The Birthday Girl

by Sue Fortin

  I want to look at the photographs of Alfie before Darren’s death, when Alfie was a baby, a toddler, a little lad and a teenager. I want to drink in those photos, absorb and harbour all those happy times, all that love I had for him and he had for me. I need to feel that again, to remind myself that I did once have a loving son. It will help me counter the emotions I am dealing with now and those yet to come. Or at least I hope it will. I’m not quite sure how I’m going to get over this.

  Far too soon, Seb is gently rousing me. ‘I’m sorry, Carys, but I’ve got to go,’ he says, kissing the top of my head.

  I snuggle into him, my cheek resting against his firm chest and I breathe in the fresh zingy scent of his body wash. I wish he could stay but I don’t want to put any pressure on him. He’s done so much for me already. ‘I’ll miss you,’ I say.

  ‘Shit, I’m going to miss you too. And worry about you. Are you sure you’ll be OK?’

  ‘Yes, please don’t worry.’ I look at my watch. ‘Mum will be here soon.’

  ‘I could hang on,’ says Seb, again.

  He is so thoughtful and yet so not needed right now. I don’t have the heart to tell him. ‘Please, Seb, I do appreciate it, but I will be one hundred per cent fine. Besides, I could do with an hour or two to prepare myself mentally for Mum. After all, she’s having to deal with what’s happened to Alfie too.’ An irritated tone clips the last few words which I immediately regret when I see a small flicker of hurt dash across Seb’s face. ‘Thank you, anyway,’ I tack on the end to soften the blow.

  ‘I’m sorry. I’ll get off, but if you need me, call. I can come right back.’ He kisses me and hugs me gently one last time. ‘Make sure you lock the door behind me. I’ll ring you when I get there.’

  ‘Be careful,’ I say, following him out to the front door.

  Seb picks up his overnight bag and stops on the front step. ‘I love you, Carys.’

  I watch him pull out of the drive and disappear down the road. I close the door and flick the Yale lock, remembering to put the chain across. I’ll run myself a bath and dig out the photographs while I’m upstairs.

  In the bathroom, I pour my favourite bath cream under the running tap. The sweet smell of coconut fills the steamy air. My bath is notoriously slow at filling and I potter around in my bedroom sorting out clean nightclothes. Ideally, I’d like to wash my hair but am unsure how I’ll manage with only one good hand. Perhaps I’ll have to wait for Mum to help with that tomorrow.

  The sound of my mobile, the new one Seb bought me, rings out from downstairs in the living room. I nip downstairs and pick up the handset. It’s Mum.

  ‘I’m so sorry, darling. The flight was delayed and now the traffic is horrendous. I’m not going to be with you until at least nine this evening. Is that OK?’

  ‘Of course, don’t worry,’ I say. ‘Are you driving now?’

  ‘I’m on the hands-free,’ she replies. I hear an impatient blast of the horn. ‘Bloody idiot! Not you, Carys, the moron in the BMW, just cut across me to get into a different lane.’

  ‘Look, Mum, you go. Concentrate on your driving and I’ll see you when you get here. Take your time.’

  I put the phone down on the arm of the sofa and notice something out of the corner of my eye, tucked around the side. It’s the bag the hospital sent home containing all the belongings I had on me when I was airlifted from the riverbank.

  I take it into the kitchen, emptying the contents on to the stripped-pine surface of the table. My clothes had been given to Seb yesterday and are now languishing in the washing machine, waiting for Mum to attend to when she gets here. Mum had been insistent that I was to do nothing and, to be honest, I don’t have the energy to argue. I know letting Mum help in a practical way will give her far more satisfaction and a sense of being useful.

  Amongst my clothing, I spot the little waterproof bag I had hung around my neck when Alfie and I took the kayaks. My mouth dries as I run my fingers over the plastic. I can feel the outline of the mobile phone. Alfie’s phone. Only one person knows I have this and they will be equally keen to make sure it stays out of the hands of the police.

  I drop the phone into the pouch and pop it into my pocket. I’ll hide it at the back of my wardrobe in the box where another time-bomb silently ticks. One that I don’t fully understand but the sense of anticipation that it’s about to go off any day now is getting stronger and stronger with each thought.

  ‘Hammerton,’ I say out loud. Once again, I take the stairs to my room, stopping at the bathroom to switch off the bath. The built-in wardrobes face me. Darren had them specially designed to maximise the space either side of the fireplace. I slide the right-hand door open. This part of the wardrobe, nearest to the chimney breast, has a set of drawers. The top drawer is only half the depth of the other three and at first glance, once the clothes are in, socks in this case, you wouldn’t notice the false back. I take out the drawer completely to reveal a secret hidey-hole, precisely the right size for a hotel-room-style safe. I tap in the number and the little red LED turns to green.

  I haven’t opened this safe for nearly two years. The ghosts of my past have been secreted in a dark corner of my room, not a dissimilar place to where they have been buried in my mind. I close my eyes, take a deep breath and open the safe.

  Inside is a brown A4 envelope marked ‘Private’ with my name on it, written by my own hand.

  Sitting at my dressing table, I empty the contents on to the glass surface. A newspaper clipping. A photocopy of a student profile from college. A feather and a small message card, the type you leave on a bouquet of flowers for someone’s birthday. Or funeral.

  I think of Darren’s funeral and the crowds of students who had come to say their last goodbyes. I had found it particularly moving, seeing those young people who Darren had a real affinity with, seeing his affection for them so clearly reciprocated. I had felt compelled to comfort their young broken hearts, despite my own heartache. It was a touching moment and I am sure they gained as much from the gesture as I had.

  When I turned away, however, I had seen one lone student. She hadn’t noticed me looking at her. It was the abject sorrow that filled her eyes and the pain so clearly etched on her face that caught my attention first, that and several plaited strands of hair, wrapped in multicoloured thread, finished off with a feather attached to the end. I had approached her, to try to offer some form of comfort, but as soon as I said hello and asked her if she was one of Darren’s students, she had gone such a deathly white, I thought she might faint. She had backed away from me, taking two or three steps before turning and running out of the cemetery. It was later, after going through Darren’s paperwork, that I found a printout of her student profile. Leah Hewitt. I’d been able to find her on Facebook but her privacy settings didn’t allow me to find anything else out.

  I had asked about her at the college, but was told she had left and even if they had a forwarding address, the admin staff couldn’t possibly pass it on to me. The next time I went to look at her Facebook account, it had been deactivated.

  There was something about Leah Hewitt that told me she wasn’t your average student. She appeared to keep herself apart from the others, for a start, but that on its own wasn’t what had made me want to find her. There was something I saw in her eyes, a deeper level of emotion that disturbed me. Something which I knew I would have to deal with at some point. Maybe not then or in the immediate future following the funeral, but I knew she would ultimately come back into my life. I had never managed to find her and became so caught up in the aftermath of Darren’s suicide that, although I didn’t forget about her, I put her to one side and concentrated on my own child who very much needed me.

  I pick up the feather. I had found it down the side of the passenger seat in Darren’s car a few weeks after his funeral. I had been hoovering the car when I noticed the multicoloured feather poking out from under the seat, between the seatbelt holder and centre console. When someone finds a feather, it’s suppose
d to be a sign that a loved one who has passed away has come to visit. In an unusually sentimental gesture, I had kept the feather and taken it indoors. It wasn’t until sometime later that the significance dawned on me.

  I turn my attention to the student profile printout. At the beginning of the academic year, when the students return to college, staff are given temporary registers with a printout of each student’s details and a photograph. Once the first three weeks are complete and the students have enrolled, the temporary registers are replaced with permanent electronic ones. I remember thinking there must have been a reason why he had kept hers, but my brain had been fogged with grief.

  I look at the black-and-white photocopy of Leah Hewitt’s face, studying each feature both separately and as a whole, looking for the slightest resemblance. Is it the eyes? The nose? The mouth? I can’t tell. The knot in my stomach tightens the longer I look at the young woman’s face underneath the words Hammerton College of Further Education.

  Now the grief-laden fog is lifting, I can see the reasons he kept her profile emerging from the bleak and distorted corners of my mind, forming into the monster I’ve been hiding from these past two years.

  Chapter 37

  My head is a morass of thoughts, swirling around, like a Viennese waltz, making me dizzy as I try to untangle them. And there’s that tugging heavy sensation of my heart as if it’s about to drop into the pit of my stomach, it’s teetering on the edge of realisation. I’m not quite there yet, but when the music stops and my head stops spinning, when my thoughts line up nicely in an orderly fashion, then I know my heart will plummet.

  The earlier urge to look through Alfie’s old photographs has deserted me. I can only deal with one painful realisation at a time. Robotically, I take myself downstairs to the living room and hunt through some CDs, hoping the music will help clear my thoughts. If I keep all the doors open, I will still be able to hear it when I’m in the bath. It might even help to drown out my thoughts of Alfie and Darren, dark thoughts which are never far from the surface.

  The soft tones of James Blunt drift up the stairs. I wish for a brief moment that I had taken the hospital’s offer of something to help me sleep. My beta-blockers got soaked in the river and with no more at home, I seek out the alternative and pour myself a glass of wine.

  I must have put more bath cream in than I realised. A big foaming mass of white bubbles swirls on the surface of the water. I turn on the cold and swish it around with the hot.

  As I perch on the edge of the bath, my good hand trailing a figure of eight through the water, I have a creeping sensation I am not alone. I spin round and almost topple backwards into the bath, letting out a small yelp of surprise.

  I can see the top of Zoe’s head as she stands at the foot of the stairs. I walk to the landing and look down at her, wondering how the hell she got into my house.

  ‘You left the kitchen window open,’ she says, as if she can read my mind.

  We stare at each other in a mutual silence and in those few seconds, all the pieces of not only last weekend but the two years leading up to it now begin to fall into place. I grab the top of the banisters for support as my legs go weak.

  And then, Zoe is taking the stairs two at a time. I let out another scream, this time one with more conviction. I rush across the landing and into my bedroom, slamming the door closed. I look frantically for something to push up against the door, if only to buy myself a few extra seconds. The bedside table is my only option, but one-handed, I won’t be able to move it quick enough.

  ‘Carys! Carys, don’t be silly.’ Zoe’s voice is getting closer. She’s at the top of the stairs. I can hear the loose floorboard on the landing groan under her step.

  ‘Go away. Leave me alone,’ I shout. ‘I’m on the phone to the police right now.’

  ‘Tut, tut, don’t tell lies. I have your mobile and the house phone is downstairs.’ She’s outside the bedroom door. ‘So, are you going to come out so we can talk, or do I have to come in there?’

  I consider standing my ground and going for an all-out physical fight with Zoe, but with only one arm and Zoe’s height advantage, the odds aren’t in my favour. She’s clearly recovered from her bad ankle, although I doubt now she was ever hurt. I suspect it was all a ploy to unsettle me more and a reason for her to stay at the croft. I edge myself around the bed towards the window. Would I make the drop? There’s a small porch that runs across the front door and the living- room bay window. It would break my fall. I grapple with the key in the window lock, cursing myself for insisting they were installed when we had first moved in. The locks were supposed to be a protection from the dangers outside, not to prevent me escaping the dangers lurking in my home.

  ‘Looks like I’m going to have to come in,’ calls Zoe. The handle moves and the door inches open.

  I’ve managed to get the lock undone. I grab hold of the cord for the blinds and yank at it, pulling it to one side to lock the blinds in one place but before I can do anything else, Zoe is around the bed and pulling me away from the window.

  ‘Get off me!’ I yell, trying to pull myself free from her grip. My bandaged hand is a hindrance. My bare feet make no impact on Zoe’s shins. She grabs my arm and twists it agonisingly behind me, grabbing a fistful of my hair with her other hand and tugging my head backwards, before marching me out of the room.

  ‘Zoe, what the hell are you doing?’ I cry out, holding on to my hair with my one free hand. If she tugs any harder, I’m sure she’s going to pull it out at the roots.

  ‘Told you. I want to talk to you. Let’s go downstairs, shall we?’

  ‘I haven’t exactly got any choice,’ I say. ‘Please can you let go of my arm, you’re hurting me.’

  ‘That is the general idea,’ says Zoe. She stops short of the top of the stairs and for one awful moment I think she’s going to launch me to the bottom. ‘Nice and easy, one step at a time.’

  Zoe steers me towards the dining room but only to grab a chair. She releases my arm and with one hand still firmly clutching my hair, she uses her free hand to drag the chair out into the hall. She pushes me into the seat and from her trouser pocket produces several red cable ties.

  As Zoe lets go of my hair to attach my wrist to the arm of the chair, I take what I think will be my only opportunity to escape. I lift my knees up and push her hard in the stomach with both feet. Zoe groans and moves to the side, but she doesn’t let go of my arm, squeezing tightly around my damaged wrist. A red-hot poker of pain shoots through me and I’m immobilised immediately.

  ‘That wasn’t very sporting of you,’ says Zoe as she deftly straps my wrists to the carver arms.

  I shout and scream, kick my feet and bang my heels down on the wooden floorboards in the hope that one of the neighbours will hear me. Being in a detached house, I know this is unlikely, but I can’t sit here and give in to whatever Zoe has planned for me. I am under no illusion that a cosy chat is on the cards.

  ‘For fuck’s sake, Carys, give it a rest!’ shouts Zoe. She grabs at a bag I hadn’t noticed before and pulls out a roll of gaffer tape. She rips off a strip with her teeth and places it firmly over my mouth.

  Zoe sits on the floor and catches her breath, resting against the wall opposite me, her knees raised and her arms languishing on top of them. ‘I’m knackered now,’ she says. ‘You shouldn’t have bothered putting up a fight. You’ll need to conserve your energy for later.’

  I can’t answer and I struggle to free my arms, but the cable-ties are too tight and my left wrist and shoulder too painful to have much effect. I decide to take Zoe’s advice and save my strength.

  After a moment or two, Zoe heaves herself to her feet and dusts down her trousers. ‘That’s better, nice and quiet.’ Then, humming an unidentifiable tune to herself, Zoe fishes around in the bag and brings out a rope. She turns and smiles. ‘Remember this?’

  My eyes bulge and a new wave of fear washes over me. The rope is the climbing rope from the croft, the one with the noose on the en
d.

  I watch in horror as Zoe ascends the stairs. Stopping halfway, she ties one end securely around the banister between two spindles, with the noose trailing down, swinging in front of me at eye level. I’m mesmerised by the sight. Images of Darren flood my mind. I can’t deal with this. Tears swamp my eyes and I feel them cascade down my face. I struggle against the ties holding my wrists in place and then try to stand by pushing my arms back and moving the chair out from under me. The pain in my wrist and shoulder is excruciating. Hunching forwards, I head for the front door but only make it as far as the foot of the stairs before Zoe blocks my path.

  ‘Don’t be silly, Carys,’ she says. ‘If you’re too impatient to stay put, we’d better get this show on the road, sooner rather than later.’ She resumes her humming as she effortlessly pushes me into the chair. Unfortunately, the chair is now on the rug at the end of the hall and all Zoe has to do is to drag the rug to move me back to where I started from.

  I’m screaming through the gaffer tape but it is too tight and muffles any sound. Zoe pulls the noose over my head; the knot pushes against the base of my neck. Then she heads up the stairs and I feel the slack leaving the rope as it bites into my skin. I stretch as high as I can, but still Zoe pulls on the rope until my windpipe is being squeezed. I struggle to inhale enough breath through my nose.

  She returns to my side and reaches into her bag. Her hand emerges holding a Stanley knife. I try to move away from the blade as it glints in the sunlight streaming through the door. A rainbow of colours reflects around the room like a disco ball, but this is no party. Zoe slices the cable ties and my hands ping free from the chair. Immediately I grapple at the rope around my neck, trying to relieve some of the pressure. I manage to stand and the tension decreases, but not for long. Zoe takes hold of the loose end of the rope and pulls on it, sending me to my tiptoes as I try to stop myself being choked.