I didn’t want to touch the grenade again. I reached for my mobile instead. Picked out the letters with my fingers.
Hi Neil, don’t forget kids at 7:45. Get the security guard to help with your paperwork. Hope it all goes OK.
His reply came back within a minute.
Still chugging through it. Security guard no help at all. Maybe he’s in the wrong line of work!
Another grenade. I dropped it into my handbag.
The missing girls shot into my head. I switched on the computer and found the News. Missing girls still not found — Police very concerned for their safety — Parents urging them to get in touch — They won’t be in trouble — Please just please get in touch.
My heart ached. It was as though the skateboard attack had not just affected me, but had affected the whole world. The whole of my world. Since I had woken up from unconsciousness, everything in my world had been different. I wondered if this world was a parallel one. Had this world been happening while I was living my other world? My pre-unconscious world? Had I somehow fallen through a hole into this one? Knocked unconscious in my real world — woken up in this darker one?
In my other world, was Neil still my loving husband, who I trusted with my life? Was I still working at the school? Did I get the Deputy Head position?
If there were parallel worlds, running simultaneously, then there must surely be a way back into the one I inhabited before. I didn’t have to live in this dark world. This world of lies and mistrust. I could go back. If only I could find the gap. The way through.
I typed parallel worlds into the search engine.
It took about ten minutes of reading to realise that I might have gone off on one. A reaction, no doubt, to finding out that Neil had lied to me.
Instead I clicked onto the bank’s website. The one where he worked, and, naturally, the one where we had our bank accounts.
The site confirmed the bank’s opening times. I already knew them anyway. I clicked the login button and signed in to my accounts.
We both had a separate account and a joint one. I noticed that the joint account was showing less money than I was expecting. I opened the transactions on the screen. There were dozens of withdrawals. Each one for £10. And there were multiple withdrawals on each day. But there were deposits too. Multiples of ten. Several days apart.
I frowned. I hadn’t taken any money out.
Which meant that Neil had.
It wasn’t possible to tell for sure, but every withdrawal looked like it came from the same place. They were all from the same bank’s cash machines at least. Where was it? It wasn’t his bank. So he wasn’t using the one right outside where he worked. He was going to another one. Practically every day, several times a day. Taking out £10. Then every few days, putting money back into the account. But not the same amount. He was taking out more than he was putting in.
Unless it wasn’t Neil. The handbag thief perhaps? But I had cancelled all my cards. Had I forgotten the one for the joint account? I couldn’t remember. But my PIN number wasn’t written down anywhere. They were all in my head. The thief couldn’t have got hold of that. Not inside my head. Where the darkness and confusion lived.
I heard a noise coming from the kitchen. I snapped my head round, looked over my shoulder at the doorway. Nothing. But there was a noise. A tapping sound and a breath-like woosh, like someone exhaling a deep breath. I couldn’t bring myself to look back at the computer monitor. At the same time I was rooted to the seat. If I could have sent someone else into the kitchen for me, I would have done.
‘Hello?’ I said.
My voice sounded too shaky.
‘What?’ I said.
Much firmer. Maybe even threatening.
I jerked out of the seat and stormed into the kitchen. Fists clenched and bared teeth.
‘What the fuck,’ I said.
But there was no one there. No one at the window. The window remained shut. No hand-prints or smears. No soil on the floor.
The boiler on the wall glowed its red light at me. The boiler had switched on. Clicking and wooshing. That was the noise I had heard.
I could see the headlines. “Woman dies of fright as central heating switches on”.
I realised there was a growing anger inside me starting to boil, steam rising, bubbles popping on the surface. And I knew it would boil over soon. Just a soon as Neil walked through the front door.
But don’t splash the kids. Boiling anger burns. Sticks to people like hot melted sugar. Scars and blisters. Mind the kids.
I turned the temperature down. Closed my eyes and stretched my neck. I rubbed my forearms. Breathed out through pursed lips. Got that temperature down. Only bring it to the boil when it’s safe. When the only person who was going to get hurt from it would be Neil. Not the Neil that I loved. Not the Neil that loved me. But the Neil in this world. The one I ended up with when I fell through the hole. Let it all stick to him. Burning and scarring.
To take my mind off my simmering rage I decided to make sure the kids’ bedrooms were ready for them. I wished I had thought about getting them presents. Just something little. A cuddly for Rose. Some killing game for Michael. Instead I wrote them a little note each and placed it on their pillows. Just telling them how special they were. How much I loved them.
I felt like leaving a different kind of note on Neil’s pillow. But pushed the feeling back down into the simmering cauldron. Added it to the mix.
The mixture of excitement and rage was not a good one. I felt breathless and confused. Not sure where to go in the house. Not sure what to do. I was desperate to see the kids. To hold them to me, squeeze them tight. Make the most of every moment I had with them. But I was fearful of confronting Neil. I wasn’t scared of him, of what he might do to me. I was fearful of what he had done. What had been going on without my knowledge.
God only knew how it might affect the kids. Me going insane and their father doing… well I just didn’t know what he had been doing. I tried to make sense of the money going out of the joint account. Ran through all the reasons he might be doing it. It could be just to get cash to buy lunch. But that wouldn’t make sense more than once a day. And why was he not using the cash point attached to where he worked? Why travel to another?
I tried to think of all the cash machines in town. Tried to remember which bank was associated with each one. I couldn’t recall all of them. Why did he always apparently use the same one. Again and again, often ten or more times a day? So I pictured all the shops and businesses around the cash points. Maybe there was a brothel in town.
I couldn’t see that.
Newsagents; fruiterers; butchers; restaurants; betting shops.
Betting shops.
That would make sense. He might have a gambling habit. There were at least two betting shops in the town, possibly more. If he had a problem with it, that would explain why he took money out from a different cash point, so his colleagues wouldn’t see him.
It would also explain why he was taking out only £10 a time, if he was trying to restrict himself, but then coming back for more when he lost. That would also explain why not all the money was being paid back. How bad was it that he had to start using the joint account? He must have known I would see it eventually. Was it a call for help? Did he want to be caught?
But how could a gambling problem account for all the nights he’d been working late?
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