Keeping Sam

by Joanne Phillips

  And then he was pulling away, holding her at arms’ length, his mouth blurred by their passion.

  ‘I … I’m sorry,’ she said, touching her fingers to her lips as though she could still feel his kiss there.

  ‘No, Kate, I’m sorry,’ Patrick said. ‘I shouldn’t have … It was taking advantage. I’m just as bad as –’

  ‘You are not!’ Kate cried, reaching out for him again. ‘Don’t ever say that. Evan was drunk, and won’t take no for an answer at the best of times. I’m sorry for involving you, for waking you up, but please don’t think that what just happened between us was anything like what Evan tried to do.’

  But Patrick’s expression told her he was far from convinced. ‘You should get some sleep,’ he said. ‘We’ve got a busy day tomorrow.’

  ‘You don’t have to help with the painting if you don’t want to,’ Kate heard herself saying. ‘I mean, you’ve already done so much. I wouldn’t want to impose.’

  ‘Impose?’ He regarded her, his face impossible to read.

  ‘I mean, if you’re busy. I don’t want to put you out.’ Kate closed her mouth, unable to trust what might come out of it next. Her mind was still reeling from Evan’s unwelcome pass at her, and from Patrick’s very welcome embrace.

  ‘Goodnight, Kate,’ Patrick said softly. ‘Call me if you hear from your ex again, or if there’s anything else you need.’

  Before Kate could think of what to say, Patrick had gone, and she was left alone on the landing, the darkness making all the edges fuzzy, her ears buzzing in the silence. She trudged back into her own room, closed and locked the door, and stood with her back pressed against it with her eyes closed for the longest time. And then she crossed the room, lay down on the bed, and fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.

  Chapter 22

  The glass felt cold in her fingers – ice-cold even though there was no ice. Maybe it was her hands that were cold. Barbara put the glass down and tucked her fists under her armpits. That was better. She rocked slightly in her chair, listening to the creak of the wood on the floorboards. She must get David to oil the bloody thing. She must tell him to …

  Barbara stopped rocking and fixed her eyes on a point on the wall opposite. She allowed her thoughts to slip away, allowed her mind to shut down. This technique had been working well so far, and she saw no reason to stop using it now. Her friends, the endless dance of them through her house, kept telling her not to be afraid to let her feelings out. What did they know? What clue did they have with their perfect families, their married, sensible children, devoted husbands, perky grandkids? It made her sick to hear them going on and on. But the look on their faces when she had told them to get out of her house and leave her alone. That had been priceless.

  Now she was alone. Well, not quite. Not yet. She still had Samuel. He was playing in David’s study, building something on his granddad’s desk with those everlasting bricks of his. For when Pops comes home, he’d said. Barbara had told him, she’d tried to explain it, but Samuel had merely looked up at her with those huge eyes of his and said, ‘Don’t be silly, Nana. Pops live here. He be home soon.’

  Well, the boy would find out the truth soon enough. And it wasn’t the only truth, either. She knew her days with him were numbered now but somehow, despite everything, she couldn’t bring herself to believe it would really happen. He was all she had left. He was all she’d ever had.

  She still had one ace up her sleeve. But she was far from sure whether it would work.

  Damn David. Damn the lot of them.

  Pushing the drink to one side, Barbara picked up the photo album that lay by her feet. Funny, because she had forgotten all about it until a few weeks ago when she found her husband searching frantically in the dresser. She never did find out what he was looking for; now she never would. She shook the thought away and opened the album. Page after page of holiday photos. Herself, Katherine and David in France, in Spain, Scotland, Wales, the Lake District. So Kate had had a terrible childhood, had she? These photographs told a different story. The child in these photographs was smiling; she was happy. She played in the sand and ate ice creams. She held her father’s hand and carried a balloon, her face lit up like the sun.

  Barbara wasn’t in many of the photos, and at first she wondered why. It wasn’t as if she were particularly camera-shy. But then she remembered: she had been the one taking the pictures. Which, in a way, made her even more present than the subjects. Without her the images wouldn’t exist.

  Just like David didn’t exist anymore.

  She forced herself to look closely at the image of her husband in the photograph she held now between her frozen fingers. At the way his hair swept to one side – oh, how he’d fought to keep hold of that parting even when it got bigger and bigger, and his hair thinner and thinner – and at his face, his eyes, his laughing mouth. Had that been before, she wondered? Before it all started to go wrong for them. Before he’d started to drink – not just for fun, like she did, but seriously, as though it was a job of work he needed to master. The drink had changed him, she knew that, but underneath he was always David. He always came back to her eventually.

  He wasn’t coming back to her now. And Barbara knew exactly who was to blame. The person who had taken away her happiness, her peace of mind, her husband. The person who was trying to take away her boy. She pulled the photo out of its plastic sleeve and held it carefully between her thumb and forefinger. With her other hand, she picked up the nail scissors and started to cut.

  Chapter 23

  If her sleep was devoid of the usual nightmares, Kate’s waking hours the next day were not. From the moment the sun glared through the curtainless windows, pulling her from sleep with all the subtlety of a road digger, Kate’s thoughts were plagued by memories of the night before. The maelstrom of emotions had left her feeling weak and vulnerable, unable to concentrate on the simplest task. Even her visit with Sam failed to soothe her mind. And when the session was over, and Kate had to once again kiss her son goodbye while all the other parents wrapped their children in warm coats and got them ready for lunch dates or took them home to play, she had felt more than ever that her heart would simply break from the pain of it. Her mother, resplendent in a cashmere coat and impeccably tied scarf, fresh from the salon with the smell of hairspray still clinging to her clothing, had smiled at Kate, and thrust a piece of paper into her shaking hand.

  ‘The funeral,’ she said, her gaze withering as she took in Kate’s dishevelled appearance. ‘It’s on Monday if you can manage to come.’

  ‘Of course I’ll come,’ Kate responded, but her mother was already walking away. Sam waved and shouted, ‘Bye bye, Mummy!’ but even that couldn’t lift Kate’s spirits. She walked slowly home, her head low, her mood even lower.

  Back at Bow Hill, Patrick and Marie had made a start on Sam’s room, Patrick on a stepladder cutting in while Marie tackled the longest expanse of wall with a ratty-looking roller. Kate had chosen sky blue and spring green for the room, and the sight of the clean, bright colours cheered her a little. Patrick said hello and threw her a warm smile, which melted her insides but also sent her into a flurry of confusion.

  ‘Do you fancy going out for something to eat later?’ he asked when Marie popped downstairs to make coffee.

  ‘Sorry,’ Kate said automatically, ‘I can’t. I’ve really got a lot to do, sewing work and stuff, and I should be getting on with –’

  ‘That’s fine,’ he said, smiling. The smile, however, did not reach his eyes. ‘No worries.’

  They worked on in silence, with a music station on the TV giving Marie the opportunity to show off her dancing moves, much to Kate’s amusement. By mid-afternoon the painting was finished, and Kate stood back and nodded, satisfied.

  ‘It looks great,’ she said.

  Marie clapped her hands in delight. ‘I can’t wait for little Sam to see it.’

  ‘Neither can I,’ Kate agreed. But then a sense of dread hit her from nowhere, pulling her down
into its depths. Would he see it? Her mother had seemed so sure of herself today, smiling that secret smile. Almost as if she knew something Kate didn’t. Well, of course it must be to do with Evan. No doubt he’d told Barbara about Kate’s rejection, and now he would be all set to do his worst at the court hearing. She wondered whether Evan would be at her father’s funeral, perhaps as her mother’s guest, and she wondered how Sam would get through it, whether he’d even understand what was going on.

  ‘Penny for them,’ Marie said, putting her arm around Kate’s shoulder after Patrick had packed up the stepladders and said goodbye.

  ‘He’s upset with me,’ Kate mused.

  ‘Is that why you have a face like a wet weekend?’ Marie asked, wiping her paint-splattered hands on her overalls. She gathered together the makeshift dust sheets and threw them over her shoulder. ‘I’ll pop these out on the landing, get Patrick to put them back in the loft later. For what it’s worth, Kate, I don’t think he’s upset with you. He likes you, I’m sure. But you’ve been through a lot. You’ve just lost your dad, you’re going through a custody battle, and then there’s Evan ... Patrick probably doesn’t know how to play it, that’s all.’

  He’s not the only one, Kate thought, but she said nothing.

  ‘Coffee?’ Marie asked, and Kate nodded gratefully. She looked around the room, enjoying being alone, taking in the way the colours reflected the slanted light, the way the blue of Sam’s new curtains complemented the blue of the walls. He would be happy here.

  She picked up Sam’s new sailor suit and smiled. And then her expression soured, recalling Evan’s barbed jibe. He had a nerve. What had he said exactly? It had been niggling at her all day, this sense of something waiting on the edges of her memory, ready to fall into place like a key turning the mechanism of a well-oiled lock.

  Evan had asked her whether Sam’s sailor suit was the same one she’d made in Manchester. It hadn’t registered at the time, but now Kate realised what it was that had been bothering her.

  Evan had left her and Sam months before she’d even started on that sailor suit. There was no way he could have known about it, no way at all. She remembered his disdain last night, how he’d accused her of being obsessed. An old granny, sitting at her sewing machine, day in, day out. And he was right – that was exactly what she had become, both here and back at her flat in Manchester before the break-in. Before the knock to her head that had left her unconscious.

  The knock to her head that had caused her to lose a year of her life, not to mention her son.

  If Evan had seen the sailor suit in Manchester, he must have been in her flat at some point after the time when her mother came to stay. She hadn’t started making clothes for Sam until after that; she hadn’t started work on the sailor suit until she’d found those special buttons and got the idea out of a magazine.

  Had her mother told him about Sam’s outfit? Was that possible? Kate couldn’t imagine any conversation where that might come up. Maybe she had seen Evan but didn’t remember. No. She shook her head so violently her hair whipped back and forth, flicking her in the face. No way. She would remember. With Sam still in nappies, with her whole life one long struggle from one meal to the next, one sleep to the next, Kate knew that Evan would not have been a welcome guest in her home at any point after he’d abandoned her.

  So how did he know about the sailor suit she’d made for Sam?

  She pressed her head against the cold glass of the window and closed her eyes. The nightmare came back to her, making her shiver. That sense of someone standing behind her when she knew there should be no one there. The fear she felt, like insects crawling over her body. Sam, playing in his pen, cooing at her, chewing on a toy. He was teething. She remembered that now, and the realisation that this was a new memory, a brand new detail, jolted through her like an electric current. Yes, Sam had been teething. She hadn’t slept for two nights and she was bone tired. She could see her old flat in her mind’s eye, the washing on the drainer, the sterilising bowl overflowing with bottles and teats. The couple in the flat below were arguing again, and Kate was tired of listening to them. She had flopped down at the table with her head in her hands and let the tears of exhaustion fall. She was tired of everything, tired of being tired. Sam gurgled and dropped his toy – a plastic tractor. It had clattered to the floor and made her jump.

  And then Kate had sat up, suddenly alert. Something else had caught her attention, but what? A creak of a floorboard where it shouldn’t have creaked? She remembered sitting there at the table, alert to the very movement of the air around her. And she had felt it then, the sense of being watched. The sense of time standing still, the ticking of a clock, the muffled arguing below. A smell, alien to that space; not the smell of Sam’s dirty nappies or washing drying on radiators or the acrid scent that crept into her flat when the boy next door smoked out of his window.

  It was the smell of danger. And she had smelt it again last night, right here in her room in Bow Hill.

  Kate placed her hands on the glass now, palms flat, spreading her fingers wide. In her mind she sent herself back to her nightmare, willing the scene into life. Turn around, she said silently. Don’t be afraid, Kate. Turn around and see who it is.

  She already knew who she would see there.

  When she opened her eyes again the light in her room had all but gone and her own pale face stared back at her from the window. Reflected in the ghostly glass, her room was bare, just a bed and a table. No playpen here. No Sam. But then a movement behind her caught her eye and she spun around, crying out in alarm, her hand flying up to her mouth.

  It was only Marie’s dress, hanging from the door, swaying slightly in a draught from the badly fitting window. Kate sat down on her bed, her heart banging, her mind suddenly alive with answers.

  Chapter 24

  ‘Madam, slow down. I can’t understand what you’re saying.’

  Kate took a deep breath and pressed the phone closer to her ear.

  ‘I need to speak to PC Georgia Mayer. Please – it’s absolutely imperative I speak to her at once.’

  ‘Imperative, is it? Absolutely.’ The Mancunian accent made a mockery of Kate’s efforts to sound important.

  ‘Look, is PC Mayer there? She was dealing with my case last year, it was a robbery, I mean a burglary – I don’t know exactly what you’d call it. My flat was broken into and I was attacked. I was hit over the head and I was in a coma for a year, well about nine months to be exact, and I had no idea who did it but now I do. And I need to tell her. I need to tell someone right away.’

  ‘Well, why don’t you tell me and I’ll pass the message on.’

  ‘No! I want to talk to someone now. I know who it was, and he’s here in Corrin Cove right now and he’s going to speak up for my mum at the hearing and then no one will believe me …’

  Kate stopped. She was babbling. She needed to get a grip.

  ‘Do you believe yourself to be in danger at this precise moment, madam?’

  ‘No,’ Kate said sullenly, looking around her sunlit bedroom and feeling a little silly.

  ‘I see. And when you say that the perpetrator is in Cobbit Cove right now, what does that mean exactly?’

  ‘Corrin Cove,’ Kate corrected. ‘It’s near St Austell. Near Plymouth,’ she added, painfully aware of how small and insignificant her tiny town would seem to the police in a metropolis like Manchester.

  ‘Oh, Plymouth,’ the sergeant said, as though that explained everything.

  After a couple more tries, Kate left a message for whoever was still dealing with her case and rang off. She’d given them Evan’s full name – surely when they looked at his record they would put two and two together and ring her right back. But after half an hour she realised it wasn’t going to happen. At least, it wasn’t going to happen as quickly as she hoped.

  Meanwhile, she had a funeral to go to. She just hoped she wouldn’t have to face Evan there.

  ***

  It was the perfect day fo
r a funeral. Low clouds gave the sky a heavy, portentous appearance and a dusting of rain forced the mourners to cluster together in little groups under the shelter of their umbrellas.

  The sight of the umbrellas came close to producing a smile on Kate’s face, although it never actually materialised. Most of them were regulation black but a few, most likely grabbed from cars at the last minute, were outrageously bright and colourful. An oversized one with green and white stripes tilted merrily in the wind amongst a sea of black. And another, pink and purple check, cast a rosy glow over the faces of the two women huddled underneath.

  Kate let the half-smile drop from her face as the coffin appeared, shouldered by four men from her father’s golf club and two solemn-faced employees of the funeral director. She held on to Marie’s arm even tighter as the box reached the side of the grave and was lowered slowly into the hole, thankful for her friend’s physical and moral support. Thank goodness Sam wasn’t here to see this. At least that was something her mother had got right, leaving him with friends for the day. Although maybe it would have helped him to say goodbye to his granddad. Selfishly, Kate would have given anything to have her son by her side right now, to feel his little hand in hers.

  ‘Not long now,’ Marie murmured, and Kate threw her a grateful glance.

  The vicar spoke in a monotone which failed to carry over the wind, and the sound of traffic from the main road at the north edge of the graveyard drowned him out even further. Kate was glad she couldn’t hear him. The words he had spoken inside the church told of a man she had never even known: a pillar of the community, a cheerful soul, loved and respected by everyone he met. So her father had been a generous man, a hard worker, well-regarded and widely liked by a host of people she’d never seen before. They’d crowded the church, seeking out her mother to speak in hushed tones of concern and grief. Kate was touched and hurt in equal measure. How she wished she had known the man they had.