She didn’t know it at the time but this was the only decision in her short life that would ever really matter. The one where the scales hung in the balance. On one side her future, on the other something else entirely.
How could she not help? She wanted to be a vet, or at least a veterinary nurse if her grades weren’t good enough. After all it was why she volunteered at Mrs. Watson’s. She took a deep breath and the scales tipped, the unlucky dice fell.
“No, it’s fine, really. ’Course I’ll help. I’ll just sit in the back with him. Have you got a blanket or anything?”
She opened the back door and slid in.
“Actually, you can just put him on my lap if you like, he’ll be fine.”
He had to stop himself from laughing. What a piece of piss. It couldn’t have gone better if he’d planned it. Oh, wait a minute, he had, right down to the last glorious detail.
She smiled at him and held out her arms for the cat, and in the confines of the car he could see her shimmering. Her energy blazed like a halo, crackling and sparking from her hair. He quickly took the plastic bag from his pocket and pressed the pad against her face, covering her nose and mouth. He felt the chloroform cold against his hand. If anyone came along now he was royally fucked, even he couldn’t talk his way out of this one.
The cat saw its chance and slipped away unnoticed—at least someone might escape with their life.
Rachel’s eyes went wide with panic, the pupils flaring and dilating as the adrenaline flooded her system. Her feet drummed helplessly against the floor as she strained against him, trying in vain to free herself from his grip. She felt her lip split against her teeth and her mouth pooled with her own hot blood.
He watched as her eyes slowly dimmed and lost their luster. He counted. He’d researched this well. He needed her at stage three, unconscious and physically incapable. Too long and she’d hit stage five, paralysis of the chest muscles, asphyxia and death. Game over player one, before he’d even played.
He leaned forward, his lips soft against her ear, “Got you,” he said, and as her consciousness surrendered the last thing she felt was his tongue, burrowing, and the fumbling of his fingers against her breast.
9
“The worst loneliness is not to be comfortable with yourself”
—Mark Twain
The weeks have rolled by and life at The Lodge is falling into a pattern, one where Tom is happy and I am not. This is the house he’s always dreamed of but I find myself torn between loving and hating it. It unsettles me. I have tried so hard to find happiness here and have occasionally glimpsed its sunny upturned face, catching me unawares pottering in the garden or planning out the color scheme for a room. Trouble is I can’t sustain it. I seem unable to find peace.
I am trying to make a home. I’m gathering photos and planning my mood boards for each room but my enthusiasm falls too readily away. I start the day full of ideas, my palette a subtle mix of misty grays and heritage greens. I picture the rooms as an eclectic mix of traditional and contemporary; our favorite things from our London home seamlessly inserted into the tranquil space of a Victorian drawing room. No matter how much I focus, I find I lose my thread and slip into apathy. We will have an interior designer eventually but I need them to have a sense of my taste. To translate my vision into reality, not inflict me with theirs.
We are lucky. My father put money in trust for me until I was twenty-one—just in case I ended up wearing all my clothes at once while I howled at strangers in the street. This cushion has allowed me to pursue my art and has supplemented Tom’s income so we can do all the things we want to do just that little bit more easily. It has also served another purpose, of course. It is the balm, the emollient my father rubs into his conscience to salve the wound of his guilt. And yes, I am aware that I’m a hypocrite.
Tom leaves early each morning for his job in the city—investment funds, how dull—so I spend my days alone. Too much solitude seems not to be good for me. I was alone for much of my day in London but not lonely like this. No sounds from the street, no people going about their daily lives. Nothing. When we’re both here the air feels lighter somehow, the atmosphere lifts. When it’s just me it changes. It seems to clot and thicken until I’m wading through treacle, its ticky tendrils dragging at my limbs. The weather hasn’t helped. The summer has been long and sultry, which has added to my lassitude.
I am still troubled by a kind of déjà vu. It will come upon me unexpectedly, the sense that I’ve been here before. I’ll walk into a room, or more specifically go into the kitchen or come through the front door, and the familiarity of it all hits me with the quality of a childhood memory. Or like the recollection of a dream. To start with it was fleeting—a blink and it was gone—but recently it’s solidifying. It’s becoming more pronounced and it troubles me. It’s not something I’ve experienced before and it seems irrational, not linked to my injury or to anything that makes any sense. I know I haven’t been here before but the feeling persists. When it comes over me it feels so real; so real that the other day I found myself standing in the driveway looking up at the house, concentrating on its every detail. I then closed my eyes and tried to summon up a memory of actually coming here, of walking up the drive and knocking on the door. That way madness lies.
I haven’t said anything to Tom. In part because I don’t want to worry him but also because I don’t think I can bear the oversolicitous concern it will bring. He will try to wrap me in kindness, to cosset me in a way that reduces me to a child. I don’t want that anymore.
I’m also struggling to sleep. This has always been problematic for me—common in my situation—but now it’s worse. My nights are haunted by dreams, prophetic and terror laden. I’ve taken to dreaming of my attacker, something I haven’t done in years. In these fevered nightmares he’s a dark figure behind me, his hands grasping and clawing at my hair. As I turn and am about to see his face, I wake trembling and sweating, my heart thundering in my chest. Recently I’ve had to get up to clear my head and to allow the tingling aftermath of panic to subside. I walk the rooms—not the kitchen obviously—in the moonlight and listen to the house breathing. I swear it does. A sibilant sigh on the edge of silence.
My dream has always been the same, the same scenario over and over. It was every night in the early days. Every time I closed my eyes, until the very thought of sleep was enough to send me spiraling into dread. I have no memory of those events, they mean nothing to me, unless there’s something buried deep that only sleep sets free.
I can remember the morning of my attack with complete clarity. The halls of Thorpwood House vibrating with the pent-up energy of girls soon to be released for the summer. The summer of 1994. The dentist was paying his annual visit to the school that day and groups of us were periodically called from our form room to sick bay where he would slide his slippery-gloved fingers over our gums and probe us for cavities, all under the vengeful gaze of Matron as chaperone. The fees the parents of the privileged few paid to Thorpwood House took care not only of our educational needs but also of such tiresome parental duties as dental checks and vaccinations. Each year we were subject to these unwelcome attentions. The dentist, with his face like a boiled ham, would no doubt have been high on my list of likely assailants had he not at the time been avidly peering into the mouth of some unfortunate girl.