The Blue Hour

Chapter 42

42

Eris, 2002

On her hands and knees on the grass outside the studio, Grace leaned towards Julian’s body, trying not to look at him as she paced her forefinger and middle finger on the side of his throat to feel for a pulse. His head was completely caved in on the other side, so a pulse wasn’t likely , but you never knew. You couldn’t be too careful.

There was no pulse and yet, as she crouched there on the grass, she thought she could feel his heartbeat through the earth, feel the blood throbbing out of him, soaking into the soil. She closed her eyes and breathed in the rich ferric smell of it, in and out, in and out, in and out, she breathed, waiting for her own heartbeat to slow.

When she opened her eyes again, when she felt strong enough to get to her feet, she saw that the tide was coming in. It was almost too late to cross over. She allowed herself a moment of relief. No one was coming. No one would catch her with blood on her hands. She had time now, a full six hours, and by then it would be the middle of the night.

She touched him. She slid her hand down the side of his body and into his trouser pocket. Then she leaned over him and searched the other pocket, her hand closing around his car key. He’d left the sports car at the bottom of the track. She needed to move it as soon as possible.

As she walked down the hill, she felt a moment of elation: the hills opposite were velveted in lush, dark greens, the gorse had been burnished by the sun to a faded gold, the sea was glittering and glorious and Julian was dead. She wanted to sing, to proclaim her victory to someone, to say, Look! Look what I have done!

Just a moment, and then the giddy feeling passed, and she came down to earth, to face the practicality of her situation. She opened his car, recoiling from the heat and cigarette stink, and drove it up the track, parking it on the blind side of the house.

She went inside and washed her hands, splashed cold water on her face, poured herself a glass to drink. She considered her options. The sensible thing would be to wait in the house until nightfall in order to avoid being seen, but she found herself suddenly seized by an irrational fear that the next time she looked up the hill he would be gone, or the next time she looked up at the window, there he would be, his head stoved in and that terrible smile on his face.

So she went back up the hill and sat at his side, where she could keep an eye on him. Where she could watch the clouds turn pink and orange and red until finally all dusk’s colour bled away, like Julian’s blood into the ground beneath her, until the sky was as cool as his skin. In that blue hour, with night encroaching, the sky beginning slowly to fill with stars, Grace wept a little, fearful of what she had done and of what she had still to do.

But once it was properly dark, she shrugged off self-pity and set to work. She intended to drag him down the path and across the hillside, over to the south side of the island, to the bluff. From there, it was a sheer drop to the sea. When they found him – if they found him – it would be impossible to tell, she reasoned, that his head injury came from a blow rather than a fall, or from being dashed against the rocks by the waves.

But almost as soon as she took hold of his wrists and started pulling his body along the ground, she knew that if she had all night and all of the next day and possibly the day after that, she would never get him up to the bluff. He was a tall man, around six feet, and not slight. After twenty or thirty minutes, she was pouring with sweat and had barely moved him more than a few feet – and that was going downhill . She let go of his wrists and collapsed heavily to the ground, crying out in pain as she landed on something hard.

The septic tank.

It took her a while to get it open. For several desperate minutes, she thought she wouldn’t be able to shift the lid, a piece of concrete twenty inches square and very heavy. But eventually, after minutes of struggling and swearing, of gagging as she inhaled the fetid stench of the tank’s contents, of jamming chisels beneath the lid in order to give her leverage, she managed to tip it upright, resting it against a stone. Under the moonless sky, she walked back up the hill, selected another large stone from the side of the path and brought it back to wedge beneath the waistband of Julian’s trousers to help weigh him down. And then, with an undeniable surge of pleasure, she began manoeuvring him, head first, into the stinking, filthy mire.

As she moved the concrete lid back into place, she managed to catch her forefinger between the lid and the lip of the opening. Crying out in agony as she tore it free, she staggered to her feet, tears filling her eyes, gripped by the sort of all-consuming rage that comes with stress and pain, gripped by the feeling that she shouldn’t be the one suffering. This was Vanessa’s fault, all of it. If she hadn’t welcomed him to their island, to their home, into her bed, if she hadn’t colluded with him, hadn’t promised to go away with him, none of this would have happened.

Blinded by fury, she ran up to the studio, where she grabbed hold of the edge of the table and wrenched it upwards, sending the remaining ceramics crashing to the floor. She grabbed a shard of porcelain and sliced through the nearest canvas, through North , through Eris Rock , through Winter ; in a frenzy of violence she slashed and ripped and did not stop until she was confronted by her own solemn gaze, by Totem .