‘Pretty little thing like you couldn’t have had a beginning like that.’
There’s an uncomfortable silence. Holly could tell the nurse that she wasn’t always considered pretty. It used to take work and chance and luck for people to look at her twice. Their silence, however, speaks of something else. She was a pretty young thing, and now isn’t quite so pretty anymore.
Aurelia turns her attention to the medical file at the end of the bed. Each flick of the page is like a paper cut to her throbbing face. ‘Stop looking!’ Holly wants to scream. Her intense gaze burns into the nurse’s skin. It’s not healing being here, trapped in this white room, the workings of her body analysed in a file, naked for all to see. Her body sluggish with drugs, vulnerable to attack. Her mouth is dry, panting, frantic. Her lips are cracked. The blood on her tongue pulls her mind to her mangled face. The force of her guilt is as persistent as a migraine; she would do anything for a private moment to collapse beneath it.
‘Is everything OK pet? You’re breathing like you’ve run a marathon!’
Holly looks away. A tear sinks into her bandages. Aurelia, mercifully, pushes the file shut.
‘I think I should give you some space, yeah? It’s been a long day.’
Her private room is so silent, Holly can hear the pounding of her breath. The metallic taste of blood still lingers on her tongue. There are no chattering families or dramatic, heaving patients. She could be lying in a hotel. Crisp sheets. Hard bed. A loneliness that bites through every surface.
She spoons mashed butternut into her mouth, a special vegan request. The rich taste of butter makes her heave. The hospital kitchen must have forgotten that dairy is not vegan. She forces the rest of it down, determined not to turn her nose up at their kindness. She’ll run off the fat in a few days and feel in control once again. These awful emotions will bend beneath the force of her will. That is the beauty of a healthy lifestyle – no matter how uncertain the world’s politics appear or how tormented your own life is, you can always return to a clean kitchen with some fresh produce and create a better life, a better world.
She tries to watch Friends reruns on the fuzzy television above her, but wearing the headphones make her feel exposed. Her heart won’t slow down. The skin on her arms tingles and, every now and then, a bolt of pain shocks her face. She has started to remember his eyes, wild and hungry, as he grabbed her around the chest. Worse still are the flashes of moments leading up to the alley – her light, musical laugh, her hand tentatively grazing his, her disgusting ease with this person she had just met. She made it so easy for him to hurt her. But there is something else haunting her this evening, something more. The silence around her has a weight to it, like a held breath. It moves with a hidden presence. She is convinced he is watching her.
Being here alone is too much. She can’t take it. Holly pulls her gown tight and eases herself off the bed, grinding her teeth against the pain of it. It’s not only her face that’s damaged. He threw her to the ground with such a force that her back is black with bruises.
She takes small, gentle steps, edging forward from the sanctuary of her room into the beating heart of the ward. Neither the nurses nor the patients glance at her bandaged face. They look ahead determinedly, the patients probably grateful they’re only in for something superficial. Holly imagines them in the comfort of their living rooms, deep in a nest of blankets and love, saying to their families, ‘Honey, you wouldn’t believe who I saw today.’
Breathing physically hurts, but her legs push her deeper into the hospital, walking through the corridors like a ghost. All those tiny, tense Pilates moves must have counted for something. She settles on a soft, purple sofa outside the maternity ward. It smells of milk, women and vanilla. Visitors are not allowed inside, but she can sit and stare at the babies lying in rows, their wails giving a voice to the tightness in her throat. Their faces poke out of their snug swaddled blankets. Each one has a sheen to it, that new baby sheen. Nothing has touched their cheeks yet, so soft and round. Her fingers rub together, imagining the feeling of the skin. Their perfection is like a punch in the throat. The sour-milk taste of vomit burns her mouth. She was beautiful once. Everybody loved to look at her. Everybody was interested in what she had to say. Not anymore.
As desperately as she wanted to leave her room, she now desperately wants to return to its safety. She needs to lie down, close her eyes, get some more pills. The walls blur through her watering eyes. The floor sways beneath her bare feet.
Her room is a cool, dark contrast to the relentless light. The silence that unnerved her has shifted into soothing stillness. No more sudden moves.
The covers of her bed have been pulled up tightly, tucked in with regimental precision. Someone must have thought she had been discharged. Yet the magazines next to her bed remain in disorder and the flowers have been untouched. Holly squints into the darkness. Was that the shape of a figure, or just the curtains blowing in the breeze?
It’s too much work to get under the covers, so she climbs on top and curls into a ball. Too hot to be trapped under blankets anyway. The bandages make her cheeks feel as if they are on fire. She shifts to get comfortable, and the bed crackles beneath her. Her breath catches. She shifts again. Something lies beneath the covers.
Heart pounding, she bunches the sheets in her fists and tugs them to the ground. Flicks her phone-torch on and shakily aims it towards the mattress. Rows and rows of faces stare up at her with small black eyes, features melted into each other. Each one so scarred their skin looks more like a mask. A low howling sound escapes her lips as she crouches on the floor, head between her knees, away from the eyes. The eyes that know.
Nobody must see this. It’s a statement, a conclusion. This was no fluke. The attacker meant to hurt her and her alone. For this, she feels complicit. Nobody attacks unless they are provoked. She gathers the pictures quickly and pushes them into her handbag. They’re good quality photographs. Printed out properly in a way she doesn’t see much these days. It’s a detail that haunts her. There is no note, no explanation, but an unsettling amount of forethought. He is here. He is always watching. And now she knows, he won’t stop until she is torn to pieces.
Chapter 6
Tyler then
Tyler was five years old when they moved from London into the glass house in Weybridge. Drawings and detailed plans of its angular edges and lush gardens had been strewn about in strange places for years – his mother had a knack for creative filing. But to his small mind, the leap from touching those rough sketches to running his fingers over the newly varnished railings confirmed his greatest belief: his mother was a magical being, able to breathe life into anything.
At night, the stars glistened through the glass walls so vividly, it was as if the house didn’t have walls at all. They were a family of wild things – mum, dad, boy – free as blackbirds and fast as foxes. His mum’s magic only grew, as they hid from each other in the rose gardens and chased each other up and down the endless stairs of the house she had dreamed into life. He’d wanted to be like her, and hung on her every word as she explained why the ceiling sloped just so and the windows opened to the west. He tried to draw fantasy houses in the hope that she would make them real as well, but he always threw them away. Not because he was ashamed, but because he just couldn’t think up a house as beautiful as the one they already had.
His dad still worked in the city most of the time, leaving them to endless, unstructured days of ‘don’t tell your father’ bliss. Once they made a pillow fort and pressed their noses against the glass wall all night, watching for barn owls and shooting stars. They paged through his bird book together, choosing a favourite one on each page. He woke up squinting at the sun the next morning, cosy under the covers, safe in the crook of his mother’s arm.
She still performed her magic, but not far away in the city like dad. She sat upstairs surrounded by books and sketches. Hours went by as she calmly plotted and planned on the big silver screen in front of her, flat
tening people’s homes and rearranging them until they were perfect. ‘Don’t look so bored, it’s just like the Lego you play with!’ she used to laugh, but he always liked her sketches more.
When his dad was not around, Tyler would do all the important stuff. He would bring his mother biscuits while she worked. He’d walk with her hand in hand as they jiggled every door and window at night to make sure everything was locked. They were a team, and together they kept the glass house safe and full of magic.
The spell wasn’t broken all at once. It happened slowly over time. First, it took the form of his mother’s thin hand held up as he tried to show her the book on insects he’d got out the library.
‘No, Tyler sweetheart. Not now, please.’
The catch in her voice turned the glass room cold. She didn’t want to play as much anymore. She was always tired, always sleeping, always sitting dazed in front of the television, battling to catch her breath after walking up the stairs. She was a faded, thin-smiling version of his real mum, and in his dark, raging moments he wanted her gone.
He thought it was his fault. Why else would his mother and father hold tense, tearful conversations in whispers so shrill it could make his ears bleed? He lay awake at night listing all the bad things he had done: not sharing, not eating all his vegetables, lying and saying he had eaten his vegetables when really he’d hidden them and thrown them out when she wasn’t looking. None of that seemed bad enough. Through some dark sorcery, the glass house folded in on itself. Wide-open spaces turned into closed doors. The garden was full of screaming faceless spirits. His mother’s explosion of sketches was neatly arranged into piles by a housekeeper who didn’t know how things were meant to work in the glass house, a housekeeper who took his jobs away, like bringing Mum tea.
He sat outside her bedroom while adults paced in and out. Behind the shut door, he heard her screams. Long before they told him she was sick, long before they explained the word ‘cancer’, he knew. He wanted to kick and bite them and shout in their faces like a savage. He knew, he knew. He had smelt the sickness on her skin first. When it came to her, he was always first.
Not that she let him close to her anymore. He longed to hold her hair in his hands and roll it into little ropes that his army figurines could climb. He cried at night because he needed to feel her hand resting on his forehead to fall asleep. It wasn’t her fault. They were keeping her locked in her own glass house like a fairy-tale princess, and it was his duty to save her. He drew up plans and armed himself with weapons (a plastic cricket bat and a towel cape) and tried to sneak inside. He slammed into a wall of grown-up legs and screamed in his father’s grip as he was carried away to the other side of the glass house.
Tyler and his father sat side by side like strangers, as he gruffly explained, ‘Your mother loves you very much, my boy, but you can’t go into her room anymore. You’ve got to be a good boy and not sneak in. The cancer has made her very sick and she doesn’t want you to see her like this, OK? Do you understand?’
He didn’t understand. The books that she and he had read together said that when someone is very sick, they get into an ambulance. They didn’t stay locked in their glass house, lying there getting sicker while strangers walked in and out carrying strange equipment and packets smelling of herbs. They went to hospital to get better. So why wasn’t she? His tea, while it took a long time to make, always tasted more delicious than any other tea. Why wouldn’t she let him bring it to her? All these questions made his head pound, so he just cried into his clenched fists.
Tyler’s father sighed and pulled his fists back into his lap.
‘Look at me, Ty. This is enough, you hear me? We need to be strong now, and you need to get out of Mum’s way. All of this . . . this performing. It’s not helping. You’re not helping.’
You’re not helping.
Tyler didn’t see when they carried her body out. But he knew. Rocking back and forth sitting on his bed, he knew. Because the glass house had lost its breath. Its spirit had crumpled until it was nothing but a dream, a sketch of a dream life that belonged to somebody else.
Chapter 7
Holly
The footsteps bang against her ears. They jolt Holly awake from a fitful sweat-stained dream of sharp things breaking the surface of her skin. Pressure. Surrender. Blood. The feeling of ill will lingers in her consciousness, soon taking the sickly shape of guilt. This is worse than anyone could understand.
‘Holly, open your eyes, my darling,’ the nurse coos. ‘You have more visitors.’
Three men stand at the end of her bed. The meds make her eyes water; they still stick together with sleep. From where she lies, their ruddy faces and shadowed eyes blur together like ghouls. Even in their awkwardly formal suits, there is an on-edge awareness that reveals them as police. As they carry through some extra chairs and seat themselves next to her bed, she feels a pang in her chest. They’re a threat to her. They’re here to hunt.
One gestures to the nurse. ‘Can you give us some time alone please, ma’am?’
‘Yes, yes of course. Holly, just buzz me if you need anything.’ She tries to lock eyes with the nurse. Please, please don’t leave me with them.
He turns to Holly. ‘Hey there, pet. My name’s Pete. My boys here are Darren and Dean. We’re here to ask you a couple of questions about the crime that took place two nights ago. We’re going to turn on this recorder, see? And write a few notes too so we can get a formal statement from you. The nurse here says it hurts for you to talk too much, so let’s make this quick and painless, yeah? You ready?’
‘Yes,’ she whispers.
‘Let’s start at the beginning. Where did you meet the attacker?’
‘I was at Starbucks drinking coffee and he came up to me.’ The moment glimmers in her mind, that everyday stillness before everything changed. Was it something in her posture, the pout of her lips that made her seem available?
‘What did he look like?’
‘He was tall, about a head taller than me. Uh, sandy hair. Green eyes. Square jaw.’
‘And you spoke to him.’ The part she feels most ashamed about – how willing, how innocent she had been. Other girls would have known better.
‘Yes, he was, uh, very charming.’ She tries to find the right words, desperate to please. She’s attuned to their reactions like a trapped animal, searching for a half-smile, an encouraging nod, anything to make her feel safe.
‘OK, so just confirming that you spoke to an unknown male whom you had never met before.’
The three men exchange a loaded look between them. Oh God, this is her fault. She brought this on herself, didn’t she? What the hell was she thinking? The other boys dance through her mind. Her history is written across London, in the sordid anecdotes of men whose surnames she cannot remember. It wouldn’t take much digging for it to surface. It wouldn’t even be the worst of her secrets. The cop writes for five agonising minutes in his notepad. He can’t be writing word for word what she is saying. She hardly said that much. He must be adding insights, judgements of his own.
‘What happened next?’
It feels so stupid now, so embarrassing. She pulls the covers a bit higher over her chest. She’s got no bra on under her gown and it makes her feel vulnerable.
‘We went for a walk around the city, and then had some supper. It was just like any first date really.’
‘Except it was a date with someone you had never met before,’ he qualifies.
Her cheeks ache, and her mouth is dry. The pain is too great for her to tolerate his sarcasm.
‘That’s usually how first dates are: a meeting of two strangers.’
‘Now, now,’ he laughs, ‘No need to get pissy. I’m just getting my details straight.’
‘And where did you have dinner then?’
‘At a place called THE GOOD LUCK CLUB, in Soho. I remember walking from there to the place we said goodbye.’ The dark alley, at that moment still heady with anticipation.
All thr
ee men stare at her pointedly. ‘Now, tell us a bit about the, uh, incident.’
She shifts in her bed. This is the part that disturbs her the most. ‘My problem is that I don’t remember too much after a certain point. I remember leaning in to kiss him while standing near the restaurant where we had dinner, and then suddenly my memory goes.’
‘You don’t remember the attack at all?’
God, how she has tried, but it is like pushing against a cement wall. Immovable. She could mention his eyes, but it wouldn’t be of any use. She cannot describe their colour or shape, only their coldness. They narrowed the same way her father’s used to when she had done something wrong.
‘No.’
‘What about when you ran to get help?’
‘Nothing.’
The men exchange glances again. She has a feeling she just failed an important test.
‘Were you drunk?’
‘No! I mean no, um, I don’t drink at all. It’s a health thing.’
‘When you were found, you were screaming that your attacker knew you. Do you remember this?’
She closes her eyes. All she can remember after the blankness of the attack is the stark interior of the ambulance, and a kind, curly-haired woman holding her hand. She was repeating something over and over, squeezing the woman’s hand tighter. The words assumed a ghastly, distorted shape as they left her slashed face. He said my full name. He called me a fraud. He knew exactly who I was the whole time. He called me by my name.
‘Yes, I do. Whoever it was definitely knew me. He did it on purpose.’ Saying it out loud makes her hands tremble. He intended to harm her, and he’ll return to do it again.
Shame on You: The addictive psychological thriller that will make you question everything you read online Page 3
