What You Left Behind

by Samantha Hayes

  “What’s going on, Jo?” The crying noises had drawn her to the kitchen. She’d forgotten to put on her slippers and the kitchen flagstones felt soothing and cool on her hot feet. “Jo, what’s the matter?”

  She sat down beside her sister at the table.

  “For God’s sake, talk to me. Is there news?”

  Dressed in yesterday’s clothes, holding a piece of paper in one hand and a mug of coffee in the other, Jo turned slowly to Lorraine. “It’s Freddie,” she sobbed, staring at the paper again. “He’s left me a suicide note.”

  26

  “This is purgatory,” Sonia says. “That’s what it is.”

  I don’t know what that means but it’s making Sonia unhappy. Her voice is stretched out thin and she is lying in bed. Tony is there too, looking after her.

  They don’t know about my secret hiding place behind the cupboard on the landing. They’d be cross if they knew I was listening but ever since the detectives took Lana to the police station yesterday my stomach has been churning. I don’t know what to do.

  “Take these,” Tony says.

  I imagine him sitting on the edge of Sonia’s bed. Tony sleeps in another bedroom. His duvet is brown and gray.

  “Thanks,” Sonia says, and then it goes quiet as she sips water.

  She’s been different since Simon died, doing and saying things I don’t understand. She said she wanted to find God. I offered to help, but not until I’ve found a girlfriend I told her. Neither of us have had any luck.

  “I can’t believe she did such a stupid thing,” Sonia says once her pills have gone down.

  I hold my breath, listening to every word.

  Tony makes a noise like he’s blowing out all the air in his lungs. “After everything,” he says, “we don’t need it.”

  “It feels like it’s happening all over again,” Sonia says.

  My heart bangs heavily. I don’t want that. I would get angry and not be nice anymore.

  “I know what you mean,” Tony replies. “She’s throwing her life away.”

  They said that’s what Simon did. Threw his life away. Wasted it. Chucked it out. They’re wrong. He didn’t. If he’d thrown it away we could have got it back for him. Sometimes I’ve thrown things away by mistake and it’s easy to find them if you look. There’s no bringing Simon back. His lips were blue. I saw them.

  I butt my head against the wall to make the thoughts go away. Later I will do another drawing.

  “Did you hear something?” Sonia says.

  The floorboards creak as Tony comes out onto the landing. I press flat against the wall but he won’t see me here. “Probably just the dogs,” he says, going back into the bedroom. The bedsprings squeak as he sits down again.

  “What if they arrest her?” Sonia asks.

  I imagine Lana in handcuffs, being put in a police cell. I would draw a picture of her escaping if that happened.

  “Then we get a bloody good lawyer.” Tony’s sigh is deep and rasping, the kind that makes you feel guilty.

  “She won’t be able to go to uni—”

  “Sonia, is that all you ever think about? Our daughter has just confessed to killing someone.”

  I hear Tony walking about. His fingers tap on glass. If he’s at the big window he’ll see the horses in the fields.

  “Since Simon …” Sonia trails off.

  “For fuck’s sake, woman.”

  More walking. Tony’s heels on the floorboards.

  He is brave. He never cries. But he does shout and get angry. Sonia told me it’s his way of coping. She said that my way is to draw things. I asked her what her way was but she said she didn’t have one.

  “You make it sound as if she’s a murderer, Tony. Lana didn’t kill anyone.” Sonia blows her nose.

  After they took Lana away, Sonia went mad, as if she was fizzy inside and it was all coming out. She was doing a crazy dance around the kitchen, tripping on things. Tony grabbed her arms and she went quiet, falling to the floor, sobbing, saying she was sorry. Then, after Lana got back from the police station, Tony had finally put her to bed.

  It’s morning now.

  “Drink your tea,” Tony says, and I hear the chink of china.

  “I should have gone with her, but it’s the police and—”

  “I know. It’s OK.”

  “I wonder if there’s news of Freddie,” Sonia says suddenly.

  I clap my hand over my mouth to stop everything coming out. I am good at keeping secrets. If I tell, they’ll be really cross with me.

  “I should call Jo.”

  “I already spoke to her,” Tony says. “There’s nothing to report.”

  “You called her?”

  I can hear a rustling of sheets. I think Sonia’s sitting up.

  “Briefly,” Tony says. “I wanted to help. You know.”

  Sonia is quiet for a bit. “She’s my friend,” she says after a while.

  Tony doesn’t answer.

  “Did you ever think things would turn out like this?” Sonia has those little waves in her voice again.

  “If I’d ever believed that my own son would do such a thing … Jesus … Nobody ever expects that.”

  “We just didn’t know him.”

  “Fucking right we didn’t.”

  More silence. Downstairs, a dog whines in the kitchen. I hear claws scratching at the door.

  “She’s going off the rails like her brother.”

  That’s what Tony said Simon had done after he died. Gone off the rails. I think that means he went mad. They once said that he’d been a mystery to them and who’d have ever known. They swore it would stay a secret that what he’d done was shameful. But I knew. I saw it. I see everything and I saw Simon hanging in the barn and it was horrid and it makes my insides hurt and it’s only when I do drawings that I feel better although not properly better like before he was dead.

  We were going on holiday. A winter break. Tony said it would do us good. Take Simon’s mind off things, off all that nonsense he’d got in his head. Simon was going to be a vet although he didn’t really want to be one and was unhappy.

  Then we couldn’t find him and everyone was panicking because we’d be late and miss the flight and we’d been searching for hours and then everything went horrid.

  “And on top of everything, I’m worried about Gil,” Sonia says.

  I shrink back against the wall even more.

  “All this stuff about seeing that crash,” Sonia says.

  She doesn’t want to believe I was there, saw everything.

  “It’s nothing to do with us,” Tony says. “And Jo’s bloody sister could do with keeping her nose out.” I hear a rattle of pills again. “I’ll get you some more from the hospital.” Tony gets lots of pills.

  “I don’t know what I’d do without you,” Sonia says.

  “I will not let this family fall apart,” he says, and that reminds me of what he said when they found him, when they were both wrapped up in each other’s arms and were standing in the barn shaking and crying and unable to look at Simon. They didn’t know I was watching through the small window at the end of the barn as if it was a horrid television show I couldn’t turn off.

  Simon had brown stuff on his legs. Simon had a rope round his neck. One eye was staring at me as if he knew I was there.

  I drew a picture that night. Simon’s ribs stuck out and his knees looked too big. I drew everything in that barn, even the other man hiding in the shadows. Underneath I wrote what Tony had said: “Nothing will destroy my family. Not even this.”

  When the police came they called Simon “number five.”

  27

  Lorraine opened the door to Freddie’s room. It still smelled of cheap body spray even though he hadn’t been in it for two nights now. The curtains were closed—the end of one was hanging off the pole as if it had once been torn open too roughly—and his bed was unmade with the fitted sheet wrung off the mattress.

  It was a typical teenager’s room, she tho
ught. She couldn’t help feeling a sense of sadness, the tang of despair or hopelessness, as if he’d shrugged off a layer of gloom and dumped it with the damp towels on the floor. She swallowed and sighed. This was her nephew.

  “Jo said he virtually lived up here,” she said. Every surface was cluttered with books and papers, cables and toiletries, as well as an assortment of dirty crockery and pie and pasty wrappers. “This is the bedroom of a very fed-up young man. Not the Freddie I know.” She picked up some clothes and put them on the bed. “Do you think it’s even in here? Apparently, he’s joined at the hip to it.”

  Adam was already poking about in cupboards, having located a laptop charger cable amid the muddle on the desk. “Then why didn’t he take this?”

  Lorraine shrugged. “Surely his laptop would be on his desk if it was here.”

  She lifted a few tatty folders and old textbooks and let them drop back into the muddle. Nothing, so she began searching the rest of the room. Jo had already found the letter addressed to her, so maybe there was a diary, or another letter, or something else that could undo the desperate thoughts and words the note had contained. It had been heartbreaking to read.

  As she opened the wardrobe, the door half dropped off its hinges. The whole thing wobbled forward and Adam moved sharply to push it back. Inside was a jumble of clothes sliding off bent coat hangers, a collection of muddy and smelly old sneakers that released a sour odor, and a shelf full of old papers and school books that clearly hadn’t been touched in a long time given the dust on them.

  Lorraine sighed. “There’s nothing here.”

  Adam was now on his hands and knees, peering beneath the bed. Reaching under it, he pulled out a flattened sports bag with some stained football kit lying on top of it, crusted and dry, as well as several more plates and a few A-level textbooks. He squinted into the dusty space.

  “Nothing much under here either. Oh, hang on …”

  He twisted his head round to look at the wooden slats, then stood and grabbed the corner of the mattress, lifting it up out of the frame and pulling out a gray laptop.

  “Not joined at the hip after all,” he remarked.

  He sat on the bed and booted it up into safe mode. Lorraine had seen him do this several times before, not least on her laptop, when she’d forgotten her password. She turned away for a moment, not wanting to witness the forceful raid into Freddie’s life, which felt inherently wrong, yet necessary at the same time.

  “Right, password off,” Adam said, handing the machine over.

  “Me? I have no idea where to begin,” Lorraine said, taking it. “It’s not as if we’re going to be able to get into his Facebook account or email without some intervention.”

  “OK then, let’s just trawl through recent files, his browsing history, that kind of thing.”

  Adam leaned close as Lorraine methodically worked through the list of websites Freddie had visited.

  “Social networking mostly,” she said as some familiar names reeled past onscreen. Lorraine reckoned any teenager’s history would look similar. “He’s been buying stuff, look. He’s been on music websites, there’s his webmail, and what’s this …”

  Lorraine copied and pasted the address into a browser window and went to the website.

  “Some kind of advice forum,” she said, not recognizing the website name.

  They both peered at the screen, speed-reading as Lorraine scrolled down.

  “Oh God,” she whispered as it became clear what people were discussing. “They’re asking for advice about suicide.”

  Adam reached out and took the laptop from her. He continued trawling through the site, sighing and making despairing noises as he worked.

  “Can you see if he’s posted anything?” Lorraine asked. “Are there any usernames that could be Freddie?”

  “That’s what I’m looking for,” he replied, clicking the mouse several times. “Do you think this could be him?”

  Lorraine read where Adam was pointing. She closed her eyes briefly.

  “Curzed95,” Adam said. “A combination of Curzon and his birth year?”

  Cursed, Lorraine thought. Is that how the poor boy feels about himself?

  They were both silent again as they read through the short but pitiful message he’d posted. It reflected what was written in the letter he’d addressed to Jo, except the message revealed more about the bullying he’d been suffering, as well as asking questions about suicide. I might as well be dead, Freddie had typed. The answers he’d received had been quite detailed, describing the best methods depending on whether he really wanted to end it all or just wanted to make a cry for help. Hanging is the real deal, someone had written, so only go there if you’re sure. Pills or shallow cuts better for a gesture.

  Lorraine looked away, close to tears. She couldn’t stand to read any more. “Jo mustn’t see this,” she said, thinking of her poor sister and how she had to stay strong.

  “Look at the date and time he posted this,” Adam said. “It’s when we were at the Hawkeswells’ barbecue, the night he disappeared.”

  Adam opened up a few other websites that Freddie had visited, but they seemed unrelated. He moved on to some Word documents he’d opened in the last few days, the filename “Chemistry Project” catching his eye. “Why would he be looking at a chemistry project when he’s finished his exams and left school?”

  Lorraine agreed and was about to say something when Adam clicked on the file.

  “Christ,” he said. “Just look at this.”

  The document was twenty-three pages long, each one containing images of what appeared to be a dedication to Freddie, as if he were already dead. First up was a picture of a gravestone with rotten flowers beside it. Lorraine noticed how someone had crudely drawn Freddie’s name on the headstone with graffiti-style writing. Then there was a smaller mug shot of him beneath it. Again, it had been tampered with. Blood was dribbling from his eyes and mouth, and a noose had been put around his neck.

  “Oh God, Adam, I’m not sure I can …”

  “OK, I’ll scan down,” Adam said as Lorraine turned away. “This is one hell of a lot of shit for anyone to deal with, and it looks as though he’s been targeted for months. It’s nasty, Ray. Any one of these comments you’d be able to shrug off. But to have them coming at you for this long with images like this …” He blew out.

  “He did well to save the screen shots,” Lorraine said.

  She stole another glimpse at the laptop and was faced with slaughtered pig carcasses with Freddie’s face superimposed over the animals’ heads.

  She turned away again.

  “Ray, you should see this,” Adam said after a short while.

  Lorraine turned back. The revolting images had gone and in their place were a couple of short emails.

  “He’s saved an email exchange with Lana,” Lorraine said after reading the messages quickly.

  “Do you know what they’re talking about?” Adam asked.

  Lorraine thought for a moment. “No. It sounds as if Lana’s worried about something she’s seen and Freddie has promised to help her. We could ask Jo or Sonia.”

  She read the last line again: If it’s true, does this make us half brother and sister? Lana x. Then, underneath, she reread Freddie’s reply: I really hope not …

  Adam logged into his own email account to send the files to himself.

  “No wonder he left home,” Lorraine said. “He must feel so alone, so desperate.” Her heart ached for him, and for Jo. It was such a tangled-up mess of emotion and … and there was something else, she thought, something else that was now bothering her.

  She went over to the window and pulled back a curtain. Her sister was in the garden below talking to Malc. They were having a heated discussion by the looks of their hand gestures and body language. Jo looked tired and pale. Suddenly, Malc left.

  “Put the laptop back where we found it,” Lorraine said quietly, closing the curtains again. “Let me deal with Jo.”

  �
��WE’LL FIND FREDDIE, you know. I promise.” Lorraine was standing in the living-room doorway. “When did you speak to Malc?”

  Jo looked up. Lorraine was shocked to see that she had a tumbler of whiskey rolling between her palms when the morning wasn’t yet over. Her eyes were blistered from tears.

  Lorraine sat down beside her on the old brown sofa.

  Jo sniffed. “He finally got my messages and called me back last night. He’s gone out to talk to Freddie’s mates. I told him he was wasting his time.”

  “He wants to feel useful.”

  “Well, he should have bloody done that months ago then, shouldn’t he?”

  “Is he going to stay here tonight?” Lorraine asked after a pause.

  Jo shrugged.

  “Going back to London, then?”

  Nothing.

  “Jo … Adam and I went through Freddie’s computer.” She paused. “He’s being bullied by some kids. It’s been pretty bad.” She noticed the letter he’d written to his mum lying crumpled on the sofa beside her and wondered how much it mentioned of what had been going on. It looked as if she’d read it a thousand times.

  Lorraine couldn’t bring herself to tell her sister about the forum Freddie had posted on. Until now, she’d never believed he’d actually do anything desperate.

  “There was something else we found, too, a few emails. It’s probably nothing, but …” She took a deep breath. “Freddie and Lana seemed to be troubled by something. Do you know what that might be?”

  Jo slowly turned to her, tucked her feet beneath herself, and hugged her arms around her body. As if she’s trying to disappear, Lorraine thought.

  “Sorry,” she finally whispered, tipping the rest of the whiskey down her throat, pretty much confirming what Lorraine suspected.

  “You always used to make things better for me,” Jo added after another pause. “Get me out of messes.”

  “Is that what you expect me to do now?”

  Tears trickled slowly down Jo’s face. “Fucking police,” she said.

  “Fucking sisters,” Lorraine said, trying to smile.

  They sat in silence for a moment, listening to the creaks and groans of the old house heating up once again. The sun had already climbed high above the church, bathing its turreted tower in a golden glow. It reminded Lorraine of the summer holidays, of setting out on long bike rides and promising to be back for supper.