Читать книгу Love Me, Love Me Not: An addictive psychological suspense with a twist you won’t see coming - Katherine Debona, Katherine Debona - Страница 11

Surrey, eight years ago

Finals were over, the hours poring over textbooks were behind us and the cellars of every student bar had been emptied during weeks of potent celebration. I was due to start work in just over a week and, despite my best attempts to dissuade her, Elle had convinced her parents to give me a proper sendoff at their home. They agreed, both because they knew my mother never would, and also, I suspect, as a thank you of sorts for my supposed good influence on their child. A child who always got what she wanted and loved any excuse to dress up and flaunt her wares at all and sundry.

‘So what’s he like?’ Elle leant towards the mirror that filled an entire wall of her bedroom as she painted a line around her lips.

‘Who?’ I asked, taking a long sip of my drink. Homemade elderflower gin with a squeeze of fresh lime. Distilled by my own hand, ever since Nana first showed me how. The familiarity soothed my troubled mind, if only for a moment.

‘Patrick.’

My insides constricted, an internal warning of what was to come. I should have trusted them.

In less time than it takes a seedling to sprout, we had mapped out and agreed every step of our future together. A two-bed flat within spitting distance of Covent Garden. Owned by his parents but perfect for his desired placement at the London School of Economics where he could continue his research. In return I’d agreed to pay the majority of the bills and we even drew up a rota to avoid any arguments over chores. We had the conversation about our futures, our ambitions, the understanding being we both favoured career over family. We had ironed out all the wrinkles, all the concerns we thought might arise from moving in together. The only anomaly I hadn’t properly accounted for was my best friend.

‘Why do you ask?’

She tilted her head from side to side. ‘I’ve got this picture in my mind of what he’s going to be like.’

‘And?’

‘You.’ A wicked grin. ‘Only male.’

The insult was clear. But I couldn’t find the words to tell her how wrong she was.

‘I can’t believe you have a boyfriend I’ve never even met.’

There was a reason for that, but not one I could share. It was why I’d been so against him coming to the party, protesting the need for him to move into the flat and set up his study just the way he wanted. That he would hate being surrounded by people who didn’t understand him.

That I was terrified of what would happen if he met Elle.

‘Do you like him?’

‘Of course I do. What sort of a question is that?’

Her eyes found mine in the mirror and I had to look away, to try and conceal the truth behind my guilty words.

‘No, I mean like him, like him.’

The flush on my face was as if she had slapped me and I hurried from the room. She followed me in silence, but it was a silence alive with noise, with unspoken, treacherous things.

I pushed my way through the crowd of well-wishers, people who had filled my life without any kind of meaning, but seemed to think they knew me. I wasn’t interested in their congratulations, I just wanted to find him, to shelter him from this cosseted world.

There he was. Shirt untucked and hair curling around the arm of his glasses. He was nodding at something Elle’s brother was saying, fingers used to nursing a pint now gripping the stem of a champagne flute.

She waltzed past me, pushing the air aside and announcing her arrival so that, as his head turned in my direction, he was overcome by the sight of her instead of me.

‘You must be Patrick,’ she said, going in for the kill with a kiss either side of his mouth, one hand resting on his shoulder to keep the gap between them small.

His face was too open, his thoughts and desires laid at her feet, but she was so used to such adoration she didn’t recognise its perfection. I couldn’t look at him; he looked like I felt.

‘He’s not at all what I expected.’ She was sat on the edge of the swimming pool, long limbs stirring the water. I imagined it to be like the tornado that ripped Dorothy from her home, wondered what would await Elle if she were plunged into another world.

‘What did you expect?’ I handed her one of the platefuls of food I’d busied myself collecting from the buffet. Anything to avoid watching him watching her.

‘Not sure. He’s rather sweet.’

Sweet. That was all she could come up with to describe the most enigmatic, talented and breathtaking person I had ever met? The only human in existence who could rival her? But then Patrick’s appeal was not so transparent, not something everyone would be able to understand.

Maybe I didn’t have anything to worry about after all.

‘So, have the two of you ever…?’ She picked up a smoked salmon blini and popped it into her mouth, along with a long sip of champagne.

‘No.’

‘What, not even after a drunken night out?’

I glared at her, annoyed by her assumption that Patrick would only ever be interested in me sexually if he were inebriated.

‘He understands I want to wait until we’re living together rather than simply doing it in a bed that contains the sexual residue of a thousand past students.’ He said it didn’t bother him, but I had seen the way he looked at her, at the longing that stretched over every part of his skin, and realised it meant he wasn’t bothered because it was me. That while I made sense on paper, Elle appealed to a different kind of reasoning.

‘Huh.’ Another morsel passed her lips.

‘Why do you sound so surprised?’

‘I assumed he was either ugly or gay. Why else would he stay in a relationship where he wasn’t getting any?’

Because, when it comes down to it, what else is there between a man and a woman other than sex? Why bother to have a relationship with someone who stimulates your mind as well as your body?

‘You wouldn’t understand, even if I did try and explain it to you.’

She smiled to herself and I wanted to ask what she was thinking. ‘You just seem so… the same.’

‘In what way?’

‘A bit awkward, a bit unsure of who you are. But then, when you start talking about something, it’s as if you’re the only person in the world who really gets it.’

I thought I could see her point, even if it was tumbled up in nonsensical English.

‘Sounds like he was talking about bats,’ I reply. Ever since Patrick read Dracula as a kid he had been obsessed with the folklore behind vampire bats; how not all cultures believed them to be signs of evil, with some viewing them as symbols of rebirth or long life. I liked to think of them as portals for change, as an opportunity to become something more.

‘Yes. But I didn’t have a clue what he was going on about.’

‘Suspicions amongst thoughts are like bats among birds, they ever fly by twilight.’

She drained her glass, then pointed it at me. ‘That’s exactly what he said. But I can’t remember who it’s by.’

Francis Bacon. Not that it would have meant anything to her because Elle’s literary abilities had never stretched beyond the love triangle between a girl, a vampire and a werewolf.

‘Don’t worry, he does it to everyone, especially when he’s nervous.’ It was his failsafe, his way of trying to interact with people with whom he had nothing in common. We used to joke about the way people responded to his theories, would laugh at their ignorance of the world around them.

‘I asked him whether he had a Batman costume at home.’

Okay, I was definitely safe.

‘He laughed and asked me if I had a Catwoman one.’

She did. Skintight latex that was worn to every Halloween party with a fluffy tail she used to entrap that year’s victim. No doubt she showed him a photograph, asked him whether she made a convincing cat. Not so safe after all.

I looked down at the plates of food between us. At the miniature chocolate cupcakes I knew she loved. Four in total. Two with icing slightly darker than the others.

‘You know, I think he likes me.’

But he wasn’t hers. He was mine and I wasn’t about to allow her to steal him from me, to assume she could have anything she set her sights upon. Not him. Anyone but him.

‘I wouldn’t have thought he was your type.’

‘Exactly. Perhaps it’s time to go for the geek instead of the jock. Up my standards. Isn’t that what you’re always telling me?’

I looked back down at our plates. Wondered whether I should switch or let fate intervene.

‘He’s my boyfriend, Elle.’

‘Of course. But it can’t be that serious if you haven’t even done the deed. I mean, aren’t you worried he’ll find someone else to scratch that itch if you won’t?’

I hadn’t been. Not until she planted the doubt in my mind. Watered it with the imaginings that were creeping around inside of me.

I had never wanted to hurt her before that moment, but one glance from her and it was unravelling so fast I had no idea how to try and put it back the way it was supposed to be. One glance from her and all of my darkness came spinning back to the surface. All of the whispers, the insecurities, the desire to cause harm that had dissipated whenever I was around him, came flying back into my consciousness and I was overcome with the urge to make her scream.

‘So where is he now?’ I picked up my own cupcake, waited for her to see me do so, then watched as she wrapped her lips around one, head dropping backwards as sweetness slid down her throat.

‘I think he’s talking to your mum,’ she said in between mouthfuls.

Good. There was time.

Have another.

‘So have you decided what you’re going to do?’ I had to keep her talking. Keep her eating.

‘No idea. Dad says I can take my time, help out with the business, but can you imagine how dull that would be?’

Yes, I can. But no worse than online shopping and days at the spa, which is how Elle had spent her summer thus far.

‘You could always teach.’ Because those that can’t, can.

‘Funny you should say that.’

‘Funny ha, ha, or funny, that’s so ridiculous I can’t quite believe what you’re suggesting?’

‘Don’t be a bitch. Just because I’m not as clever as you doesn’t mean I can’t do something worthwhile with my life.’ Her hand reached out for the second cake, then stilled, eyes stretching wide before the same hand scratched at her neck.

‘What is it?’ I offered her a drink and she swiped it away, the glass shattering on the tiled surround of the pool. ‘What’s the matter?’ I knew what the matter was, but folded confusion into my face just the same.

She pointed at her throat, tongue slowly filling the space created by her fish-like mouth. Fingers seized my arm, pressing down hard on skin that would show the outlines of her fear in days to come.

‘The cake.’ My hands came up to my mouth in a caricature of shock. ‘But you had one too, so it can’t be.’ But it can. All too easy to pretend I didn’t know which cupcakes had toffee and which had peanut icing. Silly mistake to make. Silly old me.

The hand of fate had decided, held me back from switching the plates. Made me choose him over her. A defining moment, you could call it; the first time I realised the full extent of my feelings, understood he had taken her place in my heart.

Still clutching at my arm, Elle’s lips began to swell. I imagined the sensation of her ballooning from the inside out. Flesh pressing against her skull, skin stretching tight in preparation to split wide, her beauty destroyed by one tiny nut.

‘Jane, what’s going on?’ Patrick asked. Where the fuck did he come from? Only a second ago it was just her and me, then suddenly he popped up behind us like some veritable boy scout.

Four words from him and everything was annulled.

‘She’s in anaphylactic shock.’ I leapt up, her nails leaving behind accusatory lines. ‘Lie her down, find something to prop up her head.’

‘Is she going to be all right?’

I turned away, couldn’t risk him seeing the guilt leaking from my pores. Didn’t want to witness his concern for her. There was a cabinet on the wall behind the bar, a cabinet I’d been shown by Elle’s mother the first time I was invited round for a swim.

‘Just in case,’ she had told me. ‘I need you to know what to do.’

Just in case her child was dying, she thought someone would be there to save her.

People choose what they want to see, what they want to believe. Jackie wanted to believe I wasn’t capable of hurting her child. That I didn’t hesitate before stabbing Elle in the thigh with an EpiPen as she ran screaming across the lawn. She blamed the caterers for not labelling the food correctly, despite their protestations of innocence. Because if she’d known I had even considered the possibility of hurting Elle, she would have had to ask herself not only why, but how it was that she’d invited me into their lives in the first place.

The only person who noticed the danger, the only one who stood at the edge of the crowd, with arms crossed and eyes silent, was my mother.

* * *

I kept my promise to Elle’s mother after that fateful day; to always be her friend, to protect her no matter what, but I came to hate the weight of it. By swearing allegiance to her family, by accepting her mother’s terms, I was tied to them, my conscience forever torn between what I wanted and what I had promised to be.

Elle wouldn’t have done the same. She would have waited for me to leave this world behind, made sure there was no one who could change the course of her own fate with the man she loved. In a way, this was exactly what she did the moment my back was turned, and I was a fool to ever believe otherwise.

Sometimes I think my own darkness might devour me. But I wanted to do it, to watch her choke out her last breaths, wondering why I wasn’t saving her. I still do, don’t I? It was him that stopped me, him that forever stops me from becoming what I fear. I have to be good, on the outside at least, because inside is a turmoil I battle against every day.

But I know that, however much I ignore it, it’s always there. My desire, my pain, sits coiled and tight; desperate to escape, to run free.