Best of 2017

I’m even stripped of my stupid scratchy cap and apron.

Mr Henley Snr. laughs as he finds the resignation letter in my apron pocket.

“So close,” he says. “And to think you nearly got away with it.” He laughs again to himself. “Extraordinary. You’re wasted as a cleaner, most likely as a hooker, too. You should be a lawyer.”

I have to cover my mouth to stop myself being sick.

“I’m sure I don’t need to tell you what would happen if you were foolish enough to contact my son,” he says. “Consider your employment well and truly terminated. Please don’t insult me by asking your manager for a reference.”

I can’t speak. I can’t say anything.

His smile is a sneer. “Believe me, you don’t know anything about my boy. If you’ve any sense at all you’ll stay as far away as possible. He has a penchant for asphyxiation games, as I’m sure you well know. Something tells me you wouldn’t come out the other side of the next one.”

I blink away tears, and I don’t care. I don’t care that I wouldn’t come out the other side of the next one.

I really don’t.

The life insurance would be more than enough for Dean to take care of Joseph.

“Stay away from my fucking son,” Mr Henley Snr. hisses. “You’re fucking dead to him.”

I don’t say a word as he marches me to the exit with a security guard at my side.

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

ALEXANDER

I CALL out an emergency locksmith and barricade myself in tight.

I smoke all my cigarettes and only venture out for more.

I ignore all calls. I ignore the appointments on my calendar. I ignore all the messages from my cunt of a fucking father asking me when I’m going back to the fucking office.

The pill bottles in the medicine cabinet scream my name, but I can’t abandon Brutus.

His furry head on my lap is the only thing that keeps me breathing.

It’s been forty-eight hours when I pull Melissa Martin’s little thank you notes from my kitchen drawer. I head upstairs with a cigarette in my mouth. The gemstone cabinet clicks open with the new code.

I hold her scrawled gemstone identification card next to the note thanking me for muesli, and it’s right there. Right in front of my fucking face.

She’s tried to disguise it, of course. The scrawl is more slanted on the gemstone card, but the loops of her letters are the same.

It was right in front of my face the entire fucking time, I just chose not to see it.

I didn’t want to see it.

My heart pains as I see her lucky quartz. What a fucking bitch. What a total fucking bitch.

I turn it over in my palm as I take the final drag of my cigarette, and then I throw it. Hard. Hard enough that it bounces off the fucking wall and disappears behind some shelving. Fuck it. Fuck all of it.

When I start I can’t fucking stop.

Thousands upon fucking thousands worth of rare gemstones meet the same fucking fate. I clear the shelves with frantic sweeps of my arm, launching them at the wall together with their pretty fucking plinths. I don’t give a fucking fuck. Not about any of it.

I charge downstairs and stamp on my fucking Kings and Castles CDs, because the bitch has fucking ruined them for me. She’s ruined fucking everything for me.

The orchids are wilting in their fucking vase and I tear those up too.

I hate how she was inside this fucking place. I hate how she was inside me. Inside my fucking head.

I’ve never felt so fucking violated.

Not by those cunts in the public toilet, and not by my filthy fucking father, either.

And I want to tell her. I want to tell her what I fucking think of her.

I want her to see who I really fucking am. Not the fucking sap she played like a fucking fool.

The real fucking me.

The one who paid a fucking million a couple of days ago for a permanent go on her pretty fucking snatch.

I’m going to get my fucking money’s worth.

My fingers are shaking as I type out a message to Claude.

Amy. Tonight. Delaney’s.

I wait for the reply.

Are you fucking insane?!

I don’t have time for this shit. I press to call.

“Book it,” I snap. “Just fucking book it, you greedy fucking cunt.”

“Jesus, Henley, calm the fuck down!” he bleats, and I laugh.

I really fucking laugh.

“My name’s Ted fucking Brown,” I say.

MELISSA

DEAN DOESN’T KNOW what to do. He wanders around the place, taking care of Joseph and trying to take care of me along with him, but I’m a lost cause.

It’s too painful to eat, so I don’t.

It’s too painful to think, so I don’t.

I lie in bed, cocooned in a smog of despair that won’t lift. My heart breaks a thousand times when I think of what I had and what I lost.

I was so stupid.

And selfish, and cruel, and reckless.

I hurt him.

I’ll never forgive myself for how much I hurt him.

I kiss Joseph at bedtime, and I hobble out to give him lunch, but the rest of the time I’m a zombie.

I may as well be dead.

“You need to eat, Lissa,” Dean tells me on Wednesday. “Please just eat something. Some soup, or…”

I shake my head. “I can’t.”

“But you have to! Please, Lissa, think of Joe.” His words make me cry, and he sighs. “Or don’t. Please, Lissa, just get some help. I can take you to the doctors or call someone out.”

“Nobody can help me,” I tell him. “I don’t want to see anyone.”

He doesn’t push it, and I go back to bed.

I shout him to leave me alone when he taps on the door in the afternoon. I tell him I’ve got nothing to say.

He comes in anyway, and chucks me his phone.

“I shouldn’t even be fucking showing you,” he hisses. “But I can’t fucking bear to see you like thi

s.”

The message is blurry, I have to blink three times before it comes into focus.

Delaney’s. 8 p.m.

Your client is Ted Brown.

I almost throw up.

“You can’t go,” Dean says. “Not on your own. He’ll fucking kill you.”

But I’m already up on my feet.

“I’m going,” I tell him and he curses at me.

“Did you not hear me? He’ll fucking kill you, Lissa. Call Helen, get her to babysit.”

“I need to go alone,” I say.

“No, you really fucking don’t.”

But I do.

I do need to go alone.

I take a shower and throw my everyday clothes on. A worn cami and a pair of budget jeans.

I don’t wear any makeup and I don’t spritz myself with designer perfume samples.

I just go as me.

I want him to know me. Me.

I want him to stare into my eyes and see me staring back at him.

I want to hear him say my real name.

But most of all I want to say sorry. I need to say sorry.

Even if it’s the last thing I ever do.

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

MELISSA

I DON’T bother checking into my own room at Delaney’s. I walk straight through reception and call the elevator. It takes me right up to the top floor, and I head for suite twelve with frantic steps.

I’m not scared.

My heart is already broken. I already hate myself for what I’ve done.

My dreams are already in tatters.

My breath is ragged as I reach the door, but I make no move to compose myself before I knock.

He keeps me waiting this time, and I wonder if he’s right on the other side. I wonder if he’s having second thoughts.

Tears spring to my eyes the very second he opens the door. Bittersweet relief floods through me.

Black suit, white shirt, black tie.

Dark eyes. Angry eyes.

Hurt eyes.

His hair is slick and his jaw is gritted.

The fine lines around his eyes look etched in. He looks tired. Damaged.

There’s a lump in my throat as I breathe him in for what might be the final time.

I soak in the shadow of stubble on his jaw. The birthmark on his cheek. The heaviness of his brow.