‘Sad indeed,’ Ellis comments. ‘Statistically, he’s probably not the only one to die out of all these faces.’
Rhonda wonders if she should take the picture home and give it to Jen, or if it would be too upsetting. Either way, she knows it can’t go in the skip – none of the photographs can. How tragic, she thinks, as she puts the box aside, that the young Jeremy in the photo had no idea that his life would be cut short at the age of forty-two.
The rest of the day is filled with multiple trips up and down from the loft as they ferry the boxes and sacks of stuff down to ground level. Moving a dozen or more sacks of stage costumes, wigs and old props reveals yet another layer of saggy cardboard boxes, some too heavy to lift without removing some of the books inside.
And that’s when Rhonda finds the press clippings, hidden beneath some old biology textbooks.
‘I’m pooped,’ Miranda says, wiping her sweaty face on her sleeve. ‘Are we nearly done for the day?’ She looks at her watch. ‘I reckon if we come in again tomorrow, we can have it finished.’
‘Mmm, sure,’ Rhonda says without looking up. She flicks through the yellowing newspaper pages, some torn out and some still part of the original paper but folded open. ‘You and Ellis go, if you like,’ Rhonda says, glancing up. ‘I’ll finish this load and lock up. I’ve got keys.’
‘If you’re sure?’ Ellis says, coming up behind Miranda. Rhonda glances up, confirming that she is. It’s only when she’s certain that she’s alone that she gathers up all the clippings, shoving them in a plastic bag to take home. She wants to read all about the thirteen-year-old schoolboy found guilty of murdering a toddler back in the early nineties – the reason the comprehensive went into decline. And as she’s locking up the door to the tower, she goes back into the lobby on a whim, grabbing the box containing the class photos, justifying it to herself by thinking that they might be of interest to Jen.
Twenty-Five
Then
Evan and Mac cycle up to the den as often as they can, even when the October sunshine gives way to rain and fog and shorter days, the chillier air biting at their noses and knuckles.
‘Mum says I’m not allowed out when it’s dark,’ Mac says gloomily.
‘My mum and Griff don’t care,’ Evan replies, ripping open a Crunchie bar. He tosses the wrapper down by his feet, kicking it into the scrubby, leafy ground. Acrid smoke twists up from the heap of damp twigs and leaves they ignited for a campfire, which took a load of newspaper and most of the matches to get going.
‘Why d’you call your dad Griff?’ Mac asks, tipping the last of a bag of cheese and onion crisps into his mouth.
Evan stares across at him, watching his pink tongue dart in and out as he licks the salty remains from his lips. Evan licks chocolate from his own. ‘He’s not my dad,’ Evan replies. ‘My dad’s dead. Then Mum got with Griff. He’s always hitting me,’ Evan says, the admission almost like a blow in itself. ‘And sometimes he hits Mum.’
‘Hit him back,’ Mac replies, as if it’s easy.
‘He’d kill me if I did that. Then he’d kill Mum too, and I wouldn’t be there to look after her.’ Evan feels his eyes prickling and watering. ‘Does your dad hit your mum?’ He thinks he’ll probably have to do it, too, when he’s married, although he doesn’t even like girls as they’re all mean like Gem. He definitely wants to hit her.
‘’Course not,’ Mac says, pulling a face. ‘They love each other, Mum and Dad.’
Evan nods slowly, something catching his eye. He gets up and creeps over to a tree stump a few feet away, bent at the waist, his back hunched, suddenly, lunging at his prey, clapping and cupping his hands together around it. He makes a whooping sound and peeks between his fingers.
‘Daddy-long-legs,’ he says, showing it to Mac. ‘Needs warming up,’ he says with a throaty laugh, going over to the fire. These last few days his voice has been doing strange things, like he’s got a cough even though he hasn’t.
Evan releases the drowsy insect into the fire, watching as it ignites. Both kids are mesmerised as the insect crisps and curls, blackening until its legs and wings twist from the heat, before sizzling into a gooey blob. ‘Coo-ool,’ Evan says, his insides fizzing.
‘It’s boring just killing insects,’ Mac says, opening a can of Coke.
Evan agrees. ‘What would be the worst thing to kill?’ he asks, staring up through the canopy of trees, spinning round a few times, his arms stretched wide. He plonks himself down on the log again, feeling dizzy. His nostrils tingle from the smoke as the wind changes and it blows in his face.
‘This,’ Mac says in a silly, high-pitched voice, holding up the notepad he’s been doodling in. Evan looks at the page, sizing up the drawing. It’s a stick person wearing a short skirt with scribbled-in hair hanging in bunches.
‘Gem?’ Evan says, glancing up to see Mac nodding. His voice crackles again, saliva collecting in the corners of his mouth. ‘Yeah…’ he says, feeling the pressure building inside. ‘I’d like to throw her on the fire.’
‘Ev-an?’ Evan’s mum shrieks up the stairs. He’s only been home a short while, creeping past Griff, who was sprawled out in the living room, beer can in his hand, ashtray on the arm of the sofa as he growled at the football on the telly. He’d snuck up to his bedroom with the pact that he and Mac had made as they stood beside the fire still buzzing inside his head. Kill Club secret.
‘Get down here, now. Tea!’ his mum yells out.
‘Where’ve you been all day?’ she asks when he comes into the kitchen. Rosie is in her high chair, even though she can’t really sit up properly yet. Usually she’s attached to his mum’s hip, grizzling and sucking on a slimy fist with green snot dribbling out of her nose.
‘Nowhere.’ Evan plonks himself down at the table and his mum puts a plate of food in front of him. ‘This again?’
‘I’m short this week. Eat up, it’ll fill a gap,’ his mum says, lighting a cigarette. She stands by the open back door, puffing smoke out into the night, her thin lips puckering up. ‘Could’ve done with your help today, minding Rosie for me.’ She holds the side of her head briefly, one finger tapping her temple, the glowing tip of the cigarette sticking out at right angles.
‘Sorry, Mum,’ Evan says, splitting apart the soggy bread with his fork in his right hand. He imagines the red tinned tomatoes are blood oozing out from white flesh. Gem’s flesh.
He knows what minding Rosie means. It means that his mum had wanted to spend the day in bed fighting off another migraine. She got them a lot. They make her feel sick and she has to lie in a dark room with no sound.
‘It was that brat next door again,’ she says, blowing out one final time before tossing the dog end out into the garden. She glares towards the fence, making a snarling face, before slamming the back door hard. ‘Screaming all the time while I was hanging out the washing. Set me head right off, he did.’ She goes to the sink, plunging her hands into the soapy water.
Evan thinks he hears her mutter something about wanting to kill the little sod. Rosie gurgles in her high chair next to him.
Later, when Griff has gone to the pub and his mum is watching EastEnders, Evan feels brave. Braver than brave, in fact. It’s all because Mac said they needed more cool stuff for the den. He knows Griff has some special things from when he was in the army – things he’s not allowed to touch, which immediately makes him want them all the more. They’re in a box under his mum and Griff’s bed.
He stands at the top of the stairs, listening out – hearing the TV chattering away, Rosie making gurgling noises from her cot.
Evan slowly opens his mum and Griff’s bedroom door. His heart thumps. The street light outside the window casts a glow as he goes over to the bed, careful to tread quietly because his mum is sitting right below. Kneeling down, he lifts the skirt of the nylon bedspread and shoves his hand underneath, feeling around for the box.
There. He walks his fingers along the top of the cardboard to get a grip on it, and slowly slides it out. He
hears the drum of his pulse beating in his ears as he tries not to make a sound. Evan lifts the lid and stares down at the contents.
His shoulders drop. It doesn’t look that special, he thinks, staring down at the pile of boring papers and letters. There’s a photo in a frame with cracked glass – a few men in army uniform standing beside a helicopter, one of them looking like a much younger Griff. Evan pushes his hands beneath the stack of papers like he’s doing a lucky dip, listening out for sounds of his mum moving. EastEnders will be over soon.
His fingers touch something cold near the bottom of the box. Something metal. He pulls it out, his eyes virtually exploding when he sees the tarnished cup, like the ones they give out on sports day. It’s only small, no bigger than Evan’s hand, but to him it’s like buried treasure. Quickly, he tucks it under his hoody, trembling at the thought of what Mac is going to say when he sees it.
He freezes. A noise. His mum muttering something to herself.
Then it’s quiet again.
Chancing his luck, Evan scoops his hand deeper into the box, rummaging around until his feels something hard and square. He pulls it out, not caring what it is, just that it’s going up his sweatshirt as well.
When he hears a bang downstairs along with Griff’s voice, Evan pulls the bottom drawstring of his hoody tight before putting the lid on the box and shoving it back under the bed. His cheeks burn scarlet.
Footsteps on the stairs.
‘What’s all the noise up here, boy? You in bed yet? Give yer mother some peace.’
Evan virtually melts from fear. If he’s caught, it won’t be any normal beating. It’ll be a punishment he won’t get to remember. He flies out of the bedroom and runs into Rosie’s tiny box room. He hears her snuffling and cooing contentedly.
‘Sorry, Rosie,’ he whispers, leaning over the cot, reaching down. He pinches the meaty part of her thigh as hard as he can through her towelling sleepsuit.
For a second, there’s silence as Rosie stares up at him, her fist near her glistening lips, her eyes glassy and bewildered, her legs perfectly still.
And then she screams – her face puckered and her limbs thrashing as she makes a noise ten times worse than the kid next door who gives his mum the headaches. He reaches down into the cot and picks up his baby sister, holding her across his body so she conceals the items he’s got stashed inside his hoody.
The door slams open behind him.
‘What the—?’
Evan turns, jiggling the baby up and down as he stares at Griff’s broad physique. He immediately smells the tang of beer.
‘Think she had a nightmare,’ Evan says, his voice suddenly high-pitched and fearful. ‘I’ll look after her,’ he says, bouncing Rosie about.
‘Get baby to sleep, and go to bed yerself, you big lunk.’ Griff raises his hand high, making Evan flinch, shielding Rosie’s head with his hand as he twists out of the way.
Relief surges through him when Griff leaves with only the threat lingering in the air. He puts his face down near Rosie’s, smelling her sweet milky breath as he lowers her back down into her cot, his finger in the curl of her palm, her soft skin closing around him.
‘Sorry, sorry, sorry,’ he whispers, knowing she’ll probably have a bruise tomorrow. Then he goes into his own room, jamming the door closed with the rubber wedge he nicked from school.
Sitting on the floor, his back against the door, Evan pulls the loot out from under his hoody. He sits the trophy on the threadbare carpet, imagining Mac’s face when he sees it. Carefully, he unhooks the catch on the black and gold box and opens the lid. It’s only small, but looks important with its smart leather exterior.
Evan’s mouth hangs open in awe when he sees the two identical badges set against the maroon velvet. Gold-coloured eagles with their wings spread wide sit on red enamel backgrounds, each one with tiny gold lettering underneath in a language that he doesn’t understand.
‘Wicked,’ he whispers. He can’t wait to show Mac the treasure. He takes one of the badges out, pinning it onto his black hoody. When he stares into his cracked mirror, he can hardly contain his excitement.
Later, in bed, with the badge pinned to his vest beneath his pyjama top and the other badge safely stashed in his school bag ready to give to Mac, Evan can’t sleep; knows he won’t get a wink as his fingers caress the cold metal eagle. And when sleep does eventually come, all he sees is Gem’s terrified face when he finally gets the chance to teach her a lesson.
Twenty-Six
Now
Jen
‘Who’s Madeleine, Mum?’ Kieran asks.
I freeze momentarily as I stand at the kitchen sink, my rubber-gloved hands plunged in the hot soapy water.
‘She was a colleague of your dad’s, I think, love,’ I say, forcing my hands to wring out the dishcloth.
‘A colleague or friend?’ Kieran pushes on.
I hear his leg jiggling, the heel of his trainer tap-tapping on the floor as he finishes his dinner. Thankfully, Scott is out of the house. I was hoping to spend the next hour or so with Kieran – plus have a reprieve from my thoughts, a moment of clarity to make a plan. But the note Scott left on the kitchen table – ‘Back by nine’ – plus Kieran’s unexpected inquisition are not helping my state of mind. Scott completely ignored my threat of calling the police, not even mentioning it this morning, waving me off breezily as I went to work. And I could hardly make a scene in front of Kieran.
‘A colleague. Why?’ I turn, probably faster than I’d intended, and counter it with a smile.
Kieran stares at me, assessing me. He’s such a young Jeremy sitting there – those loose, wayward curls, his wide-set eyes that always seem so intense. Kieran isn’t as dark-haired as Jeremy was, but the high cheekbones, the angular jawbone, the way he carries himself make him seem like a living ghost, a constant reminder of the man I’ve lost. And it makes me love him even harder.
‘Caitlin was asking,’ he says.
I pull off my rubber gloves, one of them getting stuck. I just want to scream and tear it from my hand – but instead, I take a breath, keeping calm. I drag out a chair beside Kieran and sit down.
‘How does Caitlin know about Madeleine?’
‘She found out that her mum was stalking her on Insta. She said she went on the skiing trip with Dad.’
‘What? Why… I don’t think that’s true.’ I curse myself for sounding snappy – my son doesn’t deserve that. I reach out for the note Scott left, nervously balling up the scrap of paper, praying that the gesture will somehow stop him coming back.
‘Mum, did you and Dad trust each other?’ Kieran asks. His leg starts jiggling again.
‘What kind of question is that?’ I feign a laugh.
‘One that answers itself if you avoid it,’ he says, those big eyes averted to the floor, the wall, the ceiling – anywhere but looking into mine.
‘Of course we trusted each other,’ I say. ‘I just don’t get why you’re asking, love.’
Part of me wonders if I should just come out with it – with everything. My suspicions about Madeleine and Jeremy having an affair; that Scott – a random stranger – is the father of my baby, that I’m certain he drugged and raped me; how he’s blackmailing me with horrific photos I didn’t even know he’d taken, which is why we have a man neither of us knows staying in our house. Neutralise everything. Except it wouldn’t neutralise anything. It would blow everything up beyond recognition. There would be no normal life for either of us ever again.
‘What does any of this have to do with Caitlin? I’m confused.’
Kieran stares at me, opening his mouth to speak.
‘By the way, how’s the extra studying going?’ I ask, suddenly desperate to change the subject.
‘Caitlin thinks Dad and Madeleine were…’ Kieran’s nose wrinkles and he blinks hard several times, briefly covering his face with hands that seem too large for his skinny teenage body. ‘She thinks they were having an affair. She overheard her mum talking about it to Chri
s, and when she checked her mum’s phone, it was true. Rhonda had been stalking Madeleine so she reckons she must know something.’ This time he manages to look me straight in the eye. ‘I’m really sorry,’ he adds, as though it’s the grown-up thing to do.
Somehow, from some deep reserves within myself, I manage to answer. ‘No, no, Kier, that’s not true at all.’ I place a hand on his. ‘Don’t you worry. Whatever Caitlin has overheard, she’s very much mistaken. Your dad was not having an affair. He would never have done anything like that.’ I manage a smile. ‘It’s unthinkable.’
‘That’s what I thought,’ Kier says, though there’s none of the relief I’d have expected. ‘But Caitlin said she knows that Dad and Madeleine were on the ski trip together, and that she’s checked out some of Madeleine’s previous posts, and some locations matched up with where Dad was when he’d gone away. Caitlin was pretty fired up and angry about it. Maybe Madeleine knows what happened to him, how the accident happened. Is she even alive? Have you tried to contact her? She might know stuff.’
Oh, love, I want to say, while throwing my arms around him, comforting him. But I don’t get a chance because suddenly there’s a bang from the hallway – the front door opening and closing – and I never thought I’d actually feel grateful to Scott for anything, let alone entering my house, but I am right now.
‘Hello, both,’ Scott says, striding into the kitchen as if he’s lived here years. My skin crawls at the sight of him, but for Kieran’s sake, I smile and stand up as if he’s welcome here.
The Trapped Wife: An absolutely gripping psychological thriller with a mind-blowing twist Page 17
