by Emmy Ellis
“Hang on a second, Vicky. Let me just check…”
Nora left Vicky at the door and pelted upstairs. She opened the boys’ door to see Adam there but Luke gone.
“Where’s your brother?” she asked.
“Went out.”
“What for?”
“I’m busy, Mum, okay? I need to sort something out. Really, really need to sort it, yeah?”
Nora lashed out, striking at Adam’s keyboard, sending it sliding off the desk. It dangled by the cord, clacking against the side. “Will you just get off that bloody computer for a few seconds and have a decent conversation with me? I’ve got pisshead Vicky at the door saying Luke’s in the woods. Why would he be there? Do you know?”
Adam leaned across, righted his keyboard, and continued hitting the keys. A stream of data was on his monitor, loads of it zipping from the bottom upwards. What looked like code, numbers, words, a mish-mash of jargon.
“I’ll speak to you when I get back,” Nora said, angry that her sense of something being off wasn’t felt by her son.
She left their room, going back to the front door. “I won’t be a second, Vicky.”
Slipping her shoes back on—
LIKE SHE REALLY NEED THEM SQUEEZING HER FEET AGAIN TONIGHT
—Nora joined Vicky on the path.
“Quickly,” Vicky said. “It might be too late.”
“Too late for what?” Nora followed her down the path then out onto the pavement.
At the end of the row, where Carly Thomas lived, there was a footpath of sorts, flattened over the years into packed mud by people taking a shortcut into the woods. Nora shadowed Vicky, who shot off at a run, albeit it wavering. Out of breath after a few metres, Nora wanted to call out that she needed a rest, but something inside told her she couldn’t let up, couldn’t slow down.
“Tell me,” she shouted, hoping her voice carried ahead to Vicky, “what he’s doing?”
“He’s on the bloody water tower!”
“What?” Fear almost smacked Nora right off her feet. She stumbled then ran faster, thinking Luke must have got in with one of those bad Xbox crowds at university and had taken drugs or something. She should have anticipated it, prevented it, limited his time online, asked more about his friendship circles, but he was a man now, eighteen, and she couldn’t poke into his life as much as she would had he been younger…
It’s too late now, but I’ll dump the bloody thing when I get back if he’s done something stupid. And as for Adam, he’ll just have to lump it. He’s still a kid. I can still do something about him.
She stared ahead, the water tower coming into view. It peeked over the treetops, some sci-fi building, something that housed aliens and whatever the hell else lived in space. She shuddered, scanning the top for a silhouette of her son, but there was nothing.
Nothing.
He’s climbed down, that’s what he’s done. Climbed down and come off whatever high he was on. Or maybe he was up there for a bet. A dare. Those stupid online friends of his goading him to climb to the top.
A few yards ahead, Vicky had reached a clearing surrounding the tower, and she stopped, bending over with her hands on her knees. The inane thought that the woman had even managed to run so far, so fast, went through Nora’s mind, but she threw it out as useless, stupid rubbish at a time such as this. Nora joined her, and together they skirted a metal strut that was snuggled deep into the ground at an angle. There were several of them keeping the tower up, and after they’d passed three, Nora began to relax.
“He must have gone home,” she said, her windpipe seizing up from the run and the cold air. She took a moment to get her breath back, then, “And what were you doing out here anyway?”
“On my way to work,” Vicky said. “Shortcut to town, remember?”
“Well, he isn’t up there now, and he’s nowhere to be seen down here. Are you sure you weren’t—”
“Seeing things?” Vicky stopped walking and jammed her hands on her hips. “No. Contrary to popular belief, I’m not as pissed up as people down our street think, thanks very much. I have a drink, yes, but it’s to help me through. I don’t see why I should go into my business, but I will, all right? I have severe lack of confidence, okay? A drink…I need a drink to even speak to people sometimes, to even leave my house, to go to work. So now you know. I don’t choose to be alcohol dependent, it just happened. I’m not drunk eighty percent of the time. You lot just think I am, like you always do. Supposing this or that about people because it fits with whatever you’ve dreamed up. You never look beyond the surface, never try to find out what someone’s reasons might be.” Vicky shook her head. “And you’ve all been doing it, to everyone, for years. Shit, even I’ve done it at times. And d’you know what, I’m sick of living this way—sick of my damn self for participating with you lot and being such a goddamned cow.”
Nora blinked. She glanced away from Vicky, knowing, if it were daylight, that an accusing glare was directed her way. Yes, Nora had supposed a lot of things, and she should have known better. Especially because of how Derek was. Particularly because of how Derek was.
Ashamed, she mumbled sorry then continued walking, rounding a fourth strut, coming to an abrupt halt because she could see what looked like a heap on the ground. A person? Luke?
“No,” she said quietly, a surge of dread and such terrible anguish ripping through her that she almost went down on her knees. She rushed forward, into a space brightened by moonlight, towards a pile—
OF CLOTHES, SOMEONE’S DUMPED A LOAD OF OLD CLOTHES
—covered by several black refuse sacks. They flapped in the slight breeze, one sheet of it blowing backwards to reveal a pair of jean-covered legs splayed at dreadful, unnatural angles. Long hair blew upwards, Medusa, snaky strands like Medusa. Snaky strands like Luke’s.
Her heart stopped for a few beats, and a frightening silence encompassed her—muggy, similar to a summer’s day where rain was needed but wasn’t going to come. She couldn’t breathe, had forgotten how to breathe, and her mind reeled with scenario after scenario, all of them bad. When her heart rattled back into service, she staggered towards the pile—a pile, not a person, it can’t be a person; not yet, not until I’ve got my head around it—and dropped onto her knees.
She didn’t check for signs of life—can’t, can’t, can’t—or look at the face—won’t, won’t, won’t—but shoved some black bags aside to dig her hand into the person’s jacket pocket. The jacket was just like Luke’s, but all the lads these days bought the same things, didn’t they; sheep, following one another, refusing to be different and stand out. She checked the pockets, finding nothing, then pulled the body onto its side, facing away from her so she didn’t have to see… She worked blindly. Drew down the zip. Something plopped out onto the ground. She reeled back in shock, seeing a mangled mess of black white and red. Were those birds there? Birds?
Ensuring she didn’t touch them, she felt in an inside pocket and pulled out a piece of paper, the words suicide note floating through her head, which she ignored, because if you registered something it meant it was real, meant you had to accept and believe.
Nora didn’t want to accept or believe.
She waited a moment before looking at the paper, and in the meagre light she saw no handwritten words, no Dear Mum. It was a cheque for a staggering amount of money, and it was then that she knew for certain this…this heap wasn’t her son. Luke wouldn’t have a cheque for that much on him.
But it was someone’s son, so she turned the body onto its back and stared at—
Jesus, no, no, no.
She rose, cheque clutched in her hand, and weaved her way to Vicky, who stood apart from the scene as if she’d known she had to remain a silent spectator. Nora launched herself at her neighbour, slumping to her knees, brush digging into her skin, snagging her damn tights that she hated wearing for work. She clutched Vicky’s legs, her cheek resting on her upper thighs, and Vicky stroked her hair.
Nora wailed,
a mannish noise, a noise a cow might make when in pain. And she was a cow. She hadn’t paid proper attention to her boys. Should have known they’d have been scarred by their father, by what had happened on that cliff. That they’d been scarred because she’d sent them to a new school where they hadn’t made many friends; she’d thought it was best that they started again, away from children who knew what had happened. Get them a really good education so they wouldn’t have to work in a shitty shop the same as she did.
What the hell had she done?
She stood, an automaton, and walked away, back towards the woods.
A magpie cackled—or was that two of them arguing?—and she grimaced at how much those birds had pissed her off at one time. How so many people in the street had pissed her off. Yet now what they’d done didn’t seem anything much at all. Who cared whether someone dried himself at his window or whether Mo had used the wrong pegs? Who cared whether Ted was a busybody or that Robert had been having it away with Sarah instead of her? None of it mattered anymore. Everything, every little thing she’d ever complained about to her boys when she’d been stressed, meant nothing now.
She absently slid the cheque in her blouse pocket, thinking that she had to ring the police, to tell them that her son had jumped or fallen off the water tower. To tell Adam his brother wouldn’t play Xbox with him again—that Adam himself wouldn’t be playing it either, not now.
Nora entered her house and went straight upstairs. To the boys’ room. She pushed open the door, and Adam waved her away, dismissing her before she’d even said a word. She placed her hands on his shoulders, staring idly at the blank screen in front of him, and listened to the sound of her breathing.
“He’s gone, hasn’t he?” Adam asked.
“Yes. I need to…I have to call the police. I have to—“
“Good.”
Good?
Adam turned, looking up at her. “You shouldn’t be sorry he’s gone. He pushed our dad, you know. A game, he’d said. So I made a game. Told him the rules just to see if he’d follow them. And he did, right down to picking number five.”
“Number five? What are you talking about?” Nora’s head was full of cotton wool. She moved to leave the room, felt the cheque dig into her as she turned. Drew it out of her pocket. She handed it to her son. “Get rid of that with your shredder thing, will you. I don’t know whose it is, but it isn’t Luke’s. It was…he had it on him. I can’t…have his memory smeared if he was up to something he shouldn’t have been. I have to call the police now, so do it quickly.”
Adam took it. Why wasn’t he upset? Why wasn’t he crying over death? First Sarah, then Nora, and now Adam. What was wrong with them all?
He stared down at the cheque. “I can cash this without it being traced. Luke would want that. He did some things to make this money. He earned it. He owed us for taking Dad away.”
Nora left the room, dazed, frozen against her son’s loyalty to a man who had wreaked havoc, her mind already on how she was going to get through the rest of her life with another tragedy lingering in the background.
“I made a game and I won, Mum.”
She started down the stairs, pausing to look through the banister rails and into her boys’ room. Adam grinned, his face just like Derek’s, twisted and evil and mean.
He laughed, throwing his head back. “I fucking won!”
Nora left him to it, knowing the wrong son had been taken.
And she was wicked—wicked for thinking such a thing.
