Silent Child(75)

“Because they already think I’m an idiot. I’m aware that this whole thing might be nothing and that’s why I wanted to bring you along. I’m not wasting their time if he has some secret motorbike in there or whatever. And I want you to see it too so I have someone to back me up. Besides, they’d need to get a warrant or whatever, and God knows how long that would take.”

“It’s probably some awful sex room.” I shuddered. “Full of porn and sex toys. He says he’s an addict.”

“Fucking hell.”

“Don’t say anything more. Just drive. I can’t… I don’t want to think about it, and I need to know what’s in that garage.”

Rob started the engine and the radio came on, blaring out Katy Perry. He apologised and turned the volume down as he pulled out of the B&B carpark. He had the radio tuned into a local station as we made our way out of the village and out towards the A59. Neither of us spoke, and we barely heard the radio, but there was some sort of talk about a storm hitting the Bishoptown area.

The baby was unsettled that day. I rubbed my pregnant belly and tried to calm myself down. Stressed mothers produce stressed babies, or so they say. With my due date approaching, I needed to think about my own wellbeing more than I had been. That wasn’t an easy task given what was going on around me.

Rob’s old truck thrummed with the sound of rain as it began to spill down from the dark clouds above. There wasn’t a single part of the sky that wasn’t grey or dark. There was no blue whatsoever. No sun. No light. I pulled the collar of my coat higher and tried not to think about the threatening sky.

We pulled into the storage centre in grim silence. Before clambering out of the truck, I pulled the hood from my coat down low over my face. Rob used a baseball cap to protect himself from the rain. We hurried along a long line of garage doors until Rob stopped.

“It’s this one. Number 29.”

“How are we going to get in?” I asked. “We can’t break in.”

“I have a mate who works here. Remember Fletcher?”

I groaned. “You mean your weed dealer?”

“The very same. Anyway, he owed me, so he’s left the door open for me. Look, if anyone finds out, we say that we heard something inside and the thing was open anyway, so…”

“Just get it open, Rob. Careful of fingerprints, though.”

Rob pulled on a pair of leather gloves. “Way ahead of you.”

The garage door opened with a rumbling rattle that sounded uncannily like thunder. The pouring rain was cold, leaving a chill on my skin so that I was glad to duck under the doors and into the garage.

“What the hell?” Rob said.

I pulled my hood away to glimpse the filled garage. What I saw took my breath away. It wasn’t anything at all like I had expected, and I admit, I had already considered the worst. I had thought of a terrible soundproofed dungeon for nefarious activities. I’d thought of a place dedicated to a sex addict, covered in pornography with a dirty mattress pushed against a wall. I’d thought of it all, and yet I was still surprised.

There was one element that I had guessed correctly: The garage was filled with pictures, but they were not pornographic—at least, not all of them. Most of the pictures were paintings. There were dozens hanging from the walls, and in between the portraits were small photographs all with the same subject… me. In the middle of the garage was an easel with a desk stacked with paints. There was also a tall filing cabinet shoved against the wall.

I walked across the garage and stood close to the wall, taking in all the photographs of my face. There were pictures of me walking through Bishoptown, sitting on a park bench feeding the ducks, carrying shopping bags home, getting off the bus. None of them appeared to be in chronological order, they were all jumbled up along the walls. In some I had Aiden’s small hand in mine. Here we were throwing pebbles over the bridge into the Ouse. There we were sitting in the park eating sandwiches. Me stood at the bottom of a tree gazing into the branches at my monkey-like child. Me wandering through the streets of Bishoptown with my make-up spread halfway down my face, bags filled with bottles of Pinot Grigio. And then, the most disturbing of all: me getting on the school bus. Me dressed for the school prom, with Rob on my arm (though Rob’s face had been scratched out).

“Look.” Rob pointed to a large portrait in the centre of the back wall. “You’re wearing the school tie. That was before sixth form. We didn’t have a uniform in sixth form.”

And then it hit me. Partway through our argument the night before, Jake had admitted that he had fallen in love with me the first time he had seen me. I was in school the first time he’d seen me. He was a teacher.

“Oh Jesus.”

“Emma, I’m so sorry. I didn’t expect any of this.”

“What did you expect?” I whispered.

Rob didn’t answer, and I was too distracted by the pictures to listen anyway. It was the paintings that disturbed me the most. He’d mostly painted my face. They were intricate portraits, almost photo-realist in style, with my features captured perfectly. In one of the paintings I was clearly sleeping, with my hair flowing out behind me. On its own I would have considered it a beautiful and flattering surprise, but as it was part of this disgusting invasion of my privacy, it was creepy and made my skin crawl.

“Don’t scratch your hands,” Rob said. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a pair of thin plastic gloves, the same sort that surgeons wear. “Put these on. We can’t leave any DNA. This is a crime scene.”