by Daniel Hurst
‘Come on, don’t be shy,’ I say to my extremely shy student.
Michael finally allows himself to relax enough to take a seat and we are ready to get going.
I take out the Maths textbook from beneath the coffee table and turn it to page sixty. Statistics. How exciting. But Michael is paying me to teach him, so I need to give him his money’s worth. He’s already got a free beer out of me. What more does he want?
It isn’t long until I get my answer.
39
AMY
It’s not often I get the house to myself, but that is a luxury I am enjoying right now. Nick is out on another run, Michael is round at Nev’s house, and Bella is doing a sponsored sleepover with her classmates in the school hall. That means my home is filled with the sweet sounds of silence, or at least it will be until I turn on the television and settle down with a glass of red wine.
I’m feeling much better about things than I was last week. I think I had just built the whole thing with Petra up into a massive problem in my mind when there wasn’t anything to worry about. My paranoia over what Nick has done to me in the past had reared its ugly head again. But now the dust has settled, and I’m able to think more clearly. Petra said those things to me because she was annoyed that I had let her go. I can see that now. She didn’t mean anything by it; she was just trying to get back at me after I told her we were not going to be paying her anymore. Likewise, Nick being spontaneously intimate with me at the top of the stairs after his run wasn’t because he was thinking about her or any other women for that matter, it was because he was full of adrenaline after his jog that evening. And any other feelings of jealously or anxiety are just down to my issues with what happened with my husband and that other woman all those years ago and nothing to do with anything that is happening right now.
The large gulp of wine that I have just taken has already worked wonders, and I feel myself relaxing. It helps that the house is peaceful and it helps that it is almost the weekend again. I’m looking forward to this particular one because I have plans to see three of my friends in Birmingham on Saturday. We are going to have an afternoon of retail therapy before cocktails and cheeseboards, and I cannot wait. It’s just what I need. A day out of the house. A day away from any responsibility. And a day away from my usual bouts of paranoia.
I’ve been so stressed recently about Michael’s exams, Bella’s bullying and the fact that my husband may or may not fancy the Swedish tutor that I haven’t taken any time to focus on myself. But that is going to change this weekend.
This weekend is about having some fun.
I have just started to lose myself in one of my favourite reality shows when I hear the ping from my phone on the coffee table. Picking up my mobile while keeping my eyes on the TV screen, I am in no rush to check the message until the scene has finished. It won’t be anything important anyway. Probably just one of my friends talking about how they can’t wait to get drunk on Saturday. But then I look down at the notification and see that it isn’t a message from my friends. Nor is it a message from anyone in my family. I have no idea who has sent this because I don’t recognise the number. There aren’t any words that could help me figure out who it’s from either. There’s just a photo attachment which I can’t make out until I open the full message.
Unlocking my phone, I wait a couple of seconds to allow the photo to open up on my screen. When it does, the glass of wine falls out of my hand and spills onto the carpet. But I’m so shocked that I don’t even care about what I’ve just done. All I care about is the person in the photo looking back at me through the screen. It’s a face that I haven’t seen in many years, and it is a person that I have done my best to forget about. But just like my husband’s infidelity, it seems there are other things that will never leave me alone.
I hear the front door opening. Nick must be back from his latest jog. He knows something is wrong when he sees my face.
He gets confirmation of that fact when I show him the photo.
40
MICHAEL
I’m glad I’ve been out of the house all night. Mum and Dad seemed in a bad mood when I got in, so I just left them to it and came straight up to my room. If they knew where I had really been then their mood would be even worse. They think I’ve been at Nev’s house playing FIFA, but I’ve really been at Petra’s flat drinking beer and listening to her tell me about her childhood. We did do a little revision but not enough to make a dent in my upcoming exams. But I don’t care. I’m not paying her to teach me how to get better grades. I’m paying her so that I can keep seeing her.
So far, it is working.
Mum and Dad have no idea, and that is the way I will keep it. I wish I could tell them how happy my tutor makes me, but I can’t. They won’t understand. They will just think it is some childish crush. But it’s more than that. I really like Petra. I mean, really, really like her.
I have a feeling it might even be more than that.
I think I might love her.
I have gotten over the fact that she is hot. Having gotten to know her more over the last few weeks, I now know that there is a smart, creative and funny person beneath the beautiful looks. My friends would tease me if I told them that I liked her as much for her brains as for her beauty, which is exactly why I won’t be telling them that. I won’t be telling anybody how I really feel.
Except her. I have to tell her.
But when?
I don’t want to do it when the time isn’t right and push her away. I have to wait for the perfect moment. It will come along soon, I’m sure of it. It just didn’t come tonight.
I’ve spent the last two hours sitting on the sofa in Petra’s flat wishing that I could lean forward and kiss her, but the moment never came. Not that it was a bad night. Not by any means. The beer was great, as was the fact that I got to sit so close to her and hear her mesmerising accent. But best of all, I have learnt even more about her background.
She told me about what it was like going to school in Stockholm. She told me about how she struggled to learn English for the longest time until suddenly it clicked with her. That was when she fell in love with the language. She told me about how she wasn’t a particularly good student because she couldn’t wait to leave the textbooks behind and get out into the real world. And she told me that she had no idea what she wanted to do with her life when she was older, but she knew things would work out well in the end.
Essentially, she told me that she was just like me when she was my age.
I’m not getting carried away when I say that we have so much in common. The only real difference I can see between us is with our ages, which is an obstacle but not an insurmountable one. I like that word insurmountable. I like it because Petra told me it was one of her favourite words in the English language once she had finally figured out how to say it. She told me she likes it because of what it means. She likes the fact that it is used to describe a problem that seems too big to overcome because, in her mind, there is no problem that is too big to overcome. That is why she seeks out challenges and problems that seem insurmountable, just so she can crush them and leave them lying in her wake.
She told me that her moving to England had seemed like an insurmountable dream when she had first had it many years ago. Her parents were dead against it, she had no money to her name, and she didn’t know a single person in this country who could have helped her when she got here. Yet still, she decided to give it a go, believing that she would be able to overcome all the hurdles of her family’s grievances, her lack of money and her lack of any friendship here to start a new life in a new country where she longed to be.
I find so much inspiration in that, and my only regret is that I hadn’t told her so. I should have said it instead of just sitting there and listening to her whilst trying to look cool with my beer bottle in my hand. I should have been genuine with her instead of trying to give off this air of maturity and composure that I always find myself putting on whenever I am around
her. But yet again, I found myself not saying much at all, too enamoured by the woman in front of me and too preoccupied with worrying about making myself look more grown-up than I actually am.
But I need to change my tactics. I won’t get Petra by being fake. I need to be genuine. I need to be myself. I need to show her the real me so she can see past all the bravado and the cocky false confidence and learn about who I really am.
That is the only way to find out if she likes me as much as I like her.
A loud burp escapes from my mouth and catches me by surprise as I lie on my bed and stare up at the ceiling. I smile at the sound of it because I know what caused it. It was that beer that I had at Petra’s. The beer that she offered me because she sees me as a grown up and not a child like Mum and Dad or my schoolteachers do. It was the beer that tasted so sweet as I sipped it whilst listening to my tutor talk. It was also the beer that I spilt on her carpet after it fizzed up but never mind about that. That was just a small blip in what was an otherwise successful evening.
I had a great time tonight. I enjoyed all of it, even the little part of the night when we actually did some revision. And I enjoy the feeling that is buzzing through my body right now.
There’s no doubt about it.
I love being in love.
THE NINTH LESSON
There were a few people in the town who didn’t believe it, but they were in the minority. They also were not in any position to change the situation. The girl who had been found guilty of burning down the school and inadvertently killing the teacher had been sentenced to five years in prison, which was not enough for the victim’s family but too much for the innocent person who would be serving it.
That first night inside was the worst. The girl cried herself to sleep in her bed, trying to come to terms with the fact that she had done nothing wrong yet found herself in a place like that, alongside real criminals. She had hoped that her tender age might have led to a more lenient sentence and certainly one that would be carried out in a minimum-security prison, but it was not to be. The judge could have given her more years, but five was still enough. And the prison she was placed in to serve out that sentence was no holiday camp.
She made no friends there, mainly because she didn’t speak to anybody but also because she didn’t want to. The other inmates weren’t like her.
They actually belonged in a place like this.
Fights broke out almost daily. One woman had her hair pulled from her scalp during an argument with another inmate. And one unlucky prisoner got beaten up so badly that she suffered a punctured lung and died on the way to the ward.
Despite the hell that she found herself in, the young woman was hopeful that justice would be done and the truth would come out, overturning the sentence and seeing her released back into society. But the problem was that nobody seemed to know the truth about the fire, especially not the woman who had been found guilty. That made it impossible for the police to reopen the case and keep digging for the real answers. Of course, somebody knew the truth. The person who started that fire knew what they had done and what they had gotten away with. But that wasn’t much help to the inmate serving a sentence for someone else’s crimes.
She was the one trapped inside.
It was precisely two years and nine days into the injustice of a sentence when the innocent prisoner was strangled in her bed by a deranged inmate who had secretly stopped taking her medication for schizophrenia. The crazed woman had suffered a manic episode and believed that the eighteen-year-old woman in that cell was the devil. It was too late to tell her that she was wrong. That poor innocent woman was no devil, but she was now dead.
The ninth lesson is that the line between good and evil becomes blurred in a place that holds both.
41
AMY
The last couple of days have gone by in a blur. Nick and I have been getting on each other’s nerves, Michael has been sneaking out to go to his friend’s house instead of revising, and Bella has told me that the bullying has started again. But that’s not even the worst of it.
That photo is still on my phone, and I have no idea who sent it to me.
The photo is the reason why my husband and I have been clashing this week. He keeps trying to make me believe that it is no big deal and is telling me not to worry about it whereas I think it is a harbinger of doom and could spell the end for our family. Maybe neither of us are right.
It has to mean something or why would I have been sent it? But maybe it isn’t as bad as I think. It could just be somebody playing a prank. Perhaps other people around town have received the photo too. It’s coming up to the twenty-fifth anniversary of the fire. The story is starting to crop up in the local news again because of that. It probably is just a prank.
So why do I feel so worried?
I’m on the train to Birmingham with my friends and spirits are high at our table which is covered in small cans of Gin & Tonic and big packets of crisps. I seem to be the only one struggling to get into the party mood. I’ve been looking forward to this day for weeks, but that was before I got the message on my phone.
That put a dampener on everything.
‘What do you say, Amy?’
I look up from the table and notice that my friends are all looking at me. There’s Sarah and Diane opposite, who I have known since primary school, and Michelle in the seat beside me, who entered our group in secondary. We are the loyal schoolfriends that kept in touch, which I like because it means that I know everything about them and they know everything about me.
Well, almost everything.
‘Sorry, I missed that,’ I say, reaching for another snack.
‘Dinner tonight. Chinese or Thai?’ Sarah asks, and I should have known it was about food because that is her favourite topic of conversation these days. She’s already spent the first part of this train journey telling us about how her latest diet isn’t working. I’m guessing she has just decided to abandon it altogether if her suggestions for our evening meal are anything to go by.
‘Either is good with me,’ I say because it is. I like all foods. I’m not fussy. And I have much more important things to think about right now.
‘What about Indian?’ Diane suddenly suggests, and that is the catalyst for another five minutes of them discussing tasty options. I zone out again and go back to the train of thought that has been running through my mind ever since I received that photo on my phone. I still don’t know who sent it because I don’t recognise the number. But there is a way to try and find out.
I could call it and see if anybody answers.
I’ve been scared to do it so far, but I have a feeling I might have a little more confidence if I keep drinking at the pace that the girls have decided to go at today. I’m already on my second G & T, and it’s not even lunchtime. A few more and I might just pluck up the courage to press the little green phone symbol beside the mystery number. They might not answer, but I have to try. That is the only way I am going to find out who sent that photo.
I did text them yesterday with a simple message: Who is this?
But I got no response.
I haven’t told Nick that I am trying to engage with this person. He thinks I have already deleted the message and moved on. But I’m not like him. I can’t just compartmentalise my thoughts into neat little boxes as if I’m tidying up in the spare bedroom. I dwell on things. I obsess over them. And I worry myself into a frenzy over them. That is why I feel so drained now on what should have been a fun day for me. I’m out of the house. I’m away from my responsibilities for the day. I’m with my best friends. I should be laughing, snacking and chatting without a care in the world, just like they are. Instead, my thoughts are zooming around my head as fast as the countryside is zooming past this train window.
I think about my family to try and calm myself down. Bella is at her regular Saturday morning dance class, which I am glad about because it will help take her mind off the teasing at school, which I now need to speak
to the teacher about again on Monday. Michael has his Under-17’s football match at the local Boys & Girls Club to keep him busy before he has to go home and do some revising because that’s what I’ve told him he needs to do. And Nick will be around the house and on standby for picking up the kids from their various activities and getting them home, as well as cooking them dinner and generally keeping them out of mischief until I arrive back later tonight.
It’s a simple Saturday. A standard Saturday. A nothing special about it Saturday.
So why does it feel like today is going to be a bad day?
42
PETRA
I know that Amy is out of the house. Michael and Bella are too. That leaves Nick home alone.
It’s about time he had some company.
I stride down the driveway past the spot where Nick and I had our brief chat a few weeks ago and reach the front door. I’m about to knock but take a couple of seconds beforehand to fiddle with my hair. I want to look perfect when he opens the door to me.
I want to take his breath away.
Knock knock knock. Three simple taps on the door with my delicate hand will be all it takes to get Nick scurrying out of his study and on his way towards me. I presume he is in his study. I can’t know for sure, but it seems like he is always in there. Unless he is out for another run.
Oh god, what if he isn’t home? Then my plan will be ruined. That would be so...
The door swings open and Nick is suddenly standing before me.
‘Hey!’ I say, flashing him my biggest smile.
He looks momentarily confused, which he should be because there is no reason why I should be here. Or at least I haven’t given him one yet.
‘Hello?’ he says, but it’s more of a question than a greeting.
‘Sorry to bother you but I’ve just realised I’ve left one of my textbooks here,’ I say, keeping my voice as light and breezy as the flowery dress that I am wearing. I’m not at all dressed for the weather today, which is grey and chilly, but I’m trying to look sexy, not sensible.