by Jaye Ford
‘Carly?’
‘Stay back.’ Her mouth was dry, her tongue slow.
He found her in the dimness, came closer. ‘Are you hurt?’
‘I’ve got a knife.’
He stopped. ‘Is there someone here?’
‘You, Nate. You’re here. You let yourself in with a fucking key.’ She lifted the blade – a threat.
Edging past her, walking backwards towards the lighter gloom of the living room, he held up a palm. ‘Carly, it’s okay.’
‘No, it’s not.’ She moved with him, staying close, not wanting to lose him in the shadows.
‘I won’t hurt you.’
‘No, you won’t.’
‘You can put the knife down.’
‘No.’
He stopped in the open space at the bottom of the stairs, reached for the wall. A light came on, blazingly bright. ‘Your hands are bleeding.’
It was blood making the knife slippery? She wanted to shift her eyes to it, didn’t move her gaze from him.
‘Did you cut yourself, Carly?’ He didn’t mean by accident.
‘It’s not me. I didn’t do this.’ Victory in her tone. Something edgy and uncontrolled in her muscles. Making her move, pace and retreat, feet shuffling like they were on a dance floor, something wrong with one of them. ‘It’s you. I know it’s you.’
‘No, Carly.’ He glanced over his shoulder, stayed where he was.
‘Don’t pretend. Just don’t.’
‘Tell me what happened.’
‘You know.’ Swaying, stepping, breathing hard.
He moved in as she danced away. The knife flared under the lights as she slashed at the air.
He showed his hands. ‘It’s okay, it’s okay.’
‘You tried to choke me.’ She swung again.
He caught her wrist and pulled her close. Strong, fast, the fat blade in the space between their chests, its sharp, lethal tip aimed at the ceiling.
‘Not me, Carly.’ His voice was low and calm. ‘I wasn’t here. I don’t know what happened but it wasn’t me.’
She breathed hard, eyes on the fingers tight around her wrist. ‘Liar.’
‘You want to hurt me?’
Her breasts touched his forearm with her inward breaths. Her pulse bucked and surged in her veins. ‘Yes.’
‘Then do it. Cut me. I don’t care.’ He changed the pressure of his hold, angled the point of the blade at himself, pushed at her hand until the tip of the knife touched the hollow under his jaw. ‘If that’s what you need, if that will fix it, do it.’
The knife slipped from her hands, clattered to the floor, skittered away. She’d killed once before, she couldn’t do it again.
Stepping back, out of his grip, she saw the blood, smeared across her hands, bright drops of it on the pale blue of her pyjama pants. The shaking started then. Great rolling tremors that quaked through her spine, spiralled out to her arms, her legs. She swayed and stumbled.
Nate caught her by the elbow. ‘Let me help you.’
She wanted to keep her distance, but any strength for resistance was gone and she let him guide her to the half bath, lurching as pain drilled through her foot. Nate sat her on the toilet lid, ran water over her hands, inspected the right one where blood oozed across the palm and dripped into the sink.
‘Tit for tat,’ she said.
He glanced up.
‘First you, now me.’ Her voice sounded strange. A knee jiggled. She pointed at his eyebrow. ‘Taking turns to bleed.’
His eyes flicked over her face as though he was trying to read what was written on it.
‘I didn’t do it,’ she said. ‘I mean I did, I must have, but not to myself. Not on purpose.’
‘You had a knife.’
Her voice was loud. It echoed in her skull. ‘I didn’t cut myself.’
He lifted her sore foot to his lap, pressed gently around the ankle. ‘I think you sprained it.’
‘I broke it once. I broke both of them. I fell down and broke myself.’
Nate said nothing to that, just tugged at her sleeves, ran fingers across her forearms, lifted her hair and touched her throat. Then, finally, said, ‘What happened, Carly?’
‘I saw you,’ she whispered.
‘Tell me everything. Tell me like I don’t know.’
‘How you pinned me down? How I fought you?’
He pushed at her sleeve again. ‘Is that how you got this?’ A pink welt stood out on the inside of her upper arm.
She snatched it back. ‘Maybe it was when you shoved your arm against my throat until I couldn’t breathe.’ She squeezed her eyes on the memory.
‘Carly, can you wait here? Just stay here. Okay?’ Then he was gone.
She heard him on the stairs, then on the floor above. She didn’t wait, she stood, clutching the sink as her head spun, lifting her eyes to the mirror. There was a raw scratch on her cheek and red welts on her throat. She reeled away from her reflection, spilling into the living room, stumbling into the TV, bumping the kitchen counter.
Then Nate was sitting on the coffee table in front of her. He was holding her undamaged hand and she was shaking her head.
‘What did you take?’ His voice was firmer, insistent. ‘What are these?’ He shook the foil blister pack.
‘Sleeping pills.’
‘Did you take them all?’
‘I didn’t take any.’
‘There are only two left.’
‘I washed them down the sink.’
‘All of them?’
‘No, one of them. One every night. I push one out then toss it down the drain.’
‘You took something, though.’ When she shook her head, he held her chin, searched her eyes. ‘Okay.’ Something grave in his voice. Her mobile in his hand. ‘Okay.’
‘No.’ She grabbed the phone. ‘You don’t get to look first.’
‘You do it then. On the laptop.’
Her hands were shaking, she couldn’t remember the password and he had to sign her in to the cloud file. The first pictures were taken just after 1 am when she’d activated the app. There were small groups of shots as she’d settled into a restless sleep. At 3.17, a longer batch. Images of Carly as she rolled towards the camera, lifted a hand to her ear, head raised off the pillow. Then nothing. No more photos.
‘Where are the rest?’ she asked.
‘That’s all there is.’
She straightened, leaned away from him, anger and fear tightening her chest. ‘You deleted them.’
‘No, Carly, listen. I found your phone on the floor in the loft just now. I came straight back down. It takes a couple of minutes to get into the file with the mobile. This is the first time I’ve seen the pictures.’
‘My phone was on the floor?’
‘Yes. With everything else that was on top of your dresser. I think you cut your hand on the glass from a mirror.’
A memory: sharp corners, toppling, tumbling. ‘I knocked the phone down?’
‘It stopped shooting before that. It stopped shooting here.’ He pointed at the last photo, her head slightly raised from the pillow.
Carly’s pulse tapped. ‘I saw you.’
‘Something woke you.’
‘My eyes were closed.’
‘And then the motion sensor stopped.’
36
Nate stayed with her through the early hours of the morning doing little more than watch her as she paced the floor, hobbling and agitated and frightened. She didn’t care, it didn’t matter – because she knew.
Someone had been there. Someone had almost choked her. Someone had slammed her into the chest of drawers. And the knowledge was like freefall – exhilarating and terrifying. It wasn’t her, she didn’t need a psychiatric ward, she wasn’t fucked up, someone else was. A man who knew her name, who’d had his hands on her, who was amused by her fear. Who could get into her apartment.
Was it Nate? She didn’t think so. Not now. The image of him had been in her mind. And yet, when he tried to put his arms around her, s
he shoved him away and scuttled out of reach. She didn’t know why, didn’t try to understand it, just kept up the pacing, giving the anxious, edgy energy an outlet so it didn’t spiral out of control.
When the early-morning sun stretched deep into the living room, Nate joined her at the windows. ‘You look a bit better.’
‘My throat hurts and I’m bruised all over.’
‘You seem more rational.’
‘Sorry about the knife. I was scared.’
‘It seemed more than that. It seemed …’
‘Crazy?’
His eyes held hers for a moment. ‘What did you have for dinner last night?’
‘What?’
‘Dinner. Amuse me.’
‘Stir-fry and a glass of red.’
‘Here?’
‘Yes. Why?’
‘You were hyper. Totally wired. Ever since I came in. Pacing the floor and talking at the speed of light.’
She turned her face away. Anxiety could look like that.
‘Sleeping pills wouldn’t do that,’ he said.
‘I told you, I didn’t take any.’
‘I’m wondering if you took something else.’
‘Got stoned and forgot to mention it?’
‘No. You said it’s happened before so maybe it’s something in your kitchen, or an allergic reaction or …’
‘Shock.’
He looked at the view, eyes aimed at the marina. ‘You’re right. It was probably shock. You scared the hell out of me with that knife. What’s the name of your friend with the books?’
Carly frowned. ‘Christina?’
‘I want to call her, see if you can stay with her today.’
‘I’ve got classes.’
Nate watched her a second, touching her for the first time since she’d pushed away from him, running a finger gently across the scratch on her cheek. ‘I don’t think you should be driving today.’
Something cold slid along Carly’s spine. Talia had put holes in the walls, she’d written her name in the dust on the manhole cover. She’d gone out one morning and driven into a tree.
‘The apartments on the top floor are all three- and four-bedders. They have bedrooms with ensuites on the lower levels,’ Nate said.
Carly’s gaze wandered around her own lower level. ‘And?’
‘You could sleep in one of them instead of a loft.’
‘I took a sleeping pill,’ Carly told Christina over lunch. ‘Woke up disoriented and stumbled into a chest of drawers. Knocked over a mirror and fell on it,’ she shrugged. ‘Not so clever. Then I tripped on the stairs when I went looking for a bandage.’ She’d then slept in Christina’s downstairs bedroom for three solid hours.
Christina pushed another sandwich towards her. ‘What happened to your face?’
‘I must have scratched myself in the bumbling around.’
Carly stayed for the day, working on an assignment at Christina’s dining table while Christina sat opposite writing reviews. It was easier than Carly expected, not chatty and annoying but productive and cooperative.
Nate called during lunch and again in the early afternoon, asking how she was, what she was doing, who was with her. It reminded her of his questions about the sleeping pills, made her feel monitored. She’d been there before, didn’t want to be there with him. He sent a text a little before four. Don’t go home yet.
Not planning to.
Forty minutes later, he sent another. Don’t leave till I get there.
Christina looked up from her keyboard. ‘What’s the frown for?’
‘Nate checking in. Again.’
‘I think his interest might be a little more than neighbourly.’
If only she knew. An old aggravation made Carly want to tap out Don’t tell me what to do. But she sent nothing: passive aggressive non-commitment.
Five minutes later. Carly?
Still at Christina’s.
Wait there for me. I need to show you something before you go back.
She hesitated before replying. Was it something pertinent to going home or an invention to make her stay? She wanted to ask, see what he came up with but, well, there was no reason to make a point of it now. Christina invited me for dinner.
She met Bernard, Christina’s husband, when he got home from work. He poured wine as Christina retold the sleeping-pill/hand-cutting/stair-falling story, not a hint of eye-rolling at Christina’s hand-to-chest retelling. Carly liked him for that.
‘Why sleep on your sofa tonight when you can stay in a comfy bed here?’ Christina said. ‘You can prop up that foot properly and not worry about breaking your neck just getting to the kitchen.’
Carly wanted to be independent, stoic, the things she’d come here to be, but the thought of another night in her apartment – with a twisted ankle and no quick escape – made her accept the invitation. It was almost ten when she preempted Nate with a text: I’m staying the night at Christina’s.
She figured he’d reply or call, a How are you doing? or No need for me to rush back then, but nothing came and at ten thirty, in bed, needing sleep and sick of waiting to hear from him, she dialled his mobile. Left a message: ‘Sleep well, see you tomorrow.’ Told herself she’d wanted him to back off, she couldn’t have it both ways.
She still hadn’t heard from him when she left Christina’s the next morning but as she stepped from the lift, hobbling on her sprained ankle, she saw his apartment door was wide open. Carly knocked on the jamb, heard a muffled bump, saw a shadow move through the light at the end of the hallway and felt suddenly, acutely aware that she couldn’t run and hide.
A woman appeared. ‘You after Nate?’
Thirty-ish, jeans and boots, short blonde hair, something sharp in her tone. Carly felt questions and doubt start to gather. ‘Yes.’
‘He’s not here.’ The woman talked as she walked towards Carly. ‘He won’t be back for a few days. Possibly more.’ Her voice was curt, the volume as loud at the door as it had been at the other end of the hallway. Anger or umbrage, Carly thought. ‘Are you Carly?’
Maybe it was an accusation. ‘Yes.’
‘Nate mentioned you. I’m his sister, Bec. Look, I’m really sorry. He’s in hospital. Someone beat the shit out of him.’
Carly’s heart thumped. ‘Who … wh– … how is he?’
‘Yeah, sorry, I should’ve told you that first.’ Bec took a breath and heaved it out, something Nate-like about the way she reined herself in. ‘He’s got concussion and a broken jaw, a couple of fractured ribs and his knee …’ The sigh was fury. ‘The bad knee is totally screwed. It’s when, not if for the surgery now.’ She turned abruptly, started back down the hallway.
Carly hobbled behind, trying to keep up with the pace and the information.
‘He’s sedated for the moment,’ Bec picked up a mug from the kitchen counter. ‘Because of the head injury. They did a CT scan and there was no brain damage but he was agitated and in a lot of pain and apparently that’s what they do. I thought I’d pick up some stuff for him, have a coffee while I’m here. I’ve been at the hospital most of the night.’ She paused, looked Carly over. ‘Are you okay? Do you need a chair?’
‘No, I’m fine.’
‘Can I make you tea? Coffee?’
‘No, thanks. What happened?’
Nate’s sister shrugged. ‘Some kids found him and called an ambulance. Near the marina.’
Eyes slipping to the street beyond the glass, Carly remembered watching him cross the road on another night with blood on his face. ‘Had he been to the pub?’
Another shrug. ‘He was found at seven. I don’t know where he was before that.’
Carly had been sipping wine, ticked off because he’d checked up on her – and his bones were being broken. ‘What are the police saying?’
‘They think someone took to him with a metal bar.’
Carly’s hand flew to her mouth.
‘They think it might’ve happened in a laneway and he managed to crawl to the water
front before he passed out.’
She blinked hard, tried to think of something useful. ‘A couple of weeks ago, he stepped into a fight at the pub around the corner. Someone split his eyebrow open. Maybe they had another go at him.’
‘Do the police know about this?’
‘He didn’t go to the police.’
‘Were you there? Do you know who it was?’
‘No. I found him afterwards.’
‘You should tell the cops.’
Carly hesitated. If they checked her name, they wouldn’t believe her. ‘I don’t know anything.’
Maybe the pause sounded more defensive than truthful, because Bec took a moment to look Carly over again: scratch on her cheek, bandage on her hand, only a sock on her sore foot. ‘How did you get hurt?’ It wasn’t concern, she wanted to know if it might’ve involved Nate.
Taking a breath, ready to repeat the easy answer, Carly hesitated again. Nate said he wanted to help work it out. Maybe he had. Maybe … what? Someone in her loft, three thirty in the morning, scaring a woman while she slept – and Nate beaten with a metal bar on the street in the early evening. Within walking distance of a rough pub and homeless people and drug users in derelict warehouses. ‘I fell down my stairs.’
His sister watched Carly a moment longer, heaved another breath before she saying, ‘You want to help me look for some clothes for Nate?’ She rinsed the mug. ‘PJs, if he’s got any,’ she said as she climbed the stairs. ‘Some clean clothes, T-shirt, trackpants. With any luck, he’ll be awake to put them on today.’
Carly held onto the handrail as she trailed behind, head down as she negotiated the stairs with her limp, only looking up as she reached the top.
‘Socks and jocks, too,’ Bec said from the wardrobe. ‘Any ideas where to look?’
Carly didn’t answer. Her eyes were fixed on the ceiling. On a square hole that opened into the black void above.
‘Yeah, I don’t know what he was doing,’ Bec said from the other side of the room. ‘The cover is on the bed.’
Bec didn’t mean the bedcover. She meant the dirty white square that had sunk into the thick padding of the doona. A vent cover. Carly lifted her gaze from it to the black hole in Nate’s ceiling, her pulse picking up as she peered at the darkness beyond.
