Saving Silence

by Gina Blaxill

  ‘Yes. I wasn’t sure at first, but I recognized his scarf and a bangle, and his body language, and then I knew.’ I drew a breath. ‘You see, I go to school with him. His name’s Ollie Moreno.’

  As Tamsin drove home – and as the police set off to haul Ollie in and speak to Imogen – I wondered how different my decisions would have been if Ollie hadn’t been involved. Somehow, when you had the power to shop someone you knew, it felt like there was more at stake, which when you thought about it was totally illogical. This was murder, whichever way you looked at it.

  Ever since what had happened at Colchester station, I’d played an unfair game with Imogen. She’d leaped to the conclusion that the gang had got to us through Ollie; that he was their captive and we needed to save him. Whereas I’d known all along that it was just an elaborate stage piece designed to manipulate her. It wasn’t very smart – I could have blown the act at any point by telling Imogen that Ollie was one of them. I guessed the gang had been banking on me being scared enough to keep my mouth shut.

  Well, it was out now. Imogen would discover through the police rather than me what her boyfriend had done. I felt strangely deflated about that. All the times I’d got cold feet and all the lies I’d told to hide what it really was I couldn’t say – bad decisions at every turn. I still wasn’t even sure why I’d felt quite so awful about breaking the news to her. In a weird way, I supposed it was as simple as this: I liked Imogen and hadn’t wanted her to hate me because of what I’d seen, because of what my evidence would mean. And stupidly I’d felt like it was my problem, something I should sort out on my own. I’d been scared and had convinced myself that shutting up was the best solution. I’d made one wrong call after another. When I looked back now, it all seemed so stupid. I shouldn’t have been a coward. I should never have got Imogen involved. And I should have gone to the police straight away.

  Would Imogen turn against me for what I’d done? Would her heart be broken and she’d never forgive me? I hoped not. I’d watched Imogen and Ollie a lot over the past couple of weeks, and despite what Imogen said, their relationship seemed more friendly than romantic. Maybe I’d read too many books, but I did wonder if they’d just fallen into going out. Maybe once she got over the shock she’d be more OK without him than she thought.

  Maybe I was just thinking these things because deep down I wanted there to be nothing there.

  Tamsin braked sharply, jolting us both forward. I saw that we were at a red light.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I should pay more attention.’

  I peered at her. Tamsin was still as pale as she’d been in the police station. She’d placed a hand on her forehead, and despite the sweater she was wearing, she was shivering. ‘Are you feeling OK?’

  ‘No, not really. And that horrible video hasn’t made me feel any better.’

  ‘Shall I make you a cup of something when we get in? I mean . . .’ I struggled for the words. ‘I have a bit of making up to do.’

  I couldn’t quite bring myself to apologize. Somehow I felt as if apologizing would drag up all the bigger things I never talked about to Tamsin or Dad. Like how I felt about slotting into their lives, and how they really felt about me being here. I wasn’t ready to go there.

  ‘Thanks.’ Tamsin sniffed, and I opened the glove compartment to find her a tissue. She had just enough time to blow her nose before the light changed.

  My thoughts turned back to the video. Would I ever forget that sickening sequence of events? It had been just two guys who’d run into the shop to start with. My film didn’t show them very clearly – they were dressed to rob, anonymously. They’d both gone straight to Hamdi and started threatening him. He was opening up the till when they first laid into him. Was he not doing it quickly enough or had they just wanted to hurt someone? Their mindset was too far from my own for me to even begin to imagine.

  It was at this point that Ollie had appeared. He was wearing his usual jeans and sports sweater. He’d made an effort to disguise himself by putting his scarf over his face, but I’d got a good look at him. Perhaps Ollie hadn’t known about his friends’ plans. The others shouted at him to take the cash as they continued to beat Hamdi. Unless he’d joined in after I’d got out, Ollie hadn’t laid a finger on Hamdi himself.

  I guessed this meant that the police would be more lenient on Ollie, especially if he gave over the others’ names. Would he wind up in prison, or the teenage equivalent, because I’d come forward? Even though I knew I couldn’t really be held to blame, I still felt uncomfortable. I mean, this was Ollie Moreno here, Mr Perfect, whom I’d never really liked because he was cooler and better-looking than me. How narrow my world had been before this had happened.

  IMOGEN

  MONDAY 18 NOVEMBER

  When I got home the front door was locked. Relieved that I was alone, I collapsed on the sofa. The last thing I felt like was facing Mum. Not just because she’d still be pissed off, but because pretty soon either she or Dad was going to need to accompany me to the police station. That’s what the officers who’d taken Ollie and Maria Paula off had said. They seemed to know I was involved. There was only one person I could think of who would have been able to tell them that.

  This was doing my head in. I went upstairs to change into my trackies and trainers. Soon I was outside again and running to the park, hoping that crisp air and the feeling of my soles bouncing off tarmac would help me to make sense of things.

  Ollie had been arrested, for God’s sake! He’d crumbled when the police had come. As though he’d been expecting it. He hadn’t said he was innocent. He hadn’t said anything at all. Apart from ‘sorry’.

  It was the way he’d looked at his mum that told me without a shadow of a doubt that there was no mistake.

  My frustration mounting, I put on a burst of speed. How could Ollie do this? How could he take part in a murder? He wasn’t a killer, he wasn’t a criminal. He’d never even been violent, for God’s sake! He was supposed to be one of the good guys!

  It began to drizzle again. I looked at the grey, heavy skyline. Even in the park, I could see buildings all around me. For the first time I felt like Walthamstow was a sealed glass tank and I was struggling to breathe.

  I didn’t want to think about Ollie. Instead I thought about Sam. He’d known about Ollie all along. That must have been what he’d shied away from telling me. Maybe he wanted to get me on his side in some weird way, before he went to the police. Right now I was too angry at him for letting me go through the stress of yesterday to begin to try to work out what might have gone on in his head. Why hadn’t he just told me the truth? Who had he been trying to protect? Himself, or me?

  When I reached home the lights were on. I unlocked the door and went through to the kitchen. Mum was sitting at the table with a coffee, on the phone. When she saw me she covered the receiver.

  ‘Stay right there. Sorry, Immy just came in. Yes, just rearrange my 4 p.m. appointment. Thanks, Sandra. Bye.’ She placed the phone back in the receiver and gave me a look. ‘What’s going on, Imogen? And what’s happened to your glasses?’

  I hadn’t expected Mum to notice I was wearing my old pair. Much bigger things passed her by, such as the fact that I clearly hadn’t gone to sixth form today. I sat down, unzipping my tracksuit top. ‘The police have called, obviously. So you don’t need to ask me, do you?’

  ‘All I’ve been told is that the police want to speak to you in relation to these break-ins and the death of that poor young man. They made it clear you weren’t involved directly.’ Mum took a sip of coffee. The tightness of her body language told me she was annoyed but she clearly wasn’t going to let rip until she’d heard me out. ‘We’re not going down to the station until you tell me everything, so you’d better start talking. I’m not angry, but I want the full story.’

  There was no point staying silent so I did as she said. Mum started off interrupting constantly, but after I snapped at her she listened silently – well, silently apart from when I mentioned I
’d been roughed up. She made a huge fuss and demanded to look at my stomach. I felt a weird sense of satisfaction as she exclaimed at the large bruise.

  When I was done, Mum said, ‘I can barely believe this – God, Immy! Are you sure you’re not in pain? We should get a doctor to look at that bruise. You should have done it yesterday. You were right by the hospital when it happened, for goodness sake.’

  ‘Well, I didn’t. Shoot me.’

  ‘That isn’t funny. What a mess!’

  ‘Sorry,’ I said in an offhand voice. ‘All this just happened and I couldn’t stop it.’

  ‘Imogen –’ Mum folded her arms, face troubled – ‘I still don’t understand. Why on earth didn’t you tell anyone you were being threatened? You know how serious cyber-bullying is. For God’s sake, they beat you up!’

  She stressed each of the last three words. I stared at the table in front of me. I could see a ring from a coffee cup in the reflection. I concentrated very hard on how the light fell on the table, and how it made it shine. I heard Mum sigh.

  ‘I’m your mother. You’re –’ Mum’s voice dipped a little. ‘Well, you’re my baby, though you’re not so little any more. This shouldn’t be happening to you. Not by yourself. I’m here for you. I wish you’d told me. I wish you’d told the police. Why didn’t you?’

  ‘I just didn’t,’ I said, softly but firmly.

  I felt Mum’s stare. She looked as though she was either going to burst into tears or come down on me like a ton of bricks and say how much I’d disappointed her. I waited to see which it would be. Instead I heard her chair squeak, and then the splash of water. Looking up, I saw that she was filling the kettle.

  ‘Coffee?’

  I nodded. Mum took two fresh mugs from the cupboard. Gently she said, ‘I’m having a tough time believing your Ollie is involved in this. He seems such a dependable young man. Focused, with his head screwed on.’

  ‘He’s not “my” Ollie.’ I snapped. I didn’t want to talk to Mum about this, but I couldn’t help it. I’d suddenly realized how angry I was. ‘I don’t want anything to do with someone who’s done what he has! How could he do something so totally out of order? We ran an anti-bullying campaign together, Mum. He hated gangs and violence then. Clearly not any more! God – it’s like he was leading a double life!’

  ‘People go along with things for lots of reasons, Immy. Ollie may have got pressured into a situation he then couldn’t get out of.’

  He should’ve been strong enough to say no, I thought. He should have known what was right. ‘Yeah, well, shoulda thought about that before he started hanging round with violent killers.’

  ‘So you think he’s guilty then.’

  ‘I saw his face when the police came for him, Mum.’

  The kettle clicked. ‘Let’s have these, calm down, then go to the police. And the doctor. No arguing.’

  ‘I want this sorted,’ I said. ‘I want to get on with my life without all this crap.’

  ‘Crap happens. Get used to it.’ If there hadn’t been softness in Mum’s voice she’d have sounded like she was on her high horse again. I took the coffee she handed me. This hadn’t been as bad as I’d feared. Mum was being calm and reasonable rather than complaining how I’d disrupted her day. There had even, if I wasn’t mistaken, been a hint of sympathy there too. I hadn’t even been grilled about our argument yesterday. Perhaps she realized this wasn’t the moment. Or perhaps my injury had shocked her into caring for once. Either way, for the first time in a while, I was grateful she was there.

  SAM

  TUESDAY 19 NOVEMBER

  Being back at sixth form after everything I’d been through felt surreal. I sat in English literature feeling even more out of the loop than usual. I couldn’t bring myself to care about the novel we were studying. It was just a story and seemed silly. For a change I was preoccupied with real life. So much could happen in a week.

  I didn’t feel like reading in a classroom at lunchtime. Before I knew where I was going I was in the canteen at one of the vending machines. As I picked up my can of Pepsi Max, I heard Imogen’s voice behind me.

  ‘And here I was thinking I was going to have to trawl all the hidey-holes this school has to offer to find you.’

  ‘Oh. Hi there.’ I turned, hands automatically smoothing down my shirt. I never knew why I did that – an automatic response from when I’d been bigger maybe.

  It felt weird to be talking to Imogen so publicly. I couldn’t help remembering what Nadina had said about Imogen finding me ‘strangely intriguing’. Maybe she’d wanted to speak to me at school in the past but my unfriendliness had put her off.

  Encouragingly, Imogen didn’t appear to be too mad at me over yesterday. She suggested we went somewhere away from the crowd. ‘Figure you’re the expert,’ she said. We ended up sitting by the radiator in one of the fourth-floor English rooms.

  ‘You had your stitches out,’ Imogen said, taking a banana and a muesli bar out of her bag. I nodded.

  ‘I had an appointment first thing. The nurse said the scar’s healing well, my wrist too, though that never really gave me any trouble at all. No Nadina today?’

  ‘Nah, her mum wanted her to rest up. Nads was all set to argue but then she remembered she had a mock exam.’ She sighed. ‘I need to go over. Still don’t feel I apologized properly.’

  When I looked quizzical, Imogen explained that she and Nadina had fallen out because she’d accused Nadina of telling Ollie that she’d been to see me. I’d known Ollie had been scared of the hold I’d had over him, but I hadn’t really clocked before that he’d been jealous too. After all, it must have looked to him like I’d been seeing his girlfriend behind his back.

  ‘If Nadina says she didn’t, you have to believe her,’ I said. ‘She’s your best friend. There are tons of other ways Ollie could have found out – one of the other girls you were with at lunch could have mentioned it maybe.’

  Imogen swore. ‘Why didn’t I think this through? And why d’you have to be right all the time?’

  ‘Don’t know about right. Just trying to be logical, which normally I’m not.’

  Imogen watched as I opened up my lunch, a ham-and-tomato sandwich and some crisps. ‘Talking of Nads, I hear you paid her a visit.’

  I hesitated. ‘I thought that if Nadina or her dad had seen the guys I might not need to show the police the video.’ I took a deep breath and looked her in the eye. ‘About that . . . I’m sorry I lied to you about not backing it up. And I’m sorry you had to hear about, you know, Ollie, from the police rather than me. That can’t have been easy.’

  She nodded. ‘It wasn’t.’

  Unnerved by how calm she was I said, ‘Why aren’t you chewing me out about everything?’

  ‘Chewing on something else, that’s why,’ Imogen said, toasting me with her banana. When I just stared, she sighed. ‘That was a joke. Sometimes when everything’s completely crap all you can do is laugh, y’know? In that hysterical fake happy kind of way.’

  ‘You’re a bit scary like this. I think I prefer being yelled at.’ I opened the crisps. She took a couple when I offered.

  ‘More seriously, I don’t know what to think.’

  ‘That makes two of us. Aren’t you . . .’ I hesitated, ‘upset? About Ollie?’

  Imogen shrugged. ‘I don’t want to talk about him.’

  ‘Sometimes it’s the people around us that help us know who we really are. When they go, you end up in a kind of crisis.’

  ‘Sounds like you’re speaking from experience.’

  It suddenly struck me that never in a million years could I have believed I’d be having a conversation like this with Imogen Maxwell, with her asking questions and actually sounding interested.

  ‘I suppose I am,’ I went on, and told her about Mum, and how since the age of thirteen I’d had to come to terms with the fact that sooner or later she’d be leaving me forever. About Dad, and how it had felt to move in with him and Tamsin. About how alien school had felt to m
e. When I got to that part, Imogen laughed.

  ‘You like to make life hard for yourself. So basically, you flung friendliness back in my face because you were being a judgemental jerk.’

  I felt my cheeks colour. ‘That’s not fair! It was different. I was a total outsider, no one was into the same stuff as me . . . making friends was always going to be impossible –’

  ‘How is that not being a judgemental jerk?’

  It took me a moment to realize that her tone had been teasing.

  ‘Sorry,’ I huffed. ‘It was just hard for me, settling in somewhere new. I suppose . . . I suppose I wasn’t confident enough to try. After Mum died, I sort of didn’t really know who I was any more. I’d been so focused on looking after her, I guess I lost sight of me. It was easier to avoid everyone and not have to deal with it.’

  She smiled. ‘It was a bit like that for me when we first moved here from Kent. I guess it was so long ago I’d forgotten about how weird it was. And there was me thinking you were just trying to act all superior and mysterious!’

  The idea of me being mysterious was funny enough to make me laugh. ‘Isn’t it only brooding vampires who are mysterious?’

  Imogen grinned. ‘For all I knew, you could’ve been a vampire. It’s not like you let anyone get to know you. Just so you know, we’re really not so different from you northerners. We’re all human. We feel the same things. And actually? We can be OK when you give us a chance.’

  ‘Well, I’m all right too when you give me a chance,’ I replied.

  Imogen gave me one of the wry yeah, right looks that I was beginning to like. ‘Seriously, Sam – you’ve been through a lot. But that’s then, this is now, and now doesn’t need to be bad if you don’t let it. Your mum would want you to make the best of things, right?’

  ‘I’m not sure Mum would like me buddying up with my young, pretty step mum.’

  Imogen made a face. ‘C’mon, Tamsin seems OK. What’s she do for a living, anyway? Always seems to be at home.’