by Adam Croft
She doesn’t even look at the other boys; just marches straight up to Daniel and tugs at his arm, pulling him back towards the house – which now looks five times its usual size – and his impending fate.
The Mother Superior’s office is a place he’s been seeing far more of recently. He’s already over the hump and on the home run, and he’s beginning to get antsy. Seven years, one month and twenty-two days to go. There’s an atmosphere around Pendleton House, too, like something’s about to change. Transformation is in the air, and Daniel can tell that the Mother Superior has picked up on it as well, and she isn’t all that happy about it.
She sits him down on a cold, hard plastic seat before taking her own rest in her plush leather armchair.
‘Do you care to explain yourself?’ she says after a few moments of silence, her eyes looking at him in her trademark neutral manner that had all of the emotion and anger hidden far behind, out of sight.
Daniel doesn’t know what to say.
‘Do you know when you were first brought into this office for disciplinary purposes?’ the Mother Superior asks, her warm Irish lilt belying the menace of her intentions. Daniel shakes his head. He does know, but he knows he’s not meant to. ‘The twelfth of February this year. And do you know how many times you have been here since?’ Again, Daniel shakes his head. This time, he really doesn’t know the answer. ‘Nine,’ the Mother Superior tells him. ‘Nine times this year, after a previously unblemished record.’
Daniel says nothing. He just continues looking at a dent on the top of her desk, studying its every angle and line. He wishes it could grow, open up and envelop him. He wants to be anywhere but here.
The Mother Superior leans forward, the desk creaking as it takes her weight through her forearms, her hands clasped together.
‘We’ve had talks about you, Daniel. Myself and the other nuns. We were all of the view that your continued bad behaviour cannot be tolerated. You have no idea – no idea – of the sacrifices we have made and continue to make in order to ensure that you’re safe in the eyes of God.’ As she speaks, Daniel notices her voice becoming firmer and angrier. She’s trying to hold it back, trying to keep a lid on it, but the pressure is building. ‘I’m afraid we’re going to have to move on to the next stage of punishment,’ she says, having taken a moment or two to calm herself down.
She stands and walks around to his side of the desk.
‘Stand, Daniel,’ she says calmly. ‘Undo your trousers, pull them to your knees and lean over the desk.’ Daniel does as he’s told. The first time he was in this situation he had the nerve to ask why she wanted him to do this. That’s not a mistake he’s going to repeat again. Behind him, he can hear the Mother Superior rummaging through a drawer. She finds what she’s looking for, exhales and then shuts the drawer. ‘It gives me absolutely no pleasure to do this, Daniel,’ she says, the pleasure clear and evident in her voice.
Daniel clamps his eyes shut and clenches his buttocks as he hears the air whistle and feels the sharp pain searing through his flesh.
9
It seems like I’m waiting forever, sat in the car while Jessica goes into the nearby branch of HSBC.
I look at the people walking past the car, milling around as they casually get on with their shopping. It seems like a bizarre antithesis to what’s going on in my life right now. Will I ever wander around the high street and do my shopping again? It sounds like an odd thing to say, but I really don’t know. I don’t even know what’s going on now, never mind what’s going to happen in weeks, months, years from now.
I must look like shit. I can’t be anything but, and an elderly gentleman peers into my car for longer than I’d like him to as he slowly saunters past, his walking stick wobbling as he balances far too much of his weight on it. I want to scream Fuck off, you daft old bugger! but I think better of it. If the idea is to remain inconspicuous, that’s not likely to do the trick.
There are kids running around and screaming, having a great time. The whole outside world just seems so weird – a mix of people going about their daily business and completely unaware of what’s just happened only a few hundred yards from here. There’s an ever-increasing feeling that people are watching me, judging me, remembering me. I feel like I’m seven years old again, just waiting to be caught for something else I’ve done wrong, waiting with my pants round my ankles, ready to feel the searing pain.
I try to tell myself that this is one of the tricks the brain plays on you when you’ve gone through a trauma. I need to remain calm, keep a level head. But right now that’s the hardest thing in the world, because my entire life has just been turned upside down in the space of a few minutes, and I don’t know why.
Christ, where is she? It feels like she’s been in there for hours. The clock in my car tells me it’s barely four minutes, though, before she’s back out and walking towards the car with a big smile on her face. She opens the passenger-side door and dumps a white padded envelope on my lap.
‘Three grand,’ she says. Just like that. As if it’s the most normal thing in the world and nothing that went on earlier today has actually happened.
‘What? Is that all? Where’s the other seven?’ I say, at a complete loss for any other words.
‘Relax, Dan. It’s to do with some sort of fraud prevention thing. They said I can get the rest tomorrow.’
‘But we won’t be here tomorrow,’ I reply.
‘So what? We’ve got four grand. It’ll have to do. I couldn’t exactly go kicking up a fuss, could I? I told them a story about selling a car and needing some cash to buy a new one.’
‘And they wouldn’t let you?’ I ask.
‘They would, but only if I did it over two days. On the plus side, it backs up your story if the banks decide to speak to each other. They probably do, you know. Money-laundering checks and all that.’
I can’t help but laugh. It just seems so stupid and irrelevant right now. ‘Oh yeah, that’s a great relief. At least when we’re being hunted by undercover police for the murder of my wife we’ll be safe in the knowledge that at least we won’t be getting a stern letter from our banks.’
‘How much fuel have you got?’ she says, ignoring my sarcasm.
‘Practically a full tank. I filled up yesterday.’ I look at the instrument panel, which tells me I’ve got 420 miles to go until my next fill-up. I have no idea where we’re going, but I know I want to eat up those 420 miles as quickly as possible and get as far away from here as I can.
‘Good. In that case, we’d better get going.’ Jessica puts on her seatbelt and settles back in her seat as if this is the most natural thing in the world. It’s both scary and oddly reassuring to know that at least one of us is staying calm. I wonder what sort of traumas she’s had to endure in the past to retain this level of calm.
‘Where?’ I ask.
‘Folkestone. It’s only thirty or forty miles. We’ll be there within the hour.’
‘Folkestone?’ I know exactly what this means.
‘Yeah. The Eurotunnel leaves every half an hour. It’ll cost us a packet at such short notice, but we can’t do much about that. We couldn’t exactly book in advance. Come on. We need to get going.’
‘And after that?’ I say, ignoring her efforts to gee me up.
‘I know a place in France. My family had a holiday cottage there.’
I can’t quite believe what I’m hearing. ‘Isn’t that a bit risky? Surely that’s the first place they’ll look, if they know you have ties there.’
‘We’re not staying there, doofus,’ she says. I’m intrigued by the Americanism. ‘I know someone in the area who can help us out. We’ll need to dump the car, for starters. They’ll be all over the place looking for this one by the morning. Now come on. We need to get out of the country while we still can.’
‘Shit. My passport.’
‘What? Don’t you have it?’ she asks, as if I’m mad.
‘Well no, I didn’t see the need in bringing my passport seven
ty miles up the road to Herne Bay. I suppose you just carry yours around everywhere with you in case you need to skip the country, do you?’ As I say this, she pulls the small burgundy booklet from her inside jacket pocket. ‘Yes. Of course you do.’
‘Where’s yours? At home?’
‘Yeah. But I can’t risk going back there.’
‘Why not? It’s not as if Lisa’s going to be there, is it?’
She’s got a point, but East Grinstead is the last place I want to be right now. I’m just about clinging on for dear life, managing to keep a rein on my emotions. I don’t want those reminders, those flashbacks to the mainly happy times we spent there. I don’t want to smell the home-cooked meals and the scent of her shampoo. I have no other option, though.
‘Do I need it? I’ve been to France on the train before and didn’t need it.’
‘They do spot checks,’ she says. ‘Be a bit stupid if we get stopped by an overzealous customs officer. Besides, if we get there quickly enough, your name won’t be on any watch lists.’
‘Watch lists?’ I ask.
‘Yeah. When they find Lisa’s body and can’t find you, they’ll put you on a watch list at the ports and airports. So you don’t leave the country. Which is why we’ve got to get out before they find her.’ She says this like it’s the most normal thing in the world.
Without saying anything, I tap the route into my satnav: from here to East Grinstead, then back over to Folkestone. ‘Nearly three hours,’ I say. ‘It’s about a hundred and forty-odd miles.’
Jessica just looks at me. ‘We’d better get going, then, hadn’t we?’
10
I’ll have about 280 miles of fuel left by the time we reach Folkestone, according to my calculations. They should be right, too, because I’ve done them over and over, about twenty times since we left Herne Bay. I know that if I don’t keep doing the calculations, my brain is going to try to think of other things, and I can’t handle that right now. The thoughts going round and round in my head are making me feel sick, and I’m struggling to cope.
I don’t know France that well, but 280 miles has got to get us somewhere over towards the German border, from what I know with my limited geography. We could fill up with more fuel, but there’d be number plate recognition cameras at the petrol stations. Thinking about it, there’d probably be cameras all over the place: on the motorways, at the side of the road, on the edge of buildings. Whichever way you look at it, cameras are going to pick us up. And that’s why I know we need to get as far away as possible as quickly as possible, so they’ve got a much longer trail to have to trace by the time they realise one exists at all.
I don’t know where in France this contact of Jessica’s lives, and I don’t want to ask. I want to know as little as possible. What I don’t know can’t hurt me. As long as we’re able to get there, get some help and put as much space between us and the police – not to mention Lisa’s killer – as possible, that’s about all we can hope for right now.
The drive over to East Grinstead seems to take an age. They say a drive always seems longer when you’re heading home, but East Grinstead already feels alien, like a location from another part of my life. From history.
It’s not helped by the fact that we’re now in rush hour – the time when everyone’s trying to get home from work. Being very much in the commuter belt, that makes a huge difference to the traffic. It’s not too bad heading over the Kent Downs, but once we’re on the M20 motorway things seem to grind to a walking pace. I can feel the time ticking away as everything in the universe counts down towards the moment that cleaner walks into my hotel room in Herne Bay tomorrow morning and discovers my wife’s dead body in the bath. She doesn’t know it yet, but tomorrow morning her life will be changed forever, and I don’t even know her name.
Even that poor cleaner will have her day, her week, probably her life, turned upside down because someone wanted not only to kill my wife but to frame me for it. That’s something that takes some doing to get my head around, and I’m still not quite sure I’ve come to terms with it. Secretly, deep down, I don’t think I want to.
The M20 merges onto the M26, which merges onto the M25. If I thought the M20 was slow, this is something else. I look at the clock for the hundredth time since we got in the car. It’s nearly six o’clock. Finally, we get off the M25 and make the relatively short drive down the (congested, naturally) A22 to East Grinstead.
My heart is in my throat as I pull up in my road, a good few houses further down from mine, the hedges and the curve in the road hiding the direct line of sight between the car and my house. I don’t particularly want the neighbours seeing Jess sitting in the passenger seat, nor do I want her seeing where I live. I’ve no idea why; I’ll probably never come back here again after tonight, so what does it matter?
Fumbling with my key in the lock, I finally manage to get the door open and make my way up the stairs to the bedroom. I don’t turn any lights on, and instead feel my way up the staircase and around the corners of the landing. My passport’s tucked away in my underwear drawer, where it always is. I take it, close the drawer and make my way back down the stairs again, stepping carefully in the darkness.
Once I’m back outside, something tells me not to lock the door. It’s almost as if I’m looking to lay a false trail of clues. What possible significance could an unlocked front door have when the police inevitably turn up tomorrow morning? I don’t know, but I’m pretty sure it’s not going to do me any harm. Even better, a burglary would complicate matters further for the police. Whatever I do, I need to give myself a head start.
In my mind, right now, this all makes sense.
I try to keep my feet firmly on the flagstones as I hopscotch my way back up the driveway, trying to avoid the crunching gravel underfoot. As I get to the end of the drive there’s a cat sat there, looking at me. Two thoughts cross my mind: firstly, the ridiculous notion that this cat is a witness to the fact I’ve been back home; secondly, that I’m really pleased right now we don’t have any pets or children. That would make this whole situation so much worse. I couldn’t just up and leave if I had those sorts of ties. But what ties do I have? A wife who’s been murdered and a house that I wouldn’t be allowed – or want – to go back into anyway.
Before long, I’m back at the car.
‘Got it?’ Jessica says, as if I’ve just popped home to grab something innocuous I forgot. There’s a charming innocence about her, as if no situation could ever faze her. To avoid letting that thought play on my mind, I start the car up again and head for the A22.
11
They’re queuing for the Eurotunnel much further up the road than I’d imagined. I’ve only used it once before, and that was very late at night, so I guess I’d had a skewed idea of what was involved. I wonder how many of these people are going home after a day’s business in London, how many are going on holiday, visiting friends, attending funerals. Either way, I wish they’d all fuck off. Jessica booked our tickets using her mobile on the way down here, but now I’m worried we’ll miss our boarding.
‘You have to keep calm,’ she says, as if this is a perfectly common situation to be in. It makes me realise how disturbed she must be as a person. I don’t mean that in a bad way, though. It actually intrigues me. Quite a lot. There seems to be some sort of deep understanding within her; a sense that she’s known all the evil there is to know in the world and knows exactly how to deal with it. Most people would just call her fucked up, but I find it fascinating. I guess we’re all a little fucked up.
Being perfectly honest, there’s a huge part of me that’s getting off on ceding control. I’ve always been the one to lead by example, do the organising, make the decisions. It’s been a case of having to. I’ve had no other choice throughout much of my life, and until now I’d never realised how much that annoyed me. Having this petite, feisty girl call all the shots is something I’m finding strangely enjoyable. No, not a girl – woman. She’s all woman. There’s no doubt abou
t that.
There’s a knock on my window, and I hear myself audibly gasp as I snap my head round to the side to see who it is. It’s a woman in a blue fleece top, with ‘BORDER CONTROL’ written on it.
‘Passports, please?’ I hear her say through the window, her voice muffled by the glass. I wind down the window and hand her my passport from my inside jacket pocket. Jess passes me hers and I hand it to the woman. I try to keep calm, appear calm.
She seems to take an age looking through it, glancing at me, then down at the picture, then back at me again. For a moment, I’m certain we’ve been rumbled. I see it all flash in front of my eyes: Lisa’s body being discovered, the forensics experts in their white bodysuits, the glare of the coroner’s bulb, the judge’s gavel crashing down on the block.
Then she smiles, hands us back our passports and moves on to the car behind us, carrying on with the daily grind.
‘The fuck?’ Jess says, taking her passport back. ‘We don’t even need to show our passports to get into France. They’re in the Schengen Area. Bloody jobsworths.’
‘You said earlier they might. Spot checks, you said.’
‘Yeah, spot checks are one thing, but that woman’s going to every single damn car. No wonder it’s taking so long to board. We’ll be here all night at this rate.’
‘Maybe they’re looking for someone,’ I say quietly.
‘Clearly not us, then.’
‘Wait a sec. Why do you have your passport on you? You just carry it around with you all the time, do you?’
Jess laughs. ‘When you look as young as I do, you always have your passport on you. The dicks at the hotel bar even started IDing me a little while back. They think it’s hilarious, but I don’t. I don’t drive, so my passport is the only form of ID I have.’
‘Yeah, but you just walk around with it in your pocket?’ I ask.
‘Much safer than leaving it in my bag or just lying around at work. You get some dodgy sorts staying in hotels, you know,’ she replies, giving me a knowing look. I still can’t get over how casual and playful she’s being. Perhaps it’s just her coping mechanism. I’ve yet to find what mine is.
