Notes on a murder, p.19
Notes on a Murder, page 19
‘Good party?’ I asked, when neither of them replied to my cheery greeting. I started driving, wondering what on earth was going on. I usually got a ‘Hiya’ at the very least from Danny, and Jonathan wasn’t a rude, unfriendly boy, although he could be a little shy.
There was something else different too, something I realised as I manoeuvred the car out of the tight cul-de-sac and onto Elm Tree Road, which was just one of the many rabbit-warren-like streets that made up our neighbourhood. Danny was in the front with me, his guitar clutched between his legs. He didn’t usually do this, not when we had Jonathan in the car. They’d always sit in the back and talk about things – trivial stuff, like the fact Scotty always played his guitar slightly flat, or something that had happened in maths class and why Mr Redmond was ‘such a prick’. But nothing was said at all. Silent and separated, they just sat as I drove, an awkward tension seeming to radiate off both of them.
‘Is everything OK?’ I asked, and Danny finally stirred, jerking his head towards me as if he’d only just realised I was there. ‘Oh fine, yeah… just tired.’
He wasn’t just tired. I knew something was wrong. But it didn’t look like he was going to elaborate, not while Jonathan was in the car. Nor did he seem keen to hang around when we got home, after his friend had sloped off to his own house over the road. He just disappeared upstairs, swiftly followed by his father, asking if he had everything packed for the flight tomorrow.
And that was that.
He behaved relatively normally the next day, was generally fine in America, if a tad quiet, while we stayed with Pete’s brother. It was only once we returned and the days started to edge into winter that that odd night in the car with the two boys came back into my mind. And everything went spinning off in another direction. A direction that both changed my world and obliterated it.
Chapter 2, Stephanie, the day of the explosion
I was having a dream when the first explosion occurred. Something about my wedding day, but we couldn’t find any flowers – someone had stolen them from the church, and then we ended up finding them in a Tesco bag-for-life out in the graveyard, swimming in blood. It was all rather horrible, especially when the vicar, who was the spitting image of Frank Sinatra, poured gasoline onto them, cackling as he did it, and created a mini blaze amongst the gravestones. Stranger still, my mother was there, looking delighted, which was a rarity in itself, and stood behind the burning flowers singing ‘We Three Kings’, the song she’d sung to me as a child, no matter what time of year it was. Desperate to take hold of her, I reached out my hand, stretching, trying to reach her.
But the explosion put an end to all that.
I was pulled into reality in an instant, flailing around in my duvet, looking about me, unsure where the noise was coming from. It was so loud, and deep, with a heavy bass resonance so strong it was almost as if I could still feel it vibrating within me.
I felt both alert and disorientated as I scrabbled around on the bedside table for my phone. I picked it up and looked at the time. 6.45am. I scrolled through the in-built news app, then BBC News, but couldn’t find any reports. I opened up Twitter and typed in Kent and Bang. Someone called CassieLovesZayn had tweeted:
OMFG what the fuck was that? MASSIVE bang. Anyone else in Hangway in Kent hear it?
A guy simply called Gavin had replied:
Yeah, love. Massive. Definitely a bomb.
Although I wasn’t any more of an expert than Gavin, I had to agree with him – a noise that loud certainly sounded like a bomb blast, or at least what I’d imagine one to sound like. But there wasn’t anywhere around here someone would want to attack. We weren’t near any tourist landmarks that would result in mass fatalities. I was continuing to scroll when I saw a woman named LexieStarSigns had tweeted:
The power station has gone up, it’s on fire! I can see it from my house!
I rushed to the balcony. The trees were too high for me to see much, but there was something there that wasn’t usually part of my morning view. A dark, ominous layer, getting larger, blossoming and growing and starting to fill the sky above the trees and the woodland my house backed onto.
I returned to my bed. Was I in danger? If the power station had gone up, was I at risk of shrapnel falling on my house or smoke inhalation or something? Whilst the thought of my own death no longer troubled me, I still didn’t really like the idea of choking amidst the unfurling carpet of black smoke crawling its way across the horizon.
I spent the best part of the next half hour sitting on my bed, scrolling through social media, checking what people were saying and watching the news organisations steadily get pictures and reports up on their websites; some embedded tweets from the public amidst their reporting, including the ones I’d already read, along with a statement from Kent Police saying they were dealing with a ‘major incident’ and in the process of evacuating nearby residences within a two-mile radius of the power station. All other residents within the Hangway area must apparently stay inside their houses and keep away from windows.
In spite of the advice, I returned to the French windows of the bedroom and went out onto the balcony. The sky was growing darker with the smoke now and there was a strange scent in the air. Burning, yes, but something else, something nasty and chemical-smelling. I went back inside and started to wander through the dark house. Though the day wasn’t especially chilly, it was cold out on the landing. Perhaps the chill came from how empty the place was. Large empty houses were sad things. All that space just felt so unnecessary. I never used the cinema room, or the home gym, or the swimming pool anymore. I kept mostly to my bedroom, interspersed with trips to the kitchen to get myself bowls of cereal or to the hallway to take in deliveries.
It was when I went down to the kitchen to make myself a coffee that I realised the power wasn’t working. I glanced at my phone and saw that it had no connection to the house Wi-Fi. Instead of coffee, I had a glass of orange juice, congratulating myself for it still being fresh and drinkable. I wasn’t a totally pathetic recluse, I thought to myself as I journeyed back upstairs. I didn’t let food go off; I still ate reasonably well. But in spite of that, things were far from calm in my world. I was always teetering on the edge of reality and something else, something more dangerous but still strangely tempting. Madness, perhaps? I don’t think I ever properly lost my grasp, not completely. There were nights when I thought I had literally gone mad with my grief and I’d never pull myself out. But then the spell would break and the dawn would come and I would be sitting there, clutching a pillow, realising I was both starving and thirsty and I would manage to pull myself up, take a shower and carry on with my day. My day inside, doing nothing much but existing. Reading books. Tidying. Watching TV without any real interest or enjoyment. It’s a cruel irony that these are the things I never felt like I had the time to do when everything was how it was meant to be. I always wished I had more free time. I never expected to end up with too much of it.
Instead of going back to my room, I went to Danny’s bedroom. It still showed evidence of his younger self, before he became a teenager. A large stack of boardgames remained at the bottom of his wardrobe that he hadn’t touched since he was ten. Some plush cuddly toys from Disney movies like Lilo & Stitch and Monsters, Inc. were under the bed – too embarrassing for him to have had on show, but too loved to be discarded completely. On the surface level, some things had changed though. The posters of Harry Potter had been taken down and replaced with ones of video games that I knew next to nothing about. I didn’t like them – they featured angry-looking men and overly sexualised women and cars. They gave the room an edge I didn’t like. Something a bit hard and laddish, something I didn’t want my son to turn into. I went over to his bed and sat down cross-legged on it. I was tempted to curl back up into the covers and breathe in his smell and get lost in a world of memories, but I knew I shouldn’t do that. If I did that, I wouldn’t leave for hours. Images of his childhood would flash before me, as if projected into the darkness of my mind by a beam of light both dim and vivid, flickering and ultra-sharp. Him splashing about in his paddling pool on the balcony garden when we had our London flat. Him running through the leaves in the park, kicking them into the air, laughing and shrieking. And more recent moments that I can’t escape, no matter how much I want to. His change of behaviour. His moods. The secrets he wouldn’t share. And the things he knew that I so wished he hadn’t.
I stared out at my dead son’s belongings and couldn’t help but feel the crushing weight of everything in the room pressing down on me. All the things he’d owned, all the toys he’d played with, all the clothes he’d worn, all the books he’d read and the movies he’d watched. And mingled amongst them, all the things he’d never do, all the clothes he’d never wear again, all the books he’d never get around to reading, all the movies he’d never watch. All the secrets he’d never share. And there were a fair number of those in here, I was sure of that. Things I would probably never know. Things I’d been in the middle of uncovering just before it all happened. Before everything ended.
The day my husband and son were killed.
Chapter 3, Stephanie, four months before the explosion
The last conversation with my husband before he died was a stupid spat about how he’d got the washing mixed up and seemed to have lost a number of my things and Danny’s rugby shorts in the process. It wasn’t the first time things had gone missing – a favourite dress of mine had vanished, one I’d wear for special occasions, like a rare evening out to a posh restaurant with Pete, along with some of my underwear and shorts. Pete had said they must be in my cupboard and I just wasn’t looking properly. I took everything out and put it back again, just to prove him wrong.
‘Whilst I love it when you try to be helpful, I think perhaps you should just leave the laundry to me,’ I’d said bluntly as I flung my things back in, coat hangers scraping as metal hit metal.
‘You’re always saying I should do more myself while we find a new housekeeper,’ he moaned as I rather dramatically swung the cupboard doors shut. I still had Danny’s PE kit to sort out. Part of me wondered if Danny should be doing this himself, now that he was sixteen and it was his own choice to be playing football after school. I was also furious that, after what had happened the night before, this day – the penultimate day of the Christmas holidays – wasn’t the calming, healing day we’d planned. Granted, Danny had seemed much better during the morning, trying to reassure us he was OK after what had happened the night before. He had given me such a fright.
The mention of a potential housekeeper led to another mini-argument, something I was trying to avoid. With something evidently on Danny’s mind, I had hoped Pete and I could have avoided petty squabbles for one day at least, just whilst we tried to find out what was going on. It was stupid, the idea that we should have someone cleaning our house and washing our clothes and doing the ironing when we could easily do it ourselves. I only worked part-time at the local travel agent’s in the high street, and Pete had started to take more of a backseat role in his company. It wasn’t like we didn’t have the time. Although time did still seem to run away with us, and, even though I hated to admit it, part of me did miss having someone doing everything for us when we’d lived in our house on Warwick Square in central London. Upon moving to Kent, I had been adamant that a luxury like that wasn’t ‘an essential’ and although I relented and allowed Pete to employ a cleaner who came in once a week, a ‘housekeeper’ felt way too old-fashioned and more like something you’d find in Downton Abbey than in a house in the suburbs.
Pete and I had been so caught up in our disagreement, I’d forgotten the plan for the afternoon: that Danny was to go to the cinema with his dad to cheer him up, followed by a pizza together. Pete was going to get to the root of what had been wrong with him for the past few months. And what had caused the unsettling drama of the night before. But all this was thrown into disarray when Danny asked if he could go round his friend Scotty’s for band practice. The request made me instantly anxious. ‘But… you and the band haven’t got together for months… and… are you sure you’re feeling up to that? I don’t think it’s a good idea after what happened…’
I didn’t know how to put into words what had happened mere hours previously. I was still shaken to the core with the fear of it and no matter how much Danny insisted the whole incident hadn’t been as serious as I feared, I was still haunted by that feeling of complete and utter dread. The curtains swaying in the wind on the balcony. The sky lighting up with fireworks. That feeling of world-altering, unstoppable dread and panic lingering in the air around us.
But Pete told me it was a good sign that Danny wanted to be around his friends. He said it was good he wanted to see them and try to go back to normal. All talk of involving medical experts or therapists or medication could wait until the start of the new term, he assured me.
So I just went along with it.
My boy set off to his friend’s house, Jonathan walking alongside him, with the plan that Pete would pick Danny up later to take him out for some dinner.
It was the last time I would ever see him alive.
I treated myself to a long bath that evening, before I knew anything was wrong, of course. I let the tension ebb away out of my body, the hot water gently lapping at my chin, the warm light complicated by a soothing silver-grey scented candle flickering on the little unit next to the bath. But any sense of calm I managed to achieve wasn’t destined to last.
The hours went by and Pete and Danny didn’t return.
I realised they would have a lot to talk about, which worried me in and of itself. What was Danny saying to his father?
As the minutes ticked on, I became more and more worried and began to text them – short ‘just checking everything’s fine’ messages at first, followed by more panicked demands they call me or at least confirm they were OK. I pulled on a comfy tracksuit and padded barefoot down the stairs, phone clutched in my hand, and sat next to the Christmas tree, hoping I would hear the car on the drive outside at any moment.
I got no reply to my messages. They didn’t even come up as read. I then worried about what situation Pete might have had to deal with when he’d got there.
It was all going wrong. I’d hoped the band practice and dinner would help Danny relax. Get back to normal. Work his way through whatever was going on with his friends. And this weird atmosphere between us all would have dissipated.
But of course that never happened.
I got the call from the police a few minutes later.
I can’t really remember what they said, but the key words had me running to the front door, forgetting to put on my shoes. I clung on to the fact that they were alive – they were still alive! – otherwise the police wouldn’t have phoned; they’d have visited. I just needed to get to the hospital.
That’s all, I told myself. Just get to the hospital and they’d be there – perhaps a bit bruised, maybe a broken arm or two, but they’d be alive; they’d mend.
It would all be OK.
As soon as I’d got out of the house and aimed the keys at my car, I saw her. Janet Franklin, walking her mother’s enormous Newfoundland dog, Charlton. On normal days I found it funny how bored the dog always looked in Janet’s company, as if he, like the rest of us, was tired of her smug superiority and snobbish jibes and endless stories about why her children are amazing at anything they do. But on that evening, I couldn’t see the dog’s face. In the light from the street lamps and the Christmas lights tastefully adorning her house, I could only make out Janet’s face looking at me as if I were insane, dashing out of my house in the freezing cold without shoes or a coat. And I didn’t wait for her to say anything. I just shouted at her. Shouted the only thing I had on my mind, that I needed to let out, to tell someone, otherwise my overwhelming panic might swallow me whole. ‘A crash!’ I said. ‘They’ve been in a crash.’
Of course, I realise how it must have sounded to Janet. Saying they must have made her instantly fear for the life of her own son. Because her boy, Jonathan, so often got a lift home with us. And I could see it in her face, all the fear and disorientation and horror that were rushing up inside of me.
‘But… I thought the boys were together? Jonathan’s not come home… Is he…? Where…?’
Then it all changed. Within a second, the whole situation was reframed, for Janet at least. Because her boy came running up to her out of nowhere, and we both stared at him.
‘Oh my God!’ she shouted and ran to him, putting her arms around him. ‘Where the hell have you been?’
‘I decided to run back from Scotty’s,’ he said to his mum, pulling away from her. ‘I had my gym stuff on already.’
She continued to just stare at him, then came the relief. Even in the dim light I could see it fill her face as she stepped forwards and clutched him in her arms once more, leaving me to turn away and get into the car, letting waves of white-hot fury rush across me – fury at her for delaying me, for wasting this past minute or so, a minute that could have been vital.
It could have been. But it wasn’t. Because they were dead by the time I reached the hospital. They’d died even before I’d put the key in the ignition.
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