Clare Mackintosh - I Let You Go

‘Get undressed.’

I’m ashamed of how easily I comply.

He folds his arms and watches me struggle with my clothes. I’m crying freely now, although I know it will anger him. I can’t stop.

Ian puts the plug in the bath. He turns on the cold tap but doesn’t touch the hot. I am naked now, standing shivering in front of him, and he looks at my body with distaste. I remember when he would kiss my shoulder blades, then trace a line so softly, reverently almost, down between my breasts and over my stomach.

‘You’ve only yourself to blame,’ he says with a sigh. ‘I could have brought you back whenever I wanted, but I let you go. I didn’t want you. All you had to do was keep your mouth shut and you could have lived out your pitiful life here.’ He shook his head. ‘But you didn’t, did you? You went to the police and you blurted it all out.’ He turns off the tap. ‘Get in.’

I don’t resist. There is no point now. I step into the bath and lower myself into it. The icy water takes my breath away and pain grips my insides. I try to fool myself that it’s hot.

‘Now get yourself clean.’

He picks up a bottle of bleach from the floor by the toilet and unscrews the top. I bite my lip. Once he made me drink bleach. Once when I came home late from a meal with the crowd from college. I told him time had run away with me, but he poured the thick liquid into a wine glass and watched while I put it to my lips. He stopped me after the first sip, bursting out laughing and telling me only an idiot would have drunk it. I threw up all night and had the chemical taste in my mouth for days.

Ian pours the bleach on to my flannel and it runs over the edges, dripping into the bath, where blue blooms fan across the surface of the water like ink on blotting paper. He hands me the flannel.

‘Scrub yourself.’

I rub the flannel across my arms, trying to splash water on myself as I do so, in an effort to dilute the bleach.

‘Now the rest of you,’ he says. ‘And don’t forget your face. Do it properly, Jennifer, or I’ll do it for you. Maybe this will wash away some of your badness.’

He directs me until I have washed every bit of my body with bleach, and my skin stings. I sink into the freezing water to relieve the burning sensation, unable to stop my teeth chattering. This pain, this humiliation; this is worse than death. The end cannot come soon enough.

I can’t feel my feet any more. I reach out and rub them, but my fingers feel as though they belong to someone else. I am beyond cold now. I try to sit up, to keep at least half of my body out of the water, but he makes me lie down, my legs bent awkwardly to the side to accommodate the tiny bath tub. He runs the cold tap again until the water reaches the top. My heartbeat no longer thumps loudly in my ears, but taps tentatively in my chest. I feel dull and sluggish, hearing Ian’s words as though from far away. My teeth are chattering and I bite my tongue, but barely register the pain.

Ian has been standing over me while I washed, but now he sits on the closed toilet seat. He watches me dispassionately. He is going to drown me, I suppose. It won’t take long – I’m half-dead already.

‘You were easy to find, you know.’ Ian speaks casually, as though we are sitting in a pub, catching up, the way old friends do. ‘It’s not difficult to set up a website with no paper trail, but you were too stupid to realise anybody could look up your address.’

I don’t say anything, but he doesn’t seem to need a response.

‘You women think you can cope on your own,’ he says. ‘You think you don’t need men, but when we leave you to it, you’re useless. You’re all the same. And the lies! Jesus, the lies you women tell. One after another, tripping off your forked tongues.’

I’m so tired. So desperately tired. I feel myself slipping underneath the surface of the water, and I jerk myself awake. I dig my fingernails into my thigh, but I can barely feel them.

‘You think we won’t find you out, but we always do. The lies, the betrayal, the bare-faced treachery.’

His words wash over me.

‘From the start I was perfectly clear about not wanting children,’ Ian says.

I close my eyes.

‘But we don’t get a choice in it, do we? It’s all about what the woman wants. Pro-fucking-choice? What about my choice?’

I think of Ben. He came so close to living. If I had only been able to keep him safe for a few more weeks …

‘Suddenly I’m presented with a son,’ Ian says, ‘and I’m expected to celebrate! Celebrate the child I never asked for in the first place. The child who never would have existed if she hadn’t tricked me into it.’

I open my eyes. The white tiles above the taps are crazed with grey lines, and I follow them until my eyes fill with water and they blur back into white. He’s not talking sense. Or perhaps I’m not making sense of it. I want to speak but my tongue feels too big for my mouth. I didn’t trick Ian into having a baby. It was an accident, but he was pleased. He said it changed everything.

Ian is leaning forward, his elbows resting on his knees and his mouth touching his closed hands, as though praying. But his fists are clenched and the muscle near his eye flickers uncontrollably.

‘I told her what the score was,’ he says. ‘I told her no strings. But she ruined it.’ He looks at me. ‘It was supposed to be a one-off – a quick fuck with a meaningless girl. There was no reason for you ever to know about it. Except she got pregnant, and instead of fucking off back home, she decided to stay and make my life hell.’

I struggle to pull together the pieces of what Ian is saying. ‘You have a son?’ I manage to say.

He looks at me and gives a mirthless laugh. ‘No,’ he corrects me, ‘he was never my son. He was the offspring of a Polish tart who used to clean the loos at work – I was just the sperm donor.’ He stands up and straightens his shirt. ‘She came knocking when she found out she was pregnant, and I made it quite clear that if she went ahead with it, she was on her own.’ He sighs. ‘I didn’t hear from her again until the child started school. And then she wouldn’t let it go.’ His mouth twists as he does a poor impression of an Eastern European accent. ‘ He needs a father, Ian. I want Jacob to know who his father is .’

I lift my head. With an effort that makes me cry out in pain, I push my hands against the bottom of the bath until I am sitting up. ‘Jacob?’ I say. ‘You’re Jacob’s father?’

There is a moment’s silence while Ian looks at me. Abruptly he takes hold of my arm. ‘Get out.’

I fall over the side of the bathtub and collapse on to the floor, my legs useless after an hour in freezing water.

‘Cover yourself up.’ He throws my dressing gown on to me and I pull it on, hating myself for the gratitude I feel. My head is spinning: Jacob was Ian’s son? But when Ian had found out it was Jacob in the accident, he must have …

When the truth finally hits me, it’s like a knife to my stomach. Jacob’s death was no accident. Ian killed his own son, and now he’s going to kill me.

50

‘Stop the car,’ I said.

You made no move to pull over, and I grabbed the wheel.

‘Ian, no!’ You tried to get the wheel back from me, and we hit the kerb and then veered back into the middle of the road, just missing a car coming in the opposite direction. You had no choice but to take your foot off the accelerator and apply the brakes. We came to a stop, the car parked diagonally in the road.

‘Get out.’

You didn’t hesitate, but once out of the car you stood motionless by its door, a fine layer of drizzle covering you. I walked round to your side of the car. ‘Look at me.’