by Nick Hollin
‘It can’t be you,’ she says softly, reaching out towards him, wanting to touch the side of his face, to at least feel a physical connection between them: the same connection she’d been searching for with all of those guys she’d slept with – guys like Nathan – that she’d let in and then pushed out before they could hurt her. ‘If it’s you, then there’s…’ she pauses, feeling the truth before saying it out loud, ‘nothing.’
Thirteen
Nathan hears the bedroom door lock. He’s lying on Katie’s bed, clothes on but loosened and handcuffs removed, having been half-carried all the way up from the car. He knows he shouldn’t have put her through that – another deception, another lie – but he can’t afford to have her asking questions, not until he’s figured out what is going on.
He’d managed to grab the landline handset while she was manoeuvring him past the sofa, then tossed it at a pile of dirty washing in the corner of the room. There’s a chance she’ll come searching for the phone in a couple of minutes, but there’s a better chance, given the state of the place, that she won’t notice at all. He moves over to the far side of the room carrying a pillow to muffle his voice. The number comes to him instantly despite it having been more than a year since he last dialled it. He remembers every word of that call, in particular the end, when he’d asked the other man not to worry about him and not to try and track him down. It was for the best, he’d said, and he’d truly believed it. Now he’s the one breaking the silence.
It rings several times before it’s answered with a tentative ‘hello?’ It’s only one word, but hearing it makes him want to cry. He responds with a choked-up ‘hello’, and then nothing more is said for at least a minute, just a silent acceptance that the connection has been made.
‘How’s Cornwall?’ he says eventually, summoning up the images that have comforted him before.
‘Sunny. How’s… wherever you are?’
‘The same.’
Another drawn-out silence, and then the conversation begins for real.
‘Are you okay?’ says the voice on the other end of the line.
‘I am,’ he says, trying to summon up a smile. From where he’s sitting, and peering past the pillow, he can make out a full-length mirror. He stares at his reflection, at a face he hasn’t confronted in more than a year, but it doesn’t feel like he’s looking at himself at all; it’s the man on the other end of the line who he hasn’t seen in… he starts to count back, seeing only swirling stripes, for so long his only way of keeping track of time.
‘Six years,’ comes the answer to the question he hadn’t asked out loud.
‘Almost exactly,’ he says, reminded of the perfect symmetry, and of his need to get back to Scotland in less than two days.
‘I was worried. I thought…’
‘Don’t,’ he says, firmly. ‘Don’t you ever think that.’
‘I took comfort in the fact that I would know if you had.’
‘What do you mean?’ Nathan breaks off and grabs at his wrist, nails scratching the hardened scar. He’d thought it was only him, another part of his madness that he’d never spoken about, never shared, never even dared to test these past few years for fear of being reminded of what he had lost.
‘Don’t you feel it too?’
‘Feel what?’ he says with a grimace, loathing the need to deny something so miraculous, so beautiful. But he has no choice, not now he knows the connection goes both ways. He needs to make the other doubt so that, when the two days are up and he is gone, there’ll be nothing missed, no clue at all. He waits for an explanation, or perhaps just confirmation that the possibility has been dismissed, but there’s silence at the other end of the line. Nathan speaks again, to break it before it breaks him. ‘Just know that I could never do what she did.’
‘That wasn’t what I was worried about, Nathan. I take it you’re still doing that stupid job?’
‘It’s not stupid,’ he snaps, surprised at his anger, defending a job he isn’t doing and has never done. ‘You know I’ve found my purpose.’
‘I don’t know anything. You never talk. You won’t even tell me why we can’t talk.’
‘It would put you at risk. I couldn’t bear it if anything happened to you.’
‘And yet, I have to live with that worry every single day?’ The sound of a sigh, sad and familiar. ‘Same old big bro.’
Nathan’s surprised how much it shakes him to hear himself described as brother. He’s tried for so long not to think of that word, to pretend that he doesn’t feel torn in half. The memories surface from time to time – he could never erase them entirely – but the good ones, the ones he can stomach, are restricted solely to his youth. And it’s to his youth he returns, to a phrase he’d said on a thousand occasions when something was wrong, something he didn’t want to have to explain, something he didn’t feel he needed to explain, not to his brother.
‘You’re supposed to understand.’
A momentary pause, followed by a deep inhalation, and he can picture that head dropping forward the way it had all those years ago when they’d both come to the realisation that this argument could not be won.
‘I do, Nathan, of course I do. But for the very same reason I know you’re not being true to yourself. This is not the life you want to lead.’
‘We can’t always do what we want.’ Another look in the mirror, and Nathan silently mouths: ‘Or be…’
‘You are acting, of course,’ says his brother.
Nathan feels a twist of panic, certain his brother has seen through his lies and read his intentions, that he understands it all.
‘Only, it’s not about good or bad reviews anymore,’ his brother continues. ‘This acting is life and death. Say the wrong thing, do the wrong thing, and it’s over. Isn’t that right?’
Nathan allows himself a shallow smile, content he’d been panicking for no reason before. His brother had not seen through his deception, just as he hadn’t for all those years they’d lived together, when Nathan had pretended to be okay; to be normal, to be the same.
‘I’m very careful,’ he says, eventually.
‘You were never that, big bro,’ says the other voice, so softly and warmly that it feels like he’s reached out and taken him in an embrace. ‘I know I have to accept your decision.’ He laughs, but it’s a sad laugh, the sort of laugh that tries desperately to distract from the horror of an associated memory. ‘I just thought we’d always be together.’
Nathan’s lips start to shape the sentence, but before he’s found the strength to share he hears it at the other end of the line.
‘So sorry to have left you alone.’
These words have power: they rob him of strength and breath, they carry him back in time. In an instant he’s picturing the kitchen table, broad, wooden and heavily scarred. In one corner is a photo of father and son; in the other a small sheet of paper with blue lines running horizontally and vertically. Soaking through the surface of that paper, written in the darkest, thickest ink, are the very words he’s just heard.
He shakes off the image, dragging himself back to the present. ‘You’re not alone, though, are you?’ he asks, while reaching out towards the mirror, fingers outstretched. They curl back towards him when he remembers the other reason for making this call. ‘You still have your wife?’
‘My wife?’ He hears a snort at the other end of the line. ‘Can you even remember her name?’
‘Of course,’ he says, desperately trawling through previous conversations, searching for descriptions of a life he’s only ever heard about in telephone calls. Once or twice he’d wondered about looking for further evidence online, to confirm that at least one of them was getting it right, but he feared, despite how careful he’d been covering his tracks from the very beginning, that in doing so he might somehow inspire his brother to do the same.
‘Your wife is called Karen,’ he says, finally dragging her name up from the depths. ‘And your son is Oliver. He must be two now, isn’t he?’
‘Almost three.’ The sadness returns to the other voice, and Nathan can feel the weight of it right at his core. ‘I’m afraid I still haven’t told him about his uncle. It just seems too hard to explain.’
‘I think one of us is more than enough for him,’ he says, again adding a tentative laugh. This time there’s no laughter back, and he curses himself for his clumsiness. Their conversations have grown increasingly awkward over the years. Sometimes it’s seemed like a crime against nature, to have taken something so perfect and torn it apart, but when he pictures the scene in Cornwall – the sun, the beach, the wife, the child – it’s enough to know such a life exists because of him, because he has been no part of it, because he made the choice to stay away.
‘I take it there’s no special person in your life, big bro?’
‘Sadly, no,’ he says. ‘For the very reason you and I are talking like this, not sharing a beer, not staring out at the sea.’
‘I thought maybe you could find yourself a nice policewoman, someone who understands that crazy world of yours?’
In wondering how his brother might know about Katie he arrives at a possibility far less troubling than the one that had inspired him to make the call. ‘You’ve not been talking to anyone, have you, trying to find out what I’m up to?’
‘You know I wouldn’t put you at risk like that.’
‘Not even an innocent conversation with a stranger, telling him about us, about what we’ve been through?’
‘Jesus, Nathan, I haven’t even dared speak to my wife about you!’
‘I’m sorry,’ says Nathan, reaching out towards the mirror again, imagining his hand resting on the other man’s shoulder and giving it a gentle squeeze. ‘If there was another way.’
‘Of course there’s another way! Trust me. Tell me where you are. Tell me who you are. Let me at least imagine your life.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Nathan says again. ‘I can’t yet.’
‘Yet?’ says his brother. ‘So, this isn’t for ever?’
‘Of course not,’ he says, staring down at the scars on his wrist. Wouldn’t it be easier to give in? To go and see him and his family and be a part of their lives? He shakes his head with such force he loses balance and knocks the nearby table where Katie has left him a glass of water. It wobbles and clinks against the metal upright of the bed lamp. He peers over the corner of the bed at the door, waiting to see the handle move, but instead he can just pick out the faint murmur of a television. ‘Listen, I’ve got to go now. But I need you to know—’
‘The same,’ says his brother. ‘Always the same.’
He lets the handset fall to the floor and with the last ounce of energy he can muster he climbs to his feet and falls sideways on the bed, burying his head into the hastily drawn sheets. Now he realises the true reason he had to make the call. It had nothing to do with the case, with answering a doubt that had evaporated the moment he’d heard his brother’s voice; the same way his agreeing to come down here with Katie has nothing to do with solving murders. He just needs to know that the people he cares about are going to be okay.
With Katie, he only needs to look around this room, a room that belongs to a completely different person to the one he left behind, to know that there’s plenty of work to do. He’d felt such guilt for having tricked her into believing he was coping, for putting on an act, but isn’t this proof she was doing the same? All those years he’d fed off her strength, off her control, off her order, and now…
* * *
He wakes in total darkness, unable to see a single thing around him, but he believes he can picture it: the closed blinds; the cracked ceiling above him; the swirling mural out on the stairway. The sheets under him certainly feel right, soaked in sweat and dragged up towards him from all directions. He rolls over, spreading out one arm to find the edge of the bed. He always likes to know how close he is to falling. Both of his wrists are sore, and his legs feel like they’ve run even further than usual. His head hurts, too, a dull pain on his jawline that sinks into his teeth. And he’s hungry. He’s often hungry, but this time he really does need to fill his stomach, and the exact meal has taken shape in his mind, a childhood favourite, straight out of the tin…
He sits up suddenly and throws himself at the edge he’s just found, not knowing where he’s going to land, just wanting to get into a corner, to get out of the way of a series of images that he desperately hopes are nothing more than the usual tricks of his mind. He falls against something hard, his forehead crashing into it, a flash of pain in the darkness. He dabs at the centre of that pain with his fingers, finding a wetness there. It could be sweat, but this feels thicker and warmer and it’s running down past his eye and across his cheek. Suddenly a click and a square of blinding light appears ahead of him. He turns his head away and lifts his hands to cover his face, the pain on his forehead now coming in frequent waves. The light is everywhere, and there’s a voice, distant but still far too close.
‘What are you doing?’ says a woman.
He has a name for that woman. He has a face, too, although he’s still refusing to look at it. And the rest he’s tried to push back, but it’s all crashing in, forcing him further and further into the corner.
‘What are you hiding from?’ she says.
His arms are tucked behind his back, and he can feel a numbness in his fingertips, like they’re no longer his, like he’s losing control.
‘The handcuffs,’ he says. ‘Please. Please I need them.’
‘No,’ she says firmly, refusing to move away.
If anything, she’s moving closer, so close he can feel her breath on his closed eyelids.
‘No more of this bullshit, Nathan. I think you heard me in the car yesterday. And I think you know it was the truth. If this doesn’t work, if we don’t work…’
He feels something being placed on his thighs, and when he opens his eyes his worst fear is confirmed. It’s a carving knife. He tries to push back, to make it slip away, but she’s pinning his legs down with her own and he can’t move.
‘We all have dark thoughts,’ she says. ‘I’ve had plenty of late. In fact, you only need to look around you,’ she pauses, as if waiting for him to do so, but he’s keeping his eyes shut tight. ‘Well, you don’t need to look, not you, not with your memory. You’ll have absorbed the whole place the moment you entered, and you’ll remember in impossible detail what my old place was like. Compare the two and you won’t need to do that special thing you do to get inside people’s minds. You’ll see how I’ve slipped, almost at the very same moment you did.’
Leaning forward an inch he’s managed to pull his arms free and they’ve fallen to his sides. He tells himself this is to ease the numbness in his fingers, which is getting worse. It’s so bad that he almost doesn’t feel those fingers being pulled back, but when he realises what she’s doing and what she’s referring to, he jerks his hand away and lets out a groan.
‘What was it about that case in particular, eh, Nathan?’
He can hear a sudden intake of breath, and feel her shifting her weight on his legs.
‘Not me,’ he says, reading her discomfort. ‘I would never… I could never…’
‘Then what the fuck are we doing here?’ she asks, this time shifting the position of the knife.
‘Steven Fish’s murder took me somewhere I hadn’t been before,’ he says, squeezing his eyes even more tightly shut. ‘I had no control. No limits.’ He’s gasping for breath now and pressing his back into the wall. ‘I only had a glimpse, but even so it was almost impossible to escape from that mind. And when I finally had, I knew I needed a way to escape from my own.’
‘Have you lost control?’ says Katie, moving forward again.
He shakes his head over and over.
‘I want to believe you,’ she says. ‘I need to believe you. But you kept things from me before. And I know you’re keeping things from me now.’
He opens his eyes wide, surprised by just how close she is. A
t least it gives him something to focus on, beyond the numbness in his hands and the position of that knife. ‘I have nothing to do with these murders,’ he says. ‘I swear to you.’
‘But you are keeping secrets,’ she says, holding his gaze without blinking. ‘Things we’ve seen have meant something to you.’
‘I haven’t killed anyone!’ he says, matching her stare. ‘You have to know that. Surely all you have to do is look into my eyes and you can tell? Jesus, Katie, you know me. What does your instinct say?’
‘It’s gone,’ she says, softly. She blinks and turns away, and he follows her, taking in the cigarette burns and empty wine bottles on the floor beside him.
‘How? What could make you doubt that gift, doubt all those years together, doubt who you are?’
‘It’s who you made me.’
‘Rubbish. I just gave you belief. Who’s taken it away?’
She opens her mouth and then closes it again, lifting the weight from his legs and snatching the knife.
‘I’m not the only one with secrets, then,’ he says. Now she’s moved he can see the phone where he’d tossed it onto the floor after speaking to his brother. Katie stands with her back to it, and he tries to kick a pile of dirty washing over it, but she turns just before it disappears.
‘You’ve called someone?’
‘No,’ he says, quickly. ‘But I think I was about to. I haven’t had a phone in more than a year, and for a long time before that I would never have had one by my bed because when I woke lost and confused in the night I would try and call home.’
