Only the Truth

by Adam Croft

‘I would’ve wanted to know what happened, to at least ground myself somehow. I wouldn’t have just suggested disappearing off into the night.’

  ‘You did, though, didn’t you? You came down those stairs with your bags packed. You said you were going.’

  I shake my head. ‘I’d just found my wife dead. Someone had set me up to look like I’d killed her. Do you know how you’d react in that situation? No, neither did I. I panicked. I needed space to think and get my head round it.’

  ‘And is it any clearer now?’ she asks, knowing full well what the answer is. ‘There’ll be a way of proving you didn’t do this, Dan. We just need the distance, mentally and physically, to be able to work it out.’

  I put my head in my hands. ‘This was a stupid idea. A really fucking stupid idea. Even if we can prove something, how do we explain running away as soon as we found the body?’

  ‘Why should we need to?’ she says. ‘Just tell them the truth. Tell them what you just told me. If it was your honest natural reaction and instinct, why should you need to explain it? You’d just been set up for murder, you were in an extreme situation and you reacted instinctively. You didn’t commit a crime.’

  ‘I’m pretty sure not reporting a dead body is a crime,’ I reply.

  ‘Yeah, because that’s the crime they’re going to be investigating.’ Strangely, Jessica’s sarcasm seems to calm me slightly. It adds an odd sense of normality to the situation. No matter how much that puts me at ease, though, I still can’t shake off the nagging suspicion about Claude. It’s become overpowering.

  ‘You’re not the only one with good instincts, you know, Jess.’

  ‘How do you mean,’ she asks, more as a statement than a question.

  ‘I mean Claude. I know there’s something not right there. There’s been something between you two, hasn’t there? Something . . . wrong.’ She says nothing, so I continue. What I say is more a stream of consciousness than anything. But there’s an almost false facade to Jess. As if her controlling, confident manner is just a mask to cover traumatic events in her past. ‘I’ve heard about girls like you. You jump into bed with every guy who wants it because that’s what’s natural to you, isn’t it? You told me after the first time we did it that sex had been devalued for you. I didn’t know at the time what that meant, but now I think I do.’ I see her jaw clench. ‘Jess, were you abused?’

  ‘You don’t know anything,’ she says, fighting to wipe a tear from her eye.

  ‘Is that why you felt safe here? Is that why, when the pressure was on, you felt you had to come here? I mean, it was pretty obvious you didn’t want to be here, but felt you had to be. What do they call it, Stockholm syndrome?’ She doesn’t say anything. ‘Jess, did Claude abuse you?’

  ‘What the actual fuck?’ she yells, looking at me with her raging red eyes. ‘Are you shitting me? Of course he fucking didn’t. I can’t even believe you’d say that.’

  ‘Jess, just tell me. I . . . I care for you. I want to know. I want to understand. I want to help.’

  ‘You can’t help. I don’t need help. And you don’t need to understand.’ I say nothing, but she speaks anyway. ‘Claude did not abuse me. Alright? That’s all you need to know.’

  What seems like only a couple of seconds, but must’ve been more, is broken by the sound of Claude’s footsteps on the gravel, making their way back towards the kitchen.

  14

  The winters at Pendleton House have always been cold, but this one has been particularly brutal. The snow has come in droves, coating the grounds with layer upon layer of thick white blanket. It’s drifted up the walls and the trees, smoothing the sharp angles and making everything look as though it’s melted into a huge mass of white. The boys shiver in their beds, each of them knowing damn well the nuns won’t be shivering.

  The radiators have been clattering and clunking for weeks, working overtime to try and keep the house warm. So far, they’ve managed to stop it completely freezing over, but the night-times are still bitter. Some nights, if he breathes out carefully and catches the light of the moon in the right way, he can see his breath misting in front of him.

  Daniel knows that in some of the other rooms, the boys huddle together at night for warmth. He can only imagine the Mother Superior in her own bedroom, the radiator no doubt searing hot, her doubled-up duvet keeping her warm and toasty. The boys have only recently been allowed an extra blanket – a heavy, coarse woollen throw that scratches at his arms if he doesn’t keep them below the covers. Not that arms outside of blankets is an option in this weather.

  Teddy Tomlin isn’t the sort of boy who’d want to huddle together for warmth, anyway. He’s a lone soldier, a boy who prefers to keep himself to himself. Earlier this evening, Mr Duggan came to visit. A couple of the boys were passing through the lobby when he arrived and they said he stank of whisky. Not long after, the Mother Superior came to take Teddy Tomlin. He’d been in a bad mood all day, Teddy. All week, really. All the boys went through periods of resentment, of hating everything about the place. Daniel was the same. But he’d learnt to keep it under lock and key. Teddy was a little slower to learn. He was reluctant earlier when the Mother Superior came in and asked him to follow her. He already knew that Mr Duggan was here and was well aware what it all meant. For the first time since he’d been there, Daniel saw signs that Teddy Tomlin was starting to rebel. He didn’t realise it at first, but that began to stir up feelings of rebellion within him, too. When a troubled yet peaceful and gentle soul like Teddy starts to fight back, you can’t help but be stirred.

  It’s been deathly silent in the room since he went. Daniel hadn’t really noticed it before, but the silence he thought he experienced every night was actually far from it. When Teddy is here, his gentle breathing fills the room. The light sound of cotton on skin as he turns over in bed. The faint scratching as he catches an itch. And even when Teddy’s not here, there are sounds from outside. A fox scuttling across the lawn. The distant thrum of traffic. The solemn hoot of an owl. In this desolate, desperate winter, though, outside simply does not exist.

  The sheer quiet of the silence means that Daniel can hear Teddy’s footsteps from further away than he usually would. Daniel can tell a lot from footsteps. That’s what sleeping in this sort of place does to you – it gives you an extraordinary skill set that no other child would have. Tonight, Teddy’s footsteps sound lonely, forlorn. They sound like the footsteps of a boy who’s given up.

  A few seconds later, the door opens and Teddy closes it behind him gently. He pulls back the corner of his bed and climbs in, not even bothering to take off his clothes. Anyone else would presume this was because Teddy’s cold, but Daniel knows Teddy never sleeps in his clothes. Not even on the coldest of cold nights.

  Daniel turns over to look at him, pulling his head back from the shaft of moonlight and allowing it to reflect off the whitewashed walls and cascade down on Teddy. When he sees him, Teddy is looking right back at him, his eyes sad, desperate and wet. Teddy doesn’t say a word, but Daniel can see the bruising already beginning to form on Teddy’s left cheek, the strong handprints and finger marks already visible in crimson red around his neck.

  Daniel swallows. Before he even knows what he’s doing, he feels the rage roaring inside him, pushing at his throat to burst free. He’s on his feet, he flings the bedroom door open and he’s marching down the corridor, barefoot in only his pyjamas, no longer feeling the cold. The rage and adrenaline is fiery inside him, warming his taut growing muscles with energy.

  He knows Mr Duggan will be in the lounge, where he always is, drinking a glass of whisky from the Mother Superior’s secret stash. She doesn’t drink herself – the supply is kept purely for Mr Duggan’s visits.

  When he gets to the end of the corridor, down the stairs, across the hall and into the lounge, Daniel cranks the door handle down and flings the door back against the wall with a clattering sound. Mr Duggan is startled, and he turns around in his seat, beginning to stand but then caught off balanc
e as Daniel throws himself at him.

  Daniel hears the whisky glass land with a thud on the carpet, the ice cubes clattering against the inside of the tumbler as his fists pummel into the side of Mr Duggan’s head. The old man is gurgling, grunting some words that Daniel can’t quite make out. Daniel is crying, the fits and sobs pouring out of him as he unleashes years of fury and rage into Mr Duggan’s skull.

  Eventually, the adrenaline begins to subside and he feels the searing pain in his knuckles and wrists as he becomes aware of the arms tugging at him from behind, willing him to let go.

  He falls to the floor, barely registering the pain from his kneecaps as he collapses into a deep and guttural sob.

  15

  I look at Jessica, my mind consumed with anger and frustration. Not anger at her, but anger at whoever did whatever they’ve done to her. I asked her if she’d been abused, and she didn’t say no, couldn’t say no. All she said was that it wasn’t Claude. I’m glad, because if she hadn’t told me that, I’d be on top of Claude right now, caving his head in.

  Jessica and I don’t say a word, but Claude’s clearly no idiot. He can see from her bloodshot eyes what’s been happening. He’s the sort of man who can tell just by looking at a person. Whatever these two have been through, it’s enough to build that sort of deep connection.

  ‘Okay, so your car is outside?’ he says eventually.

  ‘Yes, right opposite,’ I reply.

  ‘Come.’ He signals with his finger for us to follow him. We leave by the front of the farmhouse and walk past the car, a hundred yards or so further up the lane and around a hedged bend, where we stop at a large barn. It’s an enormous brick-built building, but it looks ancient. It has huge white wooden doors on the front and one smaller plain wooden door near the top of the building. It must’ve been a grain store or something, I figure.

  Claude takes a bunch of keys from the pocket of his waistcoat and fumbles around with them for a second before unlocking the huge doors and swinging one open. The inside is fairly bare – it’s beamed, with bales of hay stacked to the left- and right-hand sides. To the rear is another similar set of doors which I assume lead out onto the fields behind. Sat proudly in the middle is a car. It looks like a late-eighties or early-nineties Citroën. It’s not aged too badly, but even in this low light I can see some signs of rust and certainly plenty of dust.

  ‘Tonight, you will rest. We will bring your car in here, and tomorrow you take this car. Okay?’

  I nod, although I’m still trying to process everything. Is he helping us run away? If so, Jessica must have told him everything. If that’s the case, why would he trust me, a complete stranger? Clearly, he wouldn’t; he’d trust Jess’s judgement. But surely he’d be a little more suspicious of me, I think. That only leaves the possibility that she hasn’t told him exactly what happened – just that she has to get away and needs his help. Would that be enough for him to just offer his car? I don’t know. All I know is it’s happening.

  I turn to look at Jessica for some sort of approval or clarification, but she’s just standing, staring at the car.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ I ask.

  ‘Nothing.’ Her reply is terse but full of meaning.

  ‘I’ll go and fetch the car,’ I say, eventually.

  My legs feel heavy on the ground, as though they’re full of lead, the half-bottle of red wine clouding my brain and somehow making everything seem far more positive as I make my way back down this strange French lane towards my car. It’s surreal. Absolutely surreal. None of it quite makes sense, and I can’t come to terms with any of my emotions. I haven’t cried; I haven’t yelled. I’m just numb. It’s almost as if my brain and my body don’t know how to react. It’s not a situation anyone ever expects to be in.

  When I get to the car, I open it and climb inside, sitting for a moment and registering the familiarity of the car’s interior. It seems so disconnected from this alien world around me and everything back in England, yet it provides a sort of connection to it. I look over at the passenger seat, the seat that Lisa sat in so many times. The door handle she touched. The climate-control knob on her side of the car, always set five degrees lower than mine. In that moment, I realise just how glad I’m going to be when the morning comes and I can leave all this behind. I’ll be free of the car, free of any association with home.

  It sounds weird saying that, but England no longer feels like home. It’s been tainted for me many times over the years, but now my brain has just associated the whole place with what happened earlier, with Lisa. It’s not like I’m going to want to go back to the house we shared together, the house she chose, and carry on living a perfectly normal life. Even in this time of utter despair, I have the level of consciousness to know that things have now changed forever.

  I start the engine and pull the car onto the lane, trundling slowly up towards the barn as my headlights light the way.

  For some reason, we decide to stay in the barn that night. Claude mentioned making up a spare bed for us in the farmhouse, but it didn’t seem right somehow. Jessica said we’d burdened him enough and this way we could just get up and go, and he needn’t get involved. It seemed strangely right, although I wouldn’t have minded a hot shower and a proper bed. I’ve got a feeling it’ll be a while before I have either of those again.

  I sit on a bale of hay and try to clear my mind before going to sleep. I’m in that horrible situation where I’m as tired as hell, but I know my brain won’t switch off if I try to bed down now. Jess comes back into the barn, having gone to the farmhouse with Claude to fetch some blankets.

  ‘Here you are,’ she says, tossing something in my direction. I catch it. It’s an iPhone.

  ‘What? Why?’ I ask.

  ‘In case we get separated at any time. I’ve got one, too. They’ve got each other’s numbers programmed in. Don’t worry, it’s got an unregistered pay-as-you-go SIM – with about five hundred euros on it, so fill your boots.’

  It’s an older model than the one I had, and certainly older than the one Lisa had – she always had to have the latest model – but the operating system is the same. It’s good to have some means of communication, but I can tell I’m going to get about as much use out of this as I have out of any of the mobile phones I’ve had before: next to none.

  ‘Thanks,’ I say, trying to sound appreciative.

  Claude covers my car over with a tarpaulin before he leaves, and I wonder why the Citroën wasn’t covered with one when we arrived. It clearly never had been, either, judging by the layer of dust over the top of it. I just hope the Citroën’s going to run alright and not break down three miles along the road. Once my car is covered, it’s out of sight and out of mind.

  I look at the floor. The calmness of it seems to soothe my mind for a moment. Jess sits down and presses herself against me, pulling me into her, my head nuzzled in her bosom as she hugs me, kissing me on the top of the head.

  ‘We’re going to be alright,’ she says, the first time I’ve ever seen her truly caring. ‘We’ll sort this.’

  We lie down on the hay, embracing, and very quickly fall asleep.

  16

  It’s the first time I’ve ever been woken up by a crowing cockerel, and as I open my eyes I feel the laser-thin shaft of sunlight searing my face as it sneaks through the gap between the two large doors at the entrance to the barn. It takes me a few moments to realise where I am, even though I’ve been awake in fits and spurts for most of the night. The events of yesterday weren’t exactly conducive to a good night’s sleep.

  I look beside me and can’t see Jessica. There’s a surge of adrenaline as I worry about where she’s gone. Has she run off? Has she gone to the police? A moment or two later, she appears from the other side of the Citroën, clambering to her feet from her hands and knees.

  ‘Morning, sleepyhead,’ she says. ‘I thought I might as well get this dust and crap off the car. If we’re trying to lie low, we’re probably better off not drawing attention to oursel
ves.’

  ‘Time is it?’ I ask, my throat red raw, presumably from snoring.

  ‘Just gone six. Five back in England,’ she says, as if realising that my first instinct was going to be to work out how much time we had left. To be fair to her, she’s right. Again. ‘I reckon we’ve probably got until midday our time before your room gets cleaned. It’ll be longer before the police work out what they think happened and who they’re looking for, and longer than that before they check the CCTV footage at the ports and alert Interpol, but we can probably use midday as a decent benchmark.’ She speaks so matter-of-factly, it scares me. ‘I’ve had a look at the map. We’ve got six hours. We’ve also got options. We could head south and probably just about reach the Swiss border by midday. East, the roads are better and we can be halfway across Germany.’

  It’s a bizarre choice to have to make. This whole situation is just bizarre. I want to be back home, mourning Lisa, helping the police find out who did this. The cold light of day makes me realise what I’ve done – what we’ve done. This isn’t me, running away from something I didn’t do. It was a moment of sheer panic, my inbuilt fight-or-flight response kicking in. And with Jess staying calm, taking control, it was just so easy.

  ‘I need a moment,’ I say. Jess just looks at me, as if I’ve suggested kicking a puppy.

  ‘You’re not getting cold feet, are you?’

  I rub my eyes. ‘I dunno. I just don’t think I’m doing myself any favours going on the run. I haven’t done anything wrong. I didn’t do this.’

  Jess lets out a snort of derision. ‘And you think they’re going to believe you? I’m not being funny, but your wife lying dead in your hotel bathtub is one thing. Running off to France with the receptionist doesn’t exactly back your story up brilliantly, does it? But hey, go back if you want. Go back to your new life on the inside of a jail cell. Is that what you’d prefer? And what if you do manage to convince them you’re innocent? It’s a big if, but what if? Let’s face it. Your wife will still be dead and everyone will still know you’re the guy who ran off to France with the receptionist a few minutes later. The police get things wrong. The courts get things wrong. Do you think they’re going to believe you didn’t do anything? The papers will have you for breakfast.’