Page 50 of Only a Monster

‘Can’t sleep?’ Ruth whispered.

Joan shook her head and then remembered that Ruth wouldn’t be able to see her in the dark. ‘I thought you were asleep,’ she whispered back.

‘I couldn’t sleep after,’ Ruth said, soft. ‘For a long, long time. You keep seeing them, don’t you?’

Joan rolled to face her. ‘I keep walking into that room,’ she whispered. ‘Where I found you . . . All that blood leading to the sofa. You pressing down on Gran’s wound.’ She hadn’t seen the others, but her mind kept conjuring horrors. Bertie with his throat slit, all alone. Uncle Gus and Aunt Ada bleeding out.

Ruth pushed Joan’s hair from her face. ‘It’s not as fresh for me,’ she whispered, ‘but I remember how I felt.’

‘You don’t feel it now?’

‘I do. It’s just . . . different. Like a scar compared with a fresh wound.’

Joan didn’t know what to say. She felt hollowed out and so terribly lonely suddenly. For her, it had been last night. For Ruth, it had been years ago.

‘I miss them,’ Ruth whispered. ‘God. So much. I missed you.’

Joan had assumed that Ruth had found Gran, at least, in this time. Apparently not. She shifted closer so that she could hug Ruth, a little clumsily. Joan had barely even begun to miss them yet, she realised. It had only been one night for her. But there’d been so much pain in Ruth’s voice. This was the same loss, two years apart.

‘We’ll undo it,’ she whispered into Ruth’s shoulder. ‘We’ll get them back.’

‘Did that Oliver boy promise you that?’ Ruth whispered. ‘Because if he did—’

‘No. He said it couldn’t be done. Is that true?’

Ruth was silent. ‘Try to rest even if you can’t sleep,’ she said finally. ‘Close your eyes, at least.’

The evasion made Joan’s stomach twist. ‘Is it possible to save them?’ she said. ‘Is it?’

Ruth’s arms squeezed tighter for a moment and then she pushed Joan away gently. ‘Close your eyes,’ she said. ‘You don’t have to sleep. Just close your eyes and breathe.’

Outside, the rain had finally stopped. Joan breathed in and out. She lay awake, listening to raindrops fall from the roof in long, slow strikes.

ELEVEN

Joan jerked awake, half caught inside her childhood nightmare—the old, old one, of the prison with the cold stone floor and the guard outside with heavy shoulders like a mastiff. She lay awake, shivering with it. She could still feel the scratch of straw under her shoulders. The smell of sickness and filth seemed to linger in the air.

It was just a dream, she reminded herself. Just the one she’d always had. It wasn’t real. She was okay. She was here in bed. . . .

She opened her eyes and the memory of what was real hit her like a shock wave.

Aaron’s voice cut through it, snide and posh. ‘Could I trouble you to pass me a pen?’ His voice was weirdly grounding.

Through the bookshelf partition, Joan glimpsed the surreal image of Ruth and Aaron at the breakfast table, eating toast and drinking tea. There was a frosty tension between them, but evidently they’d formed enough of a truce to eat breakfast together.

‘Identification,’ Aaron said, writing. Someone—probably Ruth—had stolen stationery from the post office. Joan recognised the logo: a tree, half in bare winter branches, half in summer leaves. ‘Money, clothes . . .’ Aaron made an irritated noise and scribbled his pen onto the corner of the paper. ‘I can’t work like this. I need a spreadsheet.’

‘You’ve only said three things,’ Ruth said. ‘Surely you can hold three things in your head.’

‘I cannot believe I’m here with you,’ Aaron told her. ‘I wish I were anywhere but here. I wish I were at home with a good book.’

Joan dragged herself out of bed. She rubbed her eyes and stumbled around the bookshelf. ‘Hey,’ she mumbled.

They both looked up at her. ‘You look like death,’ Aaron said.

‘Yeah, well, you look . . .’ Joan waved her hand sleepily. ‘You haven’t combed your hair.’

Aaron pressed his hand to his chest, feigning a wound, and then went back to writing his list.

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