When She Was Bad(71)

Now Chloe’s voice wasn’t far away. It was right here in the room. He looked down at his hands which were pressing down on hers, pinioning her arms above her head, and her blue eyes which were wide with alarm.

He sat up, head suddenly clear.

‘Oh God! I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to . . . Are you OK?’

She grabbed the sheet and held it up against her, her breath tearing from her chest in rasps. He reached out a hand to stroke her cheek, but she flinched from his touch.

‘Get away from me!’ Her voice was croaky, but there was no mistaking the fear embedded in it. ‘You scared me.’

‘I didn’t mean to. I don’t know what happened . . . God, I’m so sorry.’

Ewan was aware he wasn’t making sense, but shock seemed to have robbed him of the ability to carry a sentence or a thought through to its end. All he knew was that for a few seconds, the woman on the bed beneath him, the woman he’d wanted to hurt, had not been Chloe.

‘Get out of my room.’

‘Please let me explain.’

But when he tried to find the words, he couldn’t. He hadn’t been himself, hadn’t been in his body or in his head. And she too had been someone else, but how could he make her understand when nothing made sense?

‘I’m sorry,’ he said again eventually. ‘I’m so sorry.’

He picked up his clothes from around the bed, and tried not to look at Chloe’s tear-stained face. He’d never laid a finger on a woman in anger. Ever. And, despite the tough-guy persona he liked to adopt, his experience of physical violence in any capacity had been limited to a few playground scuffles at school and a Saturday-night shoving contest in a pub with some body-building type clearly wired on steroids whose girlfriend he’d smiled at.

He felt like crying himself. He felt sick. He felt guilty and ashamed and unable to meet her eyes.

‘Sorry,’ he said again. Then he turned the handle of the hotel-room door and stumbled out, blinking in the bright overhead lights of the corridor. He had on his suit trousers and his new floral shirt which was unbuttoned and, he noticed now, inside out. His shoes and socks were in his hand.

In the lift, his reflection in the mirror scared him. His face was white and clammy, sweat beads popping on his skin like mini blisters. His eyes seemed hooded, the pupils staring wildly out from the bottom of a long dark tunnel. He leaned back against the wall and put his head in his hands so he wouldn’t have to look at himself.

When the lift pinged two floors up, Ewan remained in his slumped position. Everything about him felt too heavy, as if he himself was a dead weight he couldn’t face carrying around any more. His leg, which hadn’t given him any trouble on the high wire earlier in the day, was now aching in that dull but persistent way that usually presaged an uncomfortable night ahead. Eventually he peeled himself off the wall and limped out into the corridor.

‘Hello, Ewan.’

After everything that had just happened, Rachel Masters standing in the deserted hotel corridor in the middle of the night felt unreal. In his blurred head, he wondered whether perhaps the whole night had been some sort of test, culminating in him standing here, half dressed in front of his boss.

‘Been sleepwalking, have we? Or sleepstripping, maybe?’

‘It’s not what you think.’ He had a flash of Chloe’s terrified expression, and felt as if he was about to throw up. What had it been exactly?

‘Please don’t try to make excuses, Ewan. I made it perfectly clear where I stand on personal relationships between staff members. I’m going to have to think about this very carefully. Clearly you and Chloe can’t work in the same department. One of you will have to go. Now I think you should get back to your room.’

Letting himself through the door, he lay down on his bed without taking off his clothes and focused on the ceiling, trying to work out what was real. The ceiling was blank, white, giving nothing away. He studied it until he located, in the far corner by the window, a hairline crack. The tiny imperfection convinced him that this wasn’t all in his head, a nightmare from which he would soon wake up, hungover, but not ashamed.

He knew there’d been a moment when he was in bed with Chloe where he’d genuinely lost control. And he knew that she knew it too. And tomorrow she would tell everyone what he’d done, what he was.

The room, like a womb with its burgundy curtains and walls, pressed in on his already thumping head until it felt as if his skull was caught in a vice. He fell asleep with his hands pressed together on his chest, as if he was praying.





29

Sarah



No signal.

Sarah knew she shouldn’t be surprised. After all, they were in the middle of nowhere. Literally. But still the fact of being cut off from her children, from Oliver, made her feel nervous and panicked. Twenty years ago, before everyone had mobile phones, no one was able to stay in touch all the time. When you went out of the door, that was it until you stepped back in again. Unless you hovered by a landline all day. Under different circumstances maybe she’d see it as quite liberating, this being apart from her family, out of range of their demands, but she felt so low, so miserable and exhausted. And it didn’t help that the wood they were passing through was so dank and gloomy.