So what now?
Living posed a problem. Survival had meant facing up to life. What life? She didn’t have one, so her fight, no longer needed, had up and gone. The thought of her entire life stretching into a cloudy and distant future filled her with panic and a desperate sense of dread.
Being at the cottage with Dan had been a kind of shield, she realised now. They’d lived in a cocoon for two weeks, sheltered and safe. They’d waded through difficult feelings, worked out how to survive, become a team, bonded. No one had known she was alive, which felt suffocating at the time, but seemed gloriously liberating now. She should have been glad to be home, but being home had only brought a new catalogue of problems.
All these thoughts rambled pointlessly through her mind while one leg dangled out of bed and the phone rang on and on. Camilla’s staccato footsteps crossed the hall in a great hurry, passing the phone, not responding to it. She thundered up the stairs. The phone finally gave up. Naomi sat still while Camilla poked her head around the door without knocking, and made no mention of the fact that Naomi was in Annabel’s bed.
‘Ah, you’re awake.’
‘Why are you ignoring the phone?’
‘Because I know who it is.’
Naomi frowned. ‘Who is it?’
‘Unknown numbers. Journalists. Reporters. I’ve spoken to several already, and now I’ve finished. They’re after a cheap story to satiate the general public and they can forget it.’
‘My story?’
‘Of course your story. They’re not getting a word out of us, Naomi. Leeches, the lot of them. Get up now.’ Camilla whisked away.
‘Yeah, I’m fine thanks, Mum. Don’t worry about me,’ Naomi muttered to herself.
Naomi ambled to her room and paused in the doorway. Her luggage still littered the floor where she’d left it the night she returned. She hadn’t wanted to unpack. Unpacking somehow meant accepting that she was home to stay, when she felt more like a visitor. She’d left her life here and was no longer a child at home. Except that Camilla had stepped right back into the role of over-protective mother, and doubled her efforts. And Naomi had been too lethargic to object.
She hadn’t seen her own phone since the night of the wedding. At the side of her bed was Lorie’s phone. She picked it up, desperate for a message from Dan. Nothing. She tried to ring him. The answer service came on. On leaden legs, she headed for the shower and washed and conditioned her hair as if she had somewhere to go, then stood under a powerful jet of water, as hot as she could bear, disabled by her thoughts.
Why hadn’t Dan called? Where was he?
She’d exchanged a couple of texts with him from Lorie’s phone the day before. Tuesday, two days after he’d delivered her safely home he’d sent her this:
Dan: Thinking about you and glad you’re home with family. Are you OK? X
Naomi: Not sleeping so well. Awful dreams and waking up in a cold sweat. Don’t know what’s happening to me. Miss you. My mum is doing my head in. x
Dan: Already? I miss you too, but I’m trying to give you some space. Had to fill my mum in yesterday. Nightmare! She’s heartbroken. Sorry you’re having a bad time. Sounds like panic attacks. Try to relax and do small things. Take your time and don’t expect too much of yourself. Call you tonight? X
Naomi: Yes! Thank you, Doctor!! Xx
But Dan hadn’t called.
Naomi closed the door on her thoughts and turned off the shower. She stepped out, dried herself, dressed and wandered into her room where she dropped down in front of her dressing-table mirror. It had three faces. Wherever she shifted her eyes, she still found herself. She studied her dark eyes and long dark hair in the mirror and wondered who the hell she was. Naomi Hamilton? Naomi Stone? Music student? Luckiest girl alive? Life’s greatest reject? The news reports had described her in all those terms, except the last one. That was her headline.
In search of a hairbrush, she opened the narrow top drawer to her right and found a tiny picture of herself with Lorie. She picked it up and stared. They were crushed into a photo booth, heads together, laughing. Naomi found a pair of scissors and opened and closed them and listened to metal grinding. She scrunched the picture in one hand and threw it in the bin. Then she stood up, stepped back and pulled the turban from her head. She doubled over, throwing her hair in front of her. Gravity claimed it. It almost reached the floor. She took hold of it, wet and wavy, bunched it in her left hand and sliced her way across in a few seconds. She held the detached hair in one hand, threw her head back and bent down to look in the mirror. It was chin length all the way round. A little jagged, but a good enough job.
She put the hair down on her dressing table. It looked as though a horse had shrugged out of its tail. Then she set about the suitcases and bags, scattering the contents until she’d found any and every reminder of Nathan. Pictures. Messages. Cards. Things he’d either bought her or stolen, who could tell? There was an old sweater he’d once put on her on a cold night. It had kind of become hers after that. She held the sweater to her nose and inhaled. Distant traces of Nathan still lingered.
She hurled it to the floor and spread it out. She knelt down and gathered all the memories she’d segregated, then roughly piled them on top of the sweater and bundled them up inside. She took her hair – the long thick tail from the table – and wrapped it around the sweater like a package. It was long enough to tie. She snatched it up along with the phone and headed for the narrow staircase, the one rarely used that fed into the end of the house close to the back door. She diverted into the kitchen for matches and newspaper, then unlocked the back door next to the wet room, where ex-boyfriend Tom Butterworth had betrayed her with a kiss.
Slamming the back door on that memory, she trampled over damp leaves covering the slippery path until she was hidden behind the wall of Camilla’s vegetable patch. There was an empty corner where she hurried to next. She screwed up loose sheets of paper and set them ablaze. She pulled the sim card and memory card from Lorie’s phone and watched them burn. Then she took her old life wrapped in Nathan’s sweater and dead hair, and dropped them on the flames.
She watched her hair sizzle and catch fire and char and then burn.
‘That’s the last piece of me you’ll ever have, you sick psycho. I never want to see you again.’
A mallet was standing on its head against a nearby fence. She walked a few paces and picked it up. She threw Lorie’s phone onto the concrete path that divided two patches of soil and raised the mallet above her right shoulder and crashed down hard.
‘Bitch.’
5
Naomi drifted to her piano room for the first time in weeks. It was a quiet, unused room. She wanted to discover which melody had dug her out of a pit the night before. She tested a few pieces from memory. It wasn’t any of them. She stood up to search through a pile of music in a nearby cupboard and came away empty-handed. So she sat on her stool and put her hands on the piano and closed her eyes. After some searching and fumbling, her right hand found the melody. When she opened her eyes, Camilla was hovering in the doorway. Naomi looked up.
‘What are you playing?’ Camilla asked.
‘That’s what I’m trying to find out.’
‘It sounded like Rachmaninoff’s Elegie.’
‘Is that what it is?’
Naomi didn’t recognise the title.
Camilla’s face clouded. She started to stride towards Naomi. ‘What’ve you done to your hair?’ she shrieked in horror. Naomi tensed while Camilla grasped her hair between her fingers.
‘Mum,’ Naomi jerked her hair free of Camilla’s hands. ‘Just leave it, OK?’
‘Your hair was your best feature.’
‘Well, it’s gone now, like everything else.’
Camilla’s forehead creased. ‘What do you mean “everything else”?’ We’re still here – your family. Do we mean so little that you feel as though you have nothing at all?’
‘You don’t understand.’
Camilla
shaved the edge off her voice. ‘Of course I do.’
Naomi shook her head. It felt lighter with her hair gone. ‘Has Dan called?’
‘Who?’
‘Nathan’s brother. The one who saved my life, Mum, and brought me home.’
The mention of Nathan’s name brought blotches to Camilla’s neck. ‘I hope not. His life has nothing to do with ours, Naomi.’
Naomi looked directly at Camilla. ‘How can you say that?’
‘Very easily. I’ll send him a card to thank him. Enough said.’
‘My life is worth a thank you card?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. What do you want me to do, Naomi, invite him round for dinner? Ask him how his brother is doing in prison? The whole family is rotten. I don’t want any of them near this family ever again. I always knew Nathaniel was trouble. I should have put a stop to the wedding. I blame myself for that.’
‘It wasn’t your choice to make.’
‘No, it was yours, and it almost cost you your life. Don’t try and tell me you have no regrets.’ She went silent and stared hard. Naomi said nothing. ‘The whole idea was insane. I don’t want to have anything further to do with any of them. Is that clear?’
Naomi gripped her piano stool with both hands. She wanted to yell at Camilla that Lorie was responsible too. That Camilla had trusted Lorie in just the same way that Naomi had trusted Nathan, and that trusting Lorie had opened the door for Nathan. But she said nothing.
Camilla lowered her voice a little. ‘You owe him nothing, Naomi. Concentrate on yourself now. Find something constructive to do with your life. I won’t have that family drag mine down for a moment more. I intend to move on. And you’re not being left behind.’
Naomi hesitated, weighing the risk of an admission, before she confessed, ‘Mum, I’m lost, OK? I have nothing to move on to.’
‘Lost? Nonsense. Take the reins of your life. That’s what adults do, regardless of circumstances – they take responsibility. You’re thinking like a child.’
‘A child?’ Unbelievable. The word hung in her head and her chest tightened. ‘Do you understand what’s just happened to me, Mum? Do you know what I’ve been through? A child would not have handled it, I assure you.’
Camilla held up a palm to stop her. ‘I really don’t need to know the details. The important thing is you’re back now. Let’s not live in the past.’
‘The past is still the present for me, Mum. It’s all one thing at the moment. Why don’t you want to talk about this?’
‘It’s too . . . No. Sorry, but we need to move on, all of us.’
‘Fine,’ Naomi sighed. ‘Well, I don’t know what to do with my life anymore. The life I had has gone.’
‘I disagree. You have money, which means the options are wide open. You have advantages. Use them. Put that man behind you and don’t look back.’
Man? Nathan, presumably. Dan wasn’t even in Camilla’s picture.
‘It isn’t as easy as that.’
‘It’s just that simple.’
While Camilla breathed noisily, Naomi considered the money, one point one million, still sitting in Dan’s account where she had shifted it away from Nathan.
‘You might as well have the money back now,’ she said, resigned.
‘No,’ Camilla replied quickly. The sharpness was back in her tone. Naomi caught Camilla running a disapproving eye over her hair. ‘No, I don’t want it. At least I have the satisfaction of knowing that that no-good, murderous . . . criminal will never see a penny of it.’ Lorie hadn’t been mentioned all week, in any context. Nathan had copped the blame for everything. ‘I hope he suffers for a very long time for what he did to our family.’
Naomi, feeling a rush of tears, stood up. She hurried for the door.
‘Where are you going?’
Naomi, expertly trained, held the tears off. ‘Out.’
Annabel’s car keys were on the hall table beneath the portrait. Naomi scooped them up on her way past. Camilla shouted something. Naomi blocked it out. She walked out of the front door, stumbled to Annabel’s car, fired it up, reversed like a lunatic, then flew down the drive with her eyes blurred and dripping in tepid tears.
<><><>
Salford Quays was where she found herself half an hour later. ‘Why?’ She even said the word out loud. There wasn’t an answer besides the obvious: this was where Dan lived and she had to see him. He was the one person who understood, who’d lost as much as she had. Her family talked in terms of having ‘gained’ her back. They were relieved; ordeal over, burden lifted. Her return home marked the end of something agonising for them, while Naomi’s painful journey had just begun.
It was almost noon. She could only recall scraps of the journey, which might have been a worry if she’d valued her life. She dragged the handbrake up, cut the engine and looked in the mirror only to find a stranger with short hair, a pale face and haunted eyes circled in darkness. She fingered her face before rummaging through the rubble in Annabel’s car. She came up with a pair of black sunglasses and a stripy scarf. Dimming the world with the shades, she draped the scarf around her head and neck and hoped that Dan was home.
With her back to the water, she stared at the sitting-room window of Dan and Nathan’s flat, about twenty metres to her left and up. It reflected a moving cloud. She listened to her own breathing, which was strangely therapeutic. Being away from the house was more liberating than she’d expected, even here in a confined space. It was free of tension, free of noise, free of memories and opinions and expectations. It was free of Camilla. She couldn’t be contacted or tracked down.
You’re thinking like a child.
She was about to get out of the car when some movement from Dan’s flat window caught her eye. She pushed the glasses up and into her hair and leant forward and concentrated hard. The scene became clearer. A person that wasn’t Dan was standing in the window looking out. She pulled herself forward in her seat and realised that whoever was standing in Dan’s window was examining the window sill.
A policeman?
‘Holy crap.’ Naomi froze and stared hard until the guy vanished and the window reflected the midday sky again.
Her hands were shaking. Her mind raced with a hundred possibilities. What if something had happened to Dan? Should she get out and make enquiries? Hide? Stay? Leave? Disabled by indecision, fifteen minutes passed. She started the engine just as a man in a dark suit came out of the flat main-door entrance and held the door open for two more guys, each carrying a bag. Naomi sat and watched. The first man – the one in the dark suit – went to his car, took off his jacket and hung it in the back. Then he got behind the wheel and drove away. The others crossed the car park towards her. She lowered her head. They climbed into a white car to her left. The engine fired; they pulled away. Naomi was sitting in a quiet car park again.
She sat feeling nauseous, not sure what to do. She hunted round the car again until she came up with an old shopping list in red ink, blank on one side. She found a broken pencil and scribbled a note.
Dan –
Found myself here at the flat. I had to see you. I don’t know what’s going on or why you haven’t contacted me, but I disposed of Lorie’s phone this morning so you’ll have to call the house. There have been men here looking at your flat. Maybe you know why. I’m confused, Dan, and worried too. Need to speak to you. Ring the house once, put the phone down, ring again – then I’ll know it’s you and I’ll answer. Don’t speak to my mum. Explain later.
N x
Naomi pulled the sunglasses over her eyes, got out of the car and looked around. It was still and peaceful. She rushed over to the flat entrance and pressed the four-digit number on the security pad beside the door and let herself in. Head down, heart pounding, she took the stairs and arrived at a navy front door with two numbers, 17 in dull brass. There was no letter box.
‘Crap.’ Why hadn’t she remembered the letter boxes were in the hall downstairs?
She glanced over her shoulder,
short of breath, wanting to leave so badly, her limbs shook. She was sure it was pointless, but she knocked on the door with small raps, trying to make as little sound as she could. No response. She tried to shove the note beneath the door and couldn’t find a gap. Her hands were trembling.
She rolled the paper into a thin scroll and looked for somewhere to deposit it. She heard faint footsteps on the stairs behind her. Naomi took hold of the brass door knocker and coiled the scroll around it. It would have to do. Slow methodical shuffles were drawing closer, echoing around the stairwell.
Unwilling to take the stairs now, she lunged for the button to call the lift and stood close to the lift door, glasses on, scarf wound around her head. It was dark behind the lenses. The sleepy lift was being roused from a nearby place. Answering the call, it clunked reluctantly into action. It was impossible to decipher an ascent from a descent, but it was coming from somewhere.
Seconds dragged. Naomi was still. The lift jolted to a stop. The doors stayed stubbornly closed. Stillness for a moment.
‘Come on, come on.’
She felt warm air against her neck on the right side as the doors began to part.
She sharply drew breath just as a voice said directly into her right ear, ‘Hey.’
She jumped. The doors were open now. A box barely big enough for two invited her in. She hesitated, trapped, then turned to face the person behind her.
<><><>
‘Do you want to tell me what on earth’s going on?’ Camilla had burst into Annabel’s room and was standing, hands on hips, looking at Annabel who was lying on her bed, speaking and smiling into her mobile phone.
‘Mum, do you mind? I’m trying to have a private conversation.’
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