Authors: C. L. Taylor
Tags: #Fiction, #Thrillers, #Suspense, #Contemporary Women
“Emma!” Isaac stands up from his desk and steps towards me, his arms spread wide. “Good breakfast?”
I’m breathless from running through the garden to the house without stopping, and I push him away as he attempts to hug me. He smells of cigarettes, incense and deodorant.
“What’s going on?” He glances at Al, hovering behind me. She shrugs in response then reaches down to rub her ankle. She hobbled after me all the way back to the house, still trying to convince me not to talk to Isaac about the Frank rumour. She said she’d talk to Daisy and Leanne for me, but it’s not enough. I won’t have people think I’m the type of girl to lie about an attempted rape. Isaac saw what happened; everyone needs to hear it from him.
“I’d like to know what’s going on, too,” says Leanne from the doorway, her expression unreadable.
“Good,” I say. “You need to hear this.”
A wry smile crosses Isaac’s face as he looks from Leanne to me, and back again. “What’s going on?”
Leanne crosses her thin arms over her chest and leans against the doorway as though she needs its support in order to stay upright. She’s steadfastly refusing to return my gaze. Whoever told her I lied about the attack must have been very persuasive.
I glance behind her but the hallway is empty. “Where’s Daisy? She needs to hear this, too.”
I move to go and look for her, but Isaac grabs my hand before I can leave the room. “Daisy’s tidying up after breakfast. Just tell me what’s going on, please. Leanne, come in and shut the door.”
She steps into the room, shutting the door behind her, and then sits down on the rug. Al gives me a look that says, “This doesn’t mean I believe her,” then joins her on the floor.
“Okay, then.” Isaac gestures for me to sit as well, but I choose a chair instead and perch on the edge of it. Isaac slumps into his desk chair. He swivels idly from side to side, the wheels swivelling back and forth on the thin rug that covers the entrance to the basement. “Hit me with it. What’s going on?”
“There a rumour going round that I lied about Frank attacking me.”
“Is there?” He stops swivelling and cups his chin with his hand. “And who started this rumour?” He rolls the word “rumour” on his tongue as though he enjoys the sound it makes.
Al and Leanne both shake their heads.
“Leanne knows,” I say.
“Do you?” He rests his elbows on his knees and leans towards her.
When she shakes her head, Al leans away from her, a look of surprise on her face. “Yes, you do! You said you’d been sworn to secrecy.”
“No, I—”
“Okay, okay. Forget who started the rumour.” Isaac holds up his hands and sits back in his chair. His gaze shifts towards Leanne, just for a split second, then returns to me. “I’ll put this right, Emma.”
“Tell them!” I point at Leanne and Al. “Tell them Frank attacked me and that’s why you hit him. Tell them I didn’t lie about it.”
“Emma!” He wheels his chair towards me then puts a hand on my shoulder. He squeezes it as he leans towards me and hisses in my ear. “I said I’d put this right and I will.”
“But …”
“You need to trust me, okay?” There’s a finality to the way he says “okay” that stops me from objecting again.
“Right, let’s have a drink, shall we?” He rolls his chair back to his desk then reaches into the bottom drawer and pulls out four bottles of Budweiser.
None of us have drunk real lager since we got here. Daisy’s vodka is long gone, so are the bottles of wine the rest of us brought. We’ve been here twelve days now, and the only alcoholic drink available is Raj’s vile homemade beer. We were supposed to be leaving in a couple of days to go on a jungle adventure in Chitwan. The trip Leanne never got round to booking. Those plans feel like they were made in another lifetime.
Isaac flips off the metal lids and hands us each a bottle in turn. “I’m sorry I haven’t spent as much time with you guys as I would have liked. Obviously, Leanne’s come to a lot of my seminars” – he smiles warmly at her – “but Al and Emma … I feel like I need to get to know you guys a bit better.” He gives Al a lingering look, as though he hasn’t quite figured her out yet.
“So, Emma.” He sits forward in his chair, puts his own bottle between his knees and reaches into his back pocket for his tobacco tin. “Tell me a bit about yourself.”
“There’s nothing to tell.”
He opens the lid of the tin and pulls out a packet of Rizlas. “Humour me.”
“Um … I’m twenty-five. I’m from Leicester. I’ve got two brothers and a sister. My parents are both doctors and—”
“Boring.” He licks two Rizlas and presses them together then sprinkles tobacco along the length of paper. “Tell us what matters to you. Tell us what you care about.”
“Family. Friendship.” I shrug. “Loyalty, trust.”
“Okay.” He sprinkles some weed on top of the tobacco and rolls the joint back and forth in his fingers. “What else?”
“I’ve always loved animals. I wanted to be a vet until I did badly my A-levels.”
“Did you also want to be a Miss World contestant? Come on, Emma, you can do better than that.”
I shift in my seat, aware of Al and Leanne silently watching. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”
“I want you to tell me something you care about that’s going to make me sit up, something raw and honest.”
“Fine. I care about people being straight with each other. I care about honesty.”
“Better.” He lights the joint and inhales deeply. “What fucks you off?”
“Injustice, racism, homophobia.”
“You’ve gone back to being Miss World.”
“Okay.” I take a swig of my beer. “I get pissed off when people don’t give up their seats for old people on the train, or when they believe everything they read in the papers. I can’t stand spineless and weak people. And as for Jeremy Kyle—”
“Stop!” He hands me the joint. “Now I want you to tell me how many of the things that fuck you off, you actually do.”
“None of them.”
“Really?”
“Well, I don’t watch Jeremy Kyle, if that’s what you mean.” I laugh but no one else joins in. Leanne has her eyes closed.
“I imagine you give up your seat for old people, too,” Isaac says. “But what about the rest?”
I know what he’s getting at. He wants me to admit to some weaknesses.
“I’m a people pleaser,” I say. “I do and say what other people expect so they like me. I hate that about myself.”
“Cool.” Isaac nods. “Good.”
I raise my beer bottle to my mouth and I’m just about to take a swig when he grabs my hand. The bottle rattles against my top teeth.
“If you could kill anyone right now and get away with it, who would you kill, Emma?”
“What?”
“You heard me.”
“Yes, I did, and it’s a ridiculous question.”
“I still want you to answer it.”
“Right, well, I wouldn’t kill anyone.”
“Liar!”
“I’m not lying.”
“Yes, you are. Nothing you’ve said since you walked in here has been honest. Everything is measured; everything has to be carefully thought out before you say it. Even when you admitted to being a people pleaser, other weaknesses and faults occurred to you first but you rejected them because being a people pleaser is a more socially acceptable answer. You’re not LIVING, Emma; you’re pretending to live. Your whole fucking life is a lie. It isn’t other people stopping you from being you: it’s you. Now tell the truth. If you could kill anyone, who would you kill?”
“I’ve already answered the question, Isaac, and you’re not listening to my answer. I would never kill anyone, whether there were consequences or not. I would never take someone else’s life.”
“Liar!”
The bottle flies from my hands as he lunges towards me and knocks me off my chair. My head smacks against the wooden floor and then he’s on top of me, straddling my waist, his hands on my wrists, pressing them either side of my head.
“Get off me, Isaac.”
“Isaac!” Al shouts his name, but he ignores her.
“Who would you kill, Emma?”
“I wouldn’t.”
“Liar! Who would you kill?”
“No one!”
He shuffles forward so he’s sitting on my chest. I’m struggling to breathe now. Al pulls at his arm, but she’s not strong enough to dislodge him.
“Who would you kill?” Isaac’s face dips to meet mine and I know what he’s about to do before he does it. I open my mouth to protest and then his tongue’s in my mouth. My instinct is to bite down, and I’m about to clench my teeth when Isaac grabs my jaw with his right hand, preventing me from biting his tongue. I try to free my left arm to push him away, but he presses his knee into the crook of my elbow, pinning it to the floor.
He pulls back to ask again: “Who would you kill?”
A wave of panic engulfs me and the room seems to spin.
“Who would you kill, Emma? Tell me!”
I close my eyes but the tears force their way through my closed lids and roll down my cheeks. “Frank. Okay? If I had to kill someone, I’d kill Frank for trying to rape me. I want him to feel as terrified and defenceless as I did, the evil, fucking bastard.”
“Who else, Emma?” I hear a small, almost imperceptible click, but I can’t turn my head because Isaac still has his hand on my jaw. “Who else is causing you pain? Who else has hurt you? Who else would you kill if there were no consequences, no judgement, no remorse? Who would you kill?”
The last twelve days flash through my mind like scenes from a silent film. Al and Leanne open-mouthed, laughing hysterically as Daisy takes the piss out of me. Daisy’s heel grinding against the gecko, the bitterness in her eyes when Isaac talked to me at the welcome meeting, the sneer on her face when she said “Hunt the Cunt”, the submissive tilt of her head when Isaac sent her back to the house after Frank attacked me, and her smug expression when one of the men called me a bitch when I walked into the dining room for breakfast.
This trip was supposed to be an adventure, the holiday of a lifetime, but I’ve never felt more lonely, more isolated or more disliked in my life. And it’s all down to her. She could have defended me, but instead she actively turned people against me. All the confusion, all the resentment, all the pain of the last few days burns in my chest and I open my eyes. “Daisy.”
There’s a gasp. But it’s not from Al or Leanne. It’s from someone else, standing in the open doorway. Someone who just heard every word I said.
I know who is standing in the doorway, even without turning my head. The energy in the room changes; the air doesn’t grow cold, but it does still. I can no longer hear Al’s slow, heavy breaths or Leanne’s light nasal whistle. Even Isaac, still astride me, his left hand holding my arms above my head, his right hand cupping my chin, is silent.
“Well, isn’t that charming?”
“Daisy, I didn’t mean it. I just … I was …”
As I try to explain Isaac vaults off me and crosses the room to the doorway.
“Daisy.” He puts a hand on her arm as he whispers her name. “Can you come back later?”
“Actually, darling” – she glares at me, her blue eyes glittering with anger – “I’d quite like to stay.”
“We were having a session. I’d like you to come back later, please.”
Daisy continues to stare at me for what feels like forever, her eyes narrowed, her lips a thin slash, then she takes a step backward. The hem of her long scarlet skirt swishes around her ankles as she turns and walks towards the kitchen. Her flip-flops slap against the wooden floor.
“I’d like you two to go too, please,” Isaac says.
“Us?” Leanne points at her chest.
“Yes, please.”
She rises silently from the floor and, without so much as a glance at me, drifts out of the room and into the hall. Al remains where she is, sitting cross-legged on the rug. Her nostrils flare as Isaac looks down at her and raises an eyebrow as if to say, “Now you need to leave, too.”
“I’m not leaving Emma alone with you.”
“I’m not going to hurt her.” He looks at me. “I promise. I just want to talk to her. I want to explain why I did what I just did, and how it will help her.”
“Emma?” Al looks at me. “What do you want to do?”
The sound of raised voices drifts through the open door of Isaac’s study. Daisy and Leanne are arguing in the dining room. There’s no way I’m going to walk straight into that. The second I leave this room, Daisy will fly at me, and I can’t deal with that, not now, not after everything that’s happened. If I stay here for a few more minutes and give her a bit of time, she’ll calm down. Then I’ll try to explain what just happened – not that I really know myself.
There’s something so uncomfortable, so unbearable, about the way Isaac pressures you to answer his questions that the only way to make it stop is to say what he wants to hear. I understand now why Leanne told him about being raped as a teenager, not because she was desperate to share it with him but because she needed to say something, anything, to stop his constant questioning. There’s no way I’d ever harm Daisy, but I am angry with her. I haven’t felt like this since I was a teenager. The rage I can deal with, but the hurt is unbearable. I’ve always known Daisy could be cruel, but to have that cruelty turned on me feels like the ultimate betrayal. It’s as though the last seven years of our friendship have meant nothing.
“Emma?” Al says again.
“I’m going to stay. I want to hear Isaac out.”
“Okay.” She says the word uncertainly as she twists onto her knees and stands up. “All right. I’ll be in the dorm if you need me.”
She stands in the doorway for several seconds, shoulders back, chin raised as she locks eyes with Isaac.
“If you touch her again, you’ll have me to answer to. Right?”
Isaac’s lips twitch as though he’s trying to suppress a smile. “Got it, Al.”
“Good.” She steps into the hallway, closing the door behind her.
“Okay, then.” Isaac collects the beer bottle he’d knocked out of my hands and tosses it into the bin, ignoring the puddle of spilled beer on the floor, then picks up an ashtray from his desk and lies down on the rug. He closes his eyes and stretches himself out like a cat, bathing in the wide, warm triangle of sunlight that streams in through the window. He lies there, perfectly still, for several seconds, then reaches into his shirt pocket for his tobacco tin, opens his eyes and props himself up onto his elbow.
“Want one?” He flips open the tin and tosses a ready-rolled cigarette towards his mouth. He catches it between his lips then nudges the tin towards me.
I don’t even deliberate. I take out the lighter and a cigarette, light it, and then offer the flickering flame to Isaac. He puts a hand on mind and guides the flame closer to his cigarette. The tip sparks orange and he lets go of my hand. The weight of his touch remains, the imprint of his fingers still warm on my skin.
“Thanks.” I puff on my cigarette, drop the lighter back into the tin, close the lid and nudge it across the rug towards him.
Isaac exhales slowly then nods towards his shirt pocket, indicating that I should put the tin back in there. I shake my head.
“Why did you attack me like that?”
“I didn’t attack you.”
“No? So you didn’t knock me off my chair and hold me down?”
He looks at me lazily, the cigarette dangling from his lips. “Why do you think I did that?”
“I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do.”
I shift away from him and lean back against the wall, taking another puff on my cigarette. He’s playing games with me.
“Why are you so afraid to get angry, Emma?”
“I’m not.”
“Someone taught you to suppress your anger. Who was it?”
I exhale slowly, aiming the smoke towards the motes at the window. They twirl violently as it engulfs them.
“No one taught me. I’m not an angry person.”
“I disagree.”
“That’s because you don’t know me.”
“Really? It’s all very well being, as you call it, a ‘people pleaser’, someone you think people want you to be, but, when faced with real jeopardy, your true character is exposed. I saw that yesterday, after Frank attacked you. The person I talked to in the hut, that was the real you.”
I take another puff on my cigarette. “We didn’t do arguments in my house, growing up. We’d run off to our rooms to sulk instead. There was a lot of running off to other rooms in my house. We never slammed the doors, though. If you were going to sulk, you had to do it silently.”
“Then what would happen?”
“We’d slope back into whatever room the rest of the family was in and pretend nothing had happened.”
“Your parents would pretend nothing had happened, too?”
“Yeah.”
I’m telling him too much. He’s feeding me questions like he fed them to Leanne, but there’s a part of me that wants to answer him. I don’t know if it’s because Daisy and I aren’t speaking so I haven’t got anyone to confide in apart from Al, or because there’s a tiny part of me that’s flattered that Isaac’s showing an interest.
“Did anyone ever stand their ground instead of running off?” he asks.
“No, if you did that you’d be ignored. Dad would pick up the paper and Mum would close down emotionally. No conversation, no eye contact, no warmth. It was like being shut out in the cold.”
“So you learned that, in order to be loved, you should remain agreeable.”
“Pretty much.”
Isaac rubs a thumb over his cheekbone and gazes at me thoughtfully. “You mention your mum as having a reaction, but not your dad.”
“She was the one who’d discipline us. Dad would keep quiet. I don’t think he liked being on the wrong side of her, either.”
“And you wanted her to be proud of you, to love you?”
“What child doesn’t? My brothers and sister – George, Henry and Isabella – they made her proud with their sporting achievements and their dancing and their acting, but I wasn’t good at any of those things. There was a space in our family for ‘the intelligent child’ – we already had sporty, beautiful and funny – and I tried to fill it. I worked really, really hard. I wasn’t being Miss World when I told you about loving animals and wanting to be a vet. The plan was to get three As at A-level and then study veterinary science at uni. Then I got pregnant and it ruined everything.”
“You got pregnant?”
My cigarette has gone out so I lean over and flick the butt into the bin. “I was seventeen. I’d had the same boyfriend – Ben – for a year and we got drunk one night and didn’t bother with a condom. I took the morning-after pill the next day but … it didn’t work.”
“So you had a baby?”
“No. I wanted to, but my mum insisted I have an abortion. She said I’d ruin my future and she wasn’t going to sit back and let that happen. She made me an appointment at a clinic but I didn’t go; I hid at Ben’s house, but she came and got me. She told me I’d have to leave the family home if I didn’t get an abortion. I couldn’t bear it, I couldn’t bear the way she was looking at me, at the deep, deep disappointment in her eyes. All I’d ever done was try to make her proud, and—” I take a deep breath and gaze up at the ceiling. The plasterwork is rough and there’s a deep crack running from one corner of the room to the other. “So I did it. I had the abortion two weeks before my A-levels.”
“Wow.” Isaac raises his eyebrows.
“Yeah. I had my first panic attack in my Biology exam. I knew it, I knew the answer, and I was about three hundred words into my essay when my chest tightened and I felt like I couldn’t breathe. The room shrank and then I was aware of everyone staring because I gasping, really gasping, and then Miss Hutton started running down the room towards me, and—”
“It’s okay.” Isaac rolls towards me and touches my hand. “It’s okay, Emma. You’re not there now; it’s not happening. It was in the past. It’s gone. It’s over.”
He keeps hold of my hand as I take deep breath after deep breath.
“Okay?” he says when I finally exhale steadily and reach for the tobacco tin. “You all right?”
I nod. “Yeah.”
He releases my hand and watches silently as I slide a Rizla from the packet, sprinkle tobacco into it, then roll it into a tube and lick the glue. When I’ve finished he picks up the lighter, strikes it, and holds it towards me. I light up and take a deep puff on the cigarette.
“Have you ever wondered why you became Daisy’s friend, Emma?”
“Not really. It just happened. We were Freshers together, she chatted to me, it was just one of the those things.”
“You don’t think she subconsciously reminded you of your mum – a woman with a strong personality and a need to dominate?”
“God – I’ve got no idea.” I take another puff, blowing the smoke away from us both.
“The reason why I did what I just did” – Isaac props himself up on his elbow again – “was to help you. You might think it was cruel, in light of what happened with Frank –
particularly
in light of that – but I had to do it. I had to make you relive the trauma in a safe environment to give you the opportunity to be honest with yourself. You don’t want to kill Daisy, not deep down, but you’re carrying around a lot of anger about that relationship. Do you suffer from eczema or asthma, Emma?”
I shake my head.
“Psoriasis, then?”
“I get flare-ups when I’m stressed.”
“There you go. Asthma, eczema, psoriasis, IBS – they’re all outward symptoms of issues that are going on in your psyche that you’re trying to repress. They’re your subconscious manifesting itself in a cry for help – not to the outside world but to your own consciousness. Ninety-nine per cent of illnesses are caused by stress, and where does stress come from?” He taps the side of his head. If you can sort out what’s going on up here, you can sort out everything else. You don’t need your anti-anxiety tablets to prevent your panic attacks, Emma; you need to address the cause of them.”
“I know, but—”
“God, Emma.” Isaac tips his head to one side and looks at me in wonderment. “If you could see the look on your face right now. The light in your eyes is …” He shakes his head. “… wow.”
“Don’t.” I reach for the ashtray and grind my rollie into it, spending longer than necessary ensuring the glowing tip is ground out. I’m prickling with embarrassment and I can’t meet his eyes.
“You have no idea, do you? No idea at all how beautiful you are? The first time I saw you, walking towards the gates of Ekanta Yatra, with your shoulders folded in, your head down, I wanted to shake you. You were trying to hide because you felt big and awkward and unattractive compared to Daisy, and you didn’t want me to notice you.”
“That’s not true.”
“Isn’t it? You think she’s more attractive than you, but you couldn’t be more wrong. Women like her are ten-a-penny. She wears her sexuality like a beacon, blinding men with the intensity of it, stunning them into submission. But there’s a reason why she’s still alone, Emma – why she’s so desperately unhappy: she thinks, deep down, that she’s an ugly, worthless human being. Why else would she be so desperate to get men into bed to validate her self-worth?”
“But they still sleep with her.”
“Because she’s available, because she makes them feel good about themselves. But the light Daisy emits isn’t real, Emma. She can switch it on and off like a light bulb. Yours is real, but you hide it.”
For a while, I say nothing, thinking about his words.
“Emma.” It’s only as Isaac puts his hand over mine that I realise I am still grinding the cigarette butt into the ashtray. And there it is again, the hot, weighty sensation of his skin on mine.
“Have you slept with her?” I ask, without looking up. There is a raspy tone to my voice that wasn’t there a few seconds ago.
“No.”
“Because she wants to sleep with you, you know.”
He smoothes a hair back from my face then lets his hand rest on the curve of my jawbone. His eyes are narrowed, intense, scanning my face, returning again and again to my lips. I’m not stupid. I know he’s pulled this seduction routine with dozens, hundreds of other women.
“Daisy is jealous of you, Emma. You know that, don’t you?”
I move his hand from my cheek. “Now you’re being ridiculous.”
“It’s true. Why else do you think she’s stolen so many men from you in the past? She’s in competition with you and she wants to win. Daisy isn’t your friend, Emma. She’s been silently leaching your confidence for years without you even noticing.”
“You’re wrong.” I shake my head. “She’s got her faults but she’s been there for me when I’ve needed her.”
“Has she?” I jump as he grabs my hands between his. “Or has she used your moments of weakness to make herself feel stronger? Daisy needs you all right, Emma, but not in the way you think.”