Friend Request(63)

There’s a tiny part of me that wonders whether there would be a certain release in being found out, in being able to stop hiding and lying, to put down this heavy load that I’ve been carrying since I was sixteen years old. To be punished, yes, but maybe also forgiven. But then I remember Polly’s reaction, and I know there won’t be any forgiveness. And as I stand in Henry’s room, draining the last of my wine, watching his flushed, sleeping face, I know I can never let this out. Quite apart from the shame of everyone knowing what I did, it’s Henry who will keep me from speaking out. Even if it’s only the remotest of possibilities, I can’t risk going to prison and leaving my son without his mother. I’m going to have to carry this close to me for the rest of my life.

I sleep badly, my uneasy mind twisting and writhing. At two o’clock I wake with a start, drenched in sweat, certain I’ve heard a noise. The darkness is more than I can bear so I reach out a quivering hand to switch on the lamp. The house is in silence, but I can’t shake the idea that something woke me. If Henry wasn’t here I’d probably bury my head under the pillow and wait for morning, but I can’t take that risk. In the absence of a weapon, I gulp down the stale water in the glass on my bedside table and slide out of bed with it in my hand. I steal around the flat, flinching at every creak of every floorboard, switching the overhead lights on as I go, leaving an eye-watering trail of blazing brightness in my wake. In the kitchen I swap the glass for a sharp knife with a gleaming blade, its handle smooth and cool beneath my fingers. I banish the darkness from each room in turn, all of them exactly as I left them, until the only place I haven’t been is Henry’s bedroom. I stand outside his door, dry-mouthed, my T-shirt clinging to me, cold and damp with sweat. I am paralysed by the fear that what lies behind it is all my worst nightmares come true. I have a strange sense that this is the last moment of my life as I know it, that I will look back and know that after this, things were never the same. I put my hand on the handle and push. My eyes are drawn straight to the bed. It’s empty. The knife falls from my hand, landing with a soft thud on the blue carpet, and a second later I am on my knees, making a sound I’ve never heard from my own lips, a whimpering, like an animal in pain. Terror engulfs me, like a tidal wave. The breath has been knocked from me, coming only in short gasps between the low keening sound that I am making.

And then I see him. He’s on the rug by his bed, fast asleep, still holding Manky to his face. He must have fallen out of bed without even waking, the thump as he hit the floor the noise that roused me. I fall to my knees next to him, burying my face in his hair, inhaling the sweet scent of him, weeping in sheer thankfulness.

In the morning I wake early, still shaky from the night’s adventures. I’ve already looked up the address, so all I have to do is get us both dressed as quickly as possible and leave the house. I drop Henry at breakfast club at 7.30am; we’re the first ones there. He soon gets over his confusion at my chivvying this morning, delighted to have the place to himself, running straight off to get the train set out.

It’s dark as I walk towards the station, but I can see my breath in the stillness, a reminder that I’m still here, just. Some of the houses are still in darkness but there are squares of yellow light here and there and I glimpse the occasional domestic scene: a man in a suit on his sofa eating his breakfast, the flickering light of the TV casting shadows on his face; a smartly dressed woman checking her face in the mirror over the fireplace in her front room; a young mother at an upstairs window in a tired dressing gown, whey-faced and dead-eyed with exhaustion, holding her baby against her shoulder. I jump as a car revs into life as I pass, and when a tall man opens his front door and steps out into the street in front of me it’s all I can do to stifle my yelp of fear. The man looks at me curiously before striding off ahead of me in the direction of the station. I stand for a minute, my hand on the streetlight, reminding myself to breathe in and out. When did I become this jumpy, terrified person? I give myself a mental shake and walk, more slowly this time, towards the station.

There’s a café opposite the offices of Foster and Lyme so I order a coffee and settle myself in a seat by the window, eyes trained on the entrance. Suited figures are already going in and out. There’s some kind of code that has to be tapped in, which should give me time to run out and catch Pete before he goes in.

I’m on my second cup when I feel a hand on my shoulder, making me jump and slop coffee onto the table.

‘What are you doing here?’ Pete’s eyes stray furtively across the road to where his oblivious colleagues greet each other, takeaway coffees in hand.

‘I need to talk to you,’ I say in a low voice. ‘I’m sorry to ambush you at work but I couldn’t think of any other way. I don’t even know your surname. You know… what’s happened?’

‘Yes, of course I know.’ He sits down in the seat opposite me. ‘It’s so awful. I’m… sorry. I know she was your friend. I spent the whole day yesterday walking around London, thinking about it, too scared to go home in case the police were waiting for me. I’m going to be their number one suspect.’

‘So you haven’t talked to them yet?’ Hope flares in me.

‘No. I know I’m going to have to. I just wanted to… get my head together first. I’ll call them today.’

‘But aren’t the police going to wonder why you haven’t come forward before?’