The Argument (ARC)

by Victoria Jenkins

  9

  Dear Diary,

  I have done something I shouldn’t have, something I know was wrong and sinful. I have done something criminal, but I can’t take it back and now I know I’ll have to live with it. I can’t sleep at night for thinking about it, worrying about whether I’ll get caught and what will happen to me if I do. I’ve heard about young offenders’ prisons – I’ve seen them on television. I don’t want to end up somewhere like that, but I’m sure that mum knows what I’ve done. I’ve seen the way she looks at me, like she knows what I’m thinking, and I’m sure she’s planning something. I can’t trust her. I need to get away from here, but the longer I leave it, the harder it is to do. I wish I was somewhere else, just anywhere. I don’t want to be me anymore.

  10

  Nine

  Hannah

  * * *

  Hannah is out in the back garden tending to the flower beds when she hears the telephone ringing. The house phone rarely rings these days; when it does, it is usually telesales or automated messages, and she invariably puts the receiver down without listening to what the person at the other end of the line has to say. Today is different.

  ‘Mrs Walters? This is Sally Baker, one of the receptionists from St. Andrew’s Primary School.’

  Hannah feels a stirring in the pit of her stomach, something that tells her something is wrong. The school never calls her. Something has happened.

  ‘Is Rosie okay?’ she asks, hearing the wobble in the words.

  ‘There’s been an accident,’ Sally starts to say, and from hereon in, Hannah doesn’t hear the words that are being spoken. Climbing frame…fall…ambulance…each word blurs into the next to form a white noise in her head.

  ‘I’m coming,’ she says. ‘I’ll get a taxi straight there.’

  She puts the phone down and runs to the kitchen, hoping there is enough change in the emergency funds tin to get her a taxi to the school. It should only be a few pounds, but Hannah hasn’t looked in the tin in so long; she has no idea how much or how little is in there. Shaking the coins into her hand, she goes back to the phone and calls for a taxi. She searches for her mobile and calls Michael, but it goes straight to answer phone. She leaves a message, hoping it isn’t too long until he picks it up.

  The taxi arrives a short while later, though those minutes feel like an age to Hannah and she wonders whether she would have got there quicker if she ran. She wonders whether an ambulance is already there, or whether the receptionist had said that one had been called. She should have listened more carefully, but it was so hard to take everything in. She just wants to get to her daughter.

  When the driver pulls up at the school gates, Hannah looks up and down the street for signs of an ambulance. There isn’t one: either it hasn’t arrived yet or Rosie has already been taken to hospital. Hannah empties the handful of coins into the driver’s palm, not knowing whether she is giving him enough or too much.

  ‘Keep the change,’ she tells him, hoping that the latter will be the case, and that if it isn’t, he won’t bother to stop and count through it all now. She gets from the car and runs to the front door, where she presses the buzzer. ‘Rosie Walters’s mum,’ she says, and the door bleeps as it is opened for her to go in. There is a woman at reception, but whether it is Sally or another of the staff members she doesn’t know; she can’t remember all their names.

  ‘Where’s Rosie?’ she asks breathlessly.

  ‘Mrs Walters,’ the woman says, somehow aware of who she is. ‘Is everything okay?’

  ‘Is she still here? Please take me to her.’

  The woman gets up from her chair and emerges from a door to the side. ‘Is everything okay?’ she asks again.

  ‘Has she gone already?’

  ‘Gone where?’ the woman asks, studying her with a raised eyebrow and a look of concern that Hannah resents.

  ‘I got a call,’ Hannah explains, feeling frustration build in her chest. ‘From Sally. She said Rosie had been in an accident.’ She sees the receptionist glance at someone just behind her and turns to see a male member of staff at the door of one of the offices.

  ‘Everything all right?’ he asks.

  ‘Will everyone stop asking that!’ Hannah takes a deep breath and exhales loudly, trying to calm the anger she feels bubbling in her chest. ‘I had a call from Sally,’ she says again, trying to stay calm. ‘She said my daughter, Rosie, had been in an accident.’

  ‘Rosie Walters?’ the man says. ‘I’ve just seen her down in the hall.’

  Hannah rushes down the corridor, dreading what she’ll find when she gets to the hall. When the woman on the phone told her Rosie had fallen from the climbing frame, she must have meant the ones in the hall used for PE lessons, and not the ones outside in the playground as Hannah had assumed. She wonders who is already with Rosie, if the paramedics have arrived yet, but there was no sign of an ambulance outside the school.

  The receptionist runs to keep up with her. ‘Mrs Walters,’ she says, ‘there must have been a mistake.’

  But Hannah isn’t listening. When she gets to hallway, she yanks open the double doors. Inside, a class of children wearing gym shorts and t-shirts is running in and out of coloured cones, the sound of their laughter echoing from the walls. She searches among them for Rosie, convinced at first that she isn’t there – she couldn’t possibly be – before finding her daughter as she runs past in a sweaty, giggling blur of red hair and bright white trainers.

  ‘Rosie!’ Hannah flings out an arm, almost knocking her over as she passes.

  Rosie makes a sudden stop, her trainers squeaking on the parquet floor. ‘Mum. What are you doing here?’

  Hannah turns to the receptionist. ‘What’s going on?’ she asks, her tone accusing.

  ‘That’s what I was trying to tell you in the corridor. Sally couldn’t have called you – she doesn’t work on Tuesdays.’

  Hannah looks at her incredulously, the woman’s words not quite registering in her brain. ‘Sally called me,’ she repeats slowly. ‘She said Rosie had been involved in an accident.’

  The receptionist glances awkwardly at the children near her. The room has fallen into silence now, the squeaking of trainers upon the wooden floor of the hall replaced with only the sounds of breathless young lungs. ‘Let’s go back to reception,’ she suggests. ‘Rosie’s fine and well, that’s the main thing.’ She gives Rosie a smile, which only manages to make Hannah more frustrated. She wants to say so, but she doesn’t. The woman is right, of course; the main thing is that Rosie is fine. But why would Sally want to worry her in that way?

  Hannah tells Rosie quietly that she’ll see her later before leaving the class to resume their exercise. She follows the receptionist back down the corridor, feeling foolish and embarrassed, but most of all angry. Why would someone want to do this to her? she thinks. She had thought the worst, imagining Rosie in countless awful predicaments. If it was meant as a practical joke, then it really wasn’t funny.

  ‘Would you like a cup of tea, Mrs Walters?’

  ‘No. Thank you. I just want to know what’s going on.’

  ‘Okay. Look,’ the woman says, gesturing to a chair. ‘Why don’t you wait here for a moment and I’ll go and see if I can get hold of Sally. I’ve been the only person on reception this morning, so I know no one else would have called you.’

  Hannah pats her jacket, locating her mobile phone. ‘I’ll just call my husband.’

  The woman nods before heading back behind reception. Hannah feels her eyes on her as she leaves the main doors and goes to call her husband from just inside the school gates. Michael answers after just a few rings.

  ‘Everything okay?’

  He knows she would never normally contact him while he’s at work, so the call alone will be enough to signal that all is not right. Hannah begins to tell him everything that has happened that morning, her words falling from her in a hurried, jumbled mess.

  ‘Hannah, slow down. Is Rosie okay?’

  ‘She’
s fine.’

  Her husband’s sigh of relief is audible. ‘Look,’ he tells her. ‘Take a deep breath and try to calm down. You’ve obviously had a shock, but Rosie’s okay, that’s all that matters. We’ll talk about it when I get home, okay?’

  Hannah wants to talk about it now, though she knows there’s little more that can be said or done over the phone. He’s going to start thinking she’s unstable, she thinks, what with losing the keys and now this. Reluctantly, she tells him she’ll see him later before ending the call. When she goes back into the school, the receptionist is waiting for her at the front desk.

  ‘I’ve just spoken to Sally and she doesn’t know anything about a call to you, Mrs Walters. She’s been at her son’s swimming gala all day.’

  ‘It’s okay,’ Hannah says, raising a hand. It’s really not okay, but it’s clear that the school doesn’t know anything about the phone call, and the main thing is that Rosie is still here, and she is safe. Hannah doesn’t want to lose her composure in front of this woman, which has already been so close to happening. She will be the talk of the staff room, no doubt, the crazy lady who came racing into the school, talking nonsense about a phone call that none of them knows anything about.

  The receptionist is looking at her with that same expression of pity that Hannah doesn’t want to attract.

  ‘Can I call you a taxi?’

  ‘No,’ Hannah replies. ‘Thank you. I can walk home.’

  She leaves the building and heads out of the school gates, grateful for the cool air that she swallows down in greedy gulps. An awful, very real possibility has taken root in her brain, and she knows that it is justified this time, supported by everything else that has taken place over those last few days. If no one from the school made that call, then someone else did, someone who wanted to scare her. It would be easy for anyone to find the name of a receptionist at the school – all they would need to do is search online for the website and find a list of staff names. Who would be malicious enough to fake a call like that? Who would know exactly what it would take to unnerve her in such a way?

  Hannah shoves her hands into the pockets of her jacket as she crosses the road, her fingers curling to make fists. She doesn’t want to think there’s even the smallest chance it could be true, but she is sick of pushing aside what stares her in the face as the most obvious truth just to replace it with something that she can only hope might hurt less. She needs to feel this pain. She deserves to.

  There is only one possible answer to the question of who might have been behind this.

  Olivia.

  11

  Ten

  Olivia

  * * *

  Olivia stands at the end of the pier and looks out across the water, breathing in a wave of cool fresh air. It is a clear day though chilly, and she pulls her coat around her chest, folding her arms to keep herself warm from the breeze that comes in from the wide expanse of grey sea. She has found Templeton Road and the address to which she is headed, but she wanted to come here first, to just stand at this spot and take in the view: the sea gulls flying overhead, the railings that run the length of the pier; the water that stretches beyond it until it tips over the earth’s edge, out of sight. It is grey-blue, like no other colour she has seen. If she were asked to describe it to someone, she wouldn’t be able to compare it to anything else. She wouldn’t have the words to tell them how it makes her feel.

  Other than the noise of the gulls and the waves that lick the pebble beach beneath her, Olivia doesn’t hear a sound. She is used to silence, although this is a kind of silence that Olivia believes she could happily live with. Tipping her head back, she inhales the air as though breathing the stillness in, swallowing it down, storing it in her lungs so she can keep it, re-energise herself again with it later.

  She wishes she had some money with her. There is a cafe selling fish and chips at the entrance to the pier, and the smell of vinegar made her stomach rumble as she stepped on to the wooden boards that led her to where she now stands. Opposite it, there is a tiny sweet shop, an old-fashioned place selling pear drops and humbugs and an array of other flavours from a collection of glass jars that line the shelves behind the small strip of counter where the shop owner was seated. Olivia wanted to go inside, just to look, but the man was looking at her oddly – or maybe he was simply returning her own expression, she can’t be sure.

  Pushing away thoughts of her hunger, she turns her back to the promenade and everything she can’t have and stares out over the great expanse of ocean that looms in front of her. She imagines what it would feel like to jump into its icy depths, to feel its cold grip tighten its fingers on her skin and pull her below its dull surface. As a child, she believed in mermaids. She wanted to be one, which made bath time easier for her parents, never having to face the fight of getting her upstairs and into the water. She loved the feel of water on her skin and on her face, and sometimes, older now, she has submerged herself in the shallows of the bath, wondering how it might feel to stay beneath the surface. Perhaps she will do it one day, she thinks.

  It took her over half an hour to walk here from the school and, pulling herself from the dark turn of her thoughts, Olivia realises that she will be late home if she doesn’t move quickly and do what she is here for. There will be more questions to answer, more anger to face. She has her own questions, ones she recited over and over in her head while walking to this place, and yet now she is here they all seem to have left her, blown away on the wind and stolen from her by the sea. The thought makes her turn and head back to the promenade. If she delays her purpose any longer, she knows she will talk herself out of it completely.

  A couple of minutes later and back at Templeton Road, Olivia tentatively presses the bell at Sea Breeze House. There is an intercom at the door, with a keypad underneath. She wonders who knows the code, whether it is just the staff or if regular visitors can use it to gain entry. She waits a while before pressing the bell again. A few moments later, a young woman comes to open the door. She is pale and her hair looks lank, scraped back from her face in a knot that looks too tight, pulling painfully at her temples. She doesn’t look much older than Olivia. The girl raises an eyebrow expectantly.

  ‘I’m here to see Eleanor,’ Olivia explains, her heart pumping with the words. ‘I’m her granddaughter.’

  The girl ushers her into the building, looking up and down the corridor as though searching for another member of staff. She doesn’t look as though she belongs here, and the thought occurs to Olivia without the irony being missed. She waits for the girl to question her or make any comment on the fact that she has never been here before, but when she says nothing Olivia wonders whether she is new here. When the girl can’t find another member of staff to hand, she points to her left.

  ‘She’s in her room,’ she says, expecting Olivia to know where this is.

  ‘Thanks.’

  Olivia follows the corridor and glances at each closed door in turn, realising that they are all named with the person who resides behind each. The nursing home has recently been repainted and the smell of gloss lingers in the corridors. It is an unpleasant reminder of home and of the smell that’s lingered in the kitchen since Saturday night. Whatever happened there, Olivia’s mother believes her guilty of it. She no longer cares. Her mother can think what she likes of her.

  Olivia has never been in one of these places before and she had no idea what to expect before arriving. The sounds scare her. Somewhere along the hallway, from a room at which the door has been left ajar, an elderly lady is howling, her wails interspersed with the repetition of the word ‘mama’, a pitiful pair of syllables that makes Olivia at once sad and repulsed in a way she can’t justify and feels ashamed by. A woman wearing a blue tabard walks by the room, oblivious to the patient’s pleas, her face impassive. Stepping to one side as the woman passes, Olivia takes a deep breath. She wants to go home, and yet she never wants to see that place again. She doesn’t want to be here, but there are too many things s
he needs to know.

  She passes another five names before she reaches the door that reads Eleanor Medway. She doesn’t know what she should do, whether to knock or just push the door open, so she pauses for a moment, waiting for her heart to calm before she knocks the door. When there is no reply, she knocks again, this time giving the door a gentle push to see whether it will yield.

  ‘Eleanor,’ she says softly, not sure of what or who may welcome her.

  The room isn’t what she’s expecting, though what she had been expecting she isn’t quite sure. The entrance to the building and its corridors were clinical and sparse, yet here there is colour: paintings on the walls, patterned throws across the bed, pot plants on the windowsill. Olivia realises what she anticipated now, that the room would resemble a hospital ward, yet someone has made efforts to make this place more comfortable, something that might look vaguely like a home. She wonders if that person is her mother.

  Eleanor is sitting in a chair in the corner, hunched forward. The top of her back is arched painfully, and she is staring at the television that sits on top of the cheap chest of drawers at the opposite wall, its wood veneer peeling and curling at the corners, watching people search for something that may be of value among tables of junk at a car boot sale. The sound is turned off.

  ‘Have you brought a cup of tea?’ Eleanor asks without looking at her. ‘I’ve been waiting ages for a cup of tea.’

  She doesn’t turn her head; she hasn’t realised yet that Olivia isn’t staff. Perhaps she wouldn’t know otherwise even if she was to look. Olivia has never seen advanced old age like this, not up close and in real life. Her only experience of the elderly has come from television, and that has been limited: the grandmothers of gravy advertisements who cook dinner for all the family on a Sunday; the old men in soap operas who sit in the corners of pubs passing judgement on the world as it goes on around them.