She looked at him in surprise. She had fought back. That night in the park with Craig, when she heard Finn break into her house, there hadn’t been a choice. To fight back had been the only answer. ‘When you broke down my door it woke me up. I heard you thunder up the stairs and the only thing I thought of was there was no way I was going to let it happen again. Hiding didn’t even enter my head.’
‘You see, you’re brave. You fought well.’
‘Ha, you didn’t fight back. If you’d fought back it would have been over very quickly. You’re ten times bigger than I am.’
‘And you still had me doubled over in agony.’
‘Lucky shot.’
‘Clever shot. You know a man’s weakness. So I could take you very easily, I’m bigger, stronger, uglier…’
She smiled.
‘… and if it happens again, he might not be drunk, he might be stronger, you might not be lucky enough to take that clever shot, but you damned well give him something to think about. You bite, you kick, you scratch, you make sure he goes away with war wounds of his own.’
She nodded. It was intrinsic now, like when Chloe attacked her in the toilets, she reacted without thinking.
‘And what happens if I fight back and he kills me?’
‘Then you make sure you have some of his DNA under your fingernails so they can find the bastard. And then come back and haunt me for encouraging you to fight. Most importantly, you learn from your mistakes. Don’t put yourself in harm’s way again. There are many nut jobs out there, psychos that will stab people for no reason, terrorists that will blow up buildings, gun men that will walk down the street killing anyone that moves. There’s nothing you can do about that, if you’re there when that kind of shit goes down, you’ve just got to put your head between your knees and pray or run as fast as you can in the opposite direction. But don’t tempt fate. Don’t walk home alone through deserted park land late at night. That was a pretty stupid thing to do.’
She rolled her eyes. She’d had the same lecture from Alex. ‘Yes Dad.’
He ignored her insolence. ‘I presume they caught the bastard.’
‘There were luckily police nearby and when I told them what had happened, he was still there, lying on the floor, crying when they went to investigate. It went to court but despite the bruises and broken bones he left me with, attempted rape is not the same as rape. He got thirty months but nowadays thirty months means twenty four apparently. He will be released on Friday. That’s what the police were here to tell me. I’m fine about it, really. I’ve barely given it a thought over the last year. I think it was just a shock to see the policewoman again, the one that dealt with my case, it all came flooding back.’
Finn brushed a stray hair from her face and she looked at him. ‘He wants to see me.’
‘What?’
‘On Friday, the day he comes out, he wants to meet with me.’
‘No fucking way.’
‘That’s what I thought at first. That I never wanted to set eyes on him again. But now I’m thinking about it. The police will be there with me and if I agree, we’ll meet somewhere public like a coffee shop. It might be good for closure.’
‘I’ll come with you.’
Joy’s heart filled with sudden love for him. ‘No I can’t ask you to do that.’
‘I’ll come and then I can kick the bastard into a bloody pulp.’
‘No, I don’t want you to do that. If you come, you have to promise you won’t say or do anything. I need to handle this myself. Having you fight my battles for me is not going to help me feel in control about this.’
Finn clearly fought an internal battle with himself but he eventually nodded. ‘Ok I promise, not a word.’
‘I haven’t decided whether to go or not, but if I do it’d be great to have you along for moral support.’
He frowned slightly as he clearly thought of something else. ‘You were with Ed when this attack happened?’
‘Yes, we were dating, he obviously wasn’t physically with me at the time. He stayed in the bar, I was tired and wanted to go home.’
The frown deepened. ‘He didn’t walk you home?’
‘Well, no. The bar was literally a few hundred yards from the flat. You could see the lounge window from the bar. He probably thought nothing would happen. I didn’t even think about walking home alone, not such a short distance.’
‘I would have walked you home,’ he muttered. ‘He dumped you after didn’t he? That’s what you were talking about the other night, you said after what happened, he dumped you. You meant this.’
She nodded. ‘Obviously he felt bad for not walking me home and he was very sympathetic and concerned for me, but after… he didn’t want to touch me, like I was dirty in some way. To him it was almost like I’d been unfaithful to him, the fact that my hand had been around another man’s dick… he couldn’t get past that.’
‘That’s ridiculous.’
She shrugged. ‘In hindsight, the man was an arse, I’m better off without him.’
There was a silence from Finn as he clearly struggled with the next question. ‘Have you… had sex since?’
‘Yes, but… I’ve only ever gone on top.’
‘So you can stay in control.’
‘Yes, it’s hard to hand over control like that. I guess it will come with trust.’
There was another awkward silence and Joy wished she’d never had to tell him.
‘Change of subject?’ he asked.
She nodded with relief.
‘Ok…’ he paused as he clearly searched around for a suitable topic. ‘What are you doing going out dressed in black for the last few nights?’
‘I’m a ninja.’
He laughed. ‘What is it that ninjas do?’
‘Covert stuff.’
‘Like?’
‘I could tell you but then I’d have to kill you.’
‘You’re not going to tell me are you?’
‘I can’t,’ she said honestly and she sensed that for now at least he was going to leave it. She fixed him with a look. ‘Your turn now.’
‘Very well, what do you want to know?’
‘Easy one first, why did you hate being famous?’
‘Oh so you know who I am?’
‘I have no idea. Finn Mackenzie, actor in some vampire thing says Casey. I was a bit young for it myself, though I was never into TV and films, they sort of passed me by, still do, mainly.’
‘Well, I never wanted to be an actor. I was spotted, my abnormal size brought me to their attention and they asked me to audition. I thought it might be fun, a bit of money, and it was. I spent five years sword fighting, riding horses, going to exotic locations around the world. I loved it.
But nothing prepared me for the fame thing. When the first movie hit I was a star overnight. I was sixteen and suddenly the paparazzi are following me around, shoving cameras in my face. Girls are coming up to me in the street and throwing their arms round me, screaming and following me wherever I went. And as many people loved me and wanted to be a part of my life, so many people hated me. I got so much bad press, because I apparently never smiled, because I smoked at the time and they said I wasn’t a good role model for children. I had no idea at all about being a role model; I was still a child myself. Every day there’d be some story in the paper slagging me off. One paper followed me around the supermarket taking photos of everything that I put in my trolley, and featured it on a double page spread. I had condoms in the trolley, Mum was mortified.
Then when I was a bit older and I started dating women, they only wanted to be with me because I was Finn Mackenzie, because of my money, the glitzy parties they hoped I would take them to. And every single one I slept with sold their story to the papers. It was humiliating. So after I’d finished with The Darkness trilogy, I decided that was enough. The press still followed me around for a while, made out I was a has been, that no one wanted to work with me, when the reality was I was getting offers from all over the
place. I didn’t want it anymore and eventually the interest died down and I was left in peace.’
‘Ok, next question.’ He scowled but she ploughed on regardless. ‘Why do you hate Zach so much?’
‘That one’s easy, he was my best friend and he slept with my wife.’
‘Pippa?’ She was shocked at this. That was so not the answer she had been expecting.
‘I’ve only had one wife, so yes.’
‘I’m so sorry.’ The betrayal of that must have hurt so much, not only had his wife cheated on him but with his best friend of all people. ‘What happened?’
He arched an eyebrow.
‘I mean, was it a one night stand or an affair?’
‘Does it matter?’
‘No, it doesn’t. But I guess the betrayal would be worse if it had been going on for months.’
‘I suppose. I think it was only once. Things happened very quickly between me and Pippa. It was one of those stupid, fall head over heels type of loves. We were married just six months after we met and almost four months to the day that we got married, I caught them together.’
‘What was she like?’
‘She was highly strung, attention seeking. She was a singer. She was good too. But she wanted the world to sit up and pay attention. She struggled for years to make a name for herself and never made it, she used to get so angry over it. She got bored so easily, she always wanted to be doing something, she could never just sit. She took shooting lessons, learned how to rock climb and abseil, learned circus skills, acrobatics, trapeze. She did art classes, yoga, archery. But she’d get bored of them quickly and move onto some other hobby. Sex was the same, she was always rushing me, and as soon as she took what she needed, she was off doing something else. And we never did it in bed either. It had to be on a table, on the floor, in the shower, outside.
I was so in love, I would have done anything for her. I spent almost every day with her coming up with new and exciting ways to keep her interested. I took her to Paris, to Rome, we’d end up in Brighton or Edinburgh on the spur of the moment. We’d go to theme parks, to wine tasting nights, to the theatre – it was a new thing every day. But deep down I knew I was doing it all so she wouldn’t grow bored of me, and I could see she was. She told me I was boring too. If I was reading or doing the garden, she would moan at me until I did something she wanted to do. I thought by marrying her it would settle her down, but it didn’t. She laughed at the prospect of having children, said she was too busy having fun. And I wanted kids, I really wanted them.’
He sighed heavily, his eyes suddenly filled with agony. ‘She got pregnant and for three days I was the happiest man alive. I was going to be a dad. And then she came home one day and told me she’d had an abortion. My child – and she killed it like it was nothing more than an annoying wasp. She didn’t tell me until she’d had it done either. Didn’t even think to talk about it with me first.’
‘Oh Finn.’ Her heart bled for him.
He fingered her hair absently. ‘I knew then that we didn’t have a future together, but I was in shock. It wasn’t even two weeks later that I caught her with Zach. Zach interested her, I knew that, from the very first moment she laid eyes on him, she was keen. To his credit, he declined her advances for months. Me, Zach and Casey had been best friends since before I can even remember, we grew up together. Me and Zach moved to this village at the same time, we thought it would be brilliant, being neighbours. I never thought he would betray me. I could see her flirting with him, and he would just politely decline. Though as time passed, I could see he was interested too.
On her birthday, we’d planned a big party barbeque thing round my house, although after the abortion I was in no mood to celebrate, but as it had already been planned we went ahead with it anyway. Zach got really drunk and about halfway through the night he and Pippa disappeared. I went into his house and there they were on his sofa.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said again. There really were no other words she could say. She’d lost all respect for Zach in that moment. Yes he’d been drunk but still there should have been some loyalty there. You don’t just throw away thirty years of friendship for a quick drunken grope on the sofa with your best friend’s wife. Especially, when it seemed, Zach wasn’t short of offers from other women.
‘Of course I kicked her out and I thought they might get together. I might have been ok with that, eventually, if it had been real love and not just a drunken shag, but Zach didn’t want to know her.’
‘Maybe Zach felt guilty for what he had done.’
He shrugged. ‘Maybe he did. It makes no difference. I want nothing more to do with him now.
‘And Pippa?’
‘She left Bramble Hill and I haven’t seen her since. I didn’t realise it till after she’d gone what a relief it was that we were no longer together. She made me so tense. I spent ten months trying to be someone that I wasn’t. Her betrayal hurt a lot but in the end I suppose it was for the best.’
‘What did you see in her?’
‘Her vulnerability. A woman’s tears are the most powerful tool at her disposal. I wanted to protect her. Love at first sight, I was trapped and was unwilling or unable to escape.’
‘So…’ Joy bit her lip, but didn’t take her eyes off Finn’s. ‘Are you learning from your mistakes too? You’ve already fallen for one redhead so you don’t want to fall for another?’
He gaped like a fish for a moment and she knew she’d hit the nail on the head. She ploughed on. ‘You like me, but you’re trying really hard not to, trying to hate me even, because you’re scared of falling in love and of being hurt again? The wall you’ve built around your heart since Pippa cheated on you, you’re scared I’m going to break it down. That’s why you keep pushing me away, being horrible to me, because you don’t want to let me in.’
‘I don’t like…’ he started but stopped. He could clearly see it was useless to deny he liked her, not when he’d spent the night holding her in his arms, not when he had been absently stroking her back for the last ten minutes. ‘Fine, I like you, but I don’t like you. Maybe I’ve been a bit mean…’
‘A bit?’
‘Ok a lot mean, but I’ve had so many women in the last eighteen months think, “Oh poor Finn, his wife’s cheated on him, I’ll look after him, I’ll fix him”. I don’t need fixing Joy, I just want to be left alone. It was easier to push you away by being mean than have you try to fix me. But I’m just not interested in a relationship right now.’
‘So you have no feelings for me at all?’
His jaw clenched as he clearly fought the automatic denial that was forming on his lips.
‘You just spent the night in bed with me. If there was no feelings there at all, wouldn’t you have just gone back to your own bed when I fell asleep?’
‘I stayed with you as a friend, nothing more.’
‘Are you always this intimate with your friends?’ Casey would be delighted.
‘You were upset, I was trying to comfort you.’
‘Which I’m very grateful for.’ Too grateful, as she had fallen a little bit in love with him because of it.
Seemingly reading her mind, he took her chin in his large hand. ‘Don’t fall for me, Joy. You’ll get hurt and I really don’t want to hurt you.’
‘But you can’t just shut the chance of love out of your life forever. You deserve to be happy again.’
‘I’m happy alone.’
She tried another tack. ‘So you’re never getting married again?’
He shook his head.
‘No one to have children with, no one to grow old and grey with? You’ve built this beautiful home to raise a family in, you can’t let it go to waste.’
She saw him hesitate at this and the pain in his eyes he must still feel about the abortion. She decided she wasn’t going to push it anymore.
‘So… how about we’re friends instead?’ she said.
He offered her his hand to shake, which seemed a bit too polite
for the fact that she was lying on his bare chest, but she took it anyway and shook it. ‘Friends.’
She rested her head on his chest for a moment, before she got up, and his hand almost instinctively fingered one of her curls. It was such an affectionate gesture.
If this was friendship, then she could certainly get used to it.
*
Finn headed out into his garden and passed a bottle of beer to Casey. He had left Joy on good terms earlier and he was relieved that he was no longer going to have to push her away. But her comments had bothered him, she bothered him. He had taken Billy for a very long walk to think about her and when he came back Casey had been sitting on his doorstep. But even though he’d had hours to think through his emotions, his thoughts, and even though Casey was talking to him, he couldn’t clear his head of her.
He had set the boundaries quite clearly. Friends, simple as that. He knew she liked him, but there wasn’t going to be anything between them, he would see to that.
But that comment about never having children, not growing old with the person you love, that had settled into his brain and refused to go away. He still wanted that, he had wanted that so much with Pippa. That’s what Blueberry Farm had been about, creating a home for his wife and kids. Should he really throw away his chance of happiness just because of what happened between him and Pippa? She had hurt him spectacularly and he never wanted to live through that kind of hurt again. Though was it time to put the hurt behind him and move on? Could Joy really be the person he moved on with?
‘Hey, are you listening to me?’ Casey waved a hand in front of Finn’s face.
‘Mmm? Sorry mate, what were you saying?’
‘There’s been another one.’
Finn focused on Casey, his best friend, and pushed away thoughts of Joy altogether. Well temporarily at least. ‘Another what?’
‘Diamond robbery, last night. Strawberry Green this time. They took a load of diamond rings and a diamond brooch shaped like an owl. It seems the thief is working their way through the local area.’
Beneath the Moon and the Stars Page 12
