Now
As ideas go, I’ve had better ones.
Coming here is probably up there with terrible ideas that will have dire consequences – for his sake more than mine. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to stop myself harming him. This man who has done these evil things to my child.
I’m more than prepared to go to prison for hurting him, and he probably won’t die from his injuries since we’re already in a hospital, but I am here for one reason only.
If Poppy needs support to get him to confess, which will get Verity out, then I’ll do it. I’ll do pretty much anything.
I’ll even find a way to not hurt him.
Poppy tells me to wait out of sight when we arrive at the hospital so she can check if her parents are around. The last thing any of us need is that meeting.
She has been shaking all the way over here. She thinks I haven’t noticed, or maybe she does know I’ve noticed and doesn’t care enough to hide it. I’m probably shaking, too. So many emotions are coursing through me right now, while others are firing in my brain so it’d be a miracle for them not to be exposed physically.
I am rapidly trying to erase the things Verity told me, the things he did to her, the way he manipulated her. Because I can only do this if I walk into that hospital with the equivalent of a blank mind.
Poppy enters first, holds the door open for me. The room is small because it is crammed with so much equipment. At the centre of the chaos of machines is a hospital bed with sides and a white man in blue pyjamas who is staring blankly at the television that hangs above his head on a hinged arm. I remember seeing him lying on the ground outside the Sea Maiden. I would not have recognised him as the man sitting here now.
His face lights up when he sees Poppy, and I suppose it says something about their relationship that he is genuinely happy to see her. Obviously the joy instantly evaporates when he sees me, probably for the first time since he began this thing with my daughter.
‘Nice,’ he says. ‘Witness intimidation. I’ll be sure to add that to the list of charges against your daughter.’
Why did I think I could do this? Because right now, in my fantasy, I have a pillow in my hands . . .
‘She’s not here to intimidate anyone,’ Poppy says.
‘Are you sure?’ he replies. ‘We all know how violent her daughter is; it’s most likely she got it from her wayward mother.’
‘Stop, Logan, all right? Just stop. We know, all right? We both know the truth.’
‘What truth?’
‘We know that your attack didn’t happen the way you said it did. We know that she didn’t abuse you. We want you to tell us the truth.’
Logan Carlisle styles it out for a few seconds, looking from her face to mine back to her. ‘Lot of “we”s there, Poppy. Sounds very much like witness intimidation to me.’
‘Just tell me why you did it, Logan. Or tell me what really happened. But stop pretending it was how you said it was.’
‘I’m not saying a word with her in the room,’ he eventually concedes.
He is handsome. Good-looking in that way that Poppy was pretty. I remember how awful I felt when Marcus first took up with Poppy. She was so pretty, voluptuous and perfect. I’ll never forget how much it hurt. I used to watch him with her, how he’d touch her hair, smile at her, kiss her pink lips, and the jealousy would almost consume me. When he made me listen to him screwing her, it was a new kind of torment; there was nowhere to hang my feelings, no way for me to hide from it. And then he progressed to making me watch him fuck her. That was the type of suffering he was good at, that was the type of torture he loved to deploy.
This Logan Carlisle, he is handsome in the way that Poppy was pretty. I bet he is charming in the way Marcus was seductive. That is how he would have smarmed his way into Verity’s life – first as a friend so she would have fallen for him without knowing what was happening. I didn’t prepare Verity for such things: for good-looking people who were snakes. And I should have. I should have told her about me, I should have shown her my scars, I should have explained to her what the world could be like.
But I liked to pretend. Even when Poppy reappeared and upended everything, I liked to make-believe that I’d had a normal life as a teenager. That I hadn’t got involved with someone as twisted as him. In my head the years from thirteen to eighteen didn’t exist so there was no point talking about them.
And now look where I am. Where my daughter is.
And look who I have to rely on for help.
‘I’ll wait for you outside, Poppy,’ I say, and firing a glare that holds every molecule of hate I feel for him at Logan, I leave the room.
My legs give way, depositing me on one of the black-grey chairs outside his room. Good luck, Poppy, I think. Because I don’t know how you’re going to get to the truth without beating it out of him.
poppy
Now
I’m still shaking.
Shaking and shivering; quivering and quaking, as I have been ever since I forced myself to talk to Serena. She was the only one who I knew would understand, who would listen without shutting me down. I couldn’t imagine trying to tell Bella or Mum and Dad what I suspected. I couldn’t imagine the pain merely saying those words would cause them. Alain suspected, after he spoke to Logan the other day, and I had willed him to stay silent, to not say what he thought because I would be forced to defend Logan rather than agree with Alain. Thankfully, thankfully, he had picked up on the damage it would do and had left it.
I want to stand as far away from Logan as possible, but I need to sit close, to hear every single one of his words even if he lowers his voice so no one else can overhear. After Serena leaves, we sit in silence for long, long minutes. I look at him, trying to work out when he changed, when he became like this. Capable of this. Although, I don’t know what ‘this’ is, not yet. It might just be the fight he was lying about. It might not be everything.
‘Now she’s gone, you can call the police and tell them she’s put pressure on you to come here to try to get me to change my story,’ he says conspiratorially.
‘I went to her,’ I tell my brother. ‘I realised you were lying and I went to her. She didn’t want to come here. This is the last place she wants to be, but I begged her because I needed someone else to hear why you did it.’
‘Why I did what?’ His voice has frosted over now. He’s not looking at me and I can feel him physically drawing away from me.
‘Logan, just . . . just stop it. Just tell me why. Why you lied. Cos I know you did. I just don’t know why and how much of it was lies.’
‘It wasn’t lies. It just wasn’t my truth.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I went to talk to that bitch—’
‘Don’t call her that.’
‘I went to talk to her, Serena, like I said. I’ve watched you, Poppy, and I’ve watched our family and I just wanted her to know what it’s been like. I went to see her and when I got there . . .’
logan
Now
I went to talk to her, Serena, like I said. I’ve watched you, Poppy, and I’ve watched our family and I just wanted her to know what it’s been like. That it’s been ten years and nothing has got any better. I went to see her and when I got to her house, she was coming out with her daughter. The pair of them were laughing and joking and were clearly the best of friends.