Nicole
Nicole
It is only just gone seven when the doorbell rings. Nicole hopes it is not Andrew back early from his morning run. The longer he is out, the better. Ten days since Andrew confessed to his affair with Isla – ten days since Nicole began fabricating excuses to Nathaniel and Jack about the sudden onset of insomnia necessitating Andrew’s move into the spare room – and she is beginning to feel she is existing in two parallel worlds: the world of heinous lies and secrets that must be kept at all costs; and a world in which she must feign normality in order safeguard her family. The duality is exhausting and there are moments she fears her ability to maintain the pretence.
Closing her laptop – where she has been filling out yet more insurance forms about her missing car – she walks along the wide, tiled hallway, towards the front door. Opening it, she finds Abby standing on the other side.
Nicole has seen Abby almost every day since Isla was killed: days when Abby has raged with grief, days when she has been withdrawn and silent. Days when she has been apoplectic at the police’s ineptitude, and Nicole has tried to placate her, reassure her, steer her onto a calmer path. There have been moments when Abby’s rage has felt almost engulfing, when Nicole has felt overwhelmed by the sheer power of it. But today Abby seems different: adrenalised, febrile almost.
‘Can I come in?’
‘Of course.’ Nicole steps back, allows Abby to pass by, follows her into the kitchen. Glancing up the stairs, she silently wills Jack and Nathaniel to stay in their bedrooms, does not want them faced with Abby’s grief at seven o’clock on a Tuesday morning. She hopes Andrew does not return from his run, that she is not forced into yet another marital charade, not least in front of Abby, the person to whom Andrew has wrought so much damage.
‘I found something in Isla’s emails.’
A knot tightens in Nicole’s throat. She thinks of Andrew’s revelation, and a thousand possibilities hurtle through her mind that she cannot – in this brief splinter of time – believe she has not contemplated before. The possibility of a digital footprint between Andrew and Isla, a trail of virtual breadcrumbs just waiting to be followed.
‘What did you find?’ Nicole’s voice shrieks with guilt but Abby does not seem to notice, pulls a ream of paper from her bag.
Please let it not be what I think it is. Please let it not betray what my family has done to you.
‘A whole tranche of messages on Isla’s computer. Anonymous messages. I printed them off.’
Nicole breathes against the thundering in her chest. As she opens her lips, her tongue peels from the roof of her mouth. ‘What kind of messages?’
‘Vile messages. Just vile.’ Abby pauses as if steeling herself to reveal whatever she has uncovered. The sheaf of paper crumples beneath the tightness of Abby’s grip, and Nicole has a sense of watching someone unravel before her eyes.
‘Read for yourself.’ Abby thrusts the bundle towards Nicole. She reaches out, takes it, forces her eyes to focus on the printed words.
What kind of 17 yr old sucks off a married man old enough to be her dad?
You’re a whore, you know that, don’t you?
Is he paying you for it? Is that why you’ve been fucking him for weeks now? Or do you actually get off on shagging men twice your age?
Acid pools in the back of Nicole’s throat, and she dares not look up, dares not face whatever is coming next.
‘I don’t know what to do. I feel sick...’ Abby’s voice trails off, and Nicole instructs herself to read the rest of the messages, hunting for any mention of Andrew’s name. But there is nothing. Just one abusive message after another.
Something clicks inside Nicole, some instinctive drive for self-preservation; a primeval need to protect her family. If Andrew’s affair with Isla is revealed, there is no telling what the ramifications might be. It is not a risk Nicole can afford to take. Not a risk she dares take. ‘These are probably from some bored kid at school with nothing better to do than troll seventeen-year-old girls. You can’t possibly believe it’s true. It’ll be nothing more than a stupid, sick prank.’
Abby shakes her head. ‘It’s not a prank. There are replies from Isla, asking them to stop. It’s clear from what she wrote that it’s true. I don’t understand. How can I not have known? How could something like this have happened and I didn’t even know? I mean, she must have been manipulated or coerced or something, mustn’t she? Isla wouldn’t do something like that. It’s just not like her. Maybe this man had some kind of hold over her?’ Abby is gabbling, her thoughts outrunning her tongue.
Nicole thinks – as she has done, so many times – about how the relationship between her husband and Abby’s daughter may have begun, about Andrew’s explanation that he gave Isla a lift a couple of times and it ‘just developed’ from there. She cannot stop herself wondering – fearing – that it was more deliberate, more targeted on Andrew’s part, but it is a thought she cannot allow herself to consider right now. She takes a moment to collect herself. ‘I’m so sorry. This is the last thing you need. You must be reeling.’ A question flashes in neon lights at the forefront of Nicole’s mind. ‘Is there any mention of who it might have been? Who Isla was... seeing?’
There is a moment of silence into which Nicole feels she is tumbling like Alice down the rabbit hole.
Abby shakes her head. ‘No. I’ve scoured every email searching for clues but there’s nothing. I mean, it could be anyone, couldn’t it? Someone she met at swimming or through friends or at a party. Literally anyone. How am I going to find out? I have to know who it was. I want them to look me in the eye and tell me why they thought it was okay to sleep with a seventeen-year-old girl. She wasn’t even an adult, for god’s sake.’ Abby buries her face in her hands as though the speculations are taking up too much space in her head.
Coherent thought abandons Nicole, and she desperately tries to imagine what she might say next if she were not harbouring such secrets. ‘Have you any idea who the emails might be from?’ The thought of someone else knowing about Andrew’s relationship with Isla is nauseating, but she cannot indulge that fear now, not while Abby is here.
Abby shakes her head. ‘They’re all anonymous. But it must be Callum, mustn’t it? Who else would be hateful enough to send her messages like that? Nobody else would have any reason, any motive. You know how distraught he was when Isla broke up with him.’
Nicole thinks about Callum, terrified as to what he might do with the information, if it is he who has been sending the emails. She is struck, suddenly, by a bitter sense of regret that she hasn’t been nicer to Callum since he arrived at Collingswood, that she hasn’t been more welcoming – more effusive – with both Callum and Jenna. She has never been unfriendly, but neither has she gone out of her way to embrace them into the school community. Now, the regret is a stick with which she will beat herself long into the night.
‘What do I do? I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with this?’ Abby wrings her hands as though trying to squeeze some explanation out of them. ‘I feel like I’m going out of my mind. I feel like... I don’t know... that I didn’t really know Isla at all.’
Nicole rubs a hand across Abby’s back. ‘You can’t think like that. You and Isla had an incredible relationship. You know you did. Whatever this... thing was, it was just a teenage blip. Don’t let it redefine your relationship with her.’
The kitchen door clicks open and there is Jack, standing in the doorway, bleary-eyed with sleep, his blonde hair dishevelled, looking like the kind of teen who might present a TV show on the Disney channel, and yet, at the same time, still the little boy who used to curl up in Nicole’s lap while she read him Where the Wild Things Are .
Time seems to warp, to accelerate and slow down in the same moment. Nicole watches Jack clock Abby at the kitchen table, fears what he may have overheard before he opened the kitchen door, berates herself for not having been more careful. She senses the fragility of her grip on her family’s welfare, knows she must keep papering over the cracks as best she can.
‘Have you just woken up?’ She tries to keep her voice bright, optimistic.
Jack’s eyes dart towards her: questioning, uncertain. ‘Sorry, I didn’t know you were... I’ll just...’ He pivots around and scuttles into the hall.
Nicole turns to Abby, rearranges her expression. ‘I’m sorry. He’s just at that awkward age. He didn’t mean to be rude.’
Abby does not seem to have heard, stands up abruptly from the kitchen table. ‘I’m going to the police. They need to find out who these messages are from. What if there’s a link between all this...’ She waves the sheaf of paper in the air. ‘... and what happened to Isla?’
Nicole feels a bolt of alarm, like a rush of blood to the head. If Abby shows those messages to the police, the trail will lead – eventually, inevitably – back to Andrew, and Nicole cannot allow that to happen. ‘But the police have already said they think it was just a random accident. I know those messages are horrible – it must have been dreadful to find them – but they’re probably just from someone who was jealous of Isla.’
‘But we don’t know that for sure, do we? If someone was threatening her online, what’s to say they didn’t hurt her in real life too?’ Abby slings her bag over her shoulder, strides towards the kitchen door like an avenging angel, intent on justice.
Following Abby along the hallway, Nicole tries to think of something – anything – to stem the tide of Abby’s fury. ‘Let me come with you. I’ll just grab a quick shower, and then we can go together. You don’t want to go to the police station by yourself.’ At least, she thinks, if she is there, then she will know what has been said. At least she will be forewarned, forearmed.
Abby shakes her head. ‘Thanks, but I just want to get on with it. I need to get things moving.’
‘That’s fine. I don’t need a shower. I’ll get dressed—’
‘No, really, I’d rather go on my own.’ Abby reaches out, places a hand on Nicole’s arm. ‘It’s not that I don’t appreciate the offer. I do. I just need to get this done.’
Nicole nods mutely, unable to find any suggestion that might change Abby’s mind. She watches as her best friend opens the front door, walks towards her BMW parked by the side of the road, steps inside.
Panic distorts her thoughts as Abby pulls away, drives towards the police station, where she will show officers the anonymous messages that will, surely, lead back to Nicole’s family.
Closing the door, a sense of foreboding overwhelms her. Somebody knows about Andrew’s affair with Isla. And if they were angry enough to send Isla those vicious messages, she dares not imagine what they might do next.