‘Hi,’ I say, but she doesn’t respond.
I now understand how insecure and weak I have always been. So frightened of being left behind, left alone, of being unloved, I’d rather take a poor girl’s life than allow her to hurt me any further.
I wait for the first of many tears to fall. Only, they don’t arrive. I think I should cry for the lives I have taken away and the families I have destroyed. But my cheeks remain dry. Because I am awake and because monsters don’t cry.
They simply behave . . . monstrously.
Chapter 80
Damon
I look up at the building ahead of me – the DIY store where Dad works. I need to tell him what I now know about myself and hear in his own words why he took the fall for Daisy Barber’s death. Why he sacrificed fifteen years of his life in prison for my behaviour. But no matter how he answers, I know we won’t see each other again after today. He deserves a life more than I do. One far away from me and that I cannot taint. I will leave him to get on with what remains of it.
I stretch out my fingers and wince. I’ve removed the splint from my broken knuckles, but still they nag at me. And my ribs still ache from when Melissa resuscitated me a month ago. We haven’t spoken since, but I intend to make things right on that front as well. One reparation at a time. And if she doesn’t forgive me? I will find a way to make her.
I continue my inventory: I’m still walking with a stoop ever since my grandmother hit me across the back with a shovel. And the man who attacked me in the car park surely caused some degree of ligament damage to my neck when he tried to wrench me out of my vehicle. How I’m even still able to physically function amazes me.
The sliding doors to the store sweep aside for me as I make my way inside, hoping I’m not seen by either the security guard or the deputy manager who escorted me out last time I was here.
I’ve decided to approach Dad at his place of work instead of at home again so I don’t cause my grandmother more unnecessary stress. Not that I care about her; she’s a stranger to me. And besides, she strikes me as being a hardy old bird who can take care of herself. Like I can now.
‘I’ve come to see Ralf Lister,’ I say to the young staff member behind the customer service desk. ‘Is he working today?’
‘Can I ask what it’s about?’ she asks hesitantly.
‘He’s . . . my dad.’
She moves towards a microphone and her amplified voice asks a person whose name I don’t recognise to come to the desk. She must have misheard me. I clench my right fist ever so slightly.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘It’s Ralf Lister I wanted.’
She looks me up and down and offers an apologetic smile but says nothing. Another sudden rush of energy passes through me along with the crackling of static electricity. With some effort, I overcome the urge to grab her by the collar and slam her face down on to the cash register. These urges are becoming more frequent and insistent, yet I’m still able to resist them. Does she thank me for this? No. Instead, we stand in silence until the deputy manager arrives. There must be a photo of me behind the desk and an order to contact him, not Dad, if I reappear. He’s gathering himself to speak, but I pre-empt what he might have to say.
‘I don’t want any trouble,’ I begin, and hold my hands up to my chest in mock surrender. ‘I want to talk to him.’
He looks to the assistant, then back at me, and asks me to follow him into the lighting aisle. And what an accommodating fellow the deputy manager proves himself to be, for there Dad is, waiting for me a few metres away. His face is bruised and I spot atrickle of dried blood running from his ear to his neck.Shit.He looks rougher than me. He glares at me, but says nothing. It’s the deputy manager who clears his throat and speaks.
‘I’m very sorry to have to be the one to tell you this,’ he says to me, ‘but I’m afraid your dad died a couple of weeks ago.’
‘What are you talking about?’ I say. ‘He’s standing behind you.’
But as I point to the space Dad occupied an instant before, I see that he’s vanished.
Chapter 81
Laura
Damon’s flat is even more depressing on her second visit than it was on her first. She remains by the front door, surveying the open-plan lounge, diner and kitchen. There are unwashed clothes blurring the lines between furniture and laundry, and uneaten food left inside open cartons cluttering the kitchen worktops. The air is suffused with a musty odour, somewhere between a gym changing room and a place where ambition crawls away to quietly die. She makes her way inside, pushing aside detritus with her boots.
She already knows Damon isn’t here, as she watched him drive out of the car park twenty minutes ago. That’s how long it took for her to find the supervisor’s office and convince the young man working there that her boyfriend had taken both sets of house keys with him when he left and that his phone was now switched off. The touching effect of the rolled-up jumper tucked under her coat and the protective hand placed lovingly upon her pregnancy bump probably didn’t require the distressed tears she summoned to convince him to allow her in, but she takes pride in her work.
It’s by no means the first home Laura has gained entry to under false pretences, and she doubts it will be the last. However, theseare typically homes of elderly people who have been admitted to where she works. It doesn’t matter if she plunders the belongings of the terminally ill. She’s a firm believer in the old saying ‘You can’t take it with you.’
Laura checks her watch. She doesn’t know how long Damon will be away, so she gets to work. She would rather not be here, putting herself at risk, but he’s given her little choice but to up the ante. It’s a week since she sent him that text message, clearly spelling out what she expects from him. What he owes her. And how has he responded? Well, he hasn’t. Not a single word. Either he is burying his head in the sand and pretending this isn’t happening, or he doesn’t appreciate the lengths she will go to – and has done in the past – to get what is rightfully hers. Each time she thinks about it, it’s like a balled fist slowly expanding in her stomach. It stretches her insides so tight that sometimes the pain of not having what she wants makes her almost scream. She is so close to getting it that she can taste death in the back of her throat. And it is beautiful.
She glances around his home. She would like to believe that she will be doing him a favour by taking him away from all this, but she can’t fool herself. His death will be infinitely more for her benefit than his. What he has to offer her is markedly different from all the others she has helped. Damon is someone completely unique.
Her plan for today was to merely add or alter something in his flat. Nothing threatening, on the order of what she once served up to a man who crossed her, which involved a pig foetus and his dead pregnant wife’s wardrobe. And even now, when she thinks about it, she smiles at her innovativeness. Such extremes won’t be necessary with Damon, however. She will only need to do enough to immediately make him realise his safe space has been compromised. Turn a sofa ever so slightly; move the cutlery in a drawer around; rearrange his bookshelf so the spines are colour-coded; rebuild hisFriendsLego into something a little different.
