We moved to the window and peered out, but couldn’t make out much in the darkness of the winter night, lit only with pools of light from the street light in front of the school opposite, and the glow of the pub on our left and the store on the right.
There was definitely a lot of shouting, though. Sounded like quite a crowd too.
‘What’s happening?’ I breathed.
All three of us went to the front door. Jacob told Wiggins to stay, and shut him in before we went down the garden path together. Jill strode towards us.
‘I was just coming to get you. You need to come right now.’
Without explanation, she hurried away, walking full of purpose, arms swinging by the sides of her soft rectangle of a body. Her steel-grey ponytail bobbed jauntily. She was so used to everyone doing as she said that she didn’t wait to check whether we were following, just assumed we were. And it didn’t even enter our heads not to.
We hurried after her, bemused, but quickly saw where she was going. Beyond the café and the shop was a row of council houses that were now mostly privately owned – you know the ones I mean, Beth. Next to where Bob Thornby and Phyllis Blakecroft live; the neighbours who row about the overgrown hedge all the time. There, a crowd of villagers had gathered. Shouting. Angry. It seemed to be focused on the Jachowski family’s house.
Thirty-Seven
I grabbed Jacob’s arm, fearful and ashamed, pulling him back from the gate.
‘I don’t think we should get involved.’
He hesitated, looking from me to the crowd. Then we heard it. Your name, Beth. This was something to do with you. I blushed, wondering if somehow my confrontation with Aleksy had triggered it.
Snatches of some shouts became clearer over others as the calls rose and fell, as the wind picked them up and threw them in our direction.
‘Cowards! Come out!’
‘You’ll hit a girl, but don’t have the courage to tackle us lot, do you? Eh?’
‘Go back to your own country!’
Jacob walked closer and I followed, reluctantly, hanging onto him still. When the crowd realised who had arrived, they didn’t so much part for us as surround us. Bob Thornby was there, temporarily putting aside his feud with Phyllis Blakecroft. Ben Miller, Susan and Colin Winston and a lot of the Young clan, including Peter and Jon and their sons, who were adults themselves now. Half the village seemed to be there. Suddenly there was quiet. Expectation.
‘What’s going on?’ Jacob demanded.
‘The Polish kid hurt your Beth.’ It was Martin Young who spoke. Jill glared at him, but he folded his arms, mirroring her pose.
Jacob gave a bark of a laugh, clearly more nervous than he appeared. ‘Aleksy? How do you know this?’
A curtain twitched inside the Jachowski house. Someone peering outside to see if the crowd had dispersed.
‘Is this true?’ Jacob called to them.
That was the trigger for the mob to start again. A surge of insults. Pushing, shoving, faces twisting.
‘I want nowt to do with their type.’
‘They don’t want owt to do with us! They don’t integrate.’
Everyone moved forward. The breath was knocked out of me. Faces of friendly neighbours I’d known my whole life were transformed with hate. Spittle flew from lips.
‘Bloody foreigners!’ yelled Phyllis, apparently forgetting her daughter lived abroad with her Spanish husband.
‘Taking our jobs. Taking over everything!’ spat Colin.
‘They only left the flowers on the marsh ’cos they had a guilty conscience.’
‘He probably nicked ’em from work anyway – he works at the flower factory.’
My instinct told me Aleksy knew something. Maybe he was the one who had hurt you, Beth. Maybe this would scare the truth out of him.
But this baying mob felt wrong.
‘What proof do you have?’ I asked. I could barely be heard over the shouting.
‘This village was always quiet. Suddenly they move here and a girl is attacked!’ Ursula yelled, her perfect pout skewed in a sneer. ‘Who will it be next?’
‘Come on, they’ve been here for over a year, so you can’t say that,’ argued Jacob. But no one listened to your father. The mob’s righteous indignation had somehow given them the right to be angrier than your own parents.
‘What evidence have you got? Any?’ I shouted.
‘They’ve got different ways to us.’ Universal nods to Bob Thornby’s comment.
‘They don’t listen to the law. They’ve all been poaching,’ added Peter.
‘Well, I know for a fact that you go poaching sometimes, Peter Young, so that’s a hell of a thing to accuse people of,’ I shot back.
‘I want to get the person who did this more than anyone, but we need proof,’ said Jacob.
‘So yeah, give us proof,’ I added, hopefully.
Martin planted himself in front of me. His dark eyes bored into me. ‘You’re suspicious of Aleksy, though, aren’t you?’
I hesitated. ‘Well, yes, I think he’s hiding something…’
He stooped, then picked up a rock from the Jachowskis’ garden, trampling on a low shrub in the process.
I looked around for someone to stop this madness. Glenn was lurking in the churchyard, watching but not taking part. Clearly not wanting to get involved. Behind him, hovering in the pub’s doorway, were Dale and your guitar teacher, Mr Harvey, who looked like a scared sheep. Sweeping past them was a police car.
The single whoop of a siren sounded a warning that it was pulling up. People scattered. That was all the officers seemed to want, as they stayed in the car. Eyeing everyone but not bothering to chase. Only Jacob and I remained, along with Jill.
‘Hey, lady, this is your fault. Your questioning and finger-pointing has got the whole village at each other’s throats. Happy now?’ she snapped at me.
‘Hold on a minute, I never encouraged this…’
She looked over at the police car as the door swung ponderously open. It was Flo, with a male colleague. Jill nodded at them as she walked away, slow and deliberate.
The two officers pulled their caps on and sauntered over to me and Jacob. Then stood with their hands on their hips. Alison Daughtrey-Drew cast a curious glance our way as she drove towards The Poacher.
‘Jacob, Melanie… we’ve had reports of a disturbance. Is there a problem?’ asked Flo.
‘Not with us, no,’ said Jacob, explaining that we had only come out when we heard the noise.
The curtain twitched again. Seconds later, Mr Jachowski appeared at the door. When he walked towards us he took small, hesitant steps, despite his rangy frame.
‘My son didn’t do anything,’ he insisted. His accent was thick.
The male officer held up an admonishing hand, trying to keep him quiet. But Jacob got in first.
‘We know. This was just racist nonsense. I’m sorry you’ve had to witness such an ugly thing.’
‘Hang on a second – he is hiding something,’ I cut in. ‘You need to speak to Aleksy.’
‘Melanie, we will find out who attacked Beth, but nothing is going to be achieved through mob rule.’
‘Maybe if you did your job better, people wouldn’t have to turn vigilante,’ I hissed.
‘Come on, Mel, that’s not fair. I’m sure the police are doing all they can,’ offered Jacob.
‘It’s not enough!’ I looked from him to Flo to the other officer. It felt like they were on one side of a wall and I was on the other.
‘Come on, let’s get you home,’ said Flo.
Fine, I’d leave. But DS Devonport would be talking to the Jachowski boy soon – and so would I. I had a feeling we’d both better get in quick, though, before the mob returned. It was inevitable they would be back at some point over the following days or weeks.
I didn’t want things to get out of hand, or for anyone to get hurt. But, despite my guilt, if I’m honest, Beth, I didn’t really mind what they did as long as they helped me find who had hurt you.
>
Thirty-Eight
From an early age I knew I was special. I’ve fooled people my entire life. No one knew the real me. No one even suspected – friends, family, all taken in. I walked among the rank and file, fitting right in as if I were merely normal; my mask of weakness was my strength. I had the power of a god. I was stronger than a hurricane, as inevitable as the incoming tide, as terrifying as a hawk swooping down on a quivering mouse. I had control over life and death, but these fools couldn’t even see it.
Even when I got away with murder right under their noses, they couldn’t see.
Only one person had ever suspected what I was, and they were no longer a problem.
It was time to have a little carefully planned fun.
I was the scientist; she was my lab rat. She had no idea how I was deceiving her, laying out breadcrumbs for her to gobble up until she hit her head against a brick wall. Again. And again. And again.
Dead end.
Thirty-Nine
The sense of trespass made my heart beat faster as I turned the brass doorknob. Even when the door swung open, I hesitated on the threshold, a vampire needing to be invited in or suffer dire consequences. But there was no one to say the words, of course. You weren’t saying a word to anyone.
Holding my breath, I stepped inside your bedroom. Pale pink walls; glittery pens; a noticeboard devoted to smiling photos; a poster of a humpback whale breaching the ocean and surrounded by sea spray. They made my soul writhe in agony, the uninvited vampire suffering dire consequences indeed.
The thought of invading my daughter’s privacy was hateful. We were a family who respected one another’s space, who knocked before entering each other’s bedroom rather than barging in. None of us would ever dream of reading a diary, or going through each other’s mobile phones. But until you woke up, this was the only way to get hold of information you held, Beth. Hopefully, I had reasoned, once you realised the extreme circumstances, you could forgive me for this betrayal of trust.
Of course, I’d already given it a cursory search once, on that awful Saturday. The police had given it a more thorough going-over that day, too, but had come up with nothing. I hoped a mother’s intuition would guide me to something. I’d checked your Facebook account, of course, but had known before starting that there was nothing to find on it, because we were Facebook friends. That had been my condition when you had begged me to let you open an account. I couldn’t look at your private messages, of course, but the police had accessed them and found nothing worth investigating. The same with your Snapchat account, not that I understood that – it was something to do with sending friends silly photos that only lasted ten seconds, filtering your face to look like a cartoon dog or adding flowers in your hair. It made no sense, though I knew you’d tried to explain it to me several times, giving up with a dramatic sigh and a roll of your eyes each time.
So as soon as Jacob left for work at 8.10 a.m., I had gone to your room. I’d decided the night before, as your dad and I sat not side by side with you, but on opposite sides of your hospital bed. He wasn’t speaking to me because on the drive up to Leeds I’d told him exactly what Glenn and I had been up to. Although it had assuaged his fears of an affair, he seemed even more furious with me that I was investigating on my own. Told me to stop immediately – as if! The last thing he had said to me was that I was ‘being ridiculous’.
Ridiculous or not, I wasn’t stopping.
Where to begin? The police had your phone and laptop, so I couldn’t look through those. Instead, I got on my hands and knees and peered under the bed, despairing at the dustballs that had gathered there. Wiggins shoved his head and shoulders under alongside mine, then sneezed, sending the dust flying into the air. Spluttering, I pushed him away, then bent back down.
An old jumper that you had insisted was lost lurked alongside an odd sock. There were a couple of cardboard boxes pushed right up against the wall. I pulled them out. They were full of drawings of animals. You had never shown them to us – why, Beth? Was it because we had laughed at your ballerina all those years ago? My word, you had progressed since then. These sketches were amazing. The sweep of a wing, the movement of fur on a running animal, the glint in the eye; all beautifully captured.
I was eaten up with guilt that you had chosen to keep them private.
Halfway down the box lay a journal. My hands started to shake, almost too scared to open it. I had wanted secrets to be revealed, but was also terrified of what I might discover. Even finding those drawings had thrown me a little.
Your neat, round writing filled page after page. Qualms aside now, I eagerly read a section. Then read it again. What the… ?
It was a list of nature sightings. Nothing more.
Maybe it was a code, my fevered imagination decided. I scanned it again, trying to decipher it, then realised this was crazy. Popping it back in the box carefully, so you would never know it had been looked at, I moved on.
Posters of animals and brightly coloured birds – and Justin Bieber – covered the walls. I found myself peeking behind them in case something was hidden. Of course there was nothing, and I grew more and more annoyed with my own paranoia.
Desperate, I pulled books from shelves and leafed through them. Then shook them. Nothing suspicious fluttered from their pages. Books on identifying animals, dragonflies, birdwatching, nature photography. All were pulled off and stacked on the floor until the shelf was empty. There weren’t many fictional books, as you preferred to read on your tablet, but you always asked for your favourites in paperback too. Twilight, The Fault in Our Stars, The Vampire Diaries, Divergent – all books I’d never read but which you devoured.
I’d give anything to see you poring over a book again, Beth. Please, come back to me soon.
The force of longing for you made me sway. I had to steady myself against the bookcase for a moment. When I pulled myself together, I made a mental note to read aloud to you, and also buy some audiobooks for you. Perhaps you would like that, my love.
There was only one book left on the shelf: a well-thumbed copy of The Little White Horse. The room went blurry again at the sight of it, tears springing afresh. How you loved this book when we bought it for you! You were only eight, but already a bookworm. You had been so captivated by the description of the dog, Wiggins, at the start of the children’s classic that you had read it aloud to Jacob and I, laughing at how conceited the dog was, how in love he was with his gorgeous looks. It was a brilliant piece of writing, and had reminded me so much of my own passion for words.
When we’d bought our own dog a few months later, you had been adamant about what to call him. You had taken one look at his shiny coat, the soft waves of fur cascading down his chest, and instantly been reminded of the character in the book. Our own dog had an utterly different personality, but from that moment on, he was tied to the fictional character.
He watched me from your bed now, as I opened up the wardrobe and went through your pockets. It felt grubby and wrong, and I only discovered a couple of receipts for chocolate and deodorant, along with an ancient, crispy tissue. I pulled a face and carried it to the bin, which the police had already gone through.
There was nothing, absolutely nothing in your room to help me. I’d even checked inside your shoes and boots, for goodness’ sake.
I walked over to your wash basket, knowing I’d find nothing in there but desperate to smell you. I hadn’t been able to bring myself to do any of your washing yet. Picking up an orange hoody of yours, I held it to my nose. Inhaled. It smelled wonderfully of you, in a way you no longer did in the hospital, where you were too full of chemicals and surrounded by disinfectant.
Tears were threatening to overtake me once more, and that couldn’t be allowed. There was a job to do. Gasping like a marathon runner, I walked over to the window to escape the pain. From this vantage point I could see straight into the village primary school playground, with its painted wiggly lines. When you’d attended, I had often gone there, standing ju
st a little back so that no one would see me watching my daughter play. Chase, tag, skipping, ball, racing around with your golden blonde hair streaming messily behind you, or in corners, whispering conspiratorially with your friends.
Oh, Beth, will I ever see you chatting again?
My despair was not simply an emotion; it was a physical being. It smothered and choked. It fogged my head, and sat on my chest until I could barely breathe. It weighed me down until I slumped over the windowsill.
I had to do something. I didn’t know what, but if I didn’t do something I would go mad. I had researched on the Internet, trying to find something doctors might have overlooked, some new breakthrough in treatment for your kind of injury. All I had discovered was that doctors at St James’s Hospital genuinely were doing everything they could. Now the only option left was to keep pushing on with trying to find your attacker.
Full of purpose, I turned back to the room, ready to search again, and accidentally kicked the skirting board beneath the radiator at the window. A section clattered to the floor. Good grief. Like me, this place was falling apart.
I got on my hands and knees to pop it back. Was that… ? Yes, a notebook was pushed into a recess that was usually hidden by the board. A pink Moleskine, like Glenn’s. They were identical. My heart was hammering like crazy as I eased it out and opened it up. The handwriting inside was instantly recognisable as yours, Beth.
When he kissed me… OMG, it was the most amazing thing in the world. My whole body tingled with it. All my worries about being a good enough kisser flew out of the window. I instinctively knew what to do.
God, I am so in love with SSG.
I dropped the notebook on the floor in horror.
Who the hell is SSG?
Forty
I paced the bedroom, trying to work out what to do. I felt sick to my stomach – and furious. Ab-so-bloody-lutely furious.
The Darkest Lies: A gripping psychological thriller with a shocking twist Page 13