She hauled the steering wheel round and pulled us into a verge. ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked, her eyes wide with alarm.
With difficulty I turned to look at her. ‘I’m starting my fuckin’ rattle, aren’t I? The bastards in there thought I’d OD’d and flushed all the shit out of my system – didn’t bother putting any back.’ Even as I spoke I could hear my breath begin to decay into the panting little sighs that preceded full-on hysteria. ‘How soon, Lili? How fast can we get back?’
‘Three quarters of an hour? Maybe more…’
‘Too long.’ I arched my back as the first of the muscle spasms hit. ‘
Jesus
,’ I howled, ‘I
hurt
!
’
‘It’s okay, I can sort this –’ Lilith began.
‘What, you a fuckin’ pharmacy?’ I snapped.
‘I said I can sort it, Finn,’ Lilith said, sounding a hundred times calmer than I deserved. She reached behind her to grab a bag from the back seat, and brought out a fresh strip of temazepam. ‘Anal personality – we come prepared.’
‘Oh, you fucking
angel
.’ I rubbed at the crawling flesh on my face.
She pushed the first tablet out of its blister. ‘How many?’
‘Just give me the strip. I’ll do it. Promise I won’t top myself. Just give me it.’
She reluctantly handed it over and I pushed a clawed hand through lank hair. ‘Don’t watch me Lili, please don’t watch me do this. I’m not proud of it, y’know?’
She did her best not to look as I pushed half-a-dozen white tablets into my shaking palm and threw them into my mouth. I bit down on them to grind them up and reduce the time it would take for my desperate system to absorb the drug, then winced at the bitterness and choked as the powder stuck in my anaesthetic-dry throat.
Lilith scrabbled around at her feet and emerged holding a bottle of mineral water. ‘Here. This should help.’
I took a swig of the lukewarm liquid. ‘Thanks,’ I finally managed. I pulled one of the pillows from the footwell and covered my face with it. ‘I’ll be out in ten minutes. Just need everything to go away. Too big right now. But I’ll be better. Soon.’
I stayed hidden like that, smothered in pillows, until the wool filled my head to the point where the world outside the Land Rover no longer threatened to scare me to death. When I finally emerged, Lilith had her back to me as she examined the raindrops making a haphazard run down the driver’s window.
‘There. See? Human again. Ish. Human-ish,’ I announced, to signal my re-entry. ‘Y’know, even I wouldn’t have thought of bringing that shit along. How the hell did you find the space in your head to think of stuff like that?’
‘Hope. Stupid, forlorn, naive hope.’
‘I don’t get you.’
‘That we might just be able to keep driving... If there was the slightest gap.’
‘Ah.’ I got her then.
‘Like I said. Stupid. There was never going to be a fucking gap, was there? Not with her.’
‘No. Not with her. Fair play to you for givin’ it a go, mind.’ I remembered something from the hell I had inhabited just hours before. ‘You nearly said something, didn’t you? To that other doctor. The woman.’
‘Nearly.’ Lilith pressed her forehead against the misted glass. ‘God, Finn, what the
hell
was I thinking?’ There was an odd catch in her voice that I’d never heard before.
‘Lili? Are you crying?’
‘No.’ She scrubbed at her cheeks with the back of her hand and gave a discreet sniff. ‘Yes. Just remnants. Thought I’d got rid of it all earlier, to be honest.’ I watched her back stiffen as she fought to bring the tears back under control.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘Just...
everything
– All of it. All of today, and all the bastards out there. The whole bloody world, populated by monsters. Garvey, Maxwell, bloody Serena.’ She took a breath. ‘Me.’
‘You?’ I asked incredulously. ‘What the fuck have you done to be on that list?’
‘I hit you. Last night.’
I started to laugh, but had to stop when the stitches in my stomach began to feel like cheesewire in my skin. ‘Oh Jesus Christ Lili, is that what’s upsetting you? That you gave me a bit of a well-deserved whack for bein’ an evil-tongued shit? The only thing that surprised me was that it took you so bloody long!’
‘It was unforgivable.’ I got a glimpse of the tempered steel that was Lilith’s moral code. In that moment, I realised that even if she stayed at Albermarle for the next thousand years,
Blaine
would never have her. I also knew from hard experience that what my employer could not possess, she destroyed, and that sudden terror made me reach across the expanse and grasp Lilith’s arm.
‘Lili – no-one’s ever done anything like this for me. Ever. Are you hearing me? I sure as hell know I wouldn’t have taken the risks you did today just for a whore.’
‘Don’t say that,’ Lilith said, and I caught sight of her reddened eyes and tearstained cheeks.
‘It’s what I am.’
‘It’s what she makes you do. It’s
not
who you are,’ she retorted.
I didn’t fancy my chances in a semantics debate with Lilith at the best of times. Right now, knackered and aching, and with half my blood supply consisting of a charitable donation, I knew when to let it drop. There was only one other thing I could do, and it had been so long since I had dared –
wanted
– to do anything like it that I could barely remember the moves. ‘Come here,’ I urged.
I expected refusal, or at least hesitation. Instead, Lilith immediately buried her head into my chest and entwined her small, perfect hands around my back. The momentary discomfort was nothing at all compared to the realisation that she was finding refuge in my flawed embrace.
I had no idea how long we remained like that. Longer than I had ever stayed in any other man’s arms, I knew that for sure. Every time I breathed in, sweat and antiseptic mingled with his individual scent and I could feel the soft pulse of Finn’s temazepam-slowed heart through his t-shirt. For a while I was content to let that steady rhythm begin to calm and ready me for the rest of the journey.
What I did know was that as we sheltered from our own private tempests, something immutable happened to the bond betwee
n Finn Strachan and me, and
our unnamed relationship shifted into something far stronger than either of us knew how to control. If I’d had the energy, I might have halted it there, kept my face turned away and driven on through the storm. But right then, I needed the haven that Finn offered more than oxygen.
It was a grudging return to practicality and the twisted realm of curfews and arbitrary punishment that made me break away from Finn’s hold. ‘Thank you,’ I whispered into the warmth of his chest.
‘I’m
sure
that’s meant to be the other way round.’ He stroked my head one last time. ‘Um, Lili?’ he added as I started the engine, and I prepared myself for an expression of regret at our contact, or a warning not to mention anything of this to
Blaine
. ‘I don’t suppose you remembered my fags as well, did you?’
I gave him my very finest disparaging look. ‘Of course. What, did you think I was? Some damn amateur?’
*****
At nine thirty-six, the disappointment on Coyle’s face was palpable as we arrived at his gate-lodge. I parked the Land Rover by the quay and we sat and waited, like the obedient children that we were, for Henry to collect us. He had already set off across the lake in his little launch and he was carrying a female passenger that I didn’t recognise.
‘Y’know, you could just dump me out of the door, turn this thing around and fuck off,’ Finn suggested. ‘There’s still time.’
‘No I couldn’t. And if you advocate that again, I’ll personally unpick your stitches with my teeth.’
Finn grimaced. ‘I reckon if you ever fancied it, you could give
Blaine
a run for her money on the ‘creative sadism’ front.’
‘Different league. I just have better things to do with my creativity, that’s all.’
‘Hell, I’ve just seen who my welcome party is,’ Finn said. ‘Doctor Parnell. Looks like all your hard work’s been in vain, Lili. If she’s in charge of my recovery I’ll be in a box by the end of the week.’
‘Not funny.’
‘S’true. It won’t even be anything to do with my injuries. She’ll give me botulism or anthrax or something.’ He gave me a woebegone look that made me smile despite myself.
Henry tied the boat to the jetty and half-jogged to our car. ‘Oh it’s
marvellous
to see you!’ he cried as I jumped out and opened Finn’s door.
‘Yeah, looks like mother’ll live to shit her bed for another day, eh, Henry?’
Henry’s face fell.
‘Remember: stitches. Teeth,’ I warned, and Finn flashed me an evil grin.
‘Ah, Henry would only worry if I was nice to him. This way, he knows it’s nothing terminal.’
Henry’s smile returned. ‘And this way, I know it’s the real Finn that you’ve brought back, and not some civilised imposter.’
‘Touché,’ Finn conceded.
‘Lilith, I don’t believe you’ve met Doctor Ingrid Parnell?’ Henry said as we approached the launch. ‘Lady Albermarle has arranged that Finn here gets round-the-clock care until she knows he’s properly on the mend.’ He stepped closer so he could whisper to me. ‘I rather think her concern is a little belated, but there you go. She even insisted that he was supervised for the lake-crossing.’
‘Oh,
deep
joy,’ Finn said, loud enough for the woman to hear. For once, Henry didn’t reprimand him.
I climbed into the boat and got my first good look at
Blaine
’s tame doctor. At first glance she appeared to be in her sixties, with a nondescript, bland face and a broad stripe of white in her centre-parting where she was several months overdue for a dye-job. On closer inspection, Ingrid Parnell could be no more than forty-five, but she stood as a prime example of what happened when you finally surrendered to Blaine Albermarle: you became a ghost.
I looked at Finn, pale and exhausted after a day that had tested him to the very limits of his endurance, and realised that despite everything, he had never yet surrendered.
Even with Doctor Parnell’s ministrations I survived, and for two long weeks I was confined to quarters whilst I healed. Parnell was more generous with the morphine than Maxwell had been and I was grateful for the blurred edges it gave to my days; it combined with the temazepam to temper the images of knives and lunatic Roman emperors that had now added themselves to my more familiar nightmares.
From Henry, I learned that
Blaine
had advised Lilith to double her efforts on the portrait. I didn’t doubt for a moment that she was keen for her masterpiece to be completed, but I understood her well enough to know that this was my employer’s way of beginning to restore control.
I’d hoped that this enforced separation would help to replace the safe distance between us, but I missed Lilith like hell. Every day that fortnight she managed a way to see me for a grabbed half-hour, bringing armfuls of gardening magazines and, on her very first visit, a sketch of a sleeping Bran as a ‘get well’ card from the pair of them. Each time she left I meant to tell her not to come again, without the words ever leaving my mouth.
*****
Two weeks to the day from when Royce Garvey carved me like a Christmas turkey, Doctor Parnell finally gave her permission for me to leave my room. Just ten minutes after she left the island I was informed by Henry that I would be working that same night and, on legs that felt as though they no longer belonged to me, there was only one place I wanted to go.
When I finally got there, Lilith’s studio was empty; paint and brushes were laid out in their neat rows and the huge canvas dominated the sunlit room. I was glad that it was covered by a white sheet: one Blaine Albermarle hanging around the place was more than enough for anyone.
I continued my slow, uncomfortable journey down the corridor to Lilith’s bedroom. She was there, but unfortunately so was
Blaine
. ‘Good morning, Finn. You’re looking well rested,’ she observed.
‘Well, hello there,’ Lilith smiled. ‘It lives!’
‘Just about.’ I tried to sound casual about it, but my legs were acting as though they had just run a marathon – work was certainly going to be a laugh a bloody minute – and
Blaine
’s presence had just pissed on my day.
‘Sit down before you fall down, Finn,’ Lilith ordered, and I sagged into the nearest chair.
It was only then that I realised that she taking a stack of clothes from a drawer and carefully placing them into an open bag. ‘What are you doing?’ I asked.
‘Lilith’s packing, not that it’s any of your business whatsoever,’
Blaine
replied.
I was glad I was already sitting down. ‘You’re what? Oh
fuck
...’ It was as though Royce was trying to gut me all over again: I hadn’t expected this moment to feel so bad.