Safe With Me

by K. L. Slater

  Carla found another note on the file to say the school’s requests for Anna to attend a summer school for one of twenty selected gifted pupils had been refused by Monica Clarke on the grounds she needed her daughter at home to help, with no further details given.

  Repeated attempts to arrange a home visit with Mrs Clarke to discuss the matter had been declined.

  By nine forty, Daniel had still not appeared.

  When children were of concern to the staff, absences were a little more worrying than usual. The school had a responsibility to make sure the child was safe.

  Carla locked her office door and walked over to Class 6M in the Key Stage Two building.

  When she spotted Carla hovering in the corridor outside, Mrs Martin came to the classroom door.

  ‘Daniel hasn’t turned up for his session,’ Carla told her.

  ‘He’s not in today,’ Mrs Martin whispered while the seated children craned their necks to see who their teacher was talking to. ‘He was at school yesterday though and seemed his melancholy self. Nothing unusual.’

  The school office usually put a note in the class register if a parent had called a child in as being absent due to illness.

  ‘There’s no notification from the office but his sister’s at the Comp, Year Ten, I think. Anna. I could probably get her over here at break if you wanted to speak to her?’

  Carla thought for a moment.

  It was imperative she gained Daniel’s trust, and speaking to his sister without his knowledge at this early stage could seriously jeopardise that. Ringing home might have the same effect.

  ‘I’ll let it go this time,’ Carla said. ‘There’s a nasty bug going around school, lots of kids are off with that. There’s probably nothing to worry about.’

  Chapter 11

  Present day

  Anna

  I spend so much time enjoying my flowers and birthday cards, there is no time to take a shower or even bolt down my breakfast.

  I have no choice but to just pull on my uniform which I know, from a quick whiff of the armpits, is badly in need of a wash.

  I need to leave the house quickly, but I’m so tired from my restless night, my safety checks are taking twice as long. I do the kitchen plugs and appliances and then move into the sitting room.

  Despite feeling so weary, my mind is already ticking over.

  According to Ivy, the police don’t have any details about the other driver yet. She might well have killed Liam; perhaps then they’d have shown a bit more interest.

  It’s all so frustrating but I can hardly walk away now and leave Liam and Ivy to work things out on their own.

  They haven’t got a clue who they are dealing with, for one thing. They don’t know what she is capable of.

  More importantly, they are my insurance policy against losing her again.

  The plugs pass muster so I start plumping up the cushions and placing them in the correct order on the couch.

  I feel as if I’ve known Liam for years, and I might be speaking out of turn but I suspect he might feel the same way.

  I think of his hand grasping mine in the road; the way his hair flops onto his face, just like Danny’s did. His broken whisper, begging me to help him. His instant trust in me.

  Was it too much to hope for after all this time?

  After conducting a final plug-check in the kitchen, I grab my bag and force myself out of the door to face the day.

  * * *

  At work, everyone has their own allocated section at the sorting counter.

  There are shelves underneath the work surface and a vast lattice of light-oak pigeonholes on the wall above the counter where each postal worker organises the various postcodes of his or her round.

  This process is important. If you get the address allocations wrong, you could end up backtracking on the streets to deliver a letter and that could send your timings right out.

  I always leave my section of counter tidy before I leave after my shift, but invariably, when I get in the next day my area is scattered with other workers’ elastic bands, unstamped mail and crumpled flyers.

  Which is why I generally like to get to work a good fifteen minutes before my starting time of five a.m. It’s important to start the day with some sort of order.

  But this morning I arrive with only a couple of minutes to spare.

  I unlock my delivery bike in the staff rack and walk inside the office, over to the main sorting area.

  The usual huddle of staff are gossiping together in the corner but Roisin breaks away from the group when she spots me arriving at my counter.

  ‘Jim’s been looking for you.’ Her pretty freckled face creases up with concern. ‘He says you’re to go straight to his office right away. Is everything OK, Anna?’

  My heart lurches at the thought of what Jim wants with me, what it is he is going to say.

  I can feel my face freezing so I duck down under the worktop and pretend to push my handbag further back on the shelf to give me a few seconds to recover. When I stand up, I have rearranged my face and I am smiling.

  ‘I’ll pop over and see Jim now,’ I say brightly. ‘I know what it’s about.’

  Before I can dash off, she presses her hand on the top of my arm.

  ‘Let me know if there’s anything I can do, love. I mean, if you fancy calling for a coffee after work and a chat, I’m always here.’

  I picture me and Roisin sitting in the Costa café at Castle Marina. Sipping our drinks and chatting, laughing. Just like I’ve seen loads of other people doing.

  Part of me wants to say yes to meeting up, I really do. But the old feelings flood in thick and fast before I can accept her offer.

  ‘Thanks, Roisin, but I can’t make it today,’ I say. ‘Maybe some other time.’

  But as the words slide from my mouth I know it won’t happen.

  I can see Jim through the glass in his office door.

  He is leaning back on his chair on a call. When he spots me, he beckons me into the small room.

  Jim seems fairly engrossed in his conversation so I sit down on a peeling swivel chair and pick at the exposed yellow foam around the edge.

  The desk is littered with brown folders, lidless ballpoint pens and crumpled delivery chits. I spot a framed photograph, placed on top of last year’s hardback diary but it is facing away from me and I can’t see the faces of the people in it.

  A tall, thin man, Jim uses the long bony fingers of his free hand to stab at the air as he makes his point to the caller.

  ‘I’m saying We. Need. It. Today. No excuses, Larry.’

  I don’t know much about my boss, just that he is married with a couple of grown-up sons. He, on the other hand, knows everything about me because he has full access to my personnel file.

  After he finishes the call, Jim picks up a pen with a misshapen chewed tip and taps it on the desk.

  ‘Thanks for coming in, Anna.’ He rocks back in his chair. ‘I’ll cut straight to the chase. There have been a couple of complaints from the residents on your round.’

  ‘Complaints?’ The word comes out sounding normal but I’m battling to keep my hands from shaking.

  He shuffles the papers in front of him and selects a sheet.

  ‘Four days ago, Mrs Sheen, of 43 Briar Close, rang,’ he reads aloud. ‘Her daughter was expecting an acceptance letter from university which didn’t arrive. She queried it and they sent another one out first class. She hasn’t had that one, either.’

  Jim looks up at me and opens his eyes wide in expectancy of a reply.

  I shrug my shoulders and purse my lips, and I try to think what I should say.

  He looks back down at the sheet.

  ‘Then yesterday, Head Office took a call from a Miss Shelton, Flat 1B Cox Crescent.’ He scans the typed script. ‘Says here she’s missed out on two jobs because she never got the letters inviting her for interview. Gave Head Office hell, by all accounts.’

  ‘I don’t know what to say, Jim.’ I’m carefu
l to keep my voice level. ‘I always double-check the addresses before posting them through.’

  Apart from the mail upstairs, of course. That stuff doesn’t get delivered at all.

  I wince as my thumbnail slices into my index finger.

  Jim lays down the sheet of paper and pinches the bridge of his nose.

  ‘Look, between you and me, I don’t put much stock on these sorts of complaints. If folks realised the volume of mail that came through those doors they’d think twice about moaning.’

  I nod and wipe the palms of my hands on my trousers.

  ‘All the same, I have to mention it because the complainants are both residents on your round, which is unusual. Tell you what.’ He waves his pen towards the papers, ‘I won’t write anything down on your file this time but just be careful, Anna. Double-check your deliveries.’

  I walk out of Jim’s office and stride across the delivery office floor to my counter. I’m trying to appear confident but it’s all I can do not to run back outside.

  People turn to observe me with interest from their various stations.

  ‘Everything OK, Anna?’ Roisin whispers as I pass her counter.

  ‘Yep, fine,’ I say but I don’t look at her.

  I can’t wait to get out on the bike.

  I sort my mail in double quick time and set off.

  * * *

  The early morning air has a bite to it that stings my face as I pedal all the way up Patchings Hill, but instead of pulling my cap down, I open my eyes wide and let the cold flood into them. It feels good to pedal on through the tingling hurt.

  Once on the Clifton estate, I work hard and fast but my heart grows heavier when I see how slowly the bag is emptying. A glance at my watch confirms I am already halfway through my allocated shift time.

  Half an hour before I am due to finish there is still a full bag of this morning’s mail locked in the postbox near the high-rise flats that is waiting to be delivered.

  I manage to make a start on it; I even work fifteen minutes over my shift but I daren’t risk being seen working past my official finishing time.

  That would be like admitting I can’t cope, which is just what the management are trying to prove.

  I transfer the undelivered mail into a bin bag and lock it back inside the postbox. Then I pedal back to base and return my empty mail bags to the office, waving casually to Jim when I clock out, as if I haven’t a care in the world.

  On the way back home, I collect the full mail bag from the locked postbox and transfer it into the boot of my car.

  My chest feels tight and wheezy, as if I’m just getting over a bad cold.

  Sometimes I think it would be so nice to just run away from it all, start somewhere anonymous and afresh.

  Like she did, I suppose.

  Difference being: if I disappear, a handful of people will get their mail late and that’s about it.

  Nobody’s life gets ruined.

  Chapter 12

  Thirteen years earlier

  Despite Daniel Clarke not turning up for his appointment, Carla’s had a full roster of counselling appointments in her diary.

  She accepted her pupil clients from a pool of six primaries and one comprehensive, all of them part of the Cumber Meadows family of schools for whom she worked.

  Unless a child missed their session, like Daniel had that morning, she rarely had a spare session. She’d had more than enough to keep her busy during the day but Daniel’s face loomed in her mind throughout all of her appointments.

  Daniel’s teacher, Mrs Martin, hadn’t seemed overly concerned about his absence and so Carla kept telling herself neither should she be. But all day there had been a niggle at the back of her mind; it persisted even when she arrived home following the weekly staff meeting at just after seven.

  She reached into the fridge for a bottle of Sauvignon and her mind raced over a multitude of possibilities of what might be happening in Daniel’s life and why he hadn’t come into school today.

  Halfway down the glass, her worries about him began to fade and a new, far more dangerous, thought took its place. A very insistent thought.

  ‘You promised, no more,’ she hissed out loud to herself, taking another deep slug of wine.

  She had tried so hard to fight the urge and it had worked for the last few weeks.

  Right up until she’d gone rummaging in the bathroom drawer this morning for a nail file and found one of Mark’s cufflinks zipped up in an old cosmetics case.

  It was a silver cufflink with a solitaire diamond, one of his favourites. It had somehow survived her culling of anything that was remotely Mark when she moved to her new flat in Nottingham.

  She slammed the drawer shut and left the cufflink where it was. But by then her resolve had all but disappeared into the big black hole that yawned inside her and the stirrings started with a vengeance.

  She made a cup of tea but left it to go cold. She poured another glass of wine before flicking through around a hundred crappy TV channels to find there was absolutely nothing on that appealed to her.

  She pottered around in the kitchen until she couldn’t find the strength to fight it any more, at which point she walked into her bedroom and began to get ready.

  She’d already decided. She would wear the white dress tonight.

  Chapter 13

  Present day

  Anna

  I get back to the house and that’s when I first notice the smell.

  Like rotting meat with a vile sickly sweet top note, it’s a stench that clings to the inside of my nostrils from the second I walk through the door.

  It wasn’t there when I left for work this morning and there is certainly no rotting food in Albert’s bowl or in the pedal bin.

  I walk through the house, sniffing.

  I even go upstairs but, curiously, the smell seems to remain exactly the same, neither weaker nor stronger, regardless of which room I enter.

  I’m dragging my body around like it is something already dead but I suppose there is little wonder why I’m exhausted after so little sleep and working a full shift.

  I’m desperate to rest, but instead, I pace around the house for what seems like hours, trying to identify the smell.

  After I’ve padded around the entire house three times and searched each room, I’m still clueless as to what it could be.

  Back in the kitchen I turn to the bulging black bin bag containing today’s undelivered mail. It crouches by the back door, dark and menacing like a gigantic black spider that is just biding its time, waiting to sink its venomous fangs into me and finish me off.

  I can’t face dragging it up to the box room. Not right now.

  I could stow the bag in the understairs cupboard or even in the dustbin outside perhaps; although even as I ponder this option I know it would be a sure-fire way of losing track of the mail and I would risk getting found out.

  Besides, I have every intention of delivering it all. Soon as things calm down at work and they reinstate the overtime, I’ll be on it.

  But for now, if I want to keep my round, it’s imperative I maintain the illusion that I’m coping.

  For all I know, some of the other delivery staff might be doing the exact same thing because they are struggling to get their rounds finished too.

  Nobody wants to take a drop in hours or get lumbered with the crappiest round if Jim Crowe decides they are struggling.

  Perhaps if I got friendlier with Roisin I could find out how the others feel.

  I could meet her for a coffee and chat. It’s really no big deal.

  A ripple of heat shudders through me and settles in my chest. I can’t seem to shake it off.

  I need to try and distract myself before I get sucked into the bad memories, but I’m there before I’ve even had the chance to redirect my thoughts.

  I spent most of my school life watching others from the sidelines.

  I’d managed to work out long before that most of my bad experiences in life had all come be
cause I’d trusted someone and they had let me down in some way.

  My logical solution had been to keep my distance from people as much as possible.

  Generally, that worked quite well. But this one day, at the end of the summer term, I was stupid enough to be lulled into a false sense of security.

  ‘Hey, Anna,’ Ruth Metcalf called over to me at the end of one of the afternoon lessons. ‘We’re meeting at Cheatham’s café after school. Fancy coming?’

  She knocked me off guard.

  Ruth was a member of the coolest group of girls in our year. I’d be an idiot to say no; this could be my chance to form some real friends.

  This could be my chance to really change who I was and how others saw me.

  ‘Great, see you there then.’ She grinned before scuttling off to join the others as we piled out of class.

  When I got to the café, they were waiting for me outside.

  Ruth stood at the back of the large group of girls so I just sort of loitered near them, waiting for her to call me over.

  ‘What the hell are you doing here?’ The ringleader, Carol Taylor, turned on me. ‘No room here for fucking freaks.’

  ‘I. . . I thought—’

  I tried to catch Ruth’s eye but she turned to her friend, laughing.

  Then they were all around me, poking and snatching at my bag and hair.

  I screwed my face and eyes up tight so I couldn’t see them all closing in on me.

  I felt someone pull hard on my hair, a slap around the face. My bag was wrenched from my shoulder.

  ‘Freak, freak, FREAK!’

  They chanted in unison.

  I heard a guttural cough then a thick ball of spit landed on my cheek, and the crowd erupted in laughter.

  After that, it happened time after time, day after day. The minutes always felt like hours before a teacher came to intervene.