by Marc Scott
Inside her head was a tangled mess of images from her sixth birthday party. She wanted to close her eyes, to fall into a deep sleep, to forget the cruel laughter and the faces of her schoolfriends. She hoped that if he was awake that Cameron would not be in one of his foul moods. She had endured enough punishment already that day.
Chapter Sixteen
The tube station was deserted, echoes of tiny footsteps fading into the distance. Bree looked both ways and suddenly felt an uncomfortable swelling in the pit of her stomach. It was so quiet on the platform, she could hear the ticking of the clock on the wall at the end of the station. Above her, the illuminated noticeboard was clearly showing that the next train was due in two minutes. It felt as if she had been standing under that same sign for hours. Bree shuffled her feet as she felt an eerie chill run up her spine. ‘Come on! Come on!’ she said. ‘I need to get home!’
A sudden gust of wind blew from the tunnel and carried a small heap of crisp packets and confectionary wrappers past her. She looked on anxiously, but there was no sign of the overdue train. Bree was feeling more uneasy by the second. The ticking of the clock seemed to be growing louder now. Staring hard at its face she could see the time was a quarter past eleven. The platform seemed to be colder than before. She moved her feet again and rubbed her hands together. ‘For God’s sake, come on!’ Bree said, hoping her small prayer would bring the tube train to her aid. She looked around again and felt a growing unease. It felt as if she was not alone, there seemed to be another presence on the platform, she sensed that she was being watched. All at once a large clanking sound above her head made her jump. It was the noticeboard, it had finally changed. Just one minute for the train to arrive now. Bree’s attention was drawn back to the end of the platform. She could see some movement. Two shapes slowly appeared from the shadows, one quite large, one petite, wearing a bright red coat that she had seen before. They began to walk towards her. Bree turned her head the other way and looked down the tunnel, hoping to see the train’s bright headlights.
The figures drew closer and closer. Bree turned back and was surprised to see who was standing next to her. ‘Hello,’ came Maisie’s tiny voice. ‘We hoped we would see you here today.’
There was a sudden look of bewilderment on Bree’s face. ‘Hello, Maisie, what are you doing here? It is a bit late for you to be out, isn’t it?’
Maisie looked up at her mother, but something in her expression told her that she did not want to speak, so the little girl continued the conversation. ‘We are going to see Jamie, of course. Do you want to come with us?’
Bree looked first at Caroline and then down at her daughter. ‘But it is too late to see him now, the cemetery gates will be closed.’
Maisie smiled, that sweet enduring little smile. ‘We need to see him, to say thank you.’
A small gust of wind rushed out of the tunnel and distracted Bree for a few seconds. She turned back and hoped for some sort of explanation from Caroline. ‘What are you doing?’ Bree asked. ‘She shouldn’t be out at this time of night, she should be in bed.’
The large lady raised her head to look Bree squarely in the face. ‘But this is the right time,’ she said. ‘It is nearly twenty past.’
Not sure what the woman was talking about Bree looked at the large clock at the end of the platform. She could still hear the loud ticking. The clock’s hands showed that it was nearly twenty past eleven. ‘The cemetery will be closed,’ Bree insisted. ‘The gates will be locked.’
As she looked again at the clock Bree noticed something else, another figure, lurking in the shadows. It looked like the girl, the one in the yellow raincoat. She was moving in and out of the small side passages, as if she was playing a game of hide and seek. Suddenly, to Bree’s relief she could hear a noise coming from the tunnel behind her and the sound of electricity charging through the tracks. Finally, she thought, finally the train is coming!
Holding her mother’s hand tightly Maisie looked up at Bree, her small voice struggling to be heard amongst the growing sounds of the oncoming train. ‘No,’ she said, ‘you don’t understand, Bree. We are going to see Jamie for real today. We need to see him, to thank him properly for saving us.’
Bree was alarmed. ‘What do you mean, Maisie?’ she asked. The little girl said nothing. She looked at Caroline, squeezing her mother’s hand tighter as a large gust of wind gathered in the tunnel. ‘What does she mean?’ Bree shouted at Caroline. ‘What does she mean?’
The little girl in her bright red coat looked up and offered Bree her spare hand. ‘Do you want to come with us, do you want to see Jamie?’ she asked. Bree’s attention turned back towards the tunnel as the beams of the train’s lights appeared in the distance. When she turned her head back the two figures had started to move away from her. The ticking of the clock was growing louder again, the rushes of wind began howling through the tunnel. The girl in the raincoat was still there, she was on the platform, she was watching from a distance. Bree began to panic, her heart pounded in her chest. Suddenly another large clank echoed out above her head. It was the noticeboard, it now spelled out the word ‘Time’. Bree was confused, she didn’t know what was happening. Maisie started to speak, but her words could barely be heard above the cacophony of noise. The headlights of the train suddenly became much larger. The sharp scraping of brakes against the tracks could be heard. Suddenly Maisie’s words became clearer as Bree watched her and her mother start to move forwards, towards the edge of the platform. ‘We will tell Jamie that you will always love him. We will tell him that you are sorry.’ Caroline grasped her daughter’s hand tightly and the pair continued walking.
‘No!’ Bree screamed loudly. ‘No, Maisie!’
All at once the headlights of the tube train had become a mass of silver carriages as it pulled into the station. Bree turned her head away and shut her eyes tightly just as Caroline and Maisie stepped off the platform’s edge, their bodies disappearing beneath the wheels of the train’s screeching underbelly. The scraping noises of the tube’s brakes ripped through Bree’s body. She covered her ears, hoping to block out the orchestra of torturous sounds that surrounded her.
As the shades of silvery metal finally came to a halt in front of her, she opened her eyes, slowly, but what she saw alarmed her. There in the glass of the tube train’s window she could see her reflection. It was the girl from the bar, she was standing behind her. Bree’s heart pounded harder and harder. That bright shiny coat was so close to her she could feel its dampness. She knew that she had to face her nemesis. She didn’t want to, but there was nowhere to run now, nowhere for her to hide. She trembled inside as she slowly turned around. The girl was less than a foot from her, her eyes dark and lifeless, her face pale, it was wet, it was without expression. The girl began to raise her arm and a tiny hand appeared from the sleeve of her raincoat. She raised it until it touched Bree’s face, moving her slimy fingers across Bree’s cheek, which sent an ice-cold chill all the way through her shaking body. And then she spoke, softly, not in an angry tone as Bree had expected, but like that of someone she knew. ‘It is me, Bree, it is only me.’ Bree tried to raise her arm to move the girl’s cold hand from her quivering cheek, but she couldn’t, it was as if a strange force was holding her arms, stopping her from moving, stopping her from fighting. She felt helpless. The girl repeated her statement. ‘It is me, Bree, it is only me.’
Bree began to feel pressure, as if her head was being squeezed. She couldn’t breathe, the clammy hand on her cheek seemed to be draining all the life out of her. Suddenly she found her voice, but her words came out as no more than a whisper. ‘No!’ she said. ‘Go away!’ She tried again to move her arms, her whole body began to gyrate, she wanted to scream out loudly, but nothing would come out of her mouth. She closed her eyes hoping that the evil fiend in front of her would disappear, leave her alone, but she could still hear her voice, it was clearer than ever. ‘It’s me, Bree, it’s me, it’s
Kayleigh.’
Bree opened her eyes to find her best friend looking over her. She was at home, she was laid out on her sofa. ‘It was just a nightmare!’ Kayleigh said. ‘Just a bad nightmare!’
Bree began to sob uncontrollably. ‘Maisie and Caroline, they were there, they were under the train. God, it was all so real!’
Kayleigh pulled her friend closer and hugged her tightly. ‘It was just another nightmare, babe, you are safe now.’ The two of them held their tight embrace for a few minutes. Bree did not want to let her friend go, she feared that she would be back on the platform if she did. ‘Kayleigh, it is so frightening,’ she said. ‘I keep seeing them, the girl in the coat, the man without a face!’
Kayleigh could not offer her any explanations for the recurring dreams she was having, but she did offer her friend some fresh coffee. ‘You haven’t forgotten about this afternoon?’ she asked. ‘The newspaper.’
Bree hadn’t forgotten. ‘What time is it now?’ she said. Kayleigh showed her the time. It had just turned midday. ‘Shit!’ Bree said. ‘I have lost all track of time.’ Her friend helped her up from the sofa which had become more like her second bed these days.
‘What don’t you get your arse into the shower and freshen up, babe. I will make you some lunch,’ Kayleigh said. Bree nodded and made her way upstairs. Kayleigh began to ponder on the events of the past half an hour or so, when she been watching over her friend. Bree, not for the first time in her sleep, had called out a name, a name that no one mentioned these days. She began to wonder if it was time for her to call Bree’s mother. Her best friend was clearly in need of professional assistance.
* * *
Kayleigh made some poached eggs for their lunch before the girls set off for the forty-five-minute journey to the Southern Gazette newspaper in Sutton. There was not a great deal of conversation on the way. Maybe both girls were hoping for different results from the visit. Bree appeared to be desperate now to find out more about the man holding hands with her mother in that old photograph. It seemed to have given her a fresh impetus. Kayleigh, on the other hand, was hoping that this would be a wild goose chase. It had been her that had taken the photograph to one of her friends at work and had the detail of the picture scrutinised with the aid of a powerful magnifying glass. They had established that an award on the table next to where Bree’s mother had been sitting had an inscription from the Southern Gazette newspaper. The year inscribed on the trophy was 1997, the year before Bree had been born. Yes, it made perfect sense that the man in the photograph could be her father, however she wondered how her best friend would really react if that was confirmed. She already seemed to hold a bitter resentment for her mother and this would fuel her hatred even further. It also meant that Jamie had been right all along and that the man who was so desperate to get in touch with him had made no such efforts to find her. In Kayleigh’s mind the best result today was for the newspaper to have no record whatsoever of that night and that would bring an end to the matter. Neither of them could possibly have predicted at this time, however, how this day would end.
Sutton town centre had limited parking spaces available, so the girls had to walk a fair distance from a multi-storey car park to find the Gazette’s offices. Bree took a deep breath as they approached the reception area. ‘God, I am shaking,’ she said. ‘I am so nervous.’
Her friend grabbed her arm. ‘Don’t worry, babe, I will do the talking.’
The well-dressed receptionist finished what seemed to have been a personal call and asked the girls what they were there for. ‘We need to see someone about an old photograph,’ Kayleigh said, producing the picture from an envelope in her bag. ‘Do they have someone in charge of events and stuff, someone who might know about this picture?’
A male voice called out to them from the end of the reception area. ‘Gary Marshall,’ the man said. ‘He deals with all that stuff, you need Gary Marshall.’
Kayleigh gave the man a pleasant smile. She was immediately attracted to his rugged looks and his bright multi-coloured tie. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘That’s really helpful.’
The man returned the smile with a small glint in his eye. ‘Anything for a pretty lady,’ he replied.
The receptionist tried ringing Gary Marshall’s internal line a few times before reaching him. Within a few minutes, a stocky middle-aged man carrying a black folder arrived at the reception area and ushered the girls into a glass-fronted office at the side of the building. They sat down at a table which was littered with the last dozen or so issues of the Southern Gazette. ‘It is a bit more private in here,’ he said closing the door behind him. ‘OK, so I am Gary Marshall, I believe you need some assistance with an old photo or something?’
Bree was still visibly nervous, so Kayleigh produced the photograph and did all the talking. ‘It is from quite a long time ago,’ she said. ‘I think it was taken in the late nineties, maybe 1997.’
The man studied the picture, both front and back. ‘It does look like the sort of do we have. It is our annual awards dinner by the looks of things. This is a bit before my time though.’ The girls’ faces both dropped as he seemed to have little interest in the image, but then he pulled out his mobile phone from his jacket pocket and called for a colleague to join him. Kayleigh glanced out of the window to see if the young man who smiled at her was still at the reception desk. He was. He looked back at her and indicated a thumbs-up sign, as if to wish her ‘good luck’.
An elderly man, dressed in an ill-fitting jacket and sporting a rather large beer belly that hung over his trousers, entered the room and offered a handshake to the two girls. ‘Brian Needham,’ he said. ‘Gary tells me you need help with an old photograph.’
The girls both nodded. ‘It is quite old, I think it was from 1997,’ Kayleigh pointed out.
Needham made himself comfortable in the chair next to Bree and took out his glasses. ‘I can’t see a thing without these nowadays,’ he declared.
Kayleigh explained why they were there. ‘The man sitting at the front, he was a friend of the family, but they lost touch with him. We are sort of trying to reunite them.’ Bree gave her friend a harsh stare, wondering why she needed to hide the real reason for their visit.
Needham looked closely at the picture and then directly up at Bree. ‘Is that your mother?’ he asked. ‘You look so alike.’
Kayleigh saw Bree snarl at his comment before answering him through gritted teeth. ‘Yes, that is my mother.’
The newspaperman lifted the photograph to study it more closely. ‘I know this man, but I am not sure where from. He wasn’t one of our advertisers, I am sure of that.’
Kayleigh could see the disappointment in her friend’s face and thought she might need to push Needham further. ‘Don’t they keep a log of all the people that they photograph?’ she asked. ‘Maybe his name would be somewhere in there.’
Gary Marshall had some input to the conversation. ‘It could be in archives. We usually file copies of all of these pictures in the archives room upstairs.’
Needham nodded. ‘Yes, it might be in there.’
Bree was anxious now. She badly felt the need to know more about the man in the photograph. ‘Can you look for us, we don’t mind waiting.’
The elderly man laughed. ‘It could take hours,’ he said.
‘Please,’ Bree asked. ‘It really is important.’
Needham was no fool, he didn’t believe a word of the ‘long-lost friend’ story, but he felt an obligation to help her find further information, whatever she was really looking for. ‘Tell you what,’ he said, ‘you leave me your number and we will take a copy of this on the scanner. I will get one of the team to trawl through and find the details later today.’
His remark brought a small smile to Bree’s face. ‘Thank you so much,’ she said, before squeezing Kayleigh’s hand tightly below the table.
The two men led the girls back
to the reception area and scanned a copy of the photograph while an excited Bree found a pen in her bag and scribbled her name and number on a page from her pocket diary. As they said their goodbyes and were just about to leave, Kayleigh snatched the pen from her friend’s hand and made her way across to the man wearing the eye-catching tie. He smiled at her as she grabbed his arm and scribbled her mobile number on his wrist. ‘That’s my number,’ she said. ‘Just in case they lose that piece of paper.’ As she walked back to join Bree, she shouted back at him, ‘My name is Kayleigh, by the way.’
The young man laughed as the girls headed for the exit. ‘Wow!’ he said. ‘Now that really has made my day!’ The receptionist shook her head, as though she disapproved of the forward antics of the visitor, giving her colleague a look of disgust, before answering an incoming call.
No words were exchanged on their walk back to Kayleigh’s car. There was a strange feeling in the air, as though something exciting was about to happen. Bree broke her silence as they reached the parked vehicle. ‘Fucking unbelievable!’ she said. ‘You are fucking unbelievable sometimes, Kayleigh Hardy!’
Her friend shrugged her shoulders. She knew how much Bree disapproved of her forwardness with men. ‘But,’ she replied, ‘you have to admit, babe, he was fit.’
Kayleigh checked her car mirror and blew a small kiss at her reflection, before starting the journey back to Oxley village. The beaming smile on Kayleigh’s face told its own story. This may end up being a dead end for Bree in her search for the truth about her real father, but it was certainly not going to be a wasted trip for her.
Little was said in the first half of their journey back, but something more than Kayleigh’s moral compass was bothering Bree. She had to get it off her chest. ‘I don’t really look that much like my mother, do I?’ she asked. Her friend could not resist a sly dig at her ‘bestie’s’ uncanny resemblance to the woman that she was desperate to disown. ‘You are the spitting image, babe, the absolute spitting image!’