Chapters (62)
‘You be quiet, bruv, you’ve messed up big time. Big time!’ Tears were pouring down Abs’s face, he could barely see what he was doing, and he told her, ‘Look at us both, sobbing like babies.’
The blade of light between the curtains.
‘Hurry,’ the girl pleaded, as he pulled ineffectually at the rope around her wrists. What he needed was a knife, something sharp to cut through it.
‘What’s your name, darling?’ he asked her.
‘Sarah,’ she whimpered. ‘Sarah Tovey.’
‘You just stay there, Sarah Tovey.’ Because he had words he wanted to say to Jez, the man who had been like a brother, but who Abs now realized he had never really known at all. Or had refused to see what he really was.
The damp-stain on the ceiling.
‘Please don’t leave me,’ the girl cried.
Abs squeezed her arms. ‘I’m going nowhere, do you hear me?’
He pulled a sleeve across his sodden face. He was crying because he was angry and disgusted. At himself, more than anything, for refusing to admit the truth about Jez. All these years, he had buried the truth deep inside of him, bottled it all up, giving himself panic attacks. He had stuck his fingers in his ears and gone la la la, in order to drown out the unwelcome thoughts.
The mattress.
‘We can’t let her go,’ said Jez.
‘Don’t keep saying we,’ Abs told his friend angrily. ‘This – what you’ve done – has got nothing to do with me, do you understand?’
Jez stepped forward, holding out his hands in appeal. ‘If we let her go, I’m finished, Abs, I’m going to jail.’
The mattress.
‘Just stay back, yeah?’ Abs held up a hand as Jez came around the bed towards him. ‘You’re crowding me in, I can’t think.’
‘You’ve always been there for me, Abs,’ said Jez miserably. ‘I promise I won’t do it again, but you’ve got to help me, just this one time. Please, Abs.’
The girl sobbed on the floor.
That mattress.
Abs’s shoulders sagged, and he felt a sudden terrible calm inside of him, a kind of serenity, like he was standing in the eye of a hurricane. Because he finally had to admit to himself that he’d always known the truth about the events of that night. It’s just that he’d spent the whole three years blanking it out, la la la, refusing to face the facts, la la la, lying to himself that he never knew what really happened that terrible night when Rhiannon Jenkins was murdered.