by Lauren North
SHELLEY
I really didn’t know what to believe that night when Tess called me. She was very distressed and was convinced there was a man in her garden. When I got there, I went outside to look because I thought it was Ian. I thought Ian was trying to help Tess at first, and I did think handing over all the probate stuff to someone who knows what they’re doing was a good idea, but I didn’t like the way he was pressuring Tess about Mark’s will and their finances. Whether he was owed money or not, it really wasn’t any of his business what Tess did or when she did it.
When the police officers arrived it was awful. Tess started acting all weird, like she was drunk. She could barely speak. I guess you’ve got the report. They searched the outside and we all went up and looked in Jamie’s room. PC Higgs and PC French were very understanding but I’m not sure they believed Tess. I know I didn’t at that point.
CHAPTER 43
Monday, March 26
13 DAYS TO JAMIE’S BIRTHDAY
For once I’m early picking Jamie up from school. There are no other parents here yet, and all the children are still tucked inside finishing off their schoolwork before the bell rings, signaling home time.
I sit on a brick wall by the teachers’ car park and draw in a breath, relishing the silence and peace and the buttery yellow sun on my face.
The brightness hurts the backs of my eyes but I don’t turn away. It’s nice to be out from the gloom; it’s nice to be early. I glance behind me, back toward the lane. A car is passing, slowing on the bend. Sunlight bounces off the window and I can’t see the driver, but I feel them watching me and I turn quickly away.
There’s something church-like about the school with its old burned red bricks and arched windows. Even the triangular porch that ends in a point in the middle of the building looks like a steeple. There’s a cockerel weather vane that sits on the highest spot on the porch roof and creaks in the breeze.
I wonder if they use the slim red door in the porch? Or do the children always come and go through the glass reception area that’s been built on the side with two wide double doors?
I imagine Jamie sitting at a desk somewhere beyond the worn brick wall. I imagine him concentrating on his looping script writing. To me it’s just a sentence but to Jamie it’s a long list of things to remember: words on the line, comma in the right place, speech marks, expanded noun phrases, a full stop at the end. He’s just like you, Mark. He prefers math.
A light breeze, like a breath on my neck, makes me shiver, and with it comes the feeling of being watched again. I shift position on the wall and scan all around me but I see no one. Then a movement catches my eye and a woman appears at the glass doors of the school. She pulls it open and moves in my direction. She’s wearing a long black knitted cardigan over a lilac shirt and black trousers and wraps the cardigan around herself as a gust of cold wind travels across the farmland, creaking the weather vane.
She has jet-black hair that reaches her jutting collarbone. She’s painfully slim and her forehead is lined as if she’s in a constant state of concern. “Can I help you?” she asks, throwing a look back to the doors, where I see another face peeking out from behind the reception desk.
Her question seems odd and makes me smile. They clearly don’t recognize me, but then I’m usually late, and usually my hair is scraped back and I’m in welly boots and your tartan pajama bottoms. With my hair down and a pair of jeans on, is it any surprise they don’t realize I’m Jamie’s mother?
“I’m just waiting for Jamie. Jamie Clarke.” I smile and fumble in my coat pocket for my phone and blanch at the time. “Oh.” It’s only two p.m. School doesn’t finish for another hour. I’m not so much early as completely bloody wrong. No wonder the reception staff are worried. “I . . . I’m so sorry.” I shake my head. “I’ve got myself in a right muddle with the time, haven’t I? I didn’t mean to alarm anyone. I’ll come back in an hour. Sorry.”
Suddenly I’m not smiling but fighting back tears of embarrassment, which makes me want to cry even more. I only got the pickup time wrong. I read two thirty instead of one thirty on the clock on the fireplace in the living room. A simple mistake. No harm done, but it feels like a big deal. After everything that happened last week and at the weekend, it feels like a very big deal.
“Better to be an hour early than an hour late, I guess.” I laugh, but the sound is a choking cough of a thing, and when I stand up, the woman jumps back as if I’m an escaped mental patient.
I stride out of the school gates and back to the lane.
The woman is calling after me, but I quicken my pace. Wind stings the heat of my face and the hot tears now rolling down my cheeks. I’ll apologize to Jamie’s teacher at pickup. She can pass the message on to whomever I’ve just run away from.
My mobile is vibrating in my pocket and when I look at the display Shelley’s name is on the screen. I hesitate. I want to answer and tell her what an idiot I’ve been. I know she’ll say something silly that will make me laugh. But I still don’t know if I can trust her.
Then I think of Shelley’s large grin when she swept through my door with a KFC bucket, and the time before that when she looked after Jamie because I couldn’t. Shelley is my friend, I tell myself, pressing accept.
“Hey, Tess.” Shelley’s voice bounces in my ear.
“Hi.” I cross the road and tuck myself close to the bushes as I make my way back down the lane.
“You sound like you’re out somewhere,” she says. “Is now a good time?”
“It’s fine. I was just . . . out for a walk,” I finish. I’m not sure why I don’t tell Shelley what happened a minute ago. My own stupid embarrassment, probably.
“Ah, that sounds nice. I’ve been stuck in my office seeing clients all day,” Shelley says. “How are you? I meant to call you yesterday, but . . . well, things with Tim and me aren’t great. He moved out yesterday.”
“I’m so sorry, Shelley. You could’ve called me.”
“Thanks, I know, but you’re going through enough as it is right now, and I’m fine, honestly. I think it’s been a long time coming. But look, are you OK? Has everything been all right after the other night? You kind of shut down when the police arrived. I think you were in shock.”
“No, it’s fine. I’m fine.”
“Good.” She sighs. “That’s a relief. Anyway, I was wondering what you had planned for the Easter weekend. The weather is supposed to be nice.”
“Is it? Oh, I’m not sure. I haven’t thought about it.”
“Why don’t I pop by on Saturday and we can do something? Even if it’s just sitting in your garden stuffing ourselves with chocolate.”
I smile and am about to tell her that Jamie would love it when I hear something in the undergrowth ahead, a muffled cough and a rustle of leaves. I hold my breath, my gaze flicking one way, then the other. I can’t see a face but there are plenty of places to duck out of sight along the lane.
“Tess, are you there?” Shelley squawks in my ear, her voice suddenly too loud as I listen to the silent landscape.
“Yes, sorry,” I whisper. “That sounds great. I have to go.” I hang up but keep my phone gripped in my hand as I quicken my pace.
Someone is watching me. The muscles in my legs pull tight and my eyes grow wide, stinging against the bright daylight. I stop moving, waiting, praying, for a bird or rabbit to dart across the road so I can laugh at myself and carry on. Except it isn’t a bird that moves, it’s the man who followed me in Manningtree.
He’s up ahead by the track opposite the house, the one where you fell off your bike when you were a kid and got the scar on your chin. I must be fifty meters down the lane, and there’s no way I can make it to the house before him. Saliva builds in my mouth and I swallow hard.
He takes a step into the road and turns to face me. He’s wearing the same clothes as before—a dark hoody and black jeans—but this
time there is no baseball cap, no shadows to lurk in, and I can see his face clearly. His skin is pale and sags around small, watching eyes. His nose and lips are thin too, as if all his features are too small for his face. His hair is black and thinning and his body is slight beneath his clothes. He looks nothing like the burly thug I pictured when I first heard his voice on the answerphone, but it doesn’t change the terror gnarling my insides.
I don’t know how long we stand like that for—me frozen to the spot, wishing for a tractor to trundle around the bend and squash the man dead, and him waiting patiently for what I suppose is the inevitable. There is nowhere to run except back up the lane. How far would I get before he caught me?
He smiles as if reading my thoughts. His lips part and my breath catches in my throat waiting for him to yell his threat at me. He starts to speak but I can’t hear over the sound of blood rushing in my ears. He stops suddenly and turns away. There’s a movement on the lane behind him. It’s not a tractor, it’s a cyclist decked out in red Lycra.
The man jumps to the side just as the cyclist swerves and brakes and the pair collide. Both men are talking in tight angry voices as they pick themselves up from the tarmac, but I’m not listening.
I turn and run back in the direction of the school. There’s a gap between the hedges on the left that I’ve never noticed before. Without thinking, I dart through it. The path beneath my feet is slick with mud from last week’s rain and I slip and skid, moving as fast as my boots and my fitness will allow. The path slopes upward between two fields, where the earth is black and deep divots run in lines from one side to the other. Sprouts of green litter the field with the first shoots of a crop.
The mud hardens as I clamber onward. At the top of the fields I twist around to look behind me, but my foot slips and I hit the earth so hard that the impact ricochets up my spine. I turn onto my back and lie for a second, the wet ground against my head. I close my eyes and check for any damage. I’m bruised, I know that much, and a tiny, sharp stone is embedded in the skin of my palm, but nothing is broken.
When I sit up to catch my breath, the lane seems far below and there’s no sign of the man. I’m alone up here. I stand and step carefully this time, down the path and back to the road and the school, where Jamie will soon be waiting for me.
Who was that man, Mark? What does he want from me?
I picture his face and those little ferret eyes and think again how little he resembles the image I attached to the voice on the phone. He said something to me just before the cyclist came round the bend, and now that I think about it, I’m sure he said, “Mrs. Clarke?”
Not Tess.
Not Tessie, but Mrs. Clarke.
CHAPTER 44
Transcript BETWEEN ELLIOT SADLER (ES) AND TERESA CLARKE (TC) (INPATIENT AT OAKLANDS HOSPITAL, HARTFIELD WARD), WEDNESDAY, APRIL 11. SESSION 2 (Cont.)
ES: The threatening phone calls—
TC: What about them?
ES: Someone was following you. You believe someone came into your house while you were out. And then there was a man’s voice on the phone telling you that he was going to hurt you if you didn’t get what he wanted—
TC: And Jamie. He threatened Jamie too.
ES: I see. And yet you still believe Shelley is the one behind what’s happened.
TC: She is. I’m telling you she is involved somehow. I should’ve seen it coming. She (pause) she drugged me. Twice. It was some kind of sleeping tablet, I think. I think she did it to keep me out of the way so she could spend time with Jamie.
ES: Why did you continue to spend time with Shelley if you suspected something was wrong?
TC: I don’t know. I really don’t know. I had suspicions, but every time I started to think about it, something else would happen or Shelley would say just the right thing and I’d convince myself I was wrong. She charmed us somehow. She used Jamie’s feelings for her to get what she wanted. She knew I’d do anything for Jamie. And Jamie loved spending time with her. She’s really good at this football PlayStation game he’s obsessed with. Shelley wants Jamie and Ian wants the money. If you get my notebook then you can see for yourself. I figured everything out. The answer is in my notebook.
ES: Why don’t you just tell me?
TC: It’s hard to think straight. That’s why I wrote it all down. What are you doing to find Jamie? Take me through it step-by-step please, Detective. Every one of your officers—where have they been? Who have they spoken to?
ES: We’re looking into everything. Do you know a man named Richard Welkin?
TC: (Nods)
CHAPTER 45
Friday, March 30
9 DAYS TO JAMIE’S BIRTHDAY
There is a hurricane moving across the North Atlantic. Hurricane Bethany. It’s about to hit Scotland and Northern Ireland. It won’t get as far as the South East but the strong winds are pushing a warm front across the rest of England. A balmy seventy-eight degrees Fahrenheit on Good Friday—the first day of the Easter holidays—that nobody was expecting.
We are on our way back from the village playground, and as I slip-slap along the lane in my old Birkenstocks the temperature reminds me of that first August with Jamie when he was four months old. Jamie and I spent almost every day on a picnic blanket in the park with the other mums on the estate, eating sausage rolls and drinking sticky Pepsi turned warm and flat in the sun.
Pepsi, was it? I thought it was prosecco.
Only sometimes.
You’d come home from work and we’d share a bottle of chilled white wine and move the kitchen chairs into the garden so we could drop our feet in the paddling pool.
I seem to remember nappy rashes and teething too, Tessie.
I know, I remember those bits too, but this strange warmth reminds me of the good summer days.
We got married on one of those hot days, didn’t we?
We did. See, it was idyllic.
I wonder if the Chelmsford mums will be meeting in the park this weekend and whether Jamie and I should go. I thought they were my best friends—Casey and Jo, Lisa and Julie, and Debbie when she wasn’t working. But I’ve only seen them once since we left Chelmsford, and that was at your funeral.
They couldn’t be bothered to visit you.
That’s not fair. They’ve tried to keep in touch. Texts have come through from one or the other of them almost every day asking if I’m OK and if I fancy popping down to Chelmsford for lunch or dinner, or feel up for visitors at the house.
I haven’t replied. Sometimes I think our friendship existed around proximity and children. Their friendship will carry on without me, other women will come and go, my spot will be filled by someone who lives closer.
If I go to see them, they’ll want to talk about you, and I don’t want that. They might ask me why I don’t move back to Chelmsford, and I don’t have the answer. I’ve thought about it, of course. I’d be closer to my mum, I’d have my friends again, it would be easier for tutoring if or when I decide to go back, and I’m sure Jamie would settle back in to his old school eventually.
But he’s happy here. He loves the garden and the house, he loves school, and the days of nagging and bargaining with him to put his school uniform on in the mornings are gone. I think he’s as excited about going back to school after the Easter break as he is about his birthday.
I do want to do something nice this weekend though, something normal. I want to get out of the house. I’m jumping at every creak of a floorboard and I can’t answer the phone again, in case it’s him. It’s rung a few times and each time I’ve been frozen to the spot, unable to breathe.
It’s why we came out. A trip to the playground and the meadow behind the new estate. Jamie had hoped to see a friend from school but the playground was empty so we’re on our way home to the tree house instead. I should’ve arranged some playdates before the end of term but I forgot and now it’s
too late. When Easter is over I’ll make more effort to be on time for school and chat to the other mums. I’ll make more effort to be normal for Jamie.
The bushes along the lane have been cut back. Bits of nettle leaves and twigs litter the tarmac and I hop over them to avoid stinging my bare toes. An old estate car rattles past and I move Jamie and myself to the edge, grateful to whomever chopped back the brambles for the extra space on the road.
Jamie hasn’t spoken much these past few days, but the heat has improved both our moods. He is quiet but not sullen. Just thoughtful, I guess. When another car passes, coating my senses in the tang of diesel, I feel only annoyance. The sudden burst of adrenaline, the what-if-I-jump thought isn’t in me today. Will it be back tomorrow? I don’t know, but for now I’m enjoying the brief sense of summer that hurricane Bethany has brought to the village. There will be no bonfires in the air this weekend, only barbecues.
“There’s supposed to be a storm hitting in a few days,” I say to Jamie as we reach our driveway. “It’s the tail end of the hurricane. After that the temperature will drop and it will be cool spring days again.”
He shrugs a response, his feet already inching away from me in the direction of the tree house. “If it’s warm tomorrow though, shall we go to the beach at Frinton?”
Jamie smiles up at me with his big blues eyes. He prods his tongue against the wobbly tooth, testing its movement as he considers my suggestion. Then he nods before turning away and sprinting across the lawn.
I watch him disappear and feel suddenly alone. I hurry around the side of the house and sit on the lawn, listening to Jamie talk to himself. I don’t want to be in the house by myself, and I don’t want Jamie to be alone in the garden.
Tomorrow’s trip will be good for both of us.
