Dexter replies immediately.
OMGOMGOMGYES.
chapter fifty-five
STUART, SEVEN YEARS EARLIER
Jessamine didn’t take the whole ear off, apparently. Just a “chunk.”
“I didn’t do it on purpose,” she says now, sitting on the edge of the bed, twisting a tissue between her thin fingers. “It was an accident.”
“An accident,” I say with a sigh. “Right.”
“No. Honestly. I only wanted to scare you. To hurt you. I didn’t mean to injure you. It was horrible. Really horrible. There was blood everywhere, Stuart. Literally everywhere. We had to clean it all up.”
I close my eyes and shake my head, just once. “Jess,” I say, “I think maybe I need to go to hospital.”
She shakes her head firmly. “No. It’s fine. Mum stitched it up. It’s fine.”
“It does not feel fine, Jessamine. It feels far from fine.”
My hand goes to the bandages, and she slaps it away. “Leave it,” she says. “Mum’s done a lovely job. Just leave it to heal.”
I stare at her imploringly. “Jessamine,” I say, “this is insane, you know that? I mean—what is this room? Is it the one with the big cabinet blocking the door?”
She nods. “It’s the old au pair girls’ room. We blocked it off. After the last one left.”
I feel a bolt of darkness pass through me. “Why?”
She shrugs, twists at the tissue again. “I don’t know. It wasn’t my idea.”
“So, you attempt to slice off my ear, knock me out, stitch me together at home, then—what?—you decide to unboard a weird blocked-off bedroom and lock me in itfrom the outside. Jessamine. What the fuck?”
She tuts and shakes her head. “You make it sound so weird,” she says. “It wasn’t like that. I got myself into a lather, I accidentally hurt you, Mum said not to take you to hospital because, you know, questions, so she looked after you. She was like an angel, actually, and then we decided to put you up here so you’d have your own space to recover in. I know I’m a handful, and I know sharing a bed with me can be a pain, so we decided to give you your own space. So this is yours now. Stuart’s bedroom. Just for you. What do you think?”
I sigh. She makes no sense, but then, Jessamine never does. “What time is it?” I ask.
“It’s ten o’clock. Ish. You’ve been asleep for nearly thirty-six hours.”
“So it was the night before, when I got home? When you attacked me?”
She shakes her head and purses her lips. “Yes. If you want to put it like that.”
“And Daisy, she’s been getting off all right? To school?”
“She has. I’ve been seeing her off.”
Jessamine doesn’t look hungover, I notice, and this coupled with the fact that she’s been up with Daisy in the mornings suggests that she hasn’t been drinking. Could this be the beginning of a new era? I wonder. Could it be that we have reached rock bottom and might now be crawling our way back to the surface?
I find a smile for Jessamine. “Good,” I say. “Thank you. Now, I’m going to have a shower. I can smell myself.”
“No,” she says, pushing my shoulder back gently with the heel of her hand. “You mustn’t move. I’ll wash you. Let me. Please. It’s the least I can do after what happened.”
Her eyes are wide and sweet.
What happened.
What did happen? I had dinner with my lovely girl, Blaise. I got home. Whack. Thirty-six hours later. Here I am. Jessamine is sober. Apologetic, almost. Should I be doing something? Or surrendering to it all? I’m tired. I hurt. I like the idea of someone taking care of me. For a change.
