by Ben Cheetham
Face taut, lips compressed into a pale line, Eleanor stood and moved away from the sofa. Guilt clawing at his insides, Julian followed her. At the front door, with difficulty, she brought herself to look at him. He could see she was fighting back tears. “Don’t be angry with your mum,” she said. “She only wants to see you happy.”
“I know.”
“Take care of yourself, Julian.”
“You too.”
“I only hope that one day you find someone you can trust enough to share your inner self with. Because that’s when you know you love someone, isn’t it? When you feel like you can share anything with them – your hopes, your fears, your dreams, even your nightmares.”
Julian made no reply, but his teeth came together like a spring-loaded trap. Somehow he managed to keep his face impassive, although the blood was churning through him. Eleanor hesitated to leave, as if hoping for a change of heart. Julian felt his mask begin to crack. He knew he couldn’t hold it together much longer. He was about to shut the door in Eleanor’s face, when she turned away. As fast as she walked, she hadn’t made it to the gate, by the time the first tears were running down Julian’s face. Shoulders quaking, he hurried towards his bedroom. He didn’t go into it, though. He went into his mum’s room, and dropped to his knees at her bedside, laying his head on her paralysed hand. Stirring, drowsy-eyed, she slowly moved her other hand to his head. “Shh,” she soothed, her voice breathy, just barely there, stroking his hair as if he was a child that needed calming. “It’ll be alright.”
“No it won’t,” said Julian, inconsolable.
After a while, Julian’s sobs faded away. He lifted his head and saw that his mum had sunk back into her medicated sleep. She looked painfully old and frail. The last year had clawed away almost every remaining trace of the woman who used to pick him up and swing him around in the air as a young boy. He bent to kiss her cheek. Then he left the room and the house. He drove to the factory, made his way to his office and opened the safe. He took out a pile of newspapers and flipped through them, passing headlines such as ‘Fifth Body Discovered Buried In Woods Near Death House’ and ‘Third Local Man Arrested In Death House Investigation’ and ‘No Charges To Be Brought Against Julian Harris’ and ‘Susan Carter’s Parents Hail Father and Son As Heroes’. At the centre of the pile nestled a videotape – his dad’s tape. As he’d done dozens of times before, Julian stared at it with an agonised uncertainty. Only this time he didn’t return it to the safe, this time he snatched it up and started unreeling its insides. He piled the shiny black tape in a metal wastepaper bin, took some matches from his desk drawer, struck one and held it to the tape. As it crackled and melted, he muttered, “Not even a different kind of lie. Just more of the same.”
When Julian was sure the tape was destroyed beyond repair, he returned home and slept only because his eyes refused to stay open.
In the morning at breakfast, Julian watched his mum out of the corner of his eye, wondering what she remembered about the previous night. Several times he caught her giving him inquisitive sidelong glances too. When Jake took Henry for his walk, he said to her, “I had a visitor last night after you went to bed.”
“Oh really, who?”
“Don’t be coy, Mum. You know who.”
Christine looked at him direct now, eyes full of eager enquiry. “So come on, tell me how it went.”
As Julian had suspected, she’d been too heavily medicated to remember his visit to her bedroom. “Me and Eleanor are over, finished.” His voice was gentle, but there was a ring of finality in it. “I know you mean well, Mum, but I’m asking you, please leave it alone.”
Christine shook her head in disbelief and dissent. “Eleanor loves you. Don’t you know how rare love is in this world? You’d have to be insane to-” She broke off as Julian started to stand, reaching to take hold of his wrist. “Okay, Julian, let me say one more thing then I’ll drop it.” He waited mutely for her to continue, eyes on the floor. “Just do me a favour, take a few days off, get away somewhere and think things through. If you feel the same way after that, I promise I’ll never mention Eleanor’s name again.”
“I can’t. The factory-”
“To hell with the factory,” Christine interjected. “Please, Julian, do it as a favour to me, will you?”
It’d be a waste of time, there’s nothing to think over, Julian was about to tell her, when Wanda entered the kitchen, saying, “Julian, you got something odd in the mail.”
He turned to her, panic spiking in his chest. His fear turned into curiosity when he saw what she was holding. “A postcard, what’s odd about that?” said Christine.
“There’s no message on it.”
Wanda handed Julian the postcard. It showed a map of Pembrokeshire surrounded by smaller images of rolling hills, beaches and castles. Someone had ringed the Preseli Mountains in blue biro. Julian flipped the card over. As Wanda had said, there was no message, only his name and address. Like someone in a daze, he traced the outline of the writing with his index finger.
“That is odd,” agreed Christine. “Who do you think it’s from?”
As if prompted into action by her question, Julian hurried to his bedroom. Exchanging uneasy glances, Christine and Wanda followed him. “What are you doing?” asked Christine, as he began pulling clothes out of his drawers and stuffing them into a rucksack. Still getting no reply, she persisted, “Julian! What’s going on? Are you alright?”
He looked at her then, and slowly a smile spread across his face. “Yes,” he said. “Maybe I am.”
The End
Other books by the author
Blood Guilt
Is it ever truly possible to atone for killing someone?
After the death of his son in a freak accident, DI Harlan Miller’s life is spiralling out of control. He’s drinking too much. His marriage and career are on the rocks. But things are about to get even worse for him. A booze-soaked night out and a single wild punch leave a man dead and Harlan facing a manslaughter charge.
Fast-forward four years. Harlan’s prison term is up, but life on the outside holds little promise for him. Divorced, alone, eaten up with guilt, he thinks of nothing beyond atoning for the death he caused. But how do you make up for depriving a wife of her husband and two young boys of their father? Then something happens, something terrible, yet something that holds out a twisted kind of hope for Harlan – the dead man’s youngest son is abducted.
From that moment Harlan’s life has only one purpose – finding the boy. So begins a frantic race against time that leads him to a place darker than anything he experienced as a policeman and a stark moral choice that compels him to question the law he once enforced.
Set in the northern English city of Sheffield, Blood Guilt is a gritty crime thriller that'll leave you asking yourself how far you'd go to protect a child from the very real monsters that stalk our world. If you're a fan of fast-paced, hard-hitting fiction that isn't afraid of dark subjects and dangerous questions, this full-length novel is for you.
Blood Guilt is available on Kindle at
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Blood-Guilt-crime-thriller-ebook/dp/B005IHDOK8
And
http://www.amazon.com/Blood-Guilt-crime-thriller-ebook/dp/B005IHDOK8
