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Chapter 3
Lou

Saturday 21st April 2007

I’ve spent the last month trying to ready myself for this moment but nothing could have prepared me for the cloud of memories that descend as I catch sight of the Malvern Hills, curving like a dragon’s back, as I head down the A4440: buying penny sweets in white paper bags from Morley’s, laughing at the girls from the local boarding school in their brown ‘Batman’ cloaks, walking up to St Anne’s Well with Mum and Dad feeling like I was climbing a mountain, and stepping into The Martial Arts Club for the first time, feeling sick with nerves. An image of Mike, smiling and holding out a hand in welcome, flashes into my brain. I try to blot it out by focussing on the road as I speed past Malvern and along the A4103 towards Acton Green. It’s not a journey I’ve ever driven before – I passed my test in London – but the road is imprinted in my memory from all the times Dad ferried me to and from karate lessons. My phone bleeps on the passenger seat as I pass Dad’s favourite drinking haunt, The Dog and Duck. I snatch it up, hoping it’s a text from Ben, knowing it won’t be.

I haven’t seen or heard from him since that awful afternoon in Dover four weeks ago. He caught up with me after I fled, half a mile or so along the seafront.

‘Louise?’ He abandoned his car on a double yellow line and ran after me, grabbing my hand, forcing me to stop. ‘What’s wrong? What’s the matter?’

I shook my head, hating myself for what I was about to do.

‘What is it?’ he asked. ‘What just happened?’

When I told him that I didn’t think we should see each other again, the concerned expression on his face morphed into confusion. Why, he wanted to know. What had he done wrong?

‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘Nothing at all.’

He searched my face for an answer. ‘Then why?’

I couldn’t tell him. Not when I’ve spent the last eighteen years pretending that Mike Hughes doesn’t exist. Instead I mumbled something about things moving too quickly. I wasn’t ready for a relationship. We wanted different things.

I cried on the train back to London, turning my face to the window so the man sitting next to me couldn’t see my tears. Ben didn’t deserve what just happened. Neither did any of the men I’d dumped, run away from and lied to. If I didn’t face up to what happened to me when I was fourteen I was going to spend the rest of my life alone.

I glance at my phone. The text is from my best friend Alice, asking if I’ve got to Dad’s house safely. I drop the phone back on the seat and indicate left, taking the road towards Ledbury – and Mike’s house – instead of continuing on to Acton Green. I’ve never been to his house before. Why would I? He was a respectable member of the community, a karate teacher who raised money for charity through fun runs and tournaments. And besides, he lived with his wife Dee. Mike was very good at keeping our ‘affair’ secret. Our first kiss was in the changing rooms behind the dojo. I was fourteen and it was almost one year to the day after I first started karate, but we first fucked in—

Don’t use that word again.

Mike’s voice cuts through the memory.

Fucking is sex without emotion, Louise. That’s not something I do and it’s certainly not something we’re going to do. When we spend the night together for the first time it’s going to be because we love each other and we’ll express that by—

I turn the radio on and twist the knob round to the right. The sound explodes out of the speakers in a fury, making my eardrums pulse, but I don’t turn it back down. It’s a song I barely know but I sing along anyway, shouting nonsensical words as Mike’s voice creeps through the space between notes, demanding to be heard.

Mike might not have taken me to his house but I knew where he lived. I knew everything about him, or as much as a fourteen-year-old girl could without access to the internet, and I wrote it all down in my diary. I listened in to conversations between the parents and the other senseis. I casually quizzed the older students about him and, during the rare moments I was alone with Mike, I’d listen, enrapt, to anything he told me. This was way before we kissed for the first time. A long time before that.

As I turn right off New Mills Way – one street away from Mike’s house – my resolve vanishes and empty terror replaces it. What am I doing? My plan was to give myself a couple of weeks to sort out Dad’s house and start work before I tracked Mike down. I googled before I left, to check he hadn’t changed his name or gone underground. But no, he lives in the same house he lived in eighteen years ago and he’s got his own business – Hughes Removals and Deliveries – on the outskirts of Malvern. No karate club though, thank God.

I park up, then slump over the steering wheel as all the air leaves my body in one raggedy breath. I’ve got no idea what I’ll walk into when I knock on his door. Mike’s wife could answer. One of his children – if he has any. What do I say if that happens? Hello, I’m Louise, the girl your dad groomed. Is he in?

I don’t know why you’re blaming me for everything. You knew what you were getting yourself into.

Shut up, I tell the voice. I was fourteen. I had no idea.

If I did such a terrible thing why didn’t you testify at my trial?

Because I was terrified of what you might do if you weren’t convicted.

That’s a lie, isn’t it? You didn’t testify because you loved me.

No, that’s not true.

You were the one who said ‘I love you’ first. You said you wanted to marry me and have my children. Do you know why you can’t make a relationship work? Why you had to send Ben packing? Because you still love me.

‘No.’ I slam my fists against the steering wheel, pounding the horn to block out the soft murmur of Mike’s voice in the back of my skull. ‘I don’t. I don’t.’

Sweat prickles at my armpits as I push open the gate to Mike’s house and walk up the path. If his wife answers, I won’t recognise her. There are no photos of her on the internet and Mum made sure I didn’t get so much as a peek at the news or the front page of a newspaper after the trial. I didn’t have a mobile phone or home computer back in 1989 either.

But what if Dee Hughes recognises me? She never went to the dojo or to any of the matches but she must have tried to find out who I am. What if she screams in my face and tells me that I ruined her life? When I look at photos of fourteen-year-old me, I barely recognise myself. My face was soft and round, my hair dark and cut into a jaw-length bob with a thick heavy fringe. These days it’s lighter and longer, with pale tendrils that hang over sharp cheekbones and a tight jaw that I didn’t have eighteen years ago. But it’s not just my face that has changed. The softly curved body I despised so much as a teenager has gone. On a good day, I can look in the mirror and tell myself that I’m slender. On a bad day, my body looks wizened and androgynous, as though the years have eaten away at my femininity.

I knock three times on the front door. I’ve imagined this moment a thousand times. Sometimes Mike looks shocked to see me. Occasionally he starts to cry. Once I stabbed him before he could speak. I concentrate on the thick, glossy red paint and take a deep breath. If Mike peeks from behind a curtain, I want him to see me standing here confidently, not twitching and shifting. I want to get this over and done with now, before any more memories overwhelm me. I have to do it while I’m still feeling brave. We can talk on the doorstep or in the pub down the road. If he invites me in, I’ll say no. Even if he’s home alone. Particularly if he’s home alone.

That’s her, someone shouts as I step out of the French police station. Flashbulbs light up the dark sky as I’m sandwiched between four police officers and shepherded into a black car. That’s the girl who ran away with her karate teacher.

‘Hello?’

I am vaguely aware of a voice, a male baritone, shouting hello, but it doesn’t register. Nothing does.

I need to find out where Mike is. Did they bring him here too? Is he being interrogated behind one of these flat, beige doors?

‘Hello! You at the door of number fifty-nine!’

I turn slowly. There’s a man in his mid to late fifties, hanging out of the first-floor window of the house next to Mike’s. The upper half of his body is naked and his hair is slicked back, like he just stepped out of the shower. I try to erase the image of Mike’s face from my mind, to mentally shake myself forward in time, but the memory’s still holding me tightly, like the last vestiges of a dream. Or a nightmare.

‘Were you after Mike?’ the man asks.

Do I say yes or no? I have no idea who this person is.

‘I was, yes.’

‘Friend are you?’

I smile tightly. ‘Old friend.’

His eyes flick the length of my body and he smiles lasciviously. ‘Lucky Mike.’

I ignore him and head back down the path to my car.

‘He’s at work,’ the man shouts, making me pause as I touch a hand to the driver side door. ‘Greensleeves, the garden centre. He does their pick-ups on a Saturday.’ No mention of Mike’s wife, but I’m not about to ask.

‘Fancy going for a drink sometime?’ he adds as I get into my car. ‘Thank me properly?’

I consider shouting something abusive but I haven’t got time to explain why no sane woman would date a prick who slathers at women out of a window. It’s half past five. I need to find out where the garden centre is and get there before it closes. I need to find Mike. Now. Before the fear sets in again.