I raised the wine bottle up next to my shoulder like a club and stepped out from behind the end of the kitchen island. One long pace until I was facing Donovan with nothing between us except two or three big strides.
‘That’s a bad idea,’ Donovan told me.
It probably was.
If I was thinking logically, if I was calm, I probably wouldn’t have done it.
But I wasn’t thinking logically. I wasn’t calm.
I was exhausted.
And frightened.
And I couldn’t take a second more of this.
‘Put the bottle down. Take a moment to think about everything I’ve been telling you. Think about Oli.’
I didn’t put the bottle down.
The green glass was beaded with moisture. It was cool and slick in my fist.
And I’d done too much thinking already.
Donovan sized me up for a careful moment, then slowly held the knife out in front of him. He was favouring his right side, using his other arm to cover up his wound.
‘You don’t want to do this,’ he told me.
Tremors coursed through me. I felt spent and exposed, as if I was standing in a gale.
The open door to the basement was behind me. I could feel the darkness oozing out from within, coiling around my ankles, dragging me back.
I took a small step.
‘Lucy, be careful,’ Sam warned.
His voice was tight and pitchy. He looked very unsure and very afraid.
Donovan half twisted to face him, the knife moving with him, an appraising cast to his face.
Sam slowly reached out for the kitchen stool again. Fitting his hands around the wooden seat, he jerked it a few centimetres off the ground and held it warily, angling the legs towards Donovan as if he hoped to use it like a shield.
‘I’m sorry about your brother,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry for what happened to him. But you need to get out of our house.’
The wine bottle was wavering in my fist. My arm radiated a shimmery energy. I took another small step forwards and watched as Donovan gauged me again, peering at me as if he was looking through a thick mist.
‘I can’t do that,’ he told me carefully. I hated how he was talking to me. As if he was the calm and reasonable one and I was badly overreacting. ‘I go when you go. We’ll be leaving here together. You’re coming with me.’
How, I wondered? Where? Because people would see if he tried to take me away from here. Even if he waited until the middle of the night, he’d be risking a witness spotting us. And I was not going to leave with him willingly. Not if I could help it. I’d rather shout and scream and take my chances.
And what about Sam?
I go when you go.
Did that mean he thought he could leave Sam behind? And Bethany, too?
‘All day, every day, my mother torments herself,’ he told me. ‘She asks herself why Oli jumped. What did she do wrong? What did she miss? She’s suffering, too. It’s killing her. I’ve seen her shrink away from life, grow so fragile. Oli wasn’t the only victim of what happened that night. So you’re going to come with me, you’re going to look her in the eye, and you’re going to tell her the truth. That’s what I want. You’re going to give her the answers she needs.’
‘I don’t have the answers you want,’ I told him.
‘You do. You will. We’re going to go soon.’
‘No.’
I lunged towards him, swinging for his face.
The bottle flitted through the air.
He ducked backwards with a bark of pain.
Then impact.
An explosion of glass and wine.
I’d missed him and hit the hood over the range cooker.
Wine doused the stove top. It foamed and fizzed.
Chunks of glass clattered down.
My arm went light.
I was still clutching the bottle neck but now all that was left was a short, jagged curve.
I stared at it.
Donovan looked at it, too.
I saw the anguish cross his face.
I was pretty sure he was thinking of how I’d stabbed him with the shard from the jug, maybe also calculating that his long arms and the blade of the hatchet knife would give him much more reach than the broken snub of the bottle would give me.
‘Listen to me,’ he said. ‘You’re making a mistake. You need to—’
I screamed.
Donovan’s head had shunted violently sideways, his shoulder and torso following a split-second later, as if he’d been blindsided by an onrushing car.
A shout. A roar.
It took me a second to understand that Sam had charged forwards with the kitchen stool out in front of him, ramming into Donovan’s neck and upper body with the metal legs.
Sam was still screaming. Donovan had been spun around on his heels and now he was falling backwards, his upper body slamming down against the stove top, pinned by the legs of the stool, his head mashed up against the tiled splashback.
One of the metal crossbars at the bottom of the stool – the footrest – was crushing his throat.
Sam yelled louder, terrified, out of his depth, and pushed down harder.
Donovan spluttered and tried to rise up but he couldn’t.
He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t shout. His airways were being crushed.
But the knife was still in his hand and it was still dangerous.
He swung the blade towards Sam. Scything at his thigh.
A wet ripping noise as he slashed through Sam’s jeans.
Sam cried out, tipping to one side as Donovan began to swing the knife back the other way.
No.
I released the bottle neck, rushed forwards and made a grab for Donovan’s wrist.
I banged his wrist against the handle of the oven.
Banged it again.
Dug my nails deep into his skin.
I was still holding on, still fighting for the knife with Sam leaning over me and mewling in fear and fright, his feet skidding backwards desperately on the floor as he pressed down even harder on the legs of the stool until Donovan’s hand and arm went gradually floppy, the strength left his body and the knife fell to the ground.