Hold Your Breath

by Caroline Green

  A freak. And one step short of a murderer to boot.

  She knew what she had to do when she felt like this.

  Her hands were shaking as she opened her wardrobe. She reached to the very back of the shelf at the top. Rooting under the tangle of jumpers, her fingers finally found the cool metal lid of the biscuit tin.

  Taking it carefully over to the bed, she stared down at it. A familiar nauseous heat seeped through her. She had been trying hard not to look in here recently. She’d even contemplated getting rid of the box and its painful contents a few weeks ago. She’d reasoned there was no point in keeping it. She knew what Mum would say. That it was morbid. And didn’t people deserve a second chance, sometimes?

  Maybe not Tara though. And forcing herself to look in the box reminded her all over again. It hurt. And the pain was what she needed and deserved.

  Tara opened the lid and shook the contents onto the bed.

  A few newspaper cuttings fell out, along with a letter handwritten on thin, lined paper. The paper was bruised with angry pressure points so it almost felt like braille. Tara imagined the pen pressing the savage words into it and the hate that flowed through them.

  She couldn’t look at that first. She always started with the newspaper cuttings. It was important that she did it in the right order. The first one was from the local newspaper in her old town, dated February this year.

  MISSING!

  A three-year-old Southam toddler has not been seen since playing in his garden on Tuesday. Tyler Evans is described by mother Siobhan as a ‘bright, bubbly boy who we all love to bits’. If you have any information, please call.

  There was another cutting, dated the following week.

  TRAGIC TOT FIGHTS FOR LIFE

  Brave Tyler Evans is said to be in a critical condition after being found near a railway track on Saturday.

  The three-year-old was the subject of a countywide search after going missing for four days and was believed to have been abducted by Sean Stanley, an ex-boyfriend of his mother Siobhan.

  It is now thought the toddler wandered off and fell down the steep railway bank, sustaining serious injuries. Police claim the area had already been searched and have been heavily criticised for not finding the boy sooner.

  Stanley is suing the force for damage to his home and injuries sustained during his arrest. Local MP Giles Meadows has called for an inquiry into what he described as a ‘pig’s ear of an investigation’.

  And then . . .

  R.I.P. TYLER:

  BRAVE TOT LOSES BATTLE FOR LIFE

  Tara’s eyes filled with hot tears. The words wobbled and blurred and her sinuses burned and fizzed. She dropped the cutting and reached for a tissue, before blowing her nose with a loud honk.

  Hand trembling, she left the cutting where it was and took a long shaky breath before reaching for the letter. The paper had been thin and cheap to begin with, but Tara’s countless handlings of it since February had given it the quality of something much older than it was too. Mum and Dad didn’t know anything about her cuttings. The letter had been lying on the mat when she’d come home from school, addressed to Tara Murry. Still in a state of shock and moving through the world like a ghost, she’d opened it without any sense of what might be inside.

  Tara smoothed out the pages and made herself read. The handwriting was childish and blocky.

  Tara

  I want you to understand what it is youve done to my family. If you hadnt gone to the police with your crap stories, my baby would still be alive. The police are to blame, I know, but YOU was the one that persauded them he was with his dad.

  I cry all the time and the doctors had to give me pills. Chelsea and Jayden miss their brother and have nightmares every night. Our lives are in peaces and you are probably carrying on like nothing happened, tucked up in your nice house with your mum and dad. I know you have a brother. How would you feel if he was dead?

  I hope you have nightmares too Tara Murry. I WILL NEVER FORGIVE YOU FOR WHAT YOUVE DONE.

  Siobhan Evans

  Weeping quietly, Tara folded the letter again and put it back in the box. There was one more cutting, which she grimly unfolded, determined to see this ritual through. The waves of shame and pain almost had a pleasure to them, in that they took her to her lowest place. She could purge herself through tears.

  POLICE USE SCHOOLGIRL ‘PSYCHIC’ TO TRACK TYLER

  A Miston Herald EXCLUSIVE!

  Local police failed to find the toddler Tyler Evans because they had been sent on the wrong trail by a so-called ‘psychic’, according to MP Giles Meadows.

  Chief Superintendent Alun Constantine has denied the claim that an unidentified schoolgirl from the Horsley area sent police on a false trail.

  Sean Stanley, whose house was the subject of a dawn raid on a tip-off from the ‘psychic’, has said that this false information prevented police from finding the child early enough to receive vital medical care. A source at Horsley Hospital, where the boy was treated, has confirmed that they may have been able to save his life if he had been found a few hours sooner. The three year old died from injuries sustained on Thursday.

  His mother Siobhan Evans and his brother and sister are said to be in deep shock. They are currently being cared for by relatives.

  Tara’s sobs came from deep inside, wracking her body with spasms of pain and guilt.

  She cried hard for some time. Eventually, exhausted and shivering, she pulled the pale green throw that covered her duvet around her arms and stared up at the ceiling with throbbing eyes.

  As always, she began to torture herself by remembering how she’d stared up at the entrance to the police station that day. It was like pressing on a painful bruise. She imagined an alternative reality in which she simply turned around and walked away. There was a kind of agonising bliss in picturing this. How she wished she could go back and make it happen.

  But she hadn’t done that. Instead, she had gone inside and somehow persuaded them to listen to her.

  Tara had heard that the three year old had gone missing a few weeks into the spring term. Tyler Evans was the brother of a girl in the year below her, Chelsea. Everyone had been talking about it in class. Tara knew where the family lived; the address was a few streets away from her.

  When she’d passed the house on her way home from school, she’d seen a scrum of reporters already forming around the small, neat garden at the front. Outside the garden was one of those yellow bubble cars, the sort every small child in Britain seemed to own. Tara’s fingertips brushed across it and then she’d started to go a bit dizzy.

  The pictures came, stronger than they had ever been about lost keys or jewellery. So strong they hurt her head and made her feel sick.

  A stone angel towered over her, eyes blank and uncaring. Gravestones and statues crowding in. A terrible, hollow feeling of fear only helped by the rough, comforting sensation of a grubby toy pig in her hand.

  Tara had staggered away, trying to process what she’d just seen. It was Tyler. She knew this deep in her bones. He was in some sort of . . . graveyard?

  She didn’t tell anyone. It was too weird. But she spent a whole night tossing and turning as the images bombarded her mind. She told Mum she was sick the next day and as soon as the house was quiet, she’d dressed with shaking hands and walked to the police station.

  They hadn’t wanted to listen to her at first but then Siobhan Evans was in the station and overheard what was going on. Digging her long nails into Tara’s shoulders, she’d made her repeat what she’d just said.

  It was Tara’s description of the toy that swung opinion towards believing her. No one else knew that Tyler’s beloved Piggy was missing too. Siobhan’s excitement and insistence that Tara’s hunch be investigated made the police act. They had no other information and even though it was obvious the officers Tara met were deeply dubious about this, Siobhan made a scene about the consequences of them ignoring potentially vital information.

  So Tara was forced
to describe every tiny detail of her images all over again, to several different police officers. Siobhan made Tara hold a baby photo of Tyler on a keyring and more images had come so violently, and in such bright detail, that Tara had retched and almost been sick on the floor of the police station. The images of the statues were so powerful, everyone agreed he must be close to a graveyard. There was a huge cemetery nearby, which served a ten-mile radius. It seemed the obvious place. A massive fingertip search was carried out there, involving police and the many locals who had come out to help.

  But there was no sign of Tyler.

  Then Siobhan had remembered an old boyfriend who lived next door to a large church in a village about twenty miles away. They’d split under acrimonious circumstances and although Siobhan had no reason to believe the man would take Tyler, there had been threats made during their final, heated row, which implicated him.

  The police went in hard, battering down the door and dragging Sean Stanley from where he’d been sleeping off a drinking bender. Already known to police for petty crime, Stanley’d suffered injuries in the police’s handling of him.

  But Tyler hadn’t been there.

  As everyone soon discovered, he’d been lying near to his home at the bottom of the steep bank that led to the railway line. An area the police said had already been thoroughly searched. Although obviously not thoroughly enough.

  Tara felt about a hundred years old as she wearily began to pack away the cuttings and the letter.

  Of course she hadn’t killed that little boy. His injuries had killed him. And maybe, as her mother had tearfully pointed out many times since, if Siobhan Evans had kept more of an eye on her small son in the first place, it would never have happened.

  But it felt like Tara’s fault. She couldn’t explain what had happened, despite the long tearful hours trying to do just that with Mum and Dad afterwards. She’d been sure, that was all. So sure. And so wrong.

  The story would have had more prominence in the national news had it not been for a unique set of circumstances that week: the suicide of a cabinet minister and a massive terrorist attack in France. A perfect storm of bad news.

  But it wasn’t a big town and it didn’t take long for people to find out locally.

  There was no need for Siobhan Evans to tell her she’d never be forgiven.

  Tara was never going to forgive herself.

  CHAPTER 7

  WIND CHIMES

  The next day at school, Tara was conscious of Melodie Stone’s purse in her bag. It felt like it was giving off some kind of radioactive glow. She’d stuffed it hastily into an A4 envelope that morning, and the brief few moments of contact had caused a spasm of pain to shoot through her head. She didn’t want to touch it any more than she had to. It was impossible to ignore the thing. Every time she went in her bag to get a book, a tissue or her purse, the bulging envelope seemed to demand her attention.

  She found herself next to Karis during food technology, washing up some stuff that Mrs Marchment had used in a demonstration. They worked in silence. Tara kept wrestling with the decision to tell Karis about her conversation with Will. Maybe she could take the flipping purse there instead. But something stopped her every time she formed the words. She didn’t want to have to explain how she’d come into contact with Will, in case it meant divulging that she’d been to the lido to find Leo.

  So she held back. She wasn’t intending to speak at all, but it was Karis who suddenly broke the silence.

  ‘Why did you ask about Mel the other day?’ she said.

  Tara’s breath caught.

  ‘I mean, why wouldn’t she be okay in Brighton?’ Karis was watching Tara intently, her hazel eyes narrowed.

  Tara shrugged. ‘You lot were all wailing so much about how sudden it was, that was all,’ she said.

  Karis sniffed and glanced over to where Jada and co were huddled, giggling over something on Chloe’s BlackBerry. Tara followed her gaze. It suddenly struck her that she hadn’t seen Karis hanging out with that group for a few days.

  ‘I wasn’t wailing, actually,’ said Karis.

  ‘Whatever,’ said Tara, rinsing off a wooden spoon, which was nobbled and sticky with pastry mix, under the hot tap.

  ‘It is a bit strange, though,’ said Karis in a rush.

  Tara stopped what she was doing to meet her eyes.

  ‘I mean, the fact that her phone isn’t working any more,’ said Karis. ‘Why would she just leave so suddenly? She doesn’t even like her dad.’

  Tara stared at her. Why did everyone think she was the person to discuss this with?

  ‘Why are you telling me?’ she said irritably. ‘Can’t you share it with your coven over there?’ She was surprised at her own daring. Impressed with herself a bit too. She tried to avoid attention and trouble generally. She didn’t need any more battles in her life. But Karis didn’t turn on her, as she might have expected. Instead she gave a deep sigh. Her hair fell across her face as she wiped in a desultory way at a scuffed plastic chopping board.

  ‘Coven’s about right,’ she said. They didn’t speak for a couple more minutes.

  ‘So how’s that gorgeous brother of yours then?’ said Karis, flashing a lascivious grin at Tara.

  ‘Trust me,’ said Tara, ‘you wouldn’t think he was gorgeous if you had to use the bath after him. He’s so hairy, it’s like a gorilla’s been grooming itself in there.’

  Karis snorted with laughter – a proper, likeable snort – that made Tara grin back at her.

  ‘And,’ she added, warming to the theme, ‘when he’s going out, he checks his reflection in anything remotely shiny. I swear I saw him admiring himself in the kettle before. And the screen of his phone. He checks his hair way more than I do.’

  Karis was helpless with laughter now and Tara felt a giggle rumble up from her belly. She wasn’t being disloyal to Beck. She just saw a different side to him than other girls, being his sister. Anyway, he could handle it. The laughter felt like internal sunshine.

  A dark and then a blond head turned their way from across the room. She gave Jada the sweetest smile she could muster.

  On the way home from school Tara had a feeling of lightness inside. She wasn’t exactly friends with Karis, but at least for once she’d had a bit of a laugh with someone here.

  It reminded her of her old life, before they moved. Before everything happened, more accurately.

  She hadn’t ever been one of the popular girls, but she’d done okay. She’d been mates with Mahlia since primary school. They’d gone through everything together; starting secondary school, spots and periods, boys and exams. But she’d moved away too, to Scotland, a few months before things kicked off. Even though they texted and emailed, it was hard to stay friends when you didn’t see people, plus Mahlia had changed. She’d gone all active for the first time ever and threw in mentions in her emails and texts of weird stuff like water-skiing on lochs.

  Anyway, today had been the best day in a while. It was nice to feel like a normal girl for once.

  Tara decided to walk along by the river, which was a slight detour, but more scenic than going by the main road. She walked along, noticing the weeping willow that bowed delicate fronds over the water on the other bank. A wood pigeon cooed gently somewhere above her. The trees were perfectly mirrored in the still water today and she passed a houseboat that sent blue and red splashes onto the murky green of the water. A large woman with grey dreadlocks was watering the plants that tumbled from stone pots on the boat roof. She swayed slightly to the languid thump of reggae music drifting from an ancient speaker on the deck. Seeing Tara, she smiled. Tara gave her a warm smile back.

  As Tara walked a little further, houses began to come into view on the opposite bank.

  Within a few moments she saw the iron bridge, and groaned. She’d somehow managed to forget about the purse for a little while, but now it looked as though dropping it off would be so easy, it’d be downright mean not to do it.

  She put her hand into
her bag and fished out the large envelope. It was looking a bit dog-eared after being scrunched up in there all day. In fact, something had leaked in her make-up bag, and there was a sticky pink mark on the top corner. Tara tried to smear it away with the side of her hand.

  She looked up again. The houses were three storeys high, and painted white. They looked grand and elegant. Some had carefully landscaped gardens, which led in neat, green steps down to the water, with decking or vast conservatories that gleamed in the sunlight.

  One of the houses a bit further along stood out like a broken tooth in a Hollywood smile. Even from this distance Tara could see the blankets pinned up at windows instead of curtains. The back garden was a tangled jungle of brambles and nettles. A giant plastic sunflower on a stick was poking out of the low fence, where it twirled in the breeze. There was an odd tinkling sound coming from that direction and Tara spotted several sets of metal wind chimes hanging from a gnarled old fruit tree in the garden. The house looked shabby and neglected. Tara quickly ruled this out as Melodie’s house. Someone like her definitely didn’t live somewhere like this. She always wore really fashionable stuff and her hair couldn’t be cheap to maintain either, Tara thought.

  But when she crossed the bridge, she found she wasn’t on the road she needed after all. This one curved in the opposite direction to the houses. She had to ask directions in a florist’s and the road she was looking for turned out to be several streets over.

  Her good mood had totally evaporated now. She was eager to get this pointless exercise over and done with so she could go home. Then she’d text Will. She’d say she didn’t want anything further to do with it. Melodie Stone was probably having a lovely time in Brighton with everything money could buy, being a complete bitch to a whole new set of people.