Tell-Tale

by Sam Hayes

  I grabbed an armful of wood and took it back upstairs. Then I went down and fetched more. I did this until I had enough wood to last the evening. I shook out the newspapers and rolled them into knotted twists. I put a dozen into the fireplace and stacked the smallest bits of wood on top in a wigwam shape. My heart was in my throat.

  Then I lit a single match and held it against the paper. I watched as the tiny flame spread, taking only seconds to rise between the splintered wood. In ten minutes, the fire had taken hold and the stack settled and dropped to a steady blaze. I went back to the kitchen and fetched the tray of food I had prepared.

  So here I sit, a lone chair dragged next to the chimney, the tray set between my feet, my left cheek pricking scarlet from the blaze. I’m chewing slowly on cheese and crackers. I helped myself to the supply of wine left for staff and find that, after several glasses, it helps wash everything away.

  I chuck more wood on the fire and watch it ignite. A fresh wave of heat makes me take off my cardigan. Time drags slowly, silently, as I think of the others in the pub. It’s quarter to nine. I saw four of them leave – a woman who I think teaches Latin, Mr McBain the IT teacher, plus a new teacher recently over from Paris who works in the languages department, and, of course, Adam.

  I pull my feet up on to the chair, hugging my knees. ‘I suppose he doesn’t have a home to go to either,’ I mutter to myself, sipping the wine. Something about the heat, the alcohol, being alone, sends me to a place I don’t want to be. Setting the drink on a small table nearby, I pull a photograph from my back pocket. It’s in a sealed plastic bag, slightly crumpled, and the faces in it appear ghostly and silvered because of the shiny bag. I push my fingernail through the seal and open it up.

  Then I scream.

  ‘Oh my God, you scared me half to death.’ Relief turns into a hysterical laugh.

  ‘That was exactly what I was trying not to do.’ Adam bends down, laughing, and picks up the photograph I dropped. ‘Here.’ He hands it back to me after giving it a quick glance. ‘I’m sorry.’

  He drags another chair and places it opposite me. My cosy dinner for one is over, but deep down I’m grateful for the company.

  ‘What’s all this?’ he asks, pointing at the remains of my food, the blazing fire. ‘And who doesn’t have a home to go to either?’

  My entire face reddens, not just the side that is closest to the fire. ‘I thought you were at the pub,’ I say, sidestepping the question.

  ‘Would you rather be alone?’

  No, please stay with me, I beg in my head.

  I shrug. ‘Up to you,’ I say, sliding the photograph under my leg.

  ‘Nice-looking kid. Family picture?’ he asks.

  ‘No. Just a photo a friend sent me. Do you get many letters from banana land?’

  Adam snorts a laugh. ‘Sadly not,’ he says. ‘I don’t have any family in Australia. In fact, I don’t have any family anywhere apart from an ex-wife who, if she did have my address, would probably send me rotten bananas.’

  My turn to laugh. ‘Don’t tell me. She liked hers with ice cream and you liked yours spread on bread with jam.’

  ‘Something like that.’ Adam touches the bottle of wine. ‘Mind if I join you?’ In a moment, he’s back from the kitchen with more wine and another glass.

  I try to convince myself that the company is harmless, that it doesn’t mean I’m betraying anyone or putting myself at risk. He’s just another teacher, not even from this area. The risk is low.

  ‘No family anywhere, then?’ I ask. If we’re going to do it, if we’re going to spend the evening together, then I only want to talk about him. ‘And you didn’t tell me why you came back from the pub.’

  ‘No, not anywhere, and because I was worried about you. Satisfied?’ Wide-eyed, almost mischievous, Adam fills our glasses. He shifts closer to the fire, to me. ‘There’s a real chill in the air tonight.’

  ‘You didn’t have to worry about me,’ I say, angry at myself for liking it that he did. ‘I’m absolutely fine. It’s been a busy few weeks.’

  ‘You’ll become institutionalised in no time,’ he says. His lean body bends towards the heat like a plant seeking the light. ‘Outside of Roecliffe Hall, I’m officially homeless.’ He pushes the iron poker into the fire and the wood drops down into the bed of embers. He chucks more wood on, sending a rain of sparks up the chimney.

  ‘How does that make you feel?’ I put my cardigan back on and stretch it around my legs.

  ‘Free,’ he admits, nodding. ‘For the first time in my life, I feel free.’

  ‘Did you feel trapped in your marriage, then?’

  Adam sighs and waits, wondering if he should tell me. ‘Claudia is a beautiful woman. She’s every man’s dream. But when we met, we were only nineteen. She was just starting out in her modelling career and I’d not long been in Australia.’ He shakes his head, smiling at the memory. ‘Then she got whisked off to London, New York, Paris. She became quite famous and ended up with more money than sense. A few years later, she was back in Australia. By then, I was living and working in Sydney. She looked me up and things kicked off seriously from there. We were married within six months.’ Adam takes a breather, inhaling the heady fumes of the wine.

  ‘Our relationship, if I’m honest, was based around nothing more than lust. Look any deeper and it was clear that we were completely incompatible.’ His accent wins over, perhaps to conceal embarrassment.

  ‘In what way?’ I clasp my fingers around my legs.

  ‘I was teaching history in a city state school. She was an international model. You work it out.’ He grins and pushes up the sleeves of his striped shirt. ‘I think it was a novelty for her to take an academic to her glamorous parties.’

  ‘Worlds apart then,’ I say, hoping that’s the right answer. ‘Literally now,’ I add.

  ‘Claudia was always at some social event, always obsessing about her looks. She went from studio to nightclub, to health club, to studio. In the end, we never saw each other.’ Adam waits for a response but I sit silently, hoping he will continue. ‘I loved her. And she loved me. But if I mentioned kids, she broke out in a sweat.’ He laughs. ‘And as for the house, the car, the dog, the camping holiday in the hinterland every year – the whole happy family thing – forget it. Claudia was a penthouse apartment girl. It was me that left her in the end, in case you’re wondering. I did it to be kind. No one should change themselves that much.’

  ‘Sometimes it’s necessary,’ I find myself saying. Then, ‘So is that what you want? The whole happy family thing?’ I chew on a nail, watching Adam intently.

  He shrugs. ‘I guess it is, eventually. Isn’t that what we all strive for ultimately?’

  ‘Everyone except Claudia.’ I laugh in an effort to disguise my sadness.

  ‘And you?’

  ‘Maybe one day,’ I say quickly. ‘Although I’ll have to hurry up, huh?’ The humour clearly doesn’t hide anything. ‘So is it very different teaching in England to Australia?’

  ‘It’s more roundheads and cavaliers than aboriginals, but I cope. I did my training in Australia, but studied European history as well. Have you ever been married?’ It seems that Adam is as skilled as I am at shifting gears.

  ‘I guess half the battle is how you teach the kids, rather than what it’s about. After all, anyone can read a few books—’

  ‘I’m not entirely sure that’s true.’ Adam stands and leans against the heavy oak mantelpiece. His long legs are stiff, outspread, soaking up the heat. He has his back to me and I see the rise and fall of his chest.

  ‘I didn’t mean that in a bad way. Just that I’m sure how you teach is as important as what you teach.’

  Adam turns round again. ‘The girls here enjoy my classes.’

  ‘A little too much, it would seem.’ I grin.

  He covers his face. ‘Oh, don’t remind me,’ he says. ‘Listen, thanks again for doing what you did. To say I’m grateful isn’t enough.’

  ‘You don’t have
to keep thanking me.’ I mean it. ‘Tell me about the boarding school you said you went to. Was it anything like Roecliffe?’ Strangely, it’s helping, learning about Adam, learning about things outside my own sealed-off bubble.

  ‘It was about as far removed from this school as any place could be. It was in the worst part of Birmingham. It was awful. Horrendous.’ Adam sits down again. His mouth folds into an attractive smile beneath a mass of hair that doesn’t know which way to fall. He has strong features, yet somehow carries himself with gentleness.

  ‘But I thought boarding schools were for the privileged, that they cost an arm and a leg. Surely your parents must have complained about it if it was that bad.’

  ‘It wasn’t a boarding school, Frankie. It was a children’s home. I was in and out of it from the minute I was born. My parents didn’t have any money.’ His face falls flat. He’s trying to wear a mask, but it keeps slipping. ‘I spent some time with my family, but mostly I was in care. I was fostered for a while.’

  ‘What about your parents? Where are they now?’

  He shakes his head. ‘They couldn’t look after me. It was the usual. Drugs, crime, violence. I had a younger sister. I was fourteen when she was born. She was taken into care too, but we got split up. Eventually I was told that my parents were dead and I lost touch with my sister.’

  ‘That’s a tragic story.’ I pour more wine and offer up some of the cut cheese. Adam takes a piece. I stuff two lumps into my mouth. It stops me saying something I know I’ll regret.

  ‘So you can see why I made a new life in Australia. As soon as I got out of the home in Birmingham, I worked hard and saved enough for a ticket. I was one of the lucky ones. I’d studied at school and eventually got some qualifications. That got me a place in teacher training college.’

  I nod, curious why he came back to England. But I don’t get to ask. Suddenly we hear a piercing scream.

  ‘What was that?’ Adam rushes to the double doors and throws them open. Then there’s another scream followed by the vision of a pale, shaking figure in a nightdress.

  ‘Lexi,’ I say.

  CHAPTER 26

  Nina peered through the studio window before entering. She balanced a tray on one hand as she opened the door. She prayed she didn’t look as if she’d been crying.

  ‘Hey,’ she said softly. Mick didn’t like being startled or interrupted when he was working, but she’d needed to see him, just for a few moments. Her excuse was to take him lunch before she got embroiled with Tess.

  She saw the concentration in Mick’s muscles, the tight strapping across his shoulders as he leaned in to the canvas, applying a tiny amount of white paint to a huge picture. ‘The sparkle in the eyes,’ Nina whispered. ‘You’ve just brought her to life.’

  Mick turned and removed a brush from between his teeth. He drew a deep breath as if he’d been holding it all morning. ‘She’s beautiful, isn’t she?’ He made a satisfied noise from the core of his artistic soul. A strand of dark hair curled across one eye. Nina unconsciously noticed the threads of grey. She adored the way her husband looked when he worked. Absorbed, lost, content. As she’d hoped, seeing him went some way to soothing her mind.

  ‘I brought you lunch.’ She slid the tray on to a side table, pushing dozens of curled and squeezed paint tubes aside. The air was scented with linseed, turpentine, and imagination. ‘Did you hear back from that other new gallery that emailed you? Are they still interested in your work?’ Nina was doing her best to appear normal. The prospect of even more work for Mick was exciting, yet she worried about how he would cope.

  Mick tossed the brushes into a jar of blue cloudy liquid. ‘They want to meet me. I tried to call but had to leave a message.’

  ‘I’m so pleased you’re finally getting the recognition you deserve.’ Nina looked at the painting. It was slightly different to his usual style. There were more colours, for a start. Mick’s trademark palette was soft, natural, fleshy hues with one key accent colour to focus the eye. But real-life subjects and realistic backgrounds had given way to an impressionistic feel with a surreal theme. The young woman, a nude, was looking out of a balcony window. There was a hint of a street scene below, but only a hint, while the eye was instantly drawn to the scarlet pumps she wore. ‘I love it,’ Nina said, kissing Mick’s neck. She closed her eyes and breathed in his scent. Again, she felt a rush of relief, security, need. But after only a moment of closeness, Mick pulled away. He was keen to get back to work.

  ‘Enjoy your lunch,’ she said, wishing she could stay in the studio for the rest of her life. ‘I’ll see you later.’

  As she was walking back to the house, Nina’s heart stuttered again. Her fingers twitched inside her jeans pocket. Only when she was back in the kitchen did she remove the hairclip for another look. She stood in front of the mirror and held the strawberry slide against the blond hair at her temple. Nina’s mouth opened in a little gasp. Blurring at the edges, her vision played tricks and she saw someone completely different staring back.

  Nina swung away from the mirror. She reached for the phone and dialled Tess’s number. She was probably already on her way, so she left a message on the voicemail. Sorry, Tess. Something’s come up. I can’t meet today. Can we reschedule?

  Nina tore the clip from her hair and jammed it back into her pocket.

  ‘Probably just a mail order error,’ she said, not believing a word of her self-styled rationale. ‘Or maybe parole for good behaviour.’ She paced the kitchen impatiently, pulling back her hair. She bit one of her nails down so short it bled, and rhythmically kicked her toe against the table leg until it throbbed from the pain.

  Nina lifted the lid of her laptop and opened up the internet. ‘Surely,’ she whispered, ‘he can’t have disappeared off the face of the earth.’

  She typed in a search and drummed her fingers as she scanned down the list of Google results. There were thousands to trawl through. Mark McCormack, she muttered over and over. Nothing caught her eye; none of those mentioned seemed to be her Mark McCormack. She typed again, adding the outdated phone number from her notebook to the mix. Nothing came up. Then she typed Mark McCormack CID. Results showered down the page, but at first glance none of them seemed relevant to her needs. She clicked on a couple of links but the site content was irrelevant.

  Finally, Nina typed the man’s name again before adding two further words that made her stop dead and consider the danger she was in. They glared back at her from the white box before she hit the enter key.

  Eagerly, she scanned the results. Among the listings were blogs by people with either the name Mark or the surname McCormack. There were a couple of articles that caught her eye but turned out to be nothing, plus a website listing movies on the theme of her search. And so the list went on. Nina wasn’t able to find anything specific to her situation or the elusive Mark McCormack. She supposed, given the nature of his work, he wouldn’t be advertising his whereabouts.

  ‘This is useless,’ Nina said, getting up and walking away from the computer. She was angry. What was it he’d said? I’ll be here for you. I’m only a phone call away. And what else had she been told? Self-sufficiency in the community was key, as was reduced contact with the programme support team.

  ‘Not this reduced,’ Nina said bitterly. She turned back to the laptop and brought up the contact details of Avon and Somerset Police headquarters. She dialled the number and waited for a response. She had absolutely no idea what she would say. All she knew was that she needed to make that first contact, to perhaps get a message forwarded to Mark, wherever he was. At the very least, she needed to know that someone was still on her side.

  ‘I want you to connect me to the CID, please,’ Nina stated clearly.

  ‘Which department, please?’

  ‘I . . . I don’t know.’

  ‘Do you have a contact name?’

  ‘No, not exactly,’ she said. ‘Can’t you just put me through?’

  The receptionist sighed and the line went quiet for
a few seconds. Then it rang again and a male voice answered. ‘Public Protection.’

  ‘I was wondering if . . .’ Nina stopped. ‘Do you think you’d be able to . . .’ The words just weren’t there. ‘I’m trying to contact someone in the force that . . . that I knew a long time ago. The number he gave me doesn’t—’ Nina stopped when she heard the chuckle.

  ‘Aren’t we all, love,’ he said. ‘Give me a name and I’ll give the department lists a quick scan for you.’

  ‘He wasn’t actually based in Avon,’ Nina confessed. ‘I don’t know which force he came from. Can’t you just run a search on his name?’

  ‘It’s not quite that simple. Who am I speaking to exactly? Let me enter your details into the system and see what we come up with. I may be able to help if—’

  Nina quickly pressed the phone back on to its base. She lifted it up and jabbed it back in its socket several times, to make sure she was really cut off. She let out a desperate whimper. She couldn’t remember feeling such despair or panic since the day the ultrasound technician had had trouble finding her baby’s heartbeat.

  ‘Nothing will happen,’ McCormack had said to her. ‘You’ll be fine now.’ How could he have been so sure? Looking back, she had believed him, she trusted him. Nina recalled his wise features, the mature way he allayed her fears. Mark McCormack, from the first time she’d met him, had taken control of her life, managing everything from enrolling her in college to arranging for funding. He’d even helped her choose a new wardrobe when she wouldn’t go to the shops alone.

  ‘You’ve let me down,’ she whispered. She took the hairclip from her pocket and tossed it on the table. She felt like a caged animal with the door wide open – except there was nowhere for her to run.

  There was a hopelessness to the way she pressed the laptop lid shut – limp wrists, curled fingers, arms hanging heavy from her shoulders. She dropped her head on to the table and allowed her thoughts to spin. Perhaps Mark McCormack had never really been there for her at all.

  ‘Yes. Yes, I think so,’ Nina said, without knowing if that was an appropriate answer. She was distracted and couldn’t even repeat what Laura had just said to her. She glanced out of her friend’s kitchen window and adjusted the net curtains so there weren’t any gaps. She’d driven round to Laura’s to be close to someone. Her mobile phone rang in her pocket.