Paula Hawkins - Into the Water

Mark heard a thump and jumped, swerving out into the middle of the road, over-correcting back again and skidding on to the gravelled verge. He checked the rear-view mirror. He thought he’d hit something, but there was nothing there, nothing but empty tarmac. He took a deep breath and squeezed the wheel again, wincing as it pressed into the wound on his hand. He switched on the radio, turned it up as loud as it would go.

He still had no idea what he was going to do with Lena. His first idea had been to drive north to Edinburgh, dump the car in a car park and then get the ferry to the Continent. They’d find her soon enough. Well, they’d find her eventually. He might feel terrible, but he had to keep reminding himself that this was not his fault. She came at him , not the other way round. And when he tried to fight her off, fend her off, she just came at him again and again, shouting and clawing, talons drawn. He had fallen, sprawling on the kitchen floor, his carry-on bag skidding away from him across the tiles. And from it fell, as though directed by a deity with a sick sense of humour, the bracelet. The bracelet he’d been carrying around since he took it from Helen Townsend’s desk, this thing which held a power he hadn’t yet figured out how to wield, out it came, skittering across the floor between them.

Lena looked at it as though it were an alien thing. It might as well have been glowing green kryptonite from the expression on her face. And then confusion passed and she was upon him again, only this time she had the kitchen scissors in her hand and she was swinging hard at him, at his face, at his neck, swinging like she meant it. He raised his hands in self-defence and she sliced one of them open. It throbbed now, angrily, in time with his racing heartbeat.

Thump, thump, thump . He checked the rear-view again – no one behind him – and jammed his foot on the brake. There was a sickening, satisfying thud as her body slammed into metal, and all was quiet again.

He pulled the car over to the side of the road again, not to be sick this time, but to weep. For himself, for his ruined life. He cried racking sobs of frustration and despair, he beat his right hand against the steering wheel again and again and again, until it hurt as much as the left one.

Katie was fifteen years and two months old the first time they slept together. Another ten months and she would have been legal. They would have been untouchable – legally, in any case. He’d have had to walk away from the job and some people might still have thrown stones, they’d still have called him names, but he could have lived with that. They could have lived with it. Ten fucking months! They should have waited. He should have insisted they wait. Katie was the one in a hurry, Katie was the one who couldn’t stay away, Katie was the one who forced the issue, who wanted to make him hers, undeniably. And now she was gone, and he was the one who was going to pay for it.

The unfairness of it rankled, it seared his flesh like acid, and the vice just kept squeezing, tighter and tighter, and he wished to God it would just crush him, split his head open, and like her, like Katie, he’d be done with it.

Lena

I WAS FRIGHTENED when I woke up, I didn’t know where I was. I couldn’t see a thing. It was totally dark. But I realized from the noise, the movement and the smell of petrol that I was in a car. My head was really sore and my mouth too, it was hot and stuffy and there was something digging into my back, something hard, like a metal bolt. I wiggled my hand round behind my back to try to grab it, but it was attached.

That was a shame, because what I really needed was a weapon.

I was frightened, but I knew I couldn’t let my fear get the better of me. I needed to think clearly. Clearly and fast, because sooner or later the car was going to stop and then it was going to be him or me, and there was no way that he was going to do for Katie and Mum and me. No fucking way. I had to believe it, had to keep telling myself over and over: this was going to end with me alive and him dead.

Over the weeks since Katie died, I’d thought about a lot of ways to make Mark Henderson pay for what he’d done, but I never considered murder. I’d thought about other things: painting things on his walls, smashing his windows (been there, done that), calling his girlfriend to tell her everything Katie had told me: how many times, when, where. How he liked to call her ‘teacher’s pet’. I thought about getting some of the guys in the year above to kick the shit out of him. I thought about cutting off his dick and feeding it to him. But I didn’t think about killing him. Not until today.

How did I end up here? I can’t believe how stupid I was to let him get the upper hand. I should never have gone to his house, not without a clear plan, not without knowing exactly what I was going to do.

I didn’t even think, I was just making it up as I went along. I knew that he was coming back from holiday – I’d heard Sean and Erin talking about it. And then, after everything Louise said, and after the conversation I had with Julia about how it wasn’t my fault or Mum’s, I just thought, you know what? It’s time. I just wanted to stand in front of him and make him share a little in the blame. I wanted him to admit it, to admit what he’d done and that it was wrong. So I just went there, and I’d already smashed the window of the back door, so it was easy enough getting in.

The house smelled dirty, like he’d gone away without emptying the rubbish or something. For a while, I just stood in the kitchen and used the torch on my phone to look around, but then I decided I’d turn on the light, because you wouldn’t be able to see it from the road and even if his neighbours saw it they’d just think he’d come home.

It smelled dirty because it was dirty. Disgusting, actually – washing-up in the sink and ready-meal cartons with bits of food still stuck in them, and all the surfaces coated in grease. And shitloads of empty red-wine bottles in the recycling bin. It’s not how I expected it would be at all. From the way he was at school – always really neatly dressed and his fingernails clean, clipped close – I thought he’d be kind of anal.

I went through to the living room and scanned around using my phone again – I didn’t turn the light on in there in case you could see it from the road. It was so ordinary. Cheap furniture, lots of books and CDs, no pictures on the walls. It was ordinary and dirty and sad.

Upstairs was even worse. The bedroom was rank. The bed was unmade, the wardrobes open, and it smelled bad – different to downstairs, it smelled sour and sweaty, like a sick animal. I closed the curtains and turned on the bedside light. It was even worse than downstairs, it looked like somewhere someone old would live – ugly yellow walls and brown curtains and clothes and papers on the floor. I opened a drawer and there were ear plugs and nail clippers inside. In the bottom drawer, there were condoms and lube and fluffy cuffs.

I felt sick. I sat down on the bed, and then I noticed that the sheet had pulled away from the mattress a bit in the opposite corner and I could see a brown stain underneath. I actually thought I was going to vomit. It was painful, physically painful, to think about Katie being here, with him, in this horrible room in this disgusting house. I was ready to leave. It was a stupid idea anyway, going there without a plan. I turned off the light and went back downstairs, and I was almost at the back door when I heard a noise from outside, footsteps coming up the path. And then the door swung open and there he was. He looked ugly, his face and eyes red, his mouth open. I just went for him. I wanted to scratch his eyes out of his ugly face, I wanted to hear him scream.