by Carys Jones
‘We just don’t have all the details yet, I need to dig more into Jake Burton’s criminal past,’ Shane’s hands were now on her face, cupping her cheeks and tilting her gaze up to meet his. ‘As soon as I know anything else I’ll tell you. But I thought that you had a right to know the truth, Amanda. That Will isn’t who he says he is.’
‘But why?’ It made no sense. He was Will Thorn. She’d seen his passport, his birth certificate when they got married. He had an identity. A life. ‘Why would he lie?’
‘That’s what we need to find out,’ Shane used his warm touch to wipe away some of her tears. ‘But we will find out. You just need to sit tight and be patient, can you do that?’
‘How can they be the same person?’ Amanda was still struggling to fit it all together. Will Thorn was her husband. But then who was Jake Burton? And why had someone called her home asking for him? Her head ached so intensely that she feared her skull may crack as it tried to contain all her questions.
‘I don’t know yet,’ Shane told her softly. ‘But I’m here for you, Amanda. And I’m going to get you answers, I swear.’
‘But,’ Amanda greedily gulped down air, needing to steady herself. She felt like she could faint and scream all at the same time. Staring at Shane, she wanted to see more than pity in his eyes, she wanted to see answers.
‘Who did I marry?’ she rasped as she felt the world she knew, the world she had built with Will, come tumbling around her as flimsy and precarious as a house of cards.
12
Amanda slammed her front door closed, a part of her not even caring if she’d locked up properly. There was so much she didn’t care about anymore. So many things were losing their meaning in Will’s absence.
As she drifted down her driveway, Amanda’s gaze swept across her car, parked up neatly in front of the house. Numerous trips down winding country lanes to her mother’s cottage had dirtied it. The paintwork was dulled as it lay beneath a thin layer of grime and dust. Amanda’s lips trembled as she considered what Will would say if he were there.
‘Look at the state of your car,’ he’d remark as he stood beside it, slowly shaking his head.
‘It’s fine,’ Amanda would insist. Because to her it was. She didn’t mind the dirt which clung to it. All she cared about was that the car was driveable. She’d never been one to shine her machine.
‘I’m going to wash it,’ Will would already be stalking back inside to seek out a bucket and sponge.
‘Really, it’s fine.’
But Will liked everything to be perfect. It was as if for him it wasn’t enough that their lives were picture-perfect, they had to be immaculate in every way, right down to their cars or how he’d fold over the end piece of toilet paper.
‘You treat this place like a show home,’ Amanda would lament whenever she caught him straightening towels in the bathroom and picking up a speck of dirt from the floor.
‘Because it is a show home. It’s a palace and I intend to keep it that way.’
‘Homes are meant to be lived in.’
‘Homes are meant to be taken care of and cherished.’
‘You realize the house doesn’t have feelings, right? It can’t hear you right now.’ Whenever Amanda mocked Will his eyes would crinkle at the corners just slightly. She sometimes struggled to tell if he was humoured by her or annoyed.
Will was always striving for perfection.
Amanda reached her hand out towards her car and dragged a finger along the side of it, tracing a long line in the dirt. She cocked her head and looked at the car more intently. It was dirty enough to warrant a cheeky message on the back like wash me or I like it dirty. When Will eventually did come home, and Amanda had to keep believing that he would, it’d be funny if there was a message waiting for him on the back of her car, a message prompting him to give it a thorough clean. Because he was coming back, wasn’t he? And when he did, everything would just go back to normal, right?
‘Not that he’d need any additional incentive,’ she muttered to herself as she rounded the end of the vehicle. She knew that the sight of her dirtied car would be more than enough to send Will into a cleaning frenzy. Amanda was holding her hand up, poised to write a message, but she instantly froze when she looked at the back windscreen as someone had beaten her to it.
In blunt lettering was a message waiting for her. Amanda stopped breathing as she read it, her chest tightening.
Where is Jake?
When her heart kicked back in it was working double time, thumping manically in her chest. Panicked, she looked around, searching the window of every nearby home, every cluster of bushes, as though she expected someone to just suddenly appear and claim responsibility for the message.
Amanda stared at the words.
Where is Jake?
Who could have written it? It surely had to be the same person who’d originally called asking for Jake Burton. Were they watching the house? Watching her right now?
Amanda felt cold. The icy sensation plunged right down to her core. Nervously she rubbed at her arms and kept glancing around. She felt so hideously exposed, as if she were standing there completely naked with everything laid out for everyone to see.
Had someone been at her house?
The question boomed through her head accompanied by another, more primal, response.
Run.
Over and over she thought the word to herself like a relenting foghorn.
Run.
And so she ran.
*
The sunlight on the ground was mottled as it streaked in through the canopy of leaves overhead. Amanda’s feet pounded against the soft ground, snapping twigs underfoot. It was early morning and while most people were preparing to face the urban nightmare of rush-hour traffic Amanda was sprinting through the woods behind her home.
She passed only a handful of people as she ran, most of them out with their dogs. She’d nod stiffly in greeting and power past them. It felt good to be out of the house, to feel the fresh morning air all around her. She loved her early morning runs but now she needed it more than ever, needed to try and outrun the questions that kept snapping at her heels.
Where is Will?
Who is Jake Burton?
Quickening her pace, Amanda liked the pull she felt in her calf muscles. Her lungs began to ache in protest but she ignored the discomfort, pressing harder, moving faster.
She ran through a densely wooded area, expertly jumping over large roots which rose up out of the ground like abandoned corpses slumbering in the early morning sunlight. Amanda sped down a steep incline and almost collided with the grand oak tree at the base of it. But still she didn’t stop. She swerved, her trainers briefly skidding on the soft muddy ground. And then she was running again. Hard and fast. She ran deeper into the woods, putting more distance between herself and her home with each fevered step.
Amanda’s entire body throbbed as various muscles began to catch fire. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d pushed herself like this. But she wasn’t prepared to stop. Not yet. If she was running then she wasn’t thinking. And Amanda yearned to stop thinking more than anything else.
She ran down a narrow path. Outstretched branches pressed against her bare arms. Amanda knocked them aside, breathing hard as she kept on running. She tumbled out into a clearing and finally stopped for breath. Skidding to an abrupt halt, she doubled over and placed her hands on her knees, sucking in air.
Eventually she straightened and looked around. She knew the clearing she was standing in. It existed in the centre of the woods, like a foliage-filled heart. In February snowdrops carpeted the ground like freshly fallen snow, and then later in the season bluebells. It was a place of beauty, where the trees cleared to allow the sun to beat down unobscured. The branches of the trees, thick with luscious green leaves, swayed in a soft breeze as they stood circling her.
Amanda was still gulping in the fresh morning air, using it to put out the fires which had started to burn within her through
overexertion. The clearing was usually a peaceful place, filled only with birdsong. But for Amanda it currently felt chaotic, just like the rest of her run had been. Her iPod was blaring in her ears so loudly that the music was surely getting seared on to her brain. It was angry music, full of powerful drums, screamed vocals and bluesy guitars. It was the music of her youth: Linkin Park, Papa Roach and Blink 182. She hadn’t even deliberately selected the tracks, they’d just played, one after another, as if her iPod could read her mind better than she could.
It was the music Amanda had listened to with Shane. Together they’d lie on his bed, holding hands and listen to his CD player threaten to tear down his parent’s terraced house with its booming sound. It was the music Amanda turned up so loud her eardrums threatened to bleed whenever they argued. It was the music her heart was broken to, and also the music that helped mend it.
Popping out one of her pure-white earbuds, Amanda reached into the pocket of her denim cut-offs and silenced her iPod. The angry base of a Linkin Park record was gone and the sudden vacuum caused by the abrupt lack of sound was unsettling. Amanda spun around, nervously taking in all the shadows which loomed at the edge of the clearing.
A twig snapped behind her. Then another. Was she alone? Or had someone followed her? It would have been easy enough to shadow her steps through the woods. With her music pounding in her ears she was oblivious to the world beyond her little bubble. Amanda’s chest tightened as if a hand had forced its way down her throat and was now making a fist around her lungs, squeezing them like a stress reliever. Gasping, she leaned forward, her hands on her knees once more. Spots of light danced in her vision. Her legs buckled and she dropped down into the dirt. Amanda shuddered against the pain in her chest and tried to get her bearings. There was a metallic taste in her mouth and she swore she could hear the roar of the ocean even though it was over on the other side of town. And then everything went black.
*
‘Hey, are you okay?’
Whoever was delivering the question sounded far away, at the end of a phone call that had poor reception.
‘Hey, Miss. Drink some more water.’
Something soft and wet pressed against her leg as she felt cool water sliding down her throat. Amanda spluttered as her senses started to come back to her. She looked around, her eyes wide and distrusting.
She was still in the clearing in the woods. Only now instead of being on her knees in the centre, she was sat on a large log near the edge, close to the canopy of trees whose leaves whispered all around as if discussing what had just happened amongst themselves.
‘Miss, are you okay?’
The soft wet thing pressed against her leg again. Numbly Amanda looked down. A small dog with deep brown eyes and brown and white fur was looking up at her, its expression a mixture of adoration and confusion.
‘Hey, Rocky, leave her be.’
The little dog glanced away from Amanda back towards the owner of the voice who was asking all the questions. An elderly man with a kind face was staring at her. Despite the season, he was wearing a long khaki coat and jeans. Amanda recognized him as living on the edge of her estate, though it pained her to admit that she didn’t know his name, or even if he lived alone.
‘Ah, there’s more colour in your face now,’ the man smiled kindly at her. ‘Rocky here found you. You must have fainted in the clearing. Got to be careful not to overdo the exercise, especially when it’s so hot out.’
Amanda looked back towards the centre of the clearing. So she’d passed out. Had she really overdone it? Or was there more to it than that? Was everything with Will, Jake, whoever the hell her husband was, finally catching up with her? Was she now having physical reactions to all the stress?
‘Drink some more water,’ the man urged. ‘And Rocky and me will walk you home. You live in them new houses by me, don’t you?’
‘Uh-huh.’ Amanda managed to splutter out her response between swallowing down as much water as her chest would allow.
‘I thought I recognized you. I’m Bill Connors,’ he extended a rough hand towards her, which Amanda gingerly shook. As she did, she noticed that her own hands were trembling. As were her legs. It felt like her entire body was on a vibra plate and she was powerless to get off.
‘You’ll be right soon enough,’ Bill reassured her. ‘My wife was prone to fainting spells. She was a whippet of a thing too.’
Amanda forced herself to smile. Bill was being kind. If he and Rocky hadn’t discovered her collapsed in the clearing who knew what might have happened to her, or who might have come along.
‘You live with your husband, don’t you? Big strapping fella. I’ve seen him out tending to your lawn. He’s pretty house-proud, I admire that.’
Will. He was talking about Will. Amanda tried not to cry, but her body was past obeying her orders. Hot tears slid down her cheeks. Rocky became anxious at the sight and placed his paws on her leg and stared up at her face, his fluffy white tail wagging so furiously that Amanda feared it might fall off.
‘Hey,’ she knocked away her tears with the back of her hand and then fussed the adorable little dog. His tail wagged with increased fervour.
‘Oh, he loves a fuss,’ Bill stated with pride. ‘He also can’t stand to see a lady cry. Proper little gentleman that one.’
‘He’s gorgeous,’ Amanda complimented Bill as she kept rubbing Rocky behind his ears. His soft brown eyes were glued to her, looking at her as though she were the most wondrous thing he’d ever discovered during his walks in the woods.
‘I’ll have to be careful he doesn’t try and go home with you,’ Bill joked. ‘But we should really get you back to that husband of yours, he’ll be worried. That’s if you feel up to walking?’
Amanda stood up. Her legs wobbled beneath her as though they might buckle at any moment. ‘I’ll manage,’ she breathed as Bill stepped close so that she could lean against him for support.
As they stumbled out of the clearing together, Amanda looked back at the wall of trees, listened to their whispers and studied the shadows which gathered between them. She used to think oak trees were grand and sturdy, capable of shielding the smallest of creatures from a storm. But now she saw how their long branches and the gnarled roots that sprouted from the ground could conceal countless secrets, could hide even the darkest of deeds.
*
Amanda promised Bill that she’d call her GP right away but only to get him to leave. She appreciated the old man’s concern but she needed to be alone. Closing the door on Bill and Rocky, Amanda was surprised by how much she welcomed the icy solitude of the house. Since Shane’s visit she’d started to think about how much Will had lied to her. How Will Thorn wasn’t even his real name. A part of her still desperately wanted him to come home, but another more fearful part was scared about what additional truths she might uncover in her search for her missing husband.
Fear and anger raged within her, each trying to take hold. The message on her car burned in her mind. Who had done it? Had they followed her into the woods? Where was Will when she needed him in their home, needed him to protect her? She should report the message to the police. Shouldn’t she? But it felt oddly foolish to call them up about a cryptic note on her car. Would it even help lead to Will? Maybe she could call Shane. He’d come over, look at the car, make some obligatory notes and assure her that it was nothing. Right? Or was it a clue, a thread to pull at which would lead her to her husband?
Amanda lashed out, kicking at the stool beside her in frustration. It clattered to the floor, banging loudly against the polished tiles. Her husband should have been home with her, should be fretting over her faint in the woods. But Will wasn’t even answering his phone. It was disconnected.
‘Dammit,’ Amanda flung herself and grabbed the stool she’d been sat on. She lifted it off the ground and then threw it towards its partner which lay on its side on the floor. They banged together, metal grating against metal.
‘Dammit,’ Amanda lamented again, pounding
her fists against the granite countertop. Her body felt weary and useless, but the rage within her needed to come out. Holding it all in was taking too much energy.
‘Where are you?’ she screamed to the emptiness. She couldn’t even picture Will in that moment. Was he really off being Jake Burton, sat in the home of another family? It was too hard to believe. Amanda threw her fists against the countertop again.
Will had been the one to propose to her. They’d only been dating a few months. It had been a wonderful whirlwind of dinners, cinema dates and lingering kisses in the back of his car. He made Amanda feel like she was the centre of his universe. When he picked her up he was always on time, always called her when he said he would.
She’d felt herself falling right after their first kiss. She’d felt the power in his embrace but also been surprised by the tenderness. As the kiss deepened, Amanda knew in her heart that this was a man who she could willingly give all of herself to.
‘Marry me,’ his eyes had twinkled as he said the iconic words as an order rather than a question. It had been a whirlwind six months of dating. Amanda had gazed at the modest ring he’d presented as he stooped down on one knee. It was everything a proposal should be: honest, spontaneous and from the heart. It was everything Shane’s proposal hadn’t been.
Amanda baulked at the memory and stormed towards the fridge. Reaching inside, her hand hovered over a bottle of beer. Her fingertip tapped its bottle cap but then she changed her mind, grabbing the expensive bottle of vodka leaned up beside it. Amanda rarely drank vodka. Like so many things, it reminded her too much of Shane, of how they’d drink it with John and then take it in turns to spit it out on to their bonfire. It was a dangerous game, but back then that was the only kind they played. Amanda had been oblivious to what was at stake, like her heart.
The clear liquor slid down her throat as she drank it straight from the bottle. It was like an icy fire. Amanda spluttered, lowering the bottle. In a few seconds she’d be feeling the much-needed buzz of being drunk. She carried the bottle with her into the lounge. Grabbing a remote, she turned on her sound system and searched through her music until she found a particularly passionate Linkin Park track. Leaning back against her sofa, Amanda tipped the bottle to her lips and consumed more of its fire. She knew she shouldn’t, knew it was dangerous in the wake of her faint. But she needed the release. Needed to stop thinking.