Chapter 17
Rohan was late home and Emma managed to feign sleep when he finally knocked on her door after ten o’clock. She heaved a sigh of relief as she heard him moving around his room next door, grateful for the loss of his interrogation hanging over her head. This was the stupidest thing you ever did, Emma Harrington, she rebuked herself. Why would you come here? All these years of staying safe from her. You’re a fool! She agonised, tossing and turning until sleep claimed her.
Emma’s dreams were tortured. Alanya stood before her clutching Nicky’s arm and laughing victoriously. Emma screamed at her son to come back to her but the thunder drowned her out and a cruel wind stole her words from her mouth. Nicky smiled and waved at her, as gullible and foolish as his father. In front of Emma’s face, Alanya produced a steaming mug of greenish liquid and held it out to Nicky. She looked Emma in the eyes as the child cupped the mug in his tiny hands and drank.
“No!” Emma’s gasp woke her up. Sweat ran down the side of her face and the sheet underneath her felt soaked. Her breath came in oxygen-less pants and she hugged her knees into her chest. Mrs Clarke’s enquiring face wafted past Emma’s inner vision, a remnant of the embarrassing conversation that morning.
“So nobody else is allowed to collect your son from school?” she asked, writing something in the margin of the register, next to Nicky’s name.
“No, nobody.” Emma stood stiffly, holding her body rigid and praying the dog would sit nicely by her left leg and not do something silly in the classroom filled with exciting scents. “Only me. I don’t want anyone else taking him home, not even...” She sighed and raised her eyes to the ceiling. Not even Rohan.
“That’s perfectly fine, Miss Harrington. We have lots of mothers in the same position. Please don’t feel embarrassed about it. We have to protect our children, don’t we?”
Emma nodded as the kindness made her eyes fill with tears. “Yes,” she whispered. “Please tell me, will the school secretary be able to see that note?”
Mrs Clarke knitted her brow and took a step back. “Well, potentially, yes. But to be honest, there’s another four children in this class with exactly the same note next to their name, so it’s unlikely she’d bother to look. And even if she did, she wouldn’t be allowed to discuss it with anyone outside the school.”
Emma raised her eyebrows in disbelief and picked up an odd look from the pretty teacher. Mrs Clarke doubted the ability of her colleague to keep secrets too. It was written on her very professional face and it terrified Emma. With wide, brown eyes and a frightened face, Emma leaned in closer to the teacher, avoiding the influx of excited children pouring into the room behind her. “Nobody’s allowed to talk to the children at playtimes, are they?” she asked quietly and Mrs Clarke shook her head with a definite, confident movement.
“Absolutely not. All the smaller children are in the courtyard and only the juniors are allowed into the ball courts. A teacher supervises them both in and out at all times. So please don’t worry about that. Is there someone in particular we need to be aware of?”
Emma gulped. Alanya’s murders were undetected as yet and Emma realised her accusations would seem little more than slanderous when said out loud. Rohan never believed Anton’s theories about his father’s mysterious death and had been disturbed by the sudden death of Emma’s. He refused to hear any discussions implicating his mother and so the teenagers gave up eventually, whispering in corners and finding no evidence with which to prove their case. Emma shook her head. “I just don’t want strangers having access to my son,” she said, her voice sounding a little huffy. “Sorry,” she added.
“It’s fine,” Mrs Clarke had said, patting Emma’s hand in sympathy.
A clap of thunder overhead shocked Emma out of her cringe worthy memory. She jumped and counted the seconds between the second growl from the sky and the first flash of lightning which lit up the bedroom. It gave context to her weird dreams and she relaxed a little and remained sitting up in bed, watching the fireworks unfold over her street view.
The storm was terrible, edging nearer with each flash and roar until it raged directly overhead. It rocked the house with horrific rumbles and lightning shone like a strobe every few seconds. Emma heard a muted woof from Farrell downstairs in the kitchen and then the house was silent against the backdrop of the pyrotechnics outside. Fear drove Emma to Nicky’s room for comfort, jumping at a particularly big crash from the swollen sky while the next bolt of lightning lit up her son’s bedroom and his beautiful, sleeping face.
Emma sighed and pulled the threadbare cardigan more closely around her shoulders. She peered into the gloom of the long back garden, enduring yet another floodlit moment. Emma froze. Her breath felt caught as everything stopped, adrenaline coursing through her blood. The same man stood in the garden looking up at the window. He was tall and well built, dressed entirely in black. Another flash of lightning backlit his slender silhouette and Emma gasped. The usually silent dog barked again, not at the storm but at the intruder.
Emma stepped back from the window and glanced at her son. I didn’t imagine it! Nicky slept peacefully despite the din, comfortable and safe in his new surroundings. She peeped from behind the curtains and watched the man turn. He left the flat area of concrete outside the back door and used the stepping stones to make his way down the lawn. The previous moonless night had allowed him to slink around the property like a spectre, but the lightning show robbed him of the cover of darkness. Emma listened but couldn’t distinguish his footsteps on the crunchy pea gravel from the sudden, pounding rain. He hovered for a moment under the archway leading to the orchard and looked back up at the window. And her.
Emma couldn’t see his eyes. They were shrouded in the blackness of his figure but she felt them on her face, burning like lit matches held too close to the skin. He turned and walked away, trudging steadily through Rohan’s property as though out for a stroll, his hands swinging gently by his sides. Emma lost him as he blended into the darkness near the large glasshouse, half way down the property and she jumped as another thunderous groan tore the atmosphere apart. Farrell barked again as another flash of lightning lit up the shiny metal of Rohan’s car in its car port beyond the orchard.
Closing the curtains to keep Nicky undisturbed by the pyrotechnics outside, Emma left the bedroom and knocked softly on Rohan’s door. Two sightings couldn’t be the result of an overactive imagination. The man had to be the one referred to by the useless private detective. Hearing no sound from Rohan’s room, Emma ventured in. The fear of disturbing Felicity and him in bed overrode her alarm at the stranger, whom she decided must be stealing Rohan’s expensive black car. The room was silent and the floorboards slippery and polished under Emma’s worn socks. The curtains were partly open, displaying the impressive flashes outside. As Emma approached the side of the bed where a lumpy shape lay still, a beautiful bolt of lightning leaped from the blackness and licked the earth. Emma stood next to the bed and gasped at the zig-zagging thing of pure wonder, at the same time as the house shook again with the aching of the sky.
A small squeak escaped her as a hard vice closed around her throat, instantly choking her. Emma’s fingers clawed as her lungs screamed for air and she found herself pulled downwards until she contacted something knotty. Her body arced painfully backwards and she was denied the ability to even cry out, her windpipe crushed under strong fingers. The voice swearing in Russian was husky and low and Emma’s panic abated as she recognised Rohan. But the problem of her asphyxiation remained. She let go of the hand at her throat and lashed out at the face above her as the lightning betrayed its position. She felt bone underneath her knuckles and heard the impact. Her fingers smarted as though broken and an ache ran up her arm and into her shoulder. There was a groan and the choke hold ended with an abruptness that left her sliding down the side of the bed and onto the floor.
“Shit!” Rohan’s voice contained a mixture of irritation and horror. The bedside light snapped on as Emma took ra
sping breaths and clutched her throat. In the intrusive yellow light, she saw Rohan’s face staring down on her, a line of blood dribbling from one nostril. “Em! What the hell are you doing?”
Emma coughed and choked, unable to answer. Rohan leaned further out of the bed and she felt a stab of fury that he didn’t even bother getting up. Regaining control of her bodily functions, Emma kept one hand at her throat and put the other on the ground to push herself up. Her fingers contacted something shiny and hard which rolled sideways and clinked against the leg of the bed. She quested for it, sensing the surface of a hollow metal bar. I am so gonna hurt him, came the instant thought as she gripped it.
“Don’t you dare!” Rohan spoke through gritted teeth and Emma forgot the ready weapon in her indignation.
“You just tried to throttle me!” Her voice sounded croaky and strained.
“Never creep up on a soldier!” Rohan bit back, leaning further over the side and hauling Emma up two handed. His biceps flexed in the lamp light, fed by ridged veins carrying blood and oxygen to the muscular chest and shoulders. Emma clawed her throat and used the other free hand to slap Rohan. Her aim was off and the blow landed, futile and empty against his defined pectorals. His skin felt warm and welcoming. “Svin'ya!” she taunted him in his mother tongue. Pig!
Rohan snorted like one and pulled Emma into him. He lay on his back, his breathing heavy, his heartbeat thunderous against her ear. He felt so alive. “I came to tell you there was someone in the garden,” she hissed, sitting up and smoothing her fingers over her throat.
“No way!” He dismissed it to her overactive imagination and Emma’s sense of injustice flared.
“There was! He looked right at me. The lightning lit him up really well! Why do you never believe anything I say?” A rumble of thunder moved overhead, competing with the end of Emma’s sentence. The storm began to move off and a sheet of rain pounded the window behind Rohan’s head.
“Well, he’ll be getting wet, whoever he is and I’m not going out there now.” Rohan exhaled and fixed his arms around Emma’s waist. She experienced a rush of hormones at the way his fingers stroked her flesh in the gap between her too-small top and her flimsy pyjama bottoms. The retreating adrenaline left an unclaimed void which quickly filled with desire. Rohan wiped the blood on his bicep, a regal dip of his head which only smudged it across his cheek.
“Ro!” Emma turned and reached for his face, running her soft pads across his full, expressive lips. She felt his stubble under her fingers and imagined it on the tender places of her neck and shoulders. His naked torso, warm and inviting called to her, blurring the lines which made Emma fear his mother and the stranger outside. Suddenly there didn’t seem any harm in satiating a need. They were still married.
With a sigh, Emma dipped forward to kiss him, wishing she’d cleaned her teeth before she went on her nighttime wanderings. Her eyes were shrouded in the darkness but Rohan’s were lit spectacularly by the bulb next to him. His pupils dilated with lust and Emma held her breath, desperate for him to begin his lovemaking. Her body remembered how they learned the art together and she yearned for him to touch her.
Then Rohan’s face clouded and something else took over, claiming and replacing it with a latent fear. “No, Em.” He put his hand out and halted her downward progress, making her feel embarrassed and foolish. Rohan’s fingers splayed against her chest, pushing on her ribcage as though fending off something awful. His face closed to her, encased in an agonising numbness and Emma bit her lip and sat up. “Go back to bed,” Rohan said coldly. “Get some sleep.”
Emma fled from the room, closing the door quietly against her humiliation. A muted flash lit up her room as the storm moved off east, highlighting her messy, unmade bed, the sheets pulled back and the mattress cold and lonely. She turned her back on it, refusing to accept her aloneness and padded down the hallway to Nicky’s room. Emma snuggled in her son’s bed, comforted by the small sighs escaping his rosebud lips. Screw you, Rohan Andreyev, Emma sulked in the darkness, knowing she would have and not comforted by the realisation of how much she still wanted to.