Page 67 of The Elements

It was the final days of my stay in Cornwall.

Since the night they buried me alive, Arthur and Pascoe had been reluctant to spend much time with me, no doubt worried that I might hold them to account for what they had done.

Instead, I chose not to mention it at all, hoping they’d think that I’d either forgotten about it entirely or had experienced no traumatic effects.

Only once, when Pascoe brought it up in a way that made it clear that the twins had rehearsed this conversation, did we even touch upon it.

“That was a stupid thing you did that night,” he said as we walked along the beach, the two boys to my right with me by the water’s edge, for they never allowed me to stand between them.

“What night?” I asked.

“You know what night. Climbing into the box like that. Sleeping in it. You might have died.”

A lengthy silence ensued. So this, I told myself, was the way that they had decided to frame what had happened. As my fault.

“I know,” I said at last, keeping my tone steady. “Thank you, both of you, for saving me. I don’t know what I’d have done if you hadn’t.”

Immediately, the tension between us seemed to dissipate, and I watched as they gave each other reassuring smiles. Perhaps they genuinely thought I was so stupid that I actually believed this version of events.

“You’re just a kid,” said Arthur, ignoring the fact that, if I was, then he had spent much of the summer raping a child. “But you need to be more careful in the future. Especially when you go home, because we won’t be there to protect you.”

Later, in the village, I ran into Eli, who was sitting outside a pub with a beer, reading a newspaper and smoking a cigarette. I waved to him and he called me over, inviting me to sit down. He asked me how I was, and I told him the truth, that I missed him.

“Miss you too, sweetheart,” he said, folding his paper and putting it to one side. “But your mum, she gave me the old heave-ho.”

“Why?” I asked, interested to know, as it had seemed to me that she’d been lucky to find someone as nice as him.

He rubbed his thumb and index finger together.

“Money,” he said. “I don’t have enough for her, do I?

She’s got a few good years left in her yet and she’s throwing the line out, hoping to reel in a bigger fish.

” He took a drag from his cigarette and stared off in the direction of the sea before shaking his head.

“Forget I said that,” he said, turning back to me with a smile.

“She’s your mum. I shouldn’t say anything bad about her to you. ”

“She gave birth to me,” I told him. “But that’s about it. She’s not my mum really.”

“I never did understand why she gave you up,” he said, and I repeated the hand gesture he had made to me— money —which made him laugh.

“Still, she was just a teenager, I suppose,” he said.

“Can’t blame her for not being ready. I don’t hold grudges.

We had fun together, but neither of us saw it as anything long term.

Truth is, I’m not the kind of guy who gets upset about things like that.

If someone wants to be with me, great. And if they don’t, well, I’m not gonna lose any sleep over it. ”

In my mind, I returned to my earlier fantasy that he would marry Beth and adopt me, only this time I didn’t want her in the picture at all. I wanted it to be just the two of us.

“When are you going home?” he asked.

“Day after tomorrow.”

“Shame,” he said. “I’ll miss you.”

I felt myself light up from within.

“We could do something together before I go,” I suggested, and he raised an eyebrow, looking slightly baffled.

“Like what?”

“I dunno. Have dinner. Somewhere fancy though, not just down the pub for cod and chips and mushy peas. I can get that anytime.”

He shook his head. “Don’t think that would be right,” he said.

“It doesn’t really have to be somewhere fancy. I was only joking. The local is as good as anywhere.”

“Still,” he said, looking away and glancing at his watch. “Probably not.”

I felt embarrassed and confused and worried that he was going to leave. I’m just like her, amn’t I, I thought. Just like Beth. And I’ll end up just like her too .

“Why did Mr. Teague fire you?” I asked, anxious to change the subject.

“Because he’s an idiot.”

“No, but why?”

“Doesn’t want to spend the cash,” he said. “Happy to throw it away on sofas, massive televisions, and sound systems, but he wants all the behind-the-scenes shit done on the cheap. That’s what rich people are like, Freya. Tight as fuck.”

“What behind-the-scenes stuff?” I asked.

“Electrics,” he said. “Cheap cables. Cheap plumbing. Looks good on the outside, but when things go wrong, and they will sooner or later, it’ll be a shit show.

Still,” he said, taking a long drink from his beer, “it’s his money.

If he wants to throw it away, that’s on him.

But it’s a… what’s the phrase?… a false economy.

Ten years from now—five—he’ll be pulling everything out and having to start all over again. ”

“You won’t do it for him then, will you?”

“’Course I will,” he said, breaking into a wide smile. “Work’s work and a pay packet’s a pay packet. If he wants me to redo that house every few years for the rest of my life, I’m good with it, as long as he pays me.”

He reached for his cigarette pack, removed another, and looked around for his lighter.

He stood up, went over to the next table and asked for a match from another customer, while I retrieved his lighter from where it had dropped underneath the bench and put it in my pocket.

When he came back, I’d moved around to his side of the table and was sitting in the seat next to his.

He seemed a little surprised by this, but I explained that the sun had been in my eyes.

“Can I have a drink?” I asked.

“Sure,” he said. “What do you want?”

I racked my brain for things I’d heard Beth or Hannah order over the years and asked for a vodka and cranberry. Eli threw his head back and laughed.

“I meant a Coke or a Fanta,” he said. “You’re twelve years old.”

“I’ll be thirteen in November,” I told him.

“So come back to me in November five years from now and I’ll get you one then.”

I gave in and let him buy me a Sprite, and when he returned, carrying another beer for himself, I set aside the straw and glass he’d brought with him and decided to drink it directly from the bottle, just as he was doing.

“You’re better off without her anyway,” I told him, doing my best to sound grown-up.

“Without who?”

“Without Beth. You’re too good for her.”

He smiled and shrugged. “She’s a piece of work, that’s for sure.”

“I mean it. I’ve met lots of her boyfriends over the years, and I’ve hated them all. But you’re different.”

“Cheers.”

“Do you know the caves down by the beach?”

“Sure,” he said. “Why?”

“Just asking. I’d like to visit them again before I go.”

“Tide’ll be in soon. You better wait till tomorrow morning.”

“We could go together then.”

He shook his head and took a drag from his cigarette. “Sorry, kid,” he said. “Starting a new job tomorrow. A smaller house than the Teagues’, but I know the owner and he’s all right. It’ll be simple enough.”

“Don’t call me that,” I said quietly.

“What?”

“I’m not a kid.”

“All right,” he replied. “I didn’t mean anything by it.”

“I know you didn’t,” I told him, reaching out my right hand and placing it on his left leg, close to his crotch, as I moved my face closer to his.

I had expected some sort of reaction—this was, after all, how Arthur and Pascoe liked to begin things with me—but I hadn’t expected what happened next.

It was as if he’d received an electric shock.

He leaped from the seat, knocking over both our drinks and his chair, jumped back, and stared at me wide-eyed.

“What the fuck?” he said.

I stared back at him, confused by his response.

“I really like you, Eli,” I said.

“Jesus, Freya,” he said, running his hands through his hair and looking around to make sure no one was watching us.

“You’re just a child. I didn’t… I wasn’t trying to…

” He looked both frightened and upset. “That’s absolutely not what I’m looking for,” he told me.

“I’ve just tried to be a friend to you, that’s all.

Christ, I hope you haven’t thought that I… that I’ve been trying to…”

He seemed so distraught that I looked away, already bored by him.

Clearly, I’d made another mistake. I’d hoped he might take me away from Hannah, from Beth, from the twins.

That he might be a father to me, or a dad, or a brother, or a lover.

Anything. Someone who would love me. But no.

He was just another person who didn’t care about me in the slightest.

I stood up and walked toward him as he backed away.

“You can relax,” I told him. “You’re an old man, you’re nothing special, and I have no interest in Beth’s cast-offs.”

I turned away then. I only saw him once more, at his trial a year later, when I sat at the back of the courtroom and watched him collapse in the dock when the verdict was delivered.

Served him right.

I was due to get the train back to Norfolk on Saturday morning, and Beth had promised that we would spend Friday night together, presumably to make up for the fact that we had barely spent any time together since my arrival.

She’d seen me at breakfast, and occasionally before I went to bed, but had barely acknowledged my presence outside of that.

Even on her days off, she either stayed in bed until the late afternoon, or lay on the sofa watching rubbish TV and sending me to the village to buy food and cigarettes.

Although she promised to take me to the pub with her for dinner, I knew she’d find a reason to cancel.

Kitto had been coming to ours, or she’d been going to his, almost every night for the last week and it made me laugh to think that she actually believed he was grooming her to become the mistress of the big house, like some Victorian housemaid who manages to snare the wealthy widowed duke.

True to form, she told me that we’d have breakfast together on Saturday instead, giving me four pounds to go to the local burger shop for my dinner and telling me that she wouldn’t be home because Mr. Teague was taking her to the pub, the one where she’d supposedly been going to take me, and afterward she’d be spending the night in his house.

I waited until late, long past one o’clock in the morning, when I saw the lights go on, and watched from the safety of the beach as Beth and Kitto returned home.

Upstairs, where Arthur and Pascoe slept, remained unfinished, but downstairs was almost completed.

They might have been any wealthy couple coming back from a night out together.

I made my way closer, past the pit where the swimming pool would never, in fact, be installed, and watched as they stood in the kitchen, opening a bottle of wine and kissing.

At one point, he pressed her up against the fridge and his hand disappeared beneath her dress.

When he went to the bathroom, I watched as Beth opened cupboards, examining their contents, then looked around the room, taking everything in, probably deluding herself into imagining the changes she would make when she won her upgrade.

And I continued to watch when, eventually, the lights went off and they went upstairs to the bedroom.

Another hour passed before I risked entering.

It wasn’t difficult to get in. Eli had keys to the property, and he’d left them at Beth’s when he was dismissed from his dual positions as site foreman and boyfriend.

Making my way upstairs, I carefully opened the door to the master bedroom and looked in at Beth and Kitto, who were sleeping side by side, their mouths wide open, looking ugly as they dreamed of wildly different futures.

Then I went to the twins’ room and stood over them.

They were curled up together, Arthur’s arms wrapped around Pascoe’s naked torso.

Leaning down, I placed a gentle kiss on both their foreheads, and they moved only slightly beneath the covers before settling back into place.

Returning downstairs, I went into the garage, where the fuse box was located, along with a dozen cans of paint and various flammable materials.

From my pocket, I took out Eli’s lighter, holding it in a handkerchief so my fingerprints wouldn’t overwrite his, and found a bottle of methylated spirits, which I splashed around the floor.

Pulling a few wires from the fuses, I lit one, and it connected quickly, igniting others, before feasting on the flammable liquid on the floor.

I stepped away, watching as it burst into life.

It was a beautiful sight to behold. With all the work going on in the house, I knew it wouldn’t take long for the woodwork to soak up the blaze and spread toward the second floor.

They’d never know, any of them. They do say that it’s not the house fire that kills people, it’s the smoke.

All four of them would be dead before their bodies were cremated. They wouldn’t feel a thing.

Before returning to the cottage, I made sure to drop the lighter in the grass, somewhere a little hidden but easy enough for the police to find. Eli deserved this. He could have saved me but had chosen not to, so he could take his punishment too.

I slept well that night, even through the sounds of the sirens from outside, which proved a good thing, as the next few days were busy as people sympathized and took care of me.

The police asked whether Eli had ever touched me, and I said no, because I knew he’d be going to jail for the rest of his life anyway so didn’t feel the need to add to his charges.

Soon I was taken back to Norfolk, and back to Hannah, and we lived together till I was eighteen.

During those years I devoted myself to my schoolwork because I knew the only way out was to win a scholarship, which, in time, I did.

I’m pretty sure I said goodbye on the morning I left. And that was that. I was gone.

She’s probably still alive, somewhere. After all, she’ll only be in her sixties. But Beth is gone. And Kitto Teague is gone.

And most importantly, Arthur and Pascoe, those two malevolent fourteen-year-olds, never made it to fifteen, and never got to hurt anyone again.