I turned in the other direction, heading for home. I had nowhere else to go. I had no other friends because I had no friends – Marcus had seen to that. I had to go home, tell my parents everything, warn them about the photos, tell them I was sorry and have them listen and love and comfort me.
I knew they’d protect me, they’d look after me. I started to walk faster as the thought of them holding me, kissing me, telling me it was all going to be OK grew stronger and larger in my mind. I had to get home. I would be safe and loved and looked after there. Home. My legs moved faster, faster and faster until I was running, pounding the streets, tearing them up so that I could get home as soon as possible; I could get to safety as soon as possible.
The house was in darkness when I arrived. Everyone had gone to bed early and I was alone. I stood in the blackness by the front door, listening. If I heard even a creak from my parents’ bedroom I would go in, tell them everything. I didn’t want to wake them to tell them this; it would be too distressing to wake from sleep to find your daughter has killed her boyfriend you knew nothing about. I could not do that to them.
I waited and waited and waited. But nothing, not even the slightest, tiniest creak. In the morning, I decided. I’ll tell them in the morning.
In my bedroom, I ripped off my clothes and bundled them up. They had spots of blood on them. I had to hide them for now – I didn’t want Mum or Dad or, worse, Bella or Logan to come in in the morning and find them. I pulled back the carpet from under the window and removed the two loose floorboards. I pushed the clothes in with everything else Marcus-related I kept there.
Still shaky and shaking, I used my pot of Pond’s to remove the grime and the invisible spots of blood on my face, the drops of wetness I had felt in my mind splashing on my face. I could not run a bath without waking everyone up so I cleaned myself as best I could, then I climbed into my bed and pulled the covers up over my head. I was safe under there, no one could find me or see me. No one would know what I had done.
In the morning, I would tell Mum and Dad everything. They would know the best thing to do and I would be all right. All I had to do was get to morning and then I could tell them.
Morning came and went and I could not find the words to tell. Morning after morning came and went, until I ran out of mornings and Mum and Dad found out everything from Detective Inspector Grace King, ringing from North West London CID.
And the nightmare that was the story of The Ice Cream Girls began.
serena
‘I’m going to tell you something that I haven’t ever told anyone else. It is the reason why I have a conscience that taunts me, it is why I feel so guilty all the time. But when I tell you, I want you to try not to judge me too harshly. I want you to try to understand why I did what I did.’
Evan and I have moved into the back garden. I wanted to talk out here because the words, the secrets I tell him, will rise up into the night air and will be scattered by even the smallest of breezes; they will not stay in our house, locked into the bricks and mortar of our home, distantly echoing to us what I have done whenever they get the chance.
Out here, we can talk and the truth will be set free. We were laying side by side on the grass, staring up at the night sky. Now, because of the gravity of what I have said, Evan is sitting up, he has crossed his legs and he is sitting in front of me, waiting to hear my confession.
I sit up, too, match his position by crossing my legs in front of me. I gently reach out for his hands and take them in mine, slip my fingers into the spaces of his. I want to hold on to him while I tell him this bit. I want him to know that what I say was then, it is not now. It is not me.
My lips are dry and parched under my tongue as I try to wet them, my throat is tight and taut. I do not want to say but I have to. I have to be honest.
‘About an hour after I got home, I got up and I got dressed.’
Evan’s face gives nothing away, no sign at all of what he is thinking. His fingers have tightened around mine, though, which tells me he is scared of what I am about to say.
‘I sneaked out of the house.’
Evan’s fingers tighten like mini vices around mine, clamping my fingers to him, holding me secure.
‘I walked for a while – it was late and it was dark and I was scared – but I had to do it. I want you to understand that I had to do it. No matter what it meant about me, I had to do it. I walked and walked until I was far away enough from home, then I found a phonebox and called an ambulance. I told them that someone was hurt, I told them the address and then I hung up.
‘I know he was a despicable human being and he had terrorised and abused me for years, but I could not stand the thought of him being there all alone. I . . . I still loved him. And the thought of him lying there for days on his own was too much to bear. It was bad enough, distressing enough, that I would never see him again. I had to make sure he was all right. As all right as could be.
‘When the police told me he had died later, from a stab wound to his heart, I realised that if I had gone out earlier to make the call, he would probably still be alive. It was my fault. I let him die. I’ve hated myself ever since.’
‘You weren’t to know,’ Evan says. ‘You weren’t to know that Poppy would go back and kill him.’
‘No, but I had . . . I wanted it to end.’ I press my hands on my face, my fingertips pushing on to my closed eyelids, trying to hold back the tears, trying to hold back the flood with a thimble. ‘I wanted him gone. I just wanted him to stop. To be out of my life, to leave me alone. And I knew, deep down, I knew the only way that would happen would be if he was . . . I just wanted him to stop hurting me, so I wanted him to stop being. I feel so guilty because I wished it. I willed it.’ I shake my head, my fingers dripping with the tears that run down them. ‘In more than one moment, I wished him not here any more. And then it happened. Because of that fight, because he stumbled after he hit me, it happened. She could go back and kill him because he couldn’t fight back. I wished him gone and it happened.’
‘You weren’t to know that he’d die, Serena. You can’t blame yourself for that. And you called an ambulance, you didn’t just walk away and forget him.’
‘It was too late, though.’
‘I know, love, I know. But why didn’t you tell anyone that you called the ambulance?’
‘Because when Poppy and I both went in to tell the police what happened, to tell them it was an accident, they wouldn’t listen to me. They kept jumping to conclusions; they kept telling me that I had killed him. If I told them I had left the house that would mean the only confirmation from Mum and Dad that I had come home when I said I did would be gone. And if I told Mum and Dad, they might have had to lie to save me. And I had caused them enough pain already.’
Evan nods in understanding.
‘I did want to go back, you know? I wanted to go back and stay with him until help came. I wanted to be with him because when he was on the floor he looked so peaceful, so gentle. He hadn’t been like that in so long, I just wanted to be with him like that one last time. He was like him again.’
Unexpectedly, Evan asks me, ‘Why did you love him?’
‘I—’
‘Not why did you stay with him; why did you love him? What was it about him that made you love him in the first place?’
‘I can’t remember,’ I admit. ‘I remember that I loved him. I remember that it was this hideous, achy feeling every time I thought about him not being with me and him being with her, but I can’t remember what I felt for him. I can’t put my finger on something and go, “Yes, that’s it”. You know? I can’t say with any sort of certainty that he was kind, because I don’t think he was. I can’t remember one instance of him being kind. I remember him being nice, although that got less and less often as time went on. I remember him being so proud of me when I did well at school and in my exams. I remember feeling safe with him at the start, but then that went away.
‘You see, that’s where my memory loss i
s worst. I can’t remember anything that would make him special and worth everything he put me through. It’s one of the biggest things that’s fallen through the memory gaps in my mind.’
‘Maybe it’s not memory loss,’ Evan says.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Maybe you don’t remember because you didn’t really love him,’ he says gently.
‘But I did. I know I did.’
‘Maybe you’ve spent all these years trying to convince yourself you did because that would explain why you stayed with him after he beat you and raped you and terrorised you.’
I look away, look down at the grass beneath us, rather than look at my husband, my mirror of truth.
‘Sez, he traumatised you for years. My guess is that you were so scared of him telling your family, of him going through with his threat of killing you, that you found the only way you could cope with staying with him was to try to convince yourself that you loved him.
‘And maybe you did in the beginning. You were a teenager, he was your first love, he was probably the first male to show any real, genuine interest in you. He knew what he was doing – older men who go out with young girls always know what they’re doing. What sort of girls to pick, who will keep a secret, and who can be manipulated into doing whatever they want.
‘He picked you and you fell for him, that’s nothing to be ashamed of. I’m sure he’d done it to several other young women. Telling yourself that you loved him to explain away being scared of leaving is nothing to be ashamed of, either. Sweetheart, you did the best you could. I truly believe that. You found the strength to walk away in the end. So many women – grown women – don’t.’
Evan’s words creep over me, climb over my skin and sink into my body like a host of twinkling stars – they light up my blood and make me hot all over. Maybe I didn’t love him.
‘You’re a good person, which is why you feel guilty for what Poppy did. But, Serena, you’ve got to let him go now. Let him go and get on with your life.’
‘I have.’ Maybe I didn’t love him.
‘No, you haven’t. You are letting him rule your life, still. You are protecting him, still. You almost let our marriage fall apart rather than tell me the truth about him. You need to let him go, and you need to let the person you were when you stayed with him during his abuse go.’
‘But how?’ Maybe I didn’t love him.
He shrugs. ‘No idea. That’s something you’ve got to work out for yourself, because if I tell you you’ll be doing what I would need to do to let someone and my past go. You need to do what you need.’
‘Maybe I didn’t love him.’ I say to myself. ‘Maybe I didn’t love him.’ Which means it’s OK to hate him for what he did.
It’s OK to not feel sorry every second of every day that he isn’t here.
It’s OK to want to let him go.
It’s OK to decide to live in my present rather than be shackled to my past.
poppy
I finish up the final cigarette in the packet, and breathe.
In and out, in and out, in and out. Breathe.
I never got to see Marcus again. That hasn’t occurred to me until now. He was such an important part of my life, he was my life for nearly two years, and then suddenly he was gone. My last image of him was of him laying on the floor, the look of shock and agony on his face.
He might have survived if it wasn’t for Serena. He might have survived to continue to haunt me. Because now, looking back properly, I can see that he would never have let me go. He would have kept on and on until he had me back under his control or he had ruined everything about my life.
I did not want him dead; I did not want him gone like that. But was there another way? Did Serena think the same thing? Did she realise that he would never let her go, he would never leave her alone because nothing was over until he said so?
Is that why she did it?
During the trial, she said he used to say he’d kill her if she ever left. Did she see this as her only chance, her only way out, as a simple case of ‘me or him’ and he lost?
I do not know. I’ll probably never know, because this is almost it for me. This is my chance to leave prison for good. To shake off Marcus and the shockwaves he sent through my life to the lives of everyone I knew. When Marcus hit me, everyone got bruised. I have to stop living my life for him, about him, around him.
I have to find the way to move on. To stop being the naïve fifteen-year-old he met, to stop being the terrified eighteen-year-old who went to prison, to stop being the angry thirty-eight-year-old who came out into the world.
If I don’t, I’ll wear myself out; I’ll become tired of the world, just like Tina. I’ll start to believe that the only way out, the only way to free myself of the yoke of the past, is to do what she did.
‘You all right, babe?’ Alain asks as I slide back between the cool sheets, and wriggle towards him, ready to rob him of his heat.
‘Yup, I’m going to be,’ I say. ‘I need you to take me somewhere. I need to go and see some people.’
‘OK,’ he mumbles.
‘Thank you,’ I reply, hoping he knows I don’t just mean for the lift he is going to give me.
part eight
serena
‘I come bearing sketches and fabric swatches,’ Medina says the second I open the door. She holds up her large A3 sketchpad and her fabric book, just to prove it.
‘And I come bearing wine and cake and chocolate,’ Faye says, indicating to the overflowing wicker hamper she is cradling in her arms. ‘All of them samples of the items I’d like to contribute to your wedding, if you’ll let me.’
Without a word, I open the door wider to let them in and I lead the way to the kitchen and stand by the cooker, where I had been heading when the doorbell rang. Vee is at Zephie’s house and Con is at his friend Mattie’s house, and for the first time since I had them I am not obsessively worrying about what is happening to them without Evan or I there. I believe they can be safe away from us.
I have started to let him go. I have started to let fifteen-yearold Serena go, too. I am starting to let go of the past because, for the first time since I did not tell my parents a teacher had stroked my face, I am in control.
Evan is out doing something. Probably seeing Max and Teggie for a few afternoon drinks, but I didn’t ask. He does what he does when he does it. I’ve found it so much easier these days to not worry about it. He is, after all, scrupulously honest.
I wait for it. Wait and wait and wait. But it does not come. My conscience does not chime in to taunt and abuse me, to needle me and remind me how bad I am. Not completely gone, but fading. It is only a whisper at the most extreme of times. It will be a murmur soon, and hopefully then silent.
Faye dumps her hamper, which looks heavy and cumbersome, on the kitchen table and Medina dumps her stuff beside it, followed by her bag and mobile. Faye takes off her glasses and balances them on top of the chocolate in the basket. This must be serious if the glasses have come off.
‘So you two think you can buy me off with a wedding dress and wedding food?’ I ask my sisters.
I am not in that position I used to be for all those years. I am not indebted to them any more. Telling the truth does that. I do not have to accept their gifts without comment; I do not have to accept anything they offer me – good or negative – because they can’t intentionally or unintentionally ruin my life any more. And I do not feel as guilty any more for almost ruining their lives. I lied to them as a teenager, when I was naïve, young, scared and thinking I knew it all. They have lied to me all our adult lives. They have treated me like they have, not because of what I did to their lives but because they think I am the lowest of the low, a killer, a murderer. Which is bad enough. For neither of them to have ever said it . . . That is what I am most hurt about. They have just thought it and never challenged me on it. We are meant to be close, the three of us. We are not. Because they have lied to me over and over and over. They have resented me.
They have feared me. They have branded me killer. And all in secret. Families, especially ones that went through what we did, are not meant to have those kinds of secrets.
‘We also come bearing apologies,’ Medina says.
‘Big, huge apologies,’ Faye adds.
‘What for? Aren’t I the criminal? What do you two have to apologise for?’
The two of them share the same shamed expression. ‘Evan called,’ Faye says.
‘He asked why we thought you were capable of ending someone’s life.’
‘And said he was more curious than anything, not demanding we change our minds. He was just asking.’
‘And when I thought about it, I realised that I didn’t think you were. I really didn’t,’ Medina explains.
It’s going to be one of those conversations. Where the two of them start and finish each other’s sentences and I get so confused that I might as well be talking to one person. In fact, if I close my eyes, with their similar voices, it could almost be like talking to one person. It’s incredible that after twenty-odd years of living apart, they can still do that.
‘Neither did I.’
In unison, they pull out a chair and sit down. I remain standing by the cooker, unwilling to join them, unwilling to pretend that this is anywhere near settled.
‘The thing is,’ Faye says, ‘you’re my little sister. Our little sister. And we’re meant to look after you.’
‘And we didn’t.’
‘I felt so guilty, not insisting on meeting him that time. Helping you to keep it secret from Mum and Dad.’
‘And there was me, giving you advice on make-up and how to get a boy to like you and, all the while, I was sending you off into the clutches of that pervert.’
The Ice Cream Girls Page 37
