Crash, p.10
Crash, page 10
In Marks and Spencer, I bought three sets of pyjamas and a warm dressing gown.
‘Going on holiday?’ the assistant asked, pushing the receipt into the bag.
I hesitated, on the cusp of telling everything to a comfortable woman with time on her hands. My mobile rang, and I scrambled to find it at the bottom of my bag. At first, I could barely hear the voice. It was Tom, hoarse and speaking in no more than a whisper.
‘Mum, come home now… please. It’s Claudio, he wants some money.’
‘What on earth is he doing there?’ A pointless question that didn’t need a reply. ‘How much does he want?’
‘Five hundred quid.’
‘I’ll get it. Don’t let him into the house. I’ll be home in half an hour.’
The gates opened to allow me onto the drive. I saw the waiting group, Claudio leaning against the car, his back to me. It was the first time I had seen anything of him other than his arm and the flash of his dark glasses. Tom and Honey sat side by side on the top step. At the sight of me, Tom stood and folded his arms and Honey staggered to her feet. My car circled the fountain and I stepped out into the late morning heat, burning from the gravel. I shaded my eyes to better see them, absorbing the dry, yellowing grass on the lawn and exhausted foliage in our stone troughs. Apart from the sound of Honey’s nervous panting, no birds sang and the cows in the adjacent fields were silent.
Claudio pulled his body away from his car bonnet and threw down a cigarette. Honey drew back her lips in a warning snarl. Tom came down the steps, gripping her collar and stood between Claudio and me, unexpectedly taller than us both. Honey finally grasped I was home and grinned in relief.
I stared at Claudio’s dyed black hair, vivid red lips, and unnaturally pale skin. ‘I understand we owe you money,’ I said. ‘What could have happened to your payment?’
The small man screwed his already narrow eyes so they appeared shut. ‘Wasn’t in the account, Mrs Williams. Thought I’d come around and collect, in person. Didn’t mean to worry your lad.’
Tom straightened up and pushed back his shoulders, hooking his thumbs in the pockets of his jeans.
‘You didn’t have to do that,’ I said. ‘You know we always pay. Something very simple must have gone wrong.’
‘Thing is, Mrs Williams, you’re the fifth default this week. I have to pay my suppliers. It’s business. Supply and demand.’
‘I’ve got your money here.’ I pulled the wad of notes from my handbag. ‘I’ll check the problem with our accountant. Now, I’d be grateful if you would leave.’
He took the money from my hand and flicked through the notes with his thumb. I was sure he wanted to count it but noticed his hesitatation, guessing he was caught between old-fashioned politeness and his more natural conviction that he was being cheated. The hand dangling from the driver’s open window tapped the car door and Claudio startled, giving me an incongruous bow before disappearing into the rear passenger seat.
I wrapped my arm around Tom’s waist and he gripped my shoulder. We watched the car disappear through the gates, then together tumbled onto the hot, stone steps, giggling in relief. Honey barked, sensing all was well at last.
‘You were brave.’ I propped myself onto my elbows, feeling the sharp edge of the step against my spine. ‘When did you get to be so tall?’
Tom screwed up his nose so that his freckles formed a dark shadow across the bridge. ‘I’m not scared of Claudio. Dad told me all about him.’
I knew nothing of Claudio, except for his shadowy presence in the night-time car. ‘What did Carl say?’
‘His name isn’t Claudio, it’s Colin and he lives in Shepshed. He used to be a milkman, that’s when he started dealing.’
I laughed. ‘Colin might not be scary, but who’s that with him, in the driver’s seat?’
‘Dad says it’s his mum.’
I leant my head back against the step, feeling a deep, throaty laugh rise from my belly. Remembering that Tom was meant to be ill, I reached out to touch his brow. ‘Are you feeling better? Let me check if you’re still hot.’
Tom clutched at his neck and made a choking sound. ‘My throat kills but I’m okay. I probably caught it off that stupid learning mentor.’ Tom made speech marks in the air, either side of the words learning mentor and added, ‘He was sneezing all over me yesterday.’
Honey licked my face and I sat up to push her aside, a worm of fear crawling across my skull.
‘Tom, why didn’t you ask Dad to speak to Claudio? He was awake and working when I left this morning.’
‘I tried his door. It wouldn’t open. He didn’t answer my knock.’
I remembered the heavy sounds from earlier, furniture being moved. Had it been a rehearsal? ‘We’d better check on him… now.’
With our combined strength, the well-upholstered armchair propped behind the door moved just enough to allow Tom to squeeze through.
‘Move the chair,’ I called through the gap.
‘Mum, he’s dead. I think he’s dead.’
‘Let me in.’ I shouldered the heavy chair out of the way.
Tom stood next to the door leading to Carl’s bedroom. ‘He’s on the floor. In there.’
I knelt beside Carl and felt for his pulse. ‘He’s not dead, but he needs help. I don’t know what he’s taken, or how much.’
It was only ten minutes before The Haven’s private ambulance arrived but in that time, Tom’s skin took on the pallor of his father’s.
‘Come with me to the hospital,’ I begged, but Tom refused, making an angry, fierce gesture of contempt with his hand.
I tried to put an arm around him but he shrugged me aside. ‘Let me ring Madeleine, so you’re not alone,’ I said. ‘I can take you there on my way.’
‘We have to leave now,’ a paramedic interrupted, glancing between us. ‘Who’s coming and who’s staying?’
I gave in; arguing with Tom would only waste more time. There was no choice but to leave him behind with only Honey for company.
I followed the ambulance to the hospital, fearing for Tom, not his father. Until very recently, he had been a child sheltered from all harm. Today, without warning, he had joined the rest of us, the secret society who protected and cared for Carl. This wasn’t going to go well.
FOURTEEN
THURSDAY 18TH SEPTEMBER
It felt as if I had been away for days instead of hours. Tom’s trainers lay on the hall floor but apart from the low hum of the electronic monitors, the house was still and silent. That wasn’t unusual; Carl’s architect had designed the house to be soundproofed, so he would not be disturbed by screaming children or barking dogs. I went into the kitchen, not putting on any lights, and breathed in the smell of dog and rubbish which had been left a day too long without being emptied. I heard a creak from Honey’s basket and her characteristic squeak at the end of a yawn. I splashed my face with ice-cold water and looked out of the window towards the kitchen garden, grey now in the last of the daylight. A young deer, no more visible than a darting shadow, crossed the grass in front of me and stopped to scent the lopsided seat of the children’s swing, hung by Carl from an apple tree the year after Tom was born.
I put lights on in the hall and climbed the stairs to face him. My legs felt stiff, as if I had been to the gym, and I stopped when I reached the landing to inhale deeply. I felt weak and remembered I had not eaten since breakfast. There was no sound from Tom’s room. I tapped on the door. No response. I pushed my way in, my access partially blocked by his jeans and bent to pick them up so that the door would open fully. The light from the landing picked out his sleeping body, fully dressed, in a parallelogram of colour set against the grey shadows of the rest of the bedroom. He lay on his side in his running kit as if in full stride, his legs suspended in the act of pounding the pavements. Disturbed by the light, he turned over, muttering a few words I couldn’t catch. The movement released a smell of sweat and sheets that needed to be changed, and from the floor, vinegar rose from a half-eaten plate of chips, the remains of three spliffs pushed into the ketchup. I sat at Tom’s feet and as my eyes adjusted to the dim light, a room caught between childhood and adolescence gradually became solid. There were posters on the wall but an aeroplane mobile still hung from the window frame, turning in the draught. I leaned over to pick up the plate and saw his teddy under the bed, next to a pile of magazines. Kneeling beside the bed, I brushed Tom’s hair from his brow. He opened his eyes.
‘Mum…?’
‘It’s okay, I’m back. Do you want anything?’
Tom yawned and stretched, shaking his head, and I smelt again the damp, earthy smell from his body.
‘I’m going out for a walk. You go and shower and get to bed properly.’
‘But I wanted to talk to you.’ Tom sounded petulant. ‘How’s Dad?’
‘He’s fine, we’ll see him tomorrow. You need to sleep.’
Tom grunted and eased his legs off the bed. He staggered towards the door, picking up a towel from the bedroom floor.
‘Tom…?’
‘What?’
‘Use a clean towel.’
‘For fuck’s sake…’
I needlessly called out a farewell against the pattering cascade of the shower, before opening the front door and striding out across the gravel drive, tugging at my reluctant dog. It was warm and just dark, a streak of light still visible behind the beech trees that crowded the squat bulk of the church. On evenings such as these, no one thought to close their curtains and I had a chance to stare into the lives of my neighbours. Mrs Tindall sat alone, her hands folded in her lap, alert, straight-backed but leaning forward to catch the late evening news. The young couple in the neighbouring house were trying to calm a crying baby, passing the hot bundle between them, hoping that one of them might have the magic touch.
It was like the peep show machines from the seafront at Skegness. My father would give me a penny and I would light up the rooms one by one, creating from darkness the warmth and light of a family home with just the press of a button. I believed the funny little wooden family, with their crowded rooms and posed positions, had a secret life when I wasn’t there to watch them. I pestered my parents to visit the doll’s house every day and they humoured me, but I was never quick enough to catch the stiff figures rushing back to their places. My parents bought me a doll’s house for my birthday but were disappointed by how little I played with it. My mother made tiny curtains and cushion covers and my father papered the walls so that it would look like our house but they didn’t understand; the peep show family really had been alive.
A middle-aged couple in the next cottage curled up together on a sofa watching television. Their plump bodies seemed to mould, as if they had sat like this for years and their bodies were now shaped to fit together. I remembered cuddling up between Euan and Carl in the flat, but without Euan there to give legitimacy to acts of affection, Carl made it clear such intimacy made him uncomfortable and it vanished from our marriage. This ordinary love was what I wanted now, but with Dan, not Carl. I pulled my phone from my pocket, hoping he’d replied to the text I’d sent him from the hospital, but there was nothing.
I pushed on upwards, climbing the slow incline towards the green, waiting for Honey as she explored the night scents of the street. My father had never expected to be more than a prison officer, we had lived in prison housing and at the weekend we went to the officer’s social club. My mother stopped work as soon as Hazel was born, her role defined by the demands of her house, her children, and my father. After my father died, I realised how narrow her life had been. She had no ambition, no friends, opinions, or interests. My father owned all of those. All she ever wanted was for everything to be nice: a nice cup of tea, a nice bit of beef, two nice little girls, a nice house, a nice garden.
‘Oh, that’s nice,’ was my mother’s comment on everything. I don’t think I ever heard her say that something was ‘not nice’. Not nice didn’t exist. My father wasn’t nice but it took me years to see this. Hazel fought back against his control, but I learned to be his compliant, good girl and never felt the back of his hand or the lash of his tongue. We were his prisoners, kept meek and compliant by the very real threat of violence but in those days, we didn’t understand what was happening.
My first and only act of rebellion was to escape, through having more brains than I deserved and ending up at university far from home, only to fall victim to Carl. I listen to Women’s Hour, I read books, I watch daytime television and I know how domestic violence works, but I didn’t then. None of us did. Carl swamped me with a claustrophobic love that excluded everyone else. For the first time in my life, I felt important. The care he gave me, the advice, the restrictions, seemed only natural from someone who loved me so much, who only had my best interests at heart. I couldn’t see his love masked a creeping, insidious control, and a growing rejection of everything I valued. It didn’t seem personal, at first. We all rejected ‘nice’ and it had seemed especially cool to join in with Carl and Euan’s jokes at the expense of ordinary people like me, families like mine.
My brain burned with looking inside and I dropped down onto a bench on the village green. Despite Carl, all I have done is try to be ordinary, to hide the total disorder of my life and pretend to the outside world that we are a normal family. But Dan and I can be ordinary, we can meld like that couple, watch the evening news together, shake our heads at the politicians, make a nice cup of tea before bed, have slow, sleepy, middle-aged sex. I know what I want and I can have it.
‘I want him,’ I said aloud. Honey yawned and lifted her head from my shoes. ‘I will get well and then I’ll take him away from the wife and family who love him. I will destroy another family, I’ll destroy their ordinary, taken for granted lives. I’ll do it for me and it won’t be nice.’
I ate a banana, barely chewing the slimy mouthfuls as they slipped over my tongue, and dropped a piece for Honey, who tracked its path to the ground with pricked ears, followed by a fruitless search of the earth under the bench for something better.
We headed home, passing the tree Tom’s playgroup had planted in honour of Nelson Mandela becoming president of South Africa. I knelt at the base of the sturdy, adolescent tree and read the plaque, tracing the faded, mossy words with a finger. Tom had walked hand in hand from the nursery in the village hall with George, a plump little red-haired boy who often invited Tom to play but was never asked back. Where are George’s parents now, do they still live in the village? I ought to know these things, any ordinary person would.
At home, I called Oliver from my bedroom.
‘What a shocking thing,’ he said. ‘He seemed fine last night. Something must have set him off. Does the hospital think it was deliberate… an overdose?’
I thought of the chair pushed against the door. The hospital hadn’t mentioned suicide but it was possible. I shook my head, as if Oliver was in the room. ‘The news from America, I think… all this financial business has troubled him. Because of his paranoia, he might believe CU.com is next. There’s nothing else, apart from Tom’s school situation, which he doesn’t seem too bothered about.’
It was unlikely that worries about my health had precipitated Carl’s sudden collapse and I saw no reason to share something so personal with Oliver. ‘You know that Carl’s condition can only get worse,’ I added. ‘You’re the accountant, you pay his hospital bills.’
‘The thing is, Alice,’ Oliver continued after a brief pause, his tone confidential. ‘I’ve spoken to the hospital this afternoon and the doctors don’t feel Carl is fit enough to make any business decisions. You may not know this, but a few months back, Carl gave me power of attorney to act on his behalf, if the worst happened. I must now action this agreement. If you need money, you must come to me.’
‘We’ve always taken whatever we need from the business,’ I argued. ‘Carl doesn’t even have a salary. As his wife, I should have equal access to our money.’
‘Can’t be done. You’re not a business partner, you’re not even a co-owner of the flats and houses. That’s how Carl and Euan set it up, right from the start. I’m sorry if this is news to you but perhaps you should have checked. Anyway, financially things aren’t looking good, every company is feeling the pinch. You’re right that Carl never paid himself a salary but I treated the money he took from the business as a dividend and paid the tax. Right now, we can’t afford any more expense.’
‘The governors’ meeting is on Tuesday. I might have to find fees for a new school, possibly send Tom away as a boarder. At the very least, I’ll have to pay for home tutoring. You’re saying I’m on my own with this?’
‘I’m afraid that’s the case,’ Oliver replied. ‘What’s to stop you staying at home yourself, give the lad some time and attention, teach him yourself. It’s what he needs.’
‘You know nothing about what Tom needs,’ I protested. ‘What’s going on, Oliver? Carl’s dealer turned up this morning, claiming he hadn’t been paid.’
‘Ah yes, that was unfortunate. Look, Alice, we’re going to have auditors crawling all over the accounts. I’ve had to stop the payments to the dealer. I’ll sort out some more money for you, set you up with a carer’s allowance or something, but it won’t be much. It’s too late to start paying Carl a salary. We couldn’t afford him!’
Oliver laughed at his own joke and ended the call, claiming an obligation to his dinner guests.
I ran a deep bath, pouring rich oil under the pounding taps. Blood rushed to the surface of my skin as I slid into water that was too hot. I lay still until it cooled, using only the tips of my fingers to create small currents and whirlpools in the clouding water. Afterwards, I dried myself with a rough towel and smoothed my wrinkly feet and hands with lotion. I should have heeded Beatrice’s warning. In his belittling of me, Carl had found a willing partner in Euan and now I knew that both of them had conspired to shut me out of the business, from the very start, as if I wasn’t to be trusted. Would Carl have excluded me from power of attorney without a recommendation from Oliver, feeling justified by Carl’s paranoia? I would find out what power of attorney meant and once I was well, I would fight it.
