Watching Over Me

by M K Farrar

  Sitting on the outside of the window, perched on the windowsill in the rain, was the figure of a boy. His knees were pulled up to his chest, and his arms wrapped around his shins.

  Jesus Christ.

  “Edward?”

  What the hell was he doing there?

  Shock and indecision froze her in place.

  If she moved too quickly, would the boy fall? How on earth had he even managed to climb up there? Had he used a ladder? Then she remembered the small overhang sheltering the downstairs neighbour’s backdoor, which was positioned directly beneath the bathroom. He must have used that to climb up, but why? What was he doing here? What did he want?

  She knew her reaction was wrong. She was supposed to be helping this boy, not hiding away from him, frightened, as though she was the child. The vulnerable one.

  Amy pulled herself together and clambered to her feet. She went over to the window. One half opened, but she was worried that when she pushed the window open, she’d knock him off the ledge. Her biggest fear now was that she’d do or say something that would make him fall.

  “Edward?” She risked tapping lightly against the glass. “Edward, I’m going to open the window so you can climb in, but you need to move to one side, okay?”

  He seemed to register her.

  He shuffled over, but his feet and knees were still blocking the window. If she pushed it open, she’d knock him off.

  “You need to hang your legs off the sill,” she called out to him. She’d opened the window a crack to ensure he could hear her instructions.

  His hands pressed between the wall and the glass pane. “I can’t. I’ll fall.”

  “No, you won’t.” She prayed he wouldn’t. “I’ll grab you as soon as I open the window, okay?”

  “No, it’s not okay.”

  “You don’t have any choice, Edward. Either we do this, or you’re going to have to climb back down again.” She didn’t know how or why he’d managed to climb up in the first place.

  “No, I can’t do that.”

  “Okay, so move your legs and let me open the window.”

  He whimpered in fear.

  “One, two, three,” she counted down.

  Edward twisted his body, letting his legs dangle off the sill and down the side of the building. Quickly, she opened the window and reached out and grabbed his arm. She didn’t know if she’d even have enough strength to hold on to him if he did fall. Despite his age, he was taller and heavier than her, plus he’d have gravity on his side. But she couldn’t let herself think like that. This whole thing felt utterly insane, and she just needed to get him inside the flat.

  Amy kept hold of his arm, and Edward shuffled along until he was in the opening. Then she pulled him in, his body sideways, so his head and torso tumbled in before his legs, and they both ended up in a heap on the bathroom floor.

  He was shaking badly.

  She untangled herself from him and got to her feet and then reached down to help him up as well. The water was still running for her bath—though of course she had no intention of taking a soak now—the air steamy and fragrant. She reached out and turned off the tap and took out the plug, allowing the water to run back down the drain.

  He was shivering violently, his arms wrapped around his frame.

  “Jesus, you’re freezing.”

  She grabbed the fluffy white towel she’d been planning on using herself and wrapped it around his shoulders. Water dripped onto the linoleum from his hair and clothes.

  Amy guided him out of the bathroom and into her bedroom and pushed him down to sit on the end of the bed. It flashed across her mind that he was going to make her bedding wet, but that didn’t really matter now. What the hell was going on here? The evening had taken a turn she certainly hadn’t been expecting.

  Gary hadn’t collected all of his stuff from the flat, and she was sure she’d have a change of clothes for Edward. They were about the same height, even if Gary was broader around the shoulders.

  First of all, she needed him to answer some questions. She stopped in front of him and then dropped to a crouch so she could look up into his face.

  “Edward, what on earth were you doing at my bathroom window?”

  As was his habit, he didn’t meet her eye, staring down at his hands instead. “I wanted to talk to you.”

  “You could have come to my office.” Did he know she’d been suspended? It had happened last thing Friday afternoon, so she couldn’t see how. “Or even knocked on my front door.”

  His lips twisted. “Then everyone would know I’d been there.”

  “That would have been okay, Edward. You’re allowed to be at my office, remember?”

  “I don’t know who’s reporting back on me. Who’s telling my dad.”

  She recognised his paranoia. “No one is telling your dad anything, Edward.”

  “Don’t lie to me!” He raised his gaze to meet hers, a flash of anger in his eyes. “I know you talk to other people about me.”

  She couldn’t deny that, not fully.

  “So, you came to my house instead?”

  “I didn’t want anyone to see me. I thought if I came around the back, then no one would know.”

  So, he knew where she lived. She remembered the phone calls. The person she’d thought she’d seen on the street. “Have you been watching me, Edward? Have you been calling the flat?”

  He jerked back, instantly offended. “No! Why would I do that?”

  She didn’t want to push him away. He’d bridged this divide, had reached out to her. She lifted both hands in defence.

  “Hey, it’s okay. I was only asking a question. So, you came to the back of the building and climbed up to the window.”

  He sniffed and nodded. “I didn’t know it was the bathroom. I’d thought I would be able to see you, and bang on the glass so you’d let me in. Then I kind of got stuck.” He hung his head in embarrassment. “It started to rain. The windowsill got slippery. I didn’t know what to do.”

  “You did the right thing by staying put. You could have fallen.”

  “Yeah, that scared me.” He sounded younger than his years.

  She offered a smile. “I’m not surprised. I would have been scared, too.” She paused for a moment and then asked, “What did you want to see me about, Edward? It must have been really important for you to sneak around like this.”

  He lowered his voice, as though he was still worried people would hear him. “You’re right about my dad.”

  His words were a punch to her chest. “I am? Right about him hurting you?”

  “Not only that. Right about my mum, too.”

  “Edward, we should call the police.”

  He jerked back in alarm. “No, don’t do that!”

  “Why don’t you want me to call the police?”

  “I think my dad knows people. I don’t know how.”

  She frowned. “People? What do you mean by people?”

  “He seems to know how to make problems go away.”

  She thought to how she was fired earlier, removing her from his problem of having her dig into things too deeply.

  “Who with?”

  “Everyone! People at school, friends, my mother.” He paused and then added, “the police.”

  David Norton’s kind face popped into her head. Surely Edward didn’t mean the detective inspector as well.

  “I’m sure that can’t be true, Edward.”

  “You don’t believe me either!” His eyes brightened with panic.

  “I do, Edward. Honestly, I do. I’m just trying to get my head around the reason you think you can’t even trust the police.”

  “They didn’t exactly try hard to find Mum. They just accepted what my dad said and moved on.”

  “I thought they had officers comb over your house for signs of evidence that something bad had happened?”

  He sniffed. “He’s good at covering his tracks.”

  Ice ran through her veins. “What are you saying, Edward? T
hat you think something bad happened to your mum?”

  “She wouldn’t just have left me. I’m sure of it. She loved me. She put me to bed every night, would make me warm milk, and recite a prayer to me. A mum who doesn’t care doesn’t do that kind of thing.”

  Was he telling the truth, or were these just the words of an insecure, grieving boy?

  But they resonated with everything she’d been thinking.

  She glanced down to see dots of red had appeared through the washed-out blue of his jeans. Blood. Had he cut himself when he’d come through the window? But no, the jeans weren’t damaged at all. His injuries were hidden beneath his clothing, just as they’d been so many times before.

  “My God, Edward! You’re bleeding.”

  “It’s nothing. Just some cuts.”

  “Did your dad do this to you?”

  Edward pressed his lips together and glanced away.

  “Jesus.” She rubbed her hand over her mouth, trying to figure out what to do. Her phone was broken, so if she went to use the one at the end of the street, it would mean leaving Edward here, alone. She didn’t want to drag him back out into the rain either.

  Shit.

  Calling the social worker would be an option, or even David. Edward was bleeding, and he was clearly being hurt.

  “I need to leave you here for five minutes so I can go and call from the phone box. Will you be all right here?”

  His eyes widened in panic. “No, please. Don’t leave me.”

  “It’ll only be for five minutes.”

  “I don’t want to be on my own.”

  Her heart broke for the boy.

  Cautiously, she sat on the edge of the bed. “Edward, I have to tell someone you’re here, okay? If your father is hurting you, then the correct authorities need to know.”

  “I don’t trust them.”

  “Why not?”

  “They never believe me. The police left me with him. My headmaster expelled me. Even the social worker thinks I’m weird.”

  “She doesn’t think that,” she said, but she stopped herself from going any further.

  He was right. Even Ros had warned her against Edward and had told her that he made people uncomfortable. When adults were saying things like that behind his back—and god only knew what else to his face—it was no wonder he was struggling.

  Everyone in his life had failed him. His father, his teachers, his headmaster, the police. She could hardly blame him for not trusting anyone. And yet he had come here, to her. He trusted her, and she couldn’t bring herself to destroy that trust. She’d always believed she would be a terrible mother, but at least she knew she was a good therapist, despite what bloody Timothy Verte thought about her. She’d connected with this boy, and he was coming to her for help at a time when he felt he couldn’t go to anyone else.

  “What if I could show you proof?” he said, his voice so quiet she had to strain to hear.

  “What?”

  “Proof of what happened to Mum?”

  “You can show me proof? How? Where?” Despite herself, excitement sparked within her. She could prove them all wrong—Timothy, in particular—show them her instincts were correct. Immediately, a wave of shame swept over her. This wasn’t about her or her career. There was a vulnerable boy sitting on her bed. She shouldn’t even be considering herself.

  “It’s at the house.”

  “We need to take it to the police.”

  “No, not the police. Not yet. I just want to show you first. You might not think it’s enough.”

  “You could go and get it. Bring it to me.”

  “I can’t. It’s to do with the house, and my dad will notice if it’s gone.”

  She chewed her lower lip, torn. “Is your dad likely to be home?”

  Edward shook his head. “No. He goes bowling tonight.”

  “So, we could go into the house and he wouldn’t know we were there.”

  “Yeah, if we’re quick.”

  She wanted to call the detective and tell him what was happening, but there was no possibility of her doing so without Edward knowing. If only she hadn’t broken her home phone, and then maybe she could have sneaked in a call without Edward noticing, but there was no way she could get away with going to a phone box. The last thing she wanted to do was scare him away. They were finally making some progress.

  “Okay,” she agreed. “Let’s go to your house. Are you going to be okay going out in the rain again?” He’d barely dried off from his last soaking. She remembered that she was going to get him some of Gary’s old clothes. “Wait a second. I’ll find you something dry to change into.”

  She found him some dry clothes and then left him in her bedroom to change. Her own clothes were still damp, so she quickly locked herself in the bathroom—the floor still wet and the window open from where she’d pulled Edward inside—and switched her damp outfit for a slightly musty-smelling, but dry, pair of jeans and T-shirt from the hamper.

  When she let herself out of the bathroom, he was waiting for her in the hallway.

  “Ready?” she asked him.

  Edward gave a determined nod.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Amy had no idea if she was doing the right thing.

  To anyone who might notice them, she hoped they just looked like a mother and son rushing down the street to get out of the rain. She would have had to have been a young mother—sixteen years old at the time of giving birth—but it wasn’t as though it didn’t happen.

  They hurried side by side towards the Tube station. The Underground was a different place at this time compared to when she normally travelled at rush hour.

  The station guard gave them both a smile and nod as they passed through the gates and headed down the stairs towards the trains. They passed a few groups of people dressed up, clearly on their way out for a night on the town. The carriage was shared with a handful of businessmen and a couple of women on their way home after working late, or perhaps after having a drink or two with colleagues when they’d finished work.

  Tension radiated from Edward’s body as they took a seat. His shoulders were rigid, his hands clenched into fists. He wasn’t speaking, but she was used to him not talking much.

  Her stomach churned with nerves. What would happen if they got to the house, only to find Robert Swain was home earlier than intended? Or what if he arrived home when they were already there? If that happened, there was a good chance she’d end up fired rather than just suspended. She might even lose her license to practice therapy.

  A part of her wanted to put a halt to this whole thing, but in the front of her mind was the boy. He’d been failed on so many levels, and she didn’t want to be just another adult who’d let him down. Another adult he couldn’t trust. What kind of permanent damage was that likely to do to him?

  How long had Edward known the truth about what had happened to his mother? No wonder he’d been struggling with school, amongst other things. She couldn’t imagine living with someone, trying to pretend everything was normal, when you knew they’d done something terrible to someone you loved. She wanted to ask him, but this was hardly something you could bring up in public, plus the rumble and screech of the train as it hurtled through the tunnels meant she’d have had to raise her voice to be heard. She couldn’t risk anyone else overhearing.

  They reached Edward’s stop, and both stood. The train doors slid open, and they followed the platform down to the tunnel that led to the exit. Standing to one side, with Edward in front of her, she rode the escalator to the top, passed through the barriers, and stepped out onto the street.

  It was dark now, and the area felt even more run-down and threatening than it had the last time she’d been here. A homeless person called out something to them, but she pressed her hand to Edward’s back and propelled them on. Her heart thudded a tribal beat, and she had to consciously breathe more slowly to prevent herself hyperventilating. She was sure she’d hear Robert’s shout come from behind them, demanding to know
what she was doing with his son.

  Surprisingly, now he was nearer to home, Edward seemed to have relaxed. His shoulders had gone back, his chin lifted. The frightened boy she’d saved from her bathroom windowsill had receded, and a more confident young man walked beside her. Was the new confidence brought on by the knowledge that all of this might be over soon? That his father would be put behind bars, and a new part of his life would begin? Her stomach fluttered with nerves again. What if it didn’t happen that way? What if Robert came home? This could all still go very wrong.

  She thought of something. The moment Edward showed her proof, she’d call David and get him to come straight to the house. She already knew they had a home phone because she’d called the number herself when she’d been trying to chase Edward up because of his missed appointment. Had she thought to bring his card with her? Suddenly panicked, she checked her coat pockets. Her fingers met with smooth cardboard, already worn at the corners, and she breathed a sigh of relief.

  They followed the same route as she’d taken the other day and reached his house. Edward ducked down and picked up a key hidden beneath a loose brick in the small space outside the front of the house where the bins were located. He looked around, as though watching out for the imminent arrival of his father, then opened the door.

  “Quick,” he said over his shoulder—the first thing he’d said in some time. “Get inside before anyone sees.”

  She nodded and hurriedly followed, stepping into the hallway. “What is it you need to show me, Edward?”

  Edward closed the door behind them. “This way.”

  He turned into the room with the bay window, the one she’d correctly assumed would be the living room. The floor was sanded floorboards, with a large rug and coffee table in the middle of the room, surrounded by a couple of worn out sofas. In the bay window, a television stood on a stand.

  Amy stared around the room, trying to figure out what on earth it was he could possibly be showing her. The teenage boy smell, or just the scent of a dirty house, she wasn’t sure, was stronger in here. Edward went to one of the sofas and pushed it back from the wall.