The Betrayal (29 page)

T
he slapping noise awoke him
.
Once again, the bedroom shutter in Nadine’s apartment had slipped free from its clasp.
After breakfast he entered the apartment and secured it.
The wood was rotten and needed to be replaced.
Another job to add to his ‘to do’ list.
On the landing he paused, suddenly uneasy.
Something was different but he was unable to pinpoint it.
He was halfway down the stairs when he stopped and returned to the landing.
The long handle used for pulling down the attic staircase lay on the floor.
The last time he used it was Christmas Day and he had left it leaning against the wall.
Christmas had been a blur of loneliness, too much nostalgia and whiskey.
How could he know with certainty where he left anything?

He hooked the handle into the trapdoor and pulled down the folding stairs.
The naked bulb hanging from the rafters cast an eerie glow over the crates and black plastic sacks.
One of Nadine’s paintings lay on the floor.
The hairs on his neck lifted when he picked it up.
A study of fruit in a bowl, the canvas slashed diagonally in three places.
He pulled other paintings free, each one destroyed in the same way.
His skin was gritty with dust when he climbed down from the attic.
He entered the bathroom and ran the cold water over his hands until his skin felt numb.

Nadine listened silently when he rang her.
‘They could have been torn by a rat or a bird with sharp talons?’
He tried to lessen the impact of what he had told her.
‘We’ve no idea what kind of wildlife is running around up there.’

‘How did she get into my apartment?’
Her voice had flattened with certainty.

‘How do you know it’s – ’

‘Did you give her my key?’

‘Of course not.’

‘Then she must have taken a copy of the spare I gave you.
Has she done anything else?’
They had not once referred to Karin by name.
‘Has she, Jake?’
she demanded when he hesitated.

‘Small things, moving stuff in my apartment.’
He could not bear to tell her about the family photographs.
The blank circles where her head was once visible.
The damage to his van.
The darkening rim around the image of children and their parents.
Speaking such things aloud gave them substance.
‘But I wasn’t sure until now.
Your canvases…that’s the first concrete sign.
I’d changed the locks on my apartment but I didn’t realise she had a copy of your key.
I’m reporting her to the police.’

‘Do you honestly think they’ll believe you?’

‘Of course they’ll believe – ’

‘You opened Sea Aster up to her and now her
sick
DNA is all over it.’
Nadine ground out the words.
‘Burn the paintings.
I’ve no room in my life for contamination.’

The following morning he found a rusting tin barrel in the garden shed and dragged it to the bottom of the garden.
The paintings burned easily, combustible materials quickly igniting.
Afterwards he showered, the water running black with soot.
The smell of flaming oils and chemicals remained in his nostrils for hours afterwards.
Did DNA linger forever, he wondered.
Did it build a momentum, create its own venom; a blue aura incapable of being eradicated?

T
hey met
in a bar in the Italian Quarter.
Karin was perched on a high stool when he arrived, a gin and tonic at her elbow, a pint of Budweiser already drawn for him.
Instead of her signature colour she wore a short, black dress with pearls at her neck.
Her lips, glossily purple, were darkly outlined.

A group of man entered behind him.
Loud and ebullient, they had been to a rugby match and had obviously sipped from their hip flasks throughout the game.
Conversation was impossible as they crowded around the bar.
Jake lifted both glasses and carried them to a quiet alcove that had just been vacated.

‘I was surprised to hear from you,’ she said as soon as they were sitting down.
‘I thought you never wanted to speak to me again.’

‘Why are you stalking me?’
He blurted out the accusation, embarrassed at how absurd it sounded but determined not to normalise their meeting.

‘Stalking you?’
She wrinkled her nose in amusement.
‘I follow your band, Jake.
I go to hear you sing.
Since when has that been defined as “stalking”?’

‘Are you denying you attended Ali’s play?’

‘Of course not.
Why shouldn’t I go to the West End when I’m in London?’

‘Are you denying breaking into Sea Aster and destroying Nadine’s paintings?’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘You know exactly what I mean.
You slashed her paintings with a knife.’

She splashed tonic into the gin and drank from the long, slim glass before she spoke again.
‘You told me to go, Jake.
I gave you back your key.
She had a separate key.
How on earth could I enter her apartment, much less destroy paintings I never knew existed?’

‘I don’t believe you.
Neither does Nadine.
She knew it was you as soon as I told her what happened.’

‘Really.’
She drank again, crunched ice between her teeth.
‘Nadine is the person you should talk to about blades.
She’s the expert.
Are you that unobservant, Jake?
How can you live with her for so long and not be aware that she was into self-harm?
I use the past tense but it’s a nasty addiction.
She obviously hasn’t outgrown it.
Better a canvas than her wrists, I suppose.
But blaming me for your wife’s destructive actions is inexcusable.’

Nadine’s wrists were unscarred that summer in Monsheelagh.
Two years later, when they met again, he saw what she had done to herself.
Her skin was still rippled but the healing had begun, she said.
She told him about the slow erosion of self-confidence.
The turning inwards towards self-hatred.
She had been bullied, she said, shame written large on her face.
How painful it must be to sink a blade into one’s flesh, not once but many times, he had thought.
He had been bullied for a while when he was twelve but he fought the boy responsible, bleeding his nose and closing one of his eyes.
His own injuries were worse, a broken rib and a gash on his forehead where the boy struck him with a stone.
They were both suspended for a week.
The bullying never occurred again.
Physical action was a male response.
Girls, it seemed, suffered internally and created toxic wounds that never healed.

Her scars had disappeared or, perhaps, he had simply stopped noticing them.
She never named the girl who had bullied her but it was obvious that Karin was responsible.
He remembered what she had said the last time they were together.
She made my life hell.
But she wasn’t responsible for how I dealt with it.
That was something I did all by myself
.

‘I don’t know what motivates you.’
He was unable to take his eyes from the plum-coloured stain on the rim of Karin’s glass.
‘Is your crazy jealousy reserved just for me and Nadine or did you give the same treatment to the other unfortunate guys who walked out on you?’

‘No one has ever walked out on me,’ she replied.
‘No one.
As for jealousy… crazy or otherwise.
Check the mote in your own eye.
What do you think Nadine was doing when she was shacked up in Alaska with the boat guy?’

‘If you don’t stop – ’

‘Don’t…
don’t
!’
Her sharp exclamation attracted attention and two women sitting at a nearby table glanced curiously across at them.
‘Let me tell you about
don’t
.
You
don’t
accuse me of being possessive when you’ve wanted to possess me from the first time we met.
You
don’t
take from me as you’ve done then shrug me aside like a piece of discarded junk.’

‘We took from each other.’

‘No.’
Her expression hardened.
‘You took.
I gave.’

‘I never asked – ’

‘You never had to.
I knew what you wanted and I gave willingly.’

‘What were you, Karin?’
he demanded.
‘A sacrifice?’

‘I knew your mind, Jake.
The violence within.’
She tapped the side of her head.
‘I loved you and so I was willing to indulge your rape fantasies.
Who did you want to hurt when we were together?
Was it your wife who walked out on you?
Your dominatrix mother?
Did you want to rip that body stocking from your sluttish daughter?
Which of them were you thinking about when you fucked me?’

‘
Stop
.’
Buffeted by her fury he was filled with a sudden urge to put his hands on her throat, to squeeze until her demanding eyes dulled and closed.
‘I refuse to continue this conversation.’

‘You started this conversation but I intend to finish it.’
She arched her head back and exposed her throat.
The air was heavy with her scent.
A miasma, cloying his nostrils.
‘Go on, do it.
I’m inside your mind, Jake.
I know you better than you know yourself.’

She was mad, he realised.
Not in the sense that he had always imagined madness to be, irrational, erratic, violent, dazed, helpless.
This was something different, something controlled and hidden behind a thin veneer of normality.

‘You’re right, Karin,’ he replied.
‘That’s exactly what I want to do.
But, unlike you, I have the self-control to walk away and accept when a relationship like ours is over.’

‘It’s over when I say so.’
She swayed towards him and marked his cheek with the same glossy smear that stained the glass.
‘We’ve said things we’ll both regret when we’re apart.
But we’ll forgive each other in time… like all lovers do.’
She rubbed the lipstick stain on her finger then licked it.
The flick of her tongue, the glisten of saliva, those hot, sultry nights.

‘We’re not lovers,’ he said.
‘We never were.
Whatever we had between us is finished.
Don’t come near me or my family again.’

Nothing moved in her face, no twitch or pout, even her eyelashes seemed suspended.
She opened her handbag and removed her mobile phone.

‘Remember the texts,’ she said.
‘New York calling.
You promised to love me forever.’
She held the phone in front of her.
The selfie was taken before he realised what she was doing.
She snapped her handbag closed and stood up.
‘You should never have broken your promise.’

Men turned their heads to watch as her high heels clicked against the marble tiles, an arch of blue visible on the heel and sole of her shoe A Louboutin design, Nadine told him when he asked about that flash of red.
He had laughed over what he had seen as a design absurdity but now, as Karin flaunted her signature colour, bile rose in his throat and soured his mouth.

T
hanks to Stuart
, I’m a woman with means.
Ali and the twins can once again concentrate full time on their careers and Brian, my self-sufficient son… perhaps a new kiln.
Our outstanding bank debts can be settled.
Freedom, which I so avidly pursued, is mine at last.
I can turn in any direction I like and walk towards a new future.
But the shadows will come with me.
No amount of money can cast a light on them.
The only way they can be vanquished is to lose my memory and begin again… shriven.

The configuration of shipping containers – painted in bright, gaudy colours and erected on a once-disused London dockland site – look as if they could topple into the Thames on a high wind.
But they are solidly balanced on supports with walkways, balconies, glass-fronted entrances and portholes cut into the steel that serve as windows.

Aurora is working in her angel shop.
A week has passed since our meeting in the café but she’s not surprised to see me.
One of the advantages of being a psychic, I guess.
She’s a carver of angels, fluttery little creatures with serene expressions and translucent wings.
All their accoutrements – blessings, pendants, chimes, crystals, incense and whatever it takes to make the days bearable – adorn the shelves but the angels are her own creation.
Her hands are large and red-rough yet dexterous when it comes to making delicate things.
She locks the shop and introduces me to her neighbours.
One woman runs a fashion design studio, another makes hats, there’s a bearded poet, a sculpture and a silversmith.
Most of them have a second container where they live.
Before I leave I’ve arranged to rented one for my studio and a second one for my home.

I return to Aurora’s angel shop to tell her we’ll be neighbours.
Before I realise what she’s about to do she takes both my hands in hers.
Heat runs along my arms when she touches my wrists with her broad fingers.

‘Your mother is still a very strong presence,’ she says.
‘She asks me to tell you that the blade is blunt.
You’ve healed.’

The blade is blunt… a clever guess.
But Aurora’s awareness is unsettling.
She makes me think of things I’d rather ignore.
I imagine Karin on the stairs of Sea Aster, climbing higher into the attic, touching our possessions, rummaging in bags and boxes, building a picture of the lives we discarded when we moved to Sea Aster.
What else has she done?
Jake hesitated when I asked and fobbed me off.
He’s not telling me the full truth.
Do I want to know it?
This is my chance to move on.
To rebuild the house of cards that collapsed so savagely around us.
My scars barely mar the surface of my skin but they are still capable of cutting open the artery of memory.

Karin Moylan always knew how to cut deep.
The gift she gave me for my sixteenth birthday was wrapped in silver foil and emblazoned with red love hearts.
A square box sitting on my desk with a tag attached.
Impossible to miss when I entered the classroom.
To a kool babe on her 16th
birthday.
XXXX Annonimus Admiror
was
written on the gift tag.
The writing was unfamiliar, blocky misspelled letters.
I looked across at Alan O’Neill.
He’d told Jenny he liked me, had asked her to act as our go-between.
His spelling was notorious.
Could he have laid it on my desk?
An open declaration of intent?

Our history teacher, Miss Gibson, or Gibby, as we called her, should have arrived in the class but there was no sign of her.
The box was large and light.
It made no sound when I rattled it.
One of the girls who’d gathered around my desk asked to see what was inside.
I wanted to take it to a private place but I was caught in the hub of their curiosity.
Karin sitting two desks away, had removed herself from the speculation.

Quickly, before Gibby arrived, I ripped off the paper and lifted the lid.
Another box was inside it, wrapped in a different layer of gilt paper.
Then another box, like nesting Russian dolls they emerged from one another, each one neatly wrapped.
The girls no longer believed it was a large basket from Bodyshop.
Perhaps it was a pendant, earrings, maybe, they giggled, an engagement ring from my anonymous admirer.
Alan O’Neill had joined the group.
He seemed as curious as the others and my nervousness grew.
I willed Gibby to arrive and scatter us.
She was always punctual but the classroom door remained closed.
The girls cheered each time another box was revealed.
The last layer of paper was off, the tiny red box opened.

The blade glistened, silver sharp.
A girl snorted with laughter, the sound magnified by the silence of those who stared from the blade to me, a slow realisation dawning.
I dropped the box.
The blade clinked when it hit the floor.
Karin’s head was bent, her face hidden.
Her nails made a low sawing sound as she slid them along the desk.
How could she have known?
Long sleeves hid the plasters on my wrists, long socks covered my ankles.

This time I would not run from the classroom.
I picked up the blade, placed it back in the red box and left it on my desk.
I gathered up the wrapping papers, the discarded boxes, and pushed them into the litter basket.
Gibby arrived, rushing late, accompanied by Vonnie Williams.
I didn’t need to read Vonnie’s elated expression to understand why our history teacher had been delayed.

I left the school immediately after the last class ended and ran home through Gracehills Park.
Jenny called to my house a short while later.
I told my mother to send her away.
Neither of them paid any attention to my frantic command.
My door was locked but Jenny banged on it until I allowed her in.

‘You’re the only one who knew.’
My pillow was damp with tears.
‘I trusted you.’

‘You know I wouldn’t share spit with that bitch.’
She forced me to sit up and face her.
‘There’s only one way you can deal with this.’
She rolled up the sleeve of my blouse.
Her breath hissed when she saw the most recent cuts.
‘As long as you keep doing this she’ll dominate you.
Have you the courage to stop?
I believe you have.
Prove me right.’

Like the drawing on the blackboard, no one was held responsible but Karin’s name was whispered along the class grapevine.
Students began to ignore her.
Vonnie Williams, aware that she might be isolated in the chilliness surrounding Karin, ended their friendship.
I felt no pleasure as I watched Karin’s growing isolation.
I too was isolated, not by silence or by being ignored, but by the skinning of my most intimate secret.
The victim and the bully, bound together by the one crime.