That was the only reason I went there that night: I wanted the photos so no one could see them. I was sick to my stomach every time I thought about them, and how they could have been a million times worse if Serena hadn’t refused to do anything after that kiss. He probably kicked the living daylights out of her after I left but she had told him he could do what he liked but she wasn’t going to. That was another thing I was grateful to her for, because I would not have been strong enough to say no. Those photos were going to ruin my life – I had to go there to get them back.
That night was ‘my’ night with him. He’d decided that to spare us the pain of not knowing who he wanted to see when, and to stop us just turning up – like we’d ever do that – he gave us ‘nights’. The reality was, of course, it controlled how we felt when we weren’t with him, because we’d always know that he was with her and would spend the night wondering what they were doing together.
As I walked towards his house, I thought again about how I was tired of being scared all the time, of watching what I said and did and felt. I knew I had to end it. I was terrified, of course – every step was a shaky, nervy movement towards the most dangerous person I knew. But I had to do it.
With my heart in my throat, and my whole body shaking, I rang the doorbell, then I knocked.
There was a look in his eye that threw a band of cold, naked terror around my core. The last time he had looked that crazed, I had needed five stitches at the base of my head. He was also standing funny, his body tense and jittery, while he held something down by his side, just out of my line of sight. I didn’t dare provoke him by trying to catch a look at it, that would be a bad way to start this.
He had been on the verge recently of spilling over into becoming a constant terroriser. It was a slow build up to the worst times, when he would find little things that irritated him to complain about. I would be on edge more than normal. Tense and fretful, jumping every time he spoke, shaking every time he came near me. Sometimes it would get so severe that I would wish he would just do it, he would just hit me so it would be over with. He could hit me and I wouldn’t have to teeter on the edge waiting for it to happen.
His eyes had a new level of wildness about them, I realised. This was not like the five-stitches time, this was far worse. He would probably kill me if he caught me looking for the photos – from the look in his eye, it might just be a miracle if I walked away unscathed. ‘Poppy, right on time. Come in, come in. Guess who’s come for a surprise visit?’
I was suddenly scared. I had the urge to turn and run back the way I had come, to try to escape, because something didn’t feel right. Things rarely felt right around Marcus nowadays, but this time it was worse. Whoever his surprise visitor was, they had set him off and I would be paying the price.
What’s she doing here? I asked myself when I saw Serena standing in his living room. My insides flipped over when I looked at her properly. What has she done? What has she done? I started to fret as I took her in. She was standing up straight, for starters, and had clearly grown in the past two years because she seemed even taller than usual. Her long plaits were swept back into a ponytail, which sat at the base of her neck – Marcus would hate that. He liked her to wear it loose around her face, or pulled back into a high ponytail; this ponytail he would consider slovenly and casual. She was wearing denim – jeans and a denim jacket over a loose white top. At his house, we always had to dress like girls and wear tight clothes. If we ever went out without him – a rarity in itself – we had to dress down, but still like girls.
I stopped breathing when I saw the flat, black plimsolls on her feet.
She’d done it. She’d gone and done it. No! No! I was screaming inside. I was meant to do it tonight. I was meant to leave him. Now, he’ll never let me go. As long as he had her he might have let me go, but now he won’t. Now I’ll be stuck with him for ever.
Marcus, the crazed look still in his eye, moved to the centre of the room so he was between us. He was going to hit her in front of me. For the first time he was going to hit her as I watched and I wasn’t sure I’d be strong enough to stop him. It had taken every piece of courage to come here and to do this, so how could I do anything else against him?
‘I’m glad you’re here, Poppy,’ he said, while my mind was tearing around like a caged animal, scared and desperate to escape. I didn’t know what I was going to do. I stared blankly at him, listening to him with my eyes because my ears were not sending the messages to my brain. I could not understand anything except the overriding need to escape. Not only from this room, but from this life I had become entangled in. I had almost been out until Serena derailed it.
He was staring at her, but talking to me. He was talking about a way for us to be together, I realised after a few more seconds. Which was the last thing I wanted. I just wanted – needed – my life back. He was talking about dumping Serena. ‘Even if I dump her, she’ll cause trouble for us. She won’t leave us alone, and she’ll start rumours about me seducing her when she was a pupil of mine. It’d be a lie, of course, but mud sticks. It’d ruin me. Which I don’t think is fair. So, I’ve found a way to make sure that she never bothers us, never tells or comes back.’
Oh God, oh God, he’s going to kill her. He’s going to kill her and he’s going to make me watch. It had hit me what he had in his hand, what he was going to do. My whole body solidified with the horror of what I was about to see happen. I could not let it happen but I was not strong enough to stop him. The ice cream day exploded in my mind. How she took a beating for me because I had been clumsy. The day in the kitchen came to mind – how she lied to him that I had my eyes open. I did not know Serena, I did not like Serena, but I did not want her dead. I did not want anything bad to happen to her.
He seemed to be moving in slow motion as he brought what was by his side – a large kitchen knife – into view.
‘I want you to remove her from our lives,’ he said. And my heart stopped beating. ‘I want you to put an end to her and her blight on us. I want you to kill her.’
He was offering the knife to me. Me. He wanted me to . . . I stepped away from him and away from it. I needed to put as much distance as I could between me and it and him. Did he really think I could . . .
‘Baby girl,’ he encouraged in his sweet, soft voice, ‘come on now, it’s the only way, you know it is. I want to be with you, and if you do this one thing for me, just this one little thing, we can be together for ever. We could . . . we could even get married.’
I did not want to be with him for ever. I did not want to be with him at all. I stared at the knife. It was probably the largest knife I had ever seen. It probably wouldn’t even fit in my hand, even if I wanted to take it. Which I didn’t. How could I? Was he mad? Did he think that I would be capable of doing that? Or was it that he saw me as so brainwashed that I would do anything he told me? Probably, because, up until this moment, that’s all I did. Everything he told me to do I did. It had started with asking me, then telling me, then ordering me. It had all been leading up to this moment; it had all been pushing and dragging me to this moment when he would order me to do the unthinkable and I would do it without question. I would do it because that’s what I did.
More firmly, he offered me the knife. ‘Isn’t us being together what you’ve wanted from the start? What you’ve constantly dreamed of?’ Not in a long while, I wanted to tell him. What I’ve been dreaming of lately is getting away from you, never having to be around you or have anything to do with you again. I just want my life back, I want me back, to be the person I was before I fell into this thing with you.
‘Don’t worry about the police; we can convince them that we had no choice. We’ll tell them that she broke in, she attacked us, and we had to kill her to subdue her. We had to do it to stop her.’ Even more decisively, he pushed the knife towards me. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll protect you. I’ll lie for you.’ What you would do is blackmail me until the day you had no further use for me, then you would call
the police and tell them the truth.
No, I do not believe you and no, I will not do it.
I shook my head. Then I said the word that was often at the back of my tongue with him but was never said because of the consequences. I said the word and it fell off my tongue like light fell on water: gentle and beautiful. ‘No.’
He reeled back a little, as if I had hit him because he had never expected to hear that word from me. He moved a little backwards, so surprised was he, unintentionally, I think, putting himself closer to Serena. ‘What did you say?’ he asked, his voice and face both dripping in shock.
Having done it once, I could do it again. Louder, more definite, more meaningful. ‘No,’ I said again. ‘And I’m leaving you. It’s over. I don’t want to be with you any more.’
He was floored but standing up; as if Mike Tyson had delivered a knockout blow to a Weeble – he wobbled but he did not fall down.
‘Did you just say no to me?’ he asked. He had turned from a coaxing man to someone who looked ready and capable of murdering me with his bare hands.
But I had to finish this. If I backed down now he would kill me – not tonight, maybe, but at some point in the future. He would know that I was not strong enough to see an escape plan through and he would increase the torture and the pain until he had nowhere left to go but to kill me. ‘I don’t want to be with you any more,’ I said to him. ‘And I’m not going to hurt Serena, you can’t make me.’
His eyes became angry slits as he turned violently towards Serena. ‘You bitches have cooked this up together,’ he said, his voice so full of anger he could barely get the words out. ‘You bitches think you can do this to me?’ I had never seen him incensed before, I realised. I had seen him angry; I had thought I’d seen him incensed, but this was it: his usually beautiful, smooth features were swollen and red and almost pulsating with this new, never-before-seen ferocity. His whole body was taut and he could barely move with the rage that was burning him up.
‘Me?’ He stabbed himself with the knife and I gasped inside as the cut it made sprang blood. ‘ME?!’ he screamed suddenly, and stabbed himself once more. ‘YOU BITCHES THINK YOU CAN DO THIS TO ME?! YOU ARE NOTHING WITHOUT ME. I MADE YOU WHO YOU ARE. IT’S NOT OVER UNTIL I SAY. YOU HEAR ME?! I SAY WHEN IT’S OVER. I SAY. NOT YOU. I SAY!’ The screaming was not as scary as the way he kept stabbing himself in the chest, stomach and abdomen with the knife to punctuate what he was saying. Stabbing and stabbing and stabbing. I fixated on that, more than his screaming. More than his words, what he was physically doing was more terrifying.
‘AND I SAY NOW!’ he shouted suddenly.
I didn’t have time to be scared, I didn’t have time to react when he went for me, the knife moving in a smooth arc towards my chest. Serena was quicker than him, and she grabbed him from behind, yanked him away. As he stumbled backwards, the knife flew out of his hands, clattering on to the floor in front of me. They were fighting and he was trying to get free from her. And if he did, he’d go back for the knife and use it – on me or on her. Without thinking I snatched it up, moved it out of harm’s way.
He was shouting as they struggled and I didn’t know what to do. I should help her, I should stop him, but the loud SMACK! he delivered to her face freed him from her and made me jump. SMACK! He slapped her again, and she was on the ground, her mouth gushing bright red blood all down her face.
Marcus twisted back towards me and stumbled, still unsteady on his feet but ready to rip me into pieces, to tear me apart. He stumbled forwards again, this time with a silent thud; a short, sharp, heavy jolt at the end of it.
A short, sharp, heavy jolt that embedded the knife in his side.
A moment of stillness passed. Nothing happened, nothing moved, nothing breathed.
He looked like an earthquake had opened up on his face with his mouth gaping and his eyes wide.
I heard myself screaming. No one else could hear because I could not move enough to actually make the sound. But inside, at my core, I was screaming. I was screaming and screaming because something had happened and I didn’t know why or how. Something had happened and now Marcus was . . . Inside, deep inside me, I screamed. I screamed and screamed and screamed. I screamed because I did not know what else to do. But it did not leave my mouth, nor my body. I was screaming inside because in my hands I held a knife, the knife on which Marcus was impaled. I had done this. I had put a knife in him. I didn’t mean to. I didn’t mean to and I couldn’t stop screaming inside.
His eyes, so wide and white around his blue pupils, began to fill with red; his mouth still hung open as he stared at me. He stared and stared at me, silently asking me what I had done. How I could I have done it.
I watched his head move, lowering to stare down at what was sticking in his side, at the redness that spread outwards like red shockwaves from the epicentre of the wound, linking up all the tiny little stab wounds he’d made. I dared to look down and saw that my fingers were still curled around the hilt of the knife, my body was still a part of his.
I tore my hand away, the horror of the situation causing me to back away as well.
Another soft thud as Marcus dropped to his knees.
A third soft thud as he closed his hand around the knife and yanked it free of his body.
A fourth soft thud as he dropped the knife, then fell on to his side before eventually, with the final soft thud, he flopped over on to his back.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said to him. ‘I didn’t mean to. I’m sorry.’
I turned to Serena: I had to make her understand that I didn’t mean to. He walked into it, fell into it. I didn’t do it to him, I didn’t mean to. ‘I didn’t mean to. It was an accident. I didn’t mean to. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.’
She didn’t respond; she didn’t tell me she knew it was an accident, she didn’t say it was OK, she didn’t even seem to know I was there. She was staring at him, just staring and staring at him.
‘I’m sorry,’ I told her across the room. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to.’
She was standing beside me. ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.’
‘Poppy, Poppy.’ She was saying my name. ‘Look at me. Come on, Poppy, look at me.’ She was still bleeding from the lip, and a trickle of red was coming out of her nose. Her ponytail was awry, her face was wet and she looked as if she had been in a fight.
‘I’m sorry,’ I told her, holding out my hands. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘We have to go, OK?’ she said to me. She gently moved my hair away from my face, and my face felt cool again, instantly better. ‘OK?’ she said, her voice soft and kind. Kind, she was being kind. She had saved me and she was being kind. I had to do whatever she said. And she was saying we had to go so I had to do that. I had to go.
I nodded to her that I understood. I understood that whatever she said I would do, because she was nice to me.
‘Good. Good,’ she said. She was kind again by putting her arm around me. She was being lovely to me. Serena wasn’t as cold as I thought. She was lovely and she was lovely to me, even though I had done that thing that was an accident. ‘Come on, let’s go.’ She moved me towards the door. I moved my legs but she moved me, gently telling me with a slight nudge or tug where I had to go.
Outside, the air was cold and sharp against my face. Another welcome cooling moment. What month was it? Why was it so cold? What day was it?
I was going to ask Serena, but she had let me go. She had stopped holding on to me, something that I needed more than anything, and stepped away.
‘What are we going to do?’ I asked her. Because whatever she said, I would do. I owed her that. I owed her everything, so all she had to do was tell me and I would do it.
She didn’t say anything. She didn’t look as confident as she did back in the house. Now she was shaking, and she looked small and scared; her eyes were leaking and making her face even more wet.
‘Serena,’ I asked again. ‘What do we do now?’
‘I don’t k
now, Poppy,’ she said. ‘All I know is that we had to get out of there.’
‘Do you . . . do you think he’s . . . ?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, I think he is.’
My whole body lurched at the thought of what I had done.
‘What are we going to do?’ I asked her.
‘I don’t know,’ she said.
‘Are you going to tell?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘What about the police?’ I asked her.
‘I DON’T KNOW!’ she suddenly shouted back. ‘I don’t know anything. Stop asking me questions because I don’t know.’
I covered my mouth with my hands, as my breaths started to come in short, gasping bursts. ‘Oh my God, M—’
Serena was suddenly bent over, twisted towards the evergreen bush outside his house and she was retching, her body moving in violent jerks, but she was throwing up air, just dry heaving.
She stood upright and rubbed at her dry mouth with the back of her sleeve. ‘I can’t be here,’ she said out loud. ‘I just can’t be here.’
‘Can I come with you?’ I asked. I didn’t want to be alone and she was the only person I knew who would understand why.
‘Do you understand what happened?’ she asked. ‘Do you? Why would I want you to come with me? Why would I want you anywhere near me?’
‘It was an accident.’
‘I don’t mean that. None of this would have happened if you’d just left us alone. We were doing fine until you came along.’
‘But that’s not true. Serena, just—’
‘Leave me alone. Just leave me alone.’ She took off so suddenly, so fast, I didn’t have a chance to stop her, to beg her to let me come with her. She ran away from me, from where we were, as fast as she could, leaving only the sound of her plimsolls slapping on the paving stones behind her.