I take the postcard out of my waistband. Turn it over.
EL,
God, thank you, baby. I’ve missed you so fucking much. You don’t know how long I’ve waited for you to get back in touch. It’s been like dying, you know? I don’t know if you do. I don’t know if you could ever love me half as much as I love you. Your letter was pretty cold, but I understand why – I was just GLAD to get it!! I understand why you didn’t want anything to do with me that day outside the National Gallery. I understand how much he fucked you up. You’re wrong, but it’s not your fault.
Meet me – just you and me. No Cat this time. I heard the Rosemount is having a May Day party next week, and I know you’re invited (YEAH, I’m your stalker, what can I say? I fucking LOVE you).
Just text me your old room no. I’ll meet you there. 2 p.m. Just do this for me, meet me this once, and if after that you don’t want to ever see me again, I’ll leave you alone. I promise. Even though it’ll break my heart to do it.
Please come, baby. Come so I can show you just how much I need you. Want you.
I love you, Blondie. You know I do.
All my love forever and always, Ross xxx
(P.S. DON’T tell Cat. She’ll ruin it.)
My laughter is just the wrong side of hysterical. I think of El’s face over Ross’s naked shoulder. Her grey, slack horror, her furious reproach. When the staircase door bangs open again, and Ross starts creaking his way back down, my laugh turns into a more alarming giggle.
Doom, I think. Fucking doom.
CHAPTER 28
Six months after I moved to LA, still shellshocked and alone, but certain that I’d done the right thing – the brave thing – I met a man whose crooked smile so badly reminded me of Ross that I ended up having sex with him less than an hour after we met. In the staff car park of a seedy late-night bar. So frantically, so desperately, that it shocked even me. Afterwards, I stalked him around Venice Beach for weeks, mindless with hope. And when he let me down gently – probably more gently than I deserved – I sobbed in his arms and begged him for just one more night. One more night when I could feel. When I could pretend. And El had thought she was the weak one; the one who’d been a goner for him from the start.
Ross steps back down into the lantern’s pool of light. He smiles his smile and holds out a glass of red wine. Stay with me. Be with me. I love you. Not the same way that I loved El. Different. Better. I accept the wine, feign a small sip.
HE KILLED HER
HE WILL KILL YOU TOO
One postcard doesn’t make that true. Any more than my weakness or Ross being a manipulative bastard makes him a murderer. Annie snorts in the darkness. A sudden bellow of thunder makes me start. In its aftermath, the silence is broken only by the return of torrential rain, a jarring flash of white-silver through the washhouse’s window. My hand presses against my breastbone and the erratic thump of my heart. Nothing has passed. Nothing is over. I’ve only been hiding inside the brief eye of the storm.
But what about you, Blondie? Do you love me too?
I take out the postcard.
Ross blinks. ‘What’s that?’
I move incrementally closer to him as if he’s a wild animal; hold out the postcard until he takes it from me and I can retreat again. I watch him read, a muscle working in his jaw, the frown line deepening between his eyes.
‘Why do you have this?’
‘It was here.’
‘Here?’ He looks at me. ‘This isn’t true. You can’t believe it.’
I put the wine glass on the ground. ‘It’s your handwriting.’
‘All right.’ He screws up the postcard in his fist. ‘All right. I wanted her to find out about us. That’s why I wrote it. Why I set it up. I was sick of lying. I wanted her to know how much we wanted each other. And I know how bad that sounds, I know how bad it was, believe me.’ He drops the postcard, breaches the space between us, and inside the next roll of thunder, takes hold of my hands, presses his lips quick and warm against mine, and looks at me with such sincerity and sorrow that I almost forget why we’re here.
‘But then she tried to kill herself. Because of what I’d done. She begged me. She told me I was the only man she could ever love. That she would destroy all of us before she’d ever let you have me.’ He strokes his fingers up and down my skin. ‘She wasn’t in her right mind, Cat, she needed help. And I already felt so guilty. You know I did.’
‘I know you did.’
‘She blackmailed me, that’s all. You’re the one I always wanted.’
There’s no point in me asking him about El’s letter or ‘Mouse’s’ accusations. His text on Marie’s phone. Every answer will be the same. She’s crazy. Delusional. She needs help.
When I move away from him, from the relentless stroke of his fingers, he steps between me and the staircase.
‘What are you doing?’
‘I’m leaving.’
‘No.’ He folds his arms. I make myself walk towards him.
‘Let me past.’
He grabs for me, pulls me against him, pushes his cold hands up under my T-shirt, licks and kisses my neck.
‘Ross. Let me past.’
His hands move around to my bra, his thumbs pressing hard against my nipples, teeth grazing the underside of my jaw just enough to hurt.
‘Let me go!’
But of course, he won’t. That’s not what he does.
I have a sudden sharp memory of El and me sitting inside our cells in the Shank. Ross, the wing guard, looking in at us through chicken-wire mesh. Brown eyes, warm smile. I’ll let you out. I’ll let both of you out, but only if you promise never to run away. If you promise to stay with me forever.
The minute I retreat backwards, he lunges for me again. When I slam my knee up into his crotch, he grunts, eyes widening in shock. He lets go just long enough for me to dodge around him and up onto the first step. His shout is almost a wheezed cough; I feel the heavy topple of him against the stairs, and I start sprinting upwards, my body and mind suddenly – finally – awake.
He catches me on the second-from-last step, his fingers closing tight around my ankle like the clichéd kind of monster I’m beginning to think he is. I kick out, but his fingers only wind tighter, higher, digging into the muscles of my calf. My palm slaps echoless against the door out of Mirrorland before Ross turns me around and drags me back down alongside him, the stairs’ hard edges scraping my bones, banging hard enough against the back of my head that I see brief black spots.
After Grandpa dragged us away from the wall, from our escape, he let us go long enough that we tried to run. He caught El on the stairs. By the time she stopped screaming, my eyes were blurred with blood and panic. I reached down for her hand and it was gone. Bluebeard’s deadlight shone its thin silver thread against the staircase ceiling. I could hear grunts and mutters over a wet dreadful choking.
Ross’s sweat is sour. I struggle to get out from under him. Furious tears sting inside my eyes. I can’t breathe.
I’m here. And her voice isn’t an echo, it’s as hot and urgent against my ear as Ross’s curses against my face.
I screamed when I climbed down close enough to the bottom of the stairs to see Grandpa’s hands around El’s neck, her mouth half open, eyes wide white. Our slingshots and war clubs were shut inside the armoire, but I punched him like a cowboy and kicked at him like a Sioux. Screamed at the impotent horror of seeing El’s bloodshot eyes fix onto mine and knowing Mum was right: I hadn’t practised enough. I wasn’t strong enough. I couldn’t stop him.