Читать книгу Don’t Say a Word - A. L. Bird - Страница 13

Chapter 6

Scenarios, words to scream, numbers to call, flash through my mind.

I ditch the car behind a car that’s just pulling off, tail lights all red. Is he in that car? Should I be running shouting after it? No. There’s a little blonde head bobbing about in the back of it. No sign of Josh’s dark curls.

Jumping out of the car, I scan around for a sign of Josh. His schoolbag, a discarded shoe maybe. You always see a discarded shoe in these cases don’t you?

Oh come on, Jen. You’re over-reacting. He may well be safe and sound inside. No reason to suspect otherwise. No real reason.

But still my heart clutches at my lungs.

Up the school steps and open the door. Or rather, grasp the handle. There’s a code. Of course there is. And of course I don’t remember it, because I never usually have to come in. It’s stored on my phone. Which I left in the car. Shit. I buzz the buzzer. No response. Run back to the car, grab my bag with my phone in.

Precious seconds flash away. If he’s gone, he’ll be even further away now. I look up the code on my phone and tap it in. I pull open the door and I’m into the lobby area. Quiet. Empty. A few discarded bits of Lego. Signs of a gone Josh? Fuck Lucy. Fuck her. Fuck me. What’s a job compared to looking after Josh? Why am I even doing this? I don’t have to. He’s the most precious thing and now I don’t even know where he is.

I open a door off the lobby.

And there we have it. Noise. Children.

My child.

Sitting on a bench reading a book. Engrossed.

I run to him.

‘Josh!’

He looks up. Smiles.

‘Hey, Mum,’ he says.

There’s no reprimand. No complaint. Just acceptance.

Still, I need to explain.

‘I’m sorry I’m late, sweetie. I had to finish something up at work.’

I ruffle his hair. I’d forgotten how lovely it is. Even since this morning.

He shrugs. ‘No worries. Chris only just left. And this book is good – have you read it?’

He holds up something about a spy.

‘No,’ I tell him.

‘You should,’ he says.

‘Are there no teachers about?’ I ask him.

‘Mrs Morgan is here, but she’s just popped out. She said to say she’d be back.’

So, someone could just walk in here and –

‘Mrs Sutton?’

‘Ms,’ I say. It’s instinctive.

‘Of course, yes. I’m sorry.’

She lowers her eyes a little. She doesn’t know, you see. She has the same story as Josh.

‘I arrived a little late, and there was no one around,’ I tell her. ‘Anyone could walk in.’

I should soften it, but I care more about my child than her feelings.

The woman flinches. She’s not one of the young trendy teachers. She’s a grey-haired lifer with a big bosom and a cardigan. Cares about the children, but only so much. Knows what to do with a reprimand.

She draws herself up. ‘Well, they’d have to know the code, wouldn’t they, love?’

It’s true. And it’s true there are signs up saying: ‘Don’t hold the door open for anyone you don’t know’ (the kids must love abusing that). And it’s true that they know most of the parents by sight. But she’s aware, isn’t she, this Mrs Morgan, that in the real world doors get propped open when it’s hot. That ‘kind’ parents hold the door open for other parenty-looking types. That some men – and women – are great blaggers.

‘Got held up at work, did you?’ she says to me, in my pointed silence.

And there we have it. The blame squarely pinned back on me.

‘I couldn’t help it,’ I say. ‘One of my bosses wanted me to work on.’

‘I like to say the child is always the boss. They dictate what needs to be done. That’s what I told my daughter when she was thinking about going back to work.’

I want to smack Mrs Morgan in the face, but I doubt that will help for Josh’s 11-plus prep.

‘Are you my boss, Josh?’ I ask, turning to him.

He has his head in a book again. He looks up. ‘What?’

‘Never mind,’ I tell him. Best he doesn’t hear my mockery. I’m not sure who I’m attacking – Mrs Morgan, or myself. Or whether it sounded like Josh.

‘For the future, just so you know, Ms Sutton, we bring them through here after 4.15. Usually we let Josh stand by the gates – we watch from the window obviously – but if you’d like we can just keep him in here as a matter of course.’

‘I won’t be late again.’

‘No, of course you won’t, but if you are …?’

‘I won’t be.’ And I won’t, will I? It was just this once. I was distracted. Bitched. Daniel’s face, the photos of the wraps of crack, and Lucy’s snarling face flit into my vision.

No, this is Josh’s time.

‘Come on Josh,’ I say loudly. ‘Let’s go. We can get an ice cream on the way home, OK?’

Ice cream brings his head out of the book. ‘Yay!’ he says. It’s like he’s seven again – perpetually delighted by everything.

All that afternoon into evening we play. Aside from ice cream, there is Lego, chess, burping competitions, collaborative homework. Josh gets the best of my best self. When it’s time for bed, we nestle up together on his Lego Movie duvet cover (‘Everything is Awesome’ – yeah, sure it is), and read page and page aloud of his book.

For all that my mother didn’t teach me, one thing she did: the value of books as an escape tool. Tonight, every night, I’m passing on that lore. When it’s time to sleep, tonight (as every night) I don’t want to leave him, or turn out his light. I sit there a little while, until he gently nudges me away with his leg.

‘Night, Mum,’ he mumbles. ‘I love you.’

‘I love you too,’ I tell him. ‘Sweet dreams, Josh.’ I give that beautiful hair/forehead cusp a long kiss. I don’t let him see the tears in my eyes. He doesn’t yet understand all the reasons for crying. And I don’t want him to.

Josh settled, I fetch my customary glass of red wine (there are worse poisons) and pull some leftover potato salad from the fridge. I curl up with it on the sofa, then flick on the TV, softly, so as not to wake Josh. There’s a Jennifer Aniston film halfway through so I settle for that.

Jennifer Aniston at a wedding. Jennifer Aniston looking pretty. Jennifer Aniston with a boy. Good old Jen, out and about. Is that how people live? Do they really flit gorgeously from scene to scene with the only continuity being their subconscious pursuit of an honourable bachelor?

Maybe. Maybe there are people who always pursue and never give up. Chloe, for instance. Unless she really is done. Is that what all this ‘normality’ is that I’m playing at? Waiting to see if Chloe has finally left us alone? And if she has, whether I’ll ever get over my remorse at leaving her?

I change the channel. Some mating insects. Lovely.

I flick off the TV and eat my potato salad in silence.

I’m not sure this is living, really. Is it?

Should I, at twenty-nine, spend my evenings sitting quietly on the sofa, my only pastime respecting my son’s sleep? Unless you count tight-roping between guilt and fear a pastime – I should be a circus act.

But not counting that, should I just be cloistered away here? Yes, I should. And no, I shouldn’t.

Imagine for a moment that a man lived here too. What would that be like? What would we do? Would we sit quietly on the sofa too? Would we murmur sweet nothings? Would we drink wine together, dare the odd loud laugh, even if Josh’s sleep pattern were momentarily disturbed? Would we go out, maybe? Get a babysitter?

Would we feel life had moved on from having a newborn?

I allow my mind to drift back to the man from whence the newborn came. And to her. The evenings spent together. We weren’t alone then. And we weren’t drinking red wine then.

But that wasn’t romance. I can see that now. I can see the fucked-up twisty captivity of it. Wanting a father figure. Wanting stability (ha!). Wanting a house where the only rule is: You don’t touch what’s not yours.

She was his, the other girl. I never was. I need to remember that. But it doesn’t mean I’m safe from her. She’ll come looking, from time to time. A return to chaos. A return to life on the run. Should I check the phone again? Not my regular phone. The other phone. The one I keep under the bed. Probably. Just in case there’s anything on there, about Chloe.

I pull myself up off the sofa, pad into my bedroom, take the phone out of the shoebox. The old, clunky Nokia. Switch it on, half hoping it will beep, half hoping it won’t.

BEEP BEEP.

New message.

It’s from her. Shit.

‘ONE DAY I’M GOING TO FIND YOU.’

I clamp a hand over my mouth, so I won’t cry out. Sent last night – 11.54 p.m. A late-night spear shooting through the dark. When will she give up? When will she let us be?

I know the answer.

Never.

I could reply. I could put an end to it now. Say she’ll never find me unless I go to her first. Which isn’t going to happen. Can’t happen. Because think of Josh. It wouldn’t be safe.

And besides, she might be able to do something clever, like track my location, if I reply. Who knows – desperate times and all that.

No. Just put the phone back in its box. Close the lid on all thoughts of Chloe. You have to be strong. Ignore her. Stop trembling, put away those tears.

Shit. This is why I both should and shouldn’t spend the night on the sofa. Josh needs to be safe but I need somewhere else to put my brain. I should call Daniel tomorrow. Try and get a life. Everything is fine. Everything is safe. I pull myself up, ditch my supper things in the kitchen area. I go and run myself a bath. That’s what this girl needs. A long, hot, soak, to scrub everything away. Maybe one day I’ll feel truly safe. Truly clean.

***

Chloe. Sitting on a sofa. Her hair a wild loose mane, frizzing out to the side of her head. Eyes bright and wide and dark, made darker by the liquid eye liner surrounding them. Knees hugged up to her chest. I’m sitting next to her. On the other side of her, my knees bunched up too, touching almost like mirror images of each other. My hair tied back, not wild at all. We’re holding hands.

‘We’ve got to do it; you know that,’ says Chloe.

‘How? No one will believe us.’

‘They will. We’ll make them. We’ll be safe then. As long as we never ever tell anyone. They won’t know who to blame then, will they?’

I pretend to shake her hand, like I’m making a pact. Except I find I’m not shaking her hand at all. I’m shaking Josh’s hand. He’s there, in a nappy (except he’s as old as he is now), sitting in between us. Chloe gradually fades away, disintegrates into the light.

‘Wait, Chloe! What will I do without you?’

She doesn’t answer. She pretends to be gone. But she’s not gone. I can feel her. I know she is still there, watching.

***

I wake up in cold water, shivering. What the …? Christ, I didn’t know life malaise had spread to day-to-day tiredness. My fingers are shrivelled, my hair is wet, and the flat has a too-quiet feel. I clamber out of the bath and, shivering, grab my bathrobe from the back of the door. Push the recurrent Chloe nightmares to the back of my mind (‘it will take a long time for your subconscious to move on’ I was told).

What’s happened while I was sleeping? Hugging myself, I pad along the dark corridor to Josh’s room, and put my head round the door. There he is, sleeping sweetly. Of course, what else?

I’ve left his curtains open, though. Silly. I must have been so engrossed in him that I forgot the more basic maternal requirements. Still Disney print – Mickey and Minnie Mouse are separated by glass (you get what you’re given; we haven’t replaced them yet, now I’m earning). I’m about to reunite them when I see the car outside. My car. But with the inside light on.

Odd. Why would I have done that?

Maybe when I was hunting round for my bag earlier?

Do I need to go down and turn it off?

I look down at my bare, soggy feet.

Surely not.

But if I don’t, the battery will be flat, we’ll need to call the AA, Josh will be late for important playground business deals again … Urgh. Bloody adulting.

I pull the curtains shut and Josh stirs slightly. At least these days I don’t need to ‘shh’ him to sleep and rub his back, like when he was little. Tiny. In that first place. Jesus, what were they thinking, placing us there …? And maybe the back-rubbing was more for me than for him. Clutching him, facing the door, ready to dodge a bullet at any moment. ‘It will all be OK, Jen.’ All very well for you, love. You’re not the one who’s done this to yourself – to you and your newborn. Had this done to you, rather. We were the victims.

Josh is really stirring now and I don’t want him to think I’m watching him in his sleep (again) so I pad out of the room. I slip on some jeans, a sweater, and some trainers, find the key and pull the door gently shut. Even now, even when he’s a big boy, I worry about leaving him in the flat alone. That’s why I put the rubbish out in the mornings when we’re together.

There was that case, once, about a woman who popped round to her neighbour’s house while her kids were playing inside. While she was out there was a freak gas explosion. The kids died. How do you live with that? At least if she’d been in the house, they’d all be dead together. If all you’ve got are your kids, what do you do if they’re gone?

Outside, I open the car and flick off the light. As I’m doing so, I see the slip of paper on the windscreen that I’d noticed earlier when I was rushing to pick up Joshua. Shutting the car door, I pick up the bit of paper and read what it says.

I inhale sharply.

Because on it is written: ‘WE KNOW YOUR SECRET.’

What? The paper shakes in my hands. Shit. First the text message. Now this. We need to move again. I should go up and grab Josh now, put him in the car. Flee.

Then I turn the paper over.

‘… Even if you don’t. We’ll find the secrets in your family tree and share them. Look www.secretancestor.com today!’

Oh for fuck’s sake. Jen, it’s fine. It’s an ad. ‘We know your secret’ is a marketing slogan. You’re safe. Josh is safe. For once and for all, get over yourself.

I stuff the paper in my pocket and let myself back into the block of flats.

‘Go to bed and get a life,’ I mumble to myself as I climb the stairs.

I almost don’t notice the package on the doormat.