Читать книгу The Escape: The gripping, twisty thriller from the #1 bestseller - C.L. Taylor, C.L. Taylor, C. L. Taylor - Страница 8

I didn’t ring the police. I thought about it all evening, debating the pros and cons as Max turned on Netflix and settled back on the sofa with a bag of Doritos and a bottle of beer. I could barely look at him. Every crunch, every munch, every slurp made my skin prickle with anger. When we were first married he’d jump to my defence if someone was even inadvertently rude to me on a night out. He’d walk nearest the road on a rainy night to protect me from splashes. He’d jump out of bed and grab his baseball bat if I heard a noise downstairs. I thought he’d be on to the police the second I told him what had happened. Instead he looked at me like I’m some kind of hysterical neurotic. How can I ring the police if my own husband doesn’t believe me? All I’ve got is a first name and a description. What could they possibly do with that? Then there’s the fact that I’d have to go into the police station and that’s not something I can deal with right now.

At 11 p.m., when Max finally went to bed, I thought about ringing my best friend Helen who lives in Cardiff with her little boy Ben. But it was too late. She’d have been in bed for an hour at least. Instead I sent her a text asking her when would be a good time to have a chat, then I took out my laptop and Googled jobs and places to live in Chester. I’ve been thinking about moving away from Bristol for a while. What happened last night was the last straw.

Now, my shoulders loosen and my grip on the steering wheel relaxes as I pull into the lane that runs behind Mum and Dad’s house on the outskirts of Chester. Elise is asleep in the back of the car, her dark blonde head lolling against her chest, her fingers unfurled and relaxed, Effie Elephant resting on her lap.

Mum appears at the garden gate as I pull on the handbrake and turn off the engine. Her dark, dyed hair looks longer than I remember. It curls over her ears and hangs over her eyebrows. She brushes it out of her face as she approaches the car and taps on the window. I’m shocked by how tired she looks.

‘Jo?’ she says as I unwind the window. ‘What are you doing here? I said to Andy that I could hear a car pulling up.’

Mum’s been living in the UK for over thirty years, we both have, but while my Irish accent disappeared within a year of me starting school, hers is as strong as it was the day we left.

‘Didn’t you get my text?’

‘Phone’s off. You know I don’t like to waste the battery.’

I can’t help but smile. ‘It might have been urgent, Mum.’

‘Wasn’t though, was it? You’d have rung the house phone if it was.’ She glances into the back of the car as Elise stirs in her sleep. ‘Babby all right?’

I want to tell her what happened yesterday. She’d understand why I was so scared for Elise’s safety, why I still am. But she’s got enough on her plate looking after Dad. I can’t put this on her too. Just being here and seeing her face makes me feel like I can breathe again.

‘She’s fine.’ I gesture for Mum to move away from the door so I can open it. ‘We just fancied seeing you and Dad. How is he?’

Mum gives me a long look. ‘He’s not great, love.’

It’s the beginning of February but it’s so hot in Mum’s house that I have to strip both me and Elise down to our T-shirts within minutes of walking through the front door.

‘I keep it warm for Dad,’ Mum says as I hang our discarded clothes over the back of a chair. ‘He really feels the cold now.’

‘Can we see him?’

‘Let me go and see how he is.’

She disappears through the living-room door and into the hallway. A year ago I’d hear the sound of the stairs creaking as she made her way up to the master bedroom but Dad’s been sleeping in the dining room for a while now. He was diagnosed with motor neurone disease three years ago. He’d been unusually clumsy for a few weeks – dropping the coffee jar in the kitchen, spilling tea on himself and tripping over the rug in the living room – and Mum complained to me on the phone that she couldn’t get him to see a doctor. When he started having trouble with his speech he finally agreed to see someone. The diagnosis was made scarily quickly and within six months he was walking with a stick. Two years later he was in a wheelchair. Now he’s unable to leave his bed.

‘What’s this?’ Elise asks and I dart towards her, intercepting her grabby little hand before she can snatch one of Mum’s porcelain figurines from the windowsill.

‘It’s a ballerina,’ I say, guiding her fingers away. ‘Isn’t she pretty?’

She nods enthusiastically, her gaze still fixed on the statuette. ‘Yes.’

I walk my daughter around Mum and Dad’s compact living room, pointing out all the other ornaments: the life-sized china robin, the small crystal vase, the little boy reading a book under a windmill, the fairy plates hanging on the wall and a brown and white cow. Every single thing in this room was bought in the UK. Other than Mum’s accent, this house is devoid of any trace of our Irish heritage. I gave up trying to talk to her about Ireland years ago. She shuts down whenever anyone questions her about where she’s from or why she left. I only know that her best friend was called Mary because Mum got uncharacteristically drunk at my wedding and confided in my friend Helen. She told her that she’d wanted Mary to be her bridesmaid at her own wedding, nearly forty years earlier, but it hadn’t been possible. That she missed Mary and hadn’t seen her for over thirty years. When Helen suggested that it’s never too late to reconnect yourself with someone you love, Mum had replied, ‘It is if they hate you.’ When Helen probed for more information, Mum disappeared off in search of another glass of champagne.

Mum may have briefly opened up about her old best friend but there’s one person she’s never talked about – my real dad. He vanished three weeks before my eighth birthday.

She told me that he’d gone away for work but I didn’t believe her. I’d seen her friends cross the street when she waved hello. I’d noticed the way voices would drop and our neighbours would stare when I popped into the shop to grab a pint of milk. Kids in the playground started telling me that my dad was a bad man and their parents had told them not to talk to me any more. I didn’t understand. I was sad that my dad wasn’t at home any more and I knew my mum was upset too. But no one would tell me when he was coming back.

I was excited when I got back from school on the afternoon of my birthday and found Mum waiting at the front door with two packed suitcases. I thought we were going to visit Dad, wherever he was. I thought it was a birthday surprise. I was still excited when, ten minutes later, Uncle Carey turned up in his battered car and drove us to the train station. I didn’t want to spoil the surprise but I couldn’t stop myself from asking Mum where we were going. She unpursed her thin lips and said, ‘Away. That’s all you need to know.’ Twelve hours later we were in England. And I never saw my dad again.

It was just me and Mum for two years. And then she met Andy. It can’t have been easy for him, taking on someone else’s child – especially one on the cusp of puberty – but he took it all in his stride. He gave me space when I needed it, he played board games with me when I was fed up and let me walk his cocker spaniel Jessie when we all went out. He told me knock knock jokes that were so rubbish they made me laugh and he tried, and failed, to introduce me to sci-fi. He was kind, funny and awkward and I couldn’t help but warm to him. When he asked me if I would mind if he asked my mum to marry him I burst into tears. If he married Mum that would make us a family and he’d be my dad. There wasn’t anything I wanted more.

‘Dad’s asleep,’ Mum says now as she steps back into the living room and lowers herself into an armchair. ‘I’ll need your help turning him in a bit if that’s OK. The carer’s due this afternoon but I don’t want to leave him that long. He’ll get bedsores.’

‘Of course.’

‘CBeebies,’ Elise says, pointing at the blank television in the corner of the room.

Mum moves to get up but I tell her that I’ll do it. I settle Elise on the other side of the sofa with Effie and, as the Mr Tumble theme tune fills the room, I take the seat nearest to Mum.

‘How is he?’ I ask, keeping my voice low so Elise can’t hear. ‘How’s Dad?’

Mum twists the gold band on the third finger of her left hand. ‘He’s not good, Joanne. The consultant has him on Riluzole but it’s making him very tired. And he’s got a mask now, to help with his breathing. There’s been talk of a feeding tube but he won’t have it.’

Dad hasn’t been able to talk for at least a year but he lets you know if he disagrees with something. I saw the look in his eyes and the way his face twisted when Dr Valentine gently suggested that he might want to consider hospice care. Mum was vociferous in her response to the idea, her soft voice unusually loud as though she was literally speaking for both of them. No hospitals and no hospices. Dad wants to die at home. The disease has robbed him of so much – of his freedom, his voice, his body, his dignity – but deciding how and where he dies is his last vestige of control.

‘Oh, Mum.’ I reach for her hand but she’s too far away and my fingers graze the soft wool of her cardigan instead. ‘I wish we were closer. I wish there was more I could do. I hate it, being so far away. I feel so guilty.’

‘No.’ She sits up a little straighter in her seat. ‘Don’t you be saying things like that. You have your own life, Joanne. A house, a job, a husband and a babby. She needs to be your priority, not us.’

‘But what if we moved closer? I hate the idea of you coping all alone. I know you’ve got the carer but—’

‘I’ve Elaine Fairchild next door. And my friends from the church. I’m being looked after. Don’t you worry.’

But no family. No brothers or sisters or nieces or nephews. I know Mum still keeps in touch with her sisters Sinead and Celeste and her brother Carey – I’ve seen the Christmas cards on the mantelpiece – but she’s too proud to ask for help. She’s independent and strong-willed. She had to be, upping and leaving her friends and family and starting a new life with me as a single mum in England, a country she’d never even visited before.

‘I’m serious, Mum. I’ve been looking at jobs. There’s one here at the university. I could do it standing on my head. There are loads of good nurseries nearby and I’ve seen a lovely little bungalow in Malpas. We’d be just down the road.’

She gives me a sideways look. ‘And what does Max think of this plan?’

I glance at Elise, sucking her thumb and staring intently at Grandad Tumble. ‘I haven’t talked to him about it yet.’

‘Jo …’ Mum narrows her eyes. ‘What is it that you’re not telling me?’

I want to explain how much I’ve been struggling and how the move could help me as well as her and Dad. I thought that life would get better after Elise was born. I thought that, as soon as I held her warm, wriggling body in my arms, all the hurt and pain of losing Henry in the second trimester of my pregnancy would lessen. I thought my breath would stop catching in my throat, that the panic in my chest every time I left the house would subside. That the terrible, all-encompassing dread that something awful was just about to happen would disappear. But it didn’t. It got worse. We had lost Henry and I was terrified that we’d lose Elise too. I couldn’t sleep because I was convinced that she’d stop breathing the moment I closed my eyes. I wouldn’t let her out of my sight for fear that someone would snatch her. For months I refused to let Max take her out of the house in her pram because I was certain that, if he did, I’d never see either of them again. I had several panic attacks – once after Max went back to work and I tried to go to a local mother-and-baby group in the church hall, another time in the pharmacy when I went to buy Calpol for Elise – but I kept trying, I kept working out in front of the TV, I kept doing my mindfulness exercises. I refused to let it beat me. And then two months ago Mum told me that the consultant had given Dad less than three months to live and the walls began closing in on me again.

When I started thinking about jobs and houses in Cheshire I never truly believed that it could happen. How could I ever move to a different part of the country when I couldn’t even go to Tesco alone? It was wishful thinking. A pipe dream. But when Paula got into my car yesterday and threatened my daughter, something changed. I didn’t turn to jelly. I didn’t faint or cry or curl up in a ball. I told her to get out and I went in search of my little girl. Elise’s safety and well-being are more important to me than anything else. I know it’s not right, the way she’s living now, cooped up in the house with me, and I want to change that. I want her life to be an adventure and not a prison.

‘I’m not happy, Mum,’ I say. ‘Max and me … it’s not been good for a while and it’s been getting worse. I want a divorce.’

‘A divorce. Are you quite, quite sure? Perhaps couples counselling might help? Or your local priest?’

My heart sinks as she continues to offer suggestions. Elise is totally, blissfully oblivious to what’s going on. Her whole world is going to fall apart over the next few weeks and months and it’s up to me to protect her as best I can. I can only hope that Max will agree to an amicable separation but, deep down, I know that’s not going to happen. Despite his threats to leave in the past, he would never abandon me and Elise. He’s an only child and both of his parents are dead – we’re all he’s got. When I tell him that I want to move to Chester with Elise he’s going to be devastated.