Megan sips from her can and then places it back on the table. ‘I told you I always wanted a sister, didn’t I?’ she says.
I remember her saying this – and I get the sense she wants me to reciprocate and tell her I wanted a sister, too. I wish I could – and it’s not as if this would be the only lie I’ve told – but something stops me.
‘You did,’ I say.
‘I thought it would be easier to find things out from an older sister than from Mum.’
‘Things like what?’
Megan tilts her head a little and that’s all it takes. We explode into giggles at the same time and I laugh so much that I need to use the napkin on the table to blow my nose. Megan can’t stop, either, and the only thing that finally calms us is when the waitress arrives with our food. She puts a plate in front of each of us and then heads back to the counter. All the while, Megan and I struggle to stop ourselves from sniggering.
One thing Megan and I certainly have in common is the way we rip into food when we’re hungry. We barely speak for the next ten minutes or so as we each demolish our plates of beans, bacon, sausages, hash browns, tomatoes, mushrooms, fried egg and fried bread. It’s been a long time, but the quality of the food at The Cosmic has remained.
Megan still has a few mushrooms remaining as I mop up the remainder of the bean juice with some fried bread. I finish my coffee and then sit back and watch her polish off her food and then slurp down the rest of the Coke. Watching her drink makes me think of the bottle that I abandoned. It’s the first time I’ve thought of it in a day or so. Whatever urge I once had seems to have gone.
‘That was amazing,’ she says.
‘I know.’
‘We should do this regularly. Once a week or so. Maybe twice?’
She’s happy and excited, and I have to look away from her, out towards the car park, in order to get the words out.
‘I’m leaving Elwood,’ I say.
She slumps a little and is silent at first before she lets out a quiet: ‘Oh…’
I force myself to look at Megan, who’s fixed on me.
‘Why?’ she asks.
‘Because Elwood hasn’t been my home in a long time. Being back has proven that it still isn’t. I’m not sure it ever was. It’s just where I grew up. The house is getting cleared later today and then I’m going to find an estate agent to sell it for me.’
Megan doesn’t speak for a while. She shakes her can and, even though there’s no sound and it’s empty, she holds it to her mouth.
‘Where are you going to go?’ she asks.
‘Maybe back to London? I don’t know.’
‘Do you have a job there?’
I catch the server’s eye and do the universal sign of tilting an invisible mug towards my mouth, asking for more coffee.
‘You’re the first person to ask me that,’ I say. ‘People keep asking if I’m married, or have a boyfriend. They want to know if I have kids, but those would all involve other people. Nobody seems fussed about me.’
‘I am.’
I gulp away something that could easily escalate into an embarrassing breakdown. ‘I took redundancy,’ I say. ‘I worked for the planning department at a borough council.’
Megan stares but says nothing.
‘It’s not as boring as it sounds.’
I realise I’m not even convincing myself, let alone her.
‘You’re not going back to that, are you?’
‘No. With the sale of the house and the redundancy money, I was thinking about maybe going back to college, or perhaps even looking at a university.’
Megan raises a sceptical eyebrow and looks at me as if I’ve just announced I’d like to grow an extra head.
‘I can’t wait to leave school and you want to go back.’
‘I guess…’
We go quiet as the waitress comes across with a pot of coffee and refills my mug. She takes our plates and balances them expertly along with more dishes from the adjacent table. If it was me, everything would be on the floor before I’d turned – but she heads off towards the kitchen as if nothing is untoward.
‘We just found each other,’ Megan says. ‘Now you’re leaving.’
‘I made that decision before I knew anything about you.’
She sits up straighter: ‘So you could stay…?’
I can’t meet her eye. ‘Not here. Not Elwood. I’m done with this place.’
‘But somewhere near…?’
‘I don’t know.’
It’s an impasse and I find myself looking up to the television at our side. The local news has come on and there’s a picture of Ethan. The sound is muted, but the subtitles are on and the newsreader is saying that he’s out of his coma.
When I look back down, I realise Megan has been watching, too. ‘Do you know him?’ she asks.
‘His mum was my best friend at school.’
She turns to look up at the screen once more. ‘It’s been everywhere this week. Mum’s had the news channel on all day, waiting for an update.’
‘I found him.’
‘Oh…’ She watches the screen for a little longer and then adds: ‘Did you see the car that did it?’
‘Yes… but not really. It was in the distance. I saw it stop and drive off – but that was all. I couldn’t identify the car and don’t know who was driving.’
‘Mum says it has to be someone local. She reckons nobody drives through Elwood unless they live there.’
‘That’s what everyone says.’
Megan reaches for her empty can once more and then glances towards the fridge full of soft drinks that’s over near the counter. As subtle as a brick.
‘We need to get you home,’ I say.
‘I want to stay with you.’
‘She’s still your mum. We don’t want her to report you missing, or kidnapped.’
‘She wouldn’t do that.’
‘I wouldn’t want to try her.’
Megan squeezes the centre of her can and then uses her palm to mash the top down, so that it’s nearly flat. She picks up her phone and glances to the screen, before putting it down again.
‘Can I stay with you today? At yours?’
‘The clearance people are coming.’
‘I can help.’
‘You’re sixteen – you don’t want to spend the day clearing junk out of a house. I don’t want to spend a day clearing junk out of a house.’
‘I do.’
I know she doesn’t, not really. She wants to spend the day as sisters.
‘I’ll get you a taxi back to Mum’s house,’ I say. ‘But we’ll catch up soon. I promise.’
‘How soon?’
‘Really soon. There’s something I need to check first.’
Forty-Two
The taxi takes me back to the house and I ask it to wait momentarily as I give Gav a key, so he can start the house clearance. After that, I say goodbye to Megan and tell the taxi driver to take her back to her address in Stoneridge. I give him the cash upfront – and then I set off walking in the opposite direction.
The dark blue Audi is parked outside Holly’s house when I get there. The street is empty and the graffiti has finally been cleared from Stephen’s house. Her car is unassuming, one of a handful parked on the road, and I try to remember the feeling I had when I saw it pull away close to the hospital. It was like the déjà vu of walking down a street and sensing that it’s not the first time it’s happened. I recognised the vehicle but wasn’t completely sure from where.
The last few days have given me too much experience in looking at cars for little discernible reason. I suppose that’s now something I have in common with my father. He was never any kind of mechanic – and yet he would begrudge a single penny he had to spend to get a car fixed. He’d rather stand on the roadside with a spanner and a hammer, cursing under his breath and banging various parts of the engine. That was preferable to paying the AA or RAC to come and tow him home.
When I reach Holly’s car,
I crouch and look at the bumper on the driver’s side. At first, I can’t see anything untoward. It’s only when I start to stand and the angle of the light changes slightly that I spot the blemish in the paint close to the headlight. It’s almost the same shade of dark blue, but not quite. Like comparing a faded patch on a wall where the sun shines every day with an adjacent spot that’s always in shade. It’s the same but not. Only visible to anyone standing close enough and looking at a certain angle.
I push myself up until I’m fully standing and, when I turn, Holly is at her front door, leaning on the frame and watching.
She walks down the path slowly, her gaze never leaving me. She continues until she’s barely a step away.
‘What are you doing?’ she asks calmly.
I think about walking away, about doing nothing. I’m leaving Elwood anyway and it would be the easiest thing to do.
‘It was right in front of me all the time,’ I say quietly.
Holly leans in. ‘My car?’
I glance down to the patch of discolouration, even though it looks no different to the rest of the paintwork from my current angle.
‘Not the car,’ I say. ‘Everything else.’
‘I don’t know what you’re on about.’
I angle across towards Stephen’s house, trying to remember the scene. ‘After that argument on the street with Jo and Stephen, you came over and then I went back to your house. We were in your kitchen and there was something dark on your face. I thought it was a scab and wouldn’t have even mentioned it – but you said you’d been redecorating. You were thinking about it more than me. Then I went upstairs looking for your toilet – but none of the rooms are being painted.’ I nod down to the car. ‘I’m pretty sure the stuff on your face was dark paint.’
There’s such a long gap before anything happens that it’s as if someone’s pressed pause on a TV show. We stand a short distance apart, staring at each other as the strangers we are.
Friendship can be the most random thing in a person’s life. We live in these villages, towns and cities and the person we sit next to when we’re five years old is somehow the person we remain closest to twenty years later. Forty years later. Those tiny, insignificant choices, such as which desk to use, change everything.
‘What are you saying?’ Holly asks. Her tone is husky and quiet.
‘You kept wanting to know what I’d seen. Every time we spoke, you were either asking about that, or whether the police had spoken to me.’
‘Because Ethan is Jo’s son. Of course I’m concerned.’ She sounds annoyed.
‘Then you were the person who was trying to push that it was Neil. I’d never met him, but you were already telling me how he’d been driving while banned.’
‘He has!’
I break the stare. The sun continues to singe from above and I can feel the sweat pooling at the bottom of my back.
‘You didn’t answer the question,’ Holly says.
‘Which one?’
‘What are you trying to say?’
I turn back to her again and she stares with defiance. Or, perhaps, fear.
‘Do you know who was driving the car that hit Ethan?’ I ask.
‘Of course not.’
‘Ethan’s paralysed from the waist down.’
Holly squints, taking me in, wondering if this is some sort of strange lie.
‘He’s out of the coma,’ I add, ‘but they had to send him to sleep again because he was panicking about not being able to move.’
‘I didn’t know that…’ She tails off and then adds: ‘I should call Jo.’
I don’t say anything to that.
Holly has zoned out, but then she straightens and seems to click back into the moment. I suspect she’s wondering why I already know but she doesn’t. She and Jo are supposed to be best friends… or perhaps that’s a lie, too.
‘Was it you?’ I ask.
‘Was what me?’
‘Were you driving?’
Holly’s look of disgust is either a piece of incredible acting, or she is genuinely outraged by the suggestion.
‘I’m not even going to answer that,’ she says. ‘You’ve got some nerve.’
‘Was it Mark?’
The difference in reaction would be noticeable even to someone who wasn’t looking for it. It’s not the same indignation as before, it’s surprise.
‘Why would you say that?’
‘I saw him driving your car near the hospital.’
‘So what? You know he’s Ethan’s father, right?’
‘Of course.’
She puts her hands on her hips, as if that settles it. ‘You think a father would drive a car into his own son and then disappear? You don’t know him at all. What kind of sicko are you?’
‘That’s a different question…’
There’s a flicker of movement from the front window of Holly’s house. I watch over her shoulder, but nobody appears. It could be just the breeze. She turns and follows my gaze, but then twists back without saying anything.
‘I don’t know Mark any more,’ I say.
‘No, you don’t. He’s a good bloke. He loves me and he’s been brilliant for Rob. We’ve only been keeping things quiet to spare Jo. That was his call. That’s the type of guy he is – thinking of his ex, even though she broke it off.’
‘Jo told me that he hit her.’
‘That’s a lie.’ The reply is spat back instantly. ‘Mark’s not like that and, even if something did happen, you’ve seen what Jo’s like when she went knocking on Stephen’s door. She was out of control.’
It’s always a strange argument that something didn’t happen… oh, but if it did then there was a reason anyway, so it was fine.
‘Jo said Ethan doesn’t want to see his dad because he’s been let down so many times.’
‘That’s only one side of it. You don’t know how much Jo obstructs and makes it difficult.’ She gulps and glances back to the house once more. ‘You don’t know…’
We stand at an impasse. Holly knows something about what happened, but she’s hardly going to tell me.
‘You should go,’ she says earnestly. ‘Go for good this time. I don’t know why you came back.’
‘My dad died.’
‘Really? That’s the reason? You left because of him. If it was just about the house, you could have got anyone to sort it out and sell it.’
She’s right. I’ve thought it myself in the quieter moments. I suppose I came back because I wanted to. Elwood’s a part of me and I’m a part of it.
‘I should tell the police,’ I say.
‘Tell them what? I had paint on my face?’ She laughs at me. ‘Do you think that, if this was something to do with Mark or me, it wouldn’t have been sorted by now? A new bumper. Matching paint. Off the books. No sign it ever happened. If it was something to do with me, do you think I’d be taking chances if I didn’t already know everything was cleaned up? If there weren’t perfect alibis? Do you think I’d have parked my car right here, where anyone can see, if I had any reason to think it would be traced back to a crime?’
It’s a lot to take in. She’s spoken so quickly, and with such clarity, that it’s almost impressive. It’s nearly a confession – why else use the word ‘alibis’? – but not quite. There’s nothing to tell the police, even if it wasn’t only my word against hers.
She’s not finished anyway.
‘You know you brought it all on yourself, don’t you?’
‘Brought what on?’
‘I never got beaten up by my dad. Neither did Jo. Just you. My dad didn’t slam my head into a wall. Jo’s dad didn’t kick her down the stairs. Our mums didn’t walk out on us. Just yours. Just you.’ Her top lip curls into an amused snarl. ‘You know I’m right,’ she adds.
I can’t speak. It feels like Holly has punched me in the stomach and taken my breath. She might as well have done. I blink away tears that feel close but don’t come. It’s taken all these years, but someone has finally said o
ut loud the thing that’s been my first thought almost every morning of my adult life: Is it me?
Holly’s on a roll now. ‘Just go, Abi. Go. There’s nothing for you here. Do everyone a favour. You left Elwood once, so do it again – and, this time, don’t come back.’
Forty-Three
I’ve been walking for anything between five minutes and an hour when I realise I don’t know where I am. For all my thoughts of things never changing and homing instincts and the like, I find myself staring at a row of new-looking red-brick houses – which is when I realise I’m lost.
After Holly was done, I turned and walked away – then kept walking. I remember almost none of it. There were houses and countryside, but it’s a blur. I have to use my phone to figure out that I’ve walked from one side of Elwood to the other. I must have passed the park at some point but have no memory of it.
My arms are tingling and, when I look at them closer, they’ve turned a gentle pink in the sun. I have nothing with which to cover them, so cross the road and stand in the shade of a tree as I figure out a route back to the house.
As I’m doing that, a text pings through from Jo.
Neil’s been released. Affray charge. Idiot.
I hold onto the phone, wondering if there will be any more, perhaps with news of Ethan. When nothing comes, I put it in my bag and then set off back towards the house. I try to stick to the shade as much as I can, although part of that is an attempt to avoid people as well.
When I get back to the house, the clearance is in full effect. The large white van with ‘Trash, Bang, Wallop’ across the side is parked at the front, with the back doors open. A teenager is carrying out one end of the sofa, while Gav has the back. They lug it to the rear of the truck and then put it on the ground when Gav notices me. He waves me across and wipes his brow with his arm.
The Child Across the Street: An unputdownable and absolutely gripping psychological thriller Page 23