CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Af-ter run-ning from the jour-nal-ist, run-ning and run-ning and run-ning un-til I was hunched over by the lake and strug-gling to breathe, I called my mother ten, eleven, twelve times, but still she did not an-swer.
It felt at once in-cred-i-bly ob-vi-ous and ut-terly im-pos-si-ble.
The Masked Painter was my fa-ther.
Or at least, the orig-i-nal had been. The one who had painted my mother two decades ago.
And ac-cord-ing to my mother, he was dead.
I hadn’t seen it. I hadn’t seen how clearly the dots con-nected. Her fear of the po-lice, her as-ser-tion that bad things hap-pened in that gallery, her cer-tainty that he was gone. The para-noia that had rav-aged her for as long as I could re-mem-ber.
All at once, the truth hit me.
She had killed him.
The se-cret she didn’t want get-ting out was not the cost of her beauty.
It was the fact she was a mur-derer.
My fa-ther was dead. I would never know him.
It shouldn’t hurt, but it did. It hurt so much, the cer-tainty of it, the crush-ing per-ma-nence.
A vast, gnaw-ing part of me had al-ways hoped to meet my fa-ther one day. I had spent so much of my child-hood and ado-les-cence fan-ta-siz-ing about the love that would pass so freely be-tween us. He would be won-der-ful and warm and kind, car-ing in a way my mother would never be. Maybe he would take me to foot-ball matches on Sat-ur-days, and I wouldn’t care at all about the out-come but I’d just be so happy to be there with him, chant-ing and cheer-ing in our team’s ugly striped scarves, and he’d throw his arms around me when-ever we scored. When my car broke down, he would take it apart in our garage, wip-ing black oil from his hands with an old rag, an-i-mat-edly teach-ing me how to use a socket wrench to tighten the … some-thing.
I was keenly aware that this was a fac-sim-ile of fa-ther-hood con-structed from care-ful study of pop cul-ture, but I had no other ref-er-ence point be-yond lazy stereo-typ-ing of what a fam-ily man should be.
One of my fa-vorite fan-tasies was based around the hol-i-days. He’d take me gift shop-ping on Christ-mas Eve, and it would be hur-ried and stress-ful be-cause we’d left it so late and there was no bloody wrap-ping pa-per left any-where, but then it would start snow-ing and Princes Street would be all twin-kling lights and carol singers, like a scene from Love Ac-tu-ally, and we’d laugh and laugh and laugh be-cause we’d re-al-ized all that re-ally mat-tered was that we were to-gether as a fam-ily.
I had wanted him so badly. He would open up a whole new world for me.
Ex-cept now he never would.
He was part of this whole twisted night-mare.
A swan glided over to where I crouched on the lakeshore. Its move-ments were too silent; a shadow of the thing rather than the thing it-self. Then there were those eyes, coal black and frosted with cob-web wisp, some-thing un-nat-u-ral in their empty stare.
My fa-ther was dead.
My mother had killed him.
My thoughts whirred faster and faster in my head, a steel ball run-ning the op-po-site way around a spin-ning roulette wheel, never find-ing a notch in which to set-tle.
A hand cupped my el-bow, and I jumped. I hadn’t heard any-one ap-proach.
“Oh, Penny.” Catalina’s soft voice. “I take it you didn’t know your fa-ther had died?”
So cold I felt on the brink of death, I shook my head, the move-ment stiff and jar-ring.
She squeezed my arm. “Come on, let’s get you in-side.”
“What about class?” I asked. The words were hol-low as a well.
“We can catch up.” An as-ton-ish-ing sug-ges-tion from her—noth-ing meant more to her than her stud-ies. “I think right now the great-est im-por-tance is soup and blan-kets.”
There was a clench-ing sen-sa-tion in my chest, like a fist grip-ping my heart, and I strug-gled to breathe.
I’d had a few panic at-tacks be-fore. I knew the signs.
I tried to do the long, slow in-hale, the con-trolled ex-hale, but the breaths hitched in my throat, high-pitched and sob-like.
My fa-ther was dead, my mother was a mur-derer, and I was in dan-ger. My por-trait hung in an ar-cane gallery, the sub-jects from which were be-ing grad-u-ally ex-e-cuted. I felt ter-ri-fied and small and alone. I felt like I was in a room whose walls were grad-u-ally clos-ing in, and sooner or later, I would be crushed. I wanted to run, to scream, to hide. I wanted to break free of the prison of my body. I wanted to es-cape.
Catalina lifted me to my feet, and as we walked up to the dorm, I de-cided to tell her ev-ery-thing.
Ev-ery-thing.
I don’t know what made me do it: shock, or fear, or des-per-a-tion. Maybe the un-ex-pected tide of grief shook it loose, like the wan-ing sea drag-ging peb-bles back from the shore. Per-haps it was all of those things, in part, but deep down I think I wanted to vo-cal-ize it to con-vince my-self I wasn’t go-ing mad. I needed a calm, ra-tio-nal mind to talk it through with. To make it ex-ist out-side my own ab-surd ex-pe-ri-ences. Be-cause maybe, to an out-side ear, it was all ex-ceed-in-gly ob-vi-ous—who was do-ing this, and why, and what on earth I could do about it.
Or maybe I just wanted so badly not to be alone.
Catalina lis-tened as we squelched back up the rain-slicked lawn, as we squeaked wetly over the foyer in our halls, as we slipped into the kitchen with a swift flick of the ket-tle. She lis-tened as I told her about Or-lagh’s of-fer, and my sit-ting with the Masked Painter, and about all the fa-mous faces hang-ing in the Gallery of the Ex-quis-ite. She lis-tened as I de-scribed Or-lagh’s strangely marked corpse, and of how it fit into the med-i-cal ex-am-iner’s leaked story about the bod-ies of Celia Van Der Beek and Lyle Barr. She lis-tened as I told her my the-ory—that I be-lieved Davina was us-ing the paint-ings to kill off Do-rian alumni—and my fears that I would be next.
She lis-tened as I told her I was cer-tain the orig-i-nal Masked Painter was my fa-ther, though I left out my sus-pi-cions over who killed him.
She lis-tened as I told her that my mother had threat-ened to take her own life if I went to the po-lice.
She lis-tened even though ev-ery-thing I said sounded like the twisted night-mare of a con-fused child.
As I talked, I sank on to the squashy sofa in the liv-ing area, and she laid a bob-bly knit-ted blan-ket over my legs. It was hideously ugly, this blan-ket, ev-ery color of wool un-der the sun, with wonky cro-cheted flow-ers stitched all over it, but even though it was in-ca-pable of warm-ing me up, it spread over me an in-de-scrib-able sense of com-fort. As though it had mag-i-cal prop-er-ties, and not the dark and twisted kind I was be-com-ing ac-cus-tomed to at Do-rian.
She didn’t cod-dle me as tears slicked down my face, nor did she coo or fuss when I de-scribed the cold and the hunger I feared might never leave me. She just … lis-tened. She started chop-ping veg-eta-bles, soak-ing lentils for soup, lit-tle acts of love that came so ef-fort-lessly to her.
I don’t de-serve it, said a mis-er-able voice in-side my head.
Why not? asked a far younger one.
“Firstly, thank you for trust-ing me with all of this,” she said, once I’d fi-nally fin-ished talk-ing. “I can’t even imag-ine how you must be feel-ing right now. Like you’ve fallen into a hor-ror movie, I guess.”
“You be-lieve me?” I stared at her in a very out-of-char-ac-ter man-ner. “About the paint-ings be-ing some-how … magic?”
She sim-ply shrugged, brush-ing a lock of hair out of her face with the back of her hand, still clutch-ing the kitchen knife. “I mean, first of all, I’m quite used to my hip-pie mother’s tarot read-ings and Ouija boards. She taught seances as part of her home-school cur-ricu-lum. And sec-ondly, yeah. I be-lieve in magic.”
“You do? But you’re so … smart.”
Catalina cack-led, rich and earthy, the kind of laugh that made you smile just to hear it. “That’s why I be-lieve. You re-ally think the only real things in this world are the ones we can see? The stuff we can mea-sure with a yard-stick or a barom-e-ter or a pie chart? The ab-so-lute ar-ro-gance!”
“I don’t know what to do.” I tucked my feet un-der my-self, pulling the blan-ket up to my chin. It car-ried Catalina’s scent: car-damom tea and in-cense and hon-ey-suckle fab-ric soft-ener. “It’s like a maze where ev-ery pas-sage is a dead end. Where all the walls are mir-rors.”
“You’re sure it’s Davina? You think she could re-ally do some-thing like that?”
“As sure as I can be with-out proof. She’s threat-ened me to my face. And she had rea-son to si-lence Or-lagh.”
“What about Celia and Lyle?”
“That, I haven’t fig-ured out.”
There was, of course, the chance I was wrong. That my sus-pi-cions about Davina were sim-ply con-fir-ma-tion bias; my mind look-ing for ev-i-dence to back up the in-nate fear I felt around her. But there were no other im-me-di-ate sus-pects, no other ap-par-ent con-nec-tions be-tween the wounds on my body and the tally of corpses.
“And you can’t go to the po-lice, be-cause your mum said she would…” Her eyes—slicked with warm cop-per eye-shadow—nar-rowed. “Why do you think she wants so badly to avoid the cops?”
I had to lie, even though it bris-tled against ev-ery fiber of my be-ing. “I think she just doesn’t want the truth about her beauty to leak.”
Catalina looked at me then, sear-in-gly, not the cold vulpine ici-ness of Davina but some-thing al-to-gether softer, brighter.
“Why did you do it, Penny?” she asked, lay-ing down the knife and wip-ing her hands on a vin-tage flo-ral tea towel.
I averted my gaze from the fierce search of hers. There was a fuch-sia-pink feather boa slung over the back of the sofa—stolen from the Cos-tumery, per-haps—and I fo-cused on its gar-ish plumage.
“Do what?”
“Say yes to Or-lagh’s of-fer.” A quiet beat. “It’s so un-bear-ably sad.”
Sad.
That’s not the word I ever ex-pected her to use. Stupid, self-ish, shal-low … but not sad.
And yet there was such pre-ci-sion to it. She hadn’t cho-sen that word by ac-ci-dent.
Some-how, it made me feel sad too; aching in a place I tried so very hard to ig-nore. It brought to mind that voice in the back of my head right be-fore the Masked Painter cut into me: I’m sorry.
“I don’t know why,” I an-swered, al-though it wasn’t the whole truth. It was sim-ply that the whole truth was too com-pli-cated and messy for even me to com-pre-hend. “It’s just … be-ing beau-ti-ful is so im-por-tant to me. To the world. And I don’t know why that is. I don’t know why I would value it over my life.”
She re-sumed chop-ping, dic-ing pota-toes with a chef’s deft-ness. “A lot of schol-ars link it to find-ing a mate—we’re wired to be ob-sessed with pro-cre-ation, right? Sur-vi-val of the species? Get-ting railed is our first pri-or-ity.”
Just as Or-lagh had said. I laughed, but it was brit-tle. “Even for us gays?”
Catalina beamed. “Even for us gays.”
With a sharp, bright jolt, I reg-is-tered the fact she was gay too. It felt like the sun ap-pear-ing from be-hind a cloud.
Stop it. Not this again. Re-mem-ber Samara.
But the way the cool au-tumn light was hit-ting her face … the way she made me feel so safe and warm. It was hard to ig-nore.
“I think … I think there’s more to it, though.” I took an-other sip of tea. “The self-star-va-tion thing. Be-cause log-i-cally I know that be-ing a bag of skin and bones is hardly beau-ti-ful.” I pressed my thumb against my bot-tom lip, feel-ing the soft brush of my cash-mere jumper on my skin. “Or-lagh thought it was about con-trol.”
“And I get that. What young woman doesn’t want to feel like they ac-tu-ally have con-trol over some-thing? Maybe it’s why I like DnD so much. Mas-ter of my own fate, yada yada.”
An-other strike of the tun-ing fork. I thought of all the minia-ture rules and chal-lenges I set for my-self—make it to eleven and you can have a cof-fee, an ap-ple at three, a Diet Coke at four—and the surge of sat-is-fac-tion when I met them.
Some-thing, some-thing was in my con-trol, no mat-ter how small. A stark con-trast to the rest of my child-hood, pushed and pulled along on the whims and pit-falls of my mother’s ad-dic-tion, like a piece of drift-wood at sea. The con-trol over my own body was the small-est of an-chors.
“You feel it too?” I asked, a lump bob-bing in my throat now. Catalina’s keen in-tel-li-gence al-ways seemed to cut right to the heart of the mat-ter, and it left me breath-less. “That need for con-trol?”
“Of course.” She filled the ket-tle, then crum-bled two stock cubes into a mea-sur-ing jug. “You know, when I was thir-teen my par-ents de-cided to quit their cor-po-rate jobs in Madrid, sell our house and all our be-long-ings, and move into a con-verted van. They said they were go-ing to home-school me and my sis-ter, and that we were go-ing to travel all over Eu-rope in-stead of liv-ing a con-ven-tional life.” Some-thing bit-ter passed over her usu-ally gen-tle face. “Over the course of a sin-gle week-end, I felt like I lost ev-ery-thing. My school, my friends, my home. My pri-vacy.”
“They didn’t ask if you even wanted to?”
“They did. They just ig-nored the an-swer. Said I’d change my mind once I saw how free we could be.” She pressed her hands on the edge of the counter, bent at the waist as though mo-men-tar-ily winded. “Then they started post-ing ev-ery-thing about van life on so-cial me-dia, as though it was this idyl-lic, no-madic life-style. But in re-al-ity, we’d just pull into beauty spots, take pho-tos and videos of the view, then spend the rest of the day try-ing to find some-where with ac-tual fa-cil-i-ties. I re-sented them so much. And my sis-ter and I fought all the time, be-cause we’d gone from hav-ing sep-a-rate bed-rooms to shar-ing a bunk bed over the driver’s seat. I used to dream about her get-ting sucked away with the sewage.” A bright peal of laugh-ter.
She stood back up and flicked the light on the gas stove. “And yeah, I just felt like I’d lost all the con-trol over my own life. I started re-strict-ing for a few years, be-cause if I couldn’t con-trol my world at least I could con-trol my body. Then came the di-a-betes di-ag-no-sis, and I had to start eat-ing prop-erly again. If I didn’t want to die, of course.”
“Was the di-a-betes … linked? Caused by—”
“No.” She shook her head. “It’s type one, which means it’s a ge-netic au-toim-mune dis-ease. Noth-ing I could’ve done to pre-vent it.”
“How do you feel now?” I asked. “About your body, I mean. Which is, as far as bod-ies go, a fuck-ing as-tound-ing one.”
I re-al-ized too late how brazen the com-ment was, wish-ing I could yank it back.
Catalina blushed fu-ri-ously, but a smile worked at her lips. “Thanks. I dunno, it’s hard. I think I look great. And as long as my sug-ars are un-der con-trol, I feel pretty great too. It’s just hard, some-times, when the world equates thin-ness and beauty. I have to be pretty vig-i-lant with my thoughts. Make sure I don’t buy into that shit again.”
I gazed out of the win-dow to the Cross-woods as a breeze whirled through the branches. I no-ticed that, de-spite the ter-ri-ble rev-e-la-tions of the morn-ing, I felt less anx-ious and fright-ened than I had in weeks. Catalina’s pres-ence was so easy that even my buck-ing heart, doomed to pal-pi-tate for-ever, seemed to calm.
“It’s all so messed up,” I said. Now that we’d started talk-ing about it, I found my-self not want-ing to stop. I’d kept it locked in-side me for so long. “It’s like I told Or-lagh—I don’t know who I am with-out my looks.”
“So maybe it’s not that you want beauty,” Catalina said thought-fully. “It’s that you want iden-tity. Ev-ery-one wants to feel like some-one, and beauty is a short-cut to that.”
She was so right it stole the breath from my lungs. I’d spent my whole life in my mother’s shadow, a poor im-i-ta-tion of her, with-out ever hav-ing a true sense of who I re-ally was. “Beau-ti-ful” was just an easy short-hand.
Once the pan of soup had started to bub-ble, Catalina placed a lid over the top and started scrap-ing peel-ings into the bin. “Can I ask you some-thing?”
“Of course.”
“What did you love do-ing as a kid?”
“As a kid, I was pretty much ob-sessed with gain-ing my mother’s love, by any means nec-es-sary.” I fid-dled with the hem of my jumper. “I’d do fash-ion shows up and down the hall-way, think-ing that’s what she wanted from me. But when I was at school, and I could kind of for-get about her for those hours ev-ery day … I loved chess.”
Catalina’s smiled broad-ened. There was the slight-est gap be-tween her front teeth. “That’s not what I thought you were go-ing to say.”
I shrugged. “It made sense to me. I’ve al-ways found other peo-ple’s thoughts and feel-ings and emo-tions so hard to nav-i-gate, but there’s not re-ally any of that on the chess-board.”
“Why did you stop play-ing?”
“We moved from Lon-don to Ed-in-burgh, and my new school was so much smaller than my last one. There was no chess club, and to be hon-est I was too self-con-scious to try and start one. I played a bit on-line, but it wasn’t the same, re-ally.”
Catalina clapped her hands to-gether. “Would you like to play with me?”
A flicker of child-ish ex-cite-ment flared in my tummy; a pleas-ant change from hol-low hunger. “You’d do that?”
“Sure. My dad played a lot of street chess in Madrid. He taught me and my sis-ter when we were kids.”
“I only have a tiny travel set,” I warned her.
“That’s okay. I have good glasses.”
Af-ter I’d re-trieved the chess set from the back of my wardrobe—stuffed there hastily the day I ar-rived, as though hid-ing a dark se-cret—we sat on op-po-site sides of the break-fast bar. I was still wrapped in my thick fur coat, bone-cold, but my skin could tell that the room was warm and cozy. The win-dows were steamed up from the soup. The lid rat-tled on top of the pan.
We set up the board, and my fin-ger-tips al-most fizzed with an-tic-i-pa-tion.
Catalina took the white pieces. She pushed her king’s pawn for-ward two squares. I moved my queen’s pawn for-ward two; an in-vi-ta-tion, and an at-tack.
“The Scan-di-na-vian De-fense,” she said, nod-ding pen-sively. “Nice. Ag-gres-sive.”
“You know the names of the open-ings too?” I asked in sur-prise.
“Sure. Doesn’t nec-es-sar-ily mean I know how to play them, though.”
She took my pawn with hers, and I cap-tured back with my queen—mean-ing all other pieces were still in place, with the ex-cep-tion of my dom-i-nant queen in the cen-ter. She did the ob-vi-ous thing of push-ing my queen away with her knight, but I swung it out to the side of the board and she couldn’t touch it for a few more moves.
I used the time wisely, get-ting all my mi-nor pieces into de-vel-oped po-si-tions, castling queen-side ready for an ag-gres-sive pawn rush on her king. I thought I’d be rusty, but the beau-ti-ful thing about chess was that it never changed. I slipped back into the rhythm of it, cal-cu-lat-ing and in-tu-it-ing and strate-giz-ing. Catalina never made any glar-ing mis-takes, but I was able to cap-i-tal-ize on some of the mi-nor in-ac-cu-ra-cies she made.
As I played, I found that all other thoughts left my head, since I needed all my brain-power for the com-plex po-si-tions I was pro-cess-ing. I found a calm-ness, a rhythm, that I hadn’t felt in a long time. Some-thing al-most re-sem-bling peace.
I pushed and pushed, re-lent-less in the for-ward thrust of my at-tack. She coun-tered as best she could, but af-ter ten min-utes, I had mate in three, and she had noth-ing to de-fend with.
She stared down at the board. “My god, Penny.”
Glow-ing be-neath her ad-mi-ra-tion, I couldn’t help the un-sports-man-like grin spread-ing across my face. It was an un-fa-mil-iar feel-ing, to smile so widely. “I for-got how good that feels.”
“There you go—a new iden-tity for you. Fright-en-in-gly gifted chess player.” She shook her head, then laughed, then stud-ied me with those bur-nished bronze eyes.
I nod-ded sin-cerely. “Have I told you I’m also a fairly de-cent fencer?”
A se-ri-ous ex-pres-sion fixed on my face, I climbed to my feet and mimed out my best moves. Fenc-ing had been a brief but fu-ri-ous pas-sion when I was eleven, be-fore I re-al-ized how un-cool it was. How un-be-fit-ting it was for the daugh-ter of an icon.
Catalina col-lapsed with laugh-ter. “I’ll bear that in mind next time I need a swordswoman.” She gazed up at me with an im-pen-e-tra-ble look on her sunny face. “I think you might be the most in-ter-est-ing per-son I’ve ever met. You make me want to peel back the lay-ers of you to see what I might find next.”
Ev-ery-thing in me sang. And for the first time in a long time, I re-al-ized this was what I wanted. I wanted joy and soft-ness, laugh-ter and kin-ship, games and food and love. I didn’t want to be a husk of a per-son any more.
Catalina … she made me want to be bet-ter. She made me want it more than I ever had.
And—also for the first time—she made it feel gen-uinely pos-si-ble.
Later that night, I awoke to a hot, sharp pain on my face.
Gasp-ing, I sat bolt up-right, limbs white-hot with adren-a-line. It felt as though a blade had been dragged across my cheek, the pain sear-ing bright. I half ex-pected to see a hulk-ing sil-hou-ette in my room, but there was no one there. When I held my palm to my sting-ing cheek, there was no warm ooze of blood.
I lay back against the pil-low, steady-ing my breath, rein-ing in my buck-ing heart-beat. Just a dream, I told my-self. One of those aw-ful, sen-tient dreams where the pain fol-lows you out of it.
Switch-ing on the bed-side lamp with a trem-bling hand, I picked up my phone from the bed-side ta-ble and opened the front-fac-ing cam-era.
No. Please, no.
A stark red-pur-ple mark bi-sected my jut-ting cheek-bone.