Authors: Sarah Pinborough
The Death House (19 page)
‘You have to make this work for all of us, Louis. This life business. Will you do that?’ I’m biting back my own tears now. He nods.
‘And I’m sorry, Louis, I’m sorry about Will. I’m sorry about everything.’
‘I’m sorry I got mad.’ He reaches up and grabs at my hand. He squeezes it so tight I don’t think he’ll ever let me go. ‘Please come with me.’
I carefully pull my hand away before I can change my mind and jump in there with him. ‘I can’t, Louis. I just can’t.’
I grin then, wide and easy, and I’m surprised how natural it is. The last embers of the ball of dread in my stomach blow away in the breeze. I am as free as a bird. The master of my own destiny. ‘Be lucky, Louis. And don’t be a total nerd all your life.’
He smiles back at me and for a second everything is perfect.
‘Goodbye, Louis,’ I say.
‘Goodbye, Toby.’
And then I’m running as fast as I can away from the jetty and the house and back to the road. I know where I have to go. I have to go home.
I see the tiny flicker of the candle as I run along the beach, the wet sand and shingle crunching under my feet. The sea rustles as it laps against the land and I’m sure it’s applauding me. I’m breathless when I reach the mouth of the cave.
‘You didn’t wake me,’ I say, grinning. ‘It’s our last night and you didn’t wake me.’
‘Toby?’ Clara stares up at me. She’d been lost in thought but now stares, utterly aghast. ‘What are you doing? You should be waiting for the boat. Go back to the boat.’ She stands, angry and upset. ‘You can’t be here!’
‘Louis’ there,’ I say. ‘And I
can
be here. I belong here.’
‘But you can’t . . . I don’t want you here—’
I wrap my arms around her and kiss her, forcing her to be quiet, and I don’t care that she tastes funny, sick; she’s Clara and I love her. She’s me and I’m her. We can’t be parted.
‘I want to be here,’ I say.
‘I’m sorry,’ she says. Her anger has gone, but she sounds sad.
‘What for?’
She steps back and lifts up her top. Her whole body is covered in black patches. The bruise I saw on her hip must have been the start. Now her pale skin has all but vanished.
I lean forward and gently kiss her belly button. I don’t care that she kept her sickness a secret from me. I think of the secret I’m keeping from her. The letter now in Louis’ pocket. The last paragraph. The last line:
Testing concludes that neither of these patients carries the Defective gene and their original results must have been contaminated samples. They are both healthy, normal subjects.
Some secrets are better kept than shared. It doesn’t matter now anyway. I’ve made my choice. I’ve chosen Clara.
‘I’m not going back to the house,’ she says simply. ‘I won’t go to the sanatorium.’
‘I know. I figured that out.’ I sit on the rocks and she sits beside me. ‘I’m not going back to the house, either.’
‘But if you leave now you could still catch the boat,’ she says. ‘There’s time.’
I smile and shake my head. I’m not going with Louis. Nor am I going back to the house. I’m staying right here, by her side, where I belong.
‘I figure I’ll just sit right here with you.’ I’m controlling my own destiny, and my fate is with her. It always has been.
‘But you don’t understand—’ she starts.
‘Yes, I do.’ I push a strand of her beautiful hair from her eyes. ‘Together for ever,’ I say.
There should be so much weight in those words, but they’re light as snowflakes on my tongue. I think maybe the right words always are.
Her eyes widen slightly and I see a range of emotions flicker in them. Surprise, fear, and then finally, as my meaning dawns on her, a bright joy of relief. Happiness. She smiles back.
‘You’re going to stay with me?’
‘Together for ever,’ I repeat, and wink at her. My heart is so full of love there’s no room for the dark ball in the pit of my stomach any more.
‘Together for ever,’ she says and leans into my shoulder.
In the distance I hear the first thrum of boat engines, almost ghostly, but there all the same. Good. We got the date right.
‘I think Louis will make it,’ I say, sniffing in the breeze and staring out at the water. He’s clever. And he won’t want to let me down. He’ll make it.
‘I hope so,’ Clara says, and I know she means it. There’s no bitterness in her voice, no envy.
She’s fiddling with something in her hands and I peer at it. It looks like a strip of black leather with prongs at the corners. I smile again. The smiles comes easily now the dread is gone.
‘Where did you find that?’
‘Just outside the cave. It’s weird, isn’t it?’
‘My mum showed me one on a beach once. It’s called a mermaid’s purse.’ I kiss her head. ‘A mermaid purse for a Mermaid Queen.’
‘No shit!’ She grins wide and lets out a tinkling laugh that the cave holds on to, echoing it back to us as if the rocky walls are joining in.
‘Yes shit.’
We look out over the water for a while, arms around each other and her head on my shoulder. There are no bright lights in the sky tonight but it’s beautiful all the same. I think the water will be cold when it comes.
‘It’s been brilliant, hasn’t it?’ she murmurs.
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Yes, it has.’
She sniffs and we kiss again, and just enjoy each other’s quiet company. We don’t say a lot. There isn’t a lot left to say. The house is gone.
Before
is gone.
After
is gone. There’s only us and the cave and now. But we have burned brightly, me and Clara, and that’s all that matters. We just sit and wait for dawn to break and the curious waves to creep towards the cave. I wonder how long the cave will hold us before the tide stakes its claim and we slip into the depths like mermaids. I don’t mind much either way, as long as we’re together.
After a while, the candle splutters out.
‘My mum wasn’t a bitch,’ I say eventually when my legs are numb with cold. There’s no beach left outside the cave entrance and soon there’ll be no way back to the cliff path. If there’s a last moment to change my mind, this is it, but I don’t. I don’t even consider it. I just want to unsay my lie to someone. It’s suddenly important. ‘I don’t know why I said she was.’
‘Good,’ Clara says. ‘That’s a good thing.’
She wraps her arms around my neck and kisses me some more. We don’t stop kissing, not even when the cold water laps at our jeans and makes us gasp and shiver. We breathe each other in for as long as we can. I fill my hands with her warm, wild hair, relishing the thick texture. Her mouth is soft and I can feel all her love mingling with mine. She laughs for a moment, our faces close. Her teeth are white and bright. Her freckles sit like stars on her face.
‘I love you, Toby,’ she whispers through chattering teeth as the sea rises around us.
‘I love you too, Clara,’ I whisper back.
I’m smiling although tears sting my eyes. I hold her tight and kiss her some more. I’m going to keep on kissing her for as long as I can.
I don’t think about the black forever darkness of the water. I think about mermaids. I think about the boat. I hope Louis has got away. I hope he lives a long and fantastic life. I hope he finds someone he can be as perfectly happy with as Clara has made me. I think about all the atoms racing around the world, all the people who have ever been, now in the trees and the waves and the wind. I think about our initials carved in the old oak’s bark that will be there for hundreds of years. Mainly, as the sea pulls at us and my heart races and we cling to each other, I think about Clara and me and how lucky we were to find each other and how brilliant life has been. How brilliant she is. How brilliant love is.
We hold on to each other even as the waves close over our heads. As my final breath burns in my lungs, I keep my lips pressed to hers while her mermaid hair streams like seaweed around us.
I am not afraid.
THE END.
Thanks once again to Gillian Redfearn and the whole team at Gollancz for all their support with this book, and of course my lovely agent Veronique Baxter. A special thanks also to Lee Thompson who has to put up with all my writery struggles and knows that most of them can be solved with a good whinge and a glass of wine and some chocolate. He is the best.
Also by Sarah Pinborough from Gollancz:
A Matter of Blood
The Shadow of the Soul
The Chosen Seed
Poison
Charm
Beauty
As Sarah Silverwood:
The Double-Edged Sword
The Traitor’s Gate
The London Stone
A Gollancz eBook
Copyright © Sarah Pinborough 2015
All rights reserved.
The right of Sarah Pinborough to be identified as the author
of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in Great Britain in 2015 by
Gollancz
The Orion Publishing Group Ltd
Orion House
5 Upper Saint Martin’s Lane
London, WC2H 9EA
An Hachette UK Company
This eBook first published in 2015 by Gollancz.
A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978 0 575 09706 3
All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
