Last Night

by Kerry Wilkinson

  When the front door is closed, I give it my best middle finger. I’m not sure if it’s for him or her. Probably a bit of both. It’s hard not to wonder whether they’re shagging. There was definitely something in the way he looked at her. He has to be twice her age but he makes a decent salary, he’s in shape, he doesn’t have young children to tie him down. There’s a lot there that could be appealing to a certain type of young woman.

  He didn’t out and out lie about his personal trainer but he didn’t go out of his way to make it clear he was spending time with someone who looks like Alice. I only met her today because she knocked on the door. I suspect he wanted her to wait in her car until he left the house.

  It’s hard to know why I care. It’s not because I’m desperate to rekindle whatever it is we once had, which means I suppose it’s jealousy. He’s moving on and I’m not. I can’t imagine there are too many twenty-something blokes out there desperate to start something with me – not that I’m looking for that anyway.

  Back on the sofa and I’m starting to feel like a stalker on more than one count. Tom Leonard is still missing and there haven’t been any updates in the past day. I find myself continuing on through the search results, reading articles about all sorts of Tom Leonards in case they happen to be him. Almost everything I find that relates to the correct Tom is to do with his running. There are spreadsheets of results from his club and I can’t explain why I find it so compelling. I check his times from month to month, year to year, seeing how he’s improved.

  Then there’s Natasha. Her breakfast is half a grapefruit. I’ve no idea how that counts as a meal but it was #awesome.

  It’s only when Olivia clumps down the stairs that I realise almost two hours have passed. She walks past the open door of the living room and is fully dressed, bag on her back. I call after her as she heads for the front door and get into the hallway at the same time as she’s ready to leave.

  ‘Are you all right?’ I ask. We’ve not seen each other since the previous evening.

  She turns, closing the front door slightly, though not completely. ‘Fine.’

  ‘We can talk if you want...?’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Whatever you want. Your father. Me. The house. You.’

  ‘What about Tyler?’

  I clench my teeth. Of course about Tyler. He should have been the first name I mentioned. I’ve wasted two hours reading everything about some missing teenager I don’t know, while completely ignoring the one who is seeing my daughter.

  ‘Tyler, too,’ I reply.

  It’s too late – and I know it. I’ve blown it once more.

  Olivia twists back to the front door, says she has to go – and then does precisely that.

  * * *

  The glazier arrives at eight-thirty on the dot, exactly on time. I make him a cup of tea but, other than that, he gets on with fitting a new pane of glass into the back door. He’s the perfect kind of labourer, peacefully and swiftly getting on with his work and not feeling the need to blather on endlessly about some nonsense he read in the paper yesterday. I don’t know if I can manage much in the way of small talk today.

  I leave him be and get back to reading Tom Leonard’s race results. He’s nineteen and it’s perhaps no surprise that his fastest times have come in the past year. I re-read the quotes from his parents, appealing for anyone who might have seen him. There are few details about what might have happened, because no one seems to know. He left his house as usual on Monday morning but his car was found unlocked and unoccupied a couple of miles from there. Other than that: Nothing.

  The blood on my windscreen is still such a vivid thought. It was the first thing I saw when I woke up this morning. Could it belong to Tom?

  I open the maps app and check where he went missing, comparing it to where I found myself in that field. In a straight line, it’s perhaps six or seven miles; following the roads it’s nine or ten. The times still don’t match up – I was at home when Tom went missing – but then it occurs to me that nobody knows when he disappeared. All anyone knows for sure is that he didn’t arrive at work on time. A few hours later and I checked into that same hotel. Later still, I woke up in a bloodied car.

  The glazier interrupts my cluttered thoughts when he tells me he’s finished. He’s cleaned up after himself, which must have made noise, but somehow I missed it. He writes out an invoice and says I can either pay in cash or with a card through his website. We smile and joke about how it’s not like the old days any longer and then I tell him I’ll pay through his site there and then. He says it’s not necessary but I do it anyway and then he goes on his way, telling me we should get the locks changed.

  We should, of course – except I know we won’t. The only keys we’ve had cut are all accounted for and none of us have come up with anything that’s missing. With a clear mind the morning after the night before, perhaps Dan was right. One of us accidentally left the back door unlocked and the only reason either of us noticed was because a window was broken. It might have been some kid with a ball. It feels unlikely – but unlikely isn’t impossible. It’s certainly more likely than me waking up in a field in the middle of nowhere.

  With the house now empty again, I leave my phone to charge and finish getting ready for work. This time my work pass is in the kitchen drawer, precisely where it’s supposed to be.

  It’s only when I’m on my way to the garage that I realise my car keys are missing.

  I empty the drawer out for what feels like the twentieth time in the past day – but it’s little use. The last time I used my car was for the drive back from meeting Declan yesterday – via a detour to the countryside. I walked to Ellie’s and, other than that, I was home the rest of the time. There’s a memory of opening the drawer and putting the car keys inside, but I can’t say with absolute certainty that it was yesterday, as opposed to any of the other thousands of times I’ve done the same.

  The keys aren’t in my jacket pocket, nor my bag. I check the garage but the car is locked and I can’t see them anywhere. I’ve spent hours on the sofa and pull off all the cushions, even going so far as to getting down on hands and knees to look underneath.

  No luck.

  There’s a spare set – but Dan keeps them somewhere that’s apparently secure and, though I assume they’re in the house, I’m not sure where. I’ve never needed the spare set before.

  I’m going to be even later for work than I thought. Bloody Natasha’s going to be smugger than usual and Graham’s going to kick off.

  There’s nothing else for it – so I call Dan. It rings and rings, plipping through to his voicemail message. It’s the same as it has been for as long as I can remember.

  ‘This is Daniel Denton. Please leave a message after the beep.’

  He’s clipped and formal. Perfectly perfunctory – which I suppose sums him up. It’s annoying.

  I hang up and try again, only to get the same notice. This time I leave a message, asking him to call me as soon as he gets it. I try Olivia – but she doesn’t answer – and it’s as if I’m invisible.

  On the second series of checks, my pockets are as empty as they were the first time – and my bag is still full of the same largely useless stuff it always is.

  The clock is unforgiving. It doesn’t feel like it but, somehow, forty minutes have passed since the glazier left. It’s almost half-past-ten.

  I’m hot and sweating, largely from the fruitless hunt, but it’s more than that. It’s the frustration of questioning my own mind. It feels like I can’t trust my memories. My mother went through dementia at the end. She’d ask something basic, like what I’d been up to at the weekend. I’d tell her and then, five minutes later, she’d ask again. At first, I’d say she’d already asked – but she insisted she hadn’t. Her mind played tricks and I quickly learned to play along. If that meant telling her the same story four or five times in a short period, then so be it.

  I’m forty-one, not that old, but this is how it feels now. Wak
ing up in field in the middle of nowhere; losing my pass, then my keys.

  Is it me?

  I go to the fridge, looking for something to cool me down. I’m already reaching for the water jug when, like a mirage on the horizon, there they are. My car keys are sitting at the front of the salad drawer, nestled next to the tomatoes as if that’s where they’re supposed to be. I stare at them for a second, barely believing it, before sliding out the drawer and picking them up.

  They’re real. Chilly, of course – but real.

  It almost feels as if I’ve willed them into being because I was so desperate to find them. It can’t be true, of course. They must have been here the whole time. I did make a sandwich yesterday evening, not long after getting in – so it could have been me who left them there.

  Who else could it have been? Olivia playing a weird joke? Dan? Why would they?

  I suddenly remember I’m late, shutting the fridge and hurrying through to the garage.

  I’ve almost finished reversing out when a car pulls up onto the road outside, blocking me in. I’m in the mood for an argument and am about to beep my horn when I notice the bright stripes along the side of the other car.

  It’s the police.

  Chapter Fourteen

  ‘Are you on your way out?’

  There are two uniformed officers on the driveway as I get out of the car. The one who’s spoken is the taller of the two – a typical British bobby. He stands rigid in his crisp uniform with closely cropped dark hair.

  I lean on the driver’s door as I reply: ‘On my way to work.’

  ‘I’m PC Heath and this is PC Harvey,’ the officer says. ‘Weren’t you expecting us?’

  My baffled look is enough to give them an answer. ‘I was told you didn’t have time to come out,’ I reply.

  The two officers turn to each other and PC Harvey shrugs. He’s the smaller of the pair, with tight blond curls and doesn’t have the same stiff posture of his colleague.

  ‘It was passed to us this morning,’ PC Heath says. ‘We assumed you’d been told we were coming by at eleven…?’

  ‘All I got was a crime reference number. I’ve cleaned up the broken glass from inside – and the glazier came this morning to replace the pane.’

  PC Heath nods along as if this sort of miscommunication is perfectly normal. ‘We should probably still take a statement, assuming you have time,’ he says. ‘We’ve had a few reports of youths causing disturbances in the area.’

  I glance past him along the street, as if expecting to see a gang of errant young people starting a riot a few doors down. There’s nothing, of course.

  ‘What sort of disturbance?’ I ask.

  ‘Late-night noise, knock-and-runs – that sort of thing.’

  It’s all news to me but this is what I wanted in the first place, so it seems silly to send them away now. If Graham makes a fuss about me being even later than I said, I’ll tell him the truth – that I was talking to the police.

  We enter the house through the front door and then I talk the officers through everything from the previous evening. They check the back door, not that there’s much to see now, and then we go through the whole rigmarole of me explaining that it doesn’t look as if anything was taken. I don’t bring up the money, just in case it was Olivia who took it.

  I show them out to the back garden and both officers walk slowly along the length of the flower beds. Other than a few unfriendly deposits from next door’s cat, there’s little to see. Certainly no footprints belonging to someone who might have come over the fence. The officers ask about what’s on the other side and we end up going upstairs so they are high enough to see. There’s a narrow lane that skirts the back of our house, separating it from the properties beyond. The height of the respective fences on both sides means it’s permanently in darkness. Through the winter, frost can sit on the ground for weeks at a time. It’s a cut-through to get from one part of the estate to another, frequently used by pedestrians and cyclists to save them having to go the long way round to get to the bus stop or shops.

  Some of the houses backing onto the lane have gates, allowing them to leave via the back of the house. Ours doesn’t – it’s one long eight-foot fence.

  The officers don’t say much when I tell them that Dan thought it could have been some kids coming in to retrieve a ball. It would have been a decent kick, perhaps coming from one of the gardens that back onto ours across the path. PC Heath asks if we’ve ever found wayward balls in the garden before and I have to admit that we haven’t. We’ve never had issues with anything like that. Despite his mention of trouble in the area, I haven’t seen any of it. The evenings are quiet and we haven’t had anyone knocking and running off. Dan and I have lived here for almost as long as we’ve been married and we’ve never been burgled. The only thing I can remember is that a dead mouse was left on our doorstep a year or so ago – but we’re pretty sure that was down to next door’s cat.

  PC Harvey takes notes while PC Heath asks the questions. It doesn’t feel as if there’s much I can say, let alone much they can do. I get the sense they knew it would be a waste of time before they pulled up. It’s probably an excuse to get out of their office for an hour or two – and I can’t blame them for that.

  They give me a phone number to call if I notice anything has gone missing, or to report anything new.

  The garage door is still open, so we leave the house that way. I get on with locking the doors that connect to the house but, when I turn, both officers are standing in the middle of the empty garage, close to the drain.

  PC Harvey points at a spot on the floor and looks up to me: ‘Do you know there’s blood on the ground?’ he asks.

  Chapter Fifteen

  There’s a moment in which it feels like everything has stopped. The concrete floor rushes towards me and everything starts to swirl. It’s like the rush of standing up too quickly, when it feels as if my body is no longer under my control. Mercifully, the sensation only lasts a moment, reality twisting back into view as quickly as it disappeared. There’s a pain in my chest, though – not the one from my decades-old rib break, something else. It’s sharp and stinging, as if I’m being stabbed.

  ‘Blood?’

  It’s my voice that speaks but only on instinct.

  ‘Right there.’

  I’m not sure which of the two officers is speaking because the tingle in my chest has spread to my upper arm. Am I having a heart attack? This is how it starts, isn’t it? I’ve seen the leaflets at the doctors.

  Somehow, I move across towards the officers but it feels more like I’m drifting than walking. If they notice anything out of the ordinary, neither of the constables say so.

  They’re right, of course. There’s a patch of dried blood exactly underneath the spot where my bonnet would usually cover.

  I was certain I’d checked under the car; that I’d cleaned everything away – but here it is. A crimson stain of guilt.

  ‘Do you have any idea why there might be blood in your garage, Mrs Denton?’

  I’m still not sure who’s speaking, transfixed by the floor instead. The blood is a series of spots, rather than any specific pattern. It looks like it has dripped.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ I reply.

  The stinging stab in my arm is clearing and so is the haze around the edges of my vision.

  PC Heath clips his heels and heads off towards the driveway. ‘We’ll get someone over to take a sample,’ he says. ‘If someone did break in, it might have come from them. It’s worth checking.’

  He’s quickly out of earshot and it’s only then that I realise I should have said the blood was mine – or Dan’s. Or that it was red paint for some reason. Now it’s too late, I can come up with a dozen reasons to tell them to not to bother testing. I’m one of those people who is amazing after an emergency. Or who has a hilarious comeback a good hour after the moment has passed.

  ‘You shouldn’t worry,’ I tell PC Harvey. ‘I don’t think anyone broke in
anyway.’

  ‘It’s not a problem,’ he replies. ‘What we’re here for.’

  ‘But aren’t these tests expensive? Don’t you have tight budgets and so on? I always hear things on the news.’

  This is some serious straw-clutching.

  ‘There’s been a series of break-ins on the other side of North Melbury. These are full-on burglaries, so perhaps not the same as this – but we have DNA from the perpetrator. The problem is that we don’t know who it belongs to. There are no matches on the database – but we’ll be able to tell if this is the same person.’

  He smiles and I thank him, even though it’s the last thing on my mind. What if the blood belongs to Tom Leonard? What if it belongs to someone else who’s missing? Someone who’s been found dead on those back country lanes? How could I possibly explain it?

  How can I even explain this? I was so sure I’d cleaned the floor – but then I was certain about the location of my work pass and the car keys as well. My mind feels like one big, jumbled mess. Like the pieces to Ellie’s jigsaw, all mixed up and thrown on the floor.

  PC Heath walks back, his lips tight and expressionless. ‘The testing team are free now,’ he says.

  PC Harvey answers before I can. ‘That never happens. What’s going on?’

  His colleague shrugs and they both look to me. ‘Someone can be here in half an hour,’ he adds. ‘Should I tell them to come now?’

  I should say no – but what would that look like? I called the police to report a possible break-in. They’re linking it to others across town, so I can hardly send them away. I’d look mad at best; guilty of something at worst.

  ‘That’s fine,’ I reply. Except it isn’t – and I have a horrible sinking feeling that it really won’t be.

  * * *

  It is a few minutes after midday when the crime scene analyst leaves the house. He was perfectly pleasant, working by himself and scraping up the hardened flakes of blood to take away. When I ask how long it’ll all take, he sighs. I’d bet it’s the type of question he’s asked a dozen times a day, every day.