Only when the mask came off did the fear flood in. But it was fear for Sarah. How could he have been so stupid? So naive. He thought of school and the old sensation of being powerless. Why did he bother doing anything? He simply wasn’t strong enough for the world – in a true, physical sense – not big enough to make a mark.
He got showered and thought about getting some extra security latches for his front and back doors. Anger was creeping into him again, about the newspapers. How was it fair that someone who dealt drugs, which ruined people’s lives, had the right to ruin Sam’s? Because that’s what he’d done.
Letting the water rush over his head and down his face, he realised at last the consequences of never again being anonymous in the one place he loved. Whenever he went to the café for his breakfasts or the pub for his lunches, or out with his friends, or to his favourite takeaways, or when he went out running, or when he went to the shops. And it was all because of Zac.
And Sam didn’t even have any photos. He’d been bluffing. After a crisis of conscience he’d deleted them from his camera, and there was no way of getting them back. He looked out the bedroom window into his back garden. The street light in the alleyway behind his house was blurred by the mist. He wished he hadn’t thrown out his comics. He wished he could climb up into the attic and curl up and go to sleep.
‘You’re being pathetic,’ he said aloud.
In the garden the fluffy ginger cat and his smaller black-and-white friend had got over the fence, and had been joined by a second black-and-white one. They were all staring at him.
The text from Sarah came through mid-morning the next day, asking if she could come over. It was Saturday and the mist from the night before hadn’t lifted. Sam sat in his living room, watching the news, with the phone held limply in his hand. Lifting it up, he replied that of course she could come over.
He ran upstairs and got ready. His heart pumped hard, partly with excitement, partly with fear. Thinking back on those words about how he would be happier without her, he hated the cruelty of them, and that he’d said them, when she had done nothing wrong.
She looked exhausted when she arrived. There were bags under her eyes and her shoulders were slumped; she didn’t look well.
‘Come in,’ he said. ‘I’ve got the kettle on.’
They went through to the kitchen and it was Sarah who spoke first.
‘Did you go to see him?’
Sam put the bottle of milk down.
‘Yes, but—’
‘Dressed as the superhero?’
‘Yes.’
‘Sam.’ The exasperation in her voice made him feel like a stupid child.
‘Listen,’ he said. ‘He’s bad news, Sarah. I’ve accepted what’s happened between us and I’m fine with it, but Zac is going to wreck your life.’
‘You don’t get it.’
‘You know it was him who told the papers I’m the . . . the thing I do.’
Her eyes flicked up to him.
‘He’s not a good person, Sarah. And he’s dealing again.’
‘He’s changed,’ she said. ‘This person who’s come here . . . it’s not him. It’s a different person. He’s meaner.’
‘He’s off his face on drugs all the time. This is what happens in the end.’
She started crying, standing there in the middle of the kitchen. Her shoulders lost their tension and she stood there, head lowered, her chest heaving.
He didn’t know what to do. He didn’t know if it was OK to give her a hug. Then he went to her and put his arms around her whole body.
‘Hey, hey, come on,’ he said. ‘Everything’s going to be fine.’
‘It’s not.’
‘Yeah, it is. We’ll make it OK.’
He felt her shake her head.
‘What is it?’ he said.
‘He’s going to ruin my life.’
‘We’ll talk to him. I’ll talk to him.’
‘You can’t.’ She waited. ‘He’s got a video.’
The words snagged, and Sam realised he’d held his breath.
‘What do you mean?’
Her voice drifted up quietly.
‘There’s so much you don’t know about me that I should have told you.’
His arms still around her, the embrace became lax. The kettle boiled and there was a click as it switched itself off. Slowly the pieces in the puzzle moved into place.
‘Sarah, tell me what’s happened.’
He held her close to stop her shaking but she peeled away and sat at the kitchen table.
‘My family, we’ve always been dysfunctional. When I was in school I couldn’t wait to move out and get away. And when I met Zac, I thought . . . things seemed so much better.’
She put her head in her hands.
‘I was such an idiot. I was high for so long I couldn’t see what was happening. I can’t believe . . . how badly . . . I’ve fucked up,’ she said. ‘Things had been bad for a while, like he didn’t care about anything, and one night we were . . . together, and he had his phone . . .’
His heart broke for what she was saying.
‘I hate myself because I let him do it. I was so high, it just happened . . . and in the morning . . . it made me feel so disgusting. I told him to delete it but he was just laughing at me and I flipped out and I just . . . left.’
She broke off, the weight of the words making her stop. She was trembling.
‘My parents hated Zac and I always stuck up for him. God, I was so stupid. I couldn’t call them. I’d spent years telling them I didn’t need them, and by the end they never called me and so, you know, and Zac never came after me. After all that time we’d been together and he didn’t even try calling me. He just . . . didn’t care and all of my friends were his friends really, and then . . .’
‘What?’ said Sam. ‘It’s okay. You can tell me.’
Sarah didn’t look at him. Her shouders rounded in resignation. He heard her take a breath.
‘I had no money and nowhere to go . . . I ended up on the streets.’
Sam took a seat next to her.
‘You were homeless?’
‘You think there’s support but there’s not. There’s nothing.’
Sam suddenly remembered the day he’d first met Sarah, when he’d bought a meal for Gloria. Something clicked into place.
‘What happened?’
‘Kabe happened. I knew him, sort of. But he found me, and he and Kristen took me in. Got me back on my feet, helped me get out of Edinburgh. And now Zac’s back I feel . . .’ her voice shook, ‘like I’m back at square one.’ She took a huge breath. ‘He keeps telling me he still loves me and can’t live without me, and then he always brings it back round to the video and if I don’t . . . he’ll . . . I’m a terrible person, I guess I deserve this.’
He was too stunned to think straight.
‘This is why you agreed to meet with him,’ he said. He thought of Zac’s flat, the candlelight flickering on the walls through the window, the man sitting behind that wall. ‘Sarah, this is blackmail,’ he said. ‘I mean, what sort of person lets . . .’ He stopped.
She cried some more and Sam shifted his chair across to her and put his arms around her again until she was exhausted.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let’s make the tea.’
And they did, in silence, Sam sliding the cups over to her when it was time for the milk to go in. He tried to block out the images that were spiralling into his head, of her, being put through that, and the person Sarah must have been then. They took their cups and went through to the conservatory, away from the world.
‘Do your parents know about any of this?’ he said.
Sarah shook her head. Her eyes were red, she was all cried out, but Sam was glad she was here, that the house was warm and she could feel safe.
‘You really can’t call them?’
She shook her head.
‘I really thought I was out the other end. When I met you.’ She hadn’t looked at him the whole time but now she lifted her head and met his eyes. ‘You’re such an amazing person. You have no idea how good you are.’
There was silence as these words held.
‘You’re a good person,’ he said. He watched the tiny nuances on her face, small defensive things; a near-imperceptible narrowing of the eyelids, a tightening of the flesh over her cheeks as she closed her mouth, a nervous swallow. ‘I hate that you think you’re not. You’ve been so good to me.’
‘Because I love you,’ she said, without thinking.
All the air was sucked out for a second.
‘My dad used to say to me, people don’t change, they only change the way they act.’
‘That’s cool,’ she said.
‘So you must’ve always been a good person. We all do stupid things. Look at me . . . But we’re going to sort this out, you know that? All of it.’
‘He’s going to post the video on my Facebook,’ she said.
‘He won’t do that,’ he said, knowing that Zac would do exactly that. ‘He can’t blackmail you. You can just delete your Facebook. He can’t ruin your life.’
Sarah looked over the top of her cup at him, the steam rising between them.
Sam tried to smile, but through the ache he found it hard.
‘Do you want to stay with me today? We can do something.’
She shook her head.
‘I can’t. I’ve taken an extra shift at the library. It’ll take my mind off things I guess.’ Her energy had flatlined. ‘I’d better go,’ she said, setting her tea down. ‘I’m gonna be late otherwise.’
‘Can I call you later? And you know, if you want to stay over here, to get away . . . the spare room’s made up.’
She smiled with a heartbreaking sadness and stood up. Hooking her bag over her shoulder, she made for the hallway. Sam sat there for a second, his mind churning. Then he stood up too.
‘Sarah,’ he said.
She stopped in the doorway.
‘About what I said, in your flat.’ He made a decision. ‘I lied. I can’t be happier without you. You’ve turned me inside out with how amazing you are.’
The silence in the room had its own gravity.
‘You are a good person. And you should know this.’
She turned to him. He had to tell her.
‘Whatever happens, you’ve made me want to live again.’
It was misty enough to go out without being spotted. Everything felt unreal. He passed the video shop he’d worked in as a kid, and which had closed down years ago.
Having Zac ruin his life was one thing, but what he was doing to Sarah was so much worse. He tried to imagine the circumstances in which he’d got her to do what she did. It just wasn’t Sarah. He had deliberately turned her into that person with his poison over however many years. What kind of man would even want to film someone he was supposed to care about doing that? And then let her just end up on the streets. It was so much information that it seemed almost impossible, like it could never have happened.
As ever, when he was in trouble, he gravitated towards the old housing estate. He turned off the main street and went down the hill until he came at last, inevitably, to his parents’ house. In the mist churned a deep nostalgia for the old days, when the world was still wonderful.
He walked for a long time around the estate, down the intersecting alleys he’d cycled as a nine-year-old, around the square patches of communal lawn. On one of the lawns there were three mature chestnut trees. Back in the day, this had all been farmland and between two of the farmhouses had been a tree-lined carriageway. These chestnuts were the remnants of that path, a straight line with the smallest of holloways running alongside – you could see it if you looked closely; the dent of history never really goes away, the past never completely disappears.
What would the Sam of his childhood have made of this Sam now? What would his parents think of him? Constantly hiding behind the force field of his childhood memories. He looked up into the canopy of one of the old chestnut trees and watched an orange leaf snap from a branch and spin away. He knew exactly what they’d think.
But there was a solution to this. He needed to get the phone that had the video on it. Then she could get on with her life.
All he needed was the courage.