When I Find You

by Emma Curtis

  My kitchen is part of the sitting room and there is no other access to it, so I can’t arm myself with a knife or a pan. All I have is my new umbrella, hanging on one of the coat hooks, the kind that folds up small. Brandishing it like a truncheon, I tiptoe forward and press the palm of my hand against my bedroom door, push it open and turn the light on. The room is how I left it, with yesterday’s clothes still hanging over the back of the chair, my dressing table strewn with make-up. I was in a hurry this morning.

  My body is rushing with adrenaline as I step across the corridor into the sitting room. The door to the street closes with a thud, and I run to the windows, watching from behind the fall of the curtains as Elliot crosses the road and walks away.

  The glow of the street light casts shadows tinged with orange into the room. There is no one here and nowhere to hide. I breathe a sigh of relief. My sanctuary is still my sanctuary, the place where I nurse my wounds.

  I need to think, but I’m so tired and I want to believe that it was nothing, just a word, that I’m being paranoid. It isn’t hard to imagine a day when I’ll stop going out, stop making the effort, because it’s too difficult and I’m too frightened. I’ll think about it in the morning. Tomorrow I’ll try and talk to Phoebe and find some way of asking where Elliot was the night I was raped. The thought depresses me so much. I feel as though I’ve rolled the dice and landed on a snake. Back to square one.

  I draw the curtains and fall into bed with my party dress on, the zip proving too fiddly for my clumsy fingers to manage, and as soon as my head hits the pillow the room starts to turn in circles. I watch the ceiling making its slow revolutions, until my eyelids grow heavy and sleep drags me into its treacly embrace. In my dream I smell cigarettes again. I dream about a huge white spider, protecting a glistening egg as big as itself, its legs draped over it like pale fingers. The next thing I know, my bed dips as though someone has climbed in beside me, and I’m waking up, struggling for breath, a hand clamped over my mouth and nose.

  40

  Rebecca

  FELICITY KNOWS. THE information sits like a bad meal at the bottom of her stomach. Rebecca is back at home, curled up like a small child on the white carpet of her bedroom, growing cold. She doesn’t know how to react; she is part triumphant, part desolate. Felicity finding out has opened a door to the unknown. When she was younger she would have gone to greet whatever awaited her. She’s wiser now, and wary.

  She unfurls her body and stretches from the tips of her toes into her fingertips. She lifts her spine and drops her head back. She is trying to clear the fog in her mind, to find a place of rest and safety. She pushes herself up and sits on the edge of her bed, hugging her shins, her face pressed into her knees.

  This is what she wanted, but not the way she wanted it to happen. She wanted to control the when and the where. Now David is blaming her. Rebecca has never seen him so angry or so distressed. They had the row behind the stage, with the band providing a sound-screen. His eyes had been practically starting out of their sockets, spittle flying from his mouth. She couldn’t find the words she needed, the words she would have planned had she known something like this was going to happen. She should have known, and she should have been prepared.

  She glances at her clock. Maybe he’ll have calmed down by now.

  She picks up her phone and sends him a message. Can we talk?

  The response is immediate. Not now. Felicity has thrown me out. I’m with my grandparents tonight. Please do not call me. I will call you.

  Rebecca stares at her mobile. She makes herself think about Felicity, makes herself imagine how she’ll be feeling right now. Rebecca owes her an explanation, an apology, an acknowledgement that her behaviour has been unacceptable. Felicity won’t want to see her, but if she doesn’t go, if she just ignores her friend’s anger and misery, then that will be something else that Felicity can hold against her. She must see her, if only this once, and let Felicity tell her she hates her, allow her to say what she wants, to her face. Rebecca is taking her husband, so she’s prepared to take the fallout with it. It’s not all altruism though; she’ll be doing David’s job for him, making it easier for him to draw a line under his marriage.

  She repairs her make-up, changes into black trousers and a warm shirt and jumper, puts on her coat, tips up her fur collar and strides out into the night.

  The lights are on downstairs, so Felicity is still up. Rebecca imagines her friend, translucent skin mottled with tears, sitting at the kitchen table, surrounded by her perfect walls and carefully chosen possessions and wondering how she missed the fact that she’s been living on quicksand, that all this, all the money, the children, the house in France, adds up to nothing.

  The raw night air bites Rebecca’s cheeks and she holds her coat collar together across her chin. She waits for five more minutes but doesn’t get a sight of her, not even a movement behind the vast flower arrangement, that silk monstrosity that shields her friend from nosy passers-by. She crosses the road, walks up to the door and knocks. She doesn’t want to ring the bell unless she has to, in case it wakes the kids.

  When Felicity sees who it is, she moans and tries to push the door shut. Rebecca slams her palm against it and wedges her booted foot inside.

  ‘Let me in, Felicity. Please.’

  ‘Why the hell should I? I can’t believe you’ve done this to me.’

  ‘I never wanted to hurt you.’ Was that true? She was uncertain. Someone was going to get hurt eventually, and she would have avoided being that person at all costs.

  Rebecca eases herself inside. Mussy-haired and blotchy-skinned, Felicity is a picture of devastation, her eyes woeful and pink from crying. To Rebecca’s surprise, Felicity springs forward, going for her face with her bitten nails and scratching her ear. Rebecca grabs her wrists and thrusts them down, then drags her into the kitchen and closes the door. Pebbles wakes up and stretches, gets out of her bed and comes to see them, pushing her nose under Felicity’s hand. Then she sits back on her haunches and growls.

  Felicity glares at Rebecca, her chest rising and falling. There is something animal about her, something untamed. There’s an open bottle of red wine on the side, two-thirds drunk, and a glass stained with the residue on the table, surrounded by a drift of crumpled hankies.

  ‘I know that I’ve been duplicitous and underhand,’ Rebecca says, ‘but I love him.’

  ‘And you think I don’t? How could you do this to me? I thought you were my friend.’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Friends don’t make fools of each other. Friends don’t screw each other’s husbands. I expect you laugh about me behind my back.’

  ‘Of course we don’t. We love you and respect you and I’ve hated lying to you. So has David. But I’ve loved him for years.’

  ‘Why did you introduce me to him then if you wanted him so badly? Why didn’t you take him when you could?’

  ‘I honestly don’t know. I didn’t take it seriously, I suppose.’

  Rebecca squeezes the bridge of her nose. She ought to cry but she can’t; even as a child she seldom did. ‘I didn’t know, not until he asked you to marry him. The finality of it shocked me into recognizing my feelings.’

  ‘How sad and unoriginal. You wanted what you couldn’t have. I should have realized something was up when the years passed, and you never committed to anyone. At one point, I even thought you were gay.’ She mutters to herself then adds, her eyes scouring Rebecca’s face, ‘I wish you were.’

  Rebecca doesn’t know what to say. Felicity is right and wrong at the same time. It was seeing him attaching himself irrevocably to someone else that brought it home. She’s never forgotten the awful shifting feeling when Felicity showed her the ring. It had felt like the floor was falling away.

  ‘When did it start? Don’t tell me it was before my wedding day.’

  She feels a mixture of shame and defiance. ‘About a year later. It was when we were setting up Gunner Munro and spending so much time together.’
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  ‘Who made the first move?’

  She doesn’t hesitate. ‘I did.’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  Felicity goes to the window, pressing her hands against the frame and her forehead against the cool glass. In her white dressing gown, her blonde hair backlit by the moonlight, she looks like an angel.

  Rebecca allows the silence to swell. Eventually, Felicity drops her arms and turns to face her. Her face is a picture of misery. ‘When I was pregnant?’

  Put so starkly, the betrayal is appalling. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Oh Christ.’

  Felicity bursts into tears, great heaving sobs that Rebecca fears might bring the children downstairs. She wishes she hadn’t come. She wants to leave, but she can’t before Felicity tells her to go. She has to give her that at least. After a while Felicity pulls herself together. Her breath is ragged, but she is no longer crying.

  ‘Have you had sex in my bed?’

  ‘No. We wouldn’t do that.’

  ‘Oh. So you do have scruples.’

  She doesn’t answer.

  ‘And you expect me to be grateful?’

  ‘What do you want me to do?’

  ‘I want you to sell your half of the company.’ Her eyes lock on to Rebecca’s. ‘David can afford to buy you out, or he may want to find a new partner. But you have to go. He belongs with his family, and don’t you ever forget it.’

  Rebecca bends to stroke Pebbles’s fringe, then she gets up and leaves.

  Felicity doesn’t see her to the door and as she crosses the road and looks back, the lights go out. There is an air of finality about it; a line drawn. She has lost a friend, but she won’t allow herself to think that she may have lost David too. He will choose her. She hugs herself as she strides through Hampstead. She is over a week late. She is not going to think about that either. She is not going to hope.

  41

  Laura

  MY FIRST THOUGHT is that Elliot has come back, sneaking silently into the house. I struggle to sink my teeth into his hand, but his grip is too tight, and he has me trapped by his weight, one knee pressed down on my chest, making it difficult to draw breath. My screams are muffled. I pedal against the sheet, to get myself up against the headboard, but he’s far stronger than me.

  I twist and kick, trying to catch him off guard, but he clasps my wrists in one hand and forces fabric into my mouth, then leans over to pick something up from the floor. He shows it to me, puts it right in front of my face, then holds the tip of it against my neck, pushing it hard enough to dent my skin. Any harder, and he’ll break through, maybe nick an artery. Panicking, I strain my neck away, but the knife follows me. And then he hits me and it’s so unexpected and violent that I black out. When I come to, I’m gagged, and my hands are bound behind my back.

  He pulls me up and manhandles me to the door. I put up a fight and he hits me again, so hard that my vision fuzzes.

  I stagger downstairs, falling and landing at the bottom, trying to reach the door. He rights me and then there’s a blank and we’re outside, our breath misting in the cold. I don’t remember going through the door. I trip over my own feet; a drunk woman supported by her boyfriend.

  I pass out and when I wake up I’m lying on the back seat of a car, bruised and sore, speeding along a motorway, the smell of leather in my nose. Lights flash by, so bright that they hurt my eyes, and there’s a long rush of air as we cut through the slipstream and overtake a lorry. My jaw and cheekbone throb. The back of his head is blurred. The silence is ominous. I work my wrists to try and loosen my bounds but they’re too tight and I only hurt myself. I slowly take in the interior. This isn’t Elliot’s car. Elliot’s car has a baby seat in it.

  We veer off the motorway and drive for about fifteen minutes then turn into a lane that zigzags for a mile or so, before crunching over gravel to pull up in front of a house. The air smells of wet grass. The night is clear. The call of an owl, distant and ghostly, makes me shiver. I can see the upstairs windows and three gables in the roof, and above them a dark expanse of sky and a three-quarter moon. The same moon I was looking at with Elliot, only this time it has a weird halo round it.

  When he drags me out my feet slide over the seat and hit the ground with a jolt of pain that starts in my bad ankle and flares into my leg and hip. I vomit over his shoes.

  ‘For fuck’s sake.’

  I recognize that voice. He forces me to stand, then marches me across the gravel, the sharp stones digging into my bare feet, and takes me inside.

  ‘Make one sound and I’ll use this,’ he says, holding the knife close to my face.

  We are in a sitting room, the lights off. I know it’s David. I think I have known all the time, only the concussion affected my ability to pin down his name. So, I was right. It was him. Elliot had nothing to do with what happened to me.

  Keeping the knife to my throat, he pulls the fabric out of my mouth. It’s one of the woolly socks I wear in bed on cold nights.

  ‘I won’t tell anyone,’ I gasp. ‘If you let me go, I won’t say a word. I swear.’

  ‘Shut up. I need to think,’ he says.

  My nose is running and my throat aches, and I hate myself for showing weakness. I look down at my body, at my damaged dress, and hug my arms around my breasts.

  ‘Lie on your front.’

  I stifle my panic, shuffle round and press my face into a cushion. The velvety fabric is unpleasant against my cheek.

  ‘How did you get into my flat?’ I say to the back of the sofa.

  ‘You left your bag in the dressing room all day. I found your keys and had them copied at the station.’

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘What the hell do you think I want? I want you to leave me and my family alone. I’m sick of your nasty insinuations and your threats.’

  When I speak my voice sounds as though it belongs to someone else. ‘I’m the one who’s paying for what you did.’

  ‘But it’s got nothing to do with you,’ he says with frustration. ‘I don’t understand why you’ve taken it upon yourself to fight someone else’s battle.’

  I roll my body round so that I can see him. My head is heavy, but I lift it. He is sitting on an armchair, leaning back, his legs spread, exhausted.

  ‘You raped me. How is that someone else’s battle?’

  He sits forward abruptly. ‘What in Christ’s name are you talking about?’

  ‘So, you think it wasn’t rape? You think it’s all right to conceal your identity to get someone into bed. It is rape. Look it up.’

  ‘I don’t need to look it up. I didn’t rape you, Laura.’

  ‘Yes, you did.’

  ‘When?’ he asks.

  ‘After the Christmas party.’

  ‘I don’t know why we’re even discussing this. It’s pure fantasy. If you had been raped, you would have gone to the police.’

  I remember something. ‘Are you circumcised?’

  ‘Are you off your fucking trolley?’

  ‘Are you circumcised?’

  ‘No, I am not circumcised. What has that got to do with anything? I’m talking about Guy. I didn’t rape you. I would never rape anyone.’

  ‘Guy?’ I say slowly.

  ‘How did you know it was me? Were you there?’

  I’m not brilliant at reading expressions, but his bewilderment is clear.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ I say. ‘Are you saying you didn’t get in my cab?’

  ‘No, I didn’t.’ He grimaces with distaste. ‘And I’ve never been inside your flat before tonight, and as for forcing myself on you, do me a favour. I don’t sleep with women who are so paralytically drunk they haven’t a clue who they’ve invited into their bed.’

  There’s a long pause. Then he rakes his hands through his hair. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘You killed Guy.’ My mouth drops open and I look at him stupidly. ‘Is that what you’re saying? You were the driver? You knocked him down and left him to die?’

&
nbsp; ‘It wasn’t my fault. He came out of nowhere. I got him on to the pavement.’

  ‘But he was still alive, and you didn’t call 999. You were too busy worrying about what would happen to you. You could have saved him.’

  ‘He was under a street light. I assumed someone would see him.’

  I can’t believe what I’m hearing. ‘He worked for you. He respected you, David. How could you have driven away?’

  ‘Do you think I don’t feel terrible? I haven’t had a decent night’s sleep since it happened. He’s dead and there is no bringing him back. I have to live with that for the rest of my life.’

  I can’t bear to speak to him, and what response is there? Instead I fit the pieces together. He must have gone back to Gunner Munro to pick up his car that night. His ego is big enough for him to think the rules don’t apply and to consider himself capable of driving under the influence without mishap. He probably didn’t even ask himself the question. When he realized he’d hit someone, I can guess what went through his mind. His career. His reputation. His future. He could lose his business, the respect of his peers; incur the disappointment of his family and Rebecca. No wonder he reacted like he did. I’ve blundered into another crime.

  I can’t believe my own stupidity. What was I doing? Trying to punish David was like shoving a fist into a snake pit. He didn’t trick me, rape me or come anywhere near me. He couldn’t have been in two places at the same time. I got it wrong, there was somebody else in my bed that night. And in that case, was it Elliot after all? Too many weeks have gone by and the trail will be cold. If I live through this, I may never find out who did it. If I live.

  I feel a sense of dread and the sudden, crushing stillness between us tells me he’s feeling the same thing. That’s why I’m here. I am a problem he needs to solve.

  42

  Rebecca

  REBECCA WAVES BETTINA out of the room, as though she’s flicking away an annoying insect, the phone pressed to her ear. David hasn’t heard the interruption and is still talking. His voice is different. It’s a nuanced difference, but she knows him so well that she can sense it in the rhythm and speed of his speech.