The Face of Clara Morgan: a gripping and chilling psychological suspense thriller

by J. A. Baker

  ‘Ah,’ his dad replies as he places his tumbler of juice on the table and lowers his eyes. ‘Look, Alexander, all I can say is, give it time. Your mother isn’t a fan of change. She had her friends, her routine, her big house and now all of that has been taken from her. She just needs some time to settle, that’s all.’

  Behind them, Joss enters the kitchen. She flops down on the chair, snatching up a glass of orange juice and draining it in seconds. ‘Who needs time to settle?’

  Alex shrugs and blinks, trying to clear his thoughts, wishing Joss had remained upstairs. She has killed the moment, stolen his precious time with their long-suffering father.

  ‘Anyway, Dad,’ Joss says, the conversation, the awkward moment in which she intervened, already forgotten, ‘can I have some money for fabric for my lesson today? I asked Mum but she said to ask you. You’re the money man apparently.’ Joss laughs, throws back her head and runs her fingers through her hair.

  Alex shivers, feels himself shrink a little. She is unaware of the intended insult to their dad. Alex can hear his mum’s voice as she said those words, her stinging and acerbic tone as she spat them out, and then Joss’s features, bland and unresponsive, too locked into her own little world to notice or care about anybody else’s, her thoughts geared only towards the cash that she needed.

  ‘Sure.’ Their dad dips into his pocket and pulls out a £10 note. ‘This enough?’

  Joss takes it from him and nods without a word of thanks, instead cramming a piece of toast into her mouth and chewing on it noisily. She stuffs the money into her pocket and carries on eating.

  ‘Right,’ Alex murmurs, standing up, unable to take any more of Joss’s dismissive manner, her selfish thoughtless ways. ‘Thanks for breakfast, Dad. I’m going to go and get my things ready.’

  He exits the kitchen leaving a frosty silence behind him, wishing there was something he could say or do to make his sister and his mum realise that there are four people in this family and only one person working and bringing in the money and that if they don’t start taking notice of that fact, something terrible and final may just happen, breaking them apart for always.

  19

  Nina picks her way through the detritus in his room, stepping over a tangle of wires, almost tripping as her feet become caught in the clothes that are strewn about the floor. She could leave it as it is, let Dane sort it, but then it would never get done and it has got to a point where she can no longer stand it. Even being downstairs, knowing it is in this state makes her teeth itch with anxiety.

  Besides, this is a chance to search through his things, maybe stumble across those drawings she found a few weeks ago. She should have confronted him about them there and then but couldn’t face the inevitable arguments: Rob backing him up, Dane claiming she is a terrible mother, prying into his business and that he should be left alone to do whatever he wants.

  No, this way is better, easier on her nerves. She will never be a match for the pair of them, their voices filling the room, bouncing around her head, telling her she is imagining things, that she is reading too much into it and needs to get out more, not spend so much time hanging around the house and letting her mind go into overdrive. She has heard it all before, been subjected to the abuse and accusations and isn’t sure she can face any more rows and fights. Avoidance and apathy are now her default ways of dealing with the men in her life. She is always outnumbered and hasn’t the energy for them when they close ranks and turn her words around, throwing them back at her like an unexploded hand grenade.

  Ringing the school this morning proved fruitless. Even the idea that she would take matters into her own hands and sort out her son’s education has backfired. Trying to get hold of the individual teachers was like trying to catch the wind. Three calls later, she decided to give up, each time having missed Miss Bennison and Mr Rose by a matter of minutes as they both returned to class to teach for the rest of the day.

  It had seemed like such a great idea at the time. She had pictured herself sitting opposite them, working out a plan, helping Dane to get back on track but as the day progressed with no contact, it became increasingly difficult to keep up any momentum. Her energy waned and now here she is, snooping, intruding on her son’s secrets in a bid to climb inside his head and decode his thought processes and emotions.

  Perching on the edge of the mattress, Nina flicks through a notebook, looking for – she has no real idea of what it is she is looking for. Whatever she finds, she feels certain she will end up wishing she hadn’t ever seen it. So why is she in here, searching? Biting at her lip, she closes her eyes and grips the edge of the bed. She needs clues. Something. Anything that will unlock the mystery as to what motivates her boy. If she can get an idea of how he thinks, it may be the key to forging a connection with Dane, a connection she is desperate to make before he becomes a stranger to her and she loses him altogether.

  She spends the next half hour tidying up; nothing too drastic. Nothing obvious that will provoke a quarrel. She sorts through a few piles of clothes, changes the bed sheets and gathers up the trail of wires into a neat bundle, tucking them down the back of the cabinet that houses his many games. And that’s when she finds it. A folder that looks out of place, alien and menacing, covered in black scribbles and words that make Nina’s skin prickle with dread. This is worse than those drawings that she found a few months back – drawings of people in Dane’s class with threats written next to them; ways in which he was going to harm them. That is bad enough of course, but it was childish nonsense – badly drawn images of classmates with words scrawled beside them. A stick man image of a boy called Josh that Nina remembers from primary school with the words push off a cliff written next to it. Another one was an immature drawing of a girl called Lori. Again, a stick image with curly hair and wearing a skirt, like something a six-year-old would draw, with the words, kill the bitch written next to it. Finding them had made Nina’s stomach plummet, made her scalp tighten and her blood run like sand. But this wad of documents is something quite different. Something far more disturbing. Something horribly sinister.

  On the front of the folder is written, The Assassination Plan and beside it is an array of pictures of countless types of weapons – a knife, some sort of home-made bomb, a rifle, a hand grenade, an axe – so many of them it makes Nina’s head spin. Her legs become liquid. She slumps down onto the bed, clutching at the sheets, the document laid on her lap. Her vision blurs. This can’t be right. It must be for some sort of school project. It has to be. She tells herself this, knowing that such a notion is ridiculous and that this is the work of her son and isn’t linked to any school assignments or essays. Her son did this. Her only child. Her boy. Ideas plucked from out of his head on how he wants to hurt people, to maim and terrify them. To kill them.

  She swallows, the gulping sound a boom in her head. Her hands are trembling. She can’t seem to stop them, her fingers fat and clumsy as she opens the folder and scans what is written there. Words; scrawled horrific words that overlap and fill the paper; page after page after page, some decipherable, others making no sense at all. Then on the final sheet, something that stills her blood, turning it to ice. Photographs of teachers, at least ten of them. Beside each member of staff is a weapon. Nina tries to stop the tears from falling as she scans their faces, recognising the pictures from the school website; Mr Rawlings, the head teacher, his smiling face and next to it a noose. Then Mrs White, the assistant head and next to her picture, a knife. Miss Bennison’s photograph and next to her image is a pistol, then Mr Rose, his face split in half and a blood-covered axe jutting out of his head. On and on it goes. So many pictures, So many weapons. So much hatred and violence.

  Tears fall freely now, running down Nina’s face, dripping onto her hands. She throws the document aside, wiping away a rogue tear that lands on the edge of the page. She wants to take this folder and all the pages inside it and tear it into a thousand tiny pieces before throwing it in the fire. But she knows that she can’t
do that. What she has to do is put it back in its original place and then think long and hard about what she is going to do next. She can’t broach the subject with Rob or Dane. One would back the other up, claiming she is overreacting and being neurotic. They would turn the whole thing around and act as if she is the one at fault, telling her she is unhinged even though it is their son who keeps a folder on what type of violent deaths he would like to inflict on his teachers and classmates. Somehow, the pair of them would find a way to defend this whole macabre incident even though it is an indefensible atrocious thing to do.

  All she is doing here is trying to understand why anybody would do such a thing. Why her only child thinks these thoughts and carries around so much malice and anger. She created him – this potential monster – and now wonders how and why and when it all went wrong. At what point did he turn from an innocent child into a potential murderer? Or has it always been there, lurking, waiting to emerge. She thinks of those earlier incidents, the killing of helpless animals, Dane’s echoing laughter as he watched them die…

  Nina stands up and puts the folder back in its original place, her head spinning. She is off-balance, barely able to walk in a straight line as she makes her way back over to the bed where she lies down, curling up into a tight foetal position, arms wrapped around her body, legs tucked up into her chest.

  There is a chill in the room even though it’s warm outside. Goosebumps prickle her flesh. She closes her eyes and shivers, wishing she could be transported away from this place, far far away to a world where she is surrounded by like-minded people, to a place where violence and hatred are relegated to the annals of history and not present here in her home, the place where she should feel safe and protected – not wholly responsible for the actions of a troubled teenager who is enabled every step of the way by a father who sees it as his duty to ensure his boy is reared in his own mould.

  Thoughts of what she should do next jostle for space in her head. She is tired. So very, very tired. She could try contacting the school again. But then what? They could reprimand him or possibly exclude him permanently and what good would that do? They would have to find another school or possibly even a behavioural unit. Is that what she really wants for her son? For him to be relegated to the periphery of the education system, set apart from others before his adult life has even begun? Such a disadvantaged and fractured start to life. Where would he go after such a move? To the bottom of society, that’s where he would end up. Down in the gutter with the ne’er do wells. She can’t allow that to happen. He’s her boy, her baby. Every criminal, drug addict or low life is still somebody’s child.

  He could possibly be referred for counselling. It’s better than moving schools but of course Rob would never agree to such a move and nor would Dane.

  She can see it now, Rob’s expression, his temper building as he attempts to defend Dane’s actions, possibly even blaming Nina for not being a good enough mother. This would all be her fault anyway. Of course it would. Everything that goes awry in this house is always her fault. Rob is the worker, the provider. She is everything else. They have money – plenty of it. He would argue that he has done his bit, made them wealthy. Her side of the bargain has fallen far short of the mark. That is, if Rob would ever admit to there being a problem in the first place. He believes that men are strong and women are weak. Everything is black and white in his world, the lines clearly demarcated. There are no grey areas in Rob’s life and counselling and therapy is for weaklings.

  She curls up tighter, her world shrinking around her, her inability to do anything about this situation trapping her, the vines of this impossible scenario wrapping themselves around her limbs, around her torso, strengthening and tightening until she feels as if she can no longer breathe.

  Nina sits up, tears still streaming, her chest bound with panic and frustration. Doing nothing feels wrong and yet what can she do, given her circumstances? She is hemmed in on all sides, living in a fortress that she should have broken out of many years ago but didn’t, and now she is stuck here, in this house with these people; trapped in an impossible situation with no solution in sight. Everything suddenly feels so bleak, so terribly oppressive and impenetrable. All she can do is pretend. Pretend that her husband isn’t having yet another affair. Pretend that her son isn’t on the slippery slope to becoming a highly dysfunctional human being. Pretend that those notes, those horrific images and words don’t actually exist.

  Except they do. They are real, and she has no idea what to do about it. What to do about her son, the boy who, it would appear, is rapidly turning into a very unhinged and dangerous young man.

  Standing up and smoothing down her clothes, Nina straightens the bedsheets where she has lain on them, puts everything back where she found it, making sure things look undisturbed, and leaves the room, wishing she had never set foot in there. Now all she needs to do is erase it from her mind, act as if everything is perfectly normal when she knows deep down that it is isn’t and possibly never will be again.

  20

  1st July 1978

  My Dearest Clara,

  I am writing this letter knowing you will never receive it. This is a way of letting out my feelings, attempting to release the pent-up emotions that have been bubbling up inside of me. I am certain they will burst out of my chest if I don’t do something constructive to alleviate the angst and worry and turmoil that sits deep within me.

  I suppose that since you won’t get to read this letter, I can say anything I like – anything at all – and yet you are still so much a part of me that I cannot bring myself to say or do anything insulting or to denigrate the memory I have of you in any way, shape or form. You are the love of my life and will remain as such as long as I have breath left in my body. I realise this may sound dramatic but at this moment in time, those are my overriding emotions and I cannot see any changes ahead. I feel what I feel and that, I am afraid, is that.

  Again, Mother sends her best wishes. I realise you didn’t always see eye to eye but I know for sure that she is still missing you, but not as much as I am, dear Clara. You are there all the time – in my dreams, throughout every waking moment. It is utter torture knowing I may never see you again. I am presuming you are staying up there, in Scotland? Your reluctance to reply seems indicative of your long-term plans. I cannot imagine you coming back home to North Yorkshire, to the village of Ormston and you and I bumping into each other. I don’t think I could stand it. Especially if you are with somebody else – another man that is. It would end me both physically and mentally, seeing you on the arm of somebody else. I always felt so sure that you and I would spend the rest of our lives together; get married, have a family, grow old together, but here we are, apart, and here I am, alone and despondent. I am missing you so much it hurts like a physical wound that continues to bleed profusely. I fear I may never heal without you in my life.

  I am going to end this letter now as seeing these words on the paper is a reminder of how far away you are. I would give anything to have you back, my darling, my love, my dearest Clara. I wish there were some magic formula I could use to win you over and return you to my side but it appears your mind is made up and that we are very much over.

  I want you to know that I will never ever replace you. There is only enough space in my heart for one woman and that woman, my darling girl, is you.

  Take care, my love.

  Dominic.

  21

  Present Day

  The house is silent by the time she rises, everyone now absent having left for work and school. A pain rushes through her skull, the room shifting and tilting as she sits up in bed. Kate pushes the pillows behind her head and sniffs the air like an animal searching for its prey. The smell of food wafts up from below – toast, eggs, maybe even a whiff of something greasy. Anthony probably had a full English, lining his stomach for his busy day ahead. She snorts, the smell making her retch.

  Outside, the thrum of traffic pulses in her ears, every noise, every
movement she makes, heightened and accentuated. She slips out of bed, heads towards the bathroom, her stomach clenched into a hard ball of anxiety as nausea sweeps over her, making her woozy.

  She tries to remember how much she had to drink last night. One bottle perhaps. Maybe even two. Since the argument with Anthony, she has found it hard to focus on anything anymore. Her heart simply isn’t in it. She had hoped to talk him round, make him see that it is in all their interests to take Gavin up on his offer of that job, but he is holding firm, refusing to consider it. She had forgotten how stubborn her husband can be, a trait that served him well when he worked in a cut-throat environment, but not one that works well as a father and husband. This is his family. He needs to be more malleable, more open to her ideas. It’s not just about what he wants. He has others to consider.

  Her mobile phone sits by her side as she lowers herself onto the toilet and pees, the hot stream of liquid making her shiver. She finishes in the bathroom, phone clasped in her hands and creeps back to bed, wrapping the quilt around her aching body. Drinking so much doesn’t suit her. She should stop but can’t seem to muster up the energy nor the will to do it. Not drinking casts an unpleasant light on her situation, highlighting the imperfections and flaws, reminding her of how low she has fallen. Drinking helps blot them out, those imperfections, her current status in life. Sobriety would be a step too far at this juncture. Once things pick up, she will consider it. For now, she is happy to forget, pretend none of this is happening. Until she wakes up, that is. Then it starts all over again, her lacklustre life. Her dull impoverished existence.

  In a moment of spontaneity, she sends a text message, asking if they can rearrange their date, telling him how sorry she is and that she will make it up to him. What else is she supposed to do with her time? Anthony is unreachable and Alexander and Jocelyn seem to be getting on with their lives, making the best of a bad turn of events. That’s all she is doing here, turning this situation around to her advantage. Trying to dig herself out of a deep dark hole.