“I’ll only be a few moments,” Beth said, as she wheeled herself into the bedroom.
James sat down on one of the chesterfields. “No rush,” he said.
In the bedroom Beth reached down, and pulled a small suitcase out from under the bed and flipped it open. Then she went across to the dressing table, and started opening drawers, pulling out the things she needed, tossing them into the waiting case.
She didn’t notice the bedroom door start to close. But she heard the click of the latch as it shut.
She froze, one hand still clutching a cotton T-shirt. Her breath began to steam in front of her face, as the temperature in the room started to plummet. It was suddenly very cold in the room.
She was facing the wall. “Hello, Jessica,” she said, without turning around. She let the T-shirt drop back into the drawer. Slowly she turned her chair a full 180 degrees.
Jessica stood just inside the room, the closed door behind her.
She was wearing a plain white shift dress; her long hair was parted demurely in the center, and hung to each side of her pale face. But the dark eyes in the face were fierce. They fixed Beth with a penetrating, hostile gaze. Jessica’s lips looked dry and cracked. When they parted, the voice that issued from them sounded distant and strained.
“He’s mine,” she said. “Jimmy’s mine.”
Beth shook her head. “No, Jessica. He was never yours. He was just another person to use, like so many you used in your sad and pathetic life.” She had no idea where this sudden attack of bravery was coming from.
Something flared in Jessica’s eyes, and she hissed at Beth, like a cat.
Behind her, the door started to open as James made his way into the room.
“Beth is everything all right?”
Jessica glanced behind her, and made a downward thrust with her arm, slamming the door shut, knocking James back into the lounge. As the door shut, there was a loud click as the mortise lock snapped into its housing. Jessica smiled.
“He’s such an innocent.”
“I’m not afraid, Jessica.” Beth said. “Not anymore. I know the truth about you.” She realized she was gripping the arms of her chair, her fingernails digging into the soft vinyl. She relaxed her hands, and took a breath to relax the rest of her body.
Jessica stood watching her, eyes still burning furiously in an otherwise impassive face. She raised her other hand, and Beth’s wheelchair lurched backwards, crashing into the dressing table, knocking the wind from her lungs.
“You know nothing,” Jessica said. “You pathetic cripple.”
“At least it’s only my body that’s crippled,” Beth gasped. “Not my mind. Unlike yours.”
Jessica raised her hand again, and the wheelchair shot forward, colliding with the bed and throwing Beth out of the chair, half onto the bed and half onto the floor. Her fingers grasped the covers, and she pulled herself onto the bed, her gaze never leaving Jessica’s face.
“Tell me, Jessica, what was it like to go through life, unloved and incapable of loving anyone but yourself?”
“Bitch! What do you know?”
“I know you’re emotionally stunted. There’s something missing in you, Jess. Something that makes you more crippled than me.”
Something flickered on the impassive face. Uncertainty?
“My father loved me. And I loved him. Only him,” Jessica said.
Beth shifted on the bed, hauling her useless legs up onto the mattress, and turning her entire body until she was facing Jessica. “Is that why you had to get rid of Dolores? Couldn’t you bear to compete with her for his affection, for his love?”
“He never loved her. Not like he loved me,” Jessica spat.
“Is that what you told yourself?”
Again the uncertainty flickered in Jessica’s eyes.
“The truth, Jessica. Face the truth,” Beth said, as calmly as she could, even though her heart was beating like a trip hammer, echoed by the sound of James pounding on the bedroom door. “Your father loved Dolores. She was the love of his life. You were just a pathetic also-ran.”
A scent bottle launched itself from the dressing table, and sailed across the room missing Beth’s head by a centimeter, smashing against the headboard, showering her with broken glass and perfume.
Beth flicked glass away from her face, gagging at the intensely sweet smell of the perfume. “The truth,” she said again. “Face the truth, Jessica!”
For a moment the hostility faded from Jessica eyes, to be replaced by more uncertainty and then confusion. “No,” she whispered. “No.”
Suddenly Beth’s mind was filled with images.
A merry-go-round and a four-year-old Jessica perched on a gaily-colored horse, giggling with delight, while a young Bernard Franklin looked on adoringly. Jessica winning her first swimming cup at six years of age, hoisted onto the shoulders of a proud and jubilant father, and paraded around the pool, holding the cup aloft. Jessica running across a field of long grass, being chased by Bernard, laughing panting, and finally bringing his daughter to the ground with a rugby tackle, leaving them both breathless, and Jessica squealing with glee.
A darkened bedroom, with a twelve-year-old Jessica shivering under the covers. And then the covers being pulled back and Bernard Franklin sliding into the bed beside her, wrapping her in his arms, warming her before tentatively stroking her nascent breasts and kissing her, his tongue probing the soft interior of her mouth.
The picture in Beth’s mind switched. She was at Stillwater Lake, standing in the shadow of a giant oak, and watching as a seminaked couple made love. The couple, a nubile Jessica opening herself up to the thrusting, panting attentions of Carl Page. A cry of rage and Bernard Franklin burst from the trees, his face a twisted mask of anger as he dragged a startled Page from his daughter, bringing his fist smashing down into the boy’s face, knocking him senseless.
Bernard Franklin towered above Jessica, screaming at her, “Slut! Whore!” He reached down, grabbed her by the hair, yanked her to her feet and hauled her across to the water’s edge. With a cry he threw her into the lake. Jessica struck out, swimming for all she was worth, trying to escape her father’s rage. Giving a bull-like roar Bernard plunged into the lake after her, catching her within a few yards and forcing her head beneath the water. For a second she struggled, and surfaced before he grabbed her and forced her under the water again, this time for an age, until her legs stopped kicking, and she floated away from him.
Breathless and sobbing Bernard Franklin staggered from the lake, and collapsed on the shore, while his drowned daughter’s body floated to the shallows, and lay there facedown in the water.
The images receded. Beth was in the room lying on the bed, staring at Jessica, whose face was a mask of realization and pain. She mouthed the word no, and then brackish water spilled out from her mouth, over her lips and down the front of her dress, staining the white cotton green. Beauty was sucked from her face, as her cheeks caved in, shrinking back over her skull, leaving deep dark hollows. Above the hollows her eyes started to dry and shrink, leaving them looking like glittering coal-black pebbles.
The rest of her body was decaying; the skin of her arms and hands was shriveling, turning her arms into twigs, and her fingers into twisted claws.
“No!” Jessica shouted, as her legs snapped, and she collapsed to the floor. For a moment she lay there in a heap, before the white cotton shift dress billowed softly, and settled over a body that was rapidly liquefying into pool of muddy green sludge.
The door finally burst open, and James stood there, panting and rubbing his shoulder.
“Are you okay?”
On the bed Beth lay back onto the pillow, and closed her eyes. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, I’m fine.”
James looked down at the green pool that was becoming thinner, more watery and was slowly soaking into the floorboards.
He picked up the white shift dress, holding it reverently in his hands. “She always seemed so sad.”
“I can tell you why,” Beth said. “Not yet, though.”
James righted the wheelchair and wheeled it across to the edge of the bed. “I think we need to get going.”
Beth slid across the covers until her legs dangled over the chair. “This place won’t let her sleep.”
James helped her into the wheelchair. “Let’s get you out of here,” he said.
She nodded. “Yes,” she said. “Please.”