The Judas Scar

by Amanda Jennings

  ‘It’s at its best at dawn.’

  ‘How long have you lived here?’

  ‘I bought it after my wife died. I couldn’t sleep in our house without her so I sold it and bought this.’ He smiled at her. ‘Can I get you a drink?’

  ‘No, thank you.’

  She turned around and looked at the room itself. The walls were brilliant white with abstract paintings in muted black and greys. The floor was polished concrete with a high sheen in a swirl of charcoal greys. There were no rugs to soften the effect and the furniture was sparse: a large white corner sofa, a glass coffee table and a couple of Sixties-style chrome-and-black leather seats. There was a stainless steel kitchen area with an ornate faceted metal ceiling light that hung over the island unit and a solid steel-and-glass dining table to one side. The whole place was spotless – no clutter or books, no ornaments, nothing on the kitchen surfaces apart from an expensive-looking coffee machine. She tried to keep herself relaxed, but as she looked around the sterile, soulless room, she felt her skin begin to prickle with unease.

  He told her to sit down so she did, perched on the edge of the sofa, knees pressed tightly together, hands in her lap. She watched him open the fridge and get out a bottle of champagne.

  ‘I don’t want a drink, thank you.’

  ‘Just a small glass?’

  ‘No.’

  He popped the cork on the champagne anyway and the noise echoed. He poured himself a glass then put some music on. Her mouth and throat felt dry as she began to worry how vulnerable she was. She was painfully aware now that nobody knew where she was, and as she looked out of the huge window in front of her and the far-reaching views over London her head started to spin as if she had vertigo.

  ‘I thought I made it clear this was over. That anything we had was finished,’ she said as he sat down beside her. Too close. His knee touching hers. She pulled herself away. ‘You can’t call me, or text or email.’

  ‘I don’t have a choice.’ Suddenly there was a dark desperation about him; his eyes flicked back and forth over her face as if searching for something.

  ‘Of course you do.’ She was aware that her breathing had become quick and shallow. She tried to take a fuller breath to calm herself. ‘Luke, listen to me. I made a mistake. I was in a bad place and I should have been stronger.’

  ‘There are no such things as mistakes. There are things you do and things you don’t do. You need to recognise that what you and I have is important.’

  ‘You and I have nothing, Luke.’

  ‘No, we have a connection.’

  ‘We don’t have a connection, for God’s sake!’ she said with exasperation. ‘We had sex against a wall and on a grubby floor in a damp lock-up.’

  Luke reached out and took hold of her arm below her elbow.

  ‘Leave him.’

  ‘Christ,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘You really mean that, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But you don’t even know me!’

  He stared at her, his face blank, his mind turning over. ‘Come with me,’ he said, leaning forward to put his glass on the coffee table then standing.

  He walked away from her and disappeared into another room.

  ‘Luke?’ she called after him. He didn’t answer her. She swore quietly and then followed him to the doorway. ‘I don’t understa–’

  She stopped speaking and stared, trying to process what she saw. It was another large white-walled room with a neatly made bed and a bedside table with nothing on it but a stainless steel lamp and a photo frame. But above the bed, hanging on the wall, was a large canvas, a photograph. A photograph of her.

  ‘Where did you get that?’ she breathed, her eyes fixed on the picture.

  The canvas was at least a metre in width and half a metre high; it was the photo Will had taken on their wedding night on one of the disposable cameras they’d put out for their friends. It was one of Will’s favourites. He’d taken it just after they’d made love. She stared at it, mesmerised, fear mounting with every breath she took. As she stepped closer she saw the photo frame by the bed also had a picture of her. She walked over and picked it up. It was her profile picture from Facebook.

  Luke leant against the wall. His arms were crossed, his eyes dead, mouth set. She noticed to the left of him there was a chest of drawers and on it were a dozen or so more photographs.

  All of them were of her or Will.

  A cold sweat crept over her body. One of the pictures showed her walking down the steps at work. It was winter, and there was a thin layer of snow on the ground. She wore a woollen hat and gloves and her long navy trench coat. The quality of the picture was grainy, as if it had been enlarged.

  ‘You photographed me?’ she whispered.

  She looked back at the canvas above his bed, the face of a young woman so besotted with her new husband, the scent of their love fresh on her skin, her eyes full of him. She heard his voice telling her to smile, laughing as he stroked his hand down the inside of her thigh, telling her he loved her, that he would always love her.

  Oh, Will, she thought. I’ve been so stupid.

  She picked up the smaller version of it, the one in a silver frame on the chest of drawers. ‘You took this from our flat.’

  ‘Yes, when I came for dinner and you went to talk to him in the kitchen.’ There was an eerie flatness to his voice that startled her.

  ‘But … but why … ’ she stuttered. ‘Why have you got these?’

  ‘He’ll hurt you, Harmony. I’ve come to save you from him.’ She pushed her fingers against her temples and moved them in small circles, trying to relieve the pressure that was building. She looked back at the photographs. Looked at the ones of Will. Will walking into the wine shop. Will laughing in a café, the picture taken from outside on the street. Will opening their car door. Then she noticed a yellowed Polaroid tucked into the frame of another photo. Two boys, about thirteen or fourteen, both in short-sleeved shirts and grey shorts, school ties loosened at the neck, arms looped around each other’s shoulders, matching grins on their faces from ear to ear. One of the boys she recognised immediately – her husband, his crop of white-blonde unruly hair catching the sunlight, his ruddy cheeks smeared with dirt, that smile of his luminescent even then. The other boy was skinny with clear, pale skin, shorter than Will, his good looks feminine, with high chiselled cheekbones and delicate pink lips. They were outside on a games field, rugby posts in the background, other boys sitting about on the grass behind them, talking, watching sport, picking at blades of grass. She put the Polaroid back and then cast her eyes over the pictures of her husband. She heard Will’s voice, the desperate anguish as he’d stood up from the dinner table and asked why Luke had come, the look on his face at that lunch when Luke had walked through the French windows, a mix of alarm and distress. It was as if a blindfold was removed from her eyes.

  ‘This isn’t about me, is it?’ she said then. ‘It’s about Will.’

  ‘It was. At the beginning. But then I fell in love with you. I didn’t expect to but I did. You gave me hope.’

  ‘I don’t understand … ’ Her words drifted to nothing as she tried to untangle her thoughts, went back over everything that had happened, every conversation, every look, trying to work out how she hadn’t seen any of this.

  ‘We argued the night she died.’ He leant his head back against the wall, closed his eyes. Harmony noticed his fists were clenched.

  ‘She told me I was impossible to live with, that my head was too messed up. She wanted to leave me.’ He turned his head to look at Harmony. ‘She was pregnant,’ he said. ‘Eight months pregnant with our daughter when she died. I lost them both. I lost everything.’

  Harmony felt her stomach turn over. She tried to swallow. ‘But none of it is Will’s fault,’ she managed to whisper.

  ‘It’s all his fault. Will lives a life he doesn’t deserve.’ Luke pushed himself off the wall and walked towards her. ‘He doesn’t deserve you. He doesn’t dese
rve your love.’ He smiled at her then, a smile that made her flinch, it was so out of place. ‘I lied when I said I didn’t believe in love,’ he said. ‘Love is all we have.’ He lifted his hand to stroke the side of her face and she recoiled from his touch. ‘I can give you the love you need, Harmony. I’ll be there for you in a way he never can be. Love will be our salvation.’

  ‘You need help, Luke,’ she said. ‘There is no us. I don’t love you. It was never even close to love. I don’t even know you.’ She shook her head with incredulity. ‘It was sex. Just sex, for God’s sake.’

  She turned on her heel and walked out of the bedroom, back into the living room.

  ‘So, that’s what you are?’ he suddenly shouted, following her. He grabbed her arm, his fingers digging into her. He yanked her around to face him and she saw his eyes had turned cold and hard.

  ‘That’s what you are? Some cheap dirty whore who has sex with men she doesn’t know?’ His lips curled into a sneer and his eyes grew wide. ‘You’re a fucking whore?’

  His venomous words, piercing and angry, cut into her like a blade. She stared at him, trying to speak, but she couldn’t form any words. She felt her eyes begin to well with tears. Don’t cry, she told herself. Stay strong. Don’t cry.

  ‘Is that what you do? You go around flirting with men, seducing them, leading them on?’ His rage grew with every syllable.

  ‘Let go of me, Luke—’

  ‘Is this a game to you?’ He dragged her towards the coffee table and bent to pick up the bottle of champagne. ‘The drinks? The flirtatious glances? The fiddling with your fucking necklace while you flutter your eyelashes?’ He lifted the bottle close to her face, pushed the icy glass, wet with condensation, against her cheek.

  Adrenalin pumped around her, she flicked her eyes towards the door, wondered if anyone would hear her if she called out.

  ‘You think this is a game?’ he repeated.

  ‘Of course it’s not a game,’ Harmony said in a whisper. She swallowed and leant backwards away from him. Everything in her body screamed at her to run. ‘You’re scaring me. Please put the bottle down. It’s not a game. I don’t think that. I—’

  ‘Be quiet!’ he shouted.

  He drew his arm back and for a moment she thought he might bring the bottle down against her, but instead he hurled it hard against the wall. It smashed loudly, broken bottle and champagne spilling down the wall and onto the polished concrete floor where it made a pool of fizzing liquid and shattered glass.

  Harmony watched, terrified, as his hands flew to his face, his fingers clawing his scalp, again and again. He cried out as if he’d been wounded then dropped to the floor, crouching, bouncing on the balls of his feet. Then his rage began to fade and he folded his arms over his head as if sheltering from falling debris. She stood frozen to the spot and stared at Luke who was shaking, cowering on the floor in front of her, battling the demons that fought inside him.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she managed to whisper, her heart hammering with fear, knees feeling like they might buckle at any moment. ‘It’s not Will’s fault, it’s mine. Whatever happened back then, he was just a child. But I’m not and I shouldn’t have let this happen. Luke, he was just a child.’

  Luke lifted his head, his face drained of colour, drained of fight. ‘We were all just children.’

  Then he turned his face away from her, stared out of the window, his eyes glassy, unblinking. ‘Please leave me alone now,’ he said.

  For the briefest of moments, she wondered about leaving him in this state, but then she glanced at the mess of glass and champagne on the floor.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, as she turned and fled.

  A few hours later, with an overnight bag in the boot of the car, she drove along the Talgarth Road, heading out towards the M4. She couldn’t stop thinking about the look in Luke’s eyes, that eerie mix of hatred and hurt. She relived the crash of the champagne bottle as it hit the wall. She tried not to think of him following them, of the pictures he had of her and Will in his empty, cold bedroom, but it was difficult to think about anything else. She knew she should tell someone but she didn’t dare. She would have to confess her infidelity and if Will found out about her and Luke she was convinced it would be the final straw, that her marriage would collapse, and she was determined to do what she could to try and save it. There were issues they’d have to work through – those hadn’t gone away – but the episode with Luke had focused her mind; she and Will had too much to lose.

  When she joined the M25 she found it gridlocked. The traffic was solid and unmoving. Harmony swore and craned her neck to see how far the line of stationary cars stretched. It seemed to go on for miles.

  ‘Must be an accident,’ she said to herself, wiping her brow and lying back against the headrest. ‘Of all the nights.’

  An hour passed and she’d only moved two miles. She kept glancing at her phone, imagining she heard it ring, imagining it was him, calling or texting. She would have to get a new number, a new email address too, maybe even change their landline number. She wondered how she would explain that to Will.

  Up ahead, some way away, she saw the blink of flashing blue lights and heard the distant sound of sirens. ‘Come on,’ she whispered. ‘Hurry up and clear the traffic.’

  She eventually crawled past the accident, a multi-car pile-up with a couple of cars so badly crushed they no longer looked like cars. Three serious-faced policemen waved the queue through a single lane. Fire engines and ambulances lined the hard shoulder. She wondered how many people had been hurt, and how many families would have just received the horrific news that a loved one had died. She thought of Luke then, of his pregnant wife dying, imagined the look on his face when they told him, the news shattering him. Tears sprung in her eyes as she imagined how she would feel if she received a similar phone call about Will.

  The journey, which should have taken a little over an hour and a half, ended up taking over four. By the time she pulled up outside Gill’s house it was well past midnight. Just being near the house, seeing it, knowing Will was inside, reassured her. She was glad she hadn’t told him she was on her way. Surprises weren’t in her character but Will was romantic about things like that. She unclipped her seatbelt then got her phone out of her bag to text Will. When she turned it on, she braced herself for missed calls and texts from Luke, but there were none and she breathed a sigh of relief.

  I’m parked outside. Are you awake?

  She pressed send and waited. Out of the corner of her eye she saw a movement in the window upstairs. The curtain moved to one side and the shadowy outline of her husband looked down at her.

  ‘Oh Will,’ she breathed. ‘Thank God.’

  C H A P T E R T W E N T Y - F O U R

  He opened the door and there she was, lit by the soft light of the porch, wearing jeans and a navy T-shirt. She’d never looked more beautiful. Her Tiffany heart rested on her chest, her hair was tied up loosely, her face bare of make-up.

  She shook her head, seemed unsure of herself, but then smiled at him and opened her arms. He held her tightly, kissed her on the top of her head, the side of her neck, her shoulder. A weight lifted off him and he breathed in deeply and exhaled as if he’d been holding it in forever. She was back. He could feel it in the way she held him, in the way her hand stroked his back, the way she pushed her cheek against his chest. He pulled back from her and looked down into her face as she gazed up at him. He tucked a few strands of escaped hair behind her ear, brushing his fingers down her cheek as he did.

  ‘Wait there,’ he whispered. ‘Don’t move, okay?’

  She nodded, her eyes alight. The last time he had seen them alive like that was when she’d told him about the pregnancy, the glorious accident he’d turned his back on. He felt a sharp stab of regret as he realised his mother was right. He was a selfish man, only able to see things from his own viewpoint, blinkered. He turned away from her, reminding her not to move. She laughed. It was the sweetest noise he’d ever heard.
He ran through to the kitchen and grabbed his camera from the table, pulling the lens cap off as he returned.

  ‘No photographs now. I’ve been in the car for four hours. Let’s go in,’ she protested gently, as he lifted the camera and began to fiddle with the focus.

  He smiled at her. ‘All these years I’ve photographed you in the moments that matter. Let me take a photo of you now.’ He pressed the button, moved around to capture her from different angles. She laughed, and he pressed, praying that would be the one, a record of an unfettered laugh that would remind him for years to come of this moment when she gave him a second chance to be the husband she needed.

  He lowered the camera. ‘I didn’t take any photos of you when you were pregnant.’

  He saw her smile fade.

  He took her in his arms again. ‘I didn’t see how important that was to you, to us, but I do now.’ He pressed his lips against her hair.

  ‘I want to have a baby, Harmony.’

  He felt her tense. He leant back from her so he could see her face. He smiled at her and he knew then he meant it, that it wasn’t some empty platitude. What had changed? Perhaps talking to his mother, perhaps nearly losing Harmony. Perhaps he finally knew that he wasn’t his father, that he wasn’t that young scared boy who couldn’t stand up for himself, for those he cared about. But he could now. He had to. All these years he thought he’d put his past in a box, forgotten it, moved on, but he never really had. He’d been carrying it around with him like a concrete weight dragging behind him, holding him back. It was time to free himself, to be his own man, not to live in the shadow of his younger self.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Don’t say that.You wouldn’t have done what you did if that were true.’

  ‘I didn’t know what I was doing. I panicked.’ He shook his head.

  ‘I’d convinced myself I wasn’t able to look after anything. Even you. You’re always the one looking after me but when you lost the baby you became so vulnerable – the way you looked at me changed, like you needed me to do something, and I had no idea what it was I should do and that scared me. I was scared I was going to fuck it up.’ He kissed her again. ‘And then I did.’ He tightened his arms around her. ‘I mean it about the baby.’