by Emily Elgar
Hello Grace,
You won’t remember me but my name is Tony and I was there when your brother died. I knew he was in trouble in the water, so did my brother. I wanted to help but I couldn’t. I’ve felt guilty ever since. I want you to know that I still think about him and I’m sorry. I met your dad a few months ago, he told me you were sick and that I should help you. He wasn’t in a good way, I’m sorry about that too. I don’t know what I can do really but I want to make things right so here I am. I can’t make up for my past, for letting your brother down, but maybe I can do something for you. Anything you need, just let me know. I’d like to help if I can.
Cheers,
Tony
His message was brief but powerful. It changed me. I admit I was angry at first. If this Tony and his brother had helped Danny, then he might have been saved and all our lives could have been so different. But what’s the point in being angry? It won’t change anything. Instead I focused on the fact that Tony had spoken to my dad, that he wanted to help me. I felt a sort of blooming inside. Before I deleted his message I replied, asking him to set up a profile on the Wishmakers forum. I told him to use the name GoodSam because he was my Good Samaritan. I told him to find ForeverGrace.
GoodSam and ForeverGrace started messaging each other every day. I just wanted a friend, a normal friend. He told me about music he liked, gigs he was going to, he even said he’d take me to one. He didn’t understand when I said I couldn’t, that Mum would never let me. I didn’t mean to tell him what she was doing. The words just fell out of me and then I couldn’t get them back. After that we didn’t talk about music anymore. He said I was brave, thanked me for being honest with him, said that he wanted to be honest with me. He told me he’d had a bad life. That his mum died just a few months before Danny drowned, that a couple of years later his dad left him and his brother to fend for themselves. He said he only realized recently that the guilt of not helping Danny all those years ago still consumed him, made him angry, prone to violence. The twins were put into separate foster homes when they were teenagers and Tony fell in with a bad crowd. He told me he’d just left prison but said he was different now. He’d taken a course while he was in prison that made him realize how he could change his life. He wanted to be a better person, to make up for mistakes he’d made in the past. He was in Plymouth when he saw my dad, walking along a road. Tony tried to talk to him but Dad got upset, angry. But a few days later Dad contacted him and said the only way Tony could make up for not helping Danny was to help me. Tony said we weren’t so different, me and him, we’d both been trapped in lives we didn’t choose. He said he was my friend, that he was going to help. At first he said we should call the police, tell them what Mum was doing to me, but I said no. Even after everything I didn’t want to punish Mum. So Tony started making up plans for how I could get away. I thought we were playing, messing around, like I know friends do. But I know nothing about friendship and didn’t know anything about Tony, not really. He wasn’t joking. I said I wanted her to wake up one morning, come into my room, and find me gone. I told him I just wanted a chance at a new life. He said he understood. But it’s only now I know he didn’t, he didn’t understand at all.
At first, I just watched her. Counted how many pills she took from each bottle, how she ground them all up together in the pestle and mortar, how she mixed them with my food before sucking it all up into the plastic syringe and fixing it to the hole in my stomach. She let me count out my pills. Then, after a while, she let me grind. She was watching me grind my pills one evening when the doorbell rang. While Mum talked to Susie about what color she should dye her hair I hid three of the pills in my underwear and ground up some extra acetaminophen so Mum didn’t notice the difference when I showed her the powder. She kissed me, called me a good girl, before I leant back on the bed and lifted up my top.
It took months, but I hid more and more pills. I started going through withdrawal, my body shook, but I was hardened to the pain. Mum said she loved me even more. I stayed in bed, slept all day. But as the drugs left my system and I started to feel stronger, at night when I heard Mum snoring across the hall I’d practice my walking. It was painful at first, my bones felt dried out and brittle, my muscles weak and floppy like wet spaghetti. But slowly my bones and muscles hardened and as I got physically stronger it felt more and more possible. I started to believe I could get away. That I could live.
We decided we’d do it in the summer, June 3rd. We deleted our messages to each other. No one was ever supposed to get hurt, but it still felt safer that way. The plan went like this: I’d pump Mum full of the pills I’d been hiding and while she was sleeping we’d take the red box of donations. It was my money, after all. There must have been a few thousand pounds in the box—Tony said I had to give it to him for getting me away. He would take me somewhere safe to change my clothes, my appearance. Then, at first light, Tony would take me to a place called Rainstead where his twin brother, Robbie, would smuggle me to Holland in his truck. Tony said everyone wanted to get into the country, no one was interested in people trying to leave. He made it sound easy. After all, everyone was looking for a disabled teenager, not an able-bodied young woman. But I didn’t understand then what I see so clearly now. The golden rule—either I’d die or Mum would have to die. We couldn’t both survive the truth.
18
Jon
Cara still looks unwell, the skin under her eyes sags with purplish half-moons and she seems smaller somehow. She’s fully alert, though, sitting forward in the passenger seat next to me, and she’s not shaking anymore, which is definitely a good sign.
As we drive, I tell her everything. I tell her about how mad Simon seemed in our meeting, how he whispered in my ear. I tell her about meeting Dave, what he told me about the twins, and I tell her about Dr. Rossi, how Meg blackmailed her for years and how Meg was able to change Grace’s name and birthdate on her medical records. I explain we’re driving to a haulage company just outside Rainstead, which Robbie Craig registered as his place of work. She takes it all in, her eyes wide. I thought she’d be swearing, livid that I kept on digging when she asked me not to, but she seems beyond recriminations now. She just wants to find out the truth. I wait until I find a quiet lane to pull into before I stop the car to tell her what Meg was doing to Grace. I turn to Cara. She’s confused, but knows me well enough now to know I have something important to say.
“Have you ever heard of Munchausen by proxy?”
Cara shakes her head.
“I’d only heard of it at work a couple of times, but I did some reading last night. It’s a mental-health problem where a caregiver fabricates and induces illness. I don’t think Grace was ill, Cara. I think Meg was.”
As my words land, Cara’s face twists with confusion. She starts shaking her head. “I don’t . . . I don’t understand.”
“Meg stole, bought, or got drugs through blackmailing people. She forced the drugs on Grace, to give her the symptoms for epilepsy, muscular dystrophy, heart problems—all of it. Her illnesses were fabricated by Meg. That’s why Grace could run away in the graveyard. Her legs always worked, they were just forced not to.”
“Why, why would she do that?” Cara’s voice is a whisper. Her eyes flit about my face, desperate for an answer, an answer that will make everything I just said less horrifying. But I can’t give her one.
“Cara, maybe we should talk about—”
“Just tell me! Why did she do it?” Cara’s almost shouting. She won’t be fobbed off, she needs answers.
“Partly money maybe—think about all the fundraisers and support they received—but I think the real reason was deeper. Like everyone, I think Meg just wanted to be loved. She wanted people’s attention, their admiration, their respect. Maybe she thought she deserved it after Danny died. Maybe she was so delusional, her illness so entrenched, that she even believed Grace really was sick. I don’t know yet.”
I’ve said enough. I don’t mention how this revelation total
ly reframes Meg’s murder because, next to me, Cara has gone very still. She’s staring at something only she can see, her face full of a private horror and deep sadness, a place only for her and Grace. She opens the car door.
“Cara, please don’t—”
“I just need a minute on my own.”
I nod. I understand some things shouldn’t be shared. She disappears behind the car and in the rearview mirror I watch as she walks into a field and, hidden behind a hedgerow, drops to her knees on the sun-hardened earth. She covers her head with her hands and she starts to shake with sorrow and rage before I look away.
She comes back to the car a few minutes later, her face puffed and her eyes red and raw, but her expression is hard, set. I ask if she’s all right and she just nods and says, “I’m fine.” We drive the rest of the way in silence, the unsettled kind of silence that seems to hum with thoughts. Neither of us knows how this is going to play out, neither of us even wants to guess.
As we near Rainstead, Cara starts to move around in her seat.
“You all right?” I ask again, turning my head to look at her. She nods, looks at me for a moment, and I know that, for now at least, the shock has passed and she’s as determined as me to find out how this will end.
The headquarters for JPH Haulage and Sons is down a track that opens onto a muddy space about the size of a football pitch. There are a few truck cabs parked at the far end. The office is a green modular building on stilts, it’s warm looking against a large wall built out of cinder blocks. I notice there’s razor wire strung across the top. Cara reaches to open her door.
“No, Cara, you’re staying in the car.”
“Don’t be like that,” she says but then I take her wrist, probably firmer than I need to.
“We had an agreement that you’d do as I say. Don’t make me regret bringing you with me.” I’m using the same warning tone I use for Jakey when I need him to really listen to me. She looks at me. I know I sound patronizing, but at least she recognizes I’m serious. She nods, I let go of her wrist, and she shuts the door.
“Keep the doors locked and the engine running, OK?” She doesn’t argue. I feel her watching as I walk towards the office. I find myself worrying, of all things, that all this trauma will make Cara lose her spark, her courage. I push the thoughts from my mind and make myself focus on the sign that hangs inside the door in front of me: OUT OF HOURS PLEASE RING THE BELL FOR ASSISTANCE.
The bell feels sticky under my finger. There’s black paper stuck up in the glass panels of the door so whoever is outside can’t see what’s going on inside. I try the bell again and a sharp female voice calls from inside.
“Larry, that you?”
I take a deep breath, try to keep London out of my voice.
“No, I’m not Larry, I’m just here to ask after some work.”
The modular building quivers as heavy footsteps approach the door.
“Oh. Not from the council, are you?” She sounds Cornish born and bred.
“Not from the council, no.” I soften my vowels in a way I hope sounds authentic. A key rattles in the lock before the thin plastic door opens, followed by a puff of stale cigarette smoke. Her large body fills the doorway. She has thin, wispy hair and small eyes like raisins stuck in the thick dough of her face. She doesn’t try to hide what she’s doing as she looks me up and down. I suddenly feel lost, totally out of my depth. I struggle to remember why I’m here.
“What’s yer name?”
“Jon, my name’s Jon.”
“You wanting work, are you? Cos we’re not taking anyone new on, not now, so if yer here for work yer may as well leave right now.”
She bends her head and hacks a cough that sounds well rooted into the crook of her arm. There’ll be no charming her, I know. My only chance is to be upfront.
“I’m looking for someone, one of your drivers.”
“Oh yeah?” Her dark eyes move across my face.
“Robert Craig—he’s one of yours, isn’t he?”
“Might be,” she says. “What’s it to you?”
“He’s an old mate of mine. I used to know him and his brother when they lived in Taunton.”
“Oh. Well, see, that sounds like bollocks to me, Mr. Jon.” She laughs. It becomes more of a splutter before breaking into a thick, phlegmy cough when she sees my face. “I know that’s bollocks cos no one who actually knew Robbie would ever call ’im Robert.” She rolls the Rs in “Robert,” taking the piss.
I stand my ground even though I feel my face burn.
“Look, I’m just an old mate like I said. I used to know the two of them, Robbie and Tony, when they were small. I’m in town for a night and wanted to see if Robbie’s around for a pint, is all.”
The woman starts fishing around in one of the large pockets of her stretched hoodie. She finds what she’s looking for and pulls out a pouch of green tobacco. She starts rolling a cigarette with one hand, as though her fingers were designed for the work. It’s rolled, licked, and lit in a matter of seconds. One beady eye winces as it fills with smoke. Her lips move around the cigarette as she talks.
“As it happens, yer in luck. Robbie pissed me right off, canceling his trip to Holland at the eleventh hour last week. Said it was family bother, but we all know what that means. Only family he’s got left is that bloody brother of his. Look, I don’t give two shits whether yer a mate like you say or not, just make sure the little prick turns up tomorrow morning for his trip. Tell him from Mandy that if he don’t, then we don’t want ter see him here again. Hear?”
I nod.
She scowls, waits for a second before growling, “I said, hear?”
“Yes, yes I got it. So, do you have his address?”
She snorts at me, like having an address is the poshest thing she’s heard of in her life.
“I might be pissed off with ’im but I’m not that pissed off. I’m not going to give yer his fucking address or his number so don’t even bother asking.”
The paper from her cigarette sticks to her lips as she pulls it free. A curl of tobacco is left on her bottom lip.
“What I will tell yer is that it’s a tradition for blokes before a trip, especially a long haul, to go to the Bull in Rainstead the night before. They think it’s good luck to drink themselves even more stupid before they go.”
Rainstead is just a few miles down the road. I smile my thanks at her. She looks flatly back at me and says, “If yer here for trouble, mind, don’t you let onto him or anyone I sent yer or y’ll have a whole fleet of hard bastards on yer back. Hear?”
I nod and slowly start to back away. As I do, she looks over towards my car, sees Cara in the front seat, looks at me again with her suspicious eyes, and without warning slams the door, the whole modular building shaking as she stamps heavily back to wherever she came from.
If Cornwall were a family, then Rainstead would be the distant cousin no one ever likes to mention. It wasn’t always this way. I remember Ruth telling me that when she was a girl her mum would drive all the way to Rainstead to buy fish. It was a small fishing port back then, quaint and unchanged for generations before quotas took effect, suffocating business for independent fishing companies. The coastline had become a graveyard of small boats. Sometime in the late eighties, the council built a one-way system that coiled around the town, literally in the shape of a noose. It didn’t take long for the high street to go the same way as the fishing boats. Now, faded signs are the only clue that there used to be shops behind the boarded-up windows and doors. The only surviving places are a bookie’s, a pound shop, a Tesco’s, and two pubs. Cara shrinks in her seat as we pass the Bull, where Robbie and his mates will be drinking tonight. The second pub, the Lamb, is up on a hill on the road out of town, as though the building itself is desperately trying to find a way to leave Rainstead. I pull into the parking lot to turn around, go back the way we came in the hope we’ll find a B&B, when Cara nudges me and points to an old wooden frame that says ROOMS AVAILABLE hanging by the
front door. I don’t see any TripAdvisor stickers or hygiene scores stuck to the door.
“We’ll find somewhere else,” I say, pointing the car out of the parking lot, when Cara says, “Don’t be a stuck-up Londoner. Come on, it’s only for one night, it’ll be fine. You park, I’ll see if they have rooms free.”
I’m about to tell her it’s a Friday night in bloody Rainstead, of course they’ll have rooms free, but I bite my tongue. I should be glad Cara seems to be perking up a bit. I park and she comes back after a couple of minutes.
“Thirty quid each, shared bathroom, sound OK?”
I panic, try to think which of my credit cards has any money left on it.
“God, Jon, you look like you’re about to puke. I’m going to pay for my own room if that’s what’s freaking you out.” As she hauls her backpack out of the passenger footwell she says, “Oh yeah, and I told them you’re my uncle,” before she slams the door.
My room is small with thick, dusty carpets and a wobbly-looking single bed. The rooms are joined by a tiny bathroom. I have to turn sideways to walk through it into Cara’s room. She’s sitting on her bed, frowning at her phone. She drops it quickly into her bag when I knock on the half-open door. She sees my eyes follow the phone into her bag.
“Before you ask, no, I’m not messaging GoodSam. I just got a few messages from my mum, that’s all.”
“Everything OK?” I ask and Cara gives the sort of exaggerated nod I recognize from Jakey. It means Susan is probably not OK, far from it, but I remind myself Cara is an adult. I don’t have the time or energy to lecture her now. It’s coming up to 8:30 p.m. and I want to get to the Bull—I can’t risk missing Robbie.
“If it’s all right with you, I think I’m going to stay here,” Cara says.
“That’s no problem,” I say, nodding.