The Third Person

I attempted to picture him trying to stop them, but the image wouldn’t come. I couldn’t see it somehow. All I saw was Amy being taken away by her hair, and I knew exactly what had happened. Kareem had paid his debt by giving Amy to this man, Marley. Before I even knew what I was doing, I’d punched Kareem in the stomach so hard that the knife flew out of my hand and landed on the bank. All the air went out of him in a whoosh, and then I was dragging him up by the hair, pulling him towards the beck, then kicking his legs out from under him, and down he went, face first, into the water. He couldn’t help sucking it in. Blood spilled away downstream in little tendrils.

And I held him there. Looking out over the field, and then glancing back at the bank behind me. Charlie was calling me: still quite a way away. Maybe if she was closer I would have stopped: I could keep thinking like that. My mind was calm now. The panic would come afterwards, I was sure, but for now there was only silence, as I carried out this unreal thing that it had been telling me not to all along while at the same time knowing I was always going to.

He fought for a minute or so, but I was stronger than he was. And that’s what life’s about, isn’t it? You fuck up, you fight with all your might, and then you die anyway.

I met Charlie halfway back through the woods. We saw each other from quite a way off and she waited for me as I walked towards her, head bowed. I scratched my nose, looked up at her and shrugged as I reached the place she was standing.

‘He got away.’

‘Too bad.’ She noticed my clothes. ‘Jesus – you’re soaking.’

I looked down at my leg and my arms.

‘Yeah. I took a tumble into the beck. My hand’s pretty sore.’ I looked at it, pretending that it hurt or appeared injured in some way. ‘He took off over the field, and I figured I was done in.’

‘Thanks for trying.’

She smiled at me, but looked a little shaken.

‘You really beat the shit out of him,’ I said, trying to make light of the situation. But my face just wouldn’t smile. Every time I tried, it just slipped away.

She said, ‘I think he had it coming.’

And then she shivered. ‘The adrenalin’s kicking in, though. I’m a wreck. Think I hurt my hand on him, too.’

‘Let me have a look.’

Suddenly, I was this world expert on injured hands. I took up her small fist and examined it. Already, between her first two knuckles, the skin was darkening. It happened to me a lot when I went bare-fist on the Scream, and I figured she’d be okay.

‘You’ll live,’ I said, letting go of her hand.

She rubbed it.

‘Well – bit of excitement, anyway. Think we should report it?’

‘I doubt it.’ I looked behind me. ‘He’s long gone.’

‘Probably think twice before he does that again, anyway.’

‘I would think so.’ I smiled at her, but it faded again. ‘Where did you learn to do that stuff?’

She struck a stance.

‘Second-dan gojo-ryu,’ she said. ‘I’ve been training since I was eight.’

‘Jesus.’

She relaxed. ‘You still want to go for that drink?’

‘I think I really need it.’

‘Okay, then. Let’s go.’

So we walked back up to the path and together followed it all the way to the ring road. In better circumstances, it might have reminded me of walking with Amy. I don’t know how I would have felt then, but it hardly even registered now. I was like a zombie, grunting in the right places to everything Charlie said. I’d left the thinking part of me back down by Lacey Beck, and it was still kneeling there now, squatting beside Kareem’s corpse and keening like a frightened, abandoned child as the water washed over him.

CHAPTER SIX

When forensic experts want to recreate a murder victim’s face from the skull, they stick little plasticine pegs at key points on the bone structure – at the right height for the ethnic origin and gender of the skull, which is determined by size, shape, and so on – and then they join those points up with strips and fill in the spaces in-between. My relationship with Amy was as complicated and intricate as a human face, but you could begin to see the shape of it in the same way: by picking out key points and then filling in the missing details later.

Year 0:

We meet.

Year 0.3:

I tell her that I love her.

Year 3.0:

I propose; she says yes.

Year 4.5:

She disappears.

Those might well have been four of the most important moments of my life, so they’ll do as starting points.