Be Careful What You Hear

by Paul Pilkington

  Be Careful What You Hear

  Paul Pilkington

  Copyright 2015 Paul Pilkington

  British English Edition

  British English spelling and grammar used throughout.

  Smashwords Edition

  Smashwords Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  www.paulpilkington.com

  Cover Design: Jeanine Henning

  www.jeaninehenning.com

  Also by Paul Pilkington

  The One You Love (Emma Holden trilogy, book 1)

  The One You Fear (Emma Holden trilogy, book 2)

  The One You Trust (Emma Holden trilogy, book 3)

  Someone to Save You

  Emma Holden and Me

  For my family and my readers.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Epilogue

  Connect with Paul

  The One You Love – Sample

  1

  I stood at the threshold of the low-lit bedroom and smiled warmly at the two people I cherished the most in the world – my husband, James, and our six month old daughter, Grace. James, who smiled back, was kneeling next to the cot, armed with a well-read board book edition of Julia Donaldson’s The Gruffalo. It had become our bedtime story of choice for the past few weeks – so much so that both James and I knew it off by heart. We would sometimes recite it in the darkness, patting Grace to sleep, for what seemed like hours.

  ‘Hope she goes to sleep quicker than last night,’ I said softly. I’d been up in the room for over an hour that previous evening. Each time I thought Grace had dropped off to sleep, and raised my hand away from her tiny back, Grace had risen up, like one of the undead.

  ‘Me too,’ James yawned. He looked tired, washed out even.

  ‘I don’t mind doing it again tonight,’ I offered, stepping back into the room and admiring our daughter as she lay there on her back, zipped up in her baby sleeping bag. I never got tired of baby-gazing.

  Not now the nightmare of the past few months had passed.

  James shifted uncomfortably on the carpet. ‘It’s fine, honestly, George, it’s my turn.’

  George – James had called me that from the first day of meeting. He was one of only two people who shortened my full name of Georgina – the other being my father.

  I tried again, pushing some strands of hair behind my left ear. ‘It’s not like I don’t owe you some nights – many nights.’

  In the half-light, I wasn’t sure whether there was a flicker of disapproval on James’ face.

  ‘I’m fine,’ he said simply, unsmiling. ‘Absolutely fine.’

  After quickly getting changed for bed in the next door bedroom, I made my way downstairs in my pyjamas, baby monitor receiver in hand. The baby monitor, which monitored both sound and movement (via a pressure sensor underneath the cot mattress), had been my idea in the weeks leading up to Grace’s birth. James had wondered whether it would add to any parental anxiety, resulting in us listening out for any noise, or obsessing about the ticking icon on the screen’s display to tell us our precious child was still breathing. But he had gone along with my wishes, and faced with the fears of being a new parent, had admitted that he was glad of it.

  I placed the baby monitor receiver on the living room table top and flopped down onto the sofa. The monitor was already on, as I’d developed a habit in the past few weeks of turning it on as soon as Grace was in the cot – a couple of times recently James had forgotten to turn it on, and once we hadn’t noticed this for almost two hours. It sounded stupid, but the realisation that Grace had been up there, unmonitored, had made me feel sick – as if we’d placed her in harm’s way. It wasn’t like that, I knew, but that’s how it had felt.

  I reached over and set the volume on the receiver to maximum. James was reading softly, but you could still make out what he was saying – he was nearing the end of the story – the wily mouse was about to scare away the Gruffalo. Closing my eyes, I lay back on the sofa, only then realising when the wave hit me, just how tired I really was. But though I needed the rest, in some ways, I was disappointed to have been rebuffed by my husband. Although getting Grace to sleep wasn’t easy, it was an experience I didn’t enjoy missing out on. I wanted to cherish every moment with our beautiful daughter. Too much time had been wasted already, since she was born – time I could never get back. But it wasn’t fair to deny James his time with Grace – particularly as he was out at work all day.

  Maybe that’s why he had reacted the way he had.

  Or maybe there was more to it.

  James had been acting oddly for the past few weeks. He didn’t seem himself. Most times he appeared completely normal, but there were occasions when he was withdrawn and just looked sad. I’d asked him several times if anything was the matter, but he’d sworn that there was nothing.

  I wondered, with dread, whether the events of the first four months of Grace’s life had taken a fatal toll on our relationship. After all, James had coped with a lot – it couldn’t have been easy dealing with a brand new baby and a wife suffering from post-natal depression.

  A wife who had accused him of terrible things.

  I fought the urge to sleep and instead reached across to the newsletter that had arrived in this morning’s post. It was the Autumn/Winter 2014 edition of the newsletter for the dental charity, Smile! James and I had both worked for the charity, on placement during our dental training. I’d been studying at UCL in London, while James was up in Newcastle, but we had met in the baking heat of East Africa, in a makeshift operating centre in rural Sudan. The centre, run by the charity, carried out emergency dental surgery on the impoverished population. The focus was on children, and I’d lost count of the amount of operations I had performed in my eighteen month placement there.

  I leafed through the pages of the newsletter, skim reading the update from the co-ordinator. The ten page publication was mostly filled with images of happy children and dental workers – not just dentists, but nurses and public health specialists. The photos really brought back the memories of my time with them.

  Meanwhile, via the monitor, I could hear James upstairs, moving onto the second book of the night – The Hungry Caterpillar. We had a rule that there would be three books, and no more. Grace was of course too young to understand limits, but I had read that setting expectations at bedtime early could head off trouble later on.

  Sudan had been a life changing experience for me, in more ways than one. I had met James, a big burly man with a quiet confidence and friendly smile in my second month, just after he had arrived. We had both performed emergency surgery on a four year old boy who had fallen from a tree and smashed his front teeth on the hard ground.

  We hit it off straight away, and three years later were living together in London, partners in a practice in one of London’s most challenging and socio-economically deprived areas, Tower Hamlets. It was a challenge that we both relished – trying to improve the dental health of children whose teeth were some of the worst in the country. Now, seven years later, we owned
the practice outright, following the retirement of our colleague, Clive.

  But despite the busy workload, we still stayed in contact with Smile! and a proportion of profits from our practice went to the charity.

  I let go of the newsletter, finally giving up the fight against tiredness and closed my eyes again, listening to the soothing sound of my husband’s voice.

  I woke with my right cheek pressed firmly against the unforgiving arm of the sofa. Raising my head, I squinted across at the clock on the fireplace. In the low light I could just read the hands. It was nine o’clock, an hour since I had come downstairs. Still lying down, I put a hand to my head, trying to steady myself. I’d never been good at napping, and always felt awful when waking from a short sleep. Once asleep, my body wanted it to be for a long time, and I knew that if I didn’t get up now, there was a high risk that I would just fall back to sleep. But that was no good, as I needed to be up to feed Grace before bedtime.

  I sat up, but even then found myself closing my eyes and drifting.

  And that’s when I heard James.

  ‘I’ve made up my mind.’

  The sudden sound of his voice shocked me. I opened my eyes and expected him to be in the room, standing over me. But he wasn’t there.

  I must have been dreaming. My heavy eyes closed again.

  ‘I don’t feel life is worth living.’

  Again I opened my eyes. Was it coming from upstairs, via the baby monitor?

  ‘I’ve decided,’ he continued, the words slow and considered. As I tried to shake off my grogginess, it definitely seemed to be coming from the receiver. ‘We’re all going away, to somewhere where no one can find us – the middle of nowhere. And that’s where it will all end.’

  2

  I couldn’t believe what I had just heard.

  Had I been dreaming?

  Grabbing the receiver, finally waking properly, I held it tightly against my ear. But there was no sound coming from upstairs. Not even any sign of movement. I stayed there for a minute or so, watching the second hand of the clock on the fireplace as it ticked.

  The words repeated in my mind.

  I don’t feel life is worth living…

  We’re all going away…

  And that’s where it will all end.

  Suddenly the phone rang. Its sudden shrill shocked me more than it would otherwise have done. Receiver still in hand, I hurried across the darkened living room into the kitchen. As I did, I heard the familiar creak of the floorboards upstairs as James crossed the floor. He would be coming downstairs in the next few minutes.

  I felt uneasy at the thought. Had my whole world changed in such a split second?

  Instinctively I turned the receiver off, and placed it behind the photo frame that showed the family at Land’s End on the Cornish coast, at the UK’s most westerly point. The photo, next to the famous Land’s End signpost, had been taken eight weeks ago during our September holiday. The holiday had been a celebration, of an emergence from the darkness and despair of the previous four months. It had been such an uplifting, sun-filled week of fun.

  I picked up the phone, noting that the caller display said “Withheld”. ‘Hello?’

  The line went dead almost immediately.

  I replaced the handset, then picked it back up and dialled 1471. I did this, knowing that it would be a waste of time - if the caller ID on the phone hadn’t identified the number, then this method wouldn’t either. And sure enough, the automated voice confirmed that “the caller withheld their number.”

  I shrugged it off and moved to the sink, finishing off the last few dishes that remained unwashed from the evening meal. I rinsed them, reflecting on how far I had come. Just a few months ago a call like that would have sent me reeling.

  I would have jumped to conclusions – believing without doubt that the call was from a woman with whom James was having an affair. She’d called, thinking I was out, and wanted to arrange their next liaison.

  The post natal depression had brought on a deep, entrenched paranoia, and for a time I hadn’t trusted James at all. In my mind, he was not only having an affair, but was preparing to leave me for a younger woman and take Grace with him. At first, the identity of this younger woman had been a mystery to my paranoid self. But soon I zeroed in on Erika Larson, the twenty-something dentist who had been taken on by our practice to cover my maternity leave. She was young, beautiful, intelligent, and shared our passion for oversees volunteering, having spent a few years in Eastern Europe treating children in care homes run by charities. Erika, and her supposed relationship with James, became the focus of my obsession and insecurity. I dropped by the practice uninvited, thinking I’d catch them. I went through his wallet, scrolled through his text messages, and scoured his email account. Finding nothing was just more proof that he was hiding things well, and was therefore very serious about the affair. By the time I confronted James with the allegations, after weeks of self-consuming dark thoughts, I had even planned to run away with Grace.

  James hadn’t reacted the way I had expected.

  I thought he’d be angry and defensive. Or that he’d take the opportunity to come clean, and make his break for freedom with his new woman. But instead, he had talked me down from the heights of despair, and held me tightly as I sobbed into his shoulder. That night was the beginning of the end of the terrible times, and the next day I sought help from our local doctor, accompanied by my husband.

  But what about now? I dried the dishes with a clean tea towel, and put them away, considering again what I had heard.

  What I thought I had heard.

  I looked over to the photo frame. I was being stupid. I’d been half-asleep and my thoughts had intruded into my reality, fusing the two. I retrieved the receiver and switched it back on, placing it in full view on the sideboard. I looked up towards the ceiling. There had been no further noise from upstairs after hearing James’ footsteps. Maybe he’d gone to the bathroom.

  After giving him a few more minutes, I moved to the bottom of the stairs, and peered up into the darkness, listening for any sign of life.

  There was none.

  I moved slowly up the stairs, not wanting to wake Grace with my ascent. I clicked open the stair gate at the top of the stairs, which we had only just fitted in readiness for Grace’s toddling years. Down the corridor the door to Grace’s room was pushed to, while off to the left our bedroom door was open, with the room pitch black. I could see that James wasn’t in the bathroom, immediately to my left, or the back bedroom, straight ahead of me.

  He was either in the main bedroom, or back in Grace’s room. The stillness was unnerving.

  I didn’t want to risk disturbing Grace, so I tried our room first, pushing at the door. In the shadows I could see James sat up at the head of the bed, head down. As he lifted his head, the light from the streetlamp directly outside bathed his face in an eerie orange hue.

  I pushed the door to behind me as I flipped on the light. James had been crying, and he looked like a little boy who had just been caught out doing something naughty. I took a step closer, shocked at the sight of him, wet faced on the bed. ‘Are you okay?’ I kept my voice hushed, aware that noise carried through the wall between our room and Grace’s.

  He nodded, bringing a hand across his face. He squinted at me in the harsh light. I nodded towards the bedside lamp and he reached around and turned that on as I simultaneously switched off the main light.

  ‘You’ve been crying,’ I said, as I slipped off my slippers and slid onto the bed next to him.

  ‘I’m okay,’ he replied, brushing one last stubborn tear away. ‘It’s just a stress release, that’s all. It’s been a hard couple of weeks.’

  ‘You’re thinking about Margaret?’ Margaret Hughes was a dental hygienist at the practice. She’d worked there for fifteen years – well before we had arrived – and everyone saw her as the heart and soul of the place. Two weeks ago she’d come to James with a concern: a black spot on her tongue. James had tak
en a look immediately, and the initial diagnosis was clear.

  Cancer.

  Last week, an urgent hospital referral had confirmed that initial fear. Margaret had cancer of the tongue. Further histology, and scans, were required to determine whether the cancer had spread, and what the treatment would be. It was an extremely worrying time, and Margaret had taken some time off with her husband to come to terms with what had happened.

  James blew out his cheeks. ‘It’s affected me more than I thought.’

  I placed a hand on the back of his head and kissed him softly on the cheek. ‘It’s okay to be upset.’

  James gave a slow series of nods, mulling over things. ‘I just hope she’s okay.’

  ‘Me too.’

  We sat there in silence for a minute or so.

  ‘Was Grace okay going to sleep?’

  ‘Perfect. No need for a third story tonight.’

  I was pleasantly surprised. She rarely went down that quickly. ‘Maybe that walk in the park tired her out.’ The weather had been remarkably mild for early November, and I’d taken the opportunity to go to the local park for a stroll.

  ‘She was very sleepy.’

  I suddenly remembered what had brought me upstairs, and my stomach lurched. But I was now convinced that I had been dreaming. Both alternative explanations were scary - that it had been James saying those things, and planning to do something terrible to us all. Or, that I hadn’t been dreaming, or hearing my husband for real, but hallucinating. Hallucinations, both visual and audible, were serious symptoms of post-natal depression. Thankfully I hadn’t suffered from either during my four months of hell. But what if my recovery wasn’t total? What if the horrors were returning, worse than before?