The Good Samaritan

by John Marrs

  I dug my fingernails into my palms.

  No, it can’t be her. Not Charlotte. Not David’s Charlotte.

  ‘How sad,’ I replied.

  ‘That’s not the worst of it. She was two months away from having a baby, and she killed herself with a man she was having an affair with. From what everyone’s been saying, it was some kind of Romeo and Juliet suicide pact.’

  I shook my head sympathetically and stopped myself from setting the record straight. There was no affair with David. Charlotte was simply someone I’d shaped to help David finish what he’d started. I’d barely given Charlotte a second thought since it happened – maybe I was even a little envious of her, playing such an intimate role in David’s final moments. I hadn’t even bothered attending her funeral. Clearly, I’d underestimated the impact of her death.

  So that’s what Ryan had meant when he told me in the house I’d taken everything away from him already. Now that I knew what was motivating him, I could use it to my advantage.

  ‘Well, I won’t hold you up,’ I added, smiling. I began to walk away.

  ‘It’s nice to meet you,’ Kate called out, but I knew that if she saw me tomorrow, she wouldn’t have the first clue who I was.

  CHAPTER TEN

  RYAN

  ‘Thank you for agreeing to meet with me,’ I began. I slipped off my blazer and folded it across the arm of the sofa.

  ‘Can I get you a tea, coffee or a glass of water?’ she asked as she opened a window to let the stuffiness out. I assumed the room wasn’t used very often.

  ‘Water would be great, thanks.’

  It was the first appointment before the new year I could get with End of the Line’s manager Janine Thomson. When she left the room on the ground floor of their building, I glanced around at the sparsely decorated walls and noted two security cameras attached to ceiling corners. Tiny green lights flashed intermittently and I assumed we were being watched. The woodchip wallpaper could do with a fresh lick of white paint, and the two past-their-prime sofas opposite each other needed replacing. A box of tissues had been left on a coffee table. I wondered what was behind the padlocked door.

  Janine returned and placed my drink on the coffee table.

  ‘You mentioned in our telephone conversation you wanted to talk about one of our volunteers, Laura?’ she asked. She took out a notebook and pen from a bright-orange handbag. Her voice didn’t have the same soothing quality as Laura’s. It was more efficient.

  ‘She’s definitely not volunteering today?’ I asked.

  ‘No, she’s not due in until Friday.’

  ‘Okay, I think – well, I know – that Laura is encouraging some of your callers to end their lives.’

  The look Janine gave me was precisely why I hadn’t been to see her earlier and had taken matters into my own hands instead. My throat felt dry, so I reached for my glass and took a big gulp, then perched on the edge of the sofa and began to recount everything that had happened, from Charlotte’s suicide right up to the moment when Laura turned up at the house. It had been much easier spilling my guts to my brother than a stranger. Plus, now I was forced to self-edit, or risk incriminating myself. I admitted to following Laura, but not her family, and I kept quiet about her stabbing me and how I’d used Effie for my own means. Janine took notes up until I finished talking.

  ‘Right,’ she said. ‘That’s quite an accusation, Mr Smith.’

  ‘I know how it must sound – how I must sound – but Laura needs to be stopped.’

  ‘Do you mind me asking – after your wife passed away, did you undergo any grief counselling?’

  ‘No. Why?’

  ‘It’s just that sometimes grief can manifest itself in many different ways, and especially when someone we love has chosen to end their life. We start blaming ourselves or start misdirecting our anger towards others—’

  ‘I’m going to stop you right there,’ I said firmly. ‘I know exactly what grief has done. It’s torn me apart, but I haven’t lost my sanity. I spent weeks talking with this woman and I heard how persuasive she was when she thought I was at my lowest ebb. So I know for a fact that she’s a danger to vulnerable people calling you.’

  ‘Do you have any evidence of what you’ve told me?’

  I removed my Dictaphone and was about to press play when she stopped me.

  I followed her eyes as she looked at me then at one of the security cameras. She removed a pair of in-ear headphones from her bag, plugged them into the recorder and played excerpts from some of our many phone conversations.

  I watched her face as she listened, stony-faced but absorbing every one of Laura’s manipulative words. After five minutes, she pressed stop and removed her headphones.

  ‘You need to know that Laura’s a very popular member of the team and a big fundraiser for us,’ Janine said. ‘If it wasn’t for her, we’d be struggling to stay open.’

  I felt deflated. She didn’t care. I shook my head, grabbed the recording device and stood up to leave. ‘So you’re willing to overlook what she’s done because she brings in money? I knew this would be a waste of time.’

  ‘Ryan, wait,’ Janine replied and rose to her feet. She looked up towards the security cameras again, lowered her voice and then spoke quietly into my ear.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  LAURA

  I picked up a photograph of him on his wedding day. It was positioned so that he could see it from whatever angle he lay at.

  He was a much better-looking groom than his wife was a bride. Judging by the age of the wedding car parked behind them and the style of dress she and her bridesmaids wore, the black-and-white picture in the rose-gold frame was probably close to six decades old. It had faded a little, but the love between them as they held each other’s gaze for an eternity was still crystal clear. Now as Ryan’s grandfather lay asleep in the bed behind me, he bore little resemblance to the stocky, grinning man that the camera had captured so long ago.

  A day earlier, I’d sifted through dozens of photographs of faculty members on Effie’s school website until I found a picture of Ryan. He’d taken photos of my son and me in the lounge area of Henry’s home without me even noticing, but how had he gained entrance? I showed Ryan’s image on my phone to two of the brainless receptionists, and one immediately recognised him.

  ‘That’s Peter Spencer’s grandson, isn’t it?’ she began. ‘I think he’s called Robert or Ryan or Richard or something.’

  Neither enquired as to why I wanted to know, and after thanking them, I headed towards Henry’s wing, then took a diversion towards the geriatric care unit, walking along sticky, lino-clad flooring and through bleach-scented air until I reached another reception desk. I claimed to a nurse with a foreign accent that Mr Spencer was my uncle. She didn’t ask me for identification and pointed me towards Room 23. I made a mental note to complain to the management about the lackadaisical security later.

  Moments later, I loomed over a vulnerable old man, too poorly and weak to protect himself. All it might take was a firmly held pillow over his face to free him of the prison his body held him in. He might not be suicidal but I’d be giving him just as much mercy as I did my candidates.

  I glanced around his sparsely decorated room and flicked through the clothes hanging in his wardrobe, stopping at his one solitary suit. I assumed it would only be worn again when they lowered him into the ground. Photos on the shelves were of what I guessed were his children and grandkids. Then I spotted one of Ryan on his wedding day, and Charlotte by his side in an off-the-shoulder, white lace dress. It was already a dated look. I picked it up to get my first proper look at her. She was more attractive than her voice had suggested; she was slimmer and taller than me. Even if she hadn’t stepped from a clifftop, their marriage wouldn’t have survived. She was too far out of his league to have stayed for long.

  If Ryan had been allowed a peek into his future, I wondered if he’d still have married her, knowing what she’d do to him. I know I’d have still married Tony, de
spite everything that followed.

  Our wedding had been a small affair, at a church in the village of Weedon, near to where he’d grown up. We were young, both only in our early twenties at the time, but I’d never been more sure of anything in my life.

  The purpose of a wedding isn’t just to commit to each other, it’s also to bring two families together. Only I wasn’t able to deliver my side of the bargain. Tony’s ushers had to direct guests towards both sides of the aisle, so it wouldn’t look weighted in favour of the groom. His mother tried to fill my mum’s shoes by helping me to get ready in the morning. And when I held his father’s arm as he walked me up the aisle, it brought home to me just how alone I was.

  All day, when I should have been grinning from ear to ear, I just wanted it to end. It was a constant reminder I had nobody but my new husband. At the reception, when distant members of his family asked where my mother and father were, I’d have to keep telling them my parents were dead. I’d been forced to explain the same thing to everyone, from the wedding-dress shop owner to the florist, the driver of my car, and the restaurant manager arranging the top-table seating plan.

  I had no relative to run my plans past, and my bridesmaids were girls I worked with who I barely knew but who were too embarrassed to decline when I asked them. Everything about my wedding was a compromise.

  The best I could do to feel my parents’ presence was to wear my mum’s engagement ring and offer Tony my dad’s watch. I was close to tears when he accepted. I didn’t tell him I’d actually bought them at an antiques shop in the nearby village of Olney. I wanted a sense of nostalgia, even if it was someone else’s nostalgia, not mine.

  A silver watch lay unclasped and stretched out across Ryan’s grandfather’s bedside table. The inscription on the back read: To our son on his wedding day.

  How sweet, I thought. Back then I’m sure it had cost his parents a small fortune. I slipped it into my pocket, along with the batteries from his TV remote control.

  I left the room, then paused. I turned around and went back inside, closing the door quietly behind me.

  I listened carefully to the old man’s lungs as they struggled to take in air. His breath was wheezy and crackly, too weak for asthma and more likely to be emphysema. The poor bastard really was going to be better off dead.

  The call came out of the blue, but it couldn’t have been more welcome. I stubbed out my cigarette on the footpath when a number I recognised flashed across my phone.

  ‘Oh, my darling!’ I began, and closed my eyes, thrilled and relieved to hear from Effie. It had been a week since I’d surprised her at their new house. I’d since texted the number I’d memorised from the display on Tony’s dashboard and given her mine, hoping she’d want to open the lines of communication between us, which might, in turn, encourage Tony to do the same.

  ‘How are you?’

  ‘I’m okay,’ she replied hesitantly.

  ‘Are you sure about that? You don’t sound it.’

  ‘Could we . . . Would you . . . like to meet up?’

  ‘Oh, of course, I would love to. When?’

  An hour and a half later we sat side by side on a leather sofa inside a coffee shop. She’d chosen a Starbucks in a retail park on the outskirts of town because she didn’t want us to be seen by her dad or his friends, she explained. We sipped hot chocolates topped with whipped cream and sprinkles as I listened intently to my daughter filling me in on the time I’d missed from her life. She explained how some of her friends had turned against her when her Facebook account was hacked and her ex-boyfriend Matt was humiliated. Then her grades had slipped and she’d found herself alone and without any confidence in her own intelligence. It was Ryan Smith I really wanted to know about, but I couldn’t just shoehorn him into the conversation.

  ‘Are there any subjects you like?’ I asked. ‘What was it you used to be good at? Chemistry, wasn’t it?’

  ‘English and biology. And now I get shit marks in English and I hate biology because we’re expected to dissect animals. Baby pigs . . . It’s gross.’ She screwed up her face.

  To begin with, Effie struggled to maintain eye contact with me and I understood that while I was her mother, I was also a stranger. I still struggled to remember what had torn us apart, and as frustrating as it was, it didn’t seem appropriate to ask her and risk opening old wounds. Today was about moving forward and getting her back on side, to show my husband what he was missing without me. When her eyes finally reached mine and remained there, I could see so much of myself in them.

  It gradually dawned on me, as Effie spoke, that I’d never really heard what she had to say before. I’d listened, but all too often I’d dismissed her words and feelings as those of a child. Now, with her fifteenth birthday approaching, she was a young woman, and it was time I treated her like one.

  Several times she opened her mouth as if to ask me something, before having a change of heart and closing it again.

  ‘I don’t want to pry, but is there something else you want to talk to me about?’ I coaxed.

  She shook her head and looked across the car park at the shoppers loading their vehicles with bulging bags or strapping toddlers into buggies. She pursed her lips and looked so sad.

  ‘I’ve messed everything up, Mum,’ she said, before her face crumpled and she began to cry.

  I couldn’t have asked for anything better. I moved my chair closer to hers and draped my arm around her shoulders for comfort.

  ‘I got this new teacher, and at first I thought he hated me because he kept giving me rubbish grades,’ she continued.

  ‘Is this Mr Smith?’ I asked.

  She nodded. ‘He seemed like he really cared and gave me lots of attention after school. And then we started getting . . . closer.’

  ‘How close?’ I asked. Our reunion was turning out to be even more rewarding than I could have anticipated. While I hoped Ryan Smith hadn’t hurt or abused Effie, would it be the worst thing in the world for my case if he’d stepped over the line a little?

  ‘I didn’t have many friends left and he was really lovely to me and I started to get feelings for him and I thought he had them for me too. But when I told him, he was so horrible.’

  So that’s what he’d done to her. He’d led the silly girl on. Now I had something to work with.

  ‘Darling, did something physical happen between you?’

  ‘No. And I know it was wrong, but I wanted it to. He turned me down and called me nasty and stupid. I feel like such an idiot. I can’t even look at him anymore without wanting to be sick. I hate him.’

  ‘He seemed so nice. I bet he’s having a laugh about you in the staffroom over this.’

  Fear spread across my daughter’s face. ‘You think he’s told the other teachers?’

  ‘Men of his age love attention from pretty girls like you. They boast about it to their friends. And you know how rumours spread in schools – maybe that’s how he gets his kicks, leading girls on so he can humiliate them and boast about it. I just hope none of the students know.’

  Effie held her head in her hands and began to cry again. I rubbed her shoulders but didn’t encourage her to stop. I was torn between wanting to be the mother that Effie needed and demanding my revenge on Ryan. Effie potentially had all the ammunition I required, but I had to talk her around to my way of thinking first.

  ‘Does anyone else know about your feelings towards Mr Smith?’ I continued.

  ‘No, I didn’t tell anyone.’

  ‘Were you seen together?’

  ‘I guess so. I had meetings with him twice a week.’

  ‘But it’s not like you were spending time with him when there was no one else around?’

  ‘We were always alone in the room behind his classroom.’

  I wanted everything in the world to stop moving so that nothing could distract me from savouring her every word. This was how I was going to destroy Ryan: mother and daughter together, working towards a common goal.

  ‘You w
ere alone every time?’ I repeated. ‘You’re sure of this?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And did he give this kind of attention to any of the other girls?’

  ‘No. He’d wait until everyone had left.’

  ‘And how close were you, physically, when you were alone together?’

  ‘A couple of metres apart.’

  ‘Okay.’ I must have looked disappointed because she added hastily, ‘But sometimes he’d get a lot closer.’ I’d always been able to tell when she was exaggerating.

  ‘Did he ever ask you about your family?’

  ‘A little – he asked about you and Dad.’

  ‘And what did you tell him?’

  ‘Nothing, really.’

  ‘Did he say why he wanted to know about us?’

  ‘He said he was trying to understand if I had problems at home that might explain my falling grades. But it was him who started it all by marking me down all the time. He told me he didn’t want to worry you both, so it was best I didn’t mention he’d been asking about you.’

  ‘So he encouraged you to keep secrets from us?’ I shook my head, folded my arms and let out an exaggerated puff of air. ‘That’s a fairly typical approach.’

  ‘To what?’

  ‘To grooming a child.’

  ‘What, like a paedophile?’

  I nodded. ‘Part of my role at End of the Line involves talking to young people who’ve been through this, only by the time they reach me it’s often gone much, much further. These poor children. Oh, Effie, the stories I could tell you.’

  ‘But wouldn’t he have done something when I made a move on him in his car?’

  ‘You’ve been in his car?’

  ‘Yes, he gave me a lift home and I thought it was leading to something else. Then he started telling me how disgusting I was.’

  ‘Maybe he got cold feet; maybe he was playing mind games with you. It’s hard to know how these people think.’

  ‘I should tell Dad, shouldn’t I? He’ll know what to do.’