MR. TOURVILLE WAS red-faced and portly. His wig was crooked and seemed about to slide off as he wiped his brow. Doleman’s pale eyes were glued to the back of his would-be savior, who was passing around a newspaper clipping.
Carlotta Lockyer was sitting on dandelion-covered grass that matched her eyes. She was wearing faded bell-bottom jeans, trainers, and a floaty purple blouse. Her blond hair was loose, skimming her shoulders, pushed behind her ears. Her pretty chin was tucked toward her chest as she looked up at the camera. Squinting in the soft spring sunshine and frowning slightly, she was sad and brave at once, as if newly serious after a sobering close call—not the image Clarissa would have thought Mr. Tourville wanted to publicize.
She took in the headline—Young Woman’s Escape from Evil Sex Murderer.
She scanned for the date—nearly three years ago, in late April.
She read the caption beneath the photo—Carlotta Lockyer, above, was nearly Randolph Mowbray’s victim.
Then she began the article itself.
Party girl Carlotta Lockyer only narrowly avoided the fate of Rachel Hervey, 19, who was murdered last August by deranged sex beast Randolph Mowbray, 26. Pretty Carlotta, 25, met the sadistic rapist and killer at a London nightclub. She admits that she found the calculating, vain, and devious Mowbray charming. “It embarrasses and terrifies me when I think how easily I agreed to visit him, but I got ill at the last minute and couldn’t go. I learned afterward that that was the weekend he killed that girl. It could have been me.”
Mowbray, who was writing a PhD thesis about serial killers in literature, had been obsessed with Rachel for several months before he raped, tortured, and strangled her. He then hid her body under the floorboards of his house, where it lay undiscovered for ten days. The English undergraduate’s disappearance sparked a national search and a televised reconstruction of her last known movements. During the five-week trial, the family’s harrowing ordeal was made worse by Mowbray’s wholly false allegation that Rachel had sought him out for a consensual kinky sex game that he claimed had then gone wrong and led to her accidental death.
Detective Superintendent Ian Mathieson described the case as “one of the most horrific and tragic things I’ve ever had to deal with in a 35-year career. The life of a talented and beautiful young woman was viciously stolen by Mowbray’s particularly brutal and distressing crime. Rachel’s last moments were of darkness and terror and pain.”
“MISS LOCKYER’S A trouble magnet,” Annie whispered.
Clarissa nodded, though she hardly heard Annie. She remembered reading about the case at the time. There’d been something in Mowbray’s trial about how Rachel had complained to the police about him a few weeks before she went missing, but she didn’t have enough evidence for them to do anything.
Darkness and terror and pain.
She wanted to cry. She was picturing Rachel’s bruised and bloodied body beneath floorboards, her parents frantic, praying against hope for her safe return.
Mr. Tourville glared at Miss Lockyer. “You sold your story and your picture to a national newspaper.”
“They didn’t pay me a penny. I came that close”—she pinched her thumb and index finger together to demonstrate—“to that boy murdering me.”
“You exploited the tragic rape and murder of Rachel Hervey in order to feed your love of attention.”
“I never wanted that sort of attention. I hated the way they wrote about me. It wasn’t fair. They twisted everything.”
“You say you’d been raped. The other men were in the next room while this was supposedly happening. Why didn’t you scream for help? Fight back?”
“They were holding me down. Doleman threatened me with a knife. And the other men were hardly likely to come to my rescue, were they?”
“Please. You know there was no knife. You asked for it. You were lying back and enjoying it.” His delivery was so crude and venomous Clarissa couldn’t quite believe what she’d heard.
“No.” It was sob more than language.
Mr. Tourville returned Miss Lockyer’s outraged stare without flinching, puffing up his chest and setting his weight more squarely on his feet, as if he had just said something very brave when nobody else had dared.
SHE COULD HEAR Rafe’s voice, playing over and over again in her head, as she sat in the waiting room. You were crazy with passion for me, Clarissa. You were out of control, the way you responded, the things you begged me to do to you. You wanted me. You were lying back and enjoying it.
“Clarissa?” She felt a light touch on her shoulder and looked up at Annie. “Time to go home.” The others were rising to follow the usher downstairs. It was only two thirty, but they were being let out early so the judge could conduct court business.
Robert peered at her. “You don’t look well. Are you well?”
“Fine.” She tried to smile. “Just sleepy.”
“Take a long walk this afternoon,” he said. “Get some fresh air. We don’t get many chances for that these days.”
“Yes,” she said. “I think I will.”
Tuesday, February 10, 4:30 p.m.
I dump my things in my flat as soon as I’m back. Quickly, I pull on two pairs of wool socks and my wellies. I walk straight out the door again, still bundled in my coat and hat and mittens.
I can’t help but check up and down my street. There is no sign of you anywhere, which is just as it should be. I happen to know you’re trapped in London at a postgraduate English conference—it’s one of the perks of my job that Gary had me book you into it.
I need to be in a place I can think, one of the places I love best. I need to pretend that killers only torture women and hide their bodies beneath floorboards in the newspapers. Not in real life. I need to pretend that it is normal to go for a walk in the late afternoon, even if the sky is already starting to darken. If I pretend all of this hard enough, it might become true.
I walk as briskly as I dare on the icy pavements until I reach the park.
The park is round. I think of it as a giant watch face. The black iron gates marking the main entrance are in the six o’clock position. I go through them and move clockwise, in the direction of nine o’clock, keeping to the road that rims the park’s circumference. I always imagine the clock’s twelve numbers spaced along this road, and measure my location against them at any given point. The road encircles the huge island of grass at the park’s center. The grass is covered thickly in snow, too difficult to trudge through.
I have reached eight o’clock. To my left is the path along the cliff. Below it is a steeply sloping forest and my favorite view of Bath. The Abbey will soon be bathed in blue light.
They have gritted the road, so I can move quickly, enjoying my blood pumping and the quiet wind in my face. It is peaceful here, unearthly in the twilight. A child would think the mound of snow-coated grass was an enchanted realm. All I can hear is the crunch, crunch, crunch of my boots on dry sticks. The park seems to be my private garden; the cold is keeping everyone else indoors.
I am at twelve o’clock, halfway around, as far away from the park entrance as I can be. In the empty children’s playground, a swing creaks gently, as if pushed by a ghost.
That is when you appear.
“Hello, Clarissa.”
I am completely frozen.
“I wasn’t feeling well. I had to give the conference a miss.”
For several seconds I forget to breathe.
“I said I wasn’t feeling well, Clarissa. Don’t you care? Aren’t you concerned?”
I put my hands on my ears and press hard to make myself think.
“You disappoint me.” You shake your head sadly. “I stopped by your house. But I saw you walking toward the park.”
You must be so skilled at following, close enough to keep me in sight without my guessing you are there. I had no idea. I didn’t see. I didn’t hear.
“I thought I’d lost you for a minute. You disappeared, but I found you.”
You
always find me. Always. When do you ever not find me? And this time it’s my fault. All mine. All because I gave in to that stupid impulse not to let my fear of you imprison me.
Reclaim the night. That idea was so important to me and Rowena when we were at university. We went on marches, thinking of the women who did that in the 1970s. We were wrong. They were wrong. It’s not even night yet, but it soon will be, and I shouldn’t have come here. I shouldn’t have tried to disregard that fear of dark places. I must never let myself disregard that fear again.
I consider leaving the road to cut in a straight line across the disc of grass, the most direct way out, but it’s a ridiculous idea. The snowdrifts are too high—it will take forever—and there are too many trees and bushes, casting their shadows. I will not let myself be lured from the path like Little Red Riding Hood. I understand all too well the lessons those stories teach.
“My car’s parked over there.” Out of the corner of my eye I see you gesture toward three o’clock. “I can give you a lift.”
The proposal is so absurd I ought to laugh, except that I’m growing way too dizzy to find it funny.
“I’m trying to be nice after yesterday, Clarissa. After all the days. After all of your insults and slights. But you don’t make it easy.”
Just leave me alone. That’s all I want from you.
Did you not hear me say that?
“I need you to tell me that you forgive me for what I said yesterday, Clarissa. You know I didn’t mean it, calling you that. I was angry. And you were very provoking.”
I will never forgive you.
What about that? Clearly that didn’t go in either. Which is why the leaflets are right, and speaking to you—even a tiny bit—is absolutely the wrong thing to do.
I’m looking ahead and moving counterclockwise as fast as I can. I’m wondering if I am going to get out of this at all, but I can’t afford to think like that; I try to tell myself I’m overreacting. I’m only at eleven thirty, still five minutes’ walk from the black iron gates at six o’clock, but I retrace my steps along the loop the way I came. I’m not letting you get me anywhere near your car.
“You had your period last week, didn’t you?”
I can’t stop myself glancing up at you, briefly. You’re smiling like a smug detective with a valuable secret source. I don’t say, How can you know that? But I’m thinking it.
“I know you, Clarissa. I know you better than anyone knows you. That’s why you were in such a bad mood, isn’t it? That’s why you lied to me that you were sick. That’s why you ruined our evening at the restaurant. That’s why you stood me up at the theater. It was your hormones. I’m trying to forgive you for how you’ve been treating me. I’m trying to understand.”
Despite the salt on the road, I nearly lose my footing, and when you move toward me, I lurch out of your reach.
“I only wanted to help. You could have fallen and hurt yourself.”
And whose fault would that have been?
“You don’t need those leaflets from the stalker organizations, Clarissa. You know that’s not what this is.”
How can you possibly know about the leaflets? But again I manage to keep the words in. I see, too, how hopeless it would be to argue with you. You’ve actually said the name of the thing you are and you don’t even recognize yourself.
Three-quarters of female victims know their stalker. The leaflets say that too. I wish I didn’t know you.
I continue to move along the road. I haven’t got far. Only back to eleven o’clock. I scan hopelessly for CCTV cameras, but there doesn’t seem to be a single one.
“You wanted me to find you here, didn’t you? You wanted me to follow you.”
I consider screaming, but there’s nobody around to hear and I’m not sure my voice will work.
“I like your new perfume, Clarissa.”
Surely it’s faded to nothing since I sprayed it this morning. I only used a little. Behind my ears. The nape of my neck. Just as my mother taught me. Never overdo it, she always says.
“Gardenia. You’re wearing it now, aren’t you?”
Since when are you so expert that you can identify perfumes?
“Come to my car and talk to me where it’s warm.”
Walk fast Walk fast Walk fast.
“I’ll put the heating on.”
Faster Faster Faster. Don’t slip Don’t slip Don’t slip.
“We’re going the wrong way.”
And with that you grab my hand. I feel it before I see it since I’m refusing to look at you as I continue toward the black iron gates.
“I tried to make you see sense, Clarissa, but you won’t.”
I try to snatch my hand away, but you grasp it more tightly, and that’s when I notice that you are wearing fitted leather gloves.
“We do it my way now.”
Somehow I register that I’ve never seen you in gloves before, and my stomach does a full tumble. I look around wildly, but the park is still deserted. I tell you to let go of me, you have no right, to let go of me at once, but nothing I say or do makes you release me.
“Please walk with me, Clarissa. We can talk. We need to talk.”
You’ve managed to pull me a few feet. The way I don’t want to go.
“How are your parents?”
You speak as if you’d met them, as if we were taking a happy stroll and chatting like close friends, as if you weren’t dragging me by force, as if you think you can make this normal by talking about normal things. If it weren’t so awful it would be comical.
“I didn’t realize they had a sea view.”
That’s when it hits me. That’s when I see how you have learned these things.
You must have crept up to my house early on Friday morning and stolen the black bag full of my rubbish, including my used sanitary towels.
Freaky creep.
You must have taken the contents of my recycling box, too—the return envelope with the stalker organization’s logo, the brown parcel paper with my parents’ return address and Brighton postcode, the receipt for the perfume.
The most ordinary things that people do all the time. Meeting a friend for dinner is no longer possible for me. Putting the rubbish out is something I can no longer take for granted. Do you want me to know it? Or are you so out of control you don’t see that you are showing your hand, alerting me to your covert intelligence tactics?
You’ve got me back to twelve o’clock.
“I just want to take you home, Clarissa,” you say.
“With me,” you say.
“Back to my place,” you say.
“Just to spend time with you,” you say.
“That’s the only thing I want,” you say, “the only thing I ever want.”
“I’ll cook you dinner,” you say.
“I know you’re not sleeping lately. You’ll sleep beautifully if you’re with me all night,” you say, and I realize you must have found the discarded container for the sleeping pills in my rubbish, too.
“The sun’s nearly gone. You’re not safe on your own in the park after dark,” you say, and I can’t help but be amazed that there isn’t even a hint of irony in your voice.
You’re towing me faster, clutching my hand and wrist in both of your hands, and you’ve got me to one o’clock.
Why didn’t you scream for help? Fight back?
My heart is thump-thump-thumping so furiously I don’t know how it manages to keep going, and my nose is running, and my scalp is tingling as if tiny electric shocks are falling on it from the sky. But I can’t let you get me into your car. At any cost I must stop that happening.
I make another violent effort to break free.
“You asked for it.” You yank my arm so hard I cry out.
You asked for it.
You smash me against you, knocking the wind out of me. You pin my arms behind my back with one of yours, hooking one of your legs behind me, too, to stop me struggling or moving. From afar, we must look like lovers.
“I like having you in my arms this way, Clarissa.”
I am entirely alone here. The leaflets are more useless than ever.
“This is all your fault, Clarissa.”
Your breath is in my face. It doesn’t smell like toothpaste this time. It’s the sour bacteria breath a person gets before a sore throat comes on and I start to gag. I try to turn my head, but you squeeze your other hand around the back of my neck so I can’t.
“You left me no choice, Clarissa.”
My hat has fallen off. Your lips are against my ear. You’re biting the lobe.
I consider letting myself go limp, thinking that then maybe you won’t be able to hold me up. Dragging a limp weight isn’t easy. Robert told me that this morning during one of the breaks. But I realize that even if Robert’s right, I don’t want to be on the ground. I don’t want to think about what you might do if I were on the ground. Staying on my feet is crucial.
“If you keep running away, if you keep avoiding me, what do you expect?” You pause for a few seconds before saying my name again, and this time it comes out like a groan.
Anyone could do violence, Clarissa. I promise you could, too, if you needed to.
I know that Robert is right, and I would do great violence to you if I could. But a physical fight is not going to get me out of this one. I can’t beat you that way. I can’t damage you. I can’t run faster than you. Right now you’re making sure that I can’t even move at all.
My only chance is with words. And tricks. And luck. I think I can pull off the first two, but the third is not in my control.
I say, “I’ll go with you.”
Your lips are on my forehead. They are wet.
I say, “I’ll come with you to your car, but please let go of me.”
Your lips are against mine. “Really?”
“Yes,” I say. “But you’re hurting me.”
“But you like that. I know your darkest secrets, Clarissa. I know your hidden talents.”
“I don’t like being hurt. I really don’t. Please stop.”
You run your tongue over my lips.
The Book of You: A Novel Page 8
