Darker London

Blind with fury, Imogene rode. Immortality lent a certain amount of confidence to riding a bike, something she hadn’t done for over forty years. The thought of crashing or falling did not occur to her because crashing or falling would slow her down, and that was unthinkable. She must catch up to her husband, the liar. The cheat. The irredeemable bastard. She must catch up to him and tear open his whole life as punishment.

As she caught up with him, she forced clarity upon herself. Blind fury would not work. She need lucidity if she was going to come out of tonight on top. She needed to be clear sighted and goal orientated. Imogene took a long, deep breath, and asked herself what she wanted.

She wanted every lie he’d ever told revealed, wanted the weight of them to crush him, utterly destroy him. That had been her mistake, she realised. She should have destroyed him earlier, in order to rebuild him into the kind of man she wanted him to be.

Well, she would destroy him now, but she had no plans to waste any more of her heart in trying to redeem him this time. He was past help. Their marriage was in its death throes, and all Imogene wanted was to make it as messy a death as possible.


As he drove, Harley made frantic plans. London was over. London was done. He must get home and grab anything of value, and grab Rachel, and get them all back into the car and leave. He did not give a shit where they went, so long as it was far. Maybe America. You could really hide from your past, in America. You had the right to protect yourself properly there, too. Imogene wouldn’t have fucked with him if he’d been carrying his gun.

Harley was not immortal, but tonight, he drove like it.

( ... )

Rachel scrolled through the pictures Danny had sent her of his new home, the way he'd decorated his bedroom, the cakes in the kitchen, the backyard, the cat, Deirdre making a ridiculous face at the camera, barely dressed even though it was the dead of winter. Alex was in the background of a couple of them, and Rachel stopped scrolling for a few moments to look at her. She couldn't tell if Alex looked more relaxed than before, couldn't tell what her feelings were about living in this new place just from two pictures. But god, Rachel wanted to know.

Zoe had told Rachel all about what they'd done; going to Alex's house to strip it of her stuff, make a clean break from her awful mother. Zoe hadn't hidden how proud she was of Alex, as if there was any pride to be had in a family's final death throes.

( ... )

Noise woke Rachel up, a slam of a door and heavy footsteps somewhere in the building. That wasn't weird, the walls were thin, pipes in the wall behind her head rattled whenever someone down-or-upstairs was having a shower, the whole complex was full of stompers and shouters and criers and people who dragged furniture across their floors at two in the morning, people who played distant thumbing music. If her life had a soundtrack it was this chaotic mess.

Rachel's head hurt, and her ankle complained sharply as she rolled over to grope for her drink bottle and her phone. The bottle only had a mouthful left in it and her phone was on fifteen percent. She rubbed a bit of the sandpapery feeling out of her eyes and plugged it back in, scrolling through messages and updates before her eyes had really cleared.

( ... )

Rachel's dinner with Harley and Imogene had been pretty quiet - on her part. The restaurant they'd taken her too had been dimly lit, full of soft candlelight and Rachel felt like a third wheel on their romantic date. And it was romantic - Harley was going over the top with Imogene, touching her at any given opportunity, taking her hand or stroking her hair or leaning over the table and kissing her while Rachel stared at her food and tried to be invisible and blind.

She could barely eat, she was so uncomfortable. The wine, yes, she could drink, hoping that would settle her nerves. The glass was enormous, meant for swirling the wine around to bring out the scent, but it just made Rachel feel like she was very small. And once the glass was gone, she didn't have any more, because Harley and Imogene still had wine in their glasses and Rachel felt too out of place to try and ask the waited for anything.

The air hung heavily over her head, poised to shatter. She could destroy everything with a few words. Tear this family apart. He's cheating on you she thought, pushing a piece of sweet potato gnocchi through the sauce on her plate. They were only on entrées and Rachel had no appetite. Harley lifted Imogene's hand to his mouth to kiss it and Rachel thought He's lying.

( ... )

Sitting around the table at Mariposa's with Danny and Cai, Zoe and Alex had been fun, but as it got later Rachel got quieter. She rolled her glass around and around on the table, making spirals in the condensation. She ripped one napkin into pieces the size of her little fingernail, and then another, but stopped at three when Danny noticed and took her hand. She'd smiled and arranged the bits into a heart on the table instead, hoping he wouldn't think she was being destructive just for the sake of it.

It got harder to keep up with the conversation, as time went on. It was like they'd all go silent for a while and then something world burst through and get her attention again "-full on rabid wedding planner mode," Zoe was saying, and Rachel realised she'd missed a whole lot of conversation, and spent the next few minutes trying to concentrate and work out who Zoe was talking about, but then Cai made a joke about corn and the conversation changed again and she was lost.

She wasn't freaking out about going home or anything. She was just... not there.

( ... )

Danny was coming over! Danny was coming over and Rachel was so excited to prove to him how okay she was with Imogene now. He had been totally right when he'd said he hadn't been around her much, so how was he to know how much she'd actually changed?

Almost all the time when they were hanging out it was at Danny's or Zoe's or Cai's, though not Cai's so much these days. Or at uni, but it was holidays now. Hardly ever at Rachel's and Rachel did get it, because her house did used to be awful, but it was so much nicer now. Way calmer. And way, way cleaner.

And at the moment, way empty! She had the whole place to herself while her dad was out at work and while Imogene was out, probably searching for Indigo, but Rachel didn't know for sure. Imogene was out a lot and Rachel didn't want to ask, in case it was about Indigo, and in case it made her mad.

( ... )

Once upon a time, Zoe had run all the way from her house to Rachel’s. She’d turned up in the dead of the night, covered in sweat and so high, as high as Rachel had ever seen her.

Collapsing on Rachel’s bed, Zoe had said to her ‘you can’t even imagine how perfectly clear everything is at this moment’ but Rachel could, now, Rachel did.

( ... )

They could have made better time, but Zoe was trying not to think that. She was frustrated at the rain, frustrated at everyone else in their cars this morning, frustrated she lived so far away, but conscious of Liz, and everything Liz had said about taking it all on herself.

You can't control rain, and cars, and distance, Zoe reminded herself.

( ... )

Her dad had said no, but her friends were coming for her anyway. Danny and Zoe were coming and Liz and Deirdre were coming and Cai had reminded her to breath and this was a whole goddamn lot to take in. Her hands trembled with defiance. Well, they were trembling fairly often on the days she hadn’t taken her meds but it was fine, all she had to do was get to Zoe’s.

Rachel pulled on her backpack just as Harley opened the door. He’d given her a few minutes to cool off, but looking at her now it had been a few minutes too many. “What are you doing?”

“Leaving,” Rachel hiccupped. “Not staying here, with her, I’m leaving.”

( ... )

Rachel refused to admit that staying up all night talking to Danny could have been a bad idea. He had managed to stop her obsessing over all the terrible things Imogene could do to her and her father, and she’d stopped reading everything people were saying online about Indigo and the massacre, so there was that.

News sites did not name Indigo – she was still a minor – and there was no mention on anything official that their main suspect was an unarmed teenage girl, but if you dug a little deeper (and Rachel dug) then speculation was rife. One of the ambulances leaving the scene had been attacked as well. There’d been a robbery and stabbing a few blocks over – everyone was saying that was related, but Rachel didn’t think Indigo would have tried to hold up a McColls.

( ... )

Imogene came back to life a sobbing thing, weeping bloody tears as parts of her broken face rearranged themselves, and she was was forced to confront the reality of her new broken world. Her favourite hallway rug ruined, her relationship with her daughter smeared, cold and concealed, all over the hardwood floor.

Indigo was long gone by the time her mother could begin to peel her body off the floor, her hair hardened into a crusty helmet around her head. She tried to stand before she was ready and her legs trembled, lamblike, and collapsed beneath her. This sort of thing happened occasionally in the Dumitra family, but Imogene could not believe it had happened to her, could not believe she was forced to crawl out of the lake of her own blood that her daughter had reduced her to.

( ... )

Carly had been having one of her rough days. She could usually spot them from right out the gate, when she woke up already feeling like shit. They were the sort of days where she had a couple shots at lunch just to make sure she could complete work without losing it.

(Cain's hands around her throat.)

She spent a lot of time on those days glaring into reflective surfaces. I'm Carly Fucking Malec, so fuck right off. The reflection sometimes seemed a little doubtful about her words. Mirrors were harder to convince than the other people around her.

So once evening came, Carly went home and changed into something slutty put a flask in her handbag. She could sweep enough money for one or two drinks out on the town, but any more than that would break the bank. Her dress was the same red as her lips and her hair was loose and free and doing its thing with the help of three different products.

Her only interest tonight was getting fucked, was finding some guy who found her irresistible and making him say it. Being taken by some stranger who'd make her feel alive and passionate and daring.

(Cain's hands around her throat.)

She pushed open the door of the pub.

(Shake them off.)

At the bar she ordered a diet lemonade, a choice made because it was cheap as shit and hopefully someone else would soon buy her something proper. Men liked to buy her drinks, so why deny them?

Leaving hospital, Rachel tripped and skinned her knee.

It happened just a moment before she got in the car and she didn’t think Danny had seen. That was her first thought. Don’t let him have seen. Don’t worry, don’t waste your energy.

Then, the sight and smell of her blood caught up with her, and she stared at her knee.

But she laughed and it was like a release. All the stress and grief of the funeral all the paranoia that the juice was poisoned all the indecision and fear about what to do about the gun all the fear that Zoe was irreparably ill. All of it, releasing into the air around her.

( ... )

With great care, caused by great caution, Rachel slowly turned the wheel of her father’s car to the left and guided the car into the park on the side of the road, in between two other cars. The car fit, and the bumper did not come close to grazing anything it shouldn’t have. Her hands shook a little bit as she reached for the key and turned off the engine, flooding the car with silence. After a moment, she remembered to breathe.

The street was dark and narrow and lined with parked cars. Orange lights lit the night in front of her and behind, and the dashboard glowed softly in return. The radio was not on; she had been too busy concentrating to even remember that music while one drove was a thing.

( ... )

The last thing Harley ever expected was to see Imogene again, standing at his front door waiting to be let in. Her dark hair had been recently straightened and even more recently rained upon and was trying to escape its simple ponytail. She had a little make up left on her face but no lipstick, and under it all she looked exhausted and frightened.

Harley had never seen Imogene frightened before, so he opened up the door, and drew her back into his life.

( ... )

The furniture in Rachel’s new flat was mismatched; a combination of furniture that Harley had rescued from Imogene’s house. The white leather sofa, for instance, sat next to an arm chair he’d found on his way from work. The desk from Rachel’s old room was letting all its ergonomic potential go to waste as it was being used as a dinner table, but since they never ate at the table it had turned into a kitchen-storage area. Rachel had her old bed, which took up most of her tiny room, but no storage to put anything, so her clothes were in banana boxes under the bed. All of the curtains were falling apart, leftovers from the previous tenants. The toilet was avocado and permanently stained, the seat was peeling.

Rachel spent a lot of time on the white leather couch which was already dirtier than it had ever been. Baked bean juice just didn’t come off if you didn’t really care enough to scrub it.

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