Tell Me I'm Wrong

by Adam Croft

  Chris has dropped hints once or twice that I might want to see a doctor. I left him in no doubt that wouldn’t be happening. I’m not having Evie taken away from me or anyone thinking I’m a bad mother. Lots of mums struggle after the birth of their children. And most of them come through the other side. Most of them.

  It’s a shock to the system, having a child. In every conceivable way. Everything in your life changes. People told us before Evie was born that would be the case, and we believed them, but we could never have known to what extent that would be true. It changes everything.

  Chris has been distant ever since. We used to be close — we’d always been close — but that stopped almost immediately after Evie was born. It was as if we were only connected by this little screaming bag of flesh, rather than any direct connection between the two of us.

  When we found out about Riley’s death last night, I felt so sorry for Chris. I know what a dedicated teacher he is, and how much he cares for every child that passes through his class. He spoke fondly of Riley, and I got the impression that the boy was one he’d helped on a number of occasions.

  He asked me if I thought he should go round and speak to the parents, offer his condolences. I told him it would probably be best to wait, to allow them some time and space. I can’t even begin to imagine what they’re going through, but I don’t think for one minute I’d want every man and his dog turning up on my doorstep. They’ll have enough to worry about at the moment.

  The texts and phone calls started coming in thick and fast. This is a tight community, and bad news travels quickly. Everyone always seems to know everyone else’s news before they do, and I’ve got a few suspicions as to who might have tipped off the press almost instantly. I don’t say any of this to Chris, though. I need to try and stay strong and calm for him.

  He had a haunted look in his eyes all night. It reminded me of those old war veterans you see in films, their eyes hazing over with painful memories as they recount tales of battle and bloodshed. He seemed genuinely troubled by his thoughts.

  He talked in his sleep again last night. I didn’t think much of it at the time — it’s something he does fairly regularly — but this time he sounded pained, anguished. I couldn’t quite make out the words, but he was mumbling something about guilt and karma. It wasn’t the content that worried me, but his tone of voice. He sounded like he was on the edge of a breakdown. I don’t know what he was dreaming about, but he woke up this morning seemingly normal — apart from the obvious effect last night’s news had had on him.

  He said he wanted to go and see Riley’s family. I wasn’t sure that was a good idea — not so soon after the event — but he was insistent. I had the feeling it might help him somehow, perhaps provide some sort of comfort.

  Riley’s death has been playing on my mind this morning. It didn’t seem to affect me in the way I would have expected when I heard the news last night. Today, I’m starting to wonder if it hadn’t sunk in until now. I’ve been looking at Evie differently, my brain trying to process what a mother could possibly be feeling at a time like this. A normal mother.

  I’ve been trying to distract myself with household chores. The kitchen’s sparkling clean, every ornament in the house has been dusted and once I’ve put the bin out I’ll start wiping down the cupboard fronts. I poke my head around the doorway to the living room and see Evie sitting in her bouncer, chewing on a toy, happily watching This Morning on the TV.

  I gather up the black plastic sack, tie the end, and unlock the back door. An uneasy feeling hits me as I open the lid of the wheeliebin. I can’t explain it, but it’s similar to the sense of dread you get immediately before something horrible happens.

  As I open the lid and spot the lone piece of blue and white fabric between the two black sacks at the bottom of the bin, I pause for a moment. I reach inside, grab hold of it and pull it out.

  It’s a baseball cap. Far too small for an adult; this is a kid’s cap. It’s blue and white, with the number 82 stitched onto the front. Mostly blue and white. The rest of it is stained deep red, almost black. It’s blood.

  8

  Chris

  I must have been sitting in the car for a good ten or fifteen minutes, just watching. I still can’t bring myself to open the door, get out and walk up the path to Riley’s parents’ house. On the face of it, it sounds like the simplest thing to do but I can’t bring myself to do it.

  Every teacher feels responsible when something happens to a kid they’ve taught, whether it was their fault or not. It’s the duty of care that’s drummed into us all, no matter how much we have to rally against it at times. Because where does that duty of care stop? In a community like this, it can smother you as easily as protect you. Everyone knows everyone. Everyone relies on everyone. It’s a finely balanced ecosystem which can be brought crashing down with relative ease.

  And this might just do it.

  This place has always felt claustrophobic. It’s home, of course, but it’s stifling. Not being able to walk down the street whilst remaining anonymous, not being able to be yourself. Not being allowed to have secrets.

  Things need to change around here. It’s no good living in each other’s pockets all the time. It doesn’t help anyone. Sometimes, people need to cut loose.

  This is what these sorts of events do to your brain, it seems. I can’t think clearly — I haven’t been able to for a long time — and it’s going to ruin me if I’m not careful.

  It feels strange to say, but Evie brought such a huge change and upheaval into our lives that it’s made me reassess things. I can see life from another angle now. It’s opened my mind. It’s made me think much more clearly, as well as having confused everything else at the same time.

  Time on my own is crucial. I need to do it to keep my own thoughts at bay. I need the time and space to have a calm word with my inner demons. If I didn’t get the time alone... Well, I don’t know. I think I’d probably snap. And that wouldn’t be good for anyone. It would break Megan to know how I really feel at times, to know what goes through my mind. And the ramifications of that would have a lifelong impact on Evie. How would she cope without her father?

  It doesn’t bear thinking about. And that’s why I must act normal. That’s why I have to make it look as though everything’s fine, as if I’m not carrying a dark secret around with me which threatens to tear my family apart and split a fissure through the middle of this community.

  I look up at the house again. There’s a police officer on the door, who seems as though he hasn’t moved in the whole time I’ve been sitting here. He hasn’t glanced in my direction once. An older couple I don’t recognise walk up to the front door, exchange a few words with the police officer and press the doorbell. The door opens a few seconds later, and they walk inside. I don’t see who opens the door. I’m thankful for that, in a way. Seeing the sheer pain etched on the face of Riley’s parents would break me.

  I need a release. I need the release.

  I’d been tempted for a while. I’m sure the thought crosses everyone’s mind at some point or another. You see someone who fits the bill and you just... Just ignore it. Because it’s not the done thing, is it? But for some of us that temptation builds and builds until you can’t handle it any more. And you have to do it.

  The guilt you feel afterwards is immeasurable. After the immediate exhilaration, of course. The thrill of the chase finally being over. The hunter having snared his prey. But the prey often makes it far too easy. It spoils the enjoyment somewhat. Which means there’s still an itch there to be scratched, still that desire for doing it all over again. Raise the stakes this time. Make it harder. Make it riskier. Because that’s the only way I’m going to be able to get what I need out of this.

  My heart’s racing as I think about it, and I can feel the butterflies in my chest. Just the thought of it makes me want to wriggle free and get out of here. I shouldn’t be thinking these thoughts. Not here. Not after how my actions — my addictions — have
affected Riley’s family.

  How can anyone be expected to carry on after that? How would I feel if it were my own family?

  At times, when I’m thinking normally and rationally, I start to wonder about myself. I clearly have a conscience. I have love for my family. So why do I still have this horrendous, grotesque itch that needs to be scratched? How can I possibly be two completely different people at the same time? And what makes the other side come out?

  I can only find these answers from within myself. There is no other option. There’s no-one I can speak to about it. The truth cannot possibly come out.

  I turn the key in the ignition, put on my seatbelt, put the car into gear and drive off down the road.

  9

  Megan

  I don’t know how long I stand there holding the bloodstained cap, as everything seems to become a blur. I can hear the blood pulsing in my ears, feel my heart fluttering. In my heart of hearts, I know what this is. I know whose it is. I don’t think I’ve ever seen the cap before, but at the same time I instinctively know the story behind it. And I know who put it there. How else would a bloodstained young boy’s baseball cap get in our wheeliebin?

  There is only one reason, but I can’t quite convince myself it’s true. I have to believe it isn’t. I need to.

  There’s no way into our back garden from the road. The houses are so tightly packed together, we have to take the bin out through the garage on bin day. It’s a constant source of frustration — one of those things we overlooked when we bought the house, but which has since become the bane of our lives. Chris, in his usual let’s-look-at-the-positives style, declared it ‘great for security’. And it’s exactly that sentiment which is now beginning to worry me.

  The fence around the garden is high, and the bushes are dense and prickly. I’ve never been a keen gardener, so we decided to leave the perimeter more or less as it was. They say you can’t stop a determined burglar — the best you can hope for is to send them next door — and I don’t think any burglar in their right mind would prefer our practical assault course. There is no way in, nor out. I certainly wouldn’t like to try it myself.

  Most of the time, that’s great. But not now. This isn’t right. Could someone have got in from outside the property and dumped the cap in our bin? No. No way. It’s not as if it was flung in there when the bin was last out on the street ready for collection, either. It’s nestled on top of a couple of bin bags that’ve been put in there since the last collection — while the bin was in our garden. There’s no way that cap could have got in there. Unless...

  I hear the faint ringing of the doorbell inside the house. I throw the cap back into the bin and wipe my hands on the front of my clothes. There’s nothing on them, but all the same I feel dirty. Filthy. Diseased. I go back into the house, and can hear Evie starting to cry. I get a sudden stabbing of guilt as I realise I left her inside on her own while I was out here.

  ‘It’s alright, darling. Mummy won’t be a second,’ I call through to the living room as I go to the front door. I turn the key, pull down the handle and open the door to find two police officers standing there. One man, one woman. The woman speaks.

  ‘Hello, are you Mrs Megan Miller?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say, my voice faint and weak.

  ‘I’m PC Smith, this is PC Laurent. Can we speak to your husband, please?’

  10

  Megan

  ‘He’s not here,’ are the words I just about manage to squeeze out through my tight lips.

  ‘Do you know where he’s gone or when he’ll be back?’

  ‘He’ll probably only be an hour or so at most,’ I reply. I don’t know why I didn’t tell them where he is. Instinctively, I feel a need to protect him. ‘What’s this all about?’

  ‘We just need to ask him for some information that might be linked to an incident that happened yesterday. You probably heard about it.’

  I nod. ‘The little boy. Riley.’

  ‘Chris was his teacher, I hear.’

  I nod again. ‘Last year. The one that’s just finished.’

  She smiles. ‘We’re looking to speak to anyone who might have known Riley and could help us find out what happened to him. We’ll pop back a bit later, but if he comes home before then could you ask him to give me a call, please?’

  She hands me a business card, with her name, rank and mobile number underneath the county’s police insignia.

  ‘I will. Thank you.’

  ‘No problem. We’ll let you get on with your day. Sounds like you’ve got enough on your plate.’

  She signals with her eyes towards the inside of the house. It’s only then that I recognise the sound of Evie screaming in the living room behind me.

  ‘Yes. Sorry. She’s teething. Lack of sleep. You know how it is.’

  She half-smiles, half-laughs. ‘I don’t, fortunately. And I don’t think I want to, either. I’ll stick with cats.’

  ‘Don’t blame you,’ I say. ‘I’ll get Chris to call you when he’s home.’

  When they’re gone, I stand in the hallway and try to compose myself. This is too much all at once. My mind wasn’t in the right place to begin with. Now we’ve got the bombshell of a young boy being murdered in the village, the bloodstained cap in the bin, the police turning up on our doorstep and that bloody incessant screaming.

  I march into the living room and yell ‘What?!’ at the top of my voice. Evie looks at me, a confused and panicked look in her eyes. Then her lip starts trembling and she starts crying again, but a different sort of cry. Instantly, I feel like the worst person in the world. I go over and pick her up, put her to my chest and try to comfort her.

  ‘Ssshh, there we are. Mummy’s sorry. I’m sorry.’

  After a few minutes, I manage to calm her down. I know I can’t let this all get the better of me, can’t let it affect Evie, but it’s so hard. I put her back down in her bouncer, give her a toy or two to play with and go into the kitchen.

  I lean on the worktop and try to catch my breath. This is too much, too fast. I’m swinging between utter confusion and knowing that secretly, deep down, I want to be confused. I want it to make no sense. Because the alternative is that it all makes perfect sense.

  Twenty-four hours ago, things were far from perfect. But they were a hell of a lot closer to it than they are now. A young boy, murdered. A boy who’d been taught by Chris. Chris, who was fishing, alone, with no alibi, when it happened. And the bloodstained cap. In our bin. It all points one way, but I can’t think of it as an option. Can I?

  I have to know, though. I need to. I can’t go round to Riley’s parents’ house and ask them if he had a blue and white baseball cap.

  It could all have a perfectly innocent explanation. There are sick fucks out there who kill children. We all know that. And each child who dies will have had a number of teachers. Those teachers have families. This time, we’re that family.

  And the cap? What’s the innocent explanation for that? We don’t have young boys. Maybe Chris found it when he was out somewhere. Perhaps when he was fishing. He’s the sort of person who hates litter. He can’t stand things being where they shouldn’t be. Maybe he picked it up and brought it home to put it in the bin. At the time, he wouldn’t have even realised the significance. He probably forgot all about it. If I mentioned it to him now, he might make the link. It could be little Riley Markham’s cap and not throw suspicion straight at Chris’s door. It’s entirely possible. And together we could explain that, hand the cap over to the police and they could use it to find Riley’s killer.

  That would be the logical, sensible thing to do. But there’s a lingering, nagging doubt at the back of my mind. Something that says that really wouldn’t be a good idea. Something that says I need to protect my family.

  They say you can’t ignore your gut. That even though pure logic and available evidence could well point in the absolute opposite direction, what you feel in the pit of your stomach is often more right than anything else. That sort
of instinct has served me well in my life so far, but now it threatens to bring everything I’ve worked for crashing down around me. Because my instinct says I can’t possibly confront Chris with the bloodstained baseball cap, and I certainly can’t take it to the police. And that realisation fills me with dread.

  Evie’s quiet. For now. I decide to put the kettle on. I need to maintain some semblance of normality.

  As the kettle boils, my phone vibrates and plays a stab of the theme tune from the BBC News programme. It’s the noise it makes when a news alert pops up.

  I look at my phone.

  Young boy murdered in small village named as seven-year-old Riley Markham, police say.

  So it’s official. They’ve named him. That means his extended family and loved ones have all been told. Dozens of people have just had their lives brought crashing down around them. Their entire existence paused at that moment in time. There will only ever be Before and After.

  I tap the pop-up and the news article loads. I start to read, the words all blurring into one grey mass.

  Until I get further down the page and see the young, smiling face of Riley Markham looking up at me, his bright blue eyes peering out from under a distinctive and familiar baseball cap.

  11

  Five years earlier

  The waiting room feels cold. I bring my hands across my chest and rub my upper arms. It’s mid-July, but I’m freezing. Middle-aged women sit around me, fanning themselves with paper fans. Men sit spreadeagled in shorts and sunglasses, those daft toe-splitting flip-flops dangling off the end of their feet.

  I turn to Chris. He looks at me and smiles, and places a reassuring hand on my thigh. He squeezes. I feel instantly warmer.

  It doesn’t last long, though. I know deep down what’s going to be said today isn’t going to be good news. We’ve been trying for three years. We have sex every other day — sometimes every day — but still nothing. I don’t need a doctor to tell me what’s wrong. Sometimes you just know in your heart. It doesn’t feel right. Doesn’t feel realistic, no matter how much I want it to happen.