Before You Die

by Samantha Hayes

  He started to run as fast as he could, but almost immediately his hoodie got tangled in thorns. He wriggled out of it in a flash and was soon leaping over stumps and fallen branches, smashing his way through the undergrowth, tearing back towards where he thought he’d left his bike. But he’d obviously got it wrong. As he turned round and round, trying to get his bearings, the torchlight struck him full on.

  The man was just a shadow behind the beam, but he’d seen Freddie. Seen the look of horror on his face as he searched for his bike, then turned and fled for his life.

  11

  LORRAINE DIDN’T HAVE a clue what it was at first as Stella held out the item, pushing it towards her until she took it. The odd-shaped curve of tinted plastic was scratched and flecked with dried mud. At either side were holes, presumably where fixings had once been. They were both cracked.

  ‘Thanks, love,’ Lorraine muttered as Stella went outside.

  Jo looked up from the pile of sandwiches she was cutting for their lunchtime picnic. ‘What on earth is it?’

  ‘Gil said I had to give it to you,’ Stella yelled back from the garden. ‘When I saw him in the village earlier.’

  Jo squinted at the item. ‘Poor Gil. I feel sorry for him sometimes.’

  Lorraine was about to ask why, but Stella came running back inside, through to the hallway, returning a moment later. ‘He told me to give you this as well,’ she said breathlessly. ‘It’s horrid but amazing.’

  Lorraine unrolled the sheet of A4 paper. The lines didn’t resolve immediately, but when they did she wasn’t sure what to be more shocked by first, the sublime quality of the pencil drawing or its subject matter.

  ‘Good grief,’ she said.

  ‘Ah, that must be one of Gil’s drawings,’ Jo said, casting a quick glance. ‘He’s bloody talented. I keep telling Sonia they ought to take his work to a gallery or something. He could make a fortune in London.’

  ‘Not with pictures like this he couldn’t.’

  The drawing was obviously done by someone with an eye for detail and photographic accuracy, but with a very troubled mind. The face of the dead body was actually a rotting skull, flesh peeling away from shattered bone with medical detail, while the rest of him was bent around the metallic form of a crumpled motorbike. Lorraine supposed it was night-time. There was something ethereal about the tones that suggested moonlight – a full moon, she guessed.

  Lorraine had seen a lot worse in real life but still, the image made her feel sick. And concerned. She hoped Stella hadn’t studied it too closely. She wasn’t overly protective when it came to gore and grisly stuff in films, but somehow this was different. Being hand-drawn, it was more personal, more real.

  ‘Take a look,’ she said to her sister.

  Jo wiped her hands on a tea towel and moved round next to Lorraine to get a better look at the drawing.

  ‘Oh God,’ she said as she took the paper and pulled it close.

  ‘It’s nasty all right.’

  Lorraine went back to the bit of plastic she’d placed on the pine table among the typical family detritus that had built up there – a pencil case, letters half out of envelopes, a stack of junk mail and free newspapers. She turned the object over a couple of times, put it down again and returned to where Jo was standing.

  ‘Why would he draw something like this? And why give it to me?’

  ‘What do you think it means?’ Jo said, handing the picture back to Lorraine, instinctively washing her hands before touching the food.

  ‘Autistic people sometimes have problems expressing themselves verbally. Given the subject matter – a dead man and a motorbike – it could be he’s still very upset about losing his friend.’

  Jo was nodding, taking bottles of chilled water from the fridge and loading them into an ice box. ‘That sounds plausible.’

  ‘Should we mention it to Sonia? Perhaps call in on the way to the castle.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think that’s necessary,’ Jo replied. ‘I know it might look as though Gil is upset, but he and Dean weren’t exactly best mates. Gil would have just latched on to him.’

  Lorraine nodded slowly, watching as Jo busied herself. ‘Maybe we should tell Tony then.’

  Jo looked up from her packing, her face white and tense. ‘You have to interfere, don’t you? Why don’t you just admit it, Lorraine? You’re jealous. Jealous because I live in this house and jealous of me having friends. Most of all, though, I think you’re jealous because I ditched Malc, and because I have a lover.’ She pressed down hard on a packet of cheese and tomato sandwiches. ‘Go on, admit it.’

  Lorraine folded her arms. ‘Bloody hell, Jo.’ She couldn’t understand the overreaction. ‘How did we go from stopping off at the Manor to me being jealous of you in the space of a few seconds?’

  She didn’t want this to escalate, as it so easily could with Jo, so instead she looked back at the strange drawing. She tracked the fine pencil lines on the cartridge paper, drinking up the detail of the tall stems of the hedgerow grasses, the fading crowns of cow parsley, and the spent stalk of a dandelion clock, the seeds of which might have been blown away by the dead man’s last breath.

  Was she jealous of Jo?

  ‘I’m just concerned for you,’ Lorraine said finally. ‘I don’t want you to get hurt by . . .’ She trailed off, knowing that going any further would cause trouble. Instead, she looked down again at the drawing, spotting the hand in the grass as she did so.

  ‘Whoa,’ she said, bringing the picture close. ‘Jo, take a look at this.’

  The surprise in her voice brought Jo to her side. Sisters were like that. Grace and Stella did it – at each other’s throats one minute, in full-force collaboration the next.

  ‘It’s a hand,’ Jo said.

  ‘A female hand, by the looks of it.’

  Lorraine marvelled at the detail on the fingers, the knuckles, the picked skin around the thumb cuticle, the bitten-down nails as the palm lay splayed out on the grassy verge a few feet away from the dead man. It was woven cleverly into the composition from the bottom right-hand corner, creeping, barely perceptibly, into the scene. The ring, shaped like a skull, subtly harnessed the moonlight, making it look as if it were made of pewter or tin.

  Both women stared at the bit of plastic on the table again. It was what the fingers were stretching towards in the picture, except that in the drawing it had context.

  ‘It’s the visor off a motorbike helmet,’ Lorraine said, picking it up. ‘Jo, I really think we should call in at Sonia’s house on our way to the castle and let her know what’s going on.’

  Jo snapped down the lid of the ice box. ‘Fine,’ she said curtly.

  At first, it appeared no one was home. They heard the door chime ring out behind the thick oak door, but it went unanswered. There was a single car parked on the gravel drive, which Jo confirmed was Sonia’s, but even with more knocking and a couple of calls through the letterbox, no one came.

  ‘The place is so huge, it’s not surprising she can’t hear,’ Jo said. ‘Let’s go. It’s a waste of time.’

  ‘Hold your horses,’ Lorraine said. She was clutching a plastic bag containing the helmet visor and rolled-up drawing. ‘This is important.’ She glanced at the car again. ‘Sonia must be home.’

  She walked back towards the small brick building they’d passed on the way in, with Jo following grudgingly. She wondered if this was the tack room Stella had mentioned. Surely Gil didn’t live here. It looked too dilapidated for habitation. Ivy strangled an old cast-iron downpipe, reaching right up to a badly pointed chimney stack. A pigeon clapped lazily off the single clay pot. She tried to peer through the window, but it was too inaccessible due to the weeds. The sun flashed off the glass at an annoying angle, making the summer dust cast a haze over whatever was inside.

  ‘Yes, hold your horses,’ Jo said in a flat voice. ‘She’ll be down in the paddock.’ She seemed resigned to the encounter now.

  They walked round the east side of the Manor, signall
ing to Stella and Freddie in the car that they wouldn’t be long, and cut through the gravel paths of a formal rose garden that was in full bloom. Once again Lorraine was reminded of her scraggy patch back home – the antithesis of these grand borders.

  ‘Son-i-a!’ Jo called out as they approached the field.

  The horses heard them before Sonia did, raising their heads with simultaneous flicks of their dark brown tails. Four of them stood in a huddle around her while she worked, as if protecting her. She slowly stood up, her hand rubbing her lower back as she straightened. She’d been shovelling muck into a wheelbarrow.

  ‘Hello,’ she said with a small smile. Her hair was bundled back into a thin ponytail with a cloth band and she leant on the shovel. ‘Sorry I’m in such a state.’ She swept her hands down the front of a pair of khaki cut-off trousers.

  Jo put her hand up to shield her eyes from the sun. ‘You look as if you’re hard at it.’

  There was a fond laugh between the two women, showing the bond they clearly shared. Lorraine remembered her sister’s change of mood not an hour earlier. She was nothing but pleased that she had good friends and still couldn’t understand why she’d accused her of being jealous.

  She thought briefly of her own group of friends back in Birmingham. She owed several of them a phone call – most of them actually – but there was always something work-related to take care of, or daughter-related, or just plain exhaustion. In fact, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d been out with any of her girlfriends. She’d probably have to reintroduce herself by now. She sighed. Maybe she was envious of Jo.

  ‘Lorraine?’ Jo was nudging her. ‘I was just explaining why we’re here.’

  Lorraine held up the plastic bag. ‘Yes, it’s about that motorbike crash.’ When she saw the way Sonia’s face paled, she felt as if she should apologise, tell her it wasn’t really important.

  ‘How can I help?’ Sonia asked in a quiet voice.

  ‘Gil asked my daughter Stella to give me a couple of things. He knows I’m a detective so he’s probably just doing his bit to help.’ Lorraine smiled, trying to reassure her.

  Sonia shifted her slight frame from one foot to the other, still gripping on to the shovel. Her knuckles were white on the wooden handle.

  Lorraine took the plastic visor from the bag. ‘I think this has come off a helmet.’ She passed it to Jo to hold. ‘And there was this, too.’ She took out the rolled-up drawing.

  Sonia stared at the broken visor, frowning.

  ‘Gil did this drawing,’ Lorraine continued, rolling the elastic band off the tube of paper and unfurling it, exposing the graphic artwork bit by bit. ‘It’s a little upsetting, I’m afraid.’

  Sonia took it. ‘Oh my goodness, it’s getting worse.’ Her hand went to her flat chest.

  ‘Has he done this kind of thing before?’ Lorraine asked. Several years ago she’d been on a course, learning about various developmental disabilities they might encounter on the job. It was all about understanding the person rather than their actions, and not making assumptions. With someone like Gil, Lorraine thought, that would be easy to do.

  Sonia sighed. ‘What you have to understand about Gil is . . .’ She turned to an approaching mare. Her hand went out to its searching nose as it butted against her shoulder. She smiled, steadied herself. ‘Well, he’s a very special person. And, as you can see, he has an incredible talent for drawing.’

  Lorraine nodded, willing her to continue.

  ‘In fact, we like to look at Gil’s autism as exactly that, a talent rather than a disability. He’s extremely visual in outlook. He might find the washing up a bit of a challenge, but he can draw something like this in an hour or so.’ Sonia rolled up the picture, as if it was all neatly explained.

  ‘Does he remember lots of things?’ Lorraine asked.

  ‘With minute detail,’ Sonia said with a laugh. ‘But only visually. Give him a verbal shopping list and he’ll have forgotten even a couple of items by the time he gets down to the village shop. But if I show him the empty packets first, it’s not a problem.’

  ‘So the pictures Gil draws, are they usually of things he’s seen first-hand?’

  ‘Always,’ Sonia replied. Then she frowned and looked apologetic. ‘Well, that’s not entirely true. He often uses his art to express himself if something’s really troubling him. It’s as if he sees his emotions, and then draws them.’

  One of the horses came close to Lorraine, nudging against her shoulder. Sonia pulled the mare away by her head-collar, making a clicking sound with her mouth.

  ‘Look,’ she continued, ‘Dean’s suicide upset Gil a lot. It brought back feelings he thought he’d dealt with.’ She hesitated. ‘Feelings about Simon.’

  Lorraine noticed the tears gathering in her pale eyes. ‘I understand,’ she said, although there were several things she wasn’t sure about. She was aware of Jo checking her watch. ‘Did you see the hand he drew in the corner of the picture?’

  Sonia frowned again and was quick to unfurl the paper. She was silent for a moment then seemed as shocked as Jo and Lorraine had been. ‘Oh my goodness. I’d not noticed.’

  ‘Do you recognise the ring on the hand?’ Lorraine asked.

  ‘No, sorry,’ Sonia replied, glancing up. ‘You know, this could be Gil transferring Dean’s suicide into an accident. He’d be able to process that. He knows what accidents are, the types of mistakes that cause them, how to be careful and suchlike. He goes to a brilliant group in Wellesbury where he learns all about personal safety and things like that.’

  ‘So you don’t think he’s reproducing something he actually saw in this case, then?’ Lorraine said.

  ‘Oh no, nothing like that. Anyway, Gil couldn’t have been there. He was with me that night. I cooked a meal and we watched a couple of films.’ Sonia rolled up the drawing again and handed it back to Lorraine. ‘But what you must understand is that to draw something like this, in his mind, Gil might as well have been there. He has a vivid imagination.’

  ‘I see,’ Lorraine said. ‘Can I keep the picture? It’s pretty incredible.’ She smiled, already popping it back into the plastic bag.

  ‘Of course. Gil wanted you to have it. As for that old thing, Tony’s had an old helmet kicking about for ever. Gil must have found it. We’re having a big clear-out at the moment, you see. I’ll chuck it away for you, if you like.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I’ll do that.’ Lorraine smiled again, took the visor from her sister and dropped that back into the bag too. She had no intention of disposing of any of it.

  12

  ‘DOES IT ALL add up?’ Lana asked her mother, leaning her head on her shoulder. It was midday and they were at New Hope, working together. She’d brought in her laptop for her mum to use, having shown her how to open up the accounts spreadsheet from a memory stick.

  ‘Not quite,’ Sonia said glumly. ‘We need to make this fundraiser our biggest yet.’ She stared at the figures. ‘The roof needs fixing before winter and the council tax will clean us out again next quarter. The water bill’s gone up and we’re still paying for last year’s gas.’ She ruffled Lana’s hair. ‘I think I’ll buy the new sleeping bags with my own money. These ones are getting a bit old now.’

  ‘I’ll see what I’ve got to sell,’ Lana said. She’d already got rid of tons of stuff on eBay to help out, although she knew it was her mum’s conscience she was helping just as much as the people at New Hope. These days, Sonia almost seemed to put them above her own family. ‘I’ll ask around the village for donations, old clothes and bric-a-brac, stuff like that.’

  Sonia smiled and nodded in approval. Lana thought she looked exhausted. Her skin was soft but seemed pale and grey as if it hadn’t seen the sun in years, even though she spent time outside with the horses. The gentle loosening of it around her eyes, her mouth, on the backs of her hands, suddenly made her seem old, as if she’d stepped into another generation.

  ‘That’s a great idea, love,’ she said. ‘Shame it’s too late
to go on your CV.’

  ‘Mum . . .’ Lana said, but stopped. She’d already had months of honing and shaping, training and chiselling. Nothing would change the outcome now.

  Sonia took Lana’s hand and guided it to a pile of receipts. ‘Can you sort them month by month and put them into categories?’

  Lana nodded and set to work. There was something comforting about having her mum tapping away at the keys beside her, making little sighs every so often. She felt a familiar bond between them – a bond she’d worried had been lost since Simon died.

  ‘You ladies busy at it?’

  Lana jumped and looked up. Frank was standing there holding two mugs of tea. He put them on the table, sloshing some on the wooden surface.

  ‘Thanks,’ Sonia said without looking up.

  ‘Sorry I didn’t make it in last night,’ he said, looming over them.

  Lana’s ears pricked up. She’d overheard her parents arguing. Her dad hadn’t been happy about Frank demanding her mum take his shift after their meal at the pub.

  ‘It’s OK,’ Sonia said quietly.

  Frank didn’t make a move. He stood there, square to the table, hands on hips and a frown set on his face. The tea was obviously some kind of apology.

  ‘Something important came up,’ he finally muttered, before heading off to the shower room. A moment later, Lana heard a rush of water as he began his cleaning duties.

  ‘What was all that about?’ she asked when she was sure Frank wouldn’t hear.

  ‘I don’t really know,’ Sonia said, pausing to look at her daughter. ‘It’s weird. He’s never missed a shift before.’

  Lana watched as Frank came out of the shower room. He returned from the kitchen a moment later with a bucket of steaming hot water and a mop. He gave her a lingering glance as he disappeared back inside the tiled washroom. The scent of disinfectant soon travelled across the hall.

  ‘I heard shouting,’ Lana admitted. She hated it when her parents argued. It wasn’t often, but with everything else going on, she’d become sensitive. ‘Did Dad go and sleep in the spare—’ She stopped herself. ‘Gil came in yesterday with some bagged-up clothes. They were Simon’s things.’ She regretted saying that, too.