Nearest Thing to Crazy (29 page)

‘Sure,’ I say. ‘Touchy-feely is good. But if you can temper it with a bit of hot-blooded ruthlessness – a bit of passion, if you prefer – then that, in my book, will take you all the way.’

Sophie is nodding, as if the secrets of the Holy Grail have just been revealed to her. Her father is wriggling in his seat. Perhaps he’s thinking about some other sort of grail. She’s so sweet. Sweeter, actually, than I expected, considering. I suppose I’d imagined she’d be more sophisticated, more worldly and ambitious, more like I was at that age. She’s pretty, very pretty. Good wide forehead, greeny-blue eyes and thick tawny lashes that match her hair. She’s coloured her hair but it’s been done badly. The paler stripes of blonde have an orangey hue that tell me the story of some cheap little backwater salon. I’d have to sort that out. I’m pleased to see that she’s got good teeth. I would have expected that. Her clothes are okay-ish. They show me she has some sense of style, although again she obviously shopped at all the wrong places. I see it all the time – young girls who’ve grown up following the example of some god-awful frump of a mother, instilling in them their own dictionary of non-style. It’s damned hard to change a lifetime of dodgy indoctrination. I’ll have my work cut out. But it will be very satisfying, for both of us.

The little voice of reason in my head was fading to an almost inaudible whisper; ‘it’s fiction . . . it’s a novel . . .’ it told me. ‘It’s made up . . . remember it’s her imagination . . .’ I slammed the cast-off page back down on to the desk and read on.
 

‘Would you like me to try and arrange some work experience for you?’

‘Would I? Oh my God. Dad . . . I can’t believe . . . that would be amazing. Do you really think you could?’

‘Sure. Maybe in your Christmas holidays?’

‘I’ve got four weeks then.’

‘Okay. Give me your dates and I’ll see what I can do. I plan to be in London myself for some of the time. There’s always lots of parties and networking to do in the publishing world. We could have some fun together . . .’

‘Where would I stay?’

‘My flat.’

Tim sounded surprised. ‘You’ve still got a flat in London?’

‘Oh yes. I’d never give up my little flat. It’s lovely. In Notting Hill. You’d love it. You could come up, too, Tim, come and visit us, check Sophie’s okay. Wouldn’t that be fun?’

‘What shall I tell Mum?’ Sophie said.

‘We’ll think of something.’ Tim winked at me.

But she might be making this up . . . you might not know what Laura really said . . . remember it’s a novel . . . the voice repeated as if by rote.
 

After lunch we say goodbye to Sophie. She says she has to work on her essay, and I make a show of the fact that I need to do some shopping. Tim says he’s heading back to the office, and so we go our separate ways.

Fifteen minutes later I see him by the canal, where we’d arranged to meet. He is leaning against the curved brickwork fifty metres short of the tunnel entrance, not looking in my direction, but staring into the oily depths of the murky brown water. His collar is hitched up against the chill wind, his hands stuffed deep into the pockets of his coat. My red shoes make loud clicking sounds against the flinty pavement. Still he keeps his eyes fixed on the water, not looking at me. I walk on, not varying my pace when I draw level with him. He glances up as I pass him and our eyes meet briefly. He looks dreamy and removed, as though he’s been in some other world, and is now surprised to see me. The only sign of recognition is a tiny half smile that lifts one side of his mouth. I carry on walking but the change in the rhythm of my heels signals to him that I have slowed my pace. I hear his footsteps behind me. I turn my head slightly to one side so that I can see his shadow gaining on me. The wind whips at the thin fabric of my skirt, brushing cold draughts over my thighs. I keep walking towards the tunnel, and when I reach it I stop and wait, keeping my head down. Tim’s shadow grows larger and envelops me in the darkness. I hear him suck in his breath, but still he doesn’t speak; he just gazes at me as if he’s in a trance. I lean my shoulders back against the cold bricks and thrust my hips forward, longing for him to touch me. Still he stands in front of me, his feet planted squarely, hands in his pockets, fixing his eyes on mine. I can’t read his expression. Could it be anger? Or, more likely, lust? Although he hasn’t touched me, my skin feels alive, tingling all over my body. I feel my nipples grazing against the fabric of my bra and I want him to touch them, to release them, to roll them between his fingers, to clamp his lips over them and suck them. I need to touch myself. I stare at him as I put my hand up to my blouse and undo the button which strains against my cleavage. I slip my hand inside and rub my hand over my left breast, brushing it against my nipple, and then – still not letting my eyes leave his – I let my other hand drift downwards, and I slip my finger inside my knickers and touch the wet heat between my legs, and then I moan.

‘Oh my God.’ He steps forward, he reaches behind me and clamps my buttocks into his hands and squeezes hard. I can feel the solid length of his cock push against me. My finger is slick with wetness and so I rub it over his lips. His tongue laps at it, tasting me delicately at first, then takes it deep into his mouth and lets it slide out again. He nibbles lightly on my fingertip, all the time staring at me, then suddenly he clamps his teeth down harder, painfully, and I gasp and try and slap his face but he twists away so I miss, catching my nail on his nose . . .

Dan had a scratch on his nose. When he came home and saw me upstairs. I noticed. A crescent-shaped mark. Her fingernail had put it there. So it was true. It was all true. I
had
to read on, even though her words were destroying me . . . and my life with Dan.
 

Then he lifts me up and I wrap my legs around his hips, crossing them behind his arse, and he rocks me up and down over his erection. The warm wool of his trousers rubs right against the nub of my clit and I am so aroused that I come straight away. My legs judder and convulse against him. ‘Come on, baby,’ I breathe into his ear, ‘Fuck me.’

‘No.’

‘What?’

‘You’ll have to wait . . . not here . . .’

‘Bastard!’ I hiss and bite his neck.

‘Bitch!’ he hisses back and threads his fingers into my hair, pulling on it and laughing quietly. ‘Patience . . .’

I drop my legs back onto the floor. They threaten to give way. I hitch my skirt back down and straighten up.

I give him a burning look.

‘I plan to do this properly. I want time to fuck you in every way
I’ve imagined. A lot of time . . .’

‘How? How can you get away when she watches you all the time?’

‘A little something to help her sleep, that’s all. Leave the key for me . . .’

I turn away from him and walk back towards the city without looking back.

This was insane. She was manipulating me, fucking with my mind. I wanted to be sick. I wanted to shower. I wanted to scrub myself all over. I wanted to rip this fucking manuscript to shreds. I wanted to burn down her house, rip
her
to shreds. My anger felt volcanic, seismic, nuclear. I was like a woman possessed. No, no ‘like’ about it, I
was
a woman possessed. I slapped the last few pages back onto the stack, and then turned the whole thing over again, so that I could see ‘Chapter One’ on the top sheet. I didn’t care that the room was growing dark, I didn’t care that people might notice my car outside
her
house. I didn’t care about anything, except reading this fucking book.

GASLIGHT

by Eleanor Black

CHAPTER ONE

You never know what the day’s going to bring. That was one of my mother’s little homespun aphorisms. You couldn’t argue with that. Nor could you argue with her. There was a certain logic to it; good or bad, she’d be right. That day I got home from school and she told me about Dad. The only thing I could think of to say was, ‘Well, you never know what the day’s going to bring . . .’

She looked at me but I knew she wasn’t seeing me. Her eyes were all misted up.

‘Your father’s dead and that’s all you can say?’

She got up from the kitchen table, pushing her chair back so violently that it fell right over backwards, hitting the floor, wood splintering against stone. I watched her pull her hand back like it was in slow motion. At around 45 degrees it stopped, and then it accelerated towards me through the unresisting air. She hit me so hard that I crashed into the kitchen cupboard. The doorknob smashed against my knee but I couldn’t feel any pain in my leg. I was too busy tasting metal in my mouth, the metallic taste of blood where she’d smashed my cheek into my teeth. I must have looked a bit of a sight because she started to scream; she screamed and screamed and screamed until my ears hurt and I wondered if she’d ever shut up. ‘Little bitch . . .’ she yelled between her screams, ‘little bitch . . .’ I could see foam forming at the corner of her mouth. Not me, I thought, but you . . . rabid bitch . . .

‘Your mother found him. It was a terrible shock for her,’ the policewoman who was paid to be nice told me. ‘And a terrible shock for you, too. Your mother . . . she’s upset . . . she didn’t mean . . . your cheek . . . it must be sore . . .’ A kind hand reached out to stroke the blossoming bruise. I flinched, knowing that it would hurt if she touched me. You wouldn’t get away with that these days, probably be deemed ‘inappropriate’, touching someone. She’d be CRB checked, though, wouldn’t she? So maybe she’d be allowed to touch. Whatever. And maybe Mum wouldn’t be allowed to touch. It was all my fault. Obviously. I knew it would be all my fault from the minute she told me he was dead.

Where was I? Oh yes, like I was saying, you never know what the day’s going to bring, do you?

I always planned that when I was a mother I’d do it differently. I’d bake cakes that filled the kitchen with delicious smells as a welcome home from school. My child would be gathered up against a white starched apron and would plant kisses on to my flour-flecked cheeks, and I would ruffle my child’s hair with pastry-encrusted nails. There’d be a dog snoring in its bed in one corner of the room. I’d have old china jugs stuffed full of roses and I’d pick up the fallen petals and rub them between my finger and thumb, knowing that they didn’t feel half so soft as my child’s skin, and I’d live in a beautiful house in that fantastical land that people called ‘the country’ where it was either always sunny, golden and green, or snow covered and robin infested, like a Christmas card. Except life never seems to work out the way you plan it.

My eyes flew over the pages, scanning the lines, reading the words so quickly that I barely had a chance to turn them into sense. I was trying to take in too much at once. I thought I must be imagining what I was reading, as if I was reinterpreting the words. But I wasn’t. Some of the details were wrong, but there were enough correct ones for me to know that Ellie was writing about
my
life. The sentences swam in and out of focus, forming and re-forming their poisonous meaning as I read on. And it got worse, much worse.

‘No . . .’ I said aloud to the empty room. ‘It’s not possible. It simply isn’t possible.’ There was no way. There were laws in place, anonymity laws. No, I told myself. You’re being hysterical. Slow down, go back to the beginning, take a deep breath and reread it, slowly. You’ve got it wrong.
 

You never know what the day’s going to bring. I picked up the letter, along with the rest of the post, and took it inside. I put it on the dresser in the kitchen, made myself a cup of coffee, lit a cigarette, even made a couple of phone calls, before I returned to the pile. I’d given up all hope. The way I viewed it, my baby had been stolen and I was never going to see her again. But as I unfolded the letter and scanned the neatly scripted words, I realized that everything had changed, that my life would never be the same again. I had found her or, rather, she had found me.

There was no mistake. I hadn’t got it wrong. I felt the room spinning. I slumped forward, trying to get my head between my knees, but I slipped onto the floor, and then I must have passed out for a while; I don’t know how long for, maybe just a few moments. When I came to I was overcome by tremors that shook my body. My teeth were chattering and I had cramps in my stomach. I crouched into a ball hoping that the convulsions would soon cease. I couldn’t think of anything. It was just me and a sisal carpet against my nose, prickly and cold, and smelling vaguely of dog. ‘No, no, no, no . . .’ I heard a voice over and over again and then I realized it was my voice. My worst nightmare, the most unimaginably terrifying thing that could ever happen to me was there, above me, on a desk, typed clearly on a sheet of A4, as plain as you please.