Authors: Sharon Sant
He looks doubtful. ‘Are you sure you’re up to it?’
‘Yeah,’ I say, forcing a smile. ‘Why don’t we get takeaway, get slaughtered and shag each other senseless?’
He grins. ‘Is that what passes for foreplay in these parts?’
I nod.
‘Then I like England better every day.’
I let myself fall back on the sofa again. ‘Give me half an hour, though?’
‘Cassie, if you’re not well we don’t have to –’
‘I’ll be fine.’
I stare at the ceiling. I need something to block out the memories, something to keep the ghosts at bay. I need oblivion, wherever it comes from, something to dull the sharp edges of my fear.
‘What are we eating? Chinese? Indian? Pizza?’ Dante’s voice breaks through my clouded thoughts. ‘I’ll let you choose.’
‘I don’t mind.’
‘C’mon, you must have some preference.’
‘Really, I’m easy.’
‘There are so many replies I could give to that statement. Have you got any menus?’ he asks, getting up to rifle through the magazine rack. ‘This is nice,’ he says, leaning back to take a look.
‘It’s rosewood,’ I reply, my voice dull. ‘Mum’s friend brought it back from India for her.’
‘Sorry…’
I wave the apology away. ‘The house is full of their stuff. You can’t pretend it’s not here just because
they
aren’t.’
‘Why don’t you move?’ he asks, crossing his long legs to sit on the floor with a pile of leaflets.
‘Because it feels like I’m denying everything that happened if I do.’
‘So, you’re punishing yourself?’
‘Not exactly. I have to remember, though.’
He pauses for a moment. ‘Is this what they’d want for you? Do you think they’d want you to mope for them?’
‘It’s not moping,’ I snap, instantly regretting my tone. ‘But they’re not here so I’ll never know.’
‘Ok, so we have a pretty lush looking Chinese menu here,’ he says ignoring my rebuke. ‘Is this place nice?’
I glance over at the leaflet he’s holding up. ‘It’s nice; Dad used to order from there.’
‘Cool,’ he says uncertainly. He turns it over and reads for a moment. ‘They deliver. How about a meal for two? That way we get loads of goodies.’
‘I have money in a pot on the shelf,’ I say, gesturing up to the mantelpiece.
‘My treat,’ he says. ‘Do you have alcohol?’
‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘Dad might have some old whisky somewhere and Mum will have the Christmas sherry.’
‘Not big drinkers, then?’
‘Not really.’
‘Want me to fetch some beer? There’s an off-licence in the next street, isn’t there?’
‘No,’ I almost shout it. He’s stunned into silence for a moment and I feel his questioning gaze. I turn to him, trying to temper the panic building inside me. ‘Dad’s whisky is fine. It needs to be used anyway; no point in leaving it to rot.’
‘You got something to mix it with?’ he asks carefully.
‘There’s water in the tap, you big wuss,’ I say, forcing a casual air. ‘I thought you Irish could hold your drink.’
‘Ah, a common misconception,’ he says. ‘I don’t know how to break this to you, but leprechauns don’t exist either.’
I push myself up. ‘Ha ha,’ I say, throwing a cushion at him. He catches it with a quick grin. ‘Put the fire on, Paddy, then you can go and phone for the takeaway.’
Dante fiddles around with the ignition and eventually gets the gas fire going before leaving to use the phone in the hallway. I swing myself off the sofa, up onto unsteady legs, and cross to the window. I prise apart the slats of the blind to peer out at the street. The town is in darkness now, the orange of the streetlights glowing back at me from the bonnets of the cars parked along the kerbs in uniform rows.
I can definitely see what looks like the figure of man standing in the shadows across the road. I strain to see beyond the darkness. The more I look, the more uncertain I am that there is anything there at all. Dante’s voice makes me spin around.
‘Everything ok?’ he asks as I step hastily back from the window.
‘Yeah, just checking for snow.’
‘We’re expecting some?’
‘Dunno, whenever it felt this cold, Gran said snow would come. And it always did.’
‘They said half an hour for the food to be delivered. What do you want to do while we wait?’ He throws me a shy smile.
‘Easy, tiger,’ I say. ‘I’ll go and find that whisky.’
Dante spreads cushions on the floor while I blow the dust off the whisky bottle. It took a while, but I finally found it with the cleaning products under the sink. Dad was always weird about hiding alcohol, even when Tish and I were old enough for it not to matter any more. Dante settles on a cushion and holds out his glass. I pour a generous slug for him and one for me and then I join him. He takes a sip and grimaces.
‘Feck! What’s this – liquid fire?’
‘Funnily enough, that’s what it says on the bottle,’ I laugh. I take a sip of my own and all I can taste is heat, but I try not to pull a face. ‘If it’s too much for you to handle, I can always look for the sherry.’
‘You might have to,’ he says. ‘This will annihilate my tastebuds if I drink too much.’
‘You’re such a drama queen.’
‘Seriously, though, don’t you have any lemonade or something to mix it with?’
‘Nope. Just neck it, then you won’t feel the next one.’
‘I won’t be feeling anything at this rate.’
‘You big baby.’
He takes a bigger sip this time, his face contorting into a look of disgust. ‘Give me a lager any day. How do people drink this all the time?’
There’s a smart rap at the front door that echoes through the house. My glass stops, mid-way to my lips and I stare at him as the blood drains from my face.
‘That’ll be the food,’ he says, pushing himself up from the floor.
I start to breathe again.
Stupid, stupid me. Of course it will be the food
.
I go to the kitchen for plates as Dante goes to the door.
As I wipe the dust from a couple of dinner plates, I half-listen to the conversation with the delivery guy. Neither of them seems to have enough change to sort out the bill and there’s some convoluted theory about how to work it out that would wrap a knot in Einstein’s brain. I can’t help but smile. I hear the door slam to signal that they’ve finally come to some agreement.
I glance at the window and the plates slip from my grasp.
‘Dante!’ I scream, turning to look for him.
I hear him run down the hall but when I turn back to the window, the face has gone.
‘What happened?’ he asks, looking at me and then at the smashed crockery at my feet. ‘You’re bleeding,’ he says.
I look down. Blood oozes from a gash on my bare foot.
‘I dropped the plates,’ I say, staring at him.
‘You cut yourself. What were you doing? Not that pissed already?’
I look back at the black square of the kitchen window. The only face in it now is my own, reflected back at me. What I saw a moment ago… I can’t even be sure it was real. But it feels like he’s closing in.
Dante puts the takeaway bag to one side and soaks a teacloth.
‘Sit down,’ he says. I comply and he holds the cloth to my foot. ‘You’re not going to faint again, are you?’
I shake my head. ‘I dropped the plates; that’s all.’
He presses my hand to the cloth. ‘Hold this while I clean up.’
I watch as he opens cupboards. Then he turns to me. ‘A little help here?’
‘Dustpan?’
He nods.
‘Corner cupboard, bottom shelf.’
I pull away the cloth to inspect my wound as he clears up. The bleeding has almost stopped now and there doesn’t seem to be any debris in it. He glances over.
‘It wasn’t that bad then.’
‘I don’t think so. Just in a funny place.’
‘Like you,’ he says. ‘You’re still not right after passing out earlier, I knew it.’
‘I’m fine, stop fussing.’
He stows the full dustpan under the table. ‘Where are your plates?’
‘Next cupboard along.’ I need to look at the window again, but I keep my gaze firmly fixed on him as he produces two more plates
. Please don’t be there, please don’t be there…
I force myself to look at the window. All that’s there now is a ghosted mirror image of the kitchen reflected back.
‘They put chopsticks in!’ Dante says, peering into the takeaway bag. ‘How cool is that?’ He pulls out a plastic wrapped set with a soppy grin. ‘Shall we use these?’
‘I don’t know how.’
‘I do. At least, clumsily.’
‘If you want to do anything other than watch me spear individual grains of rice all night in an attempt to eat them, I suggest you get me a fork,’ I say.
We lie, face to face, on the cushions in front of the fire, our bellies full and warmed by good food and alcohol. In the half-light his eyes look like black pools of sorrow and I find myself mesmerised as we contemplate each other in silence. He runs his fingertips up and down the length of my arm in a slow, gentle movement. The action sends lazy ripples of desire through me. This is what I need, this will make me forget my fear and make me strong enough to protect him, to do what must be done to keep
him safe. I lean in to kiss him. He returns it, willing and eager, and everything that is or was fades into this moment.
I run the tap as cold as I can and splash my face. Someone stares back at me in the bathroom mirror, but I don’t recognise her. I catch another handful of water, trying to contain my disordered thoughts as the room spins. The sourness of whisky taints my mouth and I rinse it in a bid to stop the nausea. I woke crying, I know that much. Thankfully, Dante is still sleeping, so maybe the sensation of my breath being squeezed from me halted my screams. This last dream was every horrific memory melded into one monster. The end is coming, I can feel it. And if this is to be
my
end, the reason I came back, then I have to shut out this fear and welcome it. I have to be strong: for Gran, for Tish, for Mum and Dad, for a Polish girl who came to find a new life and found only death, for a teenager who never stopped praying that her dad would come, for girls whose names I may yet know for all the wrong reasons, for a beautiful Irish boy who doesn’t even know he is relying on me to keep him safe. This man is hunting me, but I’m hunting him too and I have so many more reasons to win than he has.
I go to the bedroom window and peer around the curtains. From across the street, he looks up at the house. I can make out no more than a dim outline in the gloom, but I can picture his slow smile. I know he sees me. He starts to walk, slowly, away towards town. He knows I’ll follow as certainly as I do.
Downstairs, Dante still sleeps on the cushions in front of the fire. The whisky bottle lies drained on its side a few feet away, next to the empty foil cartons. He looks peaceful now, that mournful stare replaced by something sweet and content. I concentrate on every dark lash, on every wisp of hair framing his face, on every line and contour, on the way the fire throws warm flickers of light over his bare chest. I want to store the memories of this moment and take them with me, wherever it is I’m destined to go. I realise, with a wrench, that I’ll probably never see him again. But if this is my calling, the reason I was spared by death, a temporary reprieve with a price attached, then now is the time to pay that debt and I’m ready to go. I just want to make sure I take that bastard killer with me when I do.
I almost lean to kiss Dante for the final time, but if I wake him then the moment is gone and I know that this moment must happen, no matter what else does. So I take one last look and I quietly close the door behind me.
Frost bites through my sweatshirt and I try not to tremble. I need to be cold, I need to be alert and banish the last dregs of alcohol from my system. He glances back and quickens his stride. I follow, matching it so that we’re almost walking in step, divided by the hundred yards or so between us. The dull slap of my trainers echoes the thud of his boots on the pavement. The knife is tucked in my sleeve, ice-cold against my forearm. I keep it straight so that I don’t cut myself, but I feel the tip of the blade nibble at my skin as I walk. I have nothing else with me save my phone to call Karl if I do manage to kill and not get killed. He veers into a side-street and we’re heading out of the terraced rows and into the part of town where the neat homes will soon give way to faded shop fronts and crumbling industrial units. I glance up at the windows of the houses, almost every one in darkness. The town is hushed in sleep, the roads flanked by the gloomy puddles of streetlights that reflect in the glittering frost forming on the rows of silent cars. My breath unfurls into white plumes that float away on the night air, a reminder of my borrowed time in a living body, a body that was sent back for a purpose that I now finally understand.
He halts and turns to look up the road. I can’t see his face from this distance but his body language is cocky and taunting. A few seconds later he resumes walking, slowing down for me. Against every instinct that screams for me to run at him and finish it here, I slow down to keep pace with him. The handle of my knife is greasy with the freezing sweat on my palms. I clench my fist around it tighter.
We pass the alleyway where the spices from the kitchens of the Chinese restaurant linger on the frosty air. Written across the front wall of the building in white spray paint, I notice my name:
Cold as ice-cream but still as sweet, time to die, Cassie Brown
.
I stop and read the sentence again. It’s for me. When did he write it?
I shake my head and suddenly wonder if I’m even here at all or merely in the grip of some surreal and incredibly vivid nightmare. But I look up the road again and see him turn as though he has just been watching for my reaction. In that case, he won’t get one and I start to follow again.
Further on there is more text, letters running down walls meant to take me to him:
Singing cockles and mussels, alive alive-o
.
I realise that he’s leading me to the ruins of the old bus station. Why here? Was he watching the night I encountered, the drunken girl and her would-be rapist? Has he been watching me all this time? He could have killed me already, twenty times over, so why this game?