by K. L. Slater
There was a tightness at the back of my throat. ‘What happened exactly?’ His eyes darted away and I realised I’d probably sounded a bit stern. ‘Don’t worry, you’re not in trouble, Ellis,’ I added hurriedly. ‘I’m trying to understand what you mean.’
‘Mum asked me to go to the shop, but I had to come back again because I’d forgotten the money. I saw Tom go into the house through the front door. I crept around to the back to sneak in, to snatch the money off the side, but then I heard them arguing.’
I kept my voice light and unconcerned. ‘Can you remember what they were arguing about?’
Ellis squeezed his eyes closed. ‘I heard Mum say that she knew Dad had told Tom a secret the night he died. And Tom didn’t like what he heard so he hit Dad on purpose. He wanted to hurt him.’
I sat bolt upright. ‘What did Jesse tell him?’
‘I don’t know, but Mum said she knew what the secret was.’ Ellis looked at me, his eyes dark and haunted. ‘And now she’s dead, too.’
My insides had turned to liquid. It was all nonsense, it had to be! If the police heard about this, they might think Tom had a reason to hurt Coral. To shut her up.
‘People say lots of things when they’re angry,’ I told him gently. ‘Your dad’s death was an accident. It wasn’t because anyone had been lying or trying to keep secrets.’
Ellis whipped his head around. ‘He died because Tom punched him and he fell. Why did Tom punch him? Because he didn’t like what my dad told him!’
I pressed my lips together. It was not my job to talk to Ellis about his father pulling a knife on Tom. I didn’t know whether Coral had told him about that detail, but he would certainly find out when he was older, and that would be time enough.
‘If Tom and your mum were arguing in the house, it probably sounded worse than it was, love. You must have seen it in disagreements with your friends at school. People get angry and say stuff to hurt others, and then it blows over.’
‘I haven’t got any friends,’ he said gloomily.
‘Oh, I’m sure that’s not true! Come on now, have a drink of milk and eat your biscuit.’
‘I don’t want a stupid biscuit.’ His arm swept out and knocked the glass of milk to the floor. I gasped and swooped down to snatch it up as his voice rose to a wail. ‘I want my mum and I want my dad. And now they’re both dead!’
I sat on the bed and wrapped my arms around him. I fully expected him to push me away, but he let me hold him and sobbed a hot wetness into my shoulder.
I felt something swelling in my own chest, moving up into my throat. I opened my mouth and a sob escaped, and then I was crying too.
Ellis pulled away from me and turned his back again just as a shrill ping rang out from my phone downstairs on the hall table.
‘I’d better check that,’ I whispered. He didn’t answer.
I padded out and closed the door softly behind me, dabbing my damp face with a tissue. Downstairs, I grabbed my phone. I was expecting a text from Tom saying they’d arrived at Coral’s house, but it was a follower’s notification. From Facebook.
I opened the notification and read Bridget’s most recent public Facebook post.
Thanks to everyone for your condolences. I will pass your kind thoughts on to Coral’s son and my grandson, Ellis. We don’t know anything more yet, but rest assured if the police establish that Coral’s life was indeed taken deliberately, I will not rest until someone pays for it.
My last interaction with Coral had been at the café earlier today. She had later been involved in an accident by Blidworth Woods. Tom had said the police weren’t sure how she’d come to be out of her car and walking on the road, but they were treating her death as a possible hit and run until they’d established exactly what had happened. An investigation would mean that they’d want to speak to the people who’d seen Coral most recently, and that would include me.
I looked at Bridget’s status again. She must have written and posted it after leaving the house to head over to Coral’s. Surely she’d had too much on her mind to think about updating her social media at a time like this!
I ached to speak to Audrey, to get her opinion. She had such great insight into people. But it seemed Audrey had either disappeared off the face of the earth – which was unlikely – or was deliberately avoiding me, and when I thought about what I’d spotted on her kitchen worktop, I felt sick to my stomach about what she might confirm when I did speak to her.
Then something else occurred to me.
Was Bridget planning to frame Tom for Coral’s death in some way? Was this how she’d planned on getting her revenge all along … to get Tom back behind bars, to have Ellis live with her permanently. It might sound dramatic to some but actually, the idea would be quite brilliant.
But that still left the police the question of who, exactly, had killed Coral?
Forty-Five
Tom
2009
The friendship group Tom belonged to had unanimously agreed that the year after their GCSEs was the best time at school.
Tom and Jesse and quite a few of the gang had moved on to college together. Not because they were interested in studying, far from it. Tom’s mum was chewing his ear off about what he wanted to do as a job. It didn’t really matter if he’d said he was going to be a doctor or a lawyer; his dad would’ve found something to criticise.
Opting for A levels had got his parents off his back for two years, and that was good enough for Tom, because he hadn’t really got a clue yet what he wanted to do, and neither had any of his mates.
There was a group of about five or six students who took to hanging around together in the sixth-form common room in free periods and at lunchtimes: Tom and Jesse, Coral, plus a few other kids who’d gravitated to joining them most days.
They’d all managed to get jobs in the evenings and weekends at various places to afford nights out. Although Tom’s parents were probably the best off of all his friends’ families, his mum thought spending money on drink was wasteful and his dad firmly believed he was old enough to earn his own money.
‘Hard work never hurt anyone,’ was his frequent refrain. Or another favourite, ‘My parents never gave me a penny.’
His dad redeemed himself once Tom started going out regularly with his friendship group. He’d sometimes offer to pick them up in his new, spacious 4x4, saving them the cab fares home. Tom and Jesse lived close to each other, but Coral lived the other side of town and one or two of the others, even further. The result of this was that whenever Tom moaned about his dad, the others would jump to his defence, reminding him how much worse off they’d be without him.
Then Jesse and Coral became an item. Tom had noticed them getting closer. Jesse would often choose to sit with Coral in the pub rather than next to Tom, and he’d be ‘busy’ when Tom asked if he fancied going to the cinema or maybe the bowling alley like they used to do.
For a while, Tom hung around with the two of them. They didn’t seem to mind and Coral was quite good company as it happened. Sometimes when Jesse had a late class, she and Tom would grab a coffee together in the common room or go to the library if they needed to catch up on coursework.
One midweek evening, Tom and Jesse had arranged to have a gaming session together. Tom called around to Jesse’s house, but it was Bridget who answered the door.
‘He’s out with Coral. He must’ve forgotten,’ she said, and then, when Tom’s face fell, ‘Stay anyway. I’m watching Jaws on DVD and I’ve made a big pot of chilli you can help me scoff. What do you say?’
They’d had a brilliant night. Bridget was such a cool mum, so chilled, and she liked the same things they all did. But to Tom she was also like real family. They’d spent so much time together as he was growing up, he knew her inside out and she him.
She told him about a couple of disastrous dates she’d had and how she was now a committed singleton.
‘It might be a bit early for that decision, Brid,’ he’d laughed. He’d taken to s
hortening her name like that and she said she liked it.
‘Trouble is, men my own age seem to have so much less energy than I do. They start off fun and then want to stay in every night watching serious films instead of the funny ones we like.’
Tom had agreed it sounded like hell.
As Jesse got more involved with Coral, Tom found himself round at Bridget’s house two or three times a week, keeping her company.
‘It’s not right,’ Robert remarked when he asked Tom why the group never needed a lift home any longer. ‘Holed up with a woman your mother’s age nearly every night.’
He was exaggerating, because it wasn’t every night at all. Tom liked spending time with Bridget. She was funny and kind and made him feel wanted.
Jesse had got into a couple of scuffles with boys at school who’d said disgusting things about what they’d like to do with Bridget, calling her a MILF and asking him for her number. Tom would never think of her in such disrespectful terms, but it was true she was so much more interesting than girls his own age. He had taken a couple of them out and they’d spent most of the night pouting into their phone cameras or texting their mates. He’d felt like he had nothing in common with them at all.
Then suddenly Jesse seemed to be around a lot more, and it was the three of them, Tom, Jesse and Bridget, watching movies at the house. Tom had asked about Coral.
‘I’m still seeing her, we’re still together. Just giving each other a bit of space,’ Jesse had said offhandedly.
Bridget and Tom had exchanged glances, raised their eyebrows.
A few months later, Jesse announced that Coral was pregnant. Tom’s mum would have had a meltdown, but as usual, Bridget took it in her stride.
‘I’m happy for you both. I can’t wait to see new little Jesse, although I’m not too fussed about being a grandma when I look so young,’ she’d joked.
Tom had bumped into Coral at school. She was sour-faced, and when he asked if she fancied a coffee and a catch-up, she’d hurriedly made some inane excuse and scuttled off. Something wasn’t right but nobody was saying what, though that suited Tom. He didn’t want to get pulled into the politics of their relationship.
When Coral was six months pregnant, Jesse suggested that he and Tom have a night out together. ‘We need a good session, like the old days,’ he’d said. ‘Time we had a proper chat, don’t you think?’
Tom had agreed. A bit of banter sounded like a good enough idea.
They decided they’d go to the Mayflower bar for a drink before going on to Movers nightclub in town.
Although he was concerned about his training session the next day, Tom felt a catch-up with his best mate was long overdue.
After all, what harm would a few drinks do?
Forty-Six
Bridget
October 2019
I had an awful sense that time was running out in some way, but I didn’t know why. My neck and shoulders tightened as we travelled towards Coral’s house.
We hadn’t actually discussed what would happen with Ellis now that Coral was gone. There really was nothing to discuss. Ellis would come and live with us and that went without saying. I felt numb when I thought about Coral’s death. The things we’d said to each other recently, the animosity. It all loomed large in my head. She had certainly made her disapproval of our marriage known whenever she had the opportunity, but still, I certainly didn’t wish her dead. She had always been there, since Jesse’s death, and I’d never really given much thought to my feelings for her. I felt surprised at the depth of the hollowness in my chest.
If I didn’t admit that something good had come out of Coral’s demise, I’d be lying to myself. Her threat of keeping Ellis away from me, the influence of those do-gooders at school who had been trying to convince her it was the right thing to do. All the worry of that had evaporated with her death. Still, it was an enormous price to pay and my heart cracked when I thought about how on earth Ellis was going to recover from this crushing double blow. His dad, and now his mum, gone forever.
Whoever was responsible for this had to pay.
When we first got into the car, Tom was quiet and distracted. I would make sure the three of us were happy as a new family. Once Tom had come clean about why he’d lied about going back to the gym.
I would talk to Ellis at a point in the future when things weren’t quite as raw, persuade him to give Tom a chance. He’d have more counselling sessions and I’d definitely take him out of Mansfield Academy now I knew how unsupportive they’d been of my new situation. It would do him good to start afresh somewhere else.
I parked up outside Coral’s small house and we walked around the back. I unlocked the kitchen door and we went inside. It was a small, tidy room with white units and a black and white ceramic-tiled floor.
‘I’ll start with Ellis’s bedroom,’ I said, heading for the stairs. ‘I’ll put his clothes on the bed and you can take them to the car.’
Tom followed me upstairs and together we emptied out Ellis’s wardrobe. I piled his underwear, T-shirts and jumpers on the bed. Fortunately, Coral was a bit of a clean freak, always organising her drawers and cupboards.
‘They keep shoes under the stairs,’ I told Tom, standing up straight and wincing as I rubbed at the bottom of my back. ‘I’ll sort those out in a minute, but you can start taking all this out to the car.’
Tom scooped up a big armful of hangers, grimacing when he caught his sore hand, before dutifully taking them downstairs.
When he returned, he looked doubtfully at the large pile still left. ‘Maybe we should have hired a small van,’ he said. ‘The back seat of the Merc is almost full.’
‘I’m sure we’ll manage.’ I gathered up a heap of clothing and followed him down. ‘We’ll bundle them in.’
Tom deposited his pile into the car and went back into the house. A few minutes later, I followed him back upstairs and saw he was in Coral’s bedroom.
‘What are you doing in here?’ I asked, a strange feeling coming over me as he visibly jumped.
‘I’m checking to see if there’s any stuff to go from this room,’ he said easily.
I glanced down at the mess of paperwork in front of him on the floor.
‘Did you do that?’
‘No. It was like that already,’ he said without looking at me.
I bent down and started to sort through it. It was only old bills, a tenancy agreement for the house, stuff like that, and I waved him away. ‘It’s fine. You carry on taking Ellis’s stuff down to the car. I’ll sort this out.’
I happened to look up as Tom’s hand slid furtively into his pocket. ‘What have you got there?’
‘What?’
‘Did you put something in your pocket?’
He looked at me as if he didn’t know what I was talking about, but his face had turned pale, two little rosy spots blooming on his cheeks.
‘Let me see.’
‘See what? I’m not a bloody kid, Bridget, leave it out!’
‘I saw you put your hand in your pocket, as if you’d taken something.’ I had to know.
‘Christ! Here, this is all I have. Is that OK?’ He pulled out his phone and held it up. ‘You’re paranoid.’
‘Sorry. I … I’m a bit nervy, that’s all. Let’s get out of here before the police call round.’
Fifteen minutes later, we were back in the car and on our way home. I had Ellis’s clothes. It was done.
I looked over at Tom and reached for his hand. He didn’t squeeze back, but stared straight ahead like his mind was elsewhere.
‘Everything OK?’ I wished I hadn’t been quite so snappy with him now.
‘Yeah, everything’s fine,’ he replied, but his expression said something different. I hadn’t seen him like this before. It felt like he’d frozen me out.
Forty-Seven
Audrey
Audrey parked down the road and checked to see the coast was clear before getting out of the car. When she’d left the shop, she’d drive
n out of town and parked up by the water to think things through. After much deliberation, she’d made a call and then headed here.
Soon, she would have to explain to Jill everything that had happened. She hoped that their bond, although not as unbreakable as it used to be, would see them through, and that Jill would find it in her heart to forgive her.
She and Jill had been friends for so long, it was difficult to remember what life had been like before she knew her. Although they had always been there for each other, their relationship had changed over the years, as relationships often did. They had grown a little further apart, saw each other less outside work.
Ten years ago, when Tom first went to prison, Jill had suffered terribly. Being a naturally quite insular person, she had seemed to fade quickly until she was a mere shell of her former self. Audrey had done her best to offer support, had tried repeatedly to get Jill to take some interest in life again, but in the end, she’d had to give up because it was sapping her own energy.
She’d tried to make Jill see that even though Tom had been incarcerated for a lengthy sentence, it might have been so much worse.
‘He wasn’t the one who died,’ she’d told her for months after his conviction. ‘Tom is still here and one day he’ll be a free man again. Don’t give your life up, Jill, don’t grieve like you’ve lost him for good because that’s not the case.’
Jill had spent the last ten years in complete denial of what had really happened that night. In her opinion, her son had been completely innocent. It was simple. Jesse had pulled out a knife and Tom had defended himself.
In reality, it was never as clear-cut as that. There were no witnesses, but Tom and Jesse had been friends all their lives, and a lot of folk around here knew instinctively that there must have been other complications at play.