No Longer Safe

by A J Waines

  He was affectionate and sweet from the start, asking about my panic attacks, checking I was warm enough. I sat at the table and he brought through a steaming casserole dish.

  I felt myself saying all the right things, but it was like I was sitting behind a glass partition, separated from him. A bewildered look crossed his eyes from time to time and I felt I had to apologise for my reticence, blaming it on a bad night’s sleep and recurring headaches.

  ‘You must get yourself checked out as soon as you can,’ he said. He studied my troubled face. ‘The pains are really bothering you, aren’t they? I can run you to the nearest hospital if you like – it’s no trouble.’

  ‘That’s very kind, thank you. I’ll wait until I get back.’

  ‘Head injuries can lead to strange behaviours, you know,’ he said, half-jokingly, passing me the salad bowl. I thought about the sleepwalking and chewed on my lip. I’d assumed the sleeping tablets had brought it on, but maybe it was more complicated than that.

  I didn’t want to dwell on it now. If I added yet another concern to my ever-increasing heap I might end up being crushed by the weight of it. I took another forkful of casserole and made an appreciative sound.

  ‘This is delicious,’ I said. ‘You were obviously fibbing when you said you couldn’t cook.’

  ‘It’s true – I can’t. This is the one and only dish I can do presentably. Nothing else. If you’d asked for ravioli or ratatouille, I’d have been flummoxed.’

  It was hard to match up Stuart’s warmth and generosity with the fact that he must have lied about working at the University. A layer of trust between us had been shattered, no matter how much I wanted to push it to one side. Our relationship had been deepening and I’d finally got what I’d been waiting for; an intimacy that took us beyond ‘friends’ – but now I felt the need to backtrack.

  Was he expecting me to stay tonight? Isn’t that what I had originally wanted before discovering he was some sort of fraud? My quandary did nothing to help the evening along and I became more jittery as time passed.

  Once the meal was over, we moved to the sofa and sipped wine, staring into the flames of the fire. He put his arm around me. I wished I hadn’t asked Nina to look him up. How different this evening would have been!

  ‘Penny for your thoughts,’ said Stuart, his voice disconcertingly loud.

  I was going to bluff and claim I was miles away simply enjoying the fire, but that was the old me – the new me had to pluck up the courage to say something.

  ‘Are you really a lecturer at Edinburgh University?’ I asked.

  He stiffened. ‘You don’t believe me?’

  ‘Only, someone in one of the other cottages works there and…well, we looked you up on the computer.’ I looked at the floor, my stomach shrinking.

  ‘And I’m not in the system?’ he said, a frown folding into his forehead. He took his arm away, shifting to the front of the sofa. ‘I can assure you I’m telling you the truth.’

  ‘It threw me, that’s all. What with all your questions before about Karen and the terrible business about the boy…’

  He shot to his feet. ‘You think I’m involved?’

  I took too long to answer. In that tiny gap, everything was spoilt.

  ‘You think I had something to do with that little boy’s abduction?’ he repeated.

  He didn’t wait for me to answer, moving out into the hall – for my coat, I presumed. Was Stuart somehow involved in this – with Charlie? He had no alibi for the time the boy was taken. Had he been playing me along to see how much I knew?

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I don’t know what to think. So many weird and awful things have been happening, I don’t know who to trust.’

  He came back with his own jacket, not mine. He pulled out his wallet and handed me a credit card.

  ‘This is me – Stuart Wishart,’ he said. He slipped out a card for Edinburgh central library, again with his name on it. ‘Look. And here’s my driving licence,’ he said, ‘with my address in Edinburgh on it. I’m afraid I don’t have any ID from the University on me – but I can give you a couple of names of history tutors I work with: Gerry Holding – he teaches post-grads…let me see…Liz Weatherby, she covers the Tudors…’

  ‘Okay…’

  He laughed and flopped down into the sofa. ‘It still doesn’t prove to you I’m not a child-snatcher, does it?’ I wasn’t sure if he was expecting a response.

  He rubbed his jaw and there was a prickly silence. ‘I think, perhaps, we should call it a day, don’t you?’

  He left the room and this time he did bring back my coat.

  ‘Stuart?’ I blurted out. ‘Look – it’s not that I’m accusing you of anything.’ I took the coat, but let it fall over the arm of the sofa. ‘I’m confused – all those questions about whether Karen was in LA or not – I can’t see why it would matter to you.’

  ‘Is that what you’re worried about?’

  I dropped my eyes to the carpet. ‘You pop up out of the blue – my knight in shining armour, so lovely and attentive – and I suppose it feels a bit too good to be true – like there must be another reason why you’re coming round to the cottage all the time.’

  He looked genuinely hurt. ‘How I feel…about you…is totally real. Honestly. I really love your company – you’re warm, gracious, sincere.’ He ignored the hand I put out trying to stop him. ‘It’s true.’

  He withdrew his hands into his hips, shaking his head. ‘But, okay. There is something. Something I haven’t told you.’ He reached for my arm and pulled me back to the sofa. ‘I’ve told you part of it already.’ He had? Which bit?

  His expression looked pained. ‘I told you my brother had been injured during an armed robbery…’

  ‘Yes – but, what’s that got to do with this?’

  ‘It’s a long story. Last year my brother, Tony, and his wife split up – and their grown-up son disappeared.’

  ‘I still don’t—’

  He lifted his hand to shush me. ‘The lad always had a turbulent relationship with his mother and when they broke up – it hit him hard. Tony was going downhill by then and I don’t think his son could cope with any more emotional distress. He walked out one night in March, this year. There’s been no word from him since.

  ‘He seemed to slip off the edge of the earth – he closed down his bank account, stopped using his phone… My brother wants nothing more than to have him back, but he was in no fit state to go looking for him. So – for the last few months, between teaching commitments, I’ve been trying to find him.’

  My eyes were glued to his face, wondering where all this was going.

  He went on, ‘I was hopeless on my own – I was certain my nephew had changed his name – so I hired a private detective.’ He broke into a smile. ‘That’s why I laughed when you asked me if I was a detective – I’m such an amateur at this kind of thing.’

  ‘Go on…’

  ‘Anyway, two weeks ago he contacted me to say he’d tracked down a young man he thought was Charles.’

  ‘Charles?’ I sat upright, gripping the arm of the sofa.

  ‘Yeah. His real name is Charles Wishart, but apparently, he changed his surname to Smith.’ He rolled his eyes.

  A faint buzzing sound started inside my head.

  ‘Jim followed his trail to Glasgow and managed to find out – from chatting to some of Charlie’s tipsy mates in the pub – that he was heading this way. It was the best lead we’d had, so I booked a cottage, thinking I could stay in the area and look for him. It was a bit of a long shot, but I had to try.’ His eyes met mine. ‘I’m not here for birdwatching – I think you saw through that – sorry.’

  The buzzing was getting louder. ‘Did you…f-find him?’ I stammered, ‘This…Charles?’

  ‘I thought I spotted him leaving The Cart and Horses the night before you arrived, but when I got outside, I lost him.

  ‘Then the police were talking about the little boy being snatched and they had a descripti
on of the man seen running across the field that day. I had to tell them I thought it sounded like Charlie. He’d been wearing a brown leather bomber jacket when I saw him in the pub.

  ‘He’d never been in trouble with the police before, but Jim told me the guys in the pub said he was planning on doing some kind of “job” and then taking off to Europe.’

  The sound inside my head had escalated to a thunderous drilling.

  ‘It’s not looking good for him,’ he added.

  No, it’s not.

  The words were all there – bursting to come out. It’s not looking good for him at all, because I found your nephew, Stuart – and he’s dead…

  A new image flashed into my mind. Stuart must have been within yards of Charlie’s body, festering by then in the byre, when he’d visited me at the cottage. You can stop looking, Stuart. I know exactly where Charlie is now. He’s in the lake. Karen and I threw him in there yesterday morning.

  Shame polluted every cell of my being. Stuart wasn’t the bad guy in all this – the person with something to hide. That was me.

  I couldn’t bear any more. I didn’t feel at all well. I ran for the door and bolted upstairs to the bathroom. The next moment, the entire meal that Stuart had prepared so beautifully was ejected into the toilet bowl. I sat on the floor, coughing and trying to breathe, as Stuart’s footsteps came closer up the stairs. ‘Alice? Alice are you okay? Alice?’

  He tapped on the door. I splashed water on my face and called out the only word I could think of, ‘Sorry…’

  I opened the door and fell into him. ‘Sorry…’ I said, again.

  ‘Are you alright?’

  I held on to him, unable to say anything. Right there, right then – this experience felt like the most dreadful thing in the whole world. But I couldn’t say anything. How could I?

  ‘I’ve poisoned you,’ he said, straightening up, biting his lip. ‘I told you I’m a terrible cook. I’m so sorry.’

  I held my stomach. ‘Maybe I’m allergic to something…’ I wiped a band of sweat from my forehead with my fingers, hating myself for letting him think this was his fault.

  ‘Let me get you home,’ he said urgently. ‘Will you be okay in the Land Rover?’

  I took hold of the doorframe with my free hand. For a fleeting moment, I thought I might be swallowed up in a panic attack, but it passed. ‘Yeah…I think so… thanks…’

  We went downstairs, slowly and deliberately, and he held my coat for me.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘You went to such a lot of trouble. I really appreciate it.’

  We barely said a word on the way back to the cottage. When he pulled up, I unfastened the seatbelt and turned to get straight out so there was no awkward moment over whether or not we should kiss. I felt desperately ashamed of myself.

  He took me right to the door, more or less holding me up.

  ‘Thanks for…’

  ‘You get yourself better and we’ll talk some more. I haven’t told you the whole story.’

  I stumbled going up the steps and he caught me. ‘There’s more?’

  ‘Not now,’ he said. ‘I’m not sure of my facts yet. I don’t want to make a mistake. I’ve got some calls to make. We’ll speak tomorrow, okay?’ He stroked my arm. ‘But, be careful,’ he said, his voice hushed. ‘Especially where Karen is concerned.’

  It was unnervingly quiet when I got inside. The place felt deserted and for a moment I wondered if they’d all left. As quietly as I could, I lifted the latch to the sitting room and peered around the door. There was no light on, just the flickering of candles. Two had already dripped solid trails of wax down the Welsh dresser, two more were creating a conspicuous fire hazard standing in saucers on the carpet. A strong waft of pot hit me.

  The three of them were lying on the rug in front of the fire like corpses. They were all stoned. Karen made an attempt to raise her head, but flopped down again.

  ‘It’s-you,’ she said, as one word. It sounded like a sneeze.

  Mark rolled onto his back. ‘She’s back,’ he groaned. Jodie put out an arm to thump him, but missed.

  I could hear Mel faintly whining through the baby monitor, but Karen had her hands over her ears, blocking out the noise. In a matter of days, she had sunk from being attentive and devoted to careless and irresponsible. What was she playing at?

  Without a word, I left them to it and crept into Karen’s room. Mel was quiet now as I stood over the cot to take a look at her. Her little belly was rising and falling gently and evenly under the blanket, her arms spread out above her head. The woolly hat had slightly dragged down over one eye, but I didn’t dare touch it in case I woke her.

  I slipped out before I could get caught; I knew there’d be hell to pay if I was found intruding.

  Chapter 37

  I woke the next morning and, for the briefest nano-second, I thought I was back in my room at home in Wandsworth. Then I felt the rough tufts of the candlewick bedspread under my fingers and it all came back.

  With a shudder of despondency, I missed Mum and Dad’s bland, run-of-the-mill company, the delicate wisteria pattern of the wallpaper, the home-embroidered pillowcases. Everything there suddenly seemed cosy. In comparison, everything here felt coarse and threatening. I never thought I’d ever feel that way about our antiquated little home, but I ached to be back there.

  I looked at the bottle of sleeping tablets beside me. I’d had to take another one last night after Stuart’s shocking disclosure. I’d already taken more than I’d wanted to this holiday. I knew I mustn’t have any more.

  As I got dressed, Stuart’s revelation about his connection to Charlie rattled around inside my head like a silver ball inside a pinball machine. He could hardly have had a more innocent and honourable explanation for his mysterious behaviour. Now, I needed to know the rest of the story and what part Karen had to play in it.

  I glanced down out of the window as I pulled up my jeans, my entire body shivering in great spasms. The thing about cold is it makes you crave cosiness – fires, hot drinks, the warmth of others. Yet, everything in the house had an extra layer of hostility – not just because of the chilly living space, but the lack of genuine connection between us. We were all separate – like strangers – without any real allegiance to each other. It made the temperature drop even further.

  Karen was in the kitchen, sitting alone at the table, holding her head up with difficulty. Her chin was squashed into her palm and her eyes were barely open. I whispered a polite, ‘Good morning.’

  She grunted.

  ‘Can I get you anything?’ I asked, waving the kettle in the air.

  ‘I’m going for a bath,’ she said, heaving herself to her feet. ‘Can you keep an eye on Mel? She’s out of her cot in my room.’ She grimaced. ‘But leave the curtains closed, okay? Everything’s too bright…’

  ‘Yeah. Sure.’ I hurriedly made a coffee and took it upstairs with me. Karen crossed in front of me, clutching a towel, walking towards the bathroom like a ghost. I remembered from our college days that she didn’t handle the aftermath of cannabis too well.

  I switched on the dim lamp beside Karen’s bed and rooted around in the toy box. Mel was sitting on the floor in the shadows playing with a paper bag.

  ‘Now – let’s see what we’ve got here,’ I said. ‘Do we want to play with bricks or rings?’

  ‘Ger-ger,’ she spluttered, flapping her arms.

  ‘Come and choose,’ I said.

  She crawled over to the box and I held her steady as she looked inside. She picked up a plastic dinosaur and flung it away, pulled out a fluffy dog and let it fall, then chose a small ball that tinkled as it moved.

  ‘We’ve got a bit more energy this morning, haven’t we?’ I said. ‘That’s nice.’ I was really thinking, that’s normal – certainly much more what you’d expect from a nine-month-old baby. It occurred to me that maybe Karen had been too high last night to remember to give Mel a sedative.

  Mel sat down on the carpet in her all-in-one
babygrow and put the ball in her mouth.

  ‘No, let’s not eat it – let’s play with it.’ I sat a couple of feet away from her and rolled the ball to her legs. She felt for it and threw it back. ‘Wow – that’s it – good girl.’ She jiggled around on her backside, chuckling.

  Repetition was the key to keeping her interested – so we went back and forth, back and forth as she squealed with delight. Then she sent it back slightly to one side and it rolled all the way under the chest of drawers.

  I had to lie flat on my stomach to find it. I groped into the darkness, trying not to think of the legacy of dead insects that had been accumulating under there over the years. My fingers came across something, but it wasn’t the ball.

  It crackled as I touched it and felt like a crumpled plastic bag. I pulled it out and glanced behind me at the closed door; I didn’t want to find Karen standing over me wondering what I was doing. I opened it; inside was a rolled-up pair of stained rubber gloves.

  I heard the click of the bathroom door opening.

  I squashed the gloves into the plastic bag and rammed it back under the chest of drawers. I had just picked up the ball again when Karen walked into the room.

  ‘Why the guilty look?’ she asked, rubbing her hair with the towel. I wished she couldn’t read me so well.

  ‘Just, she’s crying again – and I’m meant to be entertaining her.’

  Karen knelt down and picked up the ball. ‘Don’t worry about it. She’s a bit out of sorts – aren’t you?’ She waved the ball at Mel, then ran it across the floor to her. Mel repeated the last trick she’d learnt and threw it under the chest of drawers.

  ‘Oops – it’s gone the wrong way,’ I said, letting Karen reach for it. Karen made a humph sound I couldn’t interpret.

  ‘Listen, I don’t want to interfere,’ I said apologetically, ‘but she’s been really sleepy lately.’

  ‘Yeah – she’s still on medication – will be for a while. The tablets keep her calm, but it means she’s drowsy. I can’t do much about it.’