The Mistake

by K. L. Slater

  I smile and feel a sense of resolve inside. This is precisely why we can’t afford to let them close the place down.

  The moment I leave the building, all positive thoughts desert me and I catch myself in exactly the same tortuous place; relentlessly checking again.

  Every single day, for goodness knows how many years, I’ve promised myself I’ll try to stop doing it. But once I’m outside in the open air, even if there are plenty of people around, it’s an automatic reaction.

  It honestly feels like there’s not a thing I can do about it.

  Looking behind me every thirty seconds, monitoring the cars driving past to check the same one doesn’t keep passing me. I never listen to music while I walk; I couldn’t possibly. I need to be fully aware of any footsteps approaching behind. I cross the road if I pass by bushes or trees and I always give a wide berth to shadowy alleyways.

  Years ago, Gaynor Jackson, my therapist, said, ‘This compulsive behaviour will exhaust you, Rose. You have to stop.’

  But even after all this time, it’s still the only way I can feel remotely in control.

  One of the reasons I stopped turning up for my therapy appointments was because I couldn’t stand listening to the constant utopian ideology that Gaynor spewed on an endless loop.

  She’d repeat the same clichéd phrases: ‘You can learn to manage your fear’ and ‘you must strive to live in a state of relaxed awareness.’ She believed in the stuff she told me, really believed it could work and it might have done. If only it were as easy as it sounded.

  Gaynor meant well, I’m sure. But her advice all came from a textbook. It was clear from her sunny disposition and naïve expression, when I tried to articulate my terror, that she had never been in fear of her own life.

  She’d never lain awake in the summer months, sweating buckets in a stifling bedroom because she was too scared to open even a small window in case someone climbed up the drainpipe and forced his way in.

  She’d never had to run to the bathroom to be physically sick when she heard a noise out in the garden at dusk and felt too afraid to peer out of the curtains.

  It wasn’t Gaynor’s fault, of course. I realised a long time ago that unless a person has experienced true terror, there is nothing you can do to make them understand how utterly debilitating it can be.

  Or how your safe, ordinary life can disappear in the space of a heartbeat.

  3

  SIXTEEN YEARS EARLIER

  At first, Rose hadn’t even realised that someone was watching her.

  Weighed down with an enormous black art portfolio case, a shoulder bag and a large wallet that was full of art supplies, she juggled her load, swapped hands, but still almost tumbled from the passenger platform.

  The bus stop was situated on Hucknall Road, which traced the edge of Newstead village leading to the A611 towards Nottingham. The village sat on one side of the road and Newstead woods on the other, a curious merging of the sharp steely edges of a moribund industry and the soft green haze of nature.

  Rose sighed as her feet touched the pavement. After a good day at college, the same familiar air of resignation had settled over her during the journey.

  It happened every day. As the bus trundled closer to home, the heavier her heart felt, hanging there in her chest.

  It hadn’t always been that way. The atmosphere at home had grown steadily worse over the last few months. Mum and Dad screaming at each other, both saying awful things designed to inflict the maximum hurt.

  But Rose had noticed a new, unwelcome development. When they tired of insulting each other, they seemed to have taken a liking to turning on her. Voicing everything that was wrong with her, everything she’d done wrong, every way she continuously disappointed them.

  Every day, Rose asked herself how much longer she could stand it.

  She would turn eighteen years old in June and that was just a couple of months away now. If she really wanted to, she could leave the village and make a new start somewhere a long way from here. Nobody could stop her.

  It felt good and powerful to imagine it without considering how she’d begin to support herself. And Rose knew she could never leave Billy. So it wasn’t a real option but still… it sometimes helped when she tried to block out the worsening situation at home.

  Looking at the telltale small puddles here and there in the uneven pavement, Rose could tell it had rained here quite heavily earlier in the day. She hadn’t noticed the weather at college, snug in a classroom, absorbed in her art.

  But it had begun to rain again and, as Rose stood there, still trying to shuffle her various loads into a manageable position, she could smell the dank, old earth and fresh, young leaves; not for the first time, she thought how strange it was having a wood so close to the road.

  She’d barely found her balance in her flat, sensible shoes, when the pneumatic doors whooshed closed behind her and the bus rumbled off down the road. She lost her grip and the bulky wallet slipped from her hands, spilling out her precious soft pastels on to the asphalt.

  ‘Looks like you might need a bit of help,’ a voice said behind her. ‘Can I carry something?’

  She turned to see a man with an amused expression standing watching her. The first thing she noticed was that he looked quite a bit older than her, she guessed probably in his late twenties. He stepped clear of the trees and she noticed his waxed green jacket shone with droplets of water and his hair was damp, stuck to his forehead and cheeks.

  She looked up to the sky but it was still only spitting, certainly not enough to fully douse someone.

  ‘I know, I’m wet through.’ He grinned, displaying slightly crooked teeth in an attractive smile. ‘I’ve been climbing up in the trees and brushing against the leaves. For the photos, you see.’ He held up an expensive-looking camera.

  Rose thought how quiet it was, now that the bus had gone. There was no one else around. The rainclouds had gathered moodily above them and she wondered how long it might be before the heavens truly opened.

  She lay down the portfolio case and began to gather up the scattered pastels, praying none had reached a puddle. There was no way her parents would be able to afford more and it would be another thing for them to chastise her about.

  He was staring at her. She felt her cheeks begin to heat up, despite the chilly air.

  ‘So, what do you say?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’ She packed the last crayon back in the wallet, stood up and swapped the ungainly portfolio case over to her right hand.

  ‘Can I help you carry anything?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ Her cheeks heating up, she held out the large portfolio case. ‘Thanks.’

  Although she couldn’t deny part of her was intrigued, Rose wished the stranger would just go on his way and leave her alone. She was only too aware she looked like an idiot. Bright red cheeks to match her pale-red hair. What a mess.

  ‘Gareth Farnham,’ he said. ‘I’d shake your hand but you’ve got me laden like a donkey here.’

  He had offered, she reasoned. Rose looked at him, wondering whether to defend herself, and then he grinned. She gave him a little smile back and looked at the pavement.

  ‘Lead the way then and I’ll follow,’ he said cheerily.

  They crossed the road and headed for the village. It felt strange, walking with a man. He was taller and broader than her and she found she quite liked how that made her feel. Would he walk all the way home with her, she wondered? He was just helping her out, after all. He couldn’t possibly like her… could he?

  Anyway, he was too old for her for there to be anything like that in it. Her mum would have a fit if she saw them together and she didn’t want to begin to think what her dad might say. The mood he’d been in lately, he might well throttle her.

  Nevertheless, Gareth was quite good-looking. And very grown-up compared to the lads at college, who still acted like twelve-year-olds.

  He coughed and she realised he’d said something.

  ‘Sorry, I—’
>
  ‘I said my name’s Gareth.’ He stopped walking. ‘You seem a bit distracted… are you worried about your homework or something? Maybe I could help you with it.’

  He grinned and winked and a flush of heat began to slowly crawl up her neck.

  ‘Sorry. I meant to say, I’m Rose,’ she said and he stopped walking. She looked back at him and her feet stopped too.

  He tilted his head to one side and frowned as if he was trying to recall something and then he began to recite words, loud and dramatically.

  ‘Oh! Snatched away in beauty’s bloom,

  On thee shall press no ponderous tomb;

  But on thy turf shall roses rear

  Their leaves, the earliest of the year.’

  He beamed at her and waited.

  ‘A poem?’ She felt the heat in her face increase tenfold.

  ‘By Lord Byron, whose gaff, as you know, is just across the village.’ He grinned. ‘What’s the place called again?’

  ‘Newstead Abbey.’

  ‘That’s it, Newstead Abbey. I thought I’d impress you by reciting a poem with your name in it, you see. I’ve got a good memory like that, never had trouble with exams.’

  ‘I am impressed.’ She couldn’t help smiling. She felt very self-conscious but perhaps she needed to make a bit more effort at making conversation. ‘I – I haven’t seen you around the village before.’

  ‘You won’t have, I just moved here a couple of days ago,’ he said. ‘I’m renting one of those new apartments on Lacey Grove; everything’s still in boxes, I’m afraid. I’m going to be managing the new regeneration project. Have you heard about it?’

  ‘I think so,’ Rose replied, nodding. ‘They’re making a park and a fishing lake where the pit used to be?’

  ‘That’s the one.’ Gareth seemed pleased she knew of the project. ‘You’ve simplified it quite a bit but it’s a very high-level programme.’

  ‘Oh,’ Rose said.

  ‘Put it this way, I’ve had to speak to some pretty high-level people in government to get this thing up and running.’ He paused and looked at her expectantly. When she didn’t comment, he continued. ‘It’ll breathe new life into the village, just you wait and see.’

  They crossed the road from the bus stop and headed into the village, leaving the dripping greenery behind them.

  ‘The project sounds really good,’ Rose remarked, although privately she thought fishing cruel. That said, it could only be a good thing that funding was finally trickling into the stricken village.

  The government’s regeneration in the area was a positive start but even Rose had to acknowledge that it would take more than a bit of grass seed and water to transform it back from the ghost town it had turned into when the pit closed in 1987.

  4

  SIXTEEN YEARS EARLIER

  The rain started to beat down a little faster now as they walked around the perimeter of the primary school’s fence.

  Rose shuddered at the brightly painted, polyurethane children that lined the road. They were essentially bollards, providing a visual warning that drivers were about to pass a school; unseeing eyes that watched Rose walking by, their tight little immoveable mouths barely concealing their disapproval.

  The brick terraces came into view, dour against the grey sky. They had been built to last, originally for the mineworkers, and, although that purpose had now passed, they remained solid and fused together like links in an iron chain.

  ‘I’ll take that now, if you like.’ Rose slowed her pace and reached out for the portfolio case with an arm that was already hooked with two bags. ‘Thanks for helping me.’

  Gareth drew the portfolio closer to his body.

  ‘It’s no trouble to see you home.’ He smiled. ‘I’ll walk with you.’

  Rose’s heart began to thump. What would happen if her mum saw her with Gareth or, even worse, her dad saw? She’d hate to give them something else to moan at her about.

  Her father had become so unpredictable in the years since the pit had closed, spending most of his time down at the Station Hotel nursing the same pint of bitter all night because he couldn’t face the screaming rows with her mum if he spent precious funds on more than one or two drinks.

  Ray Tinsley had been 37 years old when the mine closed. He’d worked there all his life, since leaving school at fifteen. Ray had been a face worker – spending twelve-hour days and sometimes nights, in 38-degree heat, crawling through and toiling in a tunnel barely wider or higher than his own body.

  Suffering the hardest work but paid the most money, Ray and his fellow face workers were afforded status in the local community. Overtime had been plentiful and, consequently, money had never been a problem in the Tinsley household.

  The day the pit closed, Stella had told Rose some years later, Ray had opened an investment account and banked his redundancy payment, adamant he wouldn’t end up on the ‘scrap heap’ as some predicted and therefore wouldn’t be needing the money anytime soon.

  ‘I’m not an old man, I’ve still a lot to offer,’ he’d confidently said as he’d left his wife and five-year-old daughter, bright and early for the Job Centre, on his very first day without work.

  He had steadfastly applied for numerous jobs around the area, even as far as the sprawling hosiery factories in Mansfield and Nottingham. But so had lots of the other redundant miners and some of them were younger than Ray.

  Two months after losing his job, Stella had noticed her husband’s applications tailing off. His step slowed, his head hung a little lower. Nobody seemed remotely interested in employing a man who possessed such specific mining skills and who wasn’t far off knocking at the door of his fortieth birthday.

  ‘So, what do you say, Rosie?’

  ‘Sorry?’ Rose jerked back to the present. She felt the art supplies wallet slipping in her clammy hand. He’d called her Rosie. Nobody had called her that since her grandad when she was small.

  ‘You were deep in thought there,’ Gareth said, smiling at her. ‘I asked if you fancied going to the Odeon in Mansfield, say on Wednesday night?’

  She watched him as he frowned up at the burgeoning rain clouds. ‘You don’t have to, of course, it’s just, with being new to the area and all that… I don’t really know anyone yet. Gets a bit lonely, just watching TV on my own every night, you know?’

  Rose thought about when she’d first started at West Notts College, in Mansfield. Other people from school, who she knew by face, had also gone there. But there was no one she knew on her actual art course, so she spent her breaks and lunchtimes alone, watching other people laughing and discussing their lessons.

  She’d hated it and had begun planning how she could back out of her art course and get a job somewhere. The fantasy included escaping everything, including her parents. And then Cassie had ditched her place doing hair and beauty at Clarendon College in Nottingham and had joined Rose’s art course instead.

  That was Cassie all over. Up and down, back to front.

  ‘No pressure but what do you say?’ Gareth continued. ‘You can choose which film we see?’

  He was too old for her but it would be rude to just say no outright. The thought of escaping the horrible atmosphere at home, even for just one evening, was tempting.

  Nothing exciting and new ever happened here and now something had.

  She’d be a fool to turn Gareth down. Besides, the look on Cassie’s face when Rose told her she had a date would be priceless.

  ‘Thanks,’ she heard herself say. ‘The cinema would be really nice.’

  The closer they got to home, the jumpier Rose became. Gareth was still chattering on and she kept having to ask him to repeat himself.

  If her dad was sitting in his chair with the net hooked back, looking out of the window like he so often did, he’d interrogate her for hours.

  If she went straight up to her room, he’d complain she should be helping her mother with the tea. If she stayed downstairs too long, he’d question her commitment to the art c
ourse. Rose was heartily sick of his constant mantra: ‘It costs us to support your education, you know.’

  Gareth seemed to sense her discomfort. When she told him they’d reached her street, he handed her the rain-spotted portfolio case.

  ‘So, what’s your number?’ he asked, pulling out a Nokia phone from his pocket.

  ‘I – I haven’t got a mobile,’ Rose confessed.

  ‘What? How come?’

  She wasn’t about to tell him there was no spare money in the house for mobile phones. She couldn’t even get a Saturday job in the village; there was just nothing going at all. She’d just started volunteering at the library on Wednesday afternoons as she had no lectures then, but she didn’t get paid a cent for that; she just liked being around the books.

  She hated having to rely on her mum and dad for things. It made her feel like a little kid and she felt guilty that she made no contribution. Particularly when shortage of money was the main cause of antagonism between her parents these days.

  ‘Never mind.’ He winked at her. ‘Give us your landline number, I’ll call you on that to sort out the arrangements for Wednesday.’

  Rose opened her mouth and closed it again. She couldn’t give Gareth the number because she didn’t want her parents to know she’d arranged to see him. Yet she’d look like a silly kid if she said as much.

  Gareth stared at her for a moment and then his face broke into a broad grin.

  ‘Oh, I get it. I’ve got to be your dirty little secret, right?’

  ‘No!’ she said, mortified. ‘It’s not that at all. It’s just – well, my dad, he’s…’

  ‘Say no more.’ Gareth’s fingers hovered above the keys of his phone. ‘Just give me the number and I’ll call you tomorrow night; they won’t know it’s me. Does eight prompt suit?’

  ‘But—’

  ‘All you have to do is make sure you’re right by the phone. They’ll just think it’s a friend.’

  Rose was uncomfortable with the arrangement, but he seemed so enthusiastic, she didn’t want to burst his bubble. She supposed she could give him one wrong digit but then how would he get in touch? He did seem really nice. And even though Rose fully intended to lay it on thick with Cassie about the fact she’d been asked out on a date, truthfully it was really only a film and a bit of company because Gareth didn’t know anyone else who lived around here.