by Daniel Hurst
Pushing through the glass doors, I see that she has stopped just outside the hotel and is leaning against the side of the building as she removes her heels. She almost has her trainers back on by the time I arrive beside her.
‘Mum, what are you doing?’
The surprise of my sudden appearance causes her to drop one of her heels, and she looks at me as if she’s seen a ghost.
‘Chloe! What are you doing here?’
‘What are you doing here? I thought you were meeting Jimmy?’
Mum looks around as if she is checking that nobody else is here that might recognise her.
‘Why are you dressed like that? What are you doing?’
My questions keep coming thick and fast, but Mum’s not giving me any answers yet. Instead, she quickly finishes changing her shoes and puts her coat over her dress before pulling me away from the hotel and leading me down the street.
‘You shouldn’t have followed me. I told you to stay at home,’ she says as we cross the road without looking, causing an oncoming car to stop to allow us past.
‘You told me you were meeting Jimmy at the park. So why are you here?’ I ask, turning it back onto her. ‘Is he here? Did you give him the money?’
Mum quickens her pace even more, but I’m not prepared to rush like this all the way home, and certainly not if she isn’t going to talk to me.
‘Mum, stop!’ I cry, pulling on her arm so that she has no choice but to comply.
She turns to look at me, and it’s only now we are so close and in broad daylight that I see how much makeup she has on to go with the red dress and the ridiculous heels. If I didn’t know she’d dyed her hair blonde before I saw her in that hotel, then I almost wouldn’t have recognised her.
‘I can’t tell you,’ she says, but even she knows that’s not going to be good enough.
‘Mum, you’re scaring me,’ I tell her, shaking my head. ‘What are you doing?’
That seems to get through to her, and she softens a little before looking around and nodding towards the café a few buildings down the street.
‘Let’s go in there,’ she says, leading me towards it. ‘And then I’ll tell you what I’ve done.’
29
HEATHER
I get a cappuccino, and Chloe opts for a skinny mocha before we take our seats opposite each other at the table in the busy corner of the café.
I wish I could have something stronger to drink, but there will be time for that later. I could have taken Jimmy up on his offer of champagne in that hotel room, but I just wanted to get out of there as quickly as I could. But any relief I was experiencing about getting it over and done with was cut short when I was accosted by my daughter only seconds after leaving the lobby and pulling my heels off.
‘So, what were you doing in there?’
I had hoped that I might have been able to take a sip of my coffee before I had to answer that, but Chloe is obviously in no mood for patience.
‘I was meeting Jimmy,’ I reply, and she raises her eyebrows at me.
‘Really? I thought you were on some kind of undercover job for work,’ she says.
I shake my head, although I wish I had been clever enough to think of that. It would have been a much better excuse, but it’s too late now.
‘Why were you meeting him there? I thought you were doing it at the park?’
‘He changed his mind. Said he wanted me to go to the hotel instead.’
Chloe eyes me sceptically for a moment, obviously trying to figure out if I am telling her the truth, so I take the opportunity to break eye contact to go in search of a packet of sugar from the little holder at the edge of our table.
‘So you went into a room with him?’ Chloe asks, watching me tear open one of the sachets and pour it into my drink while still ignoring her own.
‘Yeah, he is staying there apparently. So that’s where I gave him the money.’
I use my spoon to stir the sugar in, and I can feel the heat from my cup as I do. But I can also feel the heat from Chloe’s glare across the table, and I just know that she assumes there is more to the story than what I am telling her.
‘That was all you did?’ she asks me, and my spoon clinks loudly against the bottom of my cup as I accidentally drop it.
‘Yes,’ I reply, hoping that she didn’t read too much into my sudden nervousness when she asked the question.
‘So then what’s with the dress and heels?’ she queries. ‘You look like a hooker.’
‘Chloe!’ I say as I notice the old man sitting behind her turn around and glance in our direction.
‘What! You do! Why the hell are you dressed like that to meet a guy in a hotel room?’
‘Keep your voice down.’
‘I will when you tell me what’s really going on.’
I’d decided to bring her in here because I assumed that she would ask me fewer questions in a busy public place than she would do if it was just the two of us at home. But that was clearly misguided thinking. Chloe doesn’t care where we are.
‘I told you what happened. I met Jimmy, and I gave him the money,’ I try again before taking a sip of my coffee though it does nothing to make me feel better.
‘Did you sleep with him?’
‘Chloe!’
I’m stunned by the blunt nature of her question and do my best to make the surprise of it cover up for the fact that she has hit the nail right on the head.
‘Well, did you?’
‘No!’
‘You’re lying! I can tell!’
The old man isn’t the only one who has overheard us now, and I see several other patrons in the café turn and look towards our table. Now I’m regretting coming here, but it’s a little late for that.
‘Why are you being like this?’ I ask my daughter, leaning across the table and keeping my voice low. ‘Why can’t you just trust me?’
‘Why can’t you ever tell me the truth?’ she fires back but something in the way she said that suggests to me that she isn’t just referring to this particular incident.
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘I mean that I know you have lied to me before, and you keep doing it now. But I’m not a kid anymore. You have to start treating me like an adult.’
I try to think about what she could be referring to, but then I see how upset she is getting, and I reach across the table to take her hand.
‘Chloe. Calm down. I’m sorry. I don’t know what you think I have done, but I mean it when I say that I have hardly ever lied to you unless it was to protect you from something.’
‘So what are you protecting me from now?’ she asks, moving her hand away before I can hold it.
‘Everything!’ I say, and this time it’s my turn to raise my voice.
More glances from other tables in the coffee shop convince me that it is time to go, so I stand up from my seat and leave my almost untouched drink behind.
‘Come on. We’re going home,’ I say, signalling to my daughter to leave her drink too.
‘I’m staying here,’ she replies stubbornly, and I get a flashback to when she was a little girl refusing to leave the playground or go to bed on time. But unlike then, when I was perhaps softer than I should have been, I’m not in the mood for messing around now.
‘Get up now, Chloe,’ I say, my voice low but firm. ‘I mean it.’
My stern tone seems to do the trick, and Chloe reluctantly leaves her seat and follows me out of the café, where we pass the tables full of people who are no doubt happy to see us leave so they can go back to enjoying their drinks in peace.
Back out on the street, I flag down a taxi and turn to my daughter as it pulls up to the kerb beside us.
‘Don’t say another word. We’ll talk when we get home.’
It’s a sign of how rarely I ever get like this with my daughter that Chloe complies, no doubt surprised at how forceful I am being with her right now. But as we climb into the back of the taxi, I don’t feel guilty for being so strict. Not a
fter what I have been through for her both today, over the last week, and indeed for the last ten years.
Neither of us speaks as the taxi takes us home, and it’s less than five minutes later when the driver drops us off at our front door. I pay the man while Chloe heads up the driveway before I follow her into the house and finally close the door.
I expect the questions and accusations to start right away from my daughter again now we are home, but to my surprise, Chloe still doesn’t speak and simply goes into the kitchen where I hear her rummaging around in the fridge.
I’m tempted to go upstairs and change out of this ridiculous dress, but I decide to go and finish this conversation with her before the atmosphere between us gets any worse. After all, we need each other, now more than ever.
As the search for Rupert intensifies, if we can’t support one another then what’s the point of anything?
Entering the kitchen, I’m surprised to see Chloe holding a full bottle of wine in her hand. I recognise it as the bottle that I had earmarked for when I got back from my ‘meeting’ with Jimmy today, but it seems my daughter has her eye on it too.
‘Drink?’ she offers, as if she is the adult in this interaction.
I know I should refuse and take the bottle off her but based on how crazy things have been recently, this is nothing.
It sure as hell beats another argument, anyway.
‘Yeah, why not?’ I reply, shrugging my shoulders before taking a seat at the kitchen table.
Chloe does the honours, placing two glasses of wine down between us before taking her own seat and giving me a half-smile.
‘Cheers,’ she says, raising her wine.
‘Cheers,’ I reply as our glasses clink together.
‘So, are you going to tell me why you fucked Jimmy in the hotel or are we just going to pretend like it didn’t happen?’ she says, raising her eyebrows as she takes a sip of her drink.
I’m sure I’d be well within my rights to scold my daughter for that comment, as well as take the wine off her and tell her to get to her bedroom or get out of the house. But I don’t. I’m simply too exhausted to have another row or keep another secret. Besides, she is behaving like an adult right now, so maybe I should just treat her like one.
I decide that I’m going to tell her the truth about what happened in that hotel room.
I also decide that we’re going to need a second bottle of wine.
30
CHLOE
Mum has just finished telling me about what she really got up to in that hotel room, and while I am shocked at what I have just heard, I admire her honesty. It can’t have been easy to go through with what she did, but it certainly can’t have been any easier recollecting it all for my ears.
Mum had sex with Jimmy in that hotel room. The hair, dress and heels were all as per his request. Obviously, Mum didn’t go into too much detail, and I hadn’t wanted her to, but she had said it had been as awkward, unfulfilling and transactional as one would expect from such an arrangement. I know based on how long I was waiting for her in and around that hotel that she was inside that room for less than an hour, and that was a consequence of both her desire to leave once the deed was done, and Jimmy’s acknowledgement that Mum’s secret was now safe with him.
I have to say that I’m blown away by what my mum has been willing to do to keep me safe over this last week. Not only has she buried a body to avoid me facing police questioning and having my face in all the papers, but she has also just slept with a stranger to stop that truth coming out. I’ve never been in doubt that she loved me and would do anything for me, but it has been put to the test, and she has passed with flying colours. I just wish there was something I could do to make it up to her and show her how much I love her in return.
She’s upstairs now showering while I’m still sitting in the kitchen beside the empty bottle of wine that the two of us polished off. I’m now on tap water, not because I have to be, but because I want to. I’m dehydrated, and I’m not used to drinking much alcohol, never mind a couple of glasses of wine. Of course, it’s different for Mum. She would happily have had this whole bottle to herself if I hadn’t taken it from the fridge and pretty much ensured that we were going to share it. But I’m glad she didn’t refuse.
I enjoyed sitting with her and having a few glasses together. It was almost as if we were two friends catching up rather than just a mother and daughter forced to coexist simply because they are family. It was obviously a shame that the topic of discussion couldn’t have been something lighter than Mum having to sleep with a guy who was blackmailing us but never mind. We tried to make light of it as best we could, which wasn’t easy, but the wine eventually helped with that in the end.
As we became tipsy, we lightened up and were able to almost laugh at our situation, not in a nasty way and certainly not in a way that makes what we have done any better, but in a way that made us feel better, at least for a short while. “Gallow’s humour”, Mum called it, and while I’d never heard of that expression before, I understood what it meant when she explained it to me. Basically, it’s when you can laugh at a hopeless situation. Mum and I know that we face a lifetime of feeling guilty about what we did with Rupert, but we’d go mad if we couldn’t have at least one moment every now and again when we can allow ourselves a little light relief.
But it doesn’t take much for the dark thoughts to return again.
Finishing my water, I leave the kitchen table and head out of the room, crossing through the lounge before heading upstairs, where I can still hear the shower running in the bathroom. I asked Mum if she was going to stay as a blonde, but perhaps predictably, she said she will try to get her natural hair colour to return as quickly as possible.
In her case, blondes did definitely not have more fun.
Entering my room and closing the door behind me, I slump down on my bed and think about putting a movie on to play in the background while I lie here and hopefully drift off to sleep. But before I can grab the remote control and go searching for one, I notice that I have a new message on my mobile phone, which I put up here to charge while Mum and I were halfway through the wine bottle downstairs.
Glancing at the notification on my screen, I don’t recognise the number the message has come from, although it is certain that it was intended for me because it begins with Hi Chloe.
Unfortunately, that’s all I can read of the message without unlocking my phone and going into the app, which is what I do. As I hear the water go off in the bathroom and listen to Mum opening and closing the shower door, I get to read what the rest of the message says.
Hi Chloe.
I hope you don’t mind me texting you like this. I just wanted to say that I had a delightful afternoon with your mother and would like you to pass on my best wishes to her again. But there is something that the two of us must discuss now. Please message me back when you get this as I’m an impatient man and I’m also only five minutes away from the local police station.
Jimmy.
I re-read the message three times, but it doesn’t get any better when I do. What is Jimmy talking about? Mum did what she had to, and that should have been the end of it.
I hear Mum coming out of the bathroom and consider calling her in here to help me figure it out. But she has been through enough today with this man, so I see if it’s anything that I can deal with myself.
I quickly type out a reply.
What do you want?
It takes less than ten seconds to get a response.
You.
31
HEATHER
When you have a secret, the cost of that is peace of mind. No matter what you do, where you go and how much time passes by, you will always know that things can never be perfect again. If the secret is revealed, then everything will come crashing down. That’s how I have lived my life for the last ten years ever since I stabbed Tim with that broken wine bottle and buried his body.
A secret like that would break most people. It
would certainly be considered more than enough for one person to have to carry around with them. But here I am with not just one dark secret but two. I’ve added the memory of my burial of Rupert to my already cluttered mind as if I didn’t have enough to keep me awake at night, and I’m well aware that achieving even a few seconds of peace and clarity now will be an achievement. But as I stand here in my bedroom, drying my hair after a refreshing shower, I manage to experience those few blissful seconds of calm. I manage to forget all about Tim, Rupert and what I just did in that hotel with Jimmy, and think that maybe everything is going to be okay. I enjoy it while I can because I know the feeling will be fleeting.
And I’m not wrong.
Five seconds later, Chloe enters my room, and the expression on her face tells me that my peace is now shattered once again.
I turn off the hairdryer even though I’m nowhere near finished with my hair and look at the phone that my daughter is holding out towards me. The fact that she is willingly giving me the chance to look at her mobile tells me that something is wrong. She’s never offered it up to me before.
‘What is it?’ I ask, taking the phone and looking down at the screen.
‘It’s him again.’
‘Who?’
‘Jimmy.’
My eyes scan through the short text conversation on the screen. At first, I’m appalled that this man would text my daughter and make reference to what he and I did in the hotel, but then I keep on reading, and that becomes the least of my worries.
I see that Jimmy has not only broken the terms of our agreement by not making any more demands but that the thing he wants now is definitely off-limits.
He wants Chloe.
‘What the hell? How did he get your number?’ I ask.
‘I don’t know. Did you give it to him?’
‘Why would I do that?’
‘How else could he have got it?’
I rack my brains for an answer to that. Then I find one.
‘In the hotel room,’ I say, shaking my head. ‘He must have looked at my phone when I was in the bathroom.’
