Ethan returned with the bags. The cottage walls felt thick and too close. Elly’s mum would be at home now, tucked up in bed, falling asleep soundly in the belief that her only child was happily married. It seemed impossible that Elly could be just a stone’s throw from her, and yet still feel this loneliness that seemed too big to hold inside her body. Suzanne and the others might have gotten a taxi into Edinburgh, to a bar with 2-4-1 cocktails. Maybe they would toast Elly and talk about how much they missed her, how they hoped they’d find partners as wittyand charismatic as Ethan one day. Elly reached for her clutch bag and pulled out her phone but couldn’t think of one person to call.It’s your wedding night, she imagined whoever picked up saying,why on earth are you calling me?She wouldn’t have an answer. She could never find the words.
“Isn’t this nice?” Ethan said, sitting beside her on the bed. “Just us, finally?”
Elly leaned her head on his shoulder, tried to make herself relax. His smell was so familiar.This is nice, she told herself.This is nice.
“You looked so beautiful today,” he said, kissing the top of her head. He murmured the words into her hair. “You’ve never looked so lovely.”
She let herself melt into him, closing her eyes. Had she really felt afraid of him, just a few minutes ago? Had she really cried in the bathroom at her own wedding? It was dizzying, sometimes, how quickly things could seem one way, and then shift to become something else entirely, like the turning of a kaleidoscope. Her dress was starting to itch against her skin, the material straining uncomfortably across her belly.
“I’ll go and get changed,” Elly said. She made to stand up, but Ethan’s hand clasped at her wrist, an anchor snagging her in the rocks, bringing her back down.
“Didn’t I tell you to stay?”
A quick, cold feeling – everywhere, like an ice sheet forming across the skin.
“It’s just a bit tight.”
“But I want to look at you wearing it a while longer,” he said. “So you can wait.”
Another turn of the kaleidoscope, a new reality grinding into shape.
He hadn’t always been like this. And this wasn’t what he was always like. This was just a facet, a layer – but it was a layer that seemed to find the sunlight more and more.
Elly sensed Ethan’s hands move. She was always hyper-aware of his movements in these moments, the rest of the world dulled and only him turned up in intensity. He raised his left hand to her mouth, his thumb on one side of her jaw and his fingers on the other. She thought he might caress her. Instead, he squeezed, pressing her cheeks into her teeth and forcing her lips open. His right hand found the back of her head, lacing through the hair and gripping it so that he could tilt her head back. Elly watched him with wide eyes, wishing she knew what any of this meant, wishing she was the kind of person who wouldn’t accept it, that she was the kind of person he would never even think of doing this to.
Ethan got to his feet, bringing her up with him. Not forcefully, but without compromise. He walked into her, so that she had to step clumsily backwards. Her back found the stone wall. Still squeezing her face, he kissed her hard on the mouth. “I’ve wanted to do this all day,” he said when he pulled away. “It’s all I’ve thought about.”
Elly forced her body to relax into his. She’d read in a women’s magazine once that the key to enjoying intimacy was just to tell yourself you’re enjoying it, even if you’re not. The brain can trick the body into all sorts of things. But his chest was too heavy and his mouth was too warm and all she could think about was him saying,Stay, stay, and how she’d just submitted, like a puppet. What wouldher mum have said in that situation? Suzanne, or even the woman in the bathroom? It was mortifying to see herself through their eyes, pitiful and compliant.
With a light touch on his chest, Elly pushed Ethan away. “I want to go and get changed,” she said, with more conviction than she felt. “I don’t want to wear this dress anymore.”
She saw straight away what those words did to him, how they pulled his brows down and made his eyes darker. He looked at her for a long moment and Elly wished she could snatch the words back into her mouth. She already knew that they wouldn’t be worth whatever came next.
It happened quickly – the hand snaking around her throat, applying pressure. In one fluid movement, Ethan pulled her towards him then slammed the weight of her body backwards, so that her head snapped hard against the stone wall.
That sound. Dull, like distant thunder.
Elly’s vision fractured, as if it had never been made of anything more than glass. A high-pitched ringing exploded in her ears.
He hurt me, she thought, stumbling to one side. That thought was the one bright spot in a world that had become dark.He’s never actually hurt me before. Not like this. She was aware of some boundary having been crossed, some invisible but unignorable pact having now been signed. Ethan seemed to know it, too. He pulled away from her, as if her skin burned him.
“Oh god,” he whispered, not looking at her face, but at her stomach and then the wall behind her head. “Oh god, Elly. I didn’t mean to.”
She put her hand to the back of her head, and it came away wet.
Ethan disappeared into the bathroom, locking the door. Elly stayed where she was, holding her stomach, getting smears of blood on her white dress. The sound of a tap running came from the bathroom, filling the small cottage. She felt as though she were underwater, swimming desperately upwards on the last of her breath. Upwards, towards the light.
Slowly, she smoothed down her dress, breathed in.
Later, Elly will wonder where the courage came from. She will wonder about the nature of conviction, the tangibility of it, how it fits inside the skeleton, hiding under muscle, dormant until it’s needed.
She slipped her feet back into her satin shoes. She opened the front door and thanked it for not creaking. The air met her with a cool kiss, creeping under her dress, pulling up goosebumps. Stepping out of the cottage, she left the door wide open behind her, not wanting him to hear her close it. She walked down the quiet lane and didn’t turn back. The lane snaked through a park and then past a row of houses, their dark windows like watching eyes, before bringing her back into the heart of the village and onto the high street. Elly walked with her head down beneath the glow of familiar streetlights, heels clicking on the pavement. Past the village hall, the pharmacy where she used to pick up her dad’s prescriptions, the bakery where Suzanne would be in just a few short hours to start the ovens, creating a flash of fire and warmth in the loneliness of the early morning. The streets seemed to recognise her, carrying her quickly, kindly, silently. Theback of her head throbbed. She placed her hands on her stomach to stop them from shaking and kept walking. Down the street, past the church where she’d been married just this morning. Onto the path leading into the woods.
The house will find you.
Her thoughts chased each other around her head. What on earth was she doing? Why was she out here in the cold and dark? Was she mad?
She ignored them all and kept walking.
