something clean. Out in the real world, the shots had stopped time for her and the three other people who had been there with her. She and the two survivors were fixed in those split seconds, connected to each other for as long as their memories survived. Only the dead man had got away.
She chased these thoughts, slippery as fish in her mind, absorbed in a prolonged silence while the preacher stood quite still in the half dark watching her. When he spoke, his voice had acquired its usual gentleness.
‘And if you do do that, Lucy, if you do go to the police, what happens to everyone here? What happens to me?’
She shrugged, looking away. ‘Well, everyone’s got to make up their own mind, don’t they? They’ve got to live with themselves too. I’m not going to dob anyone in. You don’t have to worry about that.’
‘You’ll still bring the world in here, Lucy. There will be no way of avoiding that.’
She shook her head. ‘No, that wouldn’t happen. I wouldn’t let it,’
she said.
The preacher sat on a chair and they faced each other in the obscurity. He leaned forward.
‘Lucy, you poor child. I am so sorry. We have asked too much of you. I should never have let you go out there alone, I should have realised what it would demand of you. I am sorry, I am so very sorry that I have done this to you. You need to rest. Because what you’re feeling — I’ve seen it before, often. This is a war and you are a soldier.
And the fighting is hard and sometimes you have to do things that you wish you’d never had to do at all. You need to rest and then to wake in the morning and see how you feel then. And by then I think these things will look very different to you.’
‘Rest?’ Lucy leaned back in her chair. ‘I am tired. I’m really tired.
But I don’t see that’s going to make any difference. How can it?
Because I did this, okay? All right, we talked about it. But I did it. You didn’t. I know what I’m feeling, Graeme. I just don’t know where to go from here. I know I can’t leave it like this. I’m going to have to do something. I’ll tell everyone why I did it. I’ll stand up and I’ll tell them why so at least they’ll know that much.’
‘What makes you think they’ll understand you?’
‘I don’t give a shit if they understand me! They’ll know. They’ll have to, because they won’t be able to pretend this didn’t happen.
Then maybe they won’t want to hang me from the nearest tree — ’
She had got to her feet and was roaming about in a small space; she stopped now to stand with her hands on her hips, and shook her head.
‘They’ll know,’ she repeated. ‘They’ll know that I never really wanted to hurt anyone. I just wanted — a bit of peace, I suppose -
something … ’
‘Lucy.’
The preacher’s voice called her back to herself.
‘Lucy, you are exhausted. When did you last have anything to eat and drink? Tell me that.’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Wait here,’ he said.
She sat down as he left the room. He returned shortly afterwards with a mug of coffee from the jug that he always kept brewing in his office. It was thick with milk.
‘I’ve sweetened it,’ he said, ‘I think you need the energy. Drink it.
You need something.’
She did not argue. She sat in her chair, sipping the warm milky liquid.
‘Lucy, we have to try and focus on the necessities. Those at least we can deal with. You need rest, you need food. Then we work out what we do next.’
‘I don’t think I can eat.’
‘Come and try. You need food, Lucy. God created us that way, in case you hadn’t noticed. Eat and rest and then we’ll see what we can do. Come into the office and I’ll get you something to eat.’
He was close to her now. She finished her coffee quickly. He took the mug from her, she collected her backpack and followed him through to his office behind the auditorium. It was a small room, heated by a two-bar radiator close to his desk. He sat her down in a chair near the heater.
‘You get warm while I make us something to eat.’
He went into the tiny makeshift kitchen behind the office. She heard the sounds of food being prepared as she waited. He called out to her, his voice a little muffled.
‘Lucy, you must trust me on this. Things will look very different to you tomorrow. Whatever you think now.’
Lucy was looking at a poster on the wall that displayed the image of a pale pink foetus floating in the womb. Its sightless eyes were closed and its small hands were curled up to its mouth. The poster was stamped with the words: Abortion is Murder.
‘No, Graeme, I don’t think it will. Because right now I can’t see how it’s any different. What that woman did and what I just did. It’s the same thing when you come down to it. It’s murder.’
‘Are you sure about that?’
‘Oh, I’m sure.’
She was sitting upright, her arms tight about her midriff, when he came back into the room carrying a tray of sandwiches. He put them in front of her on the desk and then poured a mug of coffee for himself. ‘Do you want another?’ he asked, and she shook her head.
On the wall behind him was another poster, this one of the sun glowing through clouds over the sea with the legend: You must be reborn in the spirit. At the sight of this, she felt equal amounts of anger and revulsion.
‘Eat,’ he said.
She took a tiny bite out of a sandwich, chewed and swallowed it with difficulty, then put the sandwich back down on the plate.
‘Can’t eat. My throat — it’s really tight. I don’t want it, Graeme.
I’m so tired all of a sudden.’
‘Lucy, you ask so much of yourself. Did you sleep at all last night?
I told you you’d need to. You can’t do these things without being at your fullest strength.’
She smiled grimly before replying. ‘No, I didn’t sleep much. I tried to but…’ She shrugged. ‘I was so scared and I just kept thinking about her. I kept seeing her in my head. It was weird. She looked so real somehow, she was so powerful. And when I saw her today, I thought — is that really her? She doesn’t look like anybody. She didn’t look real.’ Lucy closed her eyes, shaking her head. ‘That man — the one who was there — I thought you said it was only ever her. I don’t even know why I fired at him. I must have just kept firing. Why?’
‘I said you should be prepared for anything. This man, he was her accomplice. He was as guilty as she is. What difference does it make if you did shoot him?’
‘It makes a big difference to me.’
‘Why? He knew who and what his wife was. He watched her go off to do what she did every day. He lived on her money. Why is he any less guilty than she is? You tell me that, Lucy.’
‘It isn’t them, Graeme. It’s me. I’m the one who did this. It isn’t who they are. It’s what I did that’s in my
