Home for Truths: The stand-out domestic suspense thriller for 2020

by Alan Agnew

  My concern back to the coffee table and near-empty wine bottle. It would have been obvious I was drunk when I pulled up at the garage, probably why I argued with the cashier, did I even pay? Could I be arrested for theft and driving under the influence? I pull out my wallet from my suit trousers, a receipt for a microwave burger box, four cans of lager and a bottle of wine, thank goodness. Although the cameras I am sure would have captured my incriminating stumble back to my car. The police could come around at any time and breathalyse me, and I would still be over the limit. There were plenty of witnesses to confirm my daytime drinking.

  I drink more water, force down some toast and scrub my teeth and tongue clean. I feel paranoid. For the rest of today, I will stay in the house, too embarrassed to go out, an all too familiar feeling.

  I continue to playback the events from the petrol station. I am confident we left on good terms, I remember waving, and we may even have known each other from school. It wasn’t the petrol station.

  Caroline.

  Oh shit. I pick up my phone and staring back at me is a message ‘DO NOT CALL ME ANYMORE’ timed at 20.40 last night. The guilt cuts into my gut, turning over and over my insides.

  I look at my call log, 18 attempted calls to Caroline, all unanswered. My eyes are drawn to the one connected call at 20.33 just 3 min 47 seconds in duration but enough it seems to ignite a firework.

  Shame washes over me. I had all these notions of being a better husband during separation. She would have known I was drunk before answering the phone. She would have tried to help. I probably put some sort of blame on her, she hates that. I hate that. She used to call me a frightened child, recognising my fear trigger as anything emotional, as my body continues to adopt the fight or flight. I long for the day to expand on these two narrowest of routes.

  Chapter Six – 2 days after

  I lie awake, hoping that sleep will come. I recheck my watch. Too much going through my head, Caroline, my shopping list, Caroline, where should I start on the garden, Caroline.

  The text message sits in my hand like a glass shard, the tighter I cling to it the deeper it cuts me.

  I pray sleep will come.

  Chapter Seven – 3 days after

  I lie on my brother’s bed and visualise the room as Jimmy’s again. Light blue wallpaper peeling at the corners, splattered with blotches of blue tack that had been half picked off. Posters of footballers on the wall, Gary Lineker and Chris Waddle in England shirts. A picture of the Bernabeu stadium with ‘Espana 82’ and a Spanish flag plastered across the top. Discarded Panini football stickers all over his cupboard door, the club crests of Motherwell and Everton, anonymous moustached footballers, duplicates of his collection already tucked away in his sticker album. I can still smell the glossy magazines sprawled across the floor, copies of ‘Shoot’ football magazine, the Beano and Dandy mixed in with his schoolbooks. Centre of his dressing table was a big black stereo with speakers either side, cassette tapes sitting on top of the record player.

  I loved his room growing up. I envied everything in it and would sometimes just sit on his bed, admiring the heroes around me. A three-year age gap is a lifetime between boy and teenager.

  I venture only as far as downstairs and flick through the mail sitting beneath the letterbox. My attention is drawn to one envelope handwritten and addressed to me. My mind goes straight to Caroline, and I hurriedly rip it open. The personal touch, and with that, my excitement is quickly lost as I read an invoice from ‘Love R Flowers, always personally delivered’ for £185. I blow the air from my cheeks at the excessive personal hand delivery charge of £50, the listed address for the shop is in Bournemouth. There must be a mistake; whoever ordered them should have contacted a local branch. The other letters also look like bills, the non-descript font typed on a template, an account number referenced at the bottom of the address—another thing to sort out, tomorrow maybe, not today.

  Chapter Eight – 4 days after

  I have been awake since 5 am lying in bed as if caged in a cell. Five hours awake. Nothing running through my mind, although it should be. I still have no plans. I contracted with myself that I would wait until after the funeral, but today, I need to get my dad’s paperwork in order. Tomorrow I need to start on the garden and the other abandoned jobs in the house. Next week. Next week I will plan my life.

  I promised the solicitor I would drop off the paperwork on Monday concerning my dad’s financial affairs to advance the probate. He always kept his business affairs very close to his chest, and I never asked, so this will be like Russian roulette. I have no idea what will come of this, or for that matter where to start. I chose to start with a bottle of red, it is after lunchtime I justify, although I have not had lunch.

  I stand the bottle of Pinot Noir with a crystal glass on the dining room table and open up the cardboard box marked ‘important’. It is a healthy pile, needing two hands to lift, my thumb stretched over the top to keep them in the order they were filed. I pour myself a glass of red, my fuel, and flick through the pile. I find a collection of bank statements, receipts, guarantees for electrical goods and some old postcards.

  A separate mini pile commands my attention. It receipts of bookings and cleaning bills held together by a paperclip from our holidays in Devon. Regardless of the time of year, we went to the same holiday cottage in Brixham, we may have had part-ownership of it. My dad was meticulous about keeping paperwork as he did not trust the management company. I need not have worried too much about the weight of my task as sandwiched between various papers is a car manual, instructions for the washing machine and an old school yearbook, taking these three out more than halves the size of my task.

  The school yearbook is Baysworth Secondary 1984/85, two years before Jimmy died. I pour myself another glass and brace myself for a flood of memories. After all these years, I do not have a picture of Jimmy to call my own. When my mum passed away, I included her two photographs of him amongst her most treasured belongings to be in her possession at the time of cremation. It felt right as she continued to mourn for him right up to her passing. ‘No parent should have to bury their child’ became her mantra. It defined her. Her life was without purpose. I simply accepted it, but looking back, with life experience and maturity of my own, I feel a fresh bitterness. She gave up on my life too. Our conversations were merely functional, no emotion or thought.

  I flick through the yearbook and spot him instantly. Jimmy stands in the middle row behind seated classmates, in front of others standing on benches, he is four from the left, one from the centre. The bright red sweaters match their radiating, innocent smiles and rosy cheeks on show. None of the class appears to be the same height as another, and it’s mostly the girls that stand tallest on the back row. Jimmy’s smile is featured throughout the book, the football and cricket team photo, and back of the coach on a school trip.

  At the end of the yearbook amongst the adverts for sheds, local trades, and taxis are other photographs slipped in between the last page and cover. I take the picture out for a better look. It is framed in a bendy cheap cardboard with the words ‘Final year students, 1985/86.’ I imagine the photo being taken in autumn, just in time to purchase for Christmas gifts for grandparents. Jimmy is stood on the back row, far right, with a wider gap than necessary between him and the person next to him. He looks so much older with floppy unkempt hair covering much of his face which is littered with spots. Gone is the beaming smile, rosy cheeks, and sparkle in his eyes. He looks stern and void of interest. The difference a year makes, the effect exams can have.

  I pull out the next document, a statement from Dorset Police. The text is a horrible dark green ink printed on fine paper that has been crumpled over the years. It is an official warning against my dad for his reported behaviour towards Mr Donald Lloyd of number 5, Hatch End. Also, is a reminder that verbal abuse and threatening behaviour is criminal behaviour resulting in prosecution if repeated, the statement is dated December 1998.

  I read the let
ter a further three times, perplexed that my dad would go this far and wonder what could have prompted it to go beyond his mumbling complaints at the dinner table. I set the police warning on a separate pile and continue to read receipts for a car MOT, a lawnmower, a credit card statement, and then I reach three newspaper cuttings. I only catch sight of half the headline before I drop them to the floor, myself wanting to follow. I hold myself upright on the table, arms stretched wide, fingers gripping, and heart accelerating. I look down at my feet and read the headline. I need a drink.

  Chapter Nine – 4 days after

  I stare at the words in front of me, willing for them to scramble across the page to make different words like a cartoon. A picture of the school I have seen a thousand times. A bigger font and bolder colour than any newspaper headline I have seen before, reading ‘Sexual Abuse Scandal at Baysworth School.’ It was a headline more fitting for a Sunday tabloid paper than our local rag, which is more akin to reporting traffic congestion or a lost cat. I read the article in disbelief, of how police are investigating serious allegations of sexual abuse against pupils by the teachers going back four years. I cannot think why my dad would have kept this amongst his documents. I scan it again looking for clues. My eyes are drawn to the date of the paper, 19th July 1989, the year Jimmy died, and the same day as my 14th birthday party.

  I think back to how the mood not so much swung in our house that day, but more fell off a cliff. One moment we were blowing up balloons and making sandwiches, and the next my mum and dad were disappearing into the living room, speaking in hushed voices. Hushed voices between them became the new normal from that day on. The phone ringing all morning. My friends were dropped off apologetically by their parents, who all huddled in the kitchen, and how the party was never really a party. I can only imagine how these conversations went. This disturbing headline put all those apologies, diverted glances, and hushed conversations into a new perspective. Parents must have speculated on the teachers, swapped suspicions, added dark elements to the rumours, and made the victim’s agony even more sinister.

  The victims. Jimmy?

  They must have all thought it, explaining the focus on my mum and dad and not the parents of Davy Thompson, Laurie James, or Nathan Bryson that day. The focus was on the parents of Jimmy Jenkins. The guilt consumes me. I remember feeling so hard done by, I sulked for days, I thought they did not care about me, but how could they? The headline consumed their focus, and I was a bystander, my party a blur.

  Jimmy took his own life on a Wednesday morning, the middle of the week, dressed in his school uniform. Rather than walk to the school bus that day, he walked into our garage, took the rope from the trailer and tied it to the beam on the garage ceiling and stepped onto the wooden stool. The ultimate, permanent escape from what must have been the most frightening alternative, going to school that day. For the first time, I had a possible glimpse, a suggestion into just how terrifying the alternative was. I have spent 30 years speculating and imagining what this might have been. I’m drunk on emotion, flirting between anger and sympathy to Jimmy, intensified by the explosive shock and sustained by the alcohol.

  A second paper is tucked underneath, dated a couple of days later and reports how the probe was started after police received complaints from concerned parents, and how the school denied all accusations but were cooperating with the investigation. There is a hotline number published on the front page for worried parents or those with further information. This is so personal to my family and me, but of course, without addressing us by name. I don’t know if I feel relieved or bitter. I want more information, I want details, and I want to know how it ends. I scramble to the bottom of the box, no more newspapers, just more receipts. The probate can wait, I need to find out what happened at the school, and I know just where to start.

  Chapter Ten – 5 days after

  ‘You go, it’s your turn.’

  ‘But you kicked it over.’

  We spent as much time arguing as we did playing football. Whose turn was it in goal, who kicked it too hard, no volleys allowed, but the longest disputes were always who had to retrieve the ball after it flew over the fence into our neighbour’s back garden. I would walk around the front keeping to the path, ring the doorbell and wait the agonising minutes before Mr Lloyd opened the door and stared down at me, braced for his lecture. I would plead forgiveness before he would reluctantly toss the ball over the fence, vowing to keep it next time. The next time was also my turn. Even in those days as young boys, living without fear, we were scared of Mr Lloyd. He was a man of intimidating stature; he was the History teacher before eventually becoming Headmaster at Baysworth Secondary. He dressed as a teacher even at weekends, always with sharp coffee breath and was quick to scold us for making too much noise or running over his precious garden which offered a vital two-second short cut to our front door. He carried with him a sense of entitlement like he was forever judging others and particularly us.

  My dad and Donald would have been similar ages, neighbours in symmetrical semi-detached houses but from very different stock. Donald was the typical ex-army type, and when I was younger, I thought he spoke like a king, even today he would not sound out of place making public service announcements on behalf of the Royal family. He is a tall man, walks with pride, a straight back and chest out with combed grey hair. Most conversations would reference to his army days or a historical battle, most of which went over our heads. He was always trying to educate us on apartheid or communism, when all I knew was Nintendo and Subbuteo.

  My dad was highly suspicious of him, likely grown out of jealousy as Jimmy got on well with Donald. Jimmy developed a real passion for History when he moved to Secondary school, and he loved all of Donald’s war stories, reading his books and looking at old photographs.

  At the dinner table, Jimmy would talk about the Cold War or Battle of Leningrad, much to dad’s annoyance. His frustrations grew louder as Jimmy spent more and more time at Donald’s, learning how to use his tools, learning DIY and woodwork. It got to the point on weekends that when tea was ready, I had to go and shout Jimmy to come in from the garden, knowing he would be sawing or mending something in Donald’s shed. Dad used to say that was what the Yellow Pages were for, but mum always encouraged it, ‘he should know DIY and let’s face it, you’re not going to teach him.’

  I remember a time when Dad and Donald were friends. He would come over for drinks on a Sunday afternoon, and mum would cook an extra pie for him from time to time feeling sorry for him living on his own, which Donald was always quick to point out was by choice. Both were Rotary club members, and Dad even talked about joining the Masons at one time. He petitioned the local club with a nomination and an endorsement from Donald, only to be ‘blackballed’ by the other members. Dad was furious. He reacted with typical spite, mimicking Donald’s hosted annual drinks party and his association with the world’s most well-known secret society.

  I remember dad dismissing the Freemasons as ‘Nothing more than an 18th-century boys club who dress up in funny aprons and have a stupid handshake.’ Jimmy did little to appease this by telling my dad that ‘some of history’s most authoritative figures were Masons, including Winston Churchill, Benjamin Franklin, and George Washington.’ My dad winced, knowing the source of this information before replying ‘add to your list the KFC man, hardly an authority figure.’ Jimmy was quick to joke ‘he was still a Colonel.’ I remember it well as I was in awe of Jimmy, standing up to dad for the first time, a coming of age for him to show his intellect and growing confidence.

  Dad would always be moaning under his breath, for all to hear, about the noise of his TV coming through the walls. Sometimes it was about his hedge cuttings that fell on our lawn or his car parked on our side of the shared drive. The complaints were of the same nature, born from suspicion and jealousy.

  And now, with the newspaper in my hand, my resolve is pumped up to march over to Donald Lloyd’s door to demand answers. He was a teacher during this time
and was appointed Headmaster soon after. He would have known everything, the names of who was involved, both victims and staff. The time that has passed will be no excuse; this type of scandal would live long in the memory for a small local comprehensive school like Baysworth.

  I slam my door shut and march over the driveway staring at his front door, squeezing the newspaper tightly in my hand, my grenade. The voice in my head is angry but also struggling to put words together. My pace slowing involuntarily as my mind computes, my eyes fixed on the door that opens in front of me.

  ‘Ah Philip, were you were coming to see me, I am on my way out.’ He stands tall with a half-smile, his body facing me, but his eyes and attention focus on his keys.

  The mist in my mind suddenly clears. Donald will know that I know very little. I am hearing about it for the first time nearly 30 years on. He could just as easily deflect this away from his old teacher pals.

  ‘Well, are you wanting me or not?’ He impatiently demands, standing at his car door now. The heat in my blood and the angry voices return.

  ‘Did you and Dad fall out, and what was it about?’

  ‘Are you asking me or telling me Philip, I am confused by your double-barrelled question?’

  ‘What? Just tell me what happened Donald?’

  The last traces of his smile vanish. ‘I suggest you focus on your own affairs,’ jabbing his finger towards my Dad’s house.

  I stand rooted to the spot watching his car accelerate out of sight. The anger flares again inside me, why did I let him dismiss me so easily?