The First Cut

If she had given in to Hugo’s advances that night and gone home with him, none of this would have happened. If she hadn’t had to get home reasonably early and sober to pack for the next day, then she might have stayed at the party longer and walked across the park with a group of drunken colleagues. If she hadn’t walked across the park that night but had taken the well-lit roads around it, if she hadn’t strayed from the path to sit on the lion like a silly girl…and so it went on, nothing but a lot of ifs. And on the plus side, if that man hadn’t been walking his dog at precisely the right time, then Kirsten would have died like the later victims had.

But the more she talked about it with Laura, the more she realized that things could only have been different had she been a different kind of person. Those schools were right, in a way. The roots of what happened were tangled up with who she was. She could easily have given in to Hugo, for example. He was attractive enough, and plenty of her friends would have done so; indeed, most of them had, at one time or another. But no, she wasn’t “that kind” of girl. And she did habitually cross the park alone after dark, no matter how often people expressed concern. Also, it would never have occurred to her not to give in to that childish impulse to ride the lion unless she had been with company. In other words, maybe she did think of herself as a born victim and she just hadn’t admitted it before. But she didn’t tell Laura this. She could sense that Laura was testing her, trying to find out how sensitive she was, so she gave what she thought were the right answers. Laura seemed relieved.

But Kirsten continued to question herself. Why did she cross the park by herself in the dark, for example? Was she looking for something to happen? She certainly hadn’t been making any kind of a feminist gesture. When women want to make a point about their right to walk the streets and parks in safety, they do so in large, well-publicized groups-the sensible way. But Kirsten often did it alone. Why? Was she inviting destruction?

Somehow, a simple chain of causality wasn’t enough to explain what had happened to her. She had been living in a dream ever since the attack had occurred simply because she had accepted it in such a shallow way and had never really contemplated the deeper implications. That was no acceptance at all. The Cloud of Unknowing, her last talks with Laura Henderson: both of these gave a shape and depth to her quest that she had never imagined possible before; they concentrated her resolve and acted like a magnet forming a rose pattern from iron filings.

It all meant something-everything happened for a reason-and the more she thought about it, if there was a part of her deep inside that made her the victim-just as hatred twisted deep inside the man made him a killer-then the person who had found her must have been destined to be her savior. He had found her for a purpose, she now realized. She hadn’t died like the others; she had been delivered from that. And this was when the compelling idea of fate, destiny and retribution started to occur to her. If she had been a victim not by blind chance but for a reason, then she was still alive for a reason. She bore her stigmata for a reason. She carried within her the means of destroying this evil force. In a sense, she was his nemesis. And that was destiny, too.

She never told Laura all this; like the true nature of the cloud or bubble in her mind, it would have been too difficult to put into words. Besides, she wasn’t at all clear about it herself at first. It didn’t evolve as a fully fledged theory, like a Pallas Athena sprung from the head of Zeus, but the ideas took shape over time. It was something that she thought about a lot in the spring months of May and June while she reread old novels, plowed through Julian of Norwich’s Revelations of Divine Love, and considered which university to apply to and which area of study to concentrate on. It would probably be best, she decided, to apply to several places-say the north, where Sarah suggested they share a flat together, and to Bath and Bristol, where her parents wanted her to go. Then, when the time came, she could see how she felt and make her choice.

In early June, the killer, the man the press were now calling the “Student Slasher,” claimed yet another victim: Kim Waterford, a petite brunette with a twinkle in her eyes that even the poor-quality newspaper photograph couldn’t dim. Well, he had dimmed it, hadn’t he? Now her eyes would be dull and lifeless as dead fish. Kirsten pasted the picture and articles in her scrapbook and worked even harder at self-hypnosis.

One glorious day in late June when Bath was filled with tourists again and boaters splashed and laughed on the Avon outside the half-open window, Laura smiled at the end of the session, offered Kirsten a cigarette and said, “I think we’ve gone as far as we can go together. If you need me, I’ll be here. Don’t hesitate to call. But, really, I think you’re on your own now, love.”

Kirsten nodded. She knew she was.

43 Susan

Still clutching her holdall in the carrier bag, Sue returned to the shops again that afternoon and spent a few pounds of her fast-dwindling funds on some dark gray Marks amp; Spencer slacks and a blue windbreaker with a zip-up front. She spent a good while in front of the toilet mirror on her makeup, changing the emphasis a little here and there, and found that it was possible to fasten her wig back in a ponytail without revealing any of her own hair. Her glasses also went well with the new outfit. Now she looked just different enough not to spark any memories among those who might have noticed her ghostlike presence. She was no longer just the plain, primly dressed “nice girl” in the raincoat; nor was she the short-haired tomboy in jeans and a checked shirt. She looked more like a family holidaymaker taking a break from her parents’ company for a while. The new clothes would also be more suitable for hanging around in the woods watching over the factory, if it came to that.

She was a

She thought about Keith a lot too. Lying in that hospital in Scarborough with tubes and needles stuck in him, just as she had lain over a year ago. She had dismissed the idea of trying to get to him-security would be too tight, and she wasn’t sure she could go through with it in cold blood-but she couldn’t stop worrying. The police might be looking for her at that very moment. All the more reason to hurry up.

At a quarter to five, she dropped in at Rose’s Café. The stringy blonde behind the counter showed no interest in her beyond taking her money. Sue needed some idea of what her man’s hours were. When could she expect to find him walking alone in the dark? When did he make his deliveries? When did he sleep? She assumed that he had either made a morning delivery that day, or had set off the night before and stayed over. If the latter, then the odds were that he would be at home tonight. It a