Midnight (26 page)

The man shook his head soberly. ‘Oh, yer mean the one out Cicely way? I remember that fire. It were a bad ’un – took out half the street, it did. As I recall, four people were lost in that fire . . . So what about yer mum?’

Jack recalled his mother. Claire Redmond was a smart, attractive woman, but she was never a natural-born mother. In fact, during a heated row between his parents, Jack had once overheard her say she had never wanted children. It was a crippling thing for him to hear.

The old man was waiting for an answer. ‘Aw, don’t tell me
she
were caught up in that fire as well?’

Jack shook his head, ‘No. She didn’t even work at the factory.’

‘So, why did yer leave? I’d ’ave thought yer mum would want you at ’ome, with her. Especially with her man gone, and you coming up to the age when you could earn some money.’

Jack wasn’t enjoying this questioning, but he reluctantly satisfied the old man’s curiosity. ‘A couple of years after we lost Dad, she found herself a rich man, and moved abroad.’

The older man was shocked. ‘So, did you ’ave older brothers or sisters to keep an eye on yer?’

‘No.’ Jack recalled the loneliness he had felt. ‘I was an only child.’

‘I see. So yer dad died and yer mum buggered off with a rich fella, leaving you to fend for yourself.’ He shook his head as he moved away. ‘It don’t bear thinking about!’ Screwing up his chip paper, he placed it in a nearby bin. ‘Women, eh? Can’t live with ’em, can’t live without ’em. Well, good luck to yer, son, and mind how you go, eh?’

Jack watched him amble down the street, shifting from one side to the other to avoid the puddles. He couldn’t help but wonder if the kindly old man had also suffered at the hands of some woman or other.

Jack finished the last of his chips, which by now had grown cool. But the flavour was not lost, and he thoroughly enjoyed them, right down to the last morsel. Afterwards, he sat a while, thinking and planning, and feeling curiously at ease with the world.

Inevitably, his thoughts drifted to Molly. He hoped she and Mal were getting on all right. Strange to think she might be married to someone else. There was a time when he could not have envisaged his life without Molly in it. When he needed her, she had been there for him, a thoughtful and loving partner. And yet, from the moment he told her of his plan to move up here, it as if she became a different person. He missed her, but he was not sorry it was over between them. Because of the way things had turned out, he realised that he and Molly never really had a future together.

Thomas was worried. ‘You reckon this bloke followed you to the chippie, then?’

‘Well, to be honest, I don’t know if he actually followed me.’ Molly was beginning to wish she hadn’t said anything about the stranger. ‘By the time I came out of the shop, he was only just going in, so it could just have been a coincidence.’

‘What’s he look like?’

Libby pictured him. ‘Tallish, probably about my age, but I couldn’t see his face because he had his umbrella up and his jacket collar turned up.’ Having just left her trainers in the hall, she now took off her wet socks. She hoped Thomas would drop the subject.

Having finished dishing up the food, Thomas handed her a nice hot plate of saveloy, chips and mushy peas. ‘Don’t worry about it any more, lass,’ Thomas said. ‘Leave that to me. You just put him out of your mind.’

Eileen was proud of herself. ‘I set the table,’ she told Libby for the third time. ‘Did you get my cod?’

‘I certainly did.’ Libby pulled out a chair for her mother. ‘I got you chips too, and if you want them, some mushy peas into the bargain.’

‘I never asked for no mushy peas!’ Eileen looked agitated.

‘No matter. I’m sure me and Thomas can finish them off.’ She helped her mother into the chair. ‘All right, Mum?’

Eileen nodded. ‘But I don’t want you and Thomas to eat my mushy peas.’

Libby and Thomas exchanged a knowing smile, with Thomas teasing, ‘Too late! You didn’t want any, so now they’re all mine.’

‘You behave yourself!’ Eileen said with a chuckle. ‘Yer an old devil, that’s what!’

Folding his arms, he pretended to shrink from her. ‘I wouldn’t dare eat your mushy peas!’ he said in mock terror.

Eileen was highly amused. ‘Naughty man,’ she kept saying. ‘You’re a very naughty man!’ Then, to Libby’s delight, she got stuck into her food, as if she hadn’t been fed for a month.

Jack woke in a panic.

It had taken him a while to drop off to sleep, and when he did, he was instantly back there, in that pitch-dark place – only this time,
there was someone standing beside him
.

He couldn’t see who it was, but he knew there was someone there – a shadowy figure, stooping down . . . reaching out with both hands. ‘
No! Go away!
’
His frantic cries shook him awake, but he couldn’t escape, because the figure was closing in on him . . . and those eyes . . . stark and staring, were looking straight at him. He was trapped, but he was awake.
He was awake.
And this time, he was more afraid than he had ever been.

Scrambling out of bed, he sat for a moment, the sweat pouring down his face, his body trembling from head to foot. The dream was the same, but different, because now there was someone else in it. Someone else was there, reaching down, wanting to take him away. The dream had changed. Everything appeared sharper. Nearer. And he didn’t know how to deal with it.

He got up and began restlessly pacing the floor. ‘Someone was there . . . they were right there, next to me.’ Now he remembered the words. He could still hear the voice, soft and kind: ‘Come away, Jack . . . come away.’

But he didn’t want to go. Not yet. The eyes held him in a weird kind of fascination. So still, and cold. Staring right at him. Where was he?
For pity’s sake – where was he?

Wide awake, he could still feel the cold. It was bitter and sharp, piercing, right through to the bones. Wrapping the duvet around himself, he shivered uncontrollably. He’d never heard the voice before, but now it stayed with him, whispering in his ear: ‘Come away, Jack . . . come away.’ And he could hardly breathe.

He relived the dream carefully in his mind, looking for answers. One thing was now clear to him, which he had never realised before: someone else knew that place. Someone else heard his cry for help.

For some strange reason, being back in his home town was helping him to think with clarity. Maybe in time new things would come to the surface, and he would find the answer to his nightmares.

Calmer now, Jack went to the kitchen and made himself a cup of cocoa. He was desperately tired. But half an hour later, he was dressed and in his car. He started the engine and headed towards Bower Street. At this time of night, the roads were deserted, and unnervingly shadowy.

Crossing over into Spring Lane, he drove past the trees on the right, then turning right again, he passed the pub, and was soon in Bower Street. The street-lights shed a yellow haze across the houses, highlighting the house where Thomas used to live. Slowly, anxious not to disturb anyone, Jack parked the car a short way up from Number 20, the house where he was born.

Switching off both engine and lights, he sat there, his mind in chaos. ‘What in God’s name am I doing here?’ He glanced at the clock on the dashboard; it was almost 2 a.m. ‘I must be crazy.’

He sat there for a few minutes, his attention straying from the house he knew, to the house where Thomas had lived. All was still.

He brought his gaze to the house where Libby had lived; his best friend – the one he trusted above all others. Sadness flowed through him. Libby Harrow had been the one true mainstay in his young life. Leaving her behind had been, and would always remain, his biggest regret.

That first month in London, he’d many times picked up a postcard, ready to write to her. But for some reason, he never did. Maybe she was too close to his past. Yet he needed her to know how he’d worked hard to build a new life for himself, and how he had gone to college and got the ‘A’ Levels he badly needed to forge a career.

Looking at the house where she’d lived, Jack imagin ed her running down the path in her school skirt and white blouse, her hair tamed into auburn pigtails hanging down her shoulders, and her voice, calling to him: ‘Hurry up, Jack! Or we’ll miss the school bus and have to walk again!’

The memory caught his heart. ‘Dearest Libby,’ he said. A wealth of love trembled in his voice.

Thomas could not sleep. He was concerned about what Libby told him earlier, about the stranger. Even now, it played on his mind.

Having just woken from a shallow sleep, he instinctively went to the window and looked out. At first he didn’t see the big Lexus parked some distance away, out of reach of the street-lamps. Then, as he turned away, a figure got out of the car.

‘Who the devil’s that?’ he muttered to himself. The man’s build was much the same as the description Libby had given him, but it was dark, and the shadows hid his face. Whoever the man was, there could be no mistaking his interest in Eileen and Libby’s house, because Thomas could see that he was staring right at it.

Thomas’ first instinct was to go out there and confront the stranger. Grabbing his trousers and shirt from the back of the chair where he had left them earlier, he hastily dressed. ‘I’ll have you, yer bugger!’ he grumbled, as he kept the figure in his sights. ‘You’ll tell me what yer after, or I’ll have the coppers on yer, an’ no mistake!’

Suddenly the man climbed back into the car and within moments it was on the move. ‘Dammit!’ Thomas blamed himself, ‘I wonder if he saw me watching him.’

As the car passed underneath his window, its back end was illuminated by the nearby street-lamp. ‘Got yer!’ Pressing his face closer to the window, Thomas narrowed his old eyes to see all the better as he hurriedly scribbled the car’s number onto the wallpaper with a biro. ‘Damn and bugger it!’ He’d missed that last number. Was it an eight? Or it could have been a six. Never mind – he had most of the number-plate. That should be enough for him to keep a wary eye out.

Grumbling and moaning, he went down to the kitchen, where he sat at the table, drumming his fingers on the table-top. ‘I don’t like this business . . . not one little bit!’

A short time later, Thomas went back to bed, but he was too unsettled to sleep. All manner of questions ran through his mind, along with other things. Things long gone, but not forgotten. Bad things that troubled the mind.

Thomas didn’t see himself as a bad man. He was a man of good character. An honourable man, who cared deeply for those around him. Especially the two lovely women next door. Apart from himself, they had no one. For their sake, he hoped the stranger’s appearance in their lives was just a coincidence, instead of a sign that the past was beginning to rear its ugly head.

For reasons of his own, that was something Thomas had always feared. Yet a part of him knew it was inevitable that one day this secret would be out, sadly some secrets could not be hidden away for ever.

For a time, he stood by the window, murmuring to himself. ‘You were wrong to think it would all be forgotten,’ he bowed his head in shame. ‘There’s an old saying, Thomas, and you would do well to remember it.’ He said it now, clear and strong:
‘Be sure, yer sins will allus come back to haunt yer!’

He was not a man who read the Bible. But he knew more than enough about sinners repenting.

Chapter Seventeen

T
HE NEXT MORNING
, Jack was dog-tired, having had less than four hours’ sleep. The images of midnight still clung to him. Even now, when he was wide awake and getting ready for work, doing ordinary things – everyday, wide-awake things – like trying to fasten his tie, like brushing his teeth and combing his wayward hair. Even while he was planning the day ahead, praying that the event tomorrow would run like clockwork, he could not shut out the image of those eyes. The expression in them as they looked at him; the sadness . . . the way the moonlight made them sparkle. And the unholy smell.

Afraid that he was going mad, he turned the radio on full blast. The soft piano music pacified his shredded nerves. It smothered the rising panic inside him.

Calmer now, he looked in the mirror and managed to tie the perfect knot in his tie. He examined himself with a critical eye: smart, dark-blue suit; crisp, white shirt beneath. All in all, he now looked like a man about to do business.

He didn’t want to be seen as less than smart in his new position. As Thomas had told him once, ‘First impressions are most important.’ In fact, Jack recalled the very day he’d said that.

He was on his way to school. It was a hot July Friday towards the end of term, and it was the turn of his class to take assembly. Jack had stuffed his tie in his pocket as usual, the minute he was out of the house.

As he walked past, Thomas was at the gate. He asked Jack what he was up to at school that day, and Jack told him they were having a special assembly. ‘There’s a council-man coming to talk to us,’ he explained. ‘He means to ask us why we need a new gymnasium.’ He told Thomas, ‘I can’t stand assemblies.’

Thomas asked where his tie was, and Jack pulled it out of his pocket to show him. Thomas was persuasive but firm. ‘Put it back on, lad. You might not like the idea of listening to some bloke spouting off, but there’s no need to look like a scruff, now is there, eh? Think about it, lad. Have a bit of self-respect.’

That was when he told Jack, ‘Remember: first impressions are the most important.’ It was sound advice, which Jack had never forgotten.

Looking at himself in the mirror, he was satisfied that Thomas would approve. He felt ready to face the world. ‘Right!’ Willing himself not to think about other things, he trained his mind on the all-important test ahead of him.

Jack’s right-hand woman, Susan Wilson, had proved herself to be as reliable as ever. Six of the company’s more experienced salesmen were all geared up and ready for instructions; the ultra-efficient Susan had supplied them each with an information pack and a pen and notepad, in case they needed to make notes during Jack’s welcoming speech as manager.