Chapter 33
THIRTY-THREE
Tom doesn’t have the co-ordination to attack and speak at the same time, and so an anguished string of sounds emerges from his lips as we fight for control.
The weapon between us stops him raining down punches on me, and he doesn’t quite get the grip on the awkwardly shaped device that he needs in order to wrench it away.
“Shoot him!” Ade says, and I can honestly say that this hadn’t entered my mind until now. The crossbow was just a prop. I hadn’t considered firing it.
“Do not shoot him!” Clara instantly disagrees.
With Tom’s eyes still on mine, I can see how afraid he is. I could end his life with a squeeze of the trigger, but I wouldn’t be able to live with myself afterwards. And anyway, I have a much better idea.
Instead of pulling the crossbow towards me as I have been, I move it closer to Tom.
The sudden switch disconcerts him and gives me just enough space to point the weapon at the floor and fire.
The bolt lodges itself in the ugly carpet between my feet and, as far as he knows, it’s no longer of any use.
My mismatched opponent instantly lets go of the unloaded weapon and falls to his knees. I wait until I’m certain that he won’t try anything more before fishing another bolt from my coat on the floor and pulling back the string.
I go to stand by Clara again but keep the crossbow pointed at Tom and Ade. “No one comes any closer. I will shoot next time if I have to.” This isn’t my voice. That idiot who thought he could raid Tom’s bedroom is speaking through me.
“That’s enough!” Ade puts his hands up to show that he’s not looking for an argument so much as a reset. “I’ll tell you whatever you want to know, Tom. I came here to admit my mistakes. I’m not a killer, but I have done some terrible things. And Clara suffered more than most.”
“You don’t have to do this,” she says again, but this time the words barely escape her lips. “Please don’t do this.”
“The stupid thing is, I instantly liked her. When we met at the flat for the first time, I watched as she chatted to everyone else, and I could see that she was the opposite of me. She was shy and kind and conscientious.”
The girl in question won’t look at him. She shakes her head, and I wish I was strong enough to stop him, but my mouth stays firmly shut.
“I was never…” Ade struggles with these three words and, leaning back against the brightly coloured bar, his eyes fix on a spot in the middle of the room.
“I believed in my own legend before anyone else had even heard it. There was no doubt in my mind that I was too popular for someone like her. So I dated other girls who I didn’t like nearly as much, and I felt numb. ”
I put one hand on Clara’s shoulder as she cries silent tears.
“It might sound like I’m rewriting history by saying this, but I swear it’s true.
” Ade’s briefly monotonous voice is like a drone in an industrial symphony.
“I used to talk to Clara in secret. When Sasha wasn’t there to flirt with, and Bridget and Jake were off on their own.
We would talk about every topic under the sun, and she made me laugh like no one else.
She made me see the world in a different light, and it was beautiful. ”
He talks about Clara as if she isn’t there in front of him. This should all be directed to the girl who’s sobbing on the floor, but he doesn’t even look at her.
“One Saturday night, when we were invited to a party across town, Clara didn’t want to go, so I stayed home with her, knowing that my chance had come.
I bought a fancy bottle of wine – well, fancy by student standards – and we spent the night drinking and talking.
I needed the alcohol to give me the courage to tell her how I really felt. ”
He has been speaking at double speed but suddenly stops and slows down.
“When I was pretending to be a rock star, I had all the confidence in the world. Girls would fall over themselves to bag me as a prize.” I never said that Ade didn’t have a high opinion of himself.
“But with Clara, I felt like the fumbling teenager I really was. When the moment came, she must have felt my hands shaking. I placed one on her cheek, and she put hers on top of it to steady me. We looked at each other for a whole minute, and they may have been the most exquisite sixty seconds of my life. The excitement and anticipation – the silent thoughts that passed between us – it couldn’t have been more romantic.
And when I leaned in to kiss her, I hoped it was just the beginning. ”
He is away with dreamlike thoughts. He is nineteen years old in the tatty kitchen of a tatty maisonette in South London and, for a moment, I bet he can feel Clara’s lips on his for the first time.
“We spent the night together, and in the morning, I messed it all up. It was bright outside when I heard you coming home from the party, and I slunk off to my room so that none of you would know what happened. I abandoned the girl I was half in love with because I still thought that – somehow, for some unfathomable reason – I was better than her.”
No one says anything. Although Tom’s still clearly seething with hate for Ade, even he has fallen quiet. Clara lets out a high, startled sob, but she won’t look up and she won’t speak.
“We never held hands in public. I never put my arm around her as we wandered about the city together. I never even took her out for dinner. And then a few weeks later, the term ended, and Clara never came back.”
“Mate, I’m pretty sure you’ve done worse things than that,” I tell him, but even as I say it, I know I’ve jumped the gun.
He continues in the same cold, flat voice. “After we finished our exams and went home for the summer – after our first tour with the band started – I got a letter from Clara saying that she was pregnant.”
Her sobs have been steadily increasing in volume and frequency, and this draws a jagged gasp from her. “Don’t!” she finally screams. “Don’t say anything more.”
“I have to,” he replies without any thought for her feelings, which makes the whole apology worthless.
“I’m doing this for your sake just as much as mine.
” He takes a deep breath to steel himself for the final revelations.
“She told me that her parents had found a pregnancy test and there was no question about her having an abortion, so I shouldn’t try to convince her.
She said we were going to have a little girl. ”
Clara is shaking, and I finally slide off the sofa to put my arm around her.
“But then a month later, we were up in Glasgow, and my mum forwarded a letter on to me. All it said was, ‘I lost the baby’. I can’t tell you how that destroyed me.
The whole time I was away, I’d been imagining holding our daughter.
I’d dreamed that we could be a family and, as soon as I got back to London, I was going to visit Clara and make things right.
I’d tried calling and messaging, but I never got any replies.
I’d missed her every single day and, when I got that second letter, my world disintegrated in an instant. ”
I can see the emotion that’s running through him, but that doesn’t mean it’s warranted. I pull Clara’s head against my shoulder and move my body around to shelter her. I should do more. I should tell him to think of her and not himself, but I’m just as selfish as he is, and I let him talk.
“The whole thing affected me more than I can say.” If he’d told us it had affected him more than the woman whose baby died within her, I really would have murdered him.
“When I went back to Goldsmiths in September, Clara wasn’t there.
I still thought we could make a go of it together, but it wasn’t possible because I never saw her again until this week.
And I promise that I’ve thought about our little girl every day since then. I even gave her a name.”
In the half-second before he says another word, I realise what he’s going to say, and I want to tell him to shut his stupid mouth.
“It’s Tanis. I named this ship after the child we never got to meet.”
No one moves. No one makes a sound. I look across at Tom to see how he will react to having his moment stolen away from him.
I don’t know whether he’s used up every last milligram of energy, but he just sits there looking shocked.
Thankfully, he isn’t the one to respond to this dark confession. That’s Clara’s job.
“You don’t get to do that,” she says, looking up at Ade. “One fumble under the sheets isn’t enough to secure naming rights to a baby like you’re sponsoring a football team.”
Ade looks hurt and strangely innocent. “It’s an anagram of Saint.” His eyebrows arch in confusion. “I thought she deserved a heavenly name like that. I thought she deserved to—”
“How could you?” She pushes my arm away and clambers to her feet.
“How could you think that any of this was a good idea?” She keeps walking closer to him and, from where I’m sitting, he’s a giant standing over her.
“You say you wanted to wipe the slate clean – but that is the most egotistical thing I’ve ever heard. ”
She looks away, and I wonder for a second whether she’ll come back for the crossbow to shoot him through the heart, but that’s not Clara’s style. She raises her hand to the silver panel on the wall but doesn’t unlock the door.
“You know what? I would really like to be alone right now, but I have no desire to be murdered!” She doesn’t turn around for ten seconds and, when she does, she won’t look at any of us directly.
She hurries back to the sofa and curls up on top of it, some distance away from me.
Her eyes remain open, but they fix on nothing in particular.
Ade leans against the bar, but he has no new revelations for us.
Clara looks more scared than ever – the last girl in a movie, trapped by a pack of potential killers.
A few seconds of claustrophobic silence settle over us, and I can’t imagine what will fill the void – though it’s kind of obvious actually.
“So that’s your argument, Okojie?” I’d hoped that he was defeated, but Tom won’t give up. “You think the fact you got a girl pregnant and abandoned her is proof you’re not a killer?”
“That’s not what I said.”
“You told us last night what a bad person you are. I think it’s time you went all the way and admitted what you’ve really done. Admit that you killed my wife.”
“No chance.”
“Admit it, Ade!”
“Listen to yourself. You’re saying I pushed Sasha overboard to cover up an affair that I literally just acknowledged.”
“It has to be you.” Tom grabs his incongruous chair and hurls it across the room.
Ade ducks out of the way just in time, and it hits the wall of bottles so that the great glass sheet behind it cracks in six near-even pieces.
There’s something surreal about the result, and the cacophony of breaking glass and falling shelves leaves Tom stunned.
“This is over,” Ade says, but I’ve rarely seen a person look so hungry for blood. He raises his fists, ready for the fight that the whole week has been leading up to.
I no longer care who the killer is. I just want to get out of this room alive and go home to my family.
I realise that if I stick around any longer, I might never see my daughter again.
So before it can go any further, I move to open the door with the crossbow trained on them.
As Ade shoves Tom back and the two continue shouting at one another, I hold out my free hand to Clara.
“Come with me. We can lock ourselves in my room and be safe.” Even as I say this, Tom pushes his adversary away from him, and I have no desire to see the outcome. “Now, Clara, quick!”
I should have realised that she has no more reason to trust me than the others.
“I…” She’s too polite to say it, so I nod to show that she doesn’t have to worry anymore.
I step backwards through the door, and the cool air on my skin makes me want to smile.
The rain has turned into a fine mist; the boat isn’t rocking nearly as much as it once was.
It feels like we’ve almost made it through the storm, but that means less to me than the fact I’m finally free.
My head is full of memories. Of meeting my daughter for the first time and kissing Bridget after our gig.
The fresh air has unlocked something inside me, but the exhilaration doesn’t last. Bridget is still dead in her room, and even if I’m away from the others, I can’t escape the situation entirely.
At some point, the rescue services will arrive.
I will be treated as a murder suspect, and someone will have to make sense of everything that has happened.
By the time I get down to the lower cabins, all my energy has drained away.
I miss my beautiful Bridget even though I hadn’t seen her for a decade – even though she’s not really mine.
I miss the life we briefly shared, and I wish that I could not only travel back in time to relive it, but that I’d learnt enough since then not to mess things up a second time.
I stop in the corridor outside her room. It would be so easy to go in there and lie down next to her, but I’m not quite that weird. I close my eyes and think of her one last time before opening my door.
There’s a pleasant twang. The crossbow the killer set there is triggered. The bolt buries itself in my chest. And as I lie dying, I think, Jake, you total idiot. How could you be so stupid?