8. On the day Joel disappeared, there were several hours when John was simply ‘driving around’. He stopped at a number of places where Joel has been found on previous occasions when he’s run away
9. Although he’s not told me this in so many words, Nick believes the most likely explanation is that Joel is dead
10. Nick initially thought that John might have hurt Joel
11. I don’t know for sure that Nick has ever stopped thinking that
12. The thing is, I don’t think that. I never have. I’ve never believed that John would hurt Joel. I still don’t believe it now. John is a good man. He loved Joel. He didn’t understand him but he loved him and he would never, ever hurt him
13. But what if I’m wrong?
The eerie hooting of the owl provides the perfect counterpoint to the darkness that’s blooming in my head.
Things that have happened recently:
1. I’m being haunted. I don’t know what else to call it but a haunting. I’m being haunted by my own son
2. And also by my ex-husband
3. John is still alive, so the things I see can’t only be visions of the dead. Does this mean Joel is somehow still alive? Is that even possible? And where has he been for all this time?
4. I know there are no ghosts, no psychics, no special powers. It has to be just something wrong in my head. Or maybe I’m remembering something somehow. But what?
5. Could I have seen Joel in the park yesterday?
6. Is he coming back to me after all?
Why am I doing this? It was supposed to be a summation of evidence. Instead I’ve got a few ancient bones gnawed naked years before, and a confession that could have me locked away in the madhouse. My cheeks burn with shame.
I should just delete the lot, but I can’t bring myself to do it. Perhaps this will come in useful somehow, somewhere; perhaps I’ll come back to it later and find new insight. I’ll make it a folder to hide in, something dull and meaningless so no one will be tempted to peek. Systems Manuals, that sounds suitably anonymous.
I go to File Manager, only to discover there is already a folder with that name, which surprises me, because this is my personal filing area and everything in it is something I’ve created. So where did this come from? The folder contains a single document, also called Systems Manuals. How strange. I open it up.
The facts of what happened:
1. John and Joel didn’t get on well
2. John was disappointed in Joel’s school performance
3. John said that Joel had come between us
4. John told me that very morning that something had to change
5. Nick thought that John might have had something to do with it
6. John was driving around for hours after work
7. But when he did come home, he was just as worried about Joel as I was
8. I don’t have any evidence that John did hurt Joel, but I do have evidence that he might have wanted to
9. I never told Nick about this. Even though he gave me lots of opportunities to
10. Is that because I knew it wasn’t true? Or is it because I was afraid that it might be?
11. Would it have made any difference anyway? I don’t know
12. This is all too hard, I’ll come back to it later
The file’s dated just over two years ago.
Who wrote this? It must have been me. Who else could it possibly have been? No one else comes in my house and uses my things. So why don’t I remember creating it?
I don’t like looking at it. It makes me feel as if there might be something wrong with me. If I’ve forgotten this, what else might have slipped my mind? I find another folder that shouldn’t be there. Programme Files. Once again there’s a single document, fourteen months old.
What I think might have happened
Joel left our house that morning, I know that for sure. He went to school and he registered, but then he walked out of his lesson and I didn’t take the call from school because I was out for lunch with Melanie and my mobile was on silent in the bottom of my bag and oh God, what if I had? What if I had taken that call? No, I can’t start this again, I need to concentrate.
John was jealous of Joel. He said that himself. He started acting as if he couldn’t trust me, he was tracking my phone and Joel’s phone to see where we were all the time. He said Joel was coming between us. Joel was struggling at school and John was not dealing well with that.
I lied to you, Nick, I’m sorry but I lied to you. I told you there were no problems in their relationship, but that wasn’t right. Probably you’re clever enough to know that anyway, and besides you never take anyone’s word for anything, I know you’ll have spoken to other people to find out what their relationship was like really.
But then, who would you have spoken to that wasn’t me and that might have known how bad things got? Even Melanie and Richard never really knew, they knew John and Joel argued but I just told them that’s how teenagers were and they accepted it. We didn’t have any baby-group friends because when Joel was little he was all I wanted. We didn’t socialise with his friends’ parents because Joel didn’t have those kinds of friendships.
Motive and means and opportunity. Those are the things you look for, aren’t they? When people write crime stories they’re about the motive, the motive drives everything, but you told me once that you start by looking for the people who could have done it, and most of the time the motive is either really simple or really trivial.
So really it shouldn’t matter, should it, that I didn’t tell you John told me exactly what his motive might have been? He might have had means and opportunity, but you never found any evidence. Murderers aren’t professional criminals, almost no one does more than one. It’s not something you can practice and get good at. But you didn’t find anything. Nothing at all. So surely that means he didn’t do it?
Because it wasn’t him. It can’t have been. John’s a good man.
I don’t know if I’ll ever send this.
The taste of shock is sweet and metallic. Outside, the frost is reaching the dried brown hydrangea blooms. If I let go of the breath I’ve been holding, will it mist in the air before me? In the silence as I try to drag myself back together, I hear the faint thud of someone knocking against wood, as if a secret visitor is trying to ward off the ill-luck that stalks me.
I saw no one coming up the front path and it doesn’t sound like the door anyway, but I go downstairs and check just to be sure. Only the cold waits outside, reaching for my flesh with eager fingers. The knocking continues. It’s coming from the dining room. Someone’s knocking on the table. That classic medium’s trick to show the presence of spirits. Who’s come into my house? Have they chosen the spot where John sat years ago, weeping as he held my hand and asked me if I believed I’d done harm to my son? And will they be seen, or unseen?
I throw open the door, but there’s no one in the room but me. Just the slow steady knocking, sounding wetter now and more menacing. It’s water, dripping steadily through the ceiling from the bathroom above and pooling on the table.
“Help,” I wail, pointlessly because no one can hear me, no one can help me. I’m by myself in the house and this small domestic emergency is mine alone to cope with. Upstairs in the bathroom I find a cloud of steam, tiles sunk half an inch deep, the bath brimming with scalding water and the tap adding more and more and yet more to a tub that can hold not another single drop.
I must have done this, put the bath on to run and then forgotten it, just as I must have written those rambling records of my suspicions and then hidden them away behind dull innocuous names. But I can’t remember. What’s happening to me?
“Oh, please help me,” I whisper as I turn off the tap. I wish John were still here. I wish we were still a team. He wouldn’t be angry. He was never angry when I occasionally burned things or forgot things or broke them or left them in shops and had to go back for them. If he was here, we’d laugh together, and together we’d mo
p the tiles, drain the bath, run downstairs and dry off the table. I’d tell him how impressive it was that our hot water tank could create an entire bath’s worth of hot water at one time, and he’d tell me he loved my optimism. Together we’d wait for the ceiling to dry. Together we’d buy paint to cover the water stains. And when we were old and creaky (old and creaky, but attractive enough to make it sweet and not repulsive that we still held hands in the street, still kissed in the moonlight, still pressed our bodies close together beneath the cool linen sheets), Do you remember the night you ran the bath and forgot about it and it came through the ceiling would be added to our store of sweetness, the secret sweetness that all couples in long successful marriages share, sustaining them through the short winter days before the final parting. As I stare at the mess and make my childish wish for things to be different, I realise I’m not picturing Joel anywhere in this story.
“Please help me,” I whisper again.
The bath needs to be drained. The plug chain broke years ago. A small reminder of a long-ago bathtime when Joel held onto it to stand, and the chain snapped and his head dipped briefly beneath the water and I screamed in fear and John said Joel was only crying because I was frightening him, but I decided we were never having another chain on the plug in case Joel did it again when my back was turned and hit his head hard enough to drown, and this is a bad memory but at least it’s got Joel in it, at least it reminds me of how much we loved him, and that in spite of the agony of loss, our lives were better because he’d been in them.
But what if they weren’t? What if Joel was a mistake? That was the thought that haunted John. I remember watching it grow in the dark behind his eyes. I take a deep breath and plunge my arm deep into the scalding water.
When water’s hot enough to burn, there’s a moment when your skin is fooled into thinking it’s cold instead. In a minute the sensation will turn to fire, and I’ll have to run my arm under the cold tap until my flesh freezes once more, and when I’ve finished torturing myself my mind will be clean and empty and I’ll be able to forget all the thoughts I’ve hidden away like dead things. Where’s the plug? The steam’s making me blind. But how can it be steaming when it’s so cold?
Then there’s a hand reaching for mine and closing around my wrist. A big broad hand, much larger than mine, strong and dextrous. John’s hand. I’d know it anywhere.
And then I feel the muscles flex and tense and he pulls hard and drags me down into the thick cold water, heavy and choking with the scent of mud. My ex-husband is trying to drown me.
So this is it, then. This is what’s been waiting for me. I should struggle, but I don’t think I can find the will. If I try to live, what will I come back to? An empty home. An empty bed. A vanished son. A head full of nightmares. What’s the point? I’ll just drown instead, let this hallucination take me, and when they (whoever they might be) find my swollen body, white and purple and coming apart in the slimy rank chill of the bathwater, they’ll shake their heads and say, well, perhaps… and then feel guilty and stop themselves, but still they’ll look at each other and know that they’ve shared the same thought: Perhaps it was for the best.
That’s right. Don’t struggle. Stay here. Forget everything. It’s better this way. John is speaking to me inside my head. Wait for me, my love. I’ll come to you one day.
And how about me? Where will I be when I’m dead? Somewhere peaceful and empty, waiting for John so we can be together once more, the way we were before Joel came and then went. John’s married to someone else now but he still loves me best. I’ll wait in that vast peaceful emptiness, and I’ll watch over John and wait for him to come to me again, and as I wait I’ll fill my days with remembrance. I’ll remember his face when he saw me on our wedding day, as I floated down the aisle of the church in that ridiculous silk confection of a dress. I’ll remember our honeymoon, the timeless blissful stretch of days when we lay in white sand and sunshine and retired each afternoon to fuck into oblivion and sleep in each other’s arms. I’ll remember kissing him in the church porch, confetti tumbling around us like rain, and the bells ringing in our ears.
There is a bell ringing, but it’s not church bells. It’s a telephone, shrilling wildly across the long inches that stretch from wherever I was to wherever I am, distorted by the water that fills my ears but still recognisable. There’s still someone who wants me, then, someone who needs to speak to me, even if it’s only someone trying to sell something unwanted to a stranger. Do I want to speak to them, when John’s hand is clasped so firmly around my own, in such a perfect facsimile of love? I’d rather stay here and let fate take its course. The ringing stops and John’s voice begins to speak instead; not his true voice but a recording, ostensibly left on my answerphone to fool and intimidate criminals (Beware of the Man!), but in fact, because I can’t bear to let him go entirely. How easy death is when you simply give in and let it come to you. I thought I wanted to find out the truth, but this is what I want after all. To escape from everything by cutting myself off with a single watery breath.
And then, a boy’s voice, high and panicky, not quite settled into the register of manhood. Joel.
“Mum? Mummy? Are you there? Please don’t leave me. I need you, please help me, I need you to come and get me. Please, Mum, please help me, I’m so sorry I ran away, I need you. Please help me, Mum. Mum? Can you hear me?”
I’m too far gone to feel any kind of emotion. What happens next is pure reflex, the electric twitch that drives the movement of a dead animal in a laboratory. My free hand stretches out behind me. I reach up, up, up until I find the smooth acrylic roll of the bath top. I push once, hard, with all the strength that’s left in me. I feel my hand and arm come free from John’s grip. The world whirls around me. My head makes it back into the air.
Crouched in a pool of water, I whoop and gasp and shudder. I want to sit on the floor and breathe and whimper and remind myself that I’m still alive, but the reflex won’t let me. Instead I scrabble on hands and knees across the landing and slither down the stairs, headfirst because turning around would take time, and come to rest by the console table. I tug on the cable of the answerphone and haul it down into my lap like prey. The light is blinking.
This is the only thing, the one and only thing, with the power to call me back from the darkness. After all this time, I’m going to hear my son’s voice. I stab at the button of the answerphone.
But the only thing that comes to me is the click and hiss and swoosh of a mobile phone moving through space, as if its owner has accidentally called me from inside their pocket.
I scrabble for the phone handset. It takes me a few tries to hit the right numbers in the right order: 1471. I was called today at ten thirty-nine hours. They do not have the caller’s number to return the call.
I drop the phone on the floor beside the answerphone and put my hands up to my head so that I can hold myself and scream and tear uselessly at my hair to punish myself for not being quick enough. Before the madness takes over, I see that the broken chain of the plug is wrapped so tightly around my wrist and arm that the tiny silver beads are pressed into my flesh, and on the tender scalded skin of my forearm there is a flat livid print the size and shape of a hand.
Life Without Hope:
Parallel Lives
Today should have been my and John’s wedding anniversary.
So many years! If we’d made it, by now I would have spent significantly longer as John’s wife than as my own separate self. If we’d made it, I wonder what we would have done to celebrate? Perhaps we might have gone on holiday, just the two of us. Joel would have been eighteen, just finishing his A-levels, and probably more than happy for us to go away without him for a few days. But perhaps we would have preferred to bring him with us; perhaps he would have preferred to come along. The last holiday of his childhood.
Instead, we’re spending it apart from each other. It’s heartbreakingly sad, but I can’t pretend to be surprised that our marriage didn’t survive Jo
el’s disappearance. We were so closely knit, the three of us. It would seem wrong for John and I to carry on together in the absence of the very best part of us.
I sometimes think about the theory of parallel universes. Perhaps somewhere there’s another world where another John and Susannah are celebrating right now. Perhaps they (we?) are waking in a little hut with a grass roof, by a white beach lapped by a blue ocean. Perhaps we (they?) are on top of a mountain we’ve just climbed over a series of laborious days, me sandwiched between John and Joel as we pose for a picture. Or perhaps John couldn’t get the time off and instead they’re simply planning to go out for an expensive meal.
I could spend my time envying these parallel-universe couples. But I don’t. Because if there are universes where the three of us are still together, there must also be many others where we were never together at all.
There must be worlds where John and I never met in that tangle of bodies on the dance floor. Worlds where he lost my phone number, or where he met someone he liked even more, and so he never called. Worlds where we didn’t make up after arguments, or met other people, or just drifted apart over time.
There must be worlds where we never became parents to Joel.
There were so many ways it could have gone wrong for us. We might have balked at the courses we had to take, or become daunted by questions about coping with a child with additional needs or behavioural challenges, and decided adoption wasn’t for us after all. A wrong word on a wrong piece of paper and we might have been passed over, and the astounding gift that was our son might have been given instead to another couple. And while I know in my head we would have loved any child we were lucky enough to adopt, just as fiercely as we loved Joel, my heart doesn’t believe it. Joel was our son. He was perfect. Our time together was perfect. I wouldn’t change a thing.
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