Friend Request(98)

I walk down the corridor, hesitating just before I reach the sitting-room door. Taking a deep breath, I swing around through the doorway. It’s empty, exactly as I left it. I do the same with my bedroom, the pristine still-made bed irrefutable evidence that last night really happened. Next is the bathroom: also empty. From the doorway I can see my face in the bathroom cabinet mirror. My skin is sallow and there are dark shadows under my eyes, which are spidered with red. Something moves behind me and I spin round, my heart hammering, but there’s nothing there: just the flickering of the sunlight through the bathroom blind reflected on the wall behind me.

I tiptoe down the hall towards the kitchen. My breathing is laboured and I wonder what damage has been done as I try to inhale and exhale as quietly as I can. As I reach out to open the kitchen door a sudden noise makes me gasp and jump back, but seconds later I recognise it as the sound of the wisteria rattling against the French windows in a gust of wind. With a surge of bravery I thrust the door open. The wine bottle and two glasses sit abandoned on the table, and the chair I kicked still lies on its side on the floor. In the dawn light, the room is full of shadows, but Sam has gone.

I pick up the chair with shaking hands and pour the wine from the glasses down the sink. As I do so, I hear a noise coming from the hallway. Oh God, no. I dart out, every inch of me in fight mode, but it’s just Henry coming out of his room and heading for the bathroom. I breathe deeply, gathering myself; then while he’s in there, hurry to the front door and double lock it, putting the chain on for good measure.

Back in the kitchen, I fill the kettle, take bread from the breadbin and put it in the toaster; assemble butter and jam, plate and knife, all the while staring at my hands as if they belong to someone else.

When Henry’s toast is ready, I take it along with my phone and a cup of tea into his room. I climb into bed beside him, careful not to disturb the breakfasting bears.

‘Thank you, Mummy,’ Henry says with his customary graveness.

‘You’re welcome,’ I say, sipping my tea and pulling him close. I am thankful beyond measure that he has no idea what happened here last night, but his innocence, his blind faith in the happiness of his own life, and mine, breaks my heart this morning.

I tap away at my phone, stumbling over the keys, as he painstakingly tears his toast into small pieces, giving one to each bear. A few minutes later my phone buzzes, and even though I know Bridget won’t be messaging me any more, my stomach lurches in response.

Twenty minutes later, as I stand at the sink rinsing toast crumbs from tiny plastic plates, the doorbell rings. I advance slowly up the hall, wiping my hands on a tea towel.

‘Who is it?’ I say with difficulty, my voice hoarse.

‘It’s me,’ she calls.

I stumble to the door, fumbling with the chain, my fingers slipping on the locks. Finally I get it open and there is Polly, her hair wild and unbrushed, still in her pyjamas with her oversized Puffa coat over the top. She takes in the pallor of my skin, my bloodshot eyes, the faint marks on the sides of my neck.

‘Oh my God,’ she says, and takes me in her arms. My legs give way beneath me and I crumple into her, sobbing with relief, finally able to let go.

Chapter 41

2016
The frosted grass crunches under our feet as we walk through Dulwich Park in the winter sunshine. Henry holds tightly to my hand, as he has done ever since we heard the news. I’ve only told him that Daddy has had to go away for a bit, the words sticking in my throat, but he seems to sense there is more to it, and hasn’t asked me for any details. He’s been asking about his sister though, so I am trying to screw up the courage to arrange a meeting with Catherine. I suspect we’ve got a lot in common.

It’s two weeks now since I emerged from Henry’s room to find Sam gone. I sat at the kitchen table with Polly as we waited for the police to arrive, drinking tea, my muscles slowly relaxing, warmth inching back into me. Henry hummed tunelessly in the sitting room over the reassuring click and clack of his trains as Polly and I talked. I told her things I had never spoken about to anyone; about Maria, about me and Sam, what he had done to me, what I had let him do, and how it had made me feel. I sensed something different between Polly and me: a barrier maybe, one that hadn’t been there before? But as we talked, I realised it was the opposite: a barrier had been taken away, the one I had been putting up every time I saw her since we met. She can see me now, all of me.

We had fallen into a comfortable silence when the doorbell rang, a shrill reminder that I couldn’t stay cocooned in the flat with Polly for ever. DI Reynolds was her usual professional self, but there was a certain solicitousness that hadn’t been there before. Unlike on the previous occasions that we’d met, the words came pouring out of me like a river. I told her everything. She said that given the passage of time, and Sam’s subsequent actions, it was unlikely that any action would be taken against me, either in relation to Maria’s death or my obfuscation over the Facebook messages. I didn’t ask whether Reynolds would be telling Bridget and Tim about my part in the events of that night in 1989. The Facebook page has disappeared and I’ve heard nothing from either of them since the day I ran from Bridget’s bungalow, towards what I thought was safety.

Reynolds had news for me too: a hiker walking the coastal path had called in Sam’s car just an hour before, abandoned near the cliffs at Sharne Bay. It was at the bottom of a rough, almost impassable track that led from the main road down past the school woods to the cliffs. The driver had crashed into a tree and simply left the car where it was, its front left bumper crumpled into a pine tree, shards of glass from the headlight sprinkled all around.