Chapter Twenty-Two
Jake
It’s freeze-your-tits-off cold in here. And dark, with only a sliver of light from a lamppost outside cutting through the crack in the curtains, just enough to make out shapes in the room.
This place seems absent of smell … and absent of character, which is very unlike Belle.
I squint to try to take in more surroundings.
We’re standing in front of a built-in kitchenette.
The sink is overflowing with dirty dishes.
A leather sofa sits next to a wall, deep white cracks marbling its covers.
A fly buzzes through the room. I swat it away.
I would normally make a joke here. I don’t have one.
Before I get a chance to check Belle is okay, a door on the far side of the room slowly opens.
A girl scurries into the room, a bag under her arm, moving from surface to surface and stuffing things in: a notebook, a jumper from the back of the sofa.
Same hair, roughly, but this can’t be Belle.
Even I can see the difference between glossy and this – her dark roots have grown out, and the rest of it is dull and flat, like she’s just stopped caring.
And her posture. Even in the dark, I can see her form, how her shoulders are curved forward, head tilted down, the vertebrae at the base of her neck pushing against the skin. She reminds me of those fossils at the Natural History Museum.
She drops her bag on the sofa and moves into a side room without turning on the light and comes back arms full – toiletry bag, a toothbrush, wipes, a brush. She stuffs them into her bag.
The Belle I know fills a room with light without trying. This girl is a shadow and doesn’t want to be seen. I watch her work the room in silence and think we must be in the wrong flashback. Gabe has cocked this one up. We’re meant to be somewhere else, and this is someone else entirely.
And then she steps into the light of the streetlamp that is still forcing its way through the curtains, and reaches to unplug a charger from an extension cord – and I realise.
It is Belle.
This can’t be right. I know this woman, have loved this woman … and yet I’m standing in this room looking straight at her and I don’t know who she is.
She’s tiny – really fucking frail. It’s like she’s been stripped of her glow.
That warmth that followed her around for years has been hollowed out, like someone reached in and took the light.
As she winds the cable up, I catch a glimpse of her arm, then her neck.
Deep blue splotches which seem dark at the centre and then yellowing at the edges. Old ones and new ones.
I stare. I keep staring, keep waiting for my brain to offer me something … an explanation … anything, but nothing comes and there is nothing I can do. I can’t cross the room, can’t even turn the light on to see her properly.
Gone are the plump cheeks, the smooth skin, the bright eyes. Instead, her eyes are framed with dark circles, her skin blotchy, cheeks gaunt.
I’m angry now, so fucking mad, which feels useless because … What can I do?
‘What the fuck, Belles?’ I look at her beside me. She’s very still, eyes to the floor. A part of me shatters. I thought nothing could compare to the rage I felt seeing her post-fuck with Vik, but this … This is awful.
Like a mouse, timid and nervous, young Belle scuttles back to the sofa. She pulls on a hoodie, before stuffing a laptop and charger into her bag and zipping it up.
‘You’re leaving?’ I ask.
‘Running away from my own home, in the middle of the night,’ she whispers and then laughs, once, a short sharp sound with nothing funny in it.
‘He doesn’t know?’ I look to the bedroom door and then back to her. I’m standing here with all this rage and nowhere to put it, and it’s just sitting in my chest, getting heavier.
‘No. I’d been planning for a while. I’d found somewhere else to live but kept it a secret, didn’t want him to know where I was going.
Or try to stop me.’ She has her arms wrapped around herself, nails digging into her skin.
‘The tenancy was up in two months anyway. I just didn’t renew it, and he never checked that stuff.
’ She pauses. ‘He never even helped pay for it.’
‘Oh, Belle.’ I clear my throat, feeling it catch. ‘How did it get to this?’
Belle beside me cries. ‘I know. I don’t— How? How could I let things get that bad?’ Her cheeks are damp. ‘How could I let that happen to myself?’
I don’t think about it. I just put my arm around her and she doesn’t pull away. We stand there, watching as young Belle scans the room and nods, just once. She walks towards the door, grabs a full bin bag of possessions next to it, and pulls the rucksack over her shoulder.
‘How good was I at leaving things?’ she whispers.
‘It wasn’t you, Belle.’ I squeeze my arm around her as young Belle sneaks out of the front door, closing it slowly. ‘It can happen to anyone. Clearly.’
This wasn’t her fault, I want her to know that. If this could happen to her, of all people, it could happen to anyone. I know she’d always had a tendency to put other people first, but that’s not the same as inviting this in, and I hate that I even have to think this through.
Through the front window, we hear the sound of a car starting up. I peer out, and Belle is sitting there, hands on the steering wheel. Face determined. Strong. She doesn’t look back as the car lurches off.
My mind races as the headlights sweep the room.
I’m flitting between harsh anger – wanting to storm through that bedroom door and beat the living shit out of that waste of space – and wanting to cradle Belle, soothe her, protect her.
How could someone do this? To someone so kind, genuine. To someone who wouldn’t hurt a fly.
Of course she’s the way she is now. Of course she’s more guarded. The one back at the rehearsal, the girl with her hair done, her back straight – this is the same girl. She built all of that, on top of this. And I’ve been giving her grief for putting on an act …
I took the piss out of the people she dated. Mocked every safe choice she made, without asking why she wanted safe.
I belittled her for being too chirpy. Then too uptight.
I decided what was real in her and what wasn’t, like I had any right. I’ve spent the whole evening wanting the old Belle back, the messy one, the fun one – without once considering that maybe she’d had to leave that girl behind for a reason. And I did all of it on the night before her wedding.
And worst of all, I called her a fucking robot just moments ago. I said this to her face – told her she wasn’t acting human. I thought she was simply hollow now, rather than considering, even once, that maybe something might have made her that way.
I feel sick.
I decided what was real in her and what wasn’t, like I had any right. I know it’s not the same as what he did in that bedroom. But it’s not nothing either.
Timothy, though … Timothy, who is alive. The guy who will be there tomorrow and the day after that, and the day after that. I mean it when I think it: I’m glad she’s got him. That’s the truest thing I’ve felt since I died.
We have two more after this … So does this mean there’s another bad one to come?
‘Please tell me the next one isn’t as bad as this?’ I ask, my fingers crossed behind her back, her head against my chest.
‘It’s not great. Can we have another break?’
I reach down, my hands grazing her arm before finding her hands. ‘Of course,’ I say.
The fly buzzes back past.