Jennie Ensor - The Girl in His Eyes

Outside, rain lashed the pavement. There was no one about – no one with any sense would be out in this. She tried to steer the umbrella into the direction of the rain, as she pushed the contraption open, but it jammed halfway. She’d be soaked again before she reached West Kensington Tube station, a five-minute walk. Sometimes one could hail a taxi on North End Road, but that wasn’t likely in heavy rain.

Laura started to run. Before she’d gone fifty yards, a black cat streaked in front of her from under a parked car.

‘Shit!’

She stumbled and nearly fell. The cat sprang over a wall into a garden. She slowed to a fast walk. The pavement was scarcely visible between gauzy nets of artificial light. In the distance she could make out the streetlights of the main road. Shoving her free hand into a raincoat pocket, she brought out half a Mars Bar and a theatre ticket. Les Mis . She’d gone with Rachel an aeon ago to celebrate Rachel’s success at the end of her first year at work. That peal of flirtatious laughter sounded in her memory, as if Rachel were still beside her.

A loud smack of glass against plastic. Her heart took off, scudding against her chest. She glimpsed a lit hallway behind a closing front door. Only someone chucking stuff into a dustbin. She let out a long breath. Once again, a gust of wind tugged at her umbrella, allowing more rain to land on her. She tossed the useless thing away.

It was a while before she realised there was a car behind her, moving slowly so it kept a short distance away from her. Its engine was almost inaudible over the noise of the wind and rain, but she could just make out a deep thrum, like the purr of a giant cat. She couldn’t bring herself to look around, because she knew what she would see.

She gripped her phone in her hand, walking as fast as she could without running. Should she call 999? No, it was hardly an emergency. She scrolled down to her mother’s number.

‘Hello, Mum? Are you there?’

She heard her mother’s voice briefly before it was gobbled up by a warbling noise. She couldn’t tell if it was her mother’s voicemail or her mother actually speaking at the other end.

‘Mum, can you hear me? Dad is over here. I’ve just left the flat. He’s following me in the car.’

A garbled voice in her ear, indecipherable. Laura shoved the phone into a pocket.

The car moved slightly ahead and her heart jumped. She could see it clearly now, without turning her head – a silver-grey Porsche. His car.

It stopped ten yards ahead of her. The passenger window opened. Her father’s head leaned out. She couldn’t see much of him in the half dark. His hair, uncombed. A dull gleam in his eyes. She wanted to run away as fast as she could.

‘Laura, stop! I need to talk to you.’ The voice marred by wind and rain.

She hurried ahead, speeding up to a fast jog.

The car moved forward. Half a minute later it stopped again, right beside her. Her father’s head appeared through the open window.

‘Please, Laura! I want to talk to you, that’s all.’ There was a note of desperation in his voice.

‘I don’t want to talk to you,’ she replied.

‘I just need to say a few things I never had the chance to. It won’t take long.’

She hesitated. He wasn’t going to go away. Even if she ran it would take her two or three minutes to reach the main road.

The passenger door opened. ‘Please,’ he said. ‘Get in.’

‘No, I’d rather not.’

‘You’ll get soaked,’ he insisted. ‘We can go somewhere to talk, if you want. A pub?’

‘I don’t want to go anywhere with you.’

‘Well for Christ’s sake just get in the car then, you’ll catch your death out there.’

What to do? Water began to drip from her sodden hair down her brow. Her jumper was already damp against her skin. It would be ridiculous to stay out here.

‘OK, just five minutes.’

Laura sat down on the sculpted, pale leather seat beside her father, and pulled the door shut against the slanting rain. The dashboard’s green glow suffused the car’s interior with a faint light, and the fan heater spewed a noisy stream of air. Raindrops smacked the roof. She listened to the rhythmic flick of the windscreen wipers, a coil of tension tightening in the pit of her stomach.

‘So, what do you want to tell me?’

She was aware of him beside her, though she couldn’t bring herself to look properly. There was a fug of whisky coming off him. That same smoky-sweet smell of years ago…

A tremor caught her stomach. She clenched her bladder muscles tight against the sudden panic and tried to still the violent flutter of her heart.

He reached forward and switched off the engine then turned to her.

‘If you go to the police, Laura, my life will be over.’

How could such a simple statement have so much force? It expanded to fill the space in the car, snuffing out her rational thoughts.

‘I understand how you must feel,’ she replied. ‘How frightening it must be.’ She met his eyes. Before she could look away her eyes were drawn to his, down and down into a well of pain and darkness.

‘I want you to know that I did try. I tried so hard to let it go, to do what a good father would have done.’

His voice reminded her of a hypnotist’s. Despite her instinct to recoil, she couldn’t help but listen.

‘The first time it happened, that afternoon in the back garden. I hated myself afterwards. My little girl, my one source of joy… I’d ruined everything. I’d taken what I loved most away from her.’

His tears glinted as he raised his left hand and held it, palm up, above her lap. In the centre, a taut white thickening of the flesh in uneven ridges. The scar was roughly circular, the size of a pound coin.

She stared at it, trying to remember. She’d noticed it before, as a child, and remembered how he’d tried to hide the palm of his left hand.

‘I burned it that evening. With a cigarette lighter. I told your mother the pan caught fire while I was deep frying chips, my hand got caught in the flame. I did it again, the next time, to try to stop things getting out of hand. But it wasn’t enough.’

A flicker of anger warmed her cheeks.

‘Why did you do those things? Tell me.’

He didn’t answer.

‘You nearly ruined my life. I can’t begin to tell you how desperate I’ve been.’

‘I know what I did was wrong.’ He was addressing the dashboard.

‘Do you really?’

‘I fucked up, Laura, I fucked up big time.’ A crack opened in his voice. ‘You didn’t deserve a father like me.’

‘A father who, for years, made me too scared to sleep at night? Who treated me like—’

‘I know. I’m ashamed of what I did. Of who I am.’ He leant his head back against the headrest, his eyes shut. ‘I’m not a monster, Laura. I’m just an ordinary man who’s made some terrible mistakes.’ He looked straight at her. ‘Please, you must forgive me.’

She turned her head away from him. Dark forms merged beyond the window – bushes, houses, parked cars. Someone hurried across the road, head down, oblivious to them.

‘If you go to the police,’ he went on, ‘they’ll put me in the dock. What if they send me to prison? Do you know what they’d do to me in there?’ His voice increased in pitch. ‘Do you?’

She felt pity for him, and something stronger than pity. Contempt.

‘Do you really think,’ he went on, ‘I deserve to suffer like that? I’d sooner kill myself.’

He was trying to squeeze the resolve out of her. He was still trying to win this game that wasn’t a game.

‘If I don’t go to the police,’ she replied, ‘nothing will change. You won’t stop what you’re doing, will you? You’ll find someone else, another Emma.’