by Clare Boyd
The night of Jason Parker’s death had lain inside her like a deep dream, a scary thing to fight against, like a shadow in the dark, and she had not opened her eyes, she had not turned the light on to look the intruder in the eye. She had not confronted what she had done. The true consequences had finally dawned on her and come into the light. For the first time in her life, Sophie felt the full impact of her actions. Not in terms of facts, but in terms of feelings. Through Naomi’s suffering, through her guilt, Sophie had learnt how to imagine someone else’s pain, to feel it, and in doing so, she had dredged up her own.
The love that Naomi had shown Sophie had penetrated, at last. Naomi had been a role model and finally Sophie was learning. Perversely, with this realisation, Sophie would now have to step away from Naomi, and away from all of those people she had hurt most and loved most, to heal them, to save them.
Naomi did not deserve to suffer any more. And Dylan deserved better than a mother like Suzanne.
Chapter Thirty
Through the open kitchen window, I could hear Charlie trudge across the gravel. I stood behind the fridge door, taking a few surreptitious swigs. A little top-up to help me on my way. I was itching to leave, to get it done.
As I reached for my handbag at the front door, I caught a glimpse of myself in the hall mirror. My reflection shocked me. Grey corkscrew curls had grown out at the roots and my eyes were smaller, bloodshot from a permanent hangover. Deep lines seemed to pull my mouth down at each corner. I looked haggard, worn by life, damaged.
‘Did you get my text?’ I asked Charlie as he came in, before he had a chance to tell me how badly the interview had gone. He hadn’t needed to tell me. It was heavy in his movements, as though he were carrying weights under his clothes.
‘I did. Are you sure it’s a good idea?’
‘Yes,’ I said, but something caught in my throat. I began to cough. I had a dry mouth and a smoker’s chest. It seemed that my breathing had not regulated since the day I had run with Izzy into the house for safety, the gleam of Sophie’s headlights burning into our backs. Days had passed but the shock had not diminished.
‘Are the girls in bed?’ Charlie asked, looking straight at me, straight through me, lids at half-mast. His glasses were wide and large on his face. It seemed he had lost weight without me noticing.
‘Fast asleep,’ I replied.
Throughout the girls’ bedtime routine, I had been efficient, verging on tyrannical.
‘It’s so bloody hot out there,’ he sighed.
I grimaced at him, intolerant of his moping. ‘Did you get the job?’ I asked, with a cruel directness.
‘No.’ I watched him dump his briefcase on the shoe bench, and watched it fall from the shoe bench, watched him pick it up and reposition it, watched it fall again as he walked away. He must have heard it clunk onto the wood flooring. If he did, he ignored it. I stared at the brown, worn leather on the floor, baggy where once it had been stuffed full. It was lying there as redundant as Charlie.
‘That’s not good.’
‘It would have been a demotion anyway,’ he said.
‘It would have been a job,’ I said, stuffing my swollen feet into my shoes.
I made the mistake of looking up, seeing how he looked at me. His eyes roamed my face. He was looking for something in me that wasn’t there any more. Some kindness, perhaps.
‘I won’t be long,’ I said, my heart lurching up my throat.
‘Careful of that dog,’ he said. His parting words were protective. He was aware of so little.
‘It’s the weekend. Dylan will have taken him to Adam’s,’ I replied.
Even so, the dog would not have scared me. I had feared my own inaction more. The risks I had taken by allowing Sophie near my family made my stomach seize up. After Sophie’s little excursion to Brighton with the girls, Charlie had accused me of being drunk and paranoid; with hindsight, I had been at my most alert, acutely aware of the danger. I had heeded her first warning shot, responded to her blackmail. If Charlie knew what I planned now, he would think I had lost my mind. In one way, I have. In another, I’m stepping up to the challenge, fighting back, responding to the level of her threat. Standing up for myself. Surviving.
My body pumped with adrenaline as I drove away from home, feeling clear and determined, heroic even. I reached for the packet of cigarettes in the glove compartment, swerving in the middle of the road, correcting the car’s path, lighting up.
In my rear-view mirror, I looked for Sophie’s car. If she was following me again, she would be confused that I was heading straight to her house.
Last week, I had felt her eyes in my back, seen her figure through the reflections in windows; spotted her car in my rear-view mirror; heard her footsteps behind me.
She had thought I hadn’t seen her, but I had. I had thought she would get bored. She had not. I had refused to acknowledge her, to show her I was unnerved, refused to give her the attention she so craved. My strategy had been to rise above it, but terror and despair had raged through me. A sort of vibrating madness had buzzed continually in my head. She was a swarm of wasps crawling over my body; I had to keep still to get rid of them but my instinct was to run and scream, to shake my head back and forth, crashing my brain into my skull until I couldn’t see her any more.
When she had dared to rev her engine at Izzy in the driveway, I had momentarily lost my head, startled by her threat, enraged by how far she was prepared to go to control me.
To protect my family, to outwit her, I had to be cool-headed and cunning. I had to adopt her thought processes, become selfish and wily and ruthless to gain what I wanted. And I wanted her gone.
I parked up next to her Volvo, which was the same make and model and colour as mine. They say that imitation is a form of flattery. I was not flattered, I was violated. She had stolen my whole life; reached into my heart for my happiness and pocketed it for herself.
Shifting from one foot to the other, I knocked on her door.
‘Hi, Sophie.’
‘Naomi?’ she cried, falling a few steps back. There was that familiar waft of incense that spilt out from the open door. Her white-blonde hair was tied into a high bun, pulled off her face for a change, opening her up, showing her face as she might have been as a young girl. Her right hand was bandaged, suggesting her eczema had flared up. I experienced a split second of doubt, and then I thought of Bear’s jaws on Harley’s neck and her car pointed at Izzy, poised for another attack.
I wiped my sweating palms down my thighs.
For too long I had lived in fear of Sophie’s moods, sucked up her manipulations, swallowed her jealousies and her insanities; apologised for them, talked her through her problems, shown her unconditional love like a sister. Poor Sophie, so neglected as a child, I had thought. Poor Sophie, abandoned by her father and her mother.
Boohoo. There were no more excuses left. My sympathy had dried up, along with my fear. Her neuroses had ruled my adult life. My fear of her reactions had overridden my own sense of self, my own needs. Almost before I thought of myself, I had thought of how Sophie might react. I had spent so much time kowtowing to her, and then worrying about what she might do to the girls, that I had forgotten I was in charge of my own life.
‘It’s July the nineteenth and I want to take a drive in the Giulia,’ I said to her, too bluntly.
My heart was large in my chest, beating into my eardrums.
Her mouth fell open. ‘What?’ She stepped outside and pulled the door to, but not completely.
‘It’s the anniversary of Jason Parker’s death, twenty years on. Let’s take a drive to mark it. As a remembrance,’ I continued, trying to be softer. ‘I want to find our way back to where we were. In here,’ I said, pressing my fingers into my chest bone. ‘I want to feel that freedom and joy again. We were a team, remember? Us against the world.’
She was blinking wildly at me, biting one side of her lip. Then I heard a loud bark from Bear. Sophie glanced up to the window above the do
or.
‘I thought it was Adam’s weekend?’
‘Umm. It is,’ Sophie said, holding the brass handle of the door. I wasn’t sure whether she was going to go back inside or close it completely to come outside to the garage with me.
‘But he left Bear,’ I said.
‘Bear can’t be cooped up in the Kingston flat. He’s too sensitive…’ she stopped. ‘I’m so sorry, that was really rubbish of me, after… Since Harley… He’s muzzled, and we’ve got a better lead for him. I’m so sorry, Naomi. I wasn’t thinking…’
‘Please,’ I said, trying to loosen the tightness in my jaw. ‘It wasn’t your fault.’
‘Oh my god, Naomi. I can’t tell you how much… I really thought… I don’t know what to say,’ she stuttered, flustered and eager.
‘Come on then. You can leave Bear here, can’t you?’
‘I’m not sure…’ she said, almost in a whisper, again looking up to the window.
I hadn’t been expecting such hesitancy from her. I had expected her submission. For a long time, she had wanted us to drive together in the car again, wanted us to return to the way we were, wanted to wipe out the secret between us as though it had never been. She wanted these things more than she wanted anything else in the world. It gave me power that I had never before misused.
‘You’ve left him alone before, haven’t you?’
‘Once.’
‘We’ll be gone fifteen minutes. Half an hour tops. He won’t even know.’
‘He’s shut in Dylan’s bedroom.’
I looked at the empty dog cage in the hall and wondered why Sophie had put him upstairs, but I couldn’t digress. I needed her to do as I asked. To speak again, I had to lubricate my dry mouth. ‘I need this, Sophie. Please. For me. Just as you said the other evening, in the garden. If we took a drive in it again, together, tonight, on July the nineteenth, it might reboot our memories of that night and replace it with something happier. I don’t want to be haunted by it any more, I want to move on. Please.’
Before I had uttered the final ‘please’, she was reaching for both the green leather key ring, which held the two garage keys, and the Giulia car key from the hooks on the wall.
‘Let’s go,’ she said, and I followed her across the gravel to the garage.
She unlocked the red corrugated iron door first. ‘It won’t open from the inside any more.’
I knew this already. ‘Dylan’s axe attack?’ I laughed. It released some tension inside me.
‘I’ve bred a psycho child,’ she replied, pressing her bandaged hand onto the closed boot, smiling to herself about something that I had no interest in any more, twirling green string in her fingers. Her mysterious thoughts were irrelevant now.
We felt our way into the garage to reach the light switch by the side door, which was open by a crack.
‘Dylan left the side door open, too,’ she tutted, pulling it closed and locking it up. ‘He plays in here sometimes and I keep telling him to lock it up. He’s in big trouble this time,’ Sophie harrumphed, slamming the garage door keys on the workbench.
‘Chuck me the car key,’ I said, holding my hands in a cup shape.
The light bulb cast a nasty, bland light across her face, almost wiping her out completely. I couldn’t read her expression.
‘You want to drive?’ she asked.
‘Yeah, why not?’
‘You remember how awkward the gear lever is?’
‘Of course I do.’
‘Okay then.’ She shrugged, throwing the key to me.
As long as she acquiesced, it didn’t matter that she questioned my behaviour. It wouldn’t be long before it would be too late to question it.
As she slammed the passenger door closed, I scooped up the garage door keys. My fingers quivered as I dropped them into my pocket.
I climbed into the seat next to her, positioning myself in front of the shiny Bakelite steering wheel, running my hands up and down in semicircles, feeling my stomach turn inside out as I placed the key into the worn ignition. Instantly, the fumes from the exhaust hit the back of my throat. My eyes watered so much I couldn’t see, as though rain was streaming in a sheet across my vision.
My body rolled from the back seat into the footwell. I was winded.
‘Ouch. What? That hurt,’ I said.
‘Shut UP!’ Sophie yelled.
I collapsed back, rubbing my face, feeling my hands damp with sick and sweat.
‘Stay there,’ she said.
I closed my eyes. My head was thumping. I wanted to sleep forever.
A few seconds later, roused by a gush of cool air from the open driver’s seat door, I pulled myself up. There was steam on the window, which I wiped clear. Through the arch of cleaned glass, I peered out and saw Sophie bend down, pick up a mangled black umbrella and climb back into her seat. I ducked down and lay where she had seen me last. Through the crack between the seat and the door, I saw her hide the umbrella.
‘What happened?’ I rasped, terror rolling over me.
‘We must have hit a deer,’ she replied, clicking her seat belt closed.
I knew she was lying and I cried out. A feeble remonstration.
‘It’s okay. He didn’t suffer.’
‘No, no, no…’ I whimpered, suddenly so sober and afraid.
The car started. We moved off.
I lay in the dark discomfort of the car floor, feeling the road rushing at speed, too close to my ear. I stayed very still, my breathing heavy, my eyes closed, trying to shut out the memory of that umbrella. My thoughts were so loud and savage, I was surprised the noise wasn’t rattling out from my skull.
Stunned into inaction, tongue-tied by my own shock, managing unprecedented spikes of terror, dizzied by the stark choices we faced, I waited for Sophie to speak, to take charge.
I waited to hear the truth. She did not utter that truth. She continued to pretend we had hit a deer.
We could both pretend. If we never talked about it, it did not have to be real.
I turned the radio on and pulled the key out from the ignition, leaving the engine running, unshaken by a memory that I had grown used to, that had been squashed up inside my chest, pressing on my organs, aching when my heart worked too hard.
All those years ago, I had left on the flight to Bangkok wanting to trick my mind into blanking out the sight of the umbrella, determined to stay ignorant.
Sophie had told me it was a deer. I had decided to believe her. Over the years, it had become true. I had experienced several real-life visions of that deer hitting the windscreen. Why could Sophie not have kept it that way? Why had she ruined it by getting greedy?
I turned the radio up, so loud it vibrated through my bones, but she turned it down, quickly.
‘Stay here a minute,’ I said, opening my car door again. ‘Just realised I forgot the Exeter mixtape in my car.’
‘You’ve still got that?’
‘Of course,’ I laughed, amazed that I was able to let out a noise that resembled good humour.
But I hurried out of my seat, refusing to see her smile, refusing to witness the thrill and anticipation on her face. I couldn’t bear to see her delusion.
I pressed the driver’s door closed and flew outside, where the exhaust pipe chucked out huge storm clouds of carbon monoxide. As I reached up for the cool, metal garage door, I choked on the car’s emissions, on its faltering put-putting, old and poisonous.
Tears broke across my cheeks as I slammed the corrugated red door down, leaving the keys in the lock – but not locking it – dropping the car key just outside the garage door, where she might have thrown it before closing herself in.
The door rattled like thunder and I jumped back from its growl, as though it were the monster, not me.
There would be no way out for Sophie. The door was closed on our forever friendship. Forever gone.
Chapter Thirty-One
The clatter of the garage door closing brought with it a strange new light. The bulb seemed to f
licker and dim. Sophie twisted round in her seat, wondering what had happened, why they were shut in.
She called for Naomi over the noise of the radio, wound down her window, stuck her head out.
‘Naomi?’ she yelled, catching a gulp full of exhaust fumes, wondering where Naomi could have disappeared to. She darted out of her seat, choking, and squeezed herself around the bonnet to look for her, worrying she might have hit her head or fainted.
She looked around the car and checked under the chassis.
An old rag was lying on the workbench. She grabbed it and pressed it over her nose and mouth and ducked back into the car, sliding into the driver’s seat, fumbling for the ignition. There was no key. She patted the floor around the pedals, wondering if Naomi had dropped it. The radio blasted into her eardrums, as if it had suddenly been switched on. She turned the dial to stop the noise, but she had no idea how to turn off a running engine without a key. A ghost car, she remembered Adam calling it. Underneath the steering wheel, she knew that there were wires to fire up an engine and to cut an engine, but she did not know where to start. Her grandfather should have taught her how.
‘Naomi!’ she cried, lurching out of the car to the tool bench to scrabble around for the key to the side door. If she couldn’t turn the car off, she had to get out of the garage.
As her panic built, as the carbon monoxide ate away the oxygen in her red blood cells, her mind became cloudier. She began banging on the heavy solid oak of the side door, retching with each exertion, already barely able to stand. Her fists were as effective as feathers. The blood seeped through her bandage.
‘Naomi! I don’t have the keys! Naomi! Can you hear me?’ she called out, moving to the main garage door, smashing her palms onto the painted metal, but her voice was weak. She could barely hold her arms up.
The drawers under the bench might have a tool that could prize open the garage door. The bandages on her right hand loosened as she rooted around. A screwdriver was useless, a spanner was worse. None was heavy-duty enough to break through metal or open a jammed lock. She thought of the axe in the loft, out of harm’s way, and cursed her son for being so mischievous. Thinking of him made her cry. She heard Bear’s distant bark and imagined Dylan trying to quieten him down. She had lied to Naomi, letting her believe he was at Adam’s, knowing she would not have allowed her to leave him alone in the house at night. The image of Dylan tucked up in bed in the house, a few feet away from where she was trapped, was excruciating.