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ОглавлениеCHARLOTTE
The rest of the day passes in a blur. We’ve been so busy and, with the stocktake, I never did get chance for another break. I feel like I’ve been in a daze for the most part.
When I go to collect my bag and coat from my locker and check my phone, I see it’s flashing.
I unlock the screen.
‘Oh, God.’
Dale’s hidden behind his own locker door. ‘All right?’
‘Shit and double-bloody-shit! I forgot to pick up Elle from swimming.’ I look at my watch. It’s nearly six. Elle finished practice at three. I have numerous hours’ worth of texts, calls and voicemails on my phone, from Iain as well as Elle.
I check the last text I’d received, which had come through at four-thirty. It was from Iain.
I’ve got Elle. Don’t bother calling. I’ll be on a job.
Short, not so sweet.
Dale’s looking around the locker door at me. When he catches my eye he says, ‘Everything OK?’
I shove my phone in my bag and rush to get my coat on. ‘I can’t believe I forgot. I was meant to tell your dad about me having to pick Elle up then come back for the stocktake.’
He pulls a face.
‘What?’
‘You did look a little out of it earlier,’ he says.
‘Out of it?’
‘It’s OK, you’ve got a lot of things going on and—’
‘And that’s no excuse for forgetting my daughter, Dale.’
‘Well, she’s home now, isn’t she?’
I nod.
‘No harm done then.’
I doubt that. I don’t dare mention I forgot to collect her from school two weeks ago. Savannah had come to the rescue that day.
I wait until I’ve left the shop and run back to the car before I ring home. I get no answer. I try Elle’s mobile and that goes to voicemail. In the end I call Iain’s mobile.
It rings and then goes to voicemail too. I hang up and try again. If he doesn’t pick up this time . . .
‘Yeah?’
Iain’s voice sounds impassive.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say.
Silence.
‘Iain, is Elle OK? Only I couldn’t get an answer when I called the hou—’
‘She had to walk the path behind the Linkway on her own,’ he interrupts. ‘She had been calling you, texting.’
‘I didn’t have chance to check my phone.’
‘She called Savannah in the end and she managed to get hold of me between jobs. She would’ve gone herself but she couldn’t get out of work.’
He pauses and I can hear his breath heavy on the line and the clunk of metal against metal. He’s obviously on a job. I tell myself this is why he’s not talking much.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say again.
He sighs. ‘It’s not me you need to be apologising to. She was a little unnerved when I eventually did pick her up, when she was nearly home . . . You know how she feels about the Linkway.’
I feel crushed by his words. I do know. More than ever because she had nightmares after my accident. Trouble is, it’s almost impossible to avoid it.
I know I shouldn’t, but I try to ease the blame on myself.
‘Couldn’t she have got a lift or at least walked with someone from the team?’
I hear a thud of something very heavy over the phone. Iain has dropped something. ‘She didn’t get a lift or walk with anyone ’cos she was waiting for you. You would’ve told her to stay put, to wait for you.’
I wince at his words, his tone of voice.
‘As long as she’s all right,’ I say. ‘She didn’t answer her mobile or the house phone.’
‘She’s fine, just go home.’
‘OK. I’m in the car now.’ I wait for a response but none is forthcoming. ‘I am sorry,’ I say again.
‘I’ve got to go,’ he says and hangs up.
*
I take the Linkway to get home.
My hands grip the steering wheel tighter and feel sweaty as I try to regulate my breathing. This is my process every time I join the road off the mini roundabout.
I check my mirrors.
I take deep breaths.
I remind myself I’ve driven this road for years without incident. I managed it this morning. I can manage it fine again now.
This morning you hadn’t left your daughter to make her own way home . . .
I try to block out any thought other than that of the road ahead, but it’s hard. I’m already anxious, and I’m fighting to stay within the speed limit. All I want to do is get home.
I shudder as I glance through the trees and thick hedgerows at the other side of the road, where I know there’s a lonely, narrow path Elle would’ve had to take to get home on foot.
I imagine all sorts in my head.
It’s almost half-six by the time I pull into our drive. I see a white van parked across the road but I know it can’t be Iain’s.
I get out of the car and run to the front door. The air is balmy this evening, and a sheen of sweat has plastered my hair to my forehead. I push it away with the back of my hand as I let myself in.
I can hear the hum of the television coming from the living room. I can smell something else and realise it’s food – fatty and meaty.
‘Elle?’ I shout.
I rush into the living room when I get no reply.
The first thing I notice are boxes of half-eaten pizza and side orders stacked on the coffee table before I see Elle is sitting next to a man.
Jason is sitting close to Elle on the sofa, a half-eaten slice of pizza in one hand and a bottle of beer in the other.
Elle has her iPad balanced on her knees, her face illuminated by the screen. She doesn’t look up.
I must be staring, because Jason shifts himself away from Elle and puts his beer down on the coffee table.
‘Hey,’ he says.
I ignore him a moment and focus on Elle.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say. I watch her eyes move a fraction in my direction but she avoids actually looking at me.
‘Elle?’
‘How could you leave me standing there?’ she says, but stares at her tablet screen.
‘I just lost track of time. I’ve had so much on my mind that I just forgot and I am so sorry.’
‘We’re done talking now,’ she says. Her voice is harsh, cold.
Even Jason shoots her a look of surprise.
Jason . . . I turn to look at him now and wonder why he’s here. Anything’s better than dealing with how my daughter is treating me right now. Whether I deserve it or not, she’s just cut me down and I’m hurt.
I stare at the pizza boxes.
He looks sheepish. ‘Hope you don’t mind.’ He holds up the slice of pizza. ‘Iain said it was OK to order in . . . since we didn’t know what time you’d be home . . .’
He trails off when he sees my face. I’m embarrassed, angry. I’m a whole mix of feelings I don’t even want to confront head-on right now.
‘There’s loads left over if you want any.’
On autopilot, I grab a pizza box and head to the kitchen.
Jason follows me and I hear Elle say, ‘Just leave her.’
Jason mumbles a reply I don’t catch, then I hear him walking down the hall after me.
‘Where is Iain?’ I say as I bite into a slice of meat feast.
‘He had to go out on an emergency job.’ I see his Adam’s apple bob up and down as he swallows hard, uncomfortable. ‘Elle didn’t want to be left on her own. Iain called me and I had just finished a job around the corner. I came straight over.’
His eyes leave mine, wander further up my face.
I pull at my fringe, self-conscious, yanking it across my forehead, not that it’s going to make much difference.
‘Where’s the job?’
Jason finishes his pizza, saying as he chews, ‘With this lady in Pirton. She had a flooded kitchen, so Iain said we may as well order a pizza, to cheer Elle up.’
This is what it’s come to. Cover the awkwardness with a takeaway.
I’m not sure whether he’s making general conversation or if he feels some need to further corroborate Iain’s absence, as if I need convincing why he’s here with Elle.
‘Jason?’ Elle says, appearing in the doorway. ‘You’ll miss the film.’ She looks at me and I smile but she doesn’t return it.
I notice Jason’s cheeks flush red. He realises how this might look. Luckily I know my daughter. Any infatuation with Jason is purely one-sided.
I stare after her as she goes back to the living room. ‘I need a beer.’
Jason goes to the fridge. ‘I’ll get it.’ He stands with his back to me and rifles in the drawer for the bottle opener.
‘I forgot her.’
He pauses, before he glances over his shoulder at me. ‘She’ll get over it.’ He pops the cap off the bottle. ‘These things happen,’ he says as he hands it to me.
‘Twice in as many weeks?’ I gulp down a large mouthful of beer.
He winces. ‘Don’t be too hard on yourself.’
I smile weakly and reach for my handbag. ‘You must let me pay for the pizza.’ Avoiding talking about it, yes, I know, but this is weird for me. I’m a private person. Even if Jason’s a good friend of the family, I’m struggling here.
‘No,’ he says, waving his hand. ‘My treat.’
I pull out my purse. ‘No, really, I feel bad about all this.’ He’s uttering further protest but I’m not really hearing him. I stare down into my purse. There’s a cashpoint slip where the notes should be, but nothing else.
I’m sure I had money in there.
I look in the coin section in case I broke into the notes, and forgot, but all that’s there is about three pounds in silver.
I check the cashpoint receipt. I drew out twenty pounds yesterday.
Strange.
Maybe I did spend it all.
‘Put that away,’ Jason says, gently folding my hand around my purse, so it shuts. ‘Seriously, I’m gonna get cross. Pizza is on me.’
I go to speak but hear Elle coming back to the kitchen. I see she has her tablet in her hand again. ‘Jace? C’mon, film’s started.’
She ignores me, but I’ve seen the screen of her tablet and, thoughts of the missing money pushed aside, take a chance on trying to get her to speak to me, even if it’s a poor choice of subject matter.
‘Haven’t you had enough of reading about that?’
She stares at me and then the tablet, looks bemused.
‘Don’t you think it’s a little insensitive?’
‘How so?’
‘We know Caroline’s parents. I know Caroline.’
‘Knew,’ she corrects me. ‘Knew her.’
I remain silent. Elle’s grown up in an age where she has access to news stories all day via social media, on her mobile, tablet, laptop . . . She’s seeing stories like these all the time and, I worry, becoming almost desensitised to some of it. It’s becoming the norm. A click, read and move on generation.
‘Horrible, that,’ Jason says, craning his neck to see the screen. He’s clearly uncomfortable with how Elle’s treating me and I can’t help but admire him for trying to step in. ‘It makes you worry.’
‘I’m not worried,’ Elle says to him.
‘No?’ Jason says, raising his eyes to meet mine.
‘It’s about being street savvy. They obviously didn’t know how to recognise a dangerous situation when they saw one.’ She looks at me then. ‘Sorry, but it’s like Caroline. She disappeared while walking down a country road because she didn’t get her mum to come and pick her up from her friend’s house at midnight.’ Elle looks to me then. ‘Stupid, right?’
Wow. Cutting, and what’s worse is, I can’t really defend that, can I?
‘That’s a bit harsh,’ Jason says.
I forgot to pick Elle up. Twice. It was daylight hours, but I can’t help feeling she’s unfairly putting the blame on Ruth. Caroline was like Elle. Headstrong and with the sense of arrogance that comes with being young and feeling like you’re invincible. Ruth had told her to call when she needed a lift and Caroline hadn’t. It was that simple and that tragic. Something that could happen to anyone.
‘That’s hardly fair, Elle,’ I say.
She looks at me and then back to the tablet screen. She clicks on another news story, indifferent. ‘Truth hurts.’
She heads back to the living room.
Jason gives me a look.
‘I guess I deserved that.’
‘No, she’s out of line.’
I shake my head. ‘I forgot her and she walked along the Linkway. What if—’
‘She was fine, Charlotte. You’re being too hard on yourself.’
‘How can I make this up to her?’
He smiled. ‘Well, she’s been banging on about driving lessons.’
I cast him a look.
‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to trivialise anything.’
‘And I’m certainly not buying an apology out of her.’
I drop what remains of my slice of pizza in the bin and stare at the laundry basket, still sitting there from this morning. I begin to sort it, wanting to do anything to take my mind off the situation.
‘Speaking of her birthday,’ he says, ‘I’ve been meaning to ask you what I can get her.’
First Dale, now Jason. I don’t answer him.
I do get the feeling this is leading to something else. I look at him and see an unsettled look pass over his face. I stop putting clothes into the machine.
‘Is there something wrong?’
Jason looks at me abruptly.
‘Because this is starting to feel weird.’
He leans against the kitchen table and I can see the reluctance in his whole body. His shoulders are hunched over, the outline of his sharp shoulder blades protruding through his thin grey T-shirt. He looks over at me and I raise my eyebrows.
‘What’s wrong?’
His blue eyes are partially hidden by strands of dark-brown hair, which fall into his eyes. He sweeps them back before he speaks.
‘This is a bit weird for me. I mean . . .’ he says, suddenly more animated, placing his beer bottle down on the table. ‘Iain had to explain to me that this isn’t the first time stuff’s been left outside the house. He said there was an incident last week.’
My face screws up in confusion, but it’s brief, fleeting, because I know almost in an instant what he’s talking about. Who he’s talking about.
Her.
Ruby Tate.
‘Shit,’ I say, easing myself back to sit on the floor, one of Iain’s dirty work T-shirts still in my hand.
A silence hangs heavy in the air between us. Jason doesn’t know what to do. He looks out of his depth. He’s not used to being around me like this, in this setting.
He edges closer to me after a few moments have passed. ‘You OK?’
I look at him. ‘What was it this time?’
‘A note.’ He pauses. ‘It was insulting, aimed at you.’
‘Is that all?’ I say, slightly relieved. Confusion crosses his face. ‘Last week it was dog shit through the letterbox,’ I clarify.
‘Oh.’ He scratches his head. ‘I had no idea.’ He reaches forward, offering his hand, and I take it, let him pull me up from the floor. Once on my feet, he shoves both hands in the pockets of his jeans. ‘Iain’s never said anything about this woman before.’
A thought rushes through my head then. ‘Did Elle read it?’
‘No. No, I scrunched it up, hid it in my pocket until she was inside the house.’
‘Do you still have it?’
He shook his head. ‘Iain took it, but he filled me in on a few things. He’s worried about you, Charlotte. He said he’d be showing the police.’
I shake my head. ‘I don’t want him doing that. It’s nothing really. Nothing we can’t handle.’
‘Didn’t look like nothing.’
‘There’s no need for concern.’
‘Charlotte, Iain said it was best that I was here to watch Elle. He obviously doesn’t think this is nothing.’
I turn to him. I’m mortified. ‘Look after Elle? Why, did Ruby threaten my daughter?’
‘What?’ His face screws up. ‘No, God, no, but given that you’d . . .’ He trails off.
‘Given that I’d forgotten my daughter, Iain wanted you to watch her until I got home.’
He nodded.
‘Iain mentioned the charity fete thing you’ve got planned with Savannah.’
I look at him, waiting.
‘Maybe, given Ruby . . . Maybe you should cancel it?’
I look at the floor. I thought the whole thing with Ruby wasn’t getting to Iain. He’d told me to try and ignore it all, try to move on, at least until the trial.
‘Are you all right?’
‘Don’t keep asking me that.’
Jason’s looks at me now and, as I feel tears pricking at the backs of my eyes, I realise I can’t lose it in front of him. I don’t know him nearly well enough.
I shake myself. ‘Thanks, Jace, but I am not afraid of Ruby Tate.’
‘It’s not about whether you’re afraid of her, it’s about whether it’s worth risking her—’
‘Jace,’ I snap. ‘It’s fine. I’m OK . . . We’re OK.’
He looks unsure whether to believe me or not. I sense he doesn’t believe the bravado.
I swallow hard, try to control my voice, my face. ‘We’ll be OK. Iain will be back soon and I’m sure you’ve got things to be getting on with. Your girlfriend must be missing you. We can’t take up any more of your evening.’ I smile at him. I need to hold it together.
He doesn’t look convinced. ‘If you’re sure?’
‘We’re good. I promise.’
Even to my own ears, I don’t sound convinced.
*
Elle looked crushed when Jason told her he was leaving, but after about ten minutes she’d clearly forgotten all about it.
She sits opposite me now across the kitchen table. She’s not really spoken to me since Jason left. I can tell she’s angry but I did catch a hint of remorse in her eyes earlier. I think she knows I’m being hard enough on myself and that she doesn’t need to punish me quite so bad.
She sighs as she flips over a page in her textbook.
She’s finishing off some art history coursework, while I browse online.
At least that’s what she thinks I’m doing.
I’ve actually just logged on to Facebook, and after the initial relief at seeing there are no new private messages from her, I type her name into the search box.
Ruby Tate.
One tap of the button, and there she is, top of the search list of women with that name.
I stare at her tangled mess of long, dark-brown curls, brown-almost-black eyes staring back at me, further accentuated by some stupid Snapchat filter.
The woman’s thirty, for God’s sake.
It looks idiotic but I’m starting to think maybe there’s something more sinister here than I had first thought. Maybe the whole selfie-style idiocy is just a clever front?
I click on her name, and her profile fills the laptop screen.
Her profile has a few things that are public. Mostly it’s the same selfie shots (complete with the filters!) that fill the page but I look anyway and, after a few seconds, I see something of interest. A link to several local newspapers and another to an online petition.
The news articles are about the accident. Most of them will give all the details of Paul Selby, the man who caused this whole mess, the case coming up for trial. None of the articles will, I’m confident – no, I know – go into too much detail about me, but then there’s this link to the online petition.
I see the main headline displayed without the need to click to go to the actual page.
Install traffic cameras on the Linkway – Sign the petition now!
Oh, what a surprise.
So, the Linkway.
It’s the road where my car was all but destroyed and, despite being a main cut-through across the village, there are no cameras on that particular stretch of road.
Ruby Tate thinks this will help her boyfriend in court when he pleads not guilty to dangerous driving and use of a mobile while behind the wheel of a fuck-off-tonne HGV.
Yes, Ruby is Paul’s girlfriend and she’s launched a one-woman crusade to clear his name, despite the evidence stacked against him.
I cast my eye over the comments under the link. A few people have just written ‘Signed!’ but one or two comments are attacking me. I click away from Ruby’s page, the harsh words lingering in my head.
I pull my reading glasses off my face and rub my eyes, forgetting I still have my makeup on; I look at my fingers, see smears of mascara, and curse under my breath.
I look up when I hear Elle tut at me.
She gives me a half-smile. I hope this is a truce without any words needing to be spoken. What few memories of Elle as a little girl I do still have flood my mind.
There is vagueness surrounding the half-terms and the long, six-week breaks in summer, but despite the lack of something solid for me to latch on to, I know I was rarely around for her, even then. It makes me feel enormously sad and regretful.
The memories I do have when I did manage to take a break from work, I can barely remember.
The accident, the head injury, it’s taken a lot of precious memories. They should mostly return to me, but that doesn’t stop the feeling of sadness when I look back at photographs and can’t recall the emotion that should be attached to them.
Elle’s first birthday is patchy. Her first day at nursery is but fragments of random parts of that day. I remember her first Christmas well but the rest is still fragmented. I can remember the week leading up to the accident reasonably well, although there are gaps. These gaps are the one thing my solicitor is a bit worried about, but still, there is time yet for all the memories to come back before this goes to court.
Elle hands me a tissue for my fingers.
‘Thanks,’ I say, as I wipe mascara off my fingertips. I feel her eyes on me, though, and when I do finally look at her, I see something’s bothering her. ‘You OK? I’m so sorry for today.’
She looks like she’s choosing her words carefully before speaking them.
‘It shook me up, I can’t lie,’ she says. ‘No one likes walking that path beside the Linkway.’
This crushes me.
I reach out and take her hand. ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry I’ve done this to us.’
‘It’s not your fault. I know that, but you worry me.’
‘I can’t help how I feel, Elle.’
‘I know, and I know some of it is to be expected, but I do wish you’d trust me more. I can make my own decisions.’
I remove my hand from hers.
‘You’ve made it hard for me, for your father. After the accident—’
‘I know what I did then, but I was stupid. I wasn’t thinking straight. I didn’t know what to do or say around you. I didn’t want anything to set you back but you were acting weird and Dad was . . . well, you know?’
I wince inwardly. I think about the box of pills in our bedroom.
It’s these ripple effects that no one really ever talks about or prepares you for.
It’s times like this that I want to tell Elle all about my brother, Miles. Then maybe she’ll see why, before my accident, I was so scared to really bond with her, really connect like a mother should do. Since my accident I’ve gone out of my way to change this.
I look at her, really take her in. She looks uncomfortable. ‘Look, I know you’re under a lot of stress. Dad, too, with the business . . .’
She shuts up when I frown.
Has Iain really been talking to our daughter about money problems? If so, why not come to me?
‘I’m sorry, Mum, about earlier. I was angry, but that’s not what’s really bothering me.’
I look at her fully in the face and see the child she still is, looking back at me.
This almost vulnerable side of Elle, most people never see. True, she can be a nightmare, packed full of hormones and thinking she has the weight of the world on her shoulders, but there’s another side to her and I know she loves me, even if she does like to portray me as the enemy, and her father as the saviour.
‘Mum, I know the real reason Jason stayed with me until you came back home.’
I let her words sink in, trying not to give too much away. It pains me that something like this is worming its way into our little nucleus.
‘I saw the note left on the door. I didn’t read any of it. I pretended not to see it when Dad took it off the door and tried to hide it, but I knew it must be to do with the acc—’ She breaks off abruptly. ‘I mean, what happened.’
One thing Elle never likes to do is remind me of the collision. As if the face staring back at me when I look in the mirror each day isn’t reminder enough.
‘It’s nothing,’ I say, and replace my glasses on my face and look at the laptop screen again.
‘Mum, you really should take it to the police. They can warn her off. There are laws to stop this.’
That throws me. Elle’s not as naïve as she likes to make out sometimes.
‘It’s nothing, really.’ I smile. I’m not sure if I speak these words to convince her, or myself.
‘Mum, I know Dad won’t say this to you directly, because he doesn’t want to upset you, but—’
‘You mentioned about going to Milton Keynes to shop for something for your birthday,’ I say and, when I see the exasperation on her face at my attempt to steer the conversation away from the uncomfortable, I feel bad.
I should be able to talk to my daughter.
I should make her feel like she can come to me about anything. I don’t want her to feel like I did with my own mother. A mother I never see. It’s sad, and the last thing I’d ever want is not to feel close to my only child. She might be growing up, but she’ll always be my baby.
Still, I’m trying to protect her.
Ruby Tate is not going to ruin this weekend with my family and a day at the shops with Elle.
I know I still need to talk to Iain about postponing Elle’s birthday party, and I’m dreading bringing it up with Elle even if I do get Iain’s support. I try to stay positive.
‘I know Dad said about a car, but that’s really not a guarantee. But maybe we can look at something else?’
She goes to speak but stops herself. She gives me a nod, a disappointed look, then gathers her schoolbooks and bag and retreats upstairs, leaving me alone with my thoughts, waiting anxiously for Iain to get home.
