The Regret

by Dan Malakin

  Besides, she knew how Mark’s mind worked. He’d look at the evidence, run it through statistical analysis, and conclude: a. Konrad knew her Snapchat password; and b. he’d found the photo of her on the Internet, and not only forwarded it to his mates as a laugh, but scored extra bro points by sending it from her Snap account.

  That’s what blokes like him do, he’d say.

  ‘I’m just a bit tired,’ she said.

  ‘I know when you’re tired.’

  ‘Give it a rest, okay?’

  ‘It’s Konrad, isn’t it. What’s he done?’

  ‘All because you don’t have a relationship, it doesn’t mean you have to keep shitting on mine.’

  Mark pulled his chin back. The pains of his non-existent love life were well known to both of them – they’d talked long into the night about his fear of ending up alone. That kind of thinking had, in part, led to his illness.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Rachel said, taking his hand. ‘I didn’t…’ He was looking at her curiously, his mouth bunched to the side, like he was weighing up whether to let her in on a secret. ‘What? What is it?’

  He shook his head. ‘Nothing. It doesn’t matter.’

  She didn’t have time for this. ‘Home, now,’ she said, striding away from him.

  Lily slid off the sofa with a disappointed huff. Mark dropped to her level, kissed her cheek, and asked her to wait by the front door.

  ‘What now?’ Rachel sighed.

  Mark waited for Lily to leave the room. ‘Sort this out. I can support you, I’m always here. But it’s got to come from you.’

  ‘I’m telling you–’

  ‘No. I’m telling you.’

  She opened her mouth to speak, but the ferocity of his stare shut her up.

  ‘Think of Lily.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘It means I’d do anything to protect my daughter. Just remember that.’

  Chapter Eight

  Release

  Rachel bustled Lily through the front door, then raced to her laptop, open on the coffee table in the living room. ‘Five minutes’ play time,’ she said, logging in.

  Why hadn’t Konrad returned her call? As she changed her passwords again, she imagined Pete accosting him off the tube, thrusting his phone in his face – she saw in Snapchat that he’d taken a screenshot of the photo – and saying that she came onto him at the gym. So I replied with a picture of my dick, he’d say. You know, as a laugh. She imagined Konrad looking heartbroken, but still nodding in agreement as Pete told him he was better off without her. That bloody photo! Hadn’t it caused enough damage in her life?

  When she’d finished, she hurried Lily up the stairs. ‘Quick shower,’ Rachel said. ‘Granddad’s coming soon.’

  While Lily shuffled out of her jeans, Rachel stuffed an overnight bag. Toothbrush, mummy and baby teddies, clean clothes for the morning, and a couple of Elmer books, though she was certain her dad would ignore them in favour of watching television.

  The splash of the water muted as Lily got in the shower. Rachel poked her head round the door, and despite how stressed she was feeling, couldn’t help returning her daughter’s smile as she stamped gleefully in the tub. ‘Remember to wash, sweetness,’ she said. ‘Use soap.’

  Five minutes later, Lily was wrapped in a towel in her mother’s arms. Rachel cradled her, nuzzling her cheek and singing You Are My Sunshine, happy for this lovely moment in what, so far, had been a ridiculously horrible day.

  One that, she was certain, was going to get worse before it got better.

  It was nearly seven, and there was no sign of Konrad.

  Rachel was tipping a box of Iceland Italian Platter canapés on an oven tray when the front door opened. She raced through to the living room, but it was just her dad. He shuffled inside, meekly looking round, like he was unsure whether it was the right house, only smiling when he saw Lily rushing towards him.

  Until her gran got sick with ovarian cancer, Rachel hadn’t seen her dad since she was eight. Since he chose drinking himself into an actual gutter over raising his daughter. Being with him always made her feel like she’d taken a swig of spoiled milk. The complexion of his wide-lined face made her think of mincemeat left out of the fridge, and since getting sober he’d ballooned to the point where his gut pushed against his T-shirt like he was well into a second trimester. With his height and his vanishing hairline, he looked like a giant thumb. She put up with him, she tolerated him – she appreciated how hard he’d worked to get sober, eventually – and he did help out a lot with Lily. But that didn’t mean she had to like him.

  ‘Her bag’s there,’ she said. She crouched by Lily and pushed out her cheek. ‘See you in the morning, angel.’

  ‘Let’s go, Granddad,’ Lily said, pulling him towards the door.

  Rachel watched her go. Such a cruel irony that the more a child was loved, the less they seemed to need you. The world was full of sad kids pining for runaway dads, for the attention of absent-minded mums, but make sure they know you are always there and they can’t even be bothered to give you a kiss goodbye.

  ‘Hold on a second, lovely,’ her dad said. He pressed his chest and took a moment, as if the very act of talking left him breathless. How could he let himself get so huge? ‘You mind if we have a chat?’

  She could tell by the maudlin expression on his face that he meant that kind of chat. A support group deep and meaningful – of a sort they were both used to – and she didn’t have the head for that. She’d seen that look once before, when they did step nine together, his making amends, although how a grovelling apology could give back fifteen years of blaming herself for being so unlovable that her own father felt compelled to leave was still a mystery to her. Since accepting his “apology” they’d only communicated on a surface level. Hi, how are you, what fine/miserable weather we’re having? What else was there to add? And by the way, you leaving when I was a child set off the chain of events that crippled me emotionally for my whole life. So, thanks for that, Dad!

  Besides, she just needed a bit of space to think. Konrad was an hour late. She saw in WhatsApp he’d last been online at five thirty-two, but since then, nothing. Every time she rang it went to voicemail. Even if Pete had showed him the photo, you’d think Konrad would at least want to hear her side. After everything he’d promised that morning, how could he do this to her again?

  She began clearing the coffee table. ‘Sorry, Dad. I’m a little busy. I’ve got–’

  ‘It’s just I’ve had the little one a few times this week, and–’

  ‘I thought you liked having her stay.’

  He twisted the zipper of his denim jacket, looking down. ‘I do, I do. It’s just…’

  She felt the blood rising to her face. ‘If it’s an inconvenience, I can ask any of the other mums next time.’

  That wasn’t quite true. There was maybe one she could beg, but seeing as her little Chloe was out of bed eight times a night with sleep regression, it probably wouldn’t be the best idea, not least because she’d have to return the favour and risk the whole house being up until dawn. But he didn’t need to know that.

  ‘That’s not what I mean,’ he said. ‘Look, don’t take this the wrong way–’

  ‘Don’t say it then.’

  ‘Please, Rachel. I have to. I watched your mum push everyone away–’

  ‘Stop. I don’t want to hear it.’

  The last thing she needed was him badmouthing her mum, not after everything he’d put her through.

  ‘If you can’t come here and keep your mouth shut about Mum,’ she said, ‘then maybe you shouldn’t come here at all.’

  ‘You don’t look well, is what I’m saying.’

  ‘This coming from you?’

  ‘This isn’t about me.’

  ‘Just leave me alone, Dad.’

  ‘I’m not going anywhere. Not anymore.’

  ‘Yes you are,’ she said, moving towards him, hands out, as though she were ushering sheep thr
ough an open gate. ‘Healthy food, please. Beans on toast or something. Not crisps.’

  ‘But–’

  ‘Bye, Dad,’ she said, and closed the door. That kind of concern she could take from Mark, but not from him. She let her father be a part of Lily’s life. That didn’t mean she wanted him as part of her own.

  Rachel found her phone and opened WhatsApp. Konrad still wasn’t online. She looked back at the messages he’d sent that afternoon, one saying, Can’t wait to see you tonight, tomorrow night, and every night x. After that had come a picture of Prince Harry – Konrad had been teasing her ever since she said she found him surprisingly handsome. They were supposed to be going to Madame Tussauds that Sunday for her birthday, followed by as much ice cream as her daughter could cram in her three-year-old stomach at the huge Baskin-Robbins on Baker Street, and it’d been a running joke for weeks that he’d catch her sneaking a kiss on his royal waxwork. The two blue ticks next to her dashed off reply – I’d rather have you than all the ginger princes in the world! X – showed he’d read her message.

  What if Pete was involved in a sinister Facebook group that got kicks out of degrading innocent women? She was sure one of his mates was taking a video when she was scrabbling for her phone. What if this was part of their stupid macho games? Konrad had lost some bet and was being forced to watch her humiliation as punishment? Worse, what if he was behind it? What if he had two sides, one the fun sweet bloke she loved spending time with, the other a psycho who liked to stub cigars on his arm and humiliate his girlfriend?

  No. No way. He might carry himself like a bit of a lad, and he might hang around with some people she couldn’t stand, but even this last week he’d never been cruel, or mean.

  What if it was nothing to do with Konrad or his mates?

  Could Alan Griffin have set it up? Could he have been spying on her, getting to know her boyfriend, his mates, and sent that photo to Pete, knowing he’d tell Konrad afterward?

  Could he be out of prison and trying to destroy her life again?

  Pulse fluttering, she sat in front of the laptop. When Alan Griffin was first arrested, checking the forums for updates became Rachel’s obsession. The one with the biggest community, the most up-to-date information, used to be www.paedo-hunter.net. When the front page loaded and she saw the camouflage colour scheme, an involuntary smile pricked up her lips. She typed in her username and password, worried her login wouldn’t work anymore. She was thrilled when it did.

  If information about his release would be anywhere, it’d be here.

  At the time, his case attracted a lot of attention. A haul that size was big news. Not just the images of children, although there were over five million of those, but links to live-stream rapes in the dark web, screen prints of attempts to groom on chatrooms, and Word documents filled with grizzly stories about torturing and dismembering teenage girls. Way more shocking than what she thought they’d find. The prosecution questioned his sanity, and he’d ended up in Broadmoor. A twelve-year sentence, with the option of permanent incarceration if deemed necessary to protect the public.

  That meant he had another four years before his release, at the very least.

  Didn’t it?

  The website was as busy as ever, the top bar showing five hundred and thirty-eight registered members, with twenty-six active. It was a community of victims, their families, ex-policemen, concerned citizens. They swapped entrapment methods, uploaded videos of perverts presented with printouts of their filthy chats, and posted updates from the sex register.

  In the search bar, Rachel typed Alan Griffin. A topic with his name came back. Her finger trembled on the touchpad. Please let him still be inside. She clicked on the link, went to the last page, and scrolled down.

  The latest update was a few days ago, from someone called Guardian Angel.

  Released from Broadmoor on 27 September.

  Location unknown.

  Chapter Nine

  D0xed

  Rachel stared at the laptop screen. She felt the anxiety growing in the back of her throat, and then passing slowly down, like she’d swallowed too much in one go and could only wait in discomfort for it to clear.

  He was out.

  Alan Griffin was out of prison.

  Why wasn’t she more prepared? She forced herself to focus. There’d be plenty of time for endless self-recrimination later. She ran into the kitchen, pulling out the drawers under the kettle, hunting through the coupons and bills and loose change to find a ball of old Blu-Tack. She went from room to room, checking the windows were locked, then closing the curtains and sticking the corners to the sills, getting agitated as the fabric kept coming away, in a state of near panic by the time she finished the curtain in the living room.

  Alan Griffin. Alan bloody Griffin. He’d been out of prison for two weeks already. Her hand quivered as she rubbed her face. And she had so much more to lose now.

  Lily.

  He’d know about her daughter.

  Rachel went through to the kitchen, turned on the tap and splashed her face, hoping the shock of the cold water would clear her mind. All because Griffin was out of prison, it didn’t mean what happened at the gym was because of him – if Mark was right about that payroll e-mail, then he definitely would have had access to all her social media accounts. So why not do more to her?

  The smell of breadcrumbs and melting cheese coming from the oven made her hunger unbearable. She yanked it open, grabbed a dishcloth and pulled out the tray. At the sight of the canapés, her throat clenched into a length of knotted rope. The mozzarella sticks looked the most cooked so she blew on one and shoved it in her mouth, wincing as the coating burnt her tongue, making her teeth chew, almost gagging on the puttyish texture, the milky taste, forcing it down with water from the tap.

  That was the other thing. Her eating. What was the point of lying to herself? She was in it now – she could feel the pressure building inside, the start of an episode, like the sea contracting before a tsunami – and the sooner she faced that and addressed it, the quicker it would go away. She’d allowed it to creep up over the last week, worrying about Konrad. A few skipped lunches, some half-finished dinners, until she got to now. Nothing for dinner last night, nothing for breakfast this morning, a sachet of Ensure at lunch, and a smoothie on the bus. Two hundred calories, at most, in twenty-four hours. She probably hadn’t topped a thousand in days. No wonder Mark had noticed she’d lost weight. No wonder he thought she was being irritable. When she did an internal check, she could feel the fizz of it, the fidgety manic up-all-night energy that came at the start of a starve.

  Rachel fell onto a chair. She tried to keep her breathing calm, to stem the dread rising through her. She’d spiralled into it, been pulled in by its strange gravity, the black hole in her core. Anorexia. God, she hated the word. It sounded so dramatic, like an Egyptian queen, or a celebrity baby. Such a grandiose name for such an insidious condition.

  Why did she keep doing this to herself? Over the years she’d lain on countless couches, dissecting to death her lack of self-esteem, the shame of being almost six foot of flaws when compared to the glossy miniature babes in music videos, repeating the same mantras about how, in the Instagram age, contrasting your own disappointing timeline to the beautiful galleries of others can crush you inside. One psychologist put forward that perhaps she wanted to stay a young girl forever, that starving herself was an unconscious attempt to live in a time before her dad left. Another suggested she was trying to make herself as small as possible so she wouldn’t be a target for men like Griffin anymore. Yet another said she needed to stop punishing herself for her mum’s death.

  Rachel didn’t have many memories of her mum, and could bring to mind only fragments. How her fingers were red and cold, even in summer. Or how she was always scrubbing something, the kitchen, the bathroom, the stairs down to the cellar, even the front pavement, when there was nothing left that hadn’t felt the force of her brush. The scent of bleach clung to her skin like p
erfume. For years Rachel thought she must have been a germophobe, but now she knew her mum was doing it for the exercise, to burn the few calories she consumed.

  After her dad left, her mum started getting sick all the time. Always a small woman, she shrank before Rachel’s eyes. At meals she’d push her food around her plate, or sneak it out of her mouth with a napkin, or say she didn’t fancy it and would make something later, although she never did. Every night she sat on the back step, mouth dour, knees pressed to her skeletal chest, looking at the sky, smoking and sighing. Within two years, she was gone. All through her teenage years, Rachel blamed herself. She chose to die rather than be with you.

  Enough. Take a breath, calm down. The direction of those thoughts led only further into the darkness, and she couldn’t let that happen. Not with everything else going on.

  She forced herself to bite another mozzarella stick. She just hated it though. She hated all of it. How every time life became stressful, her body rejected food, and she had to learn how to eat all over again. How the anorexia voice grew louder and more powerful as the disease took hold, like a parasite feasting on her brain, telling her it was okay not to eat, that people could go days without food, that if she starved herself she wouldn’t feel guilt, or shame, or even grief anymore, because when you were hungry enough, nothing else mattered. But what could she do? It would keep coming back and coming back until her final breath.

  And why?

  Because it was as part of her as the brown of her eyes, or the beating of her heart.

  The doorbell rang. Was that Konrad? Had he forgotten his keys? She spat the mouthful of mozzarella into the bin, hurried through to the living room, and opened the front door.