Her soothing voice took Julian away from his anxiety to a place where he was willing to let go. As usual, the dream was lurking in the shadows of sleep. Only this time it was Mia in her Susan Carter get-up who writhed and struggled beneath him. Ducking his head, he bit her windpipe, chewing deeper and deeper, blood spurting around his jaw. He saw his face reflected in her dying eyes, mutated by a violent orgasm into something a thousand times uglier than the face in her diary. He awoke with a heavy, choking sob in his throat and Mia’s words seeming to echo in his mind. You’re too late. The bad thing already happened. Too late. Too late…
Julian didn’t go back to sleep.
In the morning, after the doctor had checked him over, his dad took him home. At the very least, Julian expected a lecture about the idiocy of running red lights, but all his dad said was, “The garage called. Looks like your car’s a write-off.” He wore the tight-lipped expression of someone who’d been strictly warned to keep his thoughts to himself.
Julian shrugged. Right then, he couldn’t have given a shit about his car. Right then, all he cared about was finding out if Mia was okay. He would’ve left the hospital before his dad arrived and gone in search of her, if it hadn’t been for his neck. The pain was something else. Even with the brace and pain killers, every slight jolt made him wince.
His mum and Wanda were waiting at the front door. “I’ll bet you’re hungry,” Wanda said to Julian. “I know what hospital food’s like.”
Julian nodded and wished he hadn’t. “You can eat in bed,” said Christine. “The doctor said to give your neck total rest for at least three days.”
Robert looked on with ill-disguised disapproval as the women fussed over Julian, almost as if he suspected his son had somehow contrived to injure himself so that they’d be forced to let him return home. When Julian was propped up in bed with everything he needed close to hand and everyone but his mum had left the room, he said, “So what happens when my neck’s better?”
“We’ll talk about that when that time comes. All I’m going to say now is what I already said, everything’s going to be alright.” Christine smiled. “It’s okay, Julian. It’s okay to be confused. Nineteen’s not an easy age to be. When I was your age I doubted and questioned everything. But it’ll work out. You’ll work it out. You’ll see, you just need time.”
Looking at his mum’s concerned, sympathetic face, Julian wanted to break down and tell her everything, talk to her about what was happening to him until he was empty like a drained cesspool. Still, he couldn’t bring himself to open up to her. Partly because, like she’d said the other day, he was a grown man. His problems were his own to work out. She already had enough to contend with without him dumping more of his shit on her. But mainly because the thought of describing the dreams made him shrivel with shame. He wondered why he hadn’t felt like that with Mia. She’d asked him if he could smell her. And perhaps, in some strange way, he had. Perhaps he’d smelled what was inside her, and, through the feeling of that smell, felt safe opening up to her.
“I love you. You know that, don’t you?” said Christine.
Julian smiled back at her. “Of course I do.”
“Just shout if you need anything.”
“I will.”
When his mum left the room, Julian flipped open his laptop and logged onto Facebook. He clicked on Send Morsus a message and wrote ‘Are you okay? That’s all I want to know’. Throughout the rest of the day, every few minutes, he checked his inbox. It remained empty. He sent more messages, each increasingly anxious and pleading. Still no response. He considered phoning Kyle, asking him to see if he could find Mia, but decided against it. Knowing how Kyle felt about her, he’d probably tell him to go fuck himself. Besides, there was only one person he could really depend on, and that person was Eleanor. But he couldn’t bring himself to contact her. It wasn’t just the thought of coming clean about why he’d stood her up, and fielding the stream of awkward questions that would inevitably follow which stopped him. It was the thought of getting her involved at all, of exposing her to something she wasn’t equipped to handle, something which, although he had no idea what it was, he sensed in his heart and in his brain to be not just ugly, but sordid and degenerate.
Julian’s mum looked in on him several times during the day. His dad didn’t look in on him once, perhaps fearing he wouldn’t be able to hold his tongue. That evening, after Wanda had gone home, he heard raised voices from the lounge. He couldn’t make out much of what was being said, but it was obvious his parents were arguing about him. There was the sound of the front door slamming, a car starting up and driving away. Despite the pain in his neck, Julian guiltily considered going to see if his mum was okay. The thought was swept away by the car returning almost as soon as it’d gone. Even angry, his dad couldn’t bear to leave his wife alone for long. His love for her was the most important thing in his life. He never said it outright, of course. Just as he’d never have admitted that when Julian was living in the house, occupying the centre of his wife’s anxious care, he sometimes acted more like a jealous sibling competing for her attention than a father.
The night, when it came on, seemed to go on and on. Julian staved off sleep for a long as possible, but the painkillers made him drowsy and he nodded off. He jolted awake with the metallic taste of blood in his mouth, and found that he’d bitten through his lip.
He managed to resist logging on until after Wanda brought him breakfast. His heart slumped at the empty inbox of his Facebook page. He picked up his mobile-phone, put it down, picked it up again, started to dial, then hung up. With every passing minute, the sense that something was wrong, that something terrible had happened to Mia grew in him. At last, it got so strong he couldn’t resist it. He phoned Eleanor. “What now, Julian?” she asked.
“I want to explain why I stood you up.”
“Does that mean you’ve sorted things out with your parents?”
“No.”
“So why the sudden urge to tell me now when you didn’t-”
“If you’ll just listen, I’ll try to explain,” Julian cut in impatiently. He told Eleanor about Mia — only what she needed to know, nothing else. He suddenly had the feeling that every second counted.
“I knew it. I knew it had to be something like that, the way you’ve been acting.”
“It’s not like you think. I don’t fancy her or anything,” Julian was quick to point out.
“So what is she, a friend?”
“She’s…” Julian struggled to find the words to define what she was to him. “She’s someone I feel responsible for.”
“Why?”
“I guess because I found her best-friend’s body.” Julian knew that wasn’t the reason, but he wasn’t about to try and explain something to Eleanor that he couldn’t explain to himself.
After a moment of silence heavy with doubt, she said, “It’s an awful thing, I know. And I can’t begin to imagine how bad Mia must be feeling, but I don’t get why that should make you feel responsible for her? Joanne Butcher’s death has nothing to do with you.”
“To be honest, I don’t really get it either.” Before Eleanor could say anything, Julian added, “Look, the thing is, Ellie, I need to ask a favour.”
She clicked her tongue in exasperation. “And here was me thinking you simply wanted to straighten things out between us.”
“This isn’t about you and me. It’s about Mia. I need you to find out if she’s okay.”
“Why wouldn’t she be?”
“I think she might be in some kind of trouble.”
“What do you mean, some kind of trouble?”
“I don’t know. I’ve just got a feeling.”
“Like, what kind of feeling?”
“A bad one. Last time I saw Mia she said some stuff, nothing specific, but…well, I think Joanne Butcher’s death has pushed her into doing something stupid.” Julian didn’t mention the Mercedes, he didn’t want to get Eleanor more involved than was absolutely necessary.