Part of me itched to join him, and I wondered whether it would help him start, to see someone else working with him. But in the end, I decided this was all about Aiden. He deserved to be left alone. So once I had set him up, I went into the kitchen to make a cup of tea. When I leaned my head around the door into the garage, Aiden was sat leaning over the canvass, moving his paintbrush in an arc. I smiled, and took a sip of my tea.
*
There were times I believed Aiden almost wanted to talk to me, and after he finished his painting was one of them. He walked up to the kitchen door and stood there in the space where the kitchen and garage connected.
“Have you finished?” I asked.
This time I waited. I sensed that he wanted to speak. He wanted to tell me that he was done. He was proud, I realised. Instead, all I got was the slightest of nods, almost imperceptible. That was enough to get my heart soaring. Progress, at last.
I followed him into the garage where he proudly displayed another terrifying piece of art, and I tried my best to not seem horrified by it. This time he’d painted in blues and greens. They’d been mixed together into a spiral, which narrowed to a dark point in the centre. It reminded me of the tunnels in my nightmares.
“It’s beautiful, sweetheart,” I said.
Later that afternoon, while Jake was still at the school—he’d taken time off for the first few days as we’d dealt with the issues with the reporters, but I could tell he was itching to go back so I let him—I took Aiden to see his dad and grandma, not just to get Aiden out of the house, but also to get away from Denise, who came to our house every day with a forced smile that made me itch.
In the living room of the B&B, Rob spread the newspapers across the table. Aiden was listening to Sonya read him The Hobbit.
“Look at what those scum have been saying.” Rob indicated the newspapers.
“I don’t really want to, Rob. I’ve been trying to keep all this away from Aiden, to be honest. I don’t think it’ll do him any good.” Bump kicked on my bladder and I shifted my weight, stroking the top of my stomach.
“I’m not going to show him, Em. What kind of a bloke do you think I am?”
“Okay, well, he’s only in the other room.”
Rob fixed me with his intense, brown eyes. “I’m aware. I just wanted to show you.”
I got it. Rob was a talker. When something bothered him he needed to talk it out. He needed to share the burden with another person. I was always the opposite. I kept things buried inside until they threatened to burst out of me. I tried not to think about the time I’d allowed everything to erupt out of me. It had only happened once in my life, and it hadn’t been a pretty sight.
“Look, there’s that photo of me. ‘Ex-officer Robert Hartley,’ they’re calling me. I’m not an ex-officer. They want to make it sound like I’ve lost my job. While you’re some sort of saint this time around. They all feel sorry for you.”
“Oh, I don’t care, Rob.”
“And look at this, they’ve even printed a copy of the thing Aiden drew in the hospital.”
I snatched the newspaper from his hand. “What? How did they get that?”
“Probably one of those nurses. I bet they sold it for hundreds. People’ll do anything to earn a quick buck, won’t they? God, I need a drink. They think he’s a nutter. They’re calling our son a nutter. And have you seen what they’re writing about Jake?”
Even though I was still staring at the full-page print of Aiden’s disturbing artwork from the hospital, I still noticed the slight change in Rob’s tone. It was quieter. Less agitated. It made me wonder if this was what he had wanted to show me all along.
“What are they writing about Jake?”
Rob licked his finger and flicked through the newspaper to find the right page. The first thing I saw was a photograph of Jake when he was younger, with an arm around an even younger girl’s shoulder.
“Who is that?” I whispered, trying my hardest to keep the tremulous note from my voice, but failing miserably.
“One of his students, apparently. They say he left his job in Bournemouth rather abruptly after the headteacher found out he was Facebook friends with several of the students.”
The blood drained from my face. I closed the newspaper, not wanting to look at that picture any longer. I felt lightheaded. Jake didn’t talk about his time in Bournemouth very often. In fact, he didn’t talk about his life outside of Bishoptown hardly at all. I knew he’d studied his PGCE in Bournemouth, and I knew he had worked at a school there, but that was about it. His family were from that part of the country too, but his parents had only visited us one Christmas, and I hadn’t thought much of it.
Though I had to admit, they’d seemed like odd people. They’d rolled up in their Land Rover dressed in the kind of attire that was more suited to a spot of pheasant shooting up at Wetherington House. But even though they were dressed in Wellington boots and Barbour jackets, each item of clothing was pristine, as if it were brand new. Even the Land Rover was gleaming.
Jake’s mother, Christine, had brought her own port to drink with the meal and not offered a drop to anyone else. She’d also pushed her turkey to the edge of her plate, and asked if there was any goose as an alternative. Jake’s father barely spoke all evening, except when he offered Jake a brandy in the lounge while the ‘ladies’ tidied away the plates. Christine had then asked whether I’d made the trifle for dessert or bought it from Tesco or ‘one of those places’, as if she didn’t even know what a supermarket was.
I’d known that Jake’s parents were rich, but I hadn’t expected them to be quite so snooty. Just like I’d known about Jake’s background in Bournemouth, but hadn’t known anything about why he had decided to move so far north. I’d always thought it was just that the opportunity arose, but it seemed odd that he’d moved quite so far away from home. Was he running from something?
What else didn’t I know about my husband?
“You didn’t know, did you?” Rob said. “He’s never mentioned any of this.”
“Of course I knew,” I snapped. “It’s all a load of rubbish.”
But Rob’s eyes narrowed. “What else has he lied to you about?”
I shook my head. “Nothing. He’s not a liar. Not like you.”
Rob’s cheeks flushed. “Don’t, Em, don’t bring that up. Not now.”
“I think it’s time to take Aiden home. You can stop by and visit him when you like.” I tucked the newspaper under my arm and waved through the door to the lounge for Aiden to leave.
“Are you sure, Em?” Rob moved towards the front door of the kitchen. We were in the private area of the B&B, behind reception.
“We’ve got to go.”
“Em, listen to me. Just hear me out. If you notice anything weird about him you have to say something. I know you’ll dismiss this as jealousy or whatever but it isn’t. I don’t trust that man, Emma. I never have.”
19
I stopped at the Sainsbury’s on the way back from Rob’s and bought every newspaper I could find, avoiding familiar faces as I hurried from aisle to checkout. But as I ducked down and hurried out of the shop, I couldn’t resist looking back to see if any of the people milling around were talking about me. I spotted two people I knew—Carol, a barmaid at the Queen’s Head, whispering to Barbara, who lived on the hill down from the school. There they were, whispering behind cupped hands, nodding in my direction.
I fumbled with my car keys, remembering the exact same thing happening after the flood. It was all the same: the desperate rushes away from the shops, almost dropping my car keys or my house keys while trying to keep away from the whispering masses, the pitying looks. That was why I’d ignored every phone call from my colleagues at work. I’d listened to all the voicemails. Their bunch of flowers was still in its cellophane, dumped into a vase by Jake. I hadn’t thought to arrange it.
Since the story had broken we’d received a multitude of cards and presents, but I couldn’t deal with any of th
em. Instead, I asked Denise to take care of it, which suited me since it gave her a job to do that kept her from under my feet. She was the one who opened the cards and placed the ones that wished us well on the mantelpiece, and the crazy ones filled with death threats and other nastiness in the recycling. She was the one who stood by the bins before the bin men arrived to stop the press going through our rubbish to find a new angle to their story. That much I was grateful for. It allowed me to ignore it as much as I could.
But that was how I coped. I blocked the outside world away. When the flood hit Bishoptown and I thought Aiden had drowned, I’d learned that I couldn’t trust anyone. I lost friends over it. I’d mention a tiny detail to someone and the next day it’d be in the newspapers. It was better that I didn’t talk to anyone except immediate family. There was no way of knowing who would go to the media and sell our secrets.
I pulled into the drive and let Aiden out of the car. His steps were lighter since those precious moments of painting. Even the stiffness in his gait was improving. Though he still didn’t talk to me, I got the sense that he was starting to relax around me, which was real progress after what had happened with the police. When he walked, his shoulders were down, instead of hunched up. He was loosening up. He seemed taller, too, even though it had been barely a week since I’d first found out he was still alive. And, though there was little change in his demeanour, I had a feeling that he was beginning to relax around me, or maybe I was beginning to relax around him..
I waved to Denise, who was standing patiently outside the house for me to let her in. “Thought we could have a catch-up,” she said.
“Sure,” I replied. “Any news from the police station?”
“No,” she answered in what I felt was a clipped, sharp tone. Perhaps she was getting fed up of that question, or at least fed up of having to relay the same response.
After the bustle of Rob’s B&B, my house was quiet and still, so silent that when the floorboards creaked, I flinched. I took Aiden’s coat and hung it on the rack, shutting out the chill from the October wind. I had the newspapers tucked under one arm, and my handbag looped over the other. Once in the kitchen, I spread all the newspapers out over the table and opened them.
Denise pulled a stuffed bear out of a bag. “Do we want to keep this teddy?” she asked. “It came in with a bunch of fan mail. What do you reckon, Aiden?”
I glanced at my son, but he didn’t react to the stuffed bear with the glass eyes. It was a sweet toy, but far too young for him now that he’d grown up.
“Charity bag,” I said.
“Gotcha,” Denise replied.
“Where’s Marcus today?”
“He’s working at the station today. We felt you didn’t need us both around all the time anymore.”
“Ahh, I see. Aiden, why don’t you go watch some TV with Denise for a while.” I shifted my gaze to Denise. “Unless there was anything else you wanted to talk to me about?”
“Well…” she started.
“Nope, good then. Off you go!” I smiled as if there was nothing wrong as Aiden made his way out of the room and into the lounge.
“Everything all right?” Denise asked.
“Yes,” I lied.
She glanced at the newspapers but didn’t say anything more.
“I’ll leave you to your reading then.” The pointed look she gave me as she left the kitchen made me think that what she had really come to the house to do was deliver the bad news that my husband was not all he seemed. Or rather, to spy on us as a family to see if Jake was acting suspiciously since the news broke of his friendship with a student on Facebook.
As soon as the door was closed I began reading. And I didn’t stop reading until I heard Jake’s key in the door. During that time I read about all the supposed things that had happened to my son, things they didn’t even know for certain. He’d been taken as a ‘sex slave’ by a ‘sadistic paedophile’ and chained up in some sort of dungeon while I was out gadding about with a glass of Chardonnay in my hand. There was even a photograph of Jake and me on our honeymoon with fat grins on our faces. Then there were photographs of Rob, who had been branded a ‘thug’ by some local source. Jake was portrayed as the sketchy teacher with a dark past, who disappeared from his last school under a cloud of suspicion. They hinted at illicit affairs with underage schoolgirls.
The papers were careful not to accuse, but they knew what they were doing. They knew what they were suggesting. If my husband could stick his dick in a teenage girl, what else was he capable of? And my judgement was awful. I was pregnant again, remember? With a man whom they all considered some sort of sick paedo without any evidence to back it up, along with the fact my first boyfriend was apparently a thug, and I was out partying all the time anyway because I was ‘young’.
I slammed the papers shut as soon as I heard the door open.
“Anyone home? It’s quiet in here. Oh, hello, Aiden. Denise. You can turn the sound up you know. Go on, that’s it. Where’s your mum? Don’t worry, I’ll find her.” Jake gave me a limp wave as he stepped into the kitchen and set his briefcase on the table. “Sam Sutton finally handed in that homework I was telling you about. A week late, and he expects me to mark it. It’s ridiculous. I might go to the head. What’s going on, are you…?” Jake glanced down at the papers spread out on the table. “Ah.”
“Ah? Is that all you have to say?” I demanded. I opened and closed my fists by my side.
“I told you that you needed to read them,” he said, chastising me like a child. “You need to know what’s going on. You need to see the lies they’re spreading.”
There was the sound of a throat being cleared and Denise appeared in the doorway with her coat in her arms. “I’m going to head off for the day. Call if you need anything.”
My heart was pumping as I watched Denise leave the kitchen. I was waiting for that door to close so I could direct my attention back to Jake. “Lies like this?” I held up a picture of my husband with his arm around a teenage girl. “That’s not a lie, Jake. That’s an actual picture of you fondling some girl.”
“Fondling? Are you mad, woman? It was the end of the school year. She wanted a picture of us together before she left to do her A-Levels at college. They’re finding malice where there is none. And quite honestly, I thought my fucking wife would be on my side.”
The sound of his raised voice caused a jolt of anxiety to spread up my spine. Perhaps it was because he was always so soft-spoken, but it was frightening to hear the ferocity in his voice. I felt sick.
“Jake, reading those things was a shock. Why didn’t you warn me?”
“I tried, but you were so stuck in your little bubble with Aiden. You’re so naïve, Emma, and you’d think you would have learned after everything that happened the first time. They called you a slut. They branded you a little whore for getting pregnant when you were eighteen.”
“It wasn’t that bad,” I pointed out. “They made out like I was a bad mother for being so young.” And I had hated them for it. But I never remembered them calling me anything derogatory like a slut. Was Jake making it up? Did he read more into the papers than what I remembered? I wasn’t sure.
“No, no, no, you’re remembering it all wrong. They made you into a little whore and it wasn’t right. You were a good girl at school. It wasn’t right.” Jake paced up and down the kitchen. Beads of sweat gathered just above his brow, even though it was a particularly chilly day. Why was he so warm? He’d already taken his boots and coat off.
“Jake, have you been drinking?”
He spun to face me, wobbling slightly and clutching the top of the chair as he moved. “No.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
“I had one on the way home from school.”
I shook my head. “A few more than one, I think. Maybe you should go to bed and sleep it off. We’ll talk about all this in the morning.”
But Jake wasn’t listening anymore. He was pulling old bottles of whiskey from the kitchen cu
pboards. Most hadn’t even been opened. They were neglected Christmas presents, the kind you allowed to gather dust at the back of an old liquor cabinet.
“I never laid a finger on that girl. Not in that way, anyway. The newspapers, they twist things. They make them dirty. You know what I mean? I was congratulating her, that’s all.”
“Jake,” I said, with a warning in my voice. “I don’t think the whiskey is going to help anything, is it? Sit down and I’ll make you a coffee.”
“Not a chance. You’re the pregnant one. You sit down and I’ll do it.” He banged the cupboard door shut. “I’m the man of the house. I’m the one who helps his wife. Need to look after my pregnant wife, carrying my child.”
“You don’t sound well. You sound stressed out and drunk. Sit down, just for a minute. They you can give me a foot rub. How does that sound?” I tried to coax him into a chair, but just as I thought it had worked, he stood up again and began pacing the length of kitchen.
“I provide for you, don’t I? I had this kitchen built especially. I bought the house for you, you know, because I imagined what it would be like to live here and raise our kids. It was always for you.”
“I know, I know.” I put my head in my hands. This wasn’t supposed to happen. Not now. My rock had cracked. He’d been busted open like an egg.
“We were so close. So fucking close. And then…”
“Don’t say it,” I begged. “Don’t tell me you resent my child. If you say it now, you can never unsay it.”
I raised my head and our eyes locked. He didn’t need to say the words because they were written all over his face. He was ashen, with clammy skin and a red flush working its way up from his shirt collar. His hands were clenched by his side. His eyes were wide and wild. When he breathed, spittle flew from his clenched teeth.
“You hate him. You’ve hated him since we first brought him home,” I said miserably, feeling a chill work its way up my arms and legs.
“Just shut up, I can’t think. I need to think.” He took off his glasses, pinched the bridge of his nose, and commenced pacing again. “I need to think.”
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