Chapter Thirty-Two
When she heard Sariah call her name through the letterbox, Alison held her breath.
Then came the lower rumble of a male voice and her heart gave a lurch before she realised it wasn’t him, it was Jacob.
She looked down at her stained tracksuit bottoms, raised her hand to feel her claggy, unwashed hair and decided to stay right where she was sitting.
How could she begin to explain what had been happening?
After a while, she heard their steps recede and the slam of two car doors, but, although she strained to hear, the engine did not start up.
All she heard was faint birdsong and the gentle swish of leaves.
Alison got out her phone and started to type a message to Sariah, telling her she was still ill, but she didn’t get further than a fake-jolly Hi! before she put it down again.
As she sat there, it was tempting to close her eyes and let her thoughts drift – she’d barely slept the night before.
But then she heard an engine start up. Heart racing, she peeped out of the window and saw the Warburn Spa minibus was parked at the end of their drive, with Sariah and Jacob in the front seats.
She hoped they would drive off soon, just in case Roy came home unexpectedly.
Already, he would have taken off his jacket to change into his overalls.
As he did, he might have given his inside jacket pocket a reassuring pat, feeling for Alison’s phone, and realise it was gone.
Any second now, the little red Corolla might come zooming up the road and onto their drive.
Then his key would be in the door and she would be here waiting, a sitting duck.
And she didn’t need an audience for that.
From outside, she heard the blast of a car radio and someone flicking through the stations.
She heard a snatch of a morning phone-in, then music.
It was an old song, a favourite of hers, and Jacob or Sariah must like it too, because it got turned up a few notches.
It reminded Alison of driving to her old job at the PR company, the journey just long enough to blast out a few disco classics from her playlist. She used to turn the volume right up for this one because she loved it. Just like she’d loved her job.
She stood up, her legs a little wobbly. She held on to the windowsill and saw that at last they were going – Sariah was doing a three-point turn.
Jacob had his window wound down and she could hear Candi Staton singing about being a lost and lonely wife and a long-buried memory came to her, one she hadn’t let in for a long time.
Her memories of her mum were so precious that she was irrationally scared that if she took them out too often, they might fade and lose their colour, like old photographs.
She could picture her mum dancing to that song in the kitchen, shimmying her way towards Alison, pointing and singing along, telling her that young hearts should run free.
Sometimes her dad joined in too and her parents would join hands, with Alison in the middle.
‘Alison sandwich!’ her mum would say. Times like that, she had felt so loved.
Alison found herself walking towards the front door, but she must have moved too fast because the dizziness almost felled her.
As she opened the door she realised that it was too late, because the minibus was starting to move.
There was a grind of gears changing and its left indicator started flashing. In a few seconds they would be gone.
In her thin socks, Alison began to run down the drive and onto the gritty road and she raised her arms in the air.
She waved like her life depended on it, like one of the Railway Children.
Her heart thumped and her right shoulder screamed in pain but it was working – the minibus came to a jerky halt.
Both doors opened at the same time and Sariah and Jacob were running back towards the house.
It was Sariah who got to her first, wrapped her arms around her and said, ‘It’s OK, we’ve got you.’
Alison didn’t want to take much with her. She packed a few of Will’s toys and clothes, a stack of nappies and his favourite blanket. For herself, she just took a change of clothes and her phone charger, which she found in Roy’s bedside table.
Walking around the house with Sariah by her side, she saw her belongings through different eyes.
Her supermarket-bought clothes, the battered paperback beside her bed, her pink plastic hairbrush – it all looked so cheap and tawdry and she didn’t want to put any of it in the carrier bag that Sariah held out.
Not even her running kit. She’d done so much running, but the problem was that she’d kept coming back to this miserable little house with its mean rules and its atmosphere of fear.
Their first stop was the nursery, all the while keeping an eye out for a red Corolla.
‘Taking him out early today,’ she explained to the staff.
They looked unsure, but they had to let Will go with her.
Then Sariah drove to Alison’s dad’s. That was the worst part: seeing the pleasure on his face when he opened the door – ‘Hello, love. Are you better?’ – and then how his face had crumpled when he realised why she’d come.
Sitting on her dad’s sofa with Will cuddled up beside her, Alison started to feel the tension leaving her body and it was as if Will also knew something fundamental had changed.
He still had the packed lunch she’d made him this morning and she watched him studiously transfer raisins from a tiny cardboard box into his mouth, then pop the lid off a plastic tub of carrot sticks.
She’d packed his food a few hours ago, but already it felt like another lifetime.
She looked into the kitchen, where her dad was making them beans on toast. When she saw him raise his big paw of a hand and give his cheek a brisk wipe, she went into the kitchen and closed the door.
‘He kept saying you were ill,’ her dad said tightly. ‘I shouldn’t have believed him.’ He didn’t look round, but continued stirring the saucepan furiously. ‘I should have checked in on you.’
‘Not your fault, Dad.’
She went over to the bread bin, pulled out a bag of white sliced and fed two into the toaster.
It was coming up to 12.30 p.m., which meant Roy would be pulling up outside the nursery to pick up Will.
Would his good-guy demeanour slip as they explained he was too late, or would he wait until he was back home before he let his true feelings show?
She imagined his rage when he discovered she’d gone and taken Will too, the inanimate objects that would get kicked, thrown and pummelled in the absence of her softer body.
‘And it wasn’t my fault either,’ she said firmly and set about buttering the toast.
She began to lay the table. Life would go on. They would survive, to misquote another of her and her mum’s favourite disco anthems. This morning she’d felt so alone, but now she didn’t: she had her dad and she had friends, good people like Sariah and Jacob.
For the next few days she wrapped Will in love, read him all her old baby books and played with the toys her dad kept in a big trunk.
She told her son they were having a little holiday with Grandpa, but she sent Roy a very different message.
Now she had her phone back, she had access to the record of incidents that she had been keeping for the past year, knowing that this time would come.
They were listed in a document she’d called Sports Centre Cleaner Rota, in case Roy went looking.
She’d taken photos too, of the bruises, and noted the dates.
She told Roy about her document and said he needed to stay away from her and Will, but she was happy to work out an access agreement, once he was calmer.
Looking at the photos she’d taken in the brutally bright light of the bathroom, she felt sick at how bad things had got. There was no way she wanted her dad to know those details, but, one evening, as they stood side by side at the sink, he surprised her.
‘It’s like the frog in boiling water,’ he said, out of nowhere.
‘Sorry?’ she replied.
‘If you put a frog in a pan of boiling water, it’ll jump right out. But put it in cold water, then slowly increase the heat underneath and it’ll stay put. Until it’s boiled alive.’
Alison ran the tea towel around a plate, couldn’t look him in the eye.
‘But you jumped out in time. And that’s what matters.’ He patted her on the back, which, from her dad, was a major show of affection.
She still needed to talk to him about what had happened on the night of the exhibition opening, but that could wait. Right now, her priority was to make sure Will felt safe and loved – the way she did, with her dad by her side.