by B P Walter
He’s turned white now. Then he says something very quietly through clenched teeth: ‘You disgust me.’
The words hit me. The cruelty of them is startling, dizzying, and, rendered temporarily speechless, I pick up a book from the bed between us and hurl it at him. It hits him on the shoulder, then falls pathetically to the floor.
He looks at the now dog-eared novel, then looks back at me. At first I think he’s going to cry, then, when I think there’s no room to astonish me further, he does something that has me backing away. He starts undoing his belt.
‘What the fuck are you doing?’ My voice is getting tight. I’m staring at his moving hands – they’re pulling down his zipper now. And his trousers are coming down. He’s stepping out of them.
‘It’s what you want, right? You said I should have been paying more attention to you. How you’ve been jealous of all those other women while not getting any yourself.’
‘I didn’t say that… I didn’t mean that I wanted…’ I’m still staring at him, transfixed. He’s unbuttoned his shirt now, his bare, still well-defined torso coming into view. He casts the shirt aside and kicks away his jeans from around his feet. Then he rounds the bed. Walking towards me. And something in my mind stirs. A weird, rippling sense of déjà vu. I’ve been here before. In this situation. With a man coming towards me.
‘Please,’ I whisper. Then I see his face change. The anger has gone. And now he’s worried. As if he’s just been jolted out of a dream.
‘Jesus, Caroline. I’m not… I didn’t mean… I wasn’t…’ He looks around, down at his own unclothed body, apparently ashamed. ‘I was just making a point.’
‘Consider the point made,’ I say, regaining some conviction in my voice.
He sits down on the bed and puts his head in his hands. ‘Everything’s so fucked up.’
I don’t say anything to this as there isn’t really anything to argue with. He’s right. Everything is so fucked up. I haven’t got a cure for it. And there’s nothing I can say that will make it any less so.
After a minute of sitting in silence, he gets up and says, ‘I need to charge my phone. I’ve got work emails I need to reply to.’
The unspoken implication is that I wouldn’t have any. I don’t protest as he walks past me to unplug my phone and attach the cable to his. I wait for him to come back, but he stands by the bedside for some time. Then exclaims, ‘What the hell is all this?’
He’s looking down at my phone, scrolling through what appears to be a mass of notifications on the home screen. I get up to have a better look and see they’re all text messages from an unknown number – or at least one that doesn’t have a name next to it in my contacts.
‘I don’t know,’ I say, reaching out for the phone, but he holds it out of my reach.
‘Where are you? I’m sorry she chucked you out. She hates me shagging women at home. She’s a bitch.’ He looks up at me, something glowing in his eyes – something that looks horribly like triumph. ‘Care to explain?’
I’m completely dumbfounded. ‘I… what? Let me see.’
He steps away again, flicking through more: ‘I saw the crash. Are you OK? Then a bit later, Came to hospital again today. Took ages to find you but I did and there was a man sitting by your bed holding your hand. You were talking to him. He your husband?’
I stare at the message. I’m astonished. And then my mind flicks back to that fleeting sense of déjà vu moments ago. And I’m suddenly horrified. Have I had someone in this room? A man? Am I having an affair? ‘I don’t know what that is,’ I say, finally.
‘What the actual FUCK, Caroline? Do you think I’m stupid? Do you think this is helping us? What, you decided you’d have a holiday away with some guy, fuck him a few times, blow a load of cash on a five-star hotel, not to mention that monstrosity,’ he gesticulates wildly at the television, ‘and then what? You’re going to leave me? Is that what you want? Us being miserable on our own, rather than miserable together? Christ, say something!’
I’m crying now, shaking my head, mumbling something even I can’t understand, until it finally comes out in a rush: ‘I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I don’t know…’
‘“I don’t know” is no longer good enough,’ he spits towards me, pacing the room now. ‘Fine! If this is what you want, if you NEED dirty weekends away in fucking Essex in order to get your shit together, be my guest. You know what? Stay as long as you like. I was scared, Caroline. First I thought you were missing, then I thought you’d fucking DIED and sat by your hospital bed praying you’d be OK, and now I find out you’ve been fucking random men…’
‘A bit rich, coming from you!’ The anger gives me the propulsive energy I need to fight, to claw back some sense of weight in the argument, otherwise I’m just going to end up cowering in tears while he shouts at me.
‘Oh that’s cheap, even by your standards.’ His lip curls in disgust.
‘How is it any different? How?’
‘So you’re admitting it, huh? Is this your confession?’
I glare at him, unable to verbalise what I want to say next, my brain teeming with so many thoughts, I can’t get one to the front of the queue quick enough. Then, suddenly, he stays completely still, as if a thought just occurred to him. ‘Is it Rob?’
That makes me jump. Physically jump. And he notices. I really don’t want to get onto the subject of Alec’s brother right now. ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
‘I’m not being ridiculous. I’ve always wondered about the two of you.’
‘I’m not doing this again, Alec. I’m not getting into your strange sibling jealousy thing…’
He lets out a short laugh. ‘Sibling jealousy? Oh here we go again, Caroline the psychotherapist, eh? It’s exactly the sort of thing he’d do, too. I’ve always known he was a cruel bastard deep under. Always wanted what I had as a kid, stole my girlfriends when I was a teenager, did what he wanted with them and made sure I knew about it, taking whatever I owned…’
I raise a hand to stop him. ‘If he did all that stuff when he was a teenager, that would have been nearly twenty years ago. Move the fuck on, Alec. And second, you don’t own me. Women aren’t something that can be stolen or kept. You should know that.’
He mutters something that sounds like ‘Unbelievable’ and then gets up and starts to walk away.
‘Where are you going?’ I call after him.
‘If you want all THIS, you can have it. If you want to cry yourself to sleep miles away from home, then fine, that’s your choice. Maybe one day you’ll realise that your grief isn’t more important than anybody else’s. That other people hurt too.’ His voice breaks as he finishes his speech, then he marches over to the door, opens it, then leaves, slamming it purposefully behind him.
I collapse onto the bed, but I don’t cry, although my eyes are still moist. I just shift into a position that doesn’t hurt my arm and listen to the sound of the rain raging against the window, sending a curtain of water splashing across the glass. Maybe I should stay here, I think. I’d be near the hospital, get to see the same doctors. Work out what’s going on. Discover why I came here in the first place.
My thoughts almost start to slip into sleep. Then a loud thump on the door startles me out of them.
‘Caroline.’
It’s Alec’s voice, from outside in the corridor. I don’t reply.
‘Caroline! Open the fucking door!’
‘Why? I thought you were leaving?’ I call out to him, aware we must be disturbing – or thoroughly entertaining – any guests spending the day in their rooms.
‘Because I left most of my clothes inside your room.’
Again, a stirring occurs in my mind. Like something tripping a very tiny switch. Someone leaving my room in a state of undress. Me opening the door to them. The thought unnerves me a little and I try to shake it off, but the feeling lingers. Taking in a deep breath, I slip slowly off the bed. ‘I’m coming,’ I say. Then walk over to the door and let him in.
Chapter Thirty-Two
The Mother
Seventeen years to go.
My wedding to Alec was a nice day in many ways, but it would have been a lot better if I hadn’t had to deal with his childish insecurities and petty sibling rivalry. We’d opted for The Chesterfield in Mayfair – a venue more expensive than I would have liked but Alec, always weird and illogical about money, seemed to think it made a good statement getting married somewhere so grand. That and the fact that one of his colleagues at the firm he was working at had also got married there a year or two previously and had recommended it. I think the idea of Alec saying, ‘That’s out of our price range,’ probably made him feel rather ill. So The Chesterfield it was, and I just went with it.
After the ceremony, the reception chuntered along like these things do. People pretending to be nice, pretending to be having a great time, when all they really wanted to do was get back home and watch Brookside. When the time finally came for the best man’s speech, I could see Rob wasn’t in the best of moods. He’d accepted the role gracefully and with good humour, although I think he had probably guessed he hadn’t been Alec’s first choice. He’d wanted a slightly more senior friend from work, hoping it would give his career-ladder aims a boost. I told him that would be embarrassing and on no account was he going to use our wedding to get ahead in his job. We’d had a row, he’d stormed off for a few hours, then when he came back he conceded that his brother would be the more natural choice as a best man.
‘Ladies and Gentlemen,’ Rob began, ‘beautiful women and beautiful men, the latter being just me, of course.’ Polite laughter. ‘Thank you for joining us to witness the union of these two annoyingly happy people, my dear brother Alec and his enchantress of a wife, Caroline. I could fill this talk with long and painfully embarrassing stories about my dear brother – of course, a best man is contractually obliged to provide some, and I’ll be waiting at that table over there afterwards to offer some to anyone who cares to listen for the rest of the night.
‘But I didn’t want this speech to be like that. It’s a very short speech and it has only one anecdote. One day, when he was sixteen, my little bro had girl trouble and came home a bit upset. I tried offering some advice, as I was already a bit of a ladies’ man at the tender age of eighteen, but he told me to sod off and the job fell to our late father to cheer him up. He said to him, “Son, throughout your life you’ll be faced with many decisions thrown your way by beautiful women. Some will be easy. Some will be hard. But you’ve always got to think – am I willing to risk everything to make this experience worth it? And I mean your street cred, your money, even your life. If the answer’s yes, offer up your heart and give her everything you’ve got.”
‘He was a wise man, our dad. I think today, my little brother has found the perfect woman who transcends those warnings and meets those requirements. Alec is right to offer up his heart to Caroline. He’s not risking his street cred – he’s substantially gaining some, marrying a woman so wonderful. He’s not risking his money, since she has more than he has.’
He paused for laughter, and was rewarded. I laughed a little too, just to seem good humoured, but inside my heart gave a little jolt. Alec won’t like this, I thought to myself. I glanced his way and I could see him looking down at the table in front of us, his eyes cold and stony.
‘And, although I’m hoping it won’t come to it, I’m sure he’d be the first to offer up his life to save hers. So please, join me in a toast to Caroline and Alec.’
Everyone drank.
It didn’t take long for the confrontation to happen. Alec and I had been talking to our next-door neighbours, thanking them for coming along to the wedding, when Rob sidled over.
‘Hey, little bro,’ he said, patting Alec on the back. ‘Did you well up at my speech?’
Our neighbours smiled calmly, then used the interruption as an opportunity to wander away. Alec said nothing at first. Just pursed his lips and stood next to me. I wasn’t sure if he wanted me to take over and defuse the situation, but eventually he spoke, in little more than a whisper:
‘Why did you do that?’
I saw Rob’s brow crease. ‘What do you mean?’
‘That story. About Dad. You knew I wouldn’t want to hear that.’
He shrugged. ‘It was a nice thing he said.’
Alec was getting redder and redder and I worried the whispering was about to turn into shouting. But he carried on talking quietly, with whispers that steadily grew into hisses as he got into his stride: ‘You know exactly what I’m talking about. He said that to me after I’d been sent home from school, having it off with a girl behind the bike sheds, without realising that an entire Year 11 boys’ football class could see, including two teachers. I was dragged onto the pitch by my collar by one of them, who then lectured me on “the sins of the flesh” and then shamed me by making me “beg the Lord for forgiveness” in front of all those laughing boys.’
Rob laughed. ‘Don’t blame me for the crazy Catholics of our youth.’
Alec leant forwards and pulled his brother in closer by his tie so that he was a couple of inches from his face. ‘You KNEW I wouldn’t want to be reminded of that on my wedding day. You KNEW that would upset me. Imagine if you’d lost your virginity like that. Would you want that to be on your mind shortly before your wedding night? You did it on purpose. You twisted Dad’s words so it made it sound like he was giving me heartfelt advice on romance. You did it to wind me up.’
Rob tried a casual laugh, pushing his brother away. ‘Not that it worked, of course. Come on, mate, let’s not be like this. I’ll get you a drink…’
‘Yes, let’s go outside,’ I started to say, feeling I should be doing more to stop this developing into something violent, like one of those soap-opera weddings that end in tears and the blue lights of ambulances. Before I could get any more words out, however, Alec had shoved his brother away and disappeared off. Rob turned to me, clearly a bit rattled. ‘Sensitive soul, isn’t he?’
I decided to treat the whole thing lightly and just rolled my eyes and laughed a little. Then the two of us went to get more drinks, and I left my new husband to wander around the small hotel garden, pissed off, drunk, and alone.
‘Well, for what it’s worth, I thought your speech was very sweet,’ I said, smiling.
‘My pleasure,’ he said. I could see him examining my face, as if checking to see if I was upset. I smiled more broadly to show him Alec’s behaviour hadn’t ruined my day. It was too predictable to do that – I’d known he’d have some kind of strop. I was just glad it was because of something his brother had said and not me.
As if reading my mind, Rob said, ‘I’m sorry, it’s my fault he’s cross. I should have thought about it more, I suppose.’
I made a dismissive gesture with my hand, ‘Oh, he often is these days.’
‘I thought you guys should be still in the honeymoon mode. Considering you haven’t even had the bloody honeymoon?’
I let out a half-laugh, half-sigh. ‘Yeah, you’d think so, wouldn’t you? But even that seems to be a stress. The flights and hotels and things like that. Anyone would think he was a teacher organising a school trip, not a luxury getaway with the woman he loves.’
He put his hand on my arm. ‘Men are dicks. Don’t let it get you down.’
He kept his hand there for longer than seemed entirely normal. I glanced around. We’d gravitated towards a quiet corner, with not many guests in sight. A quick scan of those I could see told me eyes were not upon us.
‘Well… sometimes I can’t help but wonder…’ I said, feeling a flutter in my chest. Something like excitement. Or a warning.
‘Wonder what?’ Rob asked, his eyes holding contact with mine.
‘Whether I maybe chose the wrong brother.’
He stared at me and I stared back. Then I laughed.
‘I’m joking, of course,’ I said, suddenly feeling a rush of panic. A feeling I’d exposed more of myself, my feelings, my insecuritie
s, than I ever meant to.
‘Of course,’ he said, copying my laughter. But we both knew there wasn’t anything funny in what I’d said.
‘I’d better get back to Alec. Check he hasn’t made a member of the catering staff cry over their wine-pouring skills. See you around, Rob.’ Trying to make my smile as natural as I could, I drifted back off towards the main function room, my heart still pounding.
Chapter Thirty-Three
The Boy
The news of the Piccadilly attacks has filtered out of the main headlines now, even though the threat level is still at ‘Critical’, meaning they think another attack might be imminent. There’s still a couple of stories, but just stuff about the ‘ongoing police raids’ of houses in Ilford and Barking. They’re still worried there’s a wider network of terrorists, apparently – that this could be the first of more to come. But for now, other things going on in the world are starting to take top billing.
Previously, I would have thought that would be a good thing. A relief. A break in the madness. I thought the days of me coming home from school and dreading what the news would tell me – though still being unable to look – would stop for a bit. Let me breathe. But today something happens that completely fucks my world. Bigger than anything I could have expected.
ITV’S INSIGHT DOCUMENTARY TO NAME KEY MPs IN CHILD SEX RING
The headline makes me freeze. And then the photograph accompanying it makes everything start to spin. A man, in his forties. Still fit, some girls might say. Still got it. His dark-blond hair hasn’t yet gone grey. His face is still thin. His teeth still white. I remember his teeth to this day. How they glinted. How he smiled. How he was one of the few men who didn’t wear a mask. I know who he is. I don’t have to read his name. Seeing his face is enough. I vomit all over my desk.
