The Likeness

Justin made a tentative move to stretch out a hand to me, took it back and clasped it tightly around his other elbow. “I told him I couldn’t stay there. I’m sorry, Lexie. I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have been… I mean, it was you; it was still you, even if you had been… But I couldn’t. I was-I was shaking all over, I think I must have been gibbering at him… Finally he said-and he didn’t even seem upset, not any more, just impatient-he said, ‘For heaven’s sake, shut up. I’ll stay. Get home as fast as you can. Put your gloves on and get Lexie’s keys, her wallet and her torch. Tell the others what’s happened. They’ll want to come back with you; don’t let them, whatever you do. The last thing we need is more people trampling all over the place, and anyway there’s no point in giving them more to forget. Come straight back here. Take the torch with you, but don’t use it unless you really need to, and try to be quiet. Can you remember all that?’ ”

He drew hard on the cigarette. “I said yes-I’d have said yes if he’d asked me whether I could fly home, as long as it meant getting out of there. He made me repeat it all back to him. Then he sat down on the ground, beside you-not too close, I suppose in case he got… you know. Blood on his trousers. And he looked up at me and said, ‘Well? Go on. Hurry.’

“So I went home. It was horrible. It took-well, if Rafe’s right, it can’t have actually taken that long. I don’t know. I got lost. There were places where I knew I should have been able to see the lights from the house, but I couldn’t; just black, for miles around. I knew for sure, like a fact, that the house wasn’t even there any more; there was nothing left but hedges and lanes, on and on, this huge maze and I would never get out of it, it would never be daylight again. That there were things watching me, up in the trees and hidden in the hedges-I don’t know what kind of things, but… watching me, and laughing. I was terrified. When I finally saw the house-just this faint gold glow, over the bushes-it was such a relief I almost screamed. The next thing I remember is pushing the back door open-”

“He looked like The Scream,” Rafe said, “only muddier. And he was making absolutely no sense; half what came out of his mouth was pure gibberish, like he was speaking in tongues. All we could make out was that he had to go back, and that Daniel said we should stay where we were. Personally, I thought fuck that, I wanted to go find out what the hell was going on, but when I started getting my coat, Justin and Abby both went into such hysterics that I gave up.”

“And a good thing too,” Abby said coolly. She had gone back to the doll; her hair fell across her face, hiding it, and even from across the room I could tell that her stitches were huge and sloppy and useless. “What possible use do you think you could have been?”

Rafe shrugged. “We’ll never know, will we? I know that cottage; if Justin had just told me where he was going, I could have gone instead, and he could have stayed here and pulled himself together. But apparently that’s not what Daniel had in mind.”

“Presumably he had reasons.”

“Oh, I’m sure,” Rafe said. “I’m sure he did. So Justin flapped around for a bit, grabbing things and babbling at us, and then he dashed out again.”

“I don’t remember getting back to the cottage,” Justin said. “Afterwards I was absolutely covered in mud, up to my knees-maybe I fell over, I don’t know-and I had all these little scratches on my hands; I think I must have been holding onto the hedges to stay standing. Daniel was still sitting beside you; I’m not sure he’d moved since I left. He looked up at me-there was rain on his glasses-and do you know what he said? He said, ‘This rain should come in useful. If it keeps up, any blood or footprints will be gone by the time the police arrive.’ ”

Rafe moved, a sudden restless shift that made the sofa springs grate.

“I just stood there staring at him. All I heard was ‘police’ and I honestly couldn’t think what the police had to do with anything, but it terrified me just the same. He looked me up and down and then he said, ‘You’re not wearing gloves.’ ”

“With Lexie right there beside him,” Rafe said, to nobody in particular. “Lovely.”

“I’d forgotten all about the gloves. I mean, I was… well, you get the idea. Daniel sighed and got up-he didn’t even seem to be in a hurry-and wiped his glasses on his handkerchief. Then he held out the handkerchief to me and I tried to take it, I thought he meant for me to clean my glasses as well, but he whipped it away and said, sort of irritably, ‘Keys?’ So I brought them out, and he took them and wiped them off-that was when I finally figured out what the handkerchief was all about. Then he…” Justin moved in the chair, as if he was looking for something but wasn’t sure what. “Do you really not remember any of this?”