“This,” Rowan says lightly, producing a thick wadge of paper and holding it out to her.
Saffy takes it. “What is this?”
“Have a look and see,” Rowan says. “They’re all over the village.”
Saffy takes one of the sheets of paper and stares down in horror. It is a photocopy of her posing naked in the Longing. One of the Polaroids she had given Brodie.
“How did you get these?” she says, grabbing the rest from Rowan. There are dozens of photocopies. Hundreds. She starts to tear them up frantically. “Why did you do this?”
“Me?” Rowan says, affronted. “I didn’t do anything. I came to warn you. Brodie made copies.”
Saffy covers her mouth, utterly horrified. “Brodie? Why would he make copies?”
Rowan gives a little smile. “They’re everywhere. He said he even sent them to your old school back home.”
Saffy bursts into tears, letting the papers fall from her hands to the ground. She has never felt such crippling shame, and now it comes to rest in her, like a weight on all her organs.
“You poor thing,” Rowan says, stooping to gather up the papers before they blew into the trees. “Brodie told you he’d broken up with me, isn’t that right?”
Saffy nods, tears rolling down her cheeks.
Rowan gives a coy smile as she curls the papers into a thick scroll, removing a hair band from her wrist and sliding it down the tube. “Well, he didn’t. He thinks I don’t know about you, but I do.” She glances behind her. “You want to go for a walk?”
III
Saffy isn’t sure what Rowan is up to, whether she has really come to warn her or if she is just wanting to gloat. She offers Saffy weed. Hell yes, she wants weed. And she wants to scream into the air and punch Brodie’s stupid face and erase everything that’s happened.
They head toward the moonlight that streams through the trees, and when they reach the road, she can see lights from the village in the distance, a low thrum of music.
“They’re celebrating Samhain,” Rowan says. “It’s the biggest event of the year on the island.”
“I thought you’d be celebrating,” Saffy says.
Rowan smiles. “I am. But obviously I needed to tell you about this.” She holds up the scroll, and Saffy takes it, holding her spliff to one end until it catches alight. She stands for a moment, holding the sheaf of photocopies alight like a torch. She feels daring as it blazes, letting it move down close to her hand before dropping it to the ground and stamping it out.
“I hate him,” Saffy says, punctuating the words with a fresh stamp on the photocopies.
Rowan takes a long drag of her joint and exhales in Saffy’s direction. “What you have to understand about Brodie is that he likes to control people.”
“Is that why he made the photocopies?” Saffy asks, looking at the ashes on the ground. She could burn twelve more sheafs and it wouldn’t stop the pictures spreading. He has the Polaroids. She was stupid to have done that.
“I think it comes from a deep-seated fear of not being good enough,” Rowan says wisely. “The control impulse. Like he has to force people to do things that they’d probably do anyway if he was just kind to them.” She gives a little shrug of her shoulders and a smile, as though this is acceptable.
“Why did you spend three years with him, then?” Saffy says.
“Because I love him,” Rowan says, blowing a ring of smoke.
Saffy wants to say something to that but her thoughts have become soggy, a big sopping mess of anger and confusion. She hadn’t felt ready to have sex with him, but at the time she’d felt like she was just being stupid. He’d coaxed and made a little joke about payment, and her confusion over her own feelings had blindsided her into acquiescing. She wanted to be wanted, and at the same time she didn’t want to sleep with him. At least, not so early. Not in a way that felt like she was paying him.