The Deviants (31 page)

Fallon went to Max's side and bent down to put her arms around him. ‘And there's the baby,' she said bluntly.

Neil looked from her to me, back to her. ‘What baby?'

‘The baby you put inside her. The one she lost.'

He pointed at her. ‘Shut your fucking mouth, you liar. Your mother was that old witch woman, at my daughter's inquest. I know your lot. Bunch of gyppos. I'll sue this time, I'm telling you. You'll all look like fools in court.'

She shook her head. ‘I'm not lying. I was there when she miscarried it. It was fully formed. It had bones. It had eyes.'
She looked at me. ‘I didn't know what to do with it but I couldn't just flush it down the toilet like you told me to. So I buried it. I took a boat out to the island and I buried it.' She turned her attention back to Neil. ‘I'll tell the police where it is. They'll be able to tell it was yours.'

‘You're bluffing. All of you. This is harassment.'

‘You did this to yourself, Neil,' I said. ‘You can't complain now it's come back to bite you. You're a paedophile. You're evil. Every one of us knows it now. And if I speak up, they'll speak up with me. It'll be all over this town by the morning. I'm not living with this any longer. You have to live with it.'

He breathed like he was having a heart attack, scanning the boardwalk. Then he strode over to Max, who shuffled back until Neil had a grip on the knife. He came striding back towards me. Zane and Corey started down the boardwalk, but I held a hand up to stop them.

‘It's all right,' I said. ‘I'm not afraid. He's the coward. A coward who hides behind money. He's going to offer me some right now. Aren't you, Neil?

Huffing, he backtracked to stand next to Max, sweating heavily now. He pointed the knife down at him. He was shouting.

‘Do you want to lose the house? Do you? Do you want me to lose all my businesses? Your car? Do
you
want everyone to know about this? Because that's what will come of this if you go to the police, son. Do you want your mother to be out on the streets? You're a Rittman. You'll be tarred with the same brush. And for what, eh? This is family, Max. We can't lose that. There's nothing more important, is there?'

‘Strange that family was the last thing you mentioned losing,' I called out.

I held fast to Neil's stare. Even if the sea wind burned
my eyeballs, no way was I backing down this time. Zane and Corey were standing beside Max, helping him get to his feet. Strong and mighty, making a wall in front of Fallon.

‘I've been so scared of you, for years, but I'm not scared any more. I can see what you are now. The only thing that scares me is Max living for one second longer in your disgusting shadow. You going to prison – it's going to solve all our problems.'

Neil dropped the knife. ‘A hundred thousand,' he said, quieter than before.

‘What was that?' I said, cupping my ear.

He chewed on both his lips. ‘One hundred thousand and you leave Brynstan. My lawyer can draw up the contract. But no repeat fees, no comebacks. We're done.'

I shook my head.

He breathed out – once, twice, three times. ‘Two hundred.'

I shook my head.

He scratched his neck, the diamonds on his watch glinting in the moonlight.

‘Five. Hundred. Thousand. Final. That'll buy you whatever then, won't it?'

I looked at Max, then back at Neil. ‘It won't buy my life back, will it?'

With a snarl, Neil delivered his parting gift to me in a hushed, deep tone, like the one I'd last heard on the island.

‘If your father gets cancer again, I'll make sure he dies. And then I'll come for you. That's a promise. You'll see my face in your fucking nightmares.'

I stared back. ‘I already do.'

That was the point when I just lost it. I was an athlete coming out of the blocks. I flew, barrelling into him and feeling the boardwalk disappear beneath my feet as we flew
through the air and crashed down hard onto the wet sand below. As the tide lapped over us, I straddled his chest, my hands around his neck. I squeezed and squeezed with all my strength but his neck was too strong. So I started punching him instead, both fists. Right hand, left hand. Cross punching.
Bang-bang-bang. Bang-bang-bang. Bang-bang-bang.
And screaming, so much screaming. I was wild. This was the revenge I'd always wanted. This had been the target all along – Neil Rittman. I was going to kill Neil Rittman. I wanted to kill Neil Rittman. I wanted to knock his brain clean out of his skull.

I grabbed his ears and slammed his head back on the sand. If it hadn't been for the wave, I'd have killed him then.

But it ploughed into us, a real strong one, breaking us apart. Then I was in the water, breathless with the shocking coldness of it. I could still feel the sand underneath my feet, but I couldn't keep my feet on the ground; I kept floating away and ducking under the water, gasping as the sandy brine filled my mouth. I came up to catch my breath, and another huge wave came over the top of me. And another one.

I couldn't find the surface again.

Then this black shape was in front of me. Coming at me faster than I could move away. Until…

BAM!
My whole body was smashed against a hard post, one of the jetty stilts. Then I heard the dull gurgling of the sea in my ears. And then just – darkness.

Now I'm sitting here with you.

And that's the thing I can't get over.

That trying to kill him took my life.

‘It's not fair, is it?'

27

A Shock for All

I
t's daylight. The clock on the wall of the café says 6.01 a.m. I'm not wet any more. I look out to sea. The tide is way out now, revealing a thick golden bar of sand.

I ask you if you came back just for me. You say yes. Someone always comes back. You say I needed to see a friendly face.

I'm glad it's you, Jess. I'd forgotten how beautiful you are.

The café door chimes, and a woman enters, then another. More staff. The early shift for the lifeboat crew, and the overnighters just coming off a shift on the bypass. Whipped prides itself on being the only place for miles around that opens from dawn until dusk. The radio comes on over the speakers. Some DJ on the South-West's favourite radio station is promising ‘non-stop hits all day long', and appealing for listeners to send in their old bras.

I look back through the window and see the boardwalk through the window. Some police are still milling around like luminous ants. It's still taped off.

You tell me it's going to be difficult for me, but that you're here. Everything will be OK in the end. I find that
hard to believe. You say that, now I've told you the whole story, I can begin to get over it. I find that hard to believe as well. It's too soon, I say. I'm only seventeen. I did nothing wrong.

You say I already know the answer to that.

I'm sitting beside the café window when I see the man running up the beach and I instantly know it's washed ashore. The sand flicks up behind him as he sprints. And he's screaming.

His face is alive with fear. He's running so hard to get away from it, what he's found. In those brief moments, I am the only person in the café to see him. But, within seconds, the quiet crumbles into chaos.

‘Somebody! Help!'

‘What's he saying?'

‘Did he say a body?'

Someone calls my name, but I don't turn around. I keep walking, out of the café, into the morning air, along the Esplanade, down the steps and onto the wet sand, like the sea is a magnet and I am metal.

People overtake me. Someone shouts, ‘Call the police.' Thudding footsteps, snatches of breath. The sand's covered in a billion worm hills and tiny white shells. A group of crows squawks nearby. They're all clustered around an object, pecking at it.

‘Let the police handle it.'

‘Don't look. Don't look.'

I keep walking towards the mound, until I can see for myself what the man was running from. Until I can see for myself what I have done.

And I do see it. It becomes clearer with every footstep. It's wearing my jogging bottoms. My hoody. It has my hair. It's asleep but soaking wet.

It's me.

I stare down at my bloated, bleached face on the wet sand, surrounded by tiny mirror pools and broken tree branches. One of my arms is slung out. The other is rounded, like I'm singing ‘I'm a Little Teapot'. I almost laugh. A tiny crab crawls into my open mouth.

‘God, it's so strange.'

I know, you say.

Some other people have gathered round, a couple of builders in big brown work boots and two waitresses from the café. One waitress has her hand over her mouth. One of the builders is swearing, dialling 999. Another builder is taking off his jumper. He lays it gently over my head. One of the waitresses gets out her phone and clicks onto YouTube – one way to get more followers. The third builder rips the phone from her hand and hoys it into the mud.

‘Oi!'

‘Sue me!'

‘Where's Max?' I ask you.

You tell me he's been at the police station all night.

‘All night? What happened exactly after I… after the waves?'

You take my hand and, as quick as one movie scene cuts to another, it's night-time again. Last night. Except it's all blurry, smudged at the edges, just a memory. I'm standing on the pavement, between Max's roughly parked Audi and the rusty old Jeep from the farm. I'm watching myself and Neil arguing on the jetty. You stand beside me, on the pavement. Corey's at the top of the jetty. Fallon's next to him. They're holding hands. Neil's brandishing the knife. I watch him threaten me. I see myself launch at him, sending us both overboard onto the sand below. We're tussling. I'm punching. I'm pulverising him. My fists ache, I'm punching
so hard. All I can hear is the rush of the tide as it storms the shore and pounds the stilts of the jetty. Then the waves break us apart and I disappear under the water but Neil is washed up. He gets to his feet and starts stumbling towards dry land, spluttering.

I am nowhere. That must be when I died.

Max doesn't know it. He runs to the end of the jetty and dives off, straight into the sea and disappears. His head comes up, he dives down again.

‘He'll kill himself. Don't let him, Jess,' I say. ‘Please, stop him. Do something!'

But you tell me to watch. The wind howls around us like wolves and there's a thumping noise of someone running down the jetty at full pelt, like a rugby player running for the end zone. I don't recognise them at first – they're in a white hoody. It's not Fallon or Corey, they're both still there. No, it's Zane. He dives in after Max.

‘Where the hell are the police?' shouts Corey. ‘They should be here by now, Pete called them ages ago!'

Fallon's watching Neil stumbling down the beach, getting away. And she runs after him. Fallon and Corey chase Neil down as he runs with a twisted ankle back up the seafront, sopping wet and coughing up seawater. Corey rugby-tackles him to the ground.

‘He's never played rugby in his life,' I say. You smile at me.

Fallon sits on his legs, taking off her belt and handing it to Corey so he can roughly tie Neil's hands behind his back. He's not even fighting back.

‘What about Max though? Is he going to be all right?' I ask, going back to the sea wall. I can taste salt in my throat.

You point back to the beach. Zane's pulling him out, dragging him out of the water. He's struggling, he wants
to go back in, but Zane's too strong for him. He's out of breath, but shouting at him. I can't hear them at first over the waves.

‘She's gone! You'll drown if you go back in there. She's gone, Max.'

*

In a heartbeat, we're back to the daylit beach. My body lying crudely among seaweed and wet branches. More people stand around. More people start getting their phones out. A woman in wellies and a pink anorak rubs a tear from her cheek; yet she won't look away.

They've had search and rescue boats out all night, you tell me, but the sea had swallowed me whole. And now the early morning tide has spat me out again.

There are sirens behind us on the jetty and the builders start moving people back.

‘So I died because I tried to kill him?'

You say nothing.

‘Why me?'

You won't answer.

‘Why won't you tell me? Why am I still angry, even though there's no life left?'

You say, in time, that will go. But I don't believe you.

‘I didn't learn my lesson in life, so what's the point learning it now?'

The police set up a white tent around my body and usher all the gawpers back, until they're behind a cordon near the jetty.

‘Can I go back?' I ask. ‘I mean, if I've learnt my lesson, can I be alive again? I've seen it on films. People learn their lessons and they get sent back. Can we do that?'

You say it doesn't work like that.

‘But this is crap. This is a crap way to end a life. To end
my
life. That's it? That's it? No more anything? What about Max? What about my dad, is he going to be OK? And Fallon and Corey? I know I pushed things too far but come on! What about Zane? Zane's not all right, he hurt himself. I need to go back there, Jess. I need to help them.'

You tell me I already have. You tell me everything will be all right.

But still I don't believe you.

‘Trust me.'

28

Away on Their Own

W
hat the living never find out is that dying is actually OK. It's them who have to do all the suffering, the people who stay behind. I don't feel rage now, or resentment or anything. I don't feel the urge to punch walls or pummel punchbags. And I don't itch. You say we can stay as long as we need to. You tell me the dead don't leave until their living are ready to lose them. I'm glad that's the way it is. I just wish they all knew that. I'm still here with them.