When I Was Invisible (48 page)

And more hateful of Mr Daneaux.

I have been thinking about Mr Daneaux. And how I would like to get my revenge.

‘Nika, I know you don't want to talk to me, and I'm so sorry for everything. I have to put things right. I hope you listen to this message when you find out what I have done, and I hope you understand. I have to do this. It's not fair that you don't get justice, and you don't get to have people believe you. If I do this, they'll know what he was like and they'll believe you. I have to do this. I … I love you. You're the best friend I ever had. And I'm so sorry again for how I let you down.'

She won't do it. No one actually does it. No one normal, anyway. We talk about it, we think about it, we tell ourselves about it, but we never actually do it. No matter how much we want to, we never actually do it.

I hit ‘1' on the small keyboard of my phone to listen again to the message she left about an hour ago.

There is something … something in the inflection of her voice, the melody of her words. If this were a song, I would be listening for how the words are arranged, how they flow with the harmony of her voice, what is missing as well as what is there. She speaks again in my ear and I listen to her.

‘1', I press. What is it? What is it that is missing? Something is needling me, is stopping me believing that she will not do it. Something is missing from this arrangement of lyrics and tune, something vital that makes me more and more uneasy as the minutes pass by. God. What is missing is God. Every time I have spoken to her, there has been a mention of God, her faith, her belief in a higher power. She might think about doing this, but God would hold her back, her faith would hold her back. She speaks of justice, but not forgiveness.

She's going to do it. Roni is actually going to do it.

‘Do you ever wonder if you've lived the life you were meant to?' I ask her.

She is at the top of the stone steps. They are etched with the filth of their years, could probably use a good hosing down and going over with a scrubbing brush. Roni is facing the red front door, and looks poised to press the bell, to start this process.

‘No,' she says.

‘I don't believe you,' I reply. ‘Come on, tell me, do you ever wonder if you've lived the life you were meant to?'

She sighs, and dips her head. I bet she has screwed up her lips, has closed her eyes, is trying hard not to pray for the right answer. ‘Even if I do, what difference will it make?'

‘I used to think I hadn't. I used to think that there was a life I should have lived and when I stopped being someone else, I could recapture it, restart it, whatever. Thing is, this is who I am. This is the life I was meant to live simply because it's the one I have lived. When people used to tell me that being homeless wasn't the life for me, I used to defend myself and say that it
was
. I never believed it, though. I kept thinking if I could scroll back a few years things would be different. To before I left London, before I met Todd, before I left Chiselwick, before I went to the police, before I told my parents. I kept “before-ing” myself, and what was the point? Truly, I have lived this life. It is mine, and mine alone. I am who I am because of every single thing that has happened to me. I can't pretend I'm happy all the time, I can't pretend I haven't thought about ending it all more than once. But I am who I am. This is who I am. I don't need justice.'

She turns to look at me then. She is struggling: she wants to break down in tears, but she is fighting herself. ‘What if
I
want justice? My uncle has disappeared, probably gone to Spain, and I want justice. I want this man to pay. Not just for me, but for you, too.'

‘I don't need justice,' I repeat.

‘Well, I do,' she says, so full of determination she grits her teeth before she spins on the spot and pushes the doorbell.

‘You won't be able to do it,' I tell her. ‘You saw your uncle for years and you didn't do it – what makes you think you'll be able to do this?'

‘Because it's for you.'

‘I don't need justice.'

‘You don't understand!' she cries. ‘It was—'

She's cut short by the door being opened. The tall, sophisticated-looking woman on the other side is immaculately dressed. She's a classic beauty, always has been. I remember the first time I saw her, how beautiful I thought she was. She was poised, almost regal, and I wanted to be like her. I wanted to be
exactly
like her. Her hair is now a grey-streaked bun, her face has a few more lines, but she is essentially that goddess I saw that day as an eight-year-old who decided she wanted to be a ballerina.

‘Hello?' she says, smiling at Roni first, then me. ‘Can I help you?'

I take the steps as fast as I can, put my hand on Roni. ‘No, no, wrong address,' I say. ‘Sorry to have wasted your time.' I tug at Roni, try to get her to move.

‘Don't I know you?' she says when Roni does not move, will not move. Instead Roni stares at the woman as though she is an incarnation of the Devil.

‘No, no,' I say quickly. ‘Come on, Roni, let's go.'

‘Roni?' Mrs Daneaux says. ‘Wait a minute …
Roni
?' She moves her gaze to me. ‘
Nika
?'

‘Yes,' Roni replies. ‘That's us. And I've come to give something to your husband.' I don't know who is more surprised when Roni suddenly barges past the woman in the very expensive cashmere twinset – Mrs Daneaux or me. I didn't know Roni had it in her. She marches straight into the building, her eyes wildly searching for where her quarry might be. ‘Darling, who is it?' His voice. I am eleven again, horrified by what he has just done for the first time. I am thirteen again, hearing the click as he pushes play on the CD player and the ‘Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy' fills the room and I am almost broken by what he does next. I am fifteen again, seeing his face as he tells me the police have been to talk to him and he is going to punish me for continuing to tell people our secret.

I inhale, inhale, inhale, inhale. My heart feels like it is hurtling through time, attempting to escape the past in the present-future. I need to get away from here, I need to turn and run.

‘What is going on?' Mrs Daneaux demands of Roni, who is racing up the stairs, to where the voice has come from.

Calm, Nika, calm
, I tell myself.
You have to stop Roni
.
Forget about him – think about her and what will happen to both of you if she does it
.

I barge my way in too, nowhere near calm. But I have to stop her. I don't want justice, I don't want any of this.

In their living room at the top of the house, Roni is standing by the dining table. From the look of the table, the smell in the room, they have had their dinner, drunk their wine, now they are on to fine port and a cheeseboard with various types of crackers, and fruit. I might have guessed, if I thought about them for any longer than was necessary, that they were people who turned dinner into an evening-long indulgence. Roni's hand is precariously close to the knife placed on the table to slice fruit. It is small, sharp, dangerous. There are two other people in the room – a man and a younger man – and I try not to look at them. I focus instead on Roni, who is staring at the couple in front of the fireplace while her hand moves closer to the wooden-handled knife on the table.

‘Who
are
you people?' Mr Daneaux says and the torment of all the years sweeps through me again. I try not to petrify, but I am fighting a pitched, losing battle with my terrified younger selves.

‘I'd like you to leave before I call the police,' Mrs Daneaux states, coming up behind us.

‘Call the police,' Roni says. ‘I really think they should be here for this.' Her voice has changed. She sounds detached, she sounds cold. She is stepping outside of herself so she can do this. The other two people in the room are not speaking – they are probably as focused on the weapon that is millimetres away from this stranger's hand as I am.

‘Roni, please don't do this.' I am speaking to her slowly, calmly. Her breathing is quiet but erratic, which tells me she is not quite ready. She is working herself up to it, and when her breathing, the sound of what she is thinking, finally slows and normalises, she will have completely detached. That's when she's most likely to do it. That's when she will use that knife on that man and there will be no going back for either of us.

‘The thing is, Nika, I have to do this,' she says.

‘You really don't.'

‘I do. You don't know how terrible I've felt every day,
every
day since I lied to that policeman.'

‘I do know. I've felt it too. We both went through it, remember, so I do understand how you felt.'

‘No, you don't. It wasn't the same.' She turns to me, briefly, shakes her head in what I think is regret and turns back to her prey. ‘I'm sorry, I'm so sorry.' She shakes her head again, as though trying to dislodge a memory, trying to rid herself of a truth she does not want to tell. ‘After you went to the police, and they came to have a “friendly” chat with him, he never touched me again.' It's my breathing that is slow and measured now, almost at the point of being deadly. ‘He said I had shown great loyalty but you … you had to be punished. That was why you always went first after you told the police. He would tell me afterwards what he had done to you, while I had to dance for him.'

From the corner of my eye, I see the younger man, possibly his son, raise his hand to his mouth while looking at the older man. Beside me Mrs Daneaux keeps making small little gasping sounds, and I think she is crying but I can't think about her, I can't think about anyone else.

The only person I am truly focused on is Roni. And what she has just confessed. ‘That was nearly a year before it stopped because his wife kept dropping by,' I say to her.

‘He said you deserved everything he did to you.
Didn't you?
' She spits the words at him, her breathing slowing some more. She's approaching that point when she's going to do it. ‘I'm so sorry, Nika. I'm so sorry. But it was me who made his wife turn up. I knew she was like my mother, only worried about herself, so I wrote an anonymous letter saying that her husband was planning to leave her for his
Nutcracker
pupil.'

‘That was
you
?' Mrs Daneaux says.

‘Yes, that was me. I had to do something. The things he told me he was doing to Nika …'

Roni stops crying, fretting. She's calm now; still; ready. Ready to take his life and make him pay for what he did to her, to us, probably to countless others.

I focus on his son, just a bit older than us – his eyes are wide, horrified. He used to come to group classes, but he always sat to the side with a book and never once joined in. He doesn't deserve to see this happen.

‘It's not your fault,' I say to Roni. ‘You are not to blame, for any of it. Not even lying to the police is your fault. And it's not down to you to get justice. Let's just go.'

‘He has to pay for what he did,' she replies. ‘He has to pay. And once I've done this, I'll be able to sleep at night and I'll stop hating myself and I'll feel normal.'

‘Oh, Roni,' I say teasingly while I move towards her. ‘You really are the queen of magical thinking, aren't you? That's not what will happen. What will happen is every day for the rest of your life, you will remember his face, you will remember the sensation, and you will likely never sleep again. You know that, don't you? Deep down.' I am close enough that our bodies almost touch. I feel the heat from her bare arms, even though they are covered in goosebumps. Carefully, I cover her hand with mine, wrap my fingers around hers, and slowly I move her away from the table, away from the knife, away from making one of the biggest mistakes of her life.

I am trying not to look at
him
because every time I catch a glimpse of him the memories flash through my mind, reverberate through my body. Every time I can hear his frequency and how it resonates in the world, I feel pain, I experience fear, I remember what it's like to want to stop existing.

Slowly, carefully, I pull Roni back until she is by me, by the door, ready for us to leave. The three other people in the room exhale, but the breath I can hear loudest, most clearly, is
his
. He was scared. Actually, properly scared.

I want him to feel that again. I want him to know what it is like to feel small and weak and terrified of what will happen to you next. I want him to experience for even the shortest of seconds, what it is to be truly scared. My gaze is drawn to the knife. To what it could possibly do. To the one thing that has ever made him feel what it's like to be the victim.

She's quick, so quick I can barely register what is happening. She moves at lightning speed, and the knife is in her hand before I can say stop, don't do that, it really isn't worth losing your immortal soul for.
He
isn't worth losing your freedom and soul for.

I imagined it would take more force than she uses, it would be harder than that to do what she does. His face is a mask of shock, his eyes twin beacons of pain, his mouth a small ‘o' of surprise before he slumps, falls to the floor in one move.

The four of us left standing are suddenly petrified; all horrified immobile by what has been done. But it is Mrs Daneaux who recovers enough to move first: she throws down the knife in her hand. It clatters loudly on the polished wood floor. My gaze moves from the man on the ground to the fruit knife his wife has just wielded. I take a step backwards, pushing distance between me and the wooden-handled weapon. I can't believe I thought for even a moment that I could do what she has just done. I can't believe I thought myself capable of it.