Destroy Me

by Karen Cole

  Seven

  It’s getting dark and the house suddenly feels empty and quiet after Theo has gone. Something rustles in the bushes outside – a cat, no doubt. But it sets my nerves on edge and I can’t shake an odd sensation that there’s someone out there, looking in, watching me. Hastily, I draw all the curtains and lock and bolt the doors. Then I go and check on Dylan who is still fast asleep, breathing gently. I gaze at him for a while, marvelling at how a relationship as flawed as Theo’s and mine could have created something so perfect and precious. Whatever else has happened, however much he’s hurt me, I can’t ever regret marrying Theo, because out of our marriage came this miracle – this little person who means more to me than anything else in the world.

  ‘Sleep tight,’ I whisper.

  And Dylan mumbles and shifts a little in his sleep. I kiss his flushed cheek and then, careful not to wake him, switch off his night light and tiptoe out of the room. Downstairs, in the living room, I turn on my laptop and start typing the next chapter of the Embers sequel. Though writing can sometimes feel like work, tonight it feels more like a lifeline – a way to escape from a present that seems increasingly frightening and out of control. I plunge eagerly into the simple world I’ve created – a world where I pull the strings, where people do what I decide and ultimately, all is forgiven.

  ‘Molly dropped her umbrella,’ I type.

  . . . and stared horrified at the doorway. Just when you thought things couldn’t get any worse, they did. From one of the rooms downstairs another revenant had appeared and was sliding across the hallway towards her . . .

  I type without stopping. The words flow easily, and when I next look at the clock, I’ve been working for more than an hour. I’m reading through what I’ve written, deleting a few lines here and there and changing the odd word, when a sudden rumble of thunder jolts me back into reality.

  I open the curtains and stare out through the dark window at the rain that has started lashing against the pane and the lightning flaring in the sky. It’s no good, I think. Writing has only served to delay the inevitable. This whole thing with the photofit and the police is not going to go away by itself. I’m going to have to face up to it at some point.

  I try to reassure myself, remembering that I’ve got an alibi. Luke is my alibi. The police will find him, he’ll confirm my story and then they’ll leave me alone. But when I think about the way DI Littlewood looked when I was talking about Luke, as if she doubted his existence, I wonder if she’ll even bother to try to track him down. Maybe I should do a little detective work of my own. It can’t hurt, can it?

  Glad to have thought of something positive to do, I Google architects in Cirencester on my phone. There’s only one firm in the local area: Anthony Green and Co., and I scroll through their website, looking at the profiles of the people who work there. But there’s no Luke. He could be new to the firm, I reflect. Maybe they haven’t had time to add him to the website, or perhaps he works somewhere else, like Tewkesbury. That is where we met him, after all. But a brief search of architects in Tewkesbury doesn’t yield any results either.

  Disappointed and frustrated, I head to the kitchen to make myself a cup of peppermint tea. While I’m waiting for the kettle to boil, I empty Dylan’s lunch bag and tip out the empty crisp packet and the half-eaten carrot inside. Then I open his book bag and rummage through. He has a reading book, Fat Frog, and a reading record book. Mrs Bailey has written inside: ‘Fabulous reading, Dylan. Practise the tricky word “the”’ and she has added a silver sticker with a smiley face. Tucked neatly inside the reading book, there’s a sealed blue envelope with nothing written on the front and a folded-up picture Dylan has drawn of me, Theo, Delilah and him. We’ve got circular bodies and randomly placed stick limbs and we’re all smiling. One happy family. I feel a twinge of guilt, swiftly followed by anger at Theo. That’s what our family should look like, I think. It’s his fault it doesn’t, not mine. I attach the picture to the fridge with a magnet. Then I tear open the envelope.

  Inside is a printout of a photograph on white A4 paper. No words. No explanation. Just a picture of a children’s playground – an artistic shot in black and white, oddly angled upwards so that the sky dominates the picture. Rows of rippling grey fish-scale clouds and an ominously looming sycamore above a climbing frame.

  There’s something familiar about the shape of the climbing frame. And when I examine the picture more closely, I realise that it’s similar, if not identical to the climbing frame in the Abbey Grounds park. But what’s it doing in Dylan’s book bag? Is it a kind of homework or did someone put it there by mistake?

  Another picture of the park like the message on my Facebook page. It’s strange and unnerving, but I can’t quite put my finger on why.

  Eight

  My sleep is punctured by dark, disturbing dreams. Sharp, horrific images of Charlie blaze through my mind, lit in lurid, searing detail: Charlie crying and whimpering, snot mixing with her tears, her hands stretched in front of her as she makes a futile attempt to ward off her killer; Charlie lying lifeless on the kitchen floor, red blood blooming on her white pyjama top. In my dream, someone bends over to check her pulse and suddenly her eyes fly open like in a horror movie. Then, slowly, she stretches out a quivering hand and makes a gurgling sound in her throat. She’s struggling to say something. ‘M . . . mm . . .’ she chokes out, as the blood trickles over her lips.

  ‘What is it, Charlie?’ Someone says. Is it me?

  She lifts her head and stares straight into my eyes with such hatred it sucks the air out of my lungs.

  ‘Mm . . . mm . . . Murderer!’ she rasps.

  I jerk awake, swimming in sweat. There’s a piercing pain behind my right eye and my throat is dry. Climbing out of bed, I stumble into the bathroom and take a couple of Nurofen and a sleeping pill. Examining my reflection in the mirror, I realise I must have forgotten to take out my contact lenses last night and they are now stuck to my eyes. When I finally manage to extract them, they pop out with so much suction that for one second, I think my eyeballs are going to come with them. I rub my red eyes and gaze at my blurry image in the mirror. A feeling of guilt and unease gnaws at my belly.

  ‘You just need some sleep,’ I tell myself. ‘All of this won’t seem so bad in the morning.’ So I crawl back to bed and lie with a cold flannel to my forehead, trying to keep completely still. Eventually, I drop off into a deep and unbroken sleep until I’m woken by the shrill shriek of my alarm.

  After dropping Dylan off at school, I take the long route home through the Abbey Grounds, partly to avoid a group of mothers standing on the corner, but also because I want to see if the photo in Dylan’s book bag really was taken there or if it’s my imagination.

  The park is nearly empty. There are just a few dog walkers doing the circuit of the lake. Everything is damp from the rain last night and there is a low mist hanging over the still, grey water, lending the day an other-worldly feeling. Just the sort of morning when Molly and her ghostly friends would be out and about, I think. Through habit, I try to memorise the scene so that I can describe it accurately in my writing as I head over the small footbridge, past the grass-covered remains of the ancient Roman wall, towards the play area.

  I stop just inside the fence and, taking out my phone, crouch opposite the climbing frame and take a snap. Then, I sit on the metal bench, and shielding the screen so I can see clearly, I compare the two photos – the one I’ve just taken, and the one I found in Dylan’s book bag.

  I suck in my breath in surprise. I didn’t really expect to be proved right, but the resemblance is uncanny – undeniable. That sycamore tree is in the same spot exactly. Even its lopsided shape is identical. And the wooden fence that runs around the play area has a panel missing in precisely the same place as in the photograph. Only the sky, today a uniform blanket of grey, is different. There is no doubt. Not only was the photo in the book bag almost certainly taken here,
but I believe it must have been taken quite recently.

  But who took it? And why?

  I check the photo George Wilkinson sent on my phone. The picture of this same park, only from a different perspective. Can it just be a coincidence?

  I look around the park feeling suddenly scared, as if someone might be here, waiting for me, watching me. Are you there, George? I think with a shiver and I peer into the thick bushes and trees that separate the park from the main road behind. But there’s no one around, apart from a couple of teenagers in school uniforms hanging out by the swings, swilling cans of Coke. They should be in school by now, I think. As I look at them, they eye me sulkily, as if I’m going to snitch on them, and they slope off towards the gates, dragging their school bags. I watch them go, absent-mindedly. They look thin, slightly feral. They remind me of me and Charlie at that age.

  Charlie and I came here many times over the years. We came here as dreamy adolescents, sitting by the lake and poring over books about star signs, working out who was compatible with who. Charlie was a Pisces and I was a Gemini. Not generally seen as well-matched signs. But we got on so well that we agreed there must be something in our ascendant signs. When we were older, we came here with bottles of cider from the off-licence to smoke spliffs and get off with boys.

  The last time we came here was just after we finished our A levels. The night of 28 August 2002. The night of Nessa’s party.

  As I remember that night, I feel a sharp pain in my heart – like a shard of glass has lodged there. I haven’t thought about what happened for a long time. It’s been buried at the bottom of my mind, locked away safely. But now the memories are resurfacing, things I would rather forget, bubbling up like sewage from a drain.

  I walk over to the swings and sit gingerly on the middle seat. And suddenly I’m a teenager again, feeling the breeze against my face as the sun dips behind the trees.

  Charlie was sitting on the swing next to me, puffing away on a spliff, her hair glowing amber in the sinking sunlight. She looked beautiful and brave, like a Celtic warrior queen. Jenson and May Ling were here too, sitting on that bench over there, snogging. We’d just finished our A levels and there was a feeling of freedom in the air – a fizzing in my veins and the sense of our lives stretching out before us, full of possibility.

  I was holding a roll-up awkwardly in my hand, wondering what to do with the butt once I’d finished. I didn’t want to drop it on the floor and grind it under my heel like I’d seen Jenson do, but then again would I look uncool if I threw it in the bin? More than anything, I didn’t want to seem uncool. May Ling and Jenson were so cool, effortlessly cool. I knew they only tolerated me because I was Charlie’s friend, and I didn’t want to stuff it up. I didn’t want to let Charlie down.

  Charlie had arrived late in our school in Year Eight, when we were thirteen. She’d moved from a posh private girls’ school in Cheltenham after her father died. We were drawn together partly because we were both outsiders. Charlie because of her plummy accent and me, well, because I was overweight and nerdy, and my parents insisted on dressing me in second-hand clothes.

  We were inseparable for a couple of years. But in Year Ten, Charlie changed. She cultivated a west-country drawl and made friends with a bunch of cool kids. She didn’t exactly drop me, but we drifted apart, and I was left alone, feeling hurt and betrayed. It was only in the last year of school, in the sixth form, that she deigned to become part of my life again and persuaded her new friends to allow me into their group.

  ‘She’s quite a laugh when you get to know her. She’s just shy,’ I overheard her saying in the toilet once.

  That evening in the park, Jenson and May Ling wandered over and started talking about a band they’d seen the summer before. I kept quiet. I’d never heard of the band, never even been to a concert, except for classical ones with my parents, and I didn’t want them to know. People always tell you to be yourself, don’t they? ‘Just be yourself,’ they say, ‘and everything will be fine.’ Well, in my experience, being yourself was not always enough, or maybe it’s more accurate to say it was too much. Sometimes I knew I said things that were too thoughtful, too honest or just too plain weird. By the age of seventeen, I’d learned that you had to filter yourself, keep things hidden, bury the part of you that didn’t fit with the group.

  Of course, I understand now that I was luckier than them in many ways. I had a mother and a father who loved me, even if they sometimes had a strange way of showing it. Jenson’s father was in and out of prison, May Ling’s parents were divorced, and Charlie’s father had died when she was thirteen, leaving her mother unable to pay the fees for Charlie’s expensive school. I didn’t fully realise it at the time, but Charlie must have still been mourning her father and all her bravado and reckless behaviour were probably, at least in part, a symptom of her grief. At the time, I’d just thought she was very cool, and I wanted to be like her. I let her down, I think. I bought into the myth that she portrayed to the world – that she was invincible. I didn’t see the little girl inside who was crying out for help.

  ‘I’m sorry, Charlie,’ I say aloud under my breath. ‘I didn’t understand. I should have helped you.’ And tears roll down my cheeks as I realise that I’ll never be able to say it to her now. Because Charlie is dead.

  I brush the tears away angrily. I was young. I had my own problems. I can’t be blamed. But even as I make these excuses to myself another voice, a cool and ruthless voice inside my head, is insisting otherwise. You were eighteen. Old enough to know better. You destroyed her life and you never took responsibility.

  ‘I’m bored,’ said Charlie. She was standing on the swing. And as she spoke, she stretched her arms out, letting go of the chains, making me worry she was going to fall.

  ‘What shall we do now?’ she asked when she finally grabbed hold of the chains again and sat down. ‘There’s a party at Nessa’s. Shall we go?’

  ‘Sure, why not?’ said May Ling, lazily.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I hesitated. I had promised to help my mother at a charity auction the next morning and would need to get up early.

  ‘Please come.’ Charlie gave a mischievous grin. ‘James will be there.’

  I shot her an angry look. I’d been infatuated with James since I was eleven and had never told anyone. But recently, in a moment of weakness, eager to please and to maintain our new-found closeness, I’d told Charlie. I had made her promise to keep it a secret, but here she was making it obvious in front of May Ling and Jenson that I had a crush on him.

  ‘Do you fancy James?’ May Ling asked curiously.

  ‘No, he’s just a friend, that’s all.’

  ‘Yes, you so do. You’re going red,’ said Jenson, laughing.

  ‘Shut up, Jenson,’ said Charlie. ‘He’s just her friend, that’s all. Please come with us. It won’t be the same without you. Besides, we need someone to drive.’ She clasped her hands together as if she were praying. ‘Please, Cat.’

  I hesitated just for a second. Then I smiled and nodded.

  ‘All right,’ I said.

  What made me say yes? It wasn’t that James would be there. I had given up on James ever being interested in me in that way. I think it was the fact that Charlie said she wanted me there. I could never say no to Charlie.

  What if I had said no? What if I had never gone to Nessa’s party? If only I could go back in time and just change that one decision; what happened next would never have happened. Charlie and I could have stayed friends and so many lives wouldn’t have been destroyed.

  I stand up and walk briskly towards the park gates. There is no point in brooding and wishing things could have been different. Nothing can be changed. Time travel only happens in science fiction.

  As I walk past the yew hedge, I look again at the picture of the park on my phone. It’s just a coincidence, I think, dismissing my misgivings as paranoia, the product of a guilty
conscience. The picture couldn’t be a reference to that night. Even if someone else knew what had happened back then, how would they know we’d come here earlier in the evening? And besides, no one could possibly know about that night.

  There are only two people who ever knew what happened. One of them is me and the other is dead, stabbed four times in the chest.

  Nine

  ‘Ah, finally, Catherine.’ Mum embraces me on the doorstep and looks me up and down critically. ‘You haven’t been answering your phone. Your father and I have been worried about you.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ I lie. ‘I’ve just been busy, that’s all.’ I’ve dropped in to see my parents on my way home, because I know if I don’t, my mum won’t stop ringing. I know I will have to explain the photofit eventually, and I’d rather do that in person than over the phone.

  ‘Well, you look nice, darling,’ she says dubiously. ‘You’ve changed your hair. You look as if you’ve lost some weight too, have you?’

  ‘A little.’

  Thin as a rake, my mother has never been able to understand how she could have a fat daughter. When I was a child, she used to weigh me before every meal and proclaim in mystification at my inevitable weight gain. She didn’t know that I was spending the money she gave me for after-school gym class on sweets and crisps.

  I follow her into their long, dark kitchen – the result of a badly thought-out extension in the seventies – and sit at the large pine table.

  My mother doesn’t sit down. She rarely sits. She’s one of those people who keeps busy all the time. Just now she’s bustling about making me a coffee and wiping invisible crumbs off the kitchen counter.

  ‘How are Dylan and Theo?’ she asks.

  I roll my eyes. It annoys me the way she insists on talking about them as if we’re still a family unit. ‘Dylan’s fine. I don’t know how Theo is,’ I say pointedly.