Chapter 22
Code Red was born one day at high school when Chloe’s period started.
I made a pillow of toilet paper for her to stuff in her pants, and then, once she’d got home on the bus without a mishap, started agitating for a machine in the girls’ toilets and a supply in the first aid room too.
Chloe couldn’t see through the mortification to do it for herself.
“It’s not first aid,” the deputy head told me.
“What is it then?”
“It’s a foreseeable requirement,” she said.
“So’s wiping your bum but you give us bog roll.” I was given detention for cheek but we got our vending machine stocked with the cheapest, bulkiest, naffest pads in the chemist’s shop. I left it to the girls coming after us to mention tampons.
So today, when I use the code in Chloe’s voicemail and she doesn’t get back to me immediately, I know for a fact that she’s away from her phone.
She would never ignore me when I’ve invoked Code Red.
That sets up a worry of its own. I’ve never seen Chloe without her phone tucked in a pocket or her waistband.
Where is she? All last night, she was God knows where too, while I was driving around in a fugue state, bursting in on that horrendous poker game and coming back here to sleep with David “Minto.” Where is she now?
My phone rings again and, for the first time since I gave him my number, I hope it’s not him.
“What’s up, hun?” Finally, it’s her.
I let a huge, shaky breath go and don’t try to hide that it ends in a sob. “I don’t even know where to start,” I tell her. “I’m mixed up in something really bad, Chlo, and I didn’t know it was happening.”
“Eh? Like what?”
“Aileen Murdoch, right? You know how you knew she left her husband for another woman?” I wait for an uh-huh to tell me she’s listening, but no sound comes from the other end. “Sorry, I know. It’s not as random as it seems. But—you do actually remember her, don’t you?”
“What are you babbling about?” says Chloe. “We never misuse the Code, Lindsay. Who cares about bloody Aileen Murdoch?”
“It’s the only thing I still don’t understand,” I say.
“What are the other things?” Chloe says. “The ones you’re all over.” She’s laughing at me and suddenly this pisses me off so much that I let her have the whole lot in a torrent, the words coming out like the vomit that’s still threatening.
“This house might not be mine,” I say. “I don’t know why I got to move in but it might not be legit because my lawyer was a doctor.
A bunch of real bastards—one of them is John—tricked poor old Peggy out of here and into care, then sold it to me.
And her family is in on it. Lovely David Minto who took me to the ballet and understood about Kai and had an answer for everything and did my legal work for free?
He isn’t even called David Minto. He’s David March.
He’s Peggy’s son and he’s been lying to me from day one.
” I take a huge breath. “And so, since I met Aileen on day one, I can’t believe that either.
Oh Chloe! I slept with him and I feel filthy. ”
“You slept with him?” Chloe says, her voice a yelp. “When?”
“Last night and I feel sick.” Silence. “Chlo?”
“Sorry,” she says. “I was thinking. Right, Lindsay, I missed lunch so make me a toastie and I’ll be there before it’s done. I was going to be coming sometime pretty soon anyway, today or tomorrow.”
“What do you mean?”
“There’s something I want to show you.”
She’s always been a bit single-minded, but this is a new level.
She wants to show me something? Hasn’t she been listening to me.
“Will you chum me to the police station?” I say.
“I’m going to report them. And then can I sleep on your pullout tonight?
I don’t reckon I’ll be allowed back in here and I can’t face Shelley if they take John to jail. ”
“Shoosh,” says Chloe. “Shoosh, now. If you still want to go to the police after we talk it over, of course I’ll come with you.” She’s making it sound like this thing she wants to show me is related to what’s wrong. Maybe I was being unfair.
“Thanks,” I tell her.
“And don’t worry about tonight. Everything’s going to be okay.”
It’s not like Chloe to do platitudes. It was one of the best things about her visits towards the end.
I’d take her to the farthest bit of the garden, where Kai couldn’t overhear me, and rant about the unfairness of it all and the impossibility of me ever coping, all the inarguable reasons I should kill myself as soon as he didn’t need me anymore—really bleak stuff—and she only said, “Of course it is. I’m furious too.
If God came down, I’d kick him in the nuts for doing this to you.
Of course it’s impossible, it’s unspeakable, no one should have to watch their loved one suffer like this.
And of course you want to die with him. How could you feel any other way? ”
There wasn’t a single “Time will heal” or “Speak to your doctor” or even “One day at a time, Lindsay.” So it’s kind of astonishing that she would drop an “Everything’s going to be okay” on me now when it can’t be, not even nearly.
I’m too rattled to make a toastie, but I boil the kettle and put some Penguins and KitKats on a plate.
I rub the black biscuit tin as I set it back on the shelf again, polishing it, planning to take it with me wherever I end up when I leave here.
I’d like to take the brass tabletop too.
I’ll probably find the wooden legs if I search the yard hard enough.
As these thoughts wash through me, I can feel something else stirring, a new wave of unease, and I find myself looking upwards as if I can see through the ceiling and the dead room floor even though I don’t know what’s drawing my attention there.
But I hear Chloe arriving before I can chase the thought down and so I shake it off me.
I meet her at the front door after I’ve heard her screech to a stop on the gravel instead of carrying on round the side.
When I get it unlocked and open, she’s powering towards the steps through the first of the big, cold raindrops.
She barges in, practically knocking me out of her way.
This is exactly what I need—Chloe on the warpath—but it’s still pretty scary.
She’s even got her laptop under her arm, as if she’s already made a plan that needs spreadsheets.
“Do you want a—?” I say.
“Where’s your best Wi-Fi?” she asks, talking over me. “Where’s your alive room?”
That’s not how it works, of course. My dead room is connected to the internet or I couldn’t do my job without traipsing around the house, but the phrase has been bothering her ever since she first heard it and I guess she’s taking some kind of sideways dig.
“Kitchen should be okay. Why?” I say, following her.
“It’s time to move on to the next stage,” she says. “No one else agrees with me but I think it’s time. Near enough.” By the time I reach the kitchen door she’s got the laptop open on the table and is tapping away. “Password?”
“Same,” I say. She learned it on her first visit to Hilo—Ka1&L1ndsay4evs—but for some reason her lip curls as she types it in.
“Why are you narky at me?” I say. “Or am I getting the benefit of someone else bugging you?”
“Sit down and watch this,” she says. “Tell me after you’ve seen it, if you still want to go to the polis.” I slide into the seat and see a stilled video. The counter tells me it’s three minutes long. Chloe nods at the screen. “I wasn’t quite finished, so it’s a bit rough.”
I hit play and some sort of cheap fade effect clears to reveal a shot of me standing at the dead room window, the day Chloe showed me round the house.
“You filmed me?” I say. “From down in the garden?” My face on the screen is a blank mask. I think this was when I had just found that message scratched in the paint.
That’s what it was! The wave of uneasy feeling is getting stronger. It feels like an earthquake’s on its way.
The shot changes. It’s half of Chloe’s face and one of her arms in the kitchen, more or less where I’m sitting right now.
My voice comes out loud and clear from her laptop. I came to tea here.
Chloe’s voice is even clearer. And you had the whole idea right then and there?
“Eh?” I ask her. “I don’t remember you saying that. What ‘whole idea’?”
I’ve already got the equipment. My voice again. I could convert a room this size for about seven hundred quid.
That’s bang on your budget, Lindsay.
“Okay, okay, okay,” I say. “I do remember you telling me that, but that wasn’t when it happened. And why the hell were you recording me? What’s going on?”
“Shh,” Chloe says.
What are you playing at? comes from the laptop speakers. I said that too, I think. This isn’t one of those stupid shows. This is my stupid life.
“But that’s not when I said it,” I tell Chloe.
But do you think this place would work for you? Chloe’s voice is saying. You’re the boss.
“What the hell?” I ask her now, twisting away from the screen. “You didn’t say that. Not at any point. The sound’s a million miles different. Did you even use the same mic?”
“Watch” is all Chloe says.
The film moves on to show us in the bedrooms, our feet knocking loudly on the bare boards. I come to a standstill at a window, facing the other way. Chloe is filming my back. I had no idea. Gosh, Chloe, I wonder how much this house would cost me? my voice pipes up, dripping with insincerity.
“Is that when I said that, though?” I ask. “Didn’t I say that when you were going on about bathrooms?”
She doesn’t answer me here in the kitchen. On the film, her voice says, I told them you were adamant and—reluctantly, mind—they’ve agreed.
“Told who?” I ask her.
“Shut up,” she says, leaning in and rewinding the counter. “You’ve missed a bit.”
Well, that’s certainly a lovely surprise, my voice says.
“I was outside when I said that!” I yelp. “My God, Chloe, don’t give up the day job. You can hear the bloody birds!”