by Lauren North
Shit, shit, shit.
“You wouldn’t want anything to happen to that darling child of yours.”
A hysteria grips my body, my mind blanks, my foot slams the accelerator. My little car gives a whining strain, lurching forward before picking up speed and flying along the road. The 4x4 is keeping pace just inches behind me, the full beams of his headlights blaring straight through my windscreen and lighting the road ahead better than my own could ever do.
I ignore the road sign warning me to slow down—sharp turn ahead—and take the corner into the village too quickly. My wheels skid on the wet road, sending me careering into the path of a car driving on the other side of the road. I brake hard, scrunching my eyes shut as my body yanks against the seat belt. The engine grinds, then stalls.
A horn blast fills the air, from the 4x4 or the car in front, I don’t know. I open my eyes and blink in the sudden darkness. I twist around and check on Jamie. He’s rubbing his eyes, stunned and sleepy but not hurt. I stare into the dark rearview window. The 4x4 is gone. The road behind me is empty.
The car in front reverses back a meter before maneuvering around me. As it draws level a woman buzzes down her window and I think she’s going to check that I’m OK but instead she shouts, “You stupid cow. You could’ve killed us both if I’d been five seconds further up the road.”
Tears are blurring my vision. I want to tell her about the monster trying to run me off the road, but my mouth is flailing silently and she pulls away with an angry shake of her head before I can find my voice.
“What happened, Mummy?” Jamie asks. His voice sounds young and sleepy and makes my chest ache.
“Nothing, baby. I gave myself a fright, that’s all. We’re in the village. We’ll be home in a minute,” I reply, restarting the car and driving slowly away.
* * *
—
Later, when the sand has been washed away and Jamie is absorbed in the PlayStation, I dial the 0800 number on your life insurance policy and tell them you’ve died.
What happened on the drive home was a warning.
If I can’t find whatever it is that the man wants, then maybe he’ll accept money instead. He can have it all. I have to keep Jamie safe.
I add the time and date to my notebook and write: Chased by 4x4. Land Rover?
I’m skimming back through the pages when a message buzzes on my phone. It’s Shelley: Did you get home OK?
My blood runs cold and I shiver. Five words. A concerned friend asking an innocent question, except where is the energy that seeps out of her usual texts in the same way it seeps out of her? The—Thanks for a great day, I’m shattered!
I picture Shelley’s face as she stared at Jamie and me on the beach. I thought it was sadness, I thought she was thinking of Dylan, but now that I’m looking back, could it have been jealousy?
I scrawl Shelley’s name down beside the words Land Rover and slowly connect the two with an arrow.
CHAPTER 49
IAN
I was having drinks with friends on Saturday the thirty-first. It was a birthday celebration. Like I said, I had no reason to want to scare Tess, and there are a lot of Land Rovers in this part of the world. I really think you need to be speaking to Shelley about this, not me.
SHELLEY
I really wish Tess had confided in me about the other things that were going on—the threats and the car chasing her. Maybe I’d have done something sooner and we wouldn’t be sitting here.
I knew something was wrong that day at the beach. I should’ve done something about it right then and there, but the storm came in so quick and then I think I convinced myself I was mistaken. I was going through a difficult time as well, which didn’t help. My marriage was ending and I wasn’t myself. The thing is—this is terrible—but I was jealous. I kept looking at the little magnet photo of Jamie and imagining it was Dylan, and I felt so connected to Jamie and to Tess, but I never meant for anyone to get hurt.
CHAPTER 50
Sunday, April 1
7 DAYS TO JAMIE’S BIRTHDAY
I’ve lost Jamie’s Liverpool F.C. shirt—the one we got him for Christmas that cost a fortune. He wore it for a week straight, remember? I had to sneak it out of his room after he’d fallen asleep and wash it overnight so he could wear it the next day.
And now I’ve lost it. It’s not in the wash basket. It’s not on the washing line. He’s not wearing it now.
I stare at his open wardrobe and riffle through his drawers but it’s not there. Maybe I’ve put it away with my clothes by accident, I think, heading to our bedroom and pulling open both doors of the wardrobe so I see not just my tops and the dresses I don’t wear anymore, but your things too. Your suits and shirts and the jumpers you like to hang up.
My feet feel suddenly rooted to the carpet as I gawp at your clothes. I’ll have to clear them out at some point, but not yet.
I keep staring, my eyes unable to pull away. Something isn’t right. There’s an empty space at the bottom of the wardrobe where you keep your walking boots, and an empty hanger too. I can’t see the gray Aran knitted jumper I bought you for your birthday in November.
My throat starts to throb and I sink to the carpet and find Shelley’s number on my mobile. I keep hoping I’ve made a mistake. I haven’t. There is nowhere else your boots or jumper would be.
It rings twice before she answers.
“Have you taken things from the house?” I fire out the question before she has a chance to distract me, before I can start second-guessing myself.
“Hi, Tess, how are you?” Her voice is bright but there’s a falsity to it. It’s too high. “I was just thinking about you. You didn’t reply to my text last night.”
“Have you taken anything from the house?” I ask again, remembering her text and the lights of the 4x4 blinding my eyes.
“What?”
“You’ve been in the house so much, and I wondered if you’d taken anything?” My tone softens despite the hurt in my throat. My nerve is slipping.
“What’s going on, Tess?”
I sob and try to swallow but I can’t. “Things are missing from the house.”
There’s a silence before Shelley speaks. “What things?” she asks, her voice hesitant.
“Stupid stuff.” My fingers brush the smooth cotton of one of your shirts before I peel myself from the floor and move to your study to check on Jamie out of the window. He is shuffling around the tree house, talking in the animated way he used to talk to you when he was regaling you with tales of his lunchtime football matches.
A flicker of worry worms its way through me, dislodging the missing clothes from the forefront of my mind, as if I only have the capacity to worry about one thing at a time. I probably do.
“Tess?”
“Sorry.” I shake my head and move through the upstairs to Jamie’s room. “I’m still here.”
“What things do you think are missing?”
She doesn’t believe me. It’s not just the words she uses, it’s the tone as well. Still bright, still kind, but there’s something else there too—pity.
“I’m trying to figure it out.” I give a shaky sigh, and suddenly I’m not accusing a woman I barely know whose motives I wonder about late at night. Instead I’m talking to my friend Shelley who has listened to and understood me since the moment she turned up on my doorstep.
Jamie’s wardrobe is still open. I stare at the hook on the inside of the door where his rucksack should be, the one we bought him for the camping trip we never got to go on.
I pull at his clothes drawers with my spare hand, yanking them all the way until they reach the end of their cheap plastic runners and drop to the carpet. My eyes gaze over the drawers. They are all full. Faded T-shirts from the summer below long-sleeved tops. Jumpers, jeans, stray socks not in their pairs, and underwear of every color.
“Jamie’s Liverpool football shirt is missing. It’s his favorite.” I try to remember when I last saw it. He was wearing it when we went to the playground last week. I’m sure of it. “And his rucksack and his Spider-Man pjs are gone.”
“Tess—”
“There’s more.” I cut her off before she can tell me it’s in the wash or under the bed, or that I’m just a crazy widow who’s losing things, losing it. “There is some of Mark’s stuff missing too. His walking boots are gone, and the jumper I bought him for his birthday. He wouldn’t have taken them with him on a business trip,” I add before she can ask.
“And you think I’ve taken them?” Shelley asks with an even tone as if she’s asking me if I want milk in my coffee.
“I . . . You’ve been here.” My spine tingles, my body reacting to the surfacing memory. Two weeks ago, after the trip to Tesco with Shelley, the house felt strange. The boxes in the study had been moved around. How could I have forgotten? Why hadn’t I checked the rest of the house more carefully?
“Tess, I’m worried about you,” Shelley says.
“I’m so sorry,” I splutter. “Ignore me. I’m being jittery and stupid. It’s the house.” I’m babbling now and my cheeks are flaming with heat. “I need to get out more.” I attempt a laugh but it sounds hollow.
“It’s fine,” she says, and I can feel her worry vibrating down the phone as if it’s a physical thing. “Look, why don’t we go shopping in Ipswich next Saturday? My friend Mel invited me. Her daughter will be coming too. Indra. She’s seven.”
“Er—” I wonder what Jamie will think of a shopping trip the day before his birthday. His worst nightmare normally, being dragged from shop to shop, but maybe if he’s on the lookout for a few extra birthday presents and he knows Shelley will be there, he won’t mind so much. And he’ll have someone his age to talk to.
“Come on, it will be fun,” she says. “And let’s face it, you could do with a few new clothes.” She’s teasing me now and I can’t help but smile looking down at the fleece I’ve had since forever. It used to be the deepest navy but has faded to a gray-blue. It’s covered in tiny bobbles.
“Um . . . I guess.”
“Do you want me to come pick you up? I normally go for a swim first thing Saturday anyway, so it’ll be on the way past.”
“OK. Thanks.”
“Oh, gotta go,” she says cutting my last words off. “See you Saturday.”
“Jamie will love it,” I say to the silent phone.
Emptiness consumes me. I lay my face against Jamie’s car rug and cry for a while.
Oh, Tessie.
It’s Easter weekend. I should be spending time with Jamie and hiding eggs for an egg hunt. And I will in a minute. I just need a minute.
Remember when Jamie grew out of his first baby onesies? You cried packing them away into a bag for the loft.
It felt like I was losing a part of him. It still does every time I sort through his clothes. My fingers run over Jamie’s drawers. They need sorting. I bet half this stuff doesn’t fit him anymore, although thankfully his growth spurt seems to have tailed off.
I’m just slotting the final drawer back into place when the side door crashes open.
“Mum?” Jamie’s voice shouts through the house. His feet stomp on the kitchen floor.
“Take your shoes off,” I call back.
“Oh,” I hear him say to himself. I picture him striding backward to the side door and kicking his wellies off, leaving them strewn across the nook and in the way of the side door.
“I’m hungry. Can I have my chocolate?” he shouts. I smile and pull myself up and wipe my eyes.
“Have you seen your backpack?”
“Er . . .” I can sense his mind calculating an answer as if the truth might get him in trouble.
“Is it in the tree house?”
“Yeah,” he says.
We meet on the stairs. His face is sheepish but there is sadness there too.
“It doesn’t matter,” I say softly. “I just wondered. Wash your hands and we’ll play a game of Parcheesi.”
He nods and disappears into the bathroom.
I head for the nook, surprised to see Jamie’s wellies sitting on the boot rack. I jiggle the handle of the side door back and forth, checking it’s locked. I’m pleased and sad all at the same time to see that Jamie thought to lock it when he came in. He must’ve picked up on my constant checking of the doors.
I try to remember when I last saw your things. Was it after the time someone had been in the house? I don’t know.
I can almost understand Ian prying in your study, his desperation for the money, and the warped older-brother belief that he has a right to look through your will and take over as executor.
But why would he take your clothes and boots? And Jamie’s things too. It doesn’t make sense.
CHAPTER 51
Thursday, April 5
3 DAYS TO JAMIE’S BIRTHDAY
The thing is, even though I was jittery and jumping at every creak in the house, it still floored me when the man who chased me in Manningtree walked around the side of the house and into our garden.
I was pegging out the washing, my mind on the two chocolate sponges baking in the oven for Jamie’s birthday cake. I was thinking about popping to the shops, and in my head I was listing the things I needed. Party Rings, chocolate chip cookies, blackcurrant cordial, bread, milk, a helium balloon.
It happens all at once. The crunch of feet on gravel and my mind blanking—the shopping list gone. I drop the towel and turn toward the house and there he is—the man—walking, no, striding toward me.
I gasp.
Fear presses down so fast and so hard that my legs buckle and I almost fall. I right myself at the last second and scramble back, thankful Jamie is playing up in his room and not in the tree house. The man is in different clothes today—a white short-sleeved shirt and suit trousers—but he is still the person with pale sagging skin and thin greasy hair who chased me on the cobbled street, the same man I saw on the lane waiting for me.
“Mrs. Clarke?” he says.
“What . . . what do you want?” My chest hitches so my words come out in a whispered inhale.
Color seems to drain from his face and his skin is now almost translucent in the sunshine. “I wanted to talk to you.”
I sidestep around the washing line, adding a barrier between us, even if it is just a few towels.
Fight or flight? Flight. I could make a run for it, along the side of the house and around to the garage and the driveway, get to the lane, get help. Except he’d simply go back the way he came and get there first, and who’s to say there would be help coming anyway.
The side door is open and my phone is in the kitchen. Even if I ran and made it, he could go right inside and grab Jamie.
Fight. My eyes drop to the lawn, searching for a spade or a trowel, anything in fact that I can use as a weapon, but there’s nothing.
“Mrs. Clarke? Tess, can I call you that?”
“I told you on the phone, I don’t know what Mark was working on. I don’t have whatever it is you want.”
He frowns and rubs a hand against his cheek. “Sorry. I don’t understand. We’ve never spoken on the phone.”
“Yes we have. You left that vile message on my answerphone and we . . . we spoke last week, or the week before.” I can’t remember the day now, only the fear. Why is he pretending not to know?
The muscles in my shoulders pull taut, my hands bunch into two tight fists. Fight.
“Leave,” I screech. “Get away from me. I’m going to call the police.” The anger erupts—hot lava into my blood. I grit my teeth and feel the heat flood my body. “LEAVE,” I scream again.
“I can’t do that,” he says, shaking his head and causing two lines of tears to fall from his eyes. “I’m sorry, but I ha
ve to talk to you.”
There’s a pause. Me hunched forward, panting, ready to fight for my life and Jamie’s too, and him, shoulders heaving up and down as more tears break free.
“What do you want?” I ask again, the anger fizzling just a touch, just enough for his mumbled Birmingham accent to register in my thoughts.
I am absolutely certain that this man in my garden followed me in Manningtree. I am absolutely certain that this is the same man I saw standing on the lane waiting for me. But all of a sudden I’m not so sure he is the same person on the phone who called me Tessie.
The man seems to crumble then as if his bones have disintegrated inside and there is nothing to keep him upright. He drops forward, hands on knees, crying loudly. I could run right past him and into the house, lock the door, call the police, and I don’t think he’d notice.
But I can’t keep running from him, from everything, or it will never stop.
“What’s your name?” I ask, taking a step closer.
“Richard Welkin,” he says, drawing in a shuddering breath. He looks up and seems to realize he’s sitting on the ground. “I’m so sorry, I . . . I work at the airline.” He swallows, his Adam’s apple jutting out.
“Oh.” This doesn’t make any sense.
“Could I speak to you for a moment, please?”
“Out here,” I say. “You have to stay right where you are. I’m going to go into the kitchen and get my phone. I’m going to dial 999, and if you move or say anything I don’t like, I’m going to press send.”
He nods and something like relief seems to settle on his face.
I wait another moment and then I run toward the house, keeping my distance as I go past him, just in case this is all a trick, a way to lure me close enough to grab. He doesn’t move though, and when I reach the nook, I slam the side door closed behind me and bolt the door.
The smell of burned chocolate fills the air and I remember the cakes. I pull them out and rest them on the hob. There’s a dusting of black on the top of the sponge and they’re both slanting where they’ve risen wonky in the oven. But I think they’ll be salvageable if I trim off the tops.
