by Daniel Hurst
This way, she can still be the same beautiful woman I know she is blossoming into.
I might be biased and maybe even a little deranged, but one thing I’m not is stupid. I know we are taking a massive risk now. There’s no way to avoid it. We’re moving a body, and we’re hopefully going to keep it hidden forever. It’s hardly an everyday occurrence. There are probably very few people alive right now on this planet who can even understand what this feels like. Now my daughter is one of them, through no fault of her own. It was just a stupid, senseless accident. A young life snuffed out. Sadly, it happens every day. Car crashes. Trips and falls. Disease. Sheer bad luck. Rupert isn’t the first person to die before his time, and sadly, he won’t be the last. But life goes on, as cold as that might sound to say it, and those who are still alive have every right to fight to make their existence as painless as possible, at least until their own day of reckoning comes.
That’s why I am doing this for my daughter. I will take as much of the burden of tonight onto myself as possible, which will hopefully enable her to still have a very long, healthy and happy life. Isn’t that what every parent wants for their child? I’m no different.
It’s just I’m having to take things to the extreme.
‘Come on, Chloe. The sooner we get him to the trees, the sooner this will be over.’
My daughter glares at me, and I’m not sure if it’s contempt that she harbours for me, but she eventually does as she is told and grabs hold of Rupert’s ankles again.
With her assistance, moving the body is much easier, and it doesn’t take as long as I had feared it would to get him out of the open field and into the treeline where things are much more obscured.
‘How far do we have to go?’ Chloe asks me as if there is some set distance that all ‘body movers’ must adhere to. But of course there isn’t. You just have to do your best, like anything else in life, I suppose.
‘A little further,’ I say, glancing over my shoulder at the dark woods beyond.
The woodland is too dense for the moonlight to seep through to us down here, and it is getting darker the further we go. With that in mind, I decide this is far enough.
‘Okay, let’s put him down,’ I say, and Chloe is only too happy to let go of the poor man’s limbs again.
I’m a little more careful in letting go of Rupert’s arms, lowering them more slowly until they are resting gently on the ground beside his torso. I’m trying to be as respectful as I can be considering what I’m currently doing. Yes, I’m trying to hide his body, but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t treat it well while it is in my care.
‘Now what?’
Chloe’s question is a reminder that while we have now managed to move the body to a more discreet location, there is still much to do before I can be sure that nobody will ever find it again. But that’s my problem now. This is where I take over.
‘I’m taking you home,’ I reply, walking back in the direction of the car park.
‘What?’
Chloe comes after me, but I make sure to keep walking so we don’t slow down. Every minute we waste is one minute closer to sunrise, and the body has to be buried by then, or both of us are in serious trouble.
‘Mum! What are you doing?’
Chloe grabs my arm, and even though I try to keep going, she is stronger than I anticipate and is easily able to pull me back. I turn and face her, or at least what I can see of her. Most of her face is in darkness, the large tree we are standing beside doing a great job of blocking out the moon above.
‘Listen to me. I’m taking you home, and you are going to go to bed. On the way back, you will text Zara and tell her that you were feeling sick and got me to come and pick you up instead. Say you were too embarrassed to tell her if she pushes you. Blame it on all the drink you’ve had tonight. Whatever. Just make sure Zara knows that you are home in bed.’
‘But what about Rupert? I thought we weren’t going to just leave him.’
‘We’re not. I’m going to come back here after I have dropped you off and dig a hole.’
The blunt description of my plan for the rest of the evening is enough to startle myself, never mind my daughter.
Chloe looks on the verge of tears again as she stares back in the direction of where Rupert’s body lies, but hanging around won’t make things any easier.
‘Come on,’ I say, giving her a tug on the arm and leading her out of the trees.
It’s a relief to be back in the pale moonlight again as we reach the grass and stride across the field towards where my car is parked.
Chloe is walking behind me, not moving as quickly as I would like, but at least she is heading in the right direction, so I decide not to say anything more.
When we reach the car, I make sure to look around the park to ensure that nobody has turned up here since I arrived, but it’s still just as desolate as I had hoped it would be. Once I have got Chloe home, it will just be me in this park as I work to conceal the body, and that would be a spooky thought if it weren’t instantly overridden by the fear of me and my daughter ending up in a police cell if we aren’t careful from this point on.
I get behind the steering wheel and close my door as Chloe takes her seat beside me, and it’s a relief to turn the engine and feel the warm air blowing out of the vents. I drive us out of the car park as Chloe holds her hands to the vents and gets some heat into her freezing fingers, and neither of us says a word to each other until we are almost home.
The silence is eventually broken by my daughter, although I wish it wasn’t when I hear what she has to say.
‘He told me he was going to be an actor,’ Chloe says, staring out of her window as the dark houses at the bottom end of our street roll by. ‘He said he dreamed of living in LA and having a big mansion in the hills where his family and friends could come and visit him.’
I’m not sure what I am supposed to say to that, so I say nothing as we reach our driveway.
‘I think he would have achieved it too. Not just because he had the talent or the looks. But he had the belief too. You know what I mean? Like he was going to make it happen, and there was nothing that was going to get in his way.’
I bring the car to a stop and turn off the engine, conscious that any noise on our street at this time of night might encourage a neighbour to peep through their curtains and see what’s going on. It’s no problem if anybody does see us arriving back home at this time. It fits in with our cover story that I went to pick Chloe up after the party. But I’d still like to be as quiet as possible if I can help it.
‘Come on,’ I say, opening my door and getting out.
Chloe reluctantly follows, and it’s a relief to have her back home again as soon as she is in the hallway and I have closed the front door behind us.
‘Have you sent that text?’ I ask her, but she shakes her head.
‘Give me your phone,’ I say, and she hands it over, which must be the first time I have ever been able to get her mobile from her without there being a massive argument first.
I type out the message and read it through a couple of times before handing the phone back to my daughter before it is sent.
‘That’s what it needs to say. Just edit it so it’s in your words, not mine.’
Chloe does as she is told, and I watch as her fingers move across her phone screen until she is finished.
Retaking the phone again, I re-read it before nodding and finally pressing send.
With that taken care of, that only leaves one thing to do.
‘Now go to bed, and we’ll talk in the morning,’ I instruct my daughter, and Chloe puts up no resistance, turning and slouching up the staircase with her shoulders hunched and her head drooped. She’s going to feel terrible in the morning, in more ways than one. Her hangover will be bad enough, that’s for sure, but she will also have to face up to what she has done. But I will make sure to be by her side as soon as she does wake, ensuring that these next few days are as painless as possible for her.
>
As I hear Chloe’s footsteps in her bedroom above, I turn to the front door and prepare to go back out into the cold.
‘I’ll be back soon,’ I call upstairs, but I get no response.
Then I open the door and step back outside.
The temperature seems to have dropped another degree or two in the short time since I was last out here, and maybe it has. It’s one in the morning now, and it’s likely to get even colder as the hours go by until the sun eventually rises on this town. All I want to do is get back in my car and get the heaters on, but before I can do that, I have to make a quick detour to the garage.
Opening the door as quietly as possible, I step inside and turn on the light. There is all sorts of rubbish in here, from old cardboard boxes full of Chloe’s childhood toys to old items of furniture that have been passed down to me by other family members, moved somewhere else to collect dust. There’s also a whole array of gardening items in here, like a lawnmower, a large pair of hedge clippers and a bag of fertiliser. But it’s the item hanging on the rusty nail at the far end of the garage that I am heading towards now.
Lifting it off from where it hangs, I feel the weight of it in my hands. It’s a little heavier than I remember it being and certainly heavier than how it feels in my nightmare. But it’s a good tool, and it’s definitely the best one for the job.
Turning off the light and closing the garage door, I walk around to the back of my car and open the boot before checking that there are no glimpses of light in between any of the curtains in the homes opposite my house.
Confident that there are none, I place the spade in the boot before carefully closing the lid.
10
CHLOE
I’ve been staring at the ceiling ever since I crawled into bed five minutes ago. Mum has told me to try and get some sleep, but there’s no way that’s going to happen.
I know if I close my eyes, then I will see Rupert’s face. I wonder how long it will take until the vivid image of him lying there with his eyes wide open will fade in my mind.
A few days? Weeks? Months?
Or will I be carrying it with me for the rest of my life?
Maybe I should Google it. That’s where I get the answers to all the other questions I have, so why should this be any different? I pick up my phone from where it lies on the mattress beside me and click the internet tab, and I’m only seconds away from typing out a question relating to a dead body when I pause.
What if the police ever find Rupert and discover that I was with him the night he died? It wouldn’t do me much good if they were to go trawling through the search history on my phone and see that I have been reading articles about bodies, guilt and fear. That would look suspicious, and I’m sure Mum wouldn’t be thrilled to learn that all her hard work might have gone to waste by my silly use of an online search engine.
With that in mind, I backtrack from the internet and instead open my messages, which reveals to me the last text conversation I was involved in. The message Mum sent to Zara is staring back at me from my screen, and I re-read it again, almost in a state of disbelief at the person who crafted most of it. Mum has really done a good job of making it sound like I was nowhere near the park with Rupert tonight. Along with the little bit of editing that I did to make it read more like it was written in my voice, I think Zara will buy it.
Hey babe. So sorry. Way too much vodka tonight. I might have spewed while I was on the way to meet you at the park. Kinda got it all down my dress. Gross. I had to call my mum to pick me up. Sorry for bailing. I’m in bed now. Good night? xx
It’s been fifteen minutes since the message was sent, and so far, Zara hasn’t text me back. But I know she has read it because I can see the notification in the bottom corner of the message that tells me she has opened it. The fact that she hasn’t replied isn’t doing much good for my anxiety levels right now.
It could just be that she is mad at me for not joining her at the park. I probably would be too if she had disappeared on me. It could be that she is still at the park with a load of people from the party, and she is having too much fun to type out a reply. I hope that is the case. But there is a part of me that knows her failure to reply could be for another reason. Perhaps she doesn’t believe me. Maybe she knows I’m lying.
What if she knows I was really at the other park with Rupert tonight?
I try to calm down by reminding myself that there is no good reason why she wouldn’t believe me. She certainly saw me drinking enough at the party to believe that I threw up over myself and had to go home to save myself any embarrassment. But I do wish she would text me back and set my mind at ease.
Putting my phone back down on the mattress beside me, I snuggle down deeper under the duvet as I return some much-needed warmth to my frigid bones. It’s good to no longer be out in the cold, although I’m aware that Mum isn’t so lucky. She is still out there now, back at the park, standing in those woods.
Digging Rupert’s grave.
Am I surprised that Mum didn’t just call the police? A little, but then I am all she has. I always knew she would do anything to protect me, and this proves it. Maybe I knew what I was doing when I called her first instead of an ambulance or the police.
Maybe I hoped she would somehow be able to make everything easier for me.
I wonder how different things could have gone if she had got the police involved. I wouldn’t be lying in my warm bed now, that’s for sure. I’d most likely be sitting in an interview room at the police station being questioned by a couple of gnarly officers who tried to poke holes in everything I told them. I’d possibly have had to spend the whole night at the station, either in that interrogation room or perhaps in a cell if they felt like there was more to the story than I was telling them.
Even if they had believed me and let me come home, I imagine Rupert’s parents would have wanted to speak to me. I was the last person to see their son alive. They might have wanted to know what his final moments were like. Was he happy? Sad? Content? Afraid?
It would have been very overwhelming, and that would have just been the first night. Imagine how crazy things would have been when I went back to sixth form. Mum would have been right. Everybody would have been talking about me behind my back. Some would have pointed and stared. “There goes that girl that was with Rupert when he died.”
Some teenagers might crave the spotlight, but not me. I’d have hated it, and thinking about it, I’d have probably had to withdraw from college because it would have been too much for me to handle. That would have meant that my chances of going to university would have gone down the drain. Without the qualifications I needed, I wouldn’t have been able to go onto further education. I would have been stuck here, in my hometown, where everybody knew my name, and everybody felt sorry for me.
As crazy as this night has been, and as crazy as it continues to be with Mum still out of the house digging a hole in the woods, I know this course of action is for the best. Mum knew it, and it has taken me a while to get my head around it, but I know it too. As long as I stay calm and quiet, nobody ever has to know what happened to Rupert. Nobody has to point and stare at me, and nobody has to feel sympathy for me for being the unlucky girl who ended up alone with a guy who died in a freak accident. This way, I can have a normal life.
Yet somehow, I don’t feel like I will ever be normal again.
Something has changed inside me. I can’t put my finger on it yet, but I can feel it. With what I know now and what my mother has been forced to do to protect me, it’s clear that things will always be different. There’s no way they can be the same. I will carry around with me the knowledge of where Rupert really is for the rest of my life while his family, friends and the wider public in this town search for answers and discuss conspiracy theories. The only other person who will know what happened to him is Mum.
Let’s hope we can both keep a secret.
Only time will tell.
I’m just about to try and close my eyes ev
en though I know sleep will not happen for me tonight when I feel the vibration of my mobile phone on the mattress. I pick it up and see that it is a message from Zara. She has finally responded to my text.
Babe! I was so worried! My battery died too! We didn’t stay long at the park, it was too cold. I’m so glad you are home. I thought something bad might have happened lol chat in the morning xx
Zara bought it. That’s one less thing to worry about, though somehow, that doesn’t make me think that sleep will be any easier to achieve. I doubt I will be able to settle until Mum gets home.
I wonder how she is getting on cleaning up my mess.
11
HEATHER
They say it’s better to be digging someone else’s grave than your own, but that’s not much consolation for me right now. Thankfully, the ground is fairly soft after recent showers, so I managed to get a couple of feet down before it became more difficult. The last ten minutes have been harder, but I reckon this hole is three feet deep now. That means I need to dig down one more before I’m ready to put Rupert inside.
I pause for a moment and wipe the beads of sweat from my forehead. At least I’m warm now.
Unlike the body behind me.
I’m trying not to focus on the moment I know is coming around fast. It will be the moment when the hole is dug, and all that is left to do is push Rupert into it. I’m dreading it for many reasons, and not just because it’s a grim task.
I’m dreading it because it’s so final.
Once his body is in this hole, if all goes well, it will never come out again. While that might be a good thing for Chloe and I, it is a dreadful thing for Rupert and his family. This isn’t much of a final resting place, and there will be no closure for his parents, who won’t be able to settle until they are reunited with their child. I really wish there was some other way of doing this. I wish I could just leave his body to be found so that everybody will at least know what happened to him. But that’s too risky. With a body comes an investigation, and that investigation might end up leading to my doorstep. Just as I’m sure Rupert’s mother would have done anything to protect her offspring, I am no different.