An Act of Silence

by Colette McBeth

  Outside, an eerie calm had replaced the storm, the water winking in apology for the previous night’s antics. I walked up and down the roadside, phone aloft, willing a few bars to rise up on my phone.

  Nothing. It was as if the storm had blown it away and severed my last connection to the outside world.

  Linda was waiting in the hallway when I got back. Suitcases packed.

  ‘You look terrible.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Where have you been?’

  ‘I had to make a phone call.’

  ‘We should get going . . . Oh, Anna, are you OK?’

  Tears burst out. Get a grip. ‘I’m just tired, that’s all. So much for the country air.’

  Linda’s face was etched with worry. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘This is all my fault.’

  I fought the temptation to tell her I was leaving, right now, to catch the first ferry. But curiosity and doubt encouraged me to see it through. If I left now, I’d never know for sure what Linda was up to.

  ‘Let’s get on the road . . .’ I pointed to the deer’s head on the wall ‘. . . and then we can kiss him goodbye forever.’

  The route pulled us further and further away from civilisation. Roads narrowed to single lanes, carried us up heights and revealed sheer drops to the water below. Ripe clouds, fat with rain, closed in behind us. We were at the edge of everything. Isolated, cut off, removed. Normal rules of engagement were chased away.

  My anxiety swelled to bursting point. ‘Your book isn’t about female politicians, is it?’ I said. The accusation charged the air between us.

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Politicians . . . that’s not what this is about.’

  She sighed, caught out. ‘No. It isn’t. I take it that’s what you were doing in my room last night.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How much did you read?’

  ‘Enough,’ I said.

  ‘Then I hope you understand why I didn’t want you involved in any way. Those men would do anything to keep this covered up.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Let’s just say this isn’t the first time I’ve tried.’

  I glanced at her, looking for a sign that would dilute my worry. Instead, I found fear fixed in her eyes. ‘You can turn back if you want to. It was wrong of me to ask you here on false pretences. I’m sorry.’

  Questions smashed against my skull, but I held them down. The further I probed, the greater the danger that the truth about my deception would leak out. I had to hold my nerve and my counsel. For now.

  I drove on in silence, concentrating on the road ahead, burning everything else from my mind. There were only the next few hours to get through, and then it would be over.

  ‘You have a voicemail,’ Linda said. She’d been using my phone to check directions and planted it in the tray between us.

  Jay. It must have been him returning my calls. My heart stuttered. I needed to know what he said, what I was to do. I chanced a look down to the phone. Linda screamed. A tree reared up in front of us.

  ‘I’m sure it can wait,’ she said. ‘It would be nice to come out of this alive.’

  The meeting place was a crumbling wreck, cracked paintwork, moss sprouting on the windowsills, roof tiles missing. A few panes of glass were smashed. It didn’t seem right. Every bone in my body screamed that something was wrong.

  Why?

  The question burned through my body.

  Why were we here?

  The lack of any logical explanation unnerved me. What if Linda had tricked me? Fear set inside me like concrete. Clouds swept across the hills and shaded them black. The stench of stagnant water threaded the air.

  Linda headed off to investigate and I told her I would follow, but first I needed to retrieve the message from my phone.

  Reception. Here of all places. My hands shook as I played it. One eye on Linda, stalking the place, shaking her head in confusion. If she was a liar, she was a class act, no mistaking.

  This is DS Clyde. I understand you had an inquiry about DS Huxtable. I’m afraid to say we can’t direct you to him because he is no longer employed by the Metropolitan Police. You mentioned an investigation when you called. I’m assuming this must be a historical one because DS Huxtable was suspended in January and has not returned. I’d be grateful if you would call me urgently on 0207 302302 to discuss the matter.

  The sky cracked, split right down the middle.

  Jay.

  He had lied, set us up, lured us out here where no one would hear us. I’d been looking in the wrong direction all the time. It wasn’t Linda who was out to get me. It was him, and whoever he was working for.

  Curtis. Henry. The men who stood to gain by making us disappear.

  ‘Linda!’ I screamed. It wasn’t my voice. Panic strangled me, blood flooded my head. We had to get out. Now. She turned to look at me but didn’t move. I ran towards her. ‘Linda, get in the car.’

  Fear. That’s what I saw. Something had changed. She was frightened of me.

  ‘Who are you?’ she whispered. Her voice was thin and frail.

  What glorious, terrifying irony! The first time my intentions were honest, Linda chose her moment to uncover me.

  ‘Get in the fucking car.’

  I grabbed her, dragged her towards the car. ‘We have to get out of here.’

  ‘Who are you?’ she asks again.

  What to say? The explanation went back years, one lie layered on top of another and another. Hurt and pain. The loss of a friend.

  Too much to squeeze into a second. Words would slow us down.

  ‘Just do as I say.’

  She didn’t. Not Linda. I always knew she was stubborn.

  She kicked and clawed and scratched, and when she refused to get in the car I slapped her hard. A reflex, a survival instinct, a moment where all that mattered was getting away from the farmhouse.

  In the car, doors locked, Linda shrieking, fists thudding against the window.

  The key was in the ignition and we were there, almost there, an extra minute, thirty seconds. That is all we needed.

  Time we didn’t have.

  The van swung off the lane into the drive, sent up plumes of dust. It was them, couldn’t have been anyone else. No point driving away, a car chase on those roads would send us over a sheer drop. An accident, they’d say. Convenient. There was nowhere to go.

  Linda exhaled relief, she thought they’d come to save her, and in those ticking seconds I made a calculation: should I tell her who they were? Or should I say nothing, play along as if I was still on their side in the hope that I could find a way to save us?

  Jay reached me first. ‘Just play along for now,’ he mouthed, barely audible.

  I wanted to scream and kick and bite and scratch his eyes out for everything he had done, but where would that have got us?

  ‘Don’t say a word to him. I’ll do what I can.’

  Him.

  John, heading towards us. ‘I promise I’ll try to find a way . . .’ Jay let his sentence hang, unfinished.

  Did I believe him? Did it matter?

  He was the only hope I had.

  Later he let me go to Linda, pretended not to notice me slipping out of the living room. And when she jumped out of the bathroom window, streaked towards the road, if he saw her making a run for it, he didn’t react. I watched, gripped by elation and hope as she ran, then by fear as exertion slowed her pace. Only when John spotted her and screamed, ‘What the fuck . . . Are ye asleep, man? She’s out there now!’ did Jay move and follow John out to chase her down. John was fast. It was an unfair match. He pounded the ground, arms like pistons, closing in on her. Our chances of escape shrinking to nothing. When he pushed her, I turned away before I saw the inevit
able fall. Couldn’t look at her face. I had enough tears of my own.

  Then he made me hit her.

  A test I had to pass.

  The appearance of Emily Lune from the general store provided another flash of hope. She called round with an unsolicited trout. ‘Ah brought ye one just like ah promised.’ Had she? I couldn’t remember. Not that it was relevant. She was there, standing in front of me, a friendly face. A link to the outside world.

  ‘Thanks. How do I cook it?’ A knob of butter, pinch of salt, not too long in the pan. I knew already, was only playing for time, trying to convey with my eyes what I couldn’t with my speech. Emily stared back blankly.

  My hand twitched, desperate to reach out and beg for her help. But I could hear John in the kitchen. One stray word and my act would shatter. Besides, Emily was alone. She wouldn’t have been able to save us, and she would have come off worse for trying.

  ‘Well, I’ll be going then,’ she said.

  ‘Wait a second, I’ll get you that shopping list.’

  ‘Shopping list? Oh aye, visitors have you?’

  ‘Just a few.’

  I nipped into the living room, grabbed a pen, a piece of paper from the sideboard and wrote in a scrawl.

  Ham Milk

  Eggs Eggs

  Lobster

  Potatoes

  Jay studied the list, eyes running up and down it. Did he see? Did he care? Was he allowing me one last chance of escape?

  ‘Righto,’ Emily said when she took it. One eyebrow raised at the presence of lobster. It was a pitiful effort, sure to fail, but it was the best I could think of in the circumstances.

  Friday

  Linda

  The house is resting. Quiet. I suspect it is playing games to fool me.

  Silent.

  Before the storm.

  Cortisol flushes through me, urging, pressing, begging me to do something, but the windows are shut, the doors are locked, my body is defeated. It is this combination of circumstances that produces a unique form of torture.

  Run run run.

  But where?

  There’s nowhere to go.

  The thought that I might never touch my son’s skin again, hold him, hear his laugh, watch him walk through my door, is too much to bear. Worse still, he will be locked up for a crime he didn’t commit. My boy, rotting in jail, crying out his innocence, but having no one listen. I let out a wail, a mewling sound, that is pathetic and weak and mocks the intensity of my anguish.

  I pull my knees into my chest, curl myself into a ball in an effort to staunch the pain that slices through me from every angle. My life has been reduced to one desire, one single wish: to see my son again, to tell him I am sorry, for not believing him, believing in him.

  It was never his fault.

  It was all mine.

  I had longed for a baby. Hugh did too, but he never felt the lack as keenly as I did. The months racked up disappointments. We went for tests. Nothing wrong, they said, just unlucky. It might happen. It might not. I should get over it. And I tried, I really did. I threw myself into my career. But there was always this emptiness, this aching hole I could never fill. And then Curtis happened.

  A cruel miracle.

  I prayed for a girl, thought it would be easier somehow, and when Gabriel was born I wondered if I could do it, this motherhood thing, but his face and his skin and his touch told me I could. He was perfect, but still I watched for the imperfections, ready to stamp them out as quickly as they appeared. Didn’t want to see a glimmer of Curtis in him.

  My love was tarnished by what I imagined lay under the surface. I shaped my son with my doubt, the fear that nature would outwit nurture. Where was the trust? I never believed him when he was in trouble. I helped him, I was good at that. Easier to get him out of a fix than give him the very thing he needed most: my belief. I judged him against the past, a father he never knew, and I hoped he would be good, but the truth, the ugly, wretched truth, was that I expected him to be bad.

  Then the transplant happened.

  And it changed him, so I thought.

  His furtive looks, stealing glances at Hugh and I, only for his eyes to dart away when he was spotted. Why did he lurk at the fringes of conversation as if he was no longer able to understand us? He would bury himself in his room, immune to our entreaties to go for a walk, enjoy the sunshine, do something. Anything.

  We’d stand outside his bedroom and listen to him talking. Not to his friend on the phone, not to anyone real. He was talking to the other person inside him.

  I looked it up, did some research. A third of all transplant patients believe they take on the characteristics of the donor.

  Curtis had given me my son and stolen him away. And I was scared to look at Gabriel, fearful of what I might find.

  And now, when it is too late, when I have little chance of seeing him again, the lucidity that has eluded me all his life comes raining down like a firestorm. My ignorance floors me. It was me who had changed. Hugh as well. Not Gabriel. After the transplant, he came home to a different house, to a mother whose lie had been exposed, and a father who loved him deeply, absolutely, but was heartbroken himself. We could barely exchange a civil word. No wonder the poor boy slunk away. And the worst part? He blamed himself. I could get rid of him if it would help, that is what he said when we told him we were splitting up. Why hadn’t I recognised that we were destroying him? He was lost, and we didn’t come to find him.

  The transplant had created a perfect storm. I was relieved, yes, beyond measure, but I was also disgusted at myself for what I had done, what it had cost. I expected Gabriel to achieve the impossible; to be irreproachable, faultless, to prove that I was right to sacrifice justice in order to save him.

  What teenager can meet those expectations?

  I had set my son up to fail.

  The evening he was picked up by the police, running through the streets naked, I believed the police, the woman to whom he’d exposed himself. Not my son, not for a second. This is it, I thought, his transformation into his father, complete. Too blind to see I was forming him in the image of my nightmares.

  ‘I’m telling you the truth,’ he said. ‘There was a gang on the common and they made me strip. I didn’t mean to scare that woman. I was hiding so she wouldn’t see me.’ His eyes begged me: Say you believe me, just say it.

  If his mother didn’t believe him, what did he have left?

  But I didn’t listen. I let the past come up and break us like a wave.

  And weeks later, when I found him on the roof’s edge, faltering in the wind, contemplating the drop, I held him and told him I loved him, but I didn’t say, ‘You are my son and I know you wouldn’t do this.’ I tucked him into bed and lay with him until his breaths grew deep with sleep. Then I went to my study and found the woman to whom he’d allegedly exposed himself, the one who was threatening to go to the press. I called her the next day. One thousand pounds for her silence.

  I thought it was cheap at the time.

  In truth, it cost a lot more.

  As I lie in the darkness, the minutes racing towards the end, I weep tears of frustration, knowing that everything I was missing had been there all along.

  Emily Lune

  A cup of tea and a wee sit down is exactly what Emily Lune needs. It’s been a long day, what with all the deliveries, and she’s not done yet. Not by any stretch. She still has tomorrow’s orders to get ready. People think all she does is sit in the shop and read the newspapers all day. As if! An hour’s break, that’s all, and then she’ll get motoring again. She grabs a caramel wafer and makes herself comfortable in the armchair beside the fire. She’s behind on her shows. All the crime dramas. Can’t get enough of them. ‘Should I be worried?’ Tom routinely asks her. ‘You’re not looking for ways to do me in, are you
?’

  ‘No need tae. I’ve already thought of plenty.’

  It’s not that she likes the violence. No, she likes to see the bad guys getting their just deserts. And she’s become a dab hand at guessing the whodunnits way before they’re revealed. So much so, Tom refuses to watch them with her any more. ‘Easy, DI Lune, some of us are just here for the ride,’ he says when she propounds her theories mid-programme.

  With the TV dramas she gets to step into another world, walk outside of Tighnabruiach where the worst thing to happen was when Billy Carrigan ran off with the Christmas Club money and spent it taking his fancy woman on a Hawaiian cruise.

  When her hour is up, Emily gets back to work. The shop is off her living room and her commute involves walking four short steps. The deliveries are mainly for the elderly folk who can’t make it out. A visit from Emily is sometimes the highlight of their day, God love them. She fetches Peggy’s order. Five malt loaves again. She must be anticipating a worldwide Soreen famine, the way she stockpiles them. Creamed rice, a packet of chocolate fingers.

  ‘Are ye not having anything proper?’ she routinely asks Peggy, but Peggy just smiles. ‘I’ve had a lifetime of eating broccoli. I’m eighty-seven now. If I want to live on chocolate fingers and mini rolls, I bloody well will!’ Emily makes a mental note to bring her some soup tomorrow.

  Anna’s list is next. That’s a strange one. ‘What’s wrong with ye legs?’ she wanted to say when Anna handed it to her. She would have made a joke about her laziness, but she didn’t know the woman that well. And she didn’t appear the full shilling today; she’d looked at the parcel Emily delivered like it was piece of moon rock, not a sea trout.

  And her eyes were awful strange too, as if she’d started a staring competition without telling Emily.

  Ham Milk

  Eggs Eggs

  Lobster

  Potatoes

  She’s asked for eggs twice, Emily notes. Is that a mistake, or does she really want twelve eggs? If she wanted two boxes of eggs, surely she’d have put eggs x 2 like a normal person. Maybe it was an oversight; after all, it wasn’t just the two of them anymore. Anna had guests. Emily had clocked the men standing behind her in the hallway. And she’d seen an extra car parked at the back of the drive.