She brought the peas back to her cheek and shook her head lightly. ‘I caught him once,’ she said, her breath catching slightly on the words, ‘I caught him in his office. He was … pleasuring himself. I teased him, asked if he was thinking about me. He laughed it off, said of course he was thinking about me. But I saw, out of the corner of my eye, Saffyre, I saw an essay one of his patients had written. A rape fantasy.’
My eyes opened wide.
‘Look,’ she said. ‘He’s one of those guys, you know? One of those guys that nothing would surprise you about, not really, if you actually stopped and thought about it. If you looked behind the mask. That he might actually be the bad guy, not the good guy. That he might not be the saviour.’ She paused and looked up at me. ‘He might be the predator.’
For a moment after she said that, I kind of stopped breathing.
I went back to visit my little plot of land opposite Roan’s old place the other day, just for old times’ sake. Looks like the flats are finally going to be built. The foundations are being filled. The girders are ready to put in place. There are people there all day long, the gates are open, vehicles driving in and out.
My little place has gone now, and with it the peace and the stillness, and the little red fox.
And I sit on my bed now, on this bright April evening, and I stare up at my pink paper lampshade with the heart-shape cut-outs and I feel better about the eight-year-old girl who chose it, because she grew up to be a kick-ass, finger-breaking girl who got her revenge on the person who hurt her. I look down at Angelo, not a scrap any more, a proper little cat, my little bit of wild outdoors indoors, and I should be happy, but something’s buzzing and buzzing through my head. Despite Harrison being on remand for three of the sex attacks, he has alibis for all the others and it looks like maybe there was more than one predator at large all along.
I uncross my legs and go to my window and stare down into the plaza. And then I remember a night, earlier this year, one of the nights when Josh and I went out looking for Harrison John.
And the truth hits me like a dart in the chest.
‘Try and make yourself invisible,’ I’d said to him.
The next time we met up he’d arrived in Lycra running gear, a zip-up jacket, a black beanie hat. I didn’t know it was him at first because his face was covered by a balaclava. As he approached, he pulled it down and I saw his smiling face emerge.
He said, ‘What do you think? Invisible enough?’
I pointed at the balaclava and laughed and said, ‘Where’d you get that scary-assed shit from?’
He shrugged. ‘Found it in my dad’s drawer.’
He smiled again. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let’s go hunting.’
