David let me go and stepped back, leaving me standing there with sweat sticking my top to my shoulder blades, and tears in my eyes. I don’t know whether I mumbled an apology, or whether I let out anything more than a whimper from my sore throat, because leaving that house is still a blur.
Chapter Sixteen
One thing I do remember from that night is that I’d had at least two very large glasses of wine. I was over the limit, but I couldn’t stay in that house, and I couldn’t leave my car there, either. My stiff, trembling fingers dropped my keys twice before I managed to get into the Punto, and then I almost backed into a plant pot while turning around in the driveway. When I had to stop to allow the gates to open, I stalled the car, which I hadn’t done for over a year.
I was too wound up to sort out the sat-nav app on my phone, so I drove until I realised I didn’t know where I was, and then I searched for street signs until I managed to find my way out of Rotherham towards the north. My throat ached, but I didn’t think David had applied enough pressure to leave a bruise. He’d made his threat with just enough force to leave me trembling and sweaty. The man was not someone to cross, that was for sure.
It was after nine pm and the roads were dark. My pathetic headlights didn’t make visibility much better and I was too afraid to drive on the motorway after drinking wine. When I found a quiet road, I decided to pull over and finally sort out the sat-nav so I could find my way home, as well as taking a moment to pull myself together. The temperature had dropped, but I was still sweating through my clothes, only now the air was sour from the alcohol making its way out of my pores. My upper body was shaking from the chill, the alcohol in my system, and fear of David Fielding.
A few moments later I set off down a road without street lamps, at least now with a better idea of how to get back to Hutton. Forced to drive hunched over the steering wheel so I could see where I was going in the dark, even with full beam on, I reduced my speed and hoped to come to a brighter road soon. And then it started to rain. My windscreen wipers smeared water across the glass, blurring the darkness, reducing the amount I could see to a small rectangular section of my windshield.
When I missed the sharp left turn up ahead, instead of continuing on, my wine-addled brain decided to still try to make the turning, overshooting it by a few feet and ploughing into a tall, looming tree by the side of the road. There was no airbag in my old car, so I plunged towards the windscreen and back, whipping my head back and forth. My forehead almost hit the steering wheel, but I was saved by the constricting seat belt in the nick of time. I turned off the engine and climbed out of the car to see what the damage was, using the torch app on my phone so I could see in the dark.
Shit. The bumper was completely hanging off. My bonnet was bunched up and bent in the centre. There was no way I could drive this car back to Hutton village as it was, but I also couldn’t call any roadside assistance or the emergency services—I was drunk. I gazed down at my phone. There were no best friends or reliable family members. Tom didn’t even have his learner’s license yet. What was I going to do? Stay there and get murdered in the dark by an opportunist? Or worse, David Fielding back to silence me for good.
But there was one phone number I could try, and I had to hope he was in a good mood.
*
I travelled back to Hutton in the cab of Seb’s tractor with my Punto dragging along behind us. It was a quiet journey, with Seb only talking to ask if I was hurt, and to inform me that my car would have to go to the garage in the morning. If he knew I’d been drinking, he didn’t say a word. Of course he knew; anyone with eyes could have seen I’d been drinking. I was such a bleary-eyed sweaty mess it was a miracle I’d managed to get as far out of Rotherham as I had.
By the time I got back to the cottage, pulled off my shoes, and made it into our tiny lounge, it was midnight and Tom was sitting up watching Nightmare on Elm Street, our joint favourite movie, along with Die Hard and Hellraiser.
“What the hell happened to you?” he said. “I called you.”
“I know. I’m sorry. I crashed my car and Seb had to pick me up.”
“What? But… where were you? How did you crash the car?”
I collapsed onto the sofa and pulled a cushion onto my lap. “It’s a long story.”
“You smell like fags and booze. Were you drinking?” Tom jumped to his feet, anger flashing in his eyes. “I can’t believe this.”
“Tom, don’t—”
“You’re just like Dad.”
It was like a stab to the gut to hear him compare me to our father. I threw the cushion down and stood to face him. My little brother stood opposite me defiantly, with his arms folded across his chest, eyes glazed with angry tears. “That was uncalled for. Take it back.”
“No, I won’t. Not until you stop drinking. I’m sick of finding you in the kitchen passed out. I’m sick of you sitting out in the garden drinking wine. It’s weird, Leah. You’re fucking weird.”
Before I could even open my mouth he was already heading out of the room. I cringed as the door slammed behind him. Stomping footsteps made it up the stairs before his music began to blare out of his room. I couldn’t even yell at him to turn it down for the neighbours, because we didn’t have any. Instead, I curled up on the sofa and fell asleep to Freddy Krueger slashing his way through dozens of school kids.
The horror of the movie seeped into my subconscious, infecting my feverish dreams. David Fielding chased me down a dark road, his hand outstretched to catch me. Breathlessly, I took a left turn, and then a right, desperately trying to get rid of him. When I thought I had finally lost him, he came flying overhead on wide eagle wings, swooping down to grab me. He was monstrous—part bird, part man. He had a beak for a nose and claws for fingers. I screamed and screamed before running away, throwing my body down a pitch-black road.
But then the streetlights turned on one by one, beginning at the end of the street until the light closest illuminated a figure standing in the middle of the road, right in front of me. It was the first time I’d seen his face in months: my father, standing there, holding my mother in his arms as she bled from an ugly red slash across her neck. He was crying, and for some reason that made everything worse.
I woke, covered in sweat, to a banging on the door.
Freddy Krueger was no longer terrorising school children; the television had turned itself off some time in the night. My phone was out of battery and I’d pawned my watch some months ago, so I had no idea what the time was, only that it was early morning judging by the light filtering in through the windows. I dragged my fingers through my hair and made my way into the kitchen, still worried that I’d open the door to find David Fielding standing on my doorstep with a bloodied knife in his hand.
But it was just Seb.
“Hi,” I said. “Thanks again for last night. What do I owe you for the tow?”
He shrugged his heavy shoulders and squinted beneath bushy eyebrows. “I know a mechanic who can fix that for you if you take it in on Monday. Won’t be cheap, but he won’t rip you off, neither. Thought you might want this.”
I realised then that he was holding a flask. He passed it to me along with the business card for his mechanic friend.
“Thought you might need some strong coffee. Why don’t you go for a walk after you’ve had that?”
“Thanks. I… I will.”
“All right, then.” Seb turned around and walked down the path to his tractor, leaving me standing in the doorway holding a thermos flask of coffee.
I went back inside and sipped on the coffee. It was rich, delicious, and piping hot. I decided to pour Tom a cup and take it up to him. Perhaps he would forgive me quickly enough to agree to a walk through the moors after we were dressed. But he was still fast asleep with the covers pulled over his head. I placed the coffee on his bedside table and left him be.
As I ate breakfast and contemplated the night before, I came to a decision. It was time to put an end to my obsession with Isabel’s
innocence. Enough was enough. It wasn’t my place to save her or whatever it was I was trying to do. Her reassessment was coming up, that I couldn’t deny, and there was perhaps one last thing I could do to try and help, but I’d seen first-hand that David Fielding was a bully and that his wife was afraid of him. I’d also seen the odd way Owen behaved at dinner, which made it clear that neither of David’s children was particularly well-adjusted. James Gorden had been right that there was a rotten core at the heart of the Fielding family, and it was David, plain as day. Innocent men did not put their hands around the throats of women.
I finished the coffee and placed my breakfast dishes in the sink. There was no way I could say for certain that David Fielding killed Maisie Earnshaw seven years ago. I was no expert. Why did I think I could get to the bottom of this mystery? It was time to collect everything I’d learned over the last few weeks and send it all to someone who could solve the mystery. It was time to hand it all over.
After the breakfast dishes were cleaned, I typed up an email including everything I knew about the Fieldings. At first I’d decided not to mention my trip to their home, but then I realised I had to include it. Without mentioning David losing his temper, there wasn’t any point to any of this. I included links to the missing people James had noticed and then I sent it to the local police. The message was clear: I believe Isabel Fielding is innocent of killing Maisie Earnshaw.
Tom seemed determined to ignore me that morning, so I left without him, heading out onto the moors through the farm fields. This time I continued up a steep hill that overlooked Hutton and the surrounding areas, and I found a small abandoned farmhouse nestled within a valley. The walls were crumbling, but an old door remained. It took a few jerks to come loose, but I managed to prise it open and headed into the interior of the dingy building.
There were still a few cabinets from an old kitchen and a bathroom with a green toilet covered in dust, the bowl filled with old cigarette butts. What furniture had been left was long rotted away, and the old wallpaper sagged at the corners, but it was clear that this house had once been a home. Someone had lived in this beautiful spot, and perhaps they’d been happy. I wandered around the room, letting my fingers trail through the dust, smiling at the thought of the family who might’ve once lived there. This family would’ve been nothing like the one I was born into. This pretend family loved one another, not hurt each other.
When I realised that the house reminded me of the one I grew up in, the walls seemed to close in on me and the dust clogged my throat. I had to get out of there.
Chapter Seventeen
I had no choice but to take a few days off work so I could take the Punto into the garage to get it fixed, relying on Seb once again to tow the vehicle with his tractor. On the way to the mechanic in Hutton, I spotted three magpies clustered together on a dry stone wall and couldn’t stop myself from waving. Seb noticed and smiled, which was perhaps the first time I’d ever seen him smile.
“Didn’t take you for superstitious,” he said. “You look too smart for that.”
“Well, looks can be deceiving.” I thought about leaving the conversation there, but Seb was so quiet that I ended up chattering on. “My da—father had an Irish mother who was very superstitious. He would always leave out of the same door he came in, always salute magpies, especially if there’s just one of them, and he used to tell me to put my tooth on the windowsill after it’d fallen out.”
“Did it work?”
“What, the tooth thing? I dunno.”
“Was he lucky then?”
I stared out at the moorland as I thought about it. Streaks of fluffy white clouds stretched across the pastel sky. “He was. But he never knew he was lucky, and then he pissed it all away.”
The thing I liked about Seb was that he didn’t probe at all. In fact, conversations with Seb were pretty sparse, but he was always there when I needed someone. I’ll take deeds over words anytime. The rest of the journey into Hutton was silent, but when we reached the garage he stayed and did the talking for me, haggling the mechanic down to a reasonable price, then took me straight back to the cottage. I’d persuaded Tom to stay off school, so for the rest of the afternoon we watched eighties horror films and laughed at the terrible special effects.
I didn’t once think about the email I’d sent to the police, and I barely gave Isabel a passing thought. For once I felt happy and contented. At least, I thought I did.
On Thursday evening I collected the Punto with its brand new bumper and bonnet. I’d been lucky to not have damaged the suspension, so it hadn’t taken too long to fix. I’d also taken the cheapest possible outcome and not bothered with getting the front bumper and bonnet painted, leaving me with a yellow car with a green bonnet and bumper. The kind of car a kid would create out of building blocks. On the way back to the farm I kept my head down and avoided eye contact with the pedestrians pointing and laughing, while trying to ignore the hot prickle of shame working its way up my neck. When you’re poor, shame comes as naturally as breathing, but unlike breathing, you never get used to it. I needed the car to get to work, and I needed money from work to pay the bills and feed Tom. That was all that mattered.
Tom cooked spaghetti for tea while I prepared a dessert of bread and butter pudding, one of Mum’s specialities, as well as a good way to use up stale bread. We caught up with our soaps, ate second helpings of dessert with instant custard, and Tom went upstairs to finish up his homework, leaving me alone in the kitchen. For the first time, I thought about Isabel and her family. My fingers traced the area on my neck where David Fielding had pinned me against his kitchen cabinets, his face so close to mine that I could smell the expensive red wine on his breath. I hadn’t heard from Chi at work, so at least David hadn’t gone straight to the hospital to complain about me turning up at his house. While I’d been concentrating on fixing my car and making sure my relationship with Tom was back on track, I hadn’t had time to think about what it would be like going back to the hospital and facing Isabel again.
I reached for the wine—just one glass to ease off the nerves and help me sleep. I was edgy enough to believe that I’d have unwanted nightmares. The problem was, I had the kind of brain that enjoyed reaching into the depths and revealing my worst fears to me on a regular basis. If you ever find yourself sitting alone with your mind on a loop of all the worst things that have ever happened to you, then you’ll know exactly what I mean, and the only thing that turns it off is alcohol.
*
I’d been right about the nightmare. My mind slipped easily into the same dream I’d experienced a few nights ago, which ended with my father cradling my poor dying mum in the middle of that dark street where I’d crashed the car. But this time, instead of waking, I ran towards them, pushing my father away from Mum. I was crying so hard I could barely breathe, but despite the fat tears running down my cheeks, I continued to push down on her wounds, desperately trying to stop the bleeding. As Mum’s last breath rattled through her chest, I lifted my hands to see that they were covered in blood. Slowly, I rose to my feet, the lights from the car almost blinding me. Just as I realised I was waking, Isabel’s face flashed up.
My hands were not covered in blood when I woke—they were covered in dust. My hair was tangled with broken stones, and my back was sore. I’d sleepwalked to the abandoned house.
Wincing at the stiffness in my limbs, I hurried out of the building as quickly as I could, emerging out into the early dawn as I brushed cobwebs away from my clothes. I checked my pockets to find my phone. Thankfully, it was there, and I checked the time: 5:35am. No missed calls from Tom, and I still had time to run home, shower, and leave for work.
But what the hell had happened? My sleepwalking was escalating, and now it was clear that it was linked to alcohol. My head was fuzzy from the wine, but I didn’t feel sick or shaky. Was I an alcoholic like my father? The thought that Tom might be right was almost too much to bear. Drink drove my father to violence and murder. If I really was like h
im, was I capable of the same?
Forty-five minutes later I was on the road making my way to Crowmont. Thanks to the world’s shortest shower, I was still on time, but I had to hurry. The Punto struggled its way along the narrow, uneven roads as I tapped my fingers against the steering wheel and wished it would go faster. Chi had already given me a warning about being late to work, and I didn’t want to let him down again. Ian and Brian waved as I made my way into the carpark. I almost tripped and fell as I climbed out of the car, but managed to keep my balance at the last moment, saving myself from a faceplant against the hard tarmac. When I reached my locker, I practically threw my belongings in and attached my pass to my shirt at the same time.
It was one minute past 8:30 as I walked onto the ward. Not too bad.
“Leah, can I have a word?”
My heart sank to my knees. I’d been so close.
“Sure.” I spun around and walked back the way I came, towards Chi’s office.
As he shut the door behind me, I examined his face to work out whether he was angry or annoyed, or whether this was a regular meeting about hospital matters. It was no good—Chi appeared as cheerful as ever, which could mean anything. The man was unflappable.
“How’s the car?” he asked.
“Fixed, thank God.”
“I saw the bonnet in the carpark. It’s like the Noddy car. My daughter loves that book.” He grinned at me, his eyes twinkling.
It couldn’t be too bad. Could it?
“It gets from A to B. Well, just about. It’s a bit slower than pretty much every car out there. I’m sorry I was a bit late this morning, I’m trying to sleep better, but it’s a bit of a process—”
He shook his head. “It’s not about that. Leah, since you’ve been off there’ve been some developments with Isabel. Or, rather, some setbacks. There was an altercation in the communal area which has unfortunately had an unsettling effect on her. She’s been in some distress for a while. She hurt herself quite badly as well.”
One For Sorrow Page 12
