by Megan Tayte
I felt sick.
‘Scarlett?’ said Luke. He took my hand. ‘There’s a very big difference between taking the paintings of someone who hurt you off the wall and leaving them intact on the floor, and slashing your own paintings, many of them, over and over and over with a knife.’
I jerked at the last word, and followed the line of Luke’s pointing finger to see a large kitchen knife lying on the bed. An image came to mind: tiny chubby fingers clenched around mine.
‘Jack!’
Luke’s hands were on my shoulders and he made me look at him. ‘The knife is here, Scarlett, not with Michael. Okay?’
I nodded dumbly. But of course it wasn’t okay. That he could do that with a knife – attack like that…
‘He must have been so angry,’ I said. ‘To do this.’ I gestured at the walls. To the many destroyed paintings.
‘He’s disturbed,’ said Luke. ‘That much is clear.’
‘He’s always been so reserved. Devoid of passion. I wondered once, when I first came here and saw his studio, how he could be both – such an amazing, expressive artist, but also rigidly controlled.’
‘Perhaps he couldn’t be both. Perhaps that’s what’s gone wrong inside him. He wouldn’t be the first artist to lose himself. Remember from art history at school? Gaugin, O’Keefe, Rothko, Munch, Van Gogh – they all had breakdowns.’
‘But did they go around hurting people, Luke?’
‘Yes. Rothko and Van Gogh took their own lives.’
‘Rather that than hurt others! If the beast was in Michael, and all he did was turn it on himself, we’d pity him now, not hate him. But he’s let the beast roam free. Look at the paintings.’
I walked to the nearest one. The canvas hung in pitiful shreds, twisted and warped. I attempted to push the tatters into order, but it was impossible – they fell, slithering from my fingers and trailing down. Luke reached over me and lifted the painting from the wall and laid it on the desk. With gravity no longer the enemy, he tried to piece together the jigsaw of indeterminate shapes.
‘When did he do this?’ I said. ‘What pushed him over the edge?’
‘After you worked out it was him? After he left Si’s place?’
‘He wouldn’t have had time. He went to the apartment in London right after leaving Si’s; he must have done. And afterwards… Gabe called Barnabas right away, and he checked this room. Barnabas called Gabe minutes later and said we should come, today, to the school. I’d been wondering why, until I saw all this. No wonder Barnabas was in a stuttering state before we even told him the whole story.’
‘So the room was like this before Michael took Jack?’
‘It’s the only thing that makes sense.’
‘Then when? What happened to drive him to this?’
I looked around the room and a shudder rocked me. ‘Something that made him really, really angry.’
‘Or perhaps someone,’ said Luke. ‘Look.’
He gestured to the painting on the desk, and I looked down at it. The strips of canvas would never knit smoothly back together, and the image was grotesquely distorted. But the flowing red hair and the sea-green eyes were unmistakable.
I tried to say ‘Mum’ but all that came out was a strangled moan.
Luke kicked the chair out from under the desk.
‘Sit,’ he said.
I sat.
‘Breathe,’ he said.
I breathed.
There was nothing else I could do right then.
Luke was over at a wall now, pulling down paintings until his arms were full. He laid them on the floor and set to work piecing them roughly back together. I didn’t watch him. I focused on the painting on the desk, on my mother’s eyes, perfectly captured and staring out at me from a warped ribbon of canvas. I had seen Mum only hours before – when I’d stopped in for the second time to check on her, though I knew she was safe with Daniel and the other Enforcers on guard. I’d seen her every day for so many days, and I knew every line of her face. But her eyes – they were lost to me now, always closed.
‘Scarlett?’ Luke’s hand was on my knee, shaking me. ‘Scarlett, look.’
I looked down, at the twisted jigsaw puzzle Luke had solved. And at once Luke’s question of earlier came to my mind:
What does frighten you?
For here was the answer, laid out at my feet. Here was why every step I’d taken toward this room hadn’t felt like a step upwards, to the apex of the building, but a step downwards, to the bottom of a fiery pit. What frightened me was not Michael, but who he was to me, to those I loved – what power this god, this beast, held over us.
I stood up to take in each painting and the cohesive thread. My eyes traced the path of a lunatic snail – up, down, left, right, around, back – until I was dizzy. Finally, I could look no more. I walked to the window and shoved up the sash and gasped in fresh, untainted air.
Outside, excited little boys were playing hide and seek. A gaggle, already discovered, followed the seeker like he was the Pied Piper, gleefully helping him spot a poking foot here, a stray coat hood there. One little lad, though, was determined to defy his hunters. From my vantage point on high, I could see him hiding on the roof of a tool shed – way above the sight-line of his friends. He lay there spread-eagled, looking up at the sky, and his expression was one of pure glee. He had outwitted them all. He was the best. He was also, as the others skipped off to search another area of the grounds, entirely alone.
‘All those paintings,’ said Luke behind me, ‘what does it all mean?’
‘It means,’ I said, ‘that you need to call my family.’
‘Your family?’
‘My father and my sister. They need to see.’
I half-heard Luke murmuring into his phone, but I wasn’t listening. I was watching, from Michael’s bedroom window, the little boy in hiding. With his friends gone, he’d risen to his knees and was looking around. Gone was his sunny smile, replaced with a scowl as he discovered that his cleverness in finding the perfect hiding place was going unnoticed. He thought for a moment and then stood on the shed, threw his arms wide and shouted, ‘Hey! Come and get me.’
I will, I promised.
In a different time, in a different story, five generations of our family would have come together on a private island to celebrate the connections between us, from the roots of the tree up to the tiniest of buds. We’d have taken tea in the conservatory, looking out at lush lawns and rainbow flowerbeds and, beyond, the sky and the sea whose colour called to us. We’d have pushed tables together and sat around them higgledy-piggledy: great-grandmother next to great-granddaughter, mother next to grandfather, baby nephew on grandmother’s knee.
But my great-grandmother could not be there.
And my grandparents could not be there.
And my mother could not be there.
And my nephew could not be there.
And we who remained numbered only three. My father. My sister. Me.
We sat in the conservatory in Cerulea at one end of an empty table. We did not admire the lush lawns and rainbow flowerbeds and, beyond, the sky and the sea whose colour called to us. We did not sip the tea in our cups. We just sat and waited.
My sister sat beside me, stroking a stuffed elephant. She didn’t talk; she’d lost her voice through screaming. But though she was silent, she was never still – she was a ravaged, tortured mute, hands always fretting, legs always jiggling, expression flickering between all the emotions she could no longer shout out.
My father sat opposite me and he was still. Eerily still. He didn’t talk either; he’d barely spoken since he’d seen Michael’s bedroom and had gasped out the words ‘God have mercy’, which struck me as odd, since he surely wasn’t religious. I’d thought once that Gabe was an intimidating man with a backbone of steel. Perhaps he was. But not now. Now he was something else, something broken. At times tears leaked from his eyes and he let them course down his cheeks. I passed over a tissue, but it lay ignored on
the table.
We were a lonely group, lost in our nightmares.
I wondered whether Sienna wished Jude were there, for her. Since Jack had gone, the antagonism between the two had dimmed, the absence of their son creating a powerful bond between them. Love? Or was it simply need?
Certainly, I wished Luke were there, for me. He could be silent too, but just to have him near… perhaps then the captive bird flapping frantically in my chest would calm a little.
But whatever lay ahead for us on this island, it was clearly – so clearly, given Michael’s pictures – our business: Gabe’s, Sienna’s, mine. My father had been adamant: family only. And even Luke, fired up and hugely protective, had stepped back in the face of Gabe’s command.
And so we three waited alone. We waited for Nathaniel, Evangeline’s husband, who flitted in and out of the scene but so far had said nothing more useful than, ‘Soon – I hope soon.’
Back at Kikorangi, on Gabe’s instruction, Luke had fetched Barnabas. Horrified by the sight of the partially restored artworks, Barnabas had gone at once to the island. He’d pulled Nathaniel from Evangeline’s bedside – where he’d sat day and night, refusing entry to anyone despite Gabe’s protests – and Travelled him to the school.
Nathaniel had barely materialised in Michael’s bedroom when Gabe grabbed him and told him, in a voice laced with malice, ‘She. Will. See. Us. Now.’
I’d watched as Nathaniel’s mouth opened, ready to protect his wife from her most sworn enemy. But then his roving eyes had taken in the paintings on the floor. He’d stilled and his mouth had frozen open. Then he’d clutched at his heart and staggered, and Barnabas and Luke had been forced to prop him up between them.
‘I had no idea,’ he’d gasped. ‘I didn’t know. Why? Oh God.’
Nathaniel had brought us here then, Gabe and Sienna and me. He’d settled us in the conservatory. He’d promised to wake Evangeline. He’d been trying to ever since.
‘She’s been so distressed,’ he explained, ‘since Elizabeth… Barely conscious these past days, and when she is awake, she’s not here. Then last night, after Gabriel came and told me about Michael… You have to understand, these are her last days, and she’s in so much pain, bodily, spiritually. I can’t watch her die that way. She deserves more. It was just a sedative. I thought it would buy some time while this Michael mess was straightened out. I thought – I’m sorry – I thought it was all a misunderstanding, and I didn’t want Evangeline needlessly upset. I really am sorry. The sedative will wear off and she’ll wake up soon. She must.’
And yet, the hand on the wall clock above the door ticked relentlessly around and around… and somewhere upstairs an old woman slept, drawing ever closer to the boundary between life and death… and all the sugar-free biscuits and fresh pots of tea in the world could do nothing to bring us closer to the truth beneath all the layers I’d peeled away – the final truth?
Finally, as the clock hand commenced its second rotation, I stood and told the others I needed some air and they’d find me at the old cherry tree swing. Then I pushed open the door leading out to the garden and I walked away.
I did try then to take in the lush lawns and the rainbow flowerbeds and, beyond, the sky and the sea whose colour called to me. But I’d no sooner rounded the corner on the path that led away from the house than I was no longer alone with the colours and scents and sounds of nature.
I stumbled when I saw them, the two figures rising from their perch on an old wooden bench, and I plunged forward. Two pairs of hands reached out to catch me, and one pulled me close while the other remained on my back. I allowed myself a moment, two, to be held, and then I stepped back.
‘What are you doing here?’ I demanded.
Luke answered softly: ‘Where else would we be?’
We. He and Jude. Who’d been pushed out of this ‘family’ business and had respected Gabe’s wishes, but only so far as being out of sight, not out of reach.
‘Is there news?’ said Jude.
‘No. I just couldn’t sit there any longer.’
He nodded. No doubt he remembered the many times on this island I’d fled the house.
‘Pine tree?’ he said.
‘Cherry blossom,’ I replied.
He led the way quickly, as if the answers lay at the end of the path. Luke and I walked hand in hand behind, though the path was narrow and Luke was frequently forced onto the grassy bank. He said nothing, but his fingers, laced with mine, squeezed tight – you okay? – and I answered by rubbing my thumb on his – yes, no, trying to be.
There was no blossom on the tree, that season had long passed. But the swing – the swing that last I’d seen had been lying broken on the ground – had been repaired. I laughed when I saw it, dangling there. I wasn’t sure where the laugh came from. Perhaps it was the idea that happiness still existed on this island. Perhaps it was disbelief that anyone could find freedom while flying still anchored to the ground. Perhaps I was just remembering the last time I’d been here, on the eve of my faux-wedding to Jude, and how distant and ridiculous that seemed now.
‘Why here?’ said Jude, eyeing the swing.
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I had to pick somewhere I’d be easy to find when Evangeline wakes up. It was here or the graveyard.’
I nodded along the coast a little way to a field where rows of simple grave markers stood in neatly tended grass.
Jude shuddered. ‘Not there,’ he said.
A memory, clear and tinged with sadness: Evangeline in that field, her eyes fixed on a row of grave markers, her comment: ‘A tiny baby who’s taken by God is just as important as a man who’s lived many decades.’
‘A baby?’ I’d questioned. ‘Here? I thought Cerulean babies couldn’t die?’
‘It’s rare,’ she’d said. ‘But it happens.’
Jack was human, of course. Not a Cerulean. But he was a baby, just a tiny baby, and as important as any of us – more so, if anything, for his innocence.
‘Scarlett,’ said Jude, bringing me back to the moment. ‘Can you explain – Michael’s bedroom – what you saw?’
‘I’ve tried,’ said Luke. ‘But I’m not sure I understood enough.’
I nodded and sat on the only seat available – the swing. Luke sat beside me, on a soft patch of grass. Jude stood stiffly, looking on. And I told them what I’d seen when I’d looked down at the fragments of paintings in Michael’s bedroom:
My mother’s face, lit by blue light.
The cottage at Twycombe, made to look fairytale-esque.
My mother cutting a cake in the kitchen of the lodge.
Me surfing, alone, in the cove.
My mother sitting on a park bench, hand pressed to a mountainous baby bump.
My grandparents, my parents and two babies picnicking on the beach.
My mother and I dancing around a bonfire of clothes.
A bird’s eye view of St Mary’s churchyard, with my grandparents’ graves at the centre.
My mother’s sleeping face, surrounded by tiny paint footprints.
My father shielding my sister behind him, and my mother and I kneeling and looking up – perhaps reverent, perhaps cowering – at Michael, a fusion of black and white, fury and grace, beast and god.
‘Some of them are based on pictures from Mum’s memory wall,’ I explained. ‘Some of them must be from Michael’s own observations.’
‘And fantasies,’ said Luke. ‘Clearly, he has some obsession with your family.’
‘I expected horrors,’ said Jude. ‘Destruction. Weird abstracts like that one you brought from the hospital. But most of them sound –’
‘They’re beautiful. Painted to show the beauty. Like he admired us. Except the last one.’
Luke grimaced. ‘That one’s dark.’
‘And familiar,’ I confessed now. ‘I’ve seen it before. A long time ago, in Michael’s studio, the first time I went to the school. He had a sheet thrown over it, but I peeked. Maybe he meant me to. Maybe he
watched me do it.
‘I saw it that day. I saw that scene of Michael all-powerful over Mum and Sienna and Gabe and me. I saw it, but I didn’t see it. I just saw figures. I didn’t realise who they were and what it all meant.’
‘You couldn’t have known,’ Jude said.
I shook my head. ‘I was the only one who could have known. And I should have. Don’t you see? He wanted me to know.’
‘You can’t know that,’ said Luke. ‘You’re taking too much on yourself.’
I couldn’t face arguing right now, but I knew I was right. Something drew Michael to me. Did he hate me the most? But how could that be, if I was unharmed while Mum lay in the hospital? Did he feel something for me, some longing… lust? I’d never got that sense from him. But then I clearly wasn’t the best judge of character: I’d never got the sense he was a devious, disturbed individual either.
‘Why?!’ said Jude suddenly. ‘It’s driving me mad. I’ve known Michael all my life. We grew up together.’
‘So far as you can grow up with someone who’s kept separate,’ I said.
‘Do you think this is all a result of his childhood?’ Luke said. ‘Too much time alone?’
I shrugged. What made a monster a monster?
‘Maybe he’s fixated on your family because he never had one.’
‘None of us had a family,’ Jude snapped. ‘I grew up without a mother and a father. We all did. That doesn’t give us licence to do what Michael’s done!’
Jude erupted then, and I stood up, off the swing, and walked to the cliff edge, staring down at the sea and trying to block out the words ripping through the tranquil air.
‘… just an innocent baby… what the hell can he want?… no reason, NO REASON, can make this right… will find him and when I do…’
It disturbed me to hear Jude speaking this way. It was like the world was a negative of its usual self, inversed and disorientating. Of course I understood how he felt. I felt the same way. But I felt something else too, something I was far too ashamed to articulate fully in my mind, let alone out loud. It was a feeling that tore me apart for its treachery. Why should I care anything for the man who’d caused us all such pain?
