TWENTY-EIGHT
Eliza
Poor Ashwin is clumping up the stairs yet again. He’s flagging. It’s been a long day and Eliza knows he will have taken flak from all sides. It is he who’s been trying to reassure the terrified Nicola Rosedale. He’s been a conduit to the incident commander and tactical teams; he’s had contact with witnesses and family members, absorbing their anger and fear and demands for action. He doesn’t have the luxury of being cocooned in the negotiation room.
‘Sick of those stairs?’ asks Eliza.
‘No need to go to the gym today, anyway. Okay, listen up.’ He throws himself into a chair. ‘The male who released the dogs? That was the rough sleeper Brigitte Uwase told us about. He tucked a note under the collar of the greyhound before encouraging it to head for the SFOs. The dog’s owners have just found it.’
‘That is resourceful.’ Paul gives a low whistle of admiration. ‘Using a dog to carry a message. Never come across that before.’
‘And there’s a bit of good news,’ says Ashwin. ‘He says they’ve got the café phone charging. Shouldn’t be long now before we can re-establish contact.’
There’s general relief in the negotiation room. Some minutes ago they sent a carefully worded text: Hi Sam, the two dogs are fine and reunited with their owner. How are you doing in there? Have you got your phone charging? But until now there’s been no reply from Sam. Eliza and Paul have been brainstorming ways to get another phone into the café. No options looked at all easy.
Ashwin has a photocopy of Neil’s note: several rows of neat handwriting, in what looks like green crayon.
Phone now charging. You’re making progress. Sam calmer, has let Mutesi treat minor wound to his head. BUT still volatile, hyper alert, taking Ritalin.
NB! DO NOT storm the barricades at this stage. Let us talk to him.
NB! Nicola is in a cupboard in the back kitchen. Nervous but physically ok.
My ex-wife Heather Cunningham (now something else?) lives Bristol. If I don’t come out of this, please inform her.
Neil Cunningham
‘I hope the boss takes the man’s advice,’ says Eliza. ‘No storming of any barricades.’
There’s a thoughtful silence before Eliza’s phone vibrates.
‘Text from Sam,’ she says, glancing at it. ‘All ok here will call soon.’
Ashwin laughs aloud. ‘That’s what I call a “sod off” text.’
‘Really? Why?’
Ashwin’s unwrapping a Twix bar.
‘Because that’s exactly what it means! My eldest daughter could have written that, especially at one o’clock in the morning when I’m nagging her about being late home from a party. It means: Don’t call me, I’ll call you. Maybe. When I feel like it. Or maybe not. Sod off, Dad, you fussy, tubby old fool.’
‘What d’you do in that situation?’ asks Eliza with genuine curiosity. ‘I’ve got all this ahead of me.’
‘I go and collect her anyway. I drive over there and knock on the door of wherever the party is and ask for Anita Anand, which makes me the most embarrassing wombat of a dad in the universe. I get a big telling-off all the way home.’
‘Strong personality?’
‘Oh yes. Anita rules our household.’
The three negotiators discuss their plan. Eliza’s tempted to call Sam straight away, despite his sod-off text.
‘We were really getting somewhere before his phone died,’ she says. ‘I don’t want to lose momentum.’
Paul’s reading their notes on the whiteboard. He seems completely relaxed.
‘I’d suggest we hold off for another half hour,’ he says. ‘Give Sam some space, let him feel he’s got some kind of control. I think he’s blown a gasket today because of an overwhelming sense of disempowerment. Right? In his mind, Lacey has won every battle.’
‘Until today,’ says Eliza. ‘Today, I’d say Robert Lacey has definitely come off worse.’
TWENTY-NINE
Sam
It took years for Robert to break down his mother and rebuild her in his own image, but he seemed to enjoy the journey. He liked to be God.
Selling poor Bouncer and Snoops into slavery seemed to be a decisive victory for him. He got away with it and sowed the seed in Mum’s mind that her brain might be going the same way as her father’s. From then on he began to do pretty much whatever he wanted. He was still keeping up his Santa Claus act, but the devil began to show its pointed teeth. And for every incident Sam saw, every nasty comment he heard, there must have been a hundred that he didn’t.
The practical changes came first. The whole house was redecorated, the furniture exchanged for newer, fancier stuff. It wasn’t Sam and Harriet’s house anymore; it was Robert’s. Pictures and ornaments ended up collecting cobwebs in the old milking shed, replaced by arty photos taken by Robert’s trendy friends. Photographs of Dad or Granny were swapped for ones with Robert in them. He was photogenic, all right: white teeth, broad shoulders, that crinkly-eyed smile Aunt Monique used to drool over. He installed a snazzy chef’s kitchen. Out with the old, in with the new. Out went the shabby cabinets with their peeling blue paint and drawers that stuck; out went the comfy yellow armchairs and the rag rug Sam had played on since he was a baby. In came stainless steel: a vast fridge, two sinks with a weird kind of tap like the proboscis of a giant insect. Black marble slabs covered all the surfaces, just like a morgue. The wall into the pantry was knocked down, making it all open-plan. Granny nearly fainted when she dropped by. She kept whispering hideous, utterly hideous under her breath.
Mum protested too, because the renovations involved an increase on the mortgage. She lost the argument. Of course she did. Remortgaging Tyndale Farm was part of Robert’s dastardly plan. He was playing a long game.
The kitchen got plenty of use. Robert was always throwing spur-of-the-moment dinner parties and asking people around for drinks. His friends, of course. Not hers. Mum was his precious, perfect princess—until suddenly she wasn’t.
‘Are we piling on the pounds a bit?’ he remarked one day, when she was wearing her favourite short-sleeved top. He jabbed her arm with his forefinger: poke, poke, poke. Sam saw the red marks on her skin.
‘Ouch!’ she yelped, rubbing her arm.
‘I hardly touched you.’ He laughed at her. ‘Good grief, my love, you can be quite the drama queen, can’t you?’
‘You don’t know your own strength.’
‘For God’s sake.’ His laughter morphed into a scowl. It suddenly seemed colder in the room. ‘Don’t make this into something it isn’t.’
She tried to suck her tummy in.
‘D’you really think I’ve put on weight?’
He was still scowling. ‘Best if I don’t say any more. I’m in enough trouble.’
Mum looked perfect to Sam, but later he saw her standing on the bathroom scales, squinting down at the dial. She jumped off again with a muffled squeal as though there was a scorpion between her feet. She never wore that short-sleeved top again.
That was the start of her dieting, of Robert ‘helping’ her—controlling what she ate and even what she drank. There were no more sticky goodies from Jackson’s. From then on he did all the shopping and every month he’d scan the credit card bill. What’s this? What’s that? He set goals for her weight loss. He gave her a gym membership for her birthday and exercised alongside her. He bought her fitness gear—not too figure-hugging, though, because you’re lovely, darling, but let’s face it, you’re no gym bunny.
Sam saw her refusing apple pie on one of the rare occasions when she and Sam visited Granny. It was a shame, because Granny had made the pie especially.
‘Robert’s right,’ Mum told her. ‘I’ve let myself go. I need to try harder.’
‘Why?’
‘It’s not fair on him.’
Granny’s left eyebrow shot way up. ‘On him?’
‘He has to look at me.’
‘He’s bloody lucky to be able to look at you.’
But
Mum wouldn’t budge, so Granny cut Sam a simply enormous piece of pie and poured on about a pint of custard, heavy yellow folds concertinaing onto his plate. She looked thin herself; her cheeks didn’t have that lovely granny-ish bloom anymore.
It was several years before Sam began to suspect that Robert had been messing with the bathroom scales to trick Mum into thinking she was heavier than she really was. He once caught his stepfather sitting on the edge of the bath with the scales on his knees, fiddling with the dial. Robert smiled when he saw Sam watching. He said he was fixing them. He probably was fixing them, but not in a good way.
It wasn’t long before he started controlling what Sam ate too. Things disappeared from the cupboard. Random things. No more cheese strings. No more crisps or pasta or sausage rolls—Sam loved sausage rolls, they made him happy. No more popcorn, for God’s sake.
‘Why can’t I have cheese strings?’ he complained. ‘I always have them in my lunchbox on a Friday.’
‘They’re processed rubbish,’ said Robert. ‘Make you hyperactive. You’re like a flea in a box.’
Mum was cleaning the oven, kneeling on the floor and wearing yellow rubber gloves.
‘Couldn’t he have a cheese string once a week?’ she asked. ‘They’re not so bad, are they?’
The words weren’t out of her mouth before he was rounding on her.
‘Really, Harriet? Really?’
‘I just think we need to be a bit flexible. They’ve always been Sam’s Friday treat—his little reward for getting through the week. He loves his cheese strings.’
Robert looked as though he couldn’t believe her treachery. ‘We agreed about this!’
‘When?’
‘Are you serious?’
She was kneeling at Robert’s feet. Sam didn’t like that; he wanted her to get up off the floor and tell him to pack his bags and sod off out of their house.
‘Do you realise how often you undermine me?’ he demanded furiously. ‘It’s incredibly destructive.’
‘I didn’t mean to undermine you. I’m just wondering—’
‘Oh, come on.’
‘No, really, I promise. I—’
‘You do it constantly!’ Suddenly he was shouting. ‘You do it all the time! All the bloody time!’
Mum covered her face with her yellow-gloved hands, rocking backwards and forwards.
‘Robert, please,’ she whispered.
He took a breath, held it in for a long time, let it out. When he spoke again, his voice was super-calm. Super-angry-calm. That was worse than the yelling.
‘Now you’re making me out to be an ogre. Seems pretty unfair when all I’m trying to do is help your son. I just can’t win, can I?’
‘I’m sorry. You’re right. I’m so sorry.’
It was like a magic password. As soon as she’d apologised, he pulled her to her feet and kissed her really hard on the mouth. It didn’t seem like a happy kiss to Sam. He couldn’t believe she’d just said sorry when he was the one in the wrong.
‘It’s all for you,’ he muttered in her ear. ‘Everything, everything. My whole life. It’s all for you.’
‘They’re just cheese strings,’ whined Sam. ‘They’re not some kind of deadly poison.’
‘Sammy, shush. Robert knows about nutrition.’ Mum’s voice was firm, but her face wasn’t. She looked as though she was about to be sick.
She never bought cheese strings again. There were no more Friday treats. No more treats at all, in fact, unless Robert provided them.
It was around this time that Robert introduced the homework rule: Sam had to do sixty minutes of homework in his bedroom every night. He wasn’t allowed to skip it, ever. Robert said he needed structure and routine, and would thank him one day. He was wrong about that. Sam never did thank him.
Those miserable years are jumbled in Sam’s mind. He was about twelve when Robert killed Sundance. Mum and Sam went away for a weekend with the school soccer team and came home to an empty stable. According to Robert, Sundance had been in agony with colic. The vet thought he was suffering, that it was bound to keep recurring, he was very old and it would be kindest to euthanise him. The death sentence had been carried out straight away. Sundance had already been shipped off to a furnace somewhere. All done and dusted—literally. Sam’s remaining childhood friend had been his calm, apple-munching self when Mum and he had left on Friday; now he’d been turned to dust. Like Dad. Just dust.
Granny, Mum and Sam stood at the stable door and cried their eyes out.
‘Robert killed him,’ said Sam.
Of course Mum protested. ‘It was the colic. He’s as upset as we are.’
‘Robert killed Sundance,’ Sam repeated stubbornly, and he added a silent promise to himself. One day I’m going to kill Robert.
After Sundance died, Sam threw in the towel. Nothing seemed to matter anymore. Darkness filled his heart and his head. He stopped playing soccer because he couldn’t be bothered. He didn’t want to be in the band with Jake. He gave up any pretence of trying at school. As the months passed and he became a teenager, he went from bad to worse: throwing things around in class, getting into fights, never doing his homework (despite Robert’s stupid rule) and—most maddening for the teachers—staring out of the window for hours at a time. Mum hated going to parent–teacher meetings because it was one bitter complaint after another. She said she might as well wear a T-shirt with sam ballard’s mother on the front and yes, i know, i’m really, really sorry on the back.
One awful day, Sam accidentally broke Jake’s brand-new Gameboy. It was par for the course, he was always breaking things, and he was mortified. Jake seemed to think it was the last straw. He shouted that he was sick of Sam and he’d never lend him anything ever again. Then he stomped off to the soccer pitch to play British Bulldog.
Jake was Sam’s only close friend. Other people hung out with him because they thought he was a rebel and they had a ghoulish kind of interest in what hare-brained mistake he was going to make next. Many of his classmates looked like men by now and were already chasing girls; Sam was a scrawny runt for his age and—secretly—still enjoyed playing with Lego. Jake knew all this, yet he was prepared to be Sam’s friend. Until now.
It was all too much. Sam was worn out by the darkness inside him. He was worn out by the loneliness. He felt as though darkness and loneliness had hollowed him out. For the first time in his life—but not the last—he seriously thought it would be lovely to be dead. Death sounded like a wonderful, peaceful holiday destination. He wanted to go on that holiday.
He trudged down to the boys’ changing room in the basement, thinking he might hang himself from one of the coat hooks. The room smelled of sweaty socks and testosterone. He spent ages trying to make a noose out of his tie. He was picturing all the details of his funeral: Jake would be sorry about yelling, and Mum would be sorry she’d married Robert. Robert would deliver a moving eulogy with one hand resting lovingly on Sam’s coffin. He’d cry, but there would be a grin on his other face. He would have won.
Sam abandoned his noose and began pulling every coat off every peg. He threw people’s soccer boots down the toilets and slammed hockey sticks into the wall, making bits of white plaster and green paint fly around. He emptied lunchboxes and stamped on pots of yoghurt, which splattered under his feet. He turned on the taps in the basins and put in the plugs. Finally, he found a red marker pen in someone’s smashed pencil case and wrote FUCK LIFE all over the walls.
He began to regret his five minutes of madness even before it was over. He wasn’t nearly as much of a rebel as he pretended to be. He wanted the teachers to like him—he wanted everyone to like him, and was constantly perplexed that they seemed to find him annoying. He was horrified when he saw how much mess he’d made. He slunk out of the room, felt sick and cold-sweaty all through maths, especially when he remembered about leaving the taps on. He imagined a teacher’s feet splashing through a lake on the floor.
His nightmare came true when a runner arrived w
ith a note. The maths teacher read it and delivered the dreadful summons without even glancing in his direction.
‘Sam Ballard! Head’s office. Now.’
His knees nearly gave way as he left the room. There was a buzzing in his head, the sound of fear. The headmistress was a terrifying dictator called Miss Stephanie Hodgson, one of the youngest secondary school heads in the country—not that anyone thought of her as young. She was ageless, like dragons and gods, with a superhuman ability to teleport. She was always immaculately turned out: a helmet of black hair, little glasses with green rims. She made Sam feel like a lump of Play-Doh.
So there was Miss Hodgson behind her desk, melting Sam with her death stare. His dean was there too, though he hardly said a word. They sat Sam down in a chair. His feet didn’t even reach the ground.
‘Someone has done a lot of damage in the boys’ changing room,’ Miss Hodgson began. ‘Anything you want to tell us about that?’
He fidgeted and stared at the floor. He was curling up, a leaf in a bonfire just before it catches flame.
‘Really, Sam? Nothing at all?’
When he still didn’t confess, she sighed and showed him the CCTV footage. He wished he could spontaneously combust. The quality wasn’t great: the camera must have been high up, and only recorded a few frames a second, but he couldn’t deny that the skinny vandal chucking stuff around and leaping up and down on lunchboxes was him. He was blubbing before it had played right through. His nose was running. He kept trying to wipe it on his sleeve.
‘You’ve committed a serious criminal offence,’ said Miss Hodgson, handing him a tissue from a box on her desk. ‘I hope you understand that, Sam. I may have to call the police.’
No, no, no, no, no! Police meant prison, and he’d never forgotten what Aunt Monique had told him about prison. He would have given his right hand to go back in time, pretend he was too ill for school and stay safe under his Superman duvet.
They’d already phoned Mum and asked her to come in. She did—still in her work clothes, mud under her fingernails, shock in her voice. Her frizzy hair was a marked contrast to Miss Hodgson’s sleek bob. She brought Robert with her and the first thing he did was stride across to lay a fatherly hand on Sam’s shoulder. Sam muttered geroff and squirmed out of his grasp.
The Secrets of Strangers Page 21