Chapter 94 Kier

94

Kier

Parque Nacional, Portugal, Autumn 2020

Shoving the map inside the bench seat, I slam the lid closed and make for the door, a delayed reaction, but it's too late.

It's already opening, and Zeph is coming inside. I smell him first – the usual odours of smoke and spice, but something else too. Alcohol. Sweat.

I force myself to take big breaths, but it feels like someone has a hand around my lungs, is squeezing tight. Shock, part of it, at him being here, in front of me, even though I'd thought of this, of course I had.

A tiny voice whispered in my head: He'll find you. One day, he'll find you , but I'd let myself believe it could go on like this forever. That the bubble we'd built around ourselves here would never burst.

‘It didn't have to be like this,' Zeph says slowly, conversationally, closing the van door behind him. ‘You could have just been honest. Said, Zeph, I'm unsure about things , and we could have talked it through. I could have explained—' He's got that odd, frozen look on his face. That calm voice that means something bad .

I blink, knowing what I need to do. Play for time. Don't rile.

‘What do you mean?' I hitch my voice up a notch, hoping it sounds like confusion. ‘I don't understand.'

Zeph shakes his head. ‘ You don't understand. Have you forgotten that you told me we were going to have a fresh start, then that's it, you're gone?'

I don't reply. Something in his eyes is making me wary.

‘Is that what you do, Kier, to the people you love? You ghost them?'

‘It wasn't like that.' I dig my nails into my palm, hating the sound of my voice. It's the voice I've always had with him. An appeasing voice. Part of a pattern that would play out in our conversation: He as parent. Me as child.

‘But it was, Kier. You left me high and dry, and we both know why, don't we? It's because you came out here, looking for her. '

‘You're going to have to explain. I don't know what you're talking about.' I keep my voice slow, steady.

‘Oh, but you do.' His voice is so calm, so measured, it makes my heart twist. ‘You found her. You found Romy.'

‘That isn't what happened.'

‘That's a lie, Kier, isn't it? I've been watching you. In the van.' He glances up at the shelf, a smile playing on his lips.

I follow his gaze. Something there, between my books.

My heart lurches.

A camera.

The feeling I had … it was right. He's been watching me. Wormed his way inside my private space.

Zeph shakes his head. ‘I have to say, Kier, I'm pretty fucking disappointed, because the last thing I knew, we were meant to give it a go. Become a family. That's what all this was about. You and me. You and me, we were going to fly.'

Agonisingly slowly, he reaches out, cups my face in his hands. They feel the same as they always have. Rough and warm. I can see the bumps and nicks on them, the tiny, silvered scars I know so well, and for a moment, despite everything, my body reacts to him as it always has .

I start to lean in, but then wrench myself backwards.

‘We had it all planned out, Kier. We were going to travel, be together properly, but you went dark on me. All I want is to know why. Why you left, came here. To her.'

Seeing the odd twist to his mouth, the strange look clouding his eyes, I know I can't tell him the truth. Can't tell him that although every part of me wanted to believe the relationship would work, that seed of doubt was always there. A thorn pressed deep in my side. ‘I needed some time on my own. We talked about that, didn't we?'

‘ Time? I get that.' Zeph shrugs. ‘If you were on your own. But not with my daughter, Kier. Not my fucking baby. You don't just get the right to take her away from me.'

My stomach drops with a force that makes me put a hand on the counter to steady myself.

No. He can't know.

‘I told you, Zeph. I lost the baby.' My voice sounds strange, even to my own ears.

‘No, you didn't. You had the baby, and she's here, isn't she? She's with Romy, in her van. You two have been quite the team, haven't you? Looking after her together.'

My palms are slick . He might be bluffing. You've got to try …

‘She's Romy's, Zeph. I promise, she's Romy's.' Believe me. Believe me.

The colour drains from his face. ‘ She's Romy's ?'

I sense him looking at me and I make my mouth into a smile. ‘She is. I just help Romy out with her.' My words hang in the air between us, alive and thrumming.

A bob in his throat. He holds my gaze for a moment, then takes a step forwards.

I moisten my lips. My chest is sore, like the breath in there is hard and scratchy, but I reach out a hand, lightly touch his arm and smile.

‘Do you honestly think I wouldn't have told you? And I'm probably going to be condemned to eternal damnation for saying this, but what happened, not having the baby, it was probably the right thing in the long run, for both of us. I wasn't ready, you weren't ready, but that doesn't mean we won't be in time.'

For a moment, he starts to smile back, and I think: I've done it, he believes me, and if this is the point that he's fixed on, then maybe, just maybe, I can walk him back from here.

But the smile stays frozen in place, stays too long to be real.

‘And I thought for a moment there that you were going to be honest, but no.' He blinks. ‘I'm going to give you one last shot. Are you going to say it, Kier?' Stepping closer again, he brushes the tip of his finger along my jaw. ‘Say it, Kier. Say Etta's mine and we can start this all over again.'

From the corner of my eye, I see a movement, and I glance outside, pulse catching in my throat.

Have they come back early?

‘No good looking out there.' Zeph shakes his head. ‘No one's coming to help. The rest of your friends are in town, and Romy's with Etta. She won't disturb you when you're meant to be head down. I know your patterns. This is the time you work, when Romy looks after Etta.' Finding my gaze, he looks me dead in the eye. ‘It's just you and me. You and me and the truth. All you have to do is say it. Tell me that Etta's mine.'

My thoughts scatter.

I need to get out.

If I shout now, Romy won't hear me. If I can get outside, I can raise the alarm.

We have code words for this. Romy will be able to get out the back of her van and into the woods.

I smile, open my mouth as if about to speak and then lunge sideways, slipping past him.

Nearly there … I make it one step, two, but I know, even as my hand is closing around the handle, that he's on me.

‘Not so fast.' Zeph grabs my arm, yanking me around to face him, his hand locked tight around my wrist. He tugs me closer.

‘Zeph, please, you're hurting me.' My heart sounds out an unsteady beat .

He shakes his head, a sorrowful look in his eye.

‘Jesus, Kier, you have to make this so difficult, don't you? We could have been happy, the three of us. If you'd have done the right thing just then, when I asked, we could still have been. The three of us could have left here and been happy . But we can't do that now. You lied, and I know you lied because she looks like me, doesn't she?' His voice is hoarse. His first real smile. ‘Etta looks like her daddy.'

I feel ill. Every breath hurts inside my chest.

‘Or maybe the reason you don't want to say she's mine is because you're planning on being a family with someone else? Is that it?'

His words catch me by surprise: a new narrative. ‘I don't know what you mean.'

‘You and Ned .' Zeph's lip curls. ‘I've been watching you these past few weeks. Him coming in here, you two talking, late into the night. Do you like him, Kier? Is that what it is? Because if it is, you need to tell me. Be honest.'

So this is why he's come here now to confront me . Jealousy. This is what's pushed him over the edge.

‘No, Ned and I are just friends. I don't want to be with anyone right now, I told you that.'

‘But that doesn't work, you can see that, can't you?' Zeph is breathing hard now, like he's been running. ‘It doesn't work, you being on your own. Because without me, there can be no you.' He says it again, the beginning and end of the words running together. ‘Without me there can be no you without me there can be no you.'

He shoots me a look I've never seen before.

All the other times, there's been love there, a sense of self-reprimand, reluctance, swinging in the balance, as if he weren't even sure which way he wanted it to go, but now, there's nothing. A complete detachment, a calm acceptance of what he's about to do next.

Zeph swallows, his hands coming up to my throat. Pressing and squeezing. Almost questioningly, as if he's testing it out, working out if it's really what he wants to do, and then it comes. He shoves his fists against my chest, slams me back against the wall, wedging me in the gap between the kitchen counter and the door.

He thrusts his hands towards my throat again and this time there's no question: he presses hard, so hard I can't catch my breath. I brace myself against the wall, try to push back, try to pull his hands away but my palms are slick and they fall away from his. All he does is dig in deeper, his hands crushing me.

I extend my arm instead, fingers scrabbling out sideways, trying to find something, anything, that I can use to strike back. There's Mum's glass bowl on the counter, but I'm too far away. I can't reach it.

Something flickers on his face as he watches me. For a moment, I think he might be having doubts, but then I feel a burning heat in my side. A searing pain, as if someone's slid a hot poker between my ribs.

He says it again. Just whispers now.

Without me there can be no you without me there can be no you, and the pain comes again, a little higher.

Something warm and wet trickles down my side.

His words are getting faster and faster, so fast I can't even catch the thread of them.

A strange blackness has appeared at the corner of my vision. A deep, inky dark, a gravitational force, pulling me inwards.

The pain comes again, but this time I'm not there. I've already gone, to the places I can reach in my head.

We do this exercise with Maggie when the wilds inside us take over: we travel.

This time, I go to one of the places on my very first map.

I'm at home and the sun is shining. Penn's running towards me holding a spider in his cupped hands. Look, Kier, look! My mother is in the chair, a cup of tea on the table in front of her. She is smiling.

The next pain makes this image shudder – like someone's jolted the camera. But I hold on to it fast even though the picture is bleeding at the edges.

I try to hold on because this is what it's about, isn't it? Power. He wants power over me because despite his strength and how he's using it, he feels weak. The only way he feels strong is not from this, when he hurts me, but when he can see my fear.

But I'm not scared. I'm not weak. I'm not a victim. I'm strong. A survivor.

I think of what we say when we make one of the wilds for the first time.

I am not the wilds and the wilds are not me.

I say it over and over in my head, blocking out his words, because he's still saying it, as if the more he says it, the more it will be true.

Without me there can be no you without me there can be no you.

I look him in the eye and his face constricts, and it's because he no longer sees stars in mine, like he used to. All he can see now is a reflection of him. A reflection of a monster.

Out of everything I've learnt since I've been here, that's the most important.

He's the one with the monster inside him, not me.

‘Kier,' he says, but I can't really see any more. The blackness at the corner of my vision has turned to white, the room dissolving into a hazy light.

He lets me go, but I don't have the strength to keep myself upright. I try, but I slip sideways, down.

Kneeling beside me, he starts to talk. More whispered words his breath hot against my cheek, but then I notice him hesitate.

A noise.

My eyes slip past him. The door, opening.

Romy.