‘You can’t set fire to their cider bottle, Hep,’ I told her firmly, dragging her away from temptation. ‘No matter how much they swear.’
‘I hate them.’ She spat at their oblivious backs. ‘They don’t deserve to be alive.’
‘Maybe not, but that isn’t up to us.’ I paused and took a nervous breath. ‘I want to talk to you about something, and you might not like what I’m going to say. In fact, I can’t think of much you’d like less.’
I explained. As I expected, she refused point blank to take part. It took me the best part of the afternoon to persuade her otherwise.
‘It won’t achieve anything,’ she said, once her initial torrent of rage had subsided.
‘You might feel better,’ I offered, wondering if she’d read between the lines and realised what this might mean.
She aimed a half-hearted punch at a shrivelled balloon tied to one of the pillars. ‘They didn’t listen to me when I was alive,’ she mumbled. ‘It’ll be even easier to ignore me now I’m dead.’
Somehow, I didn’t think her parents were ignoring her, not with the amount of poltergeist activity she was generating around them, but I didn’t say so. I was determined to get the three of them communicating, no matter how long it took.
Hep’s mum and dad were older than I expected. Even allowing for the aging effect of their grief, I guessed they were in their fifties. They sat in their faded, flowery living room and stared at Jeremy, sorrow hanging around them like an accustomed blanket.
‘How did you say you knew Rosemary?’ Mrs Muldoon asked, after Jeremy had introduced himself.
Nervously, he cleared his throat. ‘I didn’t, Mrs Muldoon.’
I gave him an encouraging nod. What he was doing was incredibly hard, and neither of us knew how it would go or even whether Hep was going to play ball. At the moment, she was sitting in the corner of the room, scowling ferociously and peeling the wallpaper from the wall.
‘I’d like to start by saying I’m truly sorry for your loss.’ Jeremy glanced from one to the other. ‘I can only imagine what you’ve been through.’
Mrs Muldoon bowed her head. ‘No one should outlive their child.’
Her husband said nothing.
‘My purpose for coming here might seem hard to believe at first. If I was in your shoes I’m not sure I’d be able to accept it.’ Jeremy paused and took a great gulp of what must now have been lukewarm tea. ‘It might come as something of a shock to hear this, but your daughter is in this room right now.’
A ball of crumpled wallpaper sailed over our heads and bounced off the chimney breast. Mr and Mrs Muldoon didn’t bat an eyelid. I guessed it was an everyday event for them.
If I’d been either of Hep’s parents, the temptation to make a sarcastic comment at that moment would have been too great to resist. Neither of them said a word. Somehow, they didn’t seem the sarcastic type. Instead, they continued to gaze at Jeremy as though he’d told them it was raining outside.
He went on. ‘She’s quite angry. My purpose today is to speak on Hep’s – sorry, Rosemary’s – behalf.’
Mrs Muldoon’s expression softened. ‘Can you see her?’ she asked, wistful longing creeping into her voice.
Tears sprang into my eyes. The emotion on her face was heart-wrenching. No matter what Hep felt, in that moment I knew she had been loved by her mum and dad. They might not have told her so, but she’d been the centre of their world. The tragedy was, Hep had never known.
It was too complicated to explain how Jeremy knew about Hep. We’d agreed beforehand that it would be easier to pretend he could see her. With a questioning glance at me, he said gently, ‘She’s over by the fish tank.’
Silent tears spilled down Mrs Muldoon’s worn cheeks. ‘I’d give anything to be able to see her one last time.’
‘Oh for pity’s sake, it’s like being on a daytime TV show,’ Hep sneered from her corner. ‘Any minute now they’re going to wheel out the brother I never knew I had.’
It was an act. I could tell by her glistening eyes that she was struggling not to cry. ‘Let go, Hep. You don’t have to pretend any more.’
She stared hard at the patterned carpet, pressing her lips together. ‘What do you know about it? You never wanted to die.’
I couldn’t argue. It didn’t mean I couldn’t understand the depth of her desolation and loneliness, though. I knew how that felt. She’d thought killing herself would stop all the pain and bewilderment she felt at a world which seemed unable to accept her. Instead, things had got worse.
‘No, but there are still things I wish I’d told my family. This is your chance, Hep. They’re listening now.’
The words broke the last barrier. All the pent-up emotions she’d been forcing back in the months since her death came surging out. Jeremy paled, but did his best to translate the waves of utter misery I relayed to him.
‘I couldn’t escape the bullies!’ she spat bitterly. ‘They hounded me at school and followed me home, calling me names on the bus. They even sent me bitchy texts, always from different numbers so I couldn’t grass. And . . . and then they posted a video of me having an asthma attack during cross-country on the internet.’
‘Slow down, Hep,’ I pleaded as she paused to suck in another impassioned breath. ‘I can’t keep up!’
She couldn’t help herself, though. Mrs Muldoon openly sobbed. Her husband tried to comfort her, even though it was clear he, too, was feeling the force of the charged atmosphere. Zooming around over our heads were all the movable objects in the room. They sped up with every sentence, until they were little more than a blur. Jeremy and Hep’s parents shrank lower into their seats.
‘Why didn’t they help?’ Hep’s voice was raw as she bellowed the words into the air, the lightbulbs flickering in their sockets. ‘All I needed was their support.’
Mr Muldoon broke his silence for the first time to answer. ‘We didn’t know it was so bad,’ he whispered raggedly. ‘We’d have given our own lives to help, but how could we do anything if she didn’t tell us? When the school admitted at the inquest what had been going on, I couldn’t believe we hadn’t noticed.’ His anguished gaze dropped. ‘Maybe it was easier not to see.’
‘That’s not true,’ wept Mrs Muldoon. ‘I was her mother, the one meant to keep her safe. All the signs were there. I just didn’t understand what they meant.’
Hep reached boiling point. ‘It’s too late for this! Don’t you get it? You can’t make things right. No one can!’
She screamed a desperate cry of soul-wrenching unhappiness. The flying ornaments shattered, showering us with dust and broken china.
In the emptiness that followed, all I could hear was shallow breathing.
‘I’m sorry we let you down, Rosie,’ Mrs Muldoon said at last. ‘Sometimes, I wake up thinking it’s all been a horrible dream. Then I go into your room and you’re not there.’ Her voice caught and broke. ‘Our lives ended the day you died. We miss you so very much.’
My gaze rested on Hep’s down-turned head. Surely she wasn’t immune to her parents’ pain?
‘How could I have messed up so badly, Lucy?’ she whispered.
I crossed the room and knelt beside her, threading a comforting arm around her. There was no hatred in her now. ‘You didn’t, Hep.’
She watched her parents consoling each other for a moment. When she spoke, her voice was dull. ‘I’ve put them through hell.’
I considered my next words carefully. There was no denying that Hep had caused herself and her parents untold misery, but there must have been a way for their pain to end. An idea appeared in my head. Without thinking, I went with it.
‘I’ve never told anyone this.’ Sucking in a slow, deep breath, I carried on before my nerve broke. ‘For a long time, I blamed my parents for what happened to me. Then I realised that I wasn’t being fair. I chose to go to the party and I decided not to wait around for a cab. Eventually I saw that all my choices were my own.’
She stared down at her c
hipped black fingernails. ‘It’s easier to blame them.’
‘Is it? I don’t think so. Look at what it’s doing to you.’ I reached out and touched her cheek. ‘Do you want to spend eternity blaming them?’
For several long seconds she didn’t speak. I waited. Finally, she let out a puff of reluctant acknowledgement. ‘All this time I kidded myself it was their fault. It wasn’t, though, was it? How could it have been when I never gave them the chance to help?’
Tears dripped on to Mrs Muldoon’s faded cardigan as she wrapped it around herself. ‘Please forgive us, love. We never wanted you to leave.’
Millimetre by millimetre, Hep’s head moved upwards as she came to terms with her new knowledge. Incredibly, the faintest of watery smiles crept over her face. ‘It’s OK, Mum,’ she said, stretching out a hand towards her parents. ‘I understand everything now. There’s nothing to forgive.’
Mrs Muldoon’s head jerked up. Her mouth dropped open. ‘Rosie?’
Hep’s eyes widened. ‘You can hear me?’
A look of wonder spread over Mrs Muldoon’s damp face. ‘I can hear you, my darling. Can you, George?’
Finally, Mr Muldoon allowed his tears to escape. He pressed his lips together, nodding. ‘I love you, Rosemary.’
I turned to Hep, wondering what was coming next. An uneasy frown settled on my forehead. ‘Hep? You’re glowing.’
It wasn’t coming from her beaming smile. Bathed in a golden light, she had the tiniest of twinkling lights floating in her hair and all around her. With a jolt, I realised I could see through her.
‘It’s happening, Lucy. I’m passing across.’ Her smile didn’t falter as she gazed at me. ‘It doesn’t look half bad there.’
There was hardly anything left of her as she turned to her parents. ‘I love you, Mum and Dad. Don’t be sad any more. We’ll see each other again.’
The words were little more than a whisper. A heartbeat later, the light faded away and she was gone.
For a long moment nobody spoke. Then Jeremy looked around at the fragments of broken china. ‘With the benefit of hindsight, maybe we should have moved the breakable things out of here first.’
A wobbly smile crept over my face. ‘Too late now, don’t you think?’
Hep’s dad chuckled sadly. ‘Actually, she’s done me a favour. I never liked the blasted things anyway.’
Jeremy and I didn’t talk much on the way home. He seemed exhausted by his role in the evening’s events, and I was in no mood for conversation. Apart from being stunned by Hep’s sudden departure, the effect on her parents had made me think of my own mum and dad. They must have been grieving for me still. Did they need the emotional closure which catching my killer would bring? I couldn’t know for sure, but I suspected they did. It was another reason to help Jeremy with his search. Pretty soon I was going to run out of ways to stall.
Chapter 19
As you might guess, Hep left a massive hole in my existence. A few months earlier we’d never met, and now I had to get used to the fact that when my phone vibrated it would never be with a text from her. Even though I knew she’d gone to a better place, it felt like she’d died all over again. Ryan suggested we have a party to celebrate her passing. It was a thoughtful idea, but in the end I said no. Hep had despised almost everyone. She wouldn’t want them standing around pretending to be nice in her honour. We gatecrashed a gig at Wembley Arena instead. As we danced alongside sixty thousand emotionally challenged teens, I had the definite feeling Hep was smiling. Wherever she’d gone, she approved.
* * *
Events at Hep’s house had driven all thoughts of my mysterious visitor out of my head. It wasn’t until I saw someone lurking in the stairway a few days later that I remembered Gonzo’s warning about the man he’d seen.
It was a little after midnight. I was on my way to the cupboard, thinking it was time I got some sleep, when I spotted him. He might have passed for someone looking to have a wee if it hadn’t been for the furtive way he crouched on the bottom step to look around. It dawned on me he was trying to see if there were any security cameras. Instantly, I was suspicious and decided to see what he did next.
Obviously satisfied he wasn’t being filmed, the man straightened up and crept down the last stair. I waited, wondering if he was checking the place out for a potential drug deal. One of the fluorescent lights had broken overhead, making the toilet gloomier than normal. I couldn’t make out much detail, but he was dressed in what looked like black combat trousers and a dark jacket. He had a baseball cap pulled low over his face. As he stood silently in the centre of the room, I moved closer. There was definitely something odd about his behaviour. No one ever came in to soak up the atmosphere.
He had his back to me. I edged forwards, deciding at the very least I could get a description fixed in my mind, but every sense was screaming that something was wrong with this picture. If I could just put my finger on what it was . . .
Slowly, he turned round, and my brain caught up with what my body had been trying to tell it. I knew this man. His face had haunted my dreams. Nine months ago he’d dragged me down to this toilet. For a nanosecond, I stared into the eyes of my killer.
My nerve broke. I bolted. Stumbling up the stairs, I gulped in rasping breaths of air. I ran past Gonzo, curled up in his shop doorway. Ripper saw me go and barked once. I didn’t stop. Running faster than I’d ever managed at sports day, I fled to the first person who’d made me feel safe. It might have been wrong to enter his flat uninvited, but I was past caring. Cocooned in a corner of the sofa and surrounded by cushions, I closed my eyes and forced the nightmare away. That was how Jeremy found me when he got up for work the next morning.
‘I think we should organise a stake-out,’ Jeremy said when I explained what happened. ‘If we’re going to catch this guy, we need hard evidence to take to the police. That’s why they refused to listen last time.’
I rolled my eyes. In the cold light of day, it didn’t seem so bad. ‘You’ve been watching the True Crime channel again.’
‘Actually, it’s not a bad idea,’ Ryan chipped in. I hadn’t wanted to drag him into things, but Jeremy had insisted.
‘You would say that,’ I muttered, feeling a bad mood beginning to take hold. I’d half hoped they’d tell me I was being ridiculous. By taking me seriously they were scaring me.
‘Why has he waited so long to come back?’ Jeremy wondered.
‘How am I supposed to know?’ I snapped. ‘Maybe he’s been drowning his bloodlust at flower-arranging classes.’
‘Or maybe he’s been in prison for something else,’ Jeremy said in a more reasonable tone.
Ryan’s expression was grim. ‘Then he’ll be right at home when we send him back there.’
I didn’t like the idea of a stakeout, but Jeremy and Ryan couldn’t wait to start playing cops and robbers. With my reluctant involvement, they split the evenings into guard shifts. Gonzo was easily bribed to keep watch at ground level. We were ready. All we had to do was wait.
Another week passed by. By the time the toilets closed at three o’clock each morning, I knew the killer wasn’t coming and packed Jeremy off home before he got locked in. Ryan stayed with me every night. I wasn’t complaining. Since our trip to the zoo I couldn’t get enough of kissing him, and although I could have wished for more romantic surroundings, once my initial anxiety had dropped, I enjoyed spending the night in his arms. I hated it when he had to leave me, though.
The next night was following the same pattern as all the others. It was one-fifteen a.m. Jeremy was struggling to keep his eyes open as he perched on the toilet in the end cubicle, leaning against the wall. For a supposed night-owl, he certainly liked a good kip. Gonzo had reported nothing unusual and Ripper was quiet. It looked as though it was going to be another no-show. I was relieved.
‘Why don’t you call it a night, Sleeping Beauty?’
He woke up, fixing me with a bleary gaze. ‘Eh?’
‘Go home.’
; He nodded and started to get to his feet.
‘Shhh!’ Ryan’s muttered warning carried clearly over the tiles. ‘Someone’s coming!’
I held up a hand to Jeremy.‘Wait. Can you hear anything?’
He tilted his head to one side and listened. His eyes flew to mine instantly. Ryan was right – someone was making their way down the stairs. I held my breath.
The footsteps stopped. Taking a deep breath, I leaned out of the cubicle to look. And froze. It was him.
Jeremy inched forwards, peering through the crack in the cubicle door.
‘What are you doing?’ I muttered anxiously. ‘He’ll see you.’
It was already too late. Catching the flicker of movement in the corner of his eye, the man spun round and strode purposefully to where we were hidden. He pushed the door and gazed coldly inside, hands in pockets.
‘You shouldn’t be down here.’ The man’s voice was raspy and laced with menace. ‘This is my special place.’
The last sentence caused a violent shiver to run down my spine. He’d said the same words to me on New Year’s Eve, a chilling smile on his lips as he’d eaten up the shadowy space between us. It was the exact moment I’d known something was wrong, and it made me suddenly fearful for Jeremy.
Thrusting out his chin and looking both terrified and furious, Jeremy said, ‘I know what you did. I’ve told the police about you.’
A terrified groan escaped me. What was he thinking? He was no match for a killer. I couldn’t imagine what made the man want to maim and murder, but I did know that Jeremy was in grave danger and there was nothing I could do to help. Or was there?
Darting forwards, I grabbed Ryan’s hand. ‘Help me!’
Concentrating, I smacked the palm of my hand hard on to the tap in the first sink. Water gushed out. I moved on to the next one. Ryan caught on quickly and did the same at the other sinks. Soon all the taps were roaring and the man was staring at them in confusion.
‘Run, Jeremy!’
Tamsyn Murray-Afterlife 01 My So-Called Afterlife Page 11