Mirrorland, Carole Johnstone [spiritual books to read .txt] 📗

run off his cheeks, his chin, are as real and as terrible as mine. I don’t know who grabs hold of who first. Which of us starts the kiss, which of us starts to pull at whose clothes, which of us demands and which of us yields. He pushes inside me as I lie on the stairs, and I look up at the high coved ceiling and the green-gold light as I let him, as I hold him, as I feel him, the stairs cold and hard against my skin and my bones.

And I come so hard that I scream. I forget.

Because where else would I go?

He’s all I have left.

CHAPTER 24

I speed-walk past Colquhoun’s, but before I’m even a few yards beyond it, I hear the door bang open and Anna’s ‘Wait!’

I stop, turn around. Though I don’t want to.

Anna is already crying; big ugly sobs that get in the way of what she’s trying to say. ‘It’s so terrible. I can’t believe it. I can’t believe she’s dead. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’

When she pulls me into a fierce hug, I hug her back in the hope that will be enough. I can’t deal with other people right now – not their sympathy, their grief, their need. Finally, she lets me go, and I step back. She sniffs hard, takes two big breaths as she wipes her cheeks. Smears a long black line of mascara from her left eye to her temple.

‘When I heard yesterday, I couldn’t even think,’ she says, lowering her voice and fixing me with the hard stare I better recognise. ‘But now … now I know that I have to go to the police.’

‘Anna—’

‘No, listen. I do. I have to tell them that she was scared. I have to tell them about the bruises. Marie said El wanted to leave Ross.’ She raises her palms when I start to interrupt. ‘And that’s when husbands murder their wives, isn’t it? When they’re about to—’

‘Anna! I can’t deal with—’

She grabs me hard by the elbows. ‘But you have to! I should have pressed her more, should have helped her more.’ Her grip tightens. ‘She’d want me to help you, Cat. You need to get away. You need to—’

I step backwards, dig my nails into her fingers until she lets go.

‘You do what you have to, Anna,’ I say. My voice is unsteady. My legs tingle with the panicky urge to just start running. Instead, I turn around and make myself walk away. ‘I can’t talk now.’

And I ignore her shouts and that urge to run, until both have gone.

*

The Links is completely deserted. But here, I feel eyes on me; my skin crawls with the familiar certainty of being followed, examined. I turn back once, look around the flat, empty parkland. No Anna. No one at all.

I pull up my hood and keep going. Past the same trees fighting the same bitter wind as on that freezing dawn morning all those years ago: sycamores and elms hiding tormented ghosts swollen black with plague. Past the same brownstone tenements and terraces where the murderers of children lived and lurked. And watched.

All those obstacles, those booby traps Grandpa laid so that we would never want to leave 36 Westeryk Road. He’d overegged it, I suppose, as abusers do; by the time we’d crossed over the Links, we were as tired of being afraid as we were of running. And we knew by then that he was a liar. 36 Westeryk Road was just as frightening, as dangerous, as anywhere else. But we loved him still, even against all of that fear and lying, the hot copper stink of blood on our skin. Because then, as now, it was still so easy to separate Grandpa from Bluebeard. So necessary. Far harder and more painful to push them together, to accept that the biggest nightmare from my childhood was once my very favourite person after El. There’s grief for that, too, now as then – as if I’ve lost him twice. As if he never existed at all.

I glance back towards the road before turning onto Lochinvar Drive and heading down towards the yacht club. I have to squeeze around a few more boats on raised blocks to get close to the water. The wind coming off the Forth is as cold as ever, but it’s low; the jostle and rattle of the moored yachts seems muted, faraway. I stand still at last. Breathe in, breathe out.

I look down at the stone slip and then up beyond Granton’s breakwater wall, northeast towards the small squat islet of Inchkeith, the yellow smudge of its lighthouse barely visible. The dark water beyond it. The deepwater channel. I look and I look, and I’m nearly glad when the clouds drop lower over Burntisland, and the rain starts bucketing down, hard and fast enough to drum at my aching skull and obscure my view.

My phone beeps. It’s a text from Ross.

Have to check in with work, then I’ll pick up something for dinner. Any requests? x

I don’t reply. Even though there’s nothing wrong with what he’s said. He has a job. We have to eat. We haven’t died. Which doesn’t stop me flinching when the phone beeps again.

18 April 2018 at 14:55

Inbox

john.smith120594@gmail.com

Re: HE KNOWS

To: Me

YOU’RE RUNNING OUT OF TIME.

REMEMBER WHAT HAPPENED ON THE 4TH OF SEPTEMBER.

THEN YOU’LL UNDERSTAND.

YOU’LL KNOW WHAT YOU HAVE TO DO.

Sent from my iPhone

I won’t know. I don’t know. I’ve remembered everything – every last horrible fucking thing – and I still haven’t a clue what it is I’m supposed to understand. To do.

No more riddles, Mouse. This isn’t a game. This isn’t Mirrorland. Tell me what you know. Meet me. Tell me. Or leave me alone.

I send my reply, turn back for the road. The rain is getting worse. The sky has become so dark it’s as if dusk has arrived. I struggle to negotiate my way around the boats in the yard. Their hulls are jagged with