with Rory. But, you know, don’t worry, like I said, it’s probably just another part of Mack’s latest psychosis.’
The lie that Mack had been in touch prompted a flurry of hard to answer questions from Petra, but the sweaty pallor and breathless twitchiness he was displaying must have conveyed the message that there were things she was better off not knowing. Either that or she had concluded that Mack was not the only one experiencing a vivid and debilitating paranoia and that her best option was to humour him. Either way, she and Rory had left London that night and abandoned him to a long night in an empty house, alone with his horrors.
Chapter Eleven
Once the guy started talking, it seemed that he could not stop. He obviously felt that his relentless questioning of Jessica the other day had begun to break down some of the barriers between her and him; barriers such as the fact that she was here against her will, that they barely knew each other, that they were the best part of two decades apart in age, that he would not let her contact her mum or Marcus or any of her friends, telling her over and over that it was for her ‘own good’.
After probing so much into her childhood, he had begun feeding her snippets of information about his own. He had been brought up by a single mother too, he said, and it was fine, wasn’t it?
Of course it was, she had replied truthfully. Plus, she added, she had never known any different so she was bound to think it was fine, wasn’t she? He had nodded his agreement without saying anything, and then gone quiet for a long time.
He had told her other things too, like the fact that he had lived abroad for a while and that he had been to university. She asked him what he did for a living but he just shook his head and said, ‘Oh, this and that. You name it, I’ve done it.’ Then he told her that he wanted to retrain as a teacher, that he was sick of wasting his time on jobs that meant nothing to him, and she wondered whether that was what had prompted him to ask all those seemingly irrelevant questions about her reading and television habits. Maybe he was seeking to understand teenagers better in preparation for the day when he started working with them. When she told him that she was planning to become a nurse once the baby was older, he had nodded approvingly. ‘I wish I’d known what I wanted from my life when I was your age,’ he said quietly. ‘Might have made a bit less of a mess of it then.’
As the trust quietly grew between them, he finally asked her about the night that it had all happened, the night that ruined her life, the night that had brought them here, to this shack-with-pretensions in a grey-green forest at the edge of winter. She remembered what her mother had said, that this man, although he seemed strange and aloof and brash and preening, was actually a good man, that Jessica should trust him, and so she told him. It was a relief to speak of it again, to make the blood and the screams and the swift tilting from one calm reality into a hideous, terrifying ante-world something that lived outside her own mind and body and outside of her restless, haunted dreams. He did not seem shocked, and Jessica guessed that her mother must have told him at least some of the story before he showed up at their house in the middle of the night. But even Mum did not know all of it; Jessica had not told her about the terrible noises the boy had made in the minutes it took him to die. They were part-scream, part-gasp of disbelief, part-moan of pain and terror. Jessica had not told her about how they had been able to see the inside of the boy’s body, spilling out onto the floor. With the medical knowledge she was acquiring from her Biology A-level and her work experience at the hospital, Jessica had known immediately that he could not live, but she had knelt on the bloody floor next to him and held his hand and talked to him. She had asked him if he remembered her, because
The lie that Mack had been in touch prompted a flurry of hard to answer questions from Petra, but the sweaty pallor and breathless twitchiness he was displaying must have conveyed the message that there were things she was better off not knowing. Either that or she had concluded that Mack was not the only one experiencing a vivid and debilitating paranoia and that her best option was to humour him. Either way, she and Rory had left London that night and abandoned him to a long night in an empty house, alone with his horrors.
Chapter Eleven
Once the guy started talking, it seemed that he could not stop. He obviously felt that his relentless questioning of Jessica the other day had begun to break down some of the barriers between her and him; barriers such as the fact that she was here against her will, that they barely knew each other, that they were the best part of two decades apart in age, that he would not let her contact her mum or Marcus or any of her friends, telling her over and over that it was for her ‘own good’.
After probing so much into her childhood, he had begun feeding her snippets of information about his own. He had been brought up by a single mother too, he said, and it was fine, wasn’t it?
Of course it was, she had replied truthfully. Plus, she added, she had never known any different so she was bound to think it was fine, wasn’t she? He had nodded his agreement without saying anything, and then gone quiet for a long time.
He had told her other things too, like the fact that he had lived abroad for a while and that he had been to university. She asked him what he did for a living but he just shook his head and said, ‘Oh, this and that. You name it, I’ve done it.’ Then he told her that he wanted to retrain as a teacher, that he was sick of wasting his time on jobs that meant nothing to him, and she wondered whether that was what had prompted him to ask all those seemingly irrelevant questions about her reading and television habits. Maybe he was seeking to understand teenagers better in preparation for the day when he started working with them. When she told him that she was planning to become a nurse once the baby was older, he had nodded approvingly. ‘I wish I’d known what I wanted from my life when I was your age,’ he said quietly. ‘Might have made a bit less of a mess of it then.’
As the trust quietly grew between them, he finally asked her about the night that it had all happened, the night that ruined her life, the night that had brought them here, to this shack-with-pretensions in a grey-green forest at the edge of winter. She remembered what her mother had said, that this man, although he seemed strange and aloof and brash and preening, was actually a good man, that Jessica should trust him, and so she told him. It was a relief to speak of it again, to make the blood and the screams and the swift tilting from one calm reality into a hideous, terrifying ante-world something that lived outside her own mind and body and outside of her restless, haunted dreams. He did not seem shocked, and Jessica guessed that her mother must have told him at least some of the story before he showed up at their house in the middle of the night. But even Mum did not know all of it; Jessica had not told her about the terrible noises the boy had made in the minutes it took him to die. They were part-scream, part-gasp of disbelief, part-moan of pain and terror. Jessica had not told her about how they had been able to see the inside of the boy’s body, spilling out onto the floor. With the medical knowledge she was acquiring from her Biology A-level and her work experience at the hospital, Jessica had known immediately that he could not live, but she had knelt on the bloody floor next to him and held his hand and talked to him. She had asked him if he remembered her, because
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