The Playdate (25 page)
Oh God. What is she doing here?
Suzy is standing on my doorstep, her eyes wild.
I pull my bathrobe around my half-naked body, hoping the glow in my eyes won’t give away what I have just been doing in my kitchen. Why can’t she just leave me alone today?
“Hon? Can I come in?”
“Suzy, um, sorry,” I say, looking back into the flat. The kitchen door is closing very gently, pulled from inside. I shift slightly to ensure Suzy doesn’t spot the movement. “Rae’s asleep.”
“Sorry, hon, I forgot,” she says, lowering her voice. “Listen. Jesus, I’m so freaked out . . .”
“Suze—sorry, I’m just about to go to bed,” I say, trying to keep the irritation out of my voice. “Look—can we speak tomorrow?”
“Please. You got to hear this. That woman—Debs? You’re not going to believe it. She just started screaming through my letterbox.”
My shoulders slump.
“What do you mean?” I ask briskly.
“I was calling Jez to see if he wanted to eat when he got back from Birmingham tonight, and she suddenly pushed it open and started shouting through the letterbox that I was calling her to harass her because of some girl she knew.”
I relent for a moment. “What? That’s crazy.”
“I know, hon. Look.” Suzy holds out her hands. “I’m shaking. I think she’s nuts. You know, this thing happened, and I didn’t know whether to tell you, but the other day, in the garden? I heard her husband saying something about how she shouldn’t work with children again.”
What? I feel my face darkening.
“I know . . . I should have told you. I just didn’t think, though. I thought he meant that maybe she was finding it too tiring. But now? Now I’m really worried that she’s insane. I mean, what if she did it on purpose? You know. What if she pushed Rae into the road?”
“Oh God,” I murmur, looking back behind me into the flat. I want Suzy to go, but I can’t help it. I blurt out: “She’s just let herself into my flat with the keys the plumber left. She’s been here for hours and she’s cleaned it.”
“What?” Suzy mouths.
“I know. I thought maybe she was trying to say sorry in her own weird way. But now, I’m not sure—and the creepy thing is, I’m sure something’s missing, but she’s moved stuff around and I can’t work out what it is. What if it’s a photo of Rae, or something?” Suzy covers her mouth and opens her eyes wide. “Oh God. Should I tell the police?”
“I think you have to, hon. She’s working at the school, for Christ’s sake. We need to let them know. Maybe she did something,
then lied about it on her application. I’m so sorry. I should have realized she was weird. I just assumed because she was a teacher . . .”
“It’s OK, really. You wouldn’t have known,” I say. “OK . . . well, I’ll do it.”
I wait expectantly for her to leave. But she just stands there, her eyes wide and concerned.
“Well, go on, hon,” she urges. “I’ll wait. You get the phone.”
This is getting ridiculous. “OK, then—hang on,” I murmur.
I disappear into the flat. I pick up the phone and a piece of paper with the officer’s number from the hall and walk back to the door, dialing the number, glancing up at Suzy.
“Hello.” He answers after three rings.
“Hi,” I say into the phone, nodding at Suzy. “This is Callie Roberts. My daughter, Rae, was in the accident yesterday at Ally Pally?”
“Hi, Ms. Roberts. What can I do for you?”
“Um, well, I’m a bit creeped out, to be honest. The woman who was with my child when she was hurt, her teacher, well, I’ve just received some information that this might not have been the first time a child has been hurt in her care . . .”
Suzy watches me, holding her breath. I hear the officer take a long breath of his own, before answering me. There is a strange tone to his reply, as if he is unsure of what to say.
“I’m afraid there is not much I am allowed to tell you. We’ve received no formal allegation from the cyclist or your child to suggest this was anything other than an accident.”
“Sorry, what do you mean, ‘allowed’ to tell me? That sounds like you know something.”
“Sorry, can you hold the line a minute?”
As I wait for the officer to speak to a colleague out of earshot,
I see Suzy checking her phone every few seconds. What is she doing? Idly, I realize I can hear a faint cry coming from somewhere. It’s not Rae. In fact, it’s weird. It’s like it’s coming from Suzy’s phone . . .
“Listen, I’m in court this week on a case,” the officer says, returning to the phone. “Can I give you a call back tomorrow? I need to check back with the station before I speak to you about this.”
“OK. Tomorrow? Thanks,” I say, hanging up the phone.
“What?” Suzy said.
“That was weird.”
“What?”
“I don’t know. He kind of hesitated like there was something he wanted to tell me, but he couldn’t.”
We look at each other with wide eyes.
“Shit,” I say, suddenly letting out a laugh. “This is so weird.”
Suzy makes a face and pulls me forward into her arms. Before I can help it, I stiffen, conscious she might guess what I have been doing. I push her away, freeing myself from her arms before I can stop myself. She looks at me, hurt.
“Oh, OK, hon. I know you’re tired.”
“No . . . yes, I am—sorry.”
“But listen. We’ll get to the bottom of it. Don’t worry. Now, I gotta go. You OK? You need me to help when you go back to work this week?”
I shrug. I might as well tell her. “I lost that job I was doing on the film, Suze.”
“Oh, hon,” Suzy says, taking my hands. “I am so sorry. Maybe it’s best at the moment, huh?”
I look at her quizzically. Now I know what’s bothering me about her phone. It sounded like Otto or Peter crying at the other end. “Who’s with the kids?”
“Sorry?” Suzy says.
“If Jez is in Birmingham, who’s with the kids?”
“If Jez is in Birmingham . . . ?” Suzy repeats slowly. She blushes, and gulps. I stare at her.
Is she lying to me?
“No. No,” she says, flustered. “He just got back. Actually, I better get back, too, before he burns himself trying to put out the dinner. Listen, I’ll call you tomorrow, hon. Give Rae a kiss from Aunty Suze.”
“OK . . . see you tomorrow,” I murmur, pushing an uneasy thought from my mind.
The park was so quiet. It looked like the park that stretched out below Ally Pally that she’d wandered up to yesterday, with a path winding through tall ferns and nettles. So close to the city, and yet so empty and peaceful.
She followed the path, trying to remember where she was going.
The noise came suddenly behind her. A loud shriek. It sounded like it came from a girl. Not in pain. More like she was laughing. Turning quickly, Debs looked behind her at the oak and sycamore trees she had walked out of, but there was nothing there, just bark and dark spaces and curtains of green.
Then a roaring noise cut through the silence of the park.
She turned again, with a jump. What was that? It sounded like a car. But surely cars were not allowed down this track?
She spun around, looking through the trees that surrounded this clearing to spot where the noise was coming from. It seemed to come from all directions, moving through the
woods. It had a roaring, vibrating pulse to it that for a second she thought she recognized.
Hang on. A motorbike. That’s what it sounded like. A motorbike.
As Debs turned full circle once again, two dirt bikes suddenly burst out of the trees in front of her and began bouncing across the uneven meadow toward her. They were driven by young boys who wore no helmets. A grinning teenage girl with a tight pulled-back ponytail rode pillion on one bike.
Debs gasped and looked around her. The clearing was empty, not a single dog walker or jogger in sight.
“Oi, love, got the time!” one of the teenage boys shouted above his dirt bike, making the others jeer with laughter.
“Oh, heavens,” she muttered, trying to move off the path, knowing the teenagers were not here for the time. She recognized that high-pitched jungle squawking they were making. She’d heard it the day she’d walked into her classroom to see a row of children’s backs turned away from her, staring at a computer screen. She’d been a teacher long enough to know that that noise usually meant a joke had gone too far—individual responsibility had been thrown into a pile in the middle of the room and anything could happen.
She began walking quickly ahead, hoping that a jogger or dog walker would emerge from the trees and she’d be safe. The roaring noise stopped behind her. Please, God, she thought for a second. Had they gone away? She glanced behind her to see the teenagers throwing their bikes to the ground and bouncing toward her, grinning.
Oh no. They weren’t going away. They were here to hunt her. Debs began to run blindly now, moving off the track and into the trees.
“Come on, love, we only want to know the time,” the girl shrieked, followed by laughter. She could hear their heavy footsteps closing in behind her, breaking branches and jumping on stones.
“Oh,” Debs panted, trying to push her way through the branches that seemed to be thickening and barring her way. She glanced, terrified, behind her and saw what looked like a flash of silver in the dull light.
Oh Lord. The boy had a knife.
Fighting a horrible heavy paralysis that seemed to be taking over her legs, Debs kept running, pushing through trees, feeling branches and thorns slapping her face and cutting her hands.
A wire fence appeared before her. She was trapped.
It was no use. Everything was just going against her.
Slowly, she turned to look at the teenagers as their leering faces came closer. For a second, she imagined surrender. But then her body seemed to take over. Suddenly she experienced the instinct she’d seen in a cornered cat or fox that writhed violently to get away from a trap. Her body wouldn’t let her surrender. In desperation, she lifted her foot onto the nearest low branch of an old oak tree and reached up to the next branch to pull herself up. The teenagers stood with open, staring faces.
“She’s climbing the fucking tree!” the girl screamed with laughter.
To Debs’s surprise, she
was
climbing the tree. Her sore knee was no longer sore; neither was her neck. Her body lifted up easily, her hands and feet working in partnership as she pulled herself higher and higher. Adrenaline, she thought. It must be adrenaline. The teenagers gathered at the bottom of the tree, jumping about like baboons, laughing hysterically, taunting her with the knife.
“Just means it’s going to take longer!” one of them shouted up.
Maybe, she thought. But at least up here they couldn’t get her without risking a fall. Up here, she would have a few more seconds.
It was then she heard the noise again. The high-pitched screaming of the dirt bike.
How on earth? Were there more of the gang arriving? Helplessly, Debs looked down.
The girl was opening a large black bag, and pulling out something from inside.
It was the thing she pulled from the bag that was making the screaming noise.
“No!” Debs shouted. “Please!”
I want to live, she thought, looking at the chain saw. I want to live.
* * *
Suddenly, her eyes flicked open. The bedroom came into sight, so blurred she couldn’t focus.
“Uh!” she moaned. Her body was boiling hot. Her head felt like it was in a clamp.
A nightmare. It had been a nightmare.
So why could she still hear the screaming noise?
“Oh, goodness,” she moaned, trying to sit up. Was this one of those sleeping disorders she had heard about where people kept dreaming even when they were awake? Apparently they drove people so mad that they became unable to sleep.
She tried to sit up, fighting the semiparalysis in her limbs.
What if she couldn’t wake up properly? What if she was stuck in this waking terror all the time?
She forced herself to open her eyes and focus, despite the blurriness. Gradually things began to come into focus. She
reached over and found her glasses. Her face hurt if she moved it from side to side, as if fluid inside it were moving around and settling on her nerves.