CLAIRE
Sunday, August 30, 2015
I do not feel relieved or angry or shocked. I do not feel sad or vengeful or scared.
I feel nothing.
I am aware that I should react, that I should cry or scream or shout, but I feel no compulsion to do so.
I feel nothing.
It is as though someone has scooped out my heart and replaced it with sand. There is nothing inside me apart from a strange, dull ache in the center of my chest.
Kira’s face is still hidden behind her hands but the cotton pillow beneath her head is wet with tears. I didn’t think she was going to talk to me but once she started she couldn’t stop. The words poured out of her; the words, the pain, the fear.
“Billy saved you,” I say. “He pushed you out of the way to save your life.”
Kira says nothing. So talkative and now so silent.
“And you left him there, dead or dying in the wood, and you drove back home. And then you crawled into bed with his brother as though nothing had happened.”
She sobs, audibly this time, and pulls the blanket up and over her head. I gaze down at her, at the slender figure shrouded beneath the blanket. Seven months. For seven months she’s watched me lose my job, my marriage, even my sanity and she hasn’t said a word. All this time she’s idly stood by as Jake and Mark have torn themselves apart.
“You could have told me. If you’d said that Billy was blackmailing you I would have done something. I would have made him stop.”
The shape beneath the blanket moves as she shakes her head.
“You don’t believe me?”
The sheet shifts as she pulls it away from her face and looks up at me with red-rimmed eyes.
“You’d have thrown me out.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because you thought Billy was perfect.”
Did I? Doesn’t every parent? I wasn’t blind to Billy’s faults. I knew there was a reason he was acting up at school and getting into trouble for graffitiing. Something was making him unhappy but I didn’t know what because he wouldn’t let me in. He could have told me what he’d seen outside the pub that night but he kept it to himself. Did he do that to protect me? Or did he think I thought Mark was perfect? There’s a twisted irony there that I can’t deal with right now.
“How could you do it?” I say. “How could you carry on living in our house? You saw how upset we were. How could you watch that, knowing what you did? We were searching for our son, we were desperate and all along you knew . . . you knew where Billy was.”
“I didn’t know he was dead.” She glances away.
“I don’t believe you.”
“I didn’t. I swear. I heard him hit the side of the train when he tripped, but when I got up I couldn’t see him. He wasn’t by the tracks. And I got scared. I ran back to the van. I thought he’d come after me.”
“You can’t have been that scared. You went back to our house and got into bed with Jake.”
She shakes her head. “Not straightaway. I sat up in the kitchen. Granddad was dead. I couldn’t go to Mum’s. And I told myself . . . I convinced myself . . . that there was another way out. I decided that if Billy came back . . . when Billy came back . . . I’d tell him that I’d keep having sex with him. I’d have told him anything to stop him from telling Jake what we’d done. I love Jake. I love him so much.”
“Maybe you should have thought about that before you slept with his brother.”
“I know.” She closes her eyes tightly.
“Kira, you went back to our house! You sat in our kitchen like nothing was wrong when Billy was lying in the undergrowth dying. You could have rung an ambulance. You could have saved him!”
“I was scared. I thought he’d hurt me.”
“Hurt you?”
“You don’t know what he did, Claire.” Her eyes glisten with tears. “The things he’d seen on the Internet . . . the things he made me do—”
“No.” I hold up a hand. “You could have stopped that, Kira. You had a choice.”
“Did I?” She looks at me, her eyes lifeless.
“You must have realized that Billy was dead when you woke up the next morning and he hadn’t come back.”
“I . . .” She runs her hands over her face. “I went along with what Mark said—that Billy had run away because of the argument. Jake said he was doing it for attention. I let myself believe that. I told myself that he’d got up after the train hit him but was staying away to freak everyone out, to freak me out. And then when the police got involved I made up new stories in my head—Billy was staying with mates, he had amnesia and didn’t know who he was, he’d hitchhiked somewhere.”
“You saw us, Kira! You saw how distraught and scared we were.”
“I know. And it tore me apart. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t eat. The only way I could live with it was to tell myself that what had happened was an awful accident but it wasn’t my fault. I didn’t force Billy to come with me. I didn’t push him in front of the train.”
“So why didn’t you tell anyone? If you really believed that it wasn’t your fault why didn’t you tell me?”
“I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t look you in the eye and tell you that he was dead. Not when you were so hopeful. Not when you kept telling everyone that you’d find him.”
“So you knew he was dead then.”
“I don’t know.” She curls into herself and begins to cry again. “I don’t know.”
“Don’t tell Liz that I was fucking Billy.”
That’s what I heard Kira say to Lloyd when I was pushed into the café.
I only remembered when Liz came around and was talking to me about Lloyd. That’s why I dropped my wine glass. It all came rushing back—the conversation I’d overheard and the tattoo on the back of Kira’s neck when she’d taken off her cardigan. I’d seen it before—when I’d interrupted a private moment between her and Jake in the kitchen—but I’d mistaken it for a bruise. Everything suddenly made sense—why Kira had freaked out when Jake had pulled her dressing gown away from her neck, why she wouldn’t sleep with him anymore, why she always kept her hair down.
“Kira, how did Lloyd know you were having sex with Billy?”
“He saw us, in the park one night. We thought he was going to the pub and he’d tell Liz when he got home. But he didn’t. That was the night he left her.”
“And when Liz mentioned that he was coming back to see her . . .”
“I panicked. I thought he’d watched the appeal on the TV and he wanted to tell her what he’d seen. I had his number from when I’d photographed him so I asked him to meet me. We always got on. He’s a nice man.” She starts to cry again.
“Just me!” The nurse pops her head around the curtain, making me jump. “The psych team are here so if you could say your goodbyes now, please.” She gives me a small nod.
“Please.” Kira looks imploringly at her. “Just one minute.”
“Thirty seconds.” The nurse pulls the curtain back over.
“Claire.” Kira’s eyes well with tears as she looks back at me. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I hate myself for what’s happened. I wish you hadn’t found me. If you hadn’t then now I’d be dead.”
I give her a long look but say nothing. I don’t trust myself to speak.