finding his energy. He’s moving, dragging me with him. I try to make a big enough noise to immobilise him as he pulls me towards the stairs, but terror steals the sound, and all that’s left is a long, low moan. Did I think I could keep him at bay for ever? That if I carried on talking, I could make time stand still? I reach out, close my fingers around the top of the newel post, the white death button, but Kit pulls me away, yanking me roughly up the steps, one at a time. My arms and legs feel floppy and uncoordinated, like a rag doll’s.
Does he have a plan for what happens next, or did his plan run out a long time ago? Is he going to do it in one of the bedrooms? A bitter liquid fills my throat. I haven’t got the strength to swallow; I can hardly breathe.
On the landing, the bad smell gets stronger. Kit starts to panic. I can feel it, like electrical charges all over his body, pulsing through to mine. He doesn’t want to be up here. He can’t keep still. The blade of the knife keeps touching my face; each time, I jerk my head away. Kit mumbles apologies, one after another. Sorry, sorry, sorry. I’m too frightened to speak, unable to tell him that no amount of sorrys will ever be enough. ‘It’s not your fault, any of this,’ he says. ‘I’ll show you whose fault it is.’
He moves us towards the only closed door on the landing; all the others are slightly ajar.
‘No,’ I manage to say. ‘Please, I don’t . . . no, don’t . . .’ This is the room. He’s going to kill me in this room.
Using the tip of the knife, Kit pushes hard near the handle and the door swings open with a click. He tightens his arm around my waist. I try to focus on the idea of breathing easily, without restriction. Kit yelps like an animal in a trap as he forces me over the threshold. He doesn’t want to do this. He hates everything he’s doing. The stench of putrefaction in the room makes me gag. I notice nothing but the black humming, the double bed in front of me, and on top of the bed . . .
No. No. Nopleasenopleasepleaseno.
Four large plastic parcels, each one several feet long, with brown parcel tape wound around them and sealing the ends. Four stinking cocoons, with a cloud of black flies buzzing around them – three lying side by side, and the fourth, the smallest, nestling in a groove made by the curved sides of the two biggest. Through the transparent plastic, I see material – a pattern of flowers and leaves, a paisley pattern . . .
‘We had to wrap them like mummies,’ says Kit. ‘Stop them smelling, stop the flies getting in – that’s what Jackie said. See how well it worked? This is her idea of the flies not getting in.’
Now. Now’s when I should run, but my body is boneless and limp. Kit bends down, taking me with him. There’s a roll of brown parcel tape on the floor, by the leg of the bed. ‘Pick it up,’ he says, freeing one of my arms. ‘Tape your mouth shut, then wind the tape twice round your head, so that your mouth’s properly covered.’ The knife blade slices into the air in front of my eyes. One inch more and it would cut my eyeball in half.
I feel something pouring down my legs. I try to deny to myself what this must mean, but the knowledge is there and I can’t get away from it. I’ve wet myself. I try to turn my head so that I don’t have to watch my shame soak into the carpet. Whoever finds my body will know that I died terrified and humiliated.
‘Pick up the tape,’ Kit says again, as if he can’t understand why the thing he wants to happen isn’t already happening. ‘Tape your mouth shut, then wind the tape twice around your head.’
But I can’t do anything, nothing at all. I can’t comply and I can’t resist. ‘Just kill me,’ I say, sobbing. ‘Get it over with.’
Chapter 26
24/7/2010
‘Plenty of Cambridge students stay on after they finish their degrees,’ said Charlie. ‘Why didn’t Kit Bowskill, if he was so in love with the place?’ She was sitting in the back of Simon’s car, having abandoned her own outside the Granta