“What are we going to do?”
Veronica opened her mouth and then closed it again. The two of them looked at Carl, funny how they both looked at Carl, knowing immediately that he’d know what had to be done. Jake was suddenly, violently glad of the presence of the other two, of the warmth and closeness of the dark bedroom. He wanted to stay in there forever. He would have been quite happy for time to have stopped right there, freezing the three of them on the top of the bed, forever held in the room, like something from Pompeii. Anything to put off what was coming next. He listened with dread and soon it came. Carl spoke.
“You know what we have to do.”
The two of them were silent. Then Veronica spoke up, just about – her voice was a whisper.
“Where?”
“I think here. In the back garden somewhere.”
“No,” said Jake. It was almost a sob.
Carl looked annoyed. “Come on, Jake. It’s the only chance we’ve got. If we dump her somewhere, the police’ll find her – our DNA’s all over her. They’ll find us in two seconds.”
“They’ll find us anyway.”
“They won’t. No one knows she’s here. We don’t even know who she is – just some little squat chick, she’s probably homeless. No one saw us leave. The fucking taxi driver was some illegal immigrant. She’s a nobody. Who’s going to be looking for her in our back garden?”
Jake took a deep breath.
“Are you sure?”
“What am I - psychic? I’m as sure as I need to be. I’m not going to prison, Jake, that’s for damn sure. I’m not saying goodbye to the career I’ve worked fucking years for, worked fifteen hour days for, three six five, twenty-four seven, not for one little fucked-up junkie slag, that’s for sure. Not for one little chav that no one is going to miss. Not me. No way.“
There was a moment’s silence. Then Veronica spoke up.
“Now?”
Jake felt like crying.
“Not tonight, I can’t do anything tonight. I’m fucking exhausted – Carl, please – “
Carl put a steadying hand on his shoulder.
“We can’t do it tonight. It’s getting light for one thing. We’ll wait until tomorrow night. We all need to get some sleep.”
“But we can’t just leave her there – “
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll take care of it.”
Candice was suddenly an ‘it’. Jake noticed but he was too exhausted to care. He wanted to bury himself in sleep, wrap unconsciousness around him for as long as he possibly could. Dimly, he felt a welling pulse of gratitude for Carl, who was going to take care of things, who had taken charge. He said nothing but he put his hand out to his brother, who took it wordlessly. Veronica gave a little sob and put her arms around them both. The three of them stayed like that for a long moment.
“Come on,” said Carl, releasing Jake’s hand. “Go to bed.”
*
Jake slept for eleven hours. When he finally awoke, it was the first morning of all the awakenings that were yet to follow, the first morning where he had a second of blissful unconsciousness before the awful weight of reality came crashing down, almost obliterating him beneath it. He rolled over onto his side and buried his face in the pillow, gasping with the sickening truth of it. Then he sat up slowly, tears rolling down his face. For a moment, the room swam and he had the weirdest feeling of dislocation, as if he wasn’t in his actual body, but removed from it and hovering somewhere in the air, watching himself from afar. He blinked and shook his head, a mistake as pain thudded through him.
Jake made his way to the bathroom shakily. He had the worst hangover of his entire life – his whole body felt as if it had been dipped into a vat of poison. He bent over the toilet again but there was nothing left inside him to come up, leaving him doubled up, dry-heaving until it felt as if he was about to turn himself inside out. His head throbbed. He sat back against the bath, feeling the cool porcelain against his sweating back. Slowly the nausea and chills ebbed slightly, just slightly, enough so he could eventually get up. Somehow, he managed to get himself in the shower and stood on trembling legs beneath the hot gush of water. He watched the soap scum flood past his feet and felt a tiny, marginally bit better, as if some of the past night’s sins were washing away down the plughole.
The relief didn’t last long. He wrapped himself in a towel and plodded back to his bedroom, past Carl’s closed door. Then he heard something that froze him to the spot. Panting, moans, the creaking of the bed growing in urgency. They were having sex. He couldn’t believe it. For a moment, he felt the black despair about him chill white with shock, and the fleeting thought came and went: my brother is not normal.
He made it back to bed, somehow. Jake lay beneath the covers, gripping the edge of the duvet with shaking hands. I can’t deal with this. No human being should have to deal with this. He closed his eyes tight, trying to block out the world. He wanted to go back to sleep but he knew blissful unconsciousness would elude him. After a moment, he sat up again and ransacked his bedside table, searching for the sleeping pills he had once been prescribed. Thank you God, there were two left in the little brown bottle. He swallowed both and lay back down, trying to breathe deeply and think of nothing, counting down the minutes to oblivion.
Chapter Twenty-Three
They were sat at the kitchen table when he came downstairs. He’d paused on the landing, afraid to look down at the floor below. He had waited up there for several minutes, gripping the banister, unable to bring himself to move. Then, cringing, he moved to the top of the stairs and looked down.
There was nothing there on the hallway floor. The black and white tiles looked oddly more real, more there. Jake blinked. Then he realised that they’d been washed, the usual film of dust and grime cleared away. Now they sparkled in the light that came flooding through the fanlight of the door.
He walked downstairs slowly, holding onto the banisters at every step. He couldn’t, couldn’t, bring himself to walk over the very spot that she’d landed. One of the tiles was cracked across, a thin white thread across the black surface, and he wondered queasily if it had broken under the impact of her head. Or had it always been like that? He knew he’d never be able to look at it again without wondering.
Jake paused in the doorway to the kitchen, when he realised Carl and Veronica were already in there. They were both sat silently at the table, the scraps of their breakfast meal scattered across its surface. They both looked at him, wordlessly and Jake could feel a blush rising in his face, scorching his skin. He dropped his gaze to the dirty kitchen floor.
“Do you want coffee?” Carl said tonelessly. Jake had to swallow before he was able to reply.
“Thanks.”
He sat down at the table, no longer able to trust his legs.
Veronica looked down at her plate. He had never seen her look worse – she looked wretched, fading away before his eyes. The skin of her face was scraped red with stubble rash. Mine or Carl’s, he wondered and felt his empty stomach clench. He couldn’t believe that less than twenty four hours ago, he’d been inside her. How was it possible? And this morning he’d heard them both fucking, after Carl had removed the dead body of a girl from their hallway floor. Jake closed his eyes briefly. I hope he washed his hands first, he thought, sickened.
He heard the clink of a cup being set down in front of him and muttered his thanks.
“What time is it?” he asked. He’d totally lost track of the hours.
Veronica answered him. Her voice sounded as if she was coming down with a cold.