Who Did You Tell (ARC)
Page 25
I stare at her. She’s got a really weird expression on her face,
as if she’s trying to bore into my mind and extract my thoughts.
But she’s right. I do need to talk about him. Exorcize his ghost once and for all.
‘I used to think he was the only man I could ever love. The
only man who understood what it was like to be me.’
Tears flow down my face. Sitting in the back room of an
Oxfam shop with a mug of revolting instant coffee and baring
my soul to an AA zealot like Rosie is the very last thing I want
to be doing. Is this really my last refuge? Because I know what’s
going to happen if I stay. She’ll start talking about God and
how I need to surrender to his will. How I need to go back to
Step 1 and start all over again. We’ll probably end up praying
together.
‘And yet now you feel the same way about this new man?’
‘Yes, but it’s different now. Because I’m not drinking any more.
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When I’m with Josh I feel safe. He’s uncomplicated. Kind,
responsible.’
‘And Simon wasn’t?’
Rosie’s stare is intense. All these questions about Simon!
She’s probably done a counselling course or something. Still, it
sounds as if she knows what she’s doing, as if all this is leading
me somewhere I need to be.
‘Well, he was kind when he wasn’t off his head. But uncom-
plicated? Responsible? Those aren’t words you associate with
addicts. You of all people should know that.’ I close my eyes. ‘I
can’t explain why I loved him. I just did. It was an intense kind
of love. It was . . . visceral.’
Rosie shifts her sit bones. She gazes at a point beyond my
right shoulder and frowns. ‘When someone we love dies before
their time, it’s so much harder to bear, isn’t it?’ she says.
I nod. It’s hard to tell in this light, but I think there are tears
in her eyes. Maybe she’s thinking of her mother. I drain the last
of my coffee. It might be foul, but it’s warm and wet and drink-
ing it gives me something to do.
‘I don’t suppose we can smoke in here, can we?’
Rosie shakes her head. ‘It’ll set off the smoke alarm. You can
stand on the lav and stick your head out the window if you want.’
She laughs. A deep, throaty chuckle I’ve never heard before. ‘I’ve
managed to cut right down since I’ve been dossing here.’
She’s not so bad, really. If we’d met each other when we were
both soaks, we’d have had a right old laugh. Christ, just thinking
about that makes me want a drink. I get my fags out of my pocket
and go and lock myself in the loo before I start blubbing again. I
don’t want to end up like Rosie, pushing sixty and squatting in a
charity shop, having to balance on a toilet seat with my head
shoved up next to a fanlight every time I want a smoke. What
would Josh think if he could see me now? What would Richard?
When I’ve smoked it down to the butt, I pinch it out between
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my fingers and drop it out the window. Then I do a wee. I
unlock the cubicle door and, just as I’m about to wash my
hands in the basin, something catches my eye. The familiar
face of Dolores O’Riordan staring up at me from the top of
Rosie’s cloth bag.
A chill runs through me. I look over my shoulder, but Rosie
can’t see me from here. I run the tap, then slowly, carefully, I
lift the Cranberries T- shirt out and hold it up in front of me. My stomach knots in dread. It’s the same one I saw on the mannequin. The one I thought I must have imagined. The one Rosie
denied all knowledge of. Except I didn’t imagine it. Because
here it is, in my hands. Tentatively, hardly daring to breathe, I
work my fingers round the edge of the hem till I find it. The
small round bleach stain that tells me, beyond a shadow of a
doubt, that it’s Simon’s.
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With trembling hands, I refold the T- shirt and replace it in the
bag. As I do this, I catch sight of some paper folded in half and
stuffed down the side.
‘Astrid? Are you okay?’ Rosie’s voice makes me flinch. I whip
the paper out and stuff it into my back pocket.
‘I’m fine, yeah, just drying my hands.’ At least, that’s what I
try to say. What actually comes out is a strange little croaking noise.
‘Did you turn the light off in the loo?’ Her voice is right
behind me now. I spin round to see her looming in the door-
way. Her eyes flick towards the bag on the floor. The swiftest,
most subtle of glances, but I saw it. I saw it.
I nod, barely trusting myself to speak. She knows I’ve seen it.
The space between us prickles with tension.
‘You lied to me.’ My voice is high and squeaky. I clear my
throat and try for something on a lower register, something
that carries more weight. But the same reed- thin warble betrays
me. ‘You said it must have been sold.’
She shrugs, as if it’s nothing.
‘Okay, so I lied. I had a feeling it might be worth something.
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Special- edition T- shirts often are. So I looked it up and one just like it was sold on eBay for eighty quid.’
She steps forward and plucks the shirt from the bag, shakes
it out in front of her and stares at it, as if she can’t quite believe what she’s saying. Of course she can’t. Because she’s lying
through her teeth.
‘We’re not supposed to siphon stuff off for ourselves. Things
that might fetch a bit more for the charity are auctioned online.
But as you can probably tell, I’m not exactly flush at the
moment.’ She tilts her chin back and gives me a defiant stare.
‘But I changed my mind. I wasn’t going to do it.’
I nod as if I believe her. Until I know for sure what I’m deal-
ing with here, I need to tread softly, let her think she’s fooled me.
‘Simon came close to selling it once,’ I say.
Her fingers tighten round the fabric.
‘The Cranberries were playing the night we met. Not that he
was particularly sentimental, but . . .’
She’s still clutching the T- shirt, as if she daren’t let it go, as if she suddenly needs it to be as close to her skin as possible.
With trembling fingers, I reach into my back pocket and pull
out the piece of paper. My palms are damp with sweat. Rosie
tenses as I unfold it. It’s a photocopy of a story in a newspaper
with one small paragraph ringed in red. It’s headed ‘Young
man commits suicide at Seaford Head, West Sussex’.
I’ve been a fool. An idiot. Ever since Laura gave me Simon’s
suicide note, I’ve convinced myself that the only thing torment-
ing me is myself. My inner addict struggling to get o
ut. But
what if it wasn’t Laura sending those messages? She apologized
for scaring me, yes, but what if she just meant following me
around and coming to the house under false pretences? Lying
to Mum? She never actually admitted to sending them. I just
assumed it was her.
The memory of Rosie reaching for his gold juggling ball
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when I emptied my pockets that time flashes into my mind.
The way she squeezed it into the palm of her hand and went
into that semi- trance. It makes me think of how I used to hold
it close to my chest at night and draw comfort from it, as only
a lover could.
A lover . . . or a mother.
My legs turn to jelly. A tide of nausea swells up inside me and
black spots swim before my eyes.
She moves as if to touch me, but I step aside, out of reach,
move back into the storage room. My brain struggles to com-
pute. I remember Simon once telling me his mother had ‘issues’,
that she hated him having a life of his own. But he never said
she was an alcoholic. How can she be here, in Flinstead? It
doesn’t make any sense. Unless he told her about me. But they
were estranged, weren’t they? Had been for years. I must have it
wrong. But how else would she have his T- shirt?
If I hold my nerve, I can make a dash for the back door and
get away from her. I need to work out what this means. Panic
rushes through me in an icy flood. Rosie locked the door
behind me. I saw her do it. Didn’t even question her motives.
My eyes roam the room for a set of keys, but I can’t see any.
What I do see is the PC, and my mind picks at a memory, sees
it open on the Windows template screen when I was trying that
dress on. I think of the fake flyer wrapped round the bottle of
vodka. She must have created it in here. Used the shop’s printer
to run off a copy.
Then I catch sight of the keys. She’s slung them on to her sleep-
ing bag. Rosie sees me looking at them and her jaw tightens.
‘I’m sorry, Astrid, but I can’t let you leave.’
Strategies charge through my head. She wants to talk, so
we’ll talk. It’s what she’s wanted all along, isn’t it? Sidling up to me at every opportunity, trying to engage me in conversation,
pressing her phone number into my pocket. And to think I
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thought Helen and a couple of bottles of red wine might be a
danger to me tonight.
‘Sit,’ she says, inclining her head towards the chair I was sit-
ting on before.
Fear roots me to the spot.
‘Sit,’ she says again, and I find myself obeying, because what
else can I do?
Think, Astrid. Think!
I lower myself on to the chair.
Rosie picks up my empty mug. ‘I’ll make you another one,’
she says.
Still holding the T- shirt, Rosie moves towards the recess
we’ve just come out of. I consider making a dash for the front of
the shop and hammering on the glass door to attract a passer-
by’s attention, but no sooner does this idea come into my head
than I dismiss it. The chances of anyone walking by at this time
of night are slim. I need to get hold of those keys and make it
to the back door.
I wait till I hear the sound of her rinsing my mug in the sink
before getting up as quietly as I can and enclosing the entire
bunch of keys into the palm of my hand so they don’t jangle.
Then I creep as fast as I can to the door at the back. The top bolt
slides across smoothly and noiselessly. So far so good. But the
bottom one is stuck fast. I pinch the barrel between my thumb
and forefinger and yank it across with all my strength. The
metal gouges into my flesh as it shoots back with a loud clank.
‘Astrid? Astrid, what are you doing?’
With fumbling fingers, I stick the first key in the lock, but it
won’t turn. I try the other one on the key ring, but my hand’s
shaking so much I drop it. Now I don’t know which one I’ve
just tried. By the time I’ve got the right key in the keyhole, she’s behind me. Her hand grips my shoulder, pulling me back.
‘I’m sorry, Astrid, but I can’t let you leave.’
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I twist the key, but it won’t fully turn. There’s some kind of
obstruction. Rosie tries to push me out of the way.
‘Stop it!’ she hisses. ‘You’ll break the lock. Give me the keys!’
I grab the handle with my left hand and pull the door towards
me at the same time as twisting the key as forcefully as I can. At
last, it works and the door springs open. I elbow Rosie sharply in
the side of her chest and run away from her into the night. She’s
shouting after me, but I’m back up the alleyway now and on to
Flinstead Road, my chest tight with panic, adrenalin coursing
through my veins.
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I don’t stop running. I don’t even glance over my shoulder. I
daren’t. I don’t care if Helen’s been drinking. I don’t care if she’s mad at me for turning up in the middle of the night. She’ll have to let me in. She’ll just have to.
I reach her block of flats and hold my finger on the buzzer.
What if I can’t rouse her? What if she refuses to get out of bed
to open the door? But just when I’m on the verge of giving up
the intercom crackles into life.
‘Helen, it’s me.’
‘Astrid? What are you doing here?’
‘For God’s sake, Helen! Let me in. Please! I’ll explain when I
come up.’
At last she buzzes me through.
I take the stairs two at a time. It’s a good job it’s not the holiday season yet or this block would be fully occupied. I’d have dis-gruntled residents threatening to call the police, the racket I’m
making. Helen is standing at her front door in her pyjamas.
‘What on earth’s the matter?’
‘Rosie,’ I gasp, hanging over my knees in her hallway to catch
my breath. ‘It’s Rosie!’
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My chest is tight with pain. I’ve never run so fast and so far
in such a short space of time. Years of drinking and not looking
after myself properly have taken their toll. I could have given
myself a heart attack.
I reach into my jeans pocket and pull out the folded photo-
copy. ‘Look what I found in her bag. She’s got his T- shirt too.’
Helen takes the paper and walks away from me into the liv-
ing room.
‘Where did you get this?’
‘I told you. From Rosie’s bag. She’s his mother, don’t you see?
Rosie is Simon’s mother!’
My knees give way. Helen rushes fo
rward and steers me
towards the sofa.
‘Where is she now?’
‘In the shop. That’s where I’ve just come from.’
‘But Astrid, it’s one thirty in the morning. How could you
have been in the shop?’
‘She’s got nowhere to live. She’s sleeping there.’
Helen stares at the piece of paper. ‘Did Rosie say anything?
About Simon? About . . . this?’
‘Just a load of weird shit about needing to talk to me, but I
was so freaked out by then I wasn’t really concentrating on
what she said. My mind was too busy working out how to get
away from her.’
‘Did she try to come after you? Does she know where
you are?’
‘I don’t think so. I didn’t hear anyone behind me. I didn’t
look. I just kept running.’
‘Does she know where I live?’
I think of the grey blur that rushed past the flats the first time
Helen brought me here. The one I thought might be Rosie.
‘I don’t think so. I mean, I’ve never told her. Have you?’
‘No.’ Helen takes a long, deep breath through her nostrils.
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‘Which means as long as you’re here, you’re safe. But what
about your mother? Won’t she be worrying about you?’
‘Mum’s on a Quaker retreat. She won’t be back till Sunday
evening.’
Helen nods. ‘Well, that’s sorted, then. You’ll stay here tonight
and we’ll work out what to do tomorrow.’ She rests her hand on
my arm. ‘You must be terrified, you poor thing. And exhausted.
You need to sleep.’
‘I can’t imagine falling asleep any time soon.’
‘Has Josh been in touch yet?’
Josh. Richard. The party. Ever since finding Simon’s T- shirt,
the pain and humiliation have been squeezed out. Now they
come surging back. Tears well up in my eyes as I explain.
‘Seeing him there, it made me realize how much I’ve hurt
him by not telling the truth. It made me realize how much I’ve
got to lose if he decides he doesn’t want me. I can’t bear it,
Helen. And now all this, with Rosie. I mean, why is she here, in Flinstead? What’s she going to do? She could ruin everything.’
I sniff back the tears. ‘If it’s not already ruined.’
And then I see it, sitting on the kitchen counter. A three-
quarters- full bottle of red wine and an empty glass. My heart
sinks.