by K. L. Slater
For some reason she felt like revisiting all the old Enid Blyton titles of her youth. Dear Mr Barrow had sent over a box full of much-loved books.
Not The Famous Five – she was in no mood for adventure – but The Faraway Tree, The Wishing Chair, The Naughtiest Girl series… unlike people, books didn’t monitor her reactions, ask her any questions or sigh at each other in disapproval.
Instead, they felt like a balm on her scorched, scarred heart.
The breakdown had lasted the best part of a month.
They’d sedated her during the worst part, when she’d tried to escape from everything, tried to run away dressed only in her hospital gown.
‘You’re back on the road to recovery,’ a smiling Dr Chang had announced to her, the day of her discharge.
It was true she’d stopped screaming, stopped starving herself, stopped trying to escape.
She’d chopped off her hair to shoulder-length herself and dyed it dark brown so she didn’t have to look in the mirror at the long red tresses he’d loved and tangled his fingers in.
Now, two months later, she just felt dead inside. She was zombified when awake and saw only Billy and Cassie’s faces when she closed her eyes.
She wouldn’t, couldn’t, go outside.
‘He’s in prison, Rose,’ her mother told her repeatedly. ‘He can’t hurt you now.’
‘He’s going to rot in hell in there,’ her father added. ‘They’ll never let him out.’
Rose noticed they’d long stopped saying his actual name. Everyone tiptoed around her, thinking things through before they spoke.
Her parents were colourless, pale imitations of their former selves. They were trying to carry on whilst grieving for Billy and Rose felt she was adding to their already unbearable burden by giving them something else to worry about.
They were trying so hard to help her get better and, for that, Rose was grateful.
The thing they didn’t realise was this: it didn’t matter where Gareth Farnham was or that he couldn’t physically get to her.
Because his voice was always right here. Inside her head.
57
ROSE
PRESENT DAY
It would be a lie if I denied I constantly think about the past. I think about all of it but in particular, it’s always that first, fateful meeting that changed my life and everyone else’s around me that really bites.
I think about it all the time. I recreate what I might have said or done that would’ve shut Gareth Farnham down the first time he offered to carry my art stuff home from the bus stop.
I think about the people I might have confided in when I first saw the signs that his façade was slipping.
But then, truthfully, how was I to know at barely eighteen years old that such people existed? How could I have possibly second-guessed how it would all turn out when, at the beginning at least, everything seemed so… so perfect?
These questions are amongst the first things on my mind when I wake and they’re often the last thing that flits across my consciousness before I fall to sleep each night.
I realised a long time ago that what happened is never going to go away. Ever.
‘It will get easier,’ my therapist told me continually. ‘It will.’
But you see, it doesn’t get better.
It’s more that you somehow begin to acclimatise to blaming yourself. The strength of feeling, the shame… it never goes away but you do kind of get used to having it around. You begin to accept you will never feel happy or at peace.
But this… what I’m feeling now… it’s simply impossible to live with.
The not knowing… the awful possibilities that present themselves, each one worse than the last.
The compartments in my head that I constructed all those years ago and used to bury the pain? Well, since the day I ventured into Ronnie’s spare room, they are all emptied out. Every single one of them.
My mind is one hot mess of freshly released unbearable memories and I seriously don’t know how long I can stand it.
Billy hadn’t tripped and hit his head while searching for his kite; he was abducted.
We searched for him for two days before his body was found amongst the rhododendron bushes in the abbey grounds. The post mortem revealed he’d been suffocated.
A manhunt ensued. The village filled with well-wishers, volunteers and the national press.
There was only ever really one suspect. Gareth Farnham was arrested, questioned and eventually convicted of Billy’s murder.
He denied killing my brother, as he always has done since. But by then I’d found out he was a skilled liar, a manipulator who said exactly what needed to be said in order to get what he wanted.
In court his defence had presented a psychiatrist, a Dr Simeon Chambers, who’d tried to convince the jury that Gareth was a sociopath who couldn’t help controlling the people around him. This, she’d said, although regretful, was not the same thing as murdering a child. That hurting Billy was not in his make-up.
I’d seen his lies and aggression first-hand and I’d gotten into the dock and told them so.
In his summing up, the judge had said, in his learned opinion, ‘Farnham is more of a scheming narcissist than a sociopath. He fully understands his actions.’
I’d wanted to rush over and kiss that judge for refusing to let Farnham evade justice but I hadn’t, of course. I’d sat with my fingers knotted together to stop my hands shaking. I’d stared straight ahead and hadn’t looked at Gareth, even when he was speaking.
When he hadn’t been giving evidence, I’d been able to feel his eyes burning into me, willing me to look up so he could inject his silent poison into me. Warn me to keep my mouth shut, plead with me to help him… he could do all this without uttering a word to me, such was the extent of the control he had over me.
But I had not done it; I wouldn’t look at him.
The final time our eyes had briefly met, he’d been a man convicted to life imprisonment being led down to the cells.
I’d sworn I’d never speak to him, look at him, and I’d promised myself to do my best never to think about him again.
Of course, that was before I made the discovery in Ronnie’s spare room.
58
ROSE
PRESENT DAY
Decision time is here.
I could try to forget about finding Billy’s blanket. I voice it silently in my head but of course I know the thought of doing so is just fantasy.
It’s completely impossible to forget something so shocking, so profound.
Even if I managed to push it to the back of my psyche – which I’ve hardly succeeded in doing with other traumas – it would poison everything. I’d live out the rest of my days wondering and hating myself for taking the easy way out.
I could talk to Ronnie for a third time but I honestly think there is nothing to be gained by this. After our last conversation, his memory does appear to be sketchy and he is still ill. I look at him one minute and see my kindly, supportive neighbour, and the next minute I’m imagining Ronnie younger, stronger and capable of doing harm.
I’ve spoken to Mike North, the committed detective who led the case, and even he wasn’t able to give me any cast-iron answers. It all seemed a bit too wishy-washy; speak to the police but, in the end, they might do nothing anyway, because declaring an unsafe conviction and re-opening a closed investigation is an enormous undertaking.
I could still go to the police but I feel it is the absolute last option on offer. If Ronnie is traumatised by police interviews and found to be completely innocent then I don’t think I could ever live with myself.
I could end up destroying the only true, supportive friendship I’ve had since Billy died. I’d be vilified by everyone who loves Ronnie, and I’d really have no choice but to move from the village.
No. The next step is horribly clear. I must do something I vowed to myself I would never do, something that goes against a promise I made to Dad on his deathbed.
I must make contact with Gareth Farnham.
I shudder and knot my fingers together so hard it hurts. But still, I really feel it is the only logical step for me to take now.
Closing my eyes, I think back to the first letters he wrote me from prison. I read only two before Mum destroyed all his subsequent mail. But the first two were virtually identical.
He followed the same pattern in both the letters. In the middle of his tirade of accusations that I had abandoned him, betrayed him, he would switch to declarations of love for me.
He begged me to visit him, to talk things through. He said he had things he needed to tell me about that day, things he wanted to talk to me about.
‘Keep away from him, Rose,’ Dad had said one morning, tossing another of Gareth’s letters on the fire. ‘He’s evil and his only aim will be to control and destroy you. For God’s sake, don’t fall for it again.’
He didn’t realise it but Dad made me feel so stupid when he said stuff like that.
I know I deserved it entirely. I mean, what idiot lets someone take over their very thoughts to the extent they stop listening to anyone who ever cared about them and take a virtual stranger’s word as gospel?
I once watched a fascinating nature programme about sinister parasites that control their hosts’ minds.
Toxoplasmosis is a single-celled creature that infects rats and mice. It actually changes the whole way the rodents think, in that they stop being afraid of the smell of cats and instead are attracted to a pheromone in the cats’ urine.
Ultimately, this means they stop hiding under the floorboards and get eaten. The parasite then reproduces in the cat’s stomach.
I remember I’d turned the programme off early because it made me feel queasy.
I’d somehow been invaded by Gareth Farnham when I was eighteen years old. I allowed him to get inside my head and it felt like he’d changed my very DNA.
Dad was so right. I need to stay away from Gareth Farnham for the rest of my life. And I absolutely intend to… once I’ve got what I need from him.
I soon discover that writing the letter is much harder than making the initial decision to do so.
This is the man who is serving a life sentence for killing my beautiful brother, Billy.
This is the man who got inside my head so easily and ruined all our lives.
How do I begin to find the right words to reach out when I’d rather spit in his eye?
The tone of the letter is everything. I can’t sound too hopeful. I have to pitch it just right or he’ll immediately sense an opportunity for control again. But if I am too offhand he might ignore the letter.
Somehow, I have to try to pique his interest. There has to be something in it for him; that was always the case with Gareth Farnham.
The very act of writing a letter by hand seems so personal. So much is done electronically these days.
Some prisons do allow emailed communications but I don’t like the thought of my letter getting lost in cyberspace. When Gareth was sent down, emails were a lot less popular than they are today. He might not be up to speed with the latest technology and I can’t take that risk.
A letter, although difficult to compose, is failsafe in that I know it has a good chance of eventually reaching him.
I have a pen and paper. I’ve already researched how to send a letter to a prisoner and I have the postal address for HMP Wakefield.
Now I just have to write.
Dear Gareth, I begin.
The nib of my pen jerks away from the paper and I snatch it, screw it up. There can be no ‘dear.’
I start a fresh page.
Gareth.
After Billy died, you said that…
Still too personal. I don’t want to address him in such familiar terms and I don’t want to sully Billy’s memory by mentioning his name in the letter, either.
I screw up the paper and set it aside. My pen hovers again above a clean sheet.
Confident, direct and formal is undoubtedly the approach to take.
FAO: Gareth Farnham, HMP Wakefield
Many years ago you told me you had details you wished to discuss with me.
If you still wish to do this, I am now in a position to read your letter.
Rose Tinsley
206, Tilford Road, Newstead Village, Nottinghamshire NG15 0BX
I grimace as I write my address, knowing those eyes of his that started off looking at me with love and ended up despising me, will feast on it.
But this is no time to allow negative emotions to take hold of me. He knows my address already. I’m not telling him anything new and providing a home address is a condition that HMP Wakefield stipulates before allowing mail through to a prisoner.
I re-read the note twice and then, to avoid obsessing, I fold it up and tuck it inside the envelope I have already addressed to the prison. HMP Wakefield is situated, ironically, in a place called Love Lane in Wakefield, West Yorkshire. A strange place for a person who destroyed so much love to end up, I think.
I sit for a moment and look at the letter.
I did it.
I glance at the wall clock and see it is just before 9 p.m. I never go out after dark; it’s one of my rules. But I want to post this before I get cold feet.
Filled with bravado after writing the letter, I slip on my shoes and grab my keys.
I can do this. I can see it through for Billy.
59
ROSE
PRESENT DAY
Predictably, I barely sleep and I wake up to a drab day. Rivulets of rain channel down my bedroom window like tears.
I feel exhausted and I’m dreading the day at work.
Last night, when I left the house to post the letter, the street was eerily quiet. Apart from a bus trundling by on the top road, lit up and dotted sparely with passengers, there was no traffic and no pedestrians.
I left the house by the front door, double checking to ensure the lock had caught and was secure. When I turned round, gathered my courage to walk up to the top of the road to the post box, a quick movement caught my eye.
My head jerked up immediately, my eyes scanning the street.
There; I spotted something… a change in the gloom, a vague shadow rather than a person. I blinked and then the shadow disappeared and all seemed still. Was it just my overactive imagination?
I looked at the letter in my hand and hesitated. I could always post it in the morning on my way to work. It would still get sent the next day. And yet…
There was something that felt so definite about the action of taking it that made me set one foot in front of the other, even though it felt like I was wading through treacle.
I slid the letter in the narrow opening of the post box that glimmered a dangerous red under the streetlight. After glancing around me and satisfying myself there was nobody nearby, I ran back home. Literally ran.
Key in hand, I opened the front door, slammed and locked and deadbolted it.
Then I stood, with my back leaning against the cool UPVC of the door and I laughed at myself. Would there ever be a time I’d stop this nonsense and just live my life?
There had been nobody watching me and no dastardly shadows disappearing into the field.
Still, I wish I could just stay home today and catch up on my sleep in a room reassuringly bathed in daylight. Sadly, that’s not an option. My routine is my lifeline.
I shower, wash and dry my hair and breakfast is a banana that I eat while getting dressed.
A sinking sensation fills me when I remember I’ll have to pop round to check on Ronnie before I leave. I get what I need for work and then lock up fully so I can leave for work straight from leaving his.
Two minutes later I’m climbing the stairs next door.
‘Only me,’ I call.
He’s out of bed, sitting on the floor looking dazed. His face is deathly pale and his head is hanging.
‘Ronnie!’ I rush up to him.
‘I’m alright,’ he croa
ks, allowing me to help him up. ‘I needed the bathroom and… I coped just fine until I felt dizzy when I got back in the bedroom. Stupid legs gave up on me.’
‘Did you faint?’
He shook his head. ‘Just stumbled. I’ll be fine now, Rose, you get yourself to work.’
There he is again, worrying about others. I desperately need this to be the real Ronnie. It has to be or I might never trust a human being again.
I’m so glad I posted the letter last night. The only way to move forward is to get some answers from Gareth Farnham.
I pray he is ready, after sixteen years of thinking about it, to finally face the truth.
At the library, Jim seems a little jumpy around me.
‘How are you feeling, pet? You shouldn’t worry about those fools visiting yesterday, you know. The decision whether to close the library won’t be theirs alone.’
‘I know that, Jim, but these so-called consultancy groups work on recommendations. I feel I wasted a really important chance to show them how important the library is to the village.’
‘They put my grandad out of work when they closed the steelworks up north, the troubles at the pit killed my brother and then they went and closed it anyway.’ Jim’s jaw flexed. ‘They’re not going to do it to our blinking library, Rose.’
I wish I had a fraction of Jim’s certainty. His words are determined but they won’t save this place. Over the past couple of years, I could name at least five libraries they’ve closed in Nottinghamshire and I’m sure it wasn’t through lack of local protest. The balance sheet is king and they went ahead and did it anyway.
‘I’ll put my thinking cap on,’ Jim said, with a smile. ‘People around here often under-estimate me, Rose, but they shouldn’t. You know what they say… still waters run deep.’
60
ROSE
PRESENT DAY
‘You must be mistaken, Rose,’ Miss Carter says in a frosty tone. ‘Check again, please.’
She’s just appeared at the desk to return three books, all of which are overdue by a day. There is just a very small fine to pay but she’s having none of it.
