Sticks and Stones

by Jo Jakeman

  ‘You almost had me there,’ I said. ‘But then I remembered that you’re a liar. Whatever you tell me now, I won’t believe.’

  ‘Oh, you’d know. I think you’ve always known. Let me go and you’ll get the confirmation you’ve always wanted.’

  I glanced up the stairs to where Ruby and Naomi stood. Ruby was biting the side of her thumb, and Naomi had her arms folded.

  Before I’d begun to suspect Ruby, I thought the person responsible would eventually bow under the weight of their guilt and have to tell someone. Had they wondered what had happened to the woman they’d hit? Did they regret fleeing the scene? I’d told Phillip that I wanted to look the driver in the eye and ask ‘Why?’ Were they drunk? Had they lost control of the car? Had a cat run out into the road? I needed to know.

  And here was Phillip telling me he had all the answers. When he was about to lose everything, he pulled an ace out of his sleeve.

  ‘You must be desperate,’ I said.

  I folded my arms with hands tightly under armpits and leaned on the wall, fooling no one with my feigned nonchalance.

  He laughed. ‘Perhaps I am in a position to make deals after all.’

  ‘This is low, even for you. If I let you go, you’ll tell me a story that I’ll have no way of verifying. All that will have changed is that you’ll be free to go to your hearing and try to clear your name, while I sit around wondering if you’re going to try and take revenge on us again.’

  And, I thought, I’ll never be able to look Ruby in the eye again.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘No. I won’t let you do this to me. I won’t let you use the death of our daughter as a bargaining chip. I would rather go to my grave not knowing what really happened that night than give you the upper hand.’

  As soon as I said it, I knew I was right. Even if Phillip was telling the truth, it wouldn’t change a thing. It wouldn’t bring Iris back.

  He looked past me to the stairs.

  ‘Ruby?’ he shouted. ‘Naomi? I know you’re listening up there. You may as well come down.’

  There was a short delay while they decided whether to respond to Phillip’s call and then they joined us in the cellar. I moved away from the foot of the stairs to let them into the small room.

  ‘You’re summat special, you are,’ Naomi said. ‘You can’t go lying about somethin’ like that. You’re sick.’

  ‘I’m not lying to her. And I’m not lying when I say this, either. I need to get out of here. You know that I’ve got a hearing I need to be at tomorrow. I have kept things from all of you over the years …’

  Ruby scoffed and looked away, refusing to meet his gaze. She looked heavy with discomfort.

  ‘It’s up to you, ladies. Whichever of you lets me go will get the answer to a question that’s been bugging you for years.’

  ‘It’s quite a coincidence,’ I said, ‘that you just happen to have a nugget for each of us, isn’t it?’

  He looked at Ruby. It was a soft look, one of sad resignation. Perhaps he did care about her after all.

  ‘Ruby,’ he said.

  She didn’t look at him.

  ‘Ruby? That night, after the party. I know you always wanted to know what happened to the dog. If you let me go, I will tell you exactly what happened to Rufus.’

  She looked up, despite herself. Shook her head quickly and gave him a tight-lipped smile.

  ‘Oh, Pip. You think I’ve been sulking over that for the last twenty years? I know you were responsible. Whether you simply opened the door or buried him in the garden, it makes no difference to me. I forgave you a long time ago. I accepted that you were sick. My only mistake was to think you’d changed.’

  Phillip frowned. ‘Then what do you want from me?’

  ‘Nothing. I used to feel responsible for you. You relied on me so heavily after your mum died, and I felt guilty for leaving you when I did. You used to tell me how Imogen used emotional blackmail to make you stay with her, that she tricked you into having a baby, otherwise you’d have left years ago. I’ve lost track of the times you’ve told me that you wished we’d never split up. I’ve waited in the wings for years for my chance to make it up to you, but now I see how stupid I’ve been. Goodbye, Phillip.’

  She spun round and began to climb the stairs.

  ‘Ruby, wait!’ Phillip shouted.

  I steadied myself against the cool wall and watched her back disappear up the stairs.

  ‘Don’t have the charm you thought you did, eh?’ said Naomi. ‘You got something for me, then? This should be good. Hold on. Wait for me to get comfy; I love a good fairy tale.’ She slid down the wall until she was sitting on the floor. ‘Right. I’m ready. Go on. Once upon a time …’

  Phillip narrowed his eyes. For a moment I thought he was reconsidering offering her a deal.

  ‘You’ve always wanted to know where your mum was, yeah?’

  The smile fell from Naomi’s face. Her expression was thunderous. She looked at him as if she might fly at him at any moment.

  ‘What of it?’ she spat.

  ‘I know where she is.’

  ‘Bollocks!’

  ‘Her name is Helen.’

  ‘You could have got that off my birth certificate. That don’t mean anything.’

  ‘Born 8th June 1979,’ he continued. ‘Married twice. The last records show her as Helen Beresford.’

  Naomi scrambled back to her feet and looked at me. I reached out and put my arm round her.

  ‘Ignore him. We’ve got a name now,’ I said to her. ‘We’ll find her on our own.’

  ‘Wouldn’t be so sure of that,’ said Phillip. ‘She’s been in a bit of trouble with the police. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. She’s got several aliases.’

  ‘Well, that’s handy for you, isn’t it?’ I asked. ‘If that’s true, how did you manage to track her down?’

  ‘I didn’t,’ he said. ‘She tracked me. Well, Naomi, actually. She wrote to Naomi and I opened the letter. Surely that’s not too hard to believe? So how about it, ladies? It’s a one-time offer. Whoever gets me out of here by nine o’clock tomorrow morning will get the news they’ve always wanted. It’s up to you to decide whose need is greatest. Yours, Imogen, for wanting to look the person in the eye who killed your baby? Or yours, Naomi. So that you can look into the eyes of the woman who gave you up. But remember, the clock’s ticking.’

  THIRTY-SIX

  1 year, 3 months and 5 days before the funeral

  Phil folded the letter back into the envelope and tapped it against his knuckles. It was a shame, but there was only one thing for it. Couldn’t be helped.

  He spun it into the fire, where it curled at the edges and flared brightly before shrinking and crumbling away as if it had never been there at all. And, as far as Naomi was concerned, it hadn’t.

  The flames jumped, squatted and danced about the hearth. It wasn’t cold enough for a fire, but the glow was for soothing his mind, not his body. Sparks were like waves. You could watch them, no matter what the weather, and feel your worries shrink into insignificance. Fire and water didn’t care for your strengths or your weaknesses. They were the reminder that some things were bigger than you were.

  Phil had always loved to watch things burn. Letters. Pictures.

  Evidence.

  The cleansing effect of the flames and the eradication of things that shouldn’t be. As a kid he’d sit by and watch buildings and warehouses colour the skies orange and spit sparks like fireflies among the stars. And then the firemen would come and do their best to master the beast. He wasn’t a vandal. It wasn’t arson when it was art.

  Phil always opened Naomi’s mail. Why shouldn’t he? If she objected, it was because she had something to hide. But this particular letter had been different. The handwriting was small and deep. Someone had taken great care over addressing the envelope. It wasn’t Naomi’s birthday, nor was it Christmas. It was obviously not a bill or a nuisance letter from a company mailshot. It was personal. Intriguing. Dangerous.r />
  Of course, the claims in the letter might have been pre-posterous. Anyone could have made them without a shred of evidence to back them up. Phil wouldn’t have been doing his job, as a boyfriend or as a police officer, if he hadn’t investigated further. So, in a way, he was protecting Naomi.

  The woman who wrote the letter lived more than two hundred miles away, so he’d had to call in favours from another force. No one was more surprised than he was when it all checked out. Right age, right name – but, unfortunately, completely wrong for Naomi.

  The note said she’d been looking for Naomi for six years. Wondering, crying, lighting a candle on her birthday, telling her brother and sisters about her. Six years. What about the other years? What was she doing for more than a decade before that? Not wondering where her firstborn was, that was for sure. Not imagining the childhood years Naomi had spent with her grandparents or the teenage years she’d spent in care. She could dress it up however she liked, but she had abandoned Naomi and it had been left to him to pick up the pieces.

  She said her name was Helen. It checked out on Naomi’s birth certificate. The father’s name was noticeably absent. Helen was settled now and would do anything to be reunited with her daughter. Well, she would, wouldn’t she? It was safe to crawl out of the woodwork, now that Naomi didn’t need anything from her any more.

  Naomi wasn’t the only one she’d had taken from her. To read her letter you’d think this woman was blameless. Life had put her in a bad position, dealt her a terrible hand. She couldn’t help the past but, as God was her witness, she was ready to make amends – if Naomi would let her.

  Initially Phil had considered taking the credit for this woman’s reappearance. It would be the best gift he could ever give Naomi.

  ‘Ta-daaa, I’ve found your long-lost mother.’

  Naomi would be for ever in his debt. He would have done what no one else could. She’d be grateful at first, of that there could be no doubt, but what if the woman turned out to be a money-grabber or a sponger? Or worse, what if she lived up to Naomi’s expectations?

  He was all Naomi had in the world. Until now. He had to consider his options because, after all, it didn’t just affect her. Bringing someone else into the fold would mean turning his life upside down too.

  Phil had uncovered the basic facts. She’d changed her surname on more than one occasion, so it wasn’t a surprise that Naomi had hit dead-end after dead-end when searching for her. Married, divorced, married again. In some cases the surname had changed without there being a marriage certificate to back it up. These types were always the same. Always running from something or someone.

  He’d had a couple of the lads from the local force go and check her out for him. She had a skeletal figure, a hard face and more tattoos than brains. She was living alone and claiming benefits. He thought of his own mother. Why couldn’t more women be like her? His mother had been a hard worker, not prone to womanly vapours and emotional outbursts. She was as strong as any man and twice as clever. If Naomi’s mum had been halfway like Mam, he would have made up the spare room himself. But she wasn’t, and the rational decision was to sever all ties with this woman as quickly as possible. He’d already left it too long and was worried it was giving the woman hope.

  He took a pen and paper from the sideboard:

  Dear Mrs Beresford,

  Sorry to write with disappointing news, but I’m afraid you’ve made a mistake. I am not the Naomi that you are looking for. My parents are alive and well, so I am quite certain that I am not your daughter. Please do not contact me again, as it has upset my mother greatly.

  Wishing you the best of luck with your ongoing search.

  Yours sincerely,

  Naomi

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  8 days before the funeral

  ‘This doesn’t have to change a thing,’ Naomi said.

  ‘I want him gone.’ I couldn’t settle.

  I paced the living room, walking into the blackened and blistered hallway to look at the cellar door and then back at Ruby and Naomi.

  Ruby was standing by the window, with her eyes glazed over, and Naomi was lying on her back, smoking. I’d given up asking her to go outside. It was a small problem compared to everything else we were dealing with and, besides, the whole house still smelled of smoke from Sunday morning’s fire.

  ‘Look, we have a plan. And I’ve not heard anything to make us change that. We take all the information we’ve collected and go to the police station with photos, dates and times. It’s obvious we can’t trust Phillip. He will always seek to manipulate and control. That’s what men like him do.’

  ‘He’ll tell ’em we locked him up,’ Naomi said, knocking ash into a disused coffee cup.

  ‘And we’ll tell them that it was self-preservation after he tried to kill us. The evidence is all there, if they care to look. As for the first time I locked him in the cellar … well, it’s his word against mine.’

  ‘Ours,’ said Ruby. ‘I’ll back you up. I’ll tell the police I had dinner with him on Friday, as planned, so he couldn’t have been here.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Naomi chimed in, ‘I can vouch for that, and then we came round here to see you, what with Ruby not having seen you for so long; and Phil overpowered us and locked us in the cellar. Lucky we escaped. Rachel’s neighbour can vouch for the timing of us getting out and the state of our faces. And the fact that you sent Alistair out of the country backs up how scared we were of him.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Ruby, picking up the story. ‘We all stayed together on Saturday night, knowing what a foul mood he was in, and woke up to find graffiti on the walls, the gas on and then he poured petrol through the letter box. As far as we know, he scarpered and we thanked our lucky stars that we were alive. It’s not like we’re stretching the truth very far, darling.’

  ‘I couldn’t ask you to lie for me,’ I said.

  ‘You didn’t,’ Naomi said. ‘We offered. In fact, why don’t we go to the police now, before any of us cave in? I got to tell you, it’s bloody tempting to find out where me mum is, so let’s go give our statements now, before I change my mind.’

  ‘No. I don’t want them to find him locked in my cellar. If we let him go in the morning, he’ll go straight to the hearing and I can clear out the cellar as if he’s never been there. Right now, there’s nothing more important to him than clearing his name.’

  I watched the soft clouds blow by the window. They were in a hurry.

  ‘He must know we’ve got something planned,’ said Naomi. ‘Perhaps if we tell him one of us is going to cave in tomorrow, he’ll accept the fact that he has to stay put a bit longer.’

  We sat in silence for a moment, wondering how much Phillip knew and what we could get away with.

  ‘It’s not a bad idea,’ I said eventually. ‘He doesn’t know that we are planning to let him go in the morning anyway. I think we should at least get something else out of this. Naomi, you need the information more than I do. We’ll get him to tell you where to find your mum. The only thing we need to work out is how we can unchain him safely without having a repeat of what happened last time.’

  Ruby looked at me sideways. Was it my imagination, or did she look relieved?

  ‘Thanks, but I don’t know. Perhaps it should be you. It must be eating you up not knowing.’

  Naomi was trying to show how much she didn’t care about her mum, but she was transparent. She cared very much. I hadn’t known her for long, and yet I knew how much she wanted to connect with her mother. The knowledge that she would give that up for me was a warm glow in my chest.

  ‘That bike lock has a combination code, right?’ said Naomi.

  I nodded.

  ‘How about we hide a phone down there, close enough for him to reach, but not in plain sight. I reckon we take him some clean clothes, wrap the phone in a shirt or something. And then we get out of the house, leaving the doors unlocked, and call him. Tell him that we’ll text him the combination code if he tells us �
�� you know … whatever.’

  I looked up at her. It might work.

  The three of us had spent only a few days together, yet it felt so much longer. We had reluctantly agreed that we wouldn’t contact each other for a while. We didn’t want the police to think that we were plotting to bring Phillip down. As we’d had little contact in the past, it was unlikely the police would think this was part of a master plan. Though they were bound to be suspicious, we could honestly say that until a few days ago we hardly knew each other, and it was only Phillip’s actions in the cellar that made us confess to each other how much we had lost because of him.

  As far as anyone else was concerned, we were nothing more than three ex-partners of the same man who couldn’t stand each other, but had all suffered at his hands. Circumstances had thrown us together but, if anyone asked, they weren’t enough to keep us there.

  ‘Taxi’s here,’ Ruby said. She sounded glad to be leaving.

  She embraced Naomi and me at the same time. It was an awkward tangle of arms, which gave me a mouthful of her hair and crushed Naomi’s elbow into my breast.

  ‘Be wary of him,’ she said. ‘And if the dogs turn up …?’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘We’ll call you straight away.’

  Ruby climbed into the passenger side of the taxi and sat watching us for a long minute. Suddenly I didn’t want her to leave. I felt tears come to my eyes. We had shared something life-changing, something that we might never speak of again.

  Naomi linked her arm through mine as the taxi disappeared into the hazy afternoon, and neither of us mentioned the tears falling down our faces.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  8 days before the funeral

  There was no guarantee that Phillip would deliver on his end of the promise. But that wasn’t important. All that mattered was that he believed he was getting one over on us. Our time spent with Phillip hadn’t been entirely wasted. We’d learned about duplicity from the best.