Second Life

by S. J. Watson

  ‘No!’ He steps forward. The rain has plastered his hair to his forehead; it drips from him, soaking him. ‘I didn’t kill anyone, I swear.’ He looks from me to Anna. ‘What are you doing?’ He reaches for her but I wave the gun and he backs off. ‘How can you say you lied for me? I lied for you!’

  I lift the gun up.

  ‘Tell her!’ he says, then. He’s speaking to Anna. ‘Tell her I was abroad that night!’

  She shakes her head. ‘I’m not lying for you again.’ She sobs. ‘I lied to the police, but I’m not doing it again. You told me you were abroad, but you weren’t. You killed her, Lukas. You did it.’

  ‘No!’ he says. ‘No!’ But I can barely hear him. All I can hear is Anna. You did it.

  ‘Listen,’ he says. ‘I can explain—’

  My hand begins to shake. The gun is heavy, slick with rain. ‘Where’s Connor?’

  No one speaks.

  ‘Where is he?’

  Anna looks at me. ‘Julia,’ she says, and I can see that she’s crying. ‘Julia. Connor . . . is upstairs. I tried to protect him . . .’

  I look at the blood on her shirt.

  ‘I couldn’t. We need an ambulance. We have to get him to a hospital—’

  Everything collapses. It’s automatic, impulsive. A reflex. I don’t even think. I look at the gun in my hand and, beyond it, Lukas.

  I pull the trigger.

  What happens next isn’t supposed to. There’s an instant – an almost imperceptible moment – of something that resembles stillness. Stasis. I don’t feel as if I’ve made an irreversible decision; for a moment it’s as if I can still take it all back. Turn away. Become something else, or follow a path that leads to a different future.

  But then the gun fires. My hand leaps up with the kick; there’s a flash and the noise hits. It’s intense; my whole body reacts as the gun’s blast echoes off the walls of the alleyway. A second later it’s gone, replaced by a deadening numbness. In the silence I look in horror at the gun in my hand, as if I can’t believe what I’ve done, and then I look at Lukas.

  He’s spinning, away from me, his hands at his chest. Even as he turns I can see that he’s wide-eyed, terrified; within a second or two he’s lying on the ground against the opposite wall of the alley. Stasis returns. There’s a whistling in my ears, but all else is quiet. I look at the gun. There’s a faint smell, dry and acrid, like nothing I’ve known before. Nobody moves. Nothing happens. I can feel my heart beat.

  And then a red smudge blooms on his shirt, the world of sound crashes back in, and everything happens at once.

  I step back, feel the cold wall against me. Lukas speaks; it sounds unnaturally loud now that my hearing has returned, yet still it’s little more than a thin, reedy noise in his throat. ‘You stupid bitch! You fucking shot me!’

  My courage has gone, my bravado has disappeared. My hand goes to my mouth.

  He’s panting, looking down at the blood that’s beginning to seep through his fingers. He cries out. I can’t make out what he’s saying, it’s little more than a rasping moan, but he looks from his bleeding chest to Anna and there seems to be a name in there. It sounds like ‘Bella’.

  The word seems familiar, vaguely, but I can’t place it. I look over at Anna. Help me, I want to say. What have I done? But she’s looking at me. Her face is cold. Her eyes wide, as if in shock, yet at the same time she’s wearing half a smile.

  ‘Bella,’ he says again.

  ‘Shut the fuck up,’ she says. She takes a step forward. She moves slowly. She is utterly calm.

  I look at her. I’m incredulous. I don’t know what to say. My mouth opens, closes. She looks at me.

  My world is imploding. I can’t work out what is happening. Everything seems too bright, as if I’ve been staring into the sun. I can only make out outlines, shadows. Nothing is solid, nothing seems real.

  ‘Where’s Connor? Where is he?’

  She smiles, but says nothing.

  ‘Anna? What’s this about? We’re friends . . . ? Aren’t we?’

  She laughs. The name begins to float to the surface. I’ve heard it before. I know I have. Bella.

  I just can’t yet place it. I look to the body at my feet, desperate for help. ‘Lukas?’ He looks up at me. He’s gasping, pale. His eyes close, open again. ‘Lukas?’

  He tries to take another deep breath, to speak, but the words fracture and fail.

  Anna speaks. It’s difficult to tell, but it looks as though she’s begun to cry. ‘The police will be here soon, Julia.’

  I look at the gun in my hand, at the man I’ve just shot. The truth begins to emerge, yet still it’s distorted, not yet in focus.

  ‘I didn’t mean to kill him.’

  ‘You never do—’

  ‘What—?’

  ‘Yet people still keep dying . . .’

  I don’t know what she means. ‘What? Anna—!’

  ‘Oh, Julia. You still haven’t worked it out, have you?’

  I begin to sob. ‘It’s your gun. Yours. You’re the one who told me about it.’

  ‘But I’m not the one who pulled the trigger.’

  ‘He killed my sister!’

  She smiles, then, and steps forward into the light. ‘No, he didn’t.’

  Her voice is utterly cold, her words sharp enough to sever flesh.

  ‘What?’

  ‘It was me she was meeting that night. I said we needed to talk. But not here.’ She looks at Lukas, lying silently on the floor. ‘At his place. He said we could use it.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘But she was late. She stayed for one more drink. So I bumped into her here. Right where we’re standing.’

  ‘Kate?’

  She nods. ‘I told her it was time. We’d tried everything, but you still wouldn’t give Connor back. So I said we ought to tell you the truth.’

  A wave of dread wraps itself around me, around my throat. I fight for breath.

  ‘It was you? Persuading her . . .’

  ‘Yes. I said we should tell you about Connor’s father. Tell you that he had family, family that would look after him. Not just Kate—’

  Again I look at Lukas. ‘Him?’

  ‘Don’t be so ridiculous. He was just some bloke I was fucking.’ She shakes her head. ‘I mean me.’

  I take a step back. The gun drops to my side. I don’t believe what I’m hearing.

  ‘But—’

  ‘She wouldn’t listen. She said she wasn’t telling you. It would hurt you too much.’ She shakes her head. ‘As if you getting hurt matters in the slightest, after what you did. We fought.’

  ‘What . . . ? Who are you?’

  ‘I didn’t mean to push her over.’

  ‘You killed her!’

  She looks at me. She raises her chin, defiant. Her hate is almost physical; sticky and cloying. It penetrates deep within me. She looks at me and I can see that I disgust her.

  ‘I pushed her over. She
hit her head. I was angry, I wanted to stop, but . . .’ She shrugs. ‘I didn’t know she was dead when I left her. But yes. I left her here and I went round to his place’ – she looks again at Lukas – ‘and then the next day I found out she was dead. And I was glad. You know that? Glad I left her here, alone.’

  My sobs turn into scalding tears. They run down my face. I raise the gun.

  ‘I’m glad because that’s exactly what you did to my brother.’

  ‘What . . . ?’ I say, but an image comes. The last time I’d stood over a body, a dying man. And then finally it snaps into focus. I remember the name Marcus had had for his sister.

  ‘Bella . . . You’re Bella.’

  I see it now, the thing I’ve failed to see all this time. In certain lights, from certain angles. She looks a little like her brother.

  Suddenly I’m back there. I see him that night, his face ashen, bloodless, yet filmed with sweat. He looked unreal somehow, made of rubber. Spittle fringed his mouth; there was vomit on the floor. ‘Go!’ said Frosty.

  ‘No. I can’t.’

  She looked up at me. She was crying. ‘You have to. If they find any of us here—’

  ‘No.’

  ‘—it’ll be over for all of us.’ She stood up, she held me. ‘There’s nothing we can do for Marky now, honey. He’s gone. He’s gone—’

  ‘No!’

  ‘—now you have to go, too.’

  And then I’d seen it. The truth. The people’s lives I’d ruin by staying behind with a man it was too late to help.

  ‘But—’

  ‘I promise I’ll let them know he’s here.’ She kissed me, the top of my head. ‘Go, go now. And look after yourself.’

  And then she went back to Marcus and, with one final glance at his body, I turned away and left him behind.

  I look up at the woman I’d thought was my friend Anna. At the woman who’s been pretending to be my son’s girlfriend. ‘You’re Marcus’s sister.’

  No response. My hands shake.

  ‘Look. I don’t know what you think—’

  ‘Marcus was coming home. You know? We were going to look after him. We loved him. His family. Not you. You weren’t even there. You left him.’

  ‘He overdosed, Anna! You might not like that, but it’s true. He’d been clean for weeks, he took more than he could cope with. It was nobody’s fault.’

  ‘Is that right?’ She shakes her head slowly, her eyes narrowed with bitterness. ‘You were selling your photographs, buying him drugs. I know that—’

  ‘No. No.’

  ‘And then when he couldn’t take it any more, when he overdosed, you left him to die.’

  ‘No! I loved him. I loved Marcus . . .’ I’m sobbing now, my body convulsing, my tears mingling with the rain that runs down my face. ‘I’ve never loved anyone like I loved him.’

  Her cold gaze locks with mine.

  ‘You don’t even know what happened. He was dead already. I had to leave. Marcus had . . . we were . . . I just had to go.’

  ‘You left him there, dying on the floor. You ran away. Back home to start your new life, with your lovely little house and your oh so fucking successful husband. And your son. Darling Connor.’

  ‘Connor. Where is he?’

  ‘You took everything from me. My mother hanged herself—’

  I point the gun at her. ‘Where is he?’

  ‘Then my father went, too. You should have gone to prison for what you did.’ She pauses, her head tilted. Over the driving rain I can hear sirens. ‘And now you will. They’re coming for you.’

  I scream. ‘What have you done to my son?’

  ‘Connor? Nothing. I’d never hurt Connor. He’s the only thing I’ve got left.’

  It hits me then, finally. ‘Marcus? Marcus was Connor’s father?’

  She says nothing, yet as much as I don’t want to believe it, I know it’s true. I see it all. It must’ve been when Kate came to visit. Just before Marcus died.

  She nods. ‘I didn’t know he’d had a child. But then last year Kate told me all about Connor. How she’d got pregnant when she visited her sister in Berlin, and her sister still didn’t know. I had no idea she was talking about Marcus, but then she showed me that picture of the two of you. I nearly told her that Marcus was my brother, but I decided not to. You know why? Because, finally, it all made sense. After all these years I now knew who the bitch was who’d left him to die.’ She looks me in the eye. ‘It was you, Julia. And here I was, living with your sister.’ She shakes her head. ‘That photo. I started to see him everywhere . . .’

  ‘If you’ve hurt my son—’

  ‘He’s my nephew, and I want him, Julia. He can’t stay with you. Look at you. Look at what you’ve done. You’re not fit to be his mother. I proved it. I sent the videos to Hugh, to everyone. They’ll all know what a cheap slut you are now.’

  So that’s it. It had been about getting Connor back, all along. Not the money.

  I look at Lukas. Lukas, who thought he was blackmailing me for money. He’s lying, motionless, his unseeing eyes wide open.

  I hear a car pull up, a door open. I daren’t turn round. I look at the gun in my hand. It’s as if it has nothing to do with me.

  He’s dead. The man who is the proof of what’s been going on, is dead. And I killed him.

  ‘A slut,’ says Anna. She takes a step towards me. She’s almost close enough to touch. I can hear footsteps, close by. I risk a quick glance over my shoulder. Two police cars have pulled up and Hugh is getting out of the first, along with three or four officers. They’re all shouting, a mix of French and English. Hugh’s voice is the only one I can make out. ‘Julia!’ he’s saying. ‘Julia! Put the gun down!’

  I look at him. In the car behind him I can see another figure and with a jolt of relief I realize it’s Connor. He’s looking at me. He looks lost, bewildered. But he’s alive. Anna was lying. He’s safe. Hugh must’ve found him, wandering Gare du Nord, just as Anna had pretended to. Or perhaps he finally relented and turned his phone on, to call his dad.

  ‘Julia!’ says Hugh again. He skids to a halt. The police are ahead of him, they’ve crouched on the ground. There are guns pointing at me. I look at Anna.

  ‘She killed Kate!’ I say.

  Anna speaks, too quietly for anyone but me to hear. ‘You’re a junkie and a slut and a murderer.’

  I’m still looking at my husband. I remember what he’d said, on the phone on the way here. Connor’s father is dead.

  He’d known. Kate must have told him. And he’d kept it to himself.

  I look back at Anna. I know she’s telling the truth. She’s sent the pictures to Hugh.

  She smiles.

  ‘I took it all. I’ve ruined your life, Julia, and now you’ll lose your son.’

  ‘No—’ I begin, but she silences me.

  ‘It’s over, Julia.’

  I raise the gun. The police shout, Hugh says something, but I can’t make it out. I know she’s right. Whatever happens, it’s over now. There’s no way back. I’
ve loved someone, someone who isn’t my husband. I’ve loved someone and I’ve shot him. I can’t go back from this. My life – my second life, the one I escaped into when I ran from Berlin – is over.

  ‘I should kill you,’ I say.

  ‘Then do it.’

  I close my eyes. It’s what she wants. I know it is. And if I do she’s won. But I don’t care, now. I’ve lost Hugh, I’ll lose Connor. It’s irrelevant.

  My hand is shaking, I don’t know what I’m going to do. I want to fire the gun, and at the same time I don’t. Maybe it’s not too late, maybe I can still prove it was Bella who killed my sister, that she tricked me into shooting Lukas. But I can’t work out what difference it will make; Lukas may have been many things, but he was no murderer. I’ve killed an innocent man; whether deliberately or not hardly seems to matter. I can’t live with myself either way.

  I open my eyes. Whatever happens next, whether I shoot or not, it’s over.

  Acknowledgements

  Very special thanks to Clare Conville, Richard Skinner and Miffa Salter. For practical advice on the world of photography, my thanks go to Annabel Staff and to Stuart Sandford. Thanks to my editors around the world, in particular Larry Finlay, Claire Wachtel, Michael Heyward and Iris Tupholme. Thanks to my family and friends, in particular to Nicholas Ib.

  The character name ‘Paddy Renouf’ was supplied by its original owner, who won the right to have his name featured in this book during a charity auction to raise funds for Kelling Hospital, Norfolk. The character is entirely fictional.