by Lauren North
“You . . . you are not welcome in our lives anymore,” I say. “Tomorrow I’m going to contact a new solicitor and make sure you don’t get a penny of Mark’s money. I . . . I’m going to file a restraining order too. I never want to see you again.”
My breathing is fast, like my heart thumping in my chest. I feel empowered and scared all in the same beat.
Ian shakes his head. “You need help, Tess.” He looks to Shelley and another message passes between them.
Shelley nods. “This has to stop.” She waves her hands across the kitchen.
“You’re just as bad.” I shake my head, talking fast and low so Jamie doesn’t hear. “Do you think I haven’t noticed you controlling me with all of your ‘kind’ little comments? ‘Oh, poor Tess, best not go out without me. Poor Tess, let me speak to your family for you.’”
“Tess, I never—” Shelley starts to speak but I cut her off.
“Manipulating me when I’m at my lowest. I heard you on the phone after we got back and Ian had been in the house. You were speaking to each other, weren’t you? I heard you arguing.”
“That’s not true,” Shelley cries out.
“I want you both to leave now, or I’ll call the police.” I move around the table to the cake, sitting ready on the oven top. The plate is smudged with black marks from the icing, but the cake itself is not a bad effort. The sheet of pre-bought black icing is hiding the slope of the chocolate cake where it rose wonky in the oven. I’ve cut out the bat symbol in yellow icing. The wings are a little jagged in places but the eight yellow candles are hiding the worst of it.
The jangling of cutlery fills the silence as I yank open a drawer, pull out the first knife I come across, and slam the drawer shut. The carving knife in my hand is far too efficient for slicing through sponge but I’m too angry to riffle through the utensils to find the cake cutter.
I should never have let them in. I push the Legos to one side to make space for the cake and the knife on the corner of the kitchen table. I was stupid to see Shelley as two people. There is only one person standing before me, and any pretense that we are friends is gone.
Neither of them moves. It’s as though they’re waiting for me to say something. I don’t need to look at Shelley’s face to know she is crying still. Is she sorry for her part in this? Sorry I’ve found out? Or is it another angle for her to manipulate me with? She might have lost her son, but she’s not having mine.
“Please, Tess, sit for a minute,” Shelley says, throwing a pleading glance at Ian. “We need to talk. Ian’s right. You need help.”
“You’d like me to think that, wouldn’t you?” I say, grabbing the box of matches from the window ledge. My fingers fumble in the box for a moment before I grip a match and scratch it across the box.
“Oh, Tess, no.” Shelley reaches for my hand and the matches but I shrug her away. Does she think I’m going to burn the house down now?
The flame hisses and speeds down the stick. I touch it to each of Jamie’s candles and blow out the match before it singes my fingers.
“This is ridiculous,” Ian says.
“That’s what you’ve wanted all along, isn’t it?” I say to Shelley, ignoring Ian’s comment. “To make me out like I’m a mental case and need help. Make me so reliant on you that I can’t think for myself.”
Shelley shakes her head. “No. That’s not true.”
I laugh, a short “ha,” and shake my head. “I thought I was going crazy, you know, but that’s exactly what you wanted. Who did you get to call me? And how did he know to call me Tessie?” I point the question at Ian.
“This isn’t what Mark would’ve wanted,” Ian says.
All of a sudden there’s a shift in the air and it’s them together against me. The walls of the kitchen are closing in.
“I don’t need help and I certainly don’t need you to tell me what Mark wanted. He wanted me, he wanted Jamie. He wanted us to be happy.” The words unravel growl-like from my mouth. I slam the box of matches down beside the plate and the knife, upending a pile of Legos. A piece flies across the floor, adding to the anger crackling—wood on the bonfire—inside me. I can taste the smoke in my mouth as I turn to them. “I want you to leave.” My voice is suddenly loud and bounces across the small kitchen.
“Tess, please listen to me,” Shelley says. “Jamie isn’t—”
I don’t hear her final word. I don’t need to. Happy—that’s what Shelley was going to say—Jamie isn’t happy. But I don’t hear because Jamie is standing in the doorway. His face is dark, his tongue pressing so hard against the tooth at the front that it’s protruding outward at a horizontal angle. Anger is pulsing out of his body, the same anger I felt just moments ago.
My indignation crumbles to ash as I stare into the piercing blue eyes of our son.
“Jamie.” My voice quivers. “It’s OK. Shelley and Ian were just leaving. Then we’ll have cake.” I wave a hand to the candles. The eight tiny flames are standing tall. Two blobs of wax have already rolled onto the cake and smudged the icing.
“No,” he says. The one hollow word echoes in my head.
“Bloody hell,” Ian mutters.
“Tess, look at me.” Shelley’s voice is almost a shout, but I can’t pull my focus away from Jamie. His hands bunch into two tight fists and his piercing blue eyes narrow on the carving knife. I follow his gaze and no longer see a knife to cut his birthday cake—I see a weapon.
“This has to stop,” Shelley says. There is a warning in her voice that finally drags my eyes away from Jamie and the knife. Shelley’s face is tight, her eyes wide with panic. This is exactly what she wanted, isn’t it? To drive Jamie and me apart.
“I want Shelley to be my mummy,” Jamie says, his voice soft and childish like he’s three again and asking for his teddy. “I hate you.”
“Jamie . . . I’m sorry.” I gasp, fighting for breath as his words cut into me. “I’ll do better. I’ll—”
“TESS,” Ian bellows, making me jump.
There’s a split second of silence and somewhere in the background I can hear a George Michael song on the radio.
I don’t know who moves first, but the second ticks by and in the very next one we are scrambling for the knife—Jamie, Ian, and me.
Jamie reaches for it at the same moment I do.
Shelley is screeching, “Stop it, Tess. Stop it, stop it, stop it.” And I’m trying, but then Ian is grabbing for the knife and reaching right over Jamie to get it. A pressure squeezes my body. Ian’s hand is almost at the handle, but so is Jamie’s. I can’t let Ian get it. What if he wants to hurt Jamie? I leap forward. Too fast, too far. Jamie’s hands are on the handle, Ian’s too.
I’m moving too fast. I try to right myself but it’s too late. The blade slides right into my stomach with the same ease as the cake it was intended for.
Oh, Tessie, oh no.
Your voice is distant, crackling like the radio.
The pain is hot and scorches a path out from my stomach over my entire body and I stare at the O shape of Shelley’s face, and Ian’s too as he stumbles back.
CHAPTER 60
Panic swirls like a tornado inside me. The knife is sticking out of my stomach, half in, half out. I can’t bear to look at it, but I can’t look away either. I reach for the handle and yank out the blade. Warm stickiness soaks through my top as the knife drops to the floor with a clatter of metal.
I clutch my stomach and feel blood ooze through my fingers.
“Jamie.” I sink to the floor, clenching my teeth through the pain crippling every muscle in my body; forcing myself to sound calm against the panic clawing to get out.
He’s just out of reach, standing over me in his new black and yellow Batman pajamas.
I hear their voices—Shelley’s and Ian’s. They are talking to each other or maybe to me and Jamie, but the only noise in my ears is t
he ragged inhale and exhale of my breath and the drumming of my heartbeat.
This isn’t happening. This isn’t happening. I repeat the words over and over in my head as if saying them enough times will undo the last few minutes—the last few months—of my life. A wave of pain crashes through me, returning my focus to the wound, the blood, the knife. I raise my voice and allow the desperation to ring through it: “Jamie!”
Jamie’s eyes are wide and the clearest blue, like the sky on the day you died.
My hand shakes with the force of an electrical current, and even though every movement causes an inky fog to float in the corners of my eyes, I stretch my fingers out toward him. He stumbles back to the doorway and disappears.
My breath catches and an ugly, guttural noise escapes my throat.
Ian’s voice comes fast and low and when I look up I see a mobile pressed to his ear.
“Oh, Tess,” Shelley cries out. “Hang in there.”
She picks up the knife and I watch droplets of blood run from the blade down her hand. Shelley puts the knife in the sink and crouches to the floor beside me.
“Hang in there,” she says again, but I don’t think I can. The blood is flowing out of me too fast. I can feel a puddle already cooling around me as my body collapses to the tiles.
“You can’t take Jamie away from me.” I force the words out.
Then darkness takes over my vision and all I can think is: If only I’d chosen a smaller knife; if only I hadn’t trusted Shelley; if only I’d been a better mother, then I wouldn’t be about to die.
CHAPTER 61
Transcript BETWEEN ELLIOT SADLER (ES) AND TERESA CLARKE (TC) (INPATIENT AT OAKLANDS HOSPITAL, HARTFIELD WARD), WEDNESDAY, APRIL 11. SESSION 2 (Cont.)
ES: So, Tess, I have your notebook here. Would you like to look at it?
TC: Have you looked at it?
ES: Yes.
TC: So you know then.
ES: Why don’t you take a look?
TC: Fine.
ES: Tell me what you see.
TC: I see it all. Don’t you? Look, here are the dates and times of the threatening calls, the times I was followed by Richard Welkin, although that’s not part of it. The clues are all here. Ian snooping in the house and all of his lies. And look, here’s Shelley’s pages. She was desperate to replace Dylan. She told me so many times how she wanted to be a mother again. She separated from her husband. She drugged me so she could have Jamie to herself and pretend he was hers. All this time she made out like I was the one who was struggling to cope, and maybe I was, but so was she. She wanted to take Jamie away from me. And both of them trying to make out like I’m crazy, like I need help.
(KNOCK AT DOOR)
ES: Excuse me.
SESSION PAUSED.
SESSION CONTINUED.
TC: Was that Shelley at the door?
ES: Shelley has been helping the police to answer some questions they have about you and this notebook.
TC: She’s working with him. Can’t you see that she wants to take Jamie away from me?
ES: The reason Shelley knocked on the door just now was to tell me your mother has arrived. Are you happy to see your mother now, Tess? I think it would help you to have her here for the next part of our session.
TC: I guess.
TC: What do you mean “session”?
CHAPTER 62
Wednesday, April 11
Iflick through the pages and stare at the scratches of black pen. Every single lined page is scribbled and scrawled on. Front and back. There are holes in the corners and in the middle, with ink blotched around the edges where the pen has torn through the page, but it’s all there and now that I’m staring at everything that has happened to me, to Jamie too, I can’t believe I didn’t act on it. I should’ve gone to the police straightaway. The minute I heard that first answerphone message, I should’ve taken Jamie out of school and gone to stay with my mum like she suggested.
I told myself I stayed for Jamie because he was happy in the house and at school. But he wasn’t happy. He was quiet. He barely said a word when I was in the same room as him. No, I didn’t stay for Jamie, I stayed for me, because being in that house made me feel close to you, and because I had Shelley there, pulling me back from the depths of my grief.
I have so many answers now. I know Shelley wants Jamie. I know it was Richard following me—all those hang-ups scaring me—and I’m quite sure the voice on the phone was a trick by Ian and Shelley to keep me feeling vulnerable and needing them.
But the only question that matters now, and the one I don’t have the answer to, is where is Jamie?
The lines of writing blur before my eyes. I can’t think straight. My head hurts and the inside of my mouth feels fuzzy. The pain in my stomach is a dull throbbing that pulses outward. I shift in my chair and wince at the sharp stab of pain now slicing through me.
There’s movement outside. A shuffling of feet and the thump thump of a walking stick on hard floor. There is a porthole window in the door and I can see Sadler’s large frame blocking the window. Why aren’t they coming in? What is he saying to my mum? My cheeks burn red and I pull at the scratchy fabric of my hospital nightie and the dressing gown wrapped around it.
There’s a window beside the door with blinds shut tight. The blinds are gray venetian and seem to be trapped between two panes of glass. There is no string dangling down, just a switch to press. It seems like an overly complicated system for a hospital room. My eyes travel around the rest of the room as if I’m seeing it for the first time.
There is a low pine coffee table, boxed in by a sofa on one side and two armchairs facing each other. There are no shelves or pictures. The walls are painted an off white and someone has gone to the trouble of stenciling a rich green vine across one wall. There are pastel-colored flowers dotted on the vine. It’s pretty, but again seems an extravagant choice for a public hospital.
I trudge back over the blur of memories from the last few days. Jamie’s birthday was on Sunday. What day is it now—Monday? Tuesday? Time has lost all meaning.
There was the day I woke up after surgery on the ward with the Irish nurse. I try to remember the name of the ward, but all I can remember is the smell of boiled vegetables at mealtimes and the incessant beep of the machines when the drips ran out.
There was a nurses’ station at the end of the ward and only six beds, I think. There was a woman beside me with a white bandage wrapped around her head. The recovery ward from my surgery, I guess.
I remember being dragged in and out of sleep. In and out, in and out, and I remember asking for more morphine and a young doctor with a stethoscope around her neck telling me I was being weaned off the stronger painkillers.
Then I woke up and I wasn’t on the ward anymore. I was in a private room and the nurses were wearing green instead of blue. Was that this morning or yesterday?
The police interview has dragged on for what feels like months. I’ve been evasive, but then so has he. Why can’t he tell me what they are doing to find Jamie?
A panic is trying to escape from inside me—a caged beast rattling the lock. A memory flashes before my eyes: the scramble of bodies for the knife. Jamie reaching it, then Ian and me. The feel of the blade slicing into my stomach.
The door swings open and I catch sight of a bright lime-green wall before Sadler’s bulk fills the doorway. His beard is scraggly, with more gray than black. He is tall with graying hair, and thick-rimmed glasses are in front of his brown eyes. He is wearing black suit trousers and a pale blue shirt, creased from a long day.
I notice the stoop the moment he walks forward. It seems to start halfway down his back as if his spine is angled like a boomerang. An injury on the police force, I guess, or the remnants of a childhood illness.
Sadler holds his arm out and my mum shuffles in, her walking stick jabbi
ng at the thin carpet tiles beneath her feet. I can tell straightaway that it’s a bad day for her, a day when the arthritis is winning, and I feel a sting of annoyance at Sadler and the hospital staff for making her come here.
“Mum,” I croak, surprised by the ache in my throat and the tears building behind my eyes. I’ve missed her, I realize, and yet I wish she wasn’t here.
Mum tilts her head up to Sadler, and he nods before she moves closer.
“I’m going to get us some tea and biscuits,” Sadler says, before stepping out of the room and closing the door.
Mum shuffles forward around the coffee table to the sofa. The armchair is nearer and I wonder why she doesn’t just sit there, but I don’t ask because I’m too busy staring at the coffee table. My mum’s leg is leaning up against it as she moves by, but the table doesn’t budge. I sit forward, ignoring the pain that makes me bite down on the insides of my cheeks, and spy the bolts hidden on the inside of the table legs, pinning it to the floor.
“I’m so sorry,” Mum says, busying herself with a handkerchief she has balled in her hand.
“I’m the one who’s sorry.” I sigh, suddenly tired. I wish for the fog to take me away, but for once it doesn’t come. “You shouldn’t have been dragged into this. Was your journey all right? Did the police bring you?”
Her forehead furrows. “The police? No, love, Shelley brought me.”
“Shelley? What did she tell you, Mum?” I sit upright, my wound searing with a sharp pain worse than when the knife first went in.
“She told me . . . she told me . . .” My mum’s voice is shaking, like her hands, and I desperately want to move to the sofa and tell her it will be all right, but I can’t, because I don’t think it will be.
“Look, there isn’t much time.” I glance at the door and lower my voice. “You have to get me out of here. I think Sadler—that police officer—is working with Shelley. They know each other somehow. I think he knows where Jamie is and they won’t tell me.”
