‘It wasn’t like that,’ I say as he steps in front of me, glowering.
‘You brought that
thug
to the house where my brother lies vulnerable in his own bed. To the place where my own wife and child are currently sheltering? You let him persuade you to do that?’
‘He never persuaded me.’ It’s my turn now to look shocked. ‘You need to stop jumping to conclusions. You need to just stop and
listen to me
.
It was I who persuaded him to come. He didn’t want to come back here,
why would he
?’ Ty raises his clenched hand to his mouth and Dad’s hand tightens in mine.
‘Rose was acting in my best interests, Ty
.
’
He
warns his younger brother. ‘She alone knows how much I have suffered these last five years. She knew how to release me from it, and I thank her for that. I thank
him
,’ his voice wobbles, ‘that boy, for having the courage to come back here and say to me what he did.’
‘I see,’ my uncle looks away now, looks down at the floor but I can tell he doesn’t really see. He is way too angry. He doesn’t see at all.
‘And where is he now?’
‘He’s gone,’ Dad says. ‘He left here a good hour ago.’
My uncle’s face is a picture.
You let him g
o ...
every inch of him is saying, but he doesn’t voice the words out loud. He says nothing, nothing at all for a good few minutes while he struggles to come to terms with what he should do next, what part he should play in all of this, if any.
‘Then we will leave,’ he gets out at last. His back is suddenly stiff, his whole posture has changed from what it was before. ‘You clearly don’t need us here anymore, and if your long-running feud with your neighbour has been resolved by this Jack, then... I can only say I’m happy for you.’
‘Not yet,’ Dad says, and there’s something in his voice that even Ty still recognises as the voice of his older brother. ‘You can’t leave yet, because it’s not over yet.’
‘No?’ my uncle throws at him, but no matter how antsy his tone I can feel that he’s been thrown by the things he’s just learned. He doesn’t want to believe there can be any good in Lawrence. But he has to acknowledge that
we
think so. That there might be something worth salvaging there.
‘Lawrence is in danger, Ty’ I step in now. ‘He’s always been in danger. From his own people, that’s why he never came back here after what he did.’
‘Oh?’ My uncle steps back a pace. ‘You know where he is, then?’ I can hear little strange breathing noises coming from my aunt, now. Out of the corner of my eye I can see my cousin trying to comfort her, telling her that it’s okay, everything’s okay... even though from the shock in her voice she clearly doesn’t think it is.
‘Where is he, Rose?’ Uncle Ty crouches down, beside me. His hands on my knees feel like the weight of all the world, every authority figure I have ever known, the police, every judge and jury in the land, what I imagine them all to be
.
‘Okay, Rose. Okay.’ He slides his mobile out from his jacket pocket. ‘He didn’t hurt you. Or threaten you. But now you’re ready to shop him. Just do it. Where is he?’
I put my hand on my uncle’s arm, my face hardening.
‘I’m not doing this to shop him, Ty. I’m doing it because it’s the only way I can save him.’
‘Are you sure that’s how
he’ll
see it?’ He slides my hand off his arm. ‘Don’t bank on it, Rose.’
I stop, taking in the truth of his words because I know Lawrence won’t want me to do this. He won’t want me to call the police on him right now, to betray his whereabouts. But at Macrae Farm, everything works according to Rob Macrae’s rules. I know that as well as Lawrence does. I know he cannot come out of this in any good way. I don’t know what else to do.
‘He’s gone to back to Macrae Farm.’ What else can I do?
What else?
I can feel my aunt and cousin looking at me in shocked curiosity now, a thousand questions milling uncomfortably in their eyes.
‘What must it have been
like
, being up there,’ my cousin’s voice cuts through my thoughts. ‘What was it like,
being
with
him?’
She cannot know that. She cannot even guess. How I have been with him, in what way. And what that was like. I shake my head at her and my uncle goes out into the hallway, calling the local police station. I can hear him, even as she keeps asking me questions, shaking my hand to get my attention when I don’t answer. I’m only half-listening to her, I can hear Ty telling whoever’s at the end of the line that there’s been a breakthrough and this is urgent. They need to come out and arrest a suspect immediately.
That’s great,
he’s saying
, thank you. Thank you, we’ll expect you any minute then.
‘It must have been a terrifying ordeal for you,’ Carlotta’s actually got tears in her eyes. ‘Terrifying. Once you knew who he was. I don’t know how you got through it, Rose, I really don’t.’
‘It wasn’t ... terrifying,’ I begin. I turn to Dad and his eyes say ‘Slowly and steady does it, my love.’ He gives a tiny shake of his head. I don’t have to tell them everything all at once, he’s saying to me. One little bit at a time.
‘Right. Best get your coat on, Rose.’ Ty’s back in the room, his face still looking like thunder but there’s an underlying confusion, a hurt and a feeling of puzzlement in there too, now; it’s the feeling that the two ends of the rope that go to encompass the world as he understands it don’t fit together anymore. Things are no longer as they should be. Something is broken.
‘They’re sending some men out to Macrae Farm and they want us out there too.’ His voice sounds cut up. He doesn’t quite look at me as he speaks.
‘Us?’ I look at him in alarm. He’s just told me to put my coat on, hasn’t he? I didn’t think to ask why. I didn’t want to know why.
‘You,’ Ty corrects. ‘They want you to be present at the time of arrest. But I’ll come with you.’ The thought of it is worse than anything else. Me being there at the end, when they get to him. I don’t want to be there. I don’t want to be there and Lawrence knowing that it was me who betrayed him to the police.
‘They want you to identify him as the man you’ve been with. The man who’s confessed to you. He
did
confess it all, I take it?’ My uncle pats me perfunctorily on the shoulder. ‘Come on now, Rose. Cat got your tongue? You’re the girl who wants to go off to the halls of learning to study the law! Here’s your chance to see a bit of justice in action
, to make it happen
.’ He’s business-like, suddenly driven, and I get a glimpse of what this means to him, as well. The chance to see Lawrence brought to justice is something he’s been waiting for, for a long time, too.
‘Come on, Rose,’ he urges as he sees me hesitate. ‘We need to get there before his family spirit him away again.’
‘They won’t, though. They won’t protect him.’
Uncle Ty shoots me a dark look, then. A look that tells me I’d better just get my coat on and shut up. He’s not entirely convinced of my innocence in all of this, I can tell. He’s not happy that I kept so quiet about everything I knew right up till this point, that I’ve wasted all this time, maybe even allowing the perpetrator a chance to get away. He doesn’t understand it.
‘These people will close ranks, Rose. Don’t you doubt it
. Families
stick together in times of trouble.’ His eyes are laden with reproach. ‘Don’t you know that, Rose? Don’t you know that’s how it goes?’ He shakes his head at me and I can feel his anger and his huge upset at me with every breath, with every tiny movement of his shoulders as we go downstairs and he shuffles his coat on again, pulls on his boots.
‘Lawrence made a mistake,’ I tell him once he’s standing there, ready to take me as soon as the police come. ‘He made a terrible mistake and then he stayed away for five years and made it all that much worse. He never came back until now, to see how he might have helped put things right but now he
has
. He did. At least you have to give him credit for that much?’
I feel him sniff, in a hurt way, in the darkness of the downstairs hallway. He doesn’t want me to be understanding. He doesn’t want me to be forgiving, or for Dad to be. He doesn’t see how that’s the only way any of us are ever going to move on.
‘You’ve pretty much stayed away for those five years, too.’ I remind him in a small voice and I can feel his intake of breath, though he says nothing, doesn’t even make a slight move at that comment. ‘And it’s only now that you’ve had a chance to see Jack over Christmas, that you’ve started to look into how things might be put right for him.’
‘
I
didn’t put my brother in this situation, Rose,’ he reminds me acidly.
‘But
families stick together in times of trouble
, don’t they, Ty?’
He doesn’t answer, but I feel something go in, then. Something sticks. Maybe part of his fury at Lawrence - his unwillingness to see that this boy has any good in him at all - comes from his own guilt at not doing more for his brother beforehand? The discomfort he feels at his own inaction. I don’t know. I pull my own spare coat down from the rack and put in on.
And then we stand in the hallway for the longest fifteen minutes of my life, waiting for the crunch of footsteps outside in the drive, waiting for the sharp knock on the door to let us know; the police have arrived.
They say when you come to the end of your time you get a flashback of it all. Your whole life scrolls before you like a slideshow, every last moment of it. I had no idea those pictures could come so fast and yet be so clear; that it might even be possible to feel those things over again and all so keenly. The night Kahn first came home; all velvet paws, ungainly walk, curious and unafraid. My heart swells again at the first sight of him. How I loved him, how I knew that he would be mine even though he’d never been intended for me.
My brother and I are throwing scraps to the pigs. They are so noisy and so big. They smell! He’s scared of them. I tell him he mustn’t be. That he mustn’t be afraid. I don’t know where my mother is.
The moon grows big, over the hill, a harvest-yellow moon and the fields are ripe with corn. I’m walking with some girl. The first girl I ever kissed. The first time I ever realised what it was all about. I want to stay there but the scenes are shifting so rapidly, my life rushing away like grains of sand through a timer and now there is this huge flash of shock, the sound of falling masonry, the smell of fear in my nostrils as my sanctuary is being torn down around me.
But no matter, for here is Mrs Patel. She is feeding me rice and lentils in her busy kitchen. The whole house smells of pungent spices, there is no escape from them, not in the hallway, not in the sitting-room, not even in the crowded utility space where she hangs out their washing and they have placed a small put-you-up bed for me. I’m studying in there. The feel of the paper beneath my fingers is smooth. For the first time in my life I’m studying because Mrs Patel insists that I should. In a strange, uncomfortable way, I am happy in there, in my little room.
My father jolts me now, swings me round over his shoulder like a rag-doll, interrupting the flow of my life, jolting me back into this world, startling me. I don’t know quite where I am. I cannot remember how I got here and I do not want to remember. I do not want to come back. The pictures of all my life, they were so beautiful. So much more beautiful than the place where my body is now. And I am tired. I am hurt.
So hurt. I cannot move. My arms hang limply down over my father’s shoulder. I force one eye open, and the ground beneath me is blurred, everything is dimmed. The afternoon is cold, I can feel it on my back. I think; we are out in the yard. Snow and black pebbles crunch beneath my father’s boots and when I try to remember how I got here my brain hurts. It hurts as if selective parts of my memory have been wiped clean and I know I should not try to bring them back.
I slid the colt along the floor towards him. I know I did that. That was the last thing I did. To show him; I could have killed him but I chose not. That I am not like him. The last act of my life, I think; it will be my last. I can hear the noise he made in his throat when he saw that I’d taken his gun. And now, every last nerve buzzing, I can still feel the coldness of the gun barrel as he stuck the colt to my head, pressed it in, tight. I can feel the veins in my head throbbing at the memory. How it hurt. How the sound of the empty click as he pulled the trigger back, released it, sounded like an explosion in my brain even though the gun was empty. I think I remember him laughing. How his laughter sounded coarse and cracked, hacked into phlegm by years of tobacco abuse.
As if my victory in
not
aiming that gun at his head and shooting it was an empty one. The gun was not loaded
;
I could not have hurt him.
But I know my gesture was not empty.
My head hurts now, it hurts so much but I still cling on to one thing; I know that when I chose to put that gun down, slide it back over to him -
in that moment
- I became my own man. In that moment of surrender, I chose to claim the only victory that I still could. I chose not to kill him. Not to be the brute he’s always wanted me to be. And when he stopped laughing, his face going down at the sides in a strangely-rapid change of sentiment, I saw that he knew it, too. He knew that he had not really won anything at all.
And I saw his face.
And I
knew,
that if I would not be that man, then he would not let me live. And now - for so many reasons he would never understand - I have every reason to
want
to live. I want... oh God, there are so many things I still want. I want Rose. I want my life back, the life I could have still had. All of it. All the places I haven’t yet been, the times we could have had together. It is so cold. I want to see the sun in the sky again, but...
I made my choice. It is time to go to the place where he cannot hurt me, where he cannot reach me any longer. And I am so nearly there.
My eye closes and my blurred view of the yard scrolls into rain, warm rain, and I’m cycling on a borrowed bike down some muddy camp road in Jaffna. The afternoon I arrived was so quiet but it exploded into action in less than an hour. I didn’t know what to do. Fresh out of training, what did I know? There was so much noise, people shouting, people running everywhere. They brought the broken bodies in and we did what we could. I helped them, I was brave, I tried to save them. And then the sun is rising over the forests on some sparkling golden morning and I am breathing it in, just me, alone. The air smells of the bright exotic flowers of Asia, it smells intoxicatingly sweet. On a morning like this, I don’t know how there can be anything but peace in this world.
And then at last I am standing in my sanctuary again, with Rose, my arms wrapped around her. There is a stillness and a peace in the quiet snow lying
on
the ground at our feet. The air is shrouded in a cold mist, but her body pressed against mine is so warm. The forgiveness in her heart is like a golden light that has freed me. She and her father - they have both freed me. I see that now. No matter what happens next, nobody can touch me now. The pictures stop. Now that I am at the end of it, I’m not sure, looking back on my life, what it was all about, what it was all
for
. Did I help anyone? Did I make it right? I know, in the end, I did help Sunny. But there were so many moments, there, touched with joy and sadness and, in the end, real love.
Maybe that’s what it was all for? That’s what everything was leading to; that I should know Rose, that I should love her.
That I should know that she loved me.
That is the one last thing I think before the darkness comes.