Page 78 of The Taskmaster
“Your turn, and make it juicy.”
“You want juicy? Okay, here goes. I saw my first dead body when I was three years old. I didn’t speak for four years. And... I can’t swim.”
I laughed; I couldn’t help it. It was a nervous laugh. He’d just given me two pretty dark facts and then hit me with the ‘I can’t swim’.
“It’s not unusual for a little kid to be mute for that long,” I pondered. “And if you did see a dead body at that age, it would account for a lot... but... I’ve gotta go with the swimming.”
“I’m not playing this right,” he huffed, but he was loving it. Playing with me, teasing me. Sprinkling in his dark humour where he could.
“Go on, then. Give me yours,” he urged.
But I was struggling. “I can’t think of anything good.”
“Then let’s change things up. Tell me something you’ve never told anyone else before.”
Even that had me coming up blank.
“Can you go first?” I asked. “I need time to think.”
He didn’t speak, and I started to mull over my answer, and then he spoke so quietly into the darkness I almost didn’t hear him.
“I wish I was normal. Like other people. That I had a job, a wife, a family to provide for. That the only thing I had to worry about was earning money, feeding them and making them happy.”
I turned to face him, feeling the honesty in his words as they pierced a little hole in my heart. I reached up to touch his face, telling him, “You are normal, and you will have those things. It just takes a little longer for some people to find it.”
If he was opening up, so would I.
“Sometimes, I get scared that I won’t ever find true love. That no one will want me, and I’ll live here forever surrounded by a thousand cats.”
“I thought you were a dog person?” he replied, and I laughed through the tears welling in my eyes.
“I am. But I went with the crazy cat lady for some reason. I wasn’t thinking.” I kept laughing, but he didn’t.
He held my face in his hands and placed a gentle kiss on my forehead. “You shouldn’t ever worry about being alone. It’ll never happen. You will find true love. You’re going to have so much happiness and love in your life, you’ll be begging for some alone time with that hoard of cats you’ve always dreamed of.”
“I like that you’ve been honest with me tonight.”
“I’ll always be honest with you, Abigail. Always.”
The way he pulled me to him and held me close, inhaling like he was breathing me in, made me feel something I hadn’t felt before. That maybe this man did understand me. He’d seen me at my worst, well, a version of it, and he was still here.
That had to count for something, right?
Chapter Forty-Two
ISAIAH
Iwould always be honest with her, even when we were playing our games. But she didn’t need to know that every fact I gave her in the game of two lies, one truth, was all true for me. I wasn’t necessarily hiding it about myself; I just didn’t see the point in making anything up.
I didn’t have a driving license because by the time I’d escaped that hell hole called Clivesdon House, I didn’t want any paperwork that could be used to track me down. I was lucky I’d never been pulled over by the police. I’d hate to have to kill an innocent person to save myself, but I’d do what needed to be done to stay on this side of the prison walls. I had a job to do, after all, tracking the men down.
I’d chosen the fourteenth for my birthday because I liked that number. It felt like a good date for my birthday, not that I ever celebrated. Why would I celebrate a day I wished had never happened?
The first dead bodies I saw were my parents’ when I was three years old. And to be honest, I probably stayed silent for a lot longer than four years when I was living at Clivesdon House. Being trapped in a prison with a load of paedophiles when you’rea kid will do that to you. But the actual number didn’t matter. The number I preferred was how many of them I’d killed after I’d escaped.
And then she told me she didn’t think she’d ever find love. That she’d live alone forever, and I wanted to say, ‘You’ll never be alone as long as there’s breath in my body,’ but I didn’t. I kept that inside and did what I could to make her feel better.
I didn’t know what it felt like to have emotions like normal people, but with her, things were different. There was a sense of empathy there, and I knew I’d do anything for her. I’d kill for her. I’d die for her, too, if it came to it. My life wasn’t worth shit. But hers was.
