by J. A. Baker
The police had told them that they were conducting another investigation that involved Leah but it was early stages and they weren’t at liberty to divulge too many details. Recently bereaved, desperate grieving parents, and they were still questioned about when they last saw their daughter.
Had they spoken to her? Did they know she no longer lived at her flat and had been dismissed from her job? So many negative statements and probing questions.
Their daughter had just died and neither Chrissie nor Ralph could think straight, never mind give dates and remember their movements weeks before the accident had taken place. They barely knew what day it was.
In the end, the two police officers stood up to leave, giving Chrissie a sympathetic nod and Ralph a soft pat on his shoulder. They left with no more information about Leah than when they first arrived. There was nothing to tell.
Chrissie had wanted to show them photographs of the family, to let them know that the Brownes were a good family, a caring decent family, but Ralph had stopped her.
‘They’re short staffed, pet. They don’t have time to sit and look at people’s old holiday snaps,’ he had said. That had stung. Those pictures were, still are, important to her. They are proof that the Brownes aren’t a damaged dysfunctional family. They’re a grieving one. All families have scars, it’s just that some are easier to hide than others. The Brownes’ wounds are visible for everyone to see. There’s no shying away from them. But that doesn’t make them bad people.
She sits in her chair facing the window that overlooks the back garden. Ralph is out there again. He’s off work at the minute, deliberating over whether or not to go back at all. He could take early retirement but then what would he do with himself? She visualises the pair of them rattling around the house, each of them locked in their own private world of grief, their self-made protective armour plating too tight to allow anyone else in. They will both rot if they don’t do something with their lives. Winter will be upon them in a few months. What will Ralph do then? With no garden to tend, he will simply hang around the house with nothing to do. There are a few odd jobs that need doing but neither of them can muster up the energy to care about the house anymore. Without their family here to fill it, it’s just simply somewhere to live – four walls with furniture inside. No soul, no happiness. It’s no more than an empty shell.
She knows that soon they will have to face the world, accept their lot in life and move on, but not just yet. The papers are full of the stories about the crash. She can’t bring herself to read any of them or to watch the television with those overzealous, made-up happy-clappy news presenters who cock their heads to one side whilst regaling the public with the grisly details of how people died on that train, how they were trapped in the carriage while firefighters and medics fought to rescue them, fire ripping through the metal, melting it, making it even harder to reach people.
It seems that every time she turns on the telly, it’s there, reminding her of how horrific her daughter’s last moments were, how desperate she must have felt. Chrissie wonders if they crossed her mind, if she thought of them before…
She closes her eyes and pushes it away. She can’t. She just can’t think about it right now. Perhaps another time when it’s not so raw, but not now. For the time being, both she and Ralph are concentrating on putting one foot in front of another and making it through the day without shouting and screaming and raging at the sky above them that life is so bloody difficult and unfair.
The police told them that once the investigation is complete, they will release Leah’s belongings. There isn’t much apparently, but there are some photographs and yet more diaries. Chrissie would like those for sure. She may not be able to bring herself to read them but they are a part of Leah and she will take whatever bit of solace she can. It’s something tangible at least.
The shuffle of feet in the kitchen draws her away from her thoughts. Ralph is in. He will be ready for a sandwich and a cup of tea. He always works up a thirst when he’s out in the garden. He’s in better shape mentally than she is. Maybe she should get out there, give him a hand. She can’t seem to summon up the energy. Everything feels so onerous, her limbs leaden with misery and grief.
‘You put the kettle on, love, and I’ll make you something to eat.’ That’s the least she can do for him, poor man, keeping it all hidden away, pushing his thoughts and unhappiness deep into the earth. She has watched him out there, his fingers scrabbling about in the dirt, dread and worry carved all over his face. Yet he never moans about it. Not like she does. She makes a mental note to be nicer to him, to not snap at him every time he speaks to her or tries to cuddle her. It’s hard though, when your muscles are weighed down, your flesh cold with the thought of what she went through, their Leah. Their daughter.
‘Salmon or tuna?’ she says as she slowly heads through to the kitchen.
And this is how it is. Life goes on. People eat, drink, sleep. The world continues to spin. Nothing changes. Babies are born, people die.
‘Tuna, please,’ Ralph replies as he takes two cups out of the cupboard and places them down on the kitchen counter.
He fills the kettle, the gush of the water as it hits the bottom filling the silence around them. Chrissie manages a smile. Sometimes it’s the everyday things, the routine and the normality of it all that makes everything that little bit easier to bear.
‘You’re looking a bit better, love,’ he says softly. ‘You know, all things considered.’
38
The Diary
Everything will be over if we don’t get back together. I’m getting desperate now. I’ve let other areas of my life slide and as a result I’m unemployed and practically homeless.
Once I persuade Jacob to let me back into his life, I’m confident that everything else will just fall into place and we’ll be back to how we were all those months ago. It was a mistake, us drifting apart. It’s my fault, I know, and now I’m going to have to work really hard at getting him back, getting him to believe that I’m truly sorry and am willing to try harder at being a better person, at being humbler and less controlling. I guess we all have our faults, and being bossy and bad tempered is one of mine. We can’t all be like Jacob, can we? All calm and cool and considered.
Maybe I should have watched him more and learnt from him instead of keeping tabs on where he was all the time and who he was with. That was my downfall. I drove him away and now I’m paying the price.
I’m willing to learn though, that’s the thing. I’m willing to change and will be the person he wants me to be. I can be the one he chooses to spend his life with if only he would give me a chance to prove what a decent and caring person I can be. I’ve got it within me. I’ve just let things drift. I’m prepared to be a better person. I owe him that much. He made me so happy. Everything was perfect when I lived closer to him. Seeing him every day gave me a sense of purpose.
When I lost my job the first time and had to move to a different part of town, I felt like I’d been kicked. It wasn’t the losing the job that did it, it was not being able to see Jacob every day that almost saw me off. I suppose that was when everything accelerated, the downward pull of my life and all that followed. You could say I did it to myself. Many would.
But as I said, I’m trying to improve. I don’t only owe it to myself, I owe it to lots of other people too. Too many to name. Sometimes things seem to happen to me, stuff occurs and before I know it, everything has gone wrong and ends up ruined. That’s how it’s been for as long as I can remember. You’d think I would have had the courage to do something about it before now. Sometimes we have to be down on the ground before we realise we can’t go any lower and that it’s time to start looking up at the sky once again.
39
Jacob
The knock on the door wakes him, sending a deep thumping through his head as he is ripped from a much-needed slumber. He rises and staggers to his feet, clumsy and ungainly as he struggles to see through a fog of sleep. He’s exhaust
ed, fatigue gnawing at his muscles, working its way into the very core of him and settling there.
Another night at the hospital. Another night sitting at Chloe’s bedside, willing her to wake up, willing her to breathe unaided. It’s been two weeks since he found her, here in their bed, battered half to death. Two weeks of sitting idly by, stroking her hand, talking to her. Two long weeks of waiting for his beautiful girl to rouse herself, to sit up in bed, smile at him and help unravel this awful fucking mystery that has eaten away at him. Initially he had his suspicions. It was immediate, instinctive, to think of her. For so long she has bothered them, stalking them, harassing them, making their lives a complete sodding misery.
The police had descended after he found Chloe and made that call, combing his flat looking for clues, scouring every corner, every surface, every inch of the place and coming up with very little. ‘It’s early days,’ they said. ‘The DNA results are due back anytime now.’ Not that they need them anymore. Not since the call from the police saying they had a solid suspect in mind.
He gave the police as much detail as he could but they initially went down the route that it was a burglary that went horribly wrong. Chloe’s jewellery was missing. Pictures were stolen; and more bizarrely, his crockery. He asked them what rational explanation they could provide for such an odd list of items going missing; that the intruder goes around collecting Marks and Spencer’s plates and stealing other people’s photographs? It didn’t add up, he had said to them.
He argued with them, his instinct telling him that only one person would do such a thing. He had given them Leah’s name, told them about the harassment and as much background information on her as he knew, but they appeared to have already made up their minds, telling him that manpower was thin on the ground and that they already had a few names in mind; local drug users who routinely break into houses and steal anything that isn’t nailed down. A burglary gone wrong, that was what they told him. A disturbed burglary. They had panicked, hit out at Chloe, ransacked the place and left her for dead.
‘They’ll take a necklace worth £200 and sell it for a tenner. Anything for a quick fix. That’s all they’re interested in. They’re just crackheads who can’t see any further than the end of their noses. They don’t know the value of anything,’ the policeman had said to him as they swabbed his flat and dusted for fingerprints. ‘I hope they didn’t have any sentimental value, those bits of jewellery. I doubt you’ll get ‘em back. Not unless you’re prepared to trawl round all the local junk and pawn shops, and car boot sales. That’s where they’ll be. We see it all the time.’
Jacob had thanked the police for their time and showed them out, feeling deflated. They were compassionate, cocking their heads sympathetically and nodding and smiling in all the right places, but had their own agenda, their own ideas as to who they were looking for, taking little notice when he explained how Leah had stalked them relentlessly. Perhaps if he and Chloe had gone through with their earlier threats and called the police when she had appeared outside their door, then maybe they would have treated his claims with a greater degree of seriousness.
Even when he told them about the message that he received on the phone, they didn’t appear shocked or fazed. He has since tried calling Chloe’s phone but received no ringing tone.
‘It’s been switched off or broken apart, the SIM card ripped out and sold for pennies,’ the police officer said. ‘Probably dumped it somewhere once they realised it could be traced. Smackheads aren’t interested in mobiles or technology. Just the high they’ll get from their next fix.’
Part of him had hoped they were right, that it was a random attack – somebody looking for money which they probably got. Chloe’s bag and purse were also taken. She always carried cash around. He had told her time and time again how daft and dangerous it was but she said it was a good way of keeping track of how much she spent. In her early years of teaching she had got into trouble with some debts and it had scared her so she would always keep a couple of hundred pounds with her rather than use her cards and now this attack has happened and somebody somewhere has got lucky with it.
Somebody.
Not somebody.
Leah.
Because he was right. It wasn’t a random attack. He didn’t know whether to be relieved or terrified when the police called back and sat him down to explain, asking him questions about Chloe, about her cards and missing purse. They had found it, they told him. They had found it with another person and asked him if he knew of her, this lady who had taken the bag and its contents. Again, he told them about Leah, about his suspicions after finding Chloe. They took notes, nodded as he spoke and said very little in return, but he knew then that it was Leah. She had done this. Madness had pushed her much further than even he had ever thought possible and now Chloe was seriously injured and, according to the police officers sitting on his sofa, Leah was dead.
They had found a body, they had said. A body. Not a person.
It was a train crash. The one just outside York that was making national news. Jacob had struggled to process it, to sort all that information in his mind and work out what had happened and why. Not that it mattered anymore. The last thing he wanted to do was climb inside Leah’s head and work out her motives. She was beyond that sort of effort, as was he. He was too exhausted to think straight, too angry to care about Leah. She didn’t deserve his exertions. She didn’t deserve any of his time.
The knock comes again; rhythmic, insistent. He runs his fingers through his hair. He needs a shower. He can smell his own skin, the pungent meaty aroma of unwashed flesh as he makes his way to the door. He should care but doesn’t. Everything is too much of an effort, his reserves of energy sorely depleted.
In the background, the muted TV displays images of the recent train crash, calling it a national tragedy. News of the local vicious attack on an innocent woman who is currently in a medically-induced coma, has already been overshadowed by a larger catastrophe. Chloe has already been forgotten about, relegated to the middle of the newspapers, cast aside for a more interesting story; more bodies, a greater impact. A wider audience. More revenue.
Jacob winces as he makes his way to the door, disgusted by the news, disgusted by the state of the world. In the past few weeks, he has come to the conclusion that people are selfish ignorant bastards, only interested in the misfortune of others, turned on and alerted by how much money they can make out of somebody else’s misery.
Eyes screwed up in concentration, he stands and stares through the peephole in the centre of the door at a middle-aged couple who look as dishevelled as he does. An uncomfortable heavy feeling presses down on him. The floor takes on a magnetic pull, dragging him down. He hangs on to the door frame for balance, his limbs suddenly weak. He is no fit state for visitors and besides, he has no idea who these people are. He also has no idea what they want from him. He hopes they’re not neighbours, spurred on to do something beneficent after hearing what happened. He has neither the time nor the energy for their probing questions and faux concern, for their need for grisly details dressed up as sympathy and compassion. He is beyond being polite and isn’t a fan of surprises so these people had better have a good reason for being here.
They’re obviously not journalists; he knows those old hacks now, can spot them a mile away and see through their thin veneer of jocularity. How much he has learned in the past few days and wishes he hadn’t. They’ve been waiting for him, an army of reporters, there every time he enters and leaves the hospital, even hanging about at the end of the street when he came home for a nap and a change of clothes. But now there has been a huge train crash which has taken centre stage. He isn’t sure which upsets him the most – being probed and prodded about Chloe’s attack or his beautiful girl being ignored and forgotten about simply because a better story has come along and nudged her out of the way.
So many times he has wished he hadn’t gone to that bloody stupid conference. If only he had turned it down and stayed at home.
Jacob fights back tears. He is past going over the long list of if onlys… if only he had been there to help her, if only he had driven back faster. If only, if only… Too many to count. Chloe is seriously injured, her chances of her making a full recovery still touch-and-go, and there’s not a damn thing he can do about it.
Swallowing down the lump in his throat, Jacob gingerly opens the door, his fingers clasped around the frame. Experience has taught him that anything is possible. Even these two tired middle-aged folks could have a nasty trick up their sleeve. Trust nobody. That’s his new mantra. Trust nobody, take nothing for granted. Especially happiness. He thought he had it all, that apart from Leah’s constant unwanted presence, his life was as settled as it could ever be. How wrong he was.
‘Hello?’ He deliberately jams his foot in the door, stopping these jaded folks from barging their way in. Looking harmless and affable isn’t always an indicator of innocence and virtue. He can’t be too careful. Not after what happened.
‘We’re sorry to intrude,’ the man says, sneaking occasional glances at the woman as if looking for affirmation of his words, ‘but we were wondering if we could speak to you about our daughter?’
Jacob gazes at them, assessing them, trying to work out what their ulterior motive is. What daughter? Chloe’s parents are separated and live on different continents – her father in America and her mother in Australia with her new husband. He has spoken to them on the phone frequently over the past few days. He knows Chloe’s family and is almost certain these people are not relatives.