Puppet Master

Chapter Five

Nathaniel had moved back into their family home almost immediately, as though she was five years old, and any upheaval would upset her. It was an irony in the aftermath of all of the tragedies that had befallen her so far, but they were quite convinced a house move would be the thing to really push her over the edge.  

To cope with the grief, with the loss, and with Jamie’s presence, she had allowed herself to be swallowed into a pull of ice and stone, she was almost completely numb. Now she could school her features to near perfection, so that if he touched her (on the arm, or the hand, like he would a child to steady it maybe, to stop it from falling over and knocking its knee), the outside world had no clue that she burned in that spot for days. That one touch would lead to hours of wanting and needing for her, but nobody would ever know it to look at her.

Her schedule became robotic; each day’s routine as clear and unyielding as the last, and she worked for her final exams at school, as though she was paying off a nasty creditor, because, as Nate moved in, Jayden visited more frequently, watching the television in the lounge, or drinking a beer in the garden with her brother, and more and more he was starting to seep into her life. As she tried to block him from her thoughts, he would turn up in her kitchen. Or her bathroom. Always with a smile, and a greeting so friendly she almost expected him to start pinching her cheeks.

Except he wasn’t her Jayden any more, he was the wooden, unreachable version of himself that he presented to the rest of the world. The kind of guy who flipped the rest of the universe a middle finger with a wink, and carried on doing whatever he wanted. And what he wanted, quite evidently, wasn’t Tori, because he’d pulled back from every possible contact except that of a “friend of the family”, an acquaintance who asked about school, and friends, and only stepped over those boundaries to make sure that she was eating the right foods, sleeping properly, that she was “healing”. Whatever that meant.

It lasted until she went on to university in Manchester to study Fine Art, almost eight months later. The once vibrant, exuberant child, became a woman, most often referred to by her peers as an ice queen. Months of freezing out her emotions, of ignoring all of the curiosity, and the need that he evoked in her, had left her emotionless.

Her only contact to home was Nate, and their conversation was always basic, uninformative, the kind of censored chit chat that you indulge in with old acquaintances, or distant relatives.

She did succumb to fears, and despair, quite often, as she fell further into her isolation, and became a shadow of herself.

As is often the case with small town children, Tori had always found it hard to make friends. The friends that she had, she’d known her whole life, and couldn’t even remember how they’d met! She quickly became homesick, miserable, longing for Nate, for Jayden, even for the stones that marked eternal resting places.

Her dorm room was completely utilitarian, and she took no photographs of her old life, no mementos. The walls were a bland magnolia, with simple beech furniture, and everywhere she looked as she lay within the crisp, white linen on her bed, she felt as though the space was closing in towards her.

She desperately wanted to call him, pulling out her mobile, and strolling through her contacts, she even went to press the call button.