I don’t know if DC Huhne has heard, but I can’t think about now. She is out, I am in, and there are screams from the kitchen. Adam needs my help.
I run back along the corridor, into the kitchen. Nicole has managed to tip her chair back, and is screaming for DC Huhne. Her top is raised up, and her stomach is bleeding slightly, but only a skin wound. Adam is clambering out from under the table, while fumbling around in his pocket.
‘Shut her up!’ he shouts at me, pulling out his mobile phone.
I go over to Nicole and put my hand over her mouth. She bites it, hard, so I press harder.
Adam talks into his mobile ‘Jimmy? DC Huhne, inbound. Sort her out.’ He hangs up. My struggle with Nicole’s teeth continues. This is what it would have been like with Adam, without the chloroform. With Ally, without the ice-cream and the scarves. I would have no hands left – totally bitten off.
Adam holds the knife out to me from under the table.
‘Quick, in case Jimmy can’t sort it!’ he urges.
He wants me to take the knife and kill Nicole.
This means he wants me.
I take the handle of the knife and hold it tight in my spare hand. The neck, I suppose, at the front, is the place to do it.
Still with one hand over Nicole’s mouth, her biting at me even more, I move the knife to Nicole’s neck and hold it just above her skin. I should pierce it. I understand that. I should slit her throat, penetrate the jugular, watch the blood stream out, blooding the altar of Adam. I should do it for Him.
The knife remains raised above Nicole’s skin.
‘Come on!’ shouts Adam. ‘Do it!’
It’s the common room all over again.
I lower it slightly, so that this time it rests against her neck. Its pressure makes a line of whiteness on her neck amidst the scalded red of the tea. But I don’t add any new red. The skin stays intact.
Perhaps I should do it as Luke?
Perhaps it should be:
Luke pushed at her with vigour, forcing himself into her until she bled, his maleness as a knife inside her. His steel would pierce her, penetrate her, bring him inside her as he had always wanted to. And if there was blood, that was her body’s celebration of the moment – an orgasm of red.
I look at Nicole’s neck.
It is still intact.
Luke and I are too much the same now. He cannot do it. I cannot do it. Nicole lives. Even for Adam, we cannot make that sacrifice.
Now out from under the table, Adam stands. He grabs the blade back from me. Without hesitation, he stabs her, in the neck, in the chest, over and over. I hear the knife enter her, the squelch of flesh impaled by steel. I feel sick. I see the ooze of the blood through the clothes, now the spurt. He hits a lung, I think, because she is gasping now, heaving. I back away, but I cannot escape the blood, which is everywhere. My floor, my chair, my clothes, my hands, all blooded. And she is still living, I think, breathing. And the small Adam in her stomach must be still – and then Adam ends the misery. He slits her throat. The spray, trickle, spurt, everything of blood, reddens the world, then silences it. No more Nicole. No more risk of her sharing my secrets. Just me and Adam. It is the time, surely he told me to wait for? This will be our forever closeness, that I was promised?
I turn to him. He is covered in blood. I will need to wipe him down, to cleanse him. The gloves will not protect him now. We will need to bathe, together, become clean. But will he stay? Or will he just go back to Hampstead, as if nothing has happened? Or will we be on the run now, together, forever?
‘I’ve just one question,’ says Adam. ‘Had you planned to rape her, too?’