The Promise You Made

by A J McDine

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Lunch at the pub? A walk?’

  ‘Sure, whatever.’

  She picked up her phone and started scrolling, her eyes on the screen. Smarting a little at the obvious dismissal, I mumbled something about having a shower and left her to it.

  As I stood under the lukewarm trickle of water, I told myself off for being so sensitive. Don’t suffocate the poor girl. She needs her space. I turned the shower off and wrapped a towel around me. Remember what happened last time. I rubbed myself dry, feeling the beginning of a tension headache behind my eyes. I found some paracetamol in the mirrored cabinet above the sink and swallowed them with water from the tap. I hadn’t lived with anyone since my father died. I was stuck in my ways and used to my own company. Of course living with Eloise would require some adjustment on my behalf, some give and take. But I was prepared to do whatever was necessary. Because one thing was for sure: she may have only been with me for a few days, but I knew the house would feel very empty without her.

  Downstairs, I popped two slices of bread in the toaster and reached into the cupboard for my vitamins, only remembering once I’d pulled open the door that I’d thrown them away. The decision seemed rash in the cold light of day. I’d taken them for more years than I could remember, relying on them to keep everything on an even keel. Not to the point of dependency, obviously. That would be foolish. Just as an aid to navigating life without coming a cropper on the inevitable rocks. Anxiety blooming in the pit of my stomach, I pulled the lid off the swing bin, about to dive in and extricate them when I realised it was empty. Eloise must have put the bin bag in the wheelie bin. I was halfway to the back door before I stopped myself. I wasn’t that desperate. I’d meant what I said when I told Eloise I didn’t need them any more.

  Instead, I opened a tin of cat food and spooned some into Dinah’s bowl, tapping the rim of the bowl with the spoon as I put it on the floor. Normally, the sound summoned her from afar, but not this morning. I was about to check on her when my toast popped out of the toaster and the eight o’clock pips sounded, and I realised I would be late if I didn’t get a wiggle on.

  Forty-five minutes later, I pulled into the car park in town, locked the Land Rover and hurried down the alleyway towards the Sisterline offices. As I neared the building, my path was blocked by a red van parked at an angle outside the front door. Written in large white letters on the side of the van was Paul Banks Glazing. 24-hour emergency service. The doors of the van were open and a thickset man with a grey ponytail was pulling out a stepladder.

  ‘What’s happened?’ I asked him.

  ‘Some joker’s lobbed a stone through the window,’ he said, pointing at the small arched window above the door. A cobweb of shattered glass spiralled out from a hole in the middle. ‘Still,’ he said with a chuckle, ‘keeps me in business.’

  ‘Evidently,’ I said, rolling my eyes as I took the steps two at a time. Inside, volunteers stood in huddles talking in hushed voices. ‘Where’s Eddie?’ I asked the room in general.

  ‘In her office with Dorothy,’ said an earnest-looking woman called Irene. ‘They’re waiting for the police.’

  ‘The police are coming here?’

  ‘Eddie insisted,’ Irene said. ‘The forensic man’s already been.’

  ‘Seems over the top for a broken window.’ I swept past her, knocked on Eddie’s door, and walked straight in. She was deep in conversation with Dorothy, the chair of trustees, but broke off when she saw me and nodded to a spare chair.

  ‘Rose, I’m glad you’re here,’ Eddie said. ‘I’m going to need you to hold the fort while Dorothy and I speak to the police.’

  ‘I’m surprised they’re sending someone out. They never have before.’

  ‘We’ve never received a threatening letter before,’ Eddie said. ‘I found this when I arrived this morning. Someone had pushed it under the door.’ She picked up a plastic folder with a sheet of paper inside and passed it to me. An untidy scrawl covered one side of the lined A4 sheet. The same words had been written over and over, like lines meted out during detention.

  You killed my baby girl, you bitch. But I know who you are and I know where you live.

  You killed my baby girl, you bitch. But I know who you are and I know where you live.

  You killed my baby girl, you bitch. But I know who you are and I know where you live.

  As the lines marched down the page, the writing became more and more untidy until it was almost illegible. I held the plastic wallet to the window. The words had been scored so deeply that pinpricks of light peeped through. I became aware that Eddie and Dorothy were both watching me, waiting for a reaction.

  ‘Someone’s not a happy bunny,’ I said, handing the sheet back to Eddie.

  ‘Hence the visit from the police,’ Eddie said. ‘Whoever’s sent this is probably all talk and no trousers, but we need to be sure. I can’t have my staff and volunteers at risk.’

  ‘You think it’s a man?’

  She and Dorothy exchanged a look. I scanned the page a second time. Something about the choice of words rang a bell. I frowned, chasing a memory, then nodded to myself.

  ‘It’s from that chap whose complaint you were dealing with the other day. India Matthew’s father.’

  ‘I don’t remember telling you her name,’ Eddie said, her gaze as piercing as a hawk’s.

  ‘I looked her up online.’ I shrugged. ‘I was curious. Her father called her his baby girl in one of the articles I read. Roy, his name was. It must be him. In which case,’ I resisted the urge to rub my hands together. ‘In which case, he’s talking about Rhona. The poor thing.’

  ‘It certainly seems that way,’ Eddie said. She glanced at the door. ‘But I urge you not to say anything until we’ve spoken to the police. I don’t want to worry her unnecessarily.’

  I kept my expression neutral. ‘Your secret’s safe with me.’

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  While Eddie was holed up in her office, I made a start on the annual report, although it was nigh impossible to concentrate on the charity’s achievements and objectives, fundraising and media coverage over the past twelve months with all the kerfuffle going on around me.

  Two police officers arrived just as the emergency glazier was leaving. Eddie ushered them into her office and closed the door. Wishing I was a fly on the wall, I wondered how seriously they would treat the incident. Roy Matthews hadn’t directly threatened Rhona, after all.

  How would I feel if I was told the father of a girl who’d killed herself on my watch was hellbent on revenge? Would I be worried he’d lash out again? I didn’t think so. There was truth in the old saying, barking dogs seldom bite. In my experience, it was the quiet ones you had to watch.

  Abandoning the annual report, I googled India Matthews, but other than a fundraising page set up by her friends, there was nothing new to see. Out of curiosity, I typed Roy Matthews into the search box, adding Teynham as an afterthought. India had lived in the village, according to the news reports.

  A link to a story on the Kent Police website topped the list of results. Intrigued, I clicked on it, frustrated to see the words: Webpage unavailable. This page may have expired.

  I clicked back and re-read the brief Google entry.

  A Teynham man who threatened a woman with a baseball bat has been jailed for…

  All I could think was that the story was so old it had been taken down from the Kent Police website. I kept scrolling through the list of hits. Halfway down the page was a link to a Kent Online story. I clicked through and glanced at the date. Five years ago. My hunch was right.

  A Kent judge has paid tribute to a brave victim who gave evidence against her baseball bat-wielding neighbour days before she was due to give birth.

  Judge Godfrey Lancaster said the victim’s compelling evidence in the witness box helped convict 40-year-old Roy Matthews, who has since been sentenced to 15 months in prison.

  Matthews, of London Road, Teynham, had denied affra
y and assault but was found guilty of both offences following a three-day trial at Canterbury Crown Court.

  His heavily pregnant victim, Kerry Davis, 22, said her ordeal at the hands of the divorced father-of-one was ‘the most terrifying five minutes of my life’.

  The assault, described by police as a wanton act of intimidation, was the culmination of a three-month dispute between the neighbours over noise.

  The dispute began when Ms Davis complained to the council about Matthews playing music in the early hours.

  ‘He lost his job and would get drunk and play U2 at full volume until 2am or 3am every morning,’ Ms Davis told the court. ‘Whenever I asked him to turn the music down, he would give me an earful, so I reported him to the council. The day the council sent someone round to talk to him, he completely lost the plot and turned up on the doorstep later that night with a baseball bat.’

  The court heard Matthews threatened to ‘knock some sense’ into Ms Davis before smashing her living room window. Another neighbour called the police and Matthews was arrested.

  Sentencing him, Judge Lancaster said: ‘Your bullying actions were designed purely to intimidate your heavily pregnant neighbour who was in fear for her life and that of her baby’s, and to make matters worse, you have shown no remorse since. A custodial sentence is my only option.

  ‘Furthermore, I would like to pay tribute to Ms Davis, who showed remarkable bravery coming to court to face you today just two weeks before her baby’s due date.’

  I was so engrossed in the story that I hadn’t even glanced at the custody image that accompanied the article. When I did, I gasped. Staring at me from my computer screen was the spitting image of the man who’d harangued me in the car park. No, not the spitting image. Not quite. This man had more hair and was slimmer and slightly less jowly around the face than the man with the white SUV. Perhaps they were brothers? Cousins, even? I attempted to transpose the features of SUV Man onto the face of Roy Matthews. They were both more Neanderthal than Homo sapiens, that was for sure. They had the same piggy eyes, the same brutish jaws and heavy foreheads. In fact, the more I scrutinised the picture, the deeper the sense of foreboding grew, settling around my shoulders like a cloak.

  My skin prickled as I struggled to join the dots. But deep down, I knew the truth. Of course Roy Matthews looked younger than SUV Man - the photo was taken five years ago.

  It was staring me in the face. The man who’d threatened a pregnant woman with a baseball bat inside her own home was the same man who’d launched a diatribe against me, then slashed my tyre in a fit of rage. I took off my glasses and rubbed my face.

  Just then, Eddie’s door opened, and the two officers appeared, one of them holding the plastic wallet containing Matthews’ note. I was about to jump up and pass on my vital new piece of evidence before I stopped myself just in time.

  Careful, Rose.

  I had Theo to think of. Theo, who was locked in a concrete bunker in the middle of my woods while I decided his fate. The last thing I needed was the police sniffing around.

  Did it matter that Roy Matthews had ranted at me and slashed my tyre? With any luck, he’d soon be back under lock and key, anyway. He would get his just desserts. I clicked away from the news story and opened the Excel spreadsheet containing the charity’s annual accounts. As I jotted down the headline figures, I reminded myself that sometimes it was best to keep a low profile.

  Eloise greeted me at the back door with a smile that would warm the coldest of hearts.

  ‘I’ve made vegetable soup,’ she said proudly, taking my bag and coat and steering me towards the kitchen table. ‘We can have it with cheese and crackers.’

  ‘You didn’t want to go to the pub?’

  ‘I didn’t fancy it. You don’t mind, do you?’

  ‘Of course not.’ I picked up my spoon. ‘It’s a relief to stay in after the morning I’ve had. Remember SUV Man?’

  Eloise frowned. ‘The twat who shouted at you in the car park?’

  ‘The very same.’

  She listened as I described the broken window, the scrawled note, and my amateur sleuthing. ‘He’s a thug called Roy Matthews, who was jailed five years ago for threatening his pregnant neighbour. He’s now gunning for the volunteer who spoke to his daughter.’

  We ate in silence for a moment, lost in our thoughts. Then Eloise said, ‘Does he know who the volunteer is?’

  ‘I doubt it,’ I said. ‘All calls are anonymous to protect both the callers and our volunteers. He only knew she’d phoned us because the police gave him back her phone. He must have checked her call history and put two and two together.’

  ‘Is it possible he followed you that day in the car park? Could he have seen where you went?’

  ‘I don’t think so. Why?’

  ‘Because if he saw you go into the Sisterline offices, he might have thought you were the volunteer. In which case…’

  ‘In which case what?’

  ‘You need to be careful, Rose. People like him get fixated when they feel they’ve been wronged, and they get obsessed with the person they think has wronged them. I should know,’ she added bitterly.

  I reached across the table and patted her arm. ‘I’ve told you, you don’t need to worry about Theo any more. You’re safe now.’

  ‘But are you?’ she asked. ‘He said in the note he knows where you live. He must have followed you home.’

  ‘Not me,’ I reminded her. ‘Rhona. Rhona’s the one who took the call. She’s the one he followed home.’ But as I said this, I knew it was unlikely. There were over thirty volunteers at Sisterline and any one of them could have taken India’s call. Roy Matthews had no way of knowing.

  But what if Eloise was right? What if he’d chanced upon someone who worked at the charity? Might he have put two and two together and made five? Might he think I was the one who had whispered in India’s ear seconds before she stepped into the path of a train? Might he think I’d killed his baby girl?

  I tried to swallow a mouthful of cracker, but the dry pieces stuck in my throat like shards of glass.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  JULY 1991

  * * *

  I’d been home from university for a week when my mother marched into my bedroom one morning and yanked open the curtains, flooding the room with light.

  ‘Do you mind?’ I grumbled, burrowing under the duvet. ‘I was still asleep.’

  ‘It’s half-past eleven. You may get away with lazing in bed all day when you’re at university, young lady, but not under this roof. You can crawl out of your pit right now and help me with the hoovering.’

  ‘I have coursework to do,’ I said, scowling. Not quite true. I’d all but decided to drop out of my degree. I just hadn’t plucked up the courage to tell my tutor or my parents. I couldn’t bear to see the disappointment on my father’s face, nor the triumph on my mother’s.

  ‘That can wait. Joyce from bridge club is coming over this afternoon. I want the place shipshape.’

  ‘I’m not the hired bloody help. She’s your friend. Do it yourself.’

  My mother rose to her full height. ‘Don’t take that attitude with me, Rose Barton. Your father and I have sacrificed everything to send you to university. The least you can do is help around the house. And watch your language, please missy. I won’t stand for that kind of potty-talk…’

  As I glared at her, a strange expression crossed her face and the invective turned into an incoherent mumble. The left side of her face sagged, the side of her mouth drooping alarmingly. It was like watching a waxen figure melting in the sun. I leapt out of bed and thundered down the stairs and out of the back door, yelling for my father.

  I found him in his vegetable garden, spraying the blackfly on his broad beans.

  ‘Dad, you need to come. I think Mother’s having a stroke. She started mumbling and her face has gone funny.’

  The colour drained from his face and he dropped the bottle of insecticide he was holding. ‘Have you phoned for an a
mbulance?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Call one,’ he said, jogging stiffly towards the house.

  ‘She’s in my bedroom,’ I called after him. But he had already disappeared through the back door.

  My mother spent the next month in hospital on the stroke ward, undergoing a plethora of tests and daily visits from a never-ending stream of speech and language therapists, physios and occupational therapists. But no amount of rehabilitation could repair the ravages the stroke had wreaked on her body. Her left side was paralysed, her speech slurred and her mind, once so sharp, was mired in confusion. The warfarin she was prescribed gave her nosebleeds and bleeding gums, and ugly bruises bloomed on her papery skin if you so much as touched her.

  When her consultant announced she was fit enough to come home, I was flabbergasted.

  ‘We can’t look after her!’ I hissed to my father as we cradled polystyrene cups of weak tea in the hospital canteen.

  ‘She belongs at home, Rose.’

  ‘But I don’t… I can’t…’

  He reached across the table and took my hands in his. ‘It’s all right, Rosie. I’m not asking you to. I’ll look after her. And I’ll have carers coming in every day to help. You have your own life to lead. I understand that. And you’ll be heading back to university before you know it.’

  I licked my lips. What with the stroke and the long hours at the hospital, I hadn’t found the right time to tell him I wasn’t going back. I couldn’t face his disappointment when he learned I’d failed my exams, when he realised his golden girl wasn’t clever enough to be a doctor.

  But as I sat at the stained Formica table, the noises of the hospital echoing around us, I saw how I might wriggle out of my predicament, leaving his view of me untarnished.

  I shook my head. ‘I’m not going back to uni. You can’t do this on your own.’