by Lauren North
Dead centre, in the middle of the fridge door, is one of my printouts. It’s just a single piece of A4, like all the rest I’ve got dotted around the house. Meals for the week. Bath and shower days. Homework schedules. Order and plans keeping me sane. Nothing feels as scary if it’s in an Excel spreadsheet.
I press down the bottom corner of the paper where it’s curling up. The Blu-Tack is starting to dry. This one is the kids’ week planner. I stuck it up at the beginning of the new term and already it is a tattoo on my brain as we zigzag from one club, one day, to another.
Saturdays are the worst. Football training for Harrie, gymnastics for Elise, and drama club for Molly. The frantic driving between clubs, the dodging of traffic in and out of town. Three hours when anxiety flutters in my chest as I rush to drop off and collect one child then another. It’s lunchtime before we’re home, usually with a killer headache in tow.
Only on Sundays do I feel like we draw breath. Harrie still has a football match most weeks, and Elise has her extra studying. Sometimes she pops over the road to Mike Pritchett’s house to drop off extra work he’s set her or ask a question. It’s one of the benefits of living opposite the head teacher. Although most of the time tutoring takes place during lunch break once or twice a week.
I try to fit in family time – a walk, a film night. I say family time, but it’s not really, not without Rob. Fifty-five days until he’s home.
And then what?
I’m here for you, Anna. Always. Dean’s voice pushes through my thoughts along with yesterday’s disappointment. I don’t know what I’m doing any more. I don’t know how I became this person.
The thought is a dead weight inside me as I turn to the counter to make my coffee, splashing in extra milk so I won’t have to wait for it to cool. Coffee is the answer. At this time in the morning, it is always the answer. Nothing too strong. Just a little kick up the bum to get me in the shower before I have to wake the kids.
The shower, the coffee, the make-up – they all help. The exhaustion is still there, like invisible weights pulling down my muscles, but it’s no longer a fog, more a fine mist across my eyes.
At seven a.m. my hour is up. It’s time to wake the children. I normally start with Molly. She is the one most likely to faff with her socks and her hair, the one who needs the longest to get ready, but today I am pulled towards Harrie.
It’s dark in the twins’ bedroom and smells of sleep and the lingering sickly sweet scent of the body spray Elise loves to wear.
I push open the curtains. One then the other. Elise is still fast asleep, her face to the wall, buried in her duvet, but Harrie is awake. Her eyes are wide open but vacant and glazed as though she’s not really here at all. Her body is shaking and her face is deathly pale.
‘Harrie?’
My voice doesn’t register. It’s like I’m not here.
I step close and hear her then – a barely there whisper. ‘What do I do?’ she says over and over, hardly drawing breath between each ‘do’ and ‘what’ so it’s like a tune rather than words. The anxiety I felt in bed last night returns – needles prickling everywhere, inside and out – but this time it isn’t for an imagined what-if, it’s real. Something is wrong with Harrie.
CHAPTER 7
Anna
‘Harrie?’
She doesn’t respond. Her eyes are watery, the skin around them puffy. She’s been crying.
From across the room Elise lets out a groan and turns over to face us. She scrunches her face up. ‘What’s going on?’
I don’t answer. My focus is on Harrie. I sing-song her name again.
I sit on the bed, scooping Harrie into my arms, holding her tight against me. Her body remains limp, her head drooping back as though she’s still asleep, and I cup my hand around it and hold her closer.
‘What’s wrong with Harrie?’ Elise asks, her voice no longer sleepy, but worried, scared.
‘I don’t know,’ I reply, before pressing my mouth to Harrie’s ear and saying her name again. She moves at last, her hands flying up and pushing against me, shoving me back. She wriggles up the bed and out of my arms.
‘Are you OK?’ I ask.
She doesn’t answer.
I look at her face, desperate for reassurance and finding none.
My fingers reach to smooth down her hair at the back where it’s knotted and lumpy, but she slaps them away, shrinking into herself. She looks younger all of a sudden. Eleven years old. Still a child. Anger burns, a lit flare inside my body. Anger at myself, and at Rob for talking me into leaving Harrie alone. What was I thinking? Why did I let him convince me it was a good idea? He’s a million miles away. He doesn’t know what it’s like for me day after day. What it’s like for us. He sees his children on a screen once a week when they’re excited and happy and bubbling over with things to tell him. He doesn’t see the tantrums they have, the times they’re scared or forget to brush their teeth even though I tell them every day, twice a day. They are still so young.
I push my anger aside. It’s clouding my head and I need to think straight and find out what’s wrong with Harrie.
I try again to touch her, resting a hand on her shoulder. She yelps, flinching away so fast that her top moves, showing the bare skin where her neck reaches her shoulder. And that’s when I see it – the dark smudge of a bruise. It’s wide – the width of my palm – and blotchy, darker in places than in others.
‘Harrie, your neck!’ I cry out. ‘What happened?’
She shakes her head but still she says nothing.
‘Harrie, please, talk to me? What’s going on? What happened last night? The back door was unlocked. Did someone …’ It’s a fight to finish the question I know I have to ask. ‘Did someone come into the house?’
Another side-to-side movement. I don’t know if she’s answering me or telling me she can’t talk.
‘Elise,’ I say. ‘Would you get Molly up, please? And get some breakfast?’
Elise doesn’t complain as she throws off her duvet and walks out of the bedroom.
‘It’s just us now, Harrie. I need you to talk to me. Tell me what happened last night,’ I say, trying to soften the edge of desperation in my voice.
I gnaw at my bottom lip and pull out my phone from my pocket. Should I call someone? The police? A doctor? Fuck! I wish Rob were here.
‘Why didn’t you call me back?’
Still nothing. It’s a fight now not to grab her arms and shake the words right out of her.
There’s a clang from the kitchen that sounds distinctly like a bowl dropping to the floor, followed by Elise’s bickering tone. ‘Because I said so.’
‘I want Mummy.’ Molly’s whine reaches my ears and I feel myself being pulled away. There’s a small thud and I imagine her little foot stamping to the floor in the way it always does when Elise winds her up.
‘I’ll be just a minute,’ I say to Harrie before running down the stairs to sort out Elise and Molly. In the time it takes for tempers to be soothed and for them both to be sat at the table eating their breakfast, Harrie has dressed in her school uniform. She appears from her bedroom just as I’m climbing the stairs back to her.
She looks a ghostly form of herself against the navy school jumper.
‘Baby? You don’t have to go to school today.’ I’m not sure what’s going on, I’m not sure of anything right now, but the urge to keep her close to me is so strong – an innate force.
‘I’ll go,’ she says. Her words are too soft, just a whisper of her usual voice.
‘What happened last night?’
‘Nothing.’ She shrugs before moving past me on the stairs. ‘I had a bad dream, that’s all.’
And now it’s me who is shaking my head and struggling to find the words. ‘The bruise on your neck—’
‘I got that playing football at school yesterday.’
‘Oh.’
Harrie disappears into the kitchen and I stay where I am. Rooted to the middle stair, torn between wanting to bel
ieve what Harrie has told me and wanting to keep pushing. The latter wins and I follow Harrie into the kitchen.
‘So nothing happened last night?’ I ask again.
Elise and Molly look up from their bowls of cereal, their eyes on me and then Harrie, who is shaking her head again.
‘Were you scared on your own? Why didn’t you call me back?’
‘I couldn’t remember how to work the phone.’ Her voice doesn’t sound right. It’s too robotic and nothing like the up-and-down tones I’m used to from Harrie. ‘I just went to bed.’
‘Did you press the green button first and then dial the number?’
Harrie shrugs and a wave of hot frustration floods my body. If it were an iPhone, they’d be fine, even Molly. It’s as though they’re born with some innate knowledge of Apple technology, but the old black phone with the built-in answering machine, which time and again I’ve shown them how to use, is too archaic for them to grasp.
‘There was mud on the kitchen floor when I got back last night, Harrie, and the back door was open. Did you go out?’ The atmosphere in the kitchen is charged. I wish it didn’t feel like an interrogation, but I don’t know how else to play this. The other questions teeter on my lips but I hold them back and roll them around my mind instead. Did someone come in? Did someone hurt you?
‘I thought I saw an injured cat in the garden,’ Harrie says. ‘I went out to help it but it ran off.’
‘And nothing else happened? You don’t seem yourself.’
She spins towards me then, milk slopping from the bowl of cereal in her hands. ‘I’M FINE,’ she yells, her voice as sharp as it is loud.
Molly scurries from her chair and pushes up against my side. Elise is frozen, as stunned as I am by Harrie’s outburst. The kitchen falls silent and I stare at Harrie and wish I could ignore the pale skin, the tired eyes, and believe her words, but I can’t. Harrie is my daughter, she’s part of me. And even though she isn’t as easy to read as she used to be when she was five or six and needed a wee but didn’t want to say anything, I still know her. I know how her gaze drops down when she lies, like it’s doing right now.
CHAPTER 8
The night of the crash, 7.48–7.52 p.m.
Harrie
Harrie drops her head back on the sofa cushion, her eyes fixed on the TV show she’s supposed to be watching. She listens to the slam of the front door, the start of the engine. An energy pumps around her body, willing her to move, to act, but she doesn’t. It’s fifty-fifty her mum forgets something and runs back into the house, a hurricane of frustration and muttered swear words she thinks no one else can hear. Harrie smirks thinking of Elise’s impression of their mum when she can’t find the car keys – arms flapping, hissing swear words under her breath.
The smile drops and for a second Harrie wishes they could swap places – Harrie at gymnastics and Elise here – just like they did when they were little, but this isn’t a silly game, this is real.
Harrie mutes the TV and listens to the silence, half expecting her mum to open the front door and yell at her to get in the car after all.
She looks at her watch and forces herself to wait some more. It will take her mum two minutes to drive out of the village and on to the dual carriageway. No turning back after that. Harrie waits three just to be sure. That gives her seventeen minutes, more if Elise faffs about and has to go back for something like she almost always does.
Time to move.
Harrie leaps up and turns off the TV. She reaches the front door in seconds, shoving her bare feet into her school shoes. She doesn’t have time for the laces of her trainers.
She grabs Elise’s black winter coat from the hook. The zip is broken on Harrie’s red one. She hasn’t told her mum yet. It will only stress her out. Elise won’t mind if Harrie borrows her coat, and anyway, it’s black so she’ll be less visible.
Harrie reaches for the key hanging on the hook by the door, but her hand hovers mid-air in a sudden moment of doubt. Is she really doing this?
Harrie bites her lip and thinks of her mum. She will be so angry if she finds out Harrie has left the house. There will be no more staying home alone.
Is it worth the risk?
The answer doesn’t matter, Harrie realizes. She has to do this. And anyway, if everything goes to plan, her mum will never find out. But using the front door is risky. Mr Pritchett, their head teacher, lives just across the road. If he or his wife spots Harrie leaving, they’re bound to tell her mum.
Better to use the back door and the gate at the side. She can stick to the shadows of the house that way.
Harrie darts through the kitchen to the back door. She’ll leave it unlocked. Easier to get back in. It isn’t like anyone is going to walk in and steal stuff. What would they take? The tablet with the crack in the corner where Molly dropped it on the floor? The TV that’s half the size of all her friends’ ones? Mum used to have some nice jewellery. Harrie can remember standing in her PJs, barefoot on the bouncy carpet in their old house. Her mum getting ready for a night out, sweet perfume hanging in the air, her ears and neck sparkling with jewels. Harrie hasn’t seen that jewellery in forever.
With the back door open, Harrie hesitates again. The darkness is like a wall she isn’t sure she can walk through. She thinks through the plan one more time, picturing each step like she’s done every night before bed this week. It sounded so easy in her mind, but now she’s here and actually doing it, it feels impossible.
A sudden fear grips her. A babyish kind of fear, like when she was little and scared of the dark and her dad would read her stories until she fell asleep, Elise pushed up against her, protecting her from the night.
Harrie swallows hard and pushes the fear down. The only thing she has to be scared of is what happens if she doesn’t walk out the door right now.
With a final glance at the house, her home, the place she feels safe, Harrie zips up her coat and runs.
CHAPTER 9
Anna
The routine of the morning unfolds. Breakfast, then teeth brushed, bags packed, lunches made, and all the while I watch Harrie. I see the way her hands shake as she reaches for her school shoes.
Before we leave the house, I crouch on the floor beside her and ask one more time if she wants to stay home, if she’s all right, if anything happened. The questions come out in a whispered flood. I touch her arm and she freezes, her body tensing beneath my hand, but she doesn’t pull away. I can see her thinking now, weighing up both sides. Elise is the hothead, the dive-right-in child. Act now, think later. Harrie is logical, like Rob, as though she has a crystal ball inside her mind and can see one step into the future. Then she moves her head from side to side and stands without another word, and I’m left with no choice but to open the front door and bundle us out – winter coats, bags and water bottles.
A pale sun is fighting to break through the clouds, but the day is bright and there’s a chill in the air that pushes through my thick padded coat – the cheap kind that looks cosy and warm but isn’t.
Our neighbour, June, is halfway up a ladder in her front garden and trimming a laurel bush. I bite back an offer to help after the school drop-off. June will only laugh and shoo me away with the same wave of her arms as she gives to the cat on the street who tries to crap in her flower beds.
‘Good morning, James family,’ she calls in her usual cheerful tone, looking down on us from her position on the ladder.
‘Good morning, June,’ I reply, adding extra vigour to my voice to make up for the children’s mumbled greeting. Molly slips a warm hand into mine and I give it a gentle I-love-you squeeze. She tugs at my arm and I glance down and see the worry on her face, the ‘what if we’re late and the bell has already gone and I get in trouble?’ question in her eyes.
‘We’ve got plenty of time,’ I whisper. ‘We’re never late.’
‘I saw you were back very late last night.’ June steps cautiously to the ground and leans a supportive hand on the gate.
I nod. �
�We got stuck in traffic. I hope my car didn’t wake you.’
‘Oh no,’ she smiles. ‘I’m often up in the small hours. One of the benefits of living alone. I can do as I please, when I please.’
She glances up the road to where Elise and Harrie are standing. ‘I thought I heard something last night from your garden. But then I saw you were out.’
‘Really? Like what?’ I think of the mud on the kitchen floor and Harrie’s strange behaviour this morning and feel my gut twist into a tight knot.
‘I don’t know, dear. The gate was banging. Perhaps have a check later, just to be sure it’s all secure. It could just as easily have been a senile moment on my part.’ She laughs.
‘I will. Thank you.’
‘You know, I’m always here if you need a hand with the kids,’ she says, like she always does.
‘That’s very kind, thank you,’ I reply, not wanting to mention how much I needed her last night. June has one of the old-fashioned landline phones. No caller ID. No answerphone. She has no idea I called her and I don’t want her to feel bad for not answering. ‘But I would hate to be a bother.’
I look ahead to where Harrie and Elise are now huddled together. Elise is talking furiously but Harrie is silent.
‘Why not? Bother away, Anna. My social calendar isn’t exactly rammed to the hilt.’
I smile as she laughs again. ‘OK. I will ask more. Thank you.’
June leans in then, narrowing her grey eyes at me. ‘Are you all right, Anna?’
The question startles me and I’m not prepared for the dam of emotions that threatens to break free. My pulse quickens and I think of Monday, of Dean, and I think of Rob and my confession. I think of Harrie too and the feeling that something isn’t right, and it all pushes forward like the coin-pusher machines at the arcade. Everything is teetering on the edge and June’s question is the final coin in the slot that will bring it all crashing down.