by Heidi Perks
‘There’s this black cloud hanging over me,’ she says eventually. ‘I can’t shake it.’
‘It’s been a year now.’ Audrey’s tone is a little softer.
‘I know, and I realise I should have moved on, but I can’t.’
Audrey looks at her quizzically. Charlotte can’t expect her to understand when she doesn’t know the truth. ‘You still feel responsible,’ Aud says.
‘I don’t.’ Not for what happened to Alice anyway.
‘Then I don’t get it. You don’t like coming out any more. I watch you in the playground and your head’s somewhere else completely. Charlotte, look at you. You look permanently panicked. And you’ve lost weight too,’ she says. ‘Too much.’
Charlotte picks her glass up, swilling the red liquid around until she almost spills some. It’s true, a lot of her clothes hang off her now.
‘Talk to me,’ Audrey says again.
‘You know when everyone found out Alice had been taken by her grandfather?’ Charlotte says. ‘Within twenty-four hours every one of the people I’d felt had shunned me turned up on my doorstep, each of them telling me how wonderful it was that Alice had been found and how relieved I must be.’
‘But you were.’
‘Of course I was relieved she was safe but only days before they’d all distanced themselves in some way from me, pulling their kids away from mine. But then they all got a neat resolution, which meant they could brush over what had happened and pretend like it never did. I felt like they were forgiving me.’
‘You’re losing me.’ Aud shakes her head.
‘Their forgiveness meant they thought I was guilty in the first place. And they’d been happy to victimise my children because of it too.’
Audrey looks down at her glass but doesn’t answer. They both know there’s truth in what Charlotte says.
‘None of them apologised because they didn’t want to acknowledge that they’d acted badly towards me. And I never confronted them. I just let it go.’ Charlotte shrugs. ‘The elephant in the room is always there, though. The other day Gail started talking about that TV drama, The Missing, and I was genuinely interested but then she just suddenly stopped, and looked at me, and it felt like the air had frozen. Someone changed the subject and we were all talking about hairdressers or some other crap and I thought, it’s always going to be like this, isn’t it?’
‘If this is what’s eating you up you should tell them how you feel,’ Aud says. ‘You can’t expect them to understand if you don’t.’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Charlotte sighs. What would be the point anyway? She couldn’t tell them everything. She couldn’t tell anyone that.
‘Is that what this is really about?’ Audrey asks. ‘There’s nothing else on your mind?’
Charlotte leans her head against the back of the sofa. She’s often come close to telling Audrey the whole truth, but she’s always stopped herself. She wonders how Aud would react if she knew Harriet had set her up and that Charlotte then perjured herself to save the same friend.
Maybe talking to Audrey would help lift the black cloud because recently it’s been drawing so close she expects one day to wake up and find it’s smothered her completely. It’s not easy pretending life has returned to normal.
Yet there are no grey shades with Aud. She’d undoubtedly tell her to go to the police and tell them the truth. Harriet would be arrested and tried, Alice would be taken from her, and what would those same people say then? What kind of friend would that make Charlotte?
No. She made her decision a year ago and she needs to learn to live with it.
‘I’m thinking of going to see Harriet,’ Charlotte says.
‘Good. I never understood why you lost touch, especially when she was so keen to see you.’
‘Well, she moved away—’
‘Oh, don’t give me that again,’ Aud says. ‘You pulled away from her before she moved back to Kent. You haven’t even seen the new baby. Is that why you’re going now?’
‘That’s part of it,’ Charlotte says. She doesn’t add that the bigger part is to get things off her chest. To ask Harriet about something that’s been bothering her since that night on the beach. ‘If I go next week, could you have the children?’ she asks.
A warm puff of air explodes into Harriet’s kitchen as she opens the oven door. She leans in and jabs a knife into the sponges. They look done but she hesitates, her head practically inside the oven, as she decides whether to take them out or give it another five minutes. In the end she closes the door and glances at the clock, stretching her back and rubbing her stomach. It feels knotted. A feeling that comes and goes but it’s tighter today, which isn’t surprising when Charlotte is due in one hour.
Harriet picks up the baby monitor and holds it to her ear. She can hear a faint murmuring, a heart-warming sound. As she places the monitor back on the windowsill her gaze drifts to the garden where Alice is wandering alongside the small flower bed with a watering can. The letting agent told her the garden was a good size for ground-floor flats in the area, especially so close to the school. The moment she saw the flat she said she’d take it. After the other fifteen, Harriet knew she’d struck gold and wished the agent had shown her this one first.
Moving back to Kent had been an easy decision. They couldn’t stay where they were in a house filled with memories where Brian still lingered in every corner. Each morning when Harriet woke the first thing she imagined was her husband lying in the bed beside her. And then the last memory she had of him, in the sea, would flood her thoughts and equally that wasn’t a good way to start the day.
There was nothing left for Harriet in Dorset. Nowhere she could take Alice without crushing reminders of what she’d lost. Once she’d stood in the cafe of a National Trust house and felt the world evaporating as the memory of talking to her father in that very same room blinded her. When Alice pulled at her sleeve Harriet looked about her and realised she was crying. A couple were staring at her from their corner table.
In that moment she understood they needed a fresh start, a chance to make new memories rather than reliving raw and painful ones every day. The flat in the tall Victorian semi around the corner from Alice’s new school became the perfect base.
Harriet takes a deep breath as a waft of smoke fills the air. ‘Oh no,’ she mutters, pulling the oven door open. The sponges have crusted around the edges, dark-brown circles that she knows without touching will be crispy and hard. She throws the cake pans on the side and fights back tears.
‘Mummy, what’s that smell?’ Alice comes into the kitchen, her nose screwed up as she drops the empty watering can on the floor.
‘I’ve burnt the cake.’
Alice totters over and peers at the two sponges. ‘They’ll still taste nice, Mummy.’
Harriet smiles and ruffles her daughter’s hair. ‘What are you doing in the garden?’
‘Watering Grandpa’s rose,’ she says, matter-of-factly.
‘Good girl.’ She pauses. ‘Have you watered your daddy’s too?’
Alice nods and Harriet changes the subject, asking if she’d like a drink. She has no idea if she’s doing the right thing when it comes to talking to Alice about Brian. Counsellors advise her not to ignore him, to make sure Alice knows she can talk about her father, ask questions whenever she wants. But she often wonders if it does either of them any good.
Harriet hadn’t wanted to get Brian a rose bush. In the garden centre, she’d originally only picked out one with the intention of planting it for her dad. It wasn’t until they were at the cash desk when the thought hit her that Alice should have one for her own father. ‘Let’s go and choose one for Daddy too, shall we?’ she said, and Alice followed her back through the store at least three paces behind. Harriet pointed out pretty bushes until eventually Alice agreed to one.
At first Harriet would pick a bud and put it in a bud glass on the windowsill. She told Alice that sometimes they were from Grandpa’s bush and sometimes Daddy’s but o
ver time she couldn’t bear having anything of Brian’s in the house and stopped picking flowers from his.
It’s only a plant, she would tell herself. But it wasn’t. It was a constant reminder that he was out there watching her and one day she feared she’d end up ripping the damned bush out of the ground.
‘Do you want to take this outside?’ Harriet fills a tumbler of water and hands it to Alice. She still needs to tidy the kitchen and change her clothes and lay out the new napkins with the cake she’d bought as a back-up. Make it all nice.
She hasn’t spoken to Charlotte since telling her there would be no trial. By then this was no surprise but the confirmation was still a relief. Harriet understood there was no evidence of her connection. No proof that anyone but her father was involved, whether others believed it or not.
So she ended up letting him take the blame, just as he made her promise to if it all went wrong. And how wrong it went, she thinks, her eyes filling as they are drawn to his rose bush again.
Her dad was only in her life for six months but he managed to change everything. She takes a deep breath and looks about her, reminding herself as she often does that he gave her all this. Freedom: it was all she ever wanted.
Over the last year Harriet has told him many times how sorry she is. She whispers it at night as she curls up in bed and the tears flow down her cheeks. She longs for one more day with him so she could relive all the magic he brought into their lives. They would build sandcastles and eat ice cream when it was cold, and they would laugh. Laugh until it felt greater than any pain.
Harriet presses her hand against the windowpane, covering the view of the rose. She can feel the hole in her heart stretching, tugging, until she forces herself to tear away. She needs to think about the day ahead. Charlotte will be here soon. Her stomach flutters and she allows herself to feel a little excited as she pulls a cloth out and begins to wipe down the surfaces.
Charlotte squeezes the teabag against the inside of the paper cup with a plastic spoon. Fields roll past outside the train window. The carriage was empty until they pulled into the last station where a handful of passengers shuffled in. Now there are at least a dozen of them, including a couple who sit at the far end of the carriage and keep drawing her attention.
The girl looks barely seventeen. She’s sitting next to the window and stares glumly out of it. Her boyfriend, who is at least ten years her senior, kicks a battered purple suitcase with a restless foot. Each time his foot bangs against it the girl flinches. Behind his scruffy beard and dark eyebrows there are steely grey eyes that flick around the carriage as if he’s expecting or looking for trouble.
Charlotte feels the plastic spoon snap between her fingers and glances down, surprised to find she’s broken it in half. She forces herself to turn away from the couple and think about what she plans to say to Harriet. There are many things she’s tried ignoring that won’t stop haunting her.
At first Charlotte was relieved when Harriet moved back to Kent. She wouldn’t have to look over her shoulder every time she went to the park. Not that she ever went to that particular one any more. But then, as the weeks passed, relief turned to anger, which settled in her gut and began to grow. She was angry with Harriet. So full of rage.
The papers called Harriet’s story ‘tragic’ and labelled her brave. Charlotte swallowed down the lies she read, that stuck in her throat, and all the while her rage grew and grew. What made it worse was that she couldn’t release it. Instead she had to sit back and accept she’d played a part in turning Harriet into the victim.
Some mornings Charlotte yanked back the curtains, wanting to open the windows and scream. Let the world know that it was her who should have their pity and admiration. Not Harriet. Where were the stories about Charlotte? What had happened to the people who attacked her in the press? None of them retracted their slurs. No one seemed interested in what became of the friend, but then maybe she should be grateful they’d stopped talking about her. And that that awful Josh Gates’s story about Jack had never been published.
Yet keeping quiet is suffocating. It feels like it’s quite literally drowning her. After Harriet moved Charlotte started imagining the life her old friend is now living: what her house is like, if Harriet’s cut her hair, if she has a circle of friends who’ve accepted what happened to her. She’s wondered about it to the extent that she actually hates Harriet for running away and setting up a new life for herself, while meanwhile Charlotte’s been sinking lower and lower into her own despair.
She can’t move past the fact that she lied to the police, but there’s also something else. And if what Alice told her is true then Charlotte needs to know what she’s been covering up.
Charlotte sips her tea and checks her watch as they pull into another station. Hers is the next stop, and they’re due to arrive in twelve minutes. The train pulls away again and she texts Audrey to check on the children, looking up as the boyfriend at the end of the carriage raises his voice. He calls his girlfriend a stupid bitch and slams his fist on the table in front of them and now she is crying, her shoulders heaving and tears streaming down her face in black streaks from her smudged mascara. The other passengers keep their heads down or stare out of windows except for a lady in her eighties who watches them, shocked by their public display of anger and hysteria. Now he is close up in the young girl’s face making her recoil with each word he speaks.
Charlotte pushes herself out of her seat. There was a time when she would have stayed out of other people’s business but she can’t allow this behaviour. As she strides down the carriage she can feel the nervous glances of the other passengers who likely think she’s mad for getting involved. But as soon as she reaches the couple Charlotte stops short. The man has hold of his girlfriend’s face but now he’s kissing her on the nose and telling her he’s sorry and how much he loves her. Choking back her sobs with laughter, she tells him she loves him too. Both of them are oblivious to Charlotte hovering in front of them, about to step in.
She could carry on walking and pretend she was going to the toilet but she can’t be bothered with that charade and instead turns on her heel and makes her way back to her seat. An arm reaches out, stopping her in her tracks, and Charlotte looks at the old woman who says, ‘You did a good thing there, love. You were the only one prepared to step in.’
Charlotte turns back to the couple. ‘I don’t think the girl realises she needs help.’ She feels angry that he’s treating her like this. That girl is someone’s daughter and she knows she’d want someone to step in if it were Molly or Evie.
‘No,’ the old woman says. ‘But she will do one day.’
‘Maybe I should go back and say something.’
‘I wouldn’t,’ the lady says. ‘You don’t always know when you’re doing more harm than good. If she’s not ready for help then neither of them will thank you.’
Harriet’s ground-floor flat is easy to find. It’s at the end of a pleasant street, where just around the corner there’s a small row of quaint shops and across the road a wide expanse of green park with a pavilion and a pond and a children’s playground.
Charlotte hovers on the pavement outside. Suddenly the thought of seeing Harriet is far too overwhelming and she needs to force herself up the short path to the front door, ring the bell and wait without running. Her heart is beating hard and she wonders if she might throw up when Harriet opens the door.
Harriet is wearing a long blue dress with a white cardigan over the top of it. Her hair has been cut short and coloured a much richer brown. Her mouth that sparkles with gloss breaks into a small smile as she steps aside to let Charlotte in. Charlotte mumbles a thank you as she passes and is walking through to the kitchen when Alice rushes in, armed with a handful of flowers that she thrusts into Charlotte’s hand.
‘Oh, goodness,’ she says as she bends down to the little girl. ‘Thank you.’ The tears surprise her. She didn’t expect to be so emotional at the sight of Alice who’s even taller than Molly now. Her
hair has been plaited down the back and tied with a huge yellow ribbon. She is chattering about the garden, something about a rose bush, and now about the new baby who sleeps in a cot next to Mummy’s bed, and is asking if Charlotte would like to see her bedroom because she’s hung her butterflies in the window.
‘I’d love to, maybe a little later?’ Charlotte says, straightening up. Alice won’t stop talking, excitedly telling her all about school, and now she is pulling a drawing off the fridge that she brings over.
‘That’s my picture of the school rabbit,’ Alice says. ‘It’s a real one.’
Harriet is drifting around them, filling the kettle and sliding a cake on to a plate that she puts on the small round table sitting snugly in the corner of the room. A pile of muslins are neatly folded on its edge and baby bottles are lined up in a row behind the sink. Charlotte wonders where the baby is as Alice carries on chattering to her.
‘I go to big school,’ Alice smiles proudly. ‘I go every morning five times a week.’ She holds up five fingers.
‘That’s very good counting. Do you like it at your big school?’
Alice nods eagerly. ‘The rabbit is called Cottontail and we can hold her at break time and yesterday it was my turn to feed her but do you know you’re not supposed to feed them too many carrots?’
‘I didn’t know that.’
‘It’s because they have sugar and they can give the rabbits bad teeth. My teacher said that in assembly.’
‘You’re a bright little button.’ Charlotte smiles at her.
‘She is,’ Harriet says as she comes to stand next to her daughter, resting her hand on Alice’s head. ‘She doesn’t forget a thing,’ she adds but in a way that suggests this isn’t necessarily a good thing. ‘Alice, why don’t you take a piece of cake and watch some TV?’ As soon as she passes Alice a plate, the girl is out of the room.
‘She seems very happy.’ Charlotte watches her go.
Harriet nods. ‘I hope so. But then you don’t always know for sure, do you? Please, have a piece.’ Harriet hands her a plate. Charlotte takes it and sits down on one of the seats Harriet is gesturing towards.