The other son, p.17
The Other Son, page 17
The glass shattered and rained down upon those fleeing the corridor. The screams multiplied in volume and number. Not just girls, Scott saw, boys too, and the adults, their arms instinctively circling their heads against the unknown direction of the guns.
The anger came to Noah now, finally; it was almost a relief to Scott that he possessed the emotion. He didn’t know why he found it a comfort, but he did.
As Noah kicked open the door and marched after the retreating group, Scott felt a vibration in his back pocket.
He pulled the phone out, couldn’t remember switching it on. It had been turned off since he entered the school gates that morning. He never had it on in school. He wasn’t part of any chat groups or collective message sites like the other kids.
His finger hovered over the red button, fully expecting to see his mother’s name on the screen. He hesitated, took one last glance at Noah, almost invisible now so far had he travelled down the hallway, then swiped to accept the call.
‘Nan?’ he said, tentatively.
Her voice, soothing, like it always was, echoed in the hallway. Scott made to switch it off speaker, but changed his mind when he saw that Noah had vanished entirely from view. He felt his lips twitch. His nan loved him, always had. Sure, she loved Ryan too, but it was as though she sensed the disconnect his own mother had for him and did her best to make up for it.
On the other end of the phone, he heard a gasp, a scuffle, and his mother’s voice, ‘Give it to me!’ Then she was there, sounding breathless, asking if he was okay, acting as if she cared.
He wanted her to put his nan back on the phone, but there was a disconnect in that relationship too, one that had been there for as long as he could remember.
‘Yeah,’ he said, in answer to her question.
Then she was off. Talking about his brother, as usual.
Ryan, Ryan, Ryan.
Her voice was urgent, echoing around the otherwise deserted hallway. ‘Your brother is in the science lab, in a stock cupboard, he’s with…’
Scott stopped listening. Noah had reappeared at the end of the hallway. Scott’s breath caught in his throat. Standing there in the leather coat, the guns hanging casually out of his pockets, Noah didn’t look like a boy any longer.
He looked like a man.
Scott breathed into the mobile. ‘Gotta go,’ he said. He cut the call and slipped the phone back into his pocket.
‘Come on.’ Noah walked. Scott followed.
He thought about Emily, the first one to escape, the one he’d led to safety. Had she told anyone yet? Had she proclaimed him as her hero?
‘Who was that calling you?’ Noah asked suddenly.
Scott, walking a couple of steps behind him, dragged his feet. ‘My nan,’ he said, ‘and my mum.’
Noah glanced over his shoulder and grinned. ‘What did they say? What did they ask you?’
Scott shrugged. ‘Just if I was okay.’
‘She was talking about your brother, right?’
Scott didn’t want to answer, wondered if he could get away with saying nothing, but Noah had stopped walking, and stood, arms crossed over his chest, head cocked to one side.
‘They always ask about him, right?’ he said.
Scott scuffed his shoe on the floor. ‘Yeah, sometimes.’
Noah moved, faster than lightning. Scott flinched at the speed of his approach. Noah’s arms were on him now, his hand around the back of Scott’s neck.
Scott gasped, struggled once, and then stayed dead still as he felt something cold on his collarbone.
Not the guns; from the angle he hung his head, he could see they were both still in Noah’s pockets. A blade, then. He remembered the knives that had been in the rucksack.
‘Do you wanna change that? Do you wanna do something about it?’
He knew what Noah was asking him. With the cold metal on his throat and Noah’s hand on his neck, he felt it. The intensity coming from the boy in front of him spelled it out for him.
Noah wasn’t planning on getting out of this.
The knife shifted an inch. Scott raised his eyes to lock onto Noah’s gaze.
‘I’m in,’ he said. ‘I’m with you.’
The pressure of the blade lessened, then vanished altogether.
Noah grinned. ‘The science lab, right?’ He tilted his head, rested his hands on the handles of his guns. ‘What’re we waiting for?’
33
Sara
Now
She hadn’t expected an escape route. She’d thought – hoped – that like most men, Travis would fall into a deep sleep afterwards and she would be able to slip from the bed and retreat to her cabin. She had anticipated a struggle, either that Travis wouldn’t let her leave, or that he would be clingy and cuddly, smothering her with his afterglow of love. She wasn’t sure which one would be worse.
She had been surprised when he hadn’t even stayed with her. Rather, he’d been up and off and out.
She didn’t question why, didn’t allow for any insecurities to rest upon her. She didn’t much care if he’d enjoyed it or not, though she was pretty sure it was the best thing to happen to him in a long time. He had that look about him. One that Mack had once worn, one that showed in Jojo’s eyes whenever he had looked at her.
Not at the end, though, not with Jojo.
It hadn’t been about that. It hadn’t even been to get her own satisfaction, like she’d mused on. No, this was all for Scott. If Travis thought there was something between her and him, he would be more inclined to help her boy.
Sara shivered as she groped around for her clothes, the Bacardi taste in her mouth threatening to overspill as she recalled the past against her will.
Three days was all it had been since their lives were changed forever. Just seventy-two hours since one boy had come out of the school instead of the three that Jojo and Sara had prayed for. She was barely focused, hardly able to get out of bed. Showering and personal care were a thing of the past. Her mother had gone home, finally, but would no doubt return.
And here was Jojo, on her doorstep when she’d opened the door to his gentle knock.
She couldn’t look at him. The man who was the catch of the city, friendly, with a wicked sense of humour. Gentle yet firm, kind, gorgeous.
All gone.
The man in front of her was smaller, somehow. His eyes were red-rimmed, his skin ashen. Three days of stubble at least hid the downward drag of his mouth somewhat.
‘I… I want to see him,’ he’d said; no greeting, no hug that said he knew what she was going through.
Her heart hammered. Even through the haze of medication, she knew who he was talking about.
Scott.
Why now? All these years later, all those rumours that had abounded, whispered from the lips of Kathy Driver. It had been strange, so typically British. Everyone seemed to know, but nobody talked openly about it. Sara’s biggest fear had been that one day these horrible mothers would shout it out to the whole world, breaking the unspoken code. Those who needed not to know would know. Mack, Scott, Ryan.
It was the reason she made no friends. It was the reason she stayed away from the school gates.
Oh, the shame…
The usual panic that had been there for fifteen years pounced before dying.
This time, she thought about it. As much as she could, deep in her well of grief. Mack was gone, he couldn’t be hurt by the rumours. Scott no longer had a father. Jojo no longer had a son. She, Sara, had nothing and nobody.
It had been to protect Mack, at first, when he was still alive. She was pretty certain that the extra years he had miraculously lived had been down to Scott. At first, he’d given himself the task of surviving to see the birth of his child. When that happened, he moved the goalposts.
I want to see him take his first steps.
I want to see him say his first words.
I want to see his first day at primary school.
He smashed every target. And while the rumours circulated at the school gates, there seemed to be that unspoken rule.
Mack must not know.
And hats off to those wicked, nasty women. None of them ever told him. Not even Kathy, the worst witch of all.
But Mack had finally given in to the assault on his body. Tragedy had now hit the wider community. Would the Kathys of Farenden say anything if Jojo stepped up?
She’d seen them, on the couple of occasions her mother had coerced her out of the house since the massacre. Their eyes were as glazed as hers were.
Almost as if the rush of thoughts was too much, Sara had sagged against the door, using it to prop herself up.
‘I’ll think about it,’ she managed. ‘Just… don’t rush me, don’t rush us.’
It had seemed enough at the time, the hint of something for him to hold on to. Something that could help her, even. Maybe, handled correctly, these fractured people coming together to make a whole would help Scott.
Because so far, he’d said nothing. Not to her, not to his grandmother, not even to the police, who had insisted on ‘carefully and sensitively’ questioning all the survivors before the bodies of the dead were even cold.
He’d mentioned nothing about that day, nor what he had witnessed.
Time… time… time. It was a healer. Or so they all said.
She’d closed the door on Jojo, something passing between them in that last glance: that maybe, one day, things could be something nearer to normal for all of them.
But time had moved fast.
The very next day, Sara had managed to do something so far the police had been unable to.
She had found out the identity of the second shooter.
And twelve hours after bidding goodbye to Jojo, she and Scott had packed up their home and left for good.
Now, in the home of a man who was practically a stranger, things were starting to crack.
Not just starting, she corrected herself mentally. They had been fractured for a year; even more, if she were honest. But now more people were inserting themselves into her and Scott’s life.
And that was dangerous.
She cursed as she pulled her shoes on, shoved her hair underneath the baseball cap and let herself out of the cabin.
A light breeze stirred, the leaves in the trees rippled. Knowledge, as clear as day, hit her with a thousand tiny pellets.
She had to speak to Scott. She had to listen to Scott.
She shuddered, buttoning up her shirt with fumbling fingers. From her right, near the track that led to her home, she heard a twig breaking.
Travis was coming back.
She ducked her head, moved around the cabin to the far end. She waited until the porch lights went out, followed by the kitchen ones, then doubled back on herself, keeping low, biting her lip as the memory came back to her of the kids streaming out of the school, bent almost in two, as though by making themselves half the size, they could dodge the bullets that would inevitably follow them.
At the curtainless window, she paused; then, reaching to grasp the windowsill, she peered into the room.
Travis’s cabin was open plan. She couldn’t imagine it, living in a home without rooms to shut yourself up in when the pressure of life and people got too much.
He was standing with his back to her, all lights out now, his silhouette seeming small in the darkness of the room. He was staring at the bed, she knew.
She sighed, lowered herself down to land soundlessly upon the ground, and turned away.
On the road, she breathed a little easier. Her cottage was in view, and she stepped up her pace. Scott’s bedroom light was on. She faltered, stopping at the gate.
What did he do up there? There were no books, no DVDs or video games. He had no mobile phone or iPad or any of the other gadgets she saw clutched in the hands of the kids at the Centre.
‘Scott…’ She breathed his name in the moonlight and remembered her earlier thoughts of talking to him, listening to him.
She passed the white rose bush, plucked a bloom from it as was her habit. For the first time, however, she didn’t drop it to the path and crush it underfoot. Instead, she carried it into the house, holding it as though it were a precious thing, the way she’d held Ryan when he was born.
The way she’d never held Scott.
34
Sara
Before
Her first thought was that it was a trick. Or no, not a trick, just a calming technique her mother was using to get her to chill out over not being able to reach Scott herself.
But that made no sense either. She hadn’t been hysterical, not like some of the other mothers, not over Scott, not even over Ryan, not really. She had been stressed and worried and fraught, but none of that had shown, either in her actions or her words.
It must be true, then. Mary must have reached Scott.
She lurched forward, losing the robotic stance. ‘Give it to me!’ she gasped, misjudging the distance and knocking her mother off the kerb into the road.
A tut from Mary, but she gave the phone over willingly.
‘Scott?’ Sara shouted down the phone. ‘Are you all right?’
A long silence, so long that she thought maybe it was a trick after all. Then she heard the breathing from the other end.
‘Yeah,’ he said.
Yeah. Just like that. As though the school wasn’t the site of a massacre. As though it wasn’t as bad as a war zone. As though people hadn’t been killed in there.
‘Have you seen your brother?’ she asked, for want of anything better to say.
It didn’t escape her, the autopilot that had kicked in when she’d spoken to Ryan. Ascertain his location and the fact that he was safe. Stress the importance of keeping hidden. Guilt rose in her now. She had her elder son on the phone and all she could say was his brother’s name.
‘He’s in the science lab, in a stock cupboard with a couple of other boys,’ she said. Her intention was to tell him to get to where Ryan was, to hole up together, along with Jaden, because wouldn’t it be a win if the three boys came out alive and unharmed?
‘Gotta go.’ His voice, always small, suddenly seemed even quieter.
Before she could speak, she knew he had hung up.
‘Excuse me.’ A small voice by her side brought her back to the present.
She let Mary take the phone back and looked to her right. A young girl, a stunningly pretty little thing. The kind of girl who would waltz through life. The thought was sudden, biting in its bitterness.
‘I just got out, a little while ago.’ The girl spoke breathlessly, her small white hands fluttering around her neck. In her fingers she twisted a slim gold chain, straining the necklace until Sara worried it would break in her grip.
Everything is so fragile, she thought.
‘I’m Emily, I was… He had me, held me by my neck.’ Her eyes widened as though she was reliving the horror. Sara’s heart dipped in her chest as tears spilled from the girl’s clear blue eyes.
Another presence, the girl’s mother, hustling through the group that Sara now saw surrounded her and Emily. She didn’t know the woman, nor this Emily, but she watched the mother, intrigued, as she circled her daughter with her arms and crushed her to her chest. A protective measure, as well as a need to touch the girl, make sure she was real, not an apparition, dreamed up by witnessing the terror of the other parents, their arms aching and empty.
‘Come on, home now.’ The mother’s voice was throaty, her eyes darting left and right and behind her, as if the perpetrator of this crime was going to spring up and snatch Emily away.
Sara understood. If her boys came back, she would spirit them home, lock the doors behind her and close the curtains. They wouldn’t be going anywhere again, not on their own. No parks or cinema trips with their friends. No parties unless they were under her roof, the guests carefully researched and authorised by her.
It was an absurd thought, but one that made sense.
They began to move away, Emily openly crying now, her mother herding and rushing her.
Sara blinked after them, and then, just as they were almost at the road, the girl broke free and made her way back.
‘I wanted to tell you, I had to say in case…’ She swallowed, clearly imagining all sorts of worst-case scenarios, obviously knowing that she was one of the lucky ones. ‘Your son saved my life.’
‘Oh!’ Sara cried. Tears sprang to her previously dry eyes.
Emily’s mother was back, pulling at the girl’s arm. Sara wanted to bat her away. Instead, she went into a crouch and touched Emily’s hand. ‘Did he? My son… helped you?’
Emily nodded eagerly. ‘We had no way of escaping, then it was just the two of us, and there was this window, like, really high up. He helped me climb up to it, and, like, he pushed me through it.’ At this point, she held up her hands. Scratches criss-crossed her palms, grit engrained in them, as if to prove her story. ‘He told me to run, and not to look back.’
Sara swayed, her knees weak. A strong hand clamped her shoulder. She didn’t need to look up. She’d know that touch anywhere. Jojo was back. But the thought of him and her mother in such close proximity meant nothing now. All she wanted to do was drink in this girl in front of her, the one her son had saved.
‘He was so brave,’ said Emily.
Was. The past tense hit Sara hard, and what had felt momentarily like euphoria drowned in something dark and nasty. She stood up, helped by Jojo, as the mother won and Emily let herself be pulled away.
‘He should have looked after himself,’ she said to nobody. Even in these circumstances the words sounded terrible, and she tried to fight the feeling. ‘He saved her life,’ she said. She needed it validated, heard, and she shook off Jojo’s hand and turned to her mother. ‘Did you hear her? Ryan saved that girl’s life.’
‘Jesus H Christ, will you look at that?’ Jojo’s Irish accent, which thickened at times of high excitement or anger, lent a pitch to his voice. ‘Look, do you see now?’
Sara turned to where he pointed. The main body of the school, a hundred metres away; the entrance doors, previously closed, were being pushed open.
