He comes closer, bends to kiss me. His lips linger on my cheek. When he pulls away I see from the corner of my eye that he looks to Savannah, who offers him a weak smile.
Iain says nothing and heads to the garage through the internal door from the utility room.
Savannah waits until we hear the door to the garage open and the sound of the van starting before she speaks. ‘That was—’
‘Tense?’ I say, cutting in. ‘Uncomfortable? A picture of how not to do marriage?’ I sigh. ‘All of the above?’
I sip my own coffee. It’s gone cold but I swallow it down anyway, waiting for her to say something.
She clears her throat and I know she’s trying to be tactful.
‘How are you guys? I mean really?’
I search her eyes and wonder how much she knows. Iain has confided in Savannah before. He thinks I don’t know, but I do. I’m not blind. I confide in her too, but not about everything. Some things she just wouldn’t understand.
‘I daren’t tell him I forgot to do some simple things last week.’
Savannah frowns. ‘Why?’
I hesitate. I lower my voice when I say, ‘He’d say I’m rushing to get back to normal. He’d say I’m not ready to do things by myself.’ I shrug. ‘He’s never really here, always working, and I need to be independent, get my life back on track.’
‘He’d understand how you’re feeling. You need to talk more. Be open and he’ll be more receptive, I know it.’
I try to muster a genuine smile but it’s hard.
Savannah’s grown closer to Iain and Elle in the last six months and a part of me really doesn’t know how I should feel about that. Sometimes it makes me feel inadequate.
I look at her now, as she talks to me, but I let her words wash over me.
Savannah’s the opposite to me in terms of looks. Her white-blonde hair to my dark locks. Her hazel-coloured eyes to my ice-blue. Her well-toned, slender limbs to my . . . well, more fleshed-out physique. But we matched perfectly in terms of personality.
Up until the accident, at least.
Something changed in Savannah after that day. Whether she just didn’t know what to say to make things right, I don’t know, but it hurt.
A lot.
Still does.
When I was in hospital, she wasn’t really there. I kept telling myself it was because she was so busy, but I’ve got better, healed over the last six months, and I guess we’re trying to bring our friendship back to where it was before.
‘It’ll be OK, chick,’ she’s saying to me as I drag my thoughts back to the present. ‘Iain must find it hard, though. Elle too.’
I have no choice but to nod, because I haven’t really been listening to what she’s just said before that sentence.
She looks at her watch. ‘I should be going, or I’ll be late.’ She drains the last of her coffee. ‘What’s your plan for the day, other than work?’ She gets up from her chair and straightens out her uniform.
‘Work shortly, then nothing. I need a rest if I’m honest. I feel like I need to get away from all the paperwork for the trial, all the same endless questions about that day.’
She doesn’t speak. She avoids looking me in the eye.
She picks up her phone and glances at it.
‘John came to see me yesterday,’ she says. Now she looks at me, gauging my reaction.
I swallow, throat feeling sore.
‘What did he want?’
‘He said he couldn’t get in touch with you. He thinks you’re avoiding him.’
I remember what it was like to work alongside John. He was, is, a very astute man. Some find him a little intense but he just cares very much about his friends.
‘Have you seen much of him?’ Savannah asks.
I shake my head. ‘Iain wouldn’t like it.’
She nods, like she understands, but she doesn’t, not really.
‘We have been talking on the phone.’
Savannah’s eyes flick to mine, and she raises an eyebrow. ‘And Iain doesn’t know?’
‘You can’t mention this to him or Elle,’ I say. She opens her mouth in protest. ‘It’s just until Paul Selby’s trial.’
She shakes her head, places her hand on my arm, gives it a squeeze. ‘I won’t say anything, but Charlotte . . .’ She trails off, lets her hand fall. ‘Nothing.’ She smiles.
We hear stirrings above. Elle’s emerging from her bedroom. We hear the thump of her feet on the stairs.
Savannah pulls her coat on as Elle comes into the kitchen.
‘Has Mum asked you about the swimming gala?’ Elle says, as she grabs a Coke from the fridge.
Savannah looks at me, then back to Elle. ‘No . . . That’s next Saturday, isn’t it?’
Elle swims for her school and she’s been chosen to compete in a gala, against schools from the county. It’ll be a big deal for me to go watch her.
I have a fear of water. I hate to be around it, but, for Elle, I’ve always tried to keep my fear at bay as much as possible, just so I don’t miss out on something that’s important to her. I had hoped I’d have Iain by my side, just us, as a proper family unit at the gala.
‘Yeah, but practice today. So, can you come next week and watch? I think we’re going to dinner afterwards,’ she says, and I notice a buoyancy in her.
Then I realise what she’s just said.
‘Hang on,’ I say. ‘I didn’t know you had practice today?’
Elle looks at me with a frown. ‘Yeah, I told you about it on Wednesday? Dad’s dropping me off at the pool between jobs but he said you’re picking me up.’
How have I forgotten this?
‘Yes . . .’ I say.
She cocks an eyebrow. ‘You won’t forget, will you?’
‘Of course not.’
She looks to Savannah. ‘Maybe you could pick me up?’
Savannah’s mouth drops open and I know she feels torn between us. ‘I really can’t. I’m working, but I’m sure your mum’s arranged it with Harry already.’ She looks at me.
‘Of course I have.’
I make a mental note to ask Harry if I can dip out of work quickly to collect Elle. He won’t like it but it can’t be helped.
It’s Saturday, the car park at the pool will be busy, and this sets me on edge because it means I’ll be anxious about the makeup covering my scar not being as perfect as I’d like.
I’ve missed many an outing because I can’t bear the thought of anyone staring at me.
‘Remind me what time I have to pick you up?’ I say.
‘Practice finishes at three.’
I smile. ‘I’ll be there.’
Elle has a sceptical expression on her face as she looks to Savannah. ‘So, you’ll come, next week?’
‘Try and stop me.’
‘Great.’
She smiles at her as she leaves the room.
Savannah looks at me with sympathy. ‘Is this happening a lot?’
‘Doctors said there’d be memory loss. It’s normal.’
‘Look, I really have to go now, chick, but call me if you need anything. Anything with Elle, if you need me to have a chat with her.’
I know she means well, but I do feel a little resentful now. Elle idolises Savannah. And that hurts me.
It’s natural Savannah feels a bond with my daughter – she’s known her since she was small – but I’m only human.
I’m not immune to jealousy.
I see Savannah out and head upstairs to get ready for work. I bump into Elle coming out of the bathroom. She gives me a wan smile as she passes.
Then she stops and turns to me. ‘You won’t forget later on, will you?’
‘Three o’clock. I know.’
‘I could always walk back?’
‘No, Elle—’
‘You know you’ll have to drive on the Linkway,’ she interrupts. She looks unsure. ‘I know you don’t like to drive it any more . . .’
‘I can’t let what happened stop me doing everyday
things,’ I say, and immediately feel like a fraud. I’ve let it stop me doing many things during the last six months, but I can’t show weakness to Elle. I have to be strong, outwardly at least.
Elle’s eyes linger on my face, her gaze drifting to my scar. She looks away before I can speak and heads back to her room.
I watch her as she turns and heads off down the landing and realise she’s changed her clothes again. Even as a sixth former, she still has to wear school uniform, and, having taken in her new choice of attire, I silently wish I could justify keeping her in it at weekends without looking like a raving lunatic.
This new style she’s experimenting with is down to her friend Kenzie and I can’t say I approve. Some of the clothes aimed at girls my daughter’s age . . .
I head back to my bedroom and shut the door. I listen for a few moments and when I hear the sound of Elle’s TV, I go to my wardrobe.
I get down on my knees and push some clothes out of the way. I dig right to the back of the wardrobe until my fingers feel the cardboard box.
I bring it out and rest it in my lap.
I place my hands on top, sucking in a deep breath before opening the lid.
Inside are various clippings from newspapers about the missing teens. I don’t really know why I have these. I guess I’ve been following the story on autopilot. I mean, how could I not? Teenage girls, a lot like Elle, have been disappearing in the surrounding villages, and I know what their mothers must be going through.
I see myself in their position. What would that do to me? If I couldn’t protect her?
I glance down at the cuttings. I keep these a secret from Iain. He doesn’t approve, but I had felt a need to help, any way I could.
I remove a few clippings and see the much older ones, from my childhood, bound together with a thin elastic band.
I see Miles. I see his eyes, squinting with laughter, his face yellowed with the time that has passed since this photo was printed.
I should’ve been there. To watch over and protect.
That’s how I feel about Elle. Watch over and protect. No matter what. I was wrong before, to be so detached from her growing up, but I had my reasons. At least now I have time to improve, to be the mother I should’ve been before the accident.
I let my eyes drop to the older paper clippings, give one last look at Miles before covering them up again, closing the lid.
I keep these a secret from Iain too.
I fear he never has and never will understand.
CHAPTER 5
CHARLOTTE
I relish the light breeze as I walk down the road from where I parked my car, towards the heart of the village, the epicentre of all our lives – the village hall, the two pubs, and the corner shops and independents.
I had to drive on the Linkway but today my nerves held better than usual, which means I’ll be able to get through the morning that bit more easily.
I guess thoughts of Ruth, Caroline and the others are too much at the forefront of my mind to care too much about my problems, which, let’s face it, pale in comparison.
I glance at all the cars parked along the high street and am glad I made the decision to park further away and avoid the stress.
Saturday parking is a nightmare here.
I make sure I hug the side of the pavement that’s furthest from the road, as another car comes around the bend at speed. The backdraught sends my hair flailing around my face, and I scramble to pull it back down to cover myself. Instantly I’m a little ashamed. Given what’s going on, a facial scar should be the last thing on my mind, let alone anyone else’s.
Everyone else in this village is used to my face by now, so why can’t I relax?
I used to think village life would be perfect, a safe place to raise my daughter, but scratch beneath that shiny veneer . . .
It’s bad enough that I have to work for Harry Evans, that small shit of a man I mentioned earlier, who thinks I owe him something, especially because he lets me work alongside his son.
‘This shop is a family affair, Charlotte,’ he’d said to me when I asked if there was any chance of work. ‘It’s tradition, you see.’
Well, yes, I did see, and honestly I didn’t care. I just wanted a job after life so cruelly took my old one away. There was no way I could go back to working full-time, not yet.
Savannah said the hospital would have me back in a heartbeat, but I’m not ready. Still, the thought’s comforting.
I come into the heart of the village now, passing the Black Bull pub as I cross the road towards the monument ahead. Just on the other side is the newsagent’s. Evans’s, as it’s so imaginatively called, is already open. I look at my watch. Harry’s opened early.
I step into the shop, the bell ringing as I push the door open. I cringe. Any chance of avoiding Harry for a bit longer is quashed. My eyes do a quick sweep of the area and I see that Dale’s not in yet either.
Dale is Harry’s son. He’s eighteen and has a huge crush on Elle. I might’ve thought it sweet once, but now I know what an idiot Harry is, the less I have to do with the Evans family the better. Keep it professional, do my job, get paid, go home.
‘You’re late,’ Harry says, as he marches down the shop towards me.
I shrug my coat off and avoid his penetrating, dark, beady, bird-like eyes. ‘My watch says it’s five to,’ I say, breezily, trying to remind myself I need to be sweet because I have to ask him to let me out of work to pick Elle up from swimming.
‘You know I run a tight ship, Charlotte,’ he says as he heaves a large package of newspapers off the floor beside the counter. He grabs a Stanley knife and quickly cuts the plastic ties that hold the bundle together.
‘I’m expecting the shop to be busier today, what with those girls being found. There’ll be journalists, maybe even news reporters.’ He pauses, eyes looking away into somewhere far off. ‘Imagine that, eh? My little shop on the BBC evening news.’
I stare at him, part horrified yet also unsurprised. Ultimately, I try to look unoffended. This is Harry Evans after all. He’s a man born in the wrong era. Harry’s forty-nine, born at the end of the sixties, but he’s a fifties man at heart, set in his ways with views just as out of date and offensive as his clothes.
He smooths a rough hand over the front of a tabloid, a grin pulling at the side of his mouth as I give him the once-over.
He’s dressed in some kind of brown overcoat today, with light, mustard-coloured, checked trousers.
Who even sells such monstrosities?
Underneath that overcoat I know he’ll be wearing a patterned shirt and tie that both clash with his trousers. Harry thinks it makes him eccentric and a character of the village. I know, along with everyone else, that he just looks the pretentious twat he is.
I glance at his shoes and allow myself an inward smile.
He’s all about the clothes, and the coiffed hair but I look further and cast an eye on his shoes and see him for what he really is.
The shoes are well worn, the leather down to the bare board on the toes. Harry Evans isn’t just a pretentious twat. He’s a tight pretentious twat.
‘Dale not in yet?’ I say as I ease past Harry’s bulk.
‘Any minute now,’ he says, ripping into the last of the newspaper bundles. ‘Hurry up and get back here. This is your job, remember?’
I don’t bother to reply, instead taking slightly longer than I need to put my bag in my locker and hang up my coat. I quickly check my reflection in the mirror – hate what I see; my foundation is patchy around my scar – before heading back to the shop floor just in time to see Dale has arrived and Harry’s already got him pulling something down from the shop window.
That’s funny, because there’s only one advert in the window as far as I know . . .
‘Dale?’ I say, coming up behind him.
He half-turns his face to me. ‘Oh, hey, Charlotte. You OK?’ He stops peeling off the poster in the window to give me his full attention. ‘D’ya hear about those g
irls?’ He looks all conspiratorial, leaning in closer to me than is comfortable. ‘Sick, innit?’
My eyebrows knit together then. ‘Yeah . . .’ I say, shaking my head, barely listening. ‘What’s that you’re taking down?’
Dale looks down at the poster half-peeled from the window. ‘Oh, Dad said it had to come down now.’ He pauses. ‘Thought you’d OK’d it.’
I see now what I already knew. It’s an A4 poster ad for our – or rather Iain’s – plumbing business.
Dale must see that I’m pissed off. ‘Sorry, I thought Dad had told you,’ he says, twisting the poster in his hands, nerves getting the better of him now.
‘He didn’t.’
‘Nor did I need to.’
Dale and I both turn at the sound of Harry’s voice as he comes out from the back. He carries what looks like another poster in his hands.
‘It was a temporary favour, Charlotte. I didn’t charge you for ad space seeing as you’re an employee, but, well . . .’ He shrugs. ‘Can’t be seen to have favourites.’
I watch as he hands Dale a replacement sign to stick in the window. It’s some ad for local garden services.
‘Harry,’ I say. ‘Please, we need all the help we can get at the moment. There’s so much competition with us being so close to other towns, people undercutting. We really need the money right now.’
Dale looks at me and gives me a sympathetic smile, but it’s clear he’s not going to speak up for me. Harry looks at me with indifference.
‘Plenty more hours if you want them, Mrs Monroe. All you have to do is ask,’ he says, without an ounce of sympathy.
He walks off then, leaving me with Dale, who suddenly looks more embarrassed than I am. There’s an awkward silence between us and I’m relieved when a man and woman enter the shop, both on their mobiles, speaking fast and trying hard to hide the excitement in their voices.
Dale looks at me as we hear the snippets of their conversations.
‘They’re too maggoty to be viewed by family members, that’s what I heard . . .’
‘. . . Yes, that’s what we thought, but they were in different stages of decomposition, so it’s going to be hard to say how each died . . .’
Dale goes to serve one of them with several newspapers and I move away from the counter. I feel Dale’s eyes following my movements.
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