Alice is scrambling around on the floor, trying to find the knife. Lauren is holding her phone, her eyes glassy. She is speaking into it, her voice low, clipped as she punches in the number and speaks, asks for help.
‘No!’ Alice throws herself at Lauren and manages to snatch the telephone out of her hand. She smashes it onto the floor over and over before throwing it to one side. ‘I said no calls to the emergency services! Are you deaf or just plain fucking stupid?’
He drags Alice away, a wrestle ensuing as he attempts to restrain her. She’s powerful, there’s no denying that fact, but he’s bigger, has a greater inner core strength, greater muscle density. For such a small woman, she seems to have unlimited reserves of energy, her fists pummelling at his chest, her torso squirming and twisting until eventually, exhaustion gets the better of her and she slumps against him, spent, her skin flushed pink with the exertion.
She is panting heavily. Peter grabs at her wrists, holding them fast. ‘String, Lauren. I need some string! Anything at all that I can use to tie her up.’
Lauren’s voice is a shriek. It pierces his concentration, tugs at his emotions. ‘Grandma is dying, Dad! We need an ambulance.’
He catches his breath, knows he doesn’t have to turn to face them to see that it’s true. ‘Get my mobile. I’ll hold her here. You ring 999.’
Again, as if she has been suddenly injected with a short burst of energy, Alice struggles, her bony limbs writhing and pulling. He holds her tight, sweat coursing down his back. In the next room, he can hear Lauren hunting for his phone.
‘Next to the microwave! It’s next to the microwave, Lauren. Hurry!’ Heart thumping, stampeding through his chest, he leans closer to Alice to hold her in place, pressing his entire weight onto her. Bone, muscle, sinew, meeting, melding together, suctioned together by sweat.
Lauren’s voice filters through from the kitchen, desperation and screamed obscenities echoing as she tries and fails to punch in the passcode.
‘Two six one three!’ He shouts through to her, wills her to get a move on. His mum cannot die like this. He won’t let it happen, silently vows to use every little bit of strength and ingenuity to get them out of here alive. ‘And then come and find the knife, Lauren. We need that bloody knife!’
He listens to Lauren mumbling, her voice muffled and indistinct above Alice’s growling and shouting, the thump of her feet against wood as she batters them on the floor, the gnashing and wailing and shouts that she will kill them all. Then a worrying silence. An unexpected slump as she watches and waits.
At the edge of his vision, Peter can see Lauren as she walks back into the living room, the phone clasped in one hand and another serrated knife in the other. Two knives. Jesus. They’ve already had enough blood spilled in this house. Too much. They don’t need any more.
The blade wobbles about, glinting and flashing as she holds it aloft. Her voice is a murmur, soft and frightened. Pleading. It rises slowly, her strength rapidly returning. The old Lauren. The wilful, capable Lauren. She barks out the details to the person on the other end of the line, telling them to hurry. Screaming at them. A command, not a pitiful request.
And then Alice springs to life once more. Just when he thinks it’s over, that it’s coming to an end. Like a rabid dog, she lets out a howl, her teeth bared. Kicking out and writhing, she manages to break free, but not for long. Long enough, however, to catch his daughter unawares. The phone drops to the floor, slipping out of Lauren’s fingers, but she manages to keep hold of the knife. Underneath the sideboard, Peter spots the other one, the original weapon, the silver tip protruding out from beneath the curved, wooden legs of the old, oak unit. Alice sees it too. They both move forwards, their movements, their bodies synchronised, but he’s too fast for her, a split second only separating them. He grabs it with both hands, waves it at her, telling her to back the fuck away.
It takes a matter of seconds to catch her, to wrap his arm around her waist and drag her over to a chair. He holds the tip of the blade to her throat, muttering that he will slit it in a heartbeat if she tries to escape again. He means every word of it. He’ll kill her if he has to. He will gladly run the knife across her throat and watch her bleed out.
‘My belt, Lauren! Take my belt off and tie her hands to the chair.’ She falters, stays put, eyes wide. ‘The belt, Lauren. You need to do it now. If we don’t hurry, Grandma is going to die.’ He’s trying to keep his voice even but his own fears and anxieties are bubbling up, slowly rising to the surface, trying to pull him under.
Hands grab at his midriff, a tug at his waistband, leather being freed from his stomach. Lauren is beside him. She wraps the belt around Alice’s wrists, looping the buckle through the back of the chair, pulling at it tightly. Securing it. Saving their lives.
‘Make sure it can’t come off. I don’t care if she cries out or if her blood supply gets cut off. Just tie her fucking hands together so she can’t escape.’
It feels like hours, time too difficult, too ethereal to measure. It’s only seconds; he knows that. Seconds to restrain this insane creature, to put a halt to her crazy mission to kill them all, but it feels like an eternity.
He steps back, spins the chair around to look at Alice’s face, to study her expression, try to work out what is going on in that addled brain of hers. Maybe it’s better he doesn’t know. Some things are best left unknown and unsaid.
‘Lauren, call 999 again. We need an ambulance and the police as soon as possible.’
She is smiling at him, this Alice/Jade person, a lopsided grin that turns his skin to winter, ice flooding through his veins. ‘Well, well, well. The sad little man finally grew some balls and managed to pin me down. I’ll tell them it was you who did it when they do finally arrive.’ She nods over to his mother, the crumpled heap on the floor and winks at him. ‘I’ll tell them you turned on us all, that you’re a madman. Once they see the bruises on my arms and my body where you attacked me, then they’ll know who to believe.’
He wants to laugh at the absurdity of it, isn’t even sure how she has the temerity to talk such shit. Her thoughts are on a different plane, so far removed from reality that she may as well be on another planet, in another galaxy.
‘Stop talking, Alice. We’ve heard enough from you. Just shut your fucking mouth, okay?’ A dry bark from him. A lacklustre comment. He’s all out of energy.
Snot and blood trickle down from one of her nostrils, slipping over her top lip and dispersing over her gums and teeth, a glistening, silvery streak of gelatinous fluid. She grins, her face a mask of hatred. Twisted and perverse.
‘Shut my mouth? Oh, I don’t think I can. There’s so much to be said, don’t you think? So many secrets still untold.’
He shakes his head, unwilling to become embroiled in any of her stupid, warped games. He refuses to be manipulated by her any more. Enough is enough. God, he has been blind. So fucking naïve and blind. He should have listened to Lauren, should have removed those blinkers and taken a long, hard look at the situation, assessed it objectively, but he didn’t and now they’re all paying the price. His mother is dying and it’s all his fault. Alice is right about one thing – he was too childlike, too trusting. But not any more. He sees who she is now, this Alice person. This Jade Kennedy. He sees straight through her, knows exactly who she is, what she is capable of and will have no hesitation about sticking this knife in her neck to save his family.
46JADE/ALICE
They’ll be here soon, the police, and when they arrive, everything will be over. I will lose it all. All the things I’ve worked for over these past twelve months will vanish, everything I have clawed and strived, and fought tooth and nail for will be taken from me. And what will happen to Luke then? My little Luke, the boy I deserve. My boy. Who will take care of him then? What will become of him?
My options are rapidly diminishing. I can, however, do as much damage as humanly possible before they turn up with their rough ways and punitive measures. I can tell the Saunders family what I think of them. Tell them who I really am. Let them know exactly who and what they are dealing with.
Peter is standing before me, observing my every move. Lauren is on the floor with the older woman, whispering into her ear, smoothing down her hair. Trying to stop her from dying. It’s pointless. I felt that knife as it caught her, the satisfying swish of metal cutting through flesh. She can’t have long left. I wonder how long it takes a person to bleed to death – half an hour? One hour? Two? I once read that the battlefields of the Somme weren’t littered with dead bodies but dying ones; battered, torn men who took days and days to die, their blood slowly leaking out of their bodies. I don’t imagine Peter’s mum has the same strength as those soldiers. I imagine she will die pretty soon, her organs shutting down, her heart beating its last. But she isn’t dead yet. She is suffering and so are they, sitting here, watching the life ebb away from her. That in itself gives me a great deal of pleasure.
As if he can read my thoughts, Peter shouts over his shoulder, never taking his eyes off me. ‘Lauren, call 999 again. Hurry!’
I hear her scramble for the phone, listen to her speak, then catch the faint sounds of sirens in the distance. They are already on their way. Almost here.
‘I guess you’ve seen through me now, haven’t you?’ Gone is the sweet squeak of a voice I’ve used in his presence, replaced now with my usual, dull, dour tones. My embittered, gravel-like deliverance. It runs through me, that feeling of sourness, of being forgotten, discarded. Treated like dirt. A lifetime of it. I have suffered a lifetime of hatred and rejection and I am done with it. This is my time now. A time for revelations and revenge. ‘Well, this is the real me.’ I sigh, stare down at my feet, inspecting them. ‘Have you any idea what it is like to be viewed as worthless?’ No reaction. Not a sound. Just the hard stare of a man who thought he knew it all. A man who thought he had it all and now doesn’t. Serves him right. They deserve each other – him, Lauren, that interfering old hag laid on the floor. They all deserve one other, every single one of them, with their sad, insular little ways; their lives a thin veneer of gloss that radiated shallow, superficial sadness. They don’t understand real sadness, not the grinding misery I have had to endure. They have no fucking idea. ‘No, I’ll bet you don’t. Not you with your perfect little family and perfect house. What would you know about being ignored and cast aside, about being branded a failure? Life has always gone your way, hasn’t it? Even losing your wife didn’t dent your existence, did it? You managed to carry on with everything, holding down a good job, living here in this lovely house with your perfect child and textbook mother popping in every so often to make sure you’re both managing. How bloody marvellous for you, eh?’
Outside, the sirens grow closer. I don’t have much time left. It’s almost at an end.
I can hear Lauren sobbing, her hands draped over her grandma’s body. Long, slim fingers, hair floating. Head dipped. Her tears are futile. Futile and useless. We’ve all shed them in the past year, me included, but what is the point of them? A good bout of crying leaves you breathless and exhausted. So I found a better way, a more productive way. A way of venting my anger, an outlet for my misery. I worked out how to redress the balance, to show them how it feels to be lonely, to feel as if the whole world is against you. And I have done just that. Sometimes, it was in small ways like breaking the window and ruining Sophia’s books. And then there are times such as this, where I have had to really slap them in the face to get their attention.
Peter starts to speak. I sigh, turn away, close my eyes, suddenly exhausted. It’s been a busy day, a trying day. Fatigue swamps me. Everything begins to slip away.
I hear the banging on the door, the loud voices, the shouting. I feel the vibrations on the floor as they enter the house, the charge of heavy feet, the throb of energy as they push through into the room. And then Lauren screaming, Peter shouting, my own heartbeat ringing in my ears.
It’s happening. They’re here. It’s over.
47LAUREN
