The Regret

by Dan Malakin

  ‘Really?’

  ‘I promise.’

  He went serious. ‘You know he thought… And when I rang and you didn’t answer… The way you’ve been acting, we were worried you might have, you know, done something.’

  Done something. How crazy did he think she was? Enough to jump in front of a train with Lily in her arms?

  This had to stop.

  ‘Listen to me,’ she said. ‘It’s Alan Griffin.’

  Mark stepped back. ‘What?’

  Rachel nodded carefully.

  ‘Oh, shit.’ Mark grabbed his chin. ‘Oh shit, shit, shit… Why didn’t–?’

  ‘I know, I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.’ It was such a relief to tell someone who knew what Griffin was capable of doing; it felt as though a fist gripping her lungs had let go, allowing her to breathe freely for the first time in days. ‘I should have told you – I wish I’d told you.’

  ‘Oh, wow. Oh, God. Alan Griffin. Already? I thought he got–’

  ‘Out early.’

  ‘So what–’

  ‘He got me suspended from work.’

  ‘How did he–?’

  ‘He stole my wages.’

  ‘He did what?’

  She was trying to remember all of it, but her mind had become a sinkhole, and she could only reach inside to grab random thoughts. ‘The photo – the photo!’

  Mark looked confused. ‘What photo?’

  ‘The one of me as a teenager.’

  ‘That photo?’

  ‘That photo.’ Rachel licked her lips. She knew this wasn’t coming out right, that it wouldn’t make complete sense, but telling him was like vomiting poison. She couldn’t stop. ‘I was at the gym, and Griffin sent it to Konrad’s mate Pete on Snapchat. He got into my account and sent him that photo of me. So that it looked like I did it.’

  Mark’s nod was warier than she hoped. ‘Griffin had your phone?’

  ‘No, he hacked my phone.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Then he broke me and Konrad up.’

  ‘But how–?’

  ‘He set him up with loan sharks, then stole my money from my account, so it looked like–’

  ‘Hold up,’ Mark said, waving his hands. ‘Who stole money? Konrad?’

  ‘No, Griffin. From me, and Konrad.’

  ‘Whaaaaa?’

  Mark looked lost. She was about to begin again, but he cut her off. ‘Stop, stop, please. I can’t… process what you’re saying.’ He paused for a long breath, his fingers pressed back to back in the middle of his chest. ‘Let’s start from the beginning. Okay. How do you know Griffin’s out?’

  ‘Look at this.’ Rachel opened the laptop on the kitchen table and slid into a chair, trying not to notice the way Mark was grimacing at her, like she had something gross smeared on her cheek, but it was too far into the conversation to say anything. She loaded the paedo hunter website.

  ‘Not these again,’ he groaned.

  ‘Hold on.’

  ‘You know this is how–’

  ‘Wait!’ She patted his forearm, softened her voice. ‘Just wait, okay?’ She moved down Griffin’s page until she got to the post saying he’d been released.

  ‘Oh, Jesus,’ Mark said. ‘What else is there?’

  ‘You’ll like this,’ Rachel said, scrolling to his address, pleased he finally sounded like he believed her. ‘I think he posted this himself, to mess with me.’

  Mark frowned as he looked at the screen. A moment later, his head began an apologetic, but still definite, shake. She was wrong. He didn’t believe her. Same as Becca, he thought she was making it up to get attention. How else could she prove it? The hidden camera! Where did she–?

  ‘Tell me the truth, Rach,’ Mark said, his tone measured, careful rather than accusatory. ‘Are you stalking Alan Griffin?’

  Rachel felt her shoulders twitch. ‘Am I what?’

  Mark tried for a laugh, but it flatlined into a nervous ummmm. ‘You posted his address online. Now you’re trying to tell me you found it. And you’ve–’

  ‘Wait – what? You think I posted his address. It was…’ She leaned forward to read the name. ‘JustForYou. But I think that’s Griffin. I think–’

  ‘Stop, Rachel – stop!’ He jabbed the login name in the top right corner of the forum page. ‘You’re logged on as JustForYou. Right now. On this computer.’

  How was that possible?

  ‘He must have been here, when I was out,’ she said, but even she wasn’t convinced. ‘Maybe he drove.’

  She sparked on an image of Griffin, sad and scuzzy in his hovel, his slug of a tongue feeling around the beer can lip for the final drops.

  Something wasn’t right.

  Mark clicked on JustForYou’s name to open the profile. The fields were bare, no personal details or interests, no signature set up to go on the bottom of posts. He pointed to the session details.

  ‘You’ve been logged into this account since seven thirty last night. Alan Griffin’s address was posted straight after.’

  She stared at the screen, stunned. Could she have done all this to herself? Sent that photo from Snapchat, transferred the money to Konrad’s account, deleted her patient records and posted that fat-shaming picture of Becca. The text she received when Konrad left – YOU’RE ALL MINE NOW – had she sent that from a burner phone hidden down the back of the sofa? Was that possible? Had she plied herself with too many painkillers and starved herself too many times that she’d actually broken her brain?

  Mark was rubbing her arms, like she’d told him she was cold. ‘We’ll get through this, okay? I’m here for you. You’re not alone, Rachel.’

  She wasn’t listening. Her headache had gone scalpel sharp. She needed to get some sleep, let her subconscious sift through it all, come to it tomorrow with fresh eyes. It’d be better if he took Li–

  A shrill scream from the living room. Mark bolted out of the kitchen. She lumbered after him, moving so slow it felt as if she was wading.

  Mark was on the floor, rocking and shushing Lily. Spence was back on his heels, mouth wide and hands to his head, like he’d been frozen mid-scream. Rachel saw the blood. So much blood. Covering Lily’s little arm and spilling onto Mark’s neatly pressed jeans. Beside them was the ceramic vegetable knife, the white blade stained red. ‘You’re the bloody nurses,’ he said. ‘Do something!’

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Blood

  Lily had been reaching under the sofa for a dropped crayon, and instead found the knife. The wound stretched across her palm, from the base of her little finger to the soft pad of flesh beside her thumb. Although not deep, it bled like a slashed artery.

  Mark wrapped Lily in his beige raincoat, which, Rachel noted through her numbness, was as smart and new as the rest of his wardrobe. Clutching his daughter to his chest, he ran the mile to Whittington Hospital A&E. Rachel lumbered through the wet streets, unable to keep up, her legs stiff and unwieldy.

  She staggered past the ambulances, through the sliding doors, and into the strip-lit hell of a busy emergency room. Like all nurses, as a student she’d done a stint in A&E, a two-week placement in The Dungeon of Torment, otherwise known as Ealing Hospital. And like all students, Rachel had found the experience exciting, dramatic, but more than anything, terrifying, especially the Friday night shifts where the smell of bleach, beer, and kebab burps had her retching into the toilet for half the night. Rarely had the term “never again” been more apt.

  She scanned the coughing groaning contents of the plastic chairs in the reception. No sign of Lily or Mark. The receptionist, an older woman with a receding hairline and an aura that suggested she’d been asked a thousand stupid questions in the last hour alone, told her they were in triage, but said she couldn’t go in.

  ‘I’m her mother,’ Rachel moaned.

  ‘I don’t know that,’ she replied.

  ‘I’m a nurse.’

  ‘So you should know better than to ask.’ Her expression softened a touch. ‘Take a seat. T
hey’ll be out soon.’

  Rachel perched on the last of a crooked line of grey chairs. She stared at the wall-mounted television, where a brassy blonde girl was letting rip at a smirking lump for kissing her best friend, but it failed to distract Rachel from the awful truth: she was a terrible mother. If ever she needed proof of that fact, this was it. Who left a sharp knife under the sofa when there was a child in the house? Worse, she didn’t even remember putting it there! She thought it was in her bedroom, although that wasn’t too much of an improvement. Some parent. Pathetic.

  Eventually, Mark came out, Lily clinging to him like a koala, his stained raincoat folded into a pillow on his shoulder. Rachel sprang from her seat, but he pressed down with his hand and came to her. She wanted to rip her daughter from his arms – She’s mine, she’s MINE! – but it was as if she’d forfeited some primal right of motherhood. Why should she be the one to comfort her when she was the one to blame?

  Twenty minutes later, a junior doctor was stitching the wound. Rachel wept as the needle pierced the pink ridges of skin, crushed by the knowledge that whenever her daughter looked at the scar, she’d be reminded of her mother’s negligence. Lily sat on Mark’s lap as it was being done, shrugging off Rachel’s hand when she tried to place it on her shoulder, turning her head when she went to kiss her cheek.

  ‘She’s tired,’ Mark said after Lily was discharged, but the resigned look on his face told the real story. In her core, in her very being, Rachel was broken. It emanated from her like body odour, a pheromone of failure. She tried to cover it up, but if anyone stood too close, then sooner or later they got the stink of her real nature and couldn’t wait to get away. First her parents, now Mark and Lily, with every friend, colleague and acquaintance along the way. Who did she have left? No-one.

  She was alone.

  Always was, always will be.

  Back at Mark’s apartment, once he’d put Lily to bed, they stood together in the hallway. He asked Rachel to come and sit in the lounge, but she said she wasn’t stopping long. The place stank of dehydrated broccoli; he must have been steaming vegetables when he left and forgot to turn them off.

  ‘I’m not taking Lily away,’ Mark said. ‘It’s just until…’

  He left the words hanging. Until when? She sorted her head out? Until Griffin was gone? Until hell entered the next ice age? Rachel nodded, glumly rubbing at a bead of dried paint on the wall, lips bitten into her mouth to stop the tears. She didn’t want to be there. She didn’t want to be anywhere. She wanted to be blank and lost, to disappear completely.

  ‘Tell me you understand, Rach.’

  ‘I understand,’ she replied, but she couldn’t look at him.

  ‘It’s just after what you said. Yesterday…’

  Was that only yesterday? It seemed like a year ago. ‘It’s okay.’

  ‘I don’t want you to go home and dredge through everything and pull out some paranoia that I’m trying to steal Lily from you.’

  ‘I won’t.’

  ‘Right. Okay. Good. It’s a cut – fine. But if something else happened… Social services, you know?’

  Yes, she knew. She’d been trained to look for the signs, had seen child services come onto the ward to interview parents accused of neglect. With the superiority of the flipping ignorant, she’d assumed it would never happen to her.

  Mark put his hand on her shoulder. ‘Stay as well. Long as you like.’

  ‘What about your girlfriend?’

  ‘You’re still my friend. My best friend.’

  The kindness in his face cracked her defences, and she started to cry. ‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’

  ‘I wish you’d told me. You really think it’s Griffin?’

  ‘There’s no other explanation.’

  Wasn’t there? The unsaid hung between them like a ghost, chilling the air. Who was signed in as JustForYou when Griffin’s address appeared on paedo-hunter.net? Who was signed into Snapchat when that photo was sent to Konrad’s mates? Whose Insta account was Becca’s photo posted on? Wasn’t the simplest, most convincing, explanation for all of this that she was doing it to herself? That she’d hunted Alan Griffin in some mad amnesiac fugue and posted his address online. By day, a nurse and mother, by night a stalking self-destructive lunatic.

  ‘So what we going to do about it?’ Mark asked.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘The police.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘I know last time they–’

  ‘No, Mark. Please.’ She gripped her fingers guiltily, as though she’d given something away. ‘You don’t know the full story. He set up Konrad, made it look like he stole the money from my bank account.’

  ‘And you don’t think maybe…’

  She saw Konrad at her bedroom door, struggling to contain his tears. ‘It’s not him.’

  Mark shrugged out an okay, but she could see he wasn’t convinced. ‘Get some rest. Let’s talk in the morning.’

  What she wouldn’t give for a good night’s rest, to wake fresh and alert and ready to face the horror her life had become, but she knew it wouldn’t happen. She started for the door but stopped and tried for a smile. ‘Is it… you know, serious? With this girl?’

  ‘I think it just might be.’

  ‘I’m – I’m pleased. About time, eh?’

  He stepped towards her and they hugged again. ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘Maybe, you know. You’d like to meet her? When all this… you know…’

  ‘I’d like that.’

  ‘Oh, and Rach?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Eat something.’

  Spence was still at her place, as he said he’d be, eating chow mein from a silver foil tray. When she opened the door, he rushed to help her, taking her arm and encouraging her back to the sofa, as though she were an aged relative who’d been gone for hours without telling anyone.

  ‘How was it?’ he asked.

  The soy and ginger smell of his breath made her stomach spasm, and Rachel had to hold back a heave. She glanced at where it had happened, remembering the pool of blood on the blue carpet. Spence had scrubbed it into a faint rusty smear. Lily’s blood. Lily’s blood. There forever for her to see. Something seemed to give in Rachel’s mind, like the slats of a bed breaking beneath a mattress that had been jumped on too many times. She pitched forward and let out a wail.

  ‘It was a mistake,’ Spence murmured, rubbing her back. ‘People make mistakes.’

  ‘What kind of mistake scars your child?’

  ‘You’ve been under a lot of stress. It was–’

  ‘She’s better off away from me. I – I don’t want her turn-turning into me.’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with you. You’re amazing. You’re fabulous.’

  ‘I should have known the knife was there.’

  ‘It was an accident.’

  ‘An accident? An accident is when you trip on a curb, or spill your coffee down your front. An accident is when you put your whites and colours in the same wash. An accident is not when your child slices her hand open on a knife that you’ve left hidden around the house.’

  ‘It’s as much my fault. I was on my phone, I wasn’t watching.’ Spence nodded to his half-finished tray of noodles. ‘You want some food? I’ve chowed my last mein for today.’

  She shook her head. ‘My stomach’s off. I’ll have a glass of warm milk in bed.’

  ‘I’m worried about you.’

  ‘Please, don’t be.’

  ‘I’m not stupid, Rachel. You could carve up a supermodel’s face with those cheekbones.’

  ‘Listen, you go. I’ll be–’

  Spence shut her up with a sassy snap of his fingers. ‘Nu-uh, girl. Spence is stayin’.’

  ‘You really don’t–’

  ‘And if anyone comes knocking, I’ll give them a – hiya!’ He executed a set of mid-air chops. ‘Unless it’s a hot guy, in which case it might be hey ya!’

  She could see how hard he was working to cheer her up. How coul
d she be so selfish, keeping him here? He should be in Greece, sipping champagne from the dimple of some hot bloke’s bum cheek, not crashing on her cold sofa. ‘Have you spoken to Andreas? Have you explained–?’

  ‘Plenty of time to hear my latest love woes tomorrow, missy.’

  ‘Oh! Does that–?’

  Spence clapped his hands. ‘Bed – now. I’ll be up in five with your milk.’

  Rachel jolted awake in the dark. Someone had screamed.

  Lily? Where was Lily? Her mind sprinted back – oh God.

  The knife.

  Her baby’s blood.

  Rachel patted for the lamp on her nightstand. She probably woke herself with her own shrieking, like a soldier with PTSD. The bed felt solid, the sheets rough, fibrous. This wasn’t her bed. It was the floor. Whose floor? Had she been kidnapped? She rolled onto her front, groping in the dark, an electric fizz of fear going from her neck to her heels, until the back of her fingers rapped something wooden. She felt furniture, the leg of a dressing table, and groaned. It was her dressing table. She was on the floor of her bedroom. Okay, she got it now. She’d smashed herself unconscious with sleeping pills, climbed out of bed, and went for a crawl. As you do. If you’re deranged.

  Footsteps thumped up the stairs. The hallway light came on. Rachel scrabbled backwards, smacking her head on the radiator.

  ‘Rach – Rach!’

  ‘I’m here,’ she called, rubbing the back of her skull.

  The door opened. Spence stepped in, his silhouette facing the bed. ‘Rachel?’

  ‘Here,’ she replied, dragging herself up with the table.

  He felt around for the light and turned it on. ‘What are you doing down there?’

  ‘I don’t…’ she began, shielding her eyes, but then she saw his legs.

  Was she still dreaming? Stuck in a nightmare where you think you wake again and again but never actually do?

  It couldn’t be there, all that blood.

  Below his Mykonos T-shirt, past his grey checked hipster trunks, crimson rivulets ran from his thighs like a gory barcode. She opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out. This wasn’t real.

  ‘It’s okay, Rach. Stay calm. It looks worse than it is.’