I looked, calmly at first, for the note that I had assumed would be there. Nothing on the bedside table. Nothing on the floor. Nothing in her hands, nor in the bedclothes. Nothing on the chest of drawers. Nothing in the pockets of the clothes she had been wearing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. She’d left me, and she hadn’t cared to say goodbye.
The truth of it – she was gone, like all of them – hit
me
then and I cannoned out of the room into the bathroom, all that good food churning inside me. I made it to the lavatory before it came rushing up my throat. I threw up everything that I had eaten that day, threw up until there was only the burning taste of bile in my mouth as my stomach did its best to turn itself inside out. Once it was over, I fell back against the bathroom wall and drew my knees up, balancing my elbows on top of them. I pressed the heels of my hands into my eye sockets as bright lights whirled and swung behind my eyelids.
After a time, I got to my feet and bent over the sink, rinsing my mouth out with cold water. My hands were trembling, I noticed with detachment. In the bathroom mirror, I looked strained, my cheeks hollow, my skin pale. Suddenly I saw how I would look when I was old.
From the hall, I looked through the open door of Mum’s bedroom. I could see the lump her feet made under the bedclothes. She would never move again. Never. Never. I couldn’t take it in. It was as if my brain was refusing to deal with what had happened. Maybe it was the shock, but I could only think two steps ahead.
There were people I should tell, I knew. There were things that needed to be done. But instead of doing them, I went to where I had dropped the pile of envelopes in the doorway and fished out the small fat one that contained my keys. I needed someone to put their arms around me and tell me everything was going to be all right. I needed someone to talk for me, someone to explain reasonably and rationally what had happened to my family. The only person I could think of who might be able to do that – the only
person
I could face telling, because he would know what to do – was Blake.
I would get my car, like I’d planned to, and I would go to him, and he would make everything OK.
People die in fires because they refuse to change their plans. People will walk into danger with their eyes wide open because they’re afraid of the unknown.
My life was burning down around me, and all I could do was wonder if my car would still be where I’d left it.
I’m going home to get the last few things I want, and that will be an end to it. Everything else is sorted. Ben’s found a house for us in Manchester, sharing with four other friends from university. I’ve got a job with a travel agency. The pay isn’t great, but the perks are fantastic – cheap flights and accommodation way above what we could afford otherwise. Ben and I have already planned where we’re going to go next year: Morocco, Italy, Phuket for Christmas. Everything’s coming together.
All I have to do is tell Mum, grab my stuff, and get the hell out.
It makes me feel sick, thinking about it. I rock with the motion of the train, watching fields slip by. Everything in me is screaming that I shouldn’t contemplate going home again after graduating, that I’ve made the right decision. That part of my life is over. I don’t even think that Mum wants me to go back. But I haven’t
said
it to her yet. I haven’t told her about Ben, my boyfriend of two years, who knows that he’ll probably never get to meet my mother, but not why. And I haven’t told Ben about Charlie or Dad or any of the things that have made me who I am. Too many secrets. Too much held back. There will have to be a grand coming-clean one of these days, so he can find out exactly who he’s in love with. But not yet.
Mum comes first.
The house looks empty when I walk up the road, lugging my bag; the windows are dark. Mum is never out, but there’s no point in ringing the bell. I find my keys and let myself in, aware of a strange smell that might be rotting food, and something else.
When I put on the lights, I see her straight away, lying awkwardly at the foot of the stairs. I’m not aware of moving, of dropping my bag, but suddenly I’m beside her, and I’m saying, ‘Mum! Can you hear me? Mummy?’
I haven’t called her that for years.
She makes a small sound, and relief makes me gasp, but she’s cold and her colour is dreadful. Her leg is bent under her at an angle and I know it’s broken; I also know she’s been there for a long time. There’s a dark stain on the carpet underneath her and the smell is stronger here, ammoniac.
‘I’m going to call an ambulance,’ I say clearly,
and
move away towards the phone that was just inches out of her reach all along. A hand closes around my ankle with surprising strength and I half-scream. She’s trying to speak, her eyes fluttering.
I bend over her, trying not to react to the smell of her body, her breath, feeling horror and compassion and shame. It takes her a few seconds to speak again.
‘Don’t … leave me.’
I swallow hard, trying to clear the lump that’s blocking my throat. ‘I won’t, Mum. I promise.’
I call for the ambulance and sit by her bed, and speak to the doctors and clear up the mess at home. I call Ben and tell him I’ve changed my mind. I let him think that I never really cared for him. I let him think I lied. I stop answering my mobile and ignore texts from my friends. I burn all the bridges. I cut myself off.
And it never occurs to me – not once – that I’m getting it wrong, that I’ve failed to understand my mother once again.
Don’t leave me?
Not quite.
Don’t. Leave me.
That makes a lot more sense.
THE POLICEMAN OUTSIDE
the Shepherds’ house looked bored. He had taken shelter under a cherry tree in the front garden, but the rain was still running in rivulets down his high-visibility jacket and off the peak of his cap. The press had mostly moved on to more interesting stories. Here and there someone sat in a car with steamed-up windows, watching.
In daylight, I could see details I hadn’t noticed on my previous visit – the lawn was rutted and gouged by the feet of many visitors. I paused for a second to look over the gate before turning away, towards my car.
‘Sarah!’
I knew who it was straightaway, even before I looked back to see Valerie Wade standing in the doorway of the Shepherds’ house, peering out through the rain.
Oh great
. I had completely forgotten that she would be there. All I needed was for her to call Vickers and let him know I was at the Shepherds’ house. I had a feeling that he would not approve.
‘I thought that was you,’ she said triumphantly. ‘I was just looking out the window and I saw you standing there. Did you want something?’
I wanted to run away from her, get into my car and drive out of Elmview for ever, but that wasn’t practical,
especially
since my car still needed the attention of the AA to get it moving. And my reluctance to explain what I had been doing in the Shepherds’ road – and why my car had been outside their house for so long – was even stronger now. I would have to bluff it out. Besides, there was something I wanted to say to the Shepherds. I would never have a better chance. It was as if it was meant to be.
I went through the gate and walked up the path, aware of the policeman watching me from under the branches.
‘I was wondering, would it be possible to speak to the Shepherds? I never really got a chance to talk to them about what happened with Jenny, and – well, I’d just really like to.’
Someone moved in the house behind Valerie, and I heard a rumble that was too low-pitched for me to be able to distinguish the words from where I was standing. Valerie stepped back.
‘OK. Come on in, Sarah.’
In the hall, I felt suddenly self-conscious and busied myself with finding somewhere for my dripping umbrella to stand and taking off my jacket. The hall reeked of the dense, heady scent of lilies, but an undertone of pond-water suggested they were past their best. I traced the smell to an elaborate arrangement by the telephone. The fat white blooms were tinged with brown, on the point of disintegration, the petals splayed out. No one had bothered to take off the florist’s cellophane before ramming the stems into a vase.
‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ Valerie asked, heading
for
the kitchen when I nodded, leaving me unsure where to go. I turned to look around and froze as I faced the stairs. On the second-to-last step, Michael Shepherd was sitting, forearms resting on his knees. He turned his big hands over to look at his palms, studied them for a few seconds, then let them drop. When he looked up at me I was struck again by his coal-black eyes. They still burned with ferocious intensity, but now it was the last blaze of a fire that had nearly burned out. He looked exhausted without being in the least diminished; the self-confidence and power I had noticed previously had been distilled into pure determination to endure. I found myself thinking again of my own father, wondering if he had been as strong, or as undone as the man before me.
‘What do you want?’ His voice was gravelly, as if he hadn’t used it much recently.
‘I wanted to talk to you and Mrs Shepherd,’ I managed, trying to appear calm and composed. ‘I – well, I probably understand better than most people what you’re going through. And there’s something I wanted to tell you. Something I thought you should know.’
‘Really?’ His tone was incurious, insultingly so, laden with sarcasm. It whipped blood into my cheeks and I bit my lip. He sighed, but got to his feet. ‘Come and talk to us, then.’
I followed him into the sitting room, seeing everywhere the signs of a safe, upwardly mobile life disrupted cruelly and irrevocably. Photographs of Jenny stood in frames on most of the surfaces and hung on the walls, photographs
featuring
ponies and tutus and bikinis, all the accoutrements of the middle-class child who doesn’t know what it is to want for anything. They had given her every possible advantage, every possible opportunity that her friends from wealthier backgrounds might have had. I looked at the pictures, at Jenny’s smile, and I thought that none of us had known her. For all that I’d found out about her secret life, I hadn’t gained any kind of insight into her. I knew what she had done, but I couldn’t begin to understand why, and nor, I suspected, could anyone else. All that we had to go on now were Danny Keane’s lies.
The house might have stood in a fairly modest estate, but here too the urge to improve had been given free rein. It had been extended at some stage and the ground floor appeared to be almost twice the size of the house I’d lived in all my life. Glass double doors separated the living room from a dining room. Matching doors led from there into the garden where I could see a patio with high-end garden furniture and a built-in barbecue. The kitchen, visible through an open door, was expensively fitted, all cream units and black marble worktops. A huge TV dominated the living room, its screen so big that the picture was distorted. The sound was off and a Sky newsreader was overenunciating earnestly, her face contorted with the effort of looking serious and engaged with what she was reading off the autocue. A large sofa faced the TV, and Mrs Shepherd sat on it, arms wrapped around her body, gazing at the screen unseeingly. She didn’t look up when I walked in, and I had time to notice the extreme change in her too. Her skin was blotchy and raw around her nose
and
eyes. As before, her hair was lank and stringy. She wore a sweatshirt, jeans and trainers, and the glamorous image she had once projected was long gone; it was functional clothing and it hung on her frame. Where Michael Shepherd burned with rage, his wife seemed frozen by grief.
‘Sit down,’ Shepherd said brusquely to me, pointing to an armchair at an angle to the sofa. He sat beside his wife and took her hand, squeezing it so hard his knuckles bleached white. It wrung a short cry of protest from her, but succeeded in breaking into her reverie.
‘Diane, this is … one of Jenny’s teachers.’ He looked at me blankly and passed a hand over his forehead. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t remember your name.’
‘Sarah Finch. I was Jenny’s English teacher.’
‘And what is it that you wanted to share with us?’ He sounded wary, resentful almost. Diane Shepherd was staring at me hopelessly. I sat up straight, squeezing my hands together.
‘I’ve just come to talk to you because – well, because of that.’ I pointed at the TV screen, where a reporter was speaking against a backdrop of trees. The red tickertape running along the bottom of the screen screamed, ‘Surrey police discover body on railway embankment – sources say it may be that of schoolboy Charlie Barnes, missing since 1992.’ The live image faded, replaced by the standard picture of Charlie that all the media outlets used; the school photograph where he grinned engagingly at the camera, his eyes full of life. I turned back to the Shepherds, who were looking at the screen uncomprehendingly.
‘Charlie
is – was, I mean – my brother. I was eight when he went missing. The police found his body this morning.’
‘Sorry for your loss.’ Michael Shepherd’s jaw was clenched so hard, the words barely got out between his teeth.
‘The thing is, he was killed by Danny Keane’s father.’ I knew the name would jolt them into attention. This was the hard part. ‘When Jenny disappeared, it brought everything back for me. I was – I was sort of involved from the start. I found Jenny, actually, in the woods – you might know that already.’
The two of them were staring at me. Diane looked dazed, her mouth a little bit open. Her husband was frowning and I couldn’t tell why. ‘Of course I remember. You kept cropping up,’ he said finally.
‘Tea!’ Valerie clattered in from the kitchen with a tray loaded with mugs. ‘I didn’t know if you’d want sugar, Sarah, so it’s on the tray and there’s milk too; you can add your own. I know how you two like your tea,’ and she gave an awkward little giggle as she bent down to let the Shepherds take their mugs. There were two left on the tray and I realised with a sinking feeling that Valerie intended to join us. Michael Shepherd had noticed too and before she could sit down, he intervened.