by Zoe Lea
‘You heard,’ I said, and went to lead Sam away. ‘Come on, sweetheart,’ I told him, ‘let’s go home.’
‘Wait.’ Will grabbed my arm. The people in the waiting room hushed, watching us. ‘It was a mistake,’ Will said, ‘a silly mistake. I didn’t know he was going to react like that. You need to be very careful what you’re saying. I’ve already called the social, and my solicitor … ’
‘Ashley Simmons by any chance?’
His face went pale.
‘You’re so predictable, you’re pathetic,’ I told him. ‘They’re playing you, Will. They couldn’t give a toss about you. They’re only helping you with this because they want to get back at me. They don’t care about Sam, they only care about hurting me because of what I said to Janine.’
His face slackened momentarily.
‘She’s sending me texts – did you know that?’ I told him. ‘Weird packages, letters. She’s deranged, I even felt a bit sorry for her but now … ’ I shook my head then leaned in close to him, so Sam couldn’t hear.
‘So fuck off,’ I hissed. ‘Go back to your demented new friends and do your worst.’
His face had flushed and a woman sitting at the desk picked up a phone. I assumed she was calling a security guard of some sort.
‘We’re leaving,’ I said loudly to her. ‘I’m taking my son home. To where he’s safe.’
Will stared at me a moment. The people in the waiting room stared at him and he shifted his weight under their scrutiny. Puffed out his chest a little.
‘That lad’s got real problems,’ Will said to the room at large. ‘He made a fool of me out there on the pitch, did he tell you that? Did he tell you what really happened out there? Everyone thought he was having a heart attack. We dialled 999 but no, it’s not an emergency. There’s no need for everyone to run around, no need for the ambulance or anything, because it’s just because he’s panicking. Panicking over catching the ball and running about a bit? What kind of soft lad is he?’
I was on my way to the door but I went rigid. I looked at Sam, his face streaked with tears.
‘It’s OK,’ I told him, and then I turned back to Will.
‘He’s my son,’ I shouted, ‘and the only problem he’s got is a father like you.’
Sam whimpered at the side of me, and Will began to jog forward to him, talking to him as he came closer.
‘Hey, buddy,’ he said, putting on a show for the people watching, ‘don’t you listen to what your mother says. You’ll be coming to live with me soon, promise. Then all of this can stop, we’ll get you right. Don’t you worry, I’ll be coming for you soon.’
I felt Sam begin to tremble, pushing his head away from Will and into the crook of my arm.
‘Over my dead body,’ I hissed at Will, before walking away, holding Sam’s hand tightly, whispering words of reassurance as best I could as we went through the door.
‘See what a mess you’ve made of him?’ Will shouted after us. ‘You’ve ruined him, Ruth. He needs his dad. It’s going to take him living with me to sort this out.’
Sam was shuddering, as if Will’s words had physically hit him. I heard a woman laugh loudly, I don’t know if it was at us, or something else, but suddenly everything was overwhelming. We started to jog, then sprint through the car park towards my car. We got in without speaking and I drove us home in silence.
Those had been the last words Sam had heard from Will and, since then, he’d been a mess. Terrified. So frightened that he might have to go and live with Will and be expected to attend rugby and whatever else Will deemed would ‘fix’ Sam and his anxiety. I threw the sports clothes and trainers that Will had made Sam wear in the bin and dressed him in his pyjamas. I hugged him, held him close, let him eat whatever he liked and declared the rest of the weekend as ‘duvet days’. Which in our house meant not getting out of our pyjamas, bringing down the duvets off our beds, snuggling under them on the sofa and watching movie after movie or playing game after game. Whatever Sam wanted to do.
As Sam was distracted, I checked over the pictures he’d taken on his mobile phone and it broke my heart. They were mostly blurry and out of focus – it was only a cheap thing – but I got the gist of it. Platefuls of food had been taken, then there were pictures of the car interior, and then lots of Will’s home with the soft toy at the forefront. I’m ashamed to admit I found these fascinating. Having never been inside Will’s house, only knowing the address, I devoured these photographs. Studying his choice of decor, wondering if he’d picked out that rug or if it was his new girlfriend? Did she pick out that sofa? That huge flat-screen TV?
‘Hey,’ I said to Sam as he was playing his game, ‘this picture you took.’ I showed him the phone: on the screen was a photograph of the hallway. The walls were decorated with pictures and, at the end, the soft toy in front of a pair of ankle boots.
‘Whose are those?’
Sam glanced at the image. ‘Don’t know.’
I stared at the boots. ‘Do they belong to your dad’s new girlfriend?’
Sam shrugged. They were just a pair of boots, lined up against the wall, by what I was assuming was Will’s bedroom, but they bothered me. There was something familiar about the tassels at the back, the small heel.
‘Why did you take this picture, Sammy?’ I asked. ‘Was there something in that hall that you didn’t like?’
He looked at the picture a moment. ‘The smell,’ he said. ‘It was really smelly, just outside Dad’s bedroom, like horrid perfume.’
‘Perfume?’
He nodded. ‘Only in Dad’s bedroom, but it was all along the hallway when I first got there. It made me sneeze.’
‘But she wasn’t there?’ I asked him. ‘If you smelt her perfume, she must have been in the house?’
‘She left before we got there,’ he said. ‘Dad said she didn’t want to meet me.’
I checked the photo again and then switched off the phone, ruffled his head. What kind of man tells his son that his new girlfriend doesn’t want to meet him? He was such a wanker.
‘Don’t worry,’ I told him. She’ll never be lucky enough to meet you, I thought, and you will never, ever have to smell her stinky perfume again.
TWENTY-ONE
The school run covers the times between seven-thirty and nine in the morning and between three and four-thirty in the afternoon. If you’ve ever been anywhere near a school at these times, you’ll know how chaotic it is – how many kids there are running about and how many vehicles drive too fast and with too little care. It’s estimated that every month, in the UK, over one thousand children are injured on the school run. Over a thousand. That’s a lot of little bodies that are broken and bruised.
It’s so dangerous, more dangerous than them eating sugar or putting on weight or being on the internet, and yet parents hear so little about it. Because who wants to accept that we’re all potential killers? That as we drive our four-by-fours and park in stupid places so we can drop them off quicker, we’re actually endangering the lives of our children?
It was a bugbear of John’s and he had me typing out yet another letter alerting parents to the fact that the school run could be deadly. It would have no effect. I’d send out this letter, and a text to those parents who had supplied their mobile number to the school, and still cars would be parked on the double yellows, people would zoom off at speed and Rob, Janine’s husband, would be one of them. Rob, witness to Sam’s meltdown on the rugby pitch, what was he thinking when that happened? Did he remember our conversation that fateful night where I confided my concerns about Sam? Where I secretly confessed that I was unsure I was doing my best for him? Did he see Sam have a full-on panic attack and think of me at all, or was that too much to expect from someone like him? Will’s new best friend? He must know what Janine was doing, the aggressive letters and texts she was sending to me. I’d called the police, told them about the letter and it had been logged. They said they could have a word, issue her with a police information notice, but that wa
s all they could do until something happened where I could press charges. I’d heard nothing. I assumed they’d called around to her house, spoken to her, which meant Rob must be aware of it all, and I didn’t know who was more deranged. Janine or Rob. Ashley or Will. People like them, they had no idea the damage they were causing.
I’d be doing the photocopying and be thinking about what it would feel like to go into Will’s office and smash it up. Or I’d be inputting data and find myself imagining Rob and Janine in a terrible car crash, their white Land Rover twisted and smashed out of recognition. Or Ashley: I’d find myself daydreaming about her falling down stairs, breaking her neck, or severely ill, lying in a hospital bed, tubes and wires coming out of her. I surprised myself with how vicious my imagination could be. How hard I seemed to be becoming because of everything that was happening to me. I felt like a mother tiger, snarling at everything and everyone as she tried to protect her young.
When I discovered Will had been unfaithful, I had similar visions of him on a daily basis. Ones of him suffering, being made bankrupt and begging for my forgiveness, that kind of thing, but I never actually wanted him dead. Physically hurt yes, but not dead. However, since this whole episode with Rob and Janine, and how he’d got himself entwined in it all, how he’d taken advantage, I wanted him gone. I wanted them all gone out of our lives, and my imagination wouldn’t stop presenting me with scenarios.
‘Pie.’ Becca placed the box in front of me. ‘To cheer you up.’
I stopped typing and looked at the chicken and mushroom pie she’d brought.
‘Because my guess is, with everything that’s going on, with Will and his alliance with “the dream team” and Sam and his worrying, you’ve stopped looking after yourself, and you aren’t eating.’
I looked up at her and smiled.
‘That’s why you’re always in here at break and lunch, and I know you, Ruth, so –’ she took my hands away from the keyboard ‘– stop. You’re losing weight, I can tell. Have lunch, come to the staffroom—’
‘I’m not going in the staffroom.’
‘OK –’ she held up her hands ‘– we’ll eat in here, but stop working and take a rest.’
Becca had also brought me a chocolate eclair, a packet of salt and vinegar crisps and a pink bath bomb, ‘to help you destress’.
I took out the pie and could’ve wept with how good it tasted and at her kindness.
‘Lisa says Sam’s a little better today,’ Becca volunteered as we ate.
I nodded. ‘I checked him just before the start of lunch. She’s finally letting him eat in the classroom on his own, reading his comic, so –’ I shrugged ‘– he’s OK.’
A wry smile passed over Becca’s face. ‘How did you wangle that? Sam in there on his own. You know she’s convinced her kids should all be in her routine, she’s so anal.’ She pulled a face. ‘Typical NQT. But seriously, she’s not easy on those kids, so are you two friends now? You been taking her out?’
I swallowed down my mouthful quickly less I choked on it. ‘Hardly.’ I looked up and smiled. ‘I sort of, well, I kind of threatened her.’
‘What?’ Becca’s response was priceless, and I let out a laugh. It felt so good to be finally speaking about it, because more than a week after me making those phone calls, nothing had really happened.
My great plan phoning HMRC and the local journalist hadn’t played out as I expected. Lisa was being nice to Sam, so that was a win, but Janine’s business didn’t seem to be under threat and there were no scandalous headlines. There were rumours that she was under investigation, but I’d seen no evidence of the devastation I’d imagined, so I felt it was safe to share it with Becca.
I gave a small laugh. ‘Not like that, I just told her, well, I told her that Janine was being investigated by HMRC. And that as she was tutoring for Janine, she could get mixed up in it.’ I shrugged. ‘I made out I was helping with the investigations, I might have implied that HMRC had contacted me to see if any teachers were involved … ’
‘Ruth!’ Becca started to laugh. ‘HMRC? Look at you.’
‘I know,’ I said, ‘but I had to do something and, besides, it’s almost true. She was doing it cash in hand, she could be investigated.’
‘Yeah, funny that,’ Becca said. ‘I heard the rumours that Janine is being investigated. Good timing for you, isn’t it?’
I looked up at Becca who was happily picking at her quiche. ‘That’s karma in action if ever I saw it,’ she said and smiled.
‘She deserves it,’ I said after a moment. ‘We all have to pay tax, so why shouldn’t she?’
‘I’m not saying she doesn’t deserve it,’ agreed Becca, ‘just that it’s happened at the right time.’
I kept my eyes down. It’s not that I didn’t want to admit it to Becca, it’s just that something told me not to. And I didn’t have it in me to explain it all to her, to say how I was responsible and go through the shocked and surprised chat. I’d only made a couple of phone calls after all and I had so much more I needed to talk with her about.
Since the episode at A & E I had received a barrage of threatening texts from Will. All detailing what an unfit mother I was and what action he was going to take. They had started since I refused to let him see Sam and were getting worse. The latest one had stated that I had ‘no ability to understand the needs of Sam’. That I had a history and was ‘emotionally abusing him’. They were so hurtful, I deleted most of them without reading them.
I’d also seen the red Fiat outside our house on two other occasions and, since I assumed the police had visited Janine and had a word, I was now wondering if it was something to do with Will. Perhaps someone he knew, someone he’d got to keep an eye on us. Make sure I wasn’t doing a runner with Sam, which amused me because it meant he must’ve bought it when I said I was taking Sam to Disney. He obviously thought us capable of getting on a plane and jetting off somewhere and that was a small comfort.
‘Any more orders for the cake business?’ Becca asked after a moment, and I shook my head. ‘They’ll come back,’ she said, ‘once they realise it was all lies.’
I shrugged. I’d not had one order since Sue had cancelled hers, and the sales at the farmers’ market on Sunday had been pitiful. Whether it was because of Janine’s rumours, or because I was late arriving, I couldn’t be sure, but one thing was certain, I wasn’t going to be rich off it any time soon.
‘And Will? He’s … ’
‘Being a complete dick as usual,’ I told her.
‘And any more texts or … ?’
‘Yes, loads of mean texts from Will, which I’ve stopped reading. And my car wouldn’t start the other day. For a horrible moment I thought someone had done something to it, but it turned out it was just the frost. And I’m opening the post wearing rubber gloves, sleeping with the kitchen knife under my pillow as the police have been useless, but apart from that, everything’s fine.’
She smiled weakly and I threw the empty box into the bin. ‘Thanks for lunch, that was really thoughtful.’
‘No worries, any time.’ She took a moment. ‘Want me to come around later, bring a bottle? You look like you could do with a break.’
I smiled, I could think of nothing better than an evening with Becca. Sipping wine and letting her entertain me with stories of her new boyfriend, the spin class instructor from her gym. It would be like going back in time, to a place where ex-husbands and crazed parents didn’t exist. Becca’s worries were still of what to wear on a night out, what was on in the sales and if some storyline in a soap opera she was watching had been resolved. My life was fast becoming the soap opera and it was depressing in the worst way possible.
‘I’m not good company at the moment, with all this going on,’ I told her, ‘and besides, I want to keep it simple for Sam. Want to keep him near me.’
‘Of course,’ she said, nodding. ‘How is he at home?’
I made a face; he’d started with the night terrors again since his horrendous weekend with
Will. Screaming in the night, me having to gently wake him up and then him panicking over something he’d dreamed about but couldn’t quite grasp. I didn’t want to admit it, to her, just how bad he was. He was OK at school though, and that was something. Since I’d had the word with Lisa and everyone thought Toby was a thief, that at least was OK.
‘I’m worried about you,’ Becca said, opening the crisps and handing them to me. ‘You should get your mother to babysit,’ she offered. I laughed at the suggestion.
‘Or get Sam to go stay with her? He’d be OK there, wouldn’t he? At her house?’
I thought for a moment. Sam might be OK with that, but how would my mother cope if he had a night terror? If he woke them both screaming?
‘Well surely she can come to yours for a few hours?’
I looked at her.
‘Two hours!’ she pressed. ‘Not even late. You could go out from eight till ten, or even earlier, six till eight. Be back to put Sam to bed. But you need to get out,’ Becca insisted, ‘do something. I see the road you’re headed on and it’s not good.’
‘I’m not depressed if that’s what you’re worried about,’ I told her. ‘I’m OK for the time being.’
She put her hand on my shoulder. ‘Ruth, you’re isolating yourself again. Just like when Will left, you’re pushing everyone away, hiding. You didn’t even get out to do that car boot you meant to at the weekend, did you?’
‘That was impossible, Sam had been to A & E, you know what Will did to him … ’
‘I know, I know,’ Becca said, ‘but baking two hundred cupcakes and then throwing them in the bin because your freezer is already full is not good. Not good for you. You need to blow off some steam.’
‘Whose blowing what?’
I felt myself flush. I’d not seen Glen since the fly fishing on Friday – it seemed like a lifetime ago. I’d meant to go and thank him, to tell him what an impact he’d had, how brilliant it’d been, but the events of the weekend had taken everything from me. In the two days that I’d been back at school, I’d hidden in my office. Frightened to venture out.