Page 64 of The Blue Hour

‘Of course you are, I just meant—’ She broke off. ‘You don’t really need to work at all, not right away. I’ll look after us for a while. We’ll hang out, keep each other company. It’ll be like the old days.’

‘Oh, for fuck’s sake, Grace,’ Nick snapped, ‘we’re not students any longer. It’s not going to be like theold days.’ He moved to his left to get past her, but she stepped out to block his way and so he pivoted to the right instead, pushing her to one side, but as he strode forward, he trod right on the lip of the hole the tree roots had left and his ankle turned and he fell, yelping in pain, into the pit.

If Grace hadn’t been so upset, she might have laughed at him, flailing around in the mud, in the semi-darkness, cursing at the top of his voice.

‘Are you all right?’ she asked when eventually he stopped yelling. She gathered he’d twisted his ankle. ‘Is it bad?’

‘Yes it’s fucking bad,’ he snarled up at her. ‘Help me, for God’s sake, don’t just stand there, give me your hand.’

He held out a hand to her. Grace looked at it and took a small step backwards.

‘Oh,nowyou won’t help me?’ He started scrabbling up the side of the bank, but his old trainers were not suited to the terrain; he kept slipping back, sliding down into the mud. ‘After weeks of hovering over me, treating me like a child … no, apet, something you cankeep… now, because I won’t stay here playing …happy familiesor whatever it is you want, I never could understand, what do you want? A friend? A brother? Do you want me to fuck you?’

Grace put her hands up to her ears, she couldn’t bear it, to hear him talk to her like that, but he wouldn’t stop, on and on he went; as he dragged himself on to level ground he insulted Grace, hermiserablelittle house, thisgodforsakenplace, her pathetic, lonely life. She couldn’t bear it, she just wanted it to stop, she would do anything to make him stop and so while he knelt at her feet spitting venom, she raised her walking boot and brought it down heavily on his hand. His cry of pain was like a melody.

Shaking with rage, he struggled to his feet. ‘That was assault, what you just did,’ he hissed. ‘Are doctors allowed to go around assaulting people? Or do you think that would get them into trouble?’ He cradled his hand, his face twisted in pain, tears streaking through the mud on his face. ‘You’ll pay for that, you ugly bitch, you’ll—’

‘No, please, please don’t say that – I’msorry—’ She was horrified by what had happened, by what he had said and what she had done. In her mortification, she reached for him, her mouth open and her eyes wet.

He recoiled in disgust.

Without Grace really understanding what was happening, withoutintention, her gesture of supplication became something else. Her left hand rose up to join her right and both closed around his neck, her thumbs pressing against the front of his throat.

Grace was smaller than Nick, but he was slight, and he was injured, and she had a butcher’s hands.

47

Grace helps Becker on to the sofa. He is confused and embarrassed – he has been sick all over himself. Gently, she coaxes his arms up over his head so that she can remove his jumper and t-shirt to put into the wash.

‘There you go,’ she says, as she lies him back on the couch, propping his head up with a pillow. She pops some cushions behind him and rolls him on to his side, just in case it happens again, and then she covers him with a blanket.

‘Wh-wh-wh—?’ He is shivering, his eyes are wide, their whites luminous in the windowless room.

‘I’ll get you some water,’ she says.

Standing at the sink, running the water to get it properly cold, she catches sight of her reflection in the window, disconcertingly doubled, and she flinches.

Grace thinks of herself in a lot of different ways. Like anyone, she could describe herself with any number of adjectives: conscientious, hardworking, loyal, strange, lonely, unhappy, good. She is a doctor, a friend, a carer. She is a killer. She says the word quietly to herself, sounding it out. It sounds absurd, melodramatic. Protector, she thinks. Mercy killer. But kill three, she has heard, and that makes you a serial killer. She almost wants to laugh. It’s ridiculous, it’s like saying you’re a unicorn. Three strikes and you’re in.

She picks up a mixing bowl and carries it, with the glass of water, back to the living room, arriving just as Becker retches again. She kneels, placing the mixing bowl on the floor in front of him.

‘Don’t worry,’ she says, ‘it’s quite normal. Nausea is a common side effect of morphine.’ Tears are running down his cheeks.

‘I am sorry,’ she says, touching the side of his face. ‘I honestly didn’t think it would be Nick. I knew he was in the wood, but I was so sure he was safe.’

He was buried deep, down in the pit the fallen tree had made. Grace covered him with dirt and branches, with as much debris as she could find. She had no plan, she was sure he’d be found by a dog walker within days, but she was lucky. It was a brutal winter, and the next week there was another storm, worse even than the first. It washed away a section of the causeway and, for a time, Eris became a real island, not just a tidal one. When eventually Grace was able to return to the island in spring, she found that more trees had fallen, completely covering the place where Nick’s body lay, and so felt certain that nothing would get to him.

Becker struggles to a sitting position. His head is hanging, his chin almost touching his chest. His breathing is fast and shallow. He wipes tears from his face, wipes a bubble of vomit from his lower lip. He raises his head, looks at Grace, bewildered. He looks like a child with a fever, helpless.

She places her hand on his leg. ‘When you first came here, when you told me about the bone, I wasconvincedit would be an old one, I was so certain I had nothing to fear. The silly thing is that you’re the only person who would make a connection between me and Nick. All because of that photograph! I wasn’t sure you’d even remember the name, but you do, don’t you?’ She looks into his eyes and sees that she is right. She’s done the right thing. ‘It’s just bad luck. His parents never knew me, andwe are forty years and hundreds of miles removed from our student days.’

She sighs, reaching out and pressing the back of her hand against Becker’s forehead. He’s clammy and cool, his breathing is slow. ‘Marguerite knows. Marguerite has always known. She was at her window, like always, waiting for her brute, she saw me out there, on the causeway. She asked me about it, that first time I met her in the surgery.Where did your friend go?I got such a fright.You go to the island, she said,and you come back alone. Alone, before the sunrise.’ Grace shakes her head. ‘I was young, and so afraid, but in fact it wasn’t difficult to persuade her that she was mistaken. She was completely isolated, and far from home and very frightened, too – all I needed to do was talk about calling the police, about getting them involved in her own domestic situation, and she would do or say whatever I wanted.’

Becker shakes his head, he opens his mouth but no sound comes out. He closes his mouth, closes his eyes and then he leans forward. With great effort and concentration, he tries to get to his feet. Halfway up, he topples, collapsing backwards on to the sofa.

‘Come now.’ Grace places her hands on his shoulders and presses him down. ‘You’re only making yourself feel worse. Here.’ She adjusts the angle of his body, scooping his legs back up on to the sofa so that he is lying down again. He struggles against her, but weakly, and only for a few moments. ‘Don’t think badly of me,’ Grace says. ‘You mustn’t think badly of me. I never meant to do it.’

‘It was an accident?’ he asks. His voice is touchingly hopeful.

---