Dying for Christmas (18 page)

‘At first, it wasn’t so bad, and Bella kept up a stream of commentary as she always did. “I’m swimming really good aren’t I, Dommy? Do you want to see my breast stroke? You have to make your fingers into a straight line and then push the water out with your hands.” But after a while, she was concentrating too hard to speak. The current was getting stronger now that we’d gone beyond where we could stand up and the surface was rippled with quite sizeable waves. I heard Mummy behind me shouting at us to stop. “Not far now, Bella,” I told her, indicating the raft ahead with its bed of blue inflatable buoys. But because of the current, we seemed to be making very little headway. The water in this section was cold, and getting colder. When I looked behind, I saw she was panting, her face tinged with blue. “I’m cold,” she said, and her little arms were scrabbling around in the water like a dog’s paws. “Want to go back”. “We’re nearly there now,” I said, “no point going back.” I was also struggling to keep my head above the waves that were getting bigger now, and to keep the current from dragging me under the freezing water. In calm conditions, the swim out took less than five minutes, but we must have already been in the water at least a quarter of an hour.

‘When I looked behind for the last time, her face was the colour of a Smurf. It really was. Her teeth were chattering too much to speak, but I could see her lips moving. She was still saying she was cold. Much further back, I could just make out my mother’s head bobbing in the water as she floundered around. Then I turned my head so I was looking ahead and kept my eyes fixed on the raft, using every last drop of strength to keep myself afloat.

‘Finally I arrived and hauled myself up, using the rope ladder on the side. Only then, when I was lying across the wooden platform, did I look back.’

‘And?’ I almost couldn’t bring myself to ask but I needed to know.

‘There were a lot of people in the water suddenly. The lifeguards had been alerted and two had arrived in a dinghy and were hauling my mother out. You can imagine, that was no mean feat. I couldn’t hear much because of the wind, but I could hear her shouting, “My baby, my baby.” Nothing about me, of course. Just Bella. Then they brought the dinghy over to the raft. “Are you OK?” they asked me. I told them they had to find my sister, so they got on to the raft and started diving off, searching. When they finally pulled her out, she was limp and heavy like a waterlogged sack. I cried when I saw her. I think that might be the last time I ever cried.’ He halted. ‘Oh no. There was that other time. But that came later. Much later.’

I’d been staring at him while he told his story, knowing all the time where it was leading and yet convincing myself there was some place else for it to go.

‘That’s so awful,’ I said. ‘Your poor, poor mother.’

It was the wrong thing to say, as I’d known it would be.

‘Want to know what happened to my
poor, poor mother
? It’s quite funny.’ His voice was once again dangerously light. ‘She was arrested by the Spanish authorities. They were going to charge her with criminal neglect or child neglect or something. They did a blood test and discovered she was slaughtered. They ran columns about her in the papers saying she was the worst kind of mother, taking her kids swimming in those conditions. The police quizzed me, of course, and I was the very picture of a guilt-ridden older brother. “It’s all my fault.”’ He put on a high warbling child’s voice. “I should have been able to save her.” I even told them it was my idea to go swimming in the first place, although I might have added something about Mummy not saying no, which made me feel “like it was OK”. I never could resist embellishing a good anecdote.’

‘So what happened?’

‘They dropped the charges. Not enough evidence. And besides, she was a complete fruitcake by then. I think they figured they’d spend all this time and effort bringing her to trial, only to have to put her up in a mental institution for the next god knows how many years. Just imagine the paella bill.

‘Daddy never forgave her. But then she never forgave herself either, so that made two of them.’

‘And did you go off to school?’

‘In the traumatized state I was in? No one would be that cruel. Besides, when Mummy was finally released, I was all she had in the world. She didn’t want to let me out of her sight.’

I picked up a shell from the box and held it in the palm of my hand, admiring how its smooth inside glittered where it picked up the reflection from the Christmas-tree lights. I could feel Bella’s spirit coursing through it and found myself thinking about how once this would have been the home to some underwater sea creature, and here it was in a warehouse apartment in one of the world’s major cities. Life didn’t always take you where you thought it would. I might have been losing my hair, I might be wearing what would almost certainly turn out to be a dead woman’s wedding dress. I might have a nasty rash on my stomach and a septic tattoo on my hip and be eating food that made me sick. But I was alive.

Poor, blue Bella had been fished out of the sea like so much rubbish, but I was still here. I was still breathing.

Yet while I was quietly triumphant at my survival, in another sense I also felt disappointed, let down almost. All these days had been building up to finding out what happened to Bella, and now I knew.

And there were still five presents under the tree.

Dominic saw me looking at them and smiled, guessing some of what was going through my head.

‘Don’t worry, there’s still so much to learn about each other, Jessica. Isn’t that exciting? You still don’t know the worst.’

* * *

Later, Dominic and I stood at the window and watched fireworks exploding across London’s skyline to celebrate the New Year. He counted down the seconds to midnight on his watch and then pulled me towards him, pressing his mouth on to mine, his tongue disappearing down my throat like an endoscopy camera.

His mouth tasted of sausage and blood.

Chapter Twenty-Three

The next morning when I awoke, I lay in the kennel for a long time, stroking the palms of my hands and the soles of my feet with a kind of fascinated curiosity as if I was my own scientific guinea pig, wondering at how thick and hard the skin had become and what it might mean.

Later, we sat on the sofa watching an episode of a popular American TV series. Dominic had the box set and had already watched the whole thing through. He was one of those people who try to manipulate your viewing. ‘Oh, you’re going to love this bit.’ Or, ‘You might want to look away for this scene.’ My nerves were still tingling and I had very little energy. He was sitting next to me, stroking his finger up and down the blade of his knife.

‘I love this series because it’s one of the few programmes that tell the truth – that everyone is corruptible.’

I wondered if that was the real message of the show, or just Dominic’s own spin on it.

After a while, I couldn’t concentrate on the screen. My eyes were mesmerized by his finger on that long, sharp blade. I imagined how it would feel going through my skin. Would it be a sharp, burning pain, or would it be so excruciating I wouldn’t feel it at all? How much pressure would he have to put on the hilt for the knife to slice cleanly through? I imagined it like cutting a watermelon – tough on the surface, but like sliding through butter once you got to the flesh.

We watched all the episodes on the first disc of season one. Afterwards Dominic folded up the knife and put it back into his pocket.

‘Have you made any resolutions?’ he asked out of the blue.

I remembered then about it being New Year’s Day and shook my head.

‘In that case, I have one for you,’ he said. ‘To live each day as if it’s your last.’

He leaned over and squeezed my knee, as if he’d given me a gift. Then he stood up.

‘It’s that time again, Jessica. Present time.’ He almost sang the last two words. ‘Can you believe this is the eighth day already? Doesn’t time fly?’

Today’s present was long and thin – just like his knife. Again he insisted that I feel it thoroughly before opening it, so I could try to guess what it contained.

‘Drumsticks?’ I tried. ‘One of those hand-held blenders?’

But when I’d untied the ribbons and opened the paper, it was neither of these things. It was a leather-handled whip, deceptively heavy.

There was a sharp intake of breath, like a gasp of shock that I could have sworn didn’t come from me.

‘Tell me about your first experience of sex, Jessica.’ He was leaning back on the perpendicular bit of the sofa so that he could see me properly.

I was silent.

‘Coyness is overrated, Jessica. How old were you?’

‘Eighteen. It was at university with a boy called Tom.’

‘And?’ Dominic wanted to know. ‘Did you enjoy it? Was he good? Did it hurt? Tell me everything, Jessica.’

‘There isn’t really much to tell. It was his first time too, and when it was over I looked at him and said, “Was that right, do you think?” and he said he wasn’t completely sure but he thought so.’

‘And did you like it?’

I tried to force my mind back to my single bed in my little room at the hall of residence, with the grey sky pressing damp against the window.

‘I wouldn’t say I liked it. I was just relieved to get it over with.’

Dominic seemed disappointed with my story.

‘My first time was noticeably different,’ he said. ‘Of course I’m not counting what happened in the moist darkness of my mother’s bedroom. Those were the fumblings of a very confused boy.

‘The first time I had sex I had just turned fourteen. She was forty-something. My parents had given me money for my birthday. They always gave me money – they had no idea what I liked or didn’t like, or anything about me. They weren’t communicating with each other by this stage, so it wasn’t surprising. We didn’t go in for celebrations in our house. Not after Bella. Anyway, it was enough money to buy Salome. I found Salome in the back of one of Daddy’s magazines. When she first saw me she was a bit underwhelmed, but I showed her the money and told her I was sixteen and that was good enough for her.’

‘And was … Salome … expensive?’

‘Extortionate, sweetheart. But that was because of the extras.’

I looked down at the whip in my hands. I was starting to see what the extras might mean.

‘After Salome, I was hooked. They say you never forget your first time, don’t they? The only thing was, I didn’t have the money to pay for it. I tried to persuade a girl I knew at school to try it – I’d grown into my looks by then and was quite in demand – but that ended badly. In my defence, I didn’t know then how easily skin splits open.

‘Her parents were furious. Mine weren’t too happy either. I left that school under a cloud.

‘After that I realized I had to be more subtle. By that time I was buying hard-core magazines and I discovered that the truth is, everyone’s at it. Everyone you look at on the Tube or walking past your house or drinking fucking skinny lattes in Starbucks. They’re all carrying round these great ugly secrets. The things they like to do when no one is watching. The things they like to have done to them. You’d be shocked, Jessica. How filthy most people are under their clothes.

‘So I developed this façade. I became everything a girl could want me to be. Groomed, respectful, attentive. I only brought out this’ – he indicated the whip with the slightest movement of his hand – ‘when it was too late for her to get out. When she was already in too deep.’

My head was aching and I was still feeling weak.

‘Are you in too deep, Jessica?’ His voice was feather light.

‘Did you have any long-term relationships?’ I asked him the first thing that came into my head, just to change the subject.

He smiled broadly, dimples opening up in his cheek and chin like mouths. ‘Oh yes, I had a few long relationships. A couple of women who turned out to like the same things I did. Trouble is, when you know the other person is enjoying themselves, it kind of negates the whole purpose, if you see what I mean. The pleasure is in the pain. And the pain is only truly pain if there is no pleasure.

‘My longest relationship was with my wife. My first wife, I should say.’

Suddenly I was alert. His
first
wife? It was the first indication he’d given that he’d been married before.

‘Was she beautiful – like her?’ I indicated the painting of Natalie.

Dominic shook his head. ‘Francesca was no looker. But she had the lowest threshold for fear and pain of anyone I’ve ever met, and that excited me. There’s nothing as intimate as inflicting and receiving pain, Jessica. Plus she was rich. Cesca’s parents own most of a small town in Yorkshire. That excited me too.’

‘Where is she now?’

Now his expression turned dark, his mouth a line that sewed his face together. ‘In hell, I very much hope.’

‘Why? Did she do something to upset you?’

‘You might say that, Jessica. She killed our son.’

After that, Dominic clammed up, refusing to speak.

But when in the evening I followed him into the back of the flat to go to bed, he stopped in the kitchen.

‘Haven’t you forgotten something, Jessica?’ he said without turning round.

He meant the whip.

* * *

Two hours later, I sat in a shallow bath of warm water, while he knelt beside me and dabbed antiseptic at the weeping welts on my back and breasts and thighs. On some level, I was aware of the antiseptic stinging, but I was too numb for it to fully register. Dully I noted that the rash seemed now to have spread to my upper thighs. There were ugly purple marks on my wrists and ankles where the restraints had been, and I could feel the stripes across my buttocks every time I shifted position. I wrapped my arms around my knees so I couldn’t see the angry-red raised lines that crisscrossed my chest.

Now I knew all about my threshold for pain.

Chapter Twenty-Four

If Henrietta Belvedere’s skiing holiday had been relaxing, the benefits had worn off very quickly. Jessica Gold’s boss at the TV archive held one hand to her lightly tanned forehead and was tapping the fingers of the other insistently on her desk as if sending out an SOS message.