Jennie Ensor - The Girl in His Eyes

‘You’re pathetic!’

He recoiled as if she’d struck him.

‘You waited until I was safely out of the way, then you put your filthy hands on my daughter. Not just once, lots of times. What sort of man are you?’ Words were spilling out of her in an unstoppable torrent. ‘Laura was only a child, for God’s sake! I can hardly believe what she told me. She said you made her put it in her mouth. Your fucking prick .’ The word, new on her tongue, made a satisfying crunch of sound. She noted with relish the shock on his face, which seemed to freeze except for a tiny wobble in his lower lip. ‘You bastard. How could you do that to your own daughter?’

‘Suzanne, please—’

But he wasn’t going to shut her up. He wasn’t going to convince her to see things as he wanted her to see them, not this time.

‘And you couldn’t make do with just Laura, could you? You had to go and play your sick games with Emma too. Only you had to have more fun with her, didn’t you? You had to stick your pathetic little willy into her.’ She gasped for breath. Her anger was consuming her, like no anger she’d ever experienced. ‘Are they the only ones you’ve preyed on? Or are there other girls that I don’t know about?’

‘No, there are no others.’

There was a chance, she thought, he was telling the truth. But that meant nothing. Why wouldn’t there be others? How could she believe anything he said now?

‘I swear, Suzanne, I’ve never done anything like that before. And it wasn’t nearly as bad as you think—’

‘Are you serious? Did you ever think for a moment how much harm you’ve done to that poor girl? She trusted you, she thought you were helping her, and all along… all along you…’ She couldn’t find any more words. She hated him then, more than she’d ever hated anyone. ‘And did you ever imagine that Laura could be damaged by what you did to her? Or did you sit there with your stinking hard-on, thinking of nothing but yourself? Christ, I can’t believe I didn’t see who you really were for all these years. I’ve been an absolute fool.’

Paul didn’t reply. He looked stunned, as if she’d just punched him.

‘I’m going to sleep in the guest room.’ She walked past him and up the stairs.

‘Please, listen—’

‘Leave me alone, Paul. Just leave me alone.’

She took out her pyjamas from under her pillow and opened the door of Daniel’s old bedroom. His childhood dartboard stuck out from under the wardrobe, one of the many things she hadn’t had the heart to throw away. She took off her damp clothes, sat on the bed, and started to cry. The man she’d loved for twenty-five years was gone. No, the man she thought she’d loved was gone, whoever he was.

Paul drained the coffee from his cup. He looked again at the short message beside the toaster that had greeted him half an hour earlier, scrawled in red pen on the back of the gas bill envelope:

Gone to stay with Katherine.

Suzanne must have crept out when he was asleep – he’d not heard a sound from her. He crumpled the envelope into a tight ball and tossed it in the bin, then checked his watch: 8.10am. If he didn’t leave soon he’d be late for his 9.30am meeting. He put his laptop inside his briefcase, picked up his raincoat, and closed the front door behind him. The sky was overcast, threatening rain. Moisture hung in the air.

He aimed his car key at the driver’s door and froze. The words stretched across the windscreen of his Porsche in bright orange, two-inch-high capitals:

The Porsche was parked in the street – Suzanne’s car had until recently occupied the driveway – its windscreen visible to everyone passing by. Half the street might have seen it by now, this despoiling of his car by his demented wife. Paul reached across and touched the F. The outline did not smudge; it was marker pen, he realised with a sinking heart. He spat on the F and rubbed in his spittle with a tissue then went back inside the house. He returned with a bottle of window cleaning fluid and a sponge. For ten minutes, he scrubbed until there was only a small hint of what had been there.

He turned the key in the ignition.

Pervert.

His heart kicked against his chest. The voice had come from inside his head. What was wrong with him? Mad people heard voices. They’d be putting him in a straitjacket next, locking him up in a padded cell.

He reached the end of Elgin Drive and accelerated into a gap in the traffic. Suzanne had been angry, she didn’t know what she was saying. He wasn’t a pervert. He’d only done what tens of thousands of men secretly longed to do. His yearning for Laura had tormented him, day and night. What man could have resisted her? A neutered half-wit maybe, not a man of flesh and blood, with a man’s instincts. He’d fought against that yearning for so long.

And she’d never pushed him off, had she? She’d never fought back or run away.

OK, OK, he was making excuses. He should have left her alone. But he’d never intended to harm her. His desire had sprung from love.

He drove towards the station. Yet another squeak came from a rear wheel. He breathed a sigh of exasperation. What the hell was wrong with the car this time? First the driver seat motor had packed up, now this. You didn’t expect a brand new Porsche to start falling apart after six months.

His train was delayed by ten minutes. He paced up and down the platform. A throb of pain was starting in his temple. At this rate, he’d only just make the meeting.

There were no empty seats on the train. He stood in the narrow aisle, holding on to the nearest seat, trying to ignore the other passengers who bumped against him, blared music through their headphones, and talked inanely on their phones. He tried to think about the meeting, to remember the points he needed to make.

But Laura came into his head. Laura aged ten or eleven, with that brace, and the fringe that kept flopping into her eyes. On her face that impish look she used to have, and the lightning smile that came from pure joy. It had stopped coming as she got older; she’d looked at him with sad eyes, eyes that spoke more than she’d ever said.

He thought of Emma, that night he’d driven her back to Jane’s for the last time.

He hadn’t meant to harm Emma either. He should never have agreed to take her swimming in the first place. He’d kidded himself that he could walk away if he wanted. But he’d been wrong. A kind of madness had taken him over. And now, he was paying the price. Everything was coming unstuck. The police would come to arrest him, sooner or later. His life would be blown apart. Soon, everyone would know what he’d done.

He got out at Vauxhall as usual. At 9.20am he arrived at the glass and steel tower near the Thames. The top four floors were Zenco Brand’s UK headquarters.

‘Morning, Paul,’ James on reception called out in a gruff voice, accompanied by the reluctant smile he reserved for rainy Mondays and the first morning back after a bank holiday weekend. Paul nodded, and walked on to the lift. His headache was worse than before. The last thing he wanted was a goddamn meeting. And there was another one this afternoon, with the MD, to hash over what was causing falling sales revenues.

He got out at the tenth floor and turned left, swiped his card and entered the open-plan office.

‘Hi, guys, hope you all had a good Easter.’ Most of his team had been lounging at their desks, talking and laughing. Suddenly, they were all alert, straight-backed. ‘Let’s get this show on the road. We’ve got a meeting in the boardroom in five minutes.’