Blueeyedboy would understand. Blueeyedboy, with his online games. Why does he do it? Because he can. And equally, because he can’t. And also, of course, because Chryssie believes in happy-ever-after; because Clair buys Bourbon biscuits instead of Family Circle; and because Cap is a fucktard who wouldn’t know tough if it jumped up and tore out what’s left of his guts —
I know. I’m beginning to sound like him now. I suppose it comes with the territory. And besides, I’ve always been very good at mimicking other people. It is, you might say, my only skill. My one successful party piece. But this is no time for complacency. This is the time to be most aware. Even at his most vulnerable, blueeyedboy is dangerous. He is far from stupid, and he knows how to hit back. Nigel — poor Nigel — is a case in point, deleted just as effectively as if blueeyedboy had hit a key.
That’s how he does it. That’s how he copes. He said as much in his story. That’s how a mirror-touch synaesthete orchestrated the death of one brother, by using another as proxy. And that’s how he managed to kill Nigel, with the help of an insect in a jar. And if I am to believe him now, that’s how he caused those other deaths, shielding himself from the consequences by watching it all in reverse, through his fic, like Perseus slaying the Gorgon.
I’ve thought of going to the police. But it sounds so absurd, doesn’t it? I can imagine their faces now; their looks of sympathetic amusement. I could show them his online confessions — if that’s what they really are — and I’d be the one to look crazy, lost in a world of fantasy. Like a stage magician as he prepares to saw the lady in half, blueeyedboy scrupulously invites us to check that there has been no subterfuge.
Look, no tricks. No hidden trapdoor. There’s nothing hidden up his sleeve. His crimes are public, for all to see. To speak up now would simply be to turn the spotlight on myself; to add another scandalous strand to a tale already barbed with lies. I imagine my life with Nigel placed under their scrutiny; I can already see the Press coming like starving rodents out of their holes, swarming over everything, and every little scrap of my life torn up and nibbled at and used to line their filthy nests.
I walked home via the Fireplace House. I knew it so well from his stories. In fact I’d only seen it once, in secret, when I was ten years old. I remembered the garden, all roses, and the bright green lawns, and the big front door, and the fish pond with its fountain. Of course I’d never been inside. But Daddy had told me everything. Over twenty years later, I found my way back with eerie, unsurprising ease. Class had finished at eight o’clock, and a murky dark had fallen, smelling of smoke and sour earth, bracketing the houses and cars in a halo of streetlight-orange.
The house was shut, as I’d thought it would be, but the front gate opened easily and the path had been recently weeded and cleared. Bren’s work, I told myself. He has always hated disorder.
Security lights came on as I passed. White spotlights against the green. I could see my giant shadow against the wall of the rose garden, pointing like a finger down the path and across the lawn.
I tried to imagine the house as my own. That gracious house, those gardens. If Emily had lived, I thought, they would have belonged to her now. But Emily had not lived, and the fortune had gone to her family, or at least what was left of it — to her father, Patrick White — and then, at last, from Daddy to me. I wish I could refuse the gift. But it’s too late: wherever I go, Emily White will follow me. Emily White and her circus of horrors: the gloaters, the haters, the stalkers, the Press . . .
The upstairs windows were boarded up. Across the fading front door someone had recently sprayed in blue paint: ROT IN HELL U PERVERT.
Nigel? No, surely not. I don’t believe Nigel would have harmed the old man, whatever the provocation. And as for Bren’s other suggestion — that Nigel had never loved me at all, that it had all been because of the money —
No. That’s blueeyedboy playing games again, trying to poison everything. If Nigel had lied to me, I would have known. And yet I can’t help wondering — what was in that letter he got? The letter which sent him off in such a rage? Could Brendan have been blackmailing him? Had he threatened to reveal his plans? Could Nigel really have been involved in something that led to murder?
Click.
A small, but quite familiar sound. For a moment I stood listening, the sound of my blood like surf in my ears, my skin a-prickle with nervous heat. Could they have found me already? I thought. Was this the exposure I’d feared?
‘Is anyone there?’
No answer. The trees hisshed and whispered with the wind.
‘Brendan!’ I called. ‘Bren? Is that you?’
Still nothing moved. There was silence. And yet I could feel him watching me as I’ve felt him watch me so often before, and the hackles stood up at the back of my neck, and my mouth was suddenly sour and dry.
Then I heard it again. Click.
The shutterclick sound of a camera, so dreadfully innocuous, weighted with menace and memories. Then the furtive sound of his retreat, almost inaudible, back through the bushes. He is very quiet, of course. But I can always hear him.
I took a step towards the sound, parted the bushes with my hands.
‘Why are you following me?’ I said. ‘What is it you want, Bren?’
I thought I heard him behind me then, a furtive sound in the under-growth. I made my voice seductive now, a velvet cat’s-paw of a voice, to coax an unsuspecting rat. ‘Brendan? Please. We need to talk.’
There was a piece of rock at my feet by the edge of the border. I hefted it. It felt good. I imagined myself bringing it down on his head as he hid there in the bushes.
I stood there, holding the rock in my hand, looking out for a sign of him. ‘Brendan? Are you there?’ I said. ‘Come out. I want to talk to you—’
Once more I heard a rustling, and this time I reacted. I took a step, spun round, and then, as hard as I could, I pitched the rock towards the source of the rustling sound. There came a thud and a muffled cry — and then a terrible silence.
There. You’ve done it, I told myself.
It didn’t feel real; my hands were numb. My ears were filled with white noise. Was this all I had to do? Is it so easy to kill a man?
And then it hit me; the horror, the truth. Murder was easy, I realized; as easy as throwing a casual punch; as easy as lifting up a stone. I felt empty, amazed at my emptiness. Could this really be all there was?
Then came the opening chords of grief; a swell of love and sickness. I heard a dreadful wounded cry, which for a moment I took to be his voice, but later understood was my own. I took a step towards the place where I’d thrown the rock at Brendan. I called his name. There was no reply. He could be hurt, I told myself. He could be alive, but unconscious. He could be faking it; lying in wait. I didn’t care; I had to know. There, behind the rose hedge — the briars tore my hands bloody.
And then came a movement behind me. He must have been very silent. He must have crawled on his hands and knees between the herbaceous borders. As I turned I caught a glimpse of his face, his look of pain and disbelief.