by Heidi Perks
I told her to turn the handle, but Alice started crying. I said everything would be fine and got her to stand back, then I shoved against the door with everything I had, but still it wouldn’t move.
She needed to ask for help. This was a big thing for Alice—she’d have to go into the backyard and climb onto her flowerpot and lean over the fence to Mr. Potter’s house. I knew she was scared, but I told her she had to be a big brave girl and go and see if she could get his attention.
Mr. Potter ended up climbing over the fence to come into the house with Alice. When he pulled and twisted the handle and eventually got me out of the cupboard, I sank into his chest and sobbed, pulling Alice toward me too.
He asked how long I’d been in there for. It felt like hours.
He started pulling on the handle and told me the lock was jammed, and then the whole thing came off in his hand. We agreed it was lucky that didn’t happen a minute ago, because I would have been in there a lot longer.
Before he went I asked him if he could wait while I got the spare lightbulbs. I said the one in there must have blown already. But then Mr. Potter nodded at the ceiling and pointed out that there wasn’t even one in there.
Except I know I changed it just a few days ago.
BEFORE
HARRIET
I didn’t understand until last November, six months before the fair, just how deeply Brian had me under his control, but I also knew there was little I could do about it. Not if I wanted any chance of keeping Alice.
One morning last autumn I took Alice to the park in Chiddenford in a haze of despair. He had fooled everyone. Mostly me, but he’d managed to drag everyone else into his version of reality too. What chance did I, the crazy wife who put their child in danger, stand against him? Who would believe me if I told them my truth?
Charlotte was already at the park, and I slipped onto the bench alongside her, watching Evie run around with a bubble wand clutched in her tiny hand. Alice stood by my side, hesitant to join in until she was ready. Charlotte babbled on about her sister’s wedding and, as I often did, I lost myself in the wonderful mundanity of her problems until she said, “There’s still no news of that little boy, Mason.”
“I know. The parents must feel awful. You just can’t imagine what they’re going through, can you?” I shuddered, and both our eyes followed Evie a little closer as she ran around. “I haven’t read much about it,” I admitted, even though his disappearance was headline news. Every time I thought of the little boy vanishing I felt sick.
“Hmm. I know this is a dreadful thing to say, but do you think the parents are involved?”
“No. Not at all,” I gasped. “Why, do you?”
“I don’t think so, but that’s what some people are saying. I read this article online listing all these weird reasons the case doesn’t stack up and it makes you think, doesn’t it?”
“No, it’s not them,” I said. “I don’t believe that for one minute.”
Charlotte sighed. “No, I don’t either,” she agreed. “But isn’t it awful that it gets so twisted by the media? His family’s lives have been invaded. They can’t do anything without the world watching them. It must be so hard.” She fiddled with a scarf that lay across her lap. “But then I suppose if they do have anything to hide, they won’t be able to for long.”
That night I read everything I could about the Mason Harbridge case—the boy who vanished out of sight. It was an interesting thought: how someone can vanish completely. And Charlotte was right, the eyes of the world were on those left behind—Mason’s parents couldn’t put a foot out of place without someone picking up on it.
If they stripped back the walls that Brian had so skillfully built, what would they see? How long would he be able to deceive everyone? With the press poking into our lives, the police trawling our house: living with us, watching every moment, hearing every lie that came out of his mouth.
All I’d need was for everyone to see what I saw. Then Alice and I could escape him. And Alice wouldn’t have to stay hidden for long. Just until the world recognized the monster I lived with.
After all, how clever is Brian, really?
• • •
CHARLOTTE’S THROWAWAY COMMENT about the Harbridge family never left me, and a few weeks after, in late November, I first saw a chance of turning the idea into reality.
I was cleaning the house one rainy Monday morning when the doorbell rang. I smiled at Alice who was painting at the kitchen table and, with a duster in one hand, answered the door to find a man on my doorstep. He looked as shocked as I must have been, and with one hand gripping the doorframe, he leaned slightly forward as if he were about to speak.
My eyes skimmed over his face. I shook my head nervously, took a step back. I didn’t recognize all of him, but his large green eyes were so familiar.
“Harriet,” he eventually said. It wasn’t a question.
“No,” I muttered, still shaking my head. “It can’t be you.” I looked up and down the road but there was no one around, then back to him as he awkwardly shuffled his feet.
He dropped his gaze to the ground, leaving me to stare at the patch where his white hair was thinning.
“What—” I said in a low breath. There were too many questions running through my mind. What are you doing here? Is there bad news? How did you find me? Are you really who I think you are?
“Do you think I could, erm, come in?”
I shook my head again. I couldn’t let him in. What would I tell Alice?
“I don’t need to stay long. I would just like the chance to talk to you.”
I eventually opened the door wider and directed him through to the kitchen, telling Alice that if she watched TV in the living room, we could make a cake that afternoon.
She didn’t need telling twice and as soon as Alice was out of the room, I gestured for the man to sit down while I stood against the kitchen sink and said, “Everyone thinks you’re dead.”
“You didn’t believe I’d died, then?” My father, Les, played nervously with his hands, twisting a wedding band around and around. I watched those hands closely, trying to remember them picking me up as a child or playing a game with me, but nothing came to mind.
“No, I knew the truth,” I said quietly. What I did remember was the first time I heard my mum tell someone in a store that my father was dead. I’d looked at her in shock, wondering when it could have happened, but Mum gave me a look and a small shake of her head and even at such a young age I quickly understood she wasn’t telling the truth. It was another of her fabrications.
“So Daddy’s not dead?” I’d asked her later when we were on our own.
“No, he’s not,” Mum had said, flapping about a large sheet that she was desperately trying to fold. In the end she rolled it into a ball and stuffed it into the linen closet. “But he is gone and it’ll be a lot easier for Mummy if we tell people he is.”
I hadn’t liked the sound of it, but I went along with her because she was my mum. There was no one else I could turn to, to ask if what we were doing was right. It certainly didn’t feel it, but I absorbed her lie and at some point over the years it became easier telling people he’d died than facing up to the fact my mother had deliberately created such a dreadful story. By the time I met Brian I didn’t even consider another version.
As I grew older I understood Mum well enough to know she wouldn’t have coped with the looks of pity, or neighbors talking behind her back, asking questions and wondering what it was that finally drove my father away. Or maybe what took him so long. I don’t know if Mum blamed herself for his departure—outwardly she blamed him—but she would have assumed everyone else thought it was her fault.
All I was left with was a memory of him from an old crumpled photograph. Our faces pressed together with wide smiles as he held me in his arms, both sharing an ice cream.
Now I searched his face. The features I remembered were there, but hidden under skin that puffed in layers on his cheeks. The bright
green eyes were watery now and drooped under his white eyebrows. The years had taken away the one picture I’d had in my head and replaced it with this old man who looked so lost and out of place in my kitchen. Years I would never get back, I thought, as I turned away from him sharply and fussed with the kettle so my face wouldn’t betray me.
His sudden appearance had brought a rush of unexpected emotion that I hadn’t even realized I’d been ignoring. Had I actually missed him? “How did you find me?” I asked eventually. Not why. I didn’t know if I was ready to hear the answer to that yet.
“I found you on that Facebook about a year ago.” He had a gentle lull to his voice. “You were there under your maiden name and it said you worked at St. Mary’s School in Chiddenford.” I had set up a page once to stay updated on school news, but had never added a post or even bothered updating my details when I’d left.
“Bit of a funny story after that,” he’d went on. “I have a cousin who lives down here. He knows the area well, told me where the village was.”
“Yes?” I prompted.
“One day I thought I’d come down and have a look around. I didn’t really think I had any chance of seeing you, but I happened to be walking past a park just around the corner from the school and—” He paused. “I recognized you straightaway. I never forgot your face. You had your little girl with you. She looks just like you,” he said, looking up at me and smiling. “The image of you back then.”
“So you saw me and then what?” I said harshly.
“Then I followed you,” he said, dropping his eyes to the table.
“You followed me?”
“I know, I know, it was an awful thing to do, I just— Well, I should have talked to you but I didn’t have the courage,” he said. “I dithered for ages until you got up and started walking away, and I didn’t want to blow it. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to say and—” He laughed and broke off. “Now I fear I’m still not doing a very good job.”
I dipped tea bags into the cups, poured in a splash of milk, then turned back to him. My dad fidgeted uncomfortably at the table. Had he come to tell me he was dying? I wondered. Would that matter to me?
“It’s a shock for you, I know that,” he said. “Seeing me on your doorstep.”
“I think there was a part of me that always imagined it might happen one day.”
“I hope I haven’t upset you?” He looked at me with a glimmer of hope as he tried to meet my gaze, but he couldn’t hold it for long.
“I’m more intrigued than anything,” I said, trying to sound distant. Often I had looked at Brian and thought children are better off without their fathers, but mine had never given me the chance to find out.
I handed him the tea and he wrapped his large hands around the mug, pulling it toward him and studying the liquid inside. “I’m sorry,” he said simply.
“What are you actually sorry for?” I asked, my back pressed firmly against the sink as I clutched my own cup tightly. A sudden desperate need to believe his apology surprised me.
“For the way it happened,” he said. “For not seeing you again.”
“I don’t really know what happened,” I admitted, watching him, wondering what it would have been like to have had a father around. If my life would have taken a different path and whether I’d have wanted it to. The quiet hum of a kids’ TV show filtered through the wall and I knew that no, despite it all, I wouldn’t have changed a thing. “Obviously Mum told me her version.”
“It didn’t happen quickly,” he said. “It was never a light decision for me. When I first met your mum she was a beautiful young woman.” His eyes sparkled at the memory. “Full of energy and plans, and I fell for her head over heels. We didn’t have much money but we were happy for a long time. Over the years I began noticing she had a lot of demons, troubles I wasn’t very good at handling. She worried about everything. Hated me leaving the house, convinced I wasn’t coming back. Every night she made me get out of bed at least three times to check the locks. Always at me over some concern about something or other. I started drinking a lot.” My father paused and nodded. “My way of blocking it out. One day I realized I wasn’t living anymore, I was surviving, and I didn’t want to do it any longer.”
I pulled out a chair and sat down opposite him.
“I was suffocating, Harriet,” he said. “Being in that house with her was too much. But I don’t expect you to understand what I mean.”
I didn’t answer but I must have made a sound because he looked up at me and said, “I’m sorry. Of course you understand. You would have seen the way she was. I realize I don’t know how it was for you after I left.”
“Mum was fine,” I said, and for the first time I realized I had been suffocated by someone my whole life. “She was who she was and I loved her for it.”
“She loved you very much too. More than anything else in her world, so there was no doubt in my mind you’d be fine after I left, that you’d be better off with her. I never considered taking that away from her.”
“But surely you didn’t need to make that choice?” I said sharply. “You didn’t need to get out of my life completely.”
“I could have fought,” he said solemnly. “It would have been a fight, though. I’d met someone else, you see. Marilyn. She was this light. She saved me from—” He paused. “Well, from many things, really.”
“So you chose Marilyn over me?”
“It wasn’t like that. Your mum knew about Marilyn and made it very clear that if I didn’t leave her I wasn’t welcome in your life. I begged her, pleaded that she didn’t need to stop me seeing you, but there was no changing her mind. If I’d stayed, it would have ended me, Harriet. Like I told you, I was already drinking too heavily and it was only with Marilyn’s help I finally stopped.
“I tried to visit,” he went on. “But she wouldn’t even let me in the door. It was the seventies, there weren’t support groups for dads back then. Then a week or so later I found out she’d told everyone I’d died. I didn’t come back after that. Part of me thought it would be for the best.” Les shook his head. “I didn’t want to make things harder for you with people wondering why your mother had lied to them. I’m sorry, Harriet. If I could turn back time—”
“Then you probably wouldn’t do anything differently,” I said. “Are you and Marilyn still together?”
“She died six months ago but yes, we were.” His eyes watered and I found myself reaching across the table and taking hold of his hand, feeling his rough fingers curling around my own. It may not be how I would have done it, but could I honestly blame him for needing to get away?
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“So how was it after I left?” he asked.
“Well, I wish Mum wouldn’t have hovered over me as much as she did, but I never lacked love. Why have you come looking for me now?”
“It was something I’d talked about for a long time. Marilyn kept prodding me to do it. She was the one who told me to try Facebook, but I never had the nerve. Then she passed away and now everything in life looks different. I’m an old man with no one left. I don’t deserve to have you back in my life, but I wanted the chance to see you again. And your little girl, of course.”
“Alice.”
“That’s a pretty name. How old is she?”
“She just turned four.”
My father nodded. “I promised myself that whatever you wanted from me, I would do it. If you tell me to get lost, I’ll go.” He gave me a sad smile. “I just had to know for sure. I don’t want any more regrets.” He looked at me expectantly, but I didn’t answer.
Eventually he pushed away from the table and told me he should probably be going. I didn’t stop him because I didn’t want to risk Brian coming home to find my father in our kitchen. But when my dad asked if he could see me again and spend some time with Alice, I agreed because I had nothing to lose. I wanted to find out more about him and I liked that he wanted to get to know us. And whether I liked it or not, ther
e were similarities between us.
We arranged to meet the following week in a café in Bridport and I led him to my front door and said, “My husband thinks you’re dead.”
“Oh?” He looked shocked. “You told him that?”
I nodded. “I told everyone that,” I said. “And I don’t think I should tell him otherwise for now.” He looked at me quizzically but I didn’t explain. “It’s better we keep this between us,” I said. “I’d rather no one else know you’re here.”
“Apart from my cousin.” He gave a small smile.
“Oh, right.” I’d forgotten he’d mentioned a cousin.
“But you don’t need to worry about him. He’s practically a hermit,” my father said.
“Well, please don’t mention any more to him.”
“Of course, if that’s what you want.” He smiled. “But you may be surprised. If you tell your husband about me, you might find he’s a lot more understanding than you’re giving him credit for.”
I shook my head. Brian would not be understanding in the slightest.
Monday, November 7, 2016
Brian grabbed two towels from the linen closet and ordered me to take off my clothes, yelling that Alice and I were both soaked and demanding to know what was going through my head.
I wrapped my arms tighter around the damp shirt that clung to my body. I hadn’t expected the clouds to open. I hadn’t taken umbrellas and our raincoats were packed at the bottom of the suitcase.
His mouth was close against my ear as he told me I was inches from the edge of the train platform when he found me. I turned my head away as he peeled my arms apart and shoved a towel against my chest.
A sob lodged in the back of my throat. I didn’t want to get undressed while he was there. I didn’t like the way he was watching me, waiting for me to take my clothes off.
Brian began unbuttoning my damp shirt, exposing an old, graying bra that bagged over my breasts. I recoiled from his touch, which made him suddenly stop. He asked if I did all these things on purpose. He’s not happy that after everything he does for me, this is the way I treat him.