The Book of You by Kendal Claire

Author:Kendal, Claire [Kendal, Claire]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2014-04-09T23:00:00+00:00

Week 4

The Potion of Forgetfulness

Monday

Monday, 23 February, 8.00 a.m.

It is your usual routine. You are outside my house, though you stand in the centre of the grass near Miss Norton’s bare apple tree instead of the path. I am walking quickly to the taxi.

‘You’ve lost my respect, Clarissa,’ you say, from several feet away.

I look straight ahead.

‘I warned you, Clarissa. I warned you several times. But you haven’t stopped. You’ve brought it on yourself.’

You still don’t try to get close to me. You do not move from your spot. Calmly, you watch as the taxi drives away.

Will you blow the photograph into a poster and display it somewhere public, somewhere Robert will see it? You know where my parents live. Will you send it to them?

When I think of my parents my stomach does a flip and my heart hammers even harder, but I know they are safe from you, at least physically. I know you won’t bother them in Brighton. Brighton is too far away from me. Brighton is where they must stay. Brighton is where, at least for now, I cannot go.

She was glad when the door to the jury assembly room snapped shut behind her. She hadn’t cooked her mother’s beef casserole that weekend, or touched that red wine, despite not having left her flat a single time. She hadn’t even looked out her windows, in dread of seeing him there.

She knew she couldn’t let herself spend all of her weekends locked in. Had Laura locked herself away somewhere? That was more likely than the Gothic film of chopped-up bodies she’d been playing in her own head.

Something Lottie had said kept haunting her. I thought if I ignored it, tried to avoid him, it would disappear. Clarissa understood the desire to believe that, but knew she couldn’t afford to.

She had rejected him, and that could be a trigger. Evidently, Laura had too. Rejection was probably the key to it all. Nobody liked rejection, but the vast majority of people found ways to cope with it and didn’t put themselves in a position where they’d have to face rejection multiple times a day. She’d only ever thought of him as sadistic, but it occurred to her that he was masochistic too. She pictured him coatless and half-frozen, and wondered if he made himself suffer in that way so he’d have another thing to blame her for.

But as she puzzled over it, she realised that she might learn something useful if she tried to view him as tormented; if she tried to see his behaviour as the product of a severe illness or wound. If he felt spurned, again and again spurned, then he must feel powerless; he was trying to assert sadistic power over her in the face of what he saw as repeated, cruel rejection. All she ever said to him – whether through words or actions or freezing him out – was no; it was all she could say; the power of veto was her only power; and with each no, his actions became more punishing and dangerous.

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