The Exes' Revenge

by Jo Jakeman

  I straightened up and exhaled. If Phillip was nearby, he must have heard the sound.

  A door opened next door and a small, irate man ran out.

  “Hi,” I said, stepping in front of him. “Have you seen Rachel?”

  “That’s my car!”

  “I need to find Rachel,” I said.

  Naomi went out into the road and looked up and down it while the neighbor went to assess the damage to his car. He put his hands on his bald head and walked around the vehicle.

  “We’ve only had it three weeks,” he said.

  “Sorry, but this is important. Rachel has my son.”

  I yanked on his arm, pulling him round to face me.

  “Do you know where she is or not?” I was angry and I was desperate, and couldn’t care less about his car.

  He arched away from me in shock and then saw my face for the first time.

  “Are you okay?” he asked. “Your face!”

  I touched my nose instinctively, knew it was misshapen, bloodied, and probably broken. I watched as his wide eyes traveled to Naomi and widened even more. She looked even worse than I did. One of her eyes was half closed—I was surprised she’d been able to see well enough to drive. Seeing the horror on the small man’s face made me see us through his eyes. It was the stuff of nightmares. Bruised faces, ripped clothes, bare feet. We looked like we’d been pulled from a car wreck.

  “The man who hurt us is coming here for Rachel and my son.”

  His eyes snapped back to mine.

  “There was a man here not fifteen minutes ago. It wasn’t—”

  “Did he see Rachel?”

  “He had bruises too, but he said that—”

  “What about Rachel?” Naomi was almost shouting at him.

  “No. I spoke to her around lunchtime, and she said she was on her way to the pictures. She’s not back yet.”

  Relief nearly knocked me off my feet and I steadied myself against the cool black railings.

  “What did you tell the man?” I asked.

  “Same as I’ve told you. Are you sure you’re okay? Do you think you should be getting yourself to the hospital?” He winced as he looked at my nose.

  “Do you know where he went?”

  “To the nearest cinema, I assume. He didn’t seem to be in a huge rush. Said she must have forgotten their meeting.”

  I looked at Naomi, unsure what to do next but feeling I couldn’t just sit by and wait for something to happen. Rachel should have been home by now. Where were they?

  “I need you to keep an eye out for Rachel coming home,” I said to the neighbor. “Really watch the front of the house. It’s important that she doesn’t speak to that man who came earlier. Tell her to call Imogen straightaway, and call the police if you see that man again.”

  He puffed out his chest with a sense of importance.

  “Well, yes, of course.”

  I motioned to Naomi to get in the car but shook my head as she reached the driver’s side door.

  “I’ll drive,” I said.

  “What about my car?” the man said.

  I glared at him and he shrank away from me. Naomi had left the keys in the ignition and the engine started the first time. I put the car in first gear and had to press the accelerator hard to get the car to bump forward.

  I continued slowly up the road, accelerator hard to the floor, leg straining with the effort. The car picked up and lurched forward, gathering speed over the crest of the hill and down the other side, around the crescent and back onto the busy thoroughfare.

  “At least we know that Phillip hasn’t got him yet. Rachel must have got the text about Phillip coming to pick Alistair up. I’m worried that she’s already sent him a message thinking he’s me arranging a different time or place. The house, maybe? Perhaps she thinks she’s doing me a favor by bringing him home?”

  “Ruby will deal with it if she does.”

  “You think? She’s always quick to side with Phillip.”

  “Not this time,” said Naomi. “She’ll be scared. She’s probably already got the police there by now.”

  “Call my home number and see if she’s heard anything.”

  I gave Naomi the number and she keyed it in.

  “Battery’s running low,” she said.

  “Shit.”

  I turned the car and started heading toward the house. Praying all the while that I could get to Alistair before Phillip did.

  “Ruby, it’s Naomi. . . . No, he wasn’t there. I guess that means they’ve not turned up there either? . . . No. Sit tight—we’ll look for them as soon as we’ve found Alistair, okay? . . . I know, I know. But they’re chipped, right, so as soon as someone finds them . . . That’s right. See? It’ll be okay. We’ll be back in”—she looked at me as she said—“ten minutes?” I nodded and she said into the phone, “Yeah, ten minutes.”

  She started to take the phone away from her ear and then changed her mind. “Oh, wait, Ruby? Ruby?” She looked at the screen but she’d already lost her. “I was going to ask her what the police said, but she was freaking out about the dogs. Do we need to get our stories straight before we get home and start talking to the police?”

  “Tell them the truth. It’s okay. As long as I get Alistair back, I don’t care what the police think.”

  “You will get him back. Phil ain’t got him yet. He still thinks we’re locked up. He don’t even know that we’re looking for him.”

  She was right. Phillip wouldn’t expect us to be looking for Alistair yet. He was in no rush. I came to a halt at a three-way intersection and waited for a break in the traffic. I was looking at every car as it drove past to see if it was Rachel or Phillip.

  Where are you, Rachel?

  Naomi’s mobile rang.

  “What shall I do?” she said.

  “Answer it!”

  “Hello?”

  She listened. I kept glancing over at her.

  “Who is it?” I hissed.

  “Oh, hi, yeah. No, I’m with her now—she’s driving.”

  “Who is it? Pass me the phone!” I reached for the phone, but she elbowed me away and transferred the phone to her other hand.

  “We’ll be right there.”

  She hung up the phone and turned to me.

  “That was your mum. Guess who’s just turned up at her house?”

  CHAPTER 20

  10 days before the funeral

  I kissed Alistair all over his face and hair and then again, over and over.

  “You left some kisses at home,” I said, and kissed him again.

  “Mummy?”

  “Yes?”

  “What happened to your face?”

  “I fell over a cat in the garden. I was carrying a cup of tea so didn’t have my hands free and just . . . splat! Broke the fall with my nose.”

  “What cat was it?”

  “Big, fluffy ginger one.”

  “Did you hurt it?”

  “No, but when I catch it, I’ll . . .” And I chased him about the room, tickling his sides and his tummy. I caught him and breathed him in.

  “I love you so, so much,” I said.

  “Love you most. Did Nomey fall over a cat too?”

  I looked at her half-closed eye and the bruising on her cheek.

  “No, Naomi tripped down the stairs. Would you believe she fell over her own feet?”

  He skipped away, saying, “Silly Nomey.”

  We were at Bill the gardener’s house. We couldn’t be sure that Phillip wasn’t going to turn up at Mother’s. Couldn’t be sure he wasn’t there already.

  Rachel and Naomi were eyeing each other warily, while Mother reached out a hand to me and snatched it back again before she could make contact. She opened her mouth and then shut it before unfamiliar words came out. Her e
yes darted from me to the closed door where Alistair sat watching television. Bill was making hot chocolates with the ease of a man at home in his surroundings. Whipped cream from a can. I shook my head when he offered marshmallows, but he put them on anyway and said, “You need feeding up, love.”

  Now wasn’t the time to question Mother about their relationship, but I liked seeing how comfortable they were in each other’s company.

  “Spain?” Mother said, picking up on our earlier conversation now that Alistair was out of earshot.

  “You’ve seen what he’s capable of. It’s the only way to stop Phillip getting his hands on Alistair. Rachel offered to take him away. The Easter holidays are about to start, so no one’s going to ask any questions. I could book a resort, but it would be better if they could stay with Aunty Margaret. Please, Mother, go with them. You said yourself you were considering going there to recuperate.”

  What I didn’t say was that it also had the added bonus of getting everyone I cared about out of the country, where I knew Phillip couldn’t follow. I wouldn’t put it past him to take out his anger on any or all of them.

  “Of course. But I don’t see why you aren’t coming as well. If everything is as bad as you say it is . . . And what’s to stop him coming out to Spain?”

  “He won’t expect me to let Alistair far from my side,” I said. “He’ll be looking for Alistair wherever I am. And besides, Naomi has Phillip’s passport.”

  Naomi had been planning to leave Phillip for months, but seeing as he had stopped her working, she hadn’t the means. The women’s refuge had advised that it would be easier for her if she could take a passport and birth certificate with her when she fled. She’d taken his too so that he wouldn’t find his and realize what she’d done. This way, she hoped, he’d think they’d put them somewhere “safe.”

  “How bad was it?” I asked Naomi.

  “I dunno. Not too bad, I suppose. There’s always someone who’s got it worse, i’nt there? I thought about tellin’ someone or going to the police or whatever, but I never thought they’d believe me. I’ve been in trouble with the police before. You know, small stuff. Forgery, fraud . . . Got a suspended sentence.”

  “Does Phillip know?”

  “’Course he does. It was something else he could use to control me. And then, failing that, he’d use his fists. I mean, he never left bruises or did anything in front of anyone who could back me up. Besides, it’s only painful for as long as it hurts, right? I’d just think, ‘This time next week it won’t hurt anymore.’ It was the stuff he said, you know? The threats . . . And, I suppose, after a while, he had me believing that it were my fault. And you start to wonder, don’t you? Whether you could have done summat to stop it. And where could I have gone anyway?”

  I wished I could have told her that I would have helped, but I couldn’t lie to her. I’d misjudged her and wouldn’t have been the first person to come to her aid.

  “He didn’t hit me,” I said. “He pushed me down the stairs and, you know, did that stuff with pressure points. There was one incident where he slammed me into a wall and I ended up with a black eye, but he never left a mark after that. The knuckle behind the ear was one of his favorites ways to subdue. He liked to bring his work home. But mostly it was the things that Phillip said and how he treated me that hurt the worst. I guess I had it easier than you.”

  “If you believe that, you’re dumber than you look,” she said.

  I’d told her that she should leave now, while she could, and was relieved when she refused to leave me to face Phillip on my own. After seeing with her own eyes that Alistair was safe, she drove to get his passport from our home.

  Rachel hitched herself up onto the kitchen counter and Mother didn’t even roll her eyes.

  “How did you know that text wasn’t from me?” I asked her.

  “Two things. First, it would take more than a tummy bug for you to put Alistair in Phillip’s care. He’d be safer in a lion enclosure. In fact, even if the text had been from you, I’d assume you’d lost your mental faculties and I’d have staged an intervention anyway. But the thing that sealed it for me—” She turned to Bill and took the proffered hot chocolate. “Thanks, Bill. It was the fact that you used text speak. A number two instead of the word ‘to’? And the letter ‘u’ instead of the word? That’s when I knew you’d been abducted by aliens.”

  I leaned over and kissed her cheek.

  “You’re a wonderful woman, Rachel Scott.”

  “I’ve often thought so. When I got to your mum’s, I checked my messages, and as well as the one from you, Clive from next door called and said people had been looking for me all day and a madwoman had crashed into his car and driven off. I reckoned that was you and suggested to your mum we went somewhere else just in case Phillip was on his way.”

  “May I have a word, Imogen?” Mother asked.

  I followed Mother into the conservatory.

  “Yes?”

  “Should I be worried?”

  “No, you’re completely safe.”

  “Not about me. You! I don’t like the idea of leaving you behind.”

  I nodded. “He’s coming for Alistair,” I said. “And he’s going to make me pay. But all I care about right now is getting you and Alistair to safety. Once you’re out of the country, I’ll have nothing to lose.”

  “For goodness’ sake.” She sighed, her exasperation shining through. “What good will it do Alistair if you’re hurt . . . or worse?”

  “I don’t plan on being hurt. I’ll get him away from Alistair, but I won’t run from him. But if . . . if anything does happen to me—”

  “Nonsense. I won’t have you talking like this!” snapped Mother.

  “If anything does happen to me, you’ll take care of him, won’t you?”

  Instead of facing a future without Alistair, I was contemplating the fact that Alistair might be facing a future without me.

  “Come with us, Imogen.” Her voice was softer now. “I was there, remember—I saw the way he treated you. You forget I was on the sidelines watching throughout your entire marriage.”

  “I don’t remember you offering any help at the time,” I said without bitterness.

  “What could I possibly have said? You’ve never listened to me. I warned Phillip off on more than one occasion, but he told me to keep my nose out. Said that he would tell you things that I didn’t want you to know.”

  “Like what?”

  Mother brushed invisible fibers off her sleeve.

  “Do we have to do this now?” she said with a sour look on her face.

  “I can’t think of a better time. I need to know everything that Phillip could use against me.”

  “Imogen, it’s complicated.”

  “So simplify it.”

  Mother walked to the window and folded her arms. It was gloomy outside and the lamp was on in the corner. I could see her face reflected in the glass.

  “It’s your father.”

  “What about him?”

  “I drove him to it.”

  She waited for me to speak, and when I didn’t, she took a deep breath before continuing.

  “We’d had problems when you were little, the place we were before. There was a girl who went missing. It was a huge misunderstanding. She lived five doors up the road from us and your father offered her a lift home. It wasn’t like he forced her in the car or snatched her off the street or anything, but to hear the news on the radio—well, it was like he was a pervert.”

  “What happened?” I asked. It was the first I’d heard about this and I was fearful of how the story might end.

  “He took her to the park. It was nothing really. Her aunt was meant to pick her up, but she was running late. When the girl wasn’t where she said she’d be, well, the aunt panicked and called the police. Some of the children described the car they saw her
getting into. They said it was a brown Cortina like your father’s.

  “The police found them at the park eating ice cream. The girl said he’d tried to kiss her, which was absolute rubbish. He only received a caution, but people called him names and we had a brick through the front window. Well, after that we had no choice but to move. Your father lost his job. I lost friends. They said they didn’t believe a word of what the papers said, but they wondered. How could they not? I did, and I was his wife. What kind of person takes a young girl he hardly knows to the park? He was never the cleverest, your father.

  “You were small at the time. Four years old. We thought it was better to start again, so we moved from Kent to Derbyshire.”

  Another day, in another life, I would have been shocked at the news. But on the day that my ex had attacked me and tried to abduct our son . . . I only felt numb. It had the feel of a story about it. A tale being told that had all the right elements of a page-turner but nothing to do with me. I pictured my dad, smiling, affectionate, and I couldn’t believe that anyone would have considered him capable of such a thing. I was about to say that to Mother, to brush it away as irrelevant, but she was biting her lips and her eyes looked pained.

  “There’s more, isn’t there?” I asked.

  “The day that he died, he was messing around with you and those girls from across the road. I got so mad with him. I told him that I would not have a repeat of what had happened in Kent. He was as angry as I was. He saw it as betrayal, and I suppose it was. He was a fragile man. I knew I’d hurt him by bringing it up again. I was worried that the rumors would follow us and I suppose I was worried that maybe . . . that maybe . . . well, you know, that there was some truth to it. I thought he should be careful how it looked to the neighbors. I told him he wasn’t welcome in my bed that night. I thought he’d sleep on the settee but instead he went to the garage and—”

  She stopped speaking and put two fingers to her lips to stop them from quivering. We both knew what happened next.

  “The last words I’d said to him,” she whispered. “They were so unkind.”

  I went to her and held out my arms. She hesitated for a moment and then sank into them. I was taller than she was and rested my cheek on the top of her head. She felt small and brittle, like the memory of my father. It seemed absurd that people could accuse him of any wrongdoing, but then I had always idolized him. He’d been perfect in my eyes.