The Child Across the Street: An unputdownable and absolutely gripping psychological thriller
Page 9
As they’re coming off the back of that, Diane switches gears in a blink, turns to the cameraman, gets a countdown – and then she’s off.
It’s hard to take my eyes from her as she’s such a force of nature. Whatever she said seems to work because Jo is perfect. She doesn’t stutter or repeat herself and is calm and measured when talking about the difficulties she had when pregnant with Ethan. She says she was in hospital for thirteen days after complications with the birth. Ethan’s actual father isn’t mentioned, but she talks about her son’s love of football and enthusiasm for life in general.
It’s only as she continues talking that I begin to wonder whether Jo is enjoying the limelight a little too much. At one point, she answers on behalf of Owen – and, in the space of a few minutes, she comes out with more than I’ve heard her say in two days. As soon as the thought arrives, I push it away. The entire point is that Jo’s supposed to be talking about Ethan.
After Owen and Neil have had their say, Diane turns to a camera and records a segment she calls ‘Diane’s thought for the day’. I thought Jo might end up appealing for the driver to come forward, but, instead, Diane does it. There’s no rage, or hint at vengeance. She’s calm, firm and, if I’m honest, scary as hell.
‘I’m talking to you now,’ she says. ‘The you that was driving that car. I know you’re scared and that this was a horrible, horrible mistake. Nobody sets out to do the thing you did. There are many victims in what happened on Tuesday. Three of them are sitting with me today; another – poor Ethan Coyle – is lying in hospital. But there is someone else in all this. You’ll have spent a lot of time by yourself in the hours that have passed, hearing the sound it made when your car hit Ethan. You’ll be replaying the images over and over in your mind. That will never, ever leave you – but what you can do is set things straight. You can put your hand up, admit you were driving, and get yourself on the route to getting through this. For Ethan’s sake, and your own, it’s time to do the right thing.’
It’s mesmerising and so sincere that I’m almost out of my seat ready to admit I was driving, even though I wasn’t.
Diane pauses for a second, holding the earnest pose and then nods to Jo. She thanks her for her time, and then turns to the man who was bringing in cables and says ‘I think we’re done.’
As he starts unplugging things, Diane twists back to Jo.
‘You were wonderful,’ she says. ‘Perfect, in fact. Ethan will be so proud when he sees it.’
Jo nods along but doesn’t answer.
It’s while everyone’s finishing off that I realise I can get a few seconds to myself. I push up from the chair and head through the hall into the kitchen on the spur of the moment. I have a quick look over my shoulder, only to see that I haven’t been followed. With nobody around, I open the bread bin, where I find…
Bread.
It’s nothing special, a supermarket own-brand medium-slicer. I take it out and check behind, but there are only crumbs. Whatever Jo sneaked into her kitchen yesterday has gone.
I return the loaf to where it was and then head into the hall. The two men are carrying equipment back outside, while voices continue to come from the living room. Diane calls something, or somebody, ‘wonderful’, but I don’t catch anything else.
I’m about to go back in the living room when it’s like I’m hit with a memory from the past. When we were all teenagers, Holly was once caught hiding booze under her bed. She was grounded for a week and, perhaps worse, her parents confiscated it. After that, we came up with a hiding place that would definitely be present in all our houses and which, through the rest of our times together, was never discovered.
There are still voices coming from the living room, so I creep upstairs and try each door until I find the bathroom. It’s nowhere near as dirty as in Dad’s house, but the bath and sink are both stained with browny-grey watermarks close to the rim. I ignore them and move to the toilet, feeling around the back of the cistern and then lifting off the lid. It’s far heavier than I thought and I almost drop it as I turn and lower it onto the wet towel that’s been left on the floor next to the bath.
There’s almost relief that, as much as things have changed, with this, they’re still the same.
That’s all the relief there is, however.
It’s not booze that Jo’s hidden in the cistern; it’s a small, sealed Tupperware tub of orange pills. I pull out the tub and pat it dry on a towel that’s hanging from the shower rail. The tablets inside are small and round, with no identifying marks. I slide them around, though they’re all the same and there are around twenty in total.
I take out my phone to take a photo, wondering if I’ll be able to identify them from that alone. That’s when there’s a creak from outside and the handle on the bathroom door starts to turn.
Sixteen
I freeze, the tub of pills in my hand and the lid to the toilet cistern still on the floor. The handle turns and then the door sticks in place. In my haste to get inside, I thought I’d left it unlocked – but I suppose some habits are more automatic and ingrained than others.
‘Anyone in there?’
It’s Jo’s voice, slightly muffled through the door.
‘I am,’ I say. ‘It’s Abi. I need a minute.’
‘Okay.’
I push the lid back onto the tub, making sure it’s sealed, and then drop it into the cistern. I set the toilet flushing to mask the grunts of effort I need to pick the lid back up and get it into place. When that’s done, I wash my hands – habit again – and then unlock the door.
Jo is waiting on the landing, leaning against the wall and thumbing her phone. She looks up and smiles weakly.
‘How was it?’ she asks.
‘The toilet?’
She smiles: ‘Downstairs – with Diane.’
‘It was perfect,’ I say. ‘She’s amazing. You were great, too.’
Jo nods along, but she’s distant, not quite here. Hard to blame her for that.
‘How is Ethan?’ I ask. ‘I was going to say something before, but it didn’t seem the right time.’
‘Nothing’s changed. I was there this morning and am going back in a bit.’
She’s been staring through me to such a degree that I turn and check the wall behind. There’s nothing there.
‘They called me this morning,’ she says.
‘Who?’
‘Diane’s people. I think one of them had read an article online about what happened to Ethan. It’s in the paper today.’
‘I saw it.’
‘They asked if they could come around and film something.’
‘I thought you didn’t want that…?’
A shake of the head. ‘Not the police. It’s nothing to do with them. It’s all Diane. I said yes and they were here two hours later.’
She steps around me, heading towards the bathroom. I almost stop her and ask about the pills. There was probably a time when she would’ve told me what they were and, even now, that might still be the case. The truth is that what she told Diane isn’t true. I’m not one of her best friends. I was at one time, but now we’re strangers who have somehow fallen back into one another’s lives.
‘Can I ask you something?’ Jo says.
‘Of course.’
‘Will you come to the hospital with me later?’
I try to think of a reason I could say I can’t, but there’s no way I can do that if I’m going to spend any amount of time in this town.
‘Of course,’ I say again.
‘You’re such a good friend.’
Jo gives another watery smile and then heads into the bathroom, where the lock clicks closed.
I wait for a moment, listening for the sound of the cistern lid and wondering if she’s actually come upstairs to take whatever’s in that Tupperware tub. Did it really come from Petey? Is that eight-year-old kid I saw fidgeting next to his older sister some sort of drug dealer? If so, does that mean anything in regards to what happened to Ethan?
In what I thought was the short amount of time I was away from the living room, the cleaning fairies have been in and got rid of all the scattered TV equipment. Everything is seemingly back to how it was, there’s no sign of Diane, and, aside from the original man carrying a large plastic case outside, it’s as if none of the filming ever happened.
Neil is slouched on the sofa using his phone, so I head back into the hall, where Owen is saying goodbye to Diane’s assistant. He closes the front door and then jumps as he finds me a little behind him.
‘Sorry,’ I say.
‘I didn’t hear you.’
He angles towards the stairs but has to go around me and I don’t move.
‘I heard you’ve got your driving test next week…?’ I say.
‘Who told you that?’
‘Probably your mum? I don’t remember. How have the lessons been going?’
Owen folds his arms across his front and backs away a little, avoiding eye contact. ‘Okay…’
‘Is this your first attempt?’
‘Yeah.’
He shuffles half a step closer to the stairs and I give him some room. ‘I could never get to grips with my instructor’s car and ended up taking my test in a friend’s. What about you?’
‘Um…’ Owen looks around, probably hoping someone might interrupt and give him a get-out. ‘Instructor’s car,’ he adds.
‘I passed second time around, but the examiner had it in for me the first time. Made me reverse around a corner three times and do two emergency stops. He said I had too many minors. I found it’s all in the mind. You know what you’re doing when it comes to driving, it’s just about showing someone you can do it. If you can try to think of the examiner as just another passenger, then it will probably help you relax more.’
Owen nods along, being the teenager he is. Not wanting to engage.
‘When’s your final lesson?’ I ask.
‘Tuesday.’
‘I’m sure you’ll do fine.’
Owen gasps with relief as there’s a bump from the stairs and Jo starts to descend. He mumbles a swift ‘bye’ and then disappears around me and up past his mum, disappearing through the first door at the top.
Jo watches him go and then turns back to me. Her hair’s wet and there’s a few droplets of water clinging to her eyebrows. ‘I need a brew,’ she says, leading me into the kitchen and flicking on the kettle. ‘What were you talking about?’ she asks, nodding upstairs.
‘Driving lessons. It’s some bad timing that his test’s next week.’
‘Is it?’ Jo frowns. ‘I’d forgotten. He keeps to himself so much. I hardly ever know what’s going on with him. If he’s not in his room, he’s with Beth.’
I let it settle, wondering if she’s going to say something, and then dive in. I’m seemingly on a roll with getting people to answer my questions. ‘What happened with you and Owen’s dad…?’
There’s a long, breathy pause as the kettle bubbles and then clicks itself off. Jo dumps a teabag into a mug, slops in some milk, pours on the water, and then goes to town with a teaspoon. Heresy. I figure she isn’t going to answer, but then she does.
‘Do you remember Mark?’
‘Of course. You were seeing him while I was with Chris. Holly was annoyed because she was the only single one of us.’
Jo’s misty-eyed slow nod makes it feel like we’re travelling back in time together. ‘I think we got together too young,’ she says slowly. ‘By the time we had Owen, we’d already been together for…’ she stops to count on her fingers, ‘seven years? Maybe eight? We were still only twenty-three, but I felt so much older. Neither of us could afford our own place and we were paying the rent together on a flat, so we were a bit stuck. Then my gran died and left me a bit of money. I could suddenly afford a place for myself and was thinking about ending it. That’s when I got pregnant with Ethan.’
She sighs again.
‘Is he…?’
Jo nods. ‘Mark is Ethan’s dad. Owen’s too. We’d been together for sixteen, seventeen years by the time I was pregnant with Ethan. We’d been married for about ten. Owen was a bit of a handful when he was that age. I was just so… tired.’
‘You broke up with Mark when Ethan was born…?’
‘About a year after.’ Jo has a sip of her tea and glances through towards the hall, making sure it’s clear. ‘He hit me…’
She catches my eye and holds it. She knows what she’s saying and to whom she’s saying it.
‘He wasn’t drunk, or anything,’ she adds calmly. ‘Just angry. There was this look in his eye that I’d never seen before. His football team had lost and he’d had some sort of disciplinary thing at work. His mum was ill—’
‘That’s not an excuse.’
‘I know. I was looking to get away anyway and I guess that was the final thing. He said sorry and all that. I had Holly over when I told him he had to move out. I thought there might be trouble, but he just accepted it. Packed his stuff that night and that was it. I suppose—’ She stops because there’s a knock at the front door. There’s a pause and then: ‘Can you get that?’
I get to my feet and have a quick peep into the living room as I pass, though there’s no sign of Neil. When I open the door, I’m met by Petey, who is clinging onto his bike. He goggles at me and then looks sideways at the house, probably wondering if he’s somehow got the wrong place.
‘Ethan’s mum in?’
He speaks with an assured confidence that eight-year-olds don’t usually possess. There’s certainly no nervousness about talking to an adult. I turn and call for Jo, only now wondering why she wanted me to answer the door. It was always likely to be for her.
Jo hustles along the corridor and stops on the welcome mat, turning between Petey and me. ‘Why are you at the front?’ she asks.
‘Mum sent me,’ Petey says. ‘She said the police have found the car.’
Seventeen
At times over the past couple of days, it’s felt like events are already set and that I’ve had little control over my own choices. It’s almost as if the past two decades haven’t happened, that Elwood itself does this to people. I hadn’t set out to end up in a car with Jo and yet, somehow, here we are.
Considering what happened to her son, there is some irony in the appalling state of Jo’s driving. My fingers clasp the sides of the passenger seat as I hold on tightly and hope she doesn’t get us killed. I’m not brave enough to say anything, mind – and neither is Neil in the back seat. Nobody is talking and the only good thing I can say about Jo’s driving is that she does at least appear to be watching the road. That doesn’t change the fact that she’s barrelling along narrow country lanes at twenty over the speed limit and barely slowing down for the hedge-banked corners.
I realise I’m holding my breath as she crosses the faded central line for the fourth or fifth time, before she swerves back onto the proper side of the road. We surge past a rusting sign for a quarry that’s covered with graffiti tags and then swing onto a gravelled track. The car jolts up and down, creating a cloud of dust around us that makes it impossible to see through the side windows. Jo seems to know where she’s going as she takes a sharp left, continues through a wide gate that’s been left open, and rolls to a stop in front of a Portakabin that’s stained grey with dust and clamped closed with a series of chunky padlocks.
Jo gets out of the car first and I trail behind as she stands at the front of the car, close to a wire fence. There is a vast quarry ahead that stretches from the edge of the car park far into the distance before being swallowed by green swathes of forest. There are three police cars on the other side of the fence, having presumably used some sort of service road to get closer to the quarry. Towering to the side of them is a large crane that’s anchored to the ground with a pair of thick metal supports. The arm is angled over the crat
er, with the heavy chain stretched out of sight below. There is no other machinery; no sign anyone has worked here in a long time.
It’s only as we watch that I realise I’ve been here before. The memories are fuzzy, like looking through the window on a misty morning. There was music and sunshine; booze, because that’s what we did – and then boys jumping off the quarry cliffs into the water below.
It feels like Jo can read my mind as we stand side by side. ‘We never jumped,’ she says. ‘Holly did, but we didn’t. It was so high.’
There’s a booming metallic groan from the crane and, for a second or two, it feels as if the whole thing could topple sideways into the canyon. It doesn’t though. There’s a screech and then the winch begins to crank the chain upwards.
Jo doesn’t wait as she pushes through a gap in the fence that I’d not noticed. It’s not an official door and instead appears to have been snipped apart by someone with bolt cutters.
A uniformed police officer steps out from behind a car, but his outstretched arms do little to prevent Jo stepping around him. The winch has stopped moving now and Jo shouts ‘Is that the car?’ across his instructions for her to turn around.
I wait a few steps further back and Neil joins me, keeping his arms folded as neither of us say anything.
As she gets no response with which she’s happy, Jo shouts louder until a man who was previously hidden by the crane strides around the vehicles towards me. Sergeant Davidson is in a suit, but his shoes and the bottom of his trousers are caked with dust. He’s focused on Jo but glances across to Neil and myself on the other side of the fence without acknowledgement. As he gets closer, he offers a small smile and asks Jo how she is.