Chapter Nineteen #3
Someone was watching over you, that tractor driver told me when he pulled me from my car seat, not a scratch on me.
He must have shielded my eyes.
Shielded me.
I don’t remember seeing any of it.
‘Did I know he was my father?’ I force the question out.
‘I don’t know,’ Mum says. ‘You’ve never spoken about it.
You didn’t speak at all for nearly three months afterwards.
’ More tears run down her cheeks. ‘We stayed up here. I thought that was the best thing for you, and you were just … silent. I was terrified you were never going to speak again. I kept taking you to Eleanor, but she couldn’t get through to you either.
Then we sold the house, moved down to London, and within days you started talking again.
’ She draws a ragged breath. ‘It was like as soon as I’d got you away from here, you could forget.
Not just the accident, but everything you used to get so upset over.
That man, those boys, that bird … And I wanted that for you.
It made you happier.’ She shakes her head.
‘Eleanor said I was letting you bury it, that it would come back to haunt me, haunt you, but I didn’t listen to her.
I didn’t want you to know your dad had died doing that for you.
I didn’t believe anyone should have to carry something like that, let alone a four-year-old child.
Let alone you.’ She’s really crying now.
My brave, strong mum is in pieces. ‘By the time you were old enough for me to speak to you about it, I’d kept it from you for so long, I didn’t know how to unpick the secret.
That’s why I’ve been so terrified of you coming back here.
’ She wipes her cheeks. ‘That’s why I haven’t wanted anything about your nan and granddad’s accident coming out.
’ She presses the heels of her hands to her eyes.
‘I’ve been so scared of what it will do to you, finding this all out. ’
‘Mum, come here,’ I say, wrapping her in my arms, holding her close, for myself as much as her. ‘It’s all right.’ It’s not, my inner voice screams. It’s not. ‘I don’t blame you … ’
‘You should.’
‘I don’t. You did your best for me. No one could have done better. Look at me.’ I pull away from her. ‘Look at this balanced, functional human being you’ve raised.’
She laughs, cries more, and places her hand to my face. ‘He loved you, Claude. Whatever his faults, he really loved you. More than life.’
‘Yes,’ I say, my own tears breaking free. ‘Yes … ’
‘I love you too.’
‘Well, I know that.’
She smiles.
Then, resting her head against mine, she locks my eyes with hers.
‘What do you think?’ she says. ‘Do you want to see Eleanor?’
‘I don’t know if I want to,’ I say. ‘But I think I probably need to.’
‘Yes,’ she says. ‘I think you probably do too.’
I head upstairs as soon as we reach the house. Mum doesn’t want me to, she says she’s worried about leaving me to myself, but my stitches are throbbing, and I’m desperate to lie down, close my eyes, and at least try to begin processing everything she’s told me.
I want some time alone, I say.
I need it.
But Nick’s in our room when I get there, sitting on the edge of our bed, his phone in his hands.
I stall, taking in his grim expression, and feel my every muscle tense in sudden certainty that something else not at all good is about to come my way.
I’m tempted to turn away, walk back through the door, and keep walking, not have to face up to this, whatever it is.
But I stay where I am, trapped in the beam of his stare.
I can’t tell what he’s thinking. He’s got his contacts in, dark and brown, obscuring his eyes, stopping them from being windows to anything.
He’s wearing his air force blues.
Coldly, I register that, and that he’s left shooting to come looking for me.
Not to leave another message, though.
Not this time.
Whatever he’s got to say, it’s obviously serious enough that he needs to say it in person.
‘Why aren’t you working?’ I ask, and it amazes me how calm I manage to sound.
‘I’ve got a half hour,’ he says, and doesn’t sound calm at all. He sounds like he’s trying not to choke. ‘Justin’s on with Emma.’
I glance down at his phone, my memory once again throwing up his frown last night.
Also, that bizarre text.
Have you changed your mind?
The smiling face of that woman he was pictured with over the summer.
And, still, everything from this morning continues to churn through me, on a loop.
Someone was watching over you, that tractor driver said to me.
It was my dad, I think, my dad.
‘Something’s happened,’ I say, out loud. ‘What’s happened.’
‘I didn’t want you to have to deal with it,’ says Nick, and, dropping his phone, stands, coming towards me. ‘I’ve been trying to shut it down. Get rid of it.’
‘Get rid of what?’ I say, and now I feel like I’m choking.
But I really can’t deal with this.
Can’t handle a new nightmare.
I’m already juggling too many.
He was lying across you when that tractor driver got to you.
‘What’s happened?’ I repeat.
‘Nothing,’ says Nick. ‘That’s the only thing you need to remember. Nothing has happened. I need you to trust me. I really, really need you to do that.’
‘No one says that before anything anyone wants to hear.’
‘No.’ His face is rigid with control. ‘I know.’
My phone pings.
‘Ignore that,’ says Nick.
Another ping.
Then another.
I reach into my pocket, my fingers brushing his note, closing around my phone, at once desperate, and terrified, to pull it out and look at what’s happening on the screen.
It buzzes again.
Then, it starts ringing.
‘Claude, silence it,’ says Nick. ‘You’ve always got it on silent for me. Silence it now, please.’
‘Just tell me what’s going on,’ I say, not silencing anything.
‘It was that night I took your sister and her friends out,’ he begins.
And, thinking of Hannah, realising where this is going, I want to silence him.
But since I can’t, I do my best to tune his words out.
I watch his lips move, feel his hands take a hold of my arms, but don’t listen to what he says.
Not properly.
I can’t.
Because it’s worse than a nightmare.
It’s real.
Very, very real, and happening to us.
It’s happening to me.
But I really have had enough.
I can’t take any more.
So, I close my eyes, breathe deep, and will myself into being somewhere else.
Somewhere not here.
Somewhere not now.
Somewhere, then.
Into the silver light of a late summer’s dawn. A fading moon above me.
A friend by my side.
It’s hot. Blisteringly hot, for all it’s so early.
Autumn’s coming though, it’s just around the corner, and I can’t bear that either.
Time, my mind whispers, is running out.