The Back Road

by Abbott, Rachel

  They ordered their coffee, and Tom turned to Leo.

  ‘You were miles away when I saw you,’ he said. ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘I’ve been laying some demons to rest, that’s all,’ Leo answered, with a satisfied smile.

  ‘Demons? In Little Melham? You’ve got to be kidding me,’ Tom said.

  ‘I wish I was,’ Leo said. ‘Anyway, never mind me. How did yesterday go with Lucy? Did she love the cottage now that it’s finished?’

  ‘She did, although her mother was a bit scathing. But then that’s only what I expected. She chose to live in what I would consider to be a modern, charmless box, so I had no expectation of raptures over my choice.’

  Leo didn’t speak, and just looked at him with her head to one side, as if she were waiting for him to say more.

  ‘We’ve been divorced for quite a while. We’ve gone our separate ways but we get on with each other for Lucy’s sake.’

  Tom didn’t want to talk about the breakup of his marriage. Male pride meant he wanted to avoid telling all and sundry that his wife had left him for another man, but on the other hand he didn’t want everybody to think that he was the type of bastard who cheated on women. Best to say nothing, on the whole, and let them draw their own conclusions.

  ‘It’s a pity you didn’t get to meet her. I gather you and Ellie went off on some shopping spree or other.’

  ‘We did. I think Ellie needed to get out of the house. A bit of an escape after the night before. It was a weird party, though. Everybody was behaving as if they were totally deranged, I thought. What did you make of it?’ Leo asked.

  ‘I enjoyed it. Of course, I didn’t know anybody until that evening, so I didn’t know what was normal and what wasn’t.’

  Leo raised her eyebrows.

  ‘You’re being polite Tom. Very diplomatic, I would say. You must have detected some ripples under the smooth surface though. Come on - you can tell me. They’re not my friends particularly, although I’ve known most of them for ages.’

  ‘There were one or two signs of strain that I noticed, but I’ve been to dinner parties where there have been stand up arguments or people bursting into tears at the table before now, so it was fairly mild by comparison.’

  Tom wasn’t exaggerating either. Being a policeman had lots of pluses and he loved the job, but he could quite understand that being a policeman’s wife was not always that easy. And when you get a load of coppers and their partners together, there was nearly always one couple that was temporarily or even permanently coming to the end of their tether.

  ‘Tell me about you, Leo,’ Tom said. ‘It was good of you to offer all the ladies your life coaching services free of charge. Do you think they’ll take you up on it?’

  He rested his forearms on the table and leaned forward, hoping she would realise that his interest was genuine. He found it quite amusing that they both probably spent their lives trying to get people to admit to the truth, but with entirely different objectives.

  Leo appeared to be finding the froth on her rapidly cooling cappuccino fascinating as she stirred it gently with her teaspoon.

  ‘I think that in more than one case there are some problems lying hidden, and I think I can help. Whether any of them will speak to me or not, I don’t know. But on the whole, I suspect not. Penny said she was keen, but Gary had a face like thunder.’

  Tom couldn’t forget how upset Penny had been when he’d arrived on Saturday, and how quiet she was for the whole evening. Gary seemed a cheerful kind of guy, but it was that type of cheap bravado that Tom didn’t appreciate in other men.

  ‘I can see that you understand people really well, and that must be a hell of an asset in your job - a bit like mine in that respect.’ Tom smiled as he signalled the waitress for another two coffees. ‘So tell me more about these demons you’re laying to rest. The local sweet shop seems a strange place to start.’

  For a second Leo looked cross and Tom thought that he’d gone too far. He didn’t mean to pry, and he wondered if he should change the subject. There was an uncomfortable silence.

  ‘Now listen, Tom, you can’t play the “say nothing - she’s a woman so she’s bound to fill the void” ruse on me. I do the same thing with my clients, so I know what you’re up to.’

  Tom instantly felt embarrassed. He had actually been searching for a safe topic of conversation, but Leo wasn’t to know that.

  ‘I’m sorry. It wasn’t intentional. Based on your smile, I’d assumed your demons were something trivial - and anyway it’s none of my business.’

  Leo gave him what could only be described as a calculating look.

  ‘You’re right, Tom. It is absolutely none of your business - but I’m going to tell you anyway.’ Leo sat up straight and looked him firmly in the eye. ‘However, as it is now just after mid-day, the cost of telling you will be lunch and a nice cool bottle of white wine.’

  * * *

  She waited until the wine was poured, and took a large gulp.

  ‘Okay - I’m going to give you the short version. My principle motivation for telling you is that half the village knows most of this, and I would rather you heard the truth from me than some distorted version that has had lots of intriguing - but untrue - embellishments.’

  Tom leaned across and chinked his glass with hers, and gave her an encouraging smile. She took a deep breath.

  ‘When I was ten, my mother died. She was epileptic, and she died in the bath. I found her when I got home from school.’

  She saw the consternation on Tom’s face, and realised that he probably wished he had never encouraged Leo to bare her soul. She mentally gritted her teeth and forced herself to continue.

  ‘We lived in Shrewsbury - me, my mum, and my dad. My dad theoretically had a job that required him to be away from home a lot - three or four nights most weeks. He had a senior position in one of the pottery companies in Stoke on Trent. He told my mum that he was on the sales side, which is why he had to be away so much. But that wasn’t true. He was a director, but nothing to do with selling. He was actually the finance director, so in fact he didn’t have to be away at all.’

  Leo took another sip of her wine. The waitress walked over with the menus, but Tom shook his head, and she took the hint and backed away.

  Leo paused for a moment and willed her voice to be level. ‘When I found my mum, the police had to track Dad down and ask him to come home. I assumed we’d carry on living in our house and it would just be the two of us, but he took one look at me and went upstairs and started packing a case.’ Leo shook her head as a vivid memory hit her. She was sitting silent and speechless downstairs while her dad was banging around upstairs. Neither of them had tried to comfort the other. She had been too distraught to understand what was going on. Her father had bundled her in the car, and that’s when she had started to cry. She felt as if she was leaving her - leaving her mum - and that didn’t seem right.

  ‘My dad did try to talk to me, but I wasn’t listening.’ Leo looked at Tom with a smile. ‘My mum was great. A real hippy chick, and loads of fun.’

  Leo remembered feeling as if she had been broken into tiny pieces. As if bits of her were splintering off. But that was too much to share with Tom. Better to stick to the facts.

  ‘I refused to listen to anything my father was saying. I think I sensed that I wasn’t going to want to hear it, and I couldn’t understand why he was taking me away. He was bringing me here. To Little Melham, and to Willow Farm.’

  Leo swallowed as the memories rose in a huge bubble to the surface, escaping from the black hole where they had been buried for years. She recalled that the journey hadn’t been a long one, but her dad had given up trying to speak to her. They had finally pulled up at the very bottom of the drive, and he had forced her to look at him.

  ‘Listen, L,’ he’d said. He had always shortened her name from Leonora to L. ‘This is going to come as a bit of a surprise, but I need to explain to you that I have another wife. She lives here. She doesn�
��t know about you, but I’m sure you’re going to get on fine.’

  Leo didn’t understand. What did he mean, another wife? And whose was this house? A tiny part of her mind registered her confusion, but the rest was too full of grief to cope with the intrusion of other emotions. Her dad had walked into the house. She hadn’t really taken in what he had said. All she could see in her mind was her mother’s body.

  She had leaned her head against the car window, her sobs having subsided into irregular juddering hiccups, and wiped her eyes on the sleeve of her jumper.

  ‘He asked me to wait in the car while he went to talk to his wife. God knows what he told her, or what excuses he gave. I was still sitting there not knowing what was happening when there was a piercing scream from the house, full of anger and anguish, as if it were coming up through someone’s feet and reverberating through every inch of their body. It didn’t take me long to realise it was my stepmother’s response to having a ten year old child that she knew nothing about foisted on her. That, and finding out that her husband was a bigamist.’

  Tom was propping his chin up on the clenched fist of one hand, his eyes a picture of concern.

  ‘I’m so sorry I asked, Leo. I had no right to push you to talk about all this stuff.’

  Don’t give me sympathy, Leo thought. I might not be able to finish and that would somehow be worse than never starting.

  ‘If I hadn’t told you, somebody else would. You must know by now what they’re like in this village.’ Leo mentally gritted her teeth as she continued her story. ‘When I eventually went into the house there was this girl, standing by her mum and looking as bewildered as I felt, but that was nothing to the look I got from my stepmother. It was a look of pure malice, as if somehow this was all my fault. From then on, she treated me as a drudge, and had no compunction about slapping me around. But not much more than that. My father took no interest. I think he loved my mum, but was stuck with Ellie’s mother - The Old Witch, as Max always called her. But my father was a disgrace. He did nothing to protect me - simply handed me over and lived his own life. I barely spoke to him after that, and he came and went all the time. We never knew where he was or when he’d be back, and nobody ever told us. I left home as soon as I thought I would be able to take care of myself.’

  ‘What about Ellie?’ Tom asked.

  ‘Ellie was kind to me. She tried to comfort me, and to look out for me at school. But I withdrew into myself and shut her out most of the time. She tried to please our father and he enjoyed the attention, but as far as I could see she got little reward for her effort.’

  Tom shook his head slowly, and reached over to squeeze her hand. Leo fought the urge to whip her hand away quickly. She gave it a moment, and then pulled back to grip the stem of her wine glass.

  ‘The worst of it was the names. Ellie was christened Eleanor, and when I came along my dad gave Mum some cock and bull story about why I should be christened Leonora, but it was entirely for his convenience. If he called us both Elle he could never get confused. He wouldn’t make a mistake. Anyway, once Ellie and I had realised why we were both called Elle, we told everybody to call us Ellie and Leo. But my dad continued to call us both Elle - out of indifference I think, although Ellie insists it was out of affection - and my stepmother didn’t call me anything at all. Having said that, in seven years under her roof, I never called her anything either. She wasn’t getting it all her own way. My final memories of my father are of a selfish, uninterested man. God knows where he was and what he was up to when he was away, but he provided plenty of money and all my stepmother cared about by then was vengeance.’

  Leo looked at Tom’s horrified expression. He didn’t need to feel bad. She had told him the bald truth, without overdoing the emotion. They were both silent for a moment, but Tom’s eyes never left her face. Leo knew that she had rendered him speechless, and wondered if it wasn’t all too much, too soon.

  ‘Look,’ he said. ‘I do appreciate you sharing all that with me. It must have been very difficult. But now at least I understand why you had some demons to lay to rest. Shall we order some food, and talk about something else?’

  He summoned the waitress for the menus, while Leo debated whether to tell him the rest, the undercurrents he’d missed at Saturday’s party, and her fears about everything that was not being said. Particularly by Ellie.

  23

  For the first time that she could ever remember, Ellie hadn’t wanted to come to work today, even though it was only to do half a shift. She’d run the usual tests on Abbie soon after she had arrived and those had kept her busy for a while, and she had sent Abbie’s mum, Kath, to get herself a cup of coffee and something to eat. The poor woman looked shattered. Ellie sat down on the chair by Abbie’s bed, and for a moment allowed her mind to be bombarded by her own doubts and problems. She was praying that the answer would appear in a flash of clarity, but the trouble was, there was no magic solution.

  Her doubts about Max were tearing her apart. Just the thought of not being with him was too painful to imagine. And if he found out what she’d done, she would lose him. At any moment, this could all blow up and put an end to everything that mattered. Somebody was bound to have seen either her car or his on Friday night, and when the police came knocking she was convinced that he wouldn’t keep her out of it. Why should he?

  And then there was the phone call. Why would somebody call the house and withhold their number? What was Max hiding?

  ‘Stop fooling yourself,’ she muttered out loud. Because hard as it was to admit, she knew exactly what he was hiding.

  Leo would say. ‘Ask him. Just bloody ask him.’ But that would open a door that she wanted to keep firmly shut. As long as Max believed Ellie didn’t know about his affair, he would have to find the words to tell her - and she didn’t think he’d be able to do it. So he would stay with her. With them. Everybody knew that choosing the right moment to tell your partner that you’re leaving is the hard bit. How many marriages had stayed together because nobody had had the guts to admit the truth? And over time, the danger dimmed slowly to become no more than a distant echo. At least, that’s what she hoped.

  So she couldn’t ask Max. He might say ‘Oh, thank God you know. I’m so sorry Ellie, but at least it’s not a secret anymore, and we can all move forward.’ She had imagined that conversation so many times in the last few weeks.

  On top of all this, she wished she had never mentioned that somebody had been in their house. It was obvious who it was, and it was equally obvious not only why, but how.

  The bastard.

  If she was correct, that meant he could get in at any time, even when she was alone, or when they were sleeping. Ellie shuddered. It was one thing trying to manage this horrendous situation by phone and text, but if she found herself alone in the house with him, she didn’t like to think about what might happen. Perhaps a masked intruder would be better. She couldn’t tell Max what she suspected. He wouldn’t believe her, and she could never explain.

  Ellie was staring vacantly at Abbie as the turbulent thoughts churned round and round her mind. A flicker of movement caught her eye, and she focused on Abbie’s young face. Nothing. But she was sure she’d seen something. Maybe it was the shadow of a cloud moving over the sun, or a flickering light on the other side of the unit. She looked at the smooth clear skin on the girl’s face, the side that hadn’t come into contact with the gritty road. She reached out and stroked its peachy surface with the back of her fingers, hoping and praying that she had been right; that there had been some flicker of movement. Suddenly she felt that all her problems were trivial. Imagine if this was your child, she thought. That’s what devastation is - not worrying about secret phone calls and foolish mistakes.

  Somebody in the village knew what had happened to this child. Why was she out so late, and on her own? Why was she in the middle of nowhere? And who in their right mind could have just left her there, bruised, battered and practically dead?

  Ellie tenderly st
roked the girl’s hair back from her face. She remembered Kath trying to sing to Abbie on Saturday, but she was so choked she’d had to give up. Ellie had asked her what the song was, and Kath had told her that Abbie had always loved Adele and her dad sometimes played Someone Like You on the piano for her to sing to. So now Ellie hummed it quietly. She didn’t remember the words, but hoped that didn’t matter.

  * * *

  Ten minutes later, Ellie felt a flicker of hope. She’d seen it again, and this time she was certain.

  ‘Sam,’ she said, turning to the doctor who had just arrived at Abbie’s bed. ‘It might be nothing, but I think there was a small response from Abbie when I was with her a minute ago. Nothing much, but her eyelids fluttered. Only a second, and I know it could have been anything, but I thought I should mention it.’

  Sam looked up from the chart he was reading.

  ‘Great news, Ellie. The swelling on her brain has come down, and with the reduced sedatives let’s hope we start to see a bit more of a reaction. What was her GCS?’

  Ellie pulled a face.

  ‘No change, I’m afraid. But I’ll check again in another hour and let you know.’

  ‘Okay. I suggest you don’t mention the fluttering eyes to the mother, though. It’s a bit early to get her hopes up.’

  Ellie nodded. She had to get better. She didn’t think she could bear it if this child died.

  Sadly, there were no further signs of improvement, and although Ellie tried to talk to Kath Campbell, the poor woman was still barely able to speak without crying. All Ellie got out of her was ‘it’s all our fault’ and ‘how could we have been so stupid.’ She had tried to understand why Abbie’s parents were blaming themselves but when asked, Kath just shook her head and cried some more.

  So it was with a heavy heart that Ellie made her way from the hospital to her car.