by Lesley Kara
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how close to the edge, and she seized the chance to get her
revenge. To do to me what I did to Simon. All the things I’ve
told her. She knows everything. Everything!
Gingerly, I reach for my stinking clothes. My hands are shaking
so much I can barely get hold of them and lift them towards me.
Helen is out of her chair in a flash, the photo falling to the floor in her haste to yank the clothes out of my hands. She kicks them
across the room. Then she slaps me, hard, across the face. The
force knocks me back on to the sofa and I cower into the cush-
ions, my cheek burning from the sting, my head spinning from
nausea and the strength of the blow. I’m pouring with sweat.
She picks up the photo and wanders over to the window
with it, talking to me as if nothing has happened.
‘Whenever I think of him as a child, he’s always the age he is
here, in this photo. Seven years old. A gangly little thing with a
cheeky grin.’ Her voice is soft now, indulgent. ‘Reading his sci-
ence books, asking impossible questions, making up silly jokes
and giggling before he reached the punchline.’
She shakes her head. ‘He could have done anything, been
anyone.’ The softness in her voice has gone. ‘That’s what hurts
the most. The waste. The sheer waste of a life.’
I shift position on the sofa and another wave of nausea
washes through me. If I can summon up the strength, maybe I
can launch myself at my clothes, grab them and make a run for
it. But just as I’m about to move she turns round again.
‘I hadn’t seen him for years. I’d had to distance myself, you
see? I’d told him I couldn’t spend the rest of my life bailing him
out, dreading every phone call, every knock on the door. I’d
told him I only wanted to see him if he stopped drinking. For
good. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, but it was the
only way.’
For a second I feel a pang of sympathy. This is what it must
have been like for Mum. Oh, Mum. I’d give anything to be safe
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at home with you right now. Sitting in your cosy living room in
front of the telly, cradling mugs of hot tea in our hands. All
those mind- numbingly tedious moments I never truly appreci-
ated but which right now seem like a blessing.
‘But after six months of silence I couldn’t stand it any longer.
I had to know how he was. Where he was. I was desperate. I
contacted hospitals, the police, visited homeless shelters. He’d
completely vanished, and it was all my fault. I was too strict
with him, thought I could stop him drinking from sheer will-
power alone.’
She clasps the photo to her chest and rocks in grief. I shuffle
to the edge of the sofa. If I’m going to make a run for it, I need to do it now. While her defences are down. ‘So when he turned up
on my doorstep one day, looking like the walking dead, I wel-
comed him back with open arms. My boy had come home to me
at last. He needed me. And this time I’d see to it that he got bet-
ter, once and for all. I’d never let him out of my sight again.’
She turns sharply and, in that instant, I know that it’s me
she’s not going to let out of her sight now. She’s seen me look-
ing at my clothes and she walks over to them, stands right next
to them. There’s no way I’ll have the strength to overpower her,
not in the state I’m in. She’s at least six feet tall. Of course! It was her I saw by the beach huts that time. I wasn’t hallucinat-ing. She must have dressed herself up in Simon’s old things,
been wearing his hat! Maybe I should forget my clothes and
just make a run for it. My coat must be hanging up in the hall.
I could grab it on the way out, or grab anything that’s hanging
there. Just to cover myself up enough to get home and lock
myself in the house. Phone Rosie for help.
Except I don’t have her number. I threw it away. All Rosie
wanted to do was help me. She’s always been trying to help me,
right from the start, and I was too stupid to listen. She’s never
trusted Helen. Never.
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Helen walks towards me, almost as if she knows what’s going
through my mind. ‘He told me all about you. How the two of
you lived.’
She leans forward and strikes the glass- topped coffee table
with the flat of her hand so that the empty bottles crash down
and roll on to the floor. My empty wine glass has fallen on to
its side and cracked, a dribble of red wine seeping out like
blood. I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that if I dare to
make a move she’ll strike me too. And harder than before.
Her eyes spark with hatred. ‘The last thing he needed was a
girl like you. He needed his mother. He needed me. I brought him into this world and I was going to keep him in it, for as
long as there was breath in my body.’
She takes a step closer. I flinch. Now she’s sitting on the coffee
table right in front of me, so close our knees are almost touch-
ing. All I can think of is that cracked wine glass still lying on its side. I daren’t look at it again in case she sees me and reads my
mind, but I know it’s there and that I’ll use it if I have to.
‘I contacted AA,’ she says. ‘They put me in touch with a local
group. I went to one of their meetings and two of them came
back with me to the house, spoke to Simon while he was still in
bed. He was sick for weeks. I gave up my job and started doing
freelance work, working from home as much as possible. I didn’t
want to leave him too long on his own. I cooked him lovely
meals and bought him books to read. I cut his hair, like I used
to when he was little. Bought him new clothes. The stuff he’d
brought with him was so disgusting I threw most of it away.
‘I kept some of it, though,’ she says. ‘His jacket and his hat.
They’re all I have left of him now. I kept one of his T- shirts too, but it must have got mixed up with some bits and pieces I took
to the charity shop.’
Her face hardens.
‘I took his phone away. Didn’t want all my good work to be
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undone, didn’t want him going back to you and sinking back
into his old ways. It was me he really loved. He left you and
came back to me. So much for all that garbage you told me the other night, about him hating me. He came back to me because
he loved me and he knew I’d look after him.’
‘I’m sorry I said those things, Helen. I’m sure he didn’t mean
them—’
‘Shut up, you little bitch. I’m sick of the shit that comes out
of your mouth, do you hear me? I’ve had to steel myself to lis-
ten to it these last weeks.’<
br />
After what seems like an eternity she starts to speak again.
‘They talked to him for hours, those men from AA. They
talked and he listened. When he was well enough he started
going to meetings. I’d drive him there, wait in the car outside
and drive him home afterwards. He was working the pro-
gramme, doing it properly. Not like you and your half- hearted
attempts. He knew it was his only chance. He understood.
‘His sponsor used to come to the house and I’d hear the
things they used to say. I read the Big Book from cover to cover
so I could help him, so I could bring him back from the hell
he’d been in since meeting you.’
‘But Simon used to drink before he met me, he was—’
‘It was meeting you that sent him down the wrong path. My
boy would never have mugged a defenceless young mother and
left her to die. Not my boy. Not Simon.’
A cold sweat breaks out on my back. Left her to die? What’s
she saying? What does she mean?
‘He tried to pull you off her, but you just kept tugging and
tugging at her handbag. They thought she was just concussed
when she fell, but she died a few days later from a torn blood
vessel in the brain. That poor child of hers. That poor, poor
child. All the lives you’ve destroyed.’
I stare at her in horror. ‘You’re wrong. She couldn’t have died.
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We’d have heard about it if she had. It would have been on the
news.’
‘How would you know what was in the news and what
wasn’t?’ Her spit flies through the air towards me. ‘You were
out of your head. You’re a drunk, remember?’
It can’t be true. It can’t! She’s lying. She must be. And yet how would I have known what was on the news? I might have
thought I was checking, but I’d have been pissed most of the
time.
‘Simon knew, though. He knew what you’d done. That’s why
he left you. And he was doing so well. Eight months he’d been
sober. He was like a different man. The man he was always
meant to be. But the stronger and healthier he became, the
more arguments he started. Why didn’t I trust him? Why was I
taking all his money? Why couldn’t I treat him like an adult? If
I didn’t stop acting like a gaoler, he’d leave, he said. He’d find
somewhere else to live.’
She leans toward me, and I shrink back into the cushions,
my gut knotting with fear.
‘I couldn’t let that happen. Because I knew, I knew that as
soon as he was on his own, he’d be back to his old ways. Maybe
not straight away, but bit by bit. So I relented. If I wanted to
keep him at home with me, I knew things had to change. I
started taking less of his money, gave him more freedom. Gave
him his phone back.’
She shakes her head and sneers. ‘I’d deleted your contact
details, but I should have deleted hers as well. That lovestruck
little fool he’d known at school.’
Laura. She must be talking about Laura.
‘He was always popular with the girls. Went out with loads
of them.’ She sneers at me. ‘Far, far prettier than you. All through his secondary- school years, he kept Laura dangling on a piece
of string. Sometimes he’d take pity on her and take her out. I
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never imagined for a minute that she’d be the one he rang after
all that time, but then, maybe he knew she was the safest bet.’
She clenches her hands into fists on her thighs.
‘She came round to the house. I was furious, but what could
I do? If I made a fuss, I knew he’d leave. So I kept quiet. I fig-
ured it was better him being friends with her than going back
to you.’
My toes curl as she clenches and unclenches her fists, over
and over again. If I could just reach that broken glass . . .
Helen’s voice drones on. ‘Little did I know what they were
planning up there, the two of them. She was helping him pack
his bag. The next thing I knew a taxi had arrived and they were
piling his things into it and driving off.’
She leans in towards me, her voice scarily low. ‘You know the
rest, of course. Within a few weeks they’d had a row and he’d
hooked up with you again. Two weeks later he was dead.’
She squeezes her eyes shut and bites down on her bottom lip.
Her body sways and for a second or two I think she’s on the verge
of collapsing. Then she’s staring at me again, her face pinched
with rage. ‘You saw to that, didn’t you?’
Something beeps from the windowsill. It sounds like the
text- notification sound on my phone. Helen walks calmly
across the room to pick it up.
‘I charged it up for you,’ she says, a faint smile twitching the
corner of her mouth. ‘That’s probably Josh, thanking you for
those lovely selfies you sent him.’
Now she’s openly smirking. ‘Quite the little sex kitten,
aren’t you?’
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46
‘What are you talking about?’
I lurch to my feet, trembling and weak. This can’t be happen-
ing. I don’t understand.
‘Get dressed, you pathetic creature.’
‘Give me my phone!’
‘Get dressed first.’
With shaking hands, I pick up my smelly clothes from the
floor and struggle to get into my jeans. My legs are all sticky
with sweat and the jeans are damp. I pull on my T- shirt, almost
gagging at the smell of vomit that’s soaked into it.
Helen watches with disdain as I tug it down over my hips,
trying to cover the horrible wet patch at the crotch. Her eyes
travel slowly from my face to my feet and back up again.
‘At least he knows the real you at last,’ she says, and tosses
the phone towards my face, forcing me to swerve sideways to
stop it hitting me. It lands on the sofa and I grab hold of it,
heart racing.
I’ve waited over two weeks to see Josh’s name flash up on my
screen and now here it is. Four text notifications, and they’re all
from him.
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‘Stop sending me these,’ says the first one I read.
I close my eyes. Now I know what happened to that poor
young woman, now I know for sure what kind of person I really
am, a couple of inappropriate selfies are the least of my prob-
lems, but I have to know what I’ve done. See it with my own
eyes. I go into my messages and there they are. I have no recol-
lection of doing this. None whatsoever. I must have been out of
my head.
Well, duh, Astrid. Of course you were out of your head. You’ve
drunk so much you blacked out. Welcome back, loser.
They’re worse, far worse, than
I could ever have imagined.
Me sprawled on the sofa, bottle in hand, red wine stains splat-
tering my T- shirt, an inane grin plastered over my stupid face.
Then a shot of my purple- stained teeth and my nostrils as I leer
at the camera I’m holding too close. I look horrendous. Ugly.
Revolting. And – oh no, please no – not this. Not this. I’ve actually hoicked up my T- shirt and pulled down the cups on my
bra. And there’s vomit on my chin.
I force myself to look at them again. This is what happens
when I drink. I’m embarrassing. Beyond embarrassing. I’m
monstrous. I killed a woman. Left a child without a mother.
Tears streaming down my cheeks, I read his replies.
‘I can’t believe you’re drinking again, not after everything
you said in your letter.’
What’s he talking about? What letter?
I read the next one: ‘I thought we had something. I thought
it would be okay. That sooner or later we’d get back together.
But all the lies and the drama. These disgusting pictures. I don’t
need this in my life. I don’t want it.’
His words claw at my heart, but the last one, the one that’s
just arrived, is the worst of all. Just four blunt words: ‘Leave me
alone, Astrid.’
Helen takes a step towards me.
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‘I might have helped you take the photos, but you got your-
self into that state all on your own.’
What does she mean, she helped me take them? Oh my God!
She must have positioned herself somehow so it looked like it
was me holding the phone.
Suddenly I’m reaching forward and snatching the stem of
the cracked wine glass. I smash it into the table and run at her
with it clenched in my fist, but somehow she manages to grab
hold of my wrists and hold my hands up high.
She laughs in my face. ‘He won’t want anything to do with
you now. A nice clean- living boy like Josh Carter. Not that he
would have come back to you anyway. Over two weeks and not
a single phone call. Not even a text. It’s hardly love, is it?
I ram my knee hard into her crotch, slam it up against her
pubic bone. She lets go of my wrists and doubles up in pain.
The broken glass falls to the floor and I push her to one side
and run out into the hall. There’s no sign of my shoes – I’ll have
to make my escape barefoot.
