34. Gallow Steps
Gallow Steps
Elias
When Desdemona walked into my bedroom that night, I thought I knew exactly who she was. Head girl. Famous parents. Shitty ex. The golden girl of Spearcrest—with a pair of troublemaking brothers and a little goth sister, Ophelia.
And then she offered me twenty grand to potentially ruin my future, and was even willing to sleep with me in exchange for it; that’s when I realised this whole thing had something to do with her siblings. I wasn’t wrong, but I wasn’t looking at the whole thing the way I should’ve been.
I saw it as an opportunity.
But I should’ve thought of it as a puzzle.
The pieces were all right there: a perfectionist oldest daughter. A mother who made her career prosecuting criminals. An unconscious boy with a reputation for being a creep. Two hot-headed twins who both have the strength of rugby players.
A smashed phone, spilled blood, twenty thousand pounds.
There was one piece missing—but I should’ve guessed that piece was Ophelia Sutton-Knight.
Where Desdemona is tall and athletic and robust and golden, her sister is dark and delicate. She has big dark sad eyes and round cheeks that still have the softness of baby fat in them. She’s a kid, still, with her bitten nails and chipped black nail polish.
If it was the twins, as I suspect, who hospitalised Birnam, then who else would they have done so for but Ophelia?
And if Desdemona made a deal with me to cover up their crime, who else could that crime have been to protect but Ophelia?
“I didn’t know he was filming me at first,” Ophelia said to me in a small voice, eyes fixed on the tips of her big black boots.
“By the time I found out, it was too late, and he said it was just for him, like wanting to keep a precious memory in a box.” She shook her head, heavy tears rolling down to her chin.
“And I know it’s my fault for trusting him.
I know I should’ve known better. When he said he liked me, I believed him.
Because why would anyone lie about liking…
this?” She gestures at herself with a disappointed, deprecating huff.
“I was just so grateful someone wanted me at all. It feels so stupid now.”
I’d agreed to do what she asked, of course. Ophelia clearly doesn’t know who hurt Birnam, or what her sister did. She doesn’t know I already have the phone—the planted piece of evidence that will eventually incriminate me and allow me to take the fall for a crime I didn’t commit.
“I’ll hack into his account and destroy the video, don’t worry,” I told her.
“Don’t look at it, okay?” she whispered. “If you find it. Just delete it. Don’t look at it.”
My stomach turned at the thought—at the idea that she’d even have to ask. That what happened to Ophelia has destroyed her innocence enough that she’d assume I’d feel anything but the most profound of disgust at the thought of seeing even a second of that video.
After reassuring Ophelia and agreeing to do my best, I turn to get out of the room she brought us into earlier.
With its embroidered banners and four-poster bed and heavy velvet curtain, the luxury feels oppressive and suffocating.
All I want right now is to get out, get away from this house, these people, the girl I manipulated and her hurt, terrified little sister.
“Elias.”
I stop at the door and turn around, raising an eyebrow at Ophelia.
She’s not looking at me, pulling hard on the sleeves of her jumper, cheeks dark. I know what she’s about to do before she utters the word, my heart sinking.
“Please don’t tell Desdemona.”
I stare at her in complete silence, the door handle cold underneath my palm.
“This isn’t the kind of secret I can keep from her,” I tell Ophelia finally, softly. “It would destroy her if she found out.”
“She won’t find out. She’ll never find out. I promise.”
But Ophelia doesn’t know how deeply tangled Desdemona already is in all this, the things she’s already done to try to protect her siblings.
“Desdemona wouldn’t be angry at you,” I say, lowering my voice. “She’d just want to help. You know that, right?”
“I know.” Ophelia shakes her head and swallows so hard I hear the loud gulp of it, heavy with repressed feelings.
“I know, I just—I just… I can’t tell her.
She can’t know. You wouldn’t get it, alright?
” She looks up, eyes brimming with tears once more, her eyeliner a hazy smear around her dark eyes.
“She’s so… Desdemona is perfect. She never makes mistakes, never does anything reckless, or stupid. ”
Oh, Ophelia, you have no fucking idea.
“Mum and Dad, they—they worship the ground she walks on. She’s everything to them, the entire world. Like they just took the best parts of Mum and mixed them with the best parts of Dad and created her.”
Her breath shudders. Her voice is a low, exhausted rasp, like she’s letting out a confession that’s been crushing her chest for years.
“And I’m the leftover bits. I’m what’s left after all the good stuff’s gone. I fuck things up. I ruin things. I break things that I don’t know how to fix.” She clenches her hands into fists. “And I, I know how I sound, okay?”
She draws closer, almost like she’s pleading with me.
“I’m not jealous, if that’s what you’re thinking.
Well, I am, but not the way you think. I—I love Desdemona.
She’s my sister, my first friend, my fucking hero.
All I ever wanted was to be like her. But I’m not—I’m this, this weirdo, this huge mess, and I don’t know why or how to stop it, but I can’t stand it, I can’t stand the way she looks at me now, like I’m this problem she has to fix, this lame stray she always has to patch up and look after. ”
She sniffs hard and shakes her head, glaring up as if I’ve said something, when in fact all I’ve done is stand, silently hearing her out.
“I don’t want Desdemona to help me. I don’t want her to fix my problems and look after me. I want her to look at me and think I’m strong, too, just like her, like Mum. I want her to be proud of me—not pity me. I don’t ever want her love to feel like charity—I’d rather she hate me.”
She nods to herself, as if she’s just affirmed her decision.
“This isn’t her burden to carry. It’s my mistake, my fuck-up. My mess to clean up. And that’s what I’m going to do.”
She hesitates, here, faltering, biting into her lip.
“Well, I know I’ve asked you for help, but that’s different.”
“I didn’t say it wasn’t.”
Ophelia grabs my hand and squeezes my fingers.
“Please, Elias. Please. This will be my last mistake—I swear it.” Her eyes go huge, tears wobbling to the surface.
“I don’t want Desdemona to know. If she does, it won’t matter what I do for the rest of my life—this will be who I am to her.
This disgusting, stupid girl, this girl who wasn’t strong or smart enough to stop this from happening. ”
The truth is that I understand what she’s saying, completely. I see her logic, her fears and her vulnerabilities, and I see the flaws in her logic, too. None of this happened because Ophelia was a fuck-up or because she was weak or stupid. It only happened because Birnam did something wrong.
Something low and nasty and evil.
Desdemona would know this, too, but, as it turns out, Desdemona’s mask of perfection has done nothing but backfire on her. Because after everything, it’s me, her liar, manipulator, fake boyfriend, who knows her the best, and what a fucking tragedy that is.
Most of all, I see my own role in all this: it doesn’t matter whether I agree with Ophelia’s logic or not. Telling Desdemona, after everything Ophelia told me, would make me just like Birnam—another person who stole agency from Ophelia.
Either way, I’m going to have to betray one sister.
Out of the two of them, who would survive such a betrayal the best?
I know the answer to that. But the real question is:
Out of the two of them, whose betrayal would be most painful to me?
The same person, of course. Betraying Desdemona—and she would absolutely consider this a betrayal—would cost me both her trust and her love.
Can you lose something you never had, though?
The voice inside my head is cruel yet calm. It’s not vicious or malicious. It’s not meant to harm. It’s the voice of reality, the pragmatic commentator that’s always watched over me, making sure I never lose my sanity to vain hopes and hollow dreams.
Why worry about losing her trust or her love, the voice says, when you’re going to lose her anyway?
A man walking up gallows steps might make any promise that’s asked of him.
Either way, his regrets and sorrows are going into the grave with him.
I think of Desdemona in the observatory: golden hair falling over my face as she whispered she didn’t want to be perfect. Her bare shoulders under the silver raindrops, her open mouth and her searching, hungry gaze. The way she looked at me the night she asked me to save her brothers.
The moment I swore I wouldn’t fall for her.
Too late now. What’s one more mistake?
“I won’t tell her.” My voice comes out low and alien, like it exhaled out of another person’s chest. “I promise.”
I walked into Spearcrest with nothing.
And when all this comes to an end, when truth and lies are thrown one on top of the other in the hectic pyre and there’s nothing left but ashes, I’ll leave the same way.
With nothing at all.