Close My Eyes

by Sophie McKenzie

  Lorcan and I look at each other, dumbstruck, then down at Morgan. She is perfectly still. Blood is seeping out of her chest . . . bright red against the blue carpet.

  I rush over. ‘Morgan?’

  Her eyelids flicker open and she fixes me with a triumphant look.

  ‘He’ll get you,’ she whispers. ‘I’ve made sure of it. He’ll get you both.’

  For a moment it’s still her, staring up at me – angry and brittle – and then her eyes lose their focus and their expression and suddenly she’s no longer inside her own body. Gone.

  Art sinks to his knees, the gun still in his hand. I look up, to see Ed standing in the doorway. More slow seconds pass. They feel like for ever. Then Ed draws in a huge breath and lets out an agonized wail.

  I’ve reached him before I knew I was going to move. I pull him towards me but he wriggles away, tearing across the kitchen. I can hear his footsteps crossing the hall. He’s running upstairs.

  I move to run after him, but Art grabs my arm.

  ‘Wait a minute, please,’ he urges.

  I look behind me. Lorcan is kneeling by Morgan’s body. He is holding her wrist, feeling for a pulse. His other hand is over her mouth, checking for breath. Blood is everywhere. He shakes his head. ‘She’s dead.’

  A wave of nausea surges through me. I close my eyes.

  ‘Gen?’ Art gives my arm a shake.

  I realize he’s been speaking. I haven’t taken in a word.

  ‘What?’ I stare at him blankly.

  Art sets the gun on the floor at his feet. ‘I’m leaving this here,’ he says. ‘It’s got my fingerprints all over it. Don’t touch it.’

  I nod.

  He turns to Lorcan. The two men stare at each other with untempered loathing.

  ‘Where’s Jared? How did you get away?’ Art asks.

  ‘I knocked him out,’ Lorcan says. ‘He’s outside, on the drive.’

  Art walks across the room to the French windows. As he unlocks the door, Lorcan looks up from Morgan’s body, eyes blazing. ‘Where are you going?’ he demands.

  ‘Jared might come round,’ Art says. ‘We need to make sure he doesn’t run off. I’m going to tie him up.’

  ‘Like hell you are,’ Lorcan snaps. ‘You’re not leaving this room.’

  Art steps back from the door. ‘We have to deal with Jared,’ he insists. There is a terrible pain in his eyes but I recognize the fixed set of his jaw . . . the determination in the press of his lips. ‘It’s the only way to keep Gen safe.’

  ‘You’re staying here,’ Lorcan stands up. ‘I’ll do it.’

  ‘No, listen.’ Art looks from Lorcan to me with desperate eyes. ‘I know where the rope is. I’ll come straight back.’

  ‘I don’t believe you,’ Lorcan says. He strides over to Art. The two men glare at each other, fists clenched.

  ‘I don’t care what you believe. I’m doing this for Gen,’ Art says.

  ‘I think you’ve lost the right to do anything for her.’ Lorcan moves closer. He and Art eyeball each other, neither one backing down.

  ‘Stop it. What about Ed?,’ I say, horribly aware that the little boy is upstairs somewhere, frightened and alone. ‘And we should call the police. Right now.’

  Lorcan gives Art a final glare. ‘Fine. I’ll stay with Gen.

  Art holds up his hands in a gesture somewhere between self-loathing and defeat, then he points to the gun that he left on the floor. ‘Call 999, Gen. Show them that. Tell them everything that happened. Except, there’s one thing you shouldn’t say.’

  ‘Oh, and what’s that?’ Lorcan demands.

  Art points to the knife, which Lorcan brought in from the kitchen. It’s lying a couple of metres away on the floor. ‘I’d wipe your fingerprints off that and put it back in the knife block in the kitchen.’

  Lorcan blinks. This was clearly the last thing he expected Art to say. ‘Right.’ He gets to his feet and strides into the kitchen, picking up the knife on the way. A second later I hear the tap running.

  A moment passes. I glance down at Morgan. She is still bleeding into the carpet. I cover my mouth with my hand.

  ‘Oh, Gen . . .’ Art says quietly. ‘If it has to be him, then make sure he looks after you. I know I have no right to ask you for anything, but please be careful.’

  His face is as haunted and unhappy as I’ve ever seen it, and yet behind his eyes I catch a glimpse of all the warmth and force of Art’s personality.

  I want to say something, but my feelings are too huge and too complicated to put into words. A part of me still loves Art. Will always love him.

  All I know for sure is how much wasted life is in this room right now.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Gen. Please tell Ed I love him.’ Art’s voice cracks, but before I can reply, he turns on his heel, flings open the French windows and walks out, into the darkness.

  I look down at Morgan again . . . at the dark pool of blood that now surrounds her body. I cross the toom to the phone and dial 999. I explain as calmly as I can that we need police and an ambulance as soon as possible.

  As I answer the operator’s questions Lorcan comes back into the room and puts his arms around me. I finish the call and let him hold me for a second. I want to close my eyes and shut out the sight of Morgan’s body . . . the desperation in Art’s expression . . . the terror of the little boy hiding from us upstairs . . . but I know that none of it will go away.

  And that it’s my job to face it all.

  And then I pull away and go in search of my son.

  A day passes. Then another. Before I can believe it, a week has gone by. A month. Two. Six. And my whole life has been turned upside down.

  Art was as good as his word. He tied Jared up, then came back to the house, just before the police arrived. We were all interviewed separately, of course, but I learned later that Art confessed everything immediately. He told the police the whole story – how he’d taken our baby and why – and how he’d witnessed Morgan kill Bernard O’Donnell. Dr Rodriguez managed to slip into the shadows and has so far escaped detection. I’m sure he’s living in luxury in some distant backwater – but I hope he spends the rest of his life looking over his shoulder.

  Jared admitted his involvement as soon as he discovered Morgan was dead. I didn’t see him, except in court, but it was clear he was too devastated by her death to try and cover his tracks. He pleaded guilty to the murders of Lucy O’Donnell and, years before, of Gary Bloode, the anaesthetist. He confessed he had mugged me and kidnapped Lorcan. The only thing he refused to admit was that Morgan had ordered him to kill me and Lorcan in the event of her death.

  For a long time Morgan’s final words, “He’ll get you both”, haunted me, permeating my dreams and jolting me from sleep with a pounding heart. But, six months on, no hitman has emerged from the shadows, and Jared himself is safely locked up for at least the next ten years.

  Art was arrested and charged with murder, later reduced to voluntary manslaughter. The statements Lorcan and I gave supported Art’s own account of what happened, so his sentence is less than it might have been. But he’s still in jail. He’s become a different person since he went inside – it’s not just the stoic resignation. He seems shrunken inside his prison clothes, a smaller man without his sharp suits and his iPhone, a permanent air of shame about him.

  In spite of my anger, I can’t help but feel sorry for him. After all, Art has lost virtually everything . . . not just his freedom, but his marriage, his home, his business and his reputation. Loxley Benson has been bought out by the board and Kyle is continuing to keep the company going, but I’m not sure it will survive. News of Ed’s existence and Art and Morgan’s incestuous liaison were never formally reported in the press. For Ed’s sake, I didn’t want Art prosecuted for taking him away from me, which meant many of the details were kept out of court. Nevertheless, the information has leaked and this, coupled with Art’s manslaughter conviction, has lost Loxley Benson half its clients already.

  Kyle vi
sits Art every week – and Tris and Perry have both been to see him a couple of times, but most of the board have turned their backs completely. I guess it’s hard to blame them. Art’s taken it badly. I mean, I know he deserves his punishment – and a lot of the time I’m still furious with him. But it’s hard to stay angry with a man whose destruction is so total and whose remorse so all-consuming. And Art is devastated. The only times I ever see him smile are when I take Ed to the prison for a visit.

  Ed himself has been my biggest worry – and my greatest help – in getting through the past six months. As I write, he’s playing with a stick in the back garden, pretend-shooting at the flowers. I worry that he spends too much time playing guns. Of course, he didn’t see the shooting itself. But he heard it, and he saw Morgan afterwards and he knows that she – his mother for nearly eight years – is dead. The child psychologist says his obsession with guns is probably just a normal developmental phase. We haven’t told Ed that it was his father who shot Morgan. There’s no need for him to know that now, but I worry that, as he gets older, it will be impossible to protect him from the information. Many of the details, including plenty of inaccurate ones – are on the Internet. And all the official newspaper stories name Art as Morgan’s killer, with headlines like: ‘Trials Guru on Trial for Manslaughter’. Ed’s had so much to deal with already. Not just losing Morgan and having to visit his father in jail, but being taken into care while the DNA test that backed up my story came through.

  Social services allowed me to take him home after a few days. He didn’t speak for a week and there are still times when he curls up under the duvet and refuses to come out. I worry that it’s not just how Morgan died that will damage him, but that he’s inherited my own dad’s obsessive, depressive nature as well. The child psychologist is hopeful. Ed’s been seeing her for a few months now. She recommends he should start school again as soon as possible. It will be a new school, though, just as this is a new home for him. I thought long and hard about it, but having weighed up the pros and cons of letting him stay in Shepton Longchamp or start a completely new life here, it had to be here.

  One of the first things Ed did was ask what to call me. The psychologist explained to him – with me alongside – that I was his birth mummy, but Ed hasn’t so far used those words. Which is fine. I don’t want to push him.

  I’m trying to mend bridges with Hen. I still wish that she and Art had told me sooner about him lending her all that money, but in the context of everything I’ve learned since, it doesn’t seem all that important. Hen’s busy with her new baby now, of course, but most of my other friends have been great, bringing their own kids round to play with Ed – not that he has really engaged with them yet, he’s always so wrapped up in his own head – then staying on when the children are in bed, and listening to me talk over a bottle of red wine.

  I’ve given up all my teaching commitments so I can be at home for Ed. Charlotte West called a few times, asking if we could meet for private sessions and hinting she’d like to visit Art in prison, but I ignored the calls and eventually she stopped ringing and texting.

  At least money isn’t a problem, thanks to Art. He has signed everything he can over to me and isn’t fighting the divorce, which I’ve already set in motion.

  I sit back from the kitchen table and close my laptop. I can see Ed through the window. He’s poking his stick at the ground now, spearing something on the end. His little face is screwed up with concentration.

  Having him with me is a million times more challenging than I could ever have imagined. And yet he makes sense of everything – as if nothing was in its right place when I had lost him. And now that he is found, I have found myself again too.

  The best proof of this, to me, is that I’m writing again. I’m writing about finding Ed – just to get the whole story out of me . . . I feel hopeful that, once I’ve done this, I’ll be able to write fiction again.

  Lorcan thinks I will. We’ve spent a lot of time together recently, though not here – and not with Ed. There’ll be time enough for that in the future. Anyway, Lorcan’s back in Ireland now. I could have taken Ed and gone too, but that wouldn’t have been fair. Ed needs time to get used to being with me here, just as Lorcan and I need time to find out if we have a future. We both know that coming together in the white heat of my search for Ed skewed everything. It’s funny . . . though no relationship that starts like ours did should work, I can’t help but believe ours will.

  Ed is still outside. I get up from the table and wander over to the sink to make him a drink. Now, where I once stored Arts and Crafts china, I have a stash of plastic cups and bowls. I’m still getting my head round it. This is what I wanted, after all.

  My son, my child, my holy grail.

  I stand by the sink, running the tap, letting it become real.

  Today is three years exactly since Mummy died. They don’t know I know this but I do, just like they don’t know I saw it but I did.

  I am nearly eleven. Soon I’ll be at secondary school. I saw my dad last night at visiting time. He was happy because he’ll be out of prison soon and I pretended to smile at him like always but inside I’m still following Mummy’s Special Fighting Plan. I even know where I’ll get the gun. Darren Matthews’s older brother told me. He says he knows a gang in Archway where you can weapon-up for like a few hundred quid. I’ll steal that off Geniver, no problem. Yeah, Geniver. She wants me to call her ‘Mum’. So do all the social workers and psychologists, I can tell. But it’s her fault Mummy died. So she’s just Geniver. I don’t care whether she likes it or not.

  All I care about is what Mummy told me before she died. Because it all came true. She said the Bad Lady was coming and she did. She said the Bad Lady would say she was my real mum and that she would have papers and test results and lawyers that would look like they proved it but that, whatever happened, I should never forget Mummy was my real mum because she loved me the most.

  I am just waiting for Dad to get out of prison. No one at school knows he’s there, I don’t even know if the teachers know. It doesn’t matter. When he’s free I will get him. And I will get her. And Mummy will see. I know she is watching me. Watching me right now. Waiting.

  Mummy told me I had to be her brave knight. She said that if anything happened to either of us, then I had to find a way to pay back whoever did it.

  That was the first thing. She said I must never forget it.

  The second thing was that I must not let her down.

  I won’t. I will get the gun soon. I make my promise to Mummy every night before I go to sleep.

  I will be your knight.

  I will pay them back.

  I won’t let you down, Mummy. I won’t let you down.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  If books were babies, then Close My Eyes would have had many midwives. I’m deeply grateful to early readers Dana Bate – a wonderful author in her own right – Roger Bate, Philippa Makepeace, Eoin McCarthy and Jodie Marsh, who all helped when the book was at an embryonic stage.

  My thanks to Sarah Ballard at United, who kept faith with the story as it developed and to the team at Simon and Schuster UK for their fantastic support all the way.

  Thank you also to Zoe Pagnamenta and to everyone at St Martin’s Press in the US for taking on my book with such enthusiasm. I’m especially grateful to Jennifer Weis, who brought a fresh pair of eyes to the story, offering some excellent advice as it neared completion.

  And, finally, a massive thank you to Maxine Hitchcock, for not only having the most brilliant insights but always communicating them in the most encouraging and helpful ways.

  Close My Eyes

  by Sophie McKenzie

  Reading Group Questions

  Close My Eyes Reading Group Guide

  1 One of the things which makes this novel work so well is the way the author gives us several possibilities, all equally credible, as to what might have happened to Geniver’s baby. Discuss how this is achieved.

  2 W
hich option is the one you are most inclined to believe until you find out the truth at the end of the novel?

  3 As Geniver is a first-person narrator, we experience everything from her perspective. How does this bias your perception of people and situations from the beginning? Does it ever make you doubt her decisions?

  4 There are multiple clues throughout the novel that point towards the several big reveals at the end. Do you think these are intentionally placed as hints or are they meant to further the paranoia and sense of unreliable perceptions?

  5 When we first meet Lorcan he comes across as charming but untrustworthy. By the end of the novel his true character is revealed. Discuss his role in this novel.

  6 A well-respected businessman who clearly adores his wife, how does your opinion of Art change during the course of the novel? How does the author achieve this?

  7 The child’s narrative that intersperses the story is a mystery until the very end. Who did you think it was? Discuss how the reveal of the child’s identity and his specific loyalties change the way you think about the novel.

  8 Throughout the novel there is an underlying tension and sense of paranoia. How does the author create this?

  9 Both Morgan and Art are severely affected by their childhood relationships with their late father. How much does this early trauma contribute to their life decisions and personalities? Does the knowledge of their difficult childhoods make you more understanding of their adult actions?

  10 What about Gen? Do her memories of her late father influence her actions in any way?

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