‘Please don’t hurt me,’ she said.
I blinked. Her voice was deep and gluey with fear. No, I told myself, not her voice. Not Edie. My breathing was returning to normal but my right side was numb all the way to the shoulder blades. Whatever she’d hit me with was going to leave bruises like night-blooming flowers on my skin. My feet scrambled in the dirt, suddenly cold and stiff.
‘I’m not going to hurt you,’ I told her.
The figure moved forward a little, into a space where I could see her more clearly. She was cautious, almost hopping from foot to foot as if she would take off if I made any sudden moves, like a startled rabbit. ‘We’ve got a rabbit problem,’ Peter Liverly had said to me, and the rabbits in his bag had been bloody and stripped down to the raw meat. The smell of their tiny deaths was everywhere.
‘Why’d you hit me?’ I said, struggling to get to my feet. ‘I think you’ve broken my collarbone.’
The hood slipped down to reveal an angular, bony face beneath a scrawl of dark curls. I saw fear etched on to its male features, drawn with a quick, sure hand. Disappointment settled in my stomach, plummeting like lead. I told him again I wouldn’t hurt him. He didn’t reply, simply pointed to me with a shaking finger. I looked down in wonder at the stiletto knife, clutched in my hand. I hadn’t even been aware I’d pulled it out. For a moment neither of us spoke.
‘I wouldn’t have hurt you, William,’ I said, although I didn’t know if that was true. Why had I drawn it if I hadn’t been prepared to use it? More to the point, a suspicious little voice in my head asked, why did you draw it if you thought it was Edie you were chasing?
‘You come near me with that, you’ll get done for GBH,’ he said. He had his breath back now, the fear replaced with a hostile expression I was more familiar with.
‘I’m sorry – I – I don’t know—’ I stood up, still holding the knife, my other hand reaching for my shoulder, which felt as though it was embedded with hot splinters.
‘Carrying a fucking knife,’ he muttered, shaking his head as if he couldn’t believe it. He hawked a mouthful of phlegm and spat on the ground between us. ‘No one told me you’d be fucking tooled up.’
He was tall and slight, like a stick of hazel. I didn’t know how I could have thought it was Edie. Rupert would say, ‘The mind sees what it wants to see.’ I laughed when I saw what he’d hit me with: his skateboard, gripped tightly beneath his arm. I bet if I went for him he’d have used it again.
‘You’re bleeding,’ he said.
I looked at my other hand, the maroon stain it had left on my grey sweater.
I laughed, shrill. ‘It’s fine. It’s nothing. I cut my palm open. God.’ I ran my hand over my sweaty face. He was looking at me, concerned. I must have looked like a crazy woman. Maybe I was. Maybe this was it, the slow burn of insanity. It started in the dark with the frost and the rabbits, the candles guttering on graves. ‘William—’ I said. I thought about reaching out to him, but which hand to use? The one smeared with blood or the one holding the knife? I settled for taking a step towards him. He was looking away, past me, into the dark, somewhere distant and cold and underwater.
‘They’re not nice, those girls. Rattlesnakes. You shouldn’t hang around with them, Mrs Hudson. They don’t want to help you.’
‘You sound like my brother.’ I laughed. It hurt my chest, my shoulder. ‘I could say the same to you, of course. Besides, I have to try to find Edie. The police aren’t doing their job, so I have to.’
‘Is that why you came to our house and made my mum cry?’
‘I didn’t mean to do that, William. That wasn’t my intention. I just wanted to talk to your dad.’
‘Why?’
I sighed. I’d no reason to keep Edward Thorn’s secrets but William was just a kid, and he looked as scared as I was. ‘Because your dad knows a lot of people. Important people. I thought he might be able to help me.’
He scuffed his foot on the ground. His head dipped. ‘I wish she’d come back,’ he said. ‘Edie, I mean. We weren’t serious, me and her. But I still wish she hadn’t gone, you know?’
‘Did Edie know that?’
‘Know what?’
‘That it wasn’t serious?’
‘Huh?’ He sounded genuinely confused. I felt a ripple of that old familiar anger, as sleek and sinuous as a cat coiling about my legs. I tightened my grip on the knife. The buzzing in my head was making it hard to think straight. I stepped forward.
‘Did my daughter know you weren’t serious about her? Or did you lead her on, the way all the others did?’
‘Mrs Hudson, listen – I’m – I’m not here to—’
‘Why are you here, William? It’s a cold, dark night in a graveyard. What are you doing here?’
‘Ch-Charlie.’
‘Charlie?’
‘Yeah. She told me it would be funny if I hid in the dark and threw those stones. To frighten you. She wanted to make you believe in Quiet Mary the same way they all do.’
William swallowed noisily. He flattened himself against the tree behind him, his fear of me real and almost comical; large round eyes, slack jaw. It came from him in waves. I’d forgotten that he was just a kid, that he was just as scared and confused as I was. I took another step forward. I looked down at the knife in my hand. I should put it away, I thought, but I didn’t. I could feel my fast pulse in the tips of my fingers, the cushion of my palm. The pearl handle felt cool to the touch, the blade a delicious weight, smooth and clean. I liked the way light ran along it like water.
‘I swear on my mother’s life, Mrs Hudson, I don’t know anything about your daughter!’
‘Shh,’ I told him, pressing the knife against his skinny throat. He whimpered. I pressed the tip in the soft spot behind his earlobe, nicking the skin there in a series of little cuts, like stitches. I was numb, amputated. It was like I’d stepped outside my body.
‘Please!’ he whispered frantically. ‘Please don’t do this . . .’
Suddenly I heard voices, moving through the trees. Low rustling sounds, the scuffle of leaves, someone calling my name. William slumped a little and I looked at the blood on the tip of my knife with mounting horror. Had I done that to him? Turning round, I could see torchlight slicing through the dark, hear Tony Marston’s familiar, dense tone saying, Come on, Samantha, come on out of there. William shook his head, muttering, Oh my God, and all the while I felt hollow, scooped out on the inside and left like a cave, dark and wet and empty. The frost would creep over me in the night like white lace. In the morning I’d shatter as the sun rose, my frozen body blown to the wind like flakes of snow.
Later, in the back of the police car, I felt the first warmth creeping back into my fingers and toes. Tony turned down the radio, which had already begun to play Christmas songs. He rubbed his forehead, flicking the indicator on as he made a right turn.
‘What’s going on, Sam?’
I stared at him in the rear-view mirror, unsmiling.
He sighed again. ‘You pull a weapon on a minor, you’ve been taking God knows what, you’re covered in blood – just help me out here, please.’