The Family Lie

by Jake Cross

  Nick turned to go, still thinking about the hour Bennet had agreed to give them. Anna had been promised police bail, which would mean freedom later today, but what if that went wrong? Their family might be whole for only an hour, and then exploded for ever.

  Jane was making tea in the kitchen and Middleton was at the top of the stairs, outside the bathroom, beyond which Nick could hear the shower and Josie and Anna talking. Anna had been eager to get Josie washed, and not just because she’d gone overnight without bathing. She wanted all trace of the kidnappers removed, like their smell, their skin cells, their sweat. Their whole aura.

  Middleton put out his hand. Nick took it and they shook. But then the younger man moved past and grabbed Josie’s tracksuit from the floor. He entered another bathroom just down the hall, grabbed a tealight candle and a box of matches from the windowsill, and tossed the tracksuit into the bath.

  It was aflame when Middleton appeared in the doorway. He said nothing and both men watched the outfit burn, sending black smoke up to stain the ceiling. Nick finally turned the shower on it.

  ‘Sorry if I ruined the bath. And for leaving your Jaguar in London.’

  Middleton put his hand on Nick’s shoulder. ‘I’ll get Anna the best solicitor in this country, Nick. So long ago… she shouldn’t have to go to prison. If that evidence shows that bastard Marc Eastman was at fault for Anna not watching the road, then – Nick, where are you going?’

  But Nick ignored him and a second later his feet were thumping down the stairs.

  ‘I want to see the video Anna gave you.’

  Bennet’s heart was still beating from the shock of Nick jumping into the car. Focussed on his phone, he hadn’t spotted the approach. ‘The disk? It’s evidence, Nick. Sealed. And it’s not a good idea to watch it.’

  ‘This is the DCI’s car, and I watched her put it in the boot. So open the bag. I want to see what this Eastman guy is trying to hide.’

  ‘Look, Nick, you should know that none of the people we’ve arrested have mentioned Eastman. They’re saying they don’t know anything about his involvement. It’s his wife’s family and she might have set this up behind his back to protect him. He might know nothing of the kidnap.’

  ‘No way, Bennet. He touched my wife in that car that night. It was partly his fault the hit-and-run happened. He went running to his wife afterwards and they’re neck deep in this together. He’s terrified of that dashcam because the audio will burn him. And that means it can help my wife. I want to see it. It’s a disk and there’s a laptop in this car. Nobody will know.’

  Bennet, Mr Red Tape, didn’t look sold and Nick felt anger rising. But he chose another tact. He leaned forward, and he touched the detective’s arm, and he begged.

  While Anna dried Josie off in the pink bedroom Middleton had allowed his granddaughter to design, they talked about things she wanted to get for Josie, things they were going to do together, and what kind of bouncy castle she wanted, because her grandfather had promised to buy her the biggest he could find. But Josie delighted in telling Mum that she wanted pints and pints of milk. Unaware of Josie’s allergy, the kidnappers had given her milk, just as Nick had feared, but there had been no illness and Josie was overjoyed to find that she was ‘normal’ now. The joy on her little lady’s face put a mixed bag of emotion in Anna, because this was a revelation that wouldn’t have come about had Josie not been kidnapped. A village of good in a world of bad.

  A couple of times, Josie seemed about to broach the subject of something one of her captors had said or done and Anna changed the subject. She now knew the girls who’d taken Josie had been sweet, no worse than babysitters, but still she had no desire to let her daughter talk about them as if they were good people. Because they were not. She hoped they would rot in a cell for years.

  And that brought her around to what she really wanted to talk about. She’d cycled through ways of starting this conversation and had settled on:

  ‘You know how you have your Calm Corner?’

  She did. At school, the Calm Corner was where a naughty child got sent in order to wind down.

  ‘Well, Mummy did something naughty, and she has to go to the Calm Corner.’

  ‘At school?’

  ‘No, that’s for children. This Calm Corner is for adults. It’s a place where all the naughty adults get sent. Mummy will have to go there soon.’

  ‘Today?’

  ‘Not today.’ She’d already been told she’d probably get police bail, so would have a number of weeks of freedom. But there would be a custodial sentence for sure, despite any praising testimony in court from DCI Lucy Miller.

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I did something a long time ago and I didn’t admit to it. And some people have been hurting for a long time because of it. I can’t tell you what it is, but you’ll learn about it as you get older.’

  ‘We have to go on for ten minutes. Is it ten minutes?’

  She wiped her wet eyes, in part to delay having to tell Josie that, no, it wasn’t going to be ten minutes. That she wasn’t going to see her mother for a long time, except for when she visited her at the adult Calm Corner.

  But she didn’t get chance. The pink door with its unicorn poster burst open. Nick stood there with wide eyes and ragged breath. Wordlessly, he grabbed her arm and dragged her out of the room.

  ‘Surprise for your mother, Josie, back in a mo.’

  ‘Nick? What’s going on? Let me go.’ A wild thought appeared: someone higher up than Miller had insisted that she had to be locked up right now. But she cut that idea down immediately because there was no way Nick would be part of that.

  But he didn’t let her go. He marched her into the neighbouring room, where Jane had exercise equipment. When he slammed the door, she noticed he had a laptop under his arm.

  ‘Nick, what is this? We’ve left Josie alone. Tell me.’

  His heart went out to her. Even here, with Josie in her own bedroom, surrounded by family, Anna was fearful to be away from her daughter. He opened the laptop, put it on the floor, and forced her gently to her knees. He knelt beside her. That was when the penny dropped, and her eyes widened.

  ‘No, what are you doing? I don’t want to watch it. No.’

  ‘I know it’ll be hard, but you have to.’

  ‘No, no, no. Why are you doing this?’

  She tried to stand, but he dragged her back down, and put his arm around her, locking her in place. It was a somewhat rough grip, but the lips that touched her cheek were so soft.

  ‘To give you peace.’

  Anna and Marc stand before the car, washed in its headlights like actors lit up on a stage. Her head is bowed, face in her hands. The head shakes. Marc steps out of frame. The sound of the rain materialises as the door is opened, and then the picture jerks slightly as Marc enters the vehicle.

  The frame moves backwards, stops, moves forward at a turn, slipping past Anna. It curves in the black road as the car makes a turn and heads back the way it came. Nothing to see but black road and hard rain striking the windscreen and white lines passing beneath the vehicle, like laser fire from a craft in deep space. Nothing to hear but the engine and low murmurs of grief from Marc.

  And then, in the road, they appear. Two shapes, unmoving, lying together in the centre of the road, smashed by rain.

  ‘Oh Jesus no,’ Marc hisses.

  The headlights light them up and the car stops just a few metres away. Not a wandering cow at all, then. A bearded guy and a girl, both decked out in soggy denim and wearing rucksacks. The male sits in the road and the girl lies across his lap, her head in his hands. There’s blood on her face and on his hands and leaking from somewhere under his bushy beard. Both turn their eyes towards the car. Not dead at all, then.

  ‘Thank God, yes,’ Marc wheezes.

  The door opens and the sound of the pelting rain is back. Marc appears in the headlights, blocking one. He moves towards the two injured people, but the male swipes a hand.

  ‘
Get the hell away. Call an ambulance.’

  He clearly knows this isn’t a driver stopping to help.

  ‘I’m sorry. We didn’t see you.’

  The male is jabbing a finger.

  ‘I know you, I bloody know you. You’re that politician. You think you’re above the law. Get an ambulance. You’re going down for this, you damn lunatic. Look at her. She’s hurt. You’re going down for this. Burn in Hell. Now get an ambulance.’

  As he’s screaming, Marc backs away. The picture wobbles as he gets in the car, and the sound of the rain and the shouting ceases as the door shuts.

  The injured couple slip to one side as the car pulls forward and curves past them. It drives on, and then it slows. Throughout, Marc is moaning, cursing. Things like can’t blame me and just an accident and can’t do this to me. The car stops. There’s an animal roar from the politician.

  The car moves on, but it turns in the road. Heading back. Left side, almost touching the edge so that he can drive past the causalities.

  ‘Can’t do this to me,’ Marc moans. The right-hand headlight illuminates them.

  ‘Just a stupid accident.’

  Closer now. The male tries to turn his head to see.

  ‘Ruin me, you bastards,’ Marc screams. Even over the engine, there’s the clear sound of sobbing.

  Just metres away now and the couple are about to whizz by on the right, out of the spotlight washing over them, out of frame, out of sight.

  ‘You’re not going to do this to me, to this country,’ Marc screams.

  Both headlights suddenly spear the injured hikers as the Punto veers slightly to the right. The hikers jump immediately into centre frame. And over the sobbing there’s a roar from the engine as he stamps the accelerator.

  Epilogue

  At about the time Anna, many miles away, was staring through iron bars and watching Nick walk away from her, Josie leaned forward to kiss a gravestone as Middleton got to his feet and brushed off his knees.

  ‘Times flies,’ Josie said.

  ‘And it’ll fly until next week,’ her grandfather said. He held out his hand and she took it.

  ‘One more thing for Grandy,’ she said, pulling her hand free. From a pocket she extracted a little item, which she laid in the urn of fresh flowers. Middleton saw that it was an ‘Employee of the Week’ badge.

  ‘Did your dad give you that?’

  ‘Yes. He said you gived it him for being brill at his new job. And he gived it me for being brill. So I want to give it Grandy for being brill.’

  He nodded. ‘Daddy sure is brilliant. And I’ll get you a badge for Mummy, because she’s brilliant, too.’

  She cast her eyes downwards. ‘I wish Mummy was here.’

  ‘I know. But this is normally our Sunday together, isn’t it? Our Sunday with Grandma. And Mummy told you she had to go away. You remember?’

  Josie nodded. ‘Because of the bad thing she done. She has to stone.’

  He ruffled her hair, which shone like battery wire in the sun. ‘Atone, darling. She has to atone. Like sitting in your Calm Corner. But she said she’d phone you this afternoon, didn’t she? Come on, it’s time to go and get your dinner. Your auntie’s doing her special roasties again. How can we miss those?’

  They turned from the grave and, hand in hand, headed along the path. Ahead, two big men waited by a car. Josie said, ‘Them men, Grandpo. They protect us, don’t they? Because there might be people who don’t like what Mummy done?’

  ‘They’re there so people don’t come and try to ask us questions, sugar. Some people in this world aren’t nice.’

  ‘Like those people who taked me away.’

  He stroked her hair, but didn’t answer. But he was glad of her smile and what it said about the heart of the mind that put it on her face.

  ‘But we don’t need them big men because I have super-luck and I’ll give you and Mummy and Daddy and Auntie Janie all a luck-wish each. Did I show you this what Mummy gived to me?’

  ‘You did, you did,’ Middleton said as his little granddaughter lifted the new pendant on her special necklace and shook it at him. ‘But you don’t need to do anything for us, sweetie. We already got all our wishes granted.’

  * * *

  Many miles south, Anna called Nick’s name through the iron bars, her heart full of dread. He stopped and turned. But he didn’t ask what was wrong, as she expected. She was ready to tell him she was scared, that she couldn’t do this. But instead of asking, he held out his hand.

  So, she slipped alongside the iron fence, through the open gate. He waited until she took his hand and then together they walked the flagstone path, still wet from rain an hour earlier. He stayed by her side until they reached their destination, at which point he stopped and told her she had to do this alone. He had to forcibly peel her hand out of his and give her a gentle push to get her moving. The tears were already dripping off her chin.

  The grave was marked only by a wrought iron ornate cross no higher than her knees and a stone slab flush with the mown grass. The slab bore debossed lettering filled with rainwater, so the inscribed words seemed to shimmer:

  Jon Adams

  24/12/87 – 5/9/2011

  Our Treasured Son

  Taken on a Journey, Away for Ever, but Always Here.

  ‘Taken on a journey,’ she moaned.

  Nick approached and knelt by her on the wet grass. He looked at the marker, read the words, and knew Anna was wondering what Jon Adams’s parents had actually meant. Death takes us on a journey, but Jon Adams was on a journey when he was taken. Nick squeezed her hand. In her other hand was a rose she’d brought. One of four.

  ‘How can they forgive this?’ she whispered.

  ‘But they did, Anna. That’s why we’re here.’

  She shook her head. ‘Trick,’ she said, barely audible. ‘Trick.’

  He understood. ‘It’s not a trick, Anna. The parents wouldn’t be doing this today. This boy’s dad wouldn’t have stood up in that court and said those things. You didn’t kill him—’

  ‘But I—’

  ‘And before you say you covered it up, don’t. You were terrified and confused. Look up, Anna, and you’ll see clouds, not the ceiling of a prison cell. Look at the clouds and you’ll see that you were forgiven. It can’t stop what you feel inside, but that also comes with time.’

  She didn’t answer, instead choosing to scrape rainwater from the lettering on the grave marker. Then she laid the rose. One of four.

  He rubbed her back, full of pity. It was early into a long, hard day. He told her they’d be back with Josie by nightfall, because that was what he was using to get through this. And it was a thousand times harder for Anna.

  ‘Poor Josie,’ Anna said.

  He knew exactly what she meant. They had been living in Anna’s father’s house since the story broke, to avoid negative attention, but they hadn’t wanted to upset Josie’s routines, so she still attended the same school. Most of the kids there didn’t really have a clue what was going on, but they knew Josie’s family was being talked about and she had suffered some bullying. They had had to talk to her about why, but it didn’t really penetrate deep and her young age meant she had no idea that her mother’s past actions would cast a shadow over the rest of her life.

  A constant source of terrible tension for Anna, but Nick focussed only on the present. As long as Josie continued to laugh and enjoy childhood, they could deal with the future as it unfolded. Rightly so, most of the media and public attention was on Marc Eastman and his wife and her clan, and the story would erode to nothing over the years, leaving just the storms inside the heads of a select few. A big starting point of that erosion had been the words of Jon Adams’s father in the courtroom at Anna’s sentencing hearing as he read from a prepared statement.

  ‘I’m sorry…’ Anna began, reading aloud from her own prepared ‘statement’. As he’d promised, Nick backed away so Anna could do this part alone. He watched her, but he imagined Josie in her plac
e, adult and knowing everything, and compelled to pay a lifelong debt passed from mother to daughter like a hereditary disease. And when it was done, they clasped hands and headed out of the cemetery, and into stage two of this long, hard day, where Anna would plant a second rose. One of four.

  But the remaining two weren’t for the dead.

  ‘In the years since our beloved son was snatched away, I did the rainbow of emotions. Initially I occupied one end, praying that I could get my hands on the person who killed Jon and Joanne. I spent long nights imagining tortures, I don’t mind admitting that to the court. But the passage of days, many, many days, brought a growing calm. I accepted Jon was gone, and then I started to move on. By the time I heard that the police had made arrests, I bore no ill will, just a desire for justice and closure. After the upcoming trials of those involved, primarily the former Secretary of State for Education, Marc Eastman, for murder, and his wife Iliana, for obstruction of justice, this story can close. Of course, those defendants have separate trials for kidnapping.

  ‘But that is for another day. Today we are to sentence Anna Carter for her role, and Your Honour has allowed me to speak with a chance to influence the sentence he proposes. She has been charged with obstruction of justice, concealment of a crime, leaving the scene of an accident. But not murder. She did not murder my son or his girlfriend Joanne. Truly, I do not now concern myself with her actions in delaying justice for eight years. She did not kill my son and I bear her no ill will. She made this judicial process easier by admitting guilt, she has been defended by a number of police officers in South Yorkshire, she has given heartfelt apologies, and the country has seen video evidence and heard testimony proving that she suffered, too, in a terrible connected crime of the kidnapping of her young daughter. She was tricked and cajoled by the man who did kill my son, and eight years later dragged by that same man and his wife into a second nightmare. But she did obstruct justice and she has been found guilty of that. But what should the next step be?